Christiane Robbins

Christiane Robbins (born: New Jersey, USA) is a trans-disciplinary artist, director, curator/programmer, designer and scholar. She is known for creating works of video/film, photography, visual art, installation, varied cultural projects and publications. In the 1980’s she was the co-director/producer of work that has come under the rubrics of video art / television art, such as “Perfect Leader,”; as well as engaged with internationally renowned design and curatorial practices. She then went on to produce independent film and video projects, digital art and installation pieces including; Leaves Little to be Desired…, ID, Assumed Identity, Amidst the White Noise, [1]. A Vous de Jouer ( Your Move,) [2].

Since 2001, her practice has situated itself in addressing issues of psychogeographies, locative technologies, global, environmental and cultural issues that are clearly embodied in her cross-disciplinary projects, Blue-Screen MOTO, the I-5 Project, 2001-2007 [3] and Find yourself here …, 2008-09. Ms. Robbins is directing/producing a cross disciplinary media project, 1000 Sq. Ft. focusing on the under recognized Los Angeles architect, Gregory Ain.[4]. Another recent project is GONE WEST represents an archival indexing of 365 days, similar to that of a diary or journal: a collective narrative, yet personal, locative and subjective. This series serves to document the project and conceptualization over the course of a specific year externally marked as The Year of Digital Transition. 2009 was a year deeply scarred by a collective global financial crisis. This crisis was imagined, created, made possible and exasperated by the almost incomprehensible complexities and opacities of the virtual realm - “The Digital,” i.e. September 15th, the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

She is a graduate and notable alumni of the California Institute of the Arts, having received an MFA in 1989[5]. She is a Professor at the University of Southern California[6] [7] and lives in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA. She has received an EMA[8] and Visiting Research Fellowship at Stanford University, and held teaching positions at Mills College[9], San Francisco State University[10] and UC-Berkeley.

Robbins' work has been exhibited and screened in film and video festivals in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, and in Europe. Both her experiemental and documentary video work has won several awards, including the Best of Category Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and has been broadcast on PBS (KQED, KCET, WGBH, WNET) American Public Television, Channel 4, UK, and cablecast. She has been the recipient of awards and grants, including a 2002-2003 C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Fellowship as well as recent nominations for Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships. Her work is in permanent collections such the Stedlijck Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Getty Museum, LA, the Kitchen, NY, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Pacific Film Archives, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Honolulu, the Oakland Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Stanford University Art Museum, and the California Institute of the Arts. Her works have been reviewed and appeared in a variety of publications ranging from Art Forum to Wired magazine - which speak to the broad appeal of her cross-disciplinary practice.

She began her work in video through a collaborations with Max Almy on the videos " Perfect Leader ", 1983 and " Leaving the Twentieth Century ", 1981/82 and the video installation " Deadline ", 1981. She has also worked with many artists during the past ten years including Bill Viola on his feature length video " I do not know what it is that I am " [11] and Marlon Riggs' " Color Adjustment” [12] and "Anthem".

During the 1990’s and early 21st C, she was also active within the cultural, museum and gallery communities, acting as a Director, Curator and Cultural Producer of film/video series, visual art exhibitions, performance and literary series. Her curatorial projects have been supported via grants such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Film Arts Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Lannon Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Warhol Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, etc. Robbins' curatorial practice was most recently seen in her role as a co-organizer of the USC/MIT bi-annual conference Race in Digital Space, October 2002 [13] [14] and as Executive Creative Producer for the AIM Festival for Time-based Media [15] .

In the early to mid 1990’s she served as Executive Co-Director of New Langton Arts [16] and directed the NEA’s Regional Regranting Program for Artists Fellowships[17]. Among the many exhibitions she curated, programmed and organized are: Adrian Piper's, "Black Box"/White Box", Beth B's "Amnesia,” Gilles Peress's "Farewell to Bosnia", Victor Burgins’” Venise”; Jayce Salloum/Yasmina Bouziane, Connie Samaras, "Tiny Shoes: An Homage to Jack T. Chick", George Legrady's "The Clearing", "The Bay Area Awards Show, 1993 & 94, Nora Ligarano/Marshall Reese's "The Acid Migration of Culture", + numerous media programs, artists, literary and public panels including Victor Burgin, Lyle Ashton Harris/Thomas Harris, Sandy Stone, Eileen Myles, and Jalal Toufic … among a cast of hundreds.

In 1990 she co-directed one of the first global-scale cultural projects to be posted/exhibited on the internet, On-line against AIDS, held in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aries and New York[18]. This online conference and exhibition coincided with the Seropositive Ball[19] and Sixth International Conference on Aids, offering alternative cultural viewpoints to this health crisis. Her co-directors included Mark Graham, Lee Felsenstein, Arawn Ebelyon, and Rama and was co-produced by the University of Amsterdam and the Paradiso Cultural Center.

Robbins is also a founding partner ' Jetztzeit,’ a California based studio committed to exploring and expanding the realms of digital media, design, visual arts, architectural practices, urbanism, and global cultural phenomenon[20].

She has consistently been selected and cited in Who’s Who in America, American Women, American Artists, Young Professionals, and Colleges and Universities.

Persondata
Name	Robbins, Christiane
Alternative names	Chris Robbins
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Date of birth	1959
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Date of death
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