This is a final list of our distinguished lecturers, workshop leaders and discussants in the research festival and exhibition, Conserving Performance, Performing Conservation, taking place across Switzerland on September 14-29, 2024. In alphabetical order:
Saša Asentić {Saʃa Asentitʃ, pronouns: he/him/his} is a non-disabled artist and cultural activist. In his practice, he focuses on the role and accountability that artists as workers in public have in building anti-discriminatory and accessible structures in dance and performance. Asentić is a founder of Per.Art organization, which gathers since 1999 a group of disabled and non-disabled artists, that challenge and counter ableism in dance and culture. His artistic practice is based on the principle of solidarity, and resistance against cultural oppression and indoctrination.
Julia Asperska is an art manager, organizer, networker, and context curator. She holds a Master’s in Ethnolinguistics at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2006) and attended a postgraduate course on art history and curation at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2013). Her passion for arts began with an internship at Brisbane Powerhouse, Australia (2008). Afterward, she worked in Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw and Warszawa Centralna Festival (2010). For 9 years (2011-2010) she worked as an Art Project Manager at Key Performance, an art management company based in Sweden. For two years she was the Associated Co-Director of Something Great management company (2020-2022), where she worked as the Collection Manager of Something Great Collection – a Berlin-based project dedicated solely to performing arts preservation, research, and presentation. Since 2018 she has collaborated with an Uruguayan choreographer Tamara Cubas and her organization Campo Abierto – an NGO focusing on social inclusion and education through the arts. She supports organizations with artistic, curatorial, and strategic advice. She has developed a mentorship practice and regularly holds workshops for arts professionals. Currently Julia Asperska is an Associated Curator at Internationale Tanzmesse NRW in Duesseldorf.
Simona Ciuccio studied art history and film studies in Zurich. Since 2018, she has been the collection curator at the Aargauer Kunsthaus and, since 2021, the head of collections and exhibitions. Previously, she was a curator at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, worked for the Kunstmuseum Luzern, curated the Afghan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005, worked at the Fondazione Merz, and temporarily managed the Archivio Mario and Marisa Merz in Turin. She is the co-editor of the recently published collection publication Aargauer Kunsthaus – Mit Gegenwartskunst umgehen (2024).
Sabine Gebhardt Fink is an art and cultural scientist and co-director of the Master of Fine Arts program at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. Until 2011, she was a post-doc and lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts and a lecturer in contemporary art at the Ruhr University Bochum. Since 2003, she has also been involved in interdisciplinary research projects “Perform Space” and “The Situated Body” at the HGK Basel/FHNW, as well as the SNF projects “Exhibition Displays,” “The Relationship of the Arts,” and “Hermann Obrist” in the network of arts and media around 1900 at ICS ZHdK. Sabine Gebhardt Fink is a co-founder of the Performance Index Basel, curates exhibitions and events on Swiss artists, and organizes symposia and academic conferences.
Rebecca Gordon is an independent researcher and lecturer based in Scotland. She received her PhD from the University of Glasgow in 2011 and specialises in the history and theory of contemporary art conservation. She has taught in the History of Art Departments at University College London and University of Glasgow and has published on topics including figurative language as knowledge management in contemporary art conservation, posthumanist care for conservation futures, intra-personal spatial care and creative placemaking, and learning from Indigenous storywork as an ethical guide for caring with social practice artists. She is also a founding member of Campsie Collective, Scotland, a group of creatives passionate about community, collaboration, care, and the power of art and nature to bring about equitable futures.
Gisela Hochuli is a performance artist and lives and works in Bern (Switzerland). She studied economics and sociology at the University of Bern and visual art at the Zurich University of the Arts. Since 2002 she has been showing her work at national and international festivals in different places around the world. In 2014 she won the Swiss Performance Art Award. Besides her solo work, she likes to collaborate with other artists such as Doce en Diciembre. She organizes performance events like Together Elsewhere and The Gathering, interviews artists (e.g. Mapping Bern) and writes and publishes interviews, texts and video documentaries about performance art. She loves to wallow in performance art friendships. She is an initiator and an active member of the Performance Art Network Switzerland (PANCH). Further links: www.giselahochuli.com
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gisela_Hochuli
Hanna B. Hölling is a Research Professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences—Academy of the Arts, where she leads research projects in her areas of expertise. She is also an Honorary Fellow in the Department of History of Art at University College London (UCL). Prior to her current roles, Hanna was an Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art at UCL and served as a Mellon Visiting Professor for Cultures of Conservation at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She has also held the position of Head of Conservation at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. Hanna is the author of Paik’s Virtual Archive: On Time, Change and Materiality in Media Art (University of California Press, 2017) and Revisions—Zen for Film (Bard Graduate Center, 2015). Amongst her edited collections are The Explicit Material: Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures (with F. Bewer and K. Ammann; Brill, 2017), Landscape (with J. M. Hedinger Verso, 2020), Object—Event—Performance: Art and Materiality since the 1960s (Bard Graduate Center, 2022) and Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, Vol. 1 & 2 (with J. Pelta Feldman and E. Magnin; Routledge, 2023 & 2024). www.hannahoelling.com.
Anna Huber is a dancer and choreographer who explores movement as a complex, nuanced form of expression at the intersection of performing and visual arts. From 1989 to 2008, she lived and worked in Berlin, creating numerous solos, duos, group pieces, and site-specific, transdisciplinary projects, including improvisations with live musicians. She has toured these works internationally. Huber continues to develop and expand her independent artistic language, which, in its complexity, precision, and presence, creates moments of perception that are as intense as they are ephemeral. Her work has been awarded numerous international prizes and fellowships, including the Hans Reinhart-Ring (Swiss Grand Prix Theatre) in 2002 and the Swiss Dance and Choreography Award in 2010. She works internationally as a lecturer and mentor at universities and art colleges, while also deepening her ongoing studies in somatic practices (BMC). In 2008, 2013, and 2021/22, she held the Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship for Dance and Performance at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Florence Jung incorporates scripted situations into the real world. These scenarios circulate primarily through word of mouth and secondary sources.
Sally Labern is a multidisciplinary artist working across arts and science partnerships in the Climate Emergency. Her short-term collaborations and durational socially engaged projects focus on the necessity of cultural equity within co-production, cultural democracy and social justice for well-being. She has a particular interest in trauma-informed practices and shared deep listening. Sally is Artist Director of the drawing shed, a contemporary arts organisation situated across two host housing estates in East London, and received her PDoc from University of East London in 2021. ‘A Community Rewilds…’, Split_Forest (㏄) and The Public Haybox (㏄) are all co-creation works in development. http://www.thedrawingshed.org/
Joanna Leśnierowska is an independent choreography curator, visual dramaturge and composer of light and space. As one of the first dance critics in Poland, she has contributed prolifically to the discourse on Polish choreography both nationally and internationally. From 2004 to 2020, Joanna was the driving force behind the performance program at the Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, a pioneering institution that marked Poland’s first regular dance space and choreographic development center. During her tenure, she spearheaded numerous international collaboration projects, fostering an exchange of artistic ideas. Her latest and most noteworthy project is Acziun Susch, a program dedicated to choreographic reflection and research at Muzeum Susch in Engadin, Switzerland, which she oversaw from 2019 to 2023. In her most recent anthology, “Choreography: Strategies” (co-edited with Marta Keil, 2021), Joanna offers a profound exploration of the current state and future potential of choreographic and performance art. Joanna is currently involved as a consultant at the Observatory of Culture which is concerned with establishing a new dance space in Warsaw.
Catja Loepfe studied cultural anthropology. She started as a freelance curator for art exhibitions and organized workshops for the International Theatre Institute. 1999 she took over the direction of the Rote Fabrik Theater in Zurich. 2007-2012 she worked for Gessnerallee Zurich, first as dramaturg responsible for the dance program and in her final year as interimistic director. In 2012 she was appointed as director of „Zurich tanzt“, a three days festival of dance and performances in public space. Besides that she was a member oft he artistic board oft the festival Zurcher Theater Spektakel 2012-2014. She became the artistic director of Tanzhaus Zürich in 2014.
Tabea Lurk (*1977) holds a PhD in art history and media theory and a MA in Library and Information Sciences. After a scientific internship at ZKM Karlsruhe (2004-2006) she worked as a lecturer for digital preservation at the Academy of the Arts BFH Bern (2006-2015). She worked for a short time at Niedersächsische Staats- und Univesitätsbibliothek Goettingen and since August 2015 she is head of the Media Library of the Academy of Art and Design Basel FHNW. Her main areas of interest are open science and access to digital information, digital literacy and cultural data management, data-driven community work and digital archiving. Together with Jürgen Enge and the Revolving Histories Network she has built up the web portal for Swiss Performance Art: https://performance.sammlung.cc/.a
Rachel Mader is an art researcher; since 2012 she has directed the competence centre Art, Design & Public Spheres, at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Art. She is responsible for practice-based research projects on artistic self-organization and cultural policy, art education, collecting ephemeral art (live performances), art schools as heterotopias, as well as basic research projects on topics such as artistic research, institutional studies, ambiguity in art and art and politics. Rachel Mader is co-president of the Swiss Artistic Research Network (SARN).
Emilie Magnin is a PhD candidate at the Bern University and a member of the research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Bern Academy of the Arts. Her research focuses on the institutional changes prompted by the increasing acquisition of performance artworks in museums, and the role and influence of conservators in this process. Emilie completed a master’s degree in Conservation-Restoration with a specialization in modern materials and media and holds the position of Conservator for Media Art and Installations at the Kunstmuseum Bern. She has previously worked as a Conservation Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, as a contemporary art conservator for private practices, and as a moving image archivist for the Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts and the University Library of Fribourg.
Muda Mathis (*1959 Zurich) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland . For many years she taught performance and media, at the Institute of art, Academy of Art and Design, HGK Basel. She is part of the artists cooperative VIA VideoAudioFotoKunst, Basel and member of Les Reines Prochaines, a women’s Performance Band. Since 1982 she has produced performances, videos, installations and music, exhibitions, festivals, concerts, art in public space, collective works and audio editions. Further links to her activities: https://mathiszwick.ch, https://reinesprochaines.ch, https://reinesandfriends.ch
Megan Metcalf is an art and dance historian who brings a practitioner’s perspective to scholarly research. Her largest project to date brings together work in personal and institutional archives, practical experience from working in museums, and study with major figures in American dance, including Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, and Anna Halprin. Recent publications consist of an article in Dance Chronicle and chapters in edited volumes published by Routledge and Bard Graduate Center. Metcalf received her PhD in contemporary art history in 2018 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and has taught art history at ArtCenter College of Art and Design, Otis College of Art and Design, and UCLA. She was a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 2021-2023 and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico (USA).
Andrej Mirčev is an academic, visual artist and dramaturg from former Yugoslavia. He currently serves as postdoctoral fellow at the Bern Academy of Arts, where she works in the SNSF-funded project performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge. He received his PhD from Freie Universität Berlin, where he was also Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” (2017-2018). His research engages in establishing trajectories between memory and performance studies, spatial theory, intermediality, and critical pedagogies. Mirčev was Guest Professor at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe (HfG) and the Department for Stage Design, University of Arts Berlin (UdK). His recent publications include: co-editor (together with Sabine Gebhardt Fink) Revolving Documents – Narrations of Beginnings, Recent Methods and Cross-Mappings of Performance Art, diaphanes (2024) and editor of the Performance Research volume on Diagrams & the Diagrammatic, Routledge (2023).
Nina Mühlemann (none/they) is an artist, scholar and activist based in Zurich. They are currently working as a postdoctoral researcher on the SNF-funded research project “Aesthetics of the Im/Mobile” at the Bern Academy of the Arts, researching im/mobile practices of disabled and chronically ill artists. In 2020 Nina Mühlemann and Edwin Ramirez founded Criptonite, a crip queer theatre project that centres an aesthetics of access. Their 2022 piece “Pleasure” toured widely in Switzerland and Germany, and Criptonite has been awarded conceptual funding by the city of Zurich for the period of 2024-2027.
Cori Olinghouse is a research-based artist whose practice combines performance, video, living archives, curating, and writing. In 2017 she founded The Portal, an artist-led initiative that cultivates archiving as a poetic and performative practice. Out of this work she collaborated with video artist Charles Atlas on a moving image installation of Trisha Brown’s archival materials for Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done at The Museum of Modern Art. In 2019 she collaborated with Autumn Knight and The Studio Museum in Harlem on the performance acquisition and restaging of Autumn Knight’s WALL—the first performance work to enter their permanent collection. Formerly, she served as archive director for the Trisha Brown Dance Company (2009-2018), a company she danced for from 2002-2006. She holds an MA in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University and serves as visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Peter Pleyer studied dance and choreography at the European Dance Development Center (EDDC) in the art academy Arnhem/NL. He has a strong interest in new methods of training dance and composition, where improvisation plays a central role. From 2007-14 he was the artistic director of Tanztage Berlin and from 2012 -14 in the programming team of Sophiensæle/Berlin. In 2014 he successfully picked up his choreographic career with the solo „Ponderosa Trilogy“, group research and choreography „visible undercurrent“ (2014/16) and „cranky bodies dance reset“ (2017/21). In 2020 he founded, together with his partner Michiel Keuper the Cranky Bodies a/company with the aim of developing a practice of improvised group performances that bridge the dance vs. fine arts divide. In 2022 they realized the traveling project „terrestrial transit“. He was a guest professor at HZT/UdK Berlin in 2015/16. www.crankybodies.com.
Thomas Plischke has been working as a choreographer since graduating from the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S.) in Brussels in 1998. His works have received numerous awards and have been showcased internationally. Since 2001, he has been collaborating continuously with Dr. Kattrin Deufert as the artist duo deufert&plischke. For them, theatre as a social situation—from rehearsals to performances—drives choreographic form and artistic expression. Their works are created collectively, starting from their first collaboration, Europe Endless (2002), which introduced the fictional biography of the artist duo, to a large-scale project involving over 20 artists, 24h DURCHEINANDER (2015). Between these two milestones, they have produced several series (Anarchive I-III, Das Entropische Institut, and Emergence Rooms), developing a model for a new epic theatre. One of their ongoing projects is JUST IN TIME, which explores the archivability of dance between self-extinction and revival. The project addresses how dance documents can retain the voice and vitality with which they were created, how the people behind these documents can inspire others to move, and how this research can prepare a dynamic archive that inspires other artists.
Christine Regn, Helga Broll 4.10.1964 born in Nürnberg, lives and works in different constellations in Hamburg and Basel. Chris Regn works as a conceptual artist with research, shows and videos, with the potential of tradition and forms of representation. She draws on her work at a large archive «bildwechsel – an umbrella organisation for women / media / culture» in Hamburg, as curator with the Kaskadenkondensator in Basel and with various performance and artist groups such as Evi, Nic & C, Tischgespräche and the «Art+Feminism» – Wikipedia editing group «who writes his_tory». With the performance group «Evi, Nic & C» and «Les Reines Prochaines» she created stage programs in a collective process such as «Cabaret», «Dragking Trekking Show«, «The Vegan Opera» and others. Since 2017 she works with «bildwechsel Basel» and the manifesto «die digitale See» (the digital sea, a collaboration with Muda Mathis and Andrea Saemann) on a responsible publication of collections and their accessibility. Further links to her activities: https://revolving-histories.ch/
https://www.basel-collections.ch/detail/28?
http://www.ilovebildwechsel.org/
http://www.bildwechsel.org
http://www.galerie-broll.net/archiv/
Dorothea Rust aka DoroR grew up in Zug, lives in Zurich, studied Fine Arts and MAS Culture/Gender Studies (ZHdK), training in New and Postmodern Dance in Switzerland and New York, performances and collaborations with dance artists and musicians in New York, USA and Europe, e.g. with Malcolm Goldstein and Eva Karczag et al., above all in improvisation. Performances/interventions (dance & art), translocal and collaborations on various continents. Coaching practice in dance and somatic body methods, lecturer at universities in dance and performance\art, networker and co-organiser of performance, music and discursive platforms such as THE LONGEST DAY / THE LONGEST NIGHT, 16 hours nonstop performances, SYMPODIUM What’s Wrong with Performance Art? GNOM group for new music et al. Co-founding-member of PANCH Performance Art Network Switzerland. Writes and publishes texts on performance and other current topics. Her guiding principles are relational thinking. Residencies, grants and awards: e.g. twice Swiss Performance Art Award. www.dorothearust.ch / sikart lexikon / wikipedia / panch.li / bildwechsel
Andrea Saemann (*1962) is performance artist, curator and networker based in Basel, Switzerland. Saemann loves working within movements and platforms initiated by artists themselves. 1997-2000 she co-organized the artist-run space called «Kaskadenkondensator» in Basel. 2002-2012 she developed a tool to activate performance art history with a project called «Performance Saga – interviews, performances, events», relating to the women pioneers of the first years of that art form. From 2011 – 2017 she coordinated the Swiss Performance Art Award. In 2014 she cofounded the association PANCH, a professional network for performance artists. Since 2014 she co-curates annually the festival «Translocal Performance Art Giswil». Further link: Andrea Saemann and her work – an audio play in 12 episodes by Muda Mathis.
Eszter Salamon is a choreographer, filmmaker and performer living between Berlin, Paris, and Budapest. Salamon uses choreography as an activating and organizing agency between various media such as image, sound, music, text, voice, bodily movement and actions. Since 2001 she has created solos and large scale performances, performative installations, and films that have been presented in performing arts venues and museums internationally, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; MoMA, New York City; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona; Serralves Foundation, Porto; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; mumok, Vienna; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; Museo Centro Gaiás, Santiago de Compostela; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Salzburg; Villa Empain – Boghossian Foundation, Brussels; ING Art Center, Brussels; and KINDL, Berlin; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz. Her exhibition Eszter Salamon 1949 (2014) was presented at Jeu de Paume, Paris, as part of Satellite curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez. Her performative installation Study for the Valeska Gert Pavilion was presented at the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art 2022. Her most recent film Sommerspiele (2023) premiered at Akademie der Künst, Berlin, and was presented during Hors Pistes 2024 at Centre Pompidou.
Declan Whitaker is a dancer and choreographer based in Basel. His choreographic interest lies with implicit expression, pop aesthetics and the border between fantasy and reality. He holds a Master of Arts from London Contemporary Dance School and has completed other artistic education courses at SKH/UniArts, Stockholm. Declan is also part of The Field, the associated collective at Tanzhaus Zürich where he has worked with Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Meg Stuart, Isabel Lewis and Simone Aughterlony. Declan regularly collaborates with the choreographer Frédéric Gies and has also performed in works by Martina-Sofie Wildberger and Martin Forsberg amongst others. His choreographic work has been shown at ROXY, Tanzhaus Zürich, Tanzplan Ost, PACT Zollverein (DE), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK), The Place (UK). In 2019 he received the danceWEB scholarship at ImPulsTanz and in 2023, was part of Springback Academy in the frame of Aerowaves. For the upcoming season Declan will be a LAB artist at Kaserne Basel.
Sara Wookey’s training as a dance artist and choreographer informs her research and scholarly work on dance methodologies within the ongoing project of the museum. Sara’s participation in archival, collection and conservation practices began with her contributing to Collecting the Performative (Tate 2014) and consulting on the performance archive at the New Museum (2015). As part of her dissertation Spatial Relations: Dance in the Changing Museum (2020) she was an Associate Researcher at Tate (2017-2018) and commissioned to create a work for the Van Abbemuseum which is now part of its permanent collection. Sara is an Associate Researcher at the University of New South Wales on the project Precarious Movements: Choreography & the Museum (2022-2024), an Affiliate Researcher at the Centre for Arts, Social Science and Humanities at the University of Cambridge and a practitioner researcher at the MUNCH Museum. Sara’s writing has been published by Valiz Press, Routledge and Art Review. www.sarawookey.com
Charles Wrapner is a Cuban screenwriter, playwright, dramaturge, and researcher. He founded his first theater company at the age of 15 and has been writing and directing plays and scripts ever since. During his postgraduate studies, he attended courses with renowned directors from Uruguay to Denmark to hone the art of storytelling. After completing his MA in Contemporary Arts Practice at HKB, Charles is currently pursuing a PhD in Theatre at UniBern (Switzerland). He works as a pedagogue and theater director for Junge Bühne Bern, Telaraña Teatro, and Volkshochschule Bern. He is the director of the theater collective La Quinta Rueda and Co-Founder of Fluchtpunkt Produktion. His main interest lies in telling stories that are as unique and captivating as life itself.
Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge 