Katherine Guinness is a theorist and historian of contemporary art. She received her PhD from the University of Manchester and is the author of the first academic monograph on German artist Rosemarie Trockel, Schizogenesis: The Art of Rosemarie Trockel (Minnesota: 2019). She is a contributing editor for Art Journal Open and the co-founder of FEARS, the Female Emerging Artist Residency Series.
Katherine has taught in a wide range of departments and programs across the globe, including the University of Sydney (within the Digital Cultures program), the University of New South Wales (Architectural History and the Built Environment), North Carolina State University (Art History and Women’s and Gender Studies programs), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Art History). Previously, she was Assistant Professor and Director of Art History at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS), where she also served as the academic director of the downtown Gallery of Contemporary Art (or GOCA).
She is interested in many topics within contemporary art, all of which she examines with a Marxist-Feminist lens, and is currently working on projects that include: virtual reality and nuclear aesthetics; the relation between anesthetics and the history of aesthetic theory; an edited collection reimagining absurdist theory today; and a project on the political economy and visual culture of social media influencers.
Book: The influencer factory: a Marxist theory of corporate personhood on YouTube
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2024). The influencer factory: a Marxist theory of corporate personhood on YouTube. Stanford, CA, United States: Stanford University Press.
Book: Contemporary absurdities, existential crises, and visual art
Katherine Guinness and Charlotte Kent eds. (2024). Contemporary absurdities, existential crises, and visual art. Bristol, United Kingdom: Intellect.
Book Chapter: Archival defiance: historiographical approaches to feminist performance art and rerformance writing
Guinness, Katherine and Marshall, Jocelyn (2024). Archival defiance: historiographical approaches to feminist performance art and rerformance writing. Women’s innovations in theatre, dance, and performance. (pp. n/a-n/a) edited by Elliot Mercer and Jill Lane. New York, NY, United States: Bloomsbury.
Dirt: Dialogues with Earth Matter
Doctor Philosophy
Research on the effects of the digital media visual context on artistic representation and art creation of professional artists across the Asia-Pacific region.
Doctor Philosophy
The influencer factory: a Marxist theory of corporate personhood on YouTube
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2024). The influencer factory: a Marxist theory of corporate personhood on YouTube. Stanford, CA, United States: Stanford University Press.
Contemporary absurdities, existential crises, and visual art
Katherine Guinness and Charlotte Kent eds. (2024). Contemporary absurdities, existential crises, and visual art. Bristol, United Kingdom: Intellect.
Yiğit Soncul, Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness eds. (2024). Influencer aesthetics. Post45: Post45.
The De Gruyter handbook of digital culture
Bollmer, Grant, Guinness, Katherine and Soncul, Yiğit (2024). The De Gruyter handbook of digital culture. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter.
Schizogenesis : The Art of Rosemarie Trockel
Guinness, Katherine (2019). Schizogenesis : The Art of Rosemarie Trockel. Minneapolis, MN United States: University of Minnesota Press. doi: 10.5749/j.ctvsn3n7h
Archival defiance: historiographical approaches to feminist performance art and rerformance writing
Guinness, Katherine and Marshall, Jocelyn (2024). Archival defiance: historiographical approaches to feminist performance art and rerformance writing. Women’s innovations in theatre, dance, and performance. (pp. n/a-n/a) edited by Elliot Mercer and Jill Lane. New York, NY, United States: Bloomsbury.
Self-Portraiture and Self Performance
Guinness, Katherine (2022). Self-Portraiture and Self Performance. Visual Culture Approaches to the Selfie. (pp. 40-59) edited by Murray, DC. New York, NY United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780367206109-2
Guinness, Katherine (2021). For no given reason. This:That William Wylie and Corey Drieth. (pp. 9-31) Charlottesville/Colorado Springs: University of Virginia and University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Guinness, Katherine (2021). The vegetal world. Family Tree Whakapapa: Elin, Madeleine, Sarah, and Susanne Slavick. (pp. 3-9) Auckland, New Zealand: Wallace Arts Trust and Aratoi - Wairarapa Museum of Art and History.
Guinness, Katherine (2017). Heath Franco’s LIFE IS SEXY. The National. (pp. n/a-n/a) Sydney, NSW, Australia: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney.
Feminist interview project: Julia Rose Sutherland in conversation with Jocelyn E. Marshall
Marshall, Jocelyn E., Sutherland, Julia Rose and Guinness, Katherine (2023). Feminist interview project: Julia Rose Sutherland in conversation with Jocelyn E. Marshall. Art Journal Open.
Feminist interview project: Cassils in conversation with Amelia Jones
Jones, Amelia, Cassils and Guinness, Katherine (2023). Feminist interview project: Cassils in conversation with Amelia Jones. Art Journal Open.
Nuclear mediation and autobiographical ghosts
Guinness, Katherine (2023). Nuclear mediation and autobiographical ghosts. Apocalyptica.
Feminist Interview Project: Senga Nengudi in Conversation with Daisy McGowan
McGowan, Daisy, Nengudi, Senga and Guinness, Katherine (2022). Feminist Interview Project: Senga Nengudi in Conversation with Daisy McGowan. Art Journal Open.
Feminist interview project: Christine Sun Kim in conversation with Tabitha Jacques
Jacques, Tabitha, Kim, Christine Sun and Guinness, Katherine (2022). Feminist interview project: Christine Sun Kim in conversation with Tabitha Jacques. Art Journal Open.
Collaborative reflections on the feminist art and architecture collaborative
Kent, Charlotte, Guinness, Katherine and Tanga, Martina (2021). Collaborative reflections on the feminist art and architecture collaborative. The Oxford Artistic and Practice Based Research Platform (4).
Empathy and nausea: virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2020). Empathy and nausea: virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence. Journal of Visual Culture, 19 (1), 28-46. doi: 10.1177/1470412920906261
The Coloniser and Corpus Nullius
Guinness, Katherine (2020). The Coloniser and Corpus Nullius. Parallax, 26 (1), 76-88. doi: 10.1080/13534645.2019.1685782
Negative hauntology and the nuclear sublime: on VR and catastrophe
Guinness, Katherine (2020). Negative hauntology and the nuclear sublime: on VR and catastrophe. Spectator, 40 (2), 31-39.
Collaborations – A formless dialectic
Guinness, Katherine (2019). Collaborations – A formless dialectic. Montclair State University Creative Research Center.
Making Kin with Pessimism (and Mushrooms)
Guinness, Katherine (2018). Making Kin with Pessimism (and Mushrooms). Tilt West.
‘Do you really want to live forever?’: Animism, death, and the trouble of digital images
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2018). ‘Do you really want to live forever?’: Animism, death, and the trouble of digital images. Cultural Studies Review, 24 (2), 79-96. doi: 10.5130/csr.v24i2.5995
Hard at Play: Zaniness and Labour in Contemporary Art
Guinness, Katherine (2018). Hard at Play: Zaniness and Labour in Contemporary Art. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 18 (1), 90-107. doi: 10.1080/14434318.2018.1481333
León, Ana María, Merrett, Andrea J., Ziaee, Armaghan, Mejía Moreno, Catalina, Kent, Charlotte, Stiles, Elaine, Cheatle, Emma, Chuong, Jennifer Y., Maxim, Juliana, Iarocci, Louisa, Tanga, Martina, Touloumi, Olga, Guinness, Katherine, Surface, S., Sohail, Saher, Parrish, Sarah and Paneth-Pollak, Tessa (2018). To manifest. Harvard Design Magazine, Winter 2018, 182-189.
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2017). Phenomenology for the selfie. Cultural Politics, 13 (2), 156-176. doi: 10.1215/17432197-4129113
The future is already here, tt’s just the end
Guinness, Katherine (2016). The future is already here, tt’s just the end. Kapsula, 3, 8-15.
9B and me (love, touch, destruction)
Guinness, Katherine (2015). 9B and me (love, touch, destruction). Kapsula, 2 (3), 6-13.
Marina Abramović doesn’t feel like you
Guinness, Katherine and Bollmer, Grant David (2015). Marina Abramović doesn’t feel like you. Feral Feminisms, 3 (Winter), 40-55.
Celebrating an unstable oeuvre: Rosemarie Trockel’s retrospective
Guinness, Katherine (2014). Celebrating an unstable oeuvre: Rosemarie Trockel’s retrospective. Esse (80), 76-81.
Guinness, Katherine (2014). Does Heath Franco think I’m a dickhead? (Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the art that makes me angry). Kapsula, 1 (4), 16-19.
Desiring and destruction: Rosemarie Trockel’s painting machine
Guinness, Katherine (2012). Desiring and destruction: Rosemarie Trockel’s painting machine. NYX: A Noctournal, 93-100.
Mediation and autobiographical ghosts
Guinness, Katherine (2023). Mediation and autobiographical ghosts. Nuclear Ghosts Workshop, Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies, Heidelberg, Germany, 26-27 July 2023.
Feminist care for the archive: art history, text(ures) and methodologies
Marshall, Jocelyn E. and Guinness, Katherine (2023). Feminist care for the archive: art history, text(ures) and methodologies. Shaking the Archives: Reconsidering the Role of Archives in Contemporary Society, Edinburgh, Scotland, 23-25 June 2023.
Virtual reality for a burning world
Bollmer, Grant and Guinness, Katherine (2023). Virtual reality for a burning world. RE:SOURCE – The 10th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Venice, Italy, 13-16 September 2023.
Dirt: Dialogues with Earth Matter
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Research on the effects of the digital media visual context on artistic representation and art creation of professional artists across the Asia-Pacific region.
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors: