Sotirios Bahtsetzis
art theorist, curator, ArtBOX |
Sotirios Bahtsetzis is a curator, essayist, and educator. He is Associate Professor in Contemporary Art Theory and Curating Practices, Department of Culture, Creative Media and Industries, University of Thessaly (GR). He is also a Visiting Professor at the European Culture Program, Hellenic Open University, Patras (GR), and the International Postgraduate Program Museology, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki (GR). He is a Fulbright Research Scholar (2009) at Columbia University, New York. He has curated exhibitions, such as Homemade Exotica (2019), Roaming Images, 3 Thessaloniki Biennale (2011), Open Plan - 13 Art Athina (2007), Women Only (2008). Bahtsetzis has chapters in various scholarly books including Semiotics and Visual Communication III: Cultures of Branding (2019), Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture (2013), and Inaesthetics (2012) as well as articles in journals such as E-flux and Afterimage. Bahtsetzis research interests include installation art, theory of curating, socially engaged art, image theory, post-industrial design, media phenomenology, and posthumanities.
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Ira Bliatka
Independent researcher and instrumentalist |
Ira Bliatka is interested in topics of public space, inclusion, and participation. She joined Freiraum on behalf of Prague-partner IFD21 and contributed to a project about gentrification and its effects on ethnic and social diversity in Prague and Marseille.
She wrote a PhD thesis on the reanimation of border logics in the EU integration project, and taught international politics in Aberystwyth University. Her work focuses on new story-telling formats combining text, image, and sound, and on music as a means to more empathetic, creative societies. |
Signe Sophie Boggild
Copenhagen Architecture Festival |
Signe Sophie Bøggild is a Program manager at Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Art and architecture historian, MA and Mphil, graduated from the University of Copenhagen and Goldsmiths, University of London with studies at the University of Roskilde and Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. Signe has experience from various contexts in Denmark and abroad with research and teaching, as well as lecturing, publishing and curating on especially post-war welfare architecture and -urbanism vis-à-vis the welfare state in transition. She has among other things worked at Landscape Architecture and Planning, the University of Copenhagen and Crimson Architectural Historians, NL, where she has been involved in the research projects New Towns at the Cold War Frontier and The City of Comings and Goings. Research residences at the Danish academies in Rome and Athens. Part of the joint censor corps for the artistic education under the Ministry of Education and Research and receiver of a work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.
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Jane Dudman
Artist, Curator |
Jane Dudman is an artist, curator and researcher based in Cumbria. She has a research masters and a PhD in Digital Media and Fine Art from Newcastle University. Her work is currently sound and performance based with a particular focus on collaborative processes, the spoken word and everyday life. Her artistic research explores the particularity of ordinary experience through sound manipulation and performance strategies, relating the private to the public. She is currently exploring translation, transcription and collective speaking as a form of sense making. Jane has a background in participatory and socially engaged arts practice and has worked in the UK for the past 20 years creating and managing arts projects in health, education and community settings. She has directed many live art events, several international artists’ exchanges and has shown her work widely in Europe and beyond.
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Iskra Geshoska
Kontrapunkt, Skopje |
Iskra Geshoska is founder and a president of Kontrapunkt – association for development of critical theory, socio-cultural activism and contemporary cultural practices. She contributes to the local, national and international affirmation of the independent cultural sector and its political relevance. Her key focus is the development of critical thinking and critical theories, as well as the relationship of cultural and artistic practices and the political. She was Director of the independent Cultural center “Tocka”(Skopje) since its founding until its closing (2002-2010). She is actively involved in the process of local and national advocacy level of political relevance of the independent cultural sector as well as in the process of enabling regional cooperation. In the period 1998 – 2008, she was an editor at the publishing house Templum and the magazine Margin. From 2003 to 2005 she was an adviser at the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia. In the period of 2012 to 2017 she was President of JADRO – an association of the independent cultural scene, a national platform 66 for advocacy in Macedonia. To date she has published over 100 essays and research papers in the field of critical theory, performing arts, visual arts and cultural policies. Established in 2001, Kontrapunkt is an organization whose main focus is socio-critical activism and the relationship between art, theoretical philosophy and politics. Kontrapunkt encourages artists and independent groups to organize themselves and generate projects, thus contributing to the development of an independent cultural scene in Skopje.
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Maud Qamar
Goethe-Institut Brussels |
Maud Qamar is the coordinator of the project Freiraum. She studied translation French-German-English at the Ecole Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT), Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and specialized in literature translation at the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes (ISTI) in Brussels.
She works as a project coordinator for film and music programmes at the cultural department of the Goethe-Institut in Brussels since 2009. |
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Milan Zvada
Záhrada, Banska Bystrica |
Milan Zvada was born in 1982. 2001-2006 he studied English and Philosophy at Matej Bel University in Slovakia. In 2010, he graduated from Erasmus Mundus MA in International Performance Research at the University of Tampere and University of Amsterdam. His interests and activities range from organizing human rights-related events to cultural policy, theory of theatre, translating and composing music. He publishes articles in theatre journals and online. He works as a teacher, theatre critic and cultural manager. In 2010, he co-founded Záhrada – cultural centre based in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, where he is in charge of community development program and international artistic projects. He has curated several arts exhibitions and events, and cooperated as a dramaturge on theatre performances and festivals (www.embargofestival.sk). Currently, he is a doctoral student at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica in the field of theatre research and dramaturgy.
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