Miro Leon Bucher

New Media Artist | Curator | Philosopher | Anthropologist

Miro Leon Bucher (they/he) is a German new media artist working primarily in CGI/3D rendering, virtual and augmented reality, sound design, and creative coding and currently works as an artistic-scientific associate at the Department of Visual Arts of RWTH Aachen University, teaching Artificial Intelligence in Art and Architecture. Born in 1998 and raised near Cologne, Germany, Miro currently resides between Aachen, Germany, and Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Miro holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy and Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Cologne, for which they completed extensive research stays in Seoul, Republic of Korea and at Ewha Womans University. This research focused on gender, feminism and contemporary art. In their thesis entitled "'Lee Subin, Born 1998'. Understanding Contemporary Gender Issues in South Korea through Collaborative Exhibition-Making", Miro presents an ethnography on the epistemic potentials of collaborative exhibition-making.

In their artistic practice, Miro combines media art with Ernst Bloch's Utopianism. Using various technical processes, Miro creates tangible utopian worlds that criticise contemporary social issues and suggests new Utopian visions of the future. Based on Ernst Bloch's "Principle of Hope" and Alfred Gell's "Art and Agency", these works can be read as interventions for social change.

Miro is currently part of a research project by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehugnen (ifa) under the title "Feminist and Decolonial Approaches to AI: A Participatory Approach to Knowledge Production/Cultivation", leading to an AI workshop at Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, and a publication of the research results.

Miro has worked at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and for its Artist Residency, as well as for the Chair of Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, and Logic and the Cologne Center for Contemporary Epistemology and the Kantian Tradition (CONCEPT) at the University of Cologne. Their studies and research have been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

Miro Leon Bucher has exhibited and curated in Seoul, Republic of Korea, among other places.