Venice Photograph

Michael Mastrototaro was born in Graz, Austria and has lived in Vienna, Austria since 1991. He is father of two sons. From 1976 to 1978 he was a member of the children's choir at the Graz Opera. During this time he sang i.a. a duo with Josep Carreras in the opera The Miserliest Man Alive. He then worked at the youth stage at the Graz theater. In 1994 he completed speech choir training with Einar Schleef in Berlin. Back in Vienna, he studied for two years at the Institute for Electroacoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. After dropping out of his studies, he concentrated on his professional artistic work. Over the years, numerous projects have emerged in the artistic disciplines of net art, experimental film (16 mm), installations for public space, radio art, performance, media art and literature. Since 2017 he has been intensively involved with fine arts. The focus of his artistic activity is always the examination of social trends. In 1999 he founded the artist duo Machfeld together with the Austrian media artist Sabine Maier. In 2008 he received the Promotional Prize for Video and Media Art from the Austrian Federal Chancellery with Machfeld. He realized projects in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, Central and North America and in the USA (e.g. Hong Kong Arts Center (Hong Kong/ Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China), University of California (Santa Barbara/USA) Bag Factory (Johannesburg/South Africa), Kunsthalle Basel (Basel/Switzerland), Museum of Modern Art (Detroit/USA)).