Principal Investigator

AA & U for Architecture, Art and Urbanism

Maria Loizidou (www.marialoizidou.com ) is a visual artist, who renews her work’s perspective and enriches it with social and political concerns, by emphasizing “the power of fragility”. She is one of the co-founders of AA & U for Architecture, Art and Urbanism. AA & U focuses on the constructive entanglements between architecture, urban planning and the visual arts to support the urban commons (www.aaplusu.com ). Maria’s collaboration with AA & U allows her to address practices of fragility in a collective and interdisciplinary level.

Secondment destination:
University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, 2023
The University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2024

TRANS (transparadiso), Austria

Architect and urbanist, founded transparadiso with the artist Barbara Holub in 1999 as transdisciplinary practice. teaching at the technical university of Vienna; 2018 Österreichischer Kunstpreis, 2007 Otto-Wagner-Award for Urban Design for Salzburg Stadtwerk Lehen; 1994 Tische federal grant at Jean Nouvel’s, Paris; 2001 thesis “contextual acting in architecture and urbanism”, 1997-2003, teaches in differant positions since1997 at University of Technology of Vienna, 2004 Schindler grant, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles,  2004-2006 co-secretary of European Austria, since 2002 member of the editorial board of “dérive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung”; 2012 funding by departure for “Direct Urbanism”; 2013 publication “Direct Urbanism”  in Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2018.

Secondment destination:
TBC

AHDR/Home for Cooperation, Cyprus

Andri is the Manager of the Home for Cooperation (AHDR/H4C). She holds an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology from K.U. Leuven, Belgium, where her thesis focused on reinterpreting the transformation of borders and border-spaces in Nicosia, in their symbolic and literal sense. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Surrey, UK, where her research focused on the relationship between the postcolonial state of a country and the notion of hostility in national identities. Her evolving academic interest is to undertake her first steps for an interdisciplinary PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Architecture, looking to unpack peacebuilding as a conceptual term, a process and method, in the post conflict context of Cyprus. She is interested to look at the relation of peacebuilding with spatial practices and discursive exchange, and how the multiplicity of stories can affect and enable alternative subjectivities and transformation.

Secondment Destination:
Coventry, UK – 2023

Royal College of Art, UK

Jaspar Joseph-Lester is a London-based artist and Head of MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (where he is Reader in Art and Post-Urbanism ). His work explores the role images play in urban planning, social space and everyday praxis. His research interests are situated between art making, curating and writing and draw from the fields of architecture, design, urban studies, human geography, philosophy, cinema and media studies, spatial theory and economics. Here Joseph-Lester has focused on the conflicting ideological frameworks embodied in representations of modernity, urban renewal and regeneration as a means to better understand how art practice can redefine the successive cycle of masterplans and regeneration schemes that determine the cultural life of our cities. Key to this work is the development of platforms and frameworks for art that contribute to developing new ways of thinking social and life experiences for the future.

Secondment destination:
transparadiso, Vienna, Austria
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven NL
A Reserva na Fábrica, Oeiras, Portugal
Kunstverein am Rosa–Luxemburg–Platz, Berlin, Germany

https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/jaspar-joseph-lester/

Coventry Biennial, UK

I am an artist, curator and independent researcher interested in DIY cultures, collaboration, community and what was briefly called the post-internet. I have previously presented projects at MK Gallery, ICA London, Midlands Art Centre and in places of worship, botanical gardens and on the slopes of Cader Idris. I have spoken at events organised by the British Council, Kunsthal Gent, Eastside Projects and a number of colleges and universities. I am the founder and Artistic Director of Coventry Biennial – a social, political and critical platform for Contemporary Art in the UK. 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.

Secondment Destination: 
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: September / October 2022

University of Applied Arts, Vienna

Barbara Holubartist, researcher, based in Vienna founded transparadiso with urbanist Paul Rajakovics as transdisciplinary practice between art, architecture and urban intervention (1999); president of the Secession, Vienna (2006-2007); Austrian National Art Award (2018); directed the aBarbara Holubartist, researcher, based in Vienna founded transparadiso with urbanist Paul Rajakovics as transdisciplinary practice between art, architecture and urban intervention (1999); president of the Secession, Vienna (2006-2007); directed the artistic research project “Planning Unplanned. Towards a New Positioning of Art in the Context of Urban Development (2010-2013), Vienna University of Technology/ Institute of Art and Design) and published “Planning Unplanned. Can Art Have a Function? Towards a New Function of Art in Society” (2015, Verlag für Moderne Kunst); External Examiner at The Bartlett for “Situated Practice”, London (2019-2022); member of the jury of the “Innovation Fund for Culture in Public Space”, Stuttgart (2018>); Austrian National Art Award (2018); Research Award of the Austrian Chamber of Architects (2022). Currently she directs the flagship project “WE PARAPOM!” (weparapom.eu) for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025. Forthcoming publication: Barbara Holub. Silent Activism (de Gruyter/ edition Angewandte, 2022).

Secondment Destinations:
van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (NL): TBC
NN Contemporary, Northampton (GB): TBC

www.barbaraholub.com

Prague City Gallery (Galerie hlavního města Prahy), Czech Republic

Mgr. Jitka Hlaváčková, Ph.D., is an art theoretician working since 2006 at the Prague City Gallery, where she curates the Photography and New Media Collection. She has prepared around thirty exhibition projects so far, including Divination from a Night Sky Partially Obscured by Clouds – The Role of Photography in the Post-Media Age (2022); Sounds Codes Images – Acoustic Experiment in Visual Art (2019), etc. She also curated the Start Up series for emerging artists and the Projector, online video art gallery. She is involved in the preparation of the Art for the City programme. In 2021, she was the curator of the m3 – Art in Space Festival and theinitiator of the Gestures of Emancipation symposium focused on public space strategies. In her research, she focuses on the theory of acoustic art, photography, video art in post-media contexts of contemporary life in general. She also explores the “public language of art”, i.e., current urban and environmental art strategies in relation to social, gender and community issues.

Secondment destination/s:
TBC

University of Amsterdam

Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History, University of Amsterdam and has led the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. Until 2014 she was Professor of Iconology in Belfast. She studied in Heidelberg, London and Cologne, where she gained her PhD in 2000. She held an Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship, UCD.

Rooted in Joseph Beuys studies, she is interested in social art practices, art in public, performance, post-War art histories and art research. She also focuses on word and image studies, visual legacies of (Irish) writers, the historiography of art and curation.

Her books include: Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland: Word, Image and Institutional Critique (ed., Valiz 2017); Post-War Germany and ‘Objective Chance’: W.G. Sebald, Joseph Beuys and Tacita Dean (Steidl 2011); James Joyce als Inspirationsquelle für Joseph Beuys (Olms 2001); and Joyce in Art (Lilliput 2004). She has curated internationally.

Secondment Destinations:
Project Arts Centre, Dublin: April/May 2022
Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh: TBC
Mayday Rooms, London,: TBC
Lisbon: TBC

Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz e.V. , Berlin

SUSANNE PRINZ is a curator and writer based in Berlin. She studied Art History, American Studies and Politics at the Universität Leipzig and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. After several years of experience in the commercial art world and as a freelance curator she currently is the director of L40-Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Berlin). Since its relocation in 2010, she has presented a program of more than 100 exhibitions and events. Her special focus is on art in the public realm and time-based art. Most recent projects in or for the public realm were Flagge Zeigen / Showing True Colours (http://infectedlandscapes.eu/ ), the Activist Neuroaesthetics Festival  (https://activistneuroaesthetics.art/) and the implementation of Native Tongue XR by New Aotearoa (NZ) artist Gill Gatfield in the Metaverse and reality (with Chiara Valci Mazzara).
In addition to her curatorial work she has taught at the art academies in Berlin, Kassel, Salzburg, Linz and Montpellier.

Secondment destinations
The Royal College of Art, London: Nov/Dec 2022-January 2023
TAIDEYLIOPISTO, Helsinki: 2023