with Antonia Hirsch, visual artist and current PROGRAM artist-in-residence; Julian Kücklich, new media researcher, media clairvoyant, snake oil peddler; Anastasia Lavrova, scientist, theoretical biophysics; Kirsten Maar, researcher, Topographies of the Ephemeral: Movements of Transferal between Choreography –Architecture – Literature; Markus Miessen, architect, researcher and writer.
Antonia Hirsch is a Vancouver-based artist who has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, Europe and Asia, including Le Chamois de Messidor at Program, Berlin (2008), Altered States at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2006), and Concrete Language at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2006). Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Gallery 101, Ottawa (2007), the Charles H. Scott Gallery (2006) and Artspeak Gallery (2003) in Vancouver, the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery (2003) and Gallery 44 in Toronto (2001). In 2004, she was awarded the Canada Council Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her current projects include Vox Pop, an interventionist project on dual video billboards in downtown Vancouver, and Double Blind, a permanent public art commission for the new campus of the Vancouver Community College, to be inaugurated in February 2009. [www.antoniahirsch.com]
Julian Kücklich is media futures associate in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University of the Arts and the Press Association. He holds an MA in German and American literature from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, and a PhD from the University of Ulster (Coleraine). Since 2000, he has published numerous articles on the aesthetics, semiotics, and politics of new media, particularly computer games. His book, Playability, was recently published by VDM. [www.playability.de]
Anastasia Lavrova (PhD in Biophysics) is a researcher, member of Prof. Dr. Lutz Schimansky-Geier’s Stochastic Processes Group at the Institute for Physics at Humboldt Universität in Berlin. She focuses on the mathematical modelling of biological systems and particularly nonlinear dynamics of living systems (dissipative structures and phase waves, pulse propagation), as well as modelling of large-scale biochemical systems.
Kirsten Maar finished her Studies in German and French Literature, Theatre and Dance at the Universities of Heidelberg, Paris and Berlin. She has worked as an assistant to the director and dramaturge, for dance-festivals, media-production companies, on exposition and curatorial concepts. Since 2007 Kirsten is a member of the Collaborative Research Centre 626 on “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits” at the Freie Universität Berlin in a Project on “Topographies of the Ephemeral,” which is initiated by the Dance-Studies Department. Her work focuses on the manifold relations between choreography and architecture on levels of aesthetic experience, questions of designing tactics and political relevance.
Markus Miessen is an architect, writer and curator migrating between Berlin, London, Cambridge (MA) and the Middle East. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a collaborative agency for spatial practice and cultural analysis, and in 2007 was founding partner of the Berlin-based architectural practice nOffice. In various collaborations, Miessen has published books such as East Coast Europe (Sternberg, 2007), The Violence of Participation (Sternberg, 2007), With/Without –Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press, 2006) and Spaces of Uncertainty (Müller+Busmann, 2002). He frequently contributes to magazines and journals. His work has been exhibited and published widely, including at the Lyon, Venice, and Shenzhen Biennials. Miessen has taught and lectured internationally at institutions such as the Architectural Association (AA), Columbia and MIT. He has consulted the Slovenian Consulate (NYC) during Slovenia’s presidency of the EU council, the European Kunsthalle, the Serpentine Gallery and the Swiss think tank W.I.R.E.; in 2008, he initiated and now directs the AA Winter School Middle East (Dubai); Miessen is a Harvard fellow and a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, London. [www.studiomiessen.com]
A Multidisciplinary Team Talk is part of the continuing PUBLIC research project by Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. Organized as a daily series of experiments, interventions and discourses, PUBLIC aims to examine the potentiality of latency and open spaces made possible in the relations between individuals and publics. Other activities are posted online at www.programonline.de/public.html.
