Ute Meta Bauer

Ute Meta Bauer is a curator and since 2013 Founding Director of CCA – NTU Centre for Contemporary Art of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She was Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London (2012/2013); Associate Professor at the MIT, Cambridge, MA and Founding Director of ACT, MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2009–2012); Founding Director of the Office for Contemporary Art (OCA), Oslo (2002-2005); Co-Director of the World Biennial Forum No. 1, Gwangju (2012); Artistic Director of the 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2004) and Co-Curator of Documenta11 (2001–2002). Recent publications include: Intellectual Birdhouse. Artistic Practice as Research (co-edited with F. Dombois, M. Schwab, C. Mareis, 2012), World Biennale Forum No 1 – Shifting Gravity (co-edited with Hou Hanru, 2013). In 2015 she will co-curate the US Pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale with Paul Ha.

Boris Buden

Boris Buden is a writer and cultural critic based in Berlin. He received his PhD in cultural theory from Humboldt University in Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor of the magazine Arkzin in Zagreb. His essays and articles cover the topics of philosophy, politics, cultural and art critique. Buden is permanent fellow of European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp) in Vienna. He teaches cultural theory at the Faculty of Art and Design, Bauhaus University, Weimar. Buden is co-editor and author of several books, including Der Schacht von Babel (The Pit of Babel, Berlin, 2004) and Zone des Übergangs (The Zone of Transition. On the End of Post-Communism, Frankfurt/Main, 2009).

Diana Campbell Betancourt

Diana Campbell Betancourt is based in Mumbai and the Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation. She curated the critically acclaimed solo and public art projects for the 2nd Dhaka Art Summit. She is also leading the Creative India Foundation in Hyderabad, a private foundation supporting Indian sculpture internationally and building India’s first international sculpture park. She has realized significant public art projects in India and Bangladesh with leading South Asian artists such as Shilpa Gupta, Asim Waqif, and Raqs Media Collective. Betancourt co-curated Energy Plus, the Mumbai City Pavilion for the 9th Shanghai Biennale and is a curatorial advisor for the upcoming 2015 New Museum Triennial in New York. She has presented her work at the Tate Modern, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Instituto Inhotim, and other established institutions.

Cosmin Costinas

Cosmin Costinas lives in Hong Kong and is Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong. He was Curator at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2008-2011) and co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial: Shockworkers of the Mobile Image, Ekaterinburg (with Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, 2010). Current projects are Ten Million Rooms of Yearning, Sex in Hong Kong (with Chantal Wong, 2014) and the conference Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The new performance turn, its histories and its institutions (with Ana Janevski, 2014). Curated exhibitions include: Great Crescent: Art and Agitation in the 1960s—Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (with Doryun Chong, Lesley Ma, Para Site, 2013/14) and Spacecraft Icarus 13. Narratives of Progress from Elsewhere (2011) and 1st Former West Congress (with Maria Hlavajova, 2009) at BAK.

Joshua Decter

Joshua Decter is a New York-based writer, curator, art historian, and theorist who has contributed to Artforum, Afterall, Texte zur Kunst, Flash Art, The Exhibitionist, and other international periodicals. His last publication is Art Is a Problem: Selected Criticism, Essays, Interviews and Curatorial Projects (1986-2012). He has curated exhibitions at PS1 (now MoMA PS1); Apex Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Kunsthalle Vienna and The Santa Monica Museum of Art. Decter was Director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles (2007-2011), where he founded the new graduate program, M.A. Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere. He also taught at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, The School of Visual Arts in New York, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York University.

Mark Dion

Mark Dion lives in New York City and is a mentor at Columbia University, NY; and co-director of Mildred’s Land, Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford School of Art, Connecticut and studied at the School of Visual Arts NY. Solo exhibitions include The Macabre Treasury at Museum Het Domein (Sittard, NL, 2013); The Marvelous Museum: A Mark Dion Project at Oakland Museum of California (2010-11); The South Florida Wildlife Rescue Unit at Miami Art Museum (2006) and Tate Thames Dig at the Tate Gallery, London (1999). His work was included in dOCUMENTA 13 (2012), as well as in exhibitions at MoMA PS1; Guggenheim Bilbao; Minneapolis Institute of Art and Kunsthaus Graz. Among his awards are the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lucida Art Award (2008).

Marina Fokidis

Marina Fokidis is the founding and artistic director of Kunsthalle Athena, the first art institution of this kind in Athens which started in 2010 as an experimental platform. Since January 2012, she is also the founding director of South As a State of Mind, a bi-annual art and culture publication.
In 2011, she was co-curator of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale. She has been the commissioner and curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2003) and one of the curators of the 1st Tirana Biennial (2001). Since 2013 she is an adjunct curator of Schwarz foundation – Art Space Pythagorion where she has curated solo shows by Slavs and Tatars and Nevin Aladag.

Omer Krieger

Omer Krieger is an artist and curator who composes performative actions, political situations and civic choreographies in public space. Krieger studies the public experience and the performance of the state, and is interested in the relations bertween art, citizenship, politics and action. Co-founder of the performative research body Public Movement, Krieger has served for the last four years as artistic director of Under the Mountain: Festival of New Public Art, which takes place every summer as part of the Jerusaelm Season of Culture.

Achim Könneke

Achim Könneke is director of the Cultural Department of the city of Freiburg/Breisgau (since 2003) and member of the federal executive board of Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft KuPoGe. From 1992-2001 he was Head of the Art Department of the Cultural Office of the city of Hamburg and director of the program Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (Art in Public Space). He was art critic, cultural editor and initiated the series vor ort – Kunst in städtischen Situationen. Recent advisory and jury activities has been for the jury of the Arts Program of IGS Hamburg (2012); project advisory of the Universities of Fine Arts Luzern and Zurich (2014). He lectured on the topics of Art in public space and Cultural Politics/Arts Mediation/Cultural Education. Publications include Franz Erhard Walther, Der Oldenburger Block (1992); Die Kunst des Öffentlichen (with Marius Babias, 1998); AUSSENDIENST, Kunstprojekte in öffentlichen Räumen Hamburgs (with Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, 2002).

Suzana Milevska

Suzana Milevska currently teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as the first Endowed Professor for Central and South European Art Histories (2013-2015). Her theoretical and curatorial interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power regimes of representation, feminist art and gender theory, participatory and collaborative art practices. She taught at the Gender Studies Institute in Skopje (2013) and the Faculty of Fine Arts at University Ss. Cyril and Methodius of Skopje (2010 – 2012). In 2011 she was a researcher for the project Call the Witness – Roma Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale – Collateral Event and from 2006 – 2008 she was the director of the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research, Skopje. In 2012 she won the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory.

Dirck Möllmann

Dirck Möllmann lives in Graz and is currently curator at Institut für Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark (Institute for the arts in public sphere Styria), Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz. Selected projects and exhibitions include kunstwegen raumsichten. Nine landscape sculpture projects, Grafschaft Bentheim (2012); Stile der Stadt. video panel, Hamburg (2006/2008/2011); Spring! Kunstfrühling, exhibition at Gleishalle Bremen (2009); MAN SON 1969. The horror oft the situation, exhibition at Hamburger Kunsthalle (2009); Joseph Beuys. Das Gesamtkunstwerk Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg 1983-1984, exhibition at Altonaer Museum (2007) and SNAFU. Media Myths Mind Control, exhibition at Hamburger Kunsthalle (2006).

Nina Möntmann

Nina Möntmann is Professor of Art Theory and the History of Ideas at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, curator and writer. Recent curated projects: Harun Farocki A New Product (Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 2012); If we can’t get it together. Artists rethinking the (mal)functions of community (The Power Plant, Toronto, 2008); The Jerusalem Show: Jerusalem Syndrome (with Jack Persekian, 2009) and the Armenian Pavilion for the 52nd Venice Biennial. Recent publications include the edited volumes of Brave New Work. A Reader on Harun Farocki’s film ‚A New Product’ (Cologne, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2014); Scandalous. A Reader on Art & Ethics (Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2013); New Communities (Toronto, Public Books/The Power Plant, 2009) and Art and Its Institutions (London, Black Dog Publishing, 2006).

Bige Örer

Bige Örer worked in the coordination of cultural and artistic projects for the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts since 2003 until she was appointed director to the Istanbul Biennial in 2008. Since 2009, she has been the advisor of the Turkish Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Together with Fulya Erdemci, she was the co-curator of the Agoraphobia exhibition in Berlin, which was a prologue to the 13th Istanbul Biennial. Her contribution in various publications includes the research she co-conducted on the financing of international contemporary art biennials. She also teaches at the Istanbul Bilgi University on the subject of managing biennials and international exhibitions. In March 2013, she was appointed as the first vice-president of the International Biennial Association.

Britta Peters

Britta Peters studied Cultural Studies at the Lüneburg University and works as critic and curator in Hamburg. In 2007 she curated the Art in Public Space project Wilhelmsburger Freitag in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg. She was director of Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof (2008-2011) in Hamburg. In 2012 she curated the exhibition Demonstrationen. Vom Werden normativer Ordnungen at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt. She publishes in Camera Austria, frieze d/e and on the online-plattform of Goethe Institute.

Miguel Robles-Durán

Miguel Robles-Durán is Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Ecologies at The New School/Parsons in New York, Senior Fellow at Civic City, a post-graduate design/research program based at the Haute École d’Art et de Design (HEAD) Geneva, Switzerland and cofounder of Cohabitation Strategies, an international non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial development based in New York and Rotterdam. He is currently a national advisor for urbanization and territorial development of the Republic of Ecuador. He recently co-edited the book Urban Asymmetries: Studies and Projects on Neoliberal Urbanization and is working on a 15 month commission by the Museum of Modern Art, NYC.

Christoph Schäfer

Christoph Schäfer lives in Hamburg and is decisively involved in Park Fiction, which was also part of documenta 11. In 2013, he has been working as artistic subcurator of Container Uni (Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen). Recent projects and exhibitions include Bostanorama – A Marmaray Tunnel Excavation of the Collective Productions of Space Through Istanbul’s Stadiums, Parks and Gardens (Present & Recently Destroyed) (Istanbul Biennial, 2013); Topography of the Commons (kunstwegen raumsichten, Nordhorn/Bad Bentheim/shire Bentheim, 2013) and Auslaufendes Rot – Anti-Monument fuer die Rote Ruhr Armee (European Cultural Capital RUHR.2010). Schäfer collaborates with the Hamburg activist network against gentrification Es regnet Kaviar. and the Right to the City movement. Spector Books published The City is our Factory in 2010.

Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen

Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen ist rector of the New Design University St.Pölten since 2011. Since 2013 he is also leading the Laboratory for Implicit and Artistic Knowledge at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, where he is also adjunct Professor for Aesthetics and Artistic Knowledge. After completing a professional theatre education Schmidt-Wulffen studied Philosophy, Theoretical Linguistics and communication aesthetics in Cologne, Constance and Wuppertal. He was director of the Kunstverein Hamburg (1992-2000); rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2002-2011) and taught Exhibition History. Teaching assignments took him also to various international universities, among them Bard College (NY) and Columbia University (NY). Schmidt-Wulffen is member in scientific and academic advisory councils, e.g. at the Kadir Has University (Istanbul, since 2009) and the free University Bozen (since 2011).

Esther Shalev-Gerz

Esther Shalev-Gerz is based in Paris and works as a professor in Fine Art at the Valand Academy at Göteborg University, Sweden, where she currently is leading an international research project on Trust and the Unfolding Dialogue. Constantly inquiring into transitional qualities of time and space and the correlative transformation of identities, locales and (hi)stories, she has produced a body of work that simultaneously records, critiques, and contributes to our understandings of the societal roles and value of artistic practice. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include: Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal, Canada (2014); The Belkin Art Gallery, UBC, Vancouver (2013); Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2012); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2010). Her team is one of the six finalists in the international competition for National Holocaust Monument of Canada.

Bettina Steinbrügge

Bettina Steinbrügge was director of the Halle für Kunst Lüneburg from 2001-2007. She has taught at the University of Lüneburg, the Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and since 2009 has been teaching at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva. Since 2007 she has been a member of the programming team for the Forum Expanded for the International Film Festival in Berlin (Berlinale). From 2009 to 2011, she curated for La Kunsthalle Mulhouse – Centre d’art contemporain, and from December 2010 to the end of 2013, she was curator for contemporary art at the Kunst am Belvedere/21er Haus in Vienna. Steinbrügge is currently the director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg (since January 2014) and publishes regularly on contemporary practices with particular focus on art and the moving image.

Joanna Warsza

Joanna Warsza lives in Berlin and Warsaw and is a curator, researcher and writer in the fields of visual and performing arts and architecture. Currently she is Head of the Public Programs for Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg. She was also the curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale and associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale. Joanna works mostly in the public realm, examining social and political agendas, such as the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw and the phenomenon of the Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland (with Public Movement). In 2006 she founded Laura Palmer Foundation for curatorial projects that she run till 2011. She edited Stadium X-A Place That Never Was (2009), Forget Fear (2012) and Ministry of Highways: A Guide to the Performative Architecture of Tbilisi (2013).

Lawrence Weiner

Lawrence Weiner was born in the Bronx, New York and attented the New York public school system. The late Fifties and early Sixties were spent traveling throughout North America (USA, Mexico, Canada). The first presentation of the work was in Mill Valley, California in 1960. Weiner divides his time between his studio in New York City and his boat in Amsterdam.
He participates in public and private projects and exhibitions in both the new and old world, maintaining that art is the empirical fact of the relationships of objects to objects in relation to human beings & not dependent upon historical precedent for either use or legitimacy.

Ute Vorkoeper

Ute Vorkoeper workes as curator and author in Hamburg. She founded Stadt Kunst Gesellschaft e.V. (2012) and was artistic director of the Academy of Another City, art platform of the International Building Exhibition (2009-2011, with Andrea Knobloch), worked as visiting professor at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee (2001-2004) and is the curator of the Estate of Anna Oppermann (since 1993). Exhibitions and projects include Space for borderline messages, Kunstverein und Stadtspeicher Jena (2013); Looking for Changes, Art Parcours throughout Hamburg (2010); Signs of Respect, exhibition at Veringhöfe, Hamburg Wilhelmsburg (2009); Anna Oppermann. Ensembles 1968-1992, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart and Generali Foundation Vienna (2007). She recently published Art of Another City, together with Andrea Knobloch (Berlin, 2012).