JULIA CHRISTENSEN is an artist who works in video, photography, networked media, writing, sound arts, sculpture, installation, and performance. Her work has exhibited at galleries and museums internationally, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts in Pittsburgh, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, and The Lincoln Center in NYC. She has had several solo exhibitions, inclduing shows at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, The Banvard Gallery at Ohio State University, and the Gallery at the Green Building in Louisville.
Julia is the author of Big Box Reuse, published by the MIT Press in 2008. This book is a product of her ongoing investigation into how communities are renovating and reusing abandoned big box buildings in the United States. Her project "Surplus Rising" will be published as a part of the 3rd Coast Atlas. Christensen's writing has been published in magazines such as Orion, Print, and Slate. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New York Review of Books, Bomb, Afterall, and Dwell Magazine. Christensen's work has been featured in catalogs such as the Younger Than Jesus Artist Directory (New Museum), and Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes (Walker Art Center), as well as in a number of books written by architects, designers, and economists.
Ms. Christensen is an active musician in the worlds of new and experimental music. She is the founder and director of WAM!: Women and Art Music Ensemble at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. WAM is a group of women performers playing experimental music by living women composers. Since its beginnings in 2008, WAM's spectrum of performances has been varied. The group has commissioned works by and performed with composers such as Miya Masaoka, Pauline Oliveros, and Bevin Kelley. The group has also opened for rock acts like Deerhoof; they performed an experimental opera with performance artist Sarah Paul at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art; they opened up the Riot Grrrl Night festivities at Oberlin, celebrating Sarah Marcus' book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution.
Ms. Christensen is Assistant Professor of Integrated Media in the Studio Art Department at Oberlin College, where she also serves on the faculties of Environmental Studies and TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts). For several years she produced the Margin Release New Media Lecture Series at Oberlin, as Luce Professor of the Emerging Arts. Before coming to Oberlin, she taught at Stanford University, Pratt Institute, California College of the Arts, and other colleges. She has been an invited speaker and critic at dozens of colleges and universities, including Georgia Tech, Cornell University, Yale University, and New York University.