Team

Prof. Dr. Hanna B. Hölling, project lead

Hanna is a Research Professor and Principal Investigator at the Bern University of Applied Sciences—Academy of the Arts, where she leads two research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is also an Honorary Fellow in the Department of History of Art at University College London (UCL). Hanna’s research, teaching, and advising address subjects in art history and theory, media and material (culture) studies, museology, conservation, and American and European art created since the 1960s. For more information, including her publications, follow this link.

Next to leading the project in close collaboration with other project members, Hanna’s role in the project involves research on aspects of the conservability of performance, its objects and relics, instructions and scores and tacit and implicit knowledge and how thinking about these notions may contribute to conservation as knowledge building activity.

Dr. Julia Pelta Feldman, postdoctoral fellow 2020-24

Julia is an art historian, curator, archivist, and salonnière. Focused on art since 1945, their research interests include conservation history and theory, the periodization of recent art, performance and ephemeral media, modern and contemporary craft, and social justice in the art world. They received their doctorate from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Julia has worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Grey Art Gallery. They regularly publish articles on diverse topics in both English and German.

Julia’s research for the project is centered on expanded notions of conservation, including via archival theory and practice, immaterial and embodied forms of knowledge transmission, reperformance and reenactment, and curatorial approaches.

Dr. Andrej Mircev, postdoctoral fellow 2024-25

Andrej is an academic, visual artist, and dramaturge from the former Yugoslavia. He received his PhD from Freie Universität Berlin, where he was also a Fellow at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” (2017-2018). His research establishes trajectories between memory and performance studies, spatial theory, intermediality and critical pedagogies. Mirčev was a 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 Revolving Documents – Narrations of Beginnings: Recent Methods and Cross-Mappings of Performance Art, diaphanes (co-edited with Sabine Gebhardt Fink, 2024), Diagrams & the Diagrammatic (edited in 2023 for the Routledge journal Performance Research) and The Poetics of Performance Diagrams (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Charles Wrapner, project assistant

Charles Wrapner is a performing artist born in Cuba who excels in acting, directing, playwriting, and scriptwriting. He studied at the University of Arts in Cuba and pursued a Master’s degree in Contemporary Arts Practice: Performance Art in Switzerland. He directed for Teatro La Quinta Rueda in Cuba and Collective 4gatos in Bern. Charles is currently a doctoral student in the Institute of Theater Studies and in the Program Studies in the Arts (SINTA), where he researches Drag Performance. He is also a theater pedagogue at Junge Bühne in Bern, mentoring young performers.

Joanna Leśnierowska, artistic collaborator

Joanna Leśnierowska is an independent choreography curator, visual dramaturge, and light and space composer. She was one of the first dance critics in Poland and has written and lectured extensively on Polish choreography internationally. From 2004 to 2020, Joanna founded and directed the performance program of the Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, which was the first regular dance space and choreographic development center in Poland. During her tenure, she initiated and led several international collaboration projects.  

Joanna’s latest project is Acziun Susch, a choreographic reflection and research program at Muzeum Susch in Engadin, Switzerland, which she run 2019-23. She is also an independent curator who is involved in projects at the National Museum and Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. In her anthology, Choreography: Strategies (co-edited with Marta Keil, 2021), Joanna surveys the present and anticipates the future of choreographic and performance art.

Bringing practical experience as a curator and performance maker to the research project, Joanna will focus on the concepts of expanded documentation, re-visitation, and re-activation of performance, as well as the practice of body-to-body transmission of knowledge.

Emilie Magnin, doctoral candidate

Emilie holds a master’s degree in Conservation-Restoration from the Bern University of the Arts with a specialization in modern materials and media. After her studies, she has worked as a contemporary art and media conservator for several years. Her research interests lie in the challenges of preserving time-based and ephemeral artworks and all their intangible aspects, and in exploring how these artworks are reshaping conservation practices and theory.

Within this project, Emilie writes a doctoral dissertation concerning several aspects of the conservability of performance art. Situated in the SINTA Studies in the Arts graduate program at Bern University and Bern University of the Arts, her thesis is jointly supervised by Prof. Dr. Hanna B. Hölling and Prof. Dr. Noémie Étienne.

Valerian Maly, project specialist
2020-21

Valerian is a performance artist, lecturer and head of the Performance Art Department at the MA CAP Bern University of the Arts and a curator of performance-based projects and exhibitions. For over 30 years, together with the artist Klara Schilliger, he has worked in the expanded field of practice, creating intermedia performances, installations and location-related and situation-related works that he calls “InstallActions.” In the 1970s, Valerian founded the film, video and performance festival VIPER. Between 2011 and 2017 he was the artistic director of the art festival BONE. He also co-curated the exhibition “Terry Fox: Elemental Gestures” at Kunstmuseum Bern 2017 and initiated and co-curated the “République Géniale” – after Robert Filliou at Kunstmuseum Bern 2018. Currently he is the vice-president of the International Artist Gremium IKG and board member of the Performance Art Network Switzerland PANCH.

Electra D’Emilio Maria Letizia, project assistant, 2022-23

Electra completed her MA Conservation-Restoration in Paintings and Sculpture at HKB Bern in September 2018.  During her studies she worked as a conservator in various studios and museums in Switzerland and Italy.  She gained professional experience at Empa, where she was employed from 2019-2020 as a research assistant in the WoodNanoBonding project together with Dr Thomas Geiger (EMPA). She also works as a freelance restorer and technician for art galleries.