Curator, writer, and PhD candidate at Monash University, Melbourne. He was the artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerpen, between 2011-2015 and he curated numerous exhibitions at prestigious art institutions, such as Le Pavillon – Palais de Tokyo, Stroom Den Haag, MUSEION, Bolzano, Fondation Ricard Paris. Mihnea Mircan is an author and editor of books and exhibitions catalogues, among which the monographic survey of Miklos Onucsan, and a regular contributor to international art publications, such as Afterall, Mousse and Manifesta Journal.

Mihnea Mircan is one of the curators of the Art Encounters Biennial (Timișoara), a meeting point for the second part of the program.

Talk Topic: Anamorphoses

Talk Summary: The talk will introduce three projects that hinge on unstable images, hybrid pictures that open distinct and sometimes contrasting interpretive pathways. I will focus on the exhibition A Biography of Daphne, currently presented at the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, an attempt to reimagine the myth of Daphne – the nymph who became a laurel tree to evade the pursuit of a god – as a reflection on trauma and metamorphosis in the Anthropocene. 

Trained as an architect (B.Arch. from Universitas Indonesia and M.Arch. from Cranbrook Academy of Art), Farid Rakun wears different hats, depending on who is asking. A visiting lecturer in the Architecture Department of Universitas Indonesia, he is also a part of the artists’ collective ruangrupa, with whom he co-curated TRANSaction: Sonsbeek 2016 in Arnhem, NL. As an instigator, he has perme-ated various global institutions such as Centre Pompidou, La Biennale di Venezia, MMCA Seoul, Sharjah Biennial, Bienal de São Paulo, Harun Farocki Institut, Dutch Art Institute (DAI), Creative Time, Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD) Genève, and basis voor actuele kunst (BAK).

Talk Topic: Why the artists’ collective ruangrupa is practicing lumbung and imagining what the future holds for this collective of collectives initiative

Talk Summary: Discussing not only why the artists’ collective ruangrupa is practicing lumbung, with documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022) as its most public iteration, but also imagining what the future holds for this collective of collectives initiative, beyond one mere edition of documenta.

ruangrupa is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organization that strives to support the idea of art within urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines such as social sciences, politics, technology, media, etc, to give critical observation and views towards Indonesian urban contemporary issues. ruangrupa also produces collaborative works in the form of art projects such as exhibition, festival, art lab, workshop, research, as well as book, magazine and online-journal publication.

As an artists’ collective, ruangrupa has been involved in many collaborative and exchange projects. From 2015-18, ruangrupa co-developed a cultural platform Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem together with several artists’ collectives in Jakarta. It is a cross-disciplinary space that aims to maintain, cultivate and establish an integrated support system for creative talents, diverse communities, and various institutions. It also aspires to be able to make connections and collaborate, to share knowledge and ideas, as well as to encourage critical thinking, creativity, and innovations. The results of these joint collaborations are open for public access—and presented with various exhibitions, festivals, workshops, discussions, film screenings, music concerts, and publications of journals.

In 2018, learning from their experience establishing Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem and together with Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara, ruangrupa co-initiated GUDSKUL: contemporary art collective and ecosystem studies (or Gudskul, in short, pronounced similarly like “good school” in English). It is a public learning space established to practice an expanded understanding of collective values, such as equality, sharing, solidarity, friendship and togetherness.

Diana Marincu is a curator and art critic, Artistic Director of Art Encounters Foundation in Timișoara. Her recent exhibitions include: Harun Farocki & Antje Ehmann, Reality Would Have to Begin, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2020); Persona, MUCEM, Marseille (2019); Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing the Synthetic, Frac des Pays de la Loire (2018); Marianne Mispelaëre, Sounds Make Worlds, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara; Double Heads Matches (with Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák), New Budapest Gallery (2018); Life – A User’s Manual (with Ami Barak), Art Encounters Biennial Timișoara & Arad (2017); The White Dot and The Black Cube (a curatorial project in six parts co-curated with Anca Verona Mihuleț), MNAC Bucharest (2015-2017).

Magda Radu is a curator and art historian based in Bucharest. She is a founder of the independent art space Salonul de proiecte, established in Bucharest in 2011 – a research and production-based project whose program involves exhibitions, publications, and discursive platforms situating local phenomena in dialogue within both regional and wider international contexts. She is the editor or co-editor of several exhibition catalogues and books, among which: Art in Romania Between 1945- 2000. An Analysis from Today’s Perspective, Dear Money and André Cadere/Andrei Cădere. In the last few years, she curated exhibitions at institutions including Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein; KIOSK Ghent; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Berlin (n.b.k.); ArtEnconters Biennale, Timișoara; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; MUSAC, Leon; Spinnerei, Leipzig; Photo España, Madrid. She curated the Romanian participation at the 57 th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2017 with the project Geta Brătescu – Apparitions.

Talk Topic: Self-organization, between institutional aspirations and the need to experiment

Talk Summary: In my presentation I will look at the activity of Salonul de proiecte from the perspective of the various ways in which it functioned over the years: as a project space attached to a museum, in the beginning, and from a certain point onwards as an independent platform for research and exhibitions, attempting on some occasions to act as a para-institution, in a context in which the sustainability of long-term initiatives is constantly threatened. This winding trajectory exposed the fragility of entities attached to a space that are deprived of funding opportunities for essential operations, but it also prompted us to think about – and even to attempt to give shape to – alternative forms of institutionalism, centered on collective work and dehierarchization, care and solidarity.

Mihai Iepure-G.rski was born in Alba-Iulia, Romania. He is an Arts Academy graduate that currently resides in Cluj-Napoca and works in a variety of mediums trying hard to not fall for their charms. Some recent shows include solos at Sandwich Gallery in Bucharest and :Baril Gallery in Cluj-Napoca, group shows participations like the 1st edition of Art Encounters, Timisoara, Survival Kit 4 Festival, Riga and European Travellers – Art from Cluj today, Műcsarnok, Budapest. He has been a tranzit/erste artist in residence in 2018, has participated in the 2nd edition of the Mobile Biennale and was (long ago) among the recipients of the Open Calls of Salonul de Proiecte, Bucharest. As of recent (2019), he took matters into his own hands and started writing projects and curating as part of the Paintbrush Factory collective from Cluj alongside Răzvan Anton.

Talk Topic: The collective gaze / Reenabling the community at Fabrica de Pensule

Born in 1980 in Cluj (Romania). Studied at the University of Art and Design Cluj (BA Printmaking) and Camberwell College of Arts London (MA Drawing). He is teaching at the University of Art and Design Cluj and is part of the Paintbrush Factory artist collective. He has been involved in the digital archiving of the Minerva Press Image Archive from Cluj. And he was an artist in residence at the House by the Synagogue Mediaș in the project Absence as Heritage within TRACES (Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts ) between 2016-2018. In November 2018 he was a tranzit/erste artist in residence at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna. Since 2019 he has been co-curating the visual arts programme of the Paintbrush Factory (Cluj) alongside Mihai Iepure-Górski.

Talk Topic: The collective gaze / Reenabling the community at Fabrica de Pensule

Matthias Einhoff is co-founder and director of ZKU – Center for Arts and Urbanistics (www.zku-berlin.org), an interdisciplinary hub for urban research and artistic practice located in a former railway statin in Berlin. Next to his managing and curatorial responsibilities he is heading the development of research-based projects bridging urban discourse and local practice, e.g. www.citytoolbox.net– learning platform for practitioners, www.wasteland-twinning.net– urban wasteland arts, www.hackingurbanfurniture.net – urban infrastructure revisited.

Matthias is a board member of Haus der Statistik (www.hausderstatistik.org), a 60.000sqm co-creative development project right next to Alexanderplatz, he is co-moderating the process and has co-directed the ‚Statista’ (www.allesandersplatz.berlin/en/) – public arts section.

In 2022 ZK/U is one of initial 14 collectives participating at the documenta15 in Kassel. (https://documenta-fifteen.de/).

As a founding member of the artist collectives KUNSTrePUBLIK.de, and Superschool he has been working in the public sphere exploring the potentials of art to (re)activate social and spatial relationships of individuals and groups usually divided.

He has been a visiting professor and teacher at UdK-Berlin, KHS-Kassel, FHNW-Basel, et al.

Talk Topic: I/O Inside-Out – the inside of artistic self organisation and how algorithms can guide us out of ancient paradigms

Talk summary: In his session Matthias will dive into the histories of artistic self organisation from a Berlin perspective. He will reflect about the constitution, the ideologies and contradictions of ZK/U – Center for Arts and Urbanistics – and will touch upon the organisational structure of the artist initiated Haus der Statistik – a model project for inclusive city-planning. (He wonders whether this is still art, but if not, it’s at least experimental organisational evolution with moments of aesthetic surprise.) He will conclude with a little excursion into the opportunities of learning from algorithms, AI, non-human stakeholders and how they might guide us out of the dichotomous trap of “capitalism vs.fck-capitalism“.

Is a curator, writer, editor and educator. They is Professor Curatorial Practice and currently course director for MA Curatorial Practice at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen (former Bergen Academy of Art and Design) (2015–21), and was Senior Adviser for Bergen Assembly (2018–2020) and Director of Hordaland Art Centre in Bergen, Norway (2008–14). Their interests are in artistic and curatorial collaborations as well as developing the language that surrounds art productions of today, linguistically, spatially and structurally.

Szefer Karlsen’s writing has appeared in journals such as Afterall, Billedkunst, Kunstjournalen B-post, kunstkritikk.no and in artist monographies, and anthologies such as Plasticity of the Planet: On Environmental Challenge for Art and Its Institutions (Mousse Publishing, Mediolan and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2019), Of(f) Our Times: Curatorial Anachronics (Sternberg Press, 2019), Condition Report: Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa (Hatje Cantz, 2013) and Making Biennials in Contemporary Times (Biennial Foundation/ICCo – Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea, 2015). Szefer Karlsen was series editor for ‘Dublett’, a book series featuring artists’ works through anthologies and artists’ books (Hordaland Art Centre, 2012–2016), was co-editor of Self- Organised (Open Editions/Hordaland Art Centre, 2013) and Lokalisert/Localised (Ctrl+Z Publishing, 2009).

Talk Topic: reflecting on her 2012 book “Self-Organized”, what happened since and what are the perspectives

(*1977 in Zurich) Curator at the ETH AI Center and at the Tichy Ocean Foundation, mentor for the creative strategy and vision at the European Center for Contemporary Art in Cluj (ECCA), King of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland and Chevalier de la Tombe de Bakunin. From 2012-2019 he was artistic director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. He worked there first from 2004 – 2012 as a curatorial assistant and as co-director. From 2010 to 2015 he was head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen.

Talk Topic 1 : «The Organization of Our Selves Selon des Lois de Dadá»

Talk Topic 2: «Republica Bănățeană»

Co-curator of Art Encounters Biennial 2021, will join this year’s Autumn School of Curating, «SELF-ORGANIZATION», as a speaker.

Kasia is an art historian and Artistic Director of KANAL–Centre Pompidou. She has worked at Tate Liverpool as Senior Curator, where she was responsible for the programme and international collaborations. Prior to that she worked at Tate Modern (2010-15), where she curated a number of exhibitions. Between 2008 and 2015 she was Director of Open Art Projects, an organisation dedicated to innovative art commissions. Her independent work includes numerous interdisciplinary exhibitions, most recently the inaugural exhibition of Muzeum Susch. Redzisz has edited and contributed to several exhibition catalogues and published her texts in magazines such as Frieze, Mousse and Tate Etc.

Hajnalka Somogyi (HU) is a curator based in Budapest. Since 2014, she has worked as leader and co-curator of OFF-Biennale Budapest, which she initiated. In 2013-2014, she was editor of artmagazin.hu. Between 2009 and 2012 she was curator at Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, and between 2001 and 2006 at Trafo House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest. She co-founded the independent art initiatives Dinamo and Impex, both in Budapest.

Talk Topic: «SELF-ORGANIZATION»

Talk Summary: Self-organized initiatives present not only art but also an operative model that reflects the ideas and values the founding group consensually, or, at any given moment, antagonistically stands for. Even though these groups or platforms are commonly perceived as being created and maintained in opposition to standard institutional policies and practices (as they indeed mostly are), challenging the status quo, one should also understand the complex net of interdependencies that exist between institutions, the market and self-organized initiatives, and recognize the potential of long-term strategic alliances formed by the latter group

Joanna Warsza is curator and writer in the fields of visual and performing arts and architecture. She was the artistic director of Public Art Munich 2018 and, since 2014, she has been running the curatorial program CuratorLab at Konstfack University of arts. She also worked as head of Public Programs for Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg in 2014. In 2013, she was curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, and was the associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012

Invested in the power of technology to generate a new future for humankind, OPERATION SUNKEN SEA initiates a large-scale infrastructural intervention which takes a proactive stance towards the reparation of Africa and the Middle East by relocating the Mediterranean Sea within the African continent.

Referencing and expanding upon early twentieth century techno-utopian visions, OPERATION SUNKEN SEA is an ongoing research project and intervention by Heba Y. Amin that investigates significant transformations in territorial constructs and their impact on new geopolitical alliances and global politics. This presentation addresses how we got here.

Bio

Artist Heba Y. Amin (b. 1980, Cairo) is a Berlin-based multi-media artist, researcher and lecturer who looks at the convergence of politics, technology, and architecture. Her works and interventions have been covered by the New York Times, Guardian, Intercept, and CNN, among others. She has had recent solo exhibitions at the Mosaic Rooms (London 2020) and the Center for Persecuted Arts (Solingen 2019) as well as Böttcherstrasse Prize Exhibition (Bremen 2018), 10th Berlin Biennale (Berlin 2018), 15th Istanbul Biennale (Istanbul 2017), 11th African Biennale Photography (Bamako 2017), and 12th Dak’Art Biennale (Senegal, 2016).

Amin is the cofounder of the Black Athena Collective and a current Field of Vision fellow (NYC). She also has an extensive repertoire in public speaking and was recently awarded the Sussmann Artist award for artists who are committed to the ideals of democracy and anti-fascism. Furthermore, Amin is one of the artists behind the subversive graffiti action on the set of the television series Homeland, which received worldwide media attention.

Ibrahim Nehme will discuss, through his recent practice, the role of radical imagination in movements of resistance, and the impact of new memes on popular culture and politics.

Bio

Ibrahim Nehme is a creator, curator, and speaker based in Beirut. His work is a cross-pollination between research, art, and activism, and could be understood as a series of attempts to shift the collective consciousness.

In 2012 he founded The Outpost magazine. As a printed ‘magazine of possibilities,’ its intention was to become a platform through which young Arabs could articulate and disseminate new narratives about who they are and who they could be. Through alternative storytelling, The Outpost imagined and unlocked new futures in the Arab world. The Guardian wrote that “The Outpost is a reminder of the power of the imagination to shift perspectives” and described it as “a successor to the Economist”; Buzzfeed selected it as “one of fifteen small printed magazines you need to read”; and Monocle Radio named it as one of the top three magazines of 2015.

More recently, Ibrahim has been researching underground economies, radio networks, club culture, and various forms of mythmaking, as part of a larger study that examines the relationship between cultural output and social impact. The research has thus far led to the creation of Radio Mansion in Beirut and The Outpost café in Amman. He is currently uploading the entire printed archive of The Outpost to a new digital platform, as well as sowing the seeds of new live performances for the theater.

We are on the cusp of a global environmental movement. Tara Lasrado brings together artists, scientists, restoration specialists and local communities, cultivating new conditions and opportunities for transdisciplinary exchange. ecologyx supports new conversations, practices (un)learning; and co-creates «glocal» awareness and action that address one of the major challenges facing our planet and our society – the degradation of natural ecosystems. Tara will share her latest projects, practice and thinking across various sites in Switzerland, India and Bangladesh.

Bio

Tara Lasrado is an independent producer and curator particularly interested in working on experimental, collective and interdisciplinary collaborations for diverse audiences. From 2013 – 2016 she worked for Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, in both the head office in Amsterdam on Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg and in the local Manifesta 11 team in Zürich.

Since 2016 she has been active in various projects including AKI AORA artist residency, Forward Festival Zürich, «Fun & Fury» performance program at Cabaret Voltaire; and «Gemeinsam wie Bienen» as part of «About Us! Zürich Interkulturell». In 2018 Tara co-founded and curated Progetto 6000 to initiate a cultural exchange for emerging artists from Ticino in art institutions and off-spaces in Zürich. Since 2019, she is a co-producer for «under the mango tree», a self-organised gathering of “unlearning” that took place in Shantiniketan, India in February 2020 and focused on land-based learning, rural and performance practices by small-scale artist-led initiatives from indigenous practices and the global south.

Currently, Tara is the vision director of ecologyx, a collaboration with the Crowther Lab, ETH Zürich. She cultivates transdisciplinary exchange amongst artists, scientists and local communities, by bringing together theory and practice to create glocal impact, solidarity and action around the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems. She is also the production manager of experi_theater Zürich currently working on «Protokolle Tilo Frey», an experimental performance work consisting of a performance in an empty theatre space, a «colonial Walk» in the public space; and the Blackbox – a performative BIPOC/s space/archive in the middle of the city.

I will discuss, through my recent art practice, how I understand our contemporary crises, and how as an artist, I have been working with plants — weeds in Shanghai, ferns in Taipei, and orchids in Krabi — to cultivate ecological wisdom beyond the Anthropo-extinction event. Art can no longer be defined as anthropocentric creation. It needs to be seen as our collaboration with ten thousand happening.

Bio

ZHENG Bo (b. 1974, Beijing) lives and works in Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Committed to multispecies vibrancy, Zheng investigates the past and imagines the future from the perspectives of marginalized communities and marginalized plants. He creates weedy gardens, living slogans, and eco-queer films to cultivate ecological wisdom beyond the Anthropo-extinction event.

His projects are included in Liverpool Biennial 2021, Yokohama Triennale 2020, Manifesta 12, the 11th Taipei Biennial, the 11th Shanghai Biennial, and the performance program of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. He has worked with numerous art spaces in Asia and Europe, most recently Kunsthalle Lissabon, ICA Shanghai, @KCUA in Kyoto, Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong, Parco Arte Vivente in Torino, Villa Vassilieff in Paris, and TheCube Project Space in Taipei. His works are in the collection of Power Station of Art in Shanghai, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Singapore Art Museum, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, among others.

In 2020, as artist-in-residence at the Gropius Bau in Berlin, he is engaging in conversations with plant scientists and ecologists to speculate how plants practice politics.

He taught at China Academy of Art from 2010 to 2013, and currently teaches at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where he leads the Wanwu Practice Group.

Website: http://zhengbo.org/info.html

At the beginning of this year, Carlos Amorales was invited to participate in a contemporary art biennial in Michoacán. Autonomous communities in that region and artists engaged in these communities gave his idea of the role of an artist and art a new perspective, which was very inspiring during the pandemic lockdown and beyond. How the project for the biennial changed and developed, and what kind of imaginary strolls he took, will be presented and discussed with Adrian Notz and the participants of the Autumn School of Curating.

Bio

Carlos Amorales studied visual arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and holds an MFA from the Beeldende Rijksakademie van Kunsten, also in the same city (1992-1997). For more than ten years he developed the Liquid Archive, a collection of images from books, magazines and the Internet, which he transformed into vector graphics and used as the basis of his own visual language. Using this visual database, the artist has ventured into mediums diverse as sculpture, drawing, installation, video, animation, collage and painting. Through the constant reinterpretation and transformation of images in this archive, Amorales’ work became increasingly more abstract – a process he likens to early printing presses.

Parallel to his studio practice, Amorales has begun to explore film, a medium that allows him to test new possibilities of non-verbal communication. His films have been presented at the International Film Festival UNAM (FICUNAM), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the 8th Biennial of Berlin, The Center of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Poland, and Film Mayo in Chile.

Some of his solo exhibitions are: The Factory, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2019, Axioms for Action, MUAC, Mexico City, 2018, El Esplendor Geométrico, kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City, 2015; Anti Tropicalia, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Costa Rica, 2015; Germinal, Rufino Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, 2013; La Langue des Morts, Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, France, 2012; Carlos Amorales Remix, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy, 2010; Four Animations, Five Drawings and a Plague, Philadelphia Art Museum, 2008; New perspectives in Latin American Art, MoMA, New York, 2007; Amorales vs. Amorales, Challenge 2003, Tate Modern, London, 2003.

He has participated in various group exhibitions such as Under the Same Sun, Art from Latin America Today at the Guggenheim Museum, 2014; 8 Berlin Biennale 2001 and 2014; Shanghai Biennale 2014; 11 Sharjah Biennial 2013; Manifesta 9, 2012; Mexico: Expected / Unexpected at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in the United States, 2011; the Havana Biennial in 2009 and 2015; 5 Seoul International Media Art Biennial in Korea; The Age of Discrepancies at the University Museum of Science and Art MUCA in 2007; and the 50 Venice Biennale in 2003.

His work is part of important collections as Jumex (Mexico), Tate Modern (London), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection (Nueva York), Daros Latinamerica (Zurich), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Museum Boijmaans van Beunigen (Rotterdam) among others.

Carlos Amorales lives and works in Mexico City.

You will never walk alone – was one of the slogans of recent women strikes in Poland aiming at reclaiming a place of women in the public realm. You will never walk alone – is also an invitation to get out from our screens out in the street or in the park wherever you are, to look around and to think together whether art can be a social glue, a form of overcoming the isolation, a way of rethinking here and now. Please open the door and join.

Bio

Joanna Warsza is the program director of CuratorLab at Konstfack University in Stockholm and an independent curator in the fields of public art, visual and performing arts and architecture. She is interested in public sphere, the political and the performative or in how the post-colonial theory navigates the regions of Eastern Europe.

During the pandemic she co-curated Die Balkone, a project in windows nad balconies of Berlin, together with Ovul O. Durmusoglu, with whom she currently prepares the 3rd Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo. Joanna edited, among others: I Can’t Work Like This: A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2017), Empty Stages, Crowded Flats: Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (with Florian Malzacher, Alexander Verlag, 2017), or A City Curating Reader (with Patricia Reed, Motto Books, 2018). Originally from Warsaw, she lives in Berlin.

Adrian Notz will introduce his approach and idea of the «NEW NOW». Inspired by Dada and the avant-garde and their «End of History» a century ago he will be talking about our «End of Future» today and how this might lead into a «NEW NOW», that is crystalizing in the current situation even more and that hopefully might be similar to the visionary «New Art» the avant-gardists were searching for. Only, that our visions are not directed to a yet to come future, but to the now.

Bio

(b. 1977 in Zurich) is a freelance curator and curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation, King of Elgaland-Vargaland and Chevalier de la Tombe de Bakunin. From 2012-2019 he was Director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. He worked there first as a curatorial assistant from 2004 and from 2006 to 2012 as Co-director.

From 2010 to 2015 he was Head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen. Since 2007, Notz has been a diplomat of NSK State and from 2008-2018 he was Ambassador of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland for Zurich.
Notz has organized numerous exhibitions, events and actions with international artists, activists and thinkers. He is currently researching a personal theory he calls «End of Future», fed by his nostalgic approach to the avant-garde.

Cultural manager and entrepreneur, Ștefan Teișanu is co-founder of Cluj Cultural Centre, Fapte and Nord.

He is a member of the Romanian Economic and Social Council, as a representative of the cultural sector and the civil society, and works with the World Bank as public participation and local development specialist.

He is the executive director of Cluj Cultural Centre, a culture and sustainable development NGO with 112 members: cultural organisations and institutions, universities, associations of the business environment and of the civil society, and the local and the regional administration.

He is the founding president of Fapte, an NGO which organises the Jazz in the Park festival and other cultural events with a community impact, and also the president of Nord, a community development association in Darabani, his hometown in the Moldova region. Ștefan was the president of AIESEC Cluj-Napoca and he founded the Junior Chamber International local subsidiary.

His personal belief is that people can be what they want to be.

Rariţa is a cultural expert with twenty years’ experience in arts management, curating, research and policymaking. She is Programme Director of Cluj Cultural Centre, Director and co-founder of AltArt Foundation, and was co-founder of Fabrica de Pensule, Cluj-Napoca.

She was a key member of the Cluj-Napoca 2021 ECoC bidding team (2011-2016). She is engaged in policy development at local, national, and european level. She is a member of the Strategy Group of the “A Soul for Europe” initiative, member of the European House for Culture, and a board member of the Balkan Express network. In 2015 she was awarded ”The Cultural Management prize” of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund in Romania and the award for Cultural Management from the Business Women Association Cluj.

Since 2017 she is a PhD student at the Doctoral School of Public Administration and Policies, within the College of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences, Babeș-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca, undertaking research on ”New Paradigms of Urban Development. Culture, Creativity and Emotional Wellbeing as Key Factors in Urban Policies”.

She is operating in various areas of cultural management and innovative design. She was part of the contemporary art collective Centrul de Interes and head of a start-up project in charge of the design and production process. As a consultant her expertise varies from social sustainability, ethical marketing and engaging digital solutions. She graduated from the School of Domestic and International Affairs, Romanian-American University, Bucharest and is now studying Psychology at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca.

Ioana Trușcan is an independent cultural communicator with a bachelor’s degree Art History and Theory at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca. She is based in Cluj-Napoca, and since 2018 she implemented or coordinated the online & offline communication and PR activities for cultural or social projects, such as Smida Jazz Festival, Someș Delivery, Com’ON Cluj-Napoca, Hungarian Cultural Days, White Night of Galleries; she was custodian at the Venice Art Biennale, 2019 edition, within the project Unfinished Conversations on the Weight of Absence, curated by Cristian Nae. Starting in 2019, Ioana collaborates with the marketing department of the Cluj Cultural Centre. She currently carries out communication activities and project assistance within ECCA – European Center for Contemporary Art and attends the School of Cultural Mediation and Communication of Culture organized by the Cultural Association Contrasens.

Georgiana Buț is an independent curator and cultural manager. She coordinated the project ECCA – European Center for Contemporary Art within the Cluj Cultural Center between september 2019- august 2021, and has been communication and program coordinator for SPAȚIU INTACT gallery within The Paintbrush Factory (2013-2015), and Quadro Gallery (2011-2013), Cluj. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at the Doctoral School of Philosophy within the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, where she is writing a thesis on exhibition as a medium of artistic practice. Curatorial activity (selection): Departures from the Sphere, Magazzino 27 in Porto Vecchio Trieste, Franciscan Monastery in Cluj, Camera K’ARTE in Târgu Mureș & online (2020); Echoes Beneath the Waves, The Art Museum Cluj-Napoca (2020); 2META+: An evening in my parents’ studio, French Institute, and Galeria Reflex, Cluj-Napoca (2019); End of the Line, Camera K’ARTE, Târgu-Mureș (2018-19), assistant curator Memory as Vision (curator: Horea Avram), Fabrica de Pensule spaces (2018).

Graduate of the University of Art and Design in Cluj, Mihai Pop (b. 1974) is an artist, and the coordinator of Galeria Plan B, a production and exhibition space for contemporary art initiated in Cluj, in 2005, with a second exhibition space opened in 2008 in Berlin.

Within the Venice Biennale, for the Romanian Pavilion, Mihai Pop was the commissioner of the project “LOW-BUDGET MONUMENTS” (curator: Mihnea Mircan, 2007) and curator of the exhibition “Darwin’s Room”, artist – Adrian Ghenie (2015).

In 2009, Mihai Pop / Plan B was one of the initiators of the independent collective space for contemporary arts Fabrica de Pensule / The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj.

Mihai Pop lives and works in Cluj and Berlin.

Diana Marincu is the Artistic Director of the Art Encounters Foundation. Diana Marincu is a curator and art critic based in Timișoara. She got her PhD at the Bucharest National University of Arts in Art History and Theory. Her most recent exhibitions include: Harun Farocki – Reality Would Have to Begin, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2020); Bruiaj, Art Encounters Foundation, Timișoara (2020); Persona, MUCEM, Marsilia (2019); Manufacturing Nature / Naturalizing the Synthetic, Frac des Pays de la Loire (2018); Sounds Make Worlds – Marianne Mispelaere, Art Encounters Foundation (2018); co-curator together with Zsuzsanna Szegedy-Maszák, Double Heads Matches, New Budapest Gallery (2018); co-curator together with Ami Barak Life – A User’s Manual, Art Encounters Timișoara, contemporary art biennale in Timișoara & Arad (2017).

Adrian Notz (b. 1977 in Zurich) is a freelance curator, curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation. From 2012-2019 he was artistic director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. He worked there first as a curatorial assistant and as co-director. From 2010 to 2015 he was head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen. Notz has organized and curated numerous exhibitions, events, conferences, actions and interventions with international artists, activists and thinkers in Cabaret Voltaire as well as internationally around the globe. He is currently studying the contemporary potential of anarchism versus the nostalgic for marxism, the impact of the creativity imperative on contemporary society, the post-colonial theory to productively undo the avant-garde and the role of contemporary art in sight of the rapidly approaching AI singularity.

Corina manages within Cluj Cultural Centre the ECCA and The Academy of Change projects.

She has a reliable experience in cultural projects management, artistic production and cultural policies. She is one of the founding members of the contemporary art space Fabrica de Pensule / The Paintbrush Factory. Within the Paintbrush Factory Federation, she has coordinated or initiated, since 2009, over 20 projects in various fields – from visual to performing arts, education and training. In 2010 she has been awarded the Gabriela Tudor Grant in Cultural Management. In the recent years, she has participated in professional residencies in Poland and the US and was involved in various international meetings and cultural projects. Between 2013 and 2015 she was responsible of communication for Temps d’Images Festival, Cluj. Corina Bucea has contributed to several projects that have represented Romania at the Venice Biennale, both the art and architecture editions (2013, 2015, and 2016). In 2017, as a project manager, she coordinated the exhibition of Geta Brătescu – Apparitions (Curator – Magda Radu).