Theresa Reiwer

Biography

Theresa Reiwer is a (post)digital artist living in Berlin. In her practice, she expands physical spaces with video and XR technologies, referencing pop culture and neoliberal phenomena. Since 2018, she has been conducting critical artistic research on AI: both as a mirror of social paradigms and as a projection surface for speculative visions of the future. She writes the texts for her productions in collaboration with other authors and artificial intelligence.

In her site-specific “Slow Rooms” (2019), she placed a fictional showroom of a future feel-good home in an old building that was actually threatened with modernization. The follow-up project, “Social Capsule” (2021), which is also smart, but this time mobile and location-symbiotic, introduces a humanoid AR avatar as a roommate and emotion coach. In the immersive video and room installation “Decoding Bias” (2023), eight AIs come together for group therapy to heal their programmed prejudices.

Reiwer’s works have been shown internationally in theaters and in exhibition contexts, including Ars Electronica, Kaserne Basel (CH), Schauspielhaus Graz (AT), REFRESH Festival Zurich (CH), Beyond Basel Miami (USA), Three Hills and Five Gardens Museum Beijing (CN), and Bahídora (MX). At HAU, her walk-in social media installation Lasting Generation was among the works shown as part of the 2024 festival “Spy On Me #5”.

Theresa Reiwer has appeared as a speaker at symposia, participated in panel discussions (including Ars Electronica Export in Istanbul and ZHdK, Zurich/CH), and held visiting lectureships (HTW Berlin). She studied at the FU Berlin (film studies, theater studies), the kunsthochschule berlin weißensee (fine arts, stage design) and Bilgi Üniversitesi Istanbul (media art). She was a scholarship holder of the Berlin-based programme for young artists “Elsa Neumann,” received research and work scholarships from the Academy of Arts, the Senate, and others, as well as project funding from the federal government, the state, and various private foundations (including Fonds DaKü and Hauptstadtkulturfonds).