June 2022

Sonya Schönberger is a visual artist based in Berlin and currently visiting fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. Her artistic practice is strongly influenced by historical themes in connection with biographical memories marked by breaks. Many of her works have developed out of different archives that she has created or found over the last years. Alongside these, she also works with public space in Berlin that are in a process of constant change due to political or social developments.
https://www.sonyaschoenberger.de

Michelle Caswell is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies. Her research on archives, memory, public history, and social justice has been widely cited in a range of fields. Her work helps to build a critical feminist approach to archival studies. She is the Director of UCLA’s Community Archives Lab and the co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive. In 2017, she co-edited a special issue of The Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies on Critical Archival Studies. She is also the lead organizer of the Archivists Against Collective. Her most recent book, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work, was published by Routledge in 2021. Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description.
https://michellecaswell.org

Sabine Vogel is a world class composer and improvisor who has played with George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, and Magda Mayas among many others.

Alex Nowitz brings a punk and jazz background to his work in sound poetry, gesture-controlled electronics, and what he calls multivocality. Collaborators include Sten Sandell, Tomomi Adachi, Magda Mayas, and many others.

Bobby Bradford (1934) is a jazz trumpeter, cornetist, bandleader, and composer with a formidable career. He developed a distinct language with John Carter and has performed with Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, George Lewis, and many others.

Will Alexander is best known as a poet that brings cosmic consciousnesses into illuminated availability. He’s also been teaching himself the piano for 30+ years. Author of Vertical Rainbow Climber, Kaleidoscopic Omniscience and The Sri Lankan Loxodrome among many others.

Lester McFarland has played bass for most of his life, extending its reach from foundation to orbiting sundial, gospel to bluegrass to funk to now.

Sonya Schönberger is a visual artist based in Berlin and currently artist-in-residence at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. In her work, she primarily focuses on autobiographical challenges in life caused by political change. Many of her works have developed out of different archives that she has either found or created herself. Alongside these, she works with public spaces in Berlin that are in a process of constant change due to political or social developments.

https://www.sonyaschoenberger.de

Born in Israel, Liat Yossifor has been living in the United States since 1989. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine and a B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Using a monochromatic palette, Yossifor's gestural brushstrokes explore the tension between figure and ground, action and stillness, sign and symbol.

https://www.liatyossifor.com/

Colin Hacklander, born in Minneapolis in 1986, is an avant-garde composer and percussionist with a background in post-tonal theory and electronic music who works primarily with the electronic musician Farahnaz Hatam with whom he leads the Berlin-based sonic entity, LABOUR. Together, their practice explores perception and social situations through digital sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, percussion, psychoacoustics, and sound for architectural spaces while fostering a heightened sensory awareness for the listener by promoting active listening, and recognising that acoustic space approaches one externally, yet remains primarily an internal space.

Farahnaz Hatam, born in Tehran in 1967, is a sound artist, composer and specialist-DJ, working primarily with SuperCollider, a digital sound synthesis programming environment. She has a background in molecular biology and works primarily with the musician Colin Hacklander with whom she leads the Berlin-based sonic entity, LABOUR. Together, their practice explores perception and social situations through digital sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, percussion, psychoacoustics, and sound for architectural spaces while fostering a heightened sensory awareness for the listener by promoting active listening, and recognising that acoustic space approaches one externally, yet remains primarily an internal space.