Delegates
Congress
in Berlin
The following delegates have already confirmed their participation:
Olja Andrynowska studied Religious Studies at the Jagiellonian University and Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Uppsala University; lived for a while in Tel Aviv, currently becoming a professional, writing vagabond.
Ariel
Efraim Ashbel (b.1982)
is a Tel Aviv and Berlin based performance/theater artist.
Since
2000, He’s been presenting his work in many
festivals and venues around Israel, such as the Akko
festival, Tmuna theater (TLV), hazira
performance art center (Jerusalem), the center
of contemporary art (TLV) and many more. He
studied theater at the School of Visual Theater in
Jerusalem, and his BA in philosophy and
interdisciplinary humanities at Tel
Aviv university. Between the years 2008–2010 he was
the associate artistic director of Tmuna’s
Intimadance Festival. In the first half of 2011 he moved to
Berlin following a scholarship from Goethe
Institute and the International Theater Institution, for an
internship at HAU. Since then he’s splitting his
time between Tel Aviv and Berlin, adjusting to the European
weather, DJ’ing and planning new vicious work, that
will continue to take him where no Yemenite gay’s gone
before.
Cicek Bacik is born in 1972 in Almus (Turkey). In the course of family reunification, she immigrated to Berlin in 1980. Between 1994 and 2003 she studied contemporary german literature and french philology at the Free University of Berlin and the Sorbonne III. During her studies she worked as a social worker in Muslim families. After completing her master’s degree, she began to work at Berlin Institute for Comparative Social Research (BIVS) as a researcher in the field of migration research. There she worked on projects such as “Political participation of migrants in the city” and “Government policy towards Muslim minorities in the European Union.” She was especially responsible for the scientific and administrative coordination of the project “Turkish television in Germany”. Between 2007–2009 she worked as a research assistant in the project “Muslims in Europe” at the European University Viadrina / Frankfurt Oder in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology. From 2010 to 2011 she worked as research associate in the Department of Economic and Social Geography in the project “Global Prayers, redemption and liberation in the city”, dealing with the means of science and art, new manifestations of religion in urban areas. In February 2012 she submitted her doctoral thesis on “Turkish television in Germany between market, state and mess” at the Philipps University/Marburg (department of political science). Between 2006 and 2009 she got a doctoral scholarship at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation. She currently works as a project assistant in the 7th Berlin Biennial with a focus on migration-specific artworks. Since tree years she is a board member of the Turkish Union in Berlin Brandenburg (Türkischer Bund in Berlin Brandenburg– TBB) — since March 2011 she is the spokeswoman of TBB. In March 2012, she was elected to the board of the Turkish community in Germany (Türkische Gemeinde in Deutschland) and to the board of the SPD in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. Political focal points: culture, media, urban development and immigration policy.
Raji Bathish was born in the town of Nazareth 1970, is a writer, screenplay writer and cultural activist, all his writings are in Arabic. Currently he is the editor of the queer blog in the Palestinian culture magazine “qadita.net”. Raji’s writings and articles are published in the Arab world and Israel-Palestine. Has released seven books in Nazareth, Amman-Jordan and Beirut. The Book “a room in Tel-Aviv”, published by : Arab institute for studies and research –Beirut 2007 is his most known. He has also contributed in the book: Solution 196–213: United States of Palestine-Israel by Joshua Simon (Ed.) an anthology of texts proposing exceptional solutions for the region. And also contributed in the anthology of Israeli revolution poetry in summer 2011.
Irad Ben Isaak is a writer and translator, working mostly with Yiddish, German and Hebrew texts. He grew up in Tel Aviv and studied Sociology and Central European Studies at the Tel Aviv University. In 2007 Irad immigrated to Berlin and finished his Master studies in “Sociology of Europe” (Masterstudiengang „Soziologie – Europäische Gesellschaften“) at the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin). Since 2011 Irad is married to Mariusz Kałczewiak – a Jewish-Studies researcher from Warsaw.
Christina von Braun, Born in Rome, school and high school in West Germany and London. Studies of Political Science and Sociology at New York University, N.Y. and Bonn, West Germany. From 1968 onwards freelance work as film maker and writer (1968–1969: New York, 1969–1981: Paris, France, 1981–1994: Bonn and Essen (Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen (1991–1993). Since 1994 Professor of Cultural History and Theory at Humboldt University in Berlin. Visiting professor at different universities in USA, Israel and France. Fields of Research: Gender, Media, Religion and Modernity, Antisemitism. Author of more than fifty films (documentaries, essays and fiction), twenty books and numerous essays on cultural history, gender and religion. From 1996–2005 head of the department of Gender Studies at Humboldt University, since 2012 coordinator of the newly founded Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin Brandenburg (Centre for Jewish Studies). Extra university functions: Vice president of the Goethe Institute. Recent Publications: Versuch über den Schwindel. Religion, Schrift, Bild, Geschlecht. Zürich/München 2001; Gibt es eine ‚jüdische’ und eine ‚christliche’ Sexualwissenschaft? Sexualität und Säkularisierung, Wien 2004; Glauben, Wissen und Geschlecht in den drei Religionen des Buches, Wien 2009; Der Preis des Geldes. Eine Kulturgeschichte, Berlin 2012. Co-author with Wolfgang Gerlach, Ludger Heid, Der Ewige Judenhaß, Christlicher Antijudaismus, Deutschnationale Judenfeindlichkeit, Rassistischer Antisemitismus Stuttgart/Bonn/Berlin l990/2000; with Bettina Mathes, Verschleierte Wirklichkeit. Die Frau, der Islam und der Westen, Berlin 2007.
Boris Buden is a writer and cultural critic in Berlin. He studied philosophy in Zagreb (Croatia) and received his PhD in cultural theory from the Humboldt University, Berlin. In the 1990s he was editor in the magazine Arkzin, Zagreb. His essays and articles cover topics related to philosophy, politics, and cultural and art criticism. Among his translations into Croatian are some of the most important works of Sigmund Freud. He is co-editor of several books and author of Barikade, Zagreb 1996/1997, Kaptolski Kolodvor, Beograd 2001, Der Schacht von Babel, Berlin 2004, Übersetzung: Das Versprechen eines Begriffs, (Translation: The Promise of a Concept), Vienna 2008. Zone des Übergangs, Frankfurt/Main, 2009.
Katarzyna Czeczot is a literary historian and critic at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her main field of research is Polish romanticism and gender studies.
Jakub Czupryński (b. 1980), guide, genealogist and researcher tracing Jewish roots in Poland, coordinator of local projects aiming at the preservation of Jewish heritage. Lives and plays football in Kraków.
Mikołaj Denderski, born 1987, Member of general public, MA in English Studies, comes from Poland.
Kinga Dunin is a sociologist, journalist and literary critic. Member of Political Critique, the most significant left-wing intellectual organisation in Poland.
Agata Dutkowska, artist, democratic educator, activist, city guide in Kraków. Contributed to the publication Cultural Representations of Jewishness at the Turn of the 21th Century and the book “Women of Kraków”(Jewish Women Trail). For many years involved with mentoring grassroot projects in Eastern Europe. Awarded twice with a price for young artists for city space art projects: the “Allen Ginsberg Krakow Walk” (2010) and “Jewish Sport Club Makkabi back in the game” (with Lukas Roth) awarded with an additional distinction by Jenny Holzer (Art Boom Festival 2011)- www.wraca-makkabi.pl.
Galit Eilat is a writer, curator and the founding director of The Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon. She is founding editor of Maarav — an online arts and culture magazine, as well as research curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Her projects tackle issues such as the political situation in the Middle East, activism (response ability) and political imagination.
Charles Esche is a curator, writer, director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and co-director of Afterall Journal and Books based at Central St.Martins College of Art and Design, London. Since 2000, Esche has (co)-curated numerous international exhibitions including (selection): An Idea for Living – Realism and Reality in Contemporary Slovenian Art, U3 – 6th Triennial of Contemporary Slovenian Art, Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (2010); Heartland, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2008–2009); Once is Nothing (co-organized with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), Brussels Biennale 1, Brussels, 2008; Becoming Dutch, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2007–2008; Forms of Resistance, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2007.
Reem Fadda joined the Guggenheim in 2010 as Associate Curator, Middle Eastern Art, Abu Dhabi Project. From 2005 to 2007, Fadda was Director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA) and worked as Academic Director for the International Academy of Art Palestine, which she helped found in 2006. She has been involved in many international exhibitions, including Liminal Spaces, a four-year artistic and political project consisting of conferences, tours, art residencies, and exhibitions in Palestine, Israel, and Germany; Ramallah Syndrome, part of the Venice Biennale in 2009; and Tarjama/Translation, organized by ArteEast, which featured 30 artists from the Middle East and Central Asia at the Queens Museum of Art, New York, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. In 2009, she curated the Riwaq Biennale, Ramallah, with Charles Esche. Fadda is on the general assembly of the International Academy of Art and Kamandjati Association, the selection jury of the Young Arab Theatre Fund, and the steering committee of Decolonizing Architecture. She was granted a Fulbright scholarship to pursue her Ph.D. at the History of Art and Visual Studies Department at Cornell University.
Berit Fischer has been working internationally as an independent curator since 1999. Previously based in New York and London (1997–2009), she currently works from Berlin. Her research and fields of interest lie in socially produced spaces, art as a producer of knowledge and as a means to permeate the status quo, in creating fields of action, and opening spaces for critical engagement. She has been giving tutorials, lectures and workshops internationally, including at Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, (Luxemburg), Freie Universität Berlin, Nottingham Trent University (UK) and Soma in Mexico City. Since 2006 she has worked for Afterall (London); she is on the advisory board for B32 (Maastricht) and was a cofounding curator of The Brewster Project ( New York, 2001). Curatorial projects include: Other Possible Worlds – Proposals on this Side of Utopia, NGBK (Berlin), Brooklyn Waterfront Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition (New York); Dumbo Arts Festival (New York); Intrude 366, Zendai MoMA (Shanghai); City Beats at BankART (Yokahama).
Igal Halfin was born in the Ukraine (former Soviet Union) and moved with his parents to Israel in 1973. His father was a communist but his sister married a Zionist and his parents decided to immigrate for otherwise they wouldn’t have seen their daughter ever again. He grew up in Kiriat Gat – an ethnically mixed development town in the south of Israel, did a full military service (1983–85) and then enrolled in Tel Aviv university, studying history and philosophy. In 1989 Halfin enrolled in Columbia graduate program in Russian history. Upon obtaining his PhD (1995) he returned to Israel and took a position in the history department at Tel Aviv University, where he teaches till this day. His professional interest is Communist Terror, with special emphasis on Stalinism. He focuses on ego documents (interrogations and victims’ confessions applying Foucauldian and Lacanian analytic tools to those sources). Today he lives in the city of Ashkelon, 4 km north of the Gaza strip and enjoys raising 3 children here despite intermittent Palestinian shelling.
Gil Hochberg, is an associate professor of Comparative Literature and the Director of the Graduate Program. Her work focuses on the intersections among psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, Literature and Cinema. She has published essays on a wide range of issues including: Hebrew Literature, Francophone North African literature, Palestinian literature, the modern Levant, gender and nationalism, cultural memory and immigration, film and memory, Language Politics, Mediterraneanism, and Minority Discourse. Her book “In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination” (Princeton University Press, 2007), examines the complex relationship between the signifiers “Arab” and “Jew” in contemporary Jewish and Arab literatures. Her current book project is a study of the Visual Politics of the Israeli-Palestinian entitled Visual Occupations: Violence, Visibility & Visuality at a Conflict Zone.
Nataša Ilić is a free-lance curator, a member of a curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia. WHW organizes a range of production, exhibition and publishing projects and directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb. Since 1999 WHW has been intensively developing models based on collective way of working, creative use of public space and collaboration between partners of different backgrounds. Primarily shaped by the format of the exhibition, WHW projects have been conceived as platforms for progressive modes of cultural production and reflections of social reality. What, how and for whom, the three basic questions of every economic organization, concern the planning, concept and realization of exhibitions as well as the production and distribution of artworks and the artist’s position in the labor market. These questions formed the title of WHW’s first project dedicated to the 152nd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, in 2000 in Zagreb, and became the motto of WHW’s work and the title of the collective. WHW’s more recent exhibitions are 11th Istanbul Biennial What Keeps Mankind Alive? (2009), Art Always Has its Consequences, former building of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2010), Ground Floor America, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2010), One needs to live self-confidently… watching, Croatian pavilion at the 54th Venice biennial, (2011), Details, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2011), Second world, steirischer herbst, Graz, (2011). Currently WHW is curating next edition of Meeting Points, international multidisciplinary event that comprises visual arts, film, theater, dance, music, and performance, taking place in various cities in Middle East, North Africa and Europe (2013). Ilić lives and works in Zagreb and Berlin.
Jaś
Kapela is
a writer, columnist and member of Krytyka Polityczna,
author of two books of poems, two novels and a collection
of essays. His most recent book is “Jak odebrał
dzieci
Terlikowskiemu”, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej,
2011.
Christiane Ketteler, born on 9th February 1977, studied Modern Literature and Philosophy at the Freie University Berlin, Masterthesis on Joseph Roths Wandering Jews. Activists in several Berlin-based political groups, worked on Critical Theory, Critique of Religion and Antisemitism and the relationship between politics and art. Works as a German teacher, as a translator and author in Berlin. PHD Student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltmore in Fall 2012
Cilly Kugelmann is a program director and vice director of the Jewish Museum Berlin since September 2002. She came to the museum as head of the education department in May 2000. Before then she worked in Frankfurt am Main at the city’s Jewish Museum, directing the education program as well as public relations, and acting as curator (1986–2000). Born in Frankfurt am Main in 1947, Cilly Kugelmann left for Israel in 1966 where she first spent a year as an agricultural laborer on a kibbutz in Galilee. She went on to study art history and general history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She returned to Germany in 1971 and began a degree in educational sciences, sociology, and psychology. Alongside her studies and then subsequent to them (1972–1999), she organized conferences within the context of political education on the subjects of Jewish history and the conflict in the Middle East. After her degree she lead courses on integration for immigrants and asylum-seekers from Eastern European states for the National Education Federation (1978–1982), built a self-help company for the chronically ill at the department for psychiatry and social psychiatry of the Elisabeth Foundation Hospital in Darmstadt (1982–1985), took on teaching posts from the educational sciences department of the Ruprecht-Karls University (1982–1984), where she collaborated on an empirical investigation into Sinti and Roma’s experiences of persecution during the National Socialist era (1984–1986). She has been part of the editorial team of the magazine “Babylon, Contributions to Contemporary Jewish Living” since 1980 and has been involved in the publication of several books on the post-war history of Jews in Germany and on anti-Semitism.
Julie Land, (b. 1981) is an artist (focusing on video and installation art) and sociologist living in Krakow, Poland and born in the United States. Much of her work, both as an artist and academic focuses on sexuality, religion and conflict. She teaches courses on gender and social movements at the Jagiellonian University and is also involved in organizing Krakow’s Queerowy Maj/Queer May festival. As part of her work as an artist she often travels to East Jerusalem, where she conducts film and video workshops with Palestinian youths. This is as important for her work as for her understanding of the world. She is currently completing her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and PhD in sociology from the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Annette Jael Lehmann, professor of Visual Culture, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Freie Universität Berlin. Interests in no precise order: Possibilities of an imaginary renaissance/resistance; the philosophy of Buber and Rosenzweig; my current lecture on the Theory and History of Perfomannce Art, Mapping of the Unknown; LGBT Rights, the seductions of Design and/or Fine Dining … (www.annette-jael-lehmann.de)
Erica Lehrer (Ph.D. University of Michigan, 2005, Cultural Anthropology) is Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and Anthropology-Sociology at Concordia University in Montreal, where she also holds the Canada Research Chair in Post-conflict Studies. She is author of Unquiet Places: Encounters with Jewish Heritage in Post-Communist Poland (Indiana U. Press 2013), and co-editor of Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places (Palgrave 2011). She is Director of CEREV, the Centre for Ethnographic Research & Exhibition in the aftermath of Violence. Her current interests include experimental ethnography, critical curatorial work, and public humanities.
Romm Lewkowicz is a London Based Cultural Anthropologist, Journalist and migrant rights Activist. Lewkowicz holds a B.A in European History from Tel Aviv University, and an M.A in Cultural Anthropology from University College London. Long active in promoting the rights of non-Jewish migrant workers in Israel, Lewkowicz had served as the Public Policy Manager of the Israeli “Hotline for Migrant workers”, and as the Asylum Application Coordinator at the “African Refugee Development Center”. Engaging academic research, activism and art, Lewkowicz had curated the migration film festival in Tel Aviv cinemateque 2005–2009, written for “Haaretz” and “Ha-ir” papers and served as judge for Tel Aviv’s international LGBT film festival. His current research revolves around Eritrean exiles in London and Tel aviv, focusing on the interplay between visa regimes and migrants’ political organization.
Nina Möntmann is a curator and Professor of Art Theory and the History of Ideas at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Recent projects include the group show ‘If we can’t get it together. Artists rethinking the (mal)functions of community’ (The Power Plant, Toronto, 2008/09), and in 2009 ‘The Jerusalem Show: Jerusalem Syndrome’ (together with Jack Persekian). Until 2006 she worked as a curator at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art (NIFCA) in Helsinki. As a curator of the ‘New Patrons’, the ‘European Platform for an Art of the Civil Society’, she is currently curating a project with Harun Farocki in Hamburg. Nina participated in the long-term Israeli/Palestinian art and research project ‘Liminal Spaces’, and in 2010 was a research fellow at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. She organized a number of symposia amongst others for Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Power Plant in Toronto, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School in New York. Her essays have been published in numerous critical readers and catalogues. She is a correspondent for Artforum, and contributed to art journals and magazines such as Le Monde Diplomatique, Parachute, Paletten, Metropolis M, Texte zur Kunst and De-Bug. Recent publications include the edited volumes New Communities (Toronto, Public Books/The Power Plant, 2009); Art and Its Institutions (London, Black Dog Publishing, 2006); Mapping a City (Stuttgart, Hatje Cantz, 2004) co-edited with Yilmaz Dziewior.
Gabriel S. Moses is an Israeli illustrator and author of graphic novels. 30 years old, graduated with honors from the Midrash Beit-Berl Institute for Arts and Education but still has no drivers license. His work surrounds various social and aesthetic aspects regarding national, international, and local youth subculture (in Israel amongst others). Currently living and working from Berlin, he takes his time to set the foundations for a new Ultimate Teen-age Urban Guerilla Concept, while enjoying the city’s lunar skewed effect on the earth’s gravitational pull.
Katrin Pahl is an Assistant Professor of German literature and philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She also co-directs the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program there. She has studied in Bonn and Paris and has received her Ph.D. from the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2008, she was a fellow in the Excellence Cluster “Languages of Emotion” at the Freie Universität Berlin. The arc of her research is situated in affect and emotion studies. Through the prism of subjectivity, performance, and sociability, Katrin explores what changes in logic might develop when one attends to emotionality. She received the Best Article in Feminist Scholarship Prize for “Transformative Translations: Cyrillizing and Queering.” Her book Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion (2012) addresses emotions as transformational and pluralizing forces, and introduces impersonal transports, such as release, juggle, acknowledging, tremble, and broken. As one of her next projects, she will explore how historical practices and theories of sociability might be relevant in the twenty-first century for thinking kinship and affinity toward a parahuman sociability – including a sociability of different languages.
Oleksiy Radynski is a journalist and filmmaker based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is an editor of Ukrainian edition of Political Critique magazine and an activist for Visual Culture Reseach Center. He is a participant of Breaking the News project at 7. Berlin Biennale. His work focuses on the alternative educational practices, current threats to freedom of expression and the ideologies of montage. He is working on a dissertation project on Soviet avant-garde filmmaking. He is a columnist for the websites openspace.ru and krytykapolityczna.pl.
Michal Ron is a PhD student for Art History at the Freie Universität, Berlin. She is a co-founder and co-editor of HUHAJournal — a referee electronic journal for art history that is published by the University of Haifa, Israel. In her dissertation she studies the work of Marcel Broodthaers and analyzes his artistic practice of returning to history in its multilayered relations to the conception of art, history and narrative.
Marc Siegel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt. His research focuses on avant-garde film and queer studies. He is currently working on three books. One is a theory of gossip in queer film culture. The others introduce the work of two very distinct artists: American underground drag superstar Mario Montez and German artist and filmmaker Ludwig Schönherr. Siegel’s projects as a freelance curator include “Camp/Anti-Camp: A Queer Guide to Everyday Life” (with Susanne Sachsse, HAU/Berlin, 2012); “George Kuchar” (Berlin Biennial, 2010); and “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World ” (with Susanne Sachsse and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, 2009). He is on the advisory board of the Forum Expanded section of the Berlinale and one of the co-founders of the artists’ collective CHEAP, whose performances, installations and club events, have been presented at venues such as HAU/Berlin, the Donau Festival/Krems, Theater an der Parkaue/Berlin, and the Steirischer Herbst/Graz.
Joshua Simon is a curator and writer based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. He is the newly appointed director and chief curator of MOBY — Bat Yam Museum and the is co-founding editor of Maayan Magazine and The New&Bad Art Magazine and he is the editor of Maarvon (Western) – New Film Magazine, all based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. He is a PhD candidate at the Curatorial/Knowledge program at the Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London and a 2011–2013 Vera List Center for Art and Politics Fellow at the New School, New York City. Simon is the editor of United States of Israel-Palestine, from the Solution series by Sternberg Press (2011) and co-editor of The Revolution Song-Book: Tents Poetry (2011). Recent curatorial projects include: “The Unreadymade” (FormContent, London, 2010–2011) and “ReCoCo – Life Under Representational Regimes”, co-curated with Siri Peyer (2011, Zurich, Vienna; and 2012, Holon, Israel). His forthcoming book is titled Neomaterialism (Sternberg Press, 2012)
Walter Solon was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1992. He studies Social Sciences (Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology) and Literature in the University of Sao Paulo. He is currently an interchange student in the University of Cologne. He recently translated Émile Durkheim’s Rules of the Social Method for a new Brazilian edition, and is currently translating Rousseau’s Discourses and Jeffrey Herf’s book “The Jewish Enemy — Nazi Propaganda During World War IIand the Holocaust”. He has published a short story collection called “Seiva e Risco”. His poems are being published in a new anthology of Brazilian Poetry later this year.
Zoran Terzic studied Fine Arts in New York and non-normative Aesthetics in Wuppertal, where he received his PhD (2006). His research areas include: culture semiotics and political phenomenology, interplay of aesthetics and politics, imagology of belief systems, memory politics. Currently, he teaches political aesthetics at Humboldt University. His monograph The Art of Nationalism (Kunst des Nationalismus, Kadmos, 2007) deals with the cultural semiotics of war.
Magdalena Waligorska is a cultural historian and sociologist. She received her PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence. She specializes in contemporary Jewish culture and Jewish heritage revival in Europe. Her book on the klezmer revival in Poland and Germany is forthcoming. She has also co-edited Cultural Representations of Jewishness at the Turn of the 21th Century, and published in Ethnomusicology, Polish Sociological Review and Jewish Cultural Studies. She is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Free University in Berlin.
Joanna Warsza, born in 1976, is a curator on the cusp of the performing and visual arts. She graduated from the Warsaw Theater Academy and completed a postgraduate course at the University of Paris 8 dance department. She is a founder of the independent platform Laura Palmer Foundation (www.laura-palmer.pl). Joanna Warsza has worked mostly in the public realm, curating projects that examine social and political agendas, such as the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw, the phenomenon of Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland, or the legacy of post-Soviet architecture in the Caucasus. Together with Krzysztof Wodiczko she runs a seminar on conflict, trauma and art at the Warsaw Higher School for Social Psychology as well as on the performativity in contemporary culture. She has realized projects with Berlin theater Hebbel am Ufer, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, the AICA Armenia, the GeoAir Tbilisi, the Centre Pompidou or Biennale de Belleville, both in Paris, among others. She is an editor of Stadium-X – A Place That Never Was. Since the beginning of 2011 she has worked with Artur Żmijewski on the development and realization of the concept of the 7th Berlin Biennale. Joanna Warsza lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.
Dorothee Wenner is a freelance filmmaker, writer and curator specialized on cross-cultural and women issues. She has been a programmer with the International Forum of New Cinema/Berlinale since 1990, she also curates Indian films for the Dubai International Film Festival. Her films include “Peace Mission” (2008) — a documentary about the Nigerian film industry, „Germany Inside-Out — 10 experts from 10 countries and their view on German culture“, 2002, “Happy-end in Switzerland”, 2001, “Ladies Special — the ‘womens’-only train of Bombay”, 1999, “The Polish of Potsdamer Platz”, 1998. Currently she completes the documentary “Drama.Consult” — the journey of five Nigerian entrepreneurs on their way through Germany. She has been member of the jury of the African Academy Movie Awards, based in Lagos/Nigeria since inception in 2005. In 2011, she headed a new training program — the “World Cinema Fund Factories” for Berlinale — in cooperation with DWA and partners in Burkina Faso and Burundi.
Koray Yılmaz-Günay was born and raised in Berlin where he lived ever since. Still in high school, he was active in education politics and later on in the queer and anti-racist movements. In 2011 he edited a book («Karriere eines konstruierten Gegensatzes: zehn Jahre ‹Muslime versus Schwule›. Sexualpolitiken seit dem 11. September 2001» / Career of a Constructed Opposition: 10 Years of ‹Muslims vs. Gays›. Sexual Politics after 9/11.) He is the commissioner for migration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Yossi Yonah received his Ph.D. from the philosophy department, University of Pennsylvania. He teaches political philosophy and philosophy of education in the department of education, Ben Gurion University of the Negev and is a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Geneva Initiative and a member of The Board of Directors of the Adva Center (Information on Equality and Social Justice in Israel). He publishes extensively on topics pertaining to moral and political philosophy and in philosophy of education. Professor Yonah published several books in these fields among them are: In Virtue of Difference: The Multicultural Project in Israel (2005, Hebrew); Citizenship, Education and Social Conflict Israeli Political Education in Global Perspective (co-editors Hanan A. Alexander and Halleli Pinson, Routledge 2010); Racism in Israel (co-editor, Yehouda Shenhav, Hebrew, 2008); Citizenship Gaps, Migreation, Fertility and Identity in Israel (co-Editor, Adriana Kemp, Hebrew, 2008); In the Whirlpool of Identities: A Critical Look at Religion and Secularity in Israel (co-editor, Yehuda Goodman, Hebrew, 2004). He has written also many essays pertaining to multiculturalism and political philosophy in the Israeli context, among which are: “Political Liberalism and Religious Zionism: Tentative alliance,” Culture and Religion, 2007, 8(3); “Republican Meritocracy, Identity Political and the Idea Reverse Reparation: Commentary,” Political Power and Social Theory, 2007, 18; “Israel as a Multicultural Society: Challenges and Obstacles,” Israel Affairs, 2001, 11(1); “Israel’s ‘Constitutional Revolution’: The Liberal/ Communitarian Debate and Legitimate Stability,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2001, 27(4); “Israel Political Stability: A matter of Principle,” Israel Studies 2000, 5(2); “Fifty Years Later: The Scope and Limits of Liberal Democracy in Israel,” Constellations, An International Journal of Critical Democracy, 1999, 6(3); “Wadi Salib: A Place-non-Place,” Catalogue – Wadi Salib – Layers, 2011; “Loca-versalism: on Art and Multiculturalism,” Hamama: Society, Art, Periphery, 2012, 1: 111–148; Bokobza in Baram, Catalogue, “This Place”, 2012. Currently, Professor Yonah is heading, together with Professor Avia Spivak, the Expert Teams – The Spivak-Yonah Team – advising to the leaders of the social protest in Israel.
Michał Zadara, born in 1976 in Warsaw, is a Polish theatre director, set designer and multimedia artist. He has worked primarily in Warsaw and Krakow, but has also staged several plays abroad, in Germany, Israel, Austria and in USA. He studied political science and theatre at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and directing at the State Theatre School in Krakow. Zadara has directed more than 30 plays and operas pieces at theatres in Gdansk, Krakow, Bydgoszcz, Wrocław, Warsaw, Szczecin, Berlin, Tel Aviv, New York and Vienna. He is one of three directors to have worked at both National Theatres and the National Opera of Poland. He was nominated for the Political Passport prize in 2006 and 2007, and was awarded this prize — the Polish equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize — in 2007. His 2007 production of Witold Gombrowicz’s Operetta was presented in the 2009 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Zadara has also made several underground films. He plays guitar in his “All Stars Dansing Band” and writes a political column for the leftist portal www.KrytykaPolityczna.pl. He is currently working on a public monument commemorating the civil victims of the Warsaw uprising.
