Iz Paehr

Source: privat

Iz Paehr (*1992) is a disabled artist-designer. Starting from access knowledge, they challenge, hack and reinvent socio-technical systems. In Iz’ work, disability is a motor for creativity and an epistemic position from which aesthetic practices arise.

In their current S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o residency with Salzburg Festival Archive and Ars Electronica (2025-26), Iz is designing haptic controllers that invite people into accessible and multi-sensorial virtual worlds. Past works include for example ACCESS SERVER with Ren Loren Britton, a prototype for an email server that anonymises the requests that disabled people send to cultural institutions to ask for access; and World Wide Wet, a series of work presented as website artworks and artist walks that make internet, telegraph and ecological networks tangible while drawing attention to the material, oceanic and uneven distribution of communication infrastructures.

Iz work has been presented internationally in the forms of exhibitions, talks and workshops at institutions such as Sonic Acts Biennale (NL), Kansas City Art Institute (US), CCCB (ES), Goldsmiths University (UK), PACT Zollverein (DE), Archives at NCBS Bangalore (IN), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (DE). They are a recipient of fellowships and residencies from Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), Stiftung Kunstfonds (DE), Processing Foundation (US), transmediale (DE), Digital Creation Institute (CA) and others. Iz regularly teaches courses on access aesthetics and anti-ableism as a guest lecturer at Art in Context at the University of the Arts Berlin, and publishes academic articles in journals such as Catalyst, First Monday, and TSQ. In the summer semester of 2026, Iz is appointed as a guest professor in Information Design at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle.

Iz studied Visual Communications with a focus on New Media at the School of Arts and Design Kassel until 2017, with a semester spent studying Digital Creation at Kyoto Seika University. Iz lives in Berlin and can be found online via izpaehr.xyz