19 June 2023
Screen Fatigue
Ant Hampton’s work since 1999 in live performance and theatre has had a long and consistent focus guiding performers and audiences through unrehearsed situations and interactive relations. His performances, which continue to tour internationally in over 70 language versions, occasionally require no one to travel; a paradoxical outcome (for an art committed to liveness and presence) which in turn informed his recent advocacy and research project, ShowingWithoutGoing.live
Sandra Dagher
Conceptualizing, organizing and programming cultural projects for over 20 years, Sandra Dagher is a cultural practitioner who lives and works between Paris and Beirut. In 2020, she co-founded Correspondaences, a peer to peer platform for artistic and cultural practitioners from Lebanon.
Yi Kai Kao
KAO Yi Kai is a producer and curator of performing arts based in Taipei (TW). His interest in working with communities has expanded from local interaction to regional initiatives in Southeast Asia, recently initiating the platform “Connect with SEA” in collaboration with Dance Nucleus (SG) and Pineapple Lab (PH).
16 May 2023
You Never Dance Alone
Rosa Cisneros is a dancer and choreographer, Dance Historian and Critic, Roma Scholar, Sociologist, Flamenco Historian and Peace Activist who graduated from UW-Madison and UNM-Albuquerque (USA). Her PhD is in Sociology with a focus on Roma women, intersectionality, dialogic feminism and communicative methodologies. At the moment she is an artist-researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research based in the UK.
Avni Sethi is an interdisciplinary practitioner with her primary concerns lying between cultures of violence, memory, space and the body. She conceptualised and designed the Conflictorium, a Museum of Conflict in Ahmedabad and Raipur City and Mehnat Manzil, a Museum of Work situated in Ahmedabad. She has been writing and speaking about the potential of small museums as a holding space for social justice processes and the necessity of building care based ecosystems.
Nacional Trovoa is a group of racialised artists that emerged in 2017 to foster the insertion of black, indigenous and Asian professionals in the institutional and commercial circuit of the visual arts. They are a network composed of professionals between curatorship, artistic production and art-education acting in all five Brazilian regions. Ianah Maia is a visual artist, painter and agro-ecology enthusiast born in Recife (Pernambuco) who has been part of Trovoa since 2019.
Er Gao, is a dancer and choreographer curator from Guangdong. Ever since he founded Ergao Dance Production Group in 2007, his works have constantly seen body as the core of artistic investigation and the primary medium, using diverse strategies to illuminate Chinese social and cultural identities, sex, gender and other topics. His recent works focus on mobility of new urban migrants in Chinese society, and the issues on the public nature of dance.
The Field is an artistic collective in residence at Tanzhaus Zürich since its inception in 2019. The Field aims to break free from labels and relies on an open structure to cultivate a wide range of collaborations. The Field practices, investigates, experiences, reflects, exchanges, and shapes; navigating between the artistic disciplines and closely intertwined with society, generating interventions and works which go far beyond ‘dance’.
Omar Abi Azar is a theatre director and founding member of Zoukak Theatre Company. He has directed numerous performances that have been commissioned and toured worldwide. Since 2008, Omar leads psychosocial interventions with Zoukak, targeting various communities in different regions of Lebanon and abroad; giving drama-therapy workshops and creating collective performances with various groups.
Golf Thanupon Yindee/Makhampom Theatre
Makhampom is a theatre group working to build theatre as people's media. Founded in 1980, the group has grown into a large collective of volunteers in Bangkok and in Chiang Dao. They wear many hats, including: developing youth theatre; pooling activists; creating new forms; transforming society around key issues; having a long-term impact in communities; transferring knowledge through international exchanges; and running social programmes into the future.
24 April 2023
Rest, Care and Alternative Practices
Nisha Abdulla is a Bangalore based theatre maker and educator. Her work centres on new writing and dissenting imaginations, and is significantly invested in exploring the framing of the self in the structural. Nisha makes work with an anti-oppressive lens, bringing processes that action this into all artistic and community spaces she holds. She is particularly interested in creating and articulating ways of working that provides access and equal opportunity for all.
Natalia Press is a psychologist, interpreter (English, Swedish, Russian), translator and poet from Saint-Petersburg. Her particular area of interest is body-mind connection both in somatic practices and in creative writing. She is also a butoh performer and Discipline of Authentic Movement practitioner. Certified dance and movement therapist.
Joni Barnard is excited by queer and trickster approaches to life and work, practices of consent and radical liberation. Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Joni is currently living and working in Berlin. Joni is an artist, live performer, rapper, facilitator teacher of dance, theatre, embodiment and bodily activism.
14 March 2023
Revealing Residencies
Located in the Swiss mountains, Cima Città is a multi-disciplinary place of retreat, research, exchange, and development. It is the initiative of a small group of passionate individuals offering both supported and on-demand residency periods for up to 15 persons at a time.
Lea Loeb is a theatre dramaturg and curator, part of the curatorial team of Zürcher Theater Spektakel. She co-initiated Cima Città to foster the independent arts scene.
Nafasi Art Space is a vibrant art centre and platform for artistic exchange in Dar es Salaam, where contemporary visual artists and performing artists come together. Nafasi also offers regular public programmes including training, workshops, and talks, while also supporting other artists and arts organisations across Tanzania.
Rebecca Mzengi Corey is the Director Emeritus of Nafasi, serving as Executive and Artistic Director from April 2016 through January 2023.
Set against the backdrop of the Alps, MUZEUM SUSCH is an inspiring environment for artistic production, mediation, exhibition, performances, and discursive events, as well as a trans-disciplinary residency program. It is a space informed by a deep understanding of the sometimes omitted, overlooked or misread woman artists.
Joanna Lesnierowska is the curator of ACZIUN SUSCH, the choreographic reflection and research program of MUZEUM SUSCH.
Res Artis: Worldwide Network of Arts Residencies is a 30-year old network of arts residency operators from around the globe comprising more than 600 members in over 80 countries. Res Artis acts as worldwide professional body for the field, ensuring sustainability and growth by providing advocacy, policy, and research tools for its members. The former president of the San Francisco Art Institute, Gordon Knox is an educator, cultural innovator, and institution builder.
Pro Helvetia Shanghai promotes artistic and cultural exchanges between Switzerland and China by developing and nurturing long-term partnerships between event organisers and artists in both countries. They encourage this dialogue through co-productions, knowledge exchange, and residencies.
Lucy Lu has extensive management experience in international cultural exchanges and has been the Head of Pro Helvetia Shanghai since August 2018.
Kinosaki International Art Center is a residential facility for the creation of performing arts, located in an onsen district of Toyooka City in Hyogo Prefecture. Inaugurated in 2014, the centre offers a stage, studios, accommodations, and other spaces, which are offered throughout the year to artists and groups selected through an annual open call.
Yuichiro Yoshida is Program Director of Kinosaki International Art Center.
Checoeslovaquia is a residency centre and a creative factory from and for the barrio*. They understand art and culture as a must-have experience always in dialogue with our territory. They accompany artists in their technical and creative needs, with a kind, tangible and respectful approach to creative processes. They open up their spaces for artistic experiences for their people, providing a new sense of community that is built collectively, constantly and dynamically. Coté Durán is Artistic Director of Checoeslovaquia.
The Saison Foundation was established in 1987 to support contemporary Japanese performing arts through grants and through the use of its facilities in Tokyo. The residency programmes began in 2011 to stimulate bilateral exchanges with overseas institutions and to host foreign artists and art managers in their research in Japan.
Inamura is Program Director at The Saison Foundation and also contributes regularly on cultural policy and institutions.
Drilona Shehu/
Moderation
Drilona Shehu graduated with a Master of Arts in Sociology and is currently pursuing a doctoral thesis at the University of Lausanne.
Commissioned by Reso • Dance Network Switzerland, she has most recently completed a survey of artistic residencies in Switzerland meant for dance practitioners. In the form of an analytical narrative, guided by the words of the dancers and residency managers she interviewed, this study highlights the different configurations that these residencies can represent and the practices that are currently possible in the country. The results of this survey will be published shortly.
28 February 2023
Prototyping Cultural Practices
Born and raised in Lebanon, Geoliane was selected by Sciences Po Paris for WOMED 2015 (Women of the Mediterranean: Future generation of leaders). She studied law alongside theatre and performing arts at the Lebanese University and was trained in contemporary dance. Between 2006 and 2012, she worked as a performer, choreographer, exterior eye and assistant director with Lebanese and international artists. While gradually shifting to cultural management and international development, she collaborated with several international organisations on mapping the cultural scene in the Arab region and identifying valuable actors and projects. She has been jury member, moderator and speaker at different international forums.
Based in Calcutta (India), Vikram Iyengar is an arts leader and connector who works both locally and internationally. As a dancer-choreographer, arts writer, and curator-presenter, Vikram heads the performance company Ranan as well as the Pickle Factory Dance Foundation.
Dana Roy is an actor, singer, performer, and producer. For the last twenty years, she has been bridging work within performing arts group globally and collaborations with various schools in Kolkata. She is a graduate of the strategic theatre management programme by India Theatre Forum and India Foundation for the arts, as well as a Next Generation alumna of ASSITEJ.
Yazan Khalili (NL/PS) is an architect, visual artist, and cultural producer. He was the co-chair of the photography department at Bard MFA, NY (2019-2022) and currently is a Phd candidate at the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Amongst his multiple endeavours, he is a founding member of The Question of Funding collective and of Radio Alhara.
Lia Rodrigues is a dancer, choreographer and the artistic director of Lia Rodrigues Dance Company, which she founded in 1990 in Rio de Janeiro (BR) and has since built a solid international reputation. Besides its productions, the company gives classes and workshops towards beginners and professional dancers. The company also offers spaces for debate, raises awareness to contemporary art, and reaches new audiences.
In 2003, the company relocated to the favela of Maré, one of the biggest slums of Rio, where the company develops an artistic and educational project: it is a school, a training space, an unending process which keeps on renewing itself.
Zyad Al-Seblany is a 28-year old Lebanese cinema, TV and theatre graduate and practitioner, who also worked as a drama therapist for young children in Anjar’s refugee camp. Ziad has been a drag artist since 2017 and made it his main career since 2020, under the name Zuhal.
Jozef Wouters is a Brussels-based scenographer and theatre maker. His work often relates to a specific location and initiates a dialogue between strategic spaces, social processes and the power of imagination. Since 2017 he is an autonomous artist in residence with Damaged Goods.
In 2016 Wouters and his technical director Menno Vandevelde founded Decoratelier, a constantly evolving project located in a former factory in Brussels. Next to being the base from which Wouters initiates his projects, it functions as an accessible workspace and platform for artistic collaborations, residencies, nightlife and social experiment.
Khyam Allami is an Iraqi-British multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, researcher and founder of Nawa Recordings. His artistic research and practice explores experimental composition and improvisation based on, and inspired by, the fundamentals of Arabic music and culture.
Iris Hung Ping-Chi is an independent curator and art coordinator based in Taiwan. She holds a MA in Culture Industry from Goldsmiths, University of London, focusing on the role of pop-up culture in gentrified areas. After managing Bamboo Curtain Studio and Taipei Brick House, she is currently the president of Taiwan Art Space Alliance, as well as a member of the curatorial team INSIDER. Furthermore, she works as a PM for Crypto AIR (hosted by Taipei Artist Village) and the Meeting Point conference (hosted by Mekong Cultural Hub).
Trained as an actor and theatre-maker Cees Vossen graduated from the theatre faculty of HKU in Utrecht and the international theatre school ‘de Kleine Akademie’ in Brussels. He began his career by working on his own artistic projects as well as collaborating with Belgium and Dutch theatre companies as an actor and director. He gained experience as a dramaturge, staff member and curator of the theatre and dance programme at Cultuur Centrum Berchem in Antwerpen from 2008 until 2013. Since then he is employed by Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre, where he serves as artistic coordinator, curator and is responsable for the performing arts program.
26 January 2023
Practices of Planetary Care
Dina Bataineh is passionate about learning. After completing a graduate degree in sustainable development, she became disenchanted with modernity and institutions and questioned whether she had gained anything beyond the tools and means to better compete within a historically exploitative and unjust system. Dina came together with friend and former colleague Reef Fakhouri to begin a homegrown learning medium called Taghmees Social Kitchen. Combining the ingredients of people, food, and fabric, they engage in community learning, honouring people’s lived experiences. They use stories as a source of meaning creation and shared learning in the hope of collectively walking more steadily towards wellness and wisdom. Their process is one of doing, reflecting, and doing again (hopefully better) while asking questions regarding our consuming in mind and body: how does that reflect on our spirit as means of healing relations in ourselves, to each other, and within our larger interconnected body.
Reef in Arabic means countryside, the fertile land, and relates to “reef alayn”, the part of the eye that protects it when it blinks. This symbolises my passion for nature, learning from and with it while observing its beauty. Born and raised in Jordan, Reef lives and works in this region she feels strongly connected to. After working in academia, for private companies and in the NGO sector, Reef realised how much she didn’t know and how what she knew came from institutions feeding from destroying the fabric of nature and communities. Ten years ago, she joined friend and former colleague Dina to start Taghmees Social Kitchen, a homegrown learning medium. “Taghmees” translates to immerse, immerse in life and food as a way of bringing people together. There they question what enters our mind and body and take an active role in producing the meaning in this life rather than being just consumers. They use their own stories as a way of learning and reflect on different life experiences.
8 November 2022
Political Correctness
Xiaoyi Liu (SG / HK) is considered one of the most promising figures at the forefront of the experimental theatre scene in Asia. The recipient of the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council of Singapore, he is the artistic director of Emergency Stairs (SG) and the artist-in-residence at Zuni Icosahedron (HK). Xiaoyi was involved in over 70 productions as a curator, director, playwright, or actor over the past two decades.
Dr. Maryam Palizban (IR / DE) is a theater scholar, author, actress and director. Based in Berlin since 2005, she works as a scholar and artist there and in Tehran.
Ling Mao received a BA in Law and a BA in French Language and Literature at Shanghai International Studies University, followed by a MA in Cultural and Creative Industries at King’s College London.
Catol Teixeira performs and creates dances. Born in Porto Alegre (1993*), Brazil, they have lived and danced in Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Salzburg, Berlin, and now Geneva.
David Eugster is a trained historian and linguist, mostly interested in the history of advertising, PR and propaganda. At the moment , David works as a journalist and teacher in Zurich.
Tim is a Belarus-born, Georgia-based theatre director and teacher. His top interests include improvisation, participative theatre, games, applied and social theatre, and horizontal processes in cultural management.
Ogutu Muraya is a writer and theater maker whose work is embedded in the practice of Orature. In his work, he searches for new forms of storytelling where socio-political aspects merge with the belief that art is an important catalyst for questioning certainties.
Pepo Urrea Silva (Santiago, 1988) is an advertising agent with a MA in Strategic Communication (2010). Pepo has been linking this knowledge to his studies in dance and movement since 2016, serving as a creator, art director, performer, teacher and manager of spaces and collaborative artistic instances.
Kate Dzvonik (KZ) is an actress, director, and educator, who got an MFA in acting from University of South Carolina (US) in 2015.
Soukaina Aboulaoula is a curator and programme producer based in Marrakech. She is the co-founder and creative director of Untitled Duo, a platform functioning as a curatorial collective and an art direction agency since December 2017 in Marrakech.
Poorna Ravishankar is a Bangalore-based lawyer. She is also an amateur singer, a reader, loves cats, tennis and learning new languages.
Paula Chaves Bonilla is a Colombian director, performance artist, dancer, writer and activist based in Amsterdam. Her artistic research investigates social phenomena in a journalistic way—censorship and resistance, gender issues, art in a neoliberal-capitalist context—and transforms her findings into theatrical performances.
Hamed Sinno is a writer, musician, and snowflake social justice warrior.
Their current research uses performance to explore the vocal organ and digital vocality as sites of political negotiation.
4 May 2022
Fair Leaderships
After over ten years working with the Siberian independent scene, Юлия Чурилова (Yuliya Churilova) was invited in 2018 to head the young state institution «Первого театра» (First Theatre) in Novosibirsk, where she is from and has spent all her life. For four years, Yuliya has been acting as a curator, producer and organiser and has assembled a team of forty persons: actors, technical personnel, PR specialists, directors, managers, etc.
Jehan Manekshaw is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Theatre Professionals Pvt. Ltd. He is also a Co-Founder and Head of School at the Drama School Mumbai. For Theatre Professionals, Jehan has co-designed and developed tailor made programmes and engagements that provide schools with a robust drama strategy for their school, weaving the powerful learning of drama-in-education methods and strategies into the schools teaching and learning practices.
Arundhati Ghosh is the executive director of India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), an independent, nationwide, not-for-profit organisation that makes grants and implements projects across research, practice and education in the arts and culture across India, since 1995.
Fernando García Barros is the director of proyecto mARTadero, an integral and multidimensional project for social development through art and culture, located in Cochabamba (Bolivia), mARTadero Project has been working for 14 years focused on responsible advocacy through artistic-cultural mechanisms.
After beginning her professional activity in tech startups, Lilian Abou Zeki went on to manage engagement and growth for Amnesty MENA and Africa. She currently leads innovation portfolios in the humanitarian development sector. The crux of her work is about moving human centred research and expertise online in an actionable, engaging and converting framework to mobilise people in ways that would influence decision makers.
Sara Matchett is the Director of the Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies (CTDPS) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The CTDPS focuses on teaching Dance and Theatre performance as forms of critical inquiry, creative expression, pedagogy and public engagement. It views performance as a public platform for contemporary ideas, allowing us to examine and question the fundamental concerns of our times in a space that is at once critical, emotional, and collaborative