Profile
Timothy Furstnau is a writer, designer, and curator, whose wide-ranging practice has taken many forms. He is co-founder of FICTILIS, an independent curatorial studio, Museum of Capitalism, an institution dedicated to the memorializing capitalism, Writ Large, a festival and commissioning program for generative poetry and screen-based text installation, and Toolshed, a tool lending library in Hudson, NY, among other collaborative curatorial and publishing projects. He is also author of the world’s first and only study guide for pain examinations, How It Hurts. As an educator in the fields of writing, art, design, and history, he has designed seminars at The New School for Social Research, California College of the Arts, and University of California Santa Cruz, and has organized workshops and exhibitions for a variety of academic and cultural institutions.
Recent Publications
“Pace Ranae, or Adjusting the Culture of Speed,”
The New Farmer's Almanac, Vol. IV, Greenhorns, 2023.
“Tracing the Line, or the Promissory Politics of Climate Change,” for
Labor, e-flux Architecture × CCA, Oct 2021.
“Petroleum on Display: Visual Culture and the Post-visible Condition,”
Oil: Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 2021.
“Using Animals Using Tools,” (with Imani Jacqueline Brown), and “Categorization of Tools and the Tools of Categorization,” Toolshed, 2020.
Museum of Capitalism expanded second edition (editor), Inventory Press, 2020.
“Animals Being Animals,” in Pigeon, Sybil Press, 2020.
"True Cost Market," in Expedition Sustainia, online module for Government of Flanders and Ecocampus, 2019.
“What is the Speculative?” (contributor),
Sublevel Magazine, CalArts School for Critical Studies, 2018.
“Interfaces for Emplacement,” Media-N Journal, New Media Caucus, Ecologies of Creative Activism, 2016.
How It Hurts, Publication Studio Portland, 2013.
Research Interests
Political ecology, alternative economics and commoning, waste, maintenance, and repair, biocultural restoration, stewardship, and care work, language and text in performance, memory and public history, archival and curatorial practice.
Awards And Honors
Ecological Restoration Grant, Hudson Valley Partners for Climate Action, 2023.
Curator In Residence, Das Weisse Haus, Vienna, Austria, 2020.
Visiting Tutor, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), “The Whole Life: Archives and Reality,” Dresden, Germany, 2019.
Economic Security Project Grant, Anti-Monopoly Fund, 2019.
Lang Civic Liberal Arts Fellowship, Center for Capitalism Studies, The New School, 2019.
William P. Heidrich Research Fellowship, Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, 2018.
Guest Curator, Vienna Art Week, Vienna, Austria, 2018.
Project Space Residency Grant, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California, 2018.
Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (Museum of Capitalism), 2016.
Finalist, COAL Art & Environment Prize, Paris, France, 2015.
Left Tilt Fund Grant Award, 2015.
Porter Hitchcock Modern Poetry Fund, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2015.