Inke Arns, PhD, director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) in Dortmund (www.hmkv.de), has worked internationally as an independent curator and theorist specializing in media art, net cultures, and Eastern Europe since 1993. After living in Paris (1982-1986) she studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–1996) and in 2004 obtained her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin with a thesis focusing on a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflected the historical avant-garde and the notion of utopia in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia. She curated many exhibitions, most recently a.o. at Haus der Kulturen der Welt / House of World Cultures (HKW, Berlin). Author of numerous articles on media art and net culture, and editor of exhibition catalogues. www.inkearns.de