Adel Abdessemed
Adel Abdessemed’s work draws from a multiplicity of media, including sculptural installation, video, animation and photography. The ‘acts,’ as Abdessemed refers to his politically committed artworks, consistently interact with larger global realities. Abdessemed’s apparent rage permeates throughout, calling viewers’ attention to expressions of brutality and frequently referencing failed immigration policies, exile and displacement. His work has been exhibited widely, in such venues as the Venice Biennale (Italy), the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) and Dak’Art (Senegal), as well as solo exhibitions including P.S. 1 (New York). Born in 1971, he lives and works in New York and Paris.
Bani Abidi
Bani Abidi is a video artist. Her work often utilizes installation in dual screens. Much of her work has explored the ways that nationalist and other political ideologies are internalized by individuals, civil society and the creation of history. Her works have been shown a number of international exhibitions, including the Singapore Biennial (2006), the Gwangju Biennial (2008) and the Lyon Biennial (2009). She has held solo exhibitions in Bangalore, London, San Francisco and Karachi. Born in 1971 in Pakistan, she lives and works in Karachi and New Delhi.
Yassin Adnan
Yassin Adnan is a journalist, poet, and novelist. He is the presenter of the weekly cultural TV program Macharif on the 1st Moroccan TV channel (TVM). Some of his works include: I almost can’t see collection of poems, Dar Al Nahda, Beirut 2007; The shadow’s apples, short story collection, Benmsik University, Casablanca 2006, The Pavement of resurrection, collection of poems, Al-Mada Books, Damascus, 2003; Who believes in letters?, short story collection, Mirit Books, Cairo, 2001; Mannequins, collection of poems, edited by the Union of Moroccan Writers, Casablanca, 2000 and Under The Sheltering Sky of North Africa in English.
Mark Aerial Waller
Mark Aerial Waller produces interdisciplinary, cinematic time travelogues that refute any predictable balance between our romance for the ancient past and our fetish for a streamlined future. By jamming multiple time streams and technical formats he stages elliptical, psychological landscapes in which fantasy and documentary become almost interchangeable. Recent exhibitions include, Kafe Pittoresk: L’Expérience du Monde Visionnaire; Park Nights, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London; Simon & the Radio Active Flesh, Plaka, Athens; France Fiction, Paris; Taverna Especial Soup Kitchen, Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London; Nought to Sixty, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; You have not been honest, Museo D’Arte Contemporanea, Donnaregina, Napoli, Italy; Athens Biennial 2009 and La Societe des Amis de Judex, Tate Modern, London. He was also curator of Yama Screen, Istanbul 2007-8.
Sofia Aguiar
Sofia Aguiar’s figurative oil paintings, usually done on wooden boards, are often explorations of single animals, isolated objects, or spaces manipulated by humans yet uninhabited. The paintings reference notions of desire and the connections between imagination and representation, influenced by her background in social service. Her work has been part of exhibitions such as at Ar.Co (Lisbon) as well as the inaugural Arts in Marrakech Festival. Her work is also held in public collections including the Ernst & Young Contemporary Art Collection (London). Born in 1963, she lives and works between Lisbon and Tangier.
Mustapha Akrim
Mustapha Akrim’s installations question the nature of work and the difference between building and creating artwork in light of society’s constant changes. He received his diploma from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan in 2008. Akrim has participated in workshops in Namibia, Jordan, France and Morocco. He was also in residence at L’appartement 22 in Rabat. Born in 1981, he lives and works in Rabat-Sale.
Sobhi Al-Zobaidi
Sobhi Al-Zobaidi is a Palestinian filmmaker and writer who is currently based in Vancouver, pursuing a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University. His work falls in the midst of documentary, artistic and political action, exploring contemporary life and realities in Palestine. His works have been screened at such major international film festivals, such as the CinemaEast Film Festival (New York), Doumentalistas (Buenos Aires), and the Sarajevo film festival. He has received awards including the Rotterdam Film Festival’s Development Award, Best Short Documentary prize at the Institute Du Monde Arabe and Best Scenario award at the Arab Screen Independent Film Festival in London.
Francis Alÿs
The work of Francis Alÿs is poetic, episodic and engaged. It addresses the problems of displacement and the absurdity of politics through seemingly futile gestures (a dripping can of paint, an unraveling sweater, a relocated mountain). Trained in Belgium and Italy as an architect, Alÿs settled in Mexico City in 1986 and has since developed an artistic practice that combines actions, photography, film, painting and collaboration to document and to participate in contemporary urban life and local histories. Born in 1959, he lives and works in Mexico City.
Noureddine Amir
Noureddine Amir is a visual artist and clothing designer who creates couture, prêt-a-porter and costumes for film and theater. Amir’s earlier sculptures and experiments in the forms of clothing that were never meant to be worn, create a background for the sculptural quality of the clothing he produces today. His clothing is presented in reduced palettes and frequently raw material, drawing upon the aesthetics and traditions of Moroccan clothing, sculpture and art, particularly decorative traditions within the Sahara. His clothing has been shown in cities such as Casablanca, Rotterdam and Madrid. Born in 1967, he lives and works in Marrakech.
Alice Anderson
Born in London in 1976, from an English father and a North African mother, Alice Anderson grew up in the South of France. This is where she started her storytelling and her paintings about her family.
Today Alice Anderson is one of the most compelling artists to emerge on the contemporary art scene. Working from film to drawing and sculpture, playing with dislocation of time as children construct parallel worlds, her work is a compulsive and obsessional production through which she explores and gives shape to her childhood memories. Her works have been shown in institutions such as the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the Pompidou Centre, the Grand Palais, the Leon Museum, the Mudam Museum and the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland.
Younes Baba-Ali
Younes Baba-Ali lives and works in Marseille and Casablanca. He is a multi-disciplinary artist and self-taught musician whose work incorporates sound material and its conditioning. He experiments with the capacity of sound to propagate in space and to directly engage the body of the viewer in the artistic process. Baba-Ali graduated from L’Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Strasbourg in 2008, and has recently exhibited his work at the Wro 09 Biennial of New Media Art (Poland), Loop Video Art Festival (Barcelona), Interference (Breda) and In-Sonora Sound Art Festival (Madrid).
Raffaella Barker
Raffaella Barker is the author of eight novels about the lives we lead and how they warp. She is currently in the middle of another novel and splits her time between London and Norfolk. Published by Bloomsbury, Raffaella Barker also runs creative writing workshops and teaches. She writes regularly for newspapers and magazines including the Sunday Times, London Evening Standard, Independent, Harpers Bazaar and Mail YOU magazine.
Yto Barrada
Yto Barrada’s works, primarily in film and photography, have consistently interrogated notions of displacement, particularly in light of urbanization and migration. The works carry deep political commitment, frequently using Tangier and the Strait of Gibraltar as a site of inquiry that is both artistic and documentary. Though she does not represent suffering directly, her work points to ignored narratives and realities. Her work has been included in exhibitions such as Snap Judgments (New York), Africa Remix (Düsseldorf), and the 52nd Venice Biennale. Born in 1971, she lives and works in Paris and Tangier.
Marie-Louise Belarbi
Born in 1928 in Montpellier, France, Marie-Louise established, with a group of literary professionals, the Tarik Publishing House in 2000. Tarik Editions published the first testimonials of the recent history of Morocco and currently has 88 titles in its catalogue. Marie Louise dedicates herself entirely to Tarik Editions, including the discovery and launch of new talented writers from the Maghreb, co-editing texts with French, Algerian and Tunisian editors and translating some of the best French works in to Arabic and vice-versa.
Faouzi Bensaidi
Faouzi Bensaidi is an artist and filmmaker from Meknes that began by directing for the stage and has been directing films since 1997. He has worked in many genres, infusing elements ranging from enigmatic detachment to lush choreography with subtle commentaries on human relationships and contemporary Moroccan society. His short films The Wall and The Rain have won prizes at the Cannes International Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival. WWW, What a Wonderful World, a thriller based in contemporary Casablanca, is his acclaimed second feature film. Born in 1967, he lives and works in Casablanca and Paris.
Rachid Benzine
Born in 1971 in Kenitra, Morocco, Rachid Benzine is an Islamic scholar. His research and work focus on contemporary interpretations of the Koran. He teaches ‘Religion and Society’ at the Institute of Political Studies of Aix en Provence. He also teaches at the Catholic Faculty of Louvain La Neuve and at the Protestant Faculty of Paris. Rachid Benzine is the co-director of the collection Islam of Lights (Albin Michel), which publishes work on contemporary Islamic thought. In 2004, he published New Thinkers of Islam, a work which presents Muslim scholars who recommend a second reading of the Koran.
Laurent P. Berger
Laurent P. Berger is an artist. Through installations, architectures, performance, images and graphics he explores relationships between the public, time and space. In 1999, he was resident at the Villa Médici in Rome. In 2006, he participated at the Whitney Biennale in New York. His work has been exhibited at the Romaeuropa Festival, MACBA in Barcelona, Museu Berardo in Lisbon, Art Basel – Miami Beach and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 2006 he set up, with his brother Cyrille Berger, an architectural practice under the name Berger&Berger. They have been in residence at CENT QUATRE in Paris since 2007 and were awarded the NAJA (young architects’ award) in 2008 by the French Ministry of Culture. Berger has been working with Julien Fisera on Stories of Order & Disorder for AiM 2009. He lives and works in Paris.
Omar Berrada
Omar Berrada is a writer, translator and critic. Born in 1978, he grew up in Casablanca and now lives in Paris. Between 2004 and 2007, he was a producer for French national radio and hosted, on France Culture, the shows La nuit la poésie and Lumières d’août. He curated the Salon International du Livre in Tangiers in 2008 and now curates talks and conferences at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Recent publications include the co-translated Stanley Cavell’s Senses of Walden (with Bernard Rival), Théâtre Typographique, (2008), and the collective work Letters to a Young Moroccan (ed. Abdellah Taïa, Seuil, 2009).
Katrine Boorman
Katrine Boorman is an actress who has held a variety of roles in both film and television, including Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006). Married to Danny Moynihan, more recently she has featured in, as well as co- produced the film adaptation of her husband’s novel, Boogie Woogie (2009). Katrine is also the daughter of film producer and director John Boorman. She was born in 1958 in London.
John Boorman
John Boorman is a British filmmaker best known for his feature films such as Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, The General and In My Country. He had been nominated for 5 Oscars and won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for his film The General. He currently lives in Ireland.
Franck Bragigand
Franck Bragigand’s work addresses the question of how human production works. He collects random objects that are no longer of use to their previous owners and paints them, infusing them with a second life as an artwork. He reacts to mass production and consumption, criticizing the 21st century society of trash culture and questions the value of artwork. His solo exhibitions include Private Pinacotheque, Gallery Lumen Travo Amsterdam (2009), Peinture à vendre, partager, offrir Strasbourg, France (2008); Save water NP3, Groningen, The Netherlands (2007) and Retrospective: Franck Bragigand 1987-2007 at Gallery In Situ, Aalst, Belgium (2007). Born in 1971, he lives and works in Amsterdam.
Victoria Brooks
Victoria Brooks is the curator of the Sketch Gallery Foundation, a non-profit temporary exhibitions space specializing in multi-channel film and video installation. Recent exhibitions include Carsten Nicolai, Noam Gonick, Tim Etchells, Iain Sinclair & Chris Petit, Charles & Ray Eames and Michael Nyman amongst many others. Brooks also produces and presents touring projects and cinema screenings such as Cinact presents (with Nicola Lees) in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery and an ongoing series of monthly performative artist film screenings at The Gate Cinema, London. Born in 1979, she lives and works in London.
François Bucher
François Bucher is an artist from Cali, Colombia. He is also co-editor and founding member of Valdez Magazine. His video work consistently engages with the construction of power, as well as history, politics and representation within the media. He has presented work internationally in institutions and festivals including the Tate Britain, the Indonesian Independent Film Festival and the Kassel Documentary Film Festival. Born in 1972, he lives and works in Berlin.
Kim Cattrall
Kim Cattrall is a film and television actress. She is perhaps most well known for her role as Samantha Jones from HBO’s Sex and the City, which is currently being filmed in Marrakech. In 2006, she starred alongside Brendan Gleeson in John Boorman's 2006 film The Tiger's Tail, a black comedy that focuses on the impact of the Celtic Tiger economy on Irish people. Aside from her film and television work, Cattrall is also a stage and theatre actress, with performances in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and Wild Honey, to name a few. Born in the UK, she currently lives in New York.
Chto Delat? (What is to be done?)
Chto delat? (What is to be done?) is a Platform founded in 2003 in Petersburg with the goal of combining artistic practice, political theory and activism. They have since been publishing an English-Russian newspaper, which has a particular interest in the re-politicization of the creation of knowledge. The workgroup includes Olga Egorova/Tsaplya (artist, Petersburg), Artiom Magun (philosopher, Petersburg), Nikolai Oleinikov (artist, Moscow), Natalia Pershina/Glucklya (artist, Petersburg), Alexei Penzin (philosopher, Moscow), David Riff (art critic, Moscow), Alexander Skidan (poet, critic, Petersburg), Kirill Shuvalov (artist, Petersburg), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher, Moscow) and Dmitry Vilensky (artist, Petersburg).
Tomás Colaço
Tomás Colaço is a Tangier based Portuguese visual artist, born in Lisbon in 1974. He completed his architectural studies at the University of Architecture of Milan and at the University of Architecture of Venice. He did his ‘Visual Arts Independent Studies’ at MAUMAUS – School of Visual Arts (2004 – 2007) and at Ar.Co - school of visual arts (2002 2007) both in Lisbon. He has a PhD on the History and Theory of Contemporary Art and Architecture from the Sorbonne University of Paris. His work has been part of exhibitions including at the Instituto Camões (Lisbon), the Goethe Institute (Lisbon) and The Space From Getty to Goetz, directed by Hubert Damisch, Jean Claude Lebensztejn and Umberto Eco.
Stuart Comer
Stuart Comer is the Curator of film at the Tate Modern. He is the editor of Film and Video Art (Tate Publishing, 2009) and has contributed to numerous publications and periodicals. Recent freelance curatorial projects include Andy, as you know I am writing a movie… for the Beirut Art Center in 2009 and The Young and Evil for tank.tv in 2008. Comer has participated in symposia, talks and events at numerous international venues. He chaired the jury for the Derek Jarman Award for artists' film and video in 2009 and was a juror for the inaugural Magic of Persia Contemporary Art Prize in 2009.
Claudia Cristovão
Claudia Cristovão’s video installations reflect on the crucial role of memory in forming notions of cultural identity, belonging and displacement. Cristovão uses video, photography and sound to document the personal and collective memories of often-painful pasts, including those of African-born Europeans remembering the continent they fled as children during de-colonization. Born in Luanda, Angola, to Portuguese parents, Cristovão studied cinema at the Universities of Lisbon (Portugal) and Roskilde (Denmark) and is now pursuing a master’s degree at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. Her work has been exhibited in both the Dakar and Sao Paulo Biennales in 2006 and at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in 2009. Born in 1973, she lives and works in Amsterdam and London.
Shezad Dawood
Shezad Dawood is an artist and curator that works across media, using film, photography and installation. The pieces consistently play with popular culture references that are deceptively light. The multiplicity of this referencing—drawing from film, music and even plastic toys—is used to confuse notions of collective identity, traditional histories and belief systems. His work has been included in the 53rd Venice Biennale and the Tate Triennial at the Tate Britain and his public works include poster projects simultaneously in Karachi, Pakistan and Mumbai, India. Born in 1974, he lives and works in London.
Sanaa El Aji
Born in 1977, Sanna El Aji is a journalist, writer and commentator. She has been writing for Nichane (Forward, a Moroccan weekly magazine) since its launch in September 2006. Sanaa received much national and international exposure after the public outcry over her provocative article, How Moroccans laugh at religion, sex and politics. The now notorious, ‘court case about jokes’, handed her a 3-year suspended prison sentence. In 2003 her Arabic novel Majnounatou Youssef was published by Argana Editions. In Autumn 2009, her new book, a collection of writings about Batoul, her strong, curious female fictional character, is due to be released. She has also contributed to the collective work Letters to a Young Moroccan (ed. Abdellah Taïa, Seuil, 2009).
Ahmed El Maanouni
Ahmed El Maanouni is a writer, director, cinematographer and producer. He graduated in theater studies at the International University of Theater in Paris; in Economy at the University Paris Dauphine and in Cinema at the INSAS of Brussels. He is a founding member of the Arab Film-makers Association in France and the Authors Directors Producers Group in Morocco. He is also a Delegate for Europe of the Moroccan Chamber of Film Producers.
Ninar Esber
Ninar Esber’s performances, photography and videos rely on the centrality of the body, often situated within architectural spaces. Her work is consistently imbued with a performative air by her use of real-time filming, deliberate artifice and the inhabitation of characters from Marilyn Monroe to the super-hero female. The conscious visibility of her body and her role as both desiring and as an object of desire particularly interact with and fight stereotypes and expectations of Middle Eastern and Arab women. She has had solo exhibitions at L’Appartement 22 (Rabat), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Silpakorn University (Bangkok). She has also written Conversations with Adonis, My Father (Seuil, 2006). Born in 1971, she lives and works in Beirut and Paris
Charles Esche
Charles Esche is a curator and writer who has been Director of the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven) since 2004. He is also co-editor of Afterall Journal and Books, based at the Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, London. As well as many articles in catalogues and magazines, his published works include a book of his selected writings, Modest Proposals (2005), as well as multiple edited volumes such as Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (2008). Major exhibitions that he has curated include the Riwaq Bienniale (Palestine, 2007, 2009 with Reem Fadda), the Istanbul Biennale (2005) and the Gwangju Biennale (2002). Born in 1962, he lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Patricia Esquivias
Video artist Patricia Esquivias was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her informal work plays with mixtures that are often outwardly illogical of vernacular culture, historical figures and the construction of narratives. The videos use a consciously low-tech approach, often involving the filming of her laptop screen and her own casual voiceover. Esquivias has had solo exhibitions at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid) and has been part of group exhibitions such as at the New Museum (New York) and the Kunsthalle Basel. Born in 1979, she lives and works between Guadalajara and Madrid.
Hamid Fardjad
Hamid Fardjad was born in Tehran in 1942. He was the assistant to F. Rahnama and and other Iranian directors between 1958 and 1962, and to François Reichenbach in 1968. After stage directing from 1982 to 1990 in New York, he completed his first short film El Dorado, selected for the Berlin Film Festival. He directed Peter Ustinov in Animalwise, and directed Rainbow Trans, which focused on gnaoua music and also a medium-length film about Judaism in Morocco. He has also produced and collaborated with Shirin Neshat on eight films and produced the film Secret and Absurd, which was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival and opened the cinéma du futur in Lille 2004. He is currently teaching at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Marrakech.
Seamus Farrell
Seamus Farrell’s work collapses the boundaries between “artist” and “worker” while simultaneously addressing questions of globalism, ecology and art education. Farrell has had solo exhibitions at Espace 150x295cm (Martil, Morocco), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), and La Stecca (Milan), and has participated in group exhibitions including the 7th Gwangju Biennial (South Korea), the 1st Brussels Biennale and OPEN/INVITED ev+a (Ireland). His work, The Spiral of Fez, was produced during a workshop held in Lot 219 in Bensouda, Fez, where the artist collaborated with art students and workers to build a spiral made of recycled car doors. Born in 1965, he lives and works in Saint-Ouen, France and Cadiz, Spain.
Eric Fellner
Eric Fellner is a film producer whose works include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Fargo, Notting Hill, Atonement and United 93. He has co-chaired, Working Title Films, with Tim Bevan since 1992. Working Title is Europe’s leading film production company and has made over 90 films that have grossed over $4.5 billion worldwide. Its films have won six Academy Awards, 26 BAFTA Awards, and prestigious prizes at the Cannes and Berlin International Film Festivals. Eric Fellner, himself, has been honoured with two of the highest film awards given to British filmmakers: the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema, at BAFTA awards, and the Alexander Walker Film Award at the Evening Standard British Film Awards. He has also been honoured with a CBE.
James Fenton
Born in 1949, James Fenton has worked as a theatre critic, a foreign correspondent and a literary critic. The lectures he gave as Oxford Professor of Poetry were collected in The Strength of Poetry, and his poems were published in Children in Exile and Out of Danger. He is a recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Julien Fisera
Julien Fišera was born in 1978 in Portsmouth, of French and British nationality. Following his studies of history of art, literature and drama at the Sorbonne, Paris, as well as in London and Austin, Texas, he specialized in theatre and dramaturgy. He has worked with a number of theatre directors in France but also abroad, including Great Britain, Ireland, USA and Austria. In 2008 he wrote B.MANIA, his first play. He has directed plays in Paris at the Théâtre national de la Colline, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, and CENTQUATRE; in Dijon and also at La Capilla in Mexico City and at RedCat in Los Angeles. He has taught and directed workshops in Morocco (Agadir, Rabat), Mexico and Brazil. In 2010, his theatre company, espace commun, will be in residency at CENTQUATRE in Paris. Fišera has been working with Laurent P. Berger on Stories of Order & Disorder for AiM 2009.
Jean-François Fourtou
Jean-François Fourtou’s work “plays” with proportion and scale. His “houses” range from the giant to the miniature, from the upright to the inversed, and propose a spatial experiment that evokes memories of childhood and the magic of Alice’s Wonderland. Fourtou graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 1992 and his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and in the United States, including several large-scale public commissions. His installation in Marrakech includes objects from his Maison du géant (Giant’s House) and Maison tombée du ciel (House Fallen from the Sky) as well as the Maison poupée (Dollhouse). Born in 1964, he lives and works in Marrakech and Madrid.
Pedro Gómez-Egaña
Pedro Gómez-Egaña is a visual artist and composer who experiments with the accidental and the mechanical, through drawing, video, sculpture, installation, performance and sound. Simple black-and-white line drawings narrate the catastrophes of daily life as planes, rockets, and cars crumple. Gómez-Egaña was trained as both a composer and visual artist at Goldsmiths College (London) and the Bergen National Academy of Arts. His recent work is part of Calligraphies, a large-scale project supported by the Norwegian Artistic Fellowships Programme and has been exhibited at the Hordaland Art Centre (HKS) in Bergen, L’appartement 22 in Rabat and at La Residencia in Bogota. Born in 1976, he lives and works in Bergen, Norway.
Joana Hadjithomas
Joana Hadjithomas is a Lebanese film director, screenwriter producer and artist. In collaboration with Khalil Joreige she made Khiam (2000) and El Film al Mafkoud (The Lost Film, 2000) which was shown at a large number of film festivals, art centers and museums. A Perfect Day (2005) is one of their most acclaimed films, and earned them the Don Quixote Award and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival. Her film I Want To See also made with Khalil Joreige, and featuring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mrouré, was presented at the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. Joana was born in 1969 in Beirut, Lebanon.
Leila Hafyane
Leila Hafyane was born in Casablanca. She is a writer and teacher. Her first novel Parallel Pages was published in 2009 by L'Harmattan. Parallel Pages is an account of the life and secrets of a young writer from Casblanca, the novel has multiple voices inter-changing between reminiscing and reflecting on beauty, love and sex.
Sally Hampson
Artist/designer, Sally Hampson works with narratives, creating collections of objects, photographs, film footage and garments in a desire to make the narrative more tangible and bring it into the present. She is presenting a talismanic coat at Riad Magi for the Apothecary’s Tea Party.
Marius Hansen
Marius Hansen
John Hillcoat
Born in Brisbane, Australia in 1960, John Hillcoat is a director. He grew up in North America, Australia and Britain. John co-wrote and directed his first feature film Ghosts...Of The Civil Dead. John’s award-winning third feature film, The Proposition stars Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, John Hurt and Emily Watson. His latest feature film is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road starring Viggo Mortensen and Chalize Theron. John is in preparation of: The Wettest County, starring Shia LaBeouf, Ryan Gosling, Paul Dano, Michael Shannon and Amy Adams with Nick Cave writing; Joe Petrosino, starring Benicio Del Toro with Pete Dexter writing.
Chourouk Hriech
Chourouk Hriech is a French artist of Moroccan origins, working primarily with monochrome or black and white two-dimensional drawings, as well as installations, videos and photo-montages. The drawings create spaces not bound by empirical reality though many build upon recognizable elements of actual places. The often surreal nature of these images interacts with notions of mapping, mobility, social fictions and how humans fit into the contemporary world. Hriech published a book of drawings in 2004 entitled The Pink Book, and her work has been shown at institutions including L’appartement 22 (Rabat), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Lyon), and Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo). Born in 1977, she lives and works in Marseille and Rabat.
Fadwa Islah
Born in 1979 in Agadir, Fadwa Islah is a writer. She lives and works between Paris and Rabat. She contributed to the collective work Letters to a Young Moroccan (ed. Abdellah Taïa, Seuil, 2009).
Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien’s body of work includes film and audiovisual installations, most of which hinge on an investigation of desire and longing, as well as interrogations of the constructions of race, gender and sexuality. Julien’s work is often lushly stylized, frequently utilizing tableaus vivants and is consciously open-ended, inviting viewers to create a counter-narrative to mass media. Julien’s work has been shown in venues such as the Cannes Film Festival (France), the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea), and Documenta XI (Kassel), and his work is included in collections such as the Tate Modern (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Guggenheim (New York). Born in 1960, he lives and works in London.
Abdellah Karroum
Abdellah Karroum, born in 1970 in Morocco, works as an independent art researcher, publisher and curator. He is the founder and artistic director of several art projects including L’appartement 22, an experimental space for encounters, exhibitions and artists’ residencies founded in 2002 in Rabat, and Radio apartment22. He has curated numerous exhibitions for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bordeaux (Pensées bleues (1993), Jean-Paul Thibeau (1995), Urgences (1996), and was one of the curators for the 2006 DAK’ART Biennial for African Contemporary Art. Karroum was co-curator for the Position Papers program in the Gwangju Bienniale 2008 and is also a member of the Prince Pierre Monaco Foundation’s Artistic Council for its International Prize of Contemporary Art. Karroum is the curator of the main exhibition for the AiM International Biennale 2009.
Bouchra Khalili
Bouchra Khalili is a French-Moroccan video-artist, born in 1975 in Casablanca. With a strong focus on the Mediterranean area, her videos deal with nomads and displacement, relations and distances between physical and imaginary geographies. She works on the frontiers of cinema and visual arts, documentary and fiction, experimenting with the visual and conceptual limits of these media. Her work has been shown at numerous international exhibitions, biennials and festivals, including the New York Video Festival (Lincoln Center), the Film-Laboratorio (Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome and Villa Médicis), the Biennale of the Moving Image (Genève, Switzerland), La Force de l’Art (Galerie Nationale du Grand Palais, Paris), VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo, Brasil) and Documentaire d’Avant-Garde (La Cinémathèque Française, Paris). She lives and works in Paris.
Hassan Khan
Hassan Khan works with image, sound, text, space and situation. Selected solo shows include Gezira Art Center, Cairo (1999), Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris (2004), A Space Gallery, Toronto (2005), Gasworks, London (2006) and Le Plateau, Paris (2007). As a musician he has composed soundtracks for theatre and performed at venues including Melkweg (Amsterdam), Lydmar (Stockholm), Babylon (Istanbul), Whitechapel (London), Cairo Jazz Club (Cairo), KBB (Barcelona), Strange Fruit (Beirut), SESC Sao Paolo (Sao Paolo) Podewil (Berlin) and Point Ephemere (Paris). His album Tabla Dubb is available on the 100copies label. Khan is also published widely in both Arabic and English. He lives and works in Cairo, Egypt.
Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth was born in 1945, in Toledo, Ohio. Kosuth attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962 and studied privately under the Belgian painter Line Bloom Draper. In 1965 Kosuth moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts; he would later join the faculty. He soon abandoned painting and began making conceptual works, which were first shown in 1967 at the exhibition space he co-founded, known as the Museum of Normal Art. In 1969 Kosuth held his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York and in the same year became the American editor of the journal Art and Language. Kosuth's work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. His nearly forty year inquiry into the relation of language to art has taken the form of installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, including Documenta V, VI, VII and IX (1972, 1978, 1982, 1992) and the Biennale di Venezia in 1976, 1993 and 1999. Most recently, he exhibited Il Linguaggio dell'Equilibrio / The Language of Equilibrium at the Monastic Headquarters of the Mekhitarian Order on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice. This was presented concurrently with the 2007 Biennale di Venezia. Joseph Kosuth lives and works in New York and Rome.
Faouzi Laatiris
Faouzi Laatiris is a visual artist and has taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tétouan since 1992. His works reflect on the appearances and realities of urban environments and everyday objects. In 2006, he founded the art space Espace 150 x 295 cm with fellow artist Batoul S’Himi in Martil, which hosts regular exhibitions, workshops and events. Laatiris’ works have been presented in exhibitions such as Doual’art (Douala), Dak’art (Dakar) and “Gli Artisti del Silenzio” at the Third Free International Forum (Bologna). Born in 1958, he lives in Martil and works in Tétouan.
Jooyoung Lee
Jooyoung Lee works across a wide variety of media, including installation, sound systems and video. Much of her art interacts with the public sphere directly, questioning the division of private and public, often by inviting collaboration. Lee explores both the notions and challenges of communication and translation through sound, textual and spoken language in both the gallery space and via public interventions. Her work has been exhibited at locations including the Seoul Museum of Art, the National Museum of Contemporary Arts (Seoul) and the Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (Melbourne). She lives and works in Seoul.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Rebecca Lenkiewicz is a writer whose plays have been performed at the National Theatre, the Old Vic and the Royal Opera House. Her latest play The Nature of Love explores a handful of characters in 1950s America. One is a psychologist who believes he has discovered what love truly is, another is one of the Hiroshima Maidens who was brought to America for reconstructive surgery ten years after the atom bomb was dropped.
Loredana Longo
Loredana Longo’s work addresses topics close to Sicily’s political backdrop, where the artist lives and works. Her series of videos, Explosions, depict bombings occurring in domestic, peaceful settings such as the bedroom, a wedding reception, or a living room decorated for Christmas Eve, and can be seen as mirrors of the deceptive peace and organization in an otherwise violent society. Her performances allude to the lack of drama and sensationalism within the Mafia crimes and the coldness and banality with which they are performed. Longo has recently exhibited her work at the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Palazzo Riso Museum of Contemporary art in Palermo, Italy, and the Institute Italo Latin American in Rome, Italy.
Bernard Marcade
Bernard Marcadé is an art critic, researcher and curator. Currently he teaches Aesthetic and Art History at l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Marcadé’s recent books include Il n’y a pas de second degré, remarques sur la figure de l’artiste au XXe siècle (Éditions Jacqueline Chambon, 1999), Marcel Duchamp, une vie à crédit (Flammarion, 2007), and his new book, Fabrice Hyber (Flammarion, 2009). He has also curated numerous exhibitions, such as L’excès & le retrait (XXIe Biennale Internationale in Sao Paulo, 1991); Féminin-Masculin, Le sexe de l’art (Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1995 - with Marie-Laure Bernadac); Becoming (Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, 1997) and On dirait le Sud, Cartographies sentimentales et documentaires (C.R.A.C, Sète, 2007).
James Marsh
James Marsh’s most recent dramatic film Red Riding 1980 was broadcast on Channel 4 in March 2009. Starring Paddy Considine, the film is an adaptation of David Peace’s novel of the same name. His most recent documentary film, Man On Wire, has won 26 awards worldwide, including the Oscar for best documentary, a BAFTA for Best British film, the Independent Spirit Award, the BIFA award for best documentary and Jury and Audience prizes at Sundance. The film was released theatrically worldwide and was one of the top grossing documentary films of the last five years. During the past 15 years Marsh has lived between London and New York, and is presently based in Copenhagen.
Mourad Mazouz
Opening Sketch at 9 Conduit Street, London in 2002, Mourad worked in collaboration with designers Noe Duchaufour-Lawrance and Mark Lawson Bell to create a constantly changing space – a destination for experimental food, art and music. Mourad had already sealed his reputation in the UK with the phenomenal success of Momo, the fashionable North African restaurant and bar, which opened in 1997 on Heddon Street in London. Prior to this, Mourad had gained thunderous applause in France for his celebrated restaurants Au Bascou and 404. His latest opening is Derrière in Paris this May.
Vincent Melilli
Vincent Melilli was born in Morocco. After he graduated with degrees in literature and cinema, he worked as the administrator of movie theatres in Paris (Escurial and Max Linder). From 1998 to 2000 he was in charge of audio-visual programs at the French Institute in London, and later worked as the institute’s director. Since 2005 he has been the director of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Marrakesh, the only film and visual arts school in North Africa.
Danny Moynihan
Writer, curator and artist Danny Moynihan wrote the acclaimed novel Boogie Woogie, published in 2000, on which the newly-released film is based. He also wrote the screenplay and produced the film. Moynihan attended the Slade School of Fine Arts in the late seventies before starting The Space gallery together with Paul Kasmin and Jasper Morrison in 1981. Over the years Moynihan has also curated several shows including: Artists and Photography at the Karsten Shubert Gallery, Psycho a survey of art and anatomy at the Anne Faggionatu Gallery and most recently Between a Rock and a Hard Place a selection of art depicting the stone over the last millennia. He will publish his second novel Bait in 2010.
Mark Nash
Mark Nash is a professor, curator and writer who is currently Head of the Department of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art (London). His primary interests lie in film theory and film culture. As well as numerous essays, Nash has published books such as Screen Theory Culture (2007) and Frantz Fanon (with Isaac Julien, 2000). His curatorial work includes co-curator of Documenta 11 (2002) and film curator of the Berlin Biennial (2004). Born in 1947, he lives and works in London.
Heidi Nikolaisen
Heidi Nikolaisen’s work takes the form of experimental expeditions, which look into personal histories as an opposition to the construction of recorded history. Nikolaisen was an associate lecturer at the Bergen National Academy of Arts, Norway (2007-2009) and her recent and future solo exhibitions include Nordnorsk Art Centre, Svolvær, Norway (2011), By the Way Bergen, Norway (2006) and Gallery F15, Bergen, Norway (2004). She has also participated in group exhibitions including Dualities - Norwegian Contemporary Photography at the Sol Mednick Gallery, Philadelphia, USA (2007); The soldier, the Indian and the Old Man With a Broken Heart Galleri Kjuhb, Cologne, Germany (2006) and A Place in the Sun County Museum, Murmansk, Russia (2005). Born in 1973, she lives and works in Bergen, Norway.
Otobong Nkanga
Otobong Nkanga works as both a visual artist and performer, using media including installation, photography, drawing and sculpture. The work often interrogates political realities, considering notions of changing economies, mobility and displacement, especially within her home country, Nigeria. Her work has been included in exhibitions including Snap Judgment, Flow (Studio Museum in Harlem, New York), Arte inVisibile (ARCO, Madrid), the Sharjah International Biennial (United Arab Emirates), This is Now at L’appartement 22 (curated by Cecile Bourne-Farrell, 2009) and the IV Biennale of African Photography (Bamako, Mali). Born in 1974, she lives and works in Antwerp and Paris.
Kristina Norman
Kristina Norman is a visual artist and documentary filmmaker. Her work is primarily rooted in her immediate surroundings and maintains a consistent political and documentary commitment. Her work has been included in international exhibitions and festivals since 2006, including the Biennale of Young Artists (Tallinn) and the 5th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She represented Estonia at the 53rd International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Born in 1979, she lives and works in Tallinn.
Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. In 1995 he wrote The Missing and in 1999 he published his first novel, Our Fathers, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the International Dublin IMPAC Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was winner of the Holtby Prize for Fiction. His latest novel, Be Near Me, was named one of the 25 Books to Remember by the New York Public Library and went on to win the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. O’Hagan is a contributing editor and director of the London Review of Books. For the last nine years, Andrew O’Hagan has served as UNICEF’s first ever Ambassador for Literature. His new novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and his Friend Marilyn Monroe, will be published in May 2010.
Eleanor O'Keeffe
Eleanor O'Keeffe is creative producer of Stories of Order and Disorder. She has worked in the arts throughout the world, specialising in literary festivals. She was director of the Jaipur Literature Festival in India for two years, director of Shakespeare and Company Literary Festival in Paris and one of the founders of the Palestine Festival of Literature in the West Bank. In Marrakech, she headed the Jnane Tamsna Literary Salon, which will be revived in 2010. She now lives in London.
Bouchra Ouezgane
Bouchra Ouezgane is a dancer and choreographer. With Taoufiq Izeddiou and Saïd Ait El Moumen, Ouezgane founded Anania, a contemporary dance company in Marrakech that created the Marrakech dance festival On Marche. Her choreography, situated within the interactions between tradition and modernity, has been presented in festivals such as Meeting Points 5 (multiple international cities), the Festival of Voices of the Mediterranean (Lodève), and the Festival Montpellier Danse. Ouezgane’s 2009 work Madame Plaza, performed in collaboration with local popular singers, is inspired by the history of Moroccan cabaret singers called Aïtas. The dance reflects a desire to reinvigorate local dance traditions, as well as question historical constructions of femininity and freedom. Born in 1980, she lives and works in Marrakech.
Catherine Poncin
Catherine Poncin appropriates and then re-photographs images from old personal collections, flea markets and found archives. It is a process that often leads to intimate conversations with the owners of the photographs who choose to share their images and memories with the artist. Poncin uses these everyday simple images to construct a complex de-contextualizing of their provenance. Her recent solo shows include exhibitions at Ravissement, Faïencerie de Gien (Brussels), Vis à Vis, Théâtre Gérard Philippe (Saint-Denis, France) and the French Cultural Center in Constantine (Algeria). Born in 1953, she lives and works in Montreuil, France.
Pere Portabella
Pere Portabella is a Spanish filmmaker and producer whose avant-garde films have consistently pushed the boundaries of any one genre. His commitment to politics has been expressed in early implicit critiques of Franco within his work and in serving as senator for the Catalan government. In 1999, he was honoured with the Creu de Sant Jordi, the highest possible recognition from the institutions of the Generalitat de Catalunya. His work has been included in exhibitions and festivals such as Documenta 11, the Buenos Aires Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival, as well as at institutions including the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). Born in 1929, he lives and works in Barcelona.
Alexandra Pringle
Alexandra Pringle is Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury. She began her career in publishing at the magazine Art Monthly in 1976. Two years later she joined Virago Press where she edited the famous Virago Modern Classics series and was made Editorial Director in 1984. In 1990 she joined Hamish Hamilton as Editorial Director and four years later became a literary agent. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999. Her list of authors includes Donna Tartt, Ahdaf Soueif, Kamila Shamsie, Barbara Trapido, Jhumpa Lahiri, Richard Ford, Khaled Hosseini, Margaret Atwood, Esther Freud, Hanan al-Shaykh, Ronan Bennett, William Boyd and Colum McCann.
R22 Radio
The R22 web-radio is broadcasting LIVE from Marrakech during the 3rd AiM International Biennale opening days, from 18-24 November 2009. Everyday during the opening week a live program will be conceived by the R22 team, artists and curators participating or visiting the show. R22 Radio was initiated by Abdellah Karroum and developed with Pascal Semur. Special programs are produced by Emma Chubb, Abdellah Karroum and Pascal Semur. (www.radioapartment22.com)
Younès Rahmoun
The work of Younès Rahmoun is based on repetition and spirituality with Buddhism, naturalism, mathematics and the artist’s personal life as strong influences. Since his graduation from Tetouan’s National Institute of Fine Arts in 1998, Rahmoun has explored different techniques including drawing, installation and video. His recent exhibitions include L’appartement 22 (Rabat), Galerie FJ (Casablanca) Doual’art (Douala, Cameroon) and the Singapore Biennale. Born in 1975, he lives and works in Tetouan, Morocco.
Anneka Rice
Anneka Rice is a broadcaster and writer from London. BBC trained, she has presented over 30 different series for the BBC, ITV and C4, as well as working as a journalist and newsreader in Hong Kong. She is best known in the UK for her award-winning series Treasure Hunt and Challenge Anneka. The Challenge team have worked on over 60 projects around the world, from renovating Romanian orphanages to equipping a Malawi refugee camp. She is currently working on a version of the programme for Hollywood.
Jose Roca
José Roca is a curator and critic. In Philadelphia he is currently Artistic Director of Philagrafika 2010, after managing the highly respected Banco de la República in Bogotá for ten years. Recently he was co-curator of the I Poly/graphic Triennial (San Juan, 2004) and the 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006), and served on the awards jury for the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). After co-curating Cart[ajena], a series of urban interventions in Cartagena, Colombia (2007), his upcoming works include Välparaíso, a series of urban interventions in Valparaíso, Chile, as well as Muntadas: Mechanisms of the Image (Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil). He lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia and Philadelphia, USA.
Giles Round
Giles Round's paintings, sculptures and objects utilize the formal language of design to create work that traverses the boundaries of functionality and formalism. Round has collaborated on many live events with Mark Aerial Waller such as Simon & Radioactive Flesh, Taverna Especial and The Glittering Canon in Athens, Rotterdam, London and Istanbul. Recent exhibitions and events include Living Structures, S1 Artspace, Sheffield; Kafe Pittoresk: L'Expérience du Monde Visionnaire, Park Nights, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London; Idealismusstudio, Grazer Kunstverein; Simon & the Radioactive Flesh Plaka, Athens; Taverna Especial Soup Kitchen, Manifesto Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London; Strange days & nights in nought to sixty, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and XLOMFCNHNG, Gallery Four, Dublin.
Rasha Salti
Rasha Salti is an independent curator and writer who, since 2005, has been Creative Director of CinemaEast, a biennial of recent films from North Africa and the Middle East and their diasporas. Salti has collaborated on projects including the first Lebanese film and video festival in postwar Lebanon Image-Quest (with Moukhtar Kocache, Beirut, 1995) and Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices (Beirut, 2003, 2005, and 2008). In 2006, she curated a touring retrospective of Syrian cinema and edited and translated a volume on the same subject to coincide with the exhibition, titled Insights into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Filmmakers. She lives and works between Beirut and New York.
Jerome Schlomoff
Jérôme Schlomoff works as a photographer and cinema director. He has focused on portrait photography since 1984, particularly in capturing practicing contemporary artists. These deeply intimate images can be contrasted with his poetic photographs and films that examine the link between architecture and photography, as well as the dialogue between tradition and modernity within architectural spaces, usually devoid of people. Since 2000, he has also experimented with pinhole cameras. Born in 1961, he lives and works in Amsterdam.
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel’s work has been exhibited all over the world. His work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Guggenheim Museums, New York and Bilbao; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo; The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; The National Gallery, Washington D.C; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Kunst Museum, Basel and the Foundation Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxemborg. In 1996 he wrote and directed the feature film Basquiat. The film was in the official selection of the 1996 Venice Film Festival. In 2007, Schnabel directed his third film, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. He was awarded Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globes. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Director. Born in 1951, he lives and works in New York City and Montauk, Long Island.
Wael Shawky
Batoul S’Himi transforms common household objects – a stovetop coffee pot, a pressure cooker – into tools of resistance and ethical engagement. Her art objects question social conventions and the relationship of women to the interior in particular. S’Himi graduated from Tetouan’s Academy of Fine Arts (Morocco) in 1998 and co-founded the independent art space, L’Espace 150x295 (Martil) in 2005 with artist Faouzi Laatiris. Her work has been exhibited at L’appartement 22 (Rabat), the Musée des Arts Decoratifs (Paris) and in the Dak’art Biennale (Dakar). Born in 1974, she lives and works in Martil, Morocco.
Hardeep Singh-Kohli
Hardeep is a writer, comedian, actor, presenter, director and cartographer. He regularly writes for the Guardian and the Independent. His book Indian Takeaway: One man’s attempt to cook his way home was published in 2008. In August 2009 he performed a one-man show, The Nearly Naked Chef, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Batoul S'Himi
Batoul S’Himi transforms common household objects – a stovetop coffee pot, a pressure cooker – into tools of resistance and ethical engagement. Her art objects question social conventions and the relationship of women to the interior in particular. S’Himi graduated from Tetouan’s Academy of Fine Arts (Morocco) in 1998 and co-founded the independent art space, L’Espace 150x295 (Martil) in 2005 with artist Faouzi Laatiris. Her work has been exhibited at L’appartement 22 (Rabat), the Musée des Arts Decoratifs (Paris), and in the Dak’art Biennale (Dakar). Born in 1974, she lives and works in Martil, Morocco.
Kathryn Smith
Smith is a multidisciplinary research-based practitioner whose working methods are informed by art theory, praxis and an interest in forensic investigation. Of particular interest are the psychological aspects of criminal activity wherebyconnections are built through her practice, re-creating compelling narratives. She studied an MFA at Wits University and a PhD in Fine Arts at Wits School of the Arts. Her major solo exhibition, Euphemism in 2004 toured six galleries and museums in South Africa. She has been a correspondent for Contemporary and Flash Art and a regular contributor to Art South Africa. Born in 1975 in Durban, she lives and works in Johannesburg.
Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999 and translated into more than 20 languages. She also wrote the well loved, In the Eye of the Sun and the collection of short stories, I Think of You. Soueif is also a political and cultural commentator. The London Review of Books has called her "a political analyst and commentator of the best kind" and her clear-eyed reporting and analysis is syndicated throughout the world. Her translation (from Arabic into English) of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah came out in 2004. In 2007, Soueif founded Engaged Events, a UK based charity. Its first project is the Palestine Festival of Literature, which took place in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jenin and al-Khalil/Hebron in 2008 and 2009.
Anna Steiger
Anna Steiger is a Mezzo Soprano. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London and subsequently with Vera Rozsa. She went on to join the Glyndebourne Chorus, quickly moving up to soloist when she jumped in to the title role in L’Incoronazione di Poppea to great critical acclaim. Having always had a voice that could sing either soprano or mezzo soprano, she has sung a huge and varied repertoire world wide. She has worked with many great directors and conductors such as: Chailly, Rattle, Ozawa, Harnoncourt, Haitink, Marriner and Nagano, Jonathan Miller, Peter Hall, Peter Sellars, Willy Decker, Nicolas Joel and Jerome Savary. Currently, she is performing Schonberg’s Pierrot Lunaire on tour in France and will be appearing in Opera de Lyon’s and Opera de Montpellier’s production of La Traviata.
Anne Szefer Karlesen
Anne Szefer Karlsen is an artist and curator. Recent curatorial projects include multiple exhibitions and event series with Flaggfabrikken Center for Photography and Visual Art (2004, 2007, 2008), TempoSkien, a temporary sculpture park in Bryggeparken (Skien, Norway 2008), traveling exhibition Return Flight (2006-2007), and Individual Communities (locations in New York and Romania, 2006). As well as many catalogues, her published writing includes articles for publications including Kunstjounalen B-Post, Replikk no. 21, and Kunsthåndverk. She was also member of the Artistic Board and curator for Kunstnarposjekt Suidal (Suidal, Norway, 2007, 2008). She lives and works in Bergen, Norway.
Abdellah Taia
Abdellah Taia was born in Rabat in 1973 to a poor family. He lived in the city of Salé until 1998. He now resides in Paris. He has written five novels in French inspired from his life. Among them: Le Rouge du Tarbouche (2005), Salvation Army (2006) and An Arab Melancholy (2008). His work has been translated into several languages. He has been nominated twice for the prestigious French literary Prize "Le Renaudot". He has also taught at Bard College, in New York in 2004. He has also co-wrote, with the French screenwriter Louis Gardel, a screenplay for the movie La Senora.
Naoko Takahashi
Naoko Takahashi’s performance work questions social interactions through either the physical or suggested presence of the artist. The frequent use of text in her installation, performance and video art examines the act of writing and interacts with notions of representation. The work complicates notions of fixed identities, engaging with dislocation and multiplicity. Takahashi was an artist-in-residence at the Sharjah Biennial 7 and her work has been exhibited at locations including the Al Ma’mai Foundation for Contemporary Art (Jerusalem) and the Royal Academy (London). Born in 1973, she lives and works in London.
Barbara Trapido
Barbara Trapido was born in Cape Town and came to London in 1963. She is the author of six novels – Brother of the More Famous Jack (Whitbread Special Prize 1982), Noah's Ark, Temples of Delight’ (shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award), Juggling, The Travelling Hornplayer and Frankie and Stankie (both shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize). Her seventh, Sex and Stravinsky, is to be published in May 2010. She lives in Oxford.
Justine Triet
Justine Triet is a visual artist whose video works question notions of the real, though they are by no means documentaries. Instead she considers crowds, notions of power, instability and representation in light of larger public often political, events. Her work has been included in exhibitions including at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), and the Lyon Biennale. Born in 1978, she lives and works in Paris
U-Cef
Born in Rabat, Morocco, U-Cef left for New York, finding the contemporary Moroccan music scene too limited at that time. There he regularly gigged with fellow Moroccan-exile, Hassan Hakmoun, and other reggae and hip hop acts. He immersed himself in hip hop, reggae and R&B, building a solid, profound and first hand knowledge of late 20th century urban music culture. The process continued when U-Cef moved to London in 1994, except this time the input came from drum 'n' bass and ragga styles. With its hard urban edge and complex-free marriage of Moroccan roots, hip-hop and drum'n'bass, his first album Halalium was definitely ahead of its time. His new album Halalwood reflects both U-Cef's evolving love-affair with rock and R&B and his ever widening circle of musical collaborators.
Nontsikelelo Veleko
Veleko came under the South African spotlight when she was nominated for the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2003, but it was during the 2006 group exhibition of contemporary African photography, Snap Judgments, at the ICP New York, curated by Okwui Enwezor, that Veleko came to international attention. Veleko has exhibited worldwide and won many awards including the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2008, with a solo show at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg in 2007. Recent group shows include Studio Museum in Harlem; South African National Gallery; Kunsthaus, Graz, Austria and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, 2007. Born in 1977 in Bodibe, North West Province, South Africa, she currently lives and works in Johannesburg.
James Webb
James Webb has contributed works to exhibitions and public spaces since 2001, his latest in un-announced actions in Paris as well as Berlin. Since 2005 his work There’s No Place Called Home, his exhibitions and a series of artist residencies have allowed him to travel the world. He has participated in the exhibitions CAPE 09, Cape Town’s second biennale of contemporary African Culture, South Africa; This Is Now 2, L’Appartment 22, Rabat, Morocco; 9th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France and (In)visible Sounds, at the Netherlands Media Institute, Amsterdam. He also created the site specific work Listening to the World Today for the BBC World Service in 2004. Born in 1975 in Kimberley, South Africa, he lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
Alan Yentob
Alan Yentob is the Creative Director for the BBC. He is the focal point for talent management across the whole of the BBC. He joined the BBC in 1968, becoming a producer in 1970. He specialized in arts features, edited Arena (1978–85) and became head of BBC TV, music and arts in 1985. In 1996 he was appointed director of programmes for BBC television and in 2004 took the role of BBC's creative director. He also presented and wrote the landmark documentary on Leonardo Da Vinci and became host of BBC One’s successful and acclaimed arts programme, Imagine.
Hisham Zaman,
Hisham Zaman is a Kurdish-Norwegian filmmaker whose acclaimed shorts include works such as Bawke (2005), which received more than 20 international awards. Zaman’s work engages with current political themes and events while maintaining the human dimensions of personal dilemmas and viewpoints. His work has been included in festivals such as the Norwegian Short Film Festival (Grimstad), the Middle East International Film Festival (Abu Dhabi), and the New York Kurdish Film Festival. Born in 1975, he lives and works in Norway.
John Zarobell
John Zarobell is currently assistant curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, after working as associate curator of European Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His new book, Empire of Landscape, will be published this winter. He lives and works in San Francisco.
researchers & writers of participants biographies
Ahmed Boughaba, Cecile Bourne-Farrell, Emma Chubb, Anne Szefer Karlsen, Abdellah Karroum, Jesse McKee, Jeanne Mercier, Holiday Powers, Ana Luiza Teixeira de Freitas.