Video History Project

People

Kathy Rae Huffman

Kathy Rae Huffman is Director of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse -- http://www.cornerhouse.org -- Manchester's leading centre for contemporary art, media and cinema. In the heart of Manchester's centre city, it serves as a meeting point for artists, cultural and socially engaged people. From June 2000 - May 2002, she was the director of Hull Time Based Arts, East Yorkshire's premiere media and live-art centre for the production and presentation of artists work, and the annual ROOT festival. She is a networker and specialist for web based initiatives, a collector of new media works, and a curator who pioneered support of artists work centered in media theory and practice.

She travels widely and works closely with artists in Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Austria, Netherlands, and elsewhere. From 1998-2000, Huffman was Associate Professor of Electronic Art, and director of EMAC, the undergraduate bachelor of science program Electronic Media Arts and Communication, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. At RPI, her research focused around issues of female environments in the Internet, including 3D online environments, telepresence events, and the history of video and Installation art.

Huffman's recent exhibitions include 'Grace Weir A Fine Line' (Sept 2003);' 'Lab3D The Dimensionalised Internet' , 'Balkan Matrix' and 'Where do we go from here?', new media exhibitions at Cornerhouse that utilise digital film, internet, sound or video in real space; 'e-[d]entity', an international program of video works by women, which shows ways female identity is expressed in online environments, distributed by the Video Data Bank, Art Institute of Chicago -- https://www.vdb.org. Since 1999, Huffman has co-organized and co-curated four annual international competitions and on-line exhibitions of 3D environments Web3Dart, with Karel Dudesek (London/Vienna). The website is the largest collection of 3D online works and is the most comprehensive works of its kind. It has featured more than 150 artists from more than 35 countries. Exhibited internationally, it is the official Art Show at the 3D Web Symposium and has been shown in festivals, exhibition and art spaces internationally -- https://www.web3dart.org

Huffman's Internet networking projects include FACES (2000), a rapidly growing online collection of websites by women -- http://www.faces-l.org. Huffman co-initiated FACES, a mailing list for women working in the various fields of new media, in 1997. This list now numbers 300+ women working in the educational, artistic, technical, research, and social areas of media work. FACES meet for networking and project development at international festivals (ISEA, EMAF, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, documentaX) and has become a vital link in the info_network of informed media art women.

FACES was inspired by FACE SETTINGS (1996-1998), a performance/installation work with Eva Wohlgemuth (Vienna) that investigated communication between women, in on-line and in real life situations, mostly at special performing dinner events https://thing.at/face/. SIBERIAN DEAL (1995) a pioneering work, also with Eva Wohlgemuth, was a project investigating value and the exchange of objects and information while travelling together in Siberia. As a freelance artist, curator, writer and networker, Huffman was based in Austria from 1991-1998.

She was a member of HILUS Intermediale Projekt Forschung, Vienna (1995-1998), where she made her media library available for research, and organized public events like the successful social office meetings 'Info-Cocktails'. As a writer, Huffman has contributed to Telepolis, Rhizome, ISEA and other online journals. In 1996, Huffman collaboratively initiated the column pop~TARTS for the Telepolis online journal with Margarete Jahrmann and maintained the column until 1999 -- https://www.heise.de/tp/. Huffman was curator/producer of the Contemporary Arts Television Fund, a project that joined WGBH TV (Boston's public television station) & The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (1984-1991). She was Curator for Media and Performing Arts at The ICA from 1989 -1991. She was Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and director of its regional media art center, with a collection that focused on the history of Southern California media art, from 1979-1983.

Cite this record

"Kathy Rae Huffman." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/kathy-rae-huffman.

Download RIS citation
Summary

Kathy Rae Huffman is Director of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse, Manchester; from June 2000 to May 2002 she directed Hull Time Based Arts and the ROOT festival. From 1998 to 2000 she was Associate Professor of Electronic Art and director of EMAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researching female environments on the Internet, 3D online environments and telepresence. She curated new media exhibitions at Cornerhouse including Grace Weir A Fine Line and Lab3D, co-organized Web3Dart (from 1999), co-initiated the FACES network and collaborated with Eva Wohlgemuth on FACE SETTINGS and SIBERIAN DEAL; earlier curatorial posts include WGBH/ICA, The ICA and Long Beach Museum of Art.

Submit a change or correction

If unchecked, this will appear as a public note on the site immediately. Spam filters may delay publication, but all submissions are reviewed by staff.

Changes will be reviewed and integrated as time permits. For major changes, feel free to email [email protected].

Last modified 18 June 2011

Related records

  • Contemporary Art Television Fund Chronology

    The Institute of Contemporary Art and WGBH-TV in Boston created the Contemporary Art Television Fund to commission and co-produce new video works; the Fund accepted and solicited proposals and provided assistance for production, post-production and distribution. Co-Directors were David Ross (ICA) and Susan Dowling (producer at WGBH's New Television Workshop); Kathy Huffman served as curator and had also curated at the Regional Media Art Center at the Long Beach Museum in California. The Fund supported television works and installations, received initial funding from WGBH and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and maintained a distribution program intended to generate income for the Fund.

  • Marita Sturken People

    Marita Sturken is Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, and author of Tangled Memories (California, 1997), Thelma & Louise (British Film Institute, 2000), Practices of Looking (with Lisa Cartwright, Oxford, 2001), and co-editor of Technological Visions (Temple, 2004). She holds a PhD from the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has published in journals including Representations, Public Culture, History and Theory, and Afterimage. She has written extensively about video art and the emergence of video, including catalogues for the Museum of Modern Art and Electronic Arts Intermix, and co-curated with Robert Riley the exhibition Machine Media: Steina and Woody Vasulka at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1996.

  • Rebecca Allen People

    Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognized media artist inspired by the potential of advanced technology, the aesthetics of motion, and the study of behavior. Her work, which blurs the boundaries between physical reality and virtual reality, between biological life and artificial life, takes the…

  • Rebecca Dolan People

    Rebecca Dolan holds an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging from Maryland Institute College of Art (1999) and a BFA from Colorado State University (1991); she is Assistant Professor in the Photography & New Media Department at Kansas City Art Institute. Her exhibitions include solo shows in Kansas City (2003 Field; 2004 White, working title) and screenings at the National Gallery Film Theatre (2002) and Goethe Institut (2001); her installations are multi-channel video works with dimensional sound, and her videography (1998–2001) includes collaborations with Patrick Wright. She maintains an ongoing online project at http://www.rebad.com/ and has received institutional awards including a 2002 Faculty Development Grant and a 1999 honorable mention at MICA.

  • The Electronic Gallery Chronology

    The Electronic Gallery exhibition at the University Art Gallery, Binghamton, was curated by Maureen Turim. It presented a tape exhibition of works from the Experimental TV Center by Ralph Hocking and Sherry Miller; Hank Rudolph; Henry Linhart; Shalom Gorewitz; Peer Bode; Meryl Blackman; Reynold Weidenaar; Barbara Buckner; Neil Zusman and Julie Harrison; and Gary Hill; an accompanying essay was by Maureen Turim and Donna Cesan.

  • Michele Thursz People

    Michele Thursz is an independent curator and director of Post Media Network; in 1999 she co-founded and directed Moving Image Gallery, NYC. Recent projects include a collaboration in a production with the electronic orphanage and artist Miltos Manetas and a guest curator role at the New Museum's Media Z Lounge organizing Cin-o-matic- Memory and the Cinematic Perception, which examined the impact of new technologies on the cinematic experience. She is organizing a group show entitled In Medias Res: Technology's Impact on Artistic Practice at Exit Art, NYC; she has consulted for http://www.Turbulence.org, a net art initiative, and for bitforms gallery, NYC, on marketing and distribution of software related art.