Adrian Lahoud is an internationally recognised architect, urban designer, and researcher. He has written and lectured extensively on urban spatial forms and large scale environmental change with a focus on the Arab world and Africa. Adrian is the Dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, and previously Studio Master in the Projective Cities Master of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Design Program at the Architectural Association London. Prior to that he was Director of the MA program in Research Architecture and a Research Fellow in the Forensic Architecture ERC project at Goldsmiths, University of London. His key works include Climate Crimes at The Future Starts Here, V&A Museum, Floating Bodies at Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin and Fallen Cities: Architecture and Reconstruction in The Arab City: Architecture and Representation.

Photo by Alpimages
 

Ailton Krenak is a writer, researcher, environmentalist and indigenous leader. Originating from the Krenak people, Ailton dedicated his studies and life to activism and the indigenous movement, articulating actions and organizations in favor of the rights of indigenous peoples such as their rights over their lands, languages, cultures and lives. Ailton founded the NGO Nucleus of Indigenous Culture, as well as the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI) to unify indigenous claims. Ailton is also well-known as a writer, publishing books such as Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (Ideas to postpone the end of the world, 2019), A vida não é útil (Life is not useful, 2020) and O Amanhã Não Está à Venda (Tomorrow is not for sale, 2020). In 2020, he won the Juca Pato Intellectual of the Year Award, given by the União Brasileira de Escritores. 

Photo by Matthieu Jean Marie Lena
 

Jennifer Allora (born 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 1971, Havana) live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Solo exhibitions have taken place at Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Haus der Kunst, Munich; MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Castello de Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; MAXXI, Rome; Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and many others. Jennifer and Guillermo represented the United States at the 54th Venice Bienniale in 2011. In 2015, they made the site–specific installation Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), a Dia Art Foundation commission on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. They are preparing a large solo show at the Menil Foundation in Houston which opens September 2020.

Andrea Bowers is a Los Angeles-based American artist working in a variety of media including video, drawing and installation. Andrea received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Over the last twenty-three years, her work has explored social issues ranging from women’s or worker’s rights to climate change. Her work converges between art and activism and has been exhibited around the world, including museums and galleries in Germany, Greece and Tokyo.

Photo by Alpimages
 

Anicka Yi is an artist whose practice relates to synthetic biology, bio engineering, extinction, and bio fiction. Her work examines concepts of "the biopolitics of the senses" or how assumptions and anxieties related to gender, race, and class shape physical perception. Anicka lives and works in New York City. Institutional solo exhibitions of her work include the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Fridericianum, Kassel; Kunsthalle Basel; List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Kitchen, New York; and The Cleveland Museum of Art. In 2016, she was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize. Anicka has screened her film, The Flavor Genome, at the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, 2017.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 
 

Swedish / Swiss citizen Barbara Hendricks was born in Stephens, Arkansas and studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York with Jennie Tourel, after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Chemistry at the age of 20 from the University of Nebraska. In 1974 she made her operatic and recital debuts and since that moment, Barbara’s career and artistry has never ceased to grow; she has become one of the world’s most loved and admired musicians. Barbara has sold more than 14 million records and recorded nearly 100 albums for Sony, Decca, DG and EMI / Warner. In 2006, she launched her own record label, Arte Verum, for which she is now recording exclusively. She has worked to promote and defend Human Rights and in 2007 after 20 years of untiring service to the cause of refugees as a UNHCR ambassador they appointed her their only Honorary Ambassador for Life. In 1998 she founded the Barbara Hendricks Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation coordinating her work for refugees and Human Rights Defenders.

Photo by Alpimages

Beatrix Ruf is a Curator based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and co-designed the format of the inaugural Verbier Art Summit in 2017. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Hartwig Art Foundation in Amsterdam, and works on strategies and programs with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. Beatrix served as the Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam from November 2014 to January 2018. From September 2001 to October 2014 Beatrix was Director and Chief Curator of Kunsthalle Zürich, overseeing a substantial expansion project launched in 2003 and concluded in 2012. Former occupations include: Curator at Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Warth from 1994-1998, Director of the Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus from 1998-2001. In 2006 she curated the third edition of the Tate Triennial in London, she was Co-Curator of the Yokohama Triennial in 2008. From 1995 to 2014 she has been the curator of the Ringier Collection and since 2010 she is a member of the think tank core group of the LUMA. In 2013 Beatrix co-founded POOL, a postgraduate curatorial program in Zürich.

Photo by Alpimages

Benjamin H. Bratton’s work spans Philosophy, Art, Design and Computer Science. He is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He founded the school’s new Speculative Design undergraduate major. He is also a Professor of Digital Design at The European Graduate School; Visiting Faculty at SCI_Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture); and, from 2016-18, he was Program Director at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned an LL.M and J.S.D. from Yale University and holds the Degree of Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, by McGill University. He is director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum. He has been awarded several prizes, such as the Science and Technology Prize of Mexico, 2010, and the Kalven Jr. Prize of the Law and Society Association, 2011. His project ALICE: Leading Europe to a New Way of Sharing the World Experiences was funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, and was carried out from July 2011 until 2016. Boaventura’s most recent books in English include: Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide (2014), If God Were a Human Rights Activist (2015), Decolonising the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice (2017) and The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South (2018).

Photo by Alpimages

Christopher Kulendran Thomas is an artist who works through the processes by which art produces reality. Christopher’s work has been included in the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016), the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), Bread and Roses, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2016), Co-Workers: Network As Artist, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2015) and Art Turning Left: How Values Changed Making, Tate Liverpool (2013). His other exhibitions include shows at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits

Dr. Cissie Fu is Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and Co-Founder of the Political Arts Initiative, which invites 21st-century imag-e-nations of the political through digital technology and the creative and performing arts. After an AB in Government and Philosophy at Harvard University, Cissie explored public interest law in Washington DC before moving to the University of Oxford for an MSt in Women’s Studies, an MSc in Political Research and Methodology, and a DPhil in Politics and International Relations. She lectured at Oxford and University College London prior to serving as Senior Tutor and Director of Studies at Leiden University College in Leiden University’s Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs in The Hague. Having returned to Canada, she continues to be a regular guest curator and performer at art institutions in and out of Europe.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits

Claudia Comte is an artist based in Bennwil, Switzerland. Her work is defined by her interest in the memory of materials and by a careful observation of how the hand relates to different technologies. Claudia studied at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL) in 2004-2007, followed by a Masters of Art in Science of Education at Haute Ecole Pédagogique, Visual Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland in 2008-2010. She has presented her work in solo and group exhibitions at Kunstraum, Dornbirn; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; König Galerie, Berlin; Copenhagen Contemporary; Gladstone Gallery, New York; MOCA, Cleveland; Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis; Kunsthalle Basel; Desert X, Palm Springs; Kunstmuseum Luzern; Public Art Fund, New York; Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; and Elevation 1049, Gstaad. Her upcoming exhibitions include: the 58th October salon Belgrade Biennale (June 2021) and a solo presentation at The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (Spring 2021).

Photo by Gunnar Meier
 

HRH Prince Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau advises companies on their digital innovation strategies. Since 2017 the Dutch Government appointed him as Special Envoy of StartupDelta, with the ambition to make the Netherlands the best place to start, build, grow, and scale up innovative businesses. In 2019, TechLeap.NL was launched as the successor of StartupDelta, a major collective effort to bolster the growth and standing of Dutch scale-ups. Constantijn has a background in government, management consulting and policy research and advice, at the European Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Booz Allen & Hamilton and the RAND Corporation. He was employed as Chief of Staff of Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe. He went on to establish his own advisory business and initiated the country’s biggest ever startup event ‘StartupFest Europe’, reaching over 36.000 people at 30+ events in 16 locations. He holds board and advisory positions at many cultural organisations, including the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development. 

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits

Dado Valentic is a Chief Creative Technologist at Acute Art, world’s leading platform for Virtual Reality (VR) Art production and distribution. Faced with the task of overcoming the technical limitations of current VR, Dado has developed an entirely new approach to working in VR based on his experience as a researcher in the area of perception and optical illusion. He is working closely with some of the world’s leading contemporary artist and transforming their vision into interactive VR Artworks. Dado is an award-winning colourist and colour scientist with a long-standing contribution in the field of innovation of digital imaging. He has been working on some of the best-known Feature Film and TV productions including Sherlock Holmes, Exodus, Game of Thrones, Marco Polo, Total Recall and more. He was one of the inventors of Colour Managed Workflow that has today become a standard for the most high-end feature and episodic TV productions and continues to be one of the most innovative creative technologists.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Daniel Birnbaum is the Director and Curator of Acute Art in London, UK. Daniel was previously the Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 2010 to 2018. From 2000 to 2010 he was the Rector of Städelschule in Frankfurt and Director of its kunsthalle Portikus. He is contributing editor of Artforum in New York and has curated a number of large exhibitions, including Airs de Paris at Centre Pompidou in Paris (in co-operation with Christine Macel) in 2007. Daniel was the director of the 2009 Venice Biennale. He is the author of numerous books on art and philosophy and is the co-editor (with Isabelle Graw) of the Insitut für Kunstkritik series published by Sternberg Press. He is on the board of directors of Nobel Media, the organisation that manages all the events surrounding the Nobel prizes.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Dave Beech is a member of the art collective Freee, writer and Professor of Art at Valand Academy, Gothenburg. His book Art and Value, published by Brill 2015, was shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize. His work has been exhibited at the Istanbul Biennial and the Liverpool Biennial. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, co-authored the book The Philistine Controversy, Verso (2002) with John Roberts, edited the MIT/Whitechapel book Beauty (2009), and is a founding co-editor of Art and the Public Sphere journal.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits

Djamila Ribeiro is a public intellectual, writer and philosopher, a social justice activist, and one of the most influential leaders in the Afro-Brazilian women’s rights movement. Djamila holds a Master's Degree in Political Philosophy by the Federal University of São Paulo. She is a best-selling writer of the books Quem tem medo do Feminismo Negro? (‘Who is afraid of Black Feminism?’ 2018), Lugar de Fala (‘Place of Speech’) and Pequeno Manual Antirracista (‘Little Anti-racist Manual’). Djamila is the lead publisher of the Collection Feminismos Plurais (‘Plural Feminisms’), making afrodescendant writers' works available at affordable prices and with a didactical language approach. She is the founder and head of the "Sueli Carneiro Seal", which aims to publish black women from Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2019, she was awarded a Prince Claus Award for outstanding achievement in the field of culture and development.

Photo by Alpimages

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is an experimental artist based in Paris. Since 1990, she has been exploring the different modalities of sensory and cognitive relationships between bodies and spaces, real or fictitious, up to the point of questioning the distance between organic life and work. Metabolizing literary and cinematographic, architectural and musical, scientific and pop references, Dominique creates “chambres” and “interiors”, “gardens”, “attractions” and “planets”, with respect to the multiple meanings that these terms take on in the works of Virginia Woolf or Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Brontë sisters or Thomas Pynchon, Joanna Russ or Philip K. Dick. Haunted by history and future, Dominique’s works become containers where the artist incubates a form of subjectivity that does not yet exist. Through multiple international exhibitions, short films, productions and concerts, Dominique's mutant work contributes to the invention of new technologies of consciousness.

Photo by Giasco Bertoli

Dorothea von Hantelmann is Professor of Art and Society at Bard College Berlin. Before taking the position at Bard College Berlin, she was documenta Professor at the Art Academy/University of Kassel where she lectured on the history and meaning of documenta. Her main fields of research are contemporary art and theory as well as the history and theory of exhibitions. She is the author of How to Do Things with Art, one of the seminal works on performativity within contemporary art, co-editor of Die Ausstellung. Politik eines Rituals (‘The exhibition. Politics of a Ritual’) and has written extensively on contemporary art. Her current book project is entitled The exhibition: Transformations of a ritual, and it explores exhibitions as ritual spaces in which fundamental values and categories of modern, liberal and market-based societies historically have been, and continue to be, practised and reflected.

Photo by Alpimages

Since 1991 Douglas Coupland has written thirteen novels published in most languages. He has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for The Financial Times of London. In 2000 Douglas amplified his visual art production and had two separate museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at Kunstinstituut Melly, formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, and Villa Stücke in Munich in the fall of 2017. In 2015 and 2016 Douglas was artist in residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevlier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres and receiver of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

 

Ed Atkins is an artist who makes videos, writes and draws, developing a complex and deeply figured discourse around definition, wherein the impossibilities for sufficient representations of the physical, specifically corporeal, world — from computer generated imagery to bathetic poetry — are hysterically rehearsed. Solo presentations include Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; MMK Frankfurt; DHC/ART, Montréal (all 2017); Castello di Rivoli, Turin; The Kitchen, New York (both 2016); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2015) and The Serpentine Gallery, London (2014). An anthology of his texts, A Primer for Cadavers, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2016, and an extensive artist’s monograph from Skira was published in 2017. Ed lives and works in Berlin.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Rosario Hurtado & Roberto Feo define their practice as ‘the thing we do in order to understand the world’. El Último Grito produces work that responds to an on–going investigation into the nature and representation of systems, and how these construct our ideas of reality. El Último Grito sees their academic activity as an extension of their public work, bringing their experimental approach into the academic realm. Roberto Feo is Professor of Design Practice at Goldsmiths University, London and Rosario Hurtado co–directs the programme MA Space and Communications at HEAD–Genève. As part of their current academic activity they have created the research unit: Vehicles for Experimental Practice, based in Goldsmiths University London, of which the first outcome is the experimental practice journal Multiplexer.

Photo by Alpimages
 

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Director of The Showroom, London. She is affiliated to the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths and the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada. Previously, she served as Creative Time Senior Curator, Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art, and Curator International Art at Tate Modern. She recently joined Tate Modern Advisory Council. Elvira has published and lectured on modern and contemporary African art and has contributed to art journals such as Nka and Atlántica. She studied a Doctoral Degree in History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, New York; has a MAS in Theory and History of Architecture from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona; and a BA in Art History from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Since the mid-1990's, Ernesto Neto has produced an influential body of work that explores constructions of social space and the natural world by inviting physical interaction and sensory experience. Born in Rio de Janeiro, the artist continues to live and work in Brazil. He studied at the city’s Escola de artes visuais do Parque Lage in 1994 and in 1997, and also attended the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art from 1994 to 1996. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and biennials, such as a large scale installation that was on view at the Zurich train station, commissioned by the Beyeler Foundation (2018), the 14th Biennale de Lyon, curated by Emma Lavigne (2017), Manifesta 7 (2015), along with 2017 group shows at Guggenheim Bilbao, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Centre Pompidou-Metz, and a permanent installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Photo by Alpimages
 

Federico Campagna is a philosopher and writer. His latest books are Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Last Night (Zero Books, 2013). He is the editor of Franco Berardi’s philosophical anthology, Quarant’anni Contro il Lavoro (Derive Approdi, 2017). He has presented his work in institutions including the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice; Documenta 13, Kassel; the Serpentine Gallery, London; Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow and MACBA, Barcelona. Federico received his PhD from the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, London.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Gabi Ngcobo is an artist, curator and educator living in Johannesburg, South Africa. Since the early 2000's Gabi has been engaged in collaborative artistic, curatorial, and educational projects in South Africa and on an international scope. She curated the 10th Berlin Biennale titled We don’t need another hero and was one of the co-curators of the 32nd Sao Paulo Bienal (2016). She is a founding member of the Johannesburg based collaborative platforms NGO – Nothing Gets Organised and Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR, 2010–14). NGO focusses on processes of self-organisation that take place outside of predetermined structures, definitions, contexts, or forms. CHR responded to the demands of the moment through an exploration of how historical legacies impact and resonate within contemporary art.

Photo by Alpimages

Grada Kilomba is an interdisciplinary artist and writer born in Lisbon and living in Berlin. Her work draws on memory, trauma, race, gender, and the decolonisation of knowledge: ‘who can speak?’ ‘what can we speak about?’ and ‘what happens when we speak?’ are three constant questions in Grada’s body of work. She is best known for her subversive writing and her unconventional use of artistic practices, in which she gives body, voice and image to her own text, using a variety of formats such as staged reading, performance, installation, sound and video Installation - having storytelling as the central element. Her work has been presented at: 10. Berlin Biennale; Documenta 14; 32. Bienal de São Paulo; The Power Plant, Toronto; MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, among others. She is the author of Plantation Memories (2008) a compilation of episodes of everyday racism written in the form of short psychoanalytical stories.

Photo by Alpimages

Irma Boom is an Amsterdam-based graphic designer specialised in making books. For five years she worked (editing and concept/design) on the 2136-page book SHV Think Book 1996 –1896 commissioned by SHV Holdings in Utrecht. The Think Book was published in English and Chinese. Irma studied at the AKI Art Academy in Enschede. After graduation she worked for five years at the Dutch Government Publishing and Printing Office in The Hague. In 1991 she founded Irma Boom Office, which works nationally and internationally in both the cultural and commercial sectors. Since 1992 Irma has been a senior critic at Yale University in the U.S. and gives lectures and workshops worldwide. She has been the recipient of many awards for her book designs and was the youngest ever laureate to receive the prestigious Gutenberg Prize for her complete oeuvre. Irma received the 2014 Johannes Vermeer Prize– the Dutch state prize for the arts–for her unparallelled achievements in the field of graphic design from the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Jet Bussemaker.
 

Jessica Morgan joined Dia Art Foundation as Director in January 2015 and was named Nathalie de Gunzburg Director in October 2017. At Dia, Jessica is responsible for strengthening and activating all parts of Dia’s multivalent program, including its pioneering Land art projects, site-specific commissions, and collections and programming across its constellation of sites. Since her arrival at Dia, the foundation has grown and diversified its collection to include significant works by Mary Corse, Nancy Holt, Robert Morris, Dorothea Rockburne, Kishio Suga, Anne Truitt, and Lee Ufan among others. Alongside an expanded exhibition program, Jessica has continued Dia’s commitment to site-specific commissions, facilitating major new work by artists including Isabel Lewis, Rita McBride and Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and in 2015 realizing the first Dia commission outside the continental United States since 1982 with Allora & Calzadilla’s Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), situated in Puerto Rico. In 2018, Jessica announced a comprehensive, multi-year campaign, that includes the upgrade, revitalization, and ongoing stewardship of Dia’s key programmatic spaces and artist sites.

Photo by Alpimages


 

Joan Jonas is a world-renowned artist whose work encompasses a wide range of media including video, performance, installation, sound, text, and sculpture. Joan’s experiments and productions in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s continue to be crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theatre. Since 1968, her practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of rituals, and the authority of objects and gestures. Joan has exhibited, screened, and performed her work at museums, galleries, and in large scale group exhibitions throughout the world. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at Hangar Bicocca, Milan; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the United States Pavilion for the 56th edition of the Venice Biennial; Tate Modern, London; TBA21 Ocean Space at the San Lorenzo Church, Venice; and Serralves Museum, Porto. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize, presented to those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind.

Photo by Alpimages

Jochen Volz is the General Director of the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. In 2017, he was the curator of the Brazilian Pavilion for the 53rd Biennale di Venezia. He was the curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo in 2016. He served as Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2012-2015); Artistic Director at Instituto Inhotim (2005-2012); and curator at Portikus in Frankfurt (2001-2004). Volz was co-curator of the international exhibition of the 53rd Bienal de Veneza (2009) and the 1st Aichi Triennial in Nagoya (2010) and guest curator of the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006), besides having contributed to other exhibitions throughout the world. He holds a masters in art history, communication and pedagogy by the Humboldt University in Berlin (1998). Lives in São Paulo.

Photo by Alpimages
 

Karen Archey is Curator of Contemporary Art, Time-based Media at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She was previously based in Berlin and New York, where she worked as an independent curator, art critic, and editor of e-flux. Karen was a 2015 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant recipient for short-form writing. With a focus on feminist practices, art and technology, her writing is regularly featured in magazines such as frieze and ArtReview, and anthologies published by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, MIT Press and New Museum. Karen co-curated the survey exhibition Art Post-Internet at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2014) and edited the publication Art Post-Internet: INFORMATION/DATA. As regular public speaker, Karen has spoken at Renaissance Society at University of Chicago, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Museum of Modern Art New York, MoMA PS1, and elsewhere.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Lars Jakob Bang Larsen is adjunct curator of international art at Moderna Museet. He is a guest professor in art theory, at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, visiting lecturer at the program in art, culture and technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, and professeur invité and tutor at Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design, Geneva. Lars is a post doc fellow at the Institute of Art and Cultural History, University of Copenhagen, from where he also holds his PhD on psychedelic concepts in neo-avantgarde art. Lars organised several exhibitions, and was co-curator with Jochen Volz of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo 2016: Incerteza Viva (Live Uncertainty). He wrote several publications and is a contributor to various art magazines (including Artforum).

Born 1974 in El Khnansa, Morocco, Latifa Echakhch came to France at the age of 3 but has lived for most of her life in Switzerland. Hers is a multi-referential and multidirectional work, just like her personal background, her travels and her eclectic centres of interest. Latifa tends to produce installation pieces that are in direct connection with the space in which they are presented, thereby blending personal, multicultural, historical and sociological references. Winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2013 and the Zurich Art Prize in 2015, Latifa is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Cergy-Pontoise and the École nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon. Her work has been presented at the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017), Power Plant Gallery, Toronto (2017), Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2016), Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (2015), Swiss Institute, New York (2015), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014 – 2015), Palazzo Grassi, Venise (2014), Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (2013) and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013).

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Louise O. Fresco is a Dutch Professor, author and expert in the field of food and sustainable agriculture, aiming to provide an answer to the question: “How can we provide food for 9 trillion people by 2030?” Since 2000, Louise has served as Assistant Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. Louise is also a professor at Wageningen University and was appointed President of the Executive Board at Wageningen University & Research since 2014. Louise is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, writing for a wide audience about food security and eating culture, including a fortnightly column for the newspaper NRC Handelsblad and the book Hamburgers in Paradise (2012), as well as an extensive collection of articles in both scientific journals and popular media. She has published twelve non-scientific books, including three novels, of which De Utopisten (The Utopians, 2008) was shortlisted for the Libris Literature Award. 

Photo by Jeroen Oerlemans

Lucy Raven is an artist based in New York. Her work is grounded primarily in animation and moving image installations. She has had exhibitions and screenings internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Serpentine Gallery, London; MoMA and PS 1, New York; Portikus, Frankfurt; the Tate Modern, London; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her permanent public artwork, Lichtspielhaus, recently opened as part of the new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany (September 2019). She is the cofounder (with Vic Brooks and Evan Calder Williams) of the moving image research and production collective 13BC, whose exhibition Fatal Act was on view at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, Ireland until 7 December 2019. She teaches at Cooper Union School of Art in New York.


Maria Balshaw is the Director of Tate, a role she has held since June 2017. She has overall responsibility for Tate’s strategic direction and day to day operations. As Director, Maria is also the Accounting Officer appointed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Previously, as Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries, Maria was responsible for the artistic and strategic vision for each gallery. As Director of Culture for Manchester City Council from 2013-2017, Maria played a leading role in establishing the city as a major cultural centre. Maria is a Board Member of The Clore Leadership Programme and Manchester International Festival, and was a Board Member of Arts Council England until March 2018. Maria was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the arts in June 2015.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) was a writer, critic, cultural theorist, and Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a lecturer at the University of East London, London. He was a founding member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit and author of Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014), and Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009). Fisher’s writing has appeared in many publications, including Frieze, The Guardian, New Humanist, New Statesman, Sight & Sound, and The Wire. He also produced two acclaimed audio-essays in collaboration with Justin Barton: londonunderlondon (2005) and On Vanishing Land (2013).

Michelle Kuo is The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was the Editor in Chief of Artforum from 2010-2017, helming the 50th anniversary issue of the magazine as well as numerous other special issues on topics ranging from new media to painting to identity politics. Michelle is the author of essays on the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Le Corbusier and Jeff Koons, among others; has lectured widely at institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing; contributes to publications such as October and The Art Bulletin; and delivered the 2012 International Association of Art Critics’ Distinguished Lecture. She is also contributing author to a book about the subject of her PhD dissertation, the postwar group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.).

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Naine Terena belongs to the Terena indigenous people of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. She has a doctorate (PhD) in education, a Master’s degree in Art and a degree in Social Communication. Naine received a Postdoctoral fellowship in education (July 2015) at Lêtece-UFMT and currently lectures at the Catholic University of Mato Grosso in the areas of Social Communication and Indigenous Education. She is a Cultural/Artist Producer at Oráculo Comunicação on education and culture, where she develops research projects, workshops and activities related to education, culture and militancy.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Nicholas Serota was appointed Chair of Arts Council England in February 2017. Born in London in 1946, he studied Economics and History of Art at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute, London. He joined the Arts Council of Great Britain’s Visual Arts Department as a regional art officer in 1970 and then worked as a curator at the Hayward Gallery. From 1973-76 he was director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and he then became the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery from 1976-88. Nicholas was the Director of Tate from 1988 to May 2017. During this period Tate has opened Tate St Ives (1993) and Tate Modern (2000, extended in 2016), redefining the Millbank building as Tate Britain (2000). Tate has also broadened its field of interest to include twentieth-century photography, film, performance and occasionally architecture, as well as collecting from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2010, the national role of the Gallery has been further developed with the creation of the Plus Tate network of 35 institutions across the UK and Northern Ireland. In recent years, he has curated or co-curated a number of exhibitions at Tate, including Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Matisse: the Cut-Outs. Nicholas has been a Trustee of the Architecture Foundation and a commissioner on the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. He was a member of the Olympic Delivery Authority which was responsible for building the Olympic Park in East London for 2012. He is a member of the Executive Board of the BBC.


 

Artist Olafur Eliasson's works span sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installation. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making, and issues of sustainability and climate change. Since 1997, his solo shows have appeared in major museums around the world. Olafur’s projects in public spaces include The New York City Waterfalls in 2008, and Ice Watch, shown in Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015 and London in 2018. Olafur’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. He strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. He has been active in the digital realm for many years and was early to explore the potential of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. 

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Olinda Tupinambá, Indigenous to the Tupinambá and Pataxó hãhãhãe people, is a journalist, filmmaker and environmental activist. She has been working with audiovisual mediums since 2015, including documentaries, fiction and performance. She has produced and directed 7 independent audiovisual works, and has two more in production, one of which is commissioned by Pinacoteca de São Paulo in collaboration with the Ivani and Jorge Yunes Collection. Olinda has also been the curator of several film festivals and shows, including the 8th Cine Kurumin Indigenous Film Festival (2021) and Mostra Lugar de Mulher é no cinema (2021).

Photo by Arquivo Pessoal

Pamela Rosenkranz’s work addresses the shifting philosophical and scientific meanings of the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ during the time of the Anthropocene (the geological epoch marked by the impact of human activities on the ecosystem). Pamela deploys a palette of patented icons—polyethylene water bottles, soft drinks, Ralph Lauren latex paint, JPEGs of International Klein Blue, Ilford photo paper, and ASICS sneakers—augmented by flesh-toned silicone and acrylic paint. By challenging the distinction between the natural and the artificial, she addresses the evolutionary and material dynamics underlying perception, art, and culture.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 
 

Paul Spies graduated in Art History and Archeology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1987 he founded D’arts, an art-historical consultancy and organisational bureau, that produced many museum concepts, exhibitions, publications, marketing and communication campaigns, television programmes etc. In 2009 he was appointed director of the Amsterdam (Historical) Museum. Since then, he has lead the renovation of the presentations and organisation of these museums. Also, he started several partnerships with other heritage museums in Amsterdam. He was Director of the Amsterdam City Museum and since 2016 Director of the Stadtmuseum Berlin and chief curator of the Federal State of Berlin at the Humboldt Forum. 

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Paul F.M.J. Verschure is Catalan Institute of Advanced Studies (ICREA) Research Professor, Director of the neuro-engineering program at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalunya and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology where he runs the Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems (SPECS) Laboratory. He is an Associate Professor in Computation and Artificial Intelligence at the University Pompeu Fabra. He is founder/CEO of Eodyne Systems S.L., which is commercializing novel science grounded neurorehabilitation and cultural heritage technologies. Paul is founder/Chairman of the Future Memory Foundation which aims at supporting the development of new tools and paradigms for the conservation, presentation, and education of the history of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes. Complementary to his science, Paul has developed and deployed over 35 art installations and performances.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Philippe Rahm is a Swiss architect, principal in the office of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. His recent work includes the first prize for the Farini competition in Milan in 2019; the 70 hectares Central Park in Taichung, Taiwan, completed in December 2019; the Agora of the French National Radio in Paris; a 2700 m2 Exhibition architecture for the Luma Foundation in Arles, France. He has held professorships at GSD Harvard University, Columbia University and Princeton University. In 2017, his work was exhibited at both the Chicago and Seoul Architecture Biennials.

Photo by Alpimages

 

Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. He graduated from the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarised the work of OMA in “a novel about architecture”. He heads the work of both OMA and AMO, the research branch of OMA, operating in areas beyond the realm of architecture such as media, politics, renewable energy and fashion. Rem is a professor at Harvard University where he conducts the Project on the City. In 2014, he was the director of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, entitled Fundamentals. He curated Countryside: The Future (2020), an exhibition about the non-urban areas around the globe that opened in February 2020 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and closed on 15 February 2021. 

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Born in Buenos Aires and raised in Thailand, Ethiopia and Canada, Rirkrit Tiravanija is a contemporary artist who blurs the boundaries between art and life, going beyond performance to create socially-engaged artistic happening which actively engage the public to become the main actor of the artwork. He has been the protagonist of many exhibitions in major contemporary art world museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reiña Sofia of Madrid, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Rirkrit is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member/curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians and curators. Rirkrit is also President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located in Chiang Mai, where he maintains his primary residence and studio. Rirkrit has been recognised numerous awards and grants like the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize from the Guggenheim Museum (2004).

Photo by Alpimages
 

Simon Denny is a contemporary artist from New Zealand based in Berlin, Germany. He makes exhibitions that unpack the social and political implications of the technology industry and the rise of social media, startup culture, blockchains and cryptocurrencies, using a variety of media including installation, sculpture, print and video. He studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland and at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Simon curated exhibtions about Blockchain and art, and has exhibited in major museums across the world. Simon’s work is held in institutional collections internationally and he co-founded the mentoring program BPA. He is also Professor for Time Based Media at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.

Photo by Max Pitegoff Calla Henkel
 

Stefan Kaegi is based in Berlin, produces documentary theatre plays and works in public space in a diverse variety of collaborative partnerships. Stefan has toured across Europe and Asia with two Bulgarian lorry drivers and a truck which was converted into a mobile audience room (Cargo Sofia). He developed Radio Muezzin in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of technical reproduction. At the moment he adapts Remote X, an audio tour for 50 headphones to cities like Taipei and Tunis, and he tours the interactive installation Nachlass that portrays people who have not much time to live. Stefan co–produces works with Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, under the label Rimini Protokoll. Using research, public auditions and conceptual processes, they give voice to ‘experts' who are not trained actors but have something to tell. Their latest work Utopolis for 48 portable loudspeakers opened in Manchester Festival 2019.

 

Susanne Pfeffer took on the role as new director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt am Main from 1 January 2018. The curator of Anne Imhof’s Golden Lion–winning project at the German Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale, and contributor to Artforum, Pfeffer became head of Kassel’s Fridericianum in 2013. At the Fridericianum she explored posthuman futures with shows such as Speculations on Anonymous Materials (2013) and its sequels, Nature After Nature (2014) and Inhuman (2015). Susanne was artistic director at the Künstlerhaus Bremen from 2004-2006 and chief curator of the KW Insitute of Contemporary Art in Berlin from 2007-2012. 

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Tania Bruguera is a Cuban installation and performance artist, renowned for her international work that blends art and activism, striving for freedom and democracy across borders. After an artistic exploration of the potentiality of the body as a medium to question and attack the dominant structures of power, Tania started to concentrate on the creation of artistic happenings in which the public and its behaviour become active centres. Blending art and activism, Tania invented an innovative artistic method which aims to unveil the mechanism of power and address the question of repression, censorship and inequality. Tania has been the protagonist of various exhibitions in international museums as the Tate Modern, London, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Hayward Gallery, London.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 
 

Tino Sehgal, who originally studied political economics and dance, crossed over to the visual arts in 2000. He achieved international renown for his groundbreaking, experimental work presented at the Venice Biennale, the Documenta in Kassel, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Tate Modern in London. The Stedelijk has worked with him from the outset of his career, presenting his work in 2004 and 2006, and the museum acquired his first work in 2005. For Tino, an artwork consists of a live encounter between artwork and viewer. He does not make objects; he creates ‘situations’ within the museum space, in which interpreters enact choreographed actions and occasionally converse with visitors. These encounters offer the visitor a wholly unique experience of live artwork.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Tobias Madison’s artistic practice resists simple categorizations, but at its core is the fundamental question of self-determination. His work shows a continued interest in drama, technology, and an almost inhuman sense of self-sufficiency. He has had institutional solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute in New York City (2010) curated by Gianni Jetzer, the Kunstverein Munich, many group exhibitions, a solo at the Kunsthalle Zürich, NO; NO; H E P, a Frieze commission in 2014. In April 2015, Madison returned to Kunsthalle Zurich to play in Theater der Überforderung ('Theatre of Excess'), a month-long performance with daily open rehearsals directed by Barbara Weber, which “precipitated” in five premieres. Tobias teaches the Master program at HEAD-Genève and contributes regularly as a critic to magazines such as Texte zur Kunst, Frieze, May and Flash Art.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits 

Tobias is a philosopher and Founder and CEO of ToftH.org, an organisation dedicated to bringing together philosophy, art and technology. Prior to founding ToftH.org, he was the William Dawson chair at McGill University, the Reid Hoffman professor of humanities at the New School/Parsons School of Design, and a Director at the LA based Berggruen Institute. Tobias is a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and holds degrees in philosophy, anthropology and neurobiology. The focus of his work is on the philosophy, poetry, and politics of the contemporary. He also worked as an advisor for many North American and European Universities on how to re-invent the human sciences, and is the author of dozens of articles and three books: Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008), Plastic Reason (2016), and most recently of After Ethnos (2018). 

Tom Battin is a Full Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where his laboratory works on the microbial ecology and biogeochemistry of stream ecosystems in mountain regions worldwide. He is intrigued by the massive yet unseen diversity of the microbial life in these ecosystems and how they have adapted to their extreme environment. At the same time, his laboratory works are on the role of streams and rivers for the global carbon cycle, and how climate change is affecting this link. Before joining EPFL, Tom was Professor in Limnology at the University of Vienna and Visiting Professor of the University of Applied Art in Vienna and the University of Uppsala. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the USA and Spain. He has received the Spanish Ramón y Cajal fellowship and the Austrian Start Prize, the highest award for young scientists.

Torkwase Dyson is an American interdisciplinary artist based in New York. As a painter, she works across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. She focuses on the ways that black and brown bodies perceive and negotiate space. Her abstract works look to spatial liberation strategies from historical and contemporary perspectives, seeking to uncover new understandings of the potential for more livable geographies. Torkwase studied at Tougaloo College, Mississippi, where she majored in Sociology and double minored in Social Work and Fine Art. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in leading museums all over the United States, and more recently at the Sharjah Biennial. 

Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolf Singer studied Medicine in Munich and Paris, obtained his MD from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and his PhD from the Technical University in Munich. He is Director em. at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Founding Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and of the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience (ESI) and Director of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum. His research is focused on the neuronal substrate of higher cognitive functions, and especially on the question how the distributed sub-processes in the brain are coordinated and bound together in order to give rise to coherent perception and action. These studies are performed with electrophysiological techniques in behaviorally trained monkeys and with non-invasive imaging methods in human subjects.

Photo by Frederik Jacobovits