© Frederike Wetzels

Polypixa

Polypixa was born on a cold -40°C December night in St Petersburg and grew up in Transnistria until 2006, then moved to Germany. Poly studies in Cologne at the Academy of Media Arts and has started making music there: first in bands, then alone as polypixa. Poly grabs inspiration from hip-hop, punk, experimental electronics, and traditional Russian music. Industrial sounds are combined with modern and transgressive oscillator technology. They are in dialogue with experimental and political songwriting.

(2024)

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Basel Abbas

BASEL ABBAS and RUANNE ABOU-RAHME, both born in 1983, live and work together in New York. Through sound, image, text, installation and performance they deal with the themes of spatial politics, desire, subjectivity, catastrophes and the absurdity of today's power politics. They examine the spatio-temporal resonances in relation to the real, the imagined and the remembered. In interdisciplinary installations and audio-visual live performances they explore the possibilities of experience of sound, image and environment. They usually present their works as large-format installations, which they often transfer into performances and sometimes publish online. Their works are exhibited and performed internationally. Recently they founded the performance collective Tashweesh in Ramallah together with the local artist boikutt. Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme were scholarship holders at the Academy of Arts of the World from December 2012 to August 2013.

(2014)

Ruanne Abou-Rahme

RUANNE ABOU-RAHME and BASEL ABBAS, both born in 1983, live and work together in New York. Through sound, image, text, installation, and performance, they explore the themes of spatial politics, desire, subjectivity, catastrophe, and the absurdity of contemporary power politics. They investigate space-time resonances in relation to the real, the imagined, and the remembered. In interdisciplinary installations and audio-visual live performances, they explore the experiential possibilities of sound, images and environment. They present their work mostly as large-scale installations, which they often transfer into performances and sometimes publish online. Their works are exhibited and performed internationally. Recently they founded the performance collective Tashweesh in Ramallah together with local artist boikutt. In 2012-2013, Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas were Fellows of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).
(2014)

Julian Abraham

For me, all things are connected: from the atomic level to larger social structures. I am fascinated by the fact that even small interventions can change something to form new sustainable support systems. Most, if not all, of my practice derive from rhythms and systems. It depends on the context how I engage with those systems, from preserving to initiating, intervening, supporting, negotiating, hacking, questioning, etc. The closest I may come is to say that my practice is trans-disciplinary and exists on the intersection of sound/music, DIY engineering, research, biohacking, activism and more. It is formulated into installations, videos, audio, gigs, happenings, events, or anything.
As an artist, I always consider how I can function within my surrounding realities. It also made it easier for me to move between systems, therefore I am afforded with the chance to choose what, when and how I contribute. The question is always: How can I put that luxury to use? The broader question is how to best engage with systems? I would like to be able to look at things up close and from afar, from the personal and micropolitics to the universal language of art (if such a thing exists). To be an astronaut and astronomer at the same time.

(2020)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN is an artist exploring sound and its intersection with politics. Recent solo exhibitions include Earshot at Portikus in Frankfurt, which was accorded the Nam June Paik Award 2016, and Taqiyya at Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen. His works have been shown at the Shanghai Biennial, MACBA Barcelona, Tate Modern London, Beirut Art Center and the Taipei Biennial. He currently lives in Beirut.

(2016)

Bini Adamczak

BINI ADAMCZAK works as a writer and an artist. In her work she focuses on the intersections between capitalism and gender, desire and material conditions, and the past and future of revolutions. She coined the term ‘circlusion’ and has published in English the books Communism for Kids (2017) and Yesterday’s Tomorrow: On the Loneliness of Communist Specters and the Reconstruction of the Future (2021). Adamczak lives in Berlin.

(2020)

Adwoa Adjei

ADWOA ADJEI, social worker and social pedagogue, works in the refugee counseling of the Diakonie Düsseldorf. In 2019, she founded the association Friendship e.V., which works for the integration and visibility of people of African origin in Düsseldorf. In 2020, Friendship e.V. received a special prize at the 6th Integration Award of the City of Düsseldorf.

(2020)

Afrodeutsche

AFRODEUTSCHE (aka Henrietta Smith-Rolla), is a Ghanaian-Russian-German producer, singer and DJ from Manchester. Her DJ-sets are shimmering light and demanding rhythm, mixing dark bouncing House, Drexciyan delights and tough UK techno mainstays like Claro Intelecto and Randomer. She holds a monthly radio show on the reputable NTS, featuring her own productions, ranging from dark electro to breaks and jacking house.

(2019)

Photo: Anja Borer

Pável Aguilar

PÁVEL AGUILAR (*1989 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. His work combines ethnographic methods of research through oral history, focusing on the symbiotic relationships between territory and the human body through sound and music. Among of his projects have been shown at Museum Ludwig in Cologne (upcoming); Kunsthalle Basel; Kunsthaus Baselland; Kunsthalle Zürich; Kadist San Francisco; Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA; World Art Tokyo; Chroma - 58th Biennale di Venezia. He was a resident artist at FLORA ars+natura in 2018, among others.

In 2020, Aguilar got the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt in Basel; was nominated for the Swiss Performance Art Award in 2021, and finalist for Contemporary Talents at François Schneider Foundation (FR) in 2022.

(2022)

Haig Aivazian

HAIG AIVAZIAN (* 1980, Beirut, Lebanon) is an artist, curator and writer. Using performance, video, drawing, installation and sculpture, his work weaves together personal and geo-political, micro and macro narratives in its search for ideological loopholes and short circuits. Aivazian holds an MFA from Northwestern University and is a Skowhegan alumnus (2011).

(2014)

Leila Akinyi

Singer and songwriter LEILA AKINYI merges rap, soul, and Afrobeat in her music. In 2016, she released her first EP, Afro Spartana, which has found great success. Her second album, Morgenkämpfer, followed in 2017. That year, she was also nominated for the popNRW prize in the Newcomer category. Leila Akinyi lives in Cologne.

(2018)

John Akomfrah

Filmmaker JOHN AKOMFRAH (* 1957 in Accra, Ghana) made his mark in 1982 as co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective in London. For his debut film Handsworth Songs (1986), he received the Grierson Award for best documentary film. Numerous works have followed, including The Unfinished Conversation (2013) and Vertigo Sea (2015). The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Britain in London dedicated solo exhibitions to him in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Akomfrah lives and works in London.

(2018)

Alaingo


ALAINGO (Bi Zia Alain Irie) began dancing as a child and today specialises in the combination of coupé décalé movements with hip hop and various Afrobeats. He has performed with the Afropop star Debordeaux Leekunfa as well as with Ordinateur, among others. He is a member of La Fleur.

(2019)

Shahidul Alam

SHAHIDUL ALAM (* 1955 in Dhaka) is a photographer, author, curator, and activist. His photographic work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Royal Albert Hall and the Tate Modern, both in London, among others. He has been a guest speaker at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge universities, and has chaired the jury of the World Press Photo contest. Alam is a visiting professor at Sunderland University in the United Kingdom and a member of the advisory board of the National Geographic Society.

(2018)

Moustapha Alassane

The Nigerien film director The Nigerien film director MOUSTAPHA ALASSANE (1942–2015) is considered a pioneer of African cinema and became well known especially for his satirical animations and feature films which were produced in the 1960s and 1970s. During the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Alassane was made Knight of the Legion of Honour. In 2017 the MoMA honored him with a retrospective.

(2017)

Yuri Albert

YURI ALBERT (* 1959 in Moscow, Russia) is one of the most known representatives of the Moscow conceptualist circle. In his extremely diverse artistic practice, he examines the relation of contemporary art to art history and the role of the artist, authorship, and spectatorship. Albert lives and works in Moscow and Cologne.

(2017)

© Rahman Jaber

Salwa Aleryani

Salwa Aleryani is a visual artist who works mainly with sculpture and installation. Through a constellation of found and made objects, her work engages with sites and infrastructures, their histories, potentials, and promises, as well as their resistance.

She graduated with a MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design, US and holds a BA in graphic design from the University of Petra, Ammam. From 2020 to 2021, she was a Graduate School Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the UdK in Berlin. Currently she lives and works in Berlin.

(2024)

Tariq Ali

TARIQ ALI is a writer, historian and filmmaker. Ali counts as one of the most important voices of the European Left. A founding co-editor of the New Left Review, Ali contributes regularly to The Guardian and the London Review of Books. He has been a consistent critic of US dominance in the Middle and Near East in his books Bush in Babylon (2003) and The Obama Syndrome (2010). Most recently, his book The Extreme Centre: A Warning (2015) criticizes the political elite in the UK for its devotion to an increasingly radical neoliberal capitalism. During the United Kingdom’s European Union membership referendum, 2016, Ali was one of the few figures on the left to support Britain leaving the European Union. He lives and works in London.

(2015)

Bachtyar Ali

BACHTYAR ALI is a novelist, poet and essayist. He is one of the best-known authors and poets of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. His first poetry collection Gunah w Karnaval was published in 1992. In 2009, he was awarded the HARDI literature prize at the largest cultural festival in the Kurdish part of Iraq. In 2014, he received the Sherko Bekas literature prize.

(2016)

Fabien Almakiewicz

FABIEN ALMAKIEWICZ studied dance at the European Dance Development Center (EDDC) in Arnheim and fine arts in Marseille. He has worked with the Skalen Collectiv in Marseille and, since 2012, with the choreographer Christian Rizzo. Since 2000 he has worked with Serge Ricci as a co-choreographer and designer. Besides dancing he works as a choreographic assistant and stage designer.

(2021)

Photo: Massiel Hernadez García

Danielle Almeida

DANIELLE ALMEIDA is a singer and anti-racist activist. She has a master’s degree in educational sciences and bachelor’s degree in music (singing). Almeida specializes in the history of Africa and the African diaspora in Latin America. Since 2002, she has been working on anti-racist education, decolonial studies and Afrodiasporic aesthetics. Danielle Almeida has received several awards and recognitions for her work as a researcher, singer and educator.

(2022)

Maria Theresa Alves

MARIA THEREZA ALVES is an installation artist based in Berlin. Her installation The Return of a Lake (2012), which deals with the cultural, ecological and political history of Chalco, a municipality near Mexico City, was part of documenta 13. Another project, Seeds of Change (2012–2016), examines the exotic vegetation of port cities like Bristol and Liverpool as well as their roots in overseas trade.

(2018)

Doa Aly

DOA ALY (b. 1974) is an artist who works across various media. Her research-based projects unfold through the deconstruction, reinterpretation and re-appropriation of various sources, drawn from literature, history, anatomy and movement. Aly has a long history of working with relics of antiquity and has reinterpreted texts and objects through choreography, sculpture, drawing and text collages, owing to her interest and involvement in archaeological processes of excavation and recovery. She currently lives and works in Cairo.

(2024)

Amel Alzakout

AMEL ALZAKOUT is an artist and filmmaker. For her documentary film Purple Sea, realised in collaboration with Khaled Abdelwahed, she was awarded the Robert Bosch Foundation’s Film Prize for International Cooperation Germany/Arab World.

(2019)

Feben Amara

FEBEN AMARA is a scholar of art and cultural studies and works across media and disciplines at the interfaces of text production, mediation and artistic intervention. She was a member of the Chorus, the art education program of documenta 14 (2017) and worked as editor of the Project Space Festival *When the Hunger Starts *(2019). In 2020 she joined the Fasia Jansen Ensemble as a performer. In her academic research she investigates artistic-cultural productions as part of transnational practices of resistance and organization. Her current focus is on decolonization, migration, anti-racism and the aesthetics of the political.

(2020)

Pheno Ambro

PHENO AMBRO’s (Amed Bolalé Saliou Babatoundé) musical repertoire spans Afrobeats, ndombolo, coupé décalé and R&B. He sees his music as a new, modern African sound. His breakthrough came in 2015 with the internationally acclaimed song Alimé. Most recently Pheno Ambro has toured in Africa and played shows in Germany and the United States.

(2019)

Heba Y. Amin

HEBA Y. AMIN focuses on the convergence of politics, technology and architecture in her research-based artistic and scholarly work. She is co-founder of the Black Athena Collective and has taken part in group exhibitions including at the Dak’Art Biennale 2016, the Museums for Modern Art Warsaw and the 49th Berlinale Forum Expanded Exhibition. In 2017 Heba Y. Amin realized her research and exhibition project The Devil’s Garden with financial support from the Academy of the Arts of the World and Interkultur Ruhr.

(2019)

Nora Amin

NORA AMIN is a woman of letters as well as a dancer and director. After completing her studies of French and comparative literature, she worked as an assistant at the Academy of Arts in Cairo. She also founded the performance group La Musica, initiated a theater festival and is a founding member of the Modern Dance Company at the Cairo Opera House. In 2004 she held the Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship at the FU Berlin. She was a fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World in 2015. She is the author of several dramas, short stories and novels. Her latest publication is her essay Migrating the Feminine (60pages, MiCT, 2016), which deals with the role of the female body in public space, exemplified through the violent incidents in Tahrir square.

(2016)

NORA AMIN studied French and comparative literature and has worked Nora Amin lives and works in Cairo. She is a writer, performer, choreographer and theatre director and has worked as a teacher at the Academy of the Arts in Cairo for nine years. She started her professional stage career as a professional dancer and a founding member at the Modern Dance Company of the Cairo Opera House (1993/94). After that Amin moved to work as an actress in lead roles at the Hanager Arts Center till 2002. In 2000 she founded the independent theater group Lamusica and was the artistic director of the first international independent arts festival Jadayel in 2002.
She published three novels, four collections of short stories, an audio book, and translated 15 books on theatre and dance. Amin is the author of the first Arabic book on theatre and human rights Egyptian Theatre and Human Rights: the art of claiming our right under the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, 2003, and instructed the first storytelling workshop for women victims of the civil war in Sudan in cooperation with SIHA network. She is the author of Theatre for change: from the internal to the external, 2007.
One of her recent projects is The National Project for Theatre of the Oppressed where she trains units of Forum theatre activists all over Egypt. The team has now reached 500 activists in 30 cities and developed an Arab network of groups in Morocco and Lebanon. In 2014 she celebrated the 15th anniversary of her company Lamusica Independent Theatre Group ,where she directed 35 theatre, dance and music productions, by presenting a year long program of workshops and of ten restaged repertory productions with a grant from The Prince Claus Fund.
Amin was awarded with, among others, the UNESCO-Aschberg Laureat for the Center of the "Theater Of The Oppressed" in Rio De Janeiro (2003), the Samuel Fischer Guest Professorship for Literature, Germany (2004/05) and the Ibsen Scholarship, Norway (2009), and was announced by the British Council as the international young cultural leader of Egypt in the performing arts 2009/10.
In 2013 The National Festival Of Egyptian Theatre awarded her the prize of the best dramaturgy for her production An Enemy Of The People which was largely considered as the most popular theatre production in Egypt during political transformation.

Nora Amin was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) from June to August 2015.

Ulf Aminde

ULF AMINDE is a Berlin based artist. Drawing on cinematic, performative and documentary strategies his works critically confront questions of authority and representation, which frequently arise in collaborations in places and with people usually disconnected from the arts. What all his works have in common is unrestricted solidarization with the participants of his projects. In addition, he is active in the field of education with his current research focusing on the future potential of art academies. Beyond that, he is involved in various self-organized artists’ associations where he works on the solidarization potential within the art world. At the moment, he is developing the format foundationClass in Berlin which is supposed to enable refugees to apply at German art academies. To memorialize the victims and those affected by the racist terror attacks perpetrated by the NSU network on Probsteigasse (2001) and Keupstrasse (2004) in Cologne, he is developing the film and participatory project *Mahnmal Keupstraße.

(2019)

Anatolpolitan

The expression ‘Anatolpolitan’ is inspired by Achille Mbembe’s term ‘Afropolitan’. With ‘Anatolpolitan’ Nesrin Tanç outlines a new perspective on questions that deal with the cultural location of immigrants from Turkey and their descendants. Motivated by the question of which narrative and normative structures immigrants from Turkey living in the Ruhr region and their descendants can draw on in the scope of a common cultural history between Turkey and Germany, a transnational perspective on the narrated space of memory is adopted. ‘Anatolpolitan’ examines the question of which spaces for action and negotiation exist for historical or fictional narrative as descendants of immigrants from Turkey.

(2020)

Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro

NATHALIE ANGUEZOMO MBA BIKORO merges installations, sonic radio, live art performances, film & archives. Her work analyses processes of power & fictions in historical archives critically engaging in migrational struggles. She creates environments for untold narratives of resistance movements by African women and indigenous communities. Sedimented in narratives aretestimonies of sonic nature archives, queering ecologies and postcolonial feminist experiences towards new monuments, reacting to the different tones of societies shared betweendelusions & ritual. She brings new investigations about the architectures of racisms in cities, the archeologies of urban spaces & economies of traditional systems by exposing the limitations of technologies as functional memory records. She is the recipient of several awards including Fondation Blachère & Afrique Soleil Mali for Best Artist Dakar Biennale (2012), IASPIS Swedish Arts Council (2018), Arts Council England (2016), Goethe Institut (2018) and many more.

(2020)

Another Roadmap for Arts Education Africa Cluster

ANOTHER ROADMAP FOR ARTS EDUCATION AFRICA CLUSTER (ARAC) is a global network that emerged out of a research project on the history of arts education. Initiated at the Institute for Art Education at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), today the cooperative involves educators, artists, and researchers working across four different continents. In the past five years, ARAC has organized international symposiums consisting of internal working sessions alongside public workshops, exhibitions, evening programs, live music, performance, site visits, and film screenings. The activities take place in various cities across Africa and beyond—convened by working groups of Another Roadmap in Johannesburg, Kampala, Lubumbashi, Lesotho, and Cairo, among other places, and include members of Keleketla! Library, Keep the Dream Arts, Wits School of Arts as well as local, independent cultural workers.

(2020)

Vincenzo Antona

VINCENZO ANTONA operates Autotrasporti Internazionali Italia – Germania, an import and export company that transports goods between Germany and Italy/Sicily for the Italian community in Germany and their relatives in Italy.

(2019)

Arjun Appadurai

ARJUN APPADURAI is the Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has authored numerous books and scholarly articles, including Fear of Small Numbers (Duke 2006) and Modernity at Large (University of Minnesota Press 1996). Appadurai’s latest book, The Future as a Cultural Fact, was published by Verso in 2013.

(2015)

Photo: Brazzaville Aragão

Brazzaville Aragão

BRAZZAVILLE ARAGÃO is an ogan (ritual assistant). Percussionist, educator and merchant, he is a member of Ylê Asè Egi Omim, the Cultural Center of Afro-Brazilian Traditions. As a musician, he is part of Banda Love.

(2021)

Swooding Architects

SWOODING ARCHITECTS, based in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, are a team of architects and urban designers with strong technical resources and an avant-garde original concept. The team seeks to incorporate their understanding of future urban landmarks into their projects, which they consider to be the foundation of a better city life.

(2019)

© Yennu Ariendra

Yennu Ariendra

YENNU ARIENDRA is a music composer, producer, DJ, and digital artist born in Banyuwangi, East Java, Indonesia. Also known as Y-DRA and as one half of Raja Kirik, much of Ariendra's work considers the shifting roles of tradition and history in Java. Yennu is currently working as part of art collective Teater Garasi / Garasi Performance Institute, the rock band Melancholic Bitch, music label Trauma Rhythm Record, WYST sound laboratory, and puppet theater group Papermoon Puppet Theater. Y-DRA’s 2019 No-Brain Dance album channels koplo’s rhythmic elements to create individual and collective spaces for resistance. It was released with an accompanying video series which responds to the spontaneous movement of the body unique to the koplo style and culture.

(2024)

Anne Arndt

ANNE ARNDT creates installations integrating photographs, sculptures, and moving images. In her works, she analyzes political concepts and their relation to architecture and society. She approaches her topics through a multilayered process and includes the beholder in a, at times, physical way. Anne Arndt lives and works in Cologne.

(2017)

Photo: Helena Goñi

Aimar Arriola

AIMAR ARRIOLA works as a curator, editor and researcher. He holds a PhD from the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was the inaugural Associate Researcher (2020-2023) at Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao.

(2023)

Photo: do mesmo

João Carlos Artigos

JOÃO CARLOS ARTIGOS is a hacker clown and studied performing arts at Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Between 1996 and 2018, he coordinated one of the largest clown meetings in the world: Anjos do Picadeiro. He is a founding member of the Red Latinoamericana de la Risa and one of the co-creators of the Muda Outras Economias network.

(2021)

Arts of the Working Class

A multilingual street journal on poverty and wealth, art and society: Arts of the Working Class is published every two months and contains contributions by artists and thinkers from different fields and in different languages. It addresses the working class, meaning everyone, and it reports on everything that belongs to everyone. Everyone who sells this street journal earns money directly. Street vendors keep 100% of the sales. Every artist whose work is promoted in the journal, designs its substance with us. Arts of the Working Class was developed by Pauł Sochacki, María Inés Plaza Lazo and Alina Kolar, and is published for the streets of the world.

(2020)

Meira Asher

The research areas of composer- performer MEIRA ASHER include Activist Social Documentary and the Amplification of the Human Body. When living in The Netherlands she was co-founder of the bodylab art foundation in The Hague (2001-2011). Currently she is a lecturer at Haifa University’s Art School, and curator-presenter of the independent Radio Art program radioart106 (KolHaCampus106fm 2014-2017, WGXC 2018 -, and Radia.fm affiliate).

Her recent works include “Voices vs. The Israeli Occupation of Palestine 2017” for Wurfsendung Deutchlandfunk Kultur, and the site-specific sound work “Still Sleeping” commissioned by EyeBeam (New York) for their Acoustic Infrastructure installations project.

(2020)

Kader Attia

The artist KADER ATTIA (* 1970 in Dugny, France) grew up in both Algeria and the suburbs of Paris. At documenta 13 he showed his well-regarded installation The Repair.In 2016 he was awarded the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp and he, along with Zico Selloum, opened a new space for art and debate called La Colonie in Paris. Attia is a member of the Academy. He lives and works in Berlin and Algiers.

(2017)

Rochus Aust

ROCHUS AUST’s work as a composer and trumpet player is produced and performed in over 40 countries in premieres or unique performances. Important milestones of his work have most recently been the European Capitals of Cultural RUHR.2010 and Marseille Provence 2013, Space Odyssey in Kyiv 2011, /si:n/ festival in Ramallah 2013, and Highline in New York in 2015.

(2016)

Yochai Avrahami

YOCHAI AVRAHAMI lives and works in Tel Aviv. His art consists of installations, videos and sculptures. Since a few years he explores and questions the practices of exhibiting and presenting images in military collections of museums, memorials and visitor centers.

(2014)

Photo: Kagonya Awori

Kagonya Awori

DR. KAGONYA AWORI is a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher. She has over 10 years experience in User Experience Research and Design having worked across the globe in countries including Kenya, United Kingdom, and Australia, with companies such as iHub Kenya, Microsoft Research, National Australia Bank and Safaricom PLC. She holds a dual Masters in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), a Bachelors in Business Information Technology from Strathmore University (Kenya), and a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Melbourne, (Australia).

(2021)

Photo: Yuliia Forlova

Paloma Ayala

PALOMA AYALA (b. 1980, Matamoros, Mexico) is a visual artist interested in empowering the relationship between domestic living strategies and political contexts. Her work takes the form of publications, videos, installations, reading/cooking sessions, and workshops that fictionalize historical, ecological or social problematics as means of analysis and critique. Paloma’s projects nourish visions of connection, dreams of emancipation and emphasize practices of care. Her favorite spaces to work range from kitchen to river shore, from international crossing bridge to agricultural land, from community meeting to aquelarre. Paloma’s work is rooted in her home, the eastern MX/US border landscapes, simultaneously blooming in her current base in Zurich.

(2022)

Photo: Elvira Espejo Ayca

Elvira Espejo Ayca

ELVIRA ESPEJO AYCA is an indigenous artist, cultural manager and researcher. Born in Qaqachaka (Abaroa province, Oruro, Bolivia), her practice is linked to textiles, oral tradition and poetry. She is director of the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore (MUSEF). 2020 she received the Goethe medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany for her work and commitment to cultural exchange. The importance of her work is linked to the dialogue between the practice and knowledge of indigenous communities and the intersection with academia, cultural management and museums. Her work vindicates the epistemologies and practices of native and peasant people.

(2022)

Anne-Sophie Azizè Flittner

ANNE-SOPHIE AZIZÈ FLITTNER is an actress who performs at various German theaters. She also works as a director, writer, and translator. Since 2014 she moderates the audience discussions at the AfrikaFilmfestival Cologne.

(2018)

B

Younes Baba-Ali

In his work artist YOUNES BABA-ALI (* 1986 in Oujda, Morocco) tackles issues of political identity and migration. Exploring new technologies and experimenting with sound, video, photography, and installation, his artistic practice can be described as eclectic. He lives in Brussels and Casablanca.

(2017)

© Rebecca Salvadori

Hanna Bächer

Hanna Bächer works as a freelance curator of concerts, as an author and producer of audio pieces, and as an interviewer on topics between music and urban development. She is a trained sound technician and spent several years behind the mixing desks of live venues, studied musicology and geography, and now lives back in her hometown Cologne after seven years in London and Berlin.

(2023)

Ale Bachlechner

ALE BACHLECHNER is a performance and video artist and works in the city center studio in Cologne. She has a diploma in comparative literature and one from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her work includes the temporary dating agency Twelve Roses (2013) in Beirut, Lebanon, the performance coaching institute This Is Not A Competition (2016) and the online television format Studio Hallo (2018). Since 2018 she is a member of the Young Academy of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.

(2020)

Antonina Baever

ANTONINA BAEVER is an artist and curator based in Moscow. She participated in the video art festivals of Orebro, Cologne, Moscow and Melbourne and the Bergen Assembly 2013. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Socialism in a Dream (MUZEON Park of Arts, Moscow, 2014), Time Shall Be No More (CEH Manege, Moscow, 2014), Getting There Together (Triumph Gallery, Moscow, 2013). Her works can be found in museums and public collections such as the MMoMA and MUZEON Park of Arts, Documentary Film Center in Moscow.

In 2016 Antonia Baever was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Paula Baeza Pailamilla

PAULA BAEZA PAILAMILLA has graduated from Universidad ARCIS in Pedagogy in Contemporary Dance and from the master’s degree in Art Theory and History at Universidad de Chile as a CONICYT scholarship holder. Since 2012, she has developed her performances based on her own Mapuche identity, being this the point of origin for her works, questioning herself and her context in its historical, political and social dimension. Her textile work has been produced from relational art projects. Since 2016, she has been part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü.

She has been a guest artist at various events, theaters and galleries in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia, Germany and Switzerland, where she has addressed issues related to the body, to racialized identities and their context. In 2020, she was a guest artist at the 11th Berlin Biennale in Germany. She won 1st place in the New Media category in the Young Art award given by the Municipality of Santiago in 2019, and 2nd place in 2018 in the competition granted by the Department of Native Peoples of the Ministry of Culture of Chile.

(2022)

Stefanie Bailey

STEFANIE BAILEY is a writer and editor. She is the global Editor-at-Large at Ocula Magazine and has been writing regularly for other publications and institutions, as well as programming the Art Basel Conversations & Salon program at Art Basel Hong Kong. She is interested in exploring the global artworld as a site for inter-cultural exchange.

(2024)

Clara Balaguer

CLARA LOBREGAT BALAGUER (* 1980 in Manila, Philippines) is a Manila-based social practice artist and independent researcher interested in the decolonization of cultural production. She runs The Office of Culture and Design, an art and research platform, and has lectured at Walker Art Center, Strelka Moscow, and MoMA PS1, among others.

(2017)

Matthieu Bareyre

MATTHIEU BAREYRE realized his first movie, Nocturnes, in 2012. This medium length documentary was selected in 2015 at the Festival du cinéma de Brive and awarded a prize at the Cinéma du Réel festival at the Centre Pompidou. He lives and works in Paris.

(2017)

John Barker

JOHN BARKER (*1948 in London) is a writer, essayist, and performer who, since the 1970s, has been focused on economics, geopolitical dynamics, and the exploitation of labor. Since 2010, Barker has been collaborating regularly with the artist INES DOUJAK. Their work has been represented at various international venues.

(2017)

Eva Barois De Caevel

EVA BAROIS DE CAEVEL is an assistant curator at Raw Material Company, a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, and works as an independent curator. She has been working on academic research as well as on post-colonial questions and socially engaged practices in contemporary art. She collaborated with director Koyo Kouoh on several projects at WIELS, Brussels and at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg in 2015. She is the co-founder of Cartel de Kunst, an international collective and solidarity network of emerging curators based in Paris.

(2016)

Katia Barrett

KATIA BARRETT is a London-based artist who is currently completing her master studies at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem. Her current research and practice is concerned with the developments in interdisciplinary theoretical biology, where the subjectivization of nature corresponds with a naturalization of subjectivity. Referring to this as her theoretical platform, she explores questions of agency, reason, consciousness and will. Her recent shows include Young London at the V22 in London (2013) and Geology of Piss at xero, kline & coma in London (2012).
(2016)

In 2016 Katia Barrett was a Fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Giuseppe Bartolatta

GIUSEPPE BARTOLOTTA works for the Patronato ITAL-UIL welfare organization and chairs the committee for Italians abroad, Comitato degli italiani all'estero. He is also a member of the Italian cultural association Mondo Aperto/Offene Welt e.V. He dreams of retiring to Sicily, where he comes from, and loves to dance salsa.

(2019)

Wendy Bashi

WENDY BASHI is a Congolese filmmaker, journalist, and moderator. She moderated the fashion show at the presentation of the web series Kinshasa Collection at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and participates in Kizobazoba as a performer.

(2018)

Sophia Bauer

Sound is a sensation that locates me in a physical environment. Through the act of conscious listening I position myself in space and time. I become aware of my physical body, myself and my surroundings. Although I have always heard and listened, I find it difficult to decode sound, which is perhaps why it appeals to me as a medium to work with. Sound encourages me to speculate, imagine, doubt and be curious; it makes me question what I thought I knew. In sound I have discovered a powerful tool to challenge assumptions about established hierarchies and power structures in the relationship between humans and nature and in the postcolonial context.
For the past two and a half years I have been working on Forest Scapes, a body of work that uses sound to explore the influence of colonialism on forest landscapes. In 2019 I co-established the sound archive SOUND OF NAIROBI (SON).

(2019)

© Christine Fenzl

Ute Meta Bauer


UTE META BAUER is a curator of exhibitions and presentations on contemporary art, film, video, and sound that connect artistic work with other disciplines. Since 2013, she is Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and a professor in the School of Art, Design and Media. From 2012 to 2013, she served as Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, where she was the Founding Director of the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) (2009–2012) and Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program (2005–2009). In 2015, she co-curated with MIT List Center for Visual Art Director Paul Ha, presenting eminent artist Joan Jonas, the US Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale that received Honorary Mention for best National Pavilion by their International Jury.

At the NTU CCA Singapore, she curated and co-curated Allan Sekula: Fish Story, to be continued (2015), Ghosts and Spectres – Shadows of History (2017), The Oceanic (2017/2018), Tarek Atoui The Ground: From the Land to the Sea (2018), Trees of Life: Knowledge in Material (2018), Stagings. Soundings. Readings. Free Jazz (2018), Siah Armajani: Spaces for the Public. Spaces for Democracy (2019) and most recently, The Posthuman City: Climates. Habitats. Environments (2019/2020).

Bauer was Artistic Director of the 3rd berlin biennale for contemporary art, Berlin (2004) and Co-Curator of documenta11, Kassel (2001-2002) with the late Okwui Enwezor as Artistic Director. Bauer has edited numerous publications in the field of contemporary art, most recently South East Asia. Spaces of the Curatorial (with Brigitte Oetker, Sternberg Press 2016), Thomas Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions (with Anca Rujoiu, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore 2017), Place.Labour.Capital (with Anca Rujoiu, Mousse Publishing 2018) and The Impossibility of Mapping (Urban) Asia (with Khim Ong and Roger Nelson, World Scientific 2020). Bauer serves as a member of various advisory boards, including International Boards of Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, Bergen Assembly, Bergen and documenta commission, Kassel.


(2020)

Natalie Bayer

NATALIE BAYER is director of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin since 2018. She has been assistant at the Munich Citymuseum. When she worked as independent curator she contributed to exhibition projects like Crossing Munich. Orte, Bilder und Debatten der Migration (2009, Munich), Movements of Migration. Neue Perspektiven auf Migration in Göttingen (2013, Göttingen) and initiated multiple events by herself. She is member at kritnet - Netzwerk für kritische Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung and active in committees and juries. Bayer studied european ethnology and art history at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. Currently, she's writing her dissertation Migration on Display. Eine wissensanthropologische Studie zum kulturpolitischen Migrationsdiskurs im Museum at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Her research and work focus are cities, politics of history, racism and history of migration.

(2018)

Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst

MARIANNE BECHHAUS-GERST is a professor of African Studies at the University of Cologne. Her researches include among others the history of people of African origins in Germany and German colonial history. Her latest publications in this field Frauen in den deutschen Kolonien (2009, ed. together with Mechthild Leutner) and Treu bis in den Tod (2007), were both published by Ch. Links Verlag. As a curator, she has supervised exhibitions on the colonial past of the cities of Cologne and Aachen as well as on the construction of Africa in our everyday culture. She is chairperson of the association KopfWelten, a local history project involved in memory work in Cologne.

(2018)

Antonia Alessia Virginia Beeskow

ANTONIA ALESSIA VIRGINIA BEESKOW (*1992) studied Archaeology at the University of Cologne and Applied Theater Studies at the Justus Liebig University Giessen from 2013 to 2022, as well as a Master's degree in Sound and Reality at the Institute for Music and Media Düssel-dorf in 2021. She is the recipient of the 2023 Förderpreis of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in the field of music.

As an artist, sound designer and performer, Beeskow works in the independent scene, radio play, podcast, installation, experimental film and theater. In 2021, she won third place at Hörspiel festivals in Berlin and Cologne with her audio drama Noise. She founded the pandemic radio station Wilsonstrasse.FM and initiated the collective Sailor Tune in 2022, with which she presented the sound performance schrödinger's cats at the west off festival in 2022. She also shared the artistic practice that there then, not now here past with her colleagues Aran Kleebaur and Chiara Marcassa in the context of the festivals Implantieren: Beziehungsweisen 2022/23 and Politik im Freien Theater. Their Hörspiel Ecce Sigh! Siren calls, still I feel the same was commissioned for the Radiophrenia Festival Glasgow 2023 and premiered in cooperation with the Kunstradio of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. She also writes for the fanzine grapefruits.online, among others.

(2024)

© Sebastian Schütz

Aline Benecke

ALINE BENECKE addresses the constructions of cultural identity, questions of identity politics and the political relevance of the visual in her research and artistic work. She is interested in decolonial and postcolonial theories as well as queer and Black feminism. She perceives images as ‘material for thought’, flipping and twisting them to erode their inherent ideologies that pertain to historiography and the writing of history. Instead Aline generates with her works heterogeneous stories that resist linear and standardized narrations and subjectification, and which she sees as emancipatory stories and practices. Her current artistic research project will be realized as a series of workshops, installations, essays and performances based on the missing photos in her family’s photo albums, as part of an artistic doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Aline examines the body as archive and researches forms of physical memory, especially with regard to diasporic everyday knowledge in dialogue with Tina Campt, Ann Cvetkovich, Saidiya Hartman, Premesh, Lalu, Okwui Okpokwasili, Diana Taylor, Eve Tuck and many others.

(2020)

Solomon Benjamin

Jonathan Berger

JONATHAN BERGER is an artist whose works encompass a spectrum of activity. Most recently, he presented the exhibition An Introduction to Nameless Love, which was co-organized by the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University and Participant Inc NYC, exhibited at each venue in 2019 and 2020 respectively, and later selected for the 2022 Whitney Biennial. From 2013–2016, he served as Director of 80WSE Gallery at NYU, where he mounted a wide range of collaboratively produced exhibition projects presenting the work of Ellen Cantor, Bob Mizer, Printed Matter, James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas, among others. Berger’s work is represented by Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York and VEDA, Florence. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University. He lives and works in New York City and Glover, VT.

(2022)

Mareike Bernien

MAREIKE BERNIEN is an artist and teacher working between experimental film, sound and text. In her practice-based PhD, which she completed in 2016 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, she investigated the material, historical and political dimensions of colour in film. Her latest films are Tiefenschärfe (Depth of field, 2017), co-created with Alex Gerbaulet, and Rainbow’s Gravity (2014), co-created with Kerstin Schroedinger. Her works have been featured at international festivals and in other artistic contexts, including the National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), the Whitney Museum of American Art, Forum Expanded at the Berlinale, the short film festival in Oberhausen and Les Complices in Zurich.

(2019)

Vastavikta Bhagat

Bik Van Der Pol

Since 1995 Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van Der Pol have worked in collaboration as BIK VAN DER POL. Working as a collective is a consciously political and artistic decision. With a radical step away from the studio as a place of production they make the artistic workplace itself – the practice – a format of research and production. Each project begins with the development of its parameters in which it presents itself as a performative platform and opens a dialogue within the context. The artistic engagement of Bik Van Der Pol addresses the collective public space. The artist duo explores how and in which way people have access to this space and are able to shape it. They investigate in what ways art can be an instrument or a place for the creation of forms of knowledge and how this relates to “publics”.

(2017)

Cana Bilir-Meier

CANA BILIR-MEIER is an author, curator and artist. She has worked as a schoolteacher and as an assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She recently curated a program about experimental short films by Austrian women in Istanbul and developed a documentary film about censorship in art and cinema in Turkey since the 1980s. Currently she is a grantee of kültür gemma!, a project to promote city culture in Vienna as well as migrant art and cultural production. Her films have been shown at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the Diagonale in Graz, among others. She lives and works in Vienna and Istanbul.

(2016)

Katharina Bischoff

KATHARINA BISCHOFF studied applied theater science and works as a director, dramaturge, and project and production manager. She is a founding member of the theater group bigNOTWENDIGKEIT. Since 2019, as part of the collective working alliance DAS BUCHPROJEKT, she had realized a variety of books with and for children and has organized readings, exhibitions and workshops.

(2020)

Waltraud Blischke

WALTRAUD BLISCHKE (* 1967) is an author, sound artist and producer. Since 2012, she is lecturer in writing / speaking about sound and acoustic research at the Institute for Music and Media at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.

She writes for Spex, Stadtrevue, Testcard, Meakusma Magazin, St. Patrick's Zine Library and has collaborated with the Cologne labels a-Musik, Sonig and Baumusik, among others. In 2019, she created the composition Tracks United on behalf of the Düsseldorf Art Commission for the auditorium of the Heinrich-Heine-Allee subway station (curated by Ralf Brög) and collages in a DJ mix for the Meakusma Festival. In 2021 she presented the art and sound installation Trittschall at Ebertplatz Cologne. She has been working as an author for the pop anthology Testcard since 2011, most recently devoting herself to the phenomenon of eDigging.

(2024)

Hans Block

HANS BLOCK and MORITZ RIESEWIECK met at theater school in Berlin and founded the production label Laokoon. They work collaboratively in the sphere of theater, documentary, lecture performance, publication. Laokoon, the seer, was the only person who unmasked the Trojan Horse’s true nature: A dangerous fraud.

(2021)

John Blue

JOHN BLUE is a composer and multi-instrumentalist born in Portland, Oregon, in 1970. Living in Berlin since 2007, he writes and performs music as a solo instrumentalist and in bands, as well as produces and records soundtracks for film, theater, dance and art installations.

(2020)

Bobwear

BOBWEAR (Abdoulaye Kone) is a fashion designer and performer. With his label Bobwear he has developed numerous fashion shows and collections in Hamburg and Abidjan. He designs and produces costumes for Schwabinggrad Ballett and other groups, including La Fleur and Gintersdorfer/Klaßen.

(2019)

Mai-Anh Boger

MAI-ANH BOGER currently holds an interim professorship for 'Learning in Inclusive Schools' at Universität Paderborn. Her research focusses on educational philosophy and philosophy of Difference and Alterity.

(2019)

Manuela Bojadžijev

MANUELA BOJADŽIJEV has written key works on racism and migration research. For many years she has focused on the links between logistics and migration. She is Professor for Globalised Cultures at Leuphana University and Vice Director of the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research.

(2019)

Christian von Borries

CHRISTIAN VON BORRIES is an orchestra conductor, composer, filmmaker and producer of site-specific psychogeographic projects. His work was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival, the Kunstfest Weimar, the Volksbühne Berlin, the Kampnagel Hamburg and documenta 12, among others. Von Borries lives and works in Berlin.

(2016)

(c) Julian Salinas

Giscard Bouchotte

GISCARD BOUCHOTTE (Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is an independent exhibition curator, critic, and social entrepreneur. In 2011, he curated the Haitian Republic's first Pavillion at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Haiti Kingdom of This World (France, Italy, USA, Martinique, Haiti). His most recent projects include Périféériques, a travelling project exploring new artistic and social practicies in peri-urban spaces (Benin, Senegal, Haiti), and the Nuit blanche in Port-au-Prince, a plea for artists to be engaged in urban initiatives. His essays have appeared in Holland (Who More Sci-Fi Than Us? exhibit) and the US (Biennials and Art Practices in the Caribbean, Smithsonian). In Haiti, he develops workshops and has curated photographs by emerging artists in the Comoros Islands, and Guyana. He works with international public and private institutions in the Caribbean. Bouchotte has also produced and directed three films: Africa Left Bank (2006), Sarah's Dreamed Life, (2007) and Tap Tap Chéri (2017). He has assisted French filmmaker Claire Denis (and acted in her 2008 35 Rhums), and French filmmaker Charles Najman. Bouchotte was involved in the curation of the exhibition YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, in 2022.

(2023)

Soho House Copenhagen, 2024 © Davi BPLR

Davi BPLR

Davi BPLR is musician and DJ. He is two-third of In the Frame of Art, a vernissage and music event series from Cologne, and, together with Kevin BPLR, makes up the DJ duo BIPOLAR SOUNDSYSTEM, which debuted for the first time at the Feel Festival Germany last summer. Davi plays and mixes Afro and techno and house beats in new ways, it can't just be described as Afro Tech or Afro House but is something completely new.

To soundcloud profile

(2024)

Maximilian Brauer

MAXIMILIAN BRAUER is a born Berliner and then further born to be a magician. He works as an actor primarily for theater. He came into this world as a New Year’s Eve surprise in 1986.

(2020)

Anna Bromley

ANNA BROMLEY develops exhibitions, installations, performances, texts, radio conversations and plays. Her interest is aimed primarily at breaches and interruptions in/of representative ways of speaking and talking. She recently produced works for HKW Berlin, AgvA CIAT Berlin, MUU Helsinki, nGbK Berlin, documenta14 Radio, SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, Musrara Mix Jerusalem, Fondazione Arthur Cravan di Milano. Since 2010 she also conceives and produces curatorial formats – mainly in nonhierarchical collectives and collaborations – dealing with queer temporalities, self-ironic jokes, Central European ways of disciplining body and psyche, and ways to circumvent dominant techniques of the self. The anthologies Glossar inflationärer Begriffe (Glossary of Inflationary Terms, Berlin 2013, Mexiko City 2014) and Jokebook (Berlin 2015) arose from her curatorial research groups. Anna’s latest project is dedicated to radio practices in protest networks. She is a current Fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

(2020)

Agnes Brühwiler

AGNES BRÜHWILER, Swahili lecturer at the University of Cologne, Institute for African Studies and Egyptology, researches the relationship of language to gender and ideology as well as sociolinguistics and African literature.

(2018)

Magda Buczek

MAGDA BUCZEK is a Warsaw and Copenhagen-based multidisciplinary artist and the author of the collaborative platform SURPLUS. Her projects often involve texts, performance and artistic collaboration. Her works have been exhibited at Calvert 22 in London, WANTED Design in New York and SOMA in Mexico City, among other venues.

(2019)

Boris Buden

BORIS BUDEN, PhD, is an author and publicist. He studied philosophy in Zagreb and cultural studies at the HU in Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor of the magazine Arkzin, Zagreb. His essays and articles encompass such topics as philosophy, politics, and cultural and art criticism. Among other titles he has translated into Croatian are two books by Sigmund Freud. Buden is the author of Der Schacht von Babel. Ist Kultur übersetzbar? (Berlin, 2004) and Zone des Übergangs. Vom Ende des Postkommunismus (Frankfurt/Main, 2009).

(2016)

Eva Busch

EVA BUSCH studied anthropology and art. Her work is situated in the liminal spaces between science, mediation, art and activism. She is particularly interested in a queer feminist and postcolonial critique of power, differences and possible commonalities. In Bochum, Eva Busch, Julia Nitschke and other wonderful people run the atelier automatique, a workspace striving for solidarity among artists and an alternative art space supporting the local scene.

(2020)

© Benko Nkiko Patrick

Yvan Hervé Butera a.k.a. BuTeRa

YVAN HERVÉ BUTERA (he/they), is Rwandan-born and based in Kigali, Rwanda. He is an art, diversity, and inclusion consultant and facilitator. He is a mental health advocate, a curator, playwright, psychologist, and cultural event organizer, with one of the recent events being the first Kigali pride celebration in June 2022 in partnership with local activists and the support of the Goethe Institute. Butera founded the Kigali Pride Initiative and Kaze Film Festival, the first Queer Film Festival in Rwanda.

He serves as a Board member of the Rwanda Arts Initiative (RAI) and as a curator at the 250 Film Experiment Cine-club. In addition to working with other queer Rwandans, he has done activism work with Rwandan feminist organization Sistah Circle, gathering Rwandan LGBTQI+ communities and hosting safe discussions for queer Rwandans focusing on visibility, inclusivity, and mental health in Rwandan society. These series of events served as a tool to bring possible solutions to everyday challenges faced by the queer Rwandans in Rwanda and a safe space of experimental exchanges within the Rwandan queer community and He has been active in lobbying and institutional advocacy for Rwandan Queer Community and Rwandan Artists. He has worked at Ishyo Arts Centre as a playwrighter, logistics and production manager, and Festival Coordinator of Kuya Kwetu and Kina Festival; As well as an engaging and production coordinator at University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) and Hamwe Festival.

Butera holds a bachelor's degree in Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy and a Master's degree in the Psychology of Wellbeing and Social Inclusivity from the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy.

(2023)

C

Jo Caimo

JO CAIMO is a sound and visual artist, inventor, musician and radio maker. His work lies at the intersection between performance, music, product design, installation and the digital world. With his objects and instruments, he investigates ‘the collective‘ versus ‘the inner‘, and he therefore challenges the spectator to become part of his work. He develops effective measuring instruments and platforms through which we can better understand subconscious patterns and mechanisms in co-creation processes. Researching, stimulating and visualizing the energies between people collectively is the underlying theme.

(2020)

Jannis Carbotta

JANNIS CARBOTTA, born 1993, is a musician and sound artist who currently lives in Cologne and studies Music & Media at Robert Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf. Beside that he completed a short-term study at the Kunstuni Graz in Computermusic and Sound Art. The focus of Jannis’ artistic work explores the tensions between analog and digital spaces and his musical approach is sometimes focussed on processed field recordings of sonic textures and material, sometimes consists of adventures in experiments on synthesizers and electronic guitar. Apart from his studies at the Institute for Music and Media, which also develops his skills in visual and sonic arts, he has always been active in various band formations as a guitarist, bass & synth player, producer and curates as a DJ radio shows and mixes. Currently he is part of an experimental indie band called Infant Finches and works on his fist solo EP which will be released on the label Kame House in early 2023.

(2024)

Cedric Carnavaro

CEDRIC CARNAVARO is an Ivorian music producer who focuses on the music styles coupé décalé and Afrobeats . He has collaborated with DJ Lewis, DJ Mix, MC One, Rocky Gold, DJ Kedjevara as well as Gadoukou La Star, among others, and is considered an expert on West African music trends.

(2019)

Jeanne Laurent Caron

JEANNE LAURENT CARON started her dance training at the Centre Chorégraphique National of Roubaix, and continued it at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz Dresden. During her studies there, she had the opportunity to work with choreographers such as Avatara Ayuso, Cameron McMillan and to learn repertory from the Batsheva Company as well as from the Semperoper Ballet. In 2019, she joined Bodhi Project Dance Company in Salzburg, where she worked with Hillel Kogan, Stephanie Thiersch, Massimo Gerardi, Francesco Scavetta and Adrienn Hod.

(2020)

Shadow Casters

SHADOW CASTERS / BACAČI SJENKI is an international art- and production platform, that is internationally celebrated and awarded. The projects are focusing on working in public space in the form of artistic interventions. Their performances are characterized by time travels through the history and present of urban space as well as moments of collective and individual memory. Locations and their environment become stages and actors. Their projects and performances are designed as performative, multimedia-based and socially involved time-sculptures.

(2015)

Filipa César

FILIPA CÉSAR (* 1975 in Porto) studied painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto and at the Faculdade de Belas Artes at the University of Lisbon. In 2008, she completed her master’s degree in the Art in Context department at University of the Arts in Berlin. As an artist, Filipa César participated internationally in solo and group shows. Since 2007 she is working as a filmmaker as well. She lives and works in Berlin.

(2018)

Iain Chambers

IAIN CHAMBERS is Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the Oriental University in Naples where he has been Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies, and coordinates the PhD programme in ‘Cultural and Postcolonial Studies of the Anglophone world'. He is known for his interdisciplinary and intercultural work on music, popular and metropolitan cultures. More recently he has transmuted this line of research into a series of postcolonial analyses of the formation of the modern Mediterranean.

(2019)

Jordan Chanetsa

JORDAN CHANETSA is a performance artist, writer, and LGBTQIA+ rights activist and works as a consultant for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in working spaces in Zimbabwe. Chanetsa is a founding member of the Harare Queer Collective (HQ), which works to create safe spaces for Zimbabwean LGBTQIA+ people. As a presenter and media personality, she regularly addresses the difficult realities of the LGBTQIA+ community in Zimbabwe on radio shows and podcasts and is the host of "The Naked Truth Show," a program that focuses on gender, sexuality, and health. For the podcast "Her Hour" (Play Afrika TV), Chanetsa produced a special edition with the U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe about Pride Month, among other things. In 2019, Chanetsa was honored by the Dutch Embassy in Zimbabwe for her commitment as part of the "16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence" campaign. Chanetsa was also selected to participate in the “Young Leaders Program” of “Women Deliver”, an organization that promotes gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women. From June to October 2022, Jordan Chanetsa is artist-in-residence as part of the Participatory Residency Program organized by ADKDW together with DEMASK Kollektiv and Integrationshaus e.V.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

BUDHADITYA CHATTOPADHYAY is a contemporary artist, researcher and writer. Incorporating diverse media such as sound, text, and moving image, Chattopadhyay produces works for large-scale installations and live performances addressing contemporary issues of climate crisis, human intervention in the environment and ecology, urbanity, migration, race and decolonization. Chattopadhyay has been a Charles Wallace scholar and Prince Claus grantee; he has received numerous fellowships, residencies and international awards and his works have been widely exhibited, performed or presented across the globe. Chattopadhyay’s writings regularly appear in publications internationally, with two books forthcoming. Chattopadhyay holds a PhD in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University, and an MA in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies from Aarhus University; he recently completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship.

(2020)

Cheap

The art collective CHEAP was founded in Berlin in 2001 by Daniel Hendrickson, Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel. Vaginal Davis is a permanent member; the collective works regularly with Phil Collins, Wilhelm Hein, Hannah Hurtzig, Bruce LaBruce, Xiu Xiu and others. CHEAP has presented performances, installations, festivals and club events at the Volksbühne/Prater (2001), Podewil (2002/2003), Ujazdowski Castle Kino-Lab, Warsaw/Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow (2002), HAU (2003-12), Theater an der Parkaue (2005-10), Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2006), the Berlinale/Forum Expanded (2006/2007), Theater an der Gessnerallee, Zurich (2007), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2012), 80WSE Gallery, NYC (2015), Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Prague (2016), Arsenal – Institute for Film and Videoart (2006-2017), Kaserne Basel / FFT Düsseldorf (2012/2018), silent green (2017), Kammerspiele München (2018), and Haus der Berliner Festspiele (2019). CHEAP’s performance-installation of The Magic Flute. An Opera in Six Steps at the 80WSE Gallery was included on The Best in Art of 2015 list in The New York Times. In 2018 the Academy of World Culture presented CHEAP’s Original Sin, a concert by Susanne Sachsse and Xiu Xiu at Stadtgarten in Cologne. Since 2017 CHEAP has been broadcasting the monthly radio show CHEAP Funk on the Berlin art radio project reboot.fm.

(2020)

Cynthia Chepkemoi

CYNTHIA CHEPKEMOI regards herself as an archivist interested in the particular complexities of personal experience. She works in qualitative and quantitative research for both academic projects and market research companies. Her works employ research and surveys to understand Kenya at the margins, beyond the staple subjects. She has been involved with reports on various topics, including by ipsos on teenage pregnancies, medical insurance accessibility to Kenyans, the views of shareholders in KCB Bank research, the plight of sex workers in Salgaa in Nakuru County and agribusiness in Kericho County. She has a background in logistics and supply chain management and six year’s experience working in procurement in Nairobi.

(2021)

Vivek Chibber

VIVEK CHIBBER is a sociologist and professor at New York University. In his book Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, he formulates one of the most important contemporary critiques of postcolonial theory. His fundamental argument is that even though postcolonial theory sees itself as a critique of Orientalism and Eurocentrism, in fact, it supports them both. The book unleashes one of the most important recent debates in social theory and in the humanities and social sciences on the status of postcolonial studies. Despite his controversial positions, it has received many positive reviews ‒ for example, from American linguist Noam Chomsky and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.

(2018)

Photo: Chimurenga

Chimurenga

The cultural platform CHIMURENGA, founded in 2002, includes the magazine The Chronic, the online Chimurenga Library, the Pan African Market in Cape Town, and the radio project Pan African Space Station. In their sound collages they interrogate the audible as well as our understanding of music and audio consumption and the conditions governing it.

(2021)

Annick Choco

ANNICK CHOCO (Badekou Annick Prisca Agbadou) is a dancer and singer. Before her solo career she danced for Serge Beynaud and was a guest performer in Der Botschafter and Der Internationale Strafgerichtshof by Gintersdorfer/Klaßen. Since 2016 she is a regular member of La Fleur.

(2019)

© Martha Stroo

Binna Choi

BINNA CHOI is a curator and the director of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which she together with her team re-established in 2018 under its current name and modus operandi. In this context, she conceived and co-developed long-term transdisciplinary research projects like Grand Domestic Revolution (2009-2013) and Composing the Commons (2013-2016). The latter includes the collaborative project Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) (2014) of artist Annette Krauss and the Casco team. Other curatorial projects include the annual curatorial seminar Cultivate or Revolutionize? Life Between Apartment and Farmland at Times Museum in Guangzhou (2014, curated with Nikita Yingqian Cai) and the summer school and exhibition Group Affinity at Kunstverein Munich (2011, with Bart van der Heide). Furthermore, she worked as a curator for the 2016 Gwangju Biennale under the title The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do) and, in that context, organized the global forum and fellowship of experimental art organizations All the Contributing Factors alongside Maria Lind. Choi has been a faculty member at the Dutch Art Institute and is currently a member of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World) as well as Community Economies Research Network.

(2020)

Saddie Choua

SADDIE CHOUA is a Belgian-Moroccan filmmaker, writer and mixed-media visual artist, based in Belgium. A sociologist by education, she expanded her political critique of inequalities into the art and media domain, bridging art with her academic experience through political art of documentary, video installations, mixed media collage and short stories. She puts the racial/ethnic discrimination, discrimination against women, colonialism, class as well as her cats in the spotlight.

(2019)

Keti Chukhrov

KETI CHUKHROV is an associate professor at the Department of Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities, visiting professor at the European Unity at St. Petersburg, a head of theory department at the National Center for Contemporary Art. Since 2003 she has served on the editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine. Chukhrov has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics, and philosophy which have appeared in periodicals such as, among others : Afterall, Moscow Art Magazine, Artforum, Brumaria, Documenta magazines, e-flux journal, New Literary Review, et Springerin. Her full-length books include To Be – To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophical Criticism of Art, Pound &£Ü, and two volumes of dramatic poetry Just Humans and War of Quantities.

(2018)

Sebastian Cichocki

SEBASTIAN CICHOCKI lives and works in Warsaw, where he is the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Selected curated exhibitions include the Polish pavilions at the 52nd and 54th Venice Biennales, with Monika Sosnowska (1:1) and Yael Bartana (...and Europe Will Be Stunned) respectively, the latter project co-curated with Galit Eilat; Making Use. Life in Postartistic Times, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2016); Rainbow in the Dark: On the Joy and Torment of Faith, Konstmuseum Malmö (2015); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2014); Zofia Rydet, Record 1978–1990, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2015); Procedures for the Head, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia (2015); New National Art. National Realism in XXIst Century Poland, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2012); Early Years, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010); Raqs Media Collective, The Capital of Accumulation, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2010); Oskar Hansen.
Process and Art 1966–2005, Museum of Modern Art in Skopje, Macedonia. Cichocki is a curator of the Bródno Sculpture Park, a long-term public art program initiated in 2009 with the artist Paweł Althamer. He has curated exhibitions in the form of a novella, radio drama, opera libretto, garden, anti-production residency program, and performance lectures.

(2017)

Beth Collar

BETH COLLAR is an artist working predominantly in performance and sculpture or in the shared ground between them. She was born in Cambridge, England. Recent projects and performances have been at Cafe Oto, London, 2017; Kunstverein München, Munich 2017; Kunstraum, London, 2017; Standpoint, London, 2017; Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow, 2016; Hester, New York, 2016; KW, Berlin, 2016; Fig 2, ICA, London, 2015; Cubitt, London, and Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, 2015; Raven Row, London, 2015; the Serpentine Galleries, London, 2015; and Flat Time House, London, 2014. She was recipient of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2016/17.

(2017)

Maracatu Colônia

Maracatu is a traditional Afro-Brazilian music style that originated in Pernambuco, (northeastern Brazil) and is still very widespread today. It originated in the 17th century and developed from traditional African music forms of the enslaved people coming from Africa.

(2023)

Diana Combo

Eosin (DIANA COMBO) composes and performs with vinyl records. Starting from a process close to plunderphonics, she includes field recordings or sounds collected from online archives. Her re-compositions are the result of an intuitive exploration, informed by certain thematics for theoretical research and by the act of listening. Her relation with records and vinyl players has found yet another expression in contexts of collective performance, where they’re used as instruments for improvisation. In this context, Diana shared stages with Andrea Neumann, Ana Veloso, João Martins and Filipe Silva; Antoine Chessex, Werner Dafeldecker, Burkhard Beins, Nate Wooley, amongst others. She has performed solo at Transmediale, Tiny Noise and Festival ERTZ, and in venues as Casa da Música, Passos Manuel, Maus Hábitos, ZDB, Galeria Zaratan, Bar Irreal, Salon des Amateurs and General Public.

(2020)

Stephanie Comilang

STEPHANIE COMILANG identifies Kidlat Tahimik – the great auteur of independent cinema of the Philippines – as her inspiration. She centrally works around the spatial concept of home and being away from home. Her works explore how our understandings of mobility, capital and labor on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors.

(2020)

Ange da Costa

Florian Cramer

FLORIAN CRAMER (* 1969 in Berlin, Germany) is a Rotterdam-based participant observer of contemporary arts and a lecturer in 21st Century Visual Culture at Hogeschool Rotterdam. Recent publications include Anti-Media (2013), What Is Post-Digital? (2013/14), and Pattern Discrimination (with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Hito Steyerl and Clemens Apprich, 2018).

(2017)

Alice Creischer


ALICE CREISCHER is an artist and writer living in Berlin. In 2004 she and Andreas Siekmann curated the exhibition project Ex Argentina at Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and in 2002 the exhibition Die Gewalt ist der Rand aller Dinge at the Generali Foundation, Vienna. With Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz and Andreas Siekmann she curated the project Principio Potosí. The exhibition was on display at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in 2010 as well as at Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico and at the Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (MUSEF) in La Paz in 2011.

(2022)

© Peter-Andreas Hassiepen

Max Czollek

MAX CZOLLEK is a poet, essayist, and curator. He attended the Jewish Upper School in Berlin, graduating in 2006, and studied political science at the Free University of Berlin, completing his PhD at the Center for Research on Antisemitism. In 2016 he curated, along with Sasha Marianna Salzmann, the event Desintegration: Ein Kongress zeitgenössischer jüdischer Positionen. Since 2009, he has been a member of the poetry collective G13, organized group reading tours and publications and has been curator of the international poetry project Babelsprech. In addition, he is co-editor of the journal Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart. He is the author of such publications as the poetry volumes Druckkammern (2012), Jubeljahre (2015) and Grenzwerte (2019), published by the Verlagshaus Berlin, and the polemic Desintegriert euch! (2018), published by Hanser.

(2020)

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Ida Danewid

IDA DANEWID is a Teaching Fellow at SOAS University of London. Her research is situated at the intersection of race, gender, political economy, and radical political thought, and specifically focuses on questions of internationalism and the politics of solidarity. She has written on migration, gentrification, and the black radical tradition, and is currently working on a monograph that examines the shared horizons of global solidarity movements. Her article White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History won the 2017 Edward Said Award.

(2019)

Laura Dang

LAURA DANG grew up in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area and completed her studies of Applied Musicology and Music Education in Eichstätt. She is currently studying Media Art and Media Design in Master's program focusing on Experimental Radio at the Bauhaus University Weimar. Her works range between radio play, sound art, feature and live improvisations.

(2020)

Sorour Darabi

SOROUR DARABI is a Paris-based performer, dancer and choreographer. Born in Iran they explore the issues of sexual identity, gender politics and language. In 2016 they were awarded the Acknowledgement Prize of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel for their short piece Farci.e.

(2017)

Vaginal Davis

VAGINAL DAVIS is a genderqueer artist who made an international name for herself in the 1980s with her zines and punk bands in the Los Angeles underground scene. A central figure in the development of homo- and queercore, Davis is a celebrated queer performer of Color and international blacktress. She has lived in Berlin since 2006 and is known in the art world for her small-scale paintings, sculptures, and installations, which have been featured in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions.

(2022)

Black Pearl de Almeida Lima

Black Pearl de Almeida Lima a.k.a. Black Pearl Saint Laurent (b. 1994, Brazil) is a multidisciplinary AfroLatinx trans artist living in Berlin. She graduated from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim, and subsequently performed in various art institutions, as well as with renowned professional dance companies in Germany. She has been involved in the German Ballrom scene since 2020 and is currently a member of the Iconic House of Saint Laurent Europe as well as Kiki House of Solar.
Her research explores the use of the body as an artistic and political platform to subvert the invisibility (physical and symbolic) of trans identities through their life stories. Black Pearl aims to deconstruct the colonial, in narratives of all classical forms of movement and through her body into art.

(2023)

DEMASK KOLLEKTIV

DEMASK Kollektiv is a queer, intersectional and feminist BPoC collective from Cologne that advocates for the representation, empowerment and social participation of qt*i*BI*PoCs through community organizing. DDEMASK Kollektiv aims to create spaces to highlight the voices, interests, needs and narratives of qt*i*BI*PoCs especially in North Rhine-Westphalia. Many of the discourses within/of this community are based on ideas that emerged in the context of identity negotiations in the United States. DEMASK Kollektiv aspires to push the own (counter-)discourses in german-speaking regions. DEMASK Kollektiv envisions a world where qt*i*BI*PoCs can live a more livable and fulfilled life. Therefore DEMASK Kollektiv organizes cultural and political events and workshops for qt*i*BI*PoCs, while some are open for BI*PoCs that consider themselves allies of the queer community. DEMASK Kollektiv events are there to forge alliances and exchange strategies against racism, sexism, anti-queer and anti-trans* sentiments/violence as well as other forms of discrimination and oppression that queer BI*PoCs face in a capitalist, patriarchal and cis-heteronormative system.

Instagram @demask_clgn

Facebook @demaskXclgn

(2018)

Nuray Demir

NURAY DEMIR studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, the Ècole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille and the Academy of Art in Vienna. She realizes projects as an artist/curator at and with various institutions, including the Kampnagel in Hamburg, the HAU/Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the Vienna festival Wiener Festwochen and District Berlin. Since 2018, Nuray Demir has been cooperating with Michael Annoff on the project Kein schöner Archiv (Not a beautiful archive).

(2018)

Hicran Demir

Hicran Demir was born in Stuttgart and studied drama from 2005 to 2009 at CreArte – Internationale Schauspielakademie in Stuttgart. From 2009 to 2013 she lived in Istanbul, where she worked with the theater group studio5istanbul and gained experience with film, among other things. From 2013 to 2017 Hicran Demir expanded her training through studies in film and theater at the Free University of Berlin. In 2017 she was in Zinnure Türe’s production of Tevatür with Proje Difüzyon (Istanbul). In 2018 she worked for the first time with the fringe ensemble in Bonn, in the piece Anziehungskräfte. At Theater und Orchester Heidelberg Hicran Demir performed in 2019 in the piece Zwischenraum. In 2020 she appears in two solo pieces with Şermola Performans, Unvollkommen and Min’s Monolog. Hicran Demir lives in Cologne and works as a freelance actor with Şermola Performans, among others, but also for film and TV.

(2021)

Gabriel Dharmoo

GABRIEL DHARMOO lives and works in Montreal as a composer, vocalist, improviser, and researcher. His works have been performed internationally and he has received awards both as a composer (Canada Council for the Arts - Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music 2017) and as an interdisciplinary artist for his performative solo Imaginary Anthropologies.

(2014)

Diakron

DIAKRON is a studio for transdisciplinary practice. Diakron has six members, working across action research, artistic and curatorial practice, graphic design and business anthropology. They have been exploring emerging organizational forms and their capacities for engaging in widespread systemic problems. Diakron is currently developing Primer, an art-based r&d department housed in the context of Aquaporin, a global water technology company.

(2019)

Aminata Estelle Diouf

Aminata Estelle Diouf is a cultural professional, researcher and freelance translator (English - German - Japanese) at the intersection of art, film and decolonial activist practices. Initially, Aminata began working in the indie film scene, working for the independent film label Rapid Eye Movies, which specialized in music documentaries and South and East Asian cinema. From 2019, she worked for the German Research Foundation as a coordinator for a pilot project in the field of internationalization and digitization. She also worked as a facilitator for the exhibition RESIST!-The Art of Resistance at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne. Currently she is doing her PhD on Shaping Narratives & Shifting Visibilities - Black Identities & the Art of Postcolonial Resistance in Digital Spaces and works as a curator for the exhibition My Life Began Several Centuries Ago - An Ecosystem of Circulating Images in collaboration with ADKDW and University of Cologne.

(2023)

DJ Elephant Power

NICOLAS BAUDOUX aka DJ ELEPHANT POWER is a DJ, artist and producer from Brussels. Through the Cologne based label « Sonig », he released his first album « No Si, Ni So » in 2004. In 2011 he won the prestigious Belgium award Octaves De La Musique. And with his first released «Soda Waves ep» in 2017, he pushes his skills to the next level where kick-drum, percussion muscle, deep groove and bass flavour join forces. Inspired by Belgium cold techno, UK funky bass and African music tribes, Dj Elephant Power drives his own perspective into a unique genre.

(2017)

Cordão do Boitatá

Cordão do Boitatá is a carnival association from Rio de Janeiro, founded in 1996. It was created by students and musicians. Happenings took place on Praça XV in the center of Rio. Although it is not part of the official program of the Blocos in the city, it was one of the people responsible for the revival of the street carnival in Rio. Every year it attracts thousands of spectators to the performances, which last up to seven hours and always take place on Carnival Sunday.

(2023)

Maria Do Mar Castro Varela

MARIA DO MAR CASTRO VARELA is professor of Pedagogy and Social Work at the Alice Salomon University in Berlin. She holds a double degree in Psychology and Pedagogy and a Ph.D. in Political Science. Her research interests besides Gender and Queer Studies are Postcolonial Theory, Critical Migration Studies, and Critical Education. Recent publications or her, amongst others, are: Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung (with Nikita Dhawan) and Die Dämonisierung der Anderen. Rassismuskritik der Gegenwart (ed. with Paul Mecheril).

(2019)

Bariş Doğrusöz

Spanning video installation, sculpture, installation and film, Bariş Doğrusöz’s multifaceted practice is mainly based on research into the cultural histories of the Mena and Turkey region. His practice is manifested through techno-political investigations and speculative scenarios. Dogrusoz creates works that interrogate the notion of territory, border, ecosystems, scale and cross-temporalities, whether physical or symbolic, and examine how fragmented elements such as found footage, military material, archeological artifacts and codes operate as a prequel or premonition for a near future fiction. He is currently based in Istanbul and Beirut.

(2024)

Photo: Alessandro Fuchs

Adriana Dominguez

ADRIANA DOMINGUEZ VELASCO is an Art Historian and Independent Curator from Mexico, currently living and working in Zürich. She graduated in Art History from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and did an MAS in Curating at ZHdK (Zürich). She worked as Assistant Curator for Museo Tamayo in Mexico City until she moved to Switzerland in 2013. Dominguez Velasco specialises in Latin American art and her curatorial strategy mixes theory, critical thinking and humour to address current social, political and environmental issues through art exhibitions. In 2017 she co-founded the independent art space la_cápsula, which focuses on presenting Latin-American emergent art and creating links to the local art scene of Switzerland.

(2022)

Elsa Dorlin


ELSA DORLIN is professor of political contemporary philosophy at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès (France). A specialist in the philosophy of Michel Foucault, Dorlin’s research also focuses on black feminist epistemology and Fanonian phenomenology. Her latest book Self-defense: A philosophy of violence (Paris, Zones éditions, 2017), winner of the 2018 Frantz Fanon Book Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

(2022)

Ines Doujak

INES DOUJAK (* 1959 in Klagenfurt, Austria) is a feminist artist who has dedicated herself during recent years to an extensive study of textiles, investigating their global history as characterized by cultural, class, and gender conflict. Her last solo exhibition Not Dressed for Conquering took place at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2016–2017). Since 2010, Doujak has been collaborating regularly with the artist JOHN BARKER, their work has been represented at various international venues. Ines Doujak lives and works in London and Vienna.

(2017)

Max Dovey

Max Dovey works with people and technologies to create scenario-based interactions and experiences, critically reflecting on emerging technology and exploring the politics of a networked society. For instance, A Hipster Bar (2015) is a pop-up bar that uses image recognition to only admit people recognised as hipsters according to a custom-made algorithm; Respiratory Mining (2017) is a work in which the act of breathing is turned into crypto currency. Dovey received a Master’s degree in Media Design & Communication at the Piet Zwart Academy Rotterdam and worked, amongst others, with V2_ and The Patching Zone in Rotterdam. He showed his work at the Ars Electronica and The Lowry in Manchester (Humans Being Digital), taught at the Dutch Sandberg Institute as well as St. Joost Academy Breda and is an affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures and the Agorama London. He writes for Open Democracy, Imperica & Furtherfield.

(2019)

Antje Drinkuth

PROF. DIPL.-DES ANTJE DRINKUTH, is a professor of collection concepts and collection presentation at the AMD Akademie Mode & Design, Berlin.

(2018)

Friedemann Dupelius

Friedemann Dupelius (*1987 in Schorndorf) works with sound and language. He studied in Karlsruhe at the Hochschule für Musik and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, as well as Sound Studies at the University in Cologne. As Friday Dunard, Friedemann Dupelius produces genre-fluid electronic music, which he releases, performs live or mixes into DJ sets. Under the alias Wednesday Dupont he creates radio plays, radio pieces, sonic research, digital and acoustic texts for radio, festivals and internet. His project The Voice of Wednesday Dupont explores the artistic use of synthetic AI voices. Collaborative projects include Tearss and Frankfurter Tor. Friedemann Dupelius also writes radio features for WDR3 and writes cultural journalistic texts for De:Bug, Dissonance, INKA, Kaput, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, among others. He works as a curator for the music label SPA and the Cologne sound art series Brückenmusik.

Photo: Dörthe Boxberg, 2018

Madhusree Dutta

MADHUSREE DUTTA is a filmmaker, author and curator. Her areas of interest are urban public culture and archiving and documentary practices. She has been the artistic director of the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) in Cologne from 2018 until 2021. Before that she was the executive director of Majlis, an interdiscipli-nary art initiative in Mumbai, India (1998–2016).

Her publications include, amongst may other, Fake Hybrid Sites Palimpsest. Essays on Leakages (2022), co-edited with Nanna Heidenreich; Project Cinema City (2014), co-edited with Kaushik Bhowmik and Rohan Shivkumar; and dates.sites: Bombay / Mumbai (2012).

Notable curatorial projects include culture@WSF (2005–2007), Project Cinema City (2009–2012), Memory Stations (2019) and HANDS (2021), co-curated with Ala Younis. She lives in Mumbai.

(2022)

(c) Falko Alexander

Yilmaz Dziewior

Yilmaz Dziewior is director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne since February 2015. Previously, he was the director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) from 2009, a venue which places itself as a leading role in the contemporary arts in Europe. In 2022, he curated the German contribution for the 59th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Prior to his work in Bregenz, he was the director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg for eight years and, in parallel, taught as a professor of art theory at the Hochschule für bildende Künste. From 1996 to 1999 he worked as a freelancer for the Museum Ludwig. In 1997, he curated a project with Sarah Lucas and was responsible for the contemporary section of the exhibition "Kunstwelten im Dialog. From Gauguin to the Global Present” in 1999. Dziewior's texts have appeared regularly in "Artforum" (New York), "Camera Austria" (Graz) and "Texte zur Kunst" (Berlin). He has edited over 50 books and catalogs on 20th and 21st century art and has written catalog essays for institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

(2023)

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Kathrin Ebmeier

KATHRIN EBMEIER lives in Bochum and Cologne and is an artist working in various formats. With their collective Anna Kpok, KE develops performances that turn the audience into fellow players, between online games and theater spaces. They are the initiator and curator of the Oval Office Bar / Schauspielhaus Bochum, a “cosmopolitan ‘homo bar’” with a solidarity bar, antifascist cooperation partners and an independent program. With the Screwing Bitches, KE films feminist mechanic tutorials for YouTube and also develops audio walks and audio pieces with C. Bovermann, C. Baron and E. Krefta. KE completed their MA in applied theater studies at Justus Liebig University in Gießen and has shown their artistic work since then at the Ruhrtriennale, the Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, the Ringlokschuppen.Ruhr, the Theater Dortmund and the Schaubude Berlin, among others.

As an activist KE establishes (queer) feminist organization and fights against structural discrimination, particularly in the context of theater and art production. Their long-term goal is an end to the capitalistic and patriarchal economic and power systems. If KE would write a book, it would be about lesbian night/club/bar life.

(2020)

Ylê Asè Egi Omim

Ylê Asè Egi Omim is a Candomblé house which besides being a space dedicated to religious practice, is a Cultural Center of Afro-Brazilian Traditions, with the intention of facilitating a dialogue between the experiences of the African matrix sacred and the knowledge, sciences, enchantments, philosophies, and ways of life practiced within and beyond the sacred grounds, from an Afro-Pindoramic perspective.

(2023)

Yasemine Eid-Sabbagh

The artist YASMINE EID-SABBAGH studied history, photography and visual anthropology in Paris. In 2018, she earned her doctorate at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. From 2006 to 2011, she lived in Burj Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp next to Tyre, where she conducted photographic research, including a conversation project with young Palestinians, while also archiving private and studio recordings. Eid-Sabbagh has been a member of the Arab Image Foundation since 2008. She received the Arles Discovery Award 2013, and the 8th Vevey International Photography Award 2011 – for her collaboration with Rozenn Quéré titled Vies possibles et imaginaires (Possible and Imaginary Lives).

(2019)

Olivia Emefiele

Olivia Emefiele is a German-Nigerian artist and designer living in Cologne. Her works reflect anti-racist and socio-political narratives and discourses. She deals with interdisciplinary formats and figurative painting. She also works on experimental approaches in her artistic practice. She uses the symbiosis of art and design to visualize contextualizations that address diversity awareness and aesthetic changes of perspective of self-empowered inclusion. She has thematized postcolonialism, intersectional discrimination and power harassment as well as marginalized body images in her previous works. She studied Integrated Studies in Design at the Cologne International School of Design and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

(2023)

Turgut Erçetin

Born in Istanbul, TURGUT ERÇETIN studied composition and completed his doctorate studies at Stanford University under the supervision of Brian Ferneyhough. His current work focuses on issues of sound, which as a result of composed acoustics, is perceived not as sonically colorful but rather as a functionality travelling through various degrees of complexity.

His solo, chamber, and electro-acoustic works have been performed throughout the US and Europe with major performances at Ultraschall, MaerzMusik, Gaudeamus Festival, Manifeste and many other festivals. Erçetin has collaborated with pioneering ensembles such as The Arditti Quartet, The JACK Quartet, ELISION Ensemble and Ensemble Mosaik as well as many others.

In 2017 Turgut Erçetin was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Cevdet Erek

CEVDET EREK, born 1974, lives and works in Istanbul. He studied architecture at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul and sound engineering and design at the Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM) at Istanbul Technical University, ITU. From 2005 to 2006 he was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2011, Erek received his doctorate in Music from the ITU MIAM. In 2012, he received the Nam June Paik – International Media Award from Kunststiftung NRW. He currently teaches at ITU TMDK and ITU MIAM. Erek has presented his installations internationally in numerous solo and group shows. In 2017 he represented Turkey at the 57th Venice Biennale with his work ÇIN. In 2012, at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, he showed the installation Room of Rhythms, a work that he later realized in site-specific versions in altered form at MAXXI, Rome (2014), the Istanbul Biennial (2015) and the Biennale of Sydney (2016). Erek has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Art Institute of Chicago (chiçiçiçichiciç, 2019); M HKA, Antwerp (AAAAA, 2018); MUAC, Mexico City (A Long Distance Relation, 2017); Spike Island, Bristol (Alt Üst, 2014); and Kunsthalle Basel (week, 2012).

(2021)

Meryem Erkus

As an organizer and activist, Erkus is jointly responsible for many (sub-)cultural projects and hybrid (exhibition) forms in Cologne. She founded the project space GOLD+BETON at Ebertplatz and Kulturverein Baustelle Kalk e.V.. With her commitment in sub-culture and hybrid exhibition/event-formats she is actively shaping the cultural landscape of Cologne. Erkus is engaged in various co-operations centered around curatorial practice: Brückenmusik, Stadtgarten Köln, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, die Akademie der Künste der Welt, amongst others. For the initiative Baustelle Kalk e.V. she received multiple awards, amongst others, the Kölner Kunstpreis 2016 für Junge Initiativen. At Ebertplatz she is jointly responsible for the design and preservation of Kunstpassage.

(2018)

Melanie Erzuah

MELANIE ERZUAH works in various projects in education and youth work in the spheres of music, bias-free and intersectional pedagogy and empowerment. Melanie Erzuah’s work focuses on emancipatory body practices, questions of identity politics and the construction of bodies in a postcolonial, capitalist and patriarchal world. In 2020, Melanie Erzuah was choir and musical director of the Fasia Jansen Ensemble. Possibilities of embodiment of one’s own subjectivity, collective connectedness and therefore political fighting spirit were built through vocal exercises, breathing techniques and bodywork building up to improvisation exercises that were incorporated in the arrangements of the songs. In 2021 in the scope of the Outreach Scholarship from the nGbK – neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Melanie Erzuah will further develop the experiences and methods used with the Fasia Jansen Ensemble.

(2020)

Image: Lyra Garcellano

Merv Espina

MERV ESPINA is an artist and curator based in Las Piñas, Metro Manila. In 2014 he co-initiated the Kalampag Tracking Agency and in 2016 Kamuning Public Radio. He helps run WSK Festival of the Recently Possible as well as the Nusasonic collaborative music platform and contributes to Radio alHara Palestine. His artistic explorations result in installations and film screenings, seminars and magazines, music mixes and comix anthologies, pirate radio hacks, choreographies, and perfume productions. His art projects have been featured in the 2015 Jakarta Biennale and the 2020 Yokohama Triennale. Merv is a member of the ADKDW.

(2022)

Etcétera...

ETCÉTERA… are a multidisciplinary collective of visual artists, poets, actors and performers that formed in Buenos Aires in 1997. They all share the intention of bringing art to the sites of imminent social conflict, i.e. to the streets; and vice versa, social conflicts are brought into the arenas of cultural production, including art institutions and the media.

Etcétera… worked closely with the human rights group H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) in developing and popularising a form of direct action protest called “escraches” i.e. acts of public denunciation and humiliation of human rights infringers in order to reinstall social justice and influence the state’s legal and judicial institutions to follow a certain course of action.

Etcétera… form part of the urban scene as a statement of protest, denunciation and public signaling; and as a result the interventions pertain to a specific time and place. Using street-art, public interventions, and performances that are by nature contextual, ephemeral and circumstantial, they combine humour, irony, poetic means of discovery and the deconstructive potential needed to forge a new kind of socially committed art free of hackneyed rhetoric, often sarcastic and at times “incorrect”. In 2005 they co-founded the International Errorist movement based on the idea that error is a fundamental principle of reality and life.

The group develops interventions and activities in collaboration with other collectives and individuals, inside and outside the art institutions, and in the field of education. Loreto Garín Guzmán (Chile) and Federico Zukerfeld (Argentina) are the co-founders of the collective and they coordinate the archive, activities and other initiatives. In 2013 Etcétera... received the International Award of Participatory Art.

In 2014 Loreto Garín Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld were fellows of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

https://www.facebook.com/grupoetcetera?fref=ts

Ali Eyal

“Born in 1994 in The Forest, Small Farm, I live and work in Amsterdam. My artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media through combining images and textual statements; my work is primarily based in the medium of drawing and further transformed through other media – such as installations, photography, text and video. The ideas for my artworks are not mine. Otherwise, I would have been a landscape painter, painting a beautiful river. But I lost Ali. The absence of my image constitutes a dialogue with the missing persons, with the lost villages and destroyed houses, ‘because a house is like a face too.’ I am a scrap of paper that has borne the pressure of the pen and absorbed the ink of Swedenborg. The ink said, ‘These are his memoirs, not mine.’ He wrote in his spiritual memoirs, ‘The spirits, with permission, may completely possess those who speak with them, so it can be as if they are utterly in the world, and even appear in a manner of speaking in this way, so that they can deliver their thoughts through their medium, even through written messages. Since from time to time, or actually most of the time, when I directed my hand to write, it was as if my hand were their hand, and I believe it wasn’t I that wrote, but rather the spirits.’ As an artist I try to stay hidden behind the furniture, like a woodworm you don’t see but seems to have eaten everything.”

(2021)

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Photo: Emília Silberstein

Eleonora Fabião

ELEONORA FABIÃO (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a performance artist and theorist. She performs, lectures, teaches and publishes internationally. Her performative actions have been featured in numerous contexts – festivals, exhibitions, museums, sociocultural projects – but usually take place in the streets of various cities. Things That Must Be Done Series (Wall Street, Performa Biannual, 2015) is the title of a work and also a way of referring to her artistic practice. Fabião is Associate Professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, School of Communication – Theater Directing Undergraduate Program and Arts of the Scene Graduate Program. Holds a PhD and an MA in Performance Studies (New York University, CAPES grant) and an MA in Social History of Culture (PUC-Rio, CAPES grant). She concluded her postdoc in 2017 at NYU. Fabião received the Arts in the Streets Award from the Brazilian National Foundation of the Arts (2011) and the Rumos Itaú Cultural Grant (2014) that resulted in the publication of the book AÇÕES/ACTIONS (Rio de Janeiro: Tamanduá Arte, 2015). Fabião is a Researcher Level-2 of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She is an invited artist of the 34th São Paulo Art Biennial, 2021.

(2021)

Hu Fang

Born in 1970, the writer, art critic and curator HU FANG lives and works in Guangzhou and Beijing. The co-founder and artistic director of the Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou and the Beijing Pavilion has been involved in various international projects, including working as an editor for documenta 12 magazines and as co-curator of the Yokohoma Triennial 2008.

(2010)

Harun Farocki

HARUN FAROCKI traversed from pre-celluloid forms of photography and painting to the post-cinema forms of video and digital. His critic of production and circulation of images began with The Indistinguishable Fire (1969), in protest against the Vietnam War and ended with Sauerbruch Hutton Architekten (2013), a minute observation into the functioning of two architects in Berlin who are “bound to the language of modernity without being dogmatic”. In the intervening 44 years he created around 120 works in myriad genres – direct cinema, television series, essay films, children’s films, narrative films, found footage works and video arts.

(2020)

Fasia Jansen Ensemble

The FASIA JANSEN ENSEMBLE is a predominantly Black-identifying choir. Together Aischa Abdirahman, Feben Amara, Yemisi Babatola, Melanie Erzuah, Jocelina Fatouma Ndimbalan, Felicia Angélique Hilgert, Doude und Ezgi Özcan rehearse the songs of the Black German activist Fasia Jansen and try out the singing of these protest songs as a form of empowerment.

(2020)

Nafiseh Fathollahzadeh


NAFISEH FATHOLLAHZADEH is a photographer and artist from Iran based in Berlin. She studied visual communication in Tehran before she went on to complete a master in photography studies and research at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. Her work focuses on urban landscapes and research-oriented photographic studies. Her recent works, like Momentography of a failure, deal with post-photography and collaborative praxis in photography. Her work investigates the role of citizen photojournalism, appropriation of space through photography and the relation between collective and individual memories of space. In 2019 she was awarded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Fotografie Education Prize for her collaborative photography and urban research project Momentography of a failure. She was also a recipient of a DAAD scholarship.

(2020)

Cedrik Fermont

CEDRIK FERMONT is a Berlin-based Belgian-Congolese composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, radio host on Colaboradio/FR-BB.org, Staalplaat and Boxout.fm, and label manager (Syrphe) who operates in the field of noise, electronic and experimental music. His compositions and installations vary from sound art and soundscapes made of found sounds and objects to more conventional, ‘dance music’ to radio projects. He has toured extensively in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and his main research focuses on electronic, electroacoustic, experimental and noise music from Asia and Africa. In 2017 he released together with Dimitri della Faille the book Not Your World Music about noise music in South-East Asia; winner of the 2017 Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics & Sound Art category.

(2020)

Fabian Ferrari

FABIAN FERRARI is a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, a multidisciplinary department based at Oxford University. In his dissertation, he focuses on the economic geography of artificial intelligence. Fabian holds an MSc in politics and communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in social sciences from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He is also a researcher at the Fairwork Foundation, an international action research project that is working to analyze and improve pay and conditions for platform workers across the world.

(2020)

Denise Ferreira da Silva

DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA is a philosopher and Director of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her academic writing and artistic practice address the ethico-political challenges of the global present. Among her publications are Toward a Global Idea of Race (2007) and A Dívida Impagavel (The Unpayable Debt, 2019), texts for the Liverpool and São Paulo Biennials (2016), Biennale di Venezia (2017) and documenta 14.

(2021)

Photo: Pascal Schmidt - “TRANSscenedene” Dove Elbe, Hamburg 2020

Elle Fierce

ELLE FIERCE (they/them) is a Trans Non-Binary, British born Jamaican-Irish artist & activist, currently based in Germany. They are classically trained in ballet & modern dance, and graduated from English National Ballet School with a BA degree in Professional Performance in 2014. After graduation they joined Northern Ballet (UK) as an artist for 3 years and have performed on stages around the world. Their most recent engagement at Oper Leipzig, as a soloist for 4 years 2017-2021. Whilst based in Leipzig (DE) alongside their work at Oper Leipzig, they developed their activism through creating club events centering QT*BiPOC’s - the 1st in Leipzig, this then progressed to creating political demonstrations and the first “Black Queer Pride” in Leipzig. This was created through their now dissolved account “Series Be:” Now a freelance artist, with a multi disciplinary approach to performance, combining their activism and life experience as a black trans body to create provocative, yet honest work.

Filastine & Nova

FILASTINE & NOVA are a multimedia duo collaborating since 2010. Grey Filastine (* 1978 in Los Angeles, USA) is a Barcelona-based video artist, composer, and producer whose premiere album Burn It! (2006) built the starting point for many critically acclaimed albums and world tours. Vocalist Nova Ruth (* 1982 in Malang, Indonesia) was part of the Indonesian rap sensation Twin Sista (Mother of Nature, 2003) and has been working in various genres with artists like Filastine, Sven Simulacrum, and Unkle Ho.
Filastine & Nova create a borderless sound, developing highly conceptual multimedia presentations, incorporating multi-screen visuals, dance, live percussion, and spoken word.

(2019)

Sebastian Fischer

SEBASTIAN FISCHER is artistic and managing director of the AfrikaFilmFestival in Cologne and works as an independent consultant for film production companies and the Goethe Institut.

(2018)

Christine Fischer

CHRISTINE FISCHER, cultural scholar and Hispanist, works at the GRASSI Museum of Ethnography in Leipzig in the areas of program planning and audience development. She is involved in delevoping a museum program that promotes social participation, multi-perspectivity, and cultural diversity in events, workshops, and projects.

(2018)

La Fleur

LA FLEUR is a transnational collective working between Berlin, Hamburg and Paris; since 2016, they have developed a highly physical performance style for a new form of theatrical work. The team brings together dancers in urban styles, DJs, actors and other stars of show business. La Fleur analyzes and choreographs French literature from a transcultural perspective. In co-production with French and German theatres, they have created the works Les Nouveaux Aristocrates (2017), based on Honoré de Balzac, and Nana ou est-ce que tu connais le bara (2019) and Körper als Unternehmen (2019), based on Émile Zola. For Pièce d’actualité n°11. Trop d’inspiration (2018) La Fleur worked on contemporary dance styles with young people at the Theater La Commune in Aubervilliers. The piece was performed at the Ruhrfestspielen and Westwind Festival in 2019.

(2019)

Lamin Fofana

LAMIN FOFANA is an electronic producer and artist. His instrumental electronic music contrasts the reality of our world with what's beyond and explores questions of movement, migration, alienation, and belonging. From Sierra Leone, he lived in Guinea, the USA, and is currently located in Berlin. Fofana started the SCI-FI & FANTASY music imprint with Paul Lee in 2012. His latest project Brancusi Sculpting Beyonce was piublished on Hundebiss Records in 2018.

(2019)

FOKN Bois

Wanlov the Kubolor and his colleague M3nsa, also known as the FOKN BOIS, are stirring up the Ghanaian music scene with their direct rap and its musical love of experimentation. Mixing traditional African music with Rap, Dub and Techno, they produce a high-energy and hypnotic sound which is then combined with fearless lyrics and politically charged humor. Their “Gospel Porn Christian Rap” is full of tightly-worded, provocative lyricism and satirical ridicule—aimed at a planet of targets, but particularly at Christians, Muslims, Rastafarians, Chinese, and whites of all kinds. They thank God they are “not a Nigerians” and are reversing the debt aid gaze in collecting coin donations to “help America”. The FOKN Bois’ 2010 debut was the soundtrack to West Africa’s first full-length Pidgin-language musical film based entirely around samples of classic African highlife records, Cos Ov Moni. Their rap album FOKN Wit Ewe was released in 2012. The Mixtape FOKN Ode To Ghana followed in 2015. FOKN Bois live in Budapest.

(2016)

Bridget Fonkeu

BRIDGET FONKEU works as academic staff at the Technical University in Dortmund; she studied at the Ruhr University in Bochum. In October 2019, she completed her PhD in Sociolinguistics. A mother of four children, Bridget Fonkeu came to Germany from Cameroon in 1998. With her advanced degree not being officially recognized in Germany, she worked as a cleaner and later began a new course of study in 2008. Since 2015, alongside a team of other immigrants, she has directed the Silent University Ruhr, an autonomous platform that engages immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers as advisors and lecturers – exactly the positions that are often denied to them at German universities and institutions. At the Silent University, Fonkeu started the Intercultural Women’s Empowerment Network to lend advice and support to other women immigrants. Fonkeu’s fields of specialization are multilingualism and languages in immigrant communities in Germany.

(2019)

Teresa Forcades i Vila

TERESA FORCADES I VILA is a doctor and holds a PhD in theology. After studying medicine in Barcelona and New York and theology at Harvard she joined the Order of Saint Benedict in 1997. As a fierce opponent of the pharmaceutical industry Forcades is particularly critical of the medicalization of society. As a theologian she is committed to strengthening the rights of gay people and women, also within the Catholic Church. In her numerous speeches and contributions to debates she campaigns for direct democracy and a more equal distribution of goods. Forcades is considered one of the most influential voices of the intellectual Left in Europe.

(2017)

Fraueninitiative Henrichshütte Hattingen

The FRAUENINITIATIVE HENRICHTSHÜTTE HATTINGEN, a women’s initiative at the Heinrichshütte Ironworks, was founded in February 1987 after the metalworkers’ union IG Metall had appealed in the union newspaper directly to the wives and partners of the ironworks employees. Information exchange was initially the focus of the event for the union, but the women who attended soon articulated a desire to immediately undertake something more. From this impetus at the initial meeting a women’s resolution was adopted and an independent women’s general assembly was convened in order to officially form the women’s initiative. One of its members described the composition of the group especially aptly:
“More than a hundred women attend the inaugural meeting. It is a diverse troop that has stepped up, a ‘community born of necessity’, one that with their various educational backgrounds, ages and political positions had found a common denominator in a deep material and psychological concern. Only four members are ‘real’ ironworks women, that is, themselves employees at the plant (one of them the only woman in the workers’ council). The majority are wives, whose husbands are workers in the plant, and what is especially astonishing: also in attendance are several ‘sympathizers’ who have no connection to the ironworks at all.” (Prinz: Das Engagement der Frauen in Stadt und Gemeinde [The engagement of women in city and community], 1990, p. 71).

(2020)

Gunnar Friel

GUNNAR FRIEL studied at the Academy for Media Arts Cologne under Valie Export. As a media artist he investigates social qualities of spaces and their relationship to materials and digital technology. In collaboration with Anja Vormann he has been realizing interventions and installations in public spaces since 2003. In 2003 they have been awarded at the H.W. & J. Hector Prize for Young Art and 2006 at the German Video Art Prize Marl. In 2006 they participated in the 5th Biennale for Contemporary Art Busan in South Corea. Recently, their works were exhibited at Loop Video Art Barcelona, Linz 09 European Capital of Culture, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Times Museum Guangzhou. Between 2015 - 2018 Gunnar Friel worked as research artist and visiting professor at the Centro University in Mexico City. For his video project Dialogues with the Archive he received the International Research Grant of the Casa Planas and the Goethe Institute Barcelona in 2020.

(2020)

Christian Fritzenwanker

CHRISTIAN FRITZENWANKER is a Hair and Make-Up Artist currently based in Berlin. After studying in Austria, he has been working in Berlin, London, Paris and Los Angeles for international productions in fashion, film and art. His work has appeared in leading publications such as Harpers Bazar, Self Service, ID, Dazed and Confused, Another Man, American Vogue, Elle, Quest, 032c, Fantastic Man, Metal, Wallpaper, Pop, Baku, Candy and many more. He has been awarded numerous awards such as the ADC, Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View On Fashion and the Elite award. Fritzenwanker’s long-standing and wide professional experience in his field of fashion editorials, photography, advertising and film has recently led him to expand his work into art productions in galleries, theatres and museums – such as a collaboration with Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon for the play Neck of the Woods starring Charlotte Rampling at the Manchester International Festival.

(2022)

Malte Fröhlich

MALTE FRÖHLICH was born in Berlin 1987. He studied at Universität der Künste Berlin, in the Professional Media Master Class (PMMC) at Werkleitz and at Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He works as assistant director and production assistant, director and cameraman in the fields of theater, performance, film. He has worked many years in the field of social work as well. Is work was exhibited in Berlin, Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, Lyon, Marseille, Paris and other cities. His Films were screened at Film festivals in Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar and Berlin. Malte works in Cologne and Berlin and he lives in Cologne-Kalk.

(2019)

<!--M.S. KALK: M.S. BILANZ

M.S. KALK: Arrival City Kalk – Von (Lebens-)Entwürfen und (Wohn-)Biografien

M.S. KALK: First Kalker Sucuk-Party

M.S. KALK: One Day in Kalk

M.S. KALK: M.S. HALLEN KALK

M.S. KALK: Malte’s Memory Sunday & Mapping Kalk

M.S. KALK: MEMORY STATION

M.S. KALK: Get on Board!

Ye Fu

YE FU (Zheng Shiping) was born in Enshi, in the Hubei province of China. He belongs to the ethnic minority group of the Tujias. As intellectuals, he and his family were relocated to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. From 1978 to 1981 he studied Chinese literature and culture at the Hubei Institute for Nationalities. During that time he began to write and quickly gained fame in the literary underground scene in China. From 1986 to 1988 he continued his studies of Chinese literature at Wuhan University, where he also organised the “Hubei Post-modern Poetry Salon”. In 1986 he published a collection of poems with the title “The Night Howl of Wolfs”.

After graduation he was assigned a job at a public security unit in Hainan. He quit the job in 1989 to support the students at Tiananmen Square. After the bloody military suppression of the protests, he was sentenced to six years in prison. Following his release he was running a publishing house in Beijing for ten years.

Today he is a freelance writer, who is well known throughout China. Apart from publishing poetry and fiction, he also writes essays and reportage, as well as screenplays and scripts for television (for example the TV series “My Father’s War”, which was successfully broadcasted in China in 2009).

Since his work has not yet been translated into other languages, he is less well known in western countries.

Ye Fu has received many awards, among them the “Contribution Award of Contemporary Chinese” in 2009, a prize set up by the Beijing Institute of Contemporary Chinese Language; the non-fiction award from the Taipei International Book Exhibition in 2010; and the “Freedom of Writing Prize“ from the Independent Chinese PEN Centre in 2011.

His works include:

• Under the River, (Jiangshang de muqin), essay collection, Taipei 2009
• Paijian dong lai huan jiuchou, Selected essays of Ye Fu, Hong Kong 2009
• My father's war, novel (later rewritten as TV series script), Beijing 2009, reprinted in Hong Kong 2010
• Earth Lament, essay collection, Beijing 2010
• Xiangguan hechu, selected essays, Beijing 2012

In 2013 he was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Isabella Fürnkäs

ISABELLA FÜRNKÄS (*1988 in Tokyo) is the recipient of the Förderpreis des Landes NRW for media art and of the Paris Cité Internationale des Arts grant. In 2017 she received a travel grant from the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen as well as a residency from the Goethe Institute. She is a Meisterschüler of Andreas Gursky, studied with Keren Cytter and Johannes Paul Raether at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at the Universität der Künste Berlin as a guest student with Hito Steyerl. Previously, she studied art history and philosophy at the Universität zu Köln, the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, as well as fine arts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien. She uses different media such as drawing and video in her work and combines them into installations with performances. Since 2015 she has also worked as part of a performance duo with Lukas von der Gracht. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Nam June Paik Art Center Seoul, the Museum Abteiberg (with Lukas von der Gracht), CSA Space Vancouver, and in the project space of the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf.

(2017)

G

Gala Drop

GALA DROP is a Lisbon-based quartet that was founded in 2003 by keyboarder Nelson Gomes and guitarist Tiago Miranda and completed by drummer Afonso Simões. Their first, self-titled album was released in 2010. Their second record, II, came out in 2014.

(2014)

Nancy Garín

NANCY GARÍN is an independent journalist, art researcher and curator. She works in projects related to critical thinking, new pedagogies, archives, memory and decolonialism. She is the co-founder of the research platforms Equipo re (and Espectros de lo Urbano).

https://puntorojo.org/

(2022)

Christian Gärtner

CHRISTIAN GÄRTNER, an economist, is interested in the socioeconomic correlations between the economy, architecture and design. He is the founder and CEO of Urban Standards, a design and strategy consultancy that develops urban planning and mobility concepts, and also integrates contemporary urbanisation trends with the demands for a sustainable mobility policy.

(2019)

Richard Gebhardt

Political scientist RICHARD GEBHARDT is a freelance publicist and civic education trainer in Cologne. He is the author of numerous scientific contributions to books and journals, with a focus on the extremist, new and populist Right. His journalistic works have been published in ZEIT Online, Jungle World, StadtRevue and in German as well as international political periodicals. He published the book Volksgemeinschaft statt Kapitalismus? Zur sozialen Demagogie der Neonazis (PapyRossa Verlag 2009), in which he analyzes the phenomenon of successful vote catching by neo-Nazis using anti-capitalist slogans. In May 2017, he will publish an anthology on the return of hooligans in stadiums and on the streets.

(2017)

Alexandra Gerbaulet

‘The artist as burglar’, this could be the framework of ALEXANDRA GERBAULET practice. She breaks into spaces and dissolves frontiers. The body, the house, the village, the land: In her works geographies of ‘the familiar’ are revealed as closed institutions based on exclusions.” (Katharina Sykora)

(2020)

Salome Gersch

Spinning around, overlooking a backyard in Northern Paris, Martha H. and Salome G. work on uncovering the institutionalization of a linguistic expression – the German word ‘man’ – which they consider to be a speech act, for it shapes the lives and minds of mankind in an unfortunate way, as the two researchers M. H. and S. G. perceive it.

(2020)

Richard Gabriel Gersch

RICHARD GABRIEL GERSCH works in various areas of film. He worked as a script editor at Tobis Film GmbH and most recently on various projects of Komplizen Film in different areas of production. He works with various (video-) artists including Yael Bartana, Lene Berg, and Susanne Sachsse.

(2022)

Bassam Ghazi

BASSAM GHAZI shifts between cultures and perspectives and trades in histories and stories: biographic, post-migrant, diverse, inclusive, non-integrated. He is a theatre educator, director and artistic director of the Import Export Collective at Schauspiel Köln. He offers workshops and training programs on diversity, intersectionality, discrimination and racism for educational and cultural institutions. Bassam Ghazi is a member of the Alliance of Critical Cultural Practitioners and curator for the festival Augenblick mal! 2021.

(2021)

Marialaura Ghidini

MARIALAURA GHIDINI, contemporary art curator and researcher; faculty at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India.

(2021)

Maxime Gids

MAXIME GIDS is a filmmaker who reinvents the wheel on a regular basis, in order to better understand how it works, to get to grips with it, to have fun. Sometimes, in the middle of the journey, the process of reinvention forks and gives rise to new tools, new perspectives, new works.

(2021)

Monika Gintersdorfer

MONIKA GINTERSDORFER is director and co-founder of La Fleur. Between 2000 and 2004 she regularly produced works at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Münchner Kammerspielen and Salzburger Festspiele. In 2004 she founded the actionist group Rekolonisation with Jochen Dehn in Hamburg, and since 2005 has directed the performance group Gintersdorfer/Klaßen in collaboration with Knut Klaßen. Monika Gintersdorfer is a founding member of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World).

(2017)

Antonella Giurano

ANTONELLA GIURANO is founder of the Italian cultural association Mondo Aperto/Offene Welt e.V., member of the women’s association Buntes FrauenNetzwerk e.V. and of the Integration Council Cologne. On Saturdays, she likes to go shopping for Italian food in Cologne-Kalk, for example, at the delicatessen IAIA, where you can get the typical fennel salsiccia (sausage). She’s originally from Sardinia.

(2019)

Pablo Giw

PABLO GIW is a trumpet player and sound artist from Cologne. He is active in improvised and experimental music scenes.

(2017)

Thomas Gläßer

THOMAS GLÄSSER lives and works in Cologne and Berlin. A musician, program director and cultural activist, he founded the platform Zentrum für Aktuelle Musik e.V. alongside other musicians in 2006. In the field of current and contemporary music he has curated international concert series (Reconstructing Song, Reverse Exotism, Outskirts) and created festivals (Invocation, Night of Surprise, Digging the Global South) and conferences as well as artistic, pedagogic projects and local cultural and political initiatives.

(2017)

Fernando Godoy

FERNANDO GODOY is sound artist and producer based in Valparaiso. His work is focused on sound research and listening as an experience and social phenomenon. He has worked as director of the Tsonami Festival for more than ten years. As an artist he has produced radio works, sound installations, experimental compositions, sound performances and web projects, performing in Chile, Peru, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Italy, Australia, Greece and Germany. Currently he is the director of the Tsonami Sound Art Festival, director of B.A.S.E Tsonami sound art center, co-curator of Sala BASE sound art gallery, co-editor of the Sound Art and Culture Magazine AURAL, artistic director of Radio Tsonami, editor of the Tsonami Records label and the Audiomapa platform.

(2020)

Joel Suárez Gómez

JOEL SUÁREZ GÓMEZ was born in 1988 in Holguín, Cuba. After graduating from Escuela Nacional de Ballet de La Habana, he joined the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC), later becoming part of the company Danza Contemporánea de Cuba (DCC). As a visual artist, he was invited to the 11th Bienal de Artes Plásticas de La Habana. Since 2013 Gómez has been living in Berlin, where he develops personal projects and practices, collaborating with Sasha Waltz & Guests, Mouvoir (Stephanie Thiersch), and other artists around the world. He is part of an emerging group working with ‘Present Time Composition’, an improvisational method for musicians developed by Allan Bern. Interdisciplinary collaborations, new performative practices, analysis, community, recycling and friendship are the main concepts that characterize his artistic concerns.

(2021)

Muriel González Athenas

MURIEL GONZÁLEZ ATHENAS has a PhD in history and is research staff at the Ruhr University Bochum. Her work focuses on gender history, the history of labor and the cultural history of economics, cartographic construction of Europe, and feminist epistemology and methods. She works with these themes not only from a scientific perspective but also a political one. She has published, among others, works on the history of craftswomen in the early modern era and an anthology with students on the history of feminism: Feminismus in historischer Perspektive. Eine Re-aktualisierung [Feminism in historical perspective: A re-update] (Bielefeld, 2014). She is the editor of the Spanish new edition of the SCUM Manifesto (Valerie Solanas, Society for Cutting Up Men). She is currently working with maps and the genesis of the Eurocentric image of Europe.

(2020)

Avery F. Gordon

AVERY F. GORDON is a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a visiting professor at the Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. She is the author of various scholarly articles and monographs including, most recently, The Hawthorn Archive: Letters from the Utopian Margins (2017) and Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (2nd edition 2008). As part of dOCUMENTA 13 she developed Notes for the Breitenau Room of The Workhouse with artist Ines Schaber as part of the series 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts.

(2018)

© Michelle Steinkühler

Alicia Gorny

ALICIA GORNY has recently become a mother and is currently a recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the History of the Ruhr Foundation. There she pursues her dissertation project Die Unorganisierbaren. Weibliche Gewerkschaftsarbeit in der Bekleidungsindustrie [The Unorganizables: Women’s Trade Union Work in the Clothing Industry]. She completed her MA in history and gender studies in 2018 at the Ruhr University Bochum with her thesis Unsichtbare Motoren. Die Fraueninitiative Hattingen während des Hüttenstreiks 1986/87 [Invisible Engines: The Hattingen Women’s Initiative during the Steelworks Strike of 1986/87]. She has also been commissioned to develop a leadership concept for the LWL-Industriemuseum Henrichshütte Ironworks Hattingen with a particular regard for gender issues. Her BA work focused on the connection between alcoholism, violence and masculinity in the military. Between 2009 and 2013 she studied film and directing.

(2020)

Ahmad Gossein

AHMAD GHOSSEIN (* 1981 in Beirut) is an artist and filmmaker. In his works based on documentary materials he combines video art, installation, and photography. His work has been shown in numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Oslo Kunstforening, and the Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea, as well as in major film festivals like the Berlinale and the Cannes and Dubai film festivals.

(2018)

Miriam Gossing

As a directors duo Miriam Gossing and Lina Sieckmann have produced several short films on 16-mm film, in which urban and private architecture, hyper- staged environment, subcultural individuals and the notion of desire are examined – combining documentary imagery with fiction and found footage.Their works are characterised by the depth of research and contact with communities and individuals, as well as by the clear lines in their approach to architecture and the worlds which shape desire, fear, anxiety, and alienation.

Their films have been awarded with numerous grants and scholarships and are shown internationally on film festivals and in art institutions, among them International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Anthology Film Archives New York City, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum fur Gegenwart Berlin).

Since 2019 they are hosting Blonde Cobra - Festival for Queer and Experimental Cinema in Cologne together with Lara Levi Nickel, a multidisciplinary festival for film, performance, theory and music. Currently they are working on their first hybrid feature film Sirens Call with ZDF - Das Kleine Fernsehspiel about a subculture of mer-beings in Portland, Oregon (USA).

They live and work in Köln.

2009-2015 Academy of Media Arts Cologne, with Prof. Matthias Müller, Prof. Phil Collins, Prof. Sophie Maintigneux, Prof. Marie Luise Angerer, Prof. Johannes Wohnseifer
Since 2012 Collaboration as directors duo Gossing / Sieckmann
2015 Diploma with honors
2016-2017 Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, Class Prof. Rita Mc Bride

(2024)

Film Still: Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices)/Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré/2022

Raphaël Grisey

RAPHAËL GRISEY. Born in 1979, lives in Berlin. Grisey uses film, editorial and photographic works to address politics of memory, architecture, migration and farming ( such as the films Prvi Deo, Red Star 2006 mit F. Lazar; Cooperative, 2008; The Exchange of Perspectives; Minhocão, 2011; Amor e Progresso, 2014; Remanescentes 2015).

BOUBA TOURÉ. 1948-2022, lived in Paris and Somankidi Coura, Mali. He lived in France in the Foyer Pinel from 1965 and worked at the metal factory Chausson until 1969. He studied at the Vincennes University and was a projectionist at Cinema 14 Juillet and L’entrepôt, Paris. Photographer since the 1970s, he documented the lives and struggles of migrant workers and peasants in France and Mali. Touré co-founded the Co-op of Somankidi Coura in 1977. In 2015, he published the book Notre case est à Saint Denis, Xérographes Publishers. Since the 1980s, Touré has exhibited works and given talks in associative and foyer’s circles and more recently in art institutions. His photographic work has been presented amongst other places at the Bamako Encounters 2019 and in the Hamburg photography Triennale in 2022.

Since 2006 Touré and Grisey worked together on collaborative projects with the current name of Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive since 2015. It lead to various workshops, film and theatre production for example with the theatre group Kaddu Yaraax in 2017 and 2019, as well as publications and texts, such as Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive *(2017, Archives Book publishers) Their works were shown amongst other venue at Kàddu Yaraax Theatre Forum Festival (SN), Kunsthall Trondheim (NO), Archive Kabinett, Savvy Contemporary, HKW, Neue Berliner Kunstverein (DE), Den Fries (DK), 9th Contour Biennale (BE), Parco Arte Vivente (IT), Un Lieu pour Respirer, Centre Pompidou (FR), Dhaka Art Summit (BD), Open Justice (CA) and in Konsthall Göteborg (SE). Their long feature film *Xarassi Xanne - Crossing Voices has been awarded in 2022 at the Festival du Réel and at the Toronto Hotdocs Festival amongst others.

(2023)

Yoeri Guépin

The artistic practice of YOERI GUÉPIN comprises installations, (lecture-) performances and collaborative research projects in which various archival material is recontextualised. His work has been exhibited at ENSAPC YGREC in Paris, at Ormston House in Limerick and at TENT Rotterdam. He has also given lectures at various institutions.

(2018)

Ayşe Güleç

AYŞE GÜLEÇ is a researching activist and cultural worker in self-organized initiatives in the fields of migration, postcolonialism, anti-racism and art, such as the April 6th initiative and the “Unravelling NSU Complex” Tribunal. She worked as the community liaison at the artistic director’s office of documenta 14 in Kassel. Ayşe Güleç studied social pedagogy at the University of Kassel and started working in the field of migration and (inter-)cultural education at the Schlachthof cultural centre in 1998. She developed the documenta 12 advisory board and was a member of the Maybe Education Group at documenta 13.

(2019)

Kübra Gümüşay

KÜBRA GÜMÜŞAY is a journalist, blogger and public speaker. As a freelance author, she contributes to Die Zeit, Zeit Campus, taz and other media. She reports on politics, Islam, racism, feminism and social media at universities, conferences, in the press, and on radio & TV. In addition, she works as a social media consultant at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.
She is currently an ambassador against racism with the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency. Her blog, Ein Fremdwörterbuch, was nominated for the Grimme Online Award in 2011. She currently lives in Oxford, UK.

(2016)

Xiaolu Guo

XIAOLU GUO was born in China in 1973. She currently divides her time between London and New York and is a writer-in-residence at Columbia University. She has published collections of poetry, short stories, film theory and novels. Besides her work as a writer, Guo has directed documentary and feature films, some of which have won major awards. Stadt der Steine (2005) is the first novel to be published in German translation. The English edition of the book (Village of Stones, 2004) was nominated for the Foreign Fiction Prize by The Independent newspaper in April 2005. Her international breakthrough came with A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007). The most recent German-language edition was Ich bin China (2014; I am China) and her memoir Es war einmal im fernen Osten (2018; Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing up, 2017), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017.

(2020)

© Mark Sommerfeld

Abeer Gupta

ABEER GUPTA is the director of Krishnakriti Foundation in Hyderabad. He is also a director of the Achi Association India. He has directed several documentary films and curated art, education and community media projects. He directed A Day’s Job, a documentary short (2006) and executive produced Siddharth, the Prisoner, a fiction feature (2007) which received the Critic’s Choice Award at the second annual Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), Gold Coast, Australia, 2008 and Best Actor Award for Rajat Kapoor at the 10th Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, 2008.
In 2010 Gupta received a fellowship from the Cluster of Excellence – Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows, Heidelberg University, Germany on the theme “Circulation of Popular Images and Media in Muslim Religious Spheres”. In 2011 Gupta received the Early Career Film Fellowships at Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), and initiated the documentation of oral histories around the advent and the contemporary material and visual culture of Islam in the western Himalayas.
He has participated in several group shows, such as Project Cinema City (NGMA India, 2012), Fibre Fables (The Stainless Gallery, New Delhi, 2015) and Witness to Paradise (Singapore Biennale, 2016). He co-curated Atoot dor: Unbroken Thread: The Banarasi Brocade Sari at Home and in the World (National Museum, New Delhi, 2016) and curated Old Routes, New Journeys II (Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal, 2017), Graphic Storytelling in India (KNMA, New Delhi, 2018) and Urban Frames, Visual Practices and Transitions (Hyderabad City, 2019).< br /> Gupta has a long experience of teaching, prominently at the National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), Ambedkar University (Delhi) and conducted a series of lectures at the School of Art and Aesthetics, JNU (Delhi). He researches oral histories, material cultures and visual archives in the western Himalayas. He has published widely, including The Visual and Material Culture of Islam in Ladakh (2014), Discovering the Self and Others in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh (Sage, 2014) and A Sense of Place: Islam in the Western Himalaya (Marg, 2018). Gupta has a master’s degree in visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths College, London. 

(2020)

Shilpa Gupta

SHILPA GUPTA (b. 1976, India) lives and works in Mumbai. She creates artworks using objects, photographs, interactive video and sound. Gupta is interested in human perception, and her work explores how objects get defined, be it places, people, experiences, and finds herself looking at zones where these definitions get played out, be it borderlines, labels and ideas of censorship and security. She studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art (Sculpture). She has had solo shows at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz and Arnolfini in Bristol; and has participated in biennales in Venice, Berlin, Kochi, Lyon, Gwangju, Havana, Yokohama and Liverpool, among others. Her work has been shown at the MoMA, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Devi Art Foundation, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Mori Museum. In 2021, she will have solo shows at Muhka in Antwerp, Barbican in London and at Dallas Contemporary.

(2021)

Rupali Gupte

RUPALI GUPTE, architect and urbanist; co-founder and faculty at the School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai.

(2021)

Lütfiye Güzel © Ben Knabe

Lütfiye Güzel

LÜTFIYE GÜZEL (1972, Duisburg) describes herself as a poet and works in between Berlin and the Ruhr Area. Since 2014 she publishes her poems and prose in her own label * go-güzel-publishing. She teaches writing in Poetry-Workshops and is jury member of national literature awards in Berlin (Treffen junger Autor*innen).
2017 she received the Literaturpreis Ruhr. Her new book *nahezu nichts gelingt
[almost nothing works] has been published in march 2020.

(2020)

H

Kien Nghi Ha

KIEN NGHI HA is a fellow of the Institute for Post-colonial and Transcultural studies at the University of Bremen and an independent curator. He has held research positions at New York University, the University of Heidelberg and the University of Tübingen. He has curated at the Haus der Kulturen der Weltat, the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre and the Federal Agency for Civic Education in Berlin. His research focuses on post-colonial criticism, migration and Asian diasporic studies. His latest monograph Unrein und vermischt (transcript, 2010) was awarded with the Augsburg Academic Prize for Intercultural Studies in 2011.

(2016)

Ayesha Hameed

AYESHA HAMEED addresses borders and migration, critical race theory and the visual cultures of the Black Atlantic in her research and performance-based work. Her artistic works have been shown at ICA London, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Kunstraum Niederösterreich, among others. She currently teaches and conducts research at Goldsmiths, University of London.

(2019)

Jan Peter Hammer

The artist and filmmaker JAN PETER HAMMER (*1970 in Kirchheim unter Teck) lives and works in Berlin. His works have been shown internationally, including The Beast and the Sovereign at MACBA, Barcelona & Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2015); Toys Redux – On Play and Critique at Migros Museum, Zurich; Athens Biennale (2013); Without Reality There Is No Utopia at CAAC – Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla (2011).

(2017)

Stefano Harney


STEFANO HARNEY and Fred Moten are the authors of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and All Incomplete (2020) both from Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. Stefano is Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Fred teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. They have been friends and writing partners for almost forty years.

(2022)

Photo: Kinda Hassan

Kinda Hassan

Kinda Hassan is a libanese multimedia artist who works with video and sound among other art forms. She has exhibited her artwork in a number of local and international festivals and art galleries, including Transmediale in Berlin, MUCEM Museum in Marseille and La Maréchalerie Art Center in Versailles, Mumok Museum in Vienna, Zawya Cinema in Cairo, Oberhausen Film Festival in Oberhausen, at the Anthology Film Archives in New York, Werkleitz Festival in Halle, Casa Arabe in Madrid and Cordoba, Metropolis Cinema in Beirut, Al-Riwaq Gallery in Bahrain, and City Of Women in Ljubljana. Hassan completed her Master's degree in Fine Arts at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts ALBA in 2007 and her Sound Design Master’s degree at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts ESBA-TALM in 2018.

In 2021–2022 she was Artist-in-Residence at Akademie der Künste der Welt together with Mohammad Shawky Hassan. Kinda Hassan and Mohammad Shawky Hassan met in Cairo in the summer of 2017, and started working together on the sonic concept and soundtrack design of the film Shall I Compare You in a Summer’s Day? in December 2018. Taking Arab folktales as its formal reference, and Egyptian pop music as its primary sonic material, Shall I compare You to a Summer’s Day? is a queer contemporary take on One Thousand and One Nights. The project consists of a research-based essay film and a publication that attempt to expand the possibilities of pop cultural genera, such as music videos, musical theatre and TV series, in order to explore the ways in which a queer lover’s discourse could emerge from traditional modes of storytelling and various registers of language deeply rooted in Arab popular culture.

(2022)

Photo: Mohammad Shawky Hassan

Mohammad Shawky Hassan

Mohammad Shawky Hassan is an Egyptian filmmaker and video artist. He studied philosophy, film directing and cinema studies at the American University in Cairo, The Academy of Cinematic Arts & Sciences and Columbia University. His film And on a Different Note (2015) premiered at the Berlinale Forum Expanded, and was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of its permanent collection. His work has been shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), MUCEM, Sursock Museum, Sheffield DocFest and Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) among others. He is currently a Braunschweig Projects fellow at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK) and a lecturer at Humboldt University’s Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies.

In 2021–2022 he was Artist-in-Residence at Akademie der Künste der Welt together with Kinda Hassan. Kinda Hassan and Mohammad Shawky Hassan met in Cairo in the summer of 2017, and started working together on the sonic concept and soundtrack design of the film Shall I Compare You in a Summer’s Day? in December 2018. Taking Arab folktales as its formal reference, and Egyptian pop music as its primary sonic material, Shall I compare You to a Summer’s Day? is a queer contemporary take on One Thousand and One Nights. The project consists of a research-based essay film and a publication that attempt to expand the possibilities of pop cultural genera, such as music videos, musical theatre and TV series, in order to explore the ways in which a queer lover’s discourse could emerge from traditional modes of storytelling and various registers of language deeply rooted in Arab popular culture.2021–2022 war Kinda Hassan gemeinsam mit Mohammad Shawky Hassan Artist-in-Residence der Akademie der Künste der Welt. Kinda Hassan und Mohammad Shawky Hassan lernten sich im Sommer 2017 in Kairo kennen und begannen im Dezember 2018 mit der gemeinsamen Arbeit am Klangkonzept des Films Shall I Compare You in a Summer's Day?. Mit arabischen Volksmärchen als formaler Referenz und ägyptischer Popmusik als primärem Soundquelle ist Shall I compare You to a Summer's Day? eine queere zeitgenössische Interpretation von Tausendundeine Nacht. Das Projekt besteht aus einem recherchebasierten Essayfilm sowie einer Publikation und versucht, die Grenzen popkultureller Genres wie Musikvideos, Musiktheater und Fernsehserien zu erweitern. Dabei soll erforscht werden, wie - ausgehend von traditionellen Formen des Storytelling und sprachlichen Normen, die tief in der arabischen Populärkultur verwurzelt sind - die Geschichte eines queeren Liebespaar erzählt werden kann.

(2022)

© Katja Ruge

Alice Hasters

ALICE HASTERS, born 1989 in Cologne, lives in Berlin. She studied journalism in Munich and has worked for Tagesschau and RBB, among others. In September 2019, her book Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten [What white people do not want to hear about racism, but should know] was published by hanserblau. She and Maxi Häcke have a monthly podcast on feminism and pop culture called Feuer & Brot.

(2020)

Emma Haugh

EMMA HAUGH is a visual artist and educator based in Dublin and Berlin. Weaving together installation, performance, publishing and collaborative workshop techniques, she is interested in re-orienting attention in relation to cultural narratives and develops work from a queer/feminist questioning of what is missing?. She is the editor of ‘Having A Kiki - Queer Desire & Public Space’ published by PVA, and is co-founder of the artistic-curatorial collective the Many Headed Hydra.

(2018)

Lydia Hauth

LYDIA HAUTH, ethnologist, has worked at the GRASSI Museum for Ethnography in Leipzig since 2014. As a volunteer and research associate she has coordinated and curated several special exhibitions in the series Grassi invites.

(2018)

Ramon Haze

The figure of the collector and art detective RAMON HAZE was “discovered” by the artists Andreas Grahl and Holmer Feldmann in 1997. Since then they have reconstructed his art collection called “The Cabinet”. From Marcel Duchamp to Andreas Baader and Jeff Koons, it covers almost a hundred years of cultural history.

(2017)

Nanna Heidenreich

NANNA HEIDENREICH (*1970) is professor for Transcultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She is a media & cultural studies scholar as well as a curator for film, video as well as political & theoretical interventions. Curatorial works include Forum Expanded at the Berlinale (2008-2017), HKW (2016/17), Hotspots. Migration and the Sea, ADKDW, 2019. Her most recent project was Auslaufende Umwelten, developed together with Marcus Held for Kunstverein D21 in Leipzig. Her research areas include postcolonial media theory, critical migration studies, image politics, art & activism, queer cinema, oceanic perspectives and most recently, the discourse on the so-called invasive species. She lives in Vienna & Berlin.
nannaheidenreich.net.

(2022)

Ágnes Heller

ÁGNES HELLER is a Hungarian philosopher and a Holocaust survivor. She was one of the key members of the Budapest School, a forum formed by philosopher Georg Lukács in the early 1960s to promote the renewal of Marxist criticism in the face of really existing socialism in Hungary. Heller emigrated to New York in 1986, where she became Hannah Arendt’s successor as chair for philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. She authored numerous works, among others Everyday Life (Routledge Kegan & Paul 1984), The Theory of Need in Marx (Allison and Busby 1976) and Can Modernity Survive? (polity press 1990). In 2016, her essay Von der Utopie zur Dystopie: Was können wir uns wünschen? (Edition Konturen) was released.

(2017)

Stefan Helmreich

STEFAN HELMREICH is an anthropologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In his award-winning book Alien Ocean (2009) he accompanies marine biologists in their deep-sea research. In a new book project he deals with the forensics and mediality of waves and their measurements in the time of climate change.


(2019)

Louis Henderson

LOUIS HENDERSON (*1983 in Norwich, UK) is a filmmaker whose works investigate connections between colonialism, technology, capitalism, and history. He has shown his work at places such as Rotterdam International Film Festival, Doclisboa, CPH:DOX, New York Film Festival, Contour Biennial, Kiev Biennial, Centre Pompidou, SAVVY Contemporary, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Tate Britain. He lives in Lisbon and Paris.

(2016)

Daniel Hendrickson

DANIEL HENDRICKSON is a translator, musician, and member of the artist group CHEAP. He lives and works in Berlin.

(202)

Corazon Herbsthofer

Photo: Steph Martyniuk

Sheila Heti

SHEILA HETI was born in 1978 in Toronto, where she currently lives. She is the author of the international bestseller How Should a Person Be? (2010), which became an essential read for millennials. She co-authored Women in Clothes (2014) with Leanne Shapton and Heidi Julavits, another influential work featuring texts, images and numerous interviews on women and fashion. She writes for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her diverse body of work, ranging from drama to stage shows, ingeniously combines elements of art, autobiography and journalism. The New York Times listed her among the 15 most significant women who shape the way we read and write literature in the 21st century.

(2021)

Tatiana Heuman

TATIANA HEUMAN works as a musician and producer. Her unique approach to musical production was founded essentially in a free, intuitive and experimental self-made territory where genres and tags are fluid and in permanent mutation. After two EPs released in 2014 and 2016, her first album QEEI was released in August 2018 on New York based label Astro Nautico. She has toured all around Europe, USA, Mexico and South America. Her solo work and collaborations were presented on venues and festivals such as Mutek Buenos Aires, Volta festival, MONOM Funkhaus, Tauron Nowa Muzyka festival, Heroines of Sound, MACBA, HeK Basel, CTM festival, Alice Chp, Sophiensæle, Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Casino Luxembourg. Her aesthetic language has been enriched through collaborations with artists from various art fields working on sound design and music composition for films and performing arts. In 2018 Tatiana starts collaborating with performer and choreographer Olivia Hyunsin Kim. During 2019 she worked on the piece Neither God, nor Master or Husband for Kunst Radio in collaboration with Florencia Curci and Anna Raimondo, which addresses feminist contagion in Buenos Aires as the main topic. Tatiana actively develops a series of music production laboratories and workshops with the principle of understanding listening and audio processing as a means of manifestation. She is part of the communities #VIVAS (female* sounds platform), TRRUENO and female:pressure. Tatiana Heuman studied Dance, Corporal Expression (UNA), Expanded Music (UNSAM) in Argentina.

(2020)

Sandi Hilal

Sandi Hilal (born in Palestine) is an architect based in Bethlehem. She is consultant with the UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) on the camp improvement programme and visiting professor at Al-Quds/Bard College Palestine. She is founding member of DAAR as well as Campus in Camps.
She is co-author of several research projects, such as “Stateless Nation” with Alessandro Petti and “Border Devices” with Multiplicity, which are published and exhibited internationally.

In 2013 she was together with Alessandro Petti a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Photo: Miguel Hilari

Miguel Hilari

MIGUEL HILARI (born 1985 in Hamburg) is a filmmaker based in La Paz, Bolivia. His films address tensions between countryside and city, migration, colonial history and indigenous culture. They have been shown and won awards at various international film festivals. He also organizes film workshops in schools.

(2022)

Dirk Hildebrandt

DIRK HILDEBRANDT is a research assistant at the Department of Art History at the University of Cologne. He studied art history and philosophy in Bonn, Paris and Basel and wrote his doctorate on the relationship between work and practice in Allan Kaprow’s art. His current research focuses on artistic publication strategies in modern and contemporary art, the networks of European postwar art and the examination of the globalized situation of contemporary art.

(2021)

Felicia Angélique Hilgert

FELICIA ANGÉLIQUE, worked in business before she switched to education in 2015 and began working as a teacher at Sankofa e.V. She has been singing in the ComChor choir under the direction of Dr. Dr. Daniele Daude for five years. In September 2020 she began her studies in music education and social work at the FH Clara Hoffbauer in Potsdam with a focus on youth work and resilience. Felicia Angélique aka Feelicia.Sunflower is a part of the Fasia Jansen Ensemble, which is very dear to her heart.

(2020)

Photo: Katja Illner

Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz

MAX JORGE HINDERER CRUZ is a Bolivian-German writer, curator and philosopher. From March 2019 to June 2020 he was Director of the National Museum of Art (MNA) in La Paz, where he founded the museum's Program for Decolonial Studies in Art (PED) and was responsible for generating a historical change of the institutional profile. His work at the museum has been recognized by the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), being considered a reference in the international museum community for its developments in the fields of social inclusion and education.

As curator and cultural programmer (selection): from 2008 to 2011 he was curator of the exhibition and publication project Principio Potosí (Museo Reina Sofía Madrid/Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin/MNA and MUSEF La Paz - with Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann). From 2014 to 2016 he was coordinator of P.A.C.A. (Program of Autonomous Cultural Actions) and Seminário Público Micropolíticas in São Paulo (with Suely Rolnik, Amilcar Packer and Tatiana Roque). With Paul B. Preciado, Margarita Tsomou and Nelli Kambouri he organized the Apatride Society as part of the Documenta14 public program in Athens and Kassel between 2016 and 2017. In 2017 he was invited by Chimurenga’s Pan African Space Station, to co-program a section of their project Angazi, but I’m sure. at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.

Hinderer Cruz is author of the book Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa - program in progress (Afterall Books/MIT Press, 2013 - with Sabeth Buchmann) and, amongst others, editor of Art and Ideology Critique After 1989 (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König/Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2013 – with E. Birkenstock, et al.). Most recently, Hinderer Cruz published LA DEUDA CON LA BELLEZA. Textos 2019-2021 (PCP Programa Cultura Política, La Paz, 2022).

His texts and cultural critique have been published in Spanish, German, English, Portuguese and French, in various formats in catalogues, magazines, and international newspapers in Europe, Africa, the USA and Latin America. Hinderer Cruz regularly publishes essays in the Bolivian newspaper La Razón.

Hinderer Cruz was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) in 2016 and has been an active ADKDW member since 2018. He was the artistic director of ADKDW from 2022-2023.

Helmut Höge

HELMUT HÖGE, a journalist and author, writes about animals – including as a columnist and “Aushilfshausmeister” at Die Tageszeitung (taz) – and about non-Darwinian biology. His work also often deals with symbioses and correlations – keeping his eyes and ears open for interesting things. He is the author of the recently published book Die lustige Tierwelt und ihre ernste Erforschung (2018).

(2019)

Photo: Tom Holert

Tom Holert

TOM HOLERT works as an independent scholar and curator. He authored and co-authored various books on topics pertaining to the politics of the image, historical and contemporary art’s relation to knowledge production, migratory aesthetics, and the visual cultures of war education. He also organized exhibitions—such as Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930 (with Anselm Franke), and Education Shock. Learning, Politics and Architecture in the 1960s and 1970s, both at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. In 2012 he was invited to join the Academy of the Arts of the World as one of its founding members. In 2015 he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin. Recent book publications include Knowledge Beside Itself. Contemporary Art’s Epistemic Politics (Sternberg Press, 2020), Politics of Learning, Politics of Space. Architecture and the Education Shock of the 1960s and 1970s (De Gruyter, 2021) and ca. 1972. Gewalt – Umwelt – Identität – Methode (Spector Books, 2022).

(2022)

Songdam Hong

SONGDAM HONG is a political activist and visual artist. Raised in Gwangju, South Korea, he was involved in the 1980 protests against the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. He became known for his woodblock prints that show the government’s brutal treatment of the demonstrators and which lend expression to the traumatic experiences of a whole generation.
In 1983, he founded, together with other activists and artists, the People’s Art School in Gwangju, which existed until 1992 as a kind of political and artistic summer academy.
In 1989, he and other exponents of the Minjung movement were arrested for allegedly violating the National Security Act of the South Korean government. They were declared ‘prisoners of conscience’ by Amnesty International, which demanded and successfully brought about their release in the early 1990s. In 1996, the South Korean government commissioned him to create a 42-meter-long mural for Chonnam National University in Gwangju.

(2020)

Sam Hopkins

SAM HOPKINS is an artist and scholar who is attentive to the ways in which narratives and truths are encoded and produced by different media. His work is rooted in Kenya and engages with specific networks to collectively interrupt authoritative narratives of power. He explores various ways of ‘co-producing’ artworks as counter-narratives that can be read both within and beyond the gallery or museum.

Hopkins has participated in various exhibitions, including biennales in Lagos, Dakar, Poznan and Moscow. He has exhibited at a wide range of museums and galleries, including Dortmunder U, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Kunsthaus Bregenz, the Goodman Gallery and Richard Taittinger Gallery. His work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian, Abteiberg Museum and the Iwalewahaus. In 2014 he was named one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. He currently works as Assistant Professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and continues to develop his research in Nairobi.

(2021)

© Hörner/Antlfinger

Hörner/Antlfinger

Since the beginning of their collaboration in the 1990s, collaborative processes have been at the center of Ute Hörner and Mathias Antlfinger's artistic work. Their installations, videos and sculptures deal with relationships between people, animals and machines and open up both critical perspectives on changeable social constructs as well as utopian visions of equal treatment between the actors. More-than-human others appear in their works as individuals, with their own interests, abilities and desires. To tell their stories, Hörner/Antlfinger use methods of multispecies ethnography that recognize the interconnectedness and inseparability of human and non-human life forms. Their work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions and festivals.

In 2014 they founded the Interspecies Collective CMUK * together with the grey parrots Clara and Karl. Aim of the Interspecies Collective was to decenter human animals as the sole creators and to move the focus onto the artistic practice and expression of non-human Others. Their work has been shown on numerable exhibitions and festivals. Hörner/Antlfinger have been professors of media art/transmedia spaces at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne since 2009. Since 2023, they have held a professorship for Multispecies Storytelling at the KHM. They joined the Minding Animals International Network in 2018. Hörner/Antlfinger live and work in Cologne.

*The word CMUK is an acronym based on the first names of the founding members: Clara, Mathias, Ute and Karl. It can be used in Slovakian as "kisses".

www.h--a.org

(2024)

Ingvar Hornung

INGVAR HORNUNG likes to organize and to cooperate in self-organized reading groups. Starting as a participant, he joined the ongoing reading group at ADKDW in 2018. Collectively keeping the flame alive, together with others he coordinated and moderated the reading group Towards A Dirty Universalism throughout 2019, including workshops and small lectures, focused on exchange of ideas and open discussions – reaching far beyond the texts.

For 2020/2021 he is part of the organizing team around the current reading group After Work.

(2020)

Srećko Horvat

SREĆKO HORVAT is a Croatian philosopher and activist. He is regarded as one of the central figures of the new Left in post-Yugoslavia. His most recently published books include Subversion! (Zero Books 2017),* The Radicality of Love* (Polity 2015) and written with Slavoj Žižek What Does Europe Want? (Columbia University Press 2014). Together with Yannis Varoufakis, he is one of the initiators of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM 2025). Furthermore, he was one of the founders of Subversive Festival, Zagreb. Horvat was co-curator and panelist of the symposium The Extreme Centre, which took place in April 2017 as part of the PLURIVERSALE VI. He lives and works in Zagreb.

In April/May 2017 he was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Martha Höschel

Spinning around, overlooking a backyard in Northern Paris, Martha H. and Salome G. work on uncovering the institutionalization of a linguistic expression – the German word ‘man’ – which they consider to be a speech act, for it shapes the lives and minds of mankind in an unfortunate way, as the two researchers M. H. and S. G. perceive it.

(2020)

Ranjit Hoskoté

RANJIT HOSKOTÉ, born in 1969 in Mumbai, is a poet, art critic, translator, and the secretary of the Indian PEN Club. As a world-renowned curator, he was responsible for the Gwangju Biennale (2008) as well as the Indian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011), among others. His book Confluences: Forgotten Histories from East and West was published in English in 2012, coauthored by Ilija Trojanow.

(2020)

photo: Niklas Vogt

Banafshe Hourmazdi

BANAFSHE HOURMAZDI is from the Ruhr region of Germany. She studied theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts Baden Württemberg and subsequently completed her Master’s degree at the Zürich University of the Arts. She has developed and presented pieces at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Theater Luzern and Ballhaus Ost, and been a guest a number of times at the Körber Studio for Young Directors and at the Fast Forward Festival at the Staatstheater Braunschweig; other works have been developed at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse Berlin, the Munich Kammerspiele, Theater Oberhausen and the Sophiensaele in Berlin. For her production Meine Nase läuft at Theater Drachengasse, she received the Newcomer Prize in 2015 from the City of Vienna. For her performance in Futur Drei (directed by Faraz Shariat), she won the Götz George Young Talent Award as part of the First Steps Awards in 2019. She has a lead role in Futur Drei and a supporting role in Kokon (directed by Leonie Krippendorf), both presented at the 2020 Berlinale. She lives and works in Berlin and elsewhere.

(2020)

House of Melody

HOUSE OF MELODY is the first German voguing house founded in 2012 by Mother Leo Melody. Next to teaching regular classes and workshops throughout Germany, the House actively organizes workshops, panels, session and dance events with international guests at venues like Tanzhaus NRW, Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf or Sophiensäle and HAU in Berlin.

(2017)

Satch Hoyt

SATCH HOYT is a composer and a visual artist living and working in Berlin. Among others, Hoyt worked with Grace Jones, master percussionist composer Stomu Yamashta, played flute on Louise Bourgeois’ Otte, and is flautist as well as percussionist in the band Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber since 2001.

(2016)

Ali Hussein Al-Adawy

ALI HUSSEIN AL-ADAWY is a critic, curator, and researcher. Ali’s research interests center around representations of labor in film and art, the shifting dynamics of art spaces in times of permanent catastrophe, and the relationship between the circulation of images, human rights, and financialization. He was a fellow of the Harun Farocki Residency in 2018 and was part of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts.

(2024)

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Raed Ibrahim

RAED IBRAHIM is an artist and art instructor specialized in the arts in the public spheres and art interventions. He is interested in developing art historical ontology as well as discussing and enhancing the local and regional environment of art education, art production, and cultural policies.

He lectures at the Faculty of Design and Fine Arts at Jordan University. He worked as a consultant and content developer at the Children Museum Jordan, and lead numerous workshops in Jordan related to art thinking, diversity, research and cultural activism, including four editions of The Spring Sessions (2014–2017), a learning experience and arts residency program in Amman. He is also involved in regional and international art programs of learning, discussion and exchange, and with solo and group shows over the past two decades. Between 2015 and 2018, he co-directed the works of the Jordan national group for developing and researching cultural policies in Jordan, and co-organized in 2016 the massive exhibition About Culture in Jordan at Hangar Ras Al Ain which included over 50 independent cultural initiatives from around Jordan.

(2024)

Integrationshaus e.V.

As a New German Organization, we are committed to a post-migrant society in a democratic republic. Often, the domestic group identity does not include us. But we are fighting against that: This is our country, too. But this is not possible without resistance and opposition. Resistant perspectives are always there, no matter whether they are internal or external, our own or someone else's. To perceive them, to give them attention, to take a stand, to show solidarity, to ask questions, to stay curious – “panta rhei” is the symbol for our actions. Integrationshaus e.V. was founded ten years ago by two social workers in their apartment. We started as a migrant organization and today are a member of the network „Neue deutsche Organisationen". We stand up for equal rights for all, for the right for disintegration, for a society based on solidarity and for the visibility of different realities of life. We work with and for people whose voices are not being heard enough or who are being silenced, we have a clear anti-racist and feminist stance and we want to change structures to actually create space for everyone.

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Invernomuto

SIMONE BERTUZZI and SIMONE TRABUCCHI have been collaborating as INVERNOMUTO since 2003. Invernomuto explores what remains of subcultures by moving through different media. Bertuzzi and Trabucchi have developed individual lines of research into sound with the outlets Palm Wine and STILL, respectively. Their in-depth field work lead to Negus: a series of sculptures, installations and a feature-length experimental documentary.

(2019)

Mikolaj Iwanski

MIKOŁAJ IWAŃSKI is the director of the Department of History and Art Theory in the Faculty of Painting and New Media at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. He studied philosophy and economics and earned his doctorate on the market conditions for the development of contemporary art in Poland. His special areas of study include the analysis of the art market as well as the social determinants of art. Mikołaj Iwański lives in Szczecin.

(2018)

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Dagna Jakubowska

DAGNA JAKUBOWSKA is a visual artist, theatre director, entrepreneur and author of critical culinary actions. With her performative practice she explores the politics of nutrition, nutrition-related processes and other aspects of daily life. She lives and works in Warsaw and is founder and coordinator of the socio-culinary initiative Ferment Traveling Kitchen and the Nowa Przestrzeń Foundation.

(2018)

Łukasz Jastrubczak

ŁUKASZ JASTRUBCZAK was born in 1984 in Zielona Góra. He works in various mediums: video, installation, sculpture, concert, journey, and ephemeral action. His solo exhibitions have been presented at Art in General in New York, Bunkier Sztuki in Kraków, CCA Kronika in Bytom and Sabot Gallery in Cluj-Napoca. In 2013 he received ‘Spojrzenia’ (Views) – Deutsche Bank Foundation Award for the most interesting young polish artist in the past two years.
He is a member, with Krzysztof Kaczmarek, of the artistic duo Krzysztofjastrubczakłukaszkaczmarek; and author, with Sebastian Cichocki, of the publication and events titled Mirage. He played on synthesizer in the bands Boring Drug and ŁST. He is affiliated with Dawid Radziszewski Gallery in Warsaw. He lives in Szczecin, Poland, where he works in the Painting and New Media Department of the Academy of Arts and where he co-directs with Zorka Wollny the Młode Wilki festival, dedicated to visual and sound art.

(2017)

Hyeseon Jeong

Hyeseon Jeong is an artist with a background in design and works with experimental documentaries, fictional stories and sound. She is interested in seeking irony in technological and social transformations. Her works have been shown at EMAF in Osnabrück, die digitale düsseldorf and SONOHR Radio & Podcast Festival in Bern, among others. Currently she studies at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne.

(2021)

Olga Jitlina

OLGA JITLINA is an art historian, critic, curator, and video artist from Saint Petersburg. She postgraduated at Repin Academy of Arts. Jitlina’s works often investigates labour migration, its narratives and illusions in post-Soviet space.

(2015)

Jitta Collective

THE JITTA COLLECTIVE is a collaborative project of various artists under the direction of Kefa Oiro and Stephanie Thiersch. Oiro (* 1981 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a choreographer, dancer, and head of the Tuchangamke Dance Group. He lives in Nairobi where he co-curates the Nairobi Festival of Performance and Media Arts. Thiersch (* 1970 in Wiesbaden) is a choreographer, director, and media artist who has developed several award-winning stage productions with her company MOUVOIR. She lives in Cologne.

(2017)

Jodi

The artist duo JODI originated in 1995 when Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans created their first website, wwwwwwwww.jodi.org. Together with a small group of international artists, they developed the concept of ‘Net.Art’ and placed itin the context of contemporary art. The Net.Art movement expressed critical awareness of the impact made by the digital information society before this awareness became widespread. Digital media and networks are characterised by their double layering, a visible surface and underlying codes that determine or manipulate how the public reception and interaction should proceed (‘social design’ or ‘digital dictatorship’?). These underlying codes and programming options come to the surface in JODI’s work. Instead of structural contradictions, their focus is precisely on this medium-specific dysfunctionality. JODI responds to the flow of technological innovations as a parasite, experimenting with the characteristics of new digital means and the physical peculiarities of the immaterial medium. Online public interaction first motivated JODI to approach this medium.

(2019)

Anja Junghans

ANJA JUNGHANS is Agent for Diversity at the LWL-Industriemuseum Henrichshütte Ironworks since July 2019. There she guides a diversity-oriented transformation process as part of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes program 360º – New City Cultures.

She pursued cultural studies in Magdeburg and Merseburg, and before starting at the museum in Hattingen, she was initially a freelancer in Munich and later a project manager at the Zukunftsakademie NRW in Bochum.

(2020)

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Rajkamal Kahlon

RAJKAMAL KAHLON (* 1974 in Auburn, USA) questions the boundaries between painting, photography, and sculpture in her interdisciplinary practice. Her works have been shown in many prominent museums as well as at art biennials in North America, Europe, the Mideast, and Asia. She is currently showing a solo exhibition at the Weltmuseum, Vienna. She lives and works in Berlin.

(2018)

Katja Kaiser

Historian KATJA KAISER conducts research in the areas of colonial history, museum and exhibition history as well as gender studies. Currently she works for a research project at the Centre of Natural History, Hamburg; she previously worked as research associate at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. There, among other things, she took part in the exhibition project German Colonialism: Fragments Past and Present(2016).

(2018)

Joseph Kamaru

KMRU is the solo experimental ambient project of Nairobi based sound artist Joseph Kamaru. He is known for making intelligent atmospheric and emotionally experimental electronic music, giving a personal touch using everything from gritty indigenous sounds to field recordings and Synthesis to create intricate sonic soundscapes. Already earmarked by Resident Advisor as one of “15 East African Artists You Need To Hear”, KMRU is truly pioneering in the East African experimental music scene and breaking borders with his adventurous sounds. He is a regular of the legendary Nyegenyege Festival since 2017 and has also presented his live performances at CTM festival and Gamma Festival. KMRU was selected to participate at the MusicMakers Hacklab, CTM Festival, released his latest EP Erased on London label, Byrd Out, participated in GAMMA AI Lab Russia and Mutek Montreal AI Lab in 2020. Aside from his music production, KMRU has also been presenting a monthly Radio shows on Bloop Internet Public Radio, guesting on NTS Radio and Rinse FM, and also runs the Nairobi Ableton User Group.

(2020)

Nelli Kambouri

NELLI KAMBOURI is a gender scholar whose work and publications focus on gender theory, migration, labor, technology, logistics and social movements. Since documenta 14, she is a member of the Apatride Society of the Political Others. In the past, she was employed as a senior research fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences and at the Foundation for Research & Technology in Greece. She has taught at the Department of Social Policy of Panteion University and at the University of Athens. Currently, she works as a research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire (UK) for the Horizon 2020 Project PLUS: Platform Labour in Urban Spaces. She is also teaching at the Open University of Cyprus.

(2019)

Fatou Kandé Senghor

FATOU KANDÉ SENGHOR believes that individuals, communities and countries must reclaim their missing historical narratives to enable them to move forward, and that the answers and tools they need to deal with their present lie firmly in their past. In Kandé Senghor’s world, history is not resolved.

(2020)

Raphael Kariuki

RAPHAEL KARIUKI is a DJ and Producer from Nairobi. He is a co-founder of World’s Loudest Library (WLL), an outsider artists collective, and Sound of Nairobi.

(2020)

Bernd Kasparek

BERND KASPAREK is a mathematician and cultural anthropologist with a focus on migration and border studies. In particular his interests include hotspots and digital borders. He is a founding member of the Network for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies and of movements: Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies as well as a board member of the activist research association bordermonitoring.eu.

(2019)

Aki Kaurismaki

AKI KAURISMAKI, the most prolific filmmaker in the film history of Finland worked as postman, dish-washer and film critic before turning an auteur on celluloid – spinning bizarre parodies of cinema conventions such as film noir, road movies, Western films, musicals etc. Concentrating exclusively on the tales of the working class, his films are a delicate balance between minimalism and melodrama, deliciously mixed with deadpan comic elements.

(2020)

Natasha A. Kelly

NATASHA A. KELLY holds a PhD in communication studies and is a sociologist specializing in visual communication, colonialism and feminism. Born in London and socialized in Germany, the author, lecturer and curator has taught and lectured at numerous institutions in Germany and Austria. In her publications Afroism, Sisters & Souls, Afrokultur and in her artistic works EDEWA, Giftschrank und African_Diaspora Palast, Natasha A. Kelly combines theory with practice, thus cross-referencing the fields of science, society and politics. Involved in the German black community for numerous years, she works as a scientific advisor to the Central Council of African Communities in Germany, amongst others. In addition to her work as a consultant for various art institutions, she is the artistic director of the theater programme M(a)y Sister, which was performed at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin since 2015.

(2018)

Lara Khaldi

LARA KHALDI (* 1982 in Jerusalem) is an independent curator. She has curated exhibitions and projects in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Cairo, Dubai, Oslo, Brussels, and Amsterdam. She is currently co-curating Desires into Fossils: Monuments without a State, a series of research exhibitions at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah. Khaldi lives in Jerusalem.br />
(2017)

Fatima Khan

FATIMA KHAN, born in 1987 in Bhola/Bangladesh and raised in Cologne, is an artist, curator, author and moderator. She studied Ancient Languages and Cultures - Classical Literature and German Studies at the University of Cologne. She was the initiator and co-founder of q[lit]*clgn, the first feminist literature festival in Germany. She is currently studying Media Arts/Literary Writing in the postgraduate diploma program at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. On Instagram, she posts a visual diary of banal everyday situations under @fatum.khan. (Status 2022)

Fred Khumalo

FRED KHUMALO, former editor of the Sunday Times Review, is a renowned South African columnist and author. He won the literary award of the European Union for his novel Bitches' Brew (Jacana Media 2006) in 2006. Other prose works by Khumalo include Seven Steps to Heaven (Jacana Media 2008) and Dancing the Death Drill (Umuzi 2017). He has worked for a variety of newspapers in South Africa and abroad. From 2011 to 2012, Fred Khumalo was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. As part of the PLURIVERSALE IV and the Rhine-South-Africa Fellowship, he dedicated himself to the sensitive subject of Xenophobia and racism in post-apartheid South Africa: Challenges to a writer. Khumalo lives in Johannesburg.

In 2016 he was a Fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Grada Kilomba

GRADA KILOMBA is a writer and artist. She was a Guest Professor for Gender Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She is the co-editor of Mythen, Masken und Subjekte (Unrast, 2005) and author of Plantation Memories (Unrast, 2008). She performs theoretical texts at locations such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

(2016)

Kevin Kilonzo

KELVIN KILONZO grew up in Gießen and is studying contemporary dance in Cologne. He frequently appears in the free performance scene as well as with his breakdance crew.

(2017)

Gyung Moo Kim

Born in South Korea, GYUNG MOO KIM had a few years of formal dance training during his period of transition from a street dancer into a contemporary dancer, but he considers himself essentially to be a self-trained dancer. In recent years he has worked as a dancer and performer with Sidra Bell, Gallim Dance, New York Theatre Ballet, Fabien Prioville, Helena Waldmann, Alexander Kolpin, E.K.K.O, Minako Seki, Sasha Waltz & Guests and Ana Borralho & João Galante in Europe. In 2011, Moo won first prize in both dance and choreography at the 15th International Solo-Dance-Theater Festival in Stuttgart with Grief Point, a collaboration with Sidra Bell. Since 2013, his works (Chasing Silence 1 & 2, Deconstruction;f1,4) have been presented at various venues in Berlin and Miltenberg in Germany as well as in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

(2021)

Soyoung Kim


SOYOUNG KIM is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Korea National University of Arts, Director of the Trans-Asia Screen Culture Institute, and Visiting Professor at Duke University, UC Berkeley and UC Irvine. She is the editor of the ten-volume History of Korean Cinema, National Research Foundation of Korea, co-editor of Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space, with Chris Berry and Lynn Spiegel, and Geo-Spatiality in Asian and Oceanic Literature and Culture: Worlding Asia in the Anthropocene with Shiuhhuah Serena Chou and Rob Wilson. Soyoung Kim’s Exile Trilogy (2014-2017) includes three documentaries about Koreans in Central Asia, Russia, and Korea. Kim Soyoung also directed Women’s History Trilogy, a series of documentaries (Koryu: Southern Women South Korea, I’ll Be Seeing Her, and New Women: Her First Song) realised between 2000 and 2004 and was Guest of Honor at the Guanajuato International Film Festival.

Christopher Kirkley

CHRISTOPHER KIRKELY is an archivist, artist, curator, and occasional DJ from Portland who runs the project Sahel Sounds, a platform for exploring the arts and music of West Africa through non-traditional ethnographic fieldwork.

(2016)

Felix Klopotek

FELIX KLOPOTEK lives and works in Cologne. He is an editor at StadtRevue and contributes, among others, to Konkret, Jungle World and Kaput Magazin. In 2014, he realized, with the assistance of the Academy of the Arts of the World, the project A Revolutionary Parable on the Equality Of Men. Most recently, he edited the collective volume Zonen der Selbstoptimierung (Matthes & Seitz 2016).

(2016)

Bianca Klose

In 2001, BIANCA KLOSE founded The Mobile Council against Right-Wing Extremism (Mobile Beratung gegen Rechtsextremismus – MBR), which she currently directs. The main task of the counselling service is the analysis of phenomena such as right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism in a local context, as well as the support of skills for dealing with them. Klose advises and coaches political parties, administrations, religious communities, organizations, unions as well as committed groups and individuals. She is a regular speaker at expert meetings, congresses and federal and state committees on the central issues of the MBR. Bianca Klose is a spokesperson for the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Demokratieentwicklung (Federal Working Committee for the Development of Democracy – BAGD). She lives and works in Berlin.

(2017)

Alex Klug

ALEX SIMON KLUG aka FOAM works as an artist and experimental pop musician/producer in Cologne and Hamburg. From 2012 to 2017 he studied art with a focus on time-related media at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Since 2018 he is studying in the postgraduate diploma program at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Since the beginning of his studies in Hamburg, his artistic work has developed into cross-spatial multimedia installations that play with a close connection between the visual (in digital as well as tangible space) and the acoustic/musical. During his studies he already works as an assistant to artists such as Karin Sander, Achim Mohné or Thomas Kohl and enjoys artistic supervision and seminars from amongst others: Hans W. Koch, Jeanne Faust, Tobias Hartmann, Franziska Windisch, Felix Kubin, Thomas Görne, Hans Joachim Lenger, Alexander Schubert and Ute Janssen.
Together with the artists Kristina Lenz and Tim Gorinski he built up FLAT. room to display artistic works and working methods in digital space as a platform to come together for art and music events and exhibitions.

(2020)

Adrian Knuppertz

ADRIAN KNUPPERTZ has lately been dealing with questions of power relations and property issues in public space, commons, discourse and who is in position to access it. Besides photography as everyday practice, he is working with Flyposting, installation, sketches, video and sound.

(2020)

Alexander Koch

ALEXANDER KOCH is a gallerist, curator, and author living in Berlin. He is the director of the Berlin gallery KOW, which he cofounded in 2008 with Nikolaus Oberhuber and Jocelyn Wolff. He is also co-initiator and director of the international network Neue Auftraggeber / New Patrons, which brings artists together with local citizens, assisting them in commissioning contemporary art.

(2018)

Adriana Kocijan

Adriana Kocijan, born in Zagreb, studied drama and pantomime at the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen. She is an actor and dancer in the independent theater scene, with performances at various German theaters, and also a choreographer and stage designer at the Schauburg in Munich, Theater Giessen, Opera Bonn, Schauspiel Düsseldorf, DT Berlin and Theater an der Ruhr, among others. In diverse productions by Ko Murobushi as well as by Anza Furukawa, she has worked as a Butoh dancer, actor and assistant. She also worked in these capacities in several productions by Susanne Linke. With the founding of the company Cantadoras she has increasingly pursued her own solo projects and performances, and has also undertaken interdisciplinary experiments with different artists like Eckhart Koltermann, Malcolm Goldstein, Fine Kwiatkowski, Robert Bosshard and Wolfram Lakaszus. She has pursued this work since 2016 with her new company Conterbande, never losing sight of theater work. Numerous invitations have brought her to places like France, the UK, Ireland, Italy, Croatia, Poland and Spain. Adriana Kocijan has won the Theaterzwang award several times.

(2020)

Steffen Köhn

STEFFEN KÖHN (b. 1980) lives and works in Berlin. He is a filmmaker, anthropologist and video artist who uses ethnography to understand contemporary sociotechnical landscapes. For his video and installation works he engages in local collaborations with artists, software developers and science fiction writers to explore viable alternatives to current distributions of technological access and arrangements of power. His works have been shown at the Academy of the Arts Berlin, Kunsthaus Graz, Vienna Art Week, Hong Gah Museum Taipei, Lulea Biennial and the ethnographic museums of Copenhagen and Dresden. His films have been screened at the Berlinale, Rotterdam International Film Festival and the Word Film Festival Montreal, among others.

(2021)

© Jana Buch

Jody Korbach

Jody Korbach (*1991, Bielefeld) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Tal R, Christopher Williams and Johannes Paul Raether. She completed her studies in 2017 as Meisterschülerin of Christopher Williams. Korbach lives and works in Düsseldorf.

"The current relevance of her works unfolds in particular with a view to the developments within the (West) German art scene since the 1970s, as well as the current visibility of the debate on classicism from a sociological perspective." (Katharina Bruns)

"Identity politics and the artistic engagement with the continuity of more or less loud political narratives and voids in German history are Jody Korbach's themes. As a self-proclaimed non-painter, Korbach has been forcing her surroundings into community and excess since 2014. Her soccer team, complete with hooligan bonds Eiskeller Export, revolutionized artificial turf football and brought new images to the art academy. In 2018, she founded the Schützenkorps Europa association, thereby rewriting or rewriting the construct of Europe. In her work, she draws on the themes of faith, custom, homeland and national (social) ism and brings a beer tent atmosphere including drink tokens, memes, revolutionary CDU merch, flags and fan scarves into galleries." (Julian Sturz)

(2024)

Chris Korte

CHRIS KORTE is a scholar, professor, dancer, and an 80s new wave music enthusiast. After completing her Ph.D. on the Berliner Volksbühne at York University in Toronto, Korte moved to Berlin and is currently teaching German theatre history at NYU’s Berlin campus. Chris’s next major research project is on 80s utopianism and synth-pop dance choreography.

(2022)

Pekko Koskinen

PEKKO KOSKINEN, a game designer and artist, creates fictional and alternative religions, lifestyles and societies as part of his work. He is a member of the Helsinki-based Reality Research Center, a performance collective that observes, questions and updates realities, as well as the Economic Space Agency, a collective made up of radical economists, computer scientists, and game designers that is working on creating a new system of economic and informational freedom.

(2019)

© Sebastian Wolf

Hannah Krebs

HANNAH KREBS is a dancer who lives and works in Cologne and Stockholm. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Dance at the University of Music and Dance in Cologne as well as at the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm. She has performed for, among others, Michael Löhr/Emanuel Gat, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Ellen Söderhult and Chikako Kaido. In her own pieces, Hannah Krebs often works across disciplines. Her artistic work is based on interrogating current social issues from a feminist and socially critical perspective. She frequently uses documentary and biographical material to produce aesthetically absurd or surreal situations that play on the perceptions of the audience. She has collaborated with, among others, Thea Soti (vocals), Moritz Marquardt (media art), and Lena Kunz (dramaturgy).

(2020)

Merle Kröger

MERLE KRÖGER is a novelist and filmmaker based in Berlin. She co-founded both the artist group Botschaft e.V. and the film collective dogfilm in 1990, as well as the media art platform pong in 2001. Since 2007, she has collaborated with filmmaker Philip Scheffner on feature films including Revision, Havarie and Europe. Merle Kröger’s novels – such as Grenzfall, Havarie and Die Experten – combine historical research, personal history and political analysis with elements of detective fiction.

(2021)

Eleftherios Krysalis

ELEFTHERIOS KRYSALIS completed his bachelor's degree in art history and theory at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He is currently completing his M.F.A. in Art and Design at the Bauhaus University of Weimar. From 2018 to 2020 he was a DAAD scholarship holder. His focus is on experimental radio formats and electroacoustic musical elements. Currently he is working on his master thesis under the topic Politics of Listening: Soundscapes from Ramallah, Palestine.

(2020)

Arun Kundnani

The author and activist ARUN KUNDNANI has conducted extensive research on the interrelated issues of racism, Islamophobia and surveillance for many years. His most recent book, The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror (Verso 2015) received international attention – a Guardian review described him as “one of Britain’s best political writers.” Kundnani lives and works in New York.

(2017)

Hari Kunzru

HARI KUNZRU is the author of several successful novels. With The Impressionist (2002) he presented his widely recognized debut novel, followed by Transmission (2004), My Revolutions (2007), Gods Without Men (2011) as well as White Tears (2017) which has recently been published in German. Kunzru’s books have been translated into 22 languages and awarded with several prizes. The author lives in New York.

(2017)

© Harriet Meyer

Şeyda Kurt

Şeyda Kurt writes and speaks about philosophy, politics, culture and left-wing feminism. She writes texts both for theater and is a columnist at Buchjournal. As a freelance journalist, she publishes, among others, for Zeit Online and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. As an editor, she worked on the Spotify Original Podcast 190220 - En Jahr nach Hanau, which was awarded the Grimme Online Award. In April 2021, her non-fiction bestseller Radikale Zärtlichkeit - Warum Liebe politisch ist was published. In March, her experimental essay HASS - Von der Macht eines widerständigen Gefühls was published. Şeyda Kurt lives in Cologne, Berlin, on the Internet and in the ICE.

(2023)

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Lia La Novia Sirena

Lia García, better known as LIA LA NOVIA SIRENA, is a trans activist and performer whose public interventions insist on reflecting on the emotional charges that bind us. Affective encounters, or encuentros afectivos, are a series of public performances through which Lia invite the audience to think about sexuality, intimacy, and social change.

(2014)

Gadoukou La Star

GADOUKOU LA STAR (Franck Edmond Yao) is co-founder and choreographer of La Fleur. He won the Best Dancer of the African Diaspora at the African Awards in Paris four years in a row (2003–2006). He has worked collaboratively with Gintersdorfer/Klaßen on Not Punk, Pololo and Dantons Tod at Theater Bremen, among others. As Gadoukou la Star he has released coupé décalé music albums since 2008.

(2019)

Brandon LaBelle

BRANDON LABELLE is an artist, writer and theorist working with sound culture, voice and questions of agency. He develops and presents artistic projects within a range of international contexts, often working collaboratively and in public. This leads to performative installations, poetic theater, storytelling and research actions aimed at forms of experimental community making. From gestures of intimacy and listening to creative festivity and open movement work, his practice aligns itself with a politics and poetics of unrecognizability, dispossession and radical civility.
Works include The Other Citizen: Archive, Club Transmediale, Berlin (2019), The Autonomous Odyssey (with Octavio Camargo), Kunsthall 3,14 Bergen (2018), The Ungovernable, Documenta 14, Athens (2017), Oficina de Autonomia, Ybakatu, Curitiba (2017), The Hobo Subject, Gallery Forum, Zagreb (2016) and The Living School, South London Gallery (2016). He is the author of Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (2019; 2010) and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2015; 2006).
He lives in Berlin and is Professor at the Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen.

(2019)

Laibach

LAIBACH made its first big breakthrough in the late 1980s with industrial covers of pop classics by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, and the Austrian arena rock band Opus. In recent years, Laibach has also worked more with conceptual rewritings of classical music, performing with symphonic and philharmonic orchestras, creating music for theatre productions and films, and also taking part in feature-length movies. Laibach has toured extensively around the world and performed in many famous places, including the Tate Modern in London, Bozar in Brussels and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. In August 2015, Laibach became the first-ever band of its kind to perform in the secretive country of North Korea.

(2017)

Sarah van Lamsweerde

Performance artist SARAH VAN LAMSWEERDE works across theater and visual arts, exploring the range between (unfamiliar) languages and mass media phenomena. Her work has been shown by presenters such as Veem House for Performance in Amsterdam, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, Performatik Brussels etc. She lives in Brussels and Amsterdam.

(2018)

Gotthard Lange

GOTTHARD LANGE is an actor and performs at various theaters: Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, Berliner Ensemble, Schauspielhaus Bochum and Schillertheater Berlin. In addition to productions at TAT Frankfurt, HAU and Sophiensäle Berlin, Pumpenhaus Münster, Theater Rampe Stuttgart and many others, he has also acted in film and television productions, including Tatort, SOKO Wismar, Tom Tykwer’s Drei as well as Das Wunder von Bern. Since 2004 he has worked as a director and choir director in Bochum, Weimar, Berlin and Frankfurt. He lives in Berlin.

(2020)

LASSEINDRA NINJA & KENDALL MIYAKE-MUGLER

LASSEINDRA NINJA and KENDALL MIYAKE-MUGLER are voguers based in Paris. Before importing it to France and starting her own voguing house, Lasseindra discovered voguing in New York. Kendall is an official member of The Legendary House of Miyake Mugler.

(2017)

Maurizio Lazzarato

MAURIZIO LAZZARATO is a sociologist and philosopher who now lives in Paris. In the 1970s, Lazzarato studied in Padua. His involvement in the operaist movement and his politically forced move to Paris remained decisive for his theoretical works as well as for his filmic collaborations with the artist Angela Melitopoulos. In the 1990s, Lazzarato was among the co-founders of the post-operaist discourse around the shift to 'immaterial' and 'cognitive' labor as a paradigm of post-Fordist societies in the West. His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies on post-structuralist philosophy as well as in anthologies on contemporary political and economic theories. In the 1990s and 2000s, he was an editorial board member of the Parisian journals Futur Antérieur and Multitudes.

(2022)

Jan G. Lee

JAN G. LEE is artist and author of literary texts, he is a forester by education. From 1968 to 1971 he conducted artistic actions (“visions”) at Mount Diablo State Park, using natural processes (objects subject to rotting, erosion, melting, crystallization, turning to powder, etc.) and including various species of animals and plants (such as Nesting—birds’ nests made of valuable ores, Poisoning—the production of vials of emerald-colored poison from the extract of Toxicodendron diversilobum, and Layering—drawings made by animals walking over cardboard set up near watering holes). In the mid-1980s, in a rented warehouse on the outskirts of town, he began making detailed models and mock-ups of his hometown of Lafayette Hills, along with dolls depicting its residents.

(2017)

Photo: Dirk Skiba

Isabelle Lehn

ISABELLE LEHN was born in Bonn in 1979. She lives in Leipzig. Lehn studied at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig and received her PhD in Rhetoric from the University of Tübingen in 2011. Her debut novel Binde zwei Vögel zusammen (Eichborn) was published in 2016. She read from the work at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in the same year. In 2017, the novel was awarded the Schubart Literature Prize’s Förderpreis. Lehn’s autofictional novel Frühlingserwachen (S. Fischer) was shortlisted for the Text und Sprache Literature Prize in 2020. Her essay Weibliches Schreiben in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur (S. Fischer hundertvierzehn) has been nominated for the Stiftung Lesen’s Dietrich Oppenberg Media Prize in 2021.

(2021)

Achim Lengerer

In his artistic practice, ACHIM LENGERER deals with the political effects and functions of language and text. In addition to film sound tracks, installations and publications, his forms of expression include performative lectures and events. Lengerer founded various collaborative projects, including the Friday Kitchen in Frankfurt/Main. In 2006, he co-created (with Dani Gal) the project voiceoverhead, which deals with archived spoken language in audio performances, exhibitions and screenings. Lengerer has been operating the mobile exhibition space and publishing house Scriptings since 2009. In his current oral history project Tonspuren zur Linken (Soundtracks on the Radical Left), he traces the connections between left-wing groups in Cologne/the Ruhr region and the migrant struggles since the 1970s.

(2017)

Natalie Lettenewitsch

NATALIE LETTENEWITSCH has written texts on ships and beaches as a film scholar, and in her current research project traces the fascination surrounding underwater film. She understands the oceans as deeply historical and political space where myths, histories of fascination, and new technologies meet tangible material interests. She is a lecturer at the ifs international film school cologne and the University of Vienna, among others.

(2019)

Ligia Lewis

LIGIA LEWIS arbeitet als experimentelle Choreografin. Durch Choreografie und körperliche Praxis entwickelt sie ausdrucksstarke Konzepte, die Bewegungen, Sprache, Affekte, Gedanken, Beziehungen, Äußerungen und den Körpern, die sie tragen, eine Form geben. Ihre choreografische Arbeit bewegt sich zwischen dem Vertrauten und dem Unbekannten. Zu ihrer jüngsten Performance-Trilogie gehören Water Will (in Melody) (2018), minor matter (2016) und Sorrow Swag (2014). Weitere Arbeiten sind Sensation 1/This Interior (High Line Commission, 2019); so something happened, get over it; no, nothing happened, get with it (Jaou Tunis, 2018); Melancholy: A White Mellow Drama (Flax Fahrenheit, Palais de Tokyo, 2015); $$$ (Tanz im August, 2012); und Sensation 1 (sommer.bar, Tanz im August, 2011 und Basel Liste, 2014). Im Jahr 2020 produzierte Lewis deader than dead für die Made in LA Biennale im Hammer Museum, wo sie ihre letzten Performance-Stücke in einem Film dokumentierte. Ihre letzte Bühnenarbeit, Still Not Still (2021), befindet sich derzeit auf Tournee. Lewis erhielt den Tabori Award in der Kategorie Distinction (2021), einen Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants Award (2018), einen Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for minor matter (2017), eine Factory Artist Residency am tanzhaus nrw (2017-19), Fördermittel der Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa (2017-18, 2021 - 2023) und einen Prix Jardin d’Europe von ImPulsTanz für Sorrow Swag (2015). Lewis’ Bühnenwerke wurden von 2017 - 2021 zum Teil vom HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater betreut und produziert. 2019 war Lewis für das Herbstquartal Alma M. Hawkins Memorial Chair am World Arts and Cultures Department der UCLA. Lewis entwickelt derzeit ein neues Stück, A Plot / A Scandal.

(2022)

Lawrence Liang

LAWRENCE LIANG is a professor at the School of Law, Governance and Citizenship (SLGC) at Ambedkar University, Delhi. He focuses on the social life of intellectual property law, and in particular on pirate infrastructures and networks that enable greater access. He has written extensively on the intersection of law and culture and lives in New Delhi.

(2021)

Yiwu Liao

LIAO YIWU is the author of Bullets and Opium, The Corpse Walker, God is Red, and For A Song and A Hundred Songs, a memoir of the four years he spent in prison after the Tiananmen Massacre. His work has been published in more than 20 countries. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious 2012 Peace Prize, the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis from the German Book Trade Association and the Disturbing the Peace Award from the Havel Foundation. Liao Yiwu is a leading activist speaking out on behalf of Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, pressuring the Chinese government to allow her to travel on board. Liu Xia left China in July 2018. Liao is a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World.

(2022)

Photo: Ricordi/ Harald Hoffmann

Liza Lim

LIZA LIM is a composer, educator and researcher whose music focusses on collaborative and transcultural practices. The roots of beauty (in noise), time effects in the Anthropocene and the sensoria of ecological connection are ongoing concerns in her compositional work. Her four operas explore themes of desire, memory, ritual transformation and the uncanny. Her genre-crossing ritual/opera Atlas of the Sky (2018) is a work involving community participants that investigates the emotional power and energy dynamics of crowds. Liza Lim has received commissions from some of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras and ensembles. Lim is Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2021-22. Her music is published by Casa Ricordi Berlin.
https://lizalimcomposer.com

(2022)

Minouk Lim

MINOUK LIM (b.1968, South Korea) works in various media including installation, text, music, video and performance. Lim creates irony through performative forms that defy the definition and boundaries of specific genres. By exploring the conditions of our media environment, Lim’s oeuvre attempts to de-territorialize issues of identity and division aggravated by globalization. Her works employ a wide range of equipment, such as transportation vehicles, thermal imaging cameras, and broadcasting devices, in order to capture and visualize the speed, warmth and emotion of mourning. Her recent solo exhibitions include O Tannenbaum (ASAKUSA space production, Tokyo, Japan, 2018), Mamour_Minouk Lim (Tina Kim Gallery, New York, U.S., 2017) and The Promise of If (PLATEAU Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea, 2015). Her work has also been in such group exhibitions as La Biennale de Lyon (2019), the Setouchi Triennale (2016), Sydney and Taipei Biennial (2016).

(2020)

Maria Lind

MARIA LIND is an art critic, curator, and author and has been director of the Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm since 2011. In 2015 she curated the exhibition Future Light, which was presented as part of the first Vienna Biennale. With her research project Abstract Possible (2010) she has been a guest at various international museums and galleries. In the early 2000s she was director of the Kunstverein Munich and the International Artist Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS) in Stockholm. Maria Lind lives and works in Stockholm.

(2018)

Timor Litzenberger

TIMOR LITZENBERGER is a freelance composer in various musical disciplines. He has worked with Gintersdorfer/Klaßen on the album New Black - Couper Decaler electronique, released in 2012 by Buback, and has also regularly collaborated with La Fleur.

(2019)

Sharon Lockhart

SHARON LOCKHART works in the space ‘between’ images, between photography and cinema, between everyday chores and performative rituals, and also between real and suspended time. Her works are mostly developed through long term collaborations with the protagonist individuals or communities and mediated through an artistic strategy that involves choreography of repetitive actions in front of a static camera. Lockhart is known for her passion to expand the formal attributes of celluloid.

(2021)

Melissa Logan

The artist MELISSA LOGAN oscillates between performance, installation, pop music, sound, and new media in her work. She founded the artist collective Chicks on Speed in 1997 with ALEX MURRAY-LESLIE; they have recorded several albums and performed at the Venice Biennale and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Since 2016, Melissa Logan has been working on her project University of Craft Action Thought. She lives in Cologne.

(2018)

Daniel Loick

DANIEL LOICK ist Philosoph und lehrt als Associate Professor an der Universität Amsterdam. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen in den Bereichen der politischen Philosophie, der Rechts-, Kultur- und Sozialphilosophie. Vor allem beschäftigt ihn die Entwicklung einer Kritik der Staatsgewalt in ihren verschiedenen Facetten (Polizei, Gefängnisse, Grenzen), wobei er sich um einen Brückenschlag zwischen der Tradition der Kritischen Theorie und dem Abolitionismus bemüht. Unter seinen Publikationen sind vier Bücher, Kritik der Souveränität (Frankfurt 2012, englische Übersetzung erschien 2018 als A Critique of Sovereignty), Der Missbrauch des Eigentums (Berlin 2016, englische Übersetzung 2023 als The Abuse of Property), Anarchismus zur Einführung (Hamburg 2017) und Juridismus. Konturen einer kritischen Theorie des Rechts (Berlin 2017). Gemeinsam mit Vanessa E. Thompson hat er zuletzt den Band Abolitionismus. Ein Reader (Berlin 2022) herausgegeben.

(Stand: 2022)

Lova Lova

LOVA LOVA, aka Wilfred Beki from Kinshasa is a musician, performer, sapeur, and cultural activist. He is an important protagonist in the web series KINSHASA COLLECTION, for which he also composed the theme song.

(2018)

Alexis Lowry

ALEXIS LOWRY is a curator at Dia Art Foundation, New York, where she is responsible for exhibitions, collection presentations, and public programs pertaining to holdings of Minimal, Postminimal and Conceptual art. She recently organized the first retrospective of Charlotte Posenenske’s work in North America for Dia Beacon, New York, as well as installations by Mel Bochner, Mary Corse, Charles Gaines, Barry Le Va, Lee Ufan, Robert Morris, Michelle Stuart and Anne Truitt. At Dia Chelsea she has overseen commissions by Lucy Raven, Rita McBride and Kishio Suga. Prior to joining Dia, she was curator of the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence. She obtained her PhD from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 2019. In 2021, as part of her Bauhaus Residency, she is curating an exhibition featuring works by Charlotte Posenenske and Hannes Bajohr.

(2021)

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER (*1967 in Mexico City) is known for his electronic, interactive installations that straddle architecture and performance art. In 2007, he designed the Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, MUAC Museum in Mexico City, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer lives and works in Montreal and Madrid.

(2018)

Cristina Lucas

CHRISTINA LUCAS investigates the mechanisms of power in her performances, happenings, installations and video art. Her works have been on display in several museums, including Mudam – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (Luxemburg), Kunstraum Innsbruck, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki).

(2017)

Gym Lumbera

GYM LUMBERA is a filmmaker who debuted with the two features Ának Araw and Taglish. He started his career as a cinematographer for Raya Martin, Sherad Sanchez, and John Torres. Lumbera lives in Manila, in Balete, and sometimes in Los Angeles.

(2017)

M

Maha Maamoun

MAHA MAAMOUN is an artist living in Cairo, mainly active in the fields of video and photography. She is a founding member of the Executive Board of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture that was founded in Cairo in 2004. Her works have been shown at exhibitions and at international biennials, such as the Tate Modern in London, the 9th Gwangju Biennial, the Styrian Autumn in Graz, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Sharjah Biennial 10 and the MoMA in New York, the Peace Center of Contemporary Art in Copenhagen and the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In addition to her work as an artist, Maamoun has curated various exhibitions in Cairo.

In 2016 she was a Fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Mriganka Madhukaillya

Mriganka Madhukaillya is an artist and film-maker. Originally invested in documentary film work, as well as public events aimed at reviving a redundant space for discourse in India’s Northeast, Mriganka started developing projects with Desire Machine Collective and Periferry, which in time brought international attention to the singularity of the region. He is an assistant professor of New Media Technology and Cinema, as well as the founder of the Media Lab within the Department of Design at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. With a background in quantum mechanics and communication design, he has conducted research and taught at universities worldwide. He was a DAAD visiting professor at Merz Akademie, Stuttgart in 2019, and a visiting professor at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou in 2016-17.

Between 2005-2018, his work was showcased in solo shows at Galerie Max Mueller, Mumbai and Project 88, Mumbai, and was part of landmark international exhibitions such as: Krishna in the Garden of Assam (British Museum, London, 2016), The Eight Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane, Australia, 2015), After Midnight: Indian Modernism to Contemporary, India 1947 to 1997 (Queens Museum and Grey Art Gallery at New York University, 2015), Being Singular Plural (Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2012), Intense Proximity, the 3rd edition of the La Triennale (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2012), Indian Highway IV (MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, 2011) & Indian Highway V (MAXXI Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome, 2011). In 2011, Desire Machine Collective was part of the inaugural Indian Pavilion at the 54th International Art exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode. In the same time period, Mriganka engaged in research and pedagogical work.

Mriganka has been a member of several advisory boards, including acting as juror in Visual Arts for Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart. He is currently a member of the research networks Biopolitica, and Substantial Motion Research Network (initiated by Prof. Laura Marks and Prof. Azadeh Emadi).

At present, Mriganka is developing the research and design studio Forest Cybernetics, whose main project is the pedagogical lab Library in the forest.

(2024)

Zheng Mahler

ZHENG MAHLER is a Hong Kong-based collective comprised of artist Royce Ng and anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks. They work together on research-intensive, community-based, site-specific projects often utilising digital media, performances and installation to explore relationships between art and research practice.

(2019)

Taus Makhacheva

TAUS MAKHACHEVA lives and works in Moscow and is predominantly known for performance and video works that critically examine what happens when different cultures and traditions come into contact with one another. Often humorous, her works attempt to test the resilience of images, objects and bodies in today’s world. Makhacheva has a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths and an MFA from Royal College of Art. Selected exhibitions include Yokohama Triennale (2020), Lahore Biennial (2020), Lyon Biennial (2019), Manifesta 12 in Palermo (2018), Venice Biennial (2017) and Sharjah Biennial (2013).

(2021)

Suhail Malik

SUHAIL MALIK is a reader in Critical Studies and course leader for Art Practice Critical Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Between 2012 and 2015 he was a visiting professor at the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture in New York. He has published numerous articles and books, including most recently the anthologies The Time-Complex: Postcontemporary (2016) and Realism, Materialism, Art (2015), both volumes with Armen Avanessian. He lives in London.

(2018)

Cecylia Malik

CECYLIA MALIK is a painter, performer, activist, and curator. In her artistic practice she addresses sociopolitical questions, engaging with the “Right to the City” initiative and exploring art’s potential for social change through the strategy of social sculpture. She has taken part in the Photography Biennale in Poznan and in the Dialogues at the 11th Biennale of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg. Cecylia Malik lives and works in Kraków.

(2018)

Dhali Al Mamoon

DHALI AL MAMOON is a Bangladeshi contemporary artist and pedagogue based in Chittagong. His paintings, drawings, kinetic sculptures, moving objects, moving images and installations explore the varied systems of knowledge and experience that have converged over time in his homeland. With shifting layers of light, liquid, texture and form, Mamoon constructs complex, melodramatic experiences that are allegorical in effect – casting flickers of new light on our understanding of memory and history of the region.
In 2013, Mamoon’s works were presented in the Bangladesh Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as well as in a solo exhibition at Bengal Art Lounge, and in 2016 at Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts. He has also exhibited at the 2017 Bangladesh Pavilion at the first Kathmandu Triennale and in the 2019 Dhaka Art Summit. In 2006, Mamoon was awarded the grand prize at the 12th Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh. His works have been collected by Bangladesh National Museum; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Ibsen Museum, Norway; Bengal Foundation, Bangladesh and by many other public and private collections at home and abroad. Mamoon is currently a Professor at the Institute of Fine Art, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh.

(2021)

© Selma Lampart

Mandhla.

MANDHLA. is a trans-feminine gender non-comforming body from Zimbabwe, Africa. In her artistic practice, she brings a blend of experimental R&B and Soul music intertwined with visual projections and performative dancing. Her music speaks of the daily trials that Trans*, enby and femme* immigrant bodies experience daily with love, identity, sex and acceptance. A strong lover of fashion, the art of voguing and music, in her work she stages passionate queer representation and black femme power.

(2020)

Latoya Manly-Spain

LATOYA MANLY-SPAIN is a spoken-word artist and a human rights activist who advocates for permanent residency rights for refugees. She is a founding member of ARRiVATi, a collective of people-of-color artists and activists that uses art and resistance as a means to fight inequality. She is also a member of the Hamburg agitprop collective Schwabinggrad Ballett. LaToya Manly-Spain recorded the album Beyond Welcome in 2016 in collaboration with both groups. She lives in Hamburg.

(2016)

Photo: Olivier Marboeuf

Oliver Marboeuf

OLIVIER MARBOEUF is a writer, storyteller and curator. He founded the independent arts center Espace Khiasma (www.khiasma.net), which he ran from 2004 to 2018 in Les Lilas on the outskirts of Paris. At Khiasma, he developed a program featuring exhibitions, screenings, debates, performances and collaborative projects aimed at people from mi-nority groups. In his work, Olivier Marboeuf explores the different modalities of knowledge transmission and creates permanent or ephemeral cultural structures based on conversations and speculative narrative practices. He is currently working as a film pro-ducer for Spectre productions (www.spectre-productions.com). His latest texts are pub-lished on his blog, Toujours Debout (www.olivier-marboeuf.com). Marboeuf is a member of the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

(2021)

DJ Marfox

DJ MARFOX, born in São Tomé and Príncipe, sees his cultural roots as an important driving force of creative, technological and collective social evolution. His DJs di Ghetto compilation achieved cult status in Portugal and diasporic African communities throughout Europe. Eu Sei Quem Sou'n (Principe, 2011) refined his brash multi-layered poetics of complex percussion, dark baroque techno, garage, bass and batida. Releases on Lit City Trax, Warp and Principe. Dj Marfox is currently working on a commission for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

(2019)

Margaux Marielle-Tréhoüart

MARGAUX MARIELLE-TRÉHOÜART is a freelance dancer based in Berlin. She studied dance and acting at the Conservatoire de Grenoble and Folkwang University in Essen. Marielle-Tréhoüart has performed with Sasha Waltz & Guests since 2013, working under the direction of Claudia Castellucci, Pierre Audi, Régis Obadia, Luis Malvacias, Deborah Hay, Simon Tanguy, Andrew Schneider and many more. She has also developed artistic collaborations with Muriel Vernet, Fabian Gerhardt, Elik Niv, Deville Cohen, New Music Theater Ensemble Opera Lab Berlin (Michael Höppner), and Haggai Cohen-Milo. Since 2019 she has been part of the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin’s Political Voices Institute, directed by Marta Górnickas.

(2021)

Photo: Neal McQueen, 2019

Lorenzo Marsili

LORENZO MARSILI is a philosopher and activist working for a future beyond the nation state. He is one of the co-founders of the transnational NGO European Alternatives and board member of the global network CIVICUS. He was also one of the initiators of the pan-European movement DiEM25. His latest book Citizens of Nowhere (Zed Books 2018) is available in German as Wir heimatlosen Weltbürger (Suhrkamp Verlag 2019).

In 2019 he was a fellow of Academy of the Arts of the World (Akademie der Künste der Welt, ADKDW).

(2019)

Caroline Martel

CAROLINE MARTEL is a documentary artist who was born in Montréal the year the cellular phone was created (1973). She has been synthesizing documentary theory and practice in a variety of projects since 1998, with a special interest in archival materials, cinema history, women and communication technologies.

(2020)

Renzo Martens

RENZO MARTENS is a Dutch artist who currently lives and works in Brussels, Amsterdam and Kinshasa. In his documentary films Episode I (2003) and Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008), Martens used his position as an artist to highlight the media and cultural exploitation of underprivileged people. In 2010, he founded the Institute for Human Activities (IHA), which aims to create gentrification effects in the Congolese rain forest through the establishment of an international art center. Since 2013, Martens has been a Yale World Fellow. He participated in the 19th Biennale of Sydney in 2014, the Moscow Biennale 2013 and the 6th and 7th Berlin Biennale in 2010 and 2012, among others.

(2016)

Photo: Ana Paula Alves

Lena Martins

LENA MARTINS is an artisan. She has experimented with various handicrafts since she was 16 years old and created the Black Abayomi dolls in the late 1980s. Today she is 70 years old, she is a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a sister...

(2021)

© Andreas Maus

Andreas Maus

Unmistakenly, Andreas Maus expresses that at the center of all his motives, the possibility of death and also thus our fear of death is lingering. His drawings are uncanny, above all because there is not a hint of colorful cheerfulness in them. Reduced to the power of countless concise graphite strokes, the black and white contrast of these pictures is as merciless as death and our fear of death. There are neither distractions nor evasions, just a multitude of gray nuances. Maus inimitably stages his motifs with many short and long pencil strokes. Extremely delicate, like in the process of weaving. Sometimes he presses the pencil down very gently so that the line appears soft, other times he presses down harder so that the multiple interrupted line structure is deeply imprinted into the paper. Each picture is a multi-part graphic structure from which the human figures emerge just as succinctly as they are trapped within it. (Jürgen Kisters)

(2024)

© Frank Schoepgens

Michael Mayer

MICHAEL MAYER remains one of Germany's core celebrities in dance music as a DJ, producer and remixer. It's no secret that he spends his weekends traveling around the globe and back. Then, as a co-owner of Kompakt, he spends his weekdays deciding what will be released on the label and working with the label's artists. Amazingly enough, he manages to sneak into the studio on occasion to produce his own music and remix the likes of Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Foals and Rufus Wainwright. It's safe to say he loves being challenged and regardless of the pressure is never putting less than 100% of his heart and soul into everything he does.In spring 2016 Mayer released his 3rd full-length album »&« on K7, a passionate and personal collection of tracks he produced cooperating with soulmates like Barnt, Prins Thomas, Hauschka, Joe Goddard, Miss Kittin, Kölsch or Roman Flügel. Shortly after he was set to contribute to the legendary DJ Kicks series, again for K7.

(2023)

Diana McCarty

DIANA MCCARTY is cofounder and editor of the award-winning web radio station reboot.fm. The non-commercial, culture-oriented radio station based in Berlin broadcasts programs on themes of art, gender, pop culture, fashion, and (electronic) music, and involves the collaboration of 85 artists. McCarty has taken part in diverse international events and publications and has developed many interdisciplinary projects that address art, politics, media, and digital culture. She lives in Berlin.

(2018)

Yara Mekawei

YARA MEKAWEI is a Cairo-based electronic music composer and sound artist. A prolific artist and scholar, Mekawei‘s sonic bricolages draw inspiration from the flow of urban centers and the infrastructure of cities. Interested in the philosophy of architecture, history, and literature. Mekawei used the optical transfer from the musical conversation and transferring the sound waves to a visual form. Her work is based on sound as a tool of vision, the philosophy of composition is shaped by sophisticated practices that convey messages of conceptual dimension to the public. Her work shows an intangible aspect of her personality, and being feminine in an East African society.

(2020)

Dj Meko

DJ MEKO (Jean Claude Dagbo), known as le choucou du peuple or “the people’s favourite”, performs in the Paris clubs L’Ivoire, Elysee, Ritz and Titan. In addition to concerts with stars of the coupé décalé scene, he has performed with Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, in Dantons Tod at Theater Bremen, among others. Since 2016 DJ Meko has been a regular member of La Fleur.

© Alex Mello

Alex Mello

ALEX MELLO is an Afro-Latino filmmaker, actor, and writer. His artistic research focuses on intersectional perspectives on race, belonging and gender in the context of migratory societies. He is a member of the Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals (APAN) in Brazil.Currently living in Germany, the Brazilian's artistic identity is marked by references to the cultural manifestations of the Baixada Fluminense region in Rio de Janeiro, such as samba schools and religions of African origin. He has participated in award-winning theater productions in Brazil and Germany, among which the following are to be highlighted: Love and Other Demons directed by Silviu Purcărete and participation as a guest dancer in Bolero Choreografía by Maurice Béjart at the Cologne Opera.

In the audiovisual field, the artist has focused on independent productions, producing low-budget films and focusing on the protagonism of marginalized bodies. Alex Mello produces the Brazilian film festival CINEBRASIL in Cologne, which in 2022 is funded by the film festival promotion de+ of the Goethe-Institute in cooperation with the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Alex Mello became a member of the Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals - APAN in Brazil in 2022 and is part of the Black Filmmaking Community in Germany. In 2021, he won a grant for the Black Reels project, aimed at black filmmakers in Germany. As a result, the group made the film Falling into the Light. He develops workshop projects in the field of anti-discrimination theater in collaboration with institutions such as Afropolitan Berlin and Allerweltshaus Köln e.V.

(2023)

Karla Mendonca dos Santos Dany

KARLA MENDONCA DOS SANTOS DANY, born in Rio de Janeiro and currently living in Hamburg, wants to live in a world where the global environment and music have top priority. As foreign language assistant and translator, she has worked for creative and educational institutions such as Tate Modern, International School of Hamburg (ISH), Cirque du Soleil and many others. When she is not behind her computer typing, you can find her at the library in the morning or doing karaoke at night.

(2019)

Iman Mersal

IMAN MERSAL is an Egyptian poet, essayist, translator and literary scholar, and Professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in Parnassus, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and Michigan Quarterly Review. A selection of Mersal’s poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press). Her most recent publications include an Arabic translation of Charles Simic’s memoir, A Fly in the Soup (Al Kotob Khan, 2016), and Kayfa Talta’im: ‘An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as Motherhood and Its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press, 2018), and Fi Athar Enayat al-Zayyat (In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat, Al Kotob Khan, 2019).

(2021)

Philip Kojo Metz

PHILIP KOJO METZ is a Berlin-based conceptual artist working with themes related to identity, history, and the relationship of contemporary cultures towards one another. He uses different media such as photography, painting, sculpture, objects, video and performance. His works were recently exhibited at the NGBK in Berlin, the Cité in Paris, the Kunsthalle München as well as the Haverford College Philadelphia.

(2016)

© Frederike Wetzels

Elisa Metz

Elisa Metz is a musician, artist, and designer. She is the editor of grapefruits, which is a fanzine about composers and sound artists, and minneola - a podcast by and for musicians. In 2021 her first EP Three Wands was released on the Berlin experimental/ambient label planet akwa, followed by the album Glass Wands in December 2022. She composed the tracks for her self-made glass instrument and modular synthesizers in collaboration with Cologne-based producer Julian Stetter. Metz released the debut album TV in the Corner of her pop project Henry Lee in October 2022 on the label tétégé records, which she co-founded with Jakob Lebsanft. Since 2016, Elisa Metz has been working as a freelance art director for clients in the cultural sector, such as the c/o pop festival. Previously, she studied Integrated Design (B.A.) at the Köln International School of Design of the TH Köln and Sound and Reality (M. Mus.) at the Institute for Music and Media of the RSH Düsseldorf.

(2023)

Niq Mhlongo

NIQ MHLONGO is a Johannesburg-based journalist and novelist and counts among the major up-and-coming authors of the post-apartheid era. All of his books are strongly influenced by his South African hometown: he writes his fiction in Soweto, about Soweto and in Soweto dialect. After his novels Dog Eat Dog (Ohio University Press 2004) and After Tears (Ohio University Press 2007), Way Back Home (Kwela 2013, German edition 2015 at Wunderhorn) is his first novel published in German. His most recent publication is Affluenza (Kwela 2016), a collection of short stories. He was a guest at major African cultural festivals such as the Caine Prize Workshop and the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

In 2017, Niq Mhlongo was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Andrea Mijares

Andrea Mijares positions herself as lesbian, cis, of colour and with migration history. She studied Psychology (Bachelor) and Gender Studies (Master). She is a martial artist, self-assertion trainer and active in feminist/lesbian-queer girls* work.

Mishaa

MISHAA (Michele Akotcholo) is a choreographer and dancer and teaches Afrobeats classes to children and youths in Paris. She is a member of La Fleur. Her first collaboration with Monika Gintersdorfer and Gadoukou La Star was as part of the piece Les Nouveaux Aristocrates.

(2019)

Orry Mittenmayer

ORRY MITTENMAYER started as a bicycle courier at Foodora in January 2016 and moved to Deliveroo a year later. He is co-founder of Liefern am Limit, an activist for better working conditions and a political speaker. He was also chairman of the first workers’ council at Deliveroo. Orry Mittenmayer was born hearing impaired and completed training as a bookseller. After spending a year volunteering in Ghana, he attended night school and completed his Abitur in 2017 to qualify for university studies. Since October 2018 he has been studying political science and continues to be involved in Liefern am Limit as a political consultant. The Liefern am Limit campaign was honored for its commitment to better working conditions with the Hans Böckler Award of the City of Cologne.

(2020)

Avi Mograbi

AVI MOGRABI is almost always in front of the camera, but the films are never about him at all; he films the commonplace, the everyday, even the prosaic – only to reveal with unsettling lucidity more profound and unseen truths about the paradoxes of contemporary Israeli society and ist occupation of Palestine. He seems to make films about making films that in reality are never made; he trumps documentary with fiction, performance with reality, back and forth, addling the codes of direct cinema. This is the trouble with Avi Mograbi’s cinematic and artistic practice: it is so essentially and literally subversive that it is impossible to classify. As is he: actor, sound recordist, second cameraman, singer, performer, director and citizen, he embodies all these roles dutifully, responsibly, without ambiguity or affect. And most remarkably, he never displaces himself or his body from the ailing social body he films, deconstructs, challenges or provokes.

(2015)

Naeem Mohaiemen

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN merges film, photography, and essays to investigate histories of utopian left pro-jects. His two newest films premiered at documenta 14. Earlier films have been shown at the Sharjah, Venice, and Marrakech Biennales, and essays have appeared in Rethinking Marxism, Sun Never Sets, among others. He is a PhD candidate at Columbia University and lives in New York.

He imagines rhizomatic families, malleable borders, and socialist utopias– beginning from postcolonial markers and then radiating outward to unlikely transnational alliances. In spite of underscoring a tendency toward misrecognition of allies, the hope of a future global left, against current categories of race, religion and nation, drives the work. He is author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (Kunsthalle Basel, 2014); editor of Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism (Drishtipat, 2010); and co-editor w/ Lorenzo Fusi of System Error: War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (Sylvana, 2007).

(2024)

Momentography of a failure

Founded by Nafiseh Fathollahzadeh and Parham Mortazavian, MOMENTOGRAPHY OF A FAILURE is a participatory research and photography project that seeks to develop a concept of participatory citizenship by curating photo-essays by local residents, practicing interdisciplinary collaborative creation and digital non-profit publishing

(2020)

Fred Moten


FRED MOTEN and Stefano Harney are the authors of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (2013) and All Incomplete (2020) both from Minor Compositions/Autonomedia. Fred teaches in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University. Stefano is Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. They have been friends and writing partners for almost forty years.

(2022)

Mouvoir

MOUVOIR specializes in consistently interdisciplinary and poetic stage productions and performances which explore the processes of community-building bodies and play with the mechanisms of social gatherings. The company champions artistic collaborations and hospitality in the arts.

In recent years, Mouvoir has been working closely with artists from the field of music (such as the renowned Asasello Quartet, the composer Brigitta Muntendorf, and the or-chestra Les Siècles). In 2016, they created City Dance Köln (2016) in collaboration with the Kölner Philharmonie, presenting a 13-hour dance parkour with 600 actors and 10,000 participating citizens. Further large-scale stage productions followed, such as Bilderschlachten – featuring 55 actors and co-produced by Théâtre de Nîmes, Beethovenfest Bonn and tanzhaus nrw – and, more recently, Archipel, which was co-produced with Theater der Welt, Ruhrtriennale 2020 and ULTIMA Oslo, and was last staged in the summer of 2021 at Tanz im August in Berlin.

(2021)

MP GOLD

In their artistic practice the artist duo MP GOLD, made up of MARIE JOSEFIN STUTE and PHILIPP NAUJOKS, weaves together fragments from videos, drawings, sculptures, and objets trouvés to create installations. They live and work in Cologne and Düsseldorf.

(2018)

Rabih Mroué

RABIH MROUÉ, born in Beirut in 1967, is actor, director, author and ranks among the most important Lebanese contemporary artists. He is also editor of the Lebanese magazines Kalamon and The Drama Review, as well as co-founder and board member of the Beirut Art Center Association (BAC). Rabih Mroué works at the interface of performance and visual arts. His productions deal with the political situation in Lebanon and frequently combine everyday real material with self-created fictive narration. Rabih Mroué frequently works with Lina Majdalanie. His performances, such as The Inhabitants of Images (2008), Photo-Romance (2009), 33 Rounds and a few seconds (2012) as well as most recently Riding on a cloud (2014), have been represented at theaters and festivals around the world. His work The Pixelated Revolution (2012) was displayed at Documenta 13.

(2015)

Muda Outras Economias (Muda Other Economies)

MUDA OUTRAS ECONOMIAS (MUDA OTHER ECONOMIES) is a network of cultural, social, socio-environmental and educational actions formed by artists, teachers, surfers, hackers, producers and dreamers in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Muda is also the name of a alternative social currency, which was created for a solidary circular economy – a mutually supportive community based on the ethical diversity of indigenous peoples; the experiences of the Black diaspora in North, South and Central America; and the struggles of social movements. Muda’s objective is to demonstrate and to practice other ways of life outside of neoliberal hegemony.

(2023)

Esther Mugambi

ESTHER MUGAMBI is a performance and video artist, actor, and singer. Her performances, the texts of which she often authors, have been presented at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the Rotterdam Festival, at La Mama Theater in New York, and at the Young Vic Theatre in London. Esther Mugambi lives and works in Amsterdam.

(2018)

Alex Mugler

ALEX MUGLER is a New York-born, Paris-based voguer, dancer, and choreographer. His skills are reflected in intense, virtuosic and hybrid performances, traveling from high heels to ballet pointe shoes. He collaborates with artists such as Rihanna, FKA Twigs, François Chaignaud and Cecilia Bengolea.

(2017)

Katrin Mundt

KATRIN MUNDT is the curator, author and co-director of the European Media Art Festival (EMAF) in Osnabrück. She has curated film programs and exhibitions for Videonale in Bonn, HMKV Dortmund, PACT Zollverein in Essen, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Intermediæ in Madrid, Alternative Film/Video in Belgrade, and 25 FPS in Za-greb. She was a member of the selection committees for the Duisburger Filmwoche, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and Kasseler Dokfest, and regularly sits on award and funding juries. She has taught, lectured and given workshops at Goldsmiths College in London, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Ruhr-University Bochum, Werkleitz, Braunschweig University of Art, and the University of Art and Design Halle, among others. Her publications include Ortsbestimmungen. Das Dokumentarische zwischen Kino und Kunst (Berlin: Vorwerk8, 2016), co-edited with Eva Hohenberger.

(2021)

Ogutu Muraya

OGUTU MURAYA is an author, theatre-maker and storyteller. To him, art is an important catalyst for challenging one’s beliefs and for keeping alive the history that is retold in error or which remains hidden from the mainstream. His works have been shown in numerous festivals: among others, at La Mama (NYC), HIFA (Harare), Afrovibes Festival (Amsterdam) or Spielart Festival (Munich).

(2018)

© Ernest Kankam

Yussif Musah

Yussif Musah (*1997) lives and works in Kumasi, Ghana. He graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Painting and Sculpture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. He is currently an exchange student at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe. His works, figurative paintings and drawings, usually painted with charcoal or pastels, mostly are used a form of storytelling. His subject matter draws on the idea of Death, Fear, War, Trauma and Memory. By using the figurative form as a tool for image making, he approaches a work by finding particular references from archives, books, films and photographs or even prints by previous artists.

He has held a solo exhibition The Value of Nothing at Geschwister Raum, Karlsruhe (2024). Further, he has participated in the group exhibition The International Student Exhibition at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (2024), created the mural Unveiling the Forgotten: The Sweet Scent of Memory as part of the series Ancestor Veneration at Nkyinkyim Museum (2023), and participated in the group exhibition This Exhibition is Untitled the NUBUKE Foundation (2020), amongst other.

(2024)

Bethuel Muthee

BETHUEL MUTHEE is a poet living and working in Nairobi. He is a member of Maasai Mbili artists’ collective. He was series editor for Down River Road’s inaugural issue Place. As a member of Naijographia he has co-curated three exhibitions Naijographia (2017, Goethe-Institut Nairobi), Wanakuboeka Feelharmonic (2018, British Institute in Eastern Africa) and From Here to When (2019, Goethe-Institut Nairobi).

(2021)

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Sana Na N`Hada

The film director and author SANA NA N’HADA (* 1950 in Enxalé, Guinea-Bissau) is part of the pioneers of Guinean cinema. In the 1960s he was engaged in the country’s independence movement, taking up the study of filmmaking with the aim of documenting the struggle against the Portuguese colonial regime. His films include, among others, O Regresso de Amílcar Cabral (1976), Xime (1994), Kadjike (2013) and Os Escultores de Espíritos (2015). He wrote the screenplay for Filipa César’s Spell Reel.

(2018)

Alexander Nagel

ALEXANDER NAGEL is Professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. His interest in the multiple temporalities of art led to the publication of Anachronic Renaissance (co-authored with Christopher Wood, 2010) and Medieval Modern: Art Out of Time (2012). His current work addresses questions of orientation and configurations of place in Renaissance art and culture. In 2016, he received an NEH Fellowship for a collaborative project (with Elizabeth Horodowich, NMSU) entitled merasia: A Renaissance Discovery

(2017)

Nature Theater of Oklahoma

The NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA was founded in 2006 by KELLY COPPER and PAVOL LISKA in New York. The group is known for putting themselves in impossible situations and using the readymade material around them for their performances. Nature Theater of Oklahoma has performed at several important festivals and locations, among others at Berliner Theatertreffen, steirischer herbst and HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin.

(2017)

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

BONAVENTURE SOH BEJENG NDIKUNG is an art curator and biotechnologist. He is founder and artistic director of the art space SAVVY Contemporary Berlin and editor-in-chief of the SAVVY Journal for critical texts on contemporary African art. He is Curator at Large for documenta 14.

(2016)

© M. Branco

Thais Nepomuceno Veiga

Born and raised in the peripheral neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thais grew up in favelas where the state is absent. Yet, through a social project implemented by the city, Thais was introduced to drama acting at age 14 in an amateur group, and by age 16, joined a community stage production where a light designing workshop was offered. Recently working as light designer in stage performances and as filmmaker, her focuses are on projects for and by BiPoCs and minorities communities; on both stage and screen. Her film Herdeiros brings to the screen how a marginalized community survives without state support, by organizing an educational program through African Diasporic arts and knowledge, sharing with the youth the oral traditions from the bantus brought to Brazil during colonial time. Before Herdeiros, Thais had worked as a researcher for documentary in the film Clandestine Soul by Jose Barahona, as editor in short documentaries like Frontlines of all Kind and as researcher, field producer and journalist in the documentary Unser Wald Brennt, exhibited in ProSieben channel.

(2023)

Dj Nervoso

DJ NERVOSO, born in the Portuguese-speaking island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the west equatorial coast of Central Africa, has been living in Quinta do Mocho, on the periphery of Lisbon for twenty years. His excitingly fresh DJ sets, which fuse the hard hypnotic rhythms and the frenetic energy of Angolan kuduro with straightforward techno influences, were an essential spark for the experimental kuduro mutations of DJ Marfox, DJ Firmeza or DJ Nigga Fox in the early 2000s.

(2019)

Royce NG

ROYCE NG is an artist and is also part of the Hong Kong duo Zheng Mahler. In collaboration with the anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks, he works on research and community-based site-specific projects that often use digital media, performances and installations to explore the relationships between art and research practices.

(2019)

Elizabeth Ngari

ELIZABETH NGARI came from Kenya to Germany in 1966. Because of her experiences with refugee reception centers, official institutions, and the difficult conditions in refugee accommodations, which were even worse for women and children, she decided to become a political activist. Fourteen years ago, she founded Women in Exile, an organization dedicated to the concerns and worries of refugee women. For, Nagri says, in the mixed refugees groups in Brandenburg issues brought forward by women frequently met with resistance. In 2011, the association was renamed Women in Exile & Friends and now cooperates with women activists without forced migration background. They are calling for the unconditional abolition of all camps for refugee women and their children and for the extension of the Protection against Violence Act, which currently only applies to German women, to include refugee women and their children.

(2016)

Andreas Niegl

ANDREAS NIEGL is an artist living in Cologne. He works with installation, performance, video, sound, and text. He is also a sound designer and composer for theatre and dance performances. He has contributed to productions at FFT Düsseldorf, Helios Theater Hamm and Schauspiel Essen, among others.

(2019)

Nkisi

As co-founder of NON Worldwide, whose raison d’etre is described as “a collective of African artists and of the diaspora, using sound as their primary media, to articulate the visible and invisible structures that create binaries in society, and in turn distribute power”, NKISI’s ethos and music is imbued with a certain punk sensibility along with a political push back against conformity. Her DJ sets draw from a wide range of influences forming a fast paced and exhilarating experience in the dance. Her production reflects deeply in these influences also and provide a sound that is equally relentless and evocative.

(2017)

NO OBI, NO INSERT

Lauritz aka NO OBI, NO INSERT operates one of the most exciting and obscure Youtube-channels in Northrhein-Westphalia and is a true connoisseur of various genres and rarities. Besides, he also delivered one of Cologne Sessions´ favourite ambient-mixes of all times.

(2019)

Simon Noori

SIMON NOORI is a geographer and a migration and border scholar, working at the Universities of Zurich and Neuchâtel. He is interested in the politics of digital bordering, examining both the emergence of biometric border control and the use of digital devices in undocumented border crossings. He has co-founded the open-access journal movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies and has worked several years for the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone.

(2019)

Núcleo Experimental de Performance (NEP - ECo / UFRJ)

NEP – NÚCLEO EXPERIMENTAL DE PERFORMANCE (EXPERIMENTAL PERFORMANCE NUCLEUS) – UFRJ is a research and continuing education center that is part of the Postgraduate Program in Performing Arts and Theater Direction at the School of Communication at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (ECo-UFRJ). The NEP is coordinated by Adriana Schneider Alcure and Eleonora Fabião and was created by undergraduate and graduate students as a space for long-term theoretical, artistic and pedagogical research. It is also a movement of academic creativity and a space for socializing. The NEP is interested in forming an extensive and sustainable network for research, critical thinking and action and to make this their core mode of action.

(2021)

© Sara Löfwander

Christian Nyampeta

CHRISTIAN NYAMPETA is an artist working across art, design, and theory. His practice includes the convening of a roaming program of exhibitions, screenings and lyrical performances concerned with the question of how to live together through exploring the ideas of monument and translation. His latest projects include École du soir, SculptureCenter, New York (2019), and A Flower Garden of All Kinds of Loveliness Without Sorrow, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (GfZK), Leipzig (2019). Nyampeta also exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane (2019) and Camden Arts Centre, London (2017). He participated in the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg (2019), the Dakar Biennale (2018) and the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016). Nyampeta runs Radius, an online and occasionally inhabitable radio station. He is a PhD student at the Visual Cultures Department of Goldsmiths, University of London. He was awarded The Art Prize Future of Europe 2019.

(2020)

Cedrick Nzolo Ngambou

PROF. CEDRICK NZOLO NGAMBOU, is designer and professor at the Institut supérieur des arts et métiers (ISAM), Kinshasa.

(2018)

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© Daniel Koch

Ella O'Brien-Coker

For Ella O'Brien-Coker (*1990, she/they, Cologne), the various roles and facets that make up their identity are always a question of contexts & spaces. As a singer/lyricist/rapper with various bands and projects on stage and in the rehearsal room. As a musicologist and writer on the trail of what's to find between the lines. As project coordinator of NICA artist development for direct support and institutional funding of musicians in the cultural landscape. As an intersectional activist advocating for marginalized positions and engaged in community work. As a daughter and sibling, part of a complex family context that forms the basis for all previous interests. And last but not least, as Ella, simply all these things at the same time and a little bit more.

2022

(c) Nora Hase

Noelle O'Brien-Coker

Noelle O'Brien-Coker (she/they/her) works as a full-time journalist for the public radio. As an editor and writer, she creates programs which focus on music, pop culture, politics, and social justice, with a particular focus on critiques of racism and heteronormativity. In her work and beyond, it is important for her to examine from a power-critical perspective, to question apparent self-evident facts, and to convey understanding for different perspectives and complex issues.

Since 2018, Noelle is also an active member of the intersectional, queerfeminist collective DEMASK, which organizes political and cultural events by and for qt*i*BI*PoC, (trans*, inter*, Black, Indigenous and People of Color).

(2023)

Timothy O'Dwyer

The Australian DR TIMOTHY O’DWYER is a saxophonist, composer and researcher, as well as current Head of the School of Contemporary Music at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. With a background in punk-jazz and free improvisation, Timothy O’Dwyer’s music constantly pushes the boundaries of style, technique and especially context stretching across borders of culture, performance practice and art forms.

He has toured widely internationally, released 8 CDs of original compositions to critical acclaim and is a member of the Australian contemporary music group ELISION Ensemble. Timothy was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) in 2013/2014.

http://www.timodwyer.com https://www.facebook.com/timodwyerfellowship?fref=ts https://www.facebook.com/TimODwyerTheFold

Pascale Obolo

PASCALE OBOLO is a Paris-based filmmaker and editor-in-chief of AFRIKADAA, a magazin for African art and design. Her works have been shown at the Musée du Montparnasse and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris as well as the Dakar Biennale and several international film festivals.

(2016)

Dimitri (Dima) Oboukhov

DIMITRI (Dima) OBOUKHOV was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine; he left the former Soviet Union with his family in 1991. After studying in Münster, he ran the Roter Platz Pub in Cologne's Kwartier Latäng for several years. Since 2015, he has been running Bar Acéphale on Luxemburger Straße, whose name he borrowed from the secret society of artists and intellectuals that celebrated legendary parties in Paris in the 1930s.

(2022)

Kizito Odhiambo

KIZITO ODHIAMBO is a Germany-based Kenyan social entrepreneur and independent educational consultant from Gemeinsam für Afrika. He works with small farmers in Kenya to develop on-site perspectives, and his educational work is concerned with global trade structures, the living conditions of children and adults, as well as with racism.

(2018)

Ordinateur

ORDINATEUR (Pohé Cédric Kevin Bah) began his career in the coupé décalé scene alongside the renowned musicians Kedjevara, Eric Olomide and DJ Arafat. His astounding dance technique inspired his nickname Magic Feet. In addition to international solo performances and as a duo with Alaingo, he teaches dance classes across Europe. Ordinateur has regularly performed in Parisian nightclubs since 2016. He is a founding member of La Fleur.

(2019)

Uriel Orlow

URIEL ORLOW combines film, photography, drawing and sound in his research-intensive artistic practice. His work has been shown at various film festivals, art biennials and in renowned museums. He holds teaching appointments at the University of Westminster in London as well as at the Zurich University of the Arts. Orlow lives and works in London and Zurich.

(2018)

(c) Daniela Ortiz The ABC of Racist Europe, 2017

Daniela Ortiz

Daniela Ortiz lives and works in Peru and Spain. The artist is committed to combating racism, colonial and patriarchal structures and creates new visual narratives through the means of painting, collage, performances and in the form of children's books. In the exhibition, she commented on Max Ernst's Die Jungfrau züchtigt das Jesuskind vor drei Zeugen (The Virgin Chastises the Child Jesus in Front of Three Witnesses, 1921) and criticized state-run shelters under whose supervision refugee children died while the testimony of white employees counted for more than the information of racialized mothers.

(2023)

Rex Osa

REX OSA came to Germany from Nigeria in 2005 and applied for political asylum. The period that followed was one of ongoing struggles with refugee authorities, which he perceived as “a machinery of control and discrimination.” This prompted him to join the refugee self-organization network The Voice, where he became one of the main initiators of the Break Isolation campaign, informing a broader public about the conditions in refugee accommodations. Rex Osa gives public talks, both in Germany and internationally, about forced displacement and its causes and the self-organization of refugees.

(2016)

© Natacha Nisic

Eugene Ostashevsky

EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY is the author of The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (2013), a poetry novel about challenges affecting communication between pirates and parrots. Translated into German by Uljana Wolf and Monika Rinck as Der Pirat, der von Pi den Wert nicht kennt, the book won the 2019 Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie. He is now the Dorothea Schlegel artist-in-residence at EXC 2020 Temporal Communities, Freie Universität Berlin.

(2020)

Miltiadis Oulios

MILTIADIS OULIOS works as a journalist, moderator and lecturer in Cologne and Düsseldorf. The issues he focuses on include the immigration society and struggles for recognition and rights. He is an author for WDR radio and for daily newspapers; he also hosts the German-Greek magazine Radiopolis on the Funkhaus Europa radio station. In addition to this, he was active in the anti-racist network Kanak Attak. Since 2007, he has been researching the representation of migrant journalists in the German media. He is also a member of the network Neue Deutsche Medienmacher. His book Blackbox Abschiebung was published in 2015 by Suhrkamp.

(2016)

Emine Sevgi Özdamar

Whether EMINE SEVGI ÖZDAMAR belongs to German or Turkish literature is something that scholars have quarreled over since the beginning of her career. She received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1991 for extracts from her first novel Life Is a Caravanserai, Has Two Doors, I Came in One, I Went Out the Other. Her volume Mother Tongue from 1999 is a collection of stories that are like milestones of the literature between Germany and Turkey: Mother Tongue, Grandfather’s Tongue, Black Eye in Germany (a theater piece composed in prose) and Career of a Cleaning Lady. Memories of Germany. From 1979 to 1984 Özdamar had an engagement at the Schauspielhaus Bochum under the direction of Claus Peymann, where she was contracted to compose Black Eye in Germany. Her themes are theater stages and world literature between Germany and Turkey. There has been much careful analysis and research into her literary examinations of Turkish nationalism and the transnational dynamics and historical entanglements between Turkey and Germany. Her works defy categorization in existing literary groups – except in those of world literature. Thus as early as 1997 Kader Konuk describes the protagonist and the being-in-the-world of the characters in Özdamar’s first novel Life Is a Caravanserai, Has Two Doors, I Came in One, I Went Out the Other outside of the question of self-image of a particular ethnically focused literary group. In the exhibition Ghosts, Traces, Echoes: Works in Shifts are extracts from her piece Perikızı – A Dream Play (2010), which in large part and also in dramaturgical sequence trace back to the fairy tale The Girl from the Half-Burned Forest from 2007. With the new telling of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey Emine Sevgi Özdamar wrote Perikızı – A Dream Play for Ruhr.2010 as part of the project Odyssee Europa, a further milestone that underscores Özdamar’s position in the European cultural landscape.

(2021)

Ferhat Özgür

FERHAT ÖZGÜR’s artistic work covers a wide spectrum ranging from film and photography to installations. His works have been on display at many international institutions, such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Museum der Moderne Salzburg and mumok in Vienna. From 2012 to 2013, the MoMA PS1 New York presented I can sing, a solo exhibition of his works, and in 2016, AlbumArte, Rome, showed The Compassionate Artist OR My Beauty in Green Drives Me Crazy. Özgür was part of the group exhibition Shame: 100 Reasons for Turning Red at Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden and is professor at the Yeditepe University in Instanbul.

In 2017 he was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

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Dirk Paesmas (JODI Collective)

Dirk Paesmans is a member of the JODI collective with Joan Heemskerk. Their background is in photography and video art; since the mid-1990s they started to create original artworks for the World Wide Web. A few years later, they also turned to software art and artistic computer game modification. Jodi organized exhibitions (Webcrash) and participated in international group shows with performances and installations. The Net.art that Jodi creates is opposed to post-internet art, Net.artists develop their work in the context of Online media and make it available on the internet without institutional constraints. Recently JODI published performative Apps(ZYX) and exhibition projects in collaboration with other artists.

(2024)

Nikos Papastergiadis

NIKOS PAPASTERGIADIS is Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His latest book is Cosmopolitanism and Culture (Polity, 2012).

(2016)

Nicolás Paris

NICOLÁS PARIS (born in Bogotá in 1977) is an artist whose work is closely linked to ques-tions about learning. His working method, based mainly on dialogue, incomplete architecture and the act of drawing and cultivating, creates new spaces for exchange, reflection and finding new ways of being together. At the beginning of 2017, he founded the Institute for Radical Learning (InPAR), a place for mobilizing collaborative processes and facilitat-ing the establishment of study groups.

(2021)

Jiyun Park

JIYUN PARK explores sensory and synesthetic states through experimentation with materials in search of hidden and inherent sounds, spatial sound, and performances. Her works are mostly influenced by crossing the threshold of space and time in her surroundings. She is actively doing collaboration performances to expand her frame, e.g. communicating by data and human-sonic interaction.

(2020)

Anand Patwardhan

ANAND PATWARDHAN is a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker whose human rights-oriented work is often subject to suppression by the Indian government in power. While some of his films explore the rise of religious fundamentalism and casteism in India, others investigate unsustainable development. Many were awarded at international film festivals in Mumbai, Leipzig, Paris and Hong Kong and other venues.

(2017)

Manuel Pelmuș

MANUEL PELMUȘ lives and works in Oslo and Bucharest. He is one of the leading artists of the “new performance turn”, who have been reimagining the role of performance in the context of visual arts over the past decade.

(2014)

Oscar Peña

OSCAR PEÑA creates technology that enhances businesses and solves social challenges. Peña is currently leading the technology of HOGARU.com, a tech-enabled cleaning company with 600+ employees. He is happy to connect with anyone who is tackling social challenges and thinks that technology could give them an edge.

(2021)

Massimo Perinelli

MASSIMO PERINELLI is a historian at the University of Cologne. He was active with Kanak Attak and is a founding member of the initiative „Keupstraße ist überall“ and of the action group „NSU-Komplex auflösen“. Dostluk Sineması was a film series he screened in cafés along the Keupstraße in Cologne featuring testimonies of persons affected by the pogroms of the 1990s and by the NSU attack in 2004. The film series finally resulted in his publication Von Mauerfall bis Nagelbombe (Amadeu Antonio Foundation, 2014). In the near future he will take up a post as an advisor in the migration division of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin.

(2016)

Sybella Perry

SYBELLA PERRY is a British artist based in Germany, working with sound, text and performance. Her works often incorporate the sounds other people make – featuring the voices of her sister, partner and friends or the music her parents play. Taking the form of multi-channel installations, live performance for radio, publications and records, they deal with sound both as a means to create shared spaces and as a material example used to raise socio-political and philosophical questions. In 2018/19, she co-founded and organised otic.radio, a web-radio platform for students at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. This year, she will release the LP and publication Rustic Airs in collaboration with Hideous Replica and Atlas Projectos.

(2020)

Photo: Luiza Azevedo

Luna Pesce

LUNA PESCE is a biologist; she graduated from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in 2011. She is a raw foods educator who studied at Terrapia/Fio-Cruz and the founder of Arôle – Alimentação Consciente. Her passion and the focus of her research are PANCs, non-conventional food crops and medicinal plants.

(2021)

Britta Peters

The art critic and curator BRITTA PETERS (* 1967 in Birkenfeld an der Nahe) is the artistic director of Urban Arts Ruhr, a decentralized institution for contemporary art in the Ruhr region. Previously she was part of the curatorial team of Sculpture Projects Münster. She has taught at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg and at the Academy of Fine Arts Münster. As director of the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof from 2008 to 2011 she was responsible for numerous exhibitions in semi-public space.

(2018)

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez

NATAŠA PETREŠIN-BACHELEZ is an independent curator and author. The former co-director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers is also the co-founder of Cluster, a network of organizations that support and exhibit contemporary visual art. Currently she is curating Contour Biennale 9, which will take place in Mechelen, Belgium, in 2019. Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez lives in Paris.

(2018)

Alessandro Petti

Alessandro Petti (born in Italy) is an architect, researcher in urbanism, and director of Campus in Camps. He is founding member and director of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency), an art and architecture collective and residency programme which combines discourse, spatial intervention, education, collective learning, public meetings and legal challenges. Their projects have been shown in various museums and biennales around the world.

In 2013 he was together with Sandi Hilal fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Jahnavi Phalkey

JAHNAVI PHALKEY, filmmaker and historian of science and technology; Founding Director of the Science Gallery, Bengaluru.

(2021)

Amanda Pina

AMANDA PIÑA is a choreographer and dancer. Her works address the mechanisms of exclusion and employ non-Western cultural perspectives in contemporary performance. Since 2005, she has collaborated with visual artist and filmmaker Daniel Zimmermann under the label nadaproductions. Their collaborative production WAR - ein Kriegstanz (2013) attained international attention. Amanda Piña lives in Vienna.

(2018)

Alexandra Pirici

ALEXANDRA PIRICI is an artist with a background in choreography and works freely across different mediums, from performance to visual arts to music. Pirici lives in Bucharest.

(2014)

Bojana Piškur

Bojana Piškur graduated in art history from the University of Ljubljana and received her Ph.D. at the Institute for Art History at the Charles University in Prague. She is a senior curator at the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana. Her focus of professional interest is on political issues as they relate to or are manifested in the field of art, with special emphasis on the region of the former Yugoslavia and Latin America. She has researched topics such as post avant-gardes in former Yugoslavia, absent archives, radical education, other institutionality, Non-Aligned Movement, always in relation to the wider social and political environment.

Related exhibitions and projects include Glossary of Common Knowledge (with Zdenka Badovinac and Jesús Carrillo), MSUM Ljubljana and other institutions, 2014-2016; Museum in the Street (with Zdenka Badovinac), Moderna galerija Ljubljana, 2008; This is All Film. Experimental Film in Yugoslavia 1951–1991 (with Ana Janevski, Jurij Meden and Stevan Vuković), Moderna galerija Ljubljana, 2010, amongst other.

(2024)

Lyudska Poboda

LYUDSKA PODOBA is an avant-pop band founded by Ukrainian artists Anatoly Belov and Georgy Babanski. Fusing dance beats, avant-garde madness, and post-Soviet soulfulness, they probe questions of queerness, gender, sexuality, beauty, love and the lack thereof – all for the first time in Cologne. Adopting consciously campy, maudlin poses, they stress the constructedness of identity, which is even implied by their name – translatable as “Human Likeness.” Against the backdrop of the homophobia that is widespread not only in Ukraine but in the whole post-Soviet region, they sound a note of joyous defiance. “It’s shiny music,” they say, “overflowing with all our favorite fetishes, mixing the things that inspire us, the things that makes us dance, turn, twist and laugh.”

(2015)

Rita Ponce de León

Rita Ponce de León is an artist with a focus on drawing and installation. She is currently studying psycho-corporal techniques for human development at the Argentinean organization Rio Abierto. Ponce de León’s way of working engages in situations that allow, through artistic and learning processes, for the generation of meaningful human bonds through intuitive encounters. She has approached practices such as butoh and other workshops that address body movement as the origin of knowledge and wisdom. She condenses this diversity of processes into drawing and visual essays.

Her work was shown at Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2016; Endless openness produces circles, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, 2014; and The Ungovernables, New Museum Triennial, New York, 2012. She has had solo exhibitions at Proyecto AMIL, Lima; 80M2 Gallery, Lima; and Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, among others. Furthermore, her images have been published in Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing (2013). She currently collaborates with choreographer Tania Solomonoff, self-education project Vacaciones de Trabajo, the transdisciplinary studio Primal, and poet Yaxkin Melchy.

(2024)

Michael Portnoy

MICHAEL PORTNOY is a New York-based artist. Although rooted in performance, his work employs a variety of media – from participatory installations to sculpture, theater, writing and video. His work has been presented internationally in such venues as Witte de With (Rotterdam), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Centre Pompidou (Paris), dOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel), and The Kitchen (New York).

(2017)

Abner Preis

ABNER PREIS focuses on public performances and mixed-media with traditional storytelling as the central aspect. Preis received his Master’s degree from the Dutch Art Institute in 2014. He exhibited and performed in numerous institutions, i.a. Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dordtmund, TAAK Amsterdam, Museum Folkwang Essen, The Player Rotterdam, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Human Cities Festival Istanbul and Tetem Enschede.

(2019)

•• Propaganda Department

•• PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT is a collective of artists, writers and illustrators established in 2017. They see their work as an inquiry into textual space, an ongoing assemblage of ‘hearsay’ manifest in print form. ‘••’ may be pronounced diăn diăn, dim2 dim2, or dot dot, etc., etc., depending upon the common attribution for the symbol in your preferred language. The name is taken from an abstraction of the character ‘點’, meaning ‘point’ or ‘dot’ but also ‘to point out, to address’ or ‘to kindle, to light’. Its components stem from the originating characters for ‘黑 black’ and ‘占 occupy’ – as in the occupation of ink and the printed word in physical and social space, bearing also the potential to question (a Cantonese use of 點 means ‘how’) and ignite. Their publications and forms of artistic research, such as the series of publicly distributed broadsheets known as the Etc., Etc., catalogue, are a corporeal extension following the slow rhythms of the haptic, mechanically distributed text: partially anonymous, intended as a dispersion, free to peruse and opening a different set of possible actions. Their work has appeared in art spaces and on street corners in equal measure.

(2021)

© Niclas Weber

Keshav Purushotham

Keshav Purushotham is a musician, composer, lyricist and producer from Cologne.

As the son of the Indian-born percussionist Ramesh Shotham, Keshav Purushotham has been in touch with music from an early age. He began his professional musical career as the founder and singer of the Cologne-based band Timid Tiger, with whom he released three albums and played at numerous national and international tours and festivals.

In 2013, he received the Artist in Residence scholarship from the Goethe Institute in India, which he used as a source of inspiration for his debut album Keshavara. His second album, Kabinett der Phantasie, was accompanied by a film of the same name, which interweaves music, acting and dance to create a vaudeville-inspired avant-garde work of art.

In order to preserve his artistic freedom, Keshav decided in 2016 to found the label Papercup Records together with his long-time musical companion Steffen Wilmking, which now has a large back catalog.

Keshav Purushotham is an integral part of the Cologne music scene and writes, composes and produces music for films, theater and TV series. He writes and produces music for well-known pop acts such as Casper, Cro and Klee.

Keshav Purushotham was awarded the popNRW prize in the Outstanding Artist category in 2020 with Keshavara.

(2024)

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Photo: Kai Kanthak

Shelly Quest

SHELLY QUEST, born in the Bronx, NYC, lives and works as a musician, producer and designer in Cologne, Germany.

In her artistic work she uses diverse resources such as color, sound and movement to express her activist approach. In the center of her work is the demand for the social empowerment and inclusion of marginalized people, especially in culture. As a rapper, she also challenges her audience with empowering and provocative lyrics, questioning existing images of role models and society.

The artist has been working with children and young adults for more than 20 years in various contexts. Through participatory activities, mentoring, and workshops, she playfully challenges young people to think about themselves and their communities.

Shelly Quest is an Artist-in-Residence with ADKDW's Participatory Residency Program beginning January 2023. In collaboration with the Jugendwerkstatt Chorweiler, she will develop a participatory program for young people from the north of Cologne during the first half of 2023.

(2023)

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© Anita Pinggera

Anne Rademacher

ANNE RADEMACHER is an English- and German-language specialist and worked for many years as a literary editor. Today she is the director of a foundation and translates from English in her free time. She is the translator of all of Xiaolu Guo’s books published in the German language, and, most recently, works by authors like Helen Hodgman, Tracy Chevalier and Jo Baker.

(2020)

Tomáš Rafa

Since 2009, TOMÁŠ RAFA has investigated notions of nationalism in Central Europe through his ongoing documentary film project, New Nationalism in the Heart of Europe. His documentary details the creation of conflicts that arise from prejudices, superstitions, and resentments in the region. Rafa’s film has been screened in museums and galleries across Europe. He is based in Warsaw.

(2017)

Jota Ramos

Jota Ramos is a transmasculine non-binary multidisciplinary artist from Berlin. Drawing from autobiographical artistic experiments, Ramos explores the practices of performance, video, installation, photography, and poetry. As a light-skinned Black person, Ramos is interested in issues surrounding the authentic representation of Black people through the creation of peripheral dissident subjectivities that dialogue with symbolic, etymological, Black, and gendered identities. To do this, Ramos uses poetic reflection to create a space for healing. Through artistic research, Ramos explores methods for creating an anti-racist and expressive representation of Black queer people, their identities, and their historical trajectories.
Ramos is currently studying directing at FilmArche in Berlin.

(2023)

Milo Rau

MILO RAU is one of the most important contemporary theater directors in Europe. Since 2007 founder and artistic director of the International Institute of Political Murder, he is also a prolific writer and essayist, authoring Was tun? Kritik der postmodernen Vernunft (2013) and Althussers Hände (2015), among others. From 2018 on, he will be directing the National Theater of Gent. He currently lives in Cologne.

(2018)

Reclaim Your City

RECLAIM YOUR CITY is a network and archive that combines forms of intervention such as urban art, graffiti, raves, and critical mapping with urban political protests and uses the means of art to demand a right to the city for everyone.

(2022)

Ethiopian Records

ETHIOPIAN RECORDS, born Endeguena Mulu, is one of the leading lights of Ethiopia’s burgeoning electronic music scene. Mixing Ethiopia’s traditional music, jazz sounds and rhythms with electronic styles like UKG, Ambient and Bass music, he created the new genre “Ethiopiyawi Electronic”.

(2019)

Georg Restle

GEORG RESTLE is a German journalist. He heads and anchors the political TV news magazine Monitor on ARD. Restle is based in Cologne.

(2017)

Camille Revol

Camille Revol began her dance training at CRR in Annecy before attending the Ecole Atel-ier Rudra Béjart in Lausanne. She later trained at D.A.N.C.E. under the artistic direction of Fréderic Flamand, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor and Angelin Preljocaj. She subse-quently worked with Avatâra Ayuso (AVA dance company), Ivar Hagendoorn, Richard Siegal (The Bakery), Samuel Mathieu (Lastiko), Philippe Jamet (Groupe Clara Scotch), Gilles Baron (Origami), Alexandre Blondel (Cie Carna), and Simon Feltz. In 2012, she played the role of Delphine in Chat Perché-Opéra rural by Caroline Gautier and Jean-Marc Singier. In 2013, she assisted Bernard Cauchard with the choreography for Dogorians, a musical show by Etienne Perruchon.

(2021)

Reyod

REYOD (Youayou Audrey) tours as a dancer with different renowned companies, teaches dance classes to young girls and performs in various contexts, including at the Zénith de Paris, Élysée Montmartre and Cigale. She has quickly established a foothold in the coupé décalé scene and has danced with groups like Les Anges D’afrik and African Probo. With La Fleur she has collaborated on the piece Les Nouveaux Aristocrates.

(2019)

Evariste Richer

Born in 1969 in Montpellier, France, EVARISTE RICHER lives and works in Paris. He is a poet and his work is presented as an exploration of reality that strives to understand our own world and the mechanisms that have given rise to it and still inform it. By appropriating the tools of science and culture, such as meteorology, metrology, astronomy and physics, he sets up systems and arrangements which help, above all, to provide a new place from which to see the world, without overlooking an intrinsic aesthetic dimension, whose end purpose is to reconcile the individual with the universal. Each one of his pieces seems totally in line with the previous one in the form of an ongoing dialogue, posited as the ‘standard model’ of a different relation to the world. The minimalist and conceptual aesthetic which informs the artist’s works disturbs us by its power of suggestion and evocation, and constructs around the viewer a narrative that questions our thought systems and jostles our understanding of the world.

Richer’s work has been acquired by numerous public collections such as the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fond National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; MACVAL (Museum of Contemporary Art of Val-de-Marne), France; Collection IAC, Villeurbanne, Rhones-Alpes, France; as well as private collections such as the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris / San Francisco; Collection Lafayette Anticipations from the Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris and the CALDIC Collection, Rotterdam.

(2021)

Moritz Riesewieck

HANS BLOCK and MORITZ RIESEWIECK met at theater school in Berlin and founded the production label Laokoon. They work collaboratively in the sphere of theater, documentary, lecture performance, publication etc. Laokoon, the seer, was the only person who unmasked the Trojan Horse’s true nature: A dangerous fraud.

(2021)

Monika Rinck

MONIKA RINCK is a poet and translator. She focuses on translation as re-embodiment, on ‘roughness’ as in rough poetry, rough silk or rough translation, and on translation under hypnosis. Together with Ann Cotten she was part of a transformative performance entitled The Hegel Flies Tonight in 2010. In 2016, with the help of hypnotherapists, she translated poems by Magnus William-Olsson from Swedish into German. These poems were published in Switzerland by Urs Engeler in the volume Homullus absconditus: Gedichte. She lives in Berlin and Vienna.

(2021)

Naomi Rincón Gallardo

With an interest in radical histories and speculative fictions, Mexico City-based artist NAOMI RINCÓN GALLARDO works across performance and video to investigate utopian possibilities and belief. Her often music-based narratives draw on counter-cultural forms like punk, DIY aesthetics, and queer identities to reframe touchstones in Mexican and Mesoamerican politics. As both an artist and an educator, she foregrounds research tools from feminist theory and radical theater to imagine new types of social engagement, encounter, and play.

(2014)

Joanne Rodriguez

JOANNE RODRIGUEZ has been a research trainee at Museum Ludwig since April 2021, where she is curating the upcoming exhibition Here and Now. Anti-Colonial Interventions. She studied literature, art, and media studies at the University of Konstanz, the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and the Universidad de Valparaíso in Chile. Her research interests include post- and decolonial theory, which she also incorporates into her curatorial practice.

(2022)

Thiago Rosa

Thiago Rosa (born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is part of the Colectivo Bonobando (directed by Adriana Schneider and Lucas Oradovschi). He is an actor and performer and has a degree in Fine Arts. In Berlin, he studied at the Tanzfabrik and is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Dance, Context and Choreography at the Inter-University Center for Dance, Berlin University of the Arts (HZT/UdK Berlin).

(2023)

Photo: Felix Norberg

Aneta Rostkowska

ANETA ROSTKOWSKA is a curator, author and gardener, a graduate of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam. Rostkowska studied philosophy, economics and art history in Kraków, Poznań, Heidelberg and Frankfurt am Main. She worked as a curator at Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art in Kraków (2011-2016) and at the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne (2016-2018). Since January 2019 she is a director of Temporary Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art in Cologne. Apart from curating, she has also been teaching art theory, art history and philosophy at various universities and art schools.

(2019)

Yazan Rousan

YAZAN ROUSAN is a professional musician, actor, composer and presenter based in Amman. In 2007, he co-founded the band Autostrad, one of the leading Arab indie bands. He received his BA from the Jordan Academy of Music in 2001, and a master’s degree in Musicology from Higher Institute Music in Tunis in 2005. He joined the band Rum, led by Tareq Al Nasser, in 1998 as a lead percussionist. He received the award for Best Music Composition and Sound Effects at the seventh Jordanian Theater Festival, 1998. During his studies in Tunis, he founded the band Aspirin and worked in theater. In 2007, he released his first album under the title Telvizion. Rousan has produced more than 50 children’s songs, as well as numerous jingles, ads and dedicated messages aired on local and regional radios. His radio show Ricardo has broadcast on Jbc Radio since 2020. He is also founder of 3al Jisir, a community of ideas and a safe and productive space. In November 2020, 3al Jisir launched JDJ, a 24-hour streaming festival of 12 DJs from Jordan. Rousan aims to revisit experimental music genres, give voice to those previously unheard, research powerful local collections and build a dedicated listenership.

(2021)

Gosha Rubchinskiy

GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY is a fashion designer, photographer, and filmmaker. Inspired by post-Soviet Russia and its skater subculture, he started his own street wear label, ГОША РУБЧИНСКИЙ, in 2008, that is currently a very successful fashion brand. He lives in Moscow.

(2017)

© Andreas Jopp

Bill Ruzima

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Ghalya Saadawi

GHALYA SAADAWI lives in Beirut. She lectures in modern and contemporary art theory, and art in Lebanon after 1990 at the American University of Beirut, The Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and the University of St. Joseph. She earned a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London in sociology titled Rethinking the Witness: Art after the Lebanese Wars (2015). Her dissertation underscores the tactics and considerations that inform a rethinking of witnessing, representation and ideology after the declared end of the civil wars. Against the classifying of all artistic practices under “postwar” and/or “contemporary art”, the thesis instead reads select practices through the historical and theoretical entanglements and discourses of the mid-20th century to the end of the Cold War, and through the lens of an extended political modernism. Some of her essays and reviews have appeared in a number of publications, anthologies, and artist’s monographs. Between 2015 and 2017, Saadawi was Resident Professor of Ashkal Alwan’s art study program, the Home Workspace Program. She is co-editor of Makhzin with founding editor and writer Mirene Arsanios and poet Iman Mersal, and is affiliated with BICAR, the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research.

(2017)

Susanne Sachsse

SUSANNE SACHSSE is a Berlin-based artist. She has worked internationally in performance, film, and art contexts with Yael Bartana, Jonathan Berger, Zach Blas, Phil Collins, Keren Cytter, Vaginal Davis, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Laibach, Ligia Lewis, Josiah McElheny, Vegard Vinge & Ida Müller and Xiu Xiu. She has starred in a number of films by Bruce LaBruce, including The Raspberry Reich. In 2001 she co-founded the artists’ collective CHEAP. She is a recipient of the Premio Maguey Queer Icon Award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. In 2021 she opened her first solo exhibition at Participant Inc in New York City. She lives in Berlin. With CHEAP she produces a monthly radio show at the artist radio station reboot FM, Berlin.

(2022)

belit sağ

BELIT SAĞ is a video artist living in Amsterdam. She studied mathematics in Ankara. Her video-artistic background can be traced to collaborations with video-activist collectives in Turkey, where she co-founded the art space Karahaber and the archival project bak.ma. In 2014 and 2015, she completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam; in 2016 and 2019, she was in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. Her works have been presented at international film festivals in Toronto, Rotterdam and New York, in the EYE film museum in Amsterdam, at the MOCA in Taipei and at the Tabakalera Film Seminar in San Sebastián.

In 2019 belit sağ was a fellow of the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

(2019)

Mamta Sagar

MAMTA SAGAR, poet and writer; Professor of academic and creative writing at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

(2021)

Tamer El Said

TAMER EL SAID realized several documentaries and short fiction films and in 2007 founded the independent film production company Zero Production in Cairo. He is also one of the founders of the Cimatheque – Alternative Film Centre in Egypt. He lives in Cairo. In the Last Days of the City is his first feature-length fiction film.

(2016)

Malik Sajad

MALIK SAJAD is a visual artist and writer from Kashmir/India. He studied visual arts and storytelling at Kashmir University and Goldsmiths, University of London. Malik Sajad was an Inlaks Foundation scholar (2011) and OMI, Francis Greenburger fellow (2013). He usually writes and draws about the human condition and the psychological consequences of political and social uncertainties. Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir, published by HarperCollins, is his first graphic novel, which won the Verve Storyteller Of The Year Award (2015), Amazon Rising Star Award (2015), and was made a part of the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. He has also written short stories documenting the human toll of political crises across South Asia for the New York Times, Caravan and Vice.

In 2019 Malik Sajad was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

© Relja Ivanic

Marko Salapura

MARKO SALAPURA is an artist and architect working between Cologne and Belgrade. He works with installation, video and performance. He is also an exhibition architecture designer. He is interested in documenting the politics of spatial processes happening on a large scale. His current project deals with documenting the Floating University in Berlin and his participation there in 2018. His video installation Kairos, looking at the expansion of the red palm weevil and the revalorisation of modernist architecture in the Mediterranean region was exhibited at Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale in Tirana. He curated the Serbian pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2014.

(2020)

Anja Saleh

ANJA SALEH is the founder TAVII, a company that came out of an interest in the interplay of the culture and politics of memory and their influence on the future and visions of tomorrow. TAVII translates this research into handmade jewelry and art and brings together the stories of people who are part of the diaspora. Saleh is the director of an empowerment project for youths and young adults; she is also active in political educational work and as an independent speaker. She was initially active online as a poet. In her artistic work she deals with various themes, often focusing on identity, language, spirituality as well as issues of intersectionality in everyday life.

(2020)

Inder Salim

In his new performance Nothing Is Outside, Indian/Kashmiri artist INDER SALIM addresses what it means to live in a swathe of land that is being obliterated by irreconcilable territorial claims. India and Pakistan, between which Kashmir lies, have been fighting one another for 70 years. Salim examines the predicament of “being” in opposing worlds – a Kashmiri in India, a South Asian in the Western world, a performance artist in the neo-capitalist world order. Isolation versus openness, demarcation versus negative determination of in-between space: these not only define a charged territory that pulls itself in opposite directions but support its transgression into the unknown. As an intervention in space, Inder Salim positions his art practice against all forms of hegemonic endeavor.

(2018)

Saskia Sassen

SASKIA SASSEN is an American sociologist and economist. During the 1980s and 1990s, she emerged as a key author in urban sociology, who coined the term of the “global city”. Her work examines the impact of globalization, economic restructuring, and communication technology upon urban life and its governance. Sassen authored numerous books which have been translated into well over 20 languages. Most recent titles include Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (2014), Cities in a World Economy (Sage 2012) and Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008). Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, New York, and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought.

(2017)

Amelia Saul

AMELIA SAUL is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. Her work spans video, performance, and scriptwriting. She has exhibited and developed projects in New York at the Performing Garage, Momenta Art, BHQFU, and the Kitchen. Her last solo exhibition, Four Women, took place at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle in 2016. She has also shown her work in Berlin, Dresden, Taipei, and Hiroshima. She is currently developing a suite of videos that cross the boundaries of video art, music video, and art film.

(2017)

Saúva

Saúva is a non-profit association created to collaborate with other non-profit initiatives. Therefore, it invests in projects and enterprises driven by the following motivations: regenerating the environment in its integrality; reducing social inequality; sharing and exchanging knowledge with traditional peoples and cultures of Brazil; practicing an education that is self-education; and co-creating other forms of economic relationship. All its investments are guided by the principle of Venture Philanthropy. This means that we aim to overcome the model of dependent assistance. The idea is to promote sustainability, autonomy, and circularity of these projects and enterprises.

(2023)

photo: Werner Lieberknecht

Anna Schapiro

ANNA SCHAPIRO studied Expanded Concepts of Art at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under Prof Ulrike Grossarth, with whom she also completed her master’s degree. Schapiro also studied at the Universidade do Porto, Portugal. Subsequently she pursued Jewish studies at the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm. Anna Schapiro has taught at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel. Her works have been shown at Kunsthaus Dresden; the Museum for Contemporary Art Wrocław; the Museum Vilha Velha, Vila Real, Portugal; and at GFLK Halle Süd, Tölz; among others. Schapiro is co-editor of the journal Jalta – Positionen zur Jüdischen Gegenwart and a member of the Ministerium für Mitgefühl.

(2020)

Katrin Schaumburg

KATRIN SCHAUMBURG is a research assistant at the Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany (DOMiD e.V.), where she works on museum, collection and participation concepts as an exhibition curator. Her PhD thesis deals with female agency in a South African township.

(2019)

Philipp Scheffner

PHILIP SCHEFFNER (born in Homburg/Saar in 1966) lives and works as an artist and filmmaker in Berlin. He runs the production platform pong along with Merle Kröger, Alex Gerbaulet, Caroline Kirberg and Mareike Bernien. His films Havarie (2016), And-Ek Ghes… (2016), Revision (2012), Der Tag des Spatzen (2010) and The Halfmoon Files (2007) premiered at the Berlinale Forum. His latest film Europe is currently in post-production.

(2021)

Mark von Schlegell

MARK VON SCHLEGELL is a science fiction author and cultural critic. His publications include, among others, the novels Venusia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents 2005), Mercury Station (2009) and Sundogz (2015, both at Semiotext(e) / Native Agents). In addition he has written various theoretical works, including Realometer: Amerikanische Romantik (Merve 2009) and Dreaming the Mainstream (Merve 2013). Mark von Schlegell lives in Cologne.

2018)

Photo: Adriana Schneider Alcure

Adriana Schneider Alcure

ADRIANA SCHNEIDER ALCURE is an artist, theater director, actress and playwright, having been responsible for several stage productions. She is a member of Coletivo Bonobando, Grupo Pedras de Teatro and Muda Other Economies. Currently she is a Professor in the Arts of the Scene Graduate Program and in the undergraduate Theater Directing Course at the School of Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Capes-Humboldt Stiftung Research Fellowship at the Universität Bonn (2018/2019) with a research project on art and fascism titled “Artistic, Political and Pedagogical Strategies in the Uses of Popular Forms of Puppet Theatre: On the Kaspertheater”. Adriana Schneider Alcure holds a PhD in Anthropology from PPGSA/UFRJ (2007), with a doctoral internship at LAI/FU-Berlin, including a DAAD/CNPq scholarship (2005/2006).

(2022)

Félix Schoeller

FÉLIX SCHOELLER is a creative technologist who operates at the frontiers of filmmaking, cognitive science and engineering. Since 2017, he has been collaborating with Monika Gintersdorfer and La Fleur, designing films and technologies to foster new forms of cultural exchange between Europe and Africa.

(2019)

Susanna Schoenberg

“The fascination for representational structures of the real is central in my formal research. The attraction for both interior issues and exterior situations, the variable border between public and private, between intimate/perceptional and social/narrative – all these subjects are fundamental themes of my work.”
SUSANNA SCHOENBERG is a film, media and performance artist based in Cologne. Her artistic production comprises films, photography, video installations, public actions and camera setups. Her media practice is focused on the idea of emergence (of reality and shapes of reality); the contingent waiving of technical and conceptual control is part of her ‘realistic’ (image giving) strategy.

(2020)

Ruth Schönegge

RUTH SCHÖNEGGE studied film editing at the Konrad Wolf Film University in Babelsberg. She lives and works in Berlin as a freelance editor of feature films and documentaries as well as multi-channel video installations, music montages and art projects.

(2020)

Kerstin Schroedinger

KERSTIN SCHROEDINGER is an artist who makes performance-based moving images and sound performances. Her historiographic practice questions the means of image production, historical linearities and ideologically unquestioned patterns of representation. Schroedinger researches the coinciding histories of industrialization and film. Her works and curatorial practice are often collaborative. Since 2017 she is a member of LaborBerlin, an artist-run analog film lab in Berlin.

(2021)

Therese Schuleit

THERESE SCHULEIT is an artist, information architect and freelance curator from Cologne. Her works examine the perception, materials and acoustic descriptions of urban and social spaces in installations, narratives and dialogical performances. She is the founder of the Festival for Applied Acoustics, and as her alter Ego Elektronentoto member of AIC - Art Initiatives Cologne. She was also part of the collective Mühlenkampf und Raumfaltung, and board member of Opekta e.V.. Since 2009 she is collaborating with ZAM e.V.

(2020)

Anne Schülke

ANNE SCHÜLKE lives and works as a media artist in Düsseldorf. She studied literature and philosophy and received her PHD on autofiction. Her work is based on observations of her surroundings, theoretical questions and has an autobiographical perspective. She develops videos, artist's books and installations. Her work is shown in the context of exhibitions and in public spaces. She often initiates projects independently and enters into collaborations. From 2019 to 2023 she is co-director of the exhibition space NKR – Neuer Kunstraum in Düsseldorf.

(2019)

© Karine Azoubib

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus

STEFANIE SCHULTE STRATHAUS is co-director of Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and head of the Berlinale section Forum Expanded. Schulte Strathaus has curated a number of film programs, retrospectives and exhibitions including Wer sagt denn, dass Beton nicht brennt, hast Du’s probiert? Film im West-Berlin der 80er Jahre (with Florian Wüst, 2006) and Live Film! Jack Smith! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World (with Susannne Sachsse and Marc Siegel in 2009). In 2010, she launched the ongoing Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice project. Schulte Strathaus, Bettina Ellerkamp and Jörg Heitmann also founded the Film Feld Forschung (Film Field Research) project at the silent green Kulturquartier. She currently curates the collaborative project Archie außer sich and is working on a number of archive projects in the MENA region and in Nigeria. She is on the boards of the Harun Farocki Institut and the Master program Film Culture at the University of Jos/Nigeria.

(2020)

Knut Schultz

KNUT SCHULTZ (aka Ruth Schultz) is a freelance theatre-maker and works in various contexts as a mixed media artist. After working as assistant director in Cologne and Bonn (at fringe ensemble, among others) and finishing literary studies at the University of Florence, she completed her studies in theatre directing at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in 2011. She realises performative and film-based works, sound pieces, and documentary projects, finding joy in magical moments and the all too human media arts. She is artistic director and co-founder of the experimental music theatre production company Paradeiser Productions, which is active in the independent art scene and in municipal theatre.

(2018)

Grit Schuster

Grit Schuster is a Berlin based visual artist playing in the fields of video art on stage and interactive media. Her works include live visuals, produced or interactive video content, video mapping, and installations that have been shown at events in and around Berlin. She enjoys exploring formats that enable participation and question the separation of authors and recipients. She is a member of Trial and Theresa, a feminist VJ collective experimenting in the field of live audio-visual performance with a special emphasis on the integration and visibility of women and queer people in the electronic arts scene. She frequently works with theatre groups and contributes design and visual content as well as technological solutions for customised input devices and recently an augmented reality implementation. Her latest work includes performances and installations at the 48 Hours Neukölln festival in 2019 and 2020 and at Transmediale: Vorspiel 2020, a facade projection during the Light Festival Berlin 2019 and collaborations with Anna Kpok in 2018 and 2020.

(2020)

Sarah Fatima Schütz


SARAH FATIMA SCHÜTZ joined the artistic direction team at the Akademie der Küste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW) in January 2022. She studied art history and ethnology as an undergraduate at the University of Hamburg and as a master at the University of Cologne.

From 2016 to 2018, she worked at the Central Office for Scientific Collections at the University of Hamburg, most recently she has been working at the Stadtmuseum Köln and as Live Speaker in the exhibition RESIST! - The Art of Resistance at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne. In her political practice, she engages academically and through the media of film and performance with theories and practices of decolonizing bodies of knowledge, museum ethnology, colonial photography, and anti-discrimination work.

Latoja Seitter

Latoja Seitter (she/her) is an activist, barista, psychologist and much more. Her activism is about queer and bipolar perspectives. Among other things, Latoja organizes dyke*nights together with people from the café where she works in a small town in the Ruhr area. The dyke*nights want to be a saver space that focuses on queer-lesbian and trans identities.

(2023)

Photo: Riju Das

Koel Sen

KOEL SEN is a filmmaker and artist based out of Mumbai, India. Alumnus of the Film & Television Institute of India and La Fémis, Paris, Koel’s work lies at the intersection of film and new media. In her film practice Koel uses archival and self-shot footage manipulating them to their core pixels using algorithms and computer-coding.

Koel’s film works revolve around ideas that are dominated by her own politics of radical feminism and subversion. Koel’s short-fiction Valay, was an Indo-French student co-production that was screened at numerous film festivals. Her short-documentary Bahava won the Emerging Talent Award at the IAWRT (International Association of Women in Film, Radio and Television) Philippines and was screened at the Grenoble Indian Film Festival (GIFF 2021) in France among others. Koel’s new media work, Stephen is going to be lonely when he is dead… created as part of an international artist residency by Goethe Institute Bangalore, British Council India and Islington Mill London in 2020 was in collaboration with artists from Germany, UK and South Asia and is currently on display online. In 2019 Koel performed live with a team of visual artists at the Magnetic Fields International Music & Arts Festival in Alsisar, Rajasthan where she projected her new-media works onto the walls of the Alsisar palace by mapping to their architecture.

Koel also teaches filmmaking and new media art at Whistling Woods International film school in Mumbai. Currently, Koel is working on her first feature-length documentary titled In the Light of Darkness.

(2022)

Şenol Sentürk

ŞENOL ŞENTÜRK works as a spatial and interior artist for the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP since 2006. In this working constellation he has realized the spatial designs for numerous installations, performances and club events worldwide. As a freelance space artist, he has collaborated with numerous other artists such as Benny Claessens, Phil Collins, Vaginal Davis, Bruce LaBruce, Ron Athey, Showcase Beat Le Mot, Susanne Sachsse & Xiu Xiu and Demir/Kılınçel.

(2022)

Angela Seo

XIU XIU is an avant garde musical group founded in 2002 focusing on extremes of emotion, sexual and spiritual darkness, the irresolution of human experience, political history and cats. They have released 15 full-length albums, countless adjunct projects and notable collaborations with experimental and pop luminaries. Given the support of David Lynch, Xiu Xiu released an album reinterpreting the music of Twin Peaks and has had songs featured in numerous horror and experimental films. They have composed and performed commissioned pieces for the artist Danh Vo, LACMA, The Guggenheim, NYU, The Venice and Berlin Biennales, Silent Green, The Getty Center and for the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP. Both members of Xiu Xiu, Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart, are active in solo music, film and literature projects.

(2022)

Agha Shahid Ali

The poet AGHA SHAHID ALI (1949–2001) grew up in Kashmir and immigrated to the United States in 1967. Ali penned several volumes of poems; individual works have also been published in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and in many other anthologies. As professor of creative writing, he taught at various universities and colleges in India and the United States. He also worked as a translator and editor.

(2018)

Bahareh Sharifi

BAHAREH SHARIFI works as an independent curator and activist on the criticism of discrimination, intersectionality and alliances for the Maxim Gorki Theater, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden and at Festiwalla 2014 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, among others. In the autumn of 2015, she organized a conference about strategies against discrimination in cultural practices at the Universität der Künste Berlin. She is currently working for Kulturprojekte Berlin as a curator of the Festival Interventionen – Refugees in Arts and Education. She is a member of the Bündnis kritischer Kulturpraktiker_innen (Alliance of critical cultural practitioners).
(Stand: 2016)

Shela Sheikh

SHELA SHEIKH is a lecturer at Goldsmiths (University of London), where she convenes the MA Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy and co-chairs the Critical Ecologies research stream. She lectures and publishes internationally. She is currently working on a multi-platform research project around colonialism, botany and the politics of planting. As part of this, she has co-edited, with Ros Gray, The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions (Third Text special issue, 2018); and, with Uriel Orlow, Theatrum Botanicum (Sternberg Press, 2018).

(2018)

Prasad Shetty

PRASAD SHETTY is an urbanist from in Mumbai. He currently teaches at the School of Environment and Architecture (sea.edu.in) and is a Partner with the BARD Studio, Mumbai (bardstucio.in). He has previously worked with several government, non-government and international development agencies as an urban management expert. His work includes exploratory research and experimental pedagogy on different aspects of urban form, experience, practice and culture. It crosses disciplinary boundaries and takes different forms – writings, drawings, mixed-media works, storytelling, teaching, walks and spatial interventions.

(2021)

Lina Sieckmann

As a directors duo Miriam Gossing and Lina Sieckmann have produced several short films on 16-mm film, in which urban and private architecture, hyper- staged environment, subcultural individuals and the notion of desire are examined – combining documentary imagery with fiction and found footage.Their works are characterised by the depth of research and contact with communities and individuals, as well as by the clear lines in their approach to architecture and the worlds which shape desire, fear, anxiety, and alienation.

Their films have been awarded with numerous grants and scholarships and are shown internationally on film festivals and in art institutions, among them International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Anthology Film Archives New York City, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum fur Gegenwart Berlin).

Since 2019 they are hosting Blonde Cobra - Festival for Queer and Experimental Cinema in Cologne together with Lara Levi Nickel, a multidisciplinary festival for film, performance, theory and music. Currently they are working on their first hybrid feature film Sirens Call with ZDF - Das Kleine Fernsehspiel about a subculture of mer-beings in Portland, Oregon (USA).

They live and work in Köln.

2009-2015 Academy of Media Arts Cologne, with Prof. Matthias Müller, Prof. Phil Collins, Prof. Sophie Maintigneux, Prof. Marie Luise Angerer, Prof. Johannes Wohnseifer
Since 2012 Collaboration as directors duo Gossing / Sieckmann
2015 Diploma with honors
2016-2017 Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, Class Prof. Rita Mc Bride

(2024)

Marc Siegel

MARC SIEGEL is Professor of Film Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. He researches and writes about experimental film and queer culture. His book A Gossip of Images is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Siegel has curated numerous international film programs, performance festivals and events. He is on the advisory board of the Forum Expanded/Berlinale and member of the Berlin-based artists’ collective CHEAP.
(Stand: 2022)

Andreas Siekmann


ANDREAS SIEKMANN is an artist and writer living in Berlin. His works explore globalization, the privatization of public space and the restructuring of labor relations. With Alice Creischer he curated Ex Argentina (2004) at Museum Ludwig, Cologne and Die Gewalt ist der Rand aller Dinge (2002) at Generali Foundation, Vienna. With Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz and Alice Creischer he curated Principio Potosí, on display at the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in 2010, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City and Museo Nacional de Etnografía y Folklore (MUSEF), La Paz in 2011.

(2022)

Martin Siemann

MARTIN SIEMANN is a lighting designer, video artist and engineer for theater technology. His work focuses on the interdisciplinary development of new spatial concepts for opera, theater and performance. He lives and works in Vienna and Berlin.

(2022)

Pola Sieverding

POLA SIEVERDING is a visual artist working with film/video and photography. She lives and works in Berlin and studied at Berlin University of the Arts, CMU Pittsburgh and Moscow Surikov Art Institute. She was a guest lecturer at the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah and an artistic collaborator at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich from 2016 to 2020. Using photography, video and sound, she explores the physical body as a vehicle for historical narratives that shape a contemporary discourse on the social body. Her work is exhibited internationally.

(2022)

Antoine Silvestre

ANTOINE SILVESTRE is an architect, philosopher and member of Espectros de lo Urbano. He has been conducting research and pedagogic activities into the relationship between city, capitalism and urbanism within the framework inherited from the European world system and modern liberal democracies. In 2022, he is currently a resident researcher at Art Centa Monica Center.

https://puntorojo.org/

Janek Simon

JANEK SIMON is a multimedia artist based in Warsaw. Simon’s works are inspired by his travels, science history and the history of political ideas; he also deals with practical and ethical aspects of DIY culture. Janek Simon has been represented in various solo and group exhibitions in Poland as well as internationally.

(2018)

Joshua Simon

JOSHUA SIMON is a director and chief curator at MoBY: Museums of Bat Yam. He authored the book Neomaterialism (Sternberg Press, 2013) and writes for Springerin, Frieze, Afterall, Modern Painters, and e-flux journal, among others. Simon is a fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World and is taking part in its research project Perverse Decolonization. He lives in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

(Stand: 2017)

Claudia Simons

CLAUDIA SIMONS is currently Africa consultant at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, previously she worked as a research associate at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. In addition she is a freelance consultant for foreign policy and security in the African Great Lakes region.

(2018)

Hye Young Sin

HYE YOUNG SIN explores notions of sound in terms of materiality with her installation, score and performance.

(2020)

Nestor Siré

NESTOR SIRÉ (b. 1988) lives and works between Havana and Camagüey, Cuba. Siré’s artistic practice intervenes directly in specific contexts in order to analyze social and cultural phenomena. His artistic methodology consists in expanding social structures so as to find more effective ways through which art can intervene in the complex relationships between official and informal networks. His works have been shown in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Queens Museum (New York), Rhizome (New York), New Museum (New York), Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City), and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santa Fe (Argentina), among other places.

(2021)

Chulayarnnon Siriphol

Bangkok-based filmmaker and visual artist CHULAYARNNON SIRIPHOL works in short film, experimental film, documentary and video installation; his works are in-between personal memory and social memory, documentary and fiction, reality and the supernatural. Many of his award-winning short films have been screened at diverse film festivals in Asia and Europe, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2005), the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014) and the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Fukuoka, Japan (2014). His film Myth of Modernity received honors at the Thai Short Film & Video Festival in 2014.

In 2017 Chulayarnnon Siriphol was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

© Francis Oghuma

Nanette Snoep

NANETTE SNOEP, born in Utrecht in 1971, is a Dutch anthropologist and cultural manager who worked at various European museums after studying in Paris. Before her appointment as director of the Rautenstrauch Joest-Museum in Cologne in 2019, she was involved in the development of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, among other projects. Most recently, she was the director the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony in Leipzig, Dresden, and Herrnhut.

(2022)

© Philippa Langley, 2022

Sanaz Sohrabi

Sanaz Sohrabi (b.1988, Tehran) is a researcher of visual culture and filmmaker. Sohrabi works with essay film and installation as her means of research to explore the shifting and migratory paths between still and moving images, situating a singular image in a continuum of historical relations and archival temporalities. Since 2017, Sohrabi has done extensive archival research at the British Petroleum archives to engage with the history of photography and film practices of the British controlled oil operations in Iran, conducting a visual ethnography of resource extraction in relation to the media infrastructures of BP. Sohrabi’s works have been shown widely in exhibitions and festivals. Including: Berlinale Forum Expanded, International Film Festival Rotterdam, IndieLisboa (Silvestre Section Best Short Film), Valdivia International Film Festival Chile (Special Jury Mention), Iran Cinéma Vérité Festival (Winner of International Mid-length), Mimesis Documentary Film Festival (Best Documentary Short), Ann Arbor Film Festival (Jury Award), Open City Documentary Film Festival, Montréal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM), Sheffield Doc/Fest, Kasseler Dokfest, Videonale, VideoEX Zurich, FIDBA Argentina, among others.

Sohrabi’s recent exhibitions include Ljubljana Biennial 2023, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montréal, Centre Clark, Montréal, and Carpintarias de São Lázaro, Lisbon. Sohrabi has been supported by fellowships and artist residency awards such as Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and RAW Académie. She received her BFA from Uni­ver­sity of Tehran College of Fine Arts and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship. She is currently a Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC) doctoral candidate at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, Montréal.


(2023)

Raphaël Grisey & Soso Soumaré © Katja Illner

Soso Soumaré

Soso Soumaré has been working in the social sector for over 15 years. As a social worker and trainer, she is particularly concerned with the topics of asylum and migration. As an activist and speaker, she strengthens the rights of people in precarious living situations. She is a junior researcher at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in the field of anthropology in Paris and combines her activist work with academic research.

(2023)

Jan Sowa

Social theorist and author JAN SOWA holds a PhD in sociology and a professorship of cultural studies. His research led him to several universities in Poland and abroad, more recently to the University of Warsaw and the University of São Paulo. Sowa is the author and editor of numerous publications, including the volume of essays A Joy Forever: Political Economy of Social Creativity (MayFlyBooks/Ephemera 2014). In his articles, books and essays he criticizes the interpretation and handling of Polish history. In his latest publication, Inna Rzeczpospolita jest możliwa. Widma przeszłości, wizje przyszłości (W.A.B. 2015), he drafts a unified model of society. Sowa counts as one of the most important voices of the European Left. He lives in Warsaw.

In 2017 Jan Sowa was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Andreas Speit

ANDREAS SPEIT is a journalist and author who has specialized in right-wing extremism and neo-Nazism in Germany. He has been a regular contributor to the daily taz since 1991, focusing on right-wing esotericism, intellectual right-wing extremism, and German nationalism. He has authored and coauthored numerous books on the neo-Nazi and right-wing populist movements in Germany, most recently publishing Bürgerliche Scharfmacher. Deutschlands neue rechte Mitte – von AfD bis Pegida (Orell Füssli 2016), which examines the roots of Germany’s New Right at the heart of its political establishment. Speit lives in Hamburg.

(2017)

Photo: Cecília Stewart

Helena Stewart

HELENA STEWART is an actor and theater director. She is one of the creators and promoters of the Muda Outras Economias network. She is a master’s student in human ecology and contemporary social problems at Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa in Portugal.

(2021)

Still

Shapeshifting through vernacular worlds of sound and imagery, Milan artist and musician STILL (aka SIMONE TRABUCCHI)´s practice is defined by a nomadic approach. After developing his personal take on ‘folk’ music through a number of releases under the alias Dracula Lewis, his new moniker Still follows the unearthing of the minor histories that link his hometown to Ethiopia and Jamaica

(2019)

Agnes Stillger

Agnes Stillger studied literature, history and art history. Since 2018, she is working on curatorial projects. From 2018 to 2020, she co-curated the research and exhibition project Seeds For Future Memories - Voicing the two ends of migration at the Villa Romana in Florence with the Thread Cultural Center in Sinthian (Senegal). In 2019 and 2020, she collaborated with the collective Black History Month Florence for the project Black Archive Alliance. In 2019, she organized the symposium Transverse Trajectories. Speculative routes out of ruinous landscapes in Florence. In her academic research, Stillger focuses on the transcultural art history of Africa and specifically the translations of human-soil relations into artistic practice, as well as the (post)colonial aesthetics of land in Senegal. Since 2021, she has been pursuing her PhD at the University of Cologne's graduate program anschließen-ausschließen. She is also a member of Dry Ocean, a collaborative artistic project between Berlin and Dakar, which was founded in 2020.

(2023)

Anne Storch

PROF. DR. ANNE STORCH, University of Cologne, Institute for African Studies and Egyptology. Specialized in African linguistics, researches what language might be beyond structural linguistic concepts–secret, magic, interpersonal relationships. In addition she has written articles on sociolinguistics, the history of science, language description.

(2018)

Marie Strauss

MARIE STRAUSS, studied fine arts at the University of Arts Berlin under Lothar Baumgarten. Numerous grants and awards include: DAAD postgraduate scholarship for Mexico City, Secretaria de Relaciones exteriores research grant (SRE) México, Edith Maryon Foundation project scholarship, Sculpture Space NY working visit. Exhibition Funding Goethe Institut Mexico, Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Work stays in Larvik / Norway, Mexico City, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Utica / NY, Sète. Exhibitions in Berlin, Cologne, Mexico City, Tijuana, Puebla, Utica NY.

(2014)

© Sandra Stein

Carmen Strzelecki

Carmen Strzelecki founded the publishing house StrzeleckiBooks, which is dedicated to current and contemporary issues in the world of art and cultural production. StrzeleckiBooks works with renowned artists such as Harun Farocki, Philip Guston, Ernesto Neto, Andreas Schulze and Johannes Wohnseifer, and at the same time supports young and emerging artists. This focus is underlined by a close collaboration with the graphic studio Carmen Strzelecki, as well as long-term collaborations with institutions based in Germany such as Museum Ludwig, Bonner Kunstverein, Filmforum NRW, filmclub 813, Temporary Gallery and also Internationale Photoszene Köln Biennale and Cine Cologne. The design studio works with established institutions and international art scenes and independent art venues and collectives.

(2023)

Alexis Rodríguez Suárez

Alexis Rodríguez Suárez (he/him) is a cis queer man of color with a migrant heritage. He works with different organizations in the development of community, queer-feminist, film and art projects, as well as cultural and political education.

Solveig Suess

SOLVEIG SUESS addresses the material politics across weather-stricken geographies where ecological shifts collide with infrastructures of migration, trade, computation and optics. Suess is co-founder of the project Geocinema, an episodic curatorial project focusing on various sensing techniques – from fragmented satellites and ground station data transfers to surveillance cameras and billions of cell phones.

(2018)

© Alexander Steffens/HKW

Can Sungu

Can Sungu is curator, researcher and author. He studied film, interdisciplinary arts and visual communication design in Istanbul and Berlin. He is co-founder and artistic director of bi‘bak and SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA in Berlin where he curated various programs, events and exhibitions such as the international symposium Cinema of Commoning (2022), the documentary exhibition projects Sıla Yolu - The Holiday Transit to Turkey and the Tales of the Highway (2016-17) and Bitter Things - Narratives and Memories of Transnational Families (2018), He has worked as a juror and consultant for the Berlinale Forum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Duisburger Fimwoche, Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the DAAD Artist-in Berlin Program, among others. He has published several books, among them Please Rewind - German-Turkish Film- and Video Culture in Berlin (Archive Books, 2020). Between 2020-23, he has been part of the curatorial team of Fiktionsbescheinigung at the Berlinale Forum - a film programme that parries German film history with intersectional perspectives. Since 2023 he is curator for filmic practices at HKW in Berlin.

(2024)

Sefa Inci Suvak

SEFA INCI SUVAK is a radio journalist, author and cultural editor. Two of her radio contributions received the Civis Media Prize. Together with Justus Herrmann, she initiated and developed the migration-audio-archiv (maa) of Cologne. Nominated for the Grimme Online Award in 2007, it is an oral history collection of narrated migration. She is also a co-founder of the Artradio.

(2019)

T

photo: Havin Al-Sindy

Karosh Taha

KAROSH TAHA was born in 1987 in Zaxo. Since 1997 she has lived and worked in the Ruhr region. She studied English and History Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen as well as in Kansas, USA. During her studies, she received a fellowship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation. In 2018, she published her first novel Beschreibung einer Krabbenwanderung (Descriptions of a crab migration); she was also a fellow at the Literary Colloquium Berlin and received the Young Artist Award from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2019, she held the Heinrich Heine Fellowship in Lüneburg. In addition, she has received a work scholarship from Kunststiftung NRW, a work scholarship from the German Literature Fund, the Hohenemser Literaturpreis, and the Rolf-Dieter-Brinkmann-Stipendium in Cologne.

(2020)

Kidlat Tahimik

KIDLAT TAHIMIK is a film director, screenwriter, and actor. He had his breakthrough as early as 1977 with his film Perfumed Nightmare and has since been considered the founder of independent Filipino cinema. His most recent film, Balikbayan #1, which he worked on for over 30 years, won an award at the Berlinale in 2015. Kidlat Tahimik lives and works in Baguio City, Philippines.

(2017)

Negar Tahsili

Documentary filmmaker NEGAR TAHSILI was born and raised in Tehran, where she continues to live and work. She is particularly interested in film, painting, and industrial design. Her work is centered on stereotypical perspectives of Iran, questions of gender between tradition and modernity, and the position of the individual in society.

During her fellowship at the Academy in 2014, Tahsili worked on a new screenplay that explores themes of identity, creativity, and art in exile. The year prior to becoming a fellow, she visited Cologne on the occasion of the Heinrich Böll Foundation film festival, where she presented the preparatory work of her latest project under the working title Rose and Nightingale. Completed in early 2014, the project is now named Private P.art, and addresses the body and gender in Iranian contemporary art. Her video Of one essence... (2005) tackles the demonization of Islamic states after the September 11 attacks and was screened at various exhibitions across the globe.

Since 2005, Tahsili has collaborated with Swedish and Swiss production companies on a series of documentary films. The docu-fiction Shahrzad never tells the story (2006) follows three transsexuals living in Iran; the documentary film Wee-man or Women (2008), which was screened at the Arab-Iranian film festival in Berlin, examines how the risks women face on the streets of Iran are handled. Alongside her filmmaking practice, Tahsili curates exhibitions on Iranian video art. Her collection Tehran 2008 was shown in Turkey, Macedonia, and the United States. She has also shot short films about contemporary artists in Iran for foreign broadcasters.

In 2014 and 2016 Negar Tahsili was a Fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

© Fatih Kurceren

Nesrin Tanç

NESRIN TANÇ pursued Turkish and German studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She is academic staff at the Institute for Turkish Studies and currently pursuing a PhD on the theme of the cultural and literary legacy of immigrants from Turkey in the Ruhr region with a focus on Duisburg. The archival research she has conducted in this context and the frequent related translation work provide an important contribution to the reappraisal of the notion of a Ruhr region literature. Using the term ‘Anatolpolitan’ she brings the cultural history of Turkey and the cultural history of Germany together in a shared context. In 2019, under the name Initiative Anatolpolitan, she developed the first literature map of the narratives of the author Fakir Baykurt, which focuses on his collection of stories Duisburg Treni / Der Zug nach Duisburg. She has been curator and initiator of many different art, cultural and educational projects, including Agentur AusländerrauşelectrOrientsounds IstanbulContemporary Cultural Studies DuisburgAnatolpolitan, Numaqam Ikesus and the lecture performance Akkordarbeit im halbverbrannten Wald, among others.

(2021)

Abi Tariq

ABI TARIQ is a Pakistani conceptual and performance artist based in Paris. He crafts site and context-specific experiences, installations and transmissions inspired by the complex and often complicated entanglements between language, culture and power.

(2017)

TkH (Walking Theory) Teorija koja Hoda

TkH (Walking Theory)/Teorija koja Hoda is an independent – institutionally non-aligned, extra-academic – platform for performing theoretical-artistic activism and was founded in 2000 in Belgrade. Since 2002 the TkH platform operates as an independent organization: the TkH-center for performing arts theory and practice which realized several programs: TkH Journal for performing arts theory, educational programs (PATS, s-o-s project, dramaturgical trainings, Knowledge Smuggling!, Deschooling Classroom), a regional online platform tkh-generator.net, programs dedicated to a critical reflection of the local scene like Forum for the Performing Arts Criticism and Walking Critique, artistic (Pro Tools) and theoretical events (conferences, labs), inter-disciplinary performances and other artworks, as well as hosting presentations and lectures by artists and theoreticians outside of Serbia. TkH collaborates with self-organized initiatives, organizations, and platforms from Belgrade (the Other Scene), the region of Western Balkans (The FaMa, Clubture), as well as several European platforms (i.a. PAF). Editorial collective: Ana Vujanović, Marta Popivoda, Bojana Cvejić, Bojan Djordjev, Siniša Ilić, Katarina Popović, Dragana Jovović, and Jelena Knežević

In 2015 TkH members Ana Vujanović, Marta Popivoda and Bojana Cvejić, Bojan Djordjev, Siniša Ilić and Katarina Popović were fellows of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Mark Terkessidis

MARK TERKESSIDIS has made a name for himself as a writer on migration and popular culture. His journalistic contributions have appeared in such publications as DIE ZEIT, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Freitag and Literaturen. His recent book, Kollaboration (Suhrkamp 2015), sketches a positive philosophy of collaboration, based on the ideas of participation and civil self-organization. In Interkultur (Suhrkamp 2010), Terkessidis urges us to reconsider the established concepts of integration and to focus instead on the creative potential of migration and mobility. He teaches in the Department of Gender and Diversity at the University of St Gallen. Mark Terkessidis lives and works in Berlin and Cologne.

(2017)

Zoran Terzić

ZORAN TERZIĆ was born in Banja Luka, and studied sociology, jazz piano and graphic design in Nuremberg and Wuppertal and fine arts in New York. He received his PhD in 2006, and in 2007 he published a book on the semiotics of warfare in the post-Yugoslav context, entitled The Art of Nationalism. He has recently published Idiocracy: Thinking and Acting in the Age of the Idiot (2020). He lives in Berlin.

(2021)

Terre Thaemlitz

TERRE THAEMLITZ is an award-winning multimedia producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ, and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. As a speaker on issues of non-essentialist Transgenderism and Queerness, Thaemlitz has lectured and participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan. Thaemlitz lives and works in Japan.

(2017)

The 2020 Drawing And Contemporary Practice III Cohort

THE 2020 DRAWING AND CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE III COHORT at Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg acts as an umbrella for collectives engaged in the practice of ‘letter writing’ – including groups such as 15172264, Are We Safe, Assume Form, Bayazi, Nagaram, Open Questions, RE: Write, and SONA. In dialogue with interlocutors located in different parts of the globe, the collectives are writing letters to Cairo, Delhi, Gwangju, and Richmond. While each group undertakes investigations that are specific to their own subjects and lines of inquiry, all of the collectives share an engagement with letter writing as a collective editorial process - in order to move towards novel publication formats and future visions of the world.

(2020)

The 5·18 Archives

The 5·18 ARCHIVES were established in 2015 in Gwangju, South Korea, in order to preserve the archives and documents of the 18 May Democratization Movement and make them available to the public. Starting as a student protest, the movement led to nationwide demonstrations in 1980 demanding reforms like the end of martial law, democratization, and minimum wages. After ten days, the military put a stop to demonstrations with the use of brutal force. Today, the 5·18 Archives are located at the former Catholic Center in Gwangju, one of the memorial sites of the movement. Since 2011 the movement’s archives have been listed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

(2020)

Stephanie Thiersch

Director and choreographer STEPHANIE THIERSCH is one of the most versatile artists in her field. Thiersch views her choreographic work as part of a broader understanding of interdisciplinary movement research. It has incorporated new media and visual art – and recently music in particular – into choreographic thinking, focusing on a transitional body at the junction of nature and culture. The hybrid approach that characterizes her pieces has been well received by audiences worldwide (South America, East Asia, Japan, Africa, Europe). Since 2011 she has concentrated on intercultural works with artists from Sub-Saharan Africa, which address post-colonial society and the decolonization of everyday life. One example is Chombotrope (2017), which was invited to the Theatertreffen in Berlin and won the Kölner Tanzpreis (Cologne Dance Prize). Thiersch was a guest professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen. She taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne and Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK). She is a member of the Deutsch-Französischer Kulturrat.

(2021)

Vanessa E. Thompson

VANESSA E. THOMPSON is a research assistant at the Institute for Sociology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Her research and teaching focuses on critical studies of racism and migration, gender and queer studies, intersectionality, postcolonial/decolonial feminist theories and methodologies, black studies (with a special focus on Black Europe), theories and critiques of securitization, as well as transformative justice.

(2019)

Davide Tidoni

DAVIDE TIDONI is an artist and researcher interested in the relational dimension of listening and the physical experience of sound. With a particular emphasis on observation and action, he creates works of different formats including live performance, intervention, audio recording, video, and guided listening. He published a sound ethnography on the ultras group BRESCIA 1911 (The Sound of Normalisation, SARU Oxford Brookes University).

(2020)

Film Still: Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices)/Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré/2022

Bouba Touré

RAPHAËL GRISEY. Born in 1979, lives in Berlin. Grisey uses film, editorial and photographic works to address politics of memory, architecture, migration and farming ( such as the films Prvi Deo, Red Star 2006 mit F. Lazar; Cooperative, 2008; The Exchange of Perspectives; Minhocão, 2011; Amor e Progresso, 2014; Remanescentes 2015).

BOUBA TOURÉ. 1948-2022, lived in Paris and Somankidi Coura, Mali. He lived in France in the Foyer Pinel from 1965 and worked at the metal factory Chausson until 1969. He studied at the Vincennes University and was a projectionist at Cinema 14 Juillet and L’entrepôt, Paris. Photographer since the 1970s, he documented the lives and struggles of migrant workers and peasants in France and Mali. Touré co-founded the Co-op of Somankidi Coura in 1977. In 2015, he published the book Notre case est à Saint Denis, Xérographes Publishers. Since the 1980s, Touré has exhibited works and given talks in associative and foyer’s circles and more recently in art institutions. His photographic work has been presented amongst other places at the Bamako Encounters 2019 and in the Hamburg photography Triennale in 2022.

Since 2006 Touré and Grisey worked together on collaborative projects with the current name of Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive since 2015. It lead to various workshops, film and theatre production for example with the theatre group Kaddu Yaraax in 2017 and 2019, as well as publications and texts, such as Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive *(2017, Archives Book publishers) Their works were shown amongst other venue at Kàddu Yaraax Theatre Forum Festival (SN), Kunsthall Trondheim (NO), Archive Kabinett, Savvy Contemporary, HKW, Neue Berliner Kunstverein (DE), Den Fries (DK), 9th Contour Biennale (BE), Parco Arte Vivente (IT), Un Lieu pour Respirer, Centre Pompidou (FR), Dhaka Art Summit (BD), Open Justice (CA) and in Konsthall Göteborg (SE). Their long feature film *Xarassi Xanne - Crossing Voices has been awarded in 2022 at the Festival du Réel and at the Toronto Hotdocs Festival amongst others.

(2023)

Carnival in Rio, 2019 © Panamérica Transatlântica

Panamérica Transatlântica

Panamérica Transatlântica is a collective art and Carnival project created by Dado Amaral and Viviana Méndez. Conceived in Paris in 2018, its first action took place in the 2019 Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With collaborators from several countries, especially France, Chile and Brazil, the carnival group took a crowd to the streets in its first parade.

In the same year, the collective held a parade in Paris that lasted more than 10 hours and covered about 3 kilometers, on the occasion of the Fête de la Musique.Other actions came in the Carnival of 2020 and 2022, in Rio de Janeiro. In 2023, after an artist residency in Valdivia, Chile, the collective settled in Rio de Janeiro for a month of work before Carnival. The exhibition Barracão System, with the group's creation in process, opened a week before Carnaval.Panamérica Transatlântica is currently coordinated by Viviana Méndez and Dado Amaral (Paris, France), Pablo Schalscha (Valdivia, Chile) and Marta Rodrigues(Rio, Brazil).

(2023)

Ilija Trojanow

ILIJA TROJANOW, born in 1965 in Sofia, fled via Yugoslavia and Italy with his family in 1971 to Germany, where they received political asylum. In 1972 the family moved on to Kenya. Trojanow resided in Nairobi until 1984, with a four-year period in Germany during this interval. He later stayed for a time in Paris. From 1984 to 1989 he studied law and ethnology in Munich. There he founded two publishing houses – Kyrill & Method and Marino. In 1998, Trojanow moved to Mumbai and in 2003 to Cape Town; today he lives in Vienna when he is not traveling. His well-known novels like Die Welt ist groß und Rettung lauert überall (The world is big and salvation lurks around the corner, 1996), The Collector of Worlds (2008) and The Lamentations of Zeno (2016) as well as his travelogues like Along the Ganges (2005) are celebrated bestsellers and have received numerous awards, including the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2006. His books have been translated into 31 languages.

(2020)

Photo: Tropical Diaspora

Tropical Diaspora

Established in Berlin in 2015 by the DJ and producer DJ GARRINCHA (São Paulo, Brazil), the label harks back to the Berlin of the 1990s, a time of underground parties and a very exciting cultural milieu of which DJ GArRinchA was part. In 2008 he launched an event called Tropical Diaspora, and was soon joined in this venture by the cultural scholar and DJ DR. SÓCRATES (Vigo, Spain). As an independent record label and event, Tropical Diaspora Records focuses mainly on the production of vinyl records representing the Afro and Native cultural diasporas.

(2021)

© Sabrina Karakatsanis

C:Mone a.k.a. Tuincy_Bright

C:Mone a.k.a Tuincy_Bright has been selecting records and playing versatile DJ sets in the Cologne music scene since more than a decade. Her musical range is rooted in early Hip-Hop Culture including styles like Jazz, Funk, Soul, Disco, Rap, R&B, Afrobeat, House and experimental Sounds. Playing soulful DJ Sets suitable to different environments such as clubs, bars, concert openings and art galleries, she puts into practice what Kool and the Gang once said: „Music is the Message that sings universal love for one and all.“

Alongside DJ colleague Sedaction she started the party and mix tape series Selectricity in January 2020 in collaboration with Giza – a visual artist & illustrator based in Cologne. On the occasion of the Black History Month 2022 they collaborated with Decolonize Cologne, an initiative founded by three historians, enriching their work with a musical debate among Black DJ’s and Artists. Since 2021 C:Mone is part of the cologne DJ Collective E.P.I.Q, a bunch of eight female DJs based in Cologne joining forces to create magical events in at outside the city.

(2023)

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UBERMORGEN

UBERMORGEN, an artist duo that got its start in 1995, is comprised of autistic actionist LIZ HAAS (LIZVLX) and pragmatic visionary HANS BERNHARD. They are net.art pioneers and media hackers widely recognized for their high-risk research into data issues and their conceptual art, haute couture websites and polarizing social experiments. CNN called them a “maverick Austrian businessman” during their online Vote-Auction project. They reached a global audience of 500 million while challenging the FBI, CIA and NSA during the 2000 US presidential election. In 2005, they launched their acclaimed EKMRZ Trilogy, a series of conceptual hacks – Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir and The Sound of eBay. UBERMORGEN owns 175 domains. Their exhibitions include Liverpool Biennial; Whitney Museum (2020); New Museum, New York; Somerset House, London; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel/Palestine (2019); Wei-Ling Contemporary Malaysia; HKW, Berlin; ZKM; National Art Gallery, Sofia (2017); ICA Miami; Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius (2015); Serpentine Galleries, London (2014); Kunsthal Aarhus; Ars Electronica, Austria; MoMA Ljubljana; ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2013); 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Japan (2012); Centre Pompidou; Gwangju Design Biennale; WRO Media Art Biennale (2011); Prague Biennale (2009); Biennale of Sydney (2008); MOCA Taipei (2007); The Premises, Johannesburg; ICC Tokyo (2005); SFMOMA, USA (2001).

(2021)

Eredovoe Udogestvo

EREDOVOE UDOGESTVO is a relatively new group of artists whose choice of a name already expresses their poetic stance: dropping the first consonants of the Russian words peredovoe khudozhestvo (advanced artistry) is a consciously infantile move, although it yields something that sounds a little like early transrational Futurist poetry. Such thinking is typical of one of the group’s founders, the Saint Petersburg poet Roman Osminkin, whose work is permeated by a spirit of subversion and over-affirmation. In a Small Victorious Anschluss, eredovoe udogestvo presents its own version of an historical battle reenactment. Such reenactments are a populär pastime among patriotically-minded Russians today, and one of the instigators of the war in Donbass, Igor Girkin, is a leader of this movement. Osminikin joins Anastasia Vepreva and sound artist Anton Komandirov in this new commission to reenact the annexation of Crimea with tanks, sexy prosecutors, and Russian passports for all, offering the Cologne audience a trip down memory lane to the “bloodlands” of Russian imperialism.

(2015)

Andrei Ujica

ANDREI UJICA is an author, director and screenwriter. Initially he composed prose, poetry and essays; however, he turned to film in the 1990s. His film debut Videograms of a Revolution (1992), on the relationship of political power and media, was created in collaboration with Harun Farocki. Ujica presented The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu at the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival in 2010.

(2018)

Ulay

ULAY was and still is already an iconic figure of contemporary art. He was one of the pioneers of body art, performance art, and Polaroid art. Ulay is often known for his collaboration with the artist Marina Abramović, his former life partner. He last lived in Amsterdam and Ljubljana.

(2020)

Ultra-red

Since 1994, the international collective ULTRA-RED has launched militant sound investigations in social movements such as HIV/AIDS justice, housing, antiracism, struggles of migration, radical education, and resistance to the war on the poor.

(2014)

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Viola Vahrson

VIOLA VAHRSON is professor of art history and visual studies at the University of Applied Science Dusseldorf. Together with philosopher Hannes Böhringer, she published a compendium on laziness (Faulheit, 2008).

(2018)

Linda Valdés

LINDA VALDÉS is an independent art researcher and curator. Her work is centered around the politics of the body and the archive, the contemporary malaise and health, as well as the exploration of the cultural displays. The AIDS crisis is one of the research focuses through the "AIDS Anarchive" project. Linda is the co-founder of the research platforms Equipo re and since 2008 she is part of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies team.

(2023)

Antje Van Wichelen

ANTJE VAN WICHELEN works with experimental 16 mm film to unlock and edit colonial photographic material. Her project 21C/19C _ Procedures for Anthropometric Image Reversal investigates the collective memory of colonial classification systems. She developed the works Noisy Images and The Recognition Machine, in whose context the collective Troubled Archives was formed. Troubled Archives’ works have been exhibited at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (Cologne, 2019) and as part of Everything Passes except the Past (Goethe Institut, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo – Turin, 2020); they have been selected for the 14th Dakar Biennale (2020; postponed to 2022). They have also published in Roots & Routes.

(2021)

Photo: Esther Rosiny-Wieland

Julius Vapiano

JULIUS VAPIANO is an author and artist and has been running the project It Tastes Like Ashes since 2016. In various publication formats, he publishes reviews with narrative elements on gastronomy, art and nightlife, by himself and recurring authors from the Cologne art scene. In 2019 he published four issues of Gratis Kritik as well as from 2020-21 with Svea Mausolf and Fritzi Schneckenhaus on the blog tasteslikeashes.de. Strzelecki Books has published YOUR GUIDE TO GASTRO (2017), HOW TO... Café Life (2019), and 11 Tears (2021).

(2023)

Sinthujan Varatharajah

SINTHUJAN VARATHARAJAH studied sociology and political sciences at the London School of Economics. He is currently a PhD candidate in political geography at University College London and conducts research on spaces of asylum. He works as a project coordinator for Refugees Welcome and is the founder of the refugee narrative project Roots of Diaspora, which accounts for and documents experiences of forced displacement among the Eelam Tamil. In his work and research, he focuses on asylum policy, racism research, critical whiteness, caste research and the geography of power.

(2016)

Françoise Vergès

FRANÇOISE VERGÈS is a writer and social theorist and holder of the Chair „Global South(s)“ at the Collège d'études mondiales, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris. She was a project advisor for documenta 11 in 2002 and contributed to the 2012 Paris Triennale. She has published widely on the subjects of vernacular practices of memories, slavery and the economy of predation, French post-coloniality and post-colonial museography. She has also directed two movies about the great Caribbean authors Aimé Césaire and Maryse Condé and organized several exhibitions at the Louvre on the subjects of slavery.

(2016)

Maurício Virgens

The German-Brazilian baritone Maurício Virgens began his vocal training in Salvador da Bahia. In 2000 he moved to Germany and took singing lessons from Grace Bumbry, Graciela Alperyn, Edda Moser and Walter Berry. He also took part in numerous master classes and competitions. In 2003 Mauricio Virgens was a prize winner at the Rheinsberg Castle Singing Competition. In 2006 he was a prize winner at the Center for Contemporary Opera International Opera Competition in New York and in 2008 the Brazilian baritone made his debut in the Weill Hall of Carnegie Hall.

He has been part of the Operwerkstatt ensemble since 2007 and sings Papageno in Mozart's Little Magic Flute and Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen, as well as regularly in the Galas & Concerts series. Maurício Virgens has been a permanent member of the SingPause since 2018 and teaches at the GGS Matthias-Claudius-School and KGS Paulusschule in Düsseldorf-Pempelfort and Düsseldorf-Düsseltal.

(2023)

David Vogel

DAVID VOGEL studied theater pedagogy at the Berlin University of the Arts. Currently, he works at Schauspiel Köln, where he leads the seniors’ ensemble Old School and the theater fan club Guckklub für Alle, among others, and is expanding the theater’s program with an educational and participatory side program. He previously worked at the children’s and youth theater GRIPS in Berlin, where he regularly directed non-professionals in all age groups. He is a member of the art education collective Geheime Dramaturgische Gesellschaft (Secret Dramaturgical Society).

(2020)

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(c) Katja Illner

Hanitra Wagner

HANITRA WAGNER has been a freelancer for the Participatory Residency Program of the Academy of World Arts (ADKDW) since 2021. She has been Co-Head of the ADKDW Residency since end of 2022. She studied Romance Languages-French and Musicology in her Bachelor's degree at the University of Cologne and is currently completing her Master's degree in Pop Music at the Folkwang University of the Arts Bochum/Essen. Hanitra Wagner is a freelance musician, artist and organizer in and around Cologne. She is interested in post- and neocolonial theory and research, queer feminist literature, and also holds an honorary seat on the Pop Culture Advisory Board of the City of Cologne.

(2023)

Janina Warnk

JANINA WARNK is active in the free art and performance scene of North Rhine-Westphalia. She explores alternate models of reality in installations and spatial simulations, while her music works with fictional figures that intervene performatively into everyday life.

(2017)

Tobaron Waxman

TOBARON WAXMAN is a visual artist and a vocalist. Tobaron was traditionally trained in Jewish philosophy, law, and liturgy for many years, and has created live art, photography, videos and films by repurposing that religious literacy and training in new ways both critical and reverent. Tobaron's work is a Queer interrogation of how borders and notions of citizenship make moral and ethical claims on our bodies. Their strategies have included: food, photography, tissue engineering, porn, biofeedback processing, curation, sound, choreography and voice.

Tobaron's work has been curated at international venues including Palais de Tokio, Videotage Hong Kong, Kunsthalle Vienna, Lentos Museum, Vdance International Video Dance Festival Tel Aviv/Ramallah, New Museum NYC, Momenta, Le Petit Versailles, Jewish Museum NYC, and Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.

Tobaron has taught their voice and collaborative techniques at the Art Institute of Chicago and Hollins MFA Dance; lectured at Parsons, SOAS London, SMFA Boston, Videotage Hong Kong, OCAD and others. Tobaron was honoured with fellowships including Kulturlabor ICI Berlin for “Mechitza 7.1” — acclaimed one of the five best art experiences of 2010. For the endurance performance “Opshernish”, Tobaron is the recipient of the first ever Audience Award of the Jewish Museum of New York. In 2013, Tobaron created “The Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency”, a summer institute of critical engagement with LGBTQ art, politics and histories, on the Toronto Island. Current projects include site-specific endurance performances for the a cappella transsexual voice, a hand painted 16mm film, and curatorial projects including their most recent written work: “Trans Women Artists: interviews with artists on the MTF spectrum” with forward by Susan Stryker (forthcoming 2015).

In 2014 Tobaron Waxman was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

http://www.tobaron.com

Astrid Wege

ASTRID WEGE is a curator, cultural scientist and publicist. She curated the exhibition Ökonomien der Zeit (2004), which was shown in Berlin, Cologne and Zurich, a retrospective on Charlotte Posenenske (2005) and the project European Kunsthalle c/o Ebertplatz (2008), among others. Since 2019 she has been the director of Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, and before that she was head of the cultural programs department of Goethe-Institut Moscow.

(2021)

Stefan Weidner in Istanbul, March 2020 | photo: Viktor Burgi

Stefan Weidner

STEFAN WEIDNER studied Islamic Studies, German Studies and Philosophy at the Universities of Göttingen, Damascus, Berkeley and Bonn. From 2001 to 2016 he was Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Fikrun wa Fann, which is published by the Goethe Institute and which aims to contribute to the dialogue between western culture and culture influenced by Islam. Author of numerous publications, editor of anthologies and translator in particular of Arabic poetry. Published among other things: Und sehnen uns nach einem neuen Gott. Religion und Poesie im Werk von Adonis (Berlin, 2005), Aufbruch in die Vernunft. Islamdebatten und islamische Welt zwischen 9/11 und den arabischen Revolutionen (Bonn, 2011). Guest professorships at the FU Berlin and at the University of Bonn. Numerous prizes including the Clemens-Brentano-Prize of the City of Heidelberg in 2006; in 2007 the Johann-Heinrich-Voß Prize of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung [German Academy for Language and Poetry] for his complete translation works. He is a member of the German PEN Club and a founding member of the Academy of the Arts of the World.

(2017)

Dorothee Wenner

Niko Willborn

NIKO WILLBORN is a German-Finnish art director who combines graphic design with a passion for groceries. Since the age of thirteen, he has organised gourmet clubs with a focus on edible wild plants and food that tells stories. He lives with his family in a 200 square meter garden in Berlin.

(2018)

Andrew Norman Wilson

ANDREW NORMAN WILSON is one of the contemporary artists whose relationship with the world of digital technologies is simultaneously oppositional, subversive, speculative and creative. Having started his artistic journey with an expose on the labor policy of the Google industry, he remains deeply engaged with the manual, material and ethical aspects of digital organism of knowledge and value production.

(2021)

Franziska Windisch

FRANZISKA WINDISCH lives and works in Brussels. Her work moves between the disciplines of performance, text, composition and installation. Situations that illustrate transformative processes and have unforeseen or irreversible results are keys to her artistic practice. She composes scores for performative acts which interrogate notions of trace, medium, sound and listening and which she then incorporates in linguistic, sculptural and installative arrangements.

(2020)

Anne Wizorek

ANNE WIZOREK is a media consultant and author who became known to a wider public through her Twitter campaign #aufschrei (outcry) in 2013, which won her the 2013 Grimme Online Award. In 2011, she was one of the organizers of re:publica. After the 2015/16 New Year’s Eve sexual assaults, she initiated the new hashtag #ausnahmslos gegen Sexismus und Rassismus. She published the book Weil ein #aufschrei nicht reicht (Fischer, 2014) In 2015, she was appointed ambassador of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency for the thematic year “Against Gender Discrimination.” Wizorek lives in Berlin.

(2016)

Nicole Wolf

NICOLE WOLF (Berlin/London) is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research, pedagogical and curatorial projects have concentrated on political/feminist cinema in South Asia and in the context of anti-colonial struggles, with an interest in the co-constitutive processes of artistic and activist narratives and more recently a focus on decolonial agri/cultural practices and a ‘Cinématics of the Soil’. Her recent publications include Is this just a story? Friendships and fictions for speculative alliances. The Yugantar film collective (1980-83); Fugitive Remains: Soil, Celluloid and Resistant Collectivities with Sheikh Shela, Ros Gray, Filipa César, Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré; and In the Wake of Gujarat: The Social Relations of Translation and Futurity. She is the editor of Grenzfälle. Dokumentarische Praxis zwischen Film und Literatur bei Merle Kröger und Philip Scheffner, published in the Texte zum Dokumentarfilm series of the dfi – Dokumentarfilminitiative.

(2021)

Jakub Woynarowski

JAKUB WOYNAROWSKIis a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, where he currently teaches at the Narrative Drawing Studio and conducts a seminar on visual culture. He combines the activities of an artist, designer and independent curator. As an author of graphic novels and art books, including Dead Season and Corpus Delicti, he investigates the feasibility of applying various forms of visual narration as instruments of theoretical reflection. Interested in the “archaeology of the avant-garde,” he points out similarities between ancient artworks and modern art. He takes up themes associated with post-secularism, post-humanism, institutional criticism and gonzo curating. In 2014 he collaborated with the Institute of Architecture as author of the artistic concept of the Polish Pavilion at the 14th Biennale of Architecture in Venice. He lives and works in Cracow, Poland

(2017)

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Xiao Ke x Zi Han

XIAO KE completed a traditional Chinese dance education and then studied contemporary dance in Shanghai. Since 2002, she has closely collaborated with contemporary artists und has founded several artists’ collectives. ZI HAN is an audiovisual artist and performer. In their Cannot Help Art Collective, founded in 2011 and based in Shanghai, both artists engage in interdisciplinary investigations of social issues.

(2017)

Xiu Xiu

XIU XIU is an avant garde musical group founded in 2002 focusing on extremes of emotion, sexual and spiritual darkness, the irresolution of human experience, political history and cats. They have released 15 full-length albums, countless adjunct projects and notable collaborations with experimental and pop luminaries. Given the support of David Lynch, Xiu Xiu released an album reinterpreting the music of Twin Peaks and has had songs featured in numerous horror and experimental films. They have composed and performed commissioned pieces for the artist Danh Vo, LACMA, The Guggenheim, NYU, The Venice and Berlin Biennales, Silent Green, The Getty Center and for the Berlin-based art collective CHEAP. Both members of Xiu Xiu, Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart, are active in solo music, film and literature projects.

(2022)

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Semih Yalcin

SEMIH YALCIN was born in Cologne and studied history and law at the University of Bonn. After graduating from high school, he served two years as a soldier in the German armed forces and later worked as a helper on construction sites, at DHL as a shipper, in an archive, at WDR and at the Cologne wholesale market. Four years ago he started as a bicycle courier at Foodora and was team leader. He now works for the international online platform and delivery service Just Eat Takeaway, which includes Lieferando. For more than three years he has represented the interests of the employees as a member of the workers’ council, at times even on the supervisory board of Delivery Hero SE. In addition to his work at Lieferando, he works on various projects, gives workshops and is a freelance museum guide at Haus der Geschichte in Bonn.

(2020)

Photo: Sebastian Wells, 2020

Ali Yass

ALI YASS, painter and filmmaker interested in resistance; documenting and practicing. He received his BA in Visual Arts from The University of Jordan in 2015. He championed the organization of Darat al Funun’s archive of 30 years of history in art from the Arab World. He also exhibited his work in Amman, Manama, Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Berlin, Nottingham, Gera, New York City, Frankfurt, Washington, D.C. and Essen. Currently he studies at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).From 15 01–27 02 2022 he is artist-in-residence at the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).

Raed Yassin

RAED YASSIN is an artist and musician who lives and works in Beirut. He graduated from the theater department at the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut in 2003. His work often originates in an examination of his personal narratives and their workings within a collective history, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production. He has exhibited and performed his work in numerous museums, festivals and venues across Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and Japan such as Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010), Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE (2011), Art Cologne, New Directions, Kalfayan Galleries booth, Köln (2012), The New Museum, Museum as a hub, New York (2012), Thessaloniki Biennial 4, Thessaloniki (2013), and Beirut Art Center, The Impossible works of Raed Yassin, Beirut (2013).

Among his many recent exhibitions and festivals are October Salon, Belgrade City Museum, Belgrade, This is The Time, This Is The Record Of Time, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Blue Times, Vienna Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria, Yassin Dynasty in The Chinese Room, Castello Di Rivoli, Torino, Italy, and Songs Of Loss and Songs Of Love, Gwangju Art Museum, South Korea (all 2014). Yassin was awarded the Fidus Prize (2009), the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2012), the AFAC grant for production (2010), the YATF grant for production (2008 & 2012), and the Sharjah Production Programme grant (2014). He is one of the organizers of IRTIJAL Festival, has released several music albums and founded the production company Annihaya in 2009. He is also a founding member of Atfal Ahdath, a Beirut based art collective. Yassin is represented by Kalfayan Galleries, Athens-Thessaloniki. In May 2015 his exhibition Karaoke opened as part of Akademie der Künste der Welts (Academy of the Arts of the Worlds, ADKDW) PLURIVERSALE II in Cologne.

In 2015 Raed Yassin was a fellow of ADKDW.

Aiwen Yin

AIWEN YIN works as a designer, researcher, author and video artist. Using performance, installation, text, video and documentation, she investigates the future potential of design with a view to its technological and political conditions and interpersonal connections. She has conducted research for the New Normal at the Strelka Institute in Moscow, among others, and was a fellow at the Art Center South Florida in Miami.

(Stand: 2019)

Ylê Asè Egi Omim

Ylê Asè Egi Omim is a Candomblé house, which is guarded by yalorixá (priestess) and educator Wanda de Omolu. It is not just a place for religious practices, it is also a cultural center for Afro-Brazilian traditions where community projects are organized. Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion that developed within the African diaspora in South America. Its myths, rituals, symbols and sacred language were brought to Brazil and preserved by enslaved Black people, and these traditions continue to be practiced daily in ‘terreiros’ (sacred ritual sites).

(2021)

Miriam Yosef

MIRIAM YOSEF works in the field of political education as a speaker, trainer and consultant with a focus on racism, power criticism and empowerment. Among other events, she organizes the BPoC empowerment series I Am Not Exotic – I Am Exhausted for the project Rebel of Color. She holds an M.A. in Human Rights from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and a B.Sc. in International Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on postcolonial studies, critical race theory and human rights.

(2019)

Mi You

MI YOU is since 2017 a Member of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World) and a lecturer at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Aalto University, Helsinki. Her long-term research and curatorial project takes the Silk Road as a figuration for nomadic imageries and old and new technologies. She has curated programs at Asian Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea and Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016). With Binna Choi, she is co-steering the research/curatorial project Unmapping Eurasia. She serves as chair of committee on Media Arts and Technology for the transnational political NGO Common Action Forum and the curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020/2021).

(2021)

© Singapore Art Museum

Ala Younis


Artist and curator ALA YOUNIS works with film and publishing projects and is research scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is co-founder of the publishing initiative Kayfa ta. Founded in 2012, Kayfa ta uses the popular form of how-to manuals to respond to some of today’s perceived needs. The project published over 20 publications and organized four shows on the efforts of independent publishers. Younis is also co-section head of Berlinale’s Forum Expanded since 2021. The section utilizes film programs and exhibition formats to create a diverse, innovative space to look into topics of today tackled through contemporary and historical, analogue and digital film, installation art, performance and music. Younis was also the co-Artistic Director of Natasha, the Singapore Biennale 2022. For this, she collaborated on exhibitions in Singapore that offered encounters with art that would encourage the audience's self-interpretation of the artworks. Since 2018, Younis has been a member of the Academy of the Arts of the World / Cologne, where she co-curated the 2021 exhibition HANDS: an art campaign. Amid the pandemic, her exhibition project succeeded in bringing tactile sensations, playfulness and interaction back into public life and presented new commissions shown for five months at Academyspace Cologne.

Since 2023, Ala Younis is Artistic Director of the Academy of the Arts of the World and spokesperson of the ADKDW members.

(2023)

© Korhan Yurtsever

Korhan Yurtsever

Korhan Yurtsever (*1947 in Istanbul, Türkiye) is a film director. His first film Fıratın Cinleri (1978) won several awards, including the Jury Prize at the San Remo Film Festival. After a personal invitation from the then mayor of Berlin, Korhan Yurtsever shot Kara Kafa in Berlin, the Ruhr area and Turkey. After its completion, Kara Kafa was immediately banned by the censorship committee in Turkey at the time. Charges were brought against Korhan, and he fled to Berlin, living in exile for several years. The film's world premiere took place 32 years later at the Antalya Film Festival in 2011. The original 35mm negative, which were not confiscated by the Turkish authorities at that time, surprisingly surfaced in 2022 and was made available for restoration by the Turkish Film Institute.

Kara Kafa stands out from other examples of German-Turkish migration cinema, especially with its left-wing political view of migration and its open social criticism. After his film was banned, he lived in Germany for a few years and later returned to Turkey, where he continued to work as a director of commercials. Other films include Zincir (1988) and The Evil Spirit of the Euphrates (1977).

(2024)

Z

Katarina Zdjelar

KATARINA ZDJELAR is an artist working in moving image, sound and performances; furthermore, she has edited several art theoretical writings. Her work was recently featured in solo exhibitions at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Kunstverein Bielefeld, Artium in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Centre for Contemporary Art Celje, and Fri Art – Centre d’art contemporain in Fribourg, amongst others. She lives and works in Rotterdam and Belgrade.

(2017)

© Nadja Krüger

Anna Zett

Anna Zett is an artist and writer. Centering the embodied experience of dialog, her analytical and emotional practice questions dominant structures and invites association and recovery. This work results in films, books, radio plays, installations and participatory live formats. Starting out with poetry and collage, Anna Zett began filmmaking during her transdisciplinary university studies in Berlin, and in 2014 released a video performance and an essay film based on her MA thesis Monsters of Modernity. Since then, her works have been shown in the international art and film context, among them Serpentine Gallery London, Whitney Museum New York, Berlinale Forum Expanded, Or Gallery Vancouver. Since 2018, her work has been addressing the emotional grid of state socialism and the chaos it left behind, resulting in the work series Deponie (Dump) and in the development of the participatory format Postsocialist Group Improvisation. With the latter she was a 2020-21 fellow of the Berlin Grant program for Artistic Research, in collaboration with performer and choreographer Hermann Heisig. Anna Zetts publications include two experimental radio plays for public radio, BR 2017, Dlf 2015, and the literary text collection Artificial Gut Feeling (Divided Publishing, 2019).

(2024)

Dardan Zhegrova

Dardan Zhegrova‘s (*1991, Prishtina) works are object – and performance oriented. His works are most often based on poems that stand always at the beginning of the conception of a new work. His texts deal with partially fictional and actually experienced events, which are mostly described from the first-person perspective. Often a (imaginary) counterpart is sought after. There are no pronouns like 'her' and 'him' – the narrative unfolds between the 'I' and the 'You'. Here, the border between the artist’s subject and the addressed person often seems to blur. This dissolution of the boundaries of a classical narrative form can also be seen in relation to the structure of time in the poems, often blurring future, present and past. This breaking down of the different boundaries in Zhegrova’s work also reflects his queer identity, which oscillates between female and male attributes and deliberately rejects and transcends a normative understanding of gender.

(2024)

Želimir Žilnik

ŽELIMIR ŽILNIK has written and directed numerous feature and documentary films which have reaped many awards at numerous domestic and international film festivals. Žilnik is renowned as an initiator of the docudrama genre. Alongside his filmmaking and production work, he has also been active in educational activities. He lives and works in Novi Sad, Serbia.

(2016)

Jürgen Zimmerer

JÜRGEN ZIMMERER is a professor for African History at the University of Hamburg. His most recent publications are Windhuk nach Auschwitz? Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Kolonialismus und Holocaust (Lit Verlag, 2011) and Kein Platz an der Sonne. Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte (Campus, 2013).

(2013)

Karen Zimmermann

KAREN ZIMMERMANN lives and works in Cologne. She graduated with distinction as Postgraduate in Media and Fine Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne with focus on Video Art and Performance. Between March and August 2020 she and her collective You Are Group were artists in residence at Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature, in Münster, DE and participated among others in Schaustellen!-Festival, Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature Münster, Videonale Bonn and Ruhrtriennale, Bochum. In summer of 2020 she received a scholarship by Kunststiftung NRW. Her artistic works deals with documentary and performative practices to address the questions of personal identity and public performance. In December 2020 she participates in the group show currents #8 at Marres Maastricht.

(2020)

Rodrigo Ríos Zunini

During the last 20 years he has worked and collaborated with different platforms dedicated to music, arts, theater, education (with children and young people at social risk and people with disabilities) and complementary therapies, always with emphasis on production, emission and sound capture. His work is inspired by diverse concepts and experiences, such as: feedback, transmission, non-input mixing, shamanic rites, turning, rotation, migration, altered states, phenomenology and perception. The main expressions of his work in the area of sound art are: sound installations, audiovisual performances, installation concerts, radio programs/broadcasts, workshops and research projects. He has presented his work in Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Germany and Switzerland.

(2020)

Percy Zvomuya

PERCY ZVOMUYA is a Harare-based writer, journalist, critic and football fan. He is also a co-founder and former co-editor of the Con Magazine, a Johannesburg based writing collective. For close to a decade, he worked at the Mail & Guardian (South Africa) until the end of 2013. In 2014, he was on the judging panel of the Caine Prize of African Writing; it was the same year he was a recipient of the Miles Morland Fellowship for a book on Robert Mugabe. He has written for several publications, including Africa is a Country, Chimurenga, Jacobin, the London Review of Books blog, Moto (Zimbabwe), and Sunday Times (South Africa).

In 2018 Percy Zvomuya was a fellow of Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World, ADKDW).