Christiane Robbins is an American Filmmaker/Director, Artist/Designer, Ex. Director/Curator/Programer,and Professor. She studied at, and is a notable Alumni of, the California Institute of the Arts. She also attended Harvard University (Business) and the University of Wisconsin. Her practice forecast the merger of transdisciplinary research, creative principles, design, engineering, cultural, social and environmental analysis. It has been generative of models that have contributed to a pioneering, collective conceptualization of hybrid 20c/21c media and cultural practices.

She was born in New Jersey, USA. She was raised by what is now known as a “Madman” and lived in advertising capitals around the world. She now lives and works in California - primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Her works have been widely recognized, screened and exhibited within mainstream public global realms, as well as in venues on the margins of conventional discursive systems. Her work practice spans independent film, video art, new media and photographic imagining practices. It has been included in exhibitions such as the Gwangju Design Biennale,[1] curated by Ai WeiWei, Gwangju Biennale 2011, Moving the Moving Image at the Walker Art Center,[2] the AIA’s Architecture in the City Film Festival,[3] the Sundance Producer’s Institute,[4] and the Banff Institute Digital Media/Film Co-Production Award.[5]

These projects and works have been screened/exhibited widely ranging from venues such as MOMA, The Whitney Museum,to the New Museum to the Gwangju Biennial, the Sao Paolo Biennial, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Vigo Intl. Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Banff Center for the Arts, SFMoMA, and the Other Cinema. She was a recipient of a 1992 SFMoMA SECA Award,[6] a 2003-04 City of Los Angeles Award Fellowship[7] as well as many other international awards, fellowships and grants. Her work is found in numerous museum and public collections throughout the world and she has taught at various universities, most recently holding the position of Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Director of the Matrix Program for Digital Inter-Media and a member of the USC's Norman Lear Center. She has served on a number of Board of Directors/Trustees, as well as grant fellowship, festival and exhibition panels and juries. She is affiliated faculty at Intel's [[Incite Research Institute,(Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography) sited within the University of London and Goldsmith College.[8]

Her commercial projects reside primary in digital film, media and digital imaging, software development, cable television, SFX and motion graphics and include clients such as MTV, Colossal Pictures, One Pass Film & Video Editel, Nightflight, Sony, the MVFF and Resource Library (one of the first digital archives, 1985.)

Recent media and cross-disciplinary work

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Time Share (working title) the materiality of digital landscapes. Author of Anthology of leading theorists and designers. 2014-16.

Area CA – The Promise of Utopia, 2012-15; trans disciplinary media project, participatory documentary and publication. The Bauhaus Ranch Project[9] encompasses the forms of a documentary film,[10] a digital media project and public installation that unveils the little-known social contexts of mid-20th century Los Angeles and the unorthodox, yet prescient, architectural practice of noted LA modernist architect, Gregory Ain. Depicting a long suppressed narrative this project holds a remarkable resonance with the pressing issues of the early 21c. Underpinning Ain’s work is that period’s combustible mix of social concerns and modernism, which Ain reconciled by bringing a dialectical rigor rigor to his analysis and practice of the perfection of architecture, that supremely social art.

Edendale, a fictionalized narrative series created for cable and screencast.

I-5 Passing,[11] 2002-07 is a journey ... across the mythos of California itself. It combines the seduction of the road trip, documentary, fictional and remediated cinematic images/narratives, with a recombinant use of data, locative, surveillance and distributed media and technologies.[12] I-5 presents us with an imaged, telematic and nomadic experience tracked through a mobile, digital rendering of our own collective carbon footprint.

Collaborative Work in Video includes:

Perfect Leader,[13] a single channel work of "video /digital art" that has been internationally exhibited and broadcast. Co-created, directed, designed and produced with Max Almy Video Data Bank. "Produced to coincide with the 1984 Presidential Campaign, Perfect Leader is a cautionary tale that brings to life a prototypical politician, as packaged by Madison Avenue. With a driving soundtrack and bold visuals, Perfect Leader satirically presents this dynamic simulation of media politics. Perfect Leader is a most effective use of television techniques to critique the impact of the media on contemporary life."[citation needed] EAI. Ridley Scott’s Max Headroom was purportedly inspired by Perfect Leader.

Leaving the Twentieth Century, a single channel work of "video/digital art" that has been internationally exhibited and broadcast. Co-created with Max Almy, co-screenwriter and production design. "Leaving the 20th Century is a compelling science fiction narrative of televisual time-travel via the electronic circuit and computer chip. … dramatizes a three-part transition -- countdown, departure, arrival -- to a technological future, foreclosed and dehumanized."[14]

Deadline], a cross-media installation, video, sculptural elements, co-created with Max Almy. "A running man, exhausted and near collapse, is superimposed over the enormous, disembodied red lips of a woman, who taunts and seduces him: "Come on, you can do it. Go a little further. Keep pushing. You've got to make it." Originally a multi-monitor installation, Deadline uses an economy of means to visualize the futile contemporary social struggle for promotion and power."[citation needed] EAI

Production design and cinematography

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Color Adjustment by Marlon Riggs, Documentary Video, Production Design/Research Associate. While revisiting American television's Riggs portrays an illuminating history of the race conflict as reflected in television. It was the recipient of the Peabody Award, the 1991 International Documentary of the Year, nominated for the Grand Prize at Sundance, among numerous other international honors and distinctions. "A cogent and thoughtful survey of Black America as represented by American television, from the demeaning stereotypes of Amos'n'Andy to the subtler, more insidious ones of The Cosby Show." -- Janet Maslin, New York Times.[citation needed]

I Do Not Know What It is I Am Like by Bill Viola, 89:00 Experimental Video. "In a stream of images of striking clarity, depth, and beauty, woven within a subtle fabric of natural sound, Bill Viola evokes a timeless overview of the natural world and our place in it."[citation needed]

Architecture and design projects

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Time Share, 2013-15

Twilight[15] A re-conceptualization and re-framing is being realized – a challenge to the prevailing depictions of 21stc (urban/(sub)urban/x-urban) life and redefines notions of space, psycho-geographies, locative technologies, mobilities, and “citiness” itself. . Collaborator: Katherine Lambert, AIA;

Virgin 2001, a collaborative architectural project rendering a vision of futuristic utopian model of a hybrid building built in and upon the virtuality and simulations inherent in the psychogeography that is Las Vegas, NV. Collaborator: Katherine Lambert, AIA; Netspannung, DE.

Block 3654, Lot 72 is a site specific installation — an ongoing project — by FACE Architecture and Design which engaged in a cultural discourse questioning the nature of socialized and enculturated space.[16]

Western Influence Studios, Berkeley, CA; Founding Partner/Principal/Creative Director/Designer with husband, Andrew Magdanz. Design, Fabrication and Production. Clients included Barney’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks, and Gump. The work was exhibited internationally and is in numerous public and private collections,i.e. the Corning Museum of Glass and the Oakland Museum.

Academic, curatorial and programming projects and publications

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'Luna Park,[17] AIM Festivals,' 1999-2003 ( Executive Producer/Creative Director ); MOCA, USC and Santa Monica Museum of Art. AIM was a leading venue for the presentation of time-based media by emerging and established international artists.[17] Since its inception in 1999, AIM has produced exhibitions, public art presentations, lectures and performances that have traveled from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, Japan and Peru. Annual Conference,Exhibition, Symposium; Lively keynote speakers and participants included Issac Julien, B. Ruby Rich , Benjamin Bratton, Shu Lea Cheang , Mark Dery, Johan Grimonprez, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,[18] Lawrence Rickels, Larry Rinder, D. J. Spooky , and included project such as Metapet,[19] Race in Digital Space,[20] 2000-2002; USC, MIT, NYU and UC-Santa Barbara.[21]

In the early to mid 1990’s she served as Executive Co-Director of New Langton Arts and directed the NEA’s Regional Regranting Program for Artists Fellowships until this program was defunded by Congress in 1995.[22]

She curated/programmed and directed numerous visual, media performance, design and music programs & exhibitions including Laurie Anderson, Paul McCarthy, Adrian Piper, Sonya Rapoport, Beth B, Victor Burgin, Lyle Ashton Harris/Thomas Harris, Nora Ligarano / Marshall Reese, Jayce Salloum, Yasmina Bouziane, Sandy Stone, Eileen Myles,Jalal Toufic, Barry McGee, Harrell Fletcher,and Rigo 23.

X-Factor[23] 1995; co-director with Steve Anker, Craig Baldwin, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid, Jeffrey Skoller, Valerie Soe, Scott Stark, and Jack Walsh in creating, producing and authoring one of the initial on-line conferences, X-Factor, referencing issues endemic to the survival, sustainment and expansion of independent, avant-garde and experimental media practice and distribution.

On-Line Against AIDS,1990/1, she was a co-director of one of the first international cultural projects to be screencast via the Internet. This internationally acclaimed project was an all-encompassing (visual art, installation, performance, and media/ technology/live transmittal of global communications via email) site-specific project that offered alternative cultural and health perspectives to the Sixth International Conference on AIDS. Collaborators included Lee Felsenstein and Mark Graham and was co-produced by the University of Amsterdam and the Paradiso Cultural Center.

References

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  1. ^ "(재)광주비엔날레". Gwangjubiennale.org. 2013-12-05. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  2. ^ http://www.walkerart.org/channel/2008/moving-the-movingimage%%2020
  3. ^ [1][dead link]
  4. ^ https://www.sundance.org/programs/producers%20/%20Sundance%20Producer's%20Institute
  5. ^ [2][dead link]
  6. ^ [3][dead link]
  7. ^ "COLA 2011". Cola2011.lamag.org. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  8. ^ "INCITE - Events - Past Events". Studioincite.com. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  9. ^ http://www.thebauhausranch.net
  10. ^ "Private Video on Vimeo". Vimeo.com. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  11. ^ http://www.jetztzeit.net%201-5_Passing%20I-5_Passing
  12. ^ "I-5 Passing". LA Re.Play. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  13. ^ "Perfect Leader | Video Data Bank". Vdb.org. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  14. ^ "Leaving the 20th Century | Video Data Bank". Vdb.org. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  15. ^ http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/ek_members/documents/pdf/aiab091874.pdf
  16. ^ "Facearchitecture.com". Facearchitecture.com. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  17. ^ a b "Art In Motion Iii". Usc.edu. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  18. ^ "Rafael Lozano-Hemmer". Lozano-hemmer.com. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  19. ^ "M E T A P E T * C R E D I T S". Metapet.net. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  20. ^ [4][dead link]
  21. ^ [5][dead link]
  22. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-26/entertainment/ca-54801_1_filmpreservation
  23. ^ http://www.cinemarquee.com/magic/filmexper.htm
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