TAHIAN BHERING (Brazil) is a visual artist and cultural producer. He holds a BA in Fine Arts for the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), now studying at the Visual Arts School of Parque Lage. Takes part in multicultural events, practices urban interventions and likes to observe and research the urban environment and surroundings, constantly thinking about the cities. In his works he mixes various images and codes present in the urbanized reality blending them into compositions full of fragments of this visual urban vocabulary. Tahian has lived in Berlin and is now situated in Rio de Janeiro, currently dwelling in some imaginary place in between, working to establish a cultural bridge among these cities.
MATTI AIKIO (Finland) is a visual artist. He has studied at Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. He comes originally from Vuotso, the southernmost sámi village in Finland. He is also reindeer herder. Artistically he has background in photography as a medium and he has worked also as freelance photographer. At the moment he focuses on video installations. Among his interests are nomadism, as well as issues of post-colonialism, conflict and globalization. Recently his works have been shown in Tromsø, Oslo, Hammerfest, Rovaniemi, Hamburg and Singapore.
MALU ANDRADE (Brazil) is a cultural producer and art educator. She graduated in History and holds a MA in History of Arts and Architecture at the Architect and Urbanism School at the University of São Paulo (FAU/USP). She has worked for several Brazilian cultural institutions as producer and art educator for visual arts. She was a member of the Baixo Centro collective and Casa da Cultura Digital. Her research is on artistic urban intervention and the environment where it takes place, as well as on how communities can empower themselves through art.
ANNA ARUTYUNOVA (Russia) is a journalist and researcher who contributes to different art publications and works as an art-correspondent for Vedomosti.Friday a weekend supplement to a business newspaper co-published with Financial Times. Her main focus is the art-market process and the problems of commercialization of art. Her research of the art-money relationship and the changing economy of art has resulted into a series of lectures at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow and will be at the core of a book that she’s writing for the Higher School of Economics Publishing House (Moscow).
ISABELLA AURORA (Brazil) is a visual artist. Currently enrrolled in the painting course of the Fine Arts school of Rio de Janeiro, she is Native of Rio and professional hula hooper. The study of visual language has commenced early with passionate drawing in early years. Currently developping paintings of medium large dimensions and performing, she takes interest in the holy, the common space (of mind and matter), illusions and guerilla. Having shown works in Niteroi and Petropolis, is preparing for a show in Rio in March 2014.
MARIA REBECCA BALLESTRA (Italy) and RACHELA ABBATE (Italy/Germany) are two visual artists who founded the association ART FOR PLANET concerning the biodiversity of cultures, operating in trans-disciplinary and participatory projects, which integrate scientific researches and socio-ecological outcome as well as long-term projects combining social and artistic activities. Both artists are engaged in international trans-disciplinary and cross-cultural projects in which research operations have outcomes in artistic practice as new interpretations of reality. They are currently working on the last step of “Journey into Fragility”, a project that has been initiated by Rebecca Ballestra, which focuses on the environmental crisis and individuals’ responses to it. In 2013 they received an award at the Sea Art Festival 2013, Busan Biennale (South Korea).
FERNANDA BARROS CARVALHO (Brazil) is a visual artist. She makes multidisciplinary works, connected with the quotidian. She scrutinizes the poetry hidden within objects and urban situations, that unfolds through publications, photography and tridimensional. Fernanda has taken part in the art residencies Berlin_Imfokus (Berlin, Germany) and Colonia de ferias (Sao Paulo, Brazil). She holds a bachelor in Communication (FAAP/Sao Paulo, Brazil); she has studied Photography at Tomie Ohtake Institute (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and at ICP – Institute of Contemporary Photography (New York, USA), as well as Creative Writing at AIC (Sao Paulo, Brazil). Recently she has exhibited at 20º Salao de Artes Plasticas (Praia Grande, Brazil), Contempo Gallery (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Bethanien (Berlin, Germany). She is the co-founder of Prólogo, an independent publishing label.
RAPHAEL COUTO (Brazil) is visual artist, performer and art-educator. Works at Colégio Pedro II, a traditional school in Rio de Janeiro, where he develops ideas in art creation and art education. He is now completing his Master in Contemporary Art at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói. He is interested in collective creations and collaborations, art as education, artists books, body as language, and performance in different ways.
BEL FALLEIROS (Brazil) is an artist from São Paulo that graduated as an architect. Her work is based on her connections with the cities in which she lives and has lived in. Using the experience of drifting through them she connects and collects materials, images, sensations and phrases. With these collected materials she recreates her own space, full of references, memories, ruins and monuments. Her work was born from her strong connection with São Paulo: a city full of contradictions, huge dimensions and complexity; a relationship of passion, love and hate. In this environment she founded an art space in the city center called Aurora, a mix of art collective, studio, and gallery – a space for exchanging artistic experiences – that recently won a government open call for independent art spaces. She also recently opened an individual exhibition at Caixa Cultural (a prize from a public open call for artists), at the ground zero point of the city. In this exhibition, the subject is São Paulo, her memories of childhood cities (her father hometown in the countryside) and her relationship with the other cities in which she has lived (New York, USA, in 2010 and Berlin, Germany, in 2011). Bel is part of the study group Ateliê Fidalga, organized by the Brazilian artists Sandra Cinto and Albano Afonso, which has more than 60 participating artists from all ages and nationalities.
RAPHAEL FRANCO (Brazil) is a Brazilian visual artist and educator. He graduated in Visual Arts at FASM (Faculdade Santa Marcelina), São Paulo. In his work, Raphael explores the relationship between man, nature and the urban environment, reflecting on the way we relate to and transform the space around us. He has been involved in collaborative projects and has been showing his work in both group and solo shows in Brazil and Europe. He is a founder member of the collectives “White Chair” and “New Species”.
ANA HUPE (Brazil) is an artist. She is currently doing a Ph.D. in Fine Arts at Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University. She holds a Master degree in Fine Arts from Rio de Janeiro’s State University (UERJ). Her artistic research deals with performative writings, texts in an expanded field, photography and video as means for storytelling. In 2014 she won a Prize from IPHAN – National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage. She is now taking part in a collective exhibition at Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (March). She is also taking part at the performance festival Performatus at Central Galeria, São Paulo (March). In 2013 she did a one-month residence at La Ene, Buenos Aires, Argentina, exhibited works at TAL gallery at Fábrica Bhering, Rio de Janeiro, took part at Vênus-Terra, Performance art’s festival at Teatro Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, presented works at CSO, Seminary on arts at University of Fine Arts of Lisbon. She also published drawings and texts in both Brazilian and international art magazines, such as Revista Arte & Ensaios and Revista Gama. From 2009 to 2013 hadi been collaborating with Opavivará, a visual artists collective based in Rio de Janeiro, with whom she took part in many exhibitions in Brazil.
HANNA HUSBERG (Finland) lives and works in Stockholm, Paris and Vienna. Her work evolves between a regular practice of video, and several installation projects challenging different aspects of our physical and visual perception. Her ongoing research project Atmospheric Alienation has been developed in exhibitions and installations and through a curatorial practice with Contingent Movements Archive and Symposium conceived for the inaugural Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. She is a participant of Frontiers in Retreat, a multidisciplinary research project aimed to broaden the understanding of global ecological changes and their local impacts on the environment.
ANDRÉ LEAL (Brazil) has graduated as architect and urban planner at the University of São Paulo (2012), but he is actively researching and producing in the field of visual arts. He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he is focussing on the practices of artists Hélio Oiticica and Gordon Matta-Clark as part of the Master in Visual Languages at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He is also an independent curator and a researcher of urban artistic practices. He has presented papers in international congresses addressing contemporary art and modern architecture and has also exhibited his work in group shows in São Paulo.
JULIA MASAGÃO (Brazil) is an architect and graphic designer from São Paulo. She currently acts in practical and research projects on visual representations and development of cities. Her main interest is on empty urban, abandoned spaces and leftovers. She received her diploma by the Escola da Cidade. In 2010, Julia won the 24th edition of the Premio de Cartaz do Museu da casa Brasileira together with Brazilian Nadezhda Mendes da Rocha, and in 2012 had her poster selected as a finalist, with Valentina Soares, for the 25th edition of the same prize. From 2009 to 2011 she worked as a graphic designer of Cosac Naify. Between 2008 and 2009 she was assistant of the architect and critic Guilherme Wisnik on the public art project Margem (Itaú Cultural). In 2009, she participated in the group exhibition, Roupa de Domingo with photos of installation/performace. Since 2011 lives in Berlin where she attends the master “Space Strategies” in Weissensee arts school (Kunshthochschule Weissensee). In 2013 she won an competition to develop the new cultural identity for Centro Cultural São Paulo, together with Joana Barossi and Marina Portolano (project to be developed in 2014). www.juliamasagao.com
OPAVIVARÁ! (Brazil) is an artist collective from Rio de Janeiro who create poetic experiences dealing with the collective and relational.
VICENTE PEREIRA (Brazil) is an actor. He graduated at Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL) with a master degree on Samuel Beckett’s playwriting by Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). He is a technical advisor for the performing arts in National Department of SESC in Rio de Janeiro. Since 2004, he has been working as a theatre teacher and theatre consultant in schools, such as the Municipal Theatre School of Londrina, state of Parana, and in social projects located in the countryside of Londrina, Rocinha, Complexo do Alemão, Complexo da Maré, among others. From 2009 to 2012, he was coordinator for institutional development in the NGO Ação Comunitária do Brasil, being responsible for partnerships with the government, companies and civil society. He is founder and coordinator of the Favelas’ Arts Festival, from 2010 to 2013, and of the Companhia de Teatro Asa-Delta that he heads since 2007.
ALEXANDER PETTERSSON (Sweden) has studied social anthropology in Stockholm and Madrid and works in cultural production. His main research interests are in questions related to gender/sexuality, religion/spirituality and resistance against hegemony (and any combination of the three).
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VANESSA ROSA (Brazil) recently graduated in Art History at Rio de Janeiro State University. As someone who is in love both for drawing and theory, she usually creates projects that put together interpretations on history/philosophy/ideas with drawings and paintings of common people. Currently, she works mostly with urban art. She has worked as project coordinator for several organizations, such as the NGO Rede Nami. She regularly participates in art exhibitions. She is also an illustrator and art director for the publishing house Viajante do Tempo. Vanessa has a deep interest in collaborative projects. She has already proposed and participated in mural paintings, exhibitions and other projects in Chile, Paraguay, USA, France and Germany.
EMILIJA SKARNULYTE (Lithuania) is a filmmaker and artist. She graduated with a BFA the Brera Academy of Milan, Italy, and with an MA in Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art, Norway. She mainly works with film, video, photography, installations and sound performances. The work of Skarnulyte consists of a series of active visions, in which she examines reality with a political and a poetic approach. Emilija´s films have been screened at the 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Edinburgh International Film Festival, OFF & FREE International Film Festival, Seoul, South Korea, Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival, Brazil, LUMEN 2013 festival, New York. She has had her own exhibitions in Italy, Norway, Lithuania, France and Greece. In 2009 she received the Italian National Prize of Fine Arts for her video “Limbic Systems”.
LAURA SOBRAL (Brazil) has studied architecture and urban planning at Universidade de São Paulo and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. She now works with cultural projects mainly about mobility (non-motorized transport) and democratization of literature. Laura also works making urban interventions, she acts in public spaces, proposing improvised interventions – which are easy to be reproduced – thereby incentivizing the relation of the appropriation of public space by city dwellers. She periodically writes for one of the most important architectural magazines in Brazil, aU, about architecture, city spaces and urban processes.
CHIARA TINONIN (Italy) is a cultural economist and free-lance writer. She graduated with a M.Sc. in Economics and Management in Arts and Culture at Bocconi University (2007). Her research focuses on the role of art and culture for economical and social growth, in particular on the opportunities for culture to provide new possibilities for human and social development. Formerly editorial coordinator of and contributor to the Annual Reports on Art Foundations and Sponsoring at The Art Newspaper (Italy), she is advisor to cultural organizations and companies on strategic investments in the arts, as well as lecturer at master courses. She is a founding member of C.A.S.S.E., a female think tank on cultural policy based in Italy, and a Manydee member after attending the Unidee residency program at Cittadellarte-Pistoletto Foundation in 2010.
MARINA TRANCOSO (Brazil) is originally from Sao Paulo, but since 2003 she has lived in many countries, such as Mexico, the Netherlands and Germany, where she is currently based. Graduated with a BA in History at Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) and holding an MA in Arts and Heritage Management from Maastricht University, Marina has worked in several cultural and art institutions in Europe and Latin America. Recently she organised, along with Maria Wildeis, the 2013 edition of STROM Festival, an independent art festival in Cologne, Germany. She is interested in developing new platforms/networking strategies for independent art initiatives and she aims to start her own publishing house.
ALESSANDRO ROLANDI (Italy) has studied Chemistry, Fine Arts, Experimental Theatre, and History of Art. He has been living and working in Beijing since 2003, as a multimedia and performance artist, director, curator, researcher, writer and lecturer. His work focuses on social intervention and relational dynamics to expand the notion of art practice beyond existing structures, spaces and hierarchies and engage directly with reality in multiple ways. He is the founder and managing director of the Social Sensibility Research & Development Department at Bernard Controls Asia since 2011. His work has been shown, among other venues at: Venice Biennale 2005 and 2011, WRO Wroclav Biennale 2011, Gwangju Biennale Museum, Gwangju, South Korea 2009, CCD Photofestival Beijing 2009, 2010-2011, CIGE and Art Beijing 2006-2010, Get it Louder, Beijing/Shanghai 2010, Museo Pecci, Milano 2011, MCAF Gent 2008, FUSO VideoArt Lisbon 2012, Under the subway, New York 2012, Ullens UCCA Beijing, 2012, EXin China International Indipendent Film Festival, Nanjing 2012, Bejing Design Week, Metaestetica, 2012. He has been working with Ma Yongfeng in the Forget Art project since 2010 and collaborated with various local and foreign artists and spaces in Beijing, such as Homeshop, Where Where, Za Jia, Art Channel, Egg Gallery, Artside gallery, Linda Gallery, Songzhuan Art Museum. He was nominated by the Global Board of Contemporary Art among the best performance artists for the Alice Awards 2011 together with Megumi Shimizu for the performance “Something on the way”. He is currently guest writer for Hyperallergic and co-founder of the UNCUT project on soundcloud.
CHEN YIZHONG (China) is a visual artist, and works as coordinator, translator for international art project. In 2012, he received his MFA degree from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. During his MFA studies, he was an exchange student of Prof. Michael Brynntrup’s Filmklasse in Hochshcule für Bildende Künste (HBK) Braunschweig, Germany. Chen works across different media, including painting, photography, video and installation. He uses his personal experience to explore the present and history, time and space, and uses his works to address various issues between individual and public. As a coordinator and translator, he has collaborated with many institutions and international artists, including Goethe Institute China, Organhus Art Space, European Alternatives, etc.
LUCIE BLANCHE (China) is based in Beijing and working for the magazine The World of Chinese. She has been contributing to other magazines: Surface, Colors, Time Out, Modern Weekly, Casa da Abitare, ELLE Deco etc. The notebook Le Citta Invisibili that she created for Colors magazine was selected in the exhibition in Shanghai Nong Art Gallery and afterwards exhibited in Caochangdi with Fabrica Mobile Museum during Beijing Design Week in 2012. She has been working with European designers since 2011. During the exhibition Detour, she conducted Beijing public for Moleskine notebook in 2013. She is currently organizing design competitions for young Chinese designers.
ZANDIE BROCKETT 张桂才 is a Beijing-based independent curator, collaborator and project consultant from Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and chief curator of Bactagon Projects, a China-centric experimental curatorial platform dedicated to theoretical and practice-based investigations of interdisciplinary creative methodologies. The platform serves as a tool for the collective production and dissemination of research from Beijing-based creatives, with a monthly conversation series, curated experiential exhibitions and an independent publication. For the 2014 Transnational Dialogue caravan, she will be investigating alternative modes of organizational structures and the means by which independent curators challenge conventional notions of funding and public engagement. Graduating with a BA in sociology and photography from Duke University, she also holds her MA in management from the Fuqua School of Business. With essays published in a variety of Chinese periodicals, artist catalogs and journals, Zandie also has translated several Chinese texts. Zandie 桂才 additionally works as the international project liaison for Chinese painter, Liu Xiaodong.
JAY CHUN-CHIEH LAI (Taiwan) is a Paris-based art critic and curator. After obtaining his master degree in Art History & Art Criticism from TNUA (Tainan National University of the Arts) in 2009, he hass published several writing pieces on arts on some of major artistic journals in Taiwan. Besides, he started his curating practice in 2010. Jay has been keen on contemporary arts for a long while, which includes organizing panel discussions as well as lectures, engaging with contemporary dancing as a dramaturgy, and conducting artistic project as an artist, in addition to curating exhibitions. His recently researching interests are global “artivism”, word/ image, and the relationships between art history and moving images.
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS (United Kingdom) is a Film and Video Artist. His work is characterised by experimental documentation of communal perspectives and memories regarding geographical location. He has exhibited and screened work nationally and internationally and won the Deutsche Bank Award for Art in 2010 for his collaborative project Unravel, the longest hand painted film in Britain after graduating in the same year with a Masters Degree from the Royal College of Art. Recent projects include Premier/Divisions a sixty minute artists film which was the outcome of a five week residency in Nairobi funded by the Gasworks Gallery and Triangle Network, a major commission for Virgin Records 40th Anniversary Exhibition, and a three week residency at the Newbridge Project in Newcastle supported by Northern Film and Media. His participation on the Transnational Dialogue programme is co-funded by the UK Arts Council’s Artist’s International Development Fund.
PAULINE DOUTRELUINGNE (Belgium) is an independent art curator, visual researcher and Sinologist based in Berlin, Germany. She studied Sinology at Ghent University and focused her master thesis on experimental Chinese art and post-Orientalism. She went to Beijing in 2004 to do a master in art criticism at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. She was the founder of the Borderline Moving Images Festival in Beijing and assistant director at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute. In 2007 she moved back to Europe and installed herself in Berlin where she continues curatorial contributions to international exhibitions, museum catalogues (FRAC NPDC), art magazines and film screenings. In 2009, she cofounded the artistic collective mindpirates, and undertook the visual research for the film Problema. Within Mindpirates she initiated the Mindpirates Projektraum where she curated many exhibitions and projects, published publications and build a strong network of artists and audience around the mindpirates. Currently working as a freelance curator. Her latest project was “If You Are So Smart, Why Aint You Rich?”, official parallel project at the Marrakech Biennale 2014 which is an ongoing research and exhibition project on the economics of knowledge.
LAURA ENGELHARDT (Germany) is trained as an architect and works as researcher and visual artist. Her work currently focuses on the production, lifespan and destruction of the built environment that evolves around a rapid urbanisation. She lives in Berlin and is currently attending a Master in Space Strategies at Kunsthochschule Weißensee.
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SEILA FERNÁNDEZ ARCONADA (Spain) is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher based in Bristol, United Kingdom. She completed her MA Fine Art at the University of the West of England with distinction in 2012. She has been a selected artist in international exhibitions such as “Here, Now, Where?” at the Marrakech Biennial and “Xchange” at Deptford X Contemporary Arts Festival. She has also curated shows such as “Secret Whispers”, as part of the Bristol Biennial. Her ongoing projects include art-research collaborations with science and arts exploring collaborative creative methods. She carries on a research about innovative social practices and collaborative methods while being actively involved in creation. She believes that art can have a unique contribution to social understanding of contemporary concerns operating as a language, generating dynamic relations and unfolding layers of coding. She is also co-organiser of Mixing Fields, an interdisciplinary collaborative platform with art and non-art specialists. Her participation on the Transnational Dialogue programme has been granted with the Artists’ International Fund of the British Council and Arts Council England.
NINA GSCHLÖßL (Germany) is a Cologne-based visual artist, primarily working in the area of documentary photography. She is now doing a master in Photography Studies and Practice at the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen, Germany. Her projects focus on social and political aspects, especially on the impact of globalization and social developments on her generation. Within this context, the role of architecture is of mayor interest to Nina. Urban development, city planning and its impact on inhabitants are one key topic in her work, next to portraits.
SYLVANA JAHRE (Germany) is an urban researcher, observer, participant and activist. She studied geography, sociology and city planning mainly in Berlin, partly in Lund and Melbourne. Currently she participates in a research project between Berlin and Johannesburg, investigating urban developments between formality and informality that was presented and exhibited in Johannesburg. She is also involved in another research in and about Istanbul. Sylvana’s research and work focuses on the critical engagement with cities like the production of space and boundaries, exclusion and “othering” of people and spaces, alternative strategies of city developments, urban growth versus shrinking cities, urban transformation, the role of arts and culture in the urban fabric, as well as the deconstruction of neoliberal and hegemonic forces in cities and regions. Methodologically she is most interested in visual forms of representation and communication of cities. Therefore photography is her favourite “tool” to become acquainted with (new) spaces and to engage with certain places.
DAVID LIMAVERDE (Brazil) is an Amsterdam-based art-educator, performer and PhD researcher in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, as well as participant in PEI – Independent Studies Programme, at MACBA (Barcelona). He has been working in the realm of Performance, Self-awareness and Community Arts – in Brazil, he got his background in Physical Theatre; throughout two years living in China, he researched Chinese Contemporary Theatre at the Central Academy of Drama (Beijing) and performed in various venues, such as 798 District; and in Europe he was awarded with an Erasmus Mundus grant during his MA in International Performance Research (Universities of Amsterdam, Helsinki and Tampere). Apart from China and Brazil, David has been living in Finland, The Netherlands and Spain, where he collaborates in projects through Ally Theatre – a transnational collective of art-educators engaged in facilitating educational and participatory arts projects within a sensorial approach. Its most recent project is a collaboration with Casa Gira Mundo (Rio de Janeiro), which was a creation of performances, utopian cartographies and forum theatre pieces together with the islanders in the archipelago of Bailique, along the Amazon River in Brazil.
MINYI LIU (China), born and raised in Southern China, has been influenced from the culture rooted in Cantonese and the culture in Mandarin. Educated in major Urban Planning at Wuhan University, she has worked as assistant architect at NODE Office for which she has been enrolled in a City Village research project in Shenzhen. After having learned German in Beijing, she now works as a translator and a freelance designer. She is also a school teacher and currently practices as an artist.
MARC de MAISONNEUVE (France) is… If you ask me who am I, I should answer that I am an artist and an European. Just because I believe that artists are people who should attempt the future and because Europe is incredibly beautiful. Maybe also because bringing future and Europe in the same sentence is a bit tendentious today or simply risky. But what is more exciting than risk? May be to throw a ring like explorers of the zone, to get lost as if we had already found ourselves. To roam in this space that we thought named. To stop and listen words and images of its explorer … Tarkovski, Eratosthenes, Bataille, unknowns… let them tell us their stories. These ruins can not be exhumed but they could help us to cope with our present, this present that has never ceased. This is who I am, like you, an inhabitant of this present.
RACHEL MARSDEN (United Kingdom) is a curator, PhD researcher, arts writer and avid blogger in the field of contemporary art, music and visual culture, specifically from East Asia and China, since 2010 living between the UK and China. She is founder of ‘The Temporary’, a new transcultural exchange platform examining “temporary” experience in art, architecture, design, music, sound, performance and culture between the UK and China. Furthermore, she is Research Curator (part-time) for Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) (UK) and is in the finally stages of PhD study, critically examining the translation, through interpretation, of contemporary Chinese art in the West since 1980, specifically the notion of “transcultural” curators and “transcultural” curatorial practice. In an academic capacity, she is currently Lecturer in MA Contemporary Curatorial Practice/BA and MA Fine Art at University of Lincoln and Visiting Lecturer in BA Fine Art/MA Art and the Public Sphere at Loughborough University (UK).
LIU YUEYANG, Tracy (China). Grown up along the Silk Road, she leads an adventurous life to discover Chinese culture. At the age of sixteen, she unearthed a secret in an Intercultural Program in Canada: only when you leave your mother culture and come into contact with different culture, can you discover the fascination of your mother culture. That’s when she started to get interested in every detail of Chinese culture (especially traditional one) and to live abroad to explore it further. In 2011, she received her MA in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), where she worked in the Multicultural Student Association and planned projects for cultural exchanges. For now, she is working on projects of SNS museum and personal memory management. She also practices traditional Chinese arts, such as Seal Engraving, Peking Opera, Tea Ceremony and calligraphy, as a lifestyle.
MIYI ZHU (China) is a producer, arts manager and translator working in Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. Having been dividing her time between China and abroad in the past 10 years, she has developed a strong interest in the issues that arise when people from different parts of the world move and meet one another, particularly in the artistic community. She has devoted her professional career to the production and management of international artistic exchanges and collaborations, in which the subject of translation and identity are her favourite topics for exploration and discussion. She is also interested in comparative cultural policy studies, which does not only serves as a window for me to look into the unique historical, political and cultural backgrounds of the countries involved but also helps navigate the macro forces that set the frameworks for individual projects. Miyi is Director of Program Operations of Ping Pong Productions, a performing arts production company based in Beijing and Washington D.C. She has a BA in Art History and Psychology from the University of Auckland and a MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from Goldsmiths, University of London.
PETRA PÖLZL (Austria) is a Cultural Manager, Ph.D. candidate, independent curator and researcher, who works in Austria, Germany and China. She has been involved in several art festivals and exhibitions. Petra studied Chinese Studies, Chinese language and Theatre Studies in Vienna, Beijing and Berlin and holds a Master degree from the Free University of Berlin. At present she is working on her Ph.D. thesis. In her research she is focusing on the artistic and political strategies applied in Performance Art in China. Lately she undertook a research trip through China where she had the opportunity to join performance art festivals and meet with several performance artists, curators and art critics. Currently she is living in Vienna and Berlin focusing on the realization of her own ideas and concepts. Her participation in the Transnational Dialogue programme has been supported by the Bundeskanzleramt Österreich – Kunst.
QIAN LILI (China) has mainly focused on painting and installation art. In 2009 she graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. She works and lives in Chongqing. Her work focuses on the study of visual structure and media-integrated applications.
SOLVEIG SUESS is a graphic designer, graduated from Glasgow School of Art and now based in Beijing. She shares her time between freelance work and self-initiated projects. With her personal projects she uses design as a method, delving into speculative narratives or creating means for investigation and collaboration with often unexpected results. She explores the links between geography and identity by looking into how identity is being created and people’s relationship with it on a personal to a national level. She is the co-founder and designer for Concrete Flux, primarily a journal on urban spaces in China with organised events supporting an open dialogue about the ever-changing cities of China. It pushes against the often elitist nature of the discussion about urbanism, emphasising that anyone who participates in city life can comment on it.
WANG DONG (China) works as curator at He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen. He is dedicated to the curation, critic and research of Chinese contemporary art and overseas. In November 2013, he was invited to the Curator Residency Program in Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei). In August 2012, he was invited to the Young Curator Visiting Program of dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel organized. In 2010, he was invited to the Global Young Curator workshop “Real Players” (13 in total from different countries) of the 6th Berlin Biennale in Berlin. In 2009, he was invited to the Advanced Training and Study Program Culture Management in ChinaI in Berlin. Main exhibitions he curated: Walk a Mile in My Shoes, Kabuso Art Museum, Bergen, Norway; Crossoroads Another Dimension—A Cross-Strait Four-Regions Artistic Exchange Project 2013, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Real Life Stories—Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, KODE Art Museum, Bergen, Norway; I Am the Space Where I Am—Swiss Contemporary Woman Art Exhibition，He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; The Benjamin Project—A Visual specimen of Dafen Village Reproduction, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.
WANG XIAOZHOU (China) is a Xi’an-based independent curator, specifically in the field of Butoh, environment installation and experimental music. As the founder of ZERO Lotus Freebody Workshop, she focuses on promoting the development of contemporary art in western China and planned body-based art events which juxtaposing with multimedia expression. Previous projects include Butoh workshops & performance collaborated with Butoh artists from Tokyo and Kyoto, and experimental music artist from Beijing and Chong Qing, performance artists from Xi’an, Xi Ning and Chong Qing (2012&2013). Except planning independent art project, she also cooperates with academic organizations to curate international exhibitions both in local Xi’an and other western regions. of Chine. Previous projects include Kengo Kuma’s PARTICLE exhibition in Chong Qing (2013), and French Artist Residence Plan in Xi’an (2010). Besides, she is also a Butoh dancer, performed at On&On Theater in Hong Kong (2012) and Zhi Yin Tang in Beijing (2013).
YAN SHUO (China) has been working as an artist in Beijing for 8 years. He hasn’t dropped creating since graduated from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. His works exhibited in several shows in Beijing, Shanghai, Paris, and Milan. His first solo exhibition “Dream eater” was hold by Imagine Gallery in Songzhuang (2007). Yan Shuo wrote features for Roodo.com, Surface, The Week, etc. , and as a columnist for Case da Abitare till now. His recently projects named “Loo Gallery” and ‘The Portrait of Community”, with Social Sensibility R&D Department of BERNARD CONTROLS. He was a part of “Shanzhai Biennale” project during 2012 Beijing Design Week.
TIANJI ZHAO is an artist and a collaborator of the Institute for Provocation, who currently travels between Beijing and Amsterdam. She received her MA in Fine Arts from Mahku (Utrecht, The Netherlands) in 2011. The immediate palpable surroundings, both physical and phenomenal, are the driving sources of her works. Fragile and impermanent materials of the installations and situations allow subtle transformations to arise, in a local tongue, touching on human behaviors and longings, cultural codes and gestures. She organizes an ongoing project “Sayizheng,” a series of one-day/night group exhibitions in Beijing’s public space, where objects of art enter everyday contexts, and the artistic language is challenged in conversing with a real world audience.
WELLINGTON DOUGALS DIAS is an artist and performer. He is one of the coordinators of Casa Gira Mundo (Lapa, Rio de janeiro) and founder of the Bando Filhotes de Leão (Rio de Janeiro). His project “Tecno Barca”, which took place in the Archipelague of Bailique in the Amazon River, won a Funarte 2011 award and the Premio Samuel Benchimol de Empreendedorismo Consciente 2012.
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LUCA FORCUCCI is a composer, artist and researcher, who observes the perceptive and dynamic properties/relations of sound and space, as components for music and art as experience. The work is presented on a regular basis around the world, such as Museum of Modern Art Paris, 30th Biennale of Sao Paulo, File Electronic Music Language Festival Sao Paolo, Palacio das Artes Belo Horizonte, International Theatre Festival Belo Horizonte, Rockbund Museum Shanghai, The Lab Gallery San Francisco, DEM Passwords Gallery Los Angeles, Akademie der Künste Berlin, French Institute Ljubjana, Haus für Elektronische Künste Basel, MAMCO Geneva, Swiss National Library. Forcucci ‘s was nominated in the arts at the World Technology Summit New York, and supported by grants from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture for research in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and at the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. The Belgian label Subrosa publishes his latest compositions. www.lucalyptus.com
MARTA MESTRE moved to Brazil in 2010 and has since been the assistant curator at the MAM – Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. She gained a History of Art degree in Portugal which was followed by a MA in Museums: Culture and Mediation in France. At MAM, she continuous to organize many successful seminars, classes and international events, introducing people from various professions to enter into debates about the arts in the city. On top of all of that, she publishes regularly as an art critic in several magazines, is the coeditor of “Ymago“, an arts theory publication, and is the cofounder of “Buala”, a website on contemporary African cultures.
XIN GENG is a graduate student studying management of culture industry in France. She is dedicated to contemporary art and culture exchange events, including visual art, installations, cross-culture communication, etc. She worked as curatorial assistant at A4 contemporary center, Chengdu, China and also artist’s assistant (Denys VINZANT) of GRAME, a national musical center in Lyon.