Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an Austrian art collective and publisher based in Vienna. Founded in 1993 by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Franz Ablinger, it began as a fanzine concerned with cyberculture, science, art and politics. The group later expanded into performance, media art, computer games, theatre, festivals and film. Since 2018, monochrom OG has been registered in Austria as a film-production company.
The collective uses the term "context hacking" for an approach that applies ideas associated with hacking to social and cultural systems. Its work commonly combines political criticism, satire, fiction and technology, with the medium chosen according to the subject of a project.
History
In the early 1990s, Grenzfurthner used FidoNet and other bulletin board systems to follow cyberpunk and international underground culture. He later said that he wanted to create a German-language fanzine that brought together technology, art and left-wing politics, partly in response to the liberal politics he associated with American cyberculture magazines such as Mondo 2000. He circulated a request for contributors through FidoNet, to which Ablinger responded.
The first issue of Monochrom appeared in 1993. The magazine was published irregularly and combined writing on art, technology, science, philosophy and popular culture with an experimental collage-based design. Grenzfurthner and Ablinger initially produced the publication as a small print fanzine and distributed material through FidoNet.
Around 1995, monochrom moved beyond publishing and began taking a more activist approach, using public interventions and online projects to pursue its criticism of politics, technology and culture. The group also experimented with short films, robots, computer games and puppet theatre.
In 1998, its internet-controlled robot Der Exot was included in the Junge Szene exhibition at the Vienna Secession. The group subsequently added conferences, musicals, theatre productions and longer-form film work to its activities.
In 2013, the MUSA museum in Vienna presented the twentieth-anniversary retrospective Die waren früher auch mal besser: monochrom(1993–2013). The exhibition documented the group’s work in publishing, net culture, visual art, performance, theatre, games and film.
Artistic approach
Monochrom has operated as a transdisciplinary platform rather than working in a single medium. Over the years, the group has produced hundreds of projects involving satire, fiction, research and participatory formats. Its work has spanned publishing, theatre (including musicals), computer games, performances, robotics, online videos and films, with formats chosen according to the ideas being developed. Political criticism and activism have remained recurring elements across these activities.
The group describes its working method as "context hacking", treating cultural practices, institutions and social relationships as systems whose conventions can be examined and altered. This approach has informed fictional biographies, public interventions, participatory performances, conferences and media projects. Grenzfurthner described some of monochrom's artistic interventions as "art with a criminal impetus". Media theorist Florian Cramer placed monochrom within the tradition of tactical media, in which communication technologies are used to gain access to social settings beyond the internet. In his account, such interventions become particularly effective when mediated simulations produce consequences in face-to-face encounters.
Flyer for Monochrom's publication and community activity, 1996. Drawing by Gerhard Junker, flyer design by Michael Marrak.
Among monochrom's early projects beyond its original print magazine was Der Exot (1997), a mobile robot fitted with a camera and controlled through a web interface. Since several users could attempt to direct it at the same time, they had to coordinate their commands through an accompanying chat room.
Other participatory works have involved staged transactions and physical experiences. In Wir kaufen Seelen (1998), monochrom offered passers-by near St. Stephen's Cathedral 50 Austrian schillings to sell their souls. In Eignblunzn (2003), members of the group ate blood sausage made from their own blood. The performance was part of Wiener Faktionismus, a project that revisited the provocations of 1960s Viennese Actionism and tested the response of the tabloid press. Since 2005, Buried Alive has allowed volunteers to spend approximately fifteen minutes in a coffin buried underground. By 2018, more than 500 people had participated in Europe and North America.
Monochrom has also worked with fictional identities and invented political settings. For the 2002 São Paulo Art Biennial, it created Georg Paul Thomann, a fictitious Austrian artist with an invented biography and body of work, and presented him as Austria’s representative at the biennial. Soviet Unterzoegersdorf depicts a fictional Soviet enclave in the Austrian Weinviertel and has been developed through performances, theatre, film and computer games.
The group has used art fairs and commercial systems as settings for interventions. At Art Basel Miami Beach in 2005, Arad-II began with Günther Friesinger posing as a curator and distributing business cards. Grenzfurthner returned the following day in protective clothing and announced that the cards had been contaminated by a dangerous virus. In 2006, monochrom entered the sun-breasts-hammer emblem of the Lord Jim Lodge in the Coca-Cola Light Art Edition competition. The design was selected and appeared on 50,000 bottles.
Recurring projects include Roboexotica, a Vienna festival for robots that prepare, serve or consume cocktails, and Arse Elektronika, a conference and festival about sexuality and technology. Roboexotica was founded in 1999 and is organised with the group Shifz. Arse Elektronika was first held in San Francisco in 2007 and has included lectures, discussions, performances, films and technological artworks. An edition titled Sexponential was presented at the Ars Electronica Festival in 2023.
monochrom film
Film and video have formed part of monochrom's work since the 1990s, with film production becoming a larger part of its activities during the 2010s. Monochrom OG was entered in the Austrian company register in 2018, with film production as its stated line of business.
The company produces feature films, documentaries and short films by members of the collective and other filmmakers. Its productions include films directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Matthias Ramon Jaklitsch, Ronald Pfisterer, Jasmin Hagendorfer, Marie-Christin Rissinger, Thyr Björnson and Sushant Chaudhary.
Since 2002, monochrom has maintained its principal office and studio at Q21 in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier. Through the quartier21 Artist-in-Residence programme, the group invited visiting artists including Angela Dorrer, Jacob Appelbaum, David Fine, Bre Pettis, Audrey Penven, Kyle Machulis, Anouk Wipprecht, Jane Tingley and Phillip Stearns.
Monochrom has described itself as both an artist collective and a community, and as a social incubator for critical and subversive cultural work. Its community activities have included support for the Radius Festival and Play:Vienna, as well as cooperation with the Vienna hackerspace Metalab. Alongside these collaborations, Hacking the Spaces, co-written by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Frank Apunkt Schneider, examined the shift from politically oriented hacklabs towards more commercially driven makerspaces. Its account of earlier autonomist movements has also been criticized for giving insufficient attention to race and gender. For several years, monochrom ran the mobile workshop project Hackbus with FM4 presenter David "Daddy D" Dempsey. From 2007, the group also contributed to Boing Boing Video as its European correspondent.
During his 2007 residency with monochrom, Pettis researched the open-source RepRap 3D-printer project at Metalab. His initial plan was to build a robot capable of printing shot glasses for Roboexotica. Pettis later co-founded MakerBot Industries, and shot glasses continued to feature in demonstrations of the company’s printers.
Filmography
To Live and Survive (2025) – directed by Matthias Jaklitsch
Solvent (2024) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
Kiki and Bubu: Rated R Us (2011) – directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
Selected exhibitions and festivals
Eignblunzn, performance at Fantastic Fest, Austin, Texas, United States (2023).
Arse Elektronika: Sexponential, guest project at the Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria (2023).
Die waren früher auch mal besser: monochrom (1993–2013), retrospective exhibition, MUSA, Vienna, Austria (2013).
Future Pass – From Asia to the World, collateral exhibition of the 54th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice, Italy (2011).
monochrom-Klimatrainingscamp, Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany (2009).
Anna Kournikova Deleted by Memeright Trusted System: Art in the Age of Intellectual Property, Hartware MedienKunstVerein at Kunsthalle Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany (2008).
The Influencers, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain (2008).
Just do it! The Subversion of Signs from Marcel Duchamp to Prada Meinhof, Lentos Art Museum, Linz, Austria (2005).
Unterspiel, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2005).
bildet to-do-stapel!, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria (2005).
↑Bergermann, Ulrike (2013). "We Love to Gendertain You: Sexualität digitaler Romantiker. Zu "Could It Be" von monochrom". Verspannungen: Vermischte Texte. Münster: LIT Verlag. p.297. ISBN978-3-643-11089-3. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
↑"monochrom OG". EVI (in German). Republic of Austria. Retrieved 25 July 2026.
12Friesinger, Günther; Grenzfurthner, Johannes; Schneider, Frank Apunkt; Ballhausen, Thomas; Fink, Roland, eds. (2013). Context Hacking: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market. Vienna: edition mono/monochrom. ISBN978-3-902796-13-4.
↑Frick, Jonas (2025). Computer Liberation: Zur Imaginationsgeschichte der Computer- und Netzwerkkultur, 1960–2000 (in German). transcript Verlag. p.773. doi:10.14361/9783839476345.
↑McGonigal, Jane (2005). "SuperGaming: Ubiquitous Play and Performance for Massively Scaled Community". Modern Drama. 48 (3): 471–491. doi:10.1353/mdr.2006.0012.
↑Fiddler, Allyson (2018). The Art of Resistance: Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century. Berghahn Books. p.55. ISBN978-1-78920-046-1.
