Benjamin Jantzen

Benjamin Jantzen, also known as Pixelschubser, was born in 1979 and now lives and works in Mannheim as a media artist and curator. In his work he explores glitch aesthetics and interactivity, creating impressive projections within an urban space and working as a freelance video designer for opera and theatre. His background on the video jockey scene means that his work draws its strength from its stylistic variety. Time and time again he has developed new approaches for different environments and performances, solving the most diverse technical problems and in the process coming into contact with a whole range of audience groups, ensuring that his visual style is constantly changing.

Benjamin Jantzen has worked with Achim Freyer on a number of projects that have taken them to the Seoul Arts Center and the Mannheim National Theatre, where Freyer’s production of the world premiere of Lucia Ronchetti’s Esame di mezzanotte was voted Premiere of the Year in a poll of critics undertaken by Opernwelt magazine in 2015.

Benjamin Jantzen is also the founder and current director of the B-Seite Festival for the visual arts and present-day culture in addition to which he runs the Lichtinstallationen.com Creative Agency for Lighting and Media and curates new media and digital art at the whiteBOX Gallery in Munich.

To date his work has been seen at the First Short Film Festival at Istanbul’s Modern Museum, at the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren, at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf and at the Mannheim Kunsthalle. Among the festivals where his live performances have been seen are Time Warp in Mannheim, the roBOt Festival in Bologna, Urban Art Forms in Vienna, FREEMOTE in Utrecht, the VJ FEST in Istanbul, the Camp Fest in Cluj, the visualberlinFestival, the License to Screen Festival in Kežmarok and the Playground AV Festival in Salzburg.