Cornelia Sollfrank studied painting at the Academy for Fine Arts in Munich (Prof. Helmut Sturm/SPUR) and Fine Arts at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (Prof. Berhard Johannes Blume).
Since the mid 90s, the hacker, cyberfeminist, conceptual and net.artist, Cornelia Sollfrank has been investigating world-wide communication networks and transfering subversive artistic strategies of the classical Avantgardes into the digital medium. Her special interest lies in experimenting with new models of authorship, in continuing all sorts of artistic appropriation, and in deconstructing myths around geniality and originality, Automatically Generated Authorship, audio play (2004). In the core of this strand of works is her concept of the net.art generator, computer programs which re-combine and collage material from the Net. Since a few years Sollfrank makes artistic contributions to the discourse on copyright and intellectual property (Legal Perspective, plug.in, Basel (2004); I DON'T KNOW - a conversation between Cornelia Sollfrank and Andy Warhol, video (2006); MuseumShop (2007).
Another focus of her work deals with collaboration, networking, and communication as artistic practices. Within this context Sollfrank is co-editor of the online magazine for art and critique, THE THING Hamburg. Furthermore many of her works-implicitly or explicitly-include a gender-specific approach. In 2006 Sollfrank started the series revisiting feminist art where she repeats early positions of feminist art.
Sollfrank is webmaster of artwarez.org and obn.org. She runs and moderates a numer of mailinglists, amongst them [echo] Kunst, Kritik und Kulturpolitik in Hamburg, surveillance studies, and oldboys. A blog and her own server are part of her communication infrastructure.
Sollfrank was founding member of the collectives frauen-und-technik and -Innen, and initiated the world-wide cyberfeminist network Old Boys Network. She has co-organized the three international conferences on Cyberfeminism (1997-2001).
In her project female extension (1997)-the hack of the first competition on net.art run by a museum-Sollfrank flooded a museum with 300 virtual, female net.artists.
With her piece 'Improved Tele-vision' (Sound-Installation/ Website) she immodestly inscribed herself in the genealogy of such famous artists as Arnold Schönberg, Nam June Paik and Dieter Roth.
Sollfrank published the readers first Cyberfeminist International (1988) and next Cyberfeminist International (1999). In 1999/2000 Sollfrank produced a series of works on the topic of Women Hackers. <> 2004 the artist monograph Cornelia Sollfrank - net.art generator has been published at Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg.
Currently Sollfrank is undertaking a practice-led PhD at Duncan of Jordanstone University in Dundee, Scotland: "Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property".
