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Speakers

Speakers

Lev Manovich is a world-renown innovator and top influencer in many fields, including media theory, digital humanities, cultural analytics, and media art. He is a Presidential Professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab. Manovich was included in the list of “25 People Shaping the Future of Design” and the list of “50 Most Interesting People Building the Future”. He is an author of 180 articles and 15 books that include Cultural Analytics, Instagram and Contemporary Image, and The Language of New Media described as “the most suggestive and broad-ranging media history since Marshall McLuhan.” Manovich’s digital art projects were shown in over 110 international exhibitions in Centre Pompidou, ICA London, ZKM, KIASMA, and other leading venues.

Since the late 1980s, Chico MacMurtrie has explored the intersection of robotic sculpture, new media installation, and performance. MacMurtrie’s work investigates organic life from deep within, finding geometry in all living systems. Chico MacMurtrie and his interdisciplinary collective Amorphic Robot Works/ARW have received numerous awards for their experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0, and Prix Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2016 and the Map Fund Grant in 2019. MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented in major museums and cultural institutions around the world including the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC), Mexico City; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition), Muffatwerk, Munich (Pneuma World); Ex-Dogana, Rome, and ZHI Art Museum, Chengdu.
Luise Kaunert is an independent curator, artist liaison and art advisor based in New York. Her areas of interest include but are not limited to media art, experimental and inter-disciplinary practices. She is currently advising private collections in Europe and the US and has organized and (co)curated exhibitions in New York and Paris. As an artist liaison she has managed and accompanied various large-scale projects of media artist Chico MacMurtrie / Amorphic Robot Works in Mexico, China, France, Brazil as well as Agnès Thurnauer’s solo show at Villa Emerige in Paris. She has contributed widely to the international development of MacMurtrie’s Brooklyn based creative collective Amorphic Robot Works and their site-specific installation and performance series known as “The Robotic Church”.

Theater director and producer. Creative Director, Co-founder of the AXiiO VR Studio, Helsinki, Finland.
Graduated from the Theater College, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, and State Theater Academy, St.Petersburg, Russia.
With twenty-seven years of work experience, Oleg has produced more than a hundred creative projects – theater performances, multimedia and fashion shows in France, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Finland. For the past six years he has been working as a director and producer of VR projects: “Kalevala.Episodes” – nomination Experiment, Golden Mask Theater Award 2020, Moscow, Russia.
“Forgotten Kiss” – Tribeca Film Festival 2020, Cinema 360, New York, USA. “Cat’s Winter Tale” – GoEast Film Festival 2020, Open Frame Award, Wiesbaden, Germany. “Stella Maris” – 360 Film Festival 2020, Paris, France. “Proximity”, “Ukraine 24.02.22”.
Permanently resides in Finland since 2013.”

Nikita Shokhov works with both still and moving images. Throughout art projects, he explores the duality of body and mind, myth and reality, human nature, religions, history, and culture. He works in collaboration with his spouse Anna Evtiugina who takes roles of co-author, and producer, depending on a project. Shokhov’s photographs were published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Harper’s Bazaar Art, l’Insensé, Openspace, Elle, Time Out and British Journal of Photography, L’Officiel Russia, L’Express, Courrier International, IL, China Newsweek, Calvert Journal, Colta, and YET magazine. He participated in numerous art festivals and biennales, including Manifesta 10 in Saint Petersburg, Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and Photoquai in Paris.
Anna Evtiugina is a curator, producer, Fulbright scholar, Edmund Muskie fellow. Founder of New York-based creative studio iPureland that curates new media exhibitions, international strategic partnerships, and professional development programs for arts organizations and businesses. iPureland curates a special grant program for galleries’ participation in high-quality international art fairs which is the first initiative of that kind in Russia. Anna initiated and curated the “Art of Becoming Black in America” project at Indiana University, performed as assisting curator of Roberta Matta exhibition at State Hermitage Museum, co-curated Last March by Naum Medovoy at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Anna co-curates the educational program International Strategies in Art Business at Moscow School of Contemporary Art of Universal University.
Georgy Molodtsov is an award-winning film and VR director, festival programmer.Programming director of VR Sci Fest (Sweden), curator of the Open Frame Award for VR within goEast Film Festival (Germany), creative producer of Russian VR Seasons initiative. Co-founder of VRability social good project.MA in Film and Video 2015, School of Communication, American University, USA (Fulbright Fellow). Studied documentary filmmaking in All-Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK) in 2003-2008.
Led by Sam and Andy Rolfes, Team Rolfes officially formed in 2017 to better contextualize their series of live, interactive animated shows for Super Deluxe, and push their increasingly-lauded stage performances across international experimental music festivals to new heights.Prior to this, the team had already gained note for their groundbreaking real-time 3D videos for musicians Amnesia Scanner and Danny L Harle, as well as their sculptural, painterly 3D print collaborations for Nicola Formichetti’s Nicopanda fashion line, and a long series of album covers for experimental musicians.From there, Team Rolfes would go on to develop their groundbreaking improvisational, expressive VR-puppetry and motion-capture practice, wielding it for music videos (Lady Gaga), TV animation (Adult Swim), stage performance (MoMA and Berlin Atonal), animated narrative series (Super Deluxe, Sonic Acts Festival), and countless other projects.

Arseniy Zhilyaev is an artist, writer and political activist who lives and works in Moscow and Voronezh. Zhilyaev’s artistic practice poses questions about the cultural production in the postsoviet condition.Using the exhibition as his medium, Arseny Zhilyaev (b.1984, RU/IT) works in the spaces between fiction and non-fiction. His projects examine the legacy of Soviet museology and the philosophy of Russian Cosmism that represents a broad range of philosophical, scientific and artistic programs, which aimed to overcome mortality, to achieve resurrection for all who ever lived and pursue space exploration. Zhilyaev produces artworks for a potential future provoking speculations on what historical context should have generated them.

Joshua Citarella is a NYC based artist and researcher. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts (2018-19) and the Rhode Island School of Design (2020) He has served as an outside advisor at Carnegie Mellon University (2020) and Tufts University (2021). His work is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Netherlands and the Hood Museum of Art in the U.S. His publications are included in the libraries of the School of Visual Art, Yale University, University of Kansas and the Fleet Library at the RISD, among others. After graduation, Citarella collaborated with an artist collective that focused on digital culture and advertising. His ongoing work with Brad Troemel began at this time with The Jogging.[4] The Jogging began in 2009 as a Tumblr blog on which thousands of strange images were posted. In 2017, Citarella continued his collaboration with Troemel, working with him on an Etsy art store called Ultra Violet Production House. As of January 2017, the two had put up seventy-eight works of art for sale, most of them made of everyday object in a manner that developed a sense of absurdity. For example, items placed for sale included a couch covered in hardcore-punk-band patches and a bench built from two Apple computers topped with a plank of wood. In 2013, Citarella debuted with a series of five chromogenic still lifes at Higher Pictures. These prints included Body Anointed with Nitroglycerin Awaits Transfiguration, depicting a “reclining nude woman, partially covered in silver, with little flecks of skin and paint floating around her,” with some of the nitroglycerin smudging the frame. Andrew Russeth of The Observer describes the work as showing “exacting detail” instilling in viewers a “discomfort [that]…is also a sign that Mr. Citarella is closely attuned to the intricate traps of image production today.”

LaJuné McMillian is a New Media Artist, and Educator creating art that integrates performance, extended reality, and physical computing to question our current forms of communication. They are passionate about discovering, learning, manifesting, and stewarding spaces for liberated Black Realities, and the Black Imagination. McMillian believes in making by diving into, navigating, critiquing, and breaking systems and technologies that uphold systemic injustices to de-commodify our bodies, undo our indoctrination, and make room for different ways of being.
McMillian has had the opportunity to show and speak about their work at Pioneer works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art & Code’s Weird Reality. Previously the Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, they integrated STEAM and Figure Skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. McMillian has continued their research on Blackness, movement, and technology during residencies and fellowships at the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Barbarian Group, and Barnard College.

Anna Shvets is an Art historian, curator, contemporary art lecturer and educator During the last three years, humanity experienced a lot. We were constantly triggered – what community do you belong to? What is your identity? Pandemic challenges that are not yet over were replaced by a reflection of the war in the digital dimension of reality… In my presentation I’d like to tell about cases that I actively participated in and curiously witnessed, those examples of taking direct action to achieve political and social goals, that are taking place in hybrid contexts: A virtual exhibition The Art Spaceship based on the idea of the utopic international space station where representatives of 24 international projects Ukrainian V-Art digital platform and its antiwar NFT art initiatives – Ukrainian virtual pavilion on Art Basel, charity exhibitions, airdrops, etc A participatory internet-based project where AI and Neural Network unite forces with a famous Russian art collective to protest against military propaganda and fake news. As a great example of ecological activism from Ecuador – the educational application ¨The fire is in the water¨ which is both a video game and a coral exploration site. Art Ambassadors – an independent decentralized community of art professionals with the representatives in Russia, USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Finland, UAE, Ecuador, Israel, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, France, Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Portugal, Turkey, Hong Kong, Spain, Georgia, New Zealand that was born as a reaction to the war.

Ellina Gennadievna is an artist, who creates interactions between organic and inorganic nature, virtual and live environment, system and entropy, also experienced game mechanics professional. Makes an electronic music and playing DJ sets, has studied Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics in Kazan State University. Later relocated to Moscow where began to study contemporary art at the Workshop of Interactive Communication and Mixed Media at the Rodchenko School. She teaches “Computer Technologies Unity” at Rodchenko School, the HSE School of Design and online “Concept” & “Learning environment” schools. Currently based in Bangkok.

Tosca Terán is an interdisciplinary, ecofeminist, and human holobiont. She describes herself as an interdisciplinary, human holobiont whose work is a confluence of art, ecology, and craft. Growing up a first-generation Mexican-American woman, she has certainly experienced both privilege and discrimination. Often perceived as European from my mother’s strong Scandinavian/German heritage she has always felt more in tune with her father’s blood and family’s culture, feeling both of this world yet not of this world. Seen yet, not seen. Her work has been featured at The Harwood Museum, SOFA New York, Metalsmith Magazine, The Toronto Design Exchange, the Memphis Metal Museum, MOCA Toronto, The Ontario Science Centre, Music Works Magazine, Vector Festival, Studio Art & Craft Canada, SONICA21, and NAISA (New Adventures In Sound Art). She has been awarded grants and funding from the Goethe-Institute Montreal, The Canada Arts Council, BigCi Environmental Award at Wollemi National Park, Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council for her immersive, nonhuman fungal bio-sonification projects.
Ira Konyukhova is an artist, writer and instagram feminist activist. She studied Physics in Moscow and fine art in Mainz, Reykjavik and Media Art and Media Theory at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HFG), which she finished with diploma in 2017. In her practice, she explores the connection between female sexuality, pop-resilience and colonial technological practices which are embodied mainly but not only in video, sculpture and installation. Her works have been presented on various international festivals and exhibitions, including DocLisboa, Athens Biennale, Teneriffa Espacio del Arte, Exground Film Festival e.t. Konyukhova was a grantee of Rhineland-Palatinate Media and Film Promotion Prize, BS Projects Residence Program as well ifa travel grant. She’s is also a founder of online and offline publication TransitoryWhite
Oksana Syhareva is an independent young producer and director. She has created fifty projects in the field of culture and art. From independent documentary screenings to large international festivals. She also did a lot of educational projects. Now she works with films: documentary and fiction. She also explores the possibilities of digital art tools and develops VR projects. The main focus of films is culture, art, human rights, social change. The main goal is to develop cultural ties between countries and peoples in order to achieve mutual understanding.
Alina Mikhaleva is a news media executive and XR technologist. With over ten years of experience in broadcast media and content marketing, Alina witnessed digital revolution in the news industry from within. Seeing the overall struggle of the news business to stay relevant to audiences worldwide, Alina shifted her attention to future formats of audience engagement – Virtual and Augmented reality. In 2016, Alina co-founded an LA-based VR Studio Spherica and started creating immersive content for clients ranging from AP, HBO, RYOT to Lexus, Google, and many others. Her experience in digital media and immersive tech has led her to develop a deeper interest in how human brains interact with content at large, and inspired her to launch a new initiative. In 2020, Alina founded Less Media Group to drive change in the media industry and utilize technologies to create deep human connections.
Olga Dvoretskaya is an NFT Producer and speaker for ART & TECH, visionary, author of educational programs for NFT ACADEMY Co-founder: CryptoShark # 1-8, CSHP.CLUB, Disartive Fair (2020-2021), DAO RASSVET.

Vladimir Storm is a visual artist and filmmaker focused on AR/VR storytelling, NFTs and digital fashion, computer games and VFX. Vladimir has worked on various art/tech projects in 20+ countries worldwide with clients like Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Valve, Snapchat, etc.
In his art practice Vladimir researches worldwide spiritual diversity and belief systems by collaborating with artists outside of the western world on a topic of digital shamanism, digitizing indigenous and traditional spiritual practices, as well as deconstructing and reframing western culture.

First formed as AES Group in 1987 by Arzamasova, Evzovich, and Svyatsky, the collective became AES+F when Fridkes joined in 1995. AES+F work at the intersection of traditional media, photography, video and digital technologies. They define their practice as a kind of “social psychoanalysis” through which they reveal and explore the values, vices and conflicts of contemporary global culture.

AES+F achieved worldwide recognition and acclaim in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale di Venezia in 2007 with their provocative, other-worldly Last Riot. The group had more than 100 solo exhibitions at museums, exhibition spaces, and commercial galleries worldwide. AES+F works have been shown in such prestigious venues as the ZKM (Karlsruhe), HAM (Helsinki), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Tate Britain (London), MAXXI and MACRO Future (Rome), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul), The State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires), and many others.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b.1988 Athens, Greece) received an MFA at Design Media Arts UCLA in 2016. Selected Solo Shows include: Role Play, Meredith Rosen Gallery NY, 2018; Pretzel Twist, The Breeder, Athens, 2017; Obscene Creatures, Resilient Terrains Assembly Point, London, UK, 2017. Selected Group shows include: Athens Biennial, 2018; Still Human at the Rubell Family Collection Miami, FL; Nature of Justice, St. Anne’s Warehouse, Brooklyn NY; Hyper Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice, IT, 2017; Unreal, NRW Forum, Düsseldorf, DE. 2017; International Topsellers – Human Product, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Wien, AT 2017; LA times 10, Architecture and Design Museum, LA, CA, 2017;After Belonging, Oslo Architecture Triennale, Oslo, NO. 2016; Game Art Festival, Hammer Museum, LA, CA, 2015.
Allen Feldman, a pioneer in the ethnography of violence, the body and the senses, is the author of Archives of the Insensible: of War, Photopolitics and Dead Memory (University of Chicago, 2015) and Formations of Violence: the Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (1991).Feldman is a cultural anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic research on the politicization of the gaze, the body and the senses in Northern Ireland, South Africa and the post 9/11 global war of terror. His research and teaching interests include visual culture, political aesthetics, political animality, and practice-led media research.
Jiabao Li creates works addressing climate change, interspecies world sharing, humane technology, and a just, sustainable future. Her mediums include wearable, robot, AR/VR, projection, performance, software, and installation. She is a member of NEW INC Creative Science at the New Museum. In Jiabao’s TED Talk, she uncovered how technology mediates the way we perceive reality. Jiabao is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. Her lab explores the intersection of art, design, technology, and biology. The interests are broadly spanning from interspecies co-creation to knowledge graph, from Biosensors to menstrual blood proteomes. She is co-founder and chief product officer of Peregrine Biosense and previously of Snapi Health. She serves on juries for major design awards such as IDSA, D&AD, Biodesign Challenge, etc. Jiabao is the recipient of numerous awards, including iF Design Award, AACYF 30 Under 30, Falling Walls, National Endowment for the Arts, STARTS Prize, Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award, Core77, IDSA, A’ Design Award, Webby Award, Cannes World Film Festival Best VR short award.
René Pinnell is the founder of Artizen, a community fund for human creativity. Playing a central role in the artistic renaissance of virtual reality, René has helped creators raise more than $34M for original projects including the first seven-figure deal for a VR film at Sundance. As an executive producer, René Pinnell has worked on some of the industry’s most groundbreaking work including the animated VR film BATTLESCAR, starring Rosario Dawson, and the VR series SPHERES, starring Jessica Chastain, Millie Bobby Brown, and Patti Smith. As a filmmaker & designer, René produced the acclaimed comedy show Backpack Picnic, directed the feature documentary The King of Texas, sold a TV pilot to MTV, designed 5 products & founded 2 companies.

Choy Ka Fai

Choy Ka Fai is a Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. At the heart of his research is a continuous exploration of the metaphysics of the human body. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body.

Johanna Bruckner

Johanna Bruckner’s work is shown internationally. Selected exhibitions and screenings: Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Mediterranea Biennial 19, San Marino, ICA Milano, the CAC Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve, Galerie EIGEN+ART Lab, Berlin, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, transmediale 2020, the Kunstraum Niederösterreich, ZKM, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, 16th Venice Architecture Biennial, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Sammlung Falkenberg, Galerie Reflector Contemporary, Bern, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, the Villa Croce, Museum for Contemporary Art, Genoa; the Kunsthaus in Hamburg, the Kunstverein Hamburger Bahnhof, Galleri Box, Cabaret Voltaire at Manifesta 11, Zurich. Bruckner has lectured at various universities and institutions including the Bauhaus University of Weimar, the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Zurich University of the Arts.

Cécile B. Evans

Cécile B. Evans is an American-Belgian artist living and working in London. Evans’ work examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological, physical, and technological structures. They have recently completed a major new commission for the Ulsan Art Museum (KOR), after having been on a residency with the National Ballet of Marseille in collaboration with the Kistefos Museum (NO) and exhibited a new installation commission at Centre Pompidou Paris (FR).
Egor Kraft (b. 1986, St. Petersburg, Russia) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of arts, media, technology, film and research. He acquired his education from Gerlesborg School of Fine Art (SE), Moscow Rodchenko Art School (RU), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (AT), Central Saint Martin’s College (UK) and ‘The New Normal’ at Strelka Institute (RU). He was affiliated as a research fellow at the University of Southampton (UK). He participated in Ars Electronica (AT), ‘Open Codes’ at ZKM (DE), 5th Ural Industrial Biennial, 5th and 2nd Moscow International Biennials for Young Art, WRO Biennial (PL), IMPAKT Festival (NL), Vienna Contemporary (AT), Manifesta X (RU), WRONG Biennale (WEB), 1st Kyiv Biennale (UA) and a number of international shows including those in State Hermitage Museum, Russian Museum, ZKM (DE), Garage Museum (RU), MOMMA, MAMM, PERMM, Moscow Polytechnic Museum, Tretyakov Gallery, Onassis Foundation (GR), Short Film Festival Cologne (DE) and many other international events. He lectured and led guest seminars in Winchester Schools of Art (UK), New Media Lab (RU), HSE University (RU) and other programmes. His essays and research papers were published in peer reviewed journals and presented at Art Machines 2 (HK), Politics Of The Machines (DE), Impakt Festival (NL) and other conferences. Egor has received New Technological Art Award in 2022 (BE). He was also nom­i­nated for var­i­ous prizes in­clud­ing the State In­no­va­tion Art Prize twice (RU), Kuryokhin Prize twice (RU), Kandinsky Prize (RU), Creative Enterprise Award (UK), the Pulsar Prize (FR) and Lumen Prize. He is a fellow of STARTS Residencies (EU/UK), Garage Museums Art & Technology 2019 (RU/DE) and BMKÖS Perspective, Innovation, Art 2021 (AT) grant programmes. In 2017 he was included in the New East 100, a list of people, places and projects shaping our world today by London based Calvert Journal.

An award-winning australian augmented reality designer, avant-garde movie producer, and multimedia artist, Sutu (aka Stu Campbell) is an architect of the digital, connected future. Whether it be augmented comics, virtual concerts, or extended reality (XR) filmmaking, he is designing the future of our meta world. He has lent his creative talents to projects spearheaded by Stephen Speilberg, The Weeknd, John Legend, Google, Marvel, and Disney. In the NFT world, Sutu is the creator of Neonz.xyz – a cyberpunk avatar projects where the NFTs unlock experiences in the Sutuverse – a web3 playground built on AR and WebGL.

During the Panel Blockchain Technology and NFTs Sutu will talk about his project Neonz.xyz