Researchers

Sirius Art Centre, Ireland

Sarah Long is an artist and writer based in Cork City, Ireland. Her work focuses on suppressed female archetypes, the politics of representation, nationhood, and myth through the lens of feminism, and addresses the fluidity of the Mother Ireland archetype.

Long’s selected solo shows include South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel (2025); St. Luke’s Crypt, Cork City (2023); Sternview Gallery, Cork (2020); and Studio 12, Backwater Artist Group, Cork (2019). Long’s debut novella W/w was published by Bloomers in 2024. In 2023, she was the inaugural Critic in Residence at Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co. Cork.

Long holds an MLitt in Art Writing from Glasgow School of Art and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art & Design.

http://www.siriusartscentre.ie

Secondment destination
National Technical University of Athens,Greece

Prague City Gallery

Martin Netočný, MA, is a curator of the Sculpture collection in Prague City Gallery and graduate of the Department of Photography, FAMU, Prague. His works of art have been featured in more than a dozen group exhibitions and several independent ones. He has collaborated on a number of collective projects researching the politics and aesthetics of public space (e.g. long-term mapping of Cultural centers presented on many exhibitions and one recently completed publication, guided tours focused on the post-mining landscape problematic, or activities subversing the strategies of urban developers). He curated several exhibitions framed by the phenomenology of post-industrial landscape approaches and possibilities of post-humanistic mean making. He regularly publishes art reviews and other texts on art. In his practice he intertwines social anthropology, visual culture theory and artistic research strategies. He is also currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Social Studies of the Masaryk University in Brno.

Coventry University

Dr Mahsa Alami Fariman is an urbanist and academic based at Coventry University, where she teaches on urban and human geography. Mahsa is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She received her PhD in Urban Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2022, focusing on the theory of ‘open city’ through a feminist lens, with a specific emphasis on Tehran, the Iranian capital. She also holds an MA in Architecture (Cultural Identity and Globalisation) from University of Westminster and studied BA, as well as, Associate of Arts in Architecture in Iran. The nature of her research is interdisciplinary revolving around different topics, such as community-led design in an urban age, the social and material infrastructures of [in]equality and in/ex-clusion, the challenges of neoliberal urbanism and the production of private public spaces, the complexities of urban flux, gendered spaces, bodies out of place & feminist methodologies.

https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/mahsa-alami-fariman

Secondment destination
CYPRUS, 10-24 June 2024 & 5-20 August 2024

Coventry Biennial, UK

I am a marketing and communications specialist, with a background in art history, digital curating, and environmental sustainability.

Building on seven years of experience of working in museums and galleries, I have effectively raised the profile of various organisations, including Culture Coventry and The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Currently, I am Marketing Manager at The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Coventry Biennial.

My knowledge of multi-platform marketing and particularly the digital landscape for the cultural sector has helped me build strong relationships and inspire diverse communities, including leading on campaigns for Turner Prize 2021, Machine Memoirs: Space, Life and Work of Frida Kahlo, and UK City of Culture.

I’ve also proudly collaborated with national galleries across the UK and Google Arts & Culture, further expanding the reach and impact of cultural initiatives.

Throughout the SPACEX project I will seek to build international relationships and knowledge in support of Coventry Biennial’s impactful work with artists and communities.

www.coventrybiennial.com

Secondment destination
Athens

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia – ITALY

After a MA in German Studies (Università di Firenze/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), a PhD in Germanic and Comparative Studies (Università di Firenze/ Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) with a dissertation on the interview as performance and historical document, and a Post-doc fellowship at the Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia on heroes in contemporary European theatre, she teaches at SSML Carlo Bo (IULM) as adjunct professor and cooperates with the Universities of Florence and of Modena e Reggio Emilia (adjunct professor for Digital Theatre – Master DHIALOGUE). She is member of the Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft,co-founder of the Florentine theatre company Genius Loci Performance and trained to be a professional social theatre worker (Teatro Civile, Roma-Prato). Focus of her current research are: digital performance, site-specific and social theatre and European identity in contemporary dramaturgies.

http://dslc.unimore.it

Secondment destination
Dublin, February 2024

Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

Anna Remešová (based in Prague) is editor in the Czech online art magazine Artalk. Studied art theory and history at the Academy of Arts, Design and Architecture in Prague. Anna is an occasional curator and organizer, mainly interested in institutional conditions of art in the context of the current politics and society. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where she focuses on the history of the Náprstek Ethnographic Museum and its permanent display.

https://avu.cz

Secondment destination
CASCO, 22/5–2/6/2023 and 18/9–7/10/2023

MayDay Rooms, UK

Lukasz Risso is a member of the MayDay Rooms collective – an archive dedicated to the history of social struggles, resistance campaigns and experimental culture. The main work of MayDay Rooms consists in connecting historical materials with contemporary political struggles through collaborative education, informal research, digitisation and free distribution. In the framework of the SpaceX programme, he collaborated with URBANER – Culture Urbane Emilia-Romagna, AFOr- Archivio delle Fonti Orali, Collettivo Amigdala, Istituto Storico di Modena, AISO – Associazione Italiana di Storia Orale and Nationhood collective on a project around (sub) cultures and their connection with processes of neoliberal urbanisation.

https://maydayrooms.org/

Secondment destination
University of Modena, Reggio Emilia, 03/07/2023 to 14/07/2023

LABORATORY FOR THE URBAN COMMONS (LUC), Athens

Panayotis Lianos is an artist, architect and tattooist based in Athens. He is a graduate of the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, has a Master of Fine Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and currently is a PhD candidate in Architecture at NTUA. His artistic research focuses on the methods of collective artistic production that can, potentially, create cracks within institutional frameworks. The mediums he employs span from installations to digital interdisciplinary fetishes, composing a vocabulary that fluctuates between bits and gestures, blood and data. Panayotis is a member of the Laboratory for the Urban Commons, the fluid artistic collaborations method brackets[], and the Ofrah Fergal Kasei practice. Via the aforementioned symbioses a series of co-authored works, interventions and publications have been produced; some are included in private and public collections, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art, while others exist in self-managed and public spaces. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS in 2022.

www.neocosmos.gr

Secondment destination
Coventry University, Spring 2024

LABORATORY FOR THE URBAN COMMONS (LUC), Athens

Pegy Zali is an architect and an artist based in Athens. Her work is a study of the dynamics of unsettled and abnormal collective actions. Her practice develops through collaborations between artists, curators, researchers and “unskilled” friends. She has received a degree from the Architectural School, N.T.U.A, an MA in Architectural Research from the same university and an MA in curating in London. Currently she is a scholar of the State Scholarships Foundation for developing her PhD research. Pegy is co-founder of the architecture and artistic research collective Laboratory for the Urban Commons and the [] (brackets), which is a method of forming fluid collaborations in the cracks of contemporary artistic practice. She has been part of the art group KERNEL and the architectural collective Nomadic Architecture; she is a fellow of the ARTWORKS 2018 programme.

www.neocosmos.gr

Secondment destination
University of Northampton, Spring 2024

LABORATORY FOR THE URBAN COMMONS (LUC), Athens

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou is a curator and a founding member of the Athens-based collective Laboratory for the Urban Commons. Her curatorial practice is rooted in collaboration, the creation of (trans-)local projects and initiatives, and in the reconsideration of the protocols of exchange and production between cultural producers and institutions/organizations. She co-founded the Athens Biennale and co-directed it from 2005–2016.Between 2006-2008 she was the director of the DESTE Foundation. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Artistic Research department at the Zurich University of the Arts / Linz University of the Arts.

www.neocosmos.gr

Secondment destination
Coventry University, 20 June to 20 July 2023