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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | I AM YOUR BODY

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Screening AM YOUR BODY_von Marco Donnarumma_bei PACT Zollverein in Essen_(C)Dirk Rose_Auswahl

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | I AM YOUR BODY

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Several projects have been selected as part of the new Media Art Fund and Media Art Fellows funding programmes. What do they all have in common? A co-operative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to investigate current issues and developments in the fields of art, technology and society. In the second series of the podcast, journalist Sophie Emilie Beha wants to find out from the people involved what other ideas and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In behind the screens – behind the scenes, she talks to artists, curators and researchers from NRW about topics that concern and affect them. They conduct research together: into the essential, the hidden, points of friction and interfaces with society that can be found in the projects.

Episode 15: I AM YOUR BODY

How is sound perceived by those who do not hear it? How does one listen to something that cannot be heard? Sound is most often considered through the normalizing viewpoint of the non-deaf. If I become your body, what does sound become for me?

These are a few questions discussed in the new episode of the podcast “behind the screens – behind the scenes” by medienwerk.nrw. Journalist Sophie Emilie Beha talks with artist Marco Donnarumma about his project I Am Your Body. The project artistically and scientifically engages with the relation between sound, AI and the embodied knowledge enshrined in D/deaf and hard of hearing bodies. It originates from reflections on Marco’s own hearing condition and builds on his previous works with AI and robotics that investigated technology and body politics. “I Am Your Body“ is based on a collaborative process of artistic research with other d/Deaf people. A working group of D/deaf and hard-of-hearing people was selected through an open call. The group met in regular sessions and shared, analysed and collected personal accounts of their embodied experience of sound and technology.

As a result of this research, Marco Donnarumma presented a film installation and a performance and a round table with the Group participants and the public. This took place at PACT Zollverein in Essen, where he was residing as an artistic research fellow in 2023.

Download a transcript of this conversation here

Marco Donnarumma (DE / IT) is an artist, performer, stage director and theorist weaving together contemporary performance, new media art and interactive computer music since the early 2000s. He manipulates bodies, creates choreographies, engineers machines and composes sounds, thus combining disciplines, media and technology into an oneiric, sensual, uncompromising aesthetics. He is internationally acknowledged for solo performances, stage productions and installations that defy genres, and where the body becomes a morphing language to speak critically of ritual, power and technology.
More info about Marco Donnarumma

Founded in 2002, PACT Zollverein in Essen is a production house with a special focus on performing arts in relation to science, contemporary theory and social topics. The house initiates and promotes experimental, artistic and transdisciplinary forms of knowledge production. Within an international stage programme, PACT presents co-productions, premieres and guest performances and realizes discursive formats such as symposia and festivals in the platform area. As a residency venue, PACT is a central place of work and activity for international and local artists. Together with six other central institutions in Germany, PACT is a member of the Alliance of International Production Houses.
More info about PACT Zollverein

Sophie Emilie Beha is a multimedia music journalist. She works in various contexts, including music, text, language, curation, improvisation, dramaturgy and poetry. Sophie moderates festivals, concert introductions, podcasts and panel discussions. She is also an author and presenter for various public broadcasters. Furthermore, she curates interdisciplinary events, realizes transmedia compositions and works as a dramaturge for ensembles.
More about Sophie

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Audience Participation Lab

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Audience Participation Lab

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Episode 12: Audience Participation Lab

For the latest episode of the Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes journalist Sophie Emilie Beha visits Berlin to talk to creative technologist and media art fellow Lisa Passing and Maren Becker from the theatre and performance network STERNA | PAU about their project Audience Participation Lab. As part of the project, they jointly developed digital tools for productions that combine theatre and computer games in a playful way. In a WG’s kitchen, Sophie, Maren and Lisa talk about what theatre and gaming can learn from each other and what experiences they have had in the fusion of these two genres outside classical dramaturgy. Especially for the release of this podcast episode, the digital archive of the production trolllike will also be reopened for your visit here. Find out what it’s all about, what the description rogue-like actually means and which country Maren is working in this summer in the new episode.

Lisa Passing works as creative technologist and artist with a focus on interaction with technology on an individual and societal level. They combine experience in software and video game development with activism as well as policy work around open source and open data. They is a member of the feminist hacker collective Heart of Code.
Find out more about Lisa Passing

Maren Becker is performance artist, musician and production manager in Bochum. They studied cultural studies and theatre studies as well as the MA Staging the Arts and the Media in Hildesheim. Maren is focusing on political performances, feminism and the emancipatory potential of DIY musical production and Bass playing. In the past they worked for I can be your translator, PENG Kollektiv, HELIOS Theater Hamm and Hiraeth Kollektiv. Maren is part of STERNA | PAU.

STERNA | PAU is a theatre and performance network from Bochum, Dortmund and Berlin. The artists create theatre for young people and adults and are constantly trying out new forms of participation. They enjoy working with non-human actors and transferring theatre into digital spaces. The focus is primarily on living together and relationships in all forms, as well as the question of how these are shaped by technology, digitality and pop culture. STERNA | PAU is a theatre collective that produces queer-feminist performances for young audiences that deal with topics such as mythology, punk, digitalisation and music. They are searching for ways to develop feminist storytelling and feminist dramaturgy. STERNA | PAU’s works have been invited to the WESTWIND Festival, FAVORITEN Festival and HAU4 Artist Lab, among others. The collective is part of the Freischwimmen network and is working together with FFT Düsseldorf on the current productions ghostlike and trolllike.
Find out more about STERNA | PAU

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | (RE)IMAG(IN)ING THE DIGITAL DOCUMENT OF DANCE

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | (RE)IMAG(IN)ING THE DIGITAL DOCUMENT OF DANCE

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Episode 11: (RE)IMAG(IN)ING THE DIGITAL DOCUMENT OF DANCE

In this new episode of the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes, journalist Sophie Emilie Beha discusses the research project (RE)IMAG(IN)ING THE DIGITAL DOCUMENT OF DANCE, which was organised as part of the media art fellowship at the Theater im Depot. In an interview, artist and choreographer Kiraņ Kumār, software engineer Matthias Härtig and theatre director Jens Heitjohann talk about their experiences from the project, which explores the understanding of dance as a universal form of movement. This is facilitated by a specially programmed digital capturing method that creates a kind of digital essence of dance. In five years of field research, Kiraņ Kumār has incorporated a plethora of archival, archaeological, ethnographic and choreographic materials from India and Indonesia into this experiment, creating a dialogue with yogic-tantric practice. In a concluding workshop, participants were introduced to a transdisciplinary practice at the interface of dance, visual arts and new media.

Kiraņ Kumār is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and author. His work focuses on the decoding of the human body-mind through a threefold practice of dance as art, science and ritual – resulting in proposals on how this understanding can enrich our world today. In Kumār’s works, these transdisciplinary investigations through performance, text, video, installation
and archiving as forms of publication in a dialogue with urgent personal and global problems.
Find out more about Kiraņ Kumār

Matthias Härtig is a programmer for artistic interactive visual applications, real-time visual environments and stage projects – especially for dance, theatre, music and computer art. He is the initiator of the DS-X.org working group and founding member of the Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau (TMA).

Publication on media art fund and media art fellows

Order or download

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Over the past two years, two calls for proposals for the Media Art Fund and Media Art Fellows funding programmes of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia have enabled a wide range of new media art and digital culture projects in the state. New, transdisciplinary forms of knowledge production and new artistic narratives have been developed in collaboration with various actors from art, technology, science and society. The publication, in which the funded projects are presented, can be downloaded or ordered. To order, simply send a short, informal e-mail to info@medienwerk-nrw.de, stating the delivery address.

Please note: The publication is in German.

Edited by: Dr. Aude Bertrand-Höttcke
With contributions by: Dr. Aude Bertrand-Höttcke, Juliette Bibasse, Paul Feigelfeld,
Noemi Garay, Sarah Heppekausen, Julia Kaganskiy, Diana McCarty,
Anneliese Ostertag, Fabian Saavedra-Lara, Klaas Werner
Design: Jonas Herfurth, Ten Ten Team Design Studio,
Year: 2023
Language: German
Editing: textstern/Ulrike Ritter
Translation: Annika Tschöpe
Format: 175 mm x 270 mm, 94 Pages

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Counting Feelings

A wide angle photo of the Pop Up Disabled Data Center shows three large and colorful sails made from differently textured fabrics in front of large windows. The left sail is a soft violet sewn together with smaller orange and grey fabrics and has braille embroidered. The middle sail falls in round curvings and is bright yellow, orange and grey. The sail on the right is made from bubblewrap that shimmers in opacities and hovers above an orange blanket placed below. The sails are connected via orange straps that weave in and out of embedded metal gromets, and that are also holding them via attachments on the ceiling. From these sails, grey booklets containing the data sets dangle downwards on long grey strings that permeate the fabrics. Below, small clay figures are scattered across on the floor.

datasetofweight_01.jpg In the middle of this photo, an orange blanket floats, folds and rests across a dark grey bench. The blanket is made from a warm knitted textile, while the pockets are shiny and look smooth to the touch. From viewing alone, the contents of the pockets cannot be determined, but it is clear that the materials are different. Around the blanket, there is floor space with small white clay figures arranged around vinyl fonts. Above, there are two fabric sails: One is an orange textile, one is a fabric made from bubblewrap. On the left, a booklet is dangling down from above so that it can be picket up and read when sitting down and using the blanket.

A grey booklet with the title "Data Set of Weight. Collecting of objects and materials within a blanket" held together by a large metal ring is dangling in front of a blanket made from knitted orange textile onto which a glossy plastic-like pocket is sewn on the right.

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Counting Feelings

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Several projects have been selected as part of the new Media Art Fund and Media Art Fellows funding programmes. What do they all have in common? A co-operative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to investigate current issues and developments in the fields of art, technology and society. In the second series of the podcast, journalist Sophie Emilie Beha wants to find out from the people involved what other ideas and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In behind the screens – behind the scenes, she talks to artists, curators and researchers from NRW about topics that concern and affect them. They conduct research together: into the essential, the hidden, points of friction and interfaces with society that can be found in the projects.

Episode 10: COUNTING FEELINGS

COUNTING FEELINGS is an artistic research project by the arts-design duo MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr) that considers data for Trans* and autistic lives and engages it for our embodiminded positions to re-count (tell about) and ac-count (claim political agency) for our experiences differently. Moving from a politics that asserts ‘nothing about us without us’, COUNTING FEELINGS celebrates Trans* and autistic authorship, figuring our politics of comradeship, embodied data practices and dreaming. This page offers recordings and PDFs of all data sets and lists that were developed during the fellowship period, as well as a podcast episode recorded with Sophie Emilie Beha and MELT.

Read Transcript

MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr) study and experiment with shape-shifting processes as they meet technologies, sensory media and pedagogies in a warming world. Meltionary (derived from “dictionary”), is a growing collection of arts-design-research engagements that cooks up questions around material transformations alongside impulses from trans* feminism and disability justice. Melting as a kaleidoscope like phenomena touches upon multiple topics at once: climate change, the potential for political reformulations, change over time and material transformation. MELT shares work in the forms of videos, installations, websites, lectures, workshops and courses.
Find out more about MELT

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Expanded Worlds

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Expanded Worlds

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Ten projects were selected as part of the new Medienkunstfonds and Medienkunstfellows funding programs. What they all have in common? A collaborative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to explore current issues and developments in the field of art, technology and society. Journalist Olga Felker wants to find out from the participants themselves what other thoughts and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes she talks to artists, curators and scientists about the essence of their projects and about what knowledge media art and digital culture can contribute to current socio-political debates.

Folge 7: Expanded Worlds

In order to experience a special media art project on site – in an environment away from museum presentation areas – the journalist Olga Felker made her way to the northern Ruhr area for a new episode behind the screens – behind the scenes. In Marl-Hüls she experienced the digital exhibition project Expanded Worlds live and took her tablet on a tour of media art works. Ten works by young artists from NRW appear on billboards in the urban space for visitors, which can be experienced with the help of a free app and augmented reality. What you see live is precisely replaced on the tablet or smartphone display with new content such as artistic videos, animations or acoustic-visual experiments. The project participants Georg Elben, museum director of the Skulpturenmuseum Marl, and Anastasija Delidova from Kollektiv 42 as well as art mediator Fionnuala Maher-Riek welcomed Olga in Marl and talked to her about the concepts and concerns behind Expanded Worlds, about dealing with new technological methods of art mediation and about the opportunities this approach holds for the museum collection.

Founded in 1982, the museum known to many as the “Glaskasten” lived up to its name: the entire exhibition area was completely surrounded by large windows. The collection of the Skulpturenmuseum Marl focuses on sculptures of classical modernism and contemporary art. In addition, there are three-dimensional works such as objects and installations. New media are another focus of the museum’s work. Since 1984, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl has been home to the Video Art Award, and since 2002, the Sound Art Award, which has been further developed into the EUROPEAN SOUNDART AWARD.
Find out more about Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Forms of Kinship

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Episode 6: Forms of Kinship

In the new podcast episode with Olga Felker we learn more about the exciting research of Media Art Fellow Kris Dittel (Rotterdam), who together with Aneta Rostkowska, director of Temporary Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art (Cologne), has launched the project Forms of Kinship. Kris and Aneta, as well as other invited guests, will approach diverse forms of kinship and social relationships beyond the traditional nuclear family in a variety of ways in a study group. In lectures and workshops with artists, thinkers, poets, and activists, they will not examine existing alternative models, but would like to collectively develop entirely new directions of thought. In the podcast, Olga, Aneta and Kris get into conversation and we learn about concepts like Family Abolition and how much the world we live in is based on structures that, among other things, are geared towards the privatization of care work.

Since 2012, the Temporary Gallery – Centre for contemporary art functions as charitable art association. Exhibition, mediation and cooperation have since formed the cornerstones of its program. Its special focus lies on the intersection of contemporary artistic and curatorial practice and theory as well as their discourse and embedding in a wider art- and cultural-historical, scientific and social context.
More info about Temporary Gallery – Centre for contemporary art

Kris Dittel is a curator, editor and occasional writer, based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Informed by her background in economics and social sciences, her curatorial practice pays attention to the social, political and economic context of her work. Her long-term research projects materialise in a multitude of ways, as exhibitions, performances, publications, talks, public events, and other. In 2022, she was a Medienkunstfellow NRW at the Temporary Gallery – centre for contemporary art in Cologne.
More info about Kris Dittel

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | TAB TALKS

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | TAB TALKS

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Ten projects were selected within the framework of the new funding programmes Media Art Fund (Medienkunstfonds) and Media Art Fellows (Medienkunstfellows). What do they all have in common? A cooperative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to explore current issues and developments in the field of art, technology and society. Author Olga Felker wants to find out from the participants themselves what other thoughts and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes, she talks to artists, curators and scientists about the essence of their projects and about the knowledge that media art and digital culture can contribute to current socio-political debates.

Episode 5: Tab Talks

The new episode of the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes is all about writing and how authors deal with the digital possibilities and challenges in their writing processes. In the Tab Talks project, funded as a Media Art Fellowship, Fellow Andreas Bülhoff of the Center for Literature (CfL) at Burg Hülshoff explores these experiences in his research and lets writers have their say. Together and in front of an audience, they explore new digital writing environments and provide insights into these partly unknown methods – quite comparable to users who present steps of their craft on Twitch or YouTube. In conversation with journalist Olga Felker, Andreas reports on his experiences and they reflect on the privacy of everyday things like folder structures and tabs in our browser windows.

Want to know more about Tab Talks?

X-Account from CfL, where Sonja Lewandowski tweets live about the events, creating a readable archive of her thoughts on the topic.
Download the Tab Talks zine, which is the result of a workshop with Allison Parrish.
More info on the previous events: Tab Talks 1, Tab Talks 2, Tab Talks 3
More info on previous workshops: Collaborative Workflows on Computers #1 und Collaborative Workflows on Computers #2

Since 2018, the Center for Literature at Burg Hülshoff has been developing projects between event, exhibition and dialogue as a place of artistic-practical research. Andreas Bülhoff conducts artistic and academic research on text and technologies. In 2020, he completed his doctorate at Goethe University Frankfurt on interface concepts of digital and post-digital text art. Most recently, the sound poetry LP ɅV – A Sound Writing Tool produced with Marc Matter was released (Research & Waves, 2020). Together with Annette Gilbert he is currently working on a Library of Artistic Print on Demand. He has been an in-house artist at the Center for Literature / Burg Hülshoff since 2022.
More info about Center for Literature auf Burg Hülshoff Projekte

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Sharing Space

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | Sharing Space

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Ten projects were selected within the framework of the new funding programmes Media Art Fonds and Media Art Fellows. What do they all have in common? A cooperative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to explore current issues and developments in the field of art, technology and society. Journalist Olga Felker wants to find out from the participants themselves what other thoughts and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes, she talks to artists, curators and scientists about the essence of their projects and about the knowledge that media art and digital culture can contribute to current sociopolitical debates.

Episode 4: sharing space

The fringe ensemble, founded in Bonn in 1999, is exploring a new understanding of encounter and proximity in the theater space together with the fellow and game designer Fehime Seven. In the project sharing space, the ensemble uses technological possibilities such as virtual and augmented reality as well as motion capture technologies to explore new situations in which the audience can meet each other in a hybrid way and perceive themselves as a community. Olga Felker, journalist and podcaster of behind the screens – behind the scenes, met Fehime and the team of the fringe ensemble to learn more about the research on interactive performance design that has developed within the framework of a media art fellowship of the state of NRW. What strategies did the theater makers use and what interesting insights into audience, communication technologies and theater space were they able to discover in their research? All this and more is now available in the new episode.

Please note: After the intro, the language of the Podcast switches to English!

Fehime Seven is a computer scientist and playwright from Istanbul, Turkey. She has shot documentaries and short movies in different locations in Europe. She has graduated from the master’s program at the IT University of Copenhagen in the Game Technology department. Alongside her study, she worked at Makropol as an XR developer. Also, she was the teaching assistant for the “Programming for Designers” course for one semester. She has been working on her new gamified award-winning theatre project “Map To Utopia” in collaboration with fringe-ensemble and Platform Theatre since 2019. She continues to work as a freelance developer on multiple game and transmedia projects.

Fringe ensemble from Bonn, Germany, exists since 1999 as a free theater-group. Since then, its founder and artistic leader Frank Heuel has developed and produced more than 80 pieces, series and projects with his professional ensemble.
More info about fringe ensemble

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | THE CASSETTE UNDERGROUND

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | THE CASSETTE UNDERGROUND

FeaturedPodcast

Ten projects were selected within the framework of the new funding programmes Media Art Fund and Media Art Fellows. What do they all have in common? A cooperative mindset and the ambition to use media art and digital culture to explore current issues and developments in the field of art, technology and society. Author Olga Felker wants to find out from the contributors themselves what other thoughts and goals lie behind the projects of art and cultural institutions and initiatives from all over NRW. In the podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes, she talks to artists, curators and scientists about the essence of their projects and about the knowledge that media art and digital culture can contribute to current socio-political debates.

Episode 3: The Cassette Underground

For the third episode of behind the screens – behind the scenes, journalist Olga Felker met media art fellow Wouter de Romph at the Inter Media Art Institute in Düsseldorf to learn more about the project The Cassette Underground, which is working intensively on this topic as part of a media art fellowship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Foundation director Linnea Semmerling also has her say, and together with the musicologist and DJ invited by IMAI she talks about the special role of cassettes, the networks of the 1980s associated with them, and the Foundation’s conservational responsibility.

Wouter de Romph is a musicologist who approaches the field from both a theoretical and practical point of view. After having studied Arts & Culture Studies and Philosophy (BA) in Rotterdam, he completed his studies in Applied Musicology (MA) in Utrecht, with a thesis on the D.I.Y. cassette networks of the 1980’s. Since, he has been involved in the music industry through his work for recordlabel, store and distributor Clone Records as well as through his role as DJ and radiomaker.

Dr. Linnea Semmerling studied cultural studies in Maastricht (BA) and art studies in Amsterdam (MA). She has worked on exhibitions at the ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), IKOB Eupen (BE), TENT Rotterdam (NL), and Marta Herford (DE). Furthermore, she has written for catalogs (ZKM Karlsruhe, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl), art magazines (Kunstforum International, Metropolis M), and professional journals (Organised Sound, Leonardo Electronic Almanac). Since 2020, she has been director of the IMAI—Inter Media Art Institute.

Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | A MODEL WORLD

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Podcast behind the screens – behind the scenes | A MODEL WORLD

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Episode 2: A Model World

In the second episode of behind the screens – behind the scenes, Olga Felker talks to curators Julia Kaganskiy and Juliette Bibasse about their research project A Model World, which was developed as part of the new Media Art Fellows programme. Julia and Juliette’s fellowship was based at the Stiftung Zollverein (Essen). It focuses on techniques for changing the climate, commonly known as geoengineering. The curators presented their research at the New Now Festival at Zeche Zollverein and are still working on making results available to the public on their website.

Julia Kaganskiy is an independent curator and cultural strategist working across art, design and technology with a focus on facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration.

Since 2009, Juliette Bibasse has been applying her skills to the digital art scene, creating connections and opportunities between artists, festivals and cultural actors.
More Information about A Model World

Portait: New Now festival, Juliette Bibasse – Julia Kaganskiy – A Calculated Risk workshop