Inke Arns has curated the 2017 exhibition "alien matter" and is the artistic director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) in Dortmund since 2005. She 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 paradigmatic shifts in the way artists in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia reflected upon the historical avant-garde and notions of utopia in visual and media art projects during the 1980s and 1990s. Arns has curated many exhibitions in Germany and abroad, edited exhibition catalogues, and authored numerous articles on media art and net culture.