Invited speakers & tutors

Published on Tuesday, 06 February 2018 18:46

INVITED SPEAKERS:

Prof Dorita Hannah is a post-disciplinary researcher, artist, curator, performance designer and architect based at the University of Auckland School of Architecture (NZ) while Adjunct Professor of Creative Arts at UTAS (Australia) and of Stage & Space with Aalto University (Finland). Her practice-led research focuses on live events, installations and exhibitions, as well as urban scenographies and cultural environments. Dr Hannah co-edited Performance Design (2008), authored Event-Space (2018) and currently co-chairs the Performance+Design Working Group for PSi and the Theatre Architecture Working Group for IFTR. She has participated in the Prague Quadrennial as design director (2003), architectural commissioner (2011), selected exhibitor (1995-2015) and theory curator (2015). Her creative work has gained awards in architecture, art and design; including a UNESCO Laureate (1999), Gold/Silver medals at World Stage Design (2009) and NZIA Architecture Medal (2016). She co-conceived and curated Fluid States, a year-long globally dispersed festival of events for PSi (2015), as well as PhoneHome for Chile's 2017 Architecture & Urbanism Biennial. 

Dr Michael Schwab is a London-based artist and artistic researcher who investigates postconceptual uses of technology in a variety of media including photography, drawing, print-making, and installation art. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), co-editor of Intellectual Birdhouse. Artistic Practice as Research. (2012), co-editor of The Exposition of Artistic Research: Publishing Art in Academia (2013), editor of the book Experimental Systems. Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (2015) as well as the editor of the forthcoming volume Transpositions. Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research (2018).

Research and visual art have been the focus of many activities developed by Prof Henk Slager (Dean MaHKU Utrecht) over the last ten years. In 2006, he co-initiated the European Artistic Research Network (EARN), a network investigating the consequences of artistic research for current art education in symposia, expert meetings, and presentations. Departing from a similar focus on artistic research, he has also (co-) produced various curatorial projects, a.o. Translocalmotion (7th Shanghai Biennale 2008), Nameless Science (Apex Art, New York, 2009), As the Academy Turns (Collaborative project Manifesta, 2010), Doing Research (dOCUMENTA 13, 2012), Offside Effect (1st Tbilisi Triennial, 2012), Aesthetic Jam (Project Taipei Biennial, 2014), Experimentality (1st Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2015), Timely Meditations (5th Guangzhou Triennial, Asia Time, 2016), To Seminar (BAK, Utrecht 2016), and The Utopia of Access (2nd Research Pavilion, Venice, 2017). He recently published The Pleasure of Research (an overview of educational and curatorial research projects 2007-2014), Hatje Cantz, Berlin 2015.

TUTORS:

Dr Mika Elo (University of the Arts Helsinki) is professor of artistic research. His  research interests include theory of photographic media, philosophical media theory, and artistic research. He is participating in discussions in these areas in the capacity of curator, visual artist and researcher. In 2009-2011 he worked in the research project Figures of Touch. In 2012-2013 he co-curated the Finnish exhibition Falling Trees at the Biennale Arte 2013 in Venice. He is also a member of the editorial board of Journal for Artistic Research.

Assoc Prof Dr Lolita Jablonskiene is a contemporary art critic and curator based in Vilnius. From 2000 she headed the Contemporary Art Information Center (CAIC), which spun off from the Soros Foundation, and joined the Lithuanian Art Museum to work for Vilnius’ forthcoming National Gallery of Art (opened in 2009). In 2002 she was appointed chief curator of the National Gallery. Jablonskiene is an ex-commissioner of the Lithuanian pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2005. She has curated contemporary art exhibitions in her home country and abroad, contributed texts to Lithuanian and foreign art press; she lectures at the Vilnius Academy of Arts (associate professor). At present she writes a book on the development of contemporary art practices in Lithuania during the 1990s.

Dr Teemu Leinonen is a Professor of New Media Design at the Media Lab, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. He is a researcher, educator, designer and former academic-bureaucrat (Vice Dean for Research). Teemu holds over two decades of experience in the field of research and development of web-based learning. In 1997-1998 he worked as a researcher in the Digital Media Institute at the Tampere University of Technology developing a learning environment for secondary education. Since 1998 Teemu has led the Learning Environments’ research group of the Media Lab Helsinki at the Aalto University.

Teemu conducts research, design, and publishes in different forums. He has published two books, over ten peer-reviewed or invited book chapters, over twenty peer-reviewed scientific articles in journals and conferences and more than fifteen software prototypes. Furthermore, Teemu has served as a member of program committee, reviewer or jury member in over twenty international conferences and festivals.

Teemu is a well-known advocate of open source / free software in education, free knowledge and open education. He has delivered number of keynotes and invited lectures in conferences in all the six continents except Antarctica (please invite me!), has given in-service courses for teachers and carried out consulting and concept design for school, universities and ICT and media companies.

Assoc Prof Dr Vytautas Michelkevičius (Vilnius Academy of Arts) is the artistic director of Nida Art Colony since 2010. He is responsible for artistic programmes and colony’s stance in contemporary art world, including communication and networking with art professionals and audiences. Until 2014 he was curating Nida artist-in-residence programme and now he is occasionally doing studio visits and selecting artists together with the colleagues. Moreover he is editing Nida Art Colony Log and writing project applications as well as doing strategic planning and programming. Vytautas is a curator, publisher, art and media researcher, and associate professor in Vilnius Academy of Arts and Vilnius University. He holds a PhD in Communication studies (Thesis on Critical media theory and photography) from Vilnius University. He is interested in photographicallity of art and society, socializing through art, interdisciplinarity between art and research, artistic research, experimental teaching, and participatory curatorial practices. Vytautas has authored or edited more than 10 catalogues and books on media theory, art and photography since 2002. He is curating mostly group shows and in 2015 he was a curator of Lithuanian Pavilion in Venice Biennale with artist Dainius Liškevičius project Museum.

Dr Joanne Morra is a Reader in Art History and Theory at Central Saint Martins (CSM), University of the Arts London. She runs The Doctoral Platform at CSM, and is the Founding Principal Editor of Journal of Visual Culture. She has published widely on modern and contemporary art, in, for instance, New Formations, Art History, Journal of Modern Art, What is Research in the Visual Arts (eds. Holly & Smith). Joanne has edited many collections, including ‘The Limits of Death’ (MUP 2000), ‘The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future’ (MIT 2006), ‘Visual Culture: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies’ (4 volumes, Routledge 2006), ‘Acts of Translation with Bal’ (Sage 2007). Recent activities include the exhibition ‘Saying It’ (Freud Museum London 2012), ‘Intimacy Unguarded: Autobiography, Biography, Memoir’ (with Talbot, 2013), ‘50 Years of Art and Objecthood’ (with Green, Sage 2017), and ‘Inside the Freud Museums: History, Memory and Site-Responsive Art’ (I.B. Tauris 2017).