Renate Lorenz is an artist and cultural scientist, primarily in the fields of Art and Queer Theory. Since the beginning of the ’90s she has been working at the intersection of visual culture, theory, and politics. She is the co-editor and author of a foundational publication about art and politics in the German-speaking area, Copyshop – Kunstpraxis und politische Öffentlichkeit (“Practices of Art and Counterpublic”) (Berlin 1993).
Her recent staged films and film installations (together with Pauline Boudry) often start with a song, a performance, a film, or a script from the past. Works such as To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation (2013) or Opaque (2014) show a – partly fictitious and transtemporal – collaboration, that is produced by a dense net of references on experimental film, the history of photography, and underground (drag-) performance. The performers are choreographers, artists, and musicians.
Renate Lorenz is showing her art internationally, e.g. at the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), the Paris Triennial (2012), at SLG and Tate Modern, London, at the CAPC Bordeaux, Kunstverein Karlsruhe (2013), Moma Modern Monday (2014), Kunsthalle Wien, Kunsthalle Zürich and Nottingham Contemporary (2015). Her most recent English publications are Queer Art (Transcript, 2012) and the artist books Temporal Drag (Hatje Cantz 2011) and Aftershow (Sternberg, 2014).