- Fake & Fake
- Nov 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 16
Caterina Fake
Artist, Technologist, Writer
Based in New York, Paris & San Francisco
Artist Statement
Caterina Fake’s practice explores systems—social, linguistic, technological, mythic, sensory—as structures of meaning and emotion. Drawing from her background as an internet pioneer and cultural theorist, she works across writing, installation, sound, music, performance and digital media to examine how memory, myth, aspiration and power circulate through networks. Her projects often fuse literary and philosophical influences (Blanchot, Carson, Deleuze, Kristeva) with personal mythology and systems aesthetics, creating hybrid works that bridge technology and the human condition.
Education
B.A. in English Literature – Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Honorary Doctorate – RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), Providence, RI
Honorary Doctorate – The New School, New York, NY
Independent study in painting, life drawing, anatomy, psychology, alchemy, critical theory and mythopoetics at, variously, Art Students League, Parsons School of Design, The New Museum, Giorno Poetry Systems, Jung Archademy.
Selected Exhibitions, Installations & Projects
2026 Finity: forthcoming. Book and multimedia installation exploring limitations as freedom. Integrates sound, video, philosophy.
2026 Yesterday: forthcoming. A work in progress, based on the talk given at the MoMA (All my troubles seemed so far away). A theatre piece, artwork, and performance on technology, and the loss of the future.
2025 Bed for Dreaming. The Jones Institute. A participatory gesamtkunstwerk in which a Chinese wedding bed is installed in the gallery, alongside paintings, statuary, and a story cabinet filled with dream objects. Participants will be invited to sleep in the bed, infused with scent, and fed ambrosias and nectars to induce dreams. Upon waking, they will record their dreams. San Francisco, CA
2025 Surreal Systems: Notes on Emergence, Collaborative music-technology project exploring 'composition as system design,' developed with Fake & Fake. San Francisco, CA
2024 Matriarch. Group show. In this group show about matriarchy, I contributed a dining room chair, covered in children’s drawings, spilled soup representing the sag and residue of hundreds of hours spent learning to eat, eating, doing homework. Maspeth, Queens
2023 House Spirits, The Briarcombe Institute. Bolinas, CA Installation exploring domestic hauntings, ancestral presences, and remote intelligences.
2022 Chrononaut. Online / Hybrid Narrative Speculative autobiography using AI-generated text, mythological time structures, and interactive design
2021 Quality Without a Name, New York, NY Series of digital-analog works on pattern, beauty, and the poetics of scent and touch, and the sensation of volumes, based on theories of Goethe, Christopher Alexander and Bachelard.
Selected Talks
2025 AI & Creativity, Institute of Contemporary Art. Alongside June Gordon and Daniel Handler, we engaged in a spirited discussion exploring the tensions between AI and creativity, issues of artistic theft, AI's dehumanizing effects and the limited legitimate uses of AI in creative work. San Francisco, CA.
2025 Art and AI, Interact Symposium. A conversation with Sarah Meyohas and others in which we discussed what makes AI's use cases, whether there is less “authorship” if AI is utilized, whether AI undermines creativity and some of the ethics of using AI in making art. San Francisco, CA.
2024 Yesterday (all my troubles seemed so far away) MoMA. A presentation about technology and nostalgia, the surprising technophilia of Henry David Thoreau, AI and its dissatisfactions, the loss of the future and our continual return to yesterday. New York, NY
2023 Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. City Arts and Lectures. A live conversation between renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog and me, mostly about his creative output, his writing, poetry and films, from his recent autobiography. San Francisco CA (Other interviewees have included neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa, author Malcolm Gladwell.)
Selected Press
Nine Must-See Art Shows in the Bay Area, by Sam Mondros. The San Francisco Standard.
Awards & Recognition
TIME 100 Most Influential People, TIME Magazine, 2006
Rhizome Lifetime Achievement Award, New Museum, 2009
Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, 2009
Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership, 2009
Silicon Valley Visionary Award, 2018
Selected Writing, Presentations & Publications
“Finity” (manuscript in progress)
“System Aesthetics,” New Music Journal (forthcoming, 2025)
“Bed for Dreaming,” essays. The Jones Institute (forthcoming, 2025)
“Should this Exist?” host, podcast. 2018-2020
“Killing the Abraham” Wired Magazine, 2011
Collaborations
Fake & Fake: collaborative projects with Ferran Martínez Miquel, composer – surrealist and avant-garde music theatre collaborations
Kevin Newbury: Yesterday, work-in-progress
Flickr, Kickstarter, Etsy– early cultural-technology platforms exploring collective authorship and creative economies
Collections
Private collections in New York, Florence, Barcelona, Vancouver and San Francisco
Digital works in Rhizome ArtBase
Affiliations
Board of Directors & Chairman of the Board, Etsy 2007-2014
Board of Trustees, Sundance Institute 2015-present
Board of Trustees, City Arts & Lectures, 2020-present
Board of Advisors, Helsinki Design & Architecture Museum 2020-present
Board of Trustees, Southern Exposure, 2015-2020
Advisory Board, SFMOMA Media Arts Committee (SMAC) 2008
Mentor, Sundance New Frontier
Comments