The School of Architecture presents Julia Christensen as part of its spring 2011 lecture series. Co-sponsored by the Kiang Gallery of Atlanta in coordination with its exhibit “After the Suburbs” curated by artist Karen Tauches. AIA credit available.

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. Recent solo exhibitions include: Your Town Inc., (Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and The Richmond Center at Western Michigan University) and Surplus Rising (Banvard Gallery at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University). Currently, she is writing an experimental opera with collaborator Sarah Paul, to be performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland in the fall of 2010.

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. She is the leader of the Big Box Reuse Group, a consulting group that deals with the creative reuse of urban blight. Christensen's writing has been published in magazines such as Orion, Print, and Slate. Christensen's work has been written about in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New York Review of Books, Bomb, Afterall, and Dwell Magazine.

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. She has performed as a musician in such locations as 21 Grand and the Acme Observatory in Oakland, CA, and has studied composition with Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, Fred Frith, and Chris Brown.  She has also performed public interventions with the activist troupe The Yes Men.

Ms. Christensen is the Henry Luce Visiting Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she produces the Margin Release New Media Lecture Series. She has a joint appointment between Oberlin College and Conservatory, teaching in the departments of TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) and Studio Art. Ms. Christensen is also a member of the Environmental Studies Faculty Committee. 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 the San Francisco Art Institute, Cornell University, Yale University, and New York University.