Denise Helene Sumi is a PhD candidate at the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is interested in international and transdisciplinary developments in contemporary art with a particular focus on artistic practices that incorporate digital technologies which establish and maintain technology-based relationships, transversal knowledge exchange, and collective approaches.

She studied Art History at the University of Vienna. After internships at the Collection and Archive of the University of Applied Arts, the Filmarchiv Austria, and the Halle für Kunst Steiermark (formerly Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien), she has since 2019 been working as coordinator for the Digital Solitude programme at the international and interdisciplinary artist residency Akademie Schloss Solitude, where she was previously fellow in the field of art coordination. Sumi has been editor-in-chief of the Solitude Journal since 2018. Together with the Digital Solitude Network and her colleague Thomas Dumke, she curated the festival Fragile Solidarity/Fragile Connections in 2022. Together with Fanny Hauser, Carolina Nöbauer, and Franziska Sophie Wildförster, she co-runs the Vienna-based exhibition space Kevin Space since 2016.

Her current research focuses on selected historical and contemporary projects by international and transdisciplinary artists and initiatives. The projects test and apply models and uses for existing and future technologies and digital networks that are characterized less by separation and exploitation and more by practices of care, collective agency,  and embodied forms of connectivity. She engages with artistic works that address urgent challenges and questions, such as what it might mean to live socially and ecologically responsible, ethical, and joyful lives with technology in a networked world. Sumi is co-editor of On Care. A Journey into the Relational Nature of Artists’ Residencies (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2023). Her reviews, texts and numerous interviews with artists have been published in Springerin, Camera Austria, Spike Art Quarterly, Medienimpulse, Schloss-Post, and the Solitude Blog, among others.