Fatima Wegmann is an artist, researcher and DJ (aka ven3mo) based in Geneva. She is interested in exploring notions of transformation and enchantment through a pluridisciplinary practice intertwined with poetry, music and science fiction. This allows her to invest a space of experimentation in search of emancipatory discourses and healing processes. During her performances, she likes to create her own narratives playing with contradictions such as utopia/dystopia, science/magic, history/mythology, fantasy/reality, as vectors of interconnectivity and collective liberation of the imaginary. In 2019 she graduated from the MA Research Programme CCC (Critical, Curatorial, Cybernetic), at HEAD Geneva.
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Chino Amobi
Born from parents of Nigerian descent in the American south (b. 1984, Tuscaloosa, Alabama), Richmond, Virginia-based Amobi bridges the fields of contemporary art, electronic music, literature, film and fashion with experimental ease. Working across these platforms enhances the richness of each medium; indistinguishable, they dissolve together in unity.
Jonas Staal
Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing) and the campaign New Unions (2016–ongoing). With BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, he co-founded the New World Academy (2013-16), with Florian Malzacher he is currently directing the utopian training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union (2017-ongoing). Recent exhibition-projects include Art of the Stateless State (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2015), After Europe (State of Concept, Athens, 2016), The Scottish-European Parliament (CCA, Glasgow, 2018) and Museum as Parliament (with the Democratic Federation of North Syria, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2018-ongoing). His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012), the 31st São Paulo Biennale (2014), The Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016) and the Warsaw Biennale (2019). Recent publications and catalogues include Nosso Lar, Brasília (Jap Sam Books, 2014), Stateless Democracy (With co-editors Dilar Dirik and Renée In der Maur, BAK, 2015), Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective (Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2018) and Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019). Staal completed his PhD research on propaganda art at the PhDArts program of Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Angela Dimitrakaki
Angela Dimitrakaki is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Edinburgh, where she also directs the MSc Modern and Contemporary Art. She has authored articles, essays and books on subjects such as globalisation, labour, gender, social reproduction, democracy, anti-fascism, and the art institution. She co-edited the special issue on ‘Anti-fascism/Art/Theory’ for Third Text in 2019 and ‘Social Reproduction and Art’ for the same journal in 2017. She is Corresponding Editor of Historical Materialism and a co-organiser of the Marxist feminist stream for the journal’s annual London conference. She is currently working on a book titled Feminism, Art, Capitalism.
Bureau de Crise
Bureau de Crise is an open and collaborative research platform of artists, engineers, and psychologists (Geneva based) who map out privacy issues in our digital society governed by the opaque laws of surveillance capitalism. Our artistic practice aims to empower people’s knowledge in protecting its data from the dark mechanisms of both behavior commodification and data weaponization. BC seeks to cultivate a sense of autonomy based on aspirations for both individual and collective freedom in our digital realm. We operate with the need for critical debates about the effects of online surveillance and censorship techniques to take place inside of cultural, artistic and academic institutions, while also collaborating with critical communities working on strategies of resistance. To contribute to the urgent appeal of global surveillance resistance, Bureau de Crise organises open and free workshops, talks and other events in which we invite artists, activists, researchers, hackers, and NGOs to share knowledge, multiple perspectives and empowering practices. www.bureaudecrise.org
Mabe Bethônico
Mabe Bethônico is a Brazilian artist living between Geneva and Belo Horizonte. Her artistic work departs from historical accounts from Brazilian colonial history and archives. One of the main references in her works is the history of mining in Minas Gerais. She narrates the cultural, economical and political transformations caused by extractivist activities, using both documents and field documentation, focusing on destruction and workers’ life around the mines. She has dealt with contents from collections such as the Eisenbibliothek in Schlatt and the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva, the Imperial College in London, the geology museum of Medellin and with materials from Brazilian archives, such as photographs from the Mining sector of the Ministry of Labor and Employment. Mabe has a Masters and a PhD from the Royal College of Art, London and is a member of World of Matter. www.mabebethonico.online
Zach Blas
Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings internationally, recently at the 2018 Gwangju Biennale; Abierto X Obras, Matadero Madrid; 2018 Creative Time Summit, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 68th Berlin International Film Festival; Art in General, New York; Gasworks, London; and e-flux, New York.
He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award in Emerging Fields and a 2018-20 Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellow.
Ramon Amaro
Ramon Amaro is a lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a researcher in the areas of machine learning, the philosophy of mathematics, black ontologies, and philosophies of being. Amaro completed his PhD in Philosophy at Goldsmiths and holds a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the University of Essex and a BSe in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Ana Teixeira Pinto
Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a lecturer at the DAI (Dutch Art Institute) and a research fellow at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Afterall, Springerin, Camera Austria, e-flux journal, art-agenda, Mousse, Frieze, Domus, Inaesthetics, Manifesta Journal, or Texte zur Kunst. She is the editor of The Reluctant Narrator (Sternberg Press, 2014) and, together with Eric de Bruyn and Sven Lütticken of a forthcoming book series on counter histories, to be published by Sternberg Press.
Marina Fokidis
Marina Fokidis is a curator and writer based in Athens, Greece. She was appointed Head of the Artistic Office, Athens (in 2014) and curatorial advisor for documenta 14. She is the founder of Kunsthalle Athena and South as a State of Mind, a biannual arts and culture magazine. In 2011 Fokidis was one of the curators of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial. She has also been the commissioner and the curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 51rst Venice Biennial (2003). Fokidis was Research Fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude (2014), and Vila Sul, Bahia, awarded by the Goethe Institut São Paulo (2017). From 2015-2017, Fokidis was a member of the nomadic professional residency program Museal Episodes in Salvador, La Paz, Johannesburg and Athens by Goethe Institut and Kulturstiftung des Bundes. In 2018, Fokidis has been granted a research and writing award for the Sacatar Foundation for a research and writing residency in the island of Itaparica/Brazil, working with members and archives of alternative moderni(ties) and their various knowledges around the broader issue on the “cultivation of art and an all beings inclusive society”.