MDPI Book Launch | Self-Representation in an Expanded Field

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa;
Mehita Iqani is a Professor in the Media Studies department at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning the politics of waste, consumption and inequality, cultural theory, critical discourse analysis, and strategic communications. She is the author of three monographs, most recently Garbage in Popular Culture: Consumption and the Aesthetics of Waste (2020, SUNY Press). She is the co-editor of four collections, most recently Media Studies: Critical African and Decolonial Approaches (2019, OUP) and African Luxury: Aesthetics and Politics (2019, Intellect and University of Chicago Press). She has also published widely in and reviews for key international journals, is Associate Editor of Consumption Markets and Culture, and is on the board of International Journal of Cultural Studies and Communication Theory. Her PhD is in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

University of Art & Design Linz, Austria;
Tina Sauerlaender is an art historian, curator, speaker, and writer. She focuses on the impact of the digital and the Internet on individual environments and society as well as on virtual reality in visual arts. She is a PhD candidate at University of Art & Design Linz, Austria, Department of Interface Cultures. Her research topic is artistic self-representation in digital art. She is the Director & Head Curator of the independent exhibition platform peer to space and has been curating and organizing international group shows since 2010, including The Unframed World: Virtual Reality as Artistic Medium for the 21st Century (House of Electronic Arts Basel, 2017). She is Co-Founder of Radiance VR, an international online research platform for VR experiences in visual arts. She has given talks on Virtual Reality & Art at re:publica (Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), or New Inc (New York). She is the author of comprehensive texts on contemporary artists, including Taryn Simon, Alicja Kwade, Gregor Hildebrandt, and Carsten Nicolai for Kritisches Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst. She is the Founder of the SALOON, a diverse network of woman identifying art professionals active in a growing number of cities worldwide. She is Artistic Director of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA;
Marc Tasman is an Intermedia artist focusing his research-creation on the strengths of social technologies to create meaning in culture. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies Department where he directs the interdisciplinary Digital Arts and Culture program. Tasman encourages students to look at theories of media and to test them using various innovative, engaging, and practical applications in classes such as Internet Culture, Media Graphics, and Photojournalism. He may be most well known as the “12-year-old Computer Genius from 1984” on YouTube, or from his project Ten Years and One Day in which he photographed himself at least once a day, every day for 3,654 consecutive days, from July 24, 1999 through July 24, 2009, using a Polaroid camera and film. Tasman has presented and exhibited throughout the U.S.A, in Canada and Europe, screened work at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and published photographs in the New York Times Digital Edition, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, and Tablet Magazine.

Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Photography at the Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands;
Natalie Zelt is a specialist in the history of art of the United States with a focus on photography and critical race and gender studies. She earned her doctorate at the University of Texas, Austin. Zelt has worked independently as a curator for more than a decade, is founding member of the anti-racist feminist collective INGZ, and has worked for institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is the author of several articles on photography and identity in the United States and her manuscript Looking and Looking Back: The Photography, Blackness, Family, and Self- Representation in the Work of LaToya Ruby Frazier, Mickalene Thomas, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby is in development for publication. She is the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in American Photography at the Rijksmuseum. She currently lives and works in Amsterdam.