ASIA

Indonesia

Tintin Wulia
Born in Bali (1972) Tintin Wulia, an architect, film composer, music teacher and film director, is now director of a short film organization, Minikino, founded in 2002, while making documentaries and animations in Indonesia. After being selected to participate as a filmmaker and composer in the Berlinale Talent Campus at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival, she continues working on a documentary about a new generation of Indonesian film makers who are redefining the Indonesian film industry.

In the Hamburg International Short Film Festival in 2003 (along with a Special Mention for one of her experimental animations), she initiated an intercultural project with Hamburg young people. She has also facilitated and directed an animation coproduction in Allermohe, (Hamburg with the Hamburg ISFF.), Boawae (Flores, Indonesia with the NTT PEP – an initiative of the Ministry of Education of Indoneisa and AusAid), and Darwin.

 

Ariani Darmawan
Born in 1977, Ariani is a young video artist who graduated from The School of Art Institute Chicago, U.S.A. An Indonesian Chinese based in Bandung, Indonesia, Ariani work include “It’s almost there” and “The City of Desire”. Her works comment on contemporary issues such as power and identity, language, and the construction of meanings by mixing the use of moving images and sounds with text and writings. Her works create narratives that has references to memory and identity. She has participated in numerous film festivals in both Europe and North America.

 

Gustaff Harriman
Gustaff H. Iskandar (b. 1974) graduated in 1999 from Fine Arts Department, Bandung Institute of Technology. Starting from 1999, Gustaff entered art management scene, wrote, participated in some visual art exhibitions, organized publishing of Trolley Magazine for some years. In the end of 2001, along with R.E. Hartanto and T. Reza Ismail founded Bandung Center for New Media Arts. Having partnership with his wife, Reina Wulansari, and other colleagues, Gustaff is working on his art, working for the organization, write and speak on discussions and symposiums. Gustaff lives and works in Bandung. Gustaff is also a member of the Bio Sampler, a collective multimedia performance group who was recently invited to be a part of Insomnia48 at The Arts House.

 

Nukila Amal
Nukila is a 32 year old literary writer based in Jakarta. Her first novel novel ‘Cala Ibi’ was published in 2003. She is one of the young emerging female writers in Indonesia who writes about contemporary life and issues since the fall of former President Suharto.

 

Ayu Utami
Ayu Utami was born in Bogor near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in 1968.

She hosts a popular radio talkshow and is one of the most prominent representatives of a new generation of Indonesian writers, who, even before the end of the Suharto regime, were already openly addressing the social and cultural conflicts of the island state, and today accompany the transition to democracy with a critical voice.

As co-founder of a union of freelance journalists declared illegal by the government, she was banned from practising her occupation in 1994, and some of her colleagues were arrested. She continued her journalistic work underground, which included the anonymous publication of a black book on corruption in the Suharto regime. With her debut novel »Saman« (1998) Ayu Utami achieved more than just her breakthrough as a writer – in her native country. The book was reprinted many times and was celebrated as a literary sensation. »Saman« was published only a few weeks before General Suharto was removed from power, and its publication was a sign of the approaching political change.

Utami treats social taboos in an open way, thereby breaking with Indonesian literature to date. She writes freely about love and sexuality and thematises the difficult relationship between Muslims and Christians – as well as the hatred towards the Chinese minority. »Saman« is the first in a cycle of novels, the second part of which was published in 2001 under the title »Larung.« Both of her novels have been published in Dutch. In 1998 »Saman« was awarded the prize for best Indonesian novel; in 2000 Ayu Utami received the renowned Prins Claus Prijs from the Dutch government. Today Ayu Utami lives in Jakarta, and since 1998 has been co-publisher of the culture magazine »Kalam«. Ayu Utami belongs to the Community of Utan Kayu, group of artists and intellectuals animating a gallery and a theatre in Indonesia.

 

Goenawan Mohamad
Goenawan Mohamad is founder and Editor of Tempo Magazine, Indonesia's most widely circulated weekly. His magazine was officially banned in 1994, but reopened in October, following the ousting of Indonesian President Suharto.

Goenawan Mohamad writes critical remarks on the press, on the massive corruption and lack of human rights and of democratic tradition in Indonesia. His tireless fight for freedom of expression has led to the foundation of several new media organisations and made the Indonesian Press one of the freest in South Asia.

Writer, editor, activist, and poet, for more than 30 years Goenawan has set standards for journalists around the world.

 

Marco Kusumawijaya
Marco is an architect and urban planner by training. As a journalist, Marco covers urban issues in Indonesia for Aikon Foundation and other publications. He initiated his country's Green Map network in 2002, shortly after publishing the first Jakarta Green Map. Today, he has published 3 Jakarta Green Maps & assisted another 8 published nationally. He is also developing the Asia Mapmakers network.

 

Rifky Effendy
Rifky Effendy is a curator based in Bandung and the Managing Director of the Bandung Arts Event. He works with Marco Kusumawijaya in curating the exhibition ‘Imagining Jakarta’.

 

Ulil Absha-Abdalla
Ulil Abshar-Abdalla is the leader of the Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal) of Indonesia, the hottest Muslim organization in post-Bali bombing Indonesia. It has a weekly radio program discussing the moderate interpretation of Islam which is broadcast to many Indonesian cities. It also publishes essays about Islam, ranging from the role of women to the principles of democracy, which are syndicated to 40 newspapers around Indonesia.

He is also associate researcher at the Freedom Institute, Jakarta and the executive director of the Indonesia conference on religion and peace.

 

Mella Jaarsma
Mella Jaarsma was born in 1960, Emmeloord, The Netherlands.

After studies at the Fine Art Academy of Minerva, Groningen, The Netherlands, Jaarsma continued her art studies in Indonesia at the Art Institute of Jakarta in 1984 and the Art Institute of Indonesia in 1985-86. She has been living and working in Yogyakarta, Indonesia since this time. Jaarsma works as both an artist and curator and has actively participated in exhibitions and performances since the mid 1980s.

Over the past three years Jaarsma has had solo exhibitions in Japan, Thailand and Indonesia. She is the founder and co-director, with Nindityo Adipurnomo, of the Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia an energetic centre for the development and exhibition of contemporary art. Jaarsma is also a board member of the Cemeti Art Foundation and as one of the representatives for Indonesia, she advises on the general policy of the program in the Erasmus Huis, the Dutch Cultural Centre in Jakarta.

 

Nindityo Adipurnomo
Nindityo Adipurnomo was born in Semarang, Indonesia in 1961, and currently lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His art education includes study at The State Academy of Fine Arts, Amsterdam (1987) as well as at the Art Institute of Indonesia, Yogyakarta (1988). He is primarily a painter and sculptor working with a variety of media, including wood, cloth, stone, ratan and copper.

In addition, he co-founded Cemeti Gallery (1988), which became Cemeti Art House (1999), in Yogyakarta with Mella Jaarsma, allowing him to also add a curatorial aspect to his artistic interests. In his capacity as curator, Adipurnomo also arranges discussions and talks by visiting international and local artists and curators to further an awareness and appreciation of contemporary art locally and internationally.

Adipurnomo has exhibited widely in major international exhibitions, including The Second Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2002), Gwangju Biennale (2002), Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions for the Asia Society Galleries, New York, (1996), and The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (1996)

Much of Adipurnomo’s work explores cultural systems as forms of social belonging and exclusion, as through his sculptural and photographic works based on the traditional Javanese hairpiece of the konde. Stressing the need for social tolerance and concern, Adipurnomo has used the konde as a metaphor for Javanese culture, exploring the possibilities and limits of cultural communication and interaction with people in the making and reception of his art.

 

Lexy Jr.
Lexy Jr is an Indonesian documentary filmmaker. Amongst others, he directed “Mass Grave: Indonesia” which is the first documentary to cover the 1965-66 Red massacre, “Indonesian Student Revolt. Don’t Follow Leaders” in 2003 and several documentaries of the role of the military in Aceh.

 

Hafiz
One of the founding members of Ruangrupa, an arts collective and centre that is an artists' initiative that focuses on the integration of fine arts, the urban community and contemporary culture. Unlike other art organizations, Ruangrupa builds and provides space in areas where video artists were usually not allowed to show their work.

Hafiz is a programmer and curator at Ruangrupa. He was one of the curators for the first Jakarta Video Art Festival in 2003 where there were about 60 video art pieces from 15 countries in the festival played, continuously in a looping cycle. The concept behind the festival is seen through the expression of language and in the depiction of contemporary issues.

 

Thailand

Navin Rawanchaikul
Navin Rawanchaikul emerged on the art scene in 1992 as a co-organiser of 'Chiang Mai Social Installation', a three-month long alternative art and culture project in his home town in the north of Thailand. Initiated by a group of young artists and students, the event comprised installations, performances, talks and social events held in temples and cemeteries around the city. A practice devoted to taking art out onto the streets and into the daily lives of ordinary people had begun.

Within three years, Rawanchaikul founded the Navin Gallery Bangkok, when he began using a taxicab as a space in which to exhibit artworks. The idea behind this mobile gallery was, he explains, 'to overcome the gap between contemporary art and our daily life'. The impulse was particularly acute, given the status of contemporary art in Thailand, where there are hardly any galleries, almost no support for young artists and very few gallery goers. For Rawanchaikul, the challenge was therefore to 'put art directly into the community'.

 

Kata Sangkhae
Born in 1976, Bangkok, Thailand Kata Sangkhae is a contemporary artist. He designs art works and objects that are at once utilitarian and community based. His ‘Red Man Swimming’ allows people who cannot swim to experience the sensation of floating on the Chao Praya River, Bangkok, in a specially designed buoyancy suit. Originally staged as a performance as part of ‘Cities on the Move’ (Bangkok, 1999), ‘Red Man Swimming’ is part performance and part documentary and refers both to the particular importance placed on water by Bangkok residents (a city that boasts its own water festival) and to the impending crisis of global water shortages.

 

Kaewkaw na
Kaewkaw is a young contemporary visual artist based in Chiangmai. She works with fashion and the concept of kitsch.

 

Santiphap Inkong-Ngam
Santiphap “Jay” Inkong-Ngam is a performance and video artist based in Chiangmai, Bangkok. He has recently moved into film-making.

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a video artist and filmmaker is interested in two different kinds of questions: the first being about the construction of identity, an identity which creates itself at the borderline between fiction and reality and which proceeds from every day situations. He also is interested in the perception and cinemagraphic production of reality, a reality that appears as non-linear, abstract and in fragments. In this context it is not important whether the created pictures are real or acted. Reality is always a little pretend. The reality of the images is (only) the possibility of an event, whereas the specific view on it is always subjective, because it seems to guarantee the supposed veracity. His films are at the intersection of different cultures, genres and disciplines and they simultaneously examine these different intersections.

His first film was shot in the year 2000 and is called "Mysterious Object at Noon" (black + white, 85 min.). One of his recent films, Tropical Malady, won a Jury Prize in the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Singapore

Choy Ka Fai
Choy Ka Fai is a young video artist, theatre and film director and performer. He graduated from LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, Media Arts in 2004. While studying at LASALLE, he has been actively involved in the theatre scene. His latest project includes TheatreWorks’ “Sandakan Threnody” as assistant video artist, which performed in Singapore and toured to Melbourne and Brisbane; and as part of KYTV, created the “P.O.P. station” (Politics of Popular) for “Insomnia48” at The Arts House.

 

KYTV (Kill Your Television)
Kill Your Television (KYTV) was formed in early 2002. Based in Singapore it is best known for its performance art projects. In 2003, they embarked on several projects in collaboration with other groups like FUNdaMENTAL Multi-Disciplinary as well as dance company Arts Fission.

KYTV is the brain-child of Aaron Kao, Jeremy Sharma and Rizman Putra, graduates of the LASALLE-SIA College of The Arts, Bachelor of Fine Art degree programme. Besides being deeply rooted in a visual art foundation, they make music together in a band called TIRAMISU. KYTV was formed because they wanted an outlet to explore other artistic interests other than music and visual arts. Their concept for KYTV is to explore the boundaries of various art forms like writing, movement, music, painting, videography etc and to create new works. Since the birth of KYTV, this collective has become well known performance art practitioners in Singapore.

At present, KYTV are Rizman Putra, Jeremy Sharma, Dovan Ong and Choy Ka Fai.

KYTV's agenda is neither political nor does it target any specific issues. Instead it is a platform to critique the ever-changing environment in which they live in.

Essentially, KYTV is a constant collaborative effort of visual artists with different aptitudes and experiences. With the various ventures, members of KYTV find themselves rediscovering their own interests alongside those of others hence, the attitude of engaging oneself with those around has been vital for the growth of KYTV. Each member thus finds himself in a unique position each time there is a discussion for a new idea.

 

Charles Lim
Charles Lim Yi Yong born in 1975 (Singapore) is a young contemporary web-based artist who lives and works in Singapore. Charles is a one of the founder of Tsunamii.

Tsunamii, formed in Singapore in 2001 by tsunamii.net, artists, Tien Wei Woon (*1975 Singapore) and Charles Lim Yi Yong (*1973 Singapore) and Scientist, Melvin Phua (*1975), tsunamii.net came from lots of discussion about current state of Singapore and how it was gearing towards technology to define and rebuild itself. Through these discussions, they soon realized that there was a vacuum in this area of discourse within the arts community. As such, tsunamii.net become a platform to address and investigate this technological phenomenon.

Since then the theme of the Internet and geography has been prominent in their series of work, the alpha 3 series. Their exhibitions (selected) include: Documenta 11, Kassel Germany (2002), Media City, Seoul, Korea (2002), Nokia Singapore Art, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2001). tsunamii.net is currently working on alpha 3.8 translocation a net commission awarded by the Walker Art Centre (2003). They are constantly looking for people/Individuals interested in their projects or proposing a project. Currently, they are quite interested in 'exploring' more about the 'internet structures' and ‘technological-after-effects'.

 

Tan Kai Syng
Kai Syng was named The Most Promising Young Artist at the age of 17 at the UOB Painting of the Year Award. In 1994, armed with the Shell-NAC Arts Scholarship, she pursued her studies at the Slade School of Fine Arts and graduated with first class honours.

Having started off with painting and sculpture, she now experiments with audio-visual forms and writing. Her works have been showcased at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, OuterLimits in New York City, USC's Art in Motion Festival, transmediale 0.1 in Berlin, Video Take in Brussels, the British Short Film Festival, Singapore Art Museum, Jubilee Hall, Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institute and Earl Lu Gallery.

One of her works won the 3rd prize (Certificate of Merit) in the New Visions category at the 42nd San Francisco International Film Festival's Golden Gate Awards in 1999. 5 of her video works were bought and collected by the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan in 2000.

She taught Film History &Theory Criticism at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film & Media Studies before being awarded the Japan Cultural Foundation’s Scholarship in 2001 to pursue a Masters of Art at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo.

Ho Tzu Nyen
Ho Tzu Nyen graduated from Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University in 2001, where he obtained a Bachelor of Creative Arts.

His first exhibited artwork was a “fake” pack of cigarettes made from the paraphernalia (notices, posters, etc.) generated to publicise French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s tour of Australia. Since then, Ho Tzu Nyen’s art practice has been marked by a diversity in his choice of media. Upon returning to Singapore, Tzu Nyen has been painting regularly, and his works have won him awards, including the Nokia Arts Awards 2001, and the prize for the Abstract Category of the UOB Painting of the Year 2001.

Tzu Nyen also has an interest in uncovering the possibilities of imaging devices: in The Cave (Nokia Singapore Art 2001), he constructed a room-sized space saturated with surveillance cameras and monitors, while his more recent A Possible Line of Flight (Cinepolitans, 2003) consisted of images captured from cameras flung off from a 25-storey-high building.

Another medium that has fascinated Tzu Nyen is photography. In Anyone (2002), he requested that his subjects “become someone else” by play-acting, or adopt a narrative pose “far from the truth”. In an upcoming work, the Self-Portrait Project (Sculpture Square Annual Show 2003), Tzu Nyen will approach 36 passers-by a day, seven days a week, in several different locations to do portraits of himself. But Tzu Nyen’s oldest and greatest passion is film.

As an Associate Artist with The Substation he is working on Utama – Every Name in History is I, a film based on the mythical founder of Singapore. Utama is conceived as an endless series of moving painterly tableaus, involving a breathless parade of costume and prop changes, interwoven into a narrative. Utama will be part of his first solo exhibition, presented in The Substation Gallery in August 2003. The exhibition will consist of Utama, together with a series of paintings drawn from the film.

 

EUROPE

Alexandra Bachzetsis
Belgium based Alexandra is a young emerging dancer/ choreographer and her main interests lie with issues concerning the representations of femininity and the mass-cultural infatuation with the female body on the one hand, and issues of a rather more 'scientific' (i.e. self-reflective) nature on the other, concerning the many methodologies of choreographing and performative behavior.

She is currently completing her individual trajectory at DasArts, the Advanced Research in Theatre and dance Studies centre in Amsterdam. In Singapore, she will further an investigation process that was first initiated at DasArts - the „Secret Instructions“ project that will be co-produced by Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (Zürich) among others.

 

Jerome Bel
Jerome Bel was born in 1964. He studied at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine at Angers, France, and went on to perform with Angelin Preljocaj, Joelle Bouvier and Régis Obadia, Daniel Larrier and Catherina Sagna. Bel assisted Philippe Découflé with the direction of the opening ceremony for the XVIth Winter Olympics at Albertville.

In his more than ten years as a choreographer, Jérôme Bel has earned a reputation as a provocateur. Routinely challenging traditional notions of dance and theater, his works–philosophical explorations of life through movement–have been controversial and confounding. Indeed, the Paris-based French dancer-choreographer says that he refuses to create pieces that merely entertain, and audiences throughout Europe (where he tours the most) have had violent reactions to his work: People have rushed the stage, angrily walked out of the theater, or thrown crumpled programs at his dancers. But as The show must go on reveals, Bel’s work can be full of charm and wit, and he’s able to push audiences to ponder some heady ideas while making them accessible and entertaining through a sharply ironic pop-culture sensibility.

The show must go on, first performed in 2001 and on tour since then, is the latest of Bel’s remarkable works in this direction. A smart exploration of the way in which popular music infiltrates and influences our lives, the piece consists of mini-vignettes threaded together by hit songs from artists such as David Bowie, Leonard Bernstein, and Edith Piaf. With each song comes a shift in scene and mood–and the audience never knows what to expect next.

 

Frédéric Seguette
Frédéric Seguette studied Dance at “Centre National de Danse Contemparaine” in Angers from 1985-1986. Since, he has performed for different Eurpean choreographers including Jacky Taffanel, Jacques Patarozzi, Stephanie Aubin and Angels Margarit. Since 1994, he has taken part in all of Jerome Bel’s productions (“The Show Must Go On”, “Jerome Bel”, “Shirtology”, “The last performance’) at the same time he has also joined Xavier Le Roy in several shows (“Xavier Le Roy”, “Project”, “Das Theatre Der Wiederholungen”). Recently he wrote a solo for Fabrice Lambert in Avignon.

 

Silke Bake
Previously a curator/programmer with the Tanzquartier in Vienna, she is currently an independent presenter, curator of more than 10 years experience. She had previously worked on projects with the House of World Cultures, Hebbel Theater in Berlin as well as the Theater der Welt in 1999.

 

Mark Deputter
Born in Belgium in 1961. He studied in the Catholic University of Louvain where he obtained degrees in Germanic Languages & Literature, Theatre Studies, philosophy and applied pedagogy.

His career was much centered in the academic world till 1988 when he was invited to become artistic co-director of the performing arts center STUC in Louvain, he stayed in that function until 1995, becoming actively involved in a number of national and international organizations: he was member and later chairman of the board of directors of the Flemish Performing Arts Organization (VDP) and founding member of the Theatre Publishing House Bebuquin and of the International Butterfly Netwrork..

In 1995, he moved to Lisbon, Portugal where he became co-director of the independent dance organization Danccas Na Cidade together with Monica Lapa and dance programmer at the Centro Cultural de Belum. He was/is a member of various European networks, including APAP, Danceweb, IETM, Departs. He is the founding member of two networks dedicated to North-South collaboration: Dancar o que e Nosso and Danse Bassin Mediterranee.

He was the editor for digital publications “Crossroads 1” and “Crossroads 2”, his articles on performing arts, cultural policy and interculturalism in have been published in various magazines such as “Etcetera” (Brussels), “iDanca” (Rio de Janeiro) and “Szene” (Salzburg).

 

Sigrid Gareis
Sigrid is with the Tanzquartier in Vienna, Austria. It is an institution dedicated exclusively to the genre of contemporary dance and performance. Since its foundation in 2001 it has positioned itself as an experimental, discussion-oriented and open house. One of the main concerns of the house is the continual exchange with artists and centres for contemporary dance and performance in central, eastern and south-east Europe as a focus. Twice a year the Tanzquartier Wien invites choreographers from eastern Europe on a two-month residency.

 

Fanny & Alexander
From Fanny & Alexander, Luigi de Angelis (director) and Chiara Lagani (writer) will join us in Singapore. Fanny & Alexander's theatre is based on absolute fiction, on a language inclined to lyrical forcings and never abandoned to everyday words, transfiguring literature in a theatrical ultra-world. Fanny & Alexander give theatre an hallucinogenic, literary and monumental sign, like an extreme game, adding a sort of tenderness from the funeral imaginary and a constant courtship of childhood as a myth.

Fanny & Alexander were born in Ravenna in 1992, founded by Luigi de Angelis and Chiara Lagani. Among their theatrical productions: Hevel, morte-transizione ('92), Cantico dei cantici ('93), Ipotenusa d'amore ('95), Con mano devota (stazione lignea), Ponti in core, Vita immaginaria di Fanny & Alexander ('96), 150.000.000 Sinfonia majakovskiana ('97), La felicit? di tutti ('98), Sulla turchinit? della fata, Storia infelice di due amanti ('99), Romeo e Giulietta-et ultra, Mon coeur mis ? nu (2000), Requiem (2002), Alice vietato >18 anni, Ardis I (Les Enfants maudits) (2003), Ardis II (2004). They have won several prizes in Italy and abroad.

 

Barbara Kraus
Barbara Kraus was born on April 9, 1966, in Vienna. Since 1994 she has been living and working as a freelance solo performer and choreographer in Vienna. Before that she underwent a 4-year training course in contemporary dance in Amsterdam/Netherlands at the Academy of Arts (drama class) and graduated in June 1994.

Her debut "The writing on my father's hands" was awarded at the "International Performance Prize 1994" in Konstanz/Germany as well as at the first Austrian Miming Competition. Subsequently, her ‘ access denied’ (1997) was awarded the Federal Chancellery for "Affairs of Art" in the same year.

Since 1997 the artist has focused on improvisation. There have been numerous performances in the frame of "Yelling at Your Boots", a cycle of improvisation. In June 1998, she collaborated with London’s DV8 Physical Theatre. Barbara Kraus' current work, "Wer will kann Kommen", will be performed for the first time on the roof of the Sofiensale in Vienna.

 

Lois Keidan
Lois Keidan is the co founder and Director of the Live Art Development Agency, the leading development organisation for Live Art in the UK. Established in 1999, the Live Art Development Agency provides practical information and advice, offers opportunities for research, training, dialogue and debate, works in partnership with practitioners and organisations on curatorial initiatives and develops new ways of increasing popular and critical awareness of Live Art.

From 1992 to 1997 she was Director of Live Arts at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, presenting a year round programme dedicated to supporting and representing new artists, new ideas and new practices from the UK and around the world. Prior to that she was responsible for national policy and provision for Performance Art and interdisciplinary practices at the Arts Council of England.

She has contributed articles on Live Art to a range of journals and publications and has presented talks and presentations at festivals, colleges, venues and conferences in the UK and internationally.

 

Maria La Ribot
The Madrid born artist Maria Ribot has lived and worked in London since 1997. Under the name La Ribot, she has created award winning dance pieces that exist at the intersection of contemporary dance, live art, performance and video.

In the last decade, La Ribot has created an exacting yet humorous vocabulary of geometric concentration through her renowned dance series Distinguished Pieces. Initiated in 1993, the scale and ambition of these works have established La Ribot as a figure of global repute.

La Ribot’s work constitutes a system that allows her to research, develop, and question the temporal, spatial and conceptual limits of dance as it relates to the overlapping fields of live art, performance and visual art. Since 2000, La Ribot has developed a strong interest in the everyday function of video. This has led to the construction of live dance pieces filmed and experienced from the perspective of the body in motion.

By presenting her work at major international art galleries, theatres, dance festivals, live art and performance festivals, La Ribot consistently employs dance as a challenge to disciplinary expectation. Experienced live, a La Ribot dance piece creates a paradox of exact uncertainty.

This paradox enthralls and draws the viewer into the intensive experience that is La Ribot. As a pioneering figure in the development of dance as live art, La Ribot’s work allows us to understand the changing state of live culture today.

 

Otobong Nkanga
Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga works in a broad spectrum of media, including performance, installations, photography, drawing and sculpture.

Born in 1974 in Kano, Nigeria, Nkanga began her art studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and later continued in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. Her works have been exhibited in such group shows as the 8th Havana Biennale. Later in July, Nkanga will be shown in the Afrika Remix exhibition at the Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, and is presently taking part in a residency-commission project to be exhibited at Kunstverein Springhornhof (near Lüneburg) in October.

According to Nkanga, the various media she employs “interrogate our mental and physical identities in varied environments and contexts.” Thus taking inspiration from her surroundings, especially architecture, the artist creates work that can be placed in varied environments and are often fragments of a multimedia work in progress.

 

Jan Ritsema
Jan Ritsema has directed plays by Shakespeare, Bernard-Marie Koltès, and Heiner Müller. He has dramatised stories by James Joyce, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Rainer Maria Rilke, and he has developed plays in collaboration with his actors. He also works with musicians, dancers and plastic artists. In recent years, he has also unexpectedly turned to dance himself, created his own dance solo and performed in Meg Stuart's choreography Crash Landings.

The International Theatre Bookshop, which was founded by him, has published more than 400 books on theatre and art. He teaches at a number of academies in the Netherlands and at PARTS, the international school in Brussels, run by Anne-Teresa de Keersmaekers.

Jan thrives on complicated philosophical texts. His work on a project always begins with a careful analysis of the text and not so much with psychological attempts at improvisation. In rehearsal, he aims at slowly finding a plethora of associations and possible meanings behind the words. In the rehearsal process, it is not how one says something, or how to do something, which is important, but rather the finding of an attitude, a reason for wanting to play this piece. Theatre happens in that unique moment where thinking and acting coincide.

 

Annemie Vanackere
Annemie is Head of Programme & Productiehus., Rotterdamse Schouwburg which is one of the most impressive arts center in Europe showcasing both cutting edge works as well as popular works. Its numerous spaces play hosts to well-known and critically acclaimed artists from around the world, primarily from Europe and North America.

 

Claire Verlet
Claire is the Director, The National Center of Dance. Situated near Paris, the CND or National Centre of Dance has 11 studios, including three that can be used for performance; a 'mediatheque' comprising 20,000 books, photographs, and videos; a space for encounters among professionals; rooms for screenings, expositions, and conferences. One of its aims is to develop contemporary dance and the research of dance performance.

 

THE ARAB WORLD

Walid Ra’ad
Walid Raad (Chbanieh, Lebanon, 1967) is a media artist and an Assistant Professor of Art at Cooper Union (New York, USA).

His work includes textual analysis, videos, performances and photography projects.

His video works include: Hostage: The Bachar Tapes, 2000; The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs, 1996-1999, and Up to the South, 1993. His photography projects and performances include: The Atlas Group: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive, 2001, and The Loudest Muttering is Over: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive, 2001. His critical essays have been published in Public Culture, Rethinking Marxism and Third Text, and his media works have been shown at numerous festivals in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Walid Raad is a founding member of the Arab Image Foundation.

 

Bilal Khbeiz
Bilal Khbeiz (1963, Kufur Shooba, Lebanon) has been working as a cultural reporter for Al Masa 3 in Beirut, between 1988 and 1989, and for Future TV between 1992 and 1994. He has been a member of the editorial staff of Mullak, a weekly cultural supplement of the newspaper An-Nahar, since 1994.

His publications include Perhaps Memory of Air (Merime Press, 1991); On My Father Illness in the Unbearable (Beirut: Dar Al Jadid, 1997); The Body is Sin and Deliverance (1998); Al-Kasal (Indolence; with Walid Sadek; Beirut: The 3rd World, 1999) and The Water is Cool in the Coffee Shop (Beirut: Hamra Project, 2000).

 

Tony Chakar
Tony Chakar (Beirut, 1968) is an architect, artist and writer. He has participated in many projects and exhibitions, including Once Upon a Time There Was a Mouth, São Paulo Biennial, 2002; Convulsive Fables, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UNIA), 2001; 4 Cotton Underwear for Tony, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, 2001; All that is Solid Melts into Air, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 2000; A Retroactive Monument for a Chimerical City, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 1999; Come in Sir, we will Wait for you Outside, Ayloul Festival 1998.

“4 Cotton Underwear for Tony, 2001-2002” is jointly produced with Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. The exhibited work focuses on the failed attempts to reconstitute a deceased loved one in a city that lives in a perpetual present dominated by political views steeped in death and martyrdom.

Walid Ra’ad, Tony Chakar and Bilal Khbeiz are members of The Atlas Group.

 

The Atlas Group
The Atlas Group is a project established by Walid Ra’ad in 1999, to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon. One of their aims with this project is to locate, preserve, study, and produce audio, visual, literary and other artefacts that shed light on the contemporary history of Lebanon. In this endeavour, they produced and found several documents including notebooks, films, videotapes, photographs and other objects. Moreover, they organised these works in an archive, The Atlas Group Archive. The project’s public forms include mixed-media installations, single channel screenings, visual and literary essays, and lectures/performances.

 

Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué (Beirut, 1967) studied drama at the Université Libanaise in Beirut and started to produce his own plays in 1990. He acted in, directed and wrote several plays, performances and videos which have been shown in Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Vienna, Tunis, Amman, Basel, Barcelona, Brussels and Berlin, including: Face A/Face B, 2001; Three Posters, 2000; Come in Sir, we will Wait for you Outside, 1998; Extension 19, 1997; La Prison de sable, 1995; The Lift, 1993; L'Abat-jour, 1990. Since 1995, he has been writing and directing short animated films and documentaries for Future TV.

 

Lina Saneh
Lina Saneh ( Beirut, 1966) studied drama at the Université Libanaise in Beirut and at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. She acted in, and directed several plays, which have been shown in Beirut, Tunis, Cairo, Amman and Paris, including Mouchakassa, 1993; Les Chaises, 1996; Ovrira, 1997 (production Ayloul Festival); Extrait d'Etat Civil, 2000; Biokhraphia, 2002 (production Ashkal Alwan). She lectures drama at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut and at the Université Saint-Esprit à Kaslic.

 

Jack Persekian
Jack Persekian is a curator based in East Jerusalem who has tasked himself to push Palestinian art on more international plain to mediate and to show that there is a thoroughly exciting Palestinian art scene in spite of the difficult political situation. He is the leader of the »al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary type« and the Anadiel gallery in Jerusalem.

 

THE AMERICAS

Benoit Lachambre
Benoît Lachambre made his professional debut with Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, in 1978 as a dancer, and in 1981 as a choreographer. He has performed with Pointépiénnu, The Toronto Dance Theater, Marie Chouinard Dance company as well as the companies of Randy Glynn, Nina Martin and Stéphanie Skura. As a dancer/choreographer Benoît has also worked with an array of independent Canadian and American dance artists. Since then he has created several of his own works ("The water fait mal"…) and danced several solos by others.

Stunningly original movement theater by this French-Canadian dancer and choreographer. LaChambre manages to create a highly personal and emotional body language.

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