Livia Alexander is a curator, writer, and Director of the Visual Studies and Art History program at the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University. Her work is focused on examining the relationship between art infrastructure and artistic production, urbanity, cultural politics of food and art, and contemporary art from Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Her numerous art and film programs, exhibitions and events include Embedded, Embedding: Artist Residencies, Urban Placemaking and Social Practice (commissioned by Residency Unlimited, in collaboration with The New School/Parsons, NYC); Customs Made: Quotidian Rituals and Everyday Practices (Maraya Arts Cenre, Sharjah, UAE); Mapping Subjectivity: Experimentation in Arab Cinema (MoMA, New York; Abu Dhabi Film Festival, Tate Modern, London); and CinemaEast Film Series. Alexander is co-producer of the research-based interactive documentary, Jerusalem, We Are Here (Canada/Palestine/Israel, 2016), directed by Dorit Naaman.
Richard Jochum is Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Vienna and an MFA in Sculpture and Media Art from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. His artistic work focuses on video, performance, and installation. His scholarly interests include artistic research practices, studio art teaching and learning, as well as new media and media art education.
Isin Onol is a New York City and Vienna based curator, writer, and art professor. She is currently the Director of Curatorial Research at School of Visual Arts Curatorial Practice MA program and a Guest Professor at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Since 2009, she has extensively produced exhibitions, conferences, public programs, and community-engaging projects across Europe, South and East Asia, the Middle East, as well as the Americas. Before that, she led the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art Istanbul as its director and curator (2006-2009).
Her curatorial research focuses on interconnecting archival information with oral histories to create platforms for collective memory through collaborative art practices. She has produced more than 60 exhibitions internationally, and published on the intersection of social justice and art. Her recent exhibitions include Bilgé: Lifespan of a Horizontal Line (New York), Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair (New York), The Wondrous Deposits of Unfinished Threads (Sinop), A Knot in the Throat: Foraging for a Vanishing Present (Vienna), Thinking Food Futures (New York), Women Mobilizing Memory (Istanbul, Vienna, New York, Madrid), and When Home Won’t Let You Stay (Vienna). She co-curated Sinopale, the International Sinop Biennial in 2012, 2014 and 2021.
Barbara Putz-Plecko is a visual artist and for more than 25 years has been professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has been vice-rector of the university since 2007. She is also dean of the Institute of Art Education and head of the Department for Art and Communication Practices and the Textile Department.
A primary focus of both departments is on contextual art practices and on artistic strategies in diverse communities and systems. As an artist and researcher, she has collaborated with many academic and non-academic institutions and grassroots organizations, and she has acted as supervisor, project partner and coordinator of numerous art projects not only in Europe but also in Africa, Asia, Central America and the USA. Her long-term research focus is on interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural collaborative processes and the exploration of participatory practices in the arts.