Mi You is a professor of Art and Economies at the University of Kassel / documenta Institute. Prior to joining the University of Kassel, she was a research associate in the Art and Media Studies department at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (2014-2021). She has also held lecturer positions in the Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art program of the School of Art, Design and Architecture, Aalto University (2019-2020), in the Roaming Academy program of the Dutch Art Institute (2018-2019) and in the Media Art program of the University of the Arts Bremen (2016-2017). Dr. You is trained in media theory and science and technology studies. Her academic interests are in new and historical materialism, performance philosophy, as well as the history, political theory and philosophy of Eurasia. She completed her PhD studies with Prof. Dr. Pexte Bexte and Prof. Dr. Marie-Luise Angerer at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 2019.
Dr. You has worked internationally as a curator. She works with the Silk Road as a figuration for old and new networks and technologies. Under this rubric, she has curated shows and programs at Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea, Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016), Zarya CCA, Vladivostok (2018) and with Binna Choi, she is co-steering a research/curatorial project “Unmapping Eurasia” (2018-). At the same time, her interests in politics around technology and futures led her to work on “actionable speculations”, articulated in the exhibition, workshops and sci-fi-a-thon “Sci-(no)-Fi” at the Academy of the Arts of the World, Cologne (2019), as well as in her function as chair of committee on Media Arts and Technology for the transnational NGO Common Action Forum. She is one of the curators of the 13thShanghai Biennale (2020-2021).
She co-initiated (in 2011) and is committee member of EU-funded project “Transnational Dialogues”, an exchange platform between China, Europe and Brazil. She is a fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn), Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern) and Independent Curators International (New York). She is a member of the Academy of Arts of the World, and serves as director of Arthub and advisor to Institute for Provocation.