Bogna Burska

Bogna Burska, a visual artist using many forms of expression and playwrite, currently a professor at the Faculty of Artistic Research and Curatorial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. From 2006 to 2024, she worked in the Intermedia Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Her works address themes of physicality, memory and emotion, often drawing from social narratives and visual pop-culture clichés. She juxtaposes what is beautiful with what is widely considered ugly, revolting or rejected. Blood-red colour is a recurring motif in her work: installations immersed in blood-red paint and red paintings. Her practice is often described as a meeting point between critical art and aesthetic inquiry. For many years, she also worked with found footage, examining the mechanisms through which contemporary narratives are produced and represented. She later returned to painting, which took on a new, organic and delicate form. She is the author of Nest, The End of Violence (with Magda Mosiewicz), Revolt of the Deaf. Renewal, and other texts presented in art galleries and theatre spaces. As of late, she has mainly been working with themes of communication and structures of mutual understanding in changing ecosystems. She exhibits in Poland and abroad; her work combines an artistic perspective with research and teaching. In 2006 together with Daniel Kotowski, she represents Poland at the Polish Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Daniel Kotowski

Daniel Kotowski, artist and performer. He works with video, installation, photography, and objects, directs performances, and initiates social processes. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2018) and the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (2016). He is currently completing his PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. He was nominated for the Paszport Polityki Award (2024) and received artistic scholarships from the City of Warsaw (2025) and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2026). In the same year, together with Bogna Burska, he represents Poland at the Polish Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. His works have been presented, among others, at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Studio Theatre in Warsaw, Pickle Bar in Berlin, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Sophie Scott

Professor Sophie Scott FMedSci FBA is Director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, and Head of the Speech Communications Group. She did her PhD at UCL between 1990-1993 and worked at for the Medical Research Council between 1993-1998, before returning to UCL to take up a series of Wellcome Trust Fellowships. She was Deputy Director at the ICN from 2014-2019 when she was appointed Director. She studies the neurobiology of human vocal communication, from speech and sound to social interactions and non verbal emotional expressions, such as laughter. She is an accomplished presenter, moderator and host, having given talks at school prize-givings and been a master of ceremonies for a British Science Association dinners. She was the 2017 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer and she was awarded the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday prize and lecture in 2021. Sophie has appeared on The One Show (BBC1) and Sunday Brunch (C4) Horizon (BBC2), David Baddiel: Social Media, Anger and Us (BBC2), and she has presented her work on Mary Beard’s Inside Culture Show (BBC2).

Annelyse Gelman

Annelyse Gelman’s most recent book, Vexations (University of Chicago Press, 2023), won the 2022 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Gelman is also the author of the poetry collection Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone (Write Bloody, 2014), and the experimental pop EP About Repulsion (Fonograf Editions, 2019), as well as the artist’s book POOL (Neck Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, BOMB Magazine, the PEN Poetry Series, The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Gelman also founded and directs Midst, an app and digital publishing platform focused on capturing, saving, and sharing the writing process. Each poem published in Midst includes an interactive timeline showing readers exactly how each published poem was written and edited—blank page to final draft. Midst is in active development, with the ultimate goal of becoming a free and highly accessible public resource. The project has commissioned emerging and acclaimed contemporary poets, including Forrest Gander, Franny Choi, Daniel Borzutzky, Mónica de la Torre, Xandria Phillips, and Dan Beachy-Quick. Read Midst at midst.press/read. Gelman’s language-based, trans-disciplinary projects are frequently ekphrastic and collaborative, using consumer-grade technologies and available materials to explore intimacy, vulnerability, and interdependence. Beyond publishing, her expanded poetics practice has resulted in a duet with Tavares Strachan's neon sculpture at the Blanton Museum of Art, a reading with Deborah Butterfield's sculptures at the Manetti Shrem Museum, and a performance for José Parlá's Amistad America mural (Austin, TX), and many other projects. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Deutsch-Amerikanische Fulbright-Kommission, New Zealand Pacific Studio, Fondation Jan Michalski, Fondation Thalie, and elsewhere (a full CV is available upon request). She holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers.