Johannes Paul Raether

Professor Johannes Paul Raether serves as Professor and Studiendekan (Dean) of the MA Live Art Forms program at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg (AdBK Nürnberg), where he develops groundbreaking work through his aLifveForms project. His artistic practice creates constructed identities that exist at the intersection of language, technological skins, and digital devices, exploring how these artificial life forms straddle and gradually detach from his "BioBody" identity.

Raether's research focuses on digital identity construction, technological embodiment, and public space interventions, with particular attention to how ritual repetition of recurring themes like witches, mothers, and swarms overgrow clear identifications and force bodyforms into states of obsession. His work addresses complex contemporary issues including reproductive technologies, biotech, globalized tourism, and the occult substances of modern technology through site-specific, colorful beings interwoven with everyday objects.

His artistic output demonstrates a consistent trajectory toward increasingly complex explorations of digital identity and technological embodiment, with exhibitions evolving from foundational conceptual frameworks to major international presentations at venues like the Berlin Biennale and Palais de Tokyo. The progression reveals deepening engagement with how technological skins mediate human experience in public spaces.

Raether's artistic manifestations have been featured at prestigious international venues including the 9th Berlin Biennale, Athens Biennal, Bergen Assembly, BAK (Utrecht), transmediale (Berlin), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Fridericianum (Kassel), and Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), with solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Transmission Gallery (Glasgow), and Ludlow 38 (New York City).

As Studiendekan of the MA Live Art Forms program, Raether guides students in developing performative practices that challenge conventional boundaries between digital and physical existence, emphasizing the political and social dimensions of technological embodiment in contemporary society.