Julia Scher
Born in 1954 in Hollywood, California, USA.
Lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Julia Scher has taught and lectured at a number of institutions including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Cooper Union for Art and Science, Hartford University Art School, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Columbia University, The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and Rutgers University. While teaching at the Department of Film and Video at the Massachusetts College of Art, (1995-96), she launched the first “Surveillance Studies” class in the United States. Since 2006, Scher has been Professor for Multimedia Performance Surveillant Architectures at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.
She is the recipient of several grants and fellowships including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Preservation Grant for Media Arts, the John F. Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Installation Art (2005), The Bunting Institute Fellowship for Surveillance Studies at Harvard University (1996–1997), and the NEA Grant for Installation Art (1992).
Emerging in the mid 1980s as a precise but playful analyst of social and technological changes, Julia Scher has been dealing with video surveillance for more than 30 years. Her work addresses surveillance both as a concrete phenomenon of control, including its apparatus and architecture, as well as its impact on private and public sphere. Very early on, her performance and video installations drew attention to the effects of increasingly ubiquitous cameras and monitors, anticipating our surveillance alienated society. Scher’s large-scale installations often include auditory components: emulating the familiar language of public announcements, Scher’s sound works expose the inherent violence and power relations underlying the innocuous-sounding language of such everyday communications in a witty, disconcerting manner.
Her work is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Kunstsammlungen, Wiesbaden; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf/Berlin; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois; Le Consortium, Dijon; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; MAMCO, Geneva; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museen Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland; Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; Neue Galerie Graz – Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz; Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and SFMOMA, San Francisco.
