Astrid Menze, born in Frankfurt/Main Germany, studied Audiovisual Media at the Gerrit Rietvield Academie in Amsterdam and San Francisco Art Institute where she received her diploma in 1999, her MFA in New Media from the Transart Institute in August 2010. She lives and works as a freelance editor and video artist in Berlin. Her work is shown and awarded nationally and internationally as group and individual projects. She is currently teaching editing and visualization at Academy for International Education in Bonn, LMU Los Angeles, A&M Texas University and film history and media theory at DEKRA Akademie Berlin.
Carolina Mendonça is interested in contamination of knowledge and in being vulnerable to different logics. Graduated in Performing Arts at ECA-USP and with Master’s in Choreography and Performance at Giessen University in Germany. Her latest projects are Pulp- History as a Warm Wet Place (2018) in Mousonturm that deals with an intuitive archeology digesting the leftovers of the XVII-XVIII centuries; useless land (2018) a night reading that invites de audience to sleep that happened in many different contexts such as MAerzmusik in Berlin, Ferme de Buisson in Paris, Beursschouwburg in Brussels and Sesta in Prague among others; We, the Undamaged others (2017) a work that puts in question happiness as an horizon that organizes our lives, premiered at Oswald de Andrade in São Paulo and showed in MIT-2018; Falling (2016) explores sleeping as a possible dance practice presented at Mousonturm.
Nancy Messegee is a text- and movement-based artist living in Austin, where she is dedicated to fully inhabiting and exploring the sacred spaces of body, home, and world through iterative creative practice. Born in upstate New York, she grew up in a village of 750 residents in Alaska, which she left at 16 to attend and then graduate from Yale, becoming the first woman in her family with a college degree.
Rene MG believes that art is an experience and is enhanced when shared with others and when it includes interactive and visceral moments. She created PIP art popup in 2016. PIP=participatory immersive/interactive performance art operates on the idea that the viewer/participant is invited into a space where they can chose to participate, facilitate or watch. PIP is site-reactive, site-specific and site-enhancing based on deep hanging out and research.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Mical is Professor of Architectural Theory. Previously a tenured faculty in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and he has taught and lectured internationally. His research crosses architectural theory, media-philosophy, design research methods. He edits the book series Architectural Intelligences (Brill).
Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Babson College teaching courses in world literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and visual art. He also holds a faculty position at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) and is Director of the Transdisciplinary Studies Program for the New Centre for Research & Practice.
Dafna Naphtali is a electronic-musician/performer/singer/composer from an eclectic musical background (jazz, classical, rock and near-eastern music). Since the mid-90’s she composes/performs experimental, interactive electro-acoustic music using her custom Max/MSP programming for live sound processing of her voice and other instruments, and also interprets the work of Cage, Stockhausen and contemporary composers.
Carrie E Neal is an integral thinker. Liking the challenge of making connections between diverse fields of study and look for ways to connect the ethereal with the practical, Carrie find ways to bring design thinking, consciousness evolution, facilitation, social justice, and holistic healing to each project. As an artist and maker, the work spans multiple disciplines including video, multimedia theater projects, book making, and quilting.
Nkechi Deanna Njaka (she/her) is a neuroscientist, choreography artist, leading mindfulness expert and meditation guide. She is the founder of The Compass, NDN lifestyle studio and co-founder of the sleep app DreamWell. She was a 2017 YBCA Truth Fellow and a 2021 Kennedy Center Artist in Residence. She is currently Esalen Faculty, an Advisor of Chorus Meditation, and a lululemon ambassador for her work in mindfulness.
Ruth Novaczek is an artist and curator, she studied fine art film at St. Martins School of Art in London, and an MA in Fine Art, at Central St Martins in 2000. In 2015 she earned a practice-based PhD entitled ’21st Century Avant-Garde; New Vernaculars and Feminine Ecriture’ from the University of Westminster, London (UK) and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Westminster.
Abbéy Odunlami Ph.D. (b. Abeokuta, Ogun State '82) is a Yoruba-Nigerian-American researcher, theorist, and educator/curator whose work investigates contemporary urban history and visual culture(s). His interdisciplinary practice challenges assumptions of history, culture, race, and conventions of display. Odunlami has worked with institutions such as the Sundance Film Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
Freya Björg Olafson is an intermedia artist who works with video, audio, painting and performance. Her creations have been presented and exhibited internationally at venues such as SECCA – SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art (North Carolina), OchoYmedio / Alas de la Danza (Quito, Guayaquil and Manta in Ecuador), The National Arts Center (Ottawa), High Performance Rodeo (Calgary), Tangente – Laboratoire des Movements Contemporains (Montreal), Sequences Real Time Media Arts Festival (Iceland) and Medea Electronique / Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece).
Morgan O’Hara (Los Angeles 1941) was raised in an international community in post-war Japan. Her practice researches the vital movement of living beings through drawing. In 1989 she began doing performative drawing in international performance art festivals, did her first site specific wall drawings and began the practice of aikido, a Japanese martial art. In 1997 O’Hara’s work was honored with a solo show in the newly opened Drawing Room at the Drawing Center in New York. O’Hara lives in New York and works internationally.
Phei Phei Oon is a Canada-based Registered Psychotherapist with more than 15 years of clinical experience. She was trained as a Clinical Psychologist and Drama Therapist and has worked at vastly diverse settings including hospitals, academia, non-profit community centers, the corporate world, and recently a reception center for Ukrainian refugees. She specializes in Selective Mutism, grief, and trauma.
Lisa Osborn has maintained a studio since 1994. Her practice is dedicated to the subject of the figure and the medium of clay. She completed a practice-based PhD at Transart Institute in 2018 entitled 'Encountering Statues: Object Oriented Ontology And The Figure In A Sculptural Practice'. Her research remains focused on what happens when we encounter statues and what is revealed about us when that encounter is considered.
Eto Otitigbe is a polymedia artist who sets alternative narratives into motion; creating spaces for unique experiences. His interdisciplinary practice includes sculpture, performance, installation, and public art.
Tom Overton is a writer and and Archive Curator/Postdoctoral Fellow at the Barbican Centre, London. As part of an AHRC-Funded PhD between the British Library and the Centre for Life-writing Research, King's College London, he catalogued the archive of the writer and artist John Berger (1926-2017), and curated a conference, free school and exhibition at Somerset House, London, to mark the 40th Anniversary of Berger's collaborative TV series and book Ways of Seeing (1972) and Booker-winning novel G.
An Paenhuysen is a freelance writer, curator, and arts educator. She wrote her Phd about the cultural criticism of the Belgian avant-garde artists in the 1920s. As a post-doc An has been working on 1920s photography at Columbia University New York, UC Berkeley, and the Humboldt-University Berlin.
Laura Parke is a Lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. She studied Graphic Design at the University of the West of England before completing an MA in Graphic Arts.Her practice-based research focuses on Design for Social Engagement and discusses issues of inclusion through collaborations and interactions with a range of practitioners, individuals, collectives and social groups.
Ece Pazarbaşı works and walks on the merged borderline of curatorial practice and artistic research as her main profession. With her special interest in alternative education, she takes parts in various educational bodies in different positions.
