Month: December 2020

Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic experiments. In 2018, he was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, and currently he works as Associate Professor at Tallinn University. Francisco has published several books – including Peripheral Methodologies (Routledge, 2021); Politics of Recuperation in Post-Crisis Portugal (Bloomsbury, 2020), Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough (Berghahn, 2019), and Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia (UCL Press, 2018). He has also curated different exhibitions – including ‘Objects of Attention’ (Estonian Museum of Applied Art & Design, 2019), and ‘Adapting to Decline’ (Estonian Mining Museum, 2021).

Francisco hosted a ‘Post-Brokenness’ workshop together with Andra Aaloe in the (Re)configuring Territories Spring School 2021.

Damiano Cerrone is the director of SPIN Unit, a transnational agency combining art and science to find new approaches to urban research and design. He works on the development of new avenues of research inquiry around urbanity and digital societies to foster change in policy making and urban management. His personal research leverages digital footprints to study new solutions to retrofitting inner cities to contemporary life.

Yin Aiwen is a practicing designer, theorist and project developer, who uses writing, speculative design and time-based art to examine the social impact of planetary communication technologies. She advocates relationship-focused design as a strategy to redesign, re-engineer and reimagine the relationship between technology and society.

She holds a master’s degree in design from Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, and a bachelor’s degree in visual communication from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. She has been a research fellow in The New Normal programme of Strelka Institute (RU, 2017), Art Center South Florida (US, 2017) and ZK/U Berlin (DE, 2019).

POLINA MEDVEDEVA is a Russian-Dutch filmmaker and artist based in Amsterdam. Her work researches the notion of informality, focusing on informal economies and non-conformist communal structures, their principles of which influence the aesthetics of her videos. Medvedeva’s works have been exhibited in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem; Inversia Festival, Murmansk; Rotterdam City Theatre; Art Brussels; Centre of Fine Arts Groningen; De Nieuwe Vide gallery, Haarlem and screened during IDFA Docs for Sale and on VPRO among others. She was a guest lecturer at the Public School for Architecture Brussels, Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, ArtEZ Zwolle and is a tutor and lecturer at the Utrecht School of the Arts.

Stockholm & Östergötland, founded in 2012 by Mariana Alves Silva, Dr.Katarina Bonnevier and Thérèse Kristiansson. The architecture, art and design practice MYCKET develops artistic research from intersectional perspectives such as anti-racist and queer-feminist theories. A practice informed by the theatrical, the carnivalesque and political activism. Together they rummage through the borderlands of the lives we live, and the environment that surrounds us. They recently inaugurated the participatory and permanent public space for dance and music Kepsen at Råslätt, Sweden (Public Art Agency Sweden, Mix Dancers Academy, Vätterhem, Jönköping municipality & Boverket, 2016-20). Recent work includes; Kämpaoke – the karaoke bar with songs that care, Stockholm Culture Festival, Public Art Agency Sweden  2019), The Grotto of Naiads, transformation of pedestrian tunnel, Haninge (2018), exhibition design Aiming for democratic architecture, Swedish Institute, Architects Sweden (2017-19), the artistic research project The Club Scene, with 13 acts of extensive theatrical performances, ArkDes, funded by the Swedish Research Council (2014-17). 

www.mycket.org

Maria Muuk is a graphic designer and writer based in Tallinn, Estonia, whose main research interest is food. By thinking and making through the lens of food, she explores its semiotic, cultural and affective meanings, as well as ways in which food can be used to facilitate change, find commonalities and digest problematics. Maria has graduated from the Graphic Design department at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA, Tallinn, 2013–2016) as well as the MA programme Critical Studies at the Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam, 2017–2019). After moving back to Estonia and working as a pastry chef for half a year, she’s currently building up a multidisciplinary graphic design practice in Tallinn. She has teaching experience in self-initiated (GD Project Space, 2016–2018) as well as art-academic education (EKA, 2019–…), whereas her focus is prevalently on affect theory, writing, love&friendship and feminism, especially in the context of design understood as visual/textual/spatial communication. The dream that keeps her going is moving to the country side to found a communal, mostly self-sustainable farm.

www.mariamuuk.ee