Fran Ilich
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Fran Ilich is a Tijuana born, cyberpunk writer and media artist/activist. During the early nineties was involved with Contra-Cultura (menor) and the independent media scene in Tijuana, where he was known to be an eclectic producer working with literature, photography, comics, videofilms and electronic music. Because of this was identified as part of the Generation X mexican literature, with other figures like Guillermo Fadanelli, Rafa Saavedra & Nahief Yeyha.
In 1995 he started publishing Cinemátik, a tabloid publication around urban electronic culture. In 1996 he was screenwriter for Discovery Channel Interacción, a show produced by Beatriz Acevedo. In 1997 he published Metro-Pop, a novel. In 1998 he was signed by Digital Entertainment Network as creator for a series of 6 minute show, targeting young latin audience, however the series never got produced as the multimedia dot-com company and internet pioneer went bankrupt. The same year along with other members of Laboratorios Cinemátik was involved in producing Cinemátik 1.0, a festival considered to be the 1st cyberculture festival in Latin America. In 1999 he distanced from what became the Nortec sound and moved to Berlin where he got more involved with the Nettime scene, collaborating with Florian Schneider, Geert Lovink, Natalie Bookchin, Pit Schultz, Ricardo Dominguez and Alexei Shulgin.
In the year 2000 he initiated the Borderhack festival in the mexican side of the Tijuana-San Diego borderwall, and moved to Mexico City to become an editor for the magazine Sputnik Cultura Digital. In 2002, he worked as a researcher for Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes. In 2003 & 2004 he directed seminars of narrative media for Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, in Seville, while being enrolled as a student of Latin American Studies at Alliant International University. In 2005 after the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle meetings in Chiapas with Subcomandante Marcos and EZLN, launched the autonomous server possibleworlds.org. In 2007 participated in Documenta 12 magazines and since then works at Fiction Department (Departamento de Ficción), a workgroup focusing on the theory and practice of narrative media. His latest novel published is Tekno Guerrilla, a fictional piece about existential crisis and the days of the HEM (Hecho En México) graffiti crew in Tijuana.
