Torsten Zenas Burns is an artist and media arts educator living in Helsinki, Finland.

Burns received a BFA in video from the New York State College of Art & Design at Alfred University and an MFA in New Genres: video & performance art from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Burns has created videos, photographs, sculptural installations, and electronic publishing projects exploring re-imagined educational practices, speculative bodies, experimental space programs, post-humans, zombie/afterlife relationships, humanimal stories, and ecological fictions.

Burns currently co-runs the artist house studios on Vartiosaari Island, Helsinki. Other long-term projects include collaborations with Monika Czyzyk, Darrin Martin, and Anthony Discenza (Halflifers). Burns’ selected video & net-art works are distributed by Vtape, Video Data Bank, and EAI (Electronic Arts Intermix).

Burns has participated in several residency programs, including Headlands Center for the Arts, The Experimental Television Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, L.M.C.C. World Views Studio Program, Smackmellon Studio Program, Eyebeam, and Signal Culture.

Burns has had video work screened at the Museum of Modern Art’s Video Viewpoints and Premieres series, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Pacific Film Archive, SF Camera Works, Dumbo Arts Center, Video_Dumbo, Aurora Picture Show, Migrating Forms, Krowswork Gallery, The Chicago Underground Film Festival, The European Media Arts Festival, Impakt Festival, The Melbourne International Film festival, Yanhuang Art Museum, The Oberhausen Short Film Festival, The Busan International Video Festival, MUUGallery, Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, The Tack Room Project space, and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter: Festival for Expanded Media. In 2020 Burns was awarded a KONE foundation grant to produce a catalogue, graphic novel, and series of drawings called The Bamboonaut Clusters, which were exhibited at Myymälä2 gallery in Helsinki, Finland.

In 2022 Burns and Darrin Martin screened their latest video project, ARK3: Crossover Chronicles 3, at the 18th Athens digital art festival: FutuRetro in Greece.

Burns and Martin held a collaborative residency at Eyebeam in 2002.