Shortbio:
*1980
Tobias Rosenberger studied "Applied Theatre Studies" in Giessen / Germany and works at the crossroads of theatre, new media art and installation. Besides various performances (Festival Junger Talente, Frankfurter Positionen, Körber Studio Junge Regie) he realized i.a. installations for the German + French Embassy in Sana'a / Yemen, Jaaga Creative Common Ground in Bangalore and Franken Architekten. He was three times participant of Luminale Frankfurt (2006, 2008, 2010) and exhibited widely, including Lyon (Les Subsistences), Barcelona (Goethe Institut), Macau (Orient Foundation), Copenhagen (re-new-DigitalArtsFestival), Liverpool (Moves10), Katowice (Galeria Rondo Sztuki), Mexico-City (solo in Galería A/B del CENART), Osnabrück (European Media Art Festival, Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche), Sevastopol (Balaklava Odyssey), Beijing (AFA Centre for Contemporary Art) and Esslingen/Neckar (solo in Villa Merkel). Rosenberger has been awarded grants from Goethe Institut and Werkleitz (1. Mexico-scholarship for German New Media artists, Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes), the City of Esslingen (Esslinger Bahnwärter Visual Arts) and Foundation Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. He has held residencies at European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Art (e- MobiLArt, 2008/2009), at Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes, map-extension 2009- 2010 programme (Festival Okuparte, Huesca/Spain) and Jaaga Bangalore (Resideny supported by Goethe Institut Max Müller Bahvan).
- Download Shortbio + Exhibition History (PDF, 0,1 MB)
- Download PDF-Portfolio of Selected Works (PDF, 9,2 MB)
- High-Resolution-Photos on Picasa
Resume with Links:
Tobias Rosenberger (*1980) is a German Media Artist and lives & works in Frankfurt / Main.
The works of Tobias Rosenberger are multilayered and multidimensional, they impress with consequent composition and the cross-linking of complex media systems. His installations mirror the world into spaces, they are stage and action space at the same time. [...]
Thereby he is not so much concerned with social criticism, the narration of stories or the expression of concrete ideas. Instead, it is about the creation of spaces, where visitors become invited to think on their own.
(Elke Eberle, Esslinger Zeitung)
After a humanistic school education (main subjects: Ancient Greek + Literature), he studied Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen / Germany i.a. with Helga Finter, Samuel Weber and Heiner Goebbels, for whom he also worked some times (2006/2007).
During university he realized several theatre performances and scenic concerts, i.a. at Festival Junger Talente (Antigone by Sophocles with Chinese actors), Frankfurter Positionen (with Ensemble Modern / Jonathan Bepler), Ferienkurse Darmstadt (Esquisse), Pact Essen, and Körber Studio Junge Regie (Herakles 2 by Heiner Müller).
Breathing City (2007), his first multichannel video-installation (Sound: Elad Shniderman) was developed during an university project in Lyon (Grammaire de la ville, Goethe Institut). This work was exhibited in Lyon (Les Subsistences), Tel Aviv (Alfred Gallery), New York (Harvestworks exhibition room), Barcelona (Goethe Institut), Copenhagen (re-new-Festival), Düsseldorf (Kunstfilmtag Kunstverein Malkasten) and Liverpool (Moves-Festival).
Also in 2007 he worked three months in New York with different artists at Harvestworks Digital Arts Center (Interactive Programming / Physical Computing) and spent 2 months in Sana'a, where he realized together with René Liebert Sana'a - City of Light (Music: Matthias Mohr), an audiovisual installation for public space in the capitol city of Yemen. This project was commissioned by the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of France and highlighted the significance of the Bab Al-Yemen.
Further works at the crossroads of public space and light art were presented at the Luminale Frankfurt (2006 Bypass, university project under the direction of Prof. Heiner Goebbels, 2008 Cold Lights in collaboration with René Liebert and Maximilian Haas, 2010 Misere(re) commissioned by Franken Architekten).
Tobias Rosenberger was a participant of E-mobilArt (European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists, 2008 - 2009), an international project tailored around the process of collaboratively creating interactive installation artworks with workshops in Athens, Rovaniemi and Vienna and subsequent exhibitions in Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki Biennial) and Katowice (Gallery Rondo Sztuki).
While also working as a freelancer for 3deluxe in Wiesbaden and Franken Architekten in Frankfurt, in 2009 he began to create media sculptures. Theatrical machines such as Projektion 1675 (realized in Schöppingen with a grant of the Stiftung Künstlerdorf) or The An-Archic Device (realized at the Centro Multimedia in Mexico-City within the framework of the first Mexico-Scholarship for German Media Artists, Goethe Institut, Werkleitz; first exhibited in a solo exhibition in the Galeria A/B del Cenart) reflect in a playful manner the relation between scale and imagination.
In 2010 he completed the Esslinger Bahnwärter-scholarship for Visual Arts with the installation The Grand Defender (based on a text fragment by Chinese philosopher Mozi), which he presented with earlier works at a solo-exhibition in the Villa Merkel (07.02 - 07.03). The Grand Defender and The An-Archic Device were subsequently part of EMAF`s 2010 MashUp exhibition in the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche in Osnabrück (21.04 - 25.05). The Roxy-Theater in Basel-Birsfelden also shows some of his works (Tobias Rosenberger: Theatermaschinen / Theatermodelle, 14.04 - 20.06).
Large scale / La canción de la gran promesa, a 15 channel-video-installation, was created in the framework of the Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes, map-extension 2009-2010 programme, in Huesca / Spain (Festival Okuparte, 08.05 - 06.06). The Single-Channel-Screening-Version of this work became part of the Nomad Films Archive is distributed via the Reframe-Collection of the Tribeca Film Institute.
For the Media- and Performance-Art-Festival Balaklava Odyssey (12.08 - 16.08) in Sevastopol / Ukraine the 9-Channel-Video-Work Sevastopol in August was produced.
Tobias Rosenberger absolved an intensive course Mandarin at the Beijing Language and Culture University (September - December 2010, A-Level Exam), and went the next year on an invitation of the Goethe Institut Max Müller Bhavan as an Artist in Residence three months to Bangalore / India (01.03.2011 - 01.06.2011). During his stay he gave a series of media art workshops and collaborated with local and international musicans, programmers, hackers and designers on an interactive Sound & Lights Projekt (21.05 - 29.05) for the Artist-Run-Space Jaaga, which operates at the crossroads of art and technology. The site-specific multichannel video- and sound-work Figures reflects this process.
Selected Press:
- Deutsche Welle Ukraine (23.08.2011)
- Video Interview Jaaga Journal (06.06.2011)
- Deccan Herald (05.06.2011)
- Filmmaker Interview The Nomad Project (10.10.2010)
- Video Interview Filmfestspezial (21.04.2010)
- Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (21.04.2010)
- Catalogue text Emaf (21.04.2010)
- Stuttgarter Zeitung (06.02.2010)
- Esslinger Zeitung (12.11.2009)
- Video Interview Centro Multimedia (28.06.2009)
- Video Interview BTV Barcelona (28.04.2008)
- Yemen Times (26.09.2007)
- Yemen Observer (22.09.2007)
- Frankfurter Rundschau (22.11.2003)
