November 2022

Ali El-Darsa, Beirut-born, lives in Berlin and works mainly in video, film, performance and installation. He holds a Master of Visual Studies (MVS Studio) from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. His work examines microhistories, questions of identity and issues of belonging within transnational contexts — emphasizing the psychological and the specificity of time-based media in regard to creating networked and mediated memories and narratives. His research in performance art often manifests in forms of site-specific, endurance and durational work. El-Darsa's work has been exhibited internationally. His performance-based research, “Playground,” will be presented at the 5th Biennale de Casablanca in Morocco, and his feature film, “The Leopard,” currently in development, was nominated for the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize and the Assembly Lab of the Open City Documentary Festival, London.

Siska born as Elie Alexandre Habib in Beirut Lebanon in 1984 and graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts ALBA in Beirut with a master degree in cinema studies and film directing. After splitting his time between Beirut and Berlin for several years, he is now predominantly based in Berlin. His practice is often centered on archiveology examining sociopolitical narratives in relation to personal and collective pasts. Siska's work often questions the ruination of Arab cultural heritage. His use of film language and codes of cinematography, as strategic mediations to activate an archive, allows him to experiment with new forms of storytelling and his own biography. His practice usually starts with an intuitive approach, stretching documentary forms towards fictional territories while remaining faithful to the essential questions at sake managing somehow to extract a poetic, almost fairy-tale quality to the narratives he explores. Siska's work has been internationally exhibited, including Martin Gropius Bau, Paris 104, Beirut exhibition center, Mosaic rooms, gallery Imago Mundy among others.

Anna Haifisch was born in 1986 in Zwenkau. She studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. Since 2015 she has been drawing “The Artist”, a series of books about being an artist. “The Artist” is a bird-like, fragile being who, more or less successfully, moves in the art world. The “The Artist” books were published in several languages and in exclusive series for the New York Museum of Modern Art, the French newspaper Le Monde, the US website VICE.com, texts on art ‒ or 2021 for Art Basel in Basel and Miami.

Felix Kubin, born 1969 in Hamburg, is a composer, radio play maker, curator and media artist. At the age of 12, when a new optimistic shift within the home-recording era took place, he began recording his first sound experiments on a 4-track device. After that, his artistic universe expanded continuously and today includes futuristic pop, radio plays, electroacoustic music, lecture performances, contemporary chamber music and the record label Gagarin Records. Felix Kubin's music is driven by an enthusiasm for experimental pop, industrial noise, and 20th century avant-garde music. In 2018, Kubin was portrayed in Marie Losier's film "Felix in Wonderland."

Lukas Schilling, born 1989 in Darmstadt, studied product and object design at the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau - Faculty of Applied Arts Schneeberg, industrial design at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and design studies at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. Today he works as an artist and designer and lives in Halle an der Saale. In his design-theoretical and sculptural practice, he focuses attention on the modalities of subtle sensory experience. The aim of his work is not only to sharpen the senses, but also to raise awareness of the act of perception itself.

Since 1999, Eric Ojo has worked in different capacities for a number of print and online media houses in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. He is currently an Associate Editor at African Examiner Online, one of the pioneers of web-based journalism platforms in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. His reporting and editorial experience cut across a broad spectrum of subjects, including human rights, gender and sexuality, security, peace and conflict, development, health, environment as well as water and sanitation. Notably, Ojo’s reportage of incessant communal, ethno-religious crises, armed conflicts, banditry, terrorism, and other related forms of criminality, in the last eight years, has deplorably subjected him to a nagging trauma of psychological burden and horror-induced depression. Aside from that, he is also haplessly horrified by the increasingly shrinking civic space in his native country, particularly as it relates to the growing threats, restricted freedoms, harassment, intimidation, attacks and even death, which has created a very risky and toxic environment for journalism practice in the West African nation. This ugly trend and a host of other limitations have adversely affected his work activities in many ways.
Ojo holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) Degree in Mass Communication from the University of Nigeria and a certificate in Economic and Financial Journalism (IIJ) Berlin, Germany. In addition, he has also completed his course work and thesis for the award of a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Degree in Multidisciplinary Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He equally holds a Certificate in Sport Management from the University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa.