farid rakun

farid rakun, trained as an architect (B.Arch from Universitas Indonesia and M.Arch from Cranbrook Academy of Art), wears different hats dependent on who is asking. He is a part of the artists’ collective ruangrupa with whom he co-curated TRANSaction: Sonsbeek 2016 in Arnhem NL and provided a collective Artistic Direction for documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022). ruangrupa is a Jakarta-based collective established in 2000. It is a non-profit organization that strives to support the idea of art within urban and cultural context by involving artists and other disciplines such as social sciences, politics, technology, media, etc, to give critical observation and views towards Indonesian urban contemporary issues. ruangrupa also produce collaborative works in the form of art projects such as exhibition, festival, art lab, workshop, research, as well as book, magazine and online-journal publication. In 2018, learning from their experience establishing Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem and together with Serrum and Grafis Huru Hara, ruangrupa co-initiated GUDSKUL: contemporary art collective and ecosystem studies (or Gudskul, in short, pronounced similarly like “good school” in English). It is a public learning space established to practice an expanded understanding of collective values, such as equality, sharing, solidarity, friendship and togetherness.

Hou Hanru

Hou Hanru is a prolific writer and curator based in Paris and Rome. He was Artistic Director of MAXXI (National Museum for 21st Century Arts, Rome, 2013-2022). He is an advisor for numerous cultural institutions including Power Station of Art, Shanghai, Times Museum, Guangzhou, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, Westbund Art Museum, Shanghai. He frequently contributes to various journals on contemporary art and culture while serving at juries of major international awards. He also lectures in numerous international institutions and teaches at universities including Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, School of Visual Art, New York. He has curated and co-curated around 150 exhibitions for last three decades across the world including: China/Avant-Garde, National Museum of Art of China, Beijing, 1989; Cities On The Move, 1997–2000; Shanghai Biennale, 2000; Gwangju Biennale, 2002; Venice Biennale -- French Pavilion, 1999, Zone of Urgency, 2003; Chinese Pavillion, 2007, The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2005; The 10th Istanbul Biennial, 2007; The 10th Biennale de Lyon, 2009, The 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013，Growing in Difference, the 7th Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture, UABB 2017-2018. His recent projects include: “On Kawara, Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules”, Taikwun, Hong Kong, 2025, “Home and Beyond – chapter 1, Hou Hanru’s curatorial journey”, Power Station of Art, Shanghai and Sea World Contemporary Art Center, Shenzhen, 2025-26.

Suzanne Lacy

Suzanne Lacy is renowned as a pioneer in socially engaged and public performance art. Her installations, videos, and performances deal with sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, labor and aging. Lacy’s large-scale projects span the globe, including England, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Ireland and the U.S. Her work has been reviewed in major periodicals and books and she exhibits in museums across the world. Also known for her writing, Lacy edited Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and authored Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974-2007. She is a resident artist at 18th Street Arts Center.

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is known for a practice that overturns traditional exhibition formats in favor of social interactions through the sharing of everyday activities such as cooking, eating and reading. Creating environments that reject the primacy of the art object, and instead focus on use value and the bringing of people together through simple acts and environments of communal care, Tiravanija’s work challenges expectations around labour and virtuosity. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. He also helped establish an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located near Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. He has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major solo shows include: Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024); Luma Arles, Arles (2024); MoMA PS1, New York (2023); Cultuurcentrum Strombeek, Grimbergen (2022); ICA, London (2019); Hirschhorn Smithsonian, Washington (2019); National Gallery Singapore (2018); Museumplein, Amsterdam (2016); YBCA, San Francisco (2015); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas (2014); Park Avenue Armory, New York (2013); Bonnierskonsthall, Stockholm (2011); Kunsthalle Bielefield (2010); Museé de la Ville de Paris (2005); Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Chiang Mai University Art Museum (2004); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997). Tiravanija’s work has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards including the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lucelia Artist Award, the Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2004) and the 2010 Absolut Art Award. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija also co-founded an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located outside Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie

Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative operates in South Rotterdam’s Feijenoord area. Evolved from an art project conducted in the area by the Freehouse Foundation in 2008. In 2013, they set up the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative, an umbrella organisation, and handed over all our activities and the cooperative work spaces to the cooperative. Freehouse, is now part of this cooperative, as one of the members together with many shopkeepers, inhabitants and the cooperative workspaces they initiated. The goal of this neighbourhood cooperative is to stimulate sustainable local production and entrepreneurship, by developing local skills and setting up chains of collective production. They aim at producing economic opportunities, leveraging political power to shift policy, and negotiating economic advantages by reinvesting profits in the area. The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative links existing workspaces, entrepreneurs, producers, social organizations with the market. They encourage sustainable local production, knowledge exchange, cultural development and entrepreneurship based on shared responsibility and participation.

Sven-Olov Wallenstein

Sven-Olov Wallenstein is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm, and the editor of the online journal Site Zones (https://www.sitezones.net/). He is the translator of works by Winckelmann, Lessing, Kant, Hegel, Frege, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Rancière, Agamben, and Adorno, as well as the author of numerous books on philosophy, contemporary art, and architecture. Recent publications include: Robert Smithson (2025), Adornos musik (2024), Aisthesis: Estetikens historia (2 vol., ed. with Cecilia Sjöholm, 2023), Den sista bilden: Det moderna måleriets kriser och förvandlingar (2022), Critical Theory: Past, Present Future (ed. with Anders Bartonek, 2021), Spacing Philosophy: Lyotard and the Idea of the Exhibition (2019, with Daniel Birnbaum), Upplysningens estetik: Nedslag i 1700-talet (2019), and Adorno: Negativ dialektik och estetisk teori (2019).

Felix Krell

Dr. Felix Krell is a Post-Doc at the ‘Department of Media Use and Digital Cultures’ within the faculty for Communication Science at Paris Lodron University Salzburg. His work focuses on the ethnographic study of emerging virtual communities in new media environments, specifically in the context of micro-forums, livestreaming and Social VR. He recently published his dissertation “Life in Virtual Reality”. He further co-founded and acts as a board member for the “Sociology of Digital Games” working group within the German Sociological Association. ORCID: 0000-0002-9987-2719