Biography
Michael Hornblow is an Artist, Researcher, Video Maker, and Arts Manager, with a multidisciplinary background encompassing Performance , Architecture and Design, Video Art, Installation, Documentary, Social Practice, Community Development, Curating, and Artistic / Creative Directing.
Michael’s art presentations include Tokyo Biennale, Asiatopia (Thailand), Melbourne Festival, the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Sydney, Vancouver, Hong Kong), PUBLIC Festival (Perth), Junction Arts Festival in Tasmania, and many independent events. He has a long history of creative work in Asia, including performing, co-founding, and curating for Melaka Festival in Malaysia, as well as several festivals and artist residencies across Indonesia (Arts Island, Asialink, and the Australia Indonesia Institute).
In performance, Michael trained with dance choreographers, Min Tanaka and Kazuo Ohno in Japan, Ko Murobushi in New York, and Tony Yap in Melbourne (amongst others). In Thailand, he was Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Buffalo Field (2017-2019), a performing arts festival in Bangkok focussing on site-specific performance and community engagement.
In video, Michael has produced projects in the areas of community development, tourism, mental health, drug rehabilitation, art activism, architecture, to name a few. This has involved working in challenging areas, such as a refugee camp in the Sahara Desert, a multi-channel video installation exploring Antonio Guadi’s Sagrada Familiar cathedral in Barcelona, and a grassroots Hip hop video in a Johannesburg squatter settlement.
In academia, Michael taught in the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University (Bangkok, Thailand), where he led students on social innovation projects in collaboration with local communities, UN agencies, and corporate partners. Before SGS, he was at Bangkok University in Digital Media and Design, and prior to that in Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania (Australia). Before UTAS, he spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Senselab at Concordia University in Montreal (Canada), after completing his PhD in the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia).
Michael is drawn to projects that are collaborative, critical, embodied, and relational, particularly those around social concerns, ecological issues, interdisciplinary innovation, and cross-cultural development. He has experience in all aspects of the creative process, from conception, ideation, and creative writing, to production, post-production and presentation, including directing and managing multidisciplinary teams, grant writing and acquittal, public speaking, promotion, publication, and distribution.
