Thomas J. Jelinek

Thomas J. Jelinek (born December 12 1964 in Stockholm) Sweden is an Austrian trans-disciplinary working conceptual artist, director, dramaturge and curator.

Thomas J. Jelinek realised art- and media-performances, video-works, space and media installations, art-festivals and contemporary theatre projects. He is developing and working on progressive, immersive forms of media performance and theatre and directed, opera and theatre projects, media- and “action”-theatre for industrial sites and urban areas in Europe.

He also worked for television and urban architectural projects, realising exhibitions, performance projects and stage works in very different contexts in Europe, such as ARS ELECTRONICA/Linz, Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin or HAU, Basel, Zentralwerk Dresden, V2 Rotterdam, Biennale de Lyon, Marseille, Venice, in Vienna in Museumquartier, Vienna Künstlerhaus or theatres, Zagreb or Asia in Cities like Shanghai, Seoul etc., and has developed and staged several opera projects in Berlin, Salzburg, Wien Modern, MTTW - Musiktheatertage Wien) and also implemented them in specific locations at the fault lines of urban structures, in public spaces such as industrial wastelands, in various European locations.

As a director and dramaturge he is collaborating with contemporary composers, choreographers and artists from various disciplines, produces and designs as scenographer, theatre-sets and communication spaces. The staged theatre spaces are characterized by the fact that the audience is immersively integrated into the action space - participating in the discourses and involving people with specific knowledge or experience from real life, not as theatre laymen but as experts, in the installations and performances with appearances.

With a specific focus on the fundamental mechanisms of perception and the construction-processes of reality he is developing collaborative projects, interactive installations, as well as transdisciplinary laboratories as an interface between art and science. Also working on the development of laboratories for discourses and contextual performance processes. In this way, he has helped “discourse theatre“ to take on new forms^[1] and realized media productions for the digital Internet audience. This is particularly evident in Art and Science projects, in which theatre-performative processes take place simultaneously in the physical theatre and in the digital communication space.

As a curator, he has initiated a series of transdisciplinary, collaborative art ventures, such as the exhibition and performance series ‘Temporal Architecture - 1997-98’ together with Elke Krasny, with presentations in Vienna, 2B Eindhoven, Holland and ‘E55-Inforally’ together with ‘nurSchrec’, with the installation space of the same name at the Trans-Europe-Halles Summit 1997 in the WUK cultural centre in Vienna with the installation space of the same name at the Trans-Europe-Halles Summit 1997 at the WUK cultural centre in Vienna and he curated international festivals such as TRANSART in 2000, 2005 in Croatia, 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

Jelinek realizes various collaborative art spaces, such as TRANSART or with NOMAD the konTEXTlab, Underground City^[2] until 2013 and since 2019 the serial laboratory Test.Tube.Lab.^[3] Various artistic formations and project groups have developed from this, as in the 1990s, the art and action group MESSING-network - which he founded with Andreas Donhauser, Katharina Mathiasek, Alexander Schuh and others, which he directed until 2003. In 1993, with the MESSING-logbuch project, he was interim programme director of the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin.

He also founded the NOMAD.theatre^[4] and the LABfactory, of which he is artistic director. Thomas Jelinek is together with Chris Haring, Stephanie Cumming and Andreas Berger co-founder and dramaturge of the performance company Liquid Loft^{[5] [6]} Since 2021, he has been developing TERRA NOVA PROTOCOLS, a digital art communication space in collaboration with the scientists and experts like the neurologist Stefan Glasauer, Eva Horn, Barbara Imhof, Margarete Jahrmann, Ramón Reichert, Oliver Schürer, a.o. Since 2025 he is director and curator of the FLUVIALE – an international, transdisciplinary mobile ART-festival.

Alongside his work as artist and director, he engaged in political art actions and various political NGO activities. From 2000 to 2008 he was chairman of IG Kultur Vienna and representative for the independent art producers in Vienna in the IG Kultur.

Thomas J. Jelinek is the son of the architect Otto Jelinek (1921-1999) and Ingrid Birgitta Knutsdotter Almgren–Jelinek (1932-2013). He is married to the performance artist and choreographer Aiko Kazuko Kurosaki, with whom he has three children. She is the sister of baroque violinist Hiro Kurosaki.

• 1998: 1. Theaterpreis des Donaufestivals (Krems/A) für „Johnny got his Gun“ (Dalton Trumbo)

• 2003: Kunststückepreis des ORF: „Best Short“ für „Dantes Inferno“, Komposition Michael Mautner

• 2007: Goldener Löwe der Biennale di Venezia für best performance (with Liquid Loft)

• Theaterpreise: Szczecin (PL), Biennale-Lyon (F)

• Vita Thomas Jelinek
• Thomas Jelinek - kunstradio
• Thomas Jelinek - brut Vienna
• Thomas Jelinek - Theater der Zeit
• nomad-theatre.eu
• fluviale.eu
• WUK Magazine