Principal Investigator

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

School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
& LABORATORY FOR THE URBAN COMMONS

Dr. Stavros Stavrides, architect and activist, is Professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he teaches graduate courses on housing design (social housing design included), as well as a postgraduate course on the meaning of metropolitan experience. He has published numerous articles on spatial theory and urban struggles. His books: The Symbolic Relation to Space (Athens, 1990), Advertising and the Meaning of Space (Athens, 1996), The Texture of Things (with E. Kotsou, Athens, 1996), From the City-as-Screen to the City-as-Stage (Athens, 2002 National Book Award), Suspended Spaces of Alterity (Athens, 2010), and Towards the City of Thresholds (in English, 2010, in Spanish, 2016 and in Turkish 2016). His research is currently focused on forms of emancipating spatial practices and urban commoning, characteristically developed in his last books Common Space: The City as Commons, (2016 in English, in Greek 2018 in Turkish 2018 and in Portuguese, forthcoming), and Common Spaces of Urban Emancipation (2019). He has lectured in European and Latin American Universities on urban struggles and practices of urban commoning.

http://courses.arch.ntua.gr/stavrides.html

Secondment destination
TBC

Director, The Wonder Cabinet

Ilaria Speri is a curator and manager of exhibitions, cultural projects, and publications. She holds a Master in Photography from NABA Milano (2012), executive training in Management at the SDA Bocconi (2020-21), and completed Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program 2021 (Beirut). For ten years she worked in Milan as a producer and curator with Fantom and the creative consultancy studio Boiler. In these contexts, she worked extensively across the Mediterranean, with institutions such as Arte Fiera Bologna; Bardo National Museum, Tunis; Beit Beirut, Lebanon; Fundació Enric Miralles, Barcelona; the Florence International Crafts Fair; Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie de Fès, Morocco; Manifesta Biennial, Palermo; and Triennale Milano. A former lecturer on the History of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, she was curatorial coordinator of the festival Fotopub in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, and a photography correspondent at Il Giornale dell’Arte (2015-20). Her writing has been published in books and magazines, most recently in ‘Dixit Algorizmi. The Garden of Knowledge’ for the Pavilion of Uzbekistan at the 59th Venice Biennale. She moved to Bethlehem, Palestine in March 2022 to take on the direction of the Wonder Cabinet.

https://wondercabinet.space/

NN Contemporary Art, UK

Emer Grant is the current Artistic Director and CEO of NN Contemporary Art, a National Portfolio Organisation in Northampton. She is a Curator, Producer, and Researcher who completed her studies at CCS Bard College (USA) the University of York (UK), and the University of Brighton. Emer was a Fellow for The Recalibrated Institution (Miami) and Curator at Art Center South Florida (now Oolite Arts). Prior she has curated shows and programming for various institutions including the Hessel Museum (NY), P! Gallery (NY), ISCP (NY), Stroom den Haag (NL) Void Gallery (NI), Pollinaria (IT), Yeah Maybe (MN), PHL (DE) and The Grand Parade Gallery (UK). She was Visiting Tutor at the RCA, Visiting Curator at Bard College MFA, Visiting Curator at the University of Minnesota Studio Arts BFA and Visiting Critic for Florida International University’s Architecture BFA programme. and has written for various publications including, Nero, Electronic Beats, The Editorial, The Miami Rail and Rhizome.

She was a fellow selected for the ICI (Independent Curators International) 2013 and has consulted for various organizations on Digital Arts and interdisciplinary strategies for public space, she was also an Associate Curator for Left Gallery (Berlin). Emer initiated and developed the 4.7 mil capital project at  24 Guildhall Road, Northampton, due to be completed in 2024. The renovations of the old Town Hall built in 1927 ( across 5 floors & 2000 sqm) will become NNCA’s new permanent home. Facilities will include a new gallery space, project space, education studio and civic reading room.  NNCA plays a unique role in the ecology of the visual arts in the town and region, focusing on how artist-led institutions can be developed and defined for the 21st century.

Secondment Destination:
Athens: June 2023

Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, The Netherlands

Marianna Takou is a researcher and organizer from Athens, Greece. She is currently based in Utrecht, where she works as a producer, organizer and researcher at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons. She first became part of the ecosystem of Casco as a volunteer in 2013. Since 2019, as part of the team, she has been working on different aspects of Casco’s operations and is a member of the Arts Collaboratory network.

With a background in Sociology and training in International Development, she holds an MSc in Sustainable Development. Her research interests and organizing focus on feminist and queer practices in mobility, migration, the commons and the degrowth movement.

https://casco.art/

Secondment destination:
TBC

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Vittorio Iervese is Professor in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.

He conducted research on visual culture, visual sociology, cultural design, festival studies, conflict management, intercultural communication, social participation, sociology of childhood. His latest researches are on the use of still and moving images to build narrative memories (SHARMED. Shared Memory and Dialogue) and a study on new digital platforms for audiovisual and culture (CLAP – Cultural Lab Platforming). Since 2017 he is President of Festival dei Popoli – Istituto Italiano per il Film di Documentazione Sociale, with which he collaborated since 2007 in the programming of the competition and for which he curated several sections and retrospectives. He is the director of the advanced course in Digital Humanities (Dhialogue) and the Festival of interactive and immersive transmedia narratives (VRMF – Virtual Reality Movie Festival)

http://personale.unimore.it/Rubrica/dettaglio/viervese

Secondment destination:
Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V.
February 2023

Uniarts Helsinki, Finland

Daniel Peltz is an artist and Professor of Time and Space Arts with a specialization in Site and Situation Specific Practices at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki. He is also the co-founder of the long-term, place-based research project, Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies.

Through public projects, performances and media installations, Peltz’ artworks explore complex social systems, attempting to provoke ruptures in the socio/cultural fabric through which new ways of being may emerge and be considered. To accomplish these goals, he uses a range of intervention, ethnographic and performance strategies. His projects often take the form of existing social behaviours, systems or protocols to directly engage non-art audiences in the language of critical art practice.

www.danielpeltz.net

Secondment destination:
Kunstverein am Rosa–Luxemburg–Platz, Berlin, Germany

Stroom Den Haag, the Netherlands

Alexandra Landré is artistic director of Stroom Den Haag since 2021. She has been involved in a large number of national and international cultural projects, with a particular focus on innovative forms of co-creation, new commissions and audience participation. Her current research interest focus on artistic practices in the public domain which center around the relationship of conflict and conviviality, especially in the context of complex ‘hyperobjects’ like climate change and social justice. Until 2020 she was the artistic director of Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (NL) where she presented acclaimed exhibtions like Disconnection (2019/20), programmed a living collection of land art projects with artists like a.o. herman de vries, as well as artists-in-residency-programs in collaboration with the Mondriaan Fonds. In her curatorial career she has collaborated with De Appel, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Bureau Amsterdam, Synch Festival, Athens, Jindrich Chalupecky Society, Prague, Kunsthalle Muenster and Kunsthalle Wien.

https://stroom.nl/index_en.php

Secondment destination:
TBC

A Reserva (Portugal)

Carlos Noronha Feio (1981) holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London, he lives and works in Oeiras and Moscow. Noronha Feio exhibits internationally, selected locations include the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art – Moscow; Nada Miami Sculpture Park; CCA Vilnius; Nottingham Contemporary; National Museum of Contemporary Art Lisbon; CCA Londonderry/Derry; Sazmanab Contemporary Art Tehran; Centro Cultural Helio Oiticica Rio de Janeiro.

Noronha Feio is included in “The Art of Not Making” as well as in “Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition”, published by Thames & Hudson. His work is present in selected collections: MAAT—Lisbon; Saatchi Collection-London; MAR—Museu de Arte do Rio.

From 2009 to 2014 he was a director of The Mews Project Space in London.

From 2020 until 2022 he was a core member, and the coordinator for Art and Creativity, of Oeiras’ bid to European Capital of Culture 2027.

http://www.a-reserva.org/

Secondment destination:
tbc

University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Dr Francesco Chiaravalloti is Tenured Assistant Professor of Cultural Policy and Management, Director of the Bachelor Programme in Cultural Studies (BA Cultuurwetenschappen), and Co-Chair of the research group Artistic Knowing: Research in and on Art and Cultural Practices.

The focus of Dr Chiaravalloti’s work is on the enhancement of the appreciation of arts, culture, and creativity by individuals, organizations, and communities. He pursues this long-term objective by conducting systematic interdisciplinary research on consumer behavior in the arts, on the relation between artistic, administrative and technical rationalities in arts organizations, and on accountability relationships and performance evaluation in the cultural sector. His approach acknowledges and respects the differences between research traditions and methods and is based, according to a new pragmatic agenda, on the conviction that synergy between them can lead to new insights into the challenges we face in contemporary society. Among his recent research projects, Dr Chiaravalloti has been coordinator and principal investigator of the NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) funded project ‘In Dialogue with Users: The Relevance of Opera for Society’, aiming at gaining a first understanding of the (non-)value of opera for specific non-audience target-groups. He is coordinator of a AFK-funded audience research project at Summer Dance Forever – International Hip Hop Dance Festival, and evaluator of the Creative Europe-funded project Opera Vision Next Generation. With his publications in arts policy and management journals, Dr Chiaravalloti is an authoritative voice in the field of performance evaluation in the arts.

https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/c/h/f.chiaravalloti/f.chiaravalloti.html

Secondment Destination:
Coventry Biennial, Coventry, UK: July and October 2023