TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

Başak Ağın, PhD, is Associate Professor of English literature at TED University, Ankara, Türkiye. She is the founder of PENTACLE, the first Turkish website on environmental and post-humanities (https://thepentacle.org), the author of Posthümanizm: Kavram, Kuram, Bilim-Kurgu [Posthumanism: Concept, Theory, Science-Fiction] (2020), and the Turkish translator of Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, which is currently in its production stage. In 2021, she edited the Turkish translation of Simon C. Estok’s Ecophobia Hypothesis (Routledge, 2018). She also co-edited two volumes, Posthuman Pathogenesis: Contagion in Literature, Arts, and Media (Routledge, 2022) and Beşerî Bilimlerin 50 Rengi: Çevreci, Dijital, Tıbbi ve Posthüman Sesler [50 Shades of Humanities: Environmental, Digital, Medical, and Posthuman Voices] (2023), the only handbook available for the Turkish academia in the relevant fields, the second volume of which is forthcoming in 2024. Her scholarly articles appeared in such journals as Ecozon@, CLCWeb, Neohelicon, Translation Review, Configurations, and EJES.

Rimon Alyagon Darr is a glass artist and cognitive scientist. In order to create multi-sensory works she often works with candy as a secondary material, using traditional glass blowing and sculpting methods on molten candy.

France and Montreal based
As a research artist Ph.D , she tries to demystifying the myth of singularity. Her works raise awareness of a philosophical, aesthetic, biological and anthropological vision. She wants to question our attachment to the ecosystem, while projecting possible scenarios; she criticizes the Cartesian separation between nature and culture. Her practice attempts to "disentangle" the codes and implications of computational society. Drawing on scientific methods and artistic inspiration, she regularly collaborates with scientists and engineers to create and design her installations.

Her artistic works are presented in Europe (Tabakalera, Frac NoA, Kapelica gallery, Ars Electronica,  Wrofest, Basis e.V, Foundation Hippocrene, Galerie Vivoequidem, Centro Huarte ..). In 2024 she received a price from Artofchange21 for the price Art Eco Conception. In 2018, she founded a bio-art and technological research group called NeuroBioticArt.

Irini Athanassakis lives and works as an artist and author in the Paris Region (F) and on Kea Island (Greece).

Trained in Sculpture, Transmedia Arts, Art History, and Philosophy (PhD), she co-operates with artists and scientists. Her art works and articles have been shown and published internationally.  The topic of KORE and infertility is the focus of her current research, and the publication named POIESIS designed by Nik Thoenen through VfmK has been released in March 2025 and is to be followed by a series of exhibitions.

In her perspective, milk, hormones, and gametes are materials, agents, and systems of meaning and exchange, and are also seen as examples of symbiotic processes. She is the editor of the book 'MILK.' Gabe, Lust und Verlust (Design Nik Thoenen, Vienna: Passagen Editors), which won the Austrian Award for the most beautiful art book in 2018.

She collaborated with the microbiologist David Berry to publish 'STILLLEBEN.' Becoming Symbionts" in Performance Research on Microperformativity, edited by Jens Hauser and Lucie Strecker, in 2021. Objects, images, videos and performances on the milk and the microbiome have been shown in Le Générateur, Paris 2023, AIL Vienna 2022, Magazin 4 Bregenz 2021, Leonardo Lectures 2019 Art&Science Department at the Medical University Vienna and Cairotronica, Cairo 2018. "Almost White. Colors of Milk, a film and book edited by Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, have been presented in May 2024 in the Salon für Kunstbuch and at MISS READ in Berlin in September 2024. Her art-based research on KORE infertility has been showcased at TTT2016 on Corfu Island at TTT2020 online version based in Vienna and at TTT2023 on Malta (in collaboration with Dana Papachristou). The latest KORE show took place in June 2024 at Sehsaal in Vienna, and she will participate in Back to Athens in June 2025.

She is currently a Fellow at w+k, the Interuniversitary Institution for Science and Art at the University Salzburg and the University Mozarteum working on KORE in/fertility and also a Fellow at IPU International Psychoanalytical University Berlin on MUTTiER. Was nicht gesagt werden kann/ Kinder/Nicht Wunsch in Kunst und Klinik (MUTTiER. What cannot be said/WISH and NO WISH to have children) in art and in the clinic.

I am an independent researcher focussing on intersections of art and technology. My research proposes an embodied, yet not humanistic, understanding of art spectatorship from a perspective grounded in a critical reading of the theory of individuation. I am particularly interested in engaging with processes of spectatorship that act as vectors of (dis)orientation, challenging, deconstructing, and remodeling the embodied experience of living in cultures permeated by digital technologies. My current research project addresses the labour of audio transcription for AI projects as a performative process of spectatorship.

Alejandro Chellet is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist, curator, and cultural practitioner working across Europe and the Americas. Holding an MFA in Performance from the Norwegian Theatre Academy, their practice explores coexistence, urban-rural migration, and environmental issues in post-pandemic society. Through participatory art, they challenge food distribution in capitalism while promoting organic farming and communal cooking.

Their work spans social practice, video, installations, urban interventions, and performance, incorporating permaculture, artivism, somatic movement, and shamanism. They have exhibited and performed in festivals, museums, and galleries worldwide, fostering global dialogue.

In Mexico City, they co-founded Cualti Mexico in 2009, an urban agriculture collective engaged in regenerative farming in Xochimilco. They also helped establish Mercado Alternativo de Tlalpan, one of the city's first farm-to-table markets. In 2015, they founded Casa Viva Gallery, an artist-run space collaborating with institutions and alternative venues like Huerto Roma Verde, where they curate artistic residencies.

I am an interdisciplinary maker with a PhD in biotechnology, passionate about open-source practices and shareable expertise. I also bring enthusiasm to grassroots software and science policy. My work often involves collaboration with artists(such as Anna Dimitriu and Blast Theory, particularly in creating innovative projects that integrate biological media.

Over the past two decades, I have been actively involved in workshops, hack-days (https://www.hackteria.org/workshops/surf-and-turf/), hack labs (eg FieldNotes, Fi; LabLife, Uk, Hlab11&14), residencies(MigratingArtAcademies), and art collective projects worldwide. These experiences have allowed me to develop my technoscientific art practice and voice, blending accessible technology with creative expression.

I am a founding member of the Maker Space in Newcastle upon Tyne and an active participant in the North East England Maker community, and the broader UK and international networks. My role extends beyond hands-on projects—I advocate for documentation, mapping, and promotion to preserve and amplify the impact of communities like mine. I am also inspired by thought-provoking artists, writers, and theorists who explore technoscientific discourses.

You can view an interview featuring me from the "Little Inventers" project here, where I mention the need and desire to tinker with hardware for fun and exploration. This motivation also underlies workshoplogy practices with the International Hackteria Network. 

Jimi DePriest is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher with a background in Anthropology and socialist organizing. Their work involves conducting Marxist and Anti Imperialist analyses of military technologies by examining the historical trajectories and socioeconomic conditions that led to their development. Jimi's emerging artistic practice is informed by their research and employs tactical media methodologies to create DIY robotic forms and political films.

Alma de Bruixes is a nomadic collective of biohackers witches who see little difference between a speculum and a sex toy. They weave together like a spell, biomaterials, DIY biology, gynaecology and lubricants for the pleasure of self-exploration.

Born from the union of ALMA Futura, which studies and develops tools for radical change in vaginal and gender health, and Bruixes-Lab, a nomadic laboratory of biohacking, sextech and witchcraft rituals. Founded by Cristina Dezi, Isabel Farina and Giulia Tomasello.
The collective is investigating the rebellious act of re-imagining science, alchemy and gynecology as alternative forms of care, knowledge and pleasure. How can we re-frame pleasure through spells and rituals and free our eroticism from the violence of racist and misogynist medical claims?

The starting point is the violence from which gynaecology was born but the ending one is pleasure as anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal and anti-capitalist. The collective has been collaborating so far with Arse Elektronika, Mu Hybrid Art House, Witches are Back, Bellakeo and Abbramà Festival.

Marco Donnarumma creates technological bodies to navigate the boundaries of experience. Born hearing and then become late-deafened, he makes work that, through resonating aesthetic encounters, challenges how powers of society regulate the human body.

Owing to a hybrid identity as a performer, sound artist, stage director, inventor, and theorist, he blends contemporary performance, new media art, and interactive computer music into performances, installations, and films that “defy categorization” (Jury Prix Ars Electronica).

Rooted in performance art, he takes the discipline into strange encounters with sound, machines, light and movement to create a sensual, uncompromising aesthetic. The inventions he designs and handcrafts, such as AI-driven robotic prosthesis and biophysical musical instruments, explore visceral forms of interaction on stage and create music from the sounds of a performer’s body.

He is considered a pioneer in the field of emerging technology and performing arts (Der Standard), and his repertoire, often created in dialogue with science and technology labs, toured 36 countries across theater and dance, media art, contemporary music, and contemporary art.

Donnarumma received numerous awards and was named Artist of the Science Year 2018 by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education. He holds a Ph.D. in performing arts, computing, and body theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. His writings integrate aesthetics, feminist studies, and critical theory with scientific research.

Dr. Marc R. Dusseiller is a transdisciplinary workshopologist, lecturer, cultural facilitator and artist. He performs DIY (do-it-yourself) workshops in lo-fi electronics and synths, open hardware for citizen science, bioart / biohacking and DIY microscopy. He was co-organizing Dock18, diy* festival and poolloop (Zürich, Switzerland), KIBLIX 2011 (Maribor, Slovenia), workshops for artists, schools and children (2008-now) as founding member of the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society, SGMK and is the co-founder of the Hackerspace Collective Bitwäscherei (2020). He has worked as guest faculty and mentor at various schools, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IN), UCSB (USA) and in Switzerland, FHNW, ZhdK, HEAD, HSLU, ETHZ. In collaboration with Kapelica Gallery, he has started the BioTehna Lab in Ljubljana (2012 - 2013), an open platform for interdisciplinary and artistic research on life sciences. Currently, he is developing means to perform bio- and nanotechnology research and dissemination, Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art, in a DIY / DIWO fashion in kitchens, ateliers and in the Majority World. He is part of the Center for Alternative Coconut Research developing low-cost educational open hardware. He was the co-organizer of the different editions of HackteriaLab 2010 - now in Zürich, Romainmotier, Bangalore, Yogyakarta, Klöntal and Okinawa and collaborated on the organisation of the BioFabbing Convergence, 2017, in Geneva, and the Gathering for Open Science Hardware 2016 in Geneva, 2018 in Shenzhen & 2026 in Bali, and organized international residencies and research collaborations in Zürich 2020-2024, Yogyakarta 2019-2023 and Chiang Mai 2024.

Tuçe Erel is a Berlin-based independent curator, researcher, and cultural worker. She studied sociology at METU (2005) and art theory and criticism (MA program) at Anatolian University (2009). She did her second MA in Art Arts Policy and Management (with curating pathway) at Birkbeck College (2015).

After working at various institutions in Istanbul as a content editor, event manager, archivist, and gallery assistant, she has been a freelance curator and art writer since 2013. She was an active member of >top e.V. between 2017 and 2021, where she curated and hosted events, exhibitions, and a Posthumanism reading group. She was a team member and co-curator at Art Laboratory Berlin from December 2019 to December 2024, assisting and co-curating their hybrid-art-oriented programme.

Her curatorial interests are ecology, Capitalocene, and posthumanism. Erel uses her sociology education in her curatorial research, and in her research methodology, she prefers to twist and challenge conventional social science methodologies. In recent years, she has explored the concept of hacking as a way to unbox the concepts of bio-politics, Anthropocene, ecological crisis, cultures, non-human agency, artistic speculation and imagination.

Since 2017, Erel implemented a curatorial narrative focusing on Capitalocene and environmental crises. Some of the curatorial projects focusing on ecology are “Now You are Here” (2017, curated with Seval Şener at Arte Sanat, Ankara); “Leviathan: A Capitalocene Beastiarium” (2021, curated with Käthe Wenzel and Lisa Glauer at TOP e.V. Berlin) "Vicious Cycles" (2022, Art Laboratory Berlin), "Echoes of the Future" (2024, at Biosphere Potsdam).

Arianna Ferrari (she/them) is a performance maker and writer whose current research delves into the complexities of postdigital society and technopolitics. She has showcased their projects in  independent spaces, galleries, and cultural centers across Europe and North America, including ]Performance Space[ in London, Defibrillator Gallery in Chicago, Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, and The Blank Contemporary Art in Bergamo. Their work has been featured in collections such as Keep it Dirty Vol.a (Punctum Books, NY) and EmergencyINDEX (Ugly Duckling Press, NY), as well as in scholarly texts like ¡Mamá, de mayor quiero ser un cyborg! La performance como resistencia somatopolítica (Manuel Lopez Garcia, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia) and The Embodiment of Gender Identity in Contemporary Female Performers (Felicie Kertudo, King’s College London). Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Visual Arts and Techno Humanities at Accademia Santa Giulia in Brescia, Italy. 

Eva Garibaldi (b. Ljubljana, 1996) is a Slovenian multidisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher based in The Netherlands. Her practice focuses on dissolving binary understandings of landscapes and bodies through critical ecologies. Her research engages with marginal spaces focusing on swamps as spaces of resistance through a through a glitch feminist lens. She works with the mediums of spatial installation, experimental film, and speculative fiction.

She is a member of CBK Rotterdam and Architectural Humanities Research Association. Her work has been presented in several publications and exhibitions across Europe such as BIO27, Milan, Berlin and Dutch Design Week, Soapbox Journal, Art Rotterdam, Garage Rotterdam and HuidenClub among others. Together with Ana Laura Richter, she is the founder of duo Swamp_Matter. Their work has been supported by Creative Industries Fund NL, Škocjan Caves Public Service Agency, Aksioma U30+, Kino Šiška and P74 Gallery.

Sebastian Gfellner is a postgraduate researcher in the Exobiology Group at the Center for Molecular Biophysics, CNRS – Orléans, and the University of Orléans (France). His scientific journey from Earth Sciences to Astrobiology started at the University of Vienna (Austria) and continued at the University of Bremen (Germany), with stops at Harvard University (United States) and the University of Liège (Belgium). Primary research focuses on extremophilic microorganisms, their survivability under extreme conditions, and analysis of their biosignatures. His special interest lies in the detection of traces of microbial life on other planetary bodies, particularly on Mars. Through arts-science collaboration, Sebastian found a way to add a transcendental narrative conceptualized by Anna Steward to his research, bridging the two worlds of arts and science.

Lex Gillon is the founder of Modality Group, a pleasure think tank dedicated to exploring the intersections of sexuality, society, and emerging technologies. With over a decade of experience in sex industry research, she brings a nuanced and data-driven perspective to conversations about intimacy, culture, and innovation.

A two-time SXSW speaker, Lex has captivated global audiences with insightful presentations that bridge the worlds of sex, data, and Web3, offering thought leadership that challenges norms and fosters deeper understanding.

Lex holds a Chinese degree from Yale University and an MBA from the Asia School of Business. She has lived on three continents, in cities such asNew York City, Shanghai, and Berlin. As "The Pleasure Researcher," Lex is committed to redefining the narratives around pleasure and creating multifaceted conversations which consider macro and microeconomic perspectives.

Jelena Guga is a theorist of new media art and culture currently working as a research fellow and coordinator of the Digital Society Lab at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Interdisciplinary Activities, Research Center for New Technologies, University of West Bohemia (Plzen, Czech Republic) and a visiting researcher at the SPECS Lab at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain). She explores the issues of identity, corporeality, agency, and perception in technologically mediated interactions and immersive environments through an interdisciplinary approach, combining art theory, (new) media theory, cultural studies, critical posthumanism, philosophy of mind, as well as dystopian science fiction narratives. She is also engaged in curatorial work at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She is the author of Digital Self: How We Became Binary and a number of academic articles in international publications. 

Helmi Hardian is a grassroots artist and ghetto scientist, with a specific interest in cooking and smoking at the same time. He lives in Surabaya, the city that is well known for its industry and technology, as well as being the center of electronic component trading (chiefly, Pasar Genteng). Hence, almost all of his works are closely related to science and technology as the medium of creativity. He is the co-founder of Waft Lab, a creative-based initiative that works at interdisciplinary practices. Currently, he focuses on tech development through DIY/DIWO culture and playing his role in researching, hacking, or deconstructing daily materials to provide some devices with new functional aspects, as well as developing workshop kits, lecturing contents, and presentation materials, which aim to learn, share, and exchange knowledge. 

Dr. WhiteFeather Hunter is an internationally recognized Canadian artist and researcher, and SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University. She holds a PhD in Biological Art through SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia, and an MFA in Fibres and Material Practices from Concordia University. Her doctoral thesis, “The Witch in the Lab Coat” was a TechnoFeminist negotiation of science biocultures by using ‘taboo’ materials such as menstrual fluid in tissue engineering protocols; this included witchcraft as performed resistance to medicalized control over women’s bodies. Her recent project, Sentient Clit—The Pussification of Biotech explores 3D-bioprinting clitorises with menstrual stem cells differentiated to neuronal types, to produce synthetic clitorises that respond to stimuli. The project was awarded an Ars Electronica 2024 S+T+ARTS Prize jury nomination. WhiteFeather exhibits internationally, recently (solo) at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (Cornwall, UK), MKII (London, UK), Plexus Projects (NYC, US), Ectopia Lab (Lisbon, PT), SomoS Arts (Berlin, DE), and Duende Art Museum (CH). She is hosted at prestigious international biolabs, such as the Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine, uLisboa, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and DZNE German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. She presents at high profile festivals, conferences, and residencies across the globe, recently delivering a keynote address for the Future Humanities Institute, University College Cork (IE). She is published in peer-reviewed journals and books in Australia, UK, Greece, France, Denmark, Canada, and USA, with forthcoming publications in Austria, Australia, and the UK.

Puneet is an artist/engineer working at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), eXtended Reality (XR), Critical Design, and Disability Studies. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada under the supervision of Artist/Researcher Chris Salter. 

Puneet’s artistic-research practice investigates how technologies of XR (umbrella term for Virtual/Augmented Reality and body-worn interfaces) can be made accessible for the disabled communities (particularly people with quadriplegia/paraplegia). Concretely, opening the platform of XR for (and with) the disabled communities, developing artistic XR interventions that re-shapes, re-imagines, and provokes the common misconceptions around sensorimotor disabilities.

Puneet’s work has been showcased both in India (from where his roots emerge) and internationally at venues such Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), ISEA (Barcelona, Spain), xCoAx (Treviso, Italy), Electronic Literature Organization (Florida, USA), KunstFest (Weimar, Germany) etc.

Markela Koniordou is a Greek performance and video artist whose work merges art, science, and social engagement. With an academic background in biological sciences and public health from University College London, and over 15 years of experience in health research, project management, and communications, she is currently pursuing an MA in Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her interdisciplinary approach allows her to explore themes of sustainability, health, and the environment by blending scientific inquiry with artistic expression.

Markela’s creative practice spans video, audio, and performance, crafting sensory experiences that prompt critical reflection on the interplay between technology, nature, and human society. Recent works include the performance "Graziata," developed during a residency at Seestadt Studios in Vienna, as well as video pieces like "Circa diem" and "Walk in the Mall," which investigate how media shapes contemporary human experience. In addition, Markela has contributed to documentary filmmaking, serving as associate producer and featured character in the award-winning short film MICROBIOME, and working on the feature documentary E-LIFE, which exposes the environmental impacts of electronic waste disposal.

Through her multidisciplinary practice, Markela Koniordou inspires dialogue and action on global issues, urging audiences to reconsider the interconnectedness of human health, the environment, and the systems that shape our world.

Line Krom is a German artist and cultural anthropologist, who explores the cultural richness of dust collected from museums, archives, mines, fields and other sites of social significance. Krom has transformed this often-overlooked material into performances, paintings, digital objects, and installations. Dust serves as both a metaphorical and material substrate in her practice for investigating themes of time, memory, environmental justice, and cultural heritage. 

Tane_Tanya Laketić is a cultural worker and researcher with completed Interdisciplinary Master's studies at the UNESCO Chair of Cultural Policy and Management of the University of Arts in Belgrade.

As an artist, she primarily works with textiles, but is also interested in drawing, text, sound and performance. In addition, Tane aspires to contribute to the wider field of culture, including various disciplines such as management, curating, art history, cultural heritage, politics, human rights with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ rights. So far, she has participated in two international conferences in 2023 (Presented research: Perreo Periferia: Feminist Exploration of Reggeaton) and 2024 (Presented research: The Architecture of Female Gaze: The Influence of Femme Fatale Stereotype Portrayal).

Since 2022, Tanya is part of the Organisational Team of the Youth Biennial (Serbia) in the Financial and External Communications Teams. She is currently curating its third edition with the concept Oases regarding 'new imaginings of future and better worlds', contextualising this natural phenomenon as 'active, transient spaces, a sort of micro-reconfigurations that have no intention of ever becoming part of the dominant discourse (desert)'. Besides, she is a member of indisciplinary international collective PhD in One Night focused on aesthetic education for all, collective intelligence, and an amateur approach to knowledge; Les Orangeries de Bierbais as well as its Laboratory for Radical Peace (Belgium) initiated by the former and the latter where aesthetics, arts, ecology, solidarity and experimentations are joined in the practice of permaculture.

I am an architect and interdisciplinary artist, actively engaged in artistic research and interdisciplinary collaborations. Architectural education and extensive artistic experience allow me to collaborate with specialists from various fields, conceptualize and realize ideas that require multifaceted knowledge. I am an alumnus and/or participant of Ars Electronica, the Architecture Fund's Experiment Platform, the Venice Biennale, EIT Climate-KIC Hub, Tech Arts Incubator, and the "Creating Vilnius" programs; a co-founder of the interdisciplinary art collective "micro-empathy"; and a member of a speculative architecture collective "3022".

Yosaku Matsutani is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at Otemon Gakuin University in Osaka, Japan. He specializes in aesthetics, art and media theory, and visual culture studies. He works on problems of art practices since the aesthetic turn, the relationship between science, technology, and art, and the sensibilities common to various organisms and things. He also collaborates with artists on various art projects that seek to reconsider the entanglement of the body, science, technology, and the environment, and to explore art practice itself. Recent articles include “Encounter with the Moon: Critical Reflections on JAXA’s “Lunar Farming” from the Perspective of Post-Earth Aesthetics,” “A Study on the Overlay Images in the Japanese Contemporary Art Scene: Cases of Chikako Yamashiroʼs Your Voice Came Out Through My Throat and Nobuaki Itoʼs Dead person and Living person” and co-authored “(De)composing Media Art through Practices with Nonhuman.” Recent art projects include "Let's Ride the Waves on March 11th," a collaboration with artist Soichiro Mihara and surfer Yuko Takahashi.

Anna Nacher works as Associate Professor at Jagiellonian University. Her research centers around digital aesthetics and media, with a focus on new media art, electronic literature, and sound art. She also ventures into environmental humanities and postcolonial theory. She has published in European Journal of Women’s Studies, Hyperrhiz, and Communications +1 (among others) and contributed chapters to edited volumes published with Routledge, Intellect and Brill. In 2021, together with Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen) and Soren Brø Pold (Aarhus University) she co-curated an online exhibition of electronic literature and digital art produced during the COVID19 pandemic: https://eliterature.org/elo2021/covid /

She is a 2020 Fulbright alumna, in 2019-2024 she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization.

In addition to her academic endeavors, Anna Nacher pursues a creative practice in sound and digital media.

She is an active member of permaculture community, Biotope Lechnica, which she has been building in the Carpathian mountainssince 2014. 

She currently is working on the project on ecomedia, bridging her theoretical academic endeavors on postdigital aesthetics, media materialities and mediation as well as her creative and permacultural pursuits, under umbrella name of Breath Library.

More information and a full list of academic publications: http://breathlibrary.org

Minas Pergantis is curently an active postdoctoral researcher and a research fellow of the Department of Audio & Visual Arts. His post doctoral research revolves around the Evaluation and Optimization of User Experience in Online Digital Art Repositories.

He is a dimplomate of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras. He has multiple years of work experience in the private sector as a Web application programmer and Website developer.

He holds a PhD from the Department of Audio & Visual Arts of the Ionian University for his research titled "Art search online: analysis of user behaviour and search technologies".

Špela Petrič is a Slovenian hybrid media artist with a background in the natural sciences. Her artistic research and practice combines (bio)media and performativity to enact strange relations between bodies that question the underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies. Recently she has been busy with looking closely at automation of care in agriculture and medicine.

tatjana petzer is a nomad between cultures and times, working as a full professor at the university of graz. she is writing in the field of humanities, especially about slavistic topics and the history of knowledge, about text and sound, image and dress  – across media and undisciplined. her most recent publications include the monograph knowledge and faith. figurations of the synergos in slavic modernism and the annotated anthology immortality. slavic variations.

The artist duo sikau/pubalova was founded in 2020, exploring the intersection of media arts, speculative research and experimental sound theater. They have been commissioned by Ars Electronica Festival, Science Gallery Bangalore, Climate Week NYC, European Commission, S+T+ARTS, LABoral, IMPAKT, Transmediale, Ensemble Modern and Ligeti Center.

Denisa Půbalová (she/her, CZ/NL) is an audiovisual artist, a researcher on environmental philosophy, critical posthumanism, and technological infrastructures, a creative coder and a lecturer. She works at the intersections of arts and science.

Exploring microscopic and macroscopic climates, her current research expands from climatic storytelling with diatoms (microalgae), to critical research of the phenomenon of Earth’s digital twin. She works with microorganisms (molds, fungi, diatoms, biofilm). For her artistic research, she worked with Waag Futurelab, Posthuman Art Network CA, and Artbiom Prague.

Together with Dr. Lea Luka Sikau, she forms duo sikau/pubalova, an artistic initiative focusing on embodied multi-sensory encounters within the arts. sikau/pubalova were commissioned by S+T+ARTS, Ars Electronica, BASE Milan, Science Gallery Bengaluru, IMPAKT Utrecht, transmediale Berlin, LABoral, Ensemble Modern, TONALi Hamburg, and ligeti zenter Hamburg.

She is a visual artist in Metanoia Creatives, a collective that focuses on digital animation, generative arts, projection mappings, and large-scale audiovisual installations presented worldwide.

Audrey Rangel Aguirre is an interdisciplinary Mexican artist based in England, researching at the intersection of art and science, focusing on artistic intuition to create new systems that belong to the future of human civilisation. Currently developing the ongoing research project Terras Lux, focusing on the relation between energy on microbial micro ecosystems on soil and the energy on the human body. In her practice, she uses creative intuition as a tool to create speculative scenarios that may be a possibility for our nearest future in our society and research through the lenses of art and philosophy, diverse fields of science. Using artistic intuition, reciprocity and caring for others as a way to weaving politics, poetics, and consequences through contemporary art practices. The current convergence of art and science may be the key to unlocking new possibilities and the development of human consciousness towards the next phase of civilisation. In her research, she allows herself to free artistic intuition to power and enhance scientific research with the aim of the creation of new systems that belong to the future of human civilisation, in which, with the collaboration of other beings like microbes and ecosystems, a new way of living and collaborating between all beings on Earth can be achieved, through reciprocity.

Kisa is a multidisciplinary artist from the Brazilian Amazon, currently living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. Her work spans across tattooing, illustration, muralism, and art education. Her signature as an artist, regardless of the method, is the use of a counter-colonial perspective, questioning the power structures that disconnect human beings from their roots, the land, and their bodies.

In her artistic interventions, Kisa seeks to reverse the logic of colonization by creating characters that live in symbiosis with the earth, reconnecting with their bodies and reclaiming symbols to strengthen their identities.

For Kisa, tattooing is an ancestral cultural manifestation that connects us to our bodies—whether to exalt, affirm identities, or reclaim symbols. For her, it is a transformative process that directly engages with the practices of bioengineering, establishing a convergence between bodies and modifications.

It is from this fusion that her collaboration with bioengineer Laura Sordini emerges—an audacious partnership that seeks to unite tattooing and pleasure in an innovative way, exploring new possibilities for body modification and expression.

Anshul Roy (b. 1997, India) is a visual artist and educator with an MFA in Art Photography from Syracuse University in New York. In 2020, he received a B.Tech in Bioengineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, where he became interested in the intersection of STEM and Arts and how these diverse knowledge systems could merge. Roy’s current artistic practice is inspired by Postcolonial discourses, exploring issues like identity, historical memory, cultural representation, and visual ethics. He is interested in probing how British colonizers employed photography in India for “othering” and visual propaganda, and how these ethnographic photos exist in our contemporary institutional archives. Through appropriation techniques, Roy recontextualizes such historical photographs to question and challenge their enduring impact on collective consciousness.

His work has been exhibited in prestigious venues like ACM SIGGRAPH, where he received the “Best in Show” award in 2024 for his project Rage Against the Archive. Roy has also shown his work at places such as the Art Gallery of Peterborough (Ontario, Canada), IEEE VIS Arts Program (St. Pete Beach, FL), :iidrr Gallery (Manhattan, NY), Light Work (Syracuse, NY), The Photographers’ Gallery (London, UK), Society for Photographic Education’s Media Festival (St. Louis, MO) and Society for Visual Anthropology’s Film and Media Festival (Tampa, FL). In 2024, he was a student at the School for Poetic Computation and an Artist-in-Residence at the ESRC-funded Digital Good Network, where he further refined his new media art practice.

Lauren Ruiz is a research-based multimedia artist interrogating perceptions of nature, authoritative systems, and their complex intersections with class, labor, and identity. Drawing from diverse sources such as historical data, scientific journals, climate fiction, and biblical texts, she creates immersive installations, digital soundscapes, web-based projects, and multimedia sculptures. Her work seeks to understand and challenge perceptions of identity within unseen environments, examining spaces beyond human perception to decipher socioeconomic disparities, ecological crises, and religious and political systems in both human and nonhuman lifeworlds.

Lauren Ruiz's studio practice celebrates the slippage between digital and analog realms, confronting liminality, invisibility, and otherness. By balancing extensive research with traditional art-making techniques, she offers intellectual and sensory examinations that illuminate and complicate our understanding of how we relate to our bodies, the earth, and concepts of ownership in the postnatural environment. Her projects often explore themes of containment and adaptation, particularly in relation to Latino experiences of land ownership and belonging in the United States.

Currently, Lauren Ruiz is exploring interiority across multiple domains, including subterranean environments and the human body. Her work questions what is buried, kept, mined, extracted, and taken—and who or what is doing the taking. She has presented her projects at institutions such as the Latvian National Museum of Art and UC Berkeley, and has been a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Women’s International Study Center. Lauren Ruiz is represented by Marquee Projects in Bellport, NY.

Mehrta Shirzadian is a performer, multimedia artist, and artistic researcher. She conducted doctoral-level research in molecular biology and holds degrees in computer science and mathematical modeling. Currently studying Art & Science at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she works with time-based media such as video installation, animation, and performance. Drawing on her scientific background, her artistic practice explores personal, interpersonal, and non-human relationships, as well as the visibility of the invisible. Engaging with themes of bodily autonomy, microbial life, and trans-corporeal perception, her work often investigates the boundaries of knowledge, identity, and materiality in intimate and speculative ways.

The artist duo sikau/pubalova was founded in 2020, exploring the intersection of media arts, speculative research and experimental sound theater. They have been commissioned by Ars Electronica Festival, Science Gallery Bangalore, Climate Week NYC, European Commission, S+T+ARTS, LABoral, IMPAKT, Transmediale, Ensemble Modern and Ligeti Center.

As artist-researcher, Dr. Lea Luka Sikau (she/her) situates herself at the intersection of sound, music theater and media art. As the Curator for Music and Sound Art at the ZKM Hertzlab, Dr. Lea Luka Sikau (she/her) shapes the sonic profile of artistic research and programming, responsible for the artist residency programs and the performance series at KUBUS. Having received a doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge for her research on posthumanism, rehearsal ethnography and new opera, she became a Fellow at Harvard University’s Mellon School for Performance Research and was awarded with the Bavarian Cultural Award for her research at MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology. She has worked with Romeo Castellucci, Marina Abramović and Rimini Protokoll.

Laura Sordini is a fourth-year PhD student in Bioengineering – Cell Therapies and Regenerative Medicine, at Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal. Her work always focused on the regeneration of the human nervous tissue, through the use of biomaterials, smart conductive polymers, 3D-bioprinting technique, and electrical stimuli. In particular, her PhD is focused on the delivery of electrical signals in a wireless mode, without the use of invasive electrodes, for the stimulation and differentiation of stem cells into neural tissue. 

Nowadays, her academic research has been "contaminated" by artistic practices, biohacking tools, transhackfeminism, and withcraft. After completing a course in Neuroscience and Art, she transitioned from regenerative medicine to regenerative cultures, regenerative design, regenerative thinking.

She is currently involved in a transfeminist collective working at the intersection between education and artistic practice, to challenge the sexist, patriarcal, colonialist and racist root of gynecology.

The collaboration between the tattoo artist and friend Isadora Regis resulted in a fusion of millennia-old body art modification practice, tattooing, with cutting-edge technology from the bioengineering field, aiming to expand the worlwide access to pleasure as a human right.

Anna Steward is a transdisciplinary multimedia artist. Her practice combines performance, installation, and scientific collaboration, with a focus on microbiology, neurology, and a growing passion for astrobiology. She trained at Arts Educational Schools London in 2000 and initially worked as an actor before shifting to Live Art in 2007. Anna graduated with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg in 2023, where she now lectures. Supported by a scholarship from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts, she collaborated with the German Archaea Centre at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where she remains a visiting artist. Her 2024/2025 Arts-Science Residency at the Center for Molecular Biophysics (CBM)–CNRS Orléans and École Supérieure d'Art et de Design Orléans, hosted by LE STUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies (France), sparked an ongoing partnership with CBM’s Exobiology and Synthetic Protein and Bioorthogonal Chemistry teams. Together, they explore microbes, meteorites, and molecules.

I am a researcher and internationally acclaimed Media Art Curator at Aalborg University, Denmark. On top of my own sound/design practice, I am presently engaged with sound curation at the Momentum Festival in Norway.

I am Co-founder of conference series, including POM – Politics of the Machines conference series (with Laura Beloff) (since 2017) and RE:SOUND MAH2019 in Aalborg 19-23 August 2019.

I have published and curated several international exhibitions since 1994, including Kiasma, ZKM, Rupertinum, Ars Electronica, Eyebeam NY, Utzon Center Aalborg, Kunsthal Aarhus, and Museum of Contemporary art in Roskilde.

I generally work with media and sound in transdisciplinary, constructive, critical and creative maker settings and developing theory and ideas from those settings. I have a background as a professional curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Roskilde) with a focus on sound art (via the legacy from Fluxus mostly). And more currently (last 15 years or so), I teach Music, Sound and Media Art and Curating in theory and practice. Recently, my focus seems to have shifted a bit towards two trajectories: 1. sound curation in a new context, post-curating or uncurating of sorts. Bigger venues and festivals. 2. towards a sound practice drawing it seems on my early background as a sound practitioner (and singer) in the 80s and early 90s in transinternational exchange with other sound artists, cross-boundary, with a certain focus on words and sound as social agencies.

Dr. Johannis Tsoumas was born in Piraeus, Greece and had a wide range of studies in the areas of Art and Design. He studied 3D Design (bias ceramics) at Harrow College of Higher Education and Middlesex Polytechnic (BTEC Higher National Diploma / B.A (Hons), 1989), M.A.(History of Design) at Middlesex University, London, England (1993).  He has obtained his Ph.D in the History of Art from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2002) and has participated in several national and international conferences with particular emphasis on the 19th century art and design history. He has many publications in both Greek and international scientific journals and is the author of five books on history of art, design and culture (The History of Decorative Arts and Architecture in Europe and America (1760-1914) (Athens: ION Publications, 2005), The Emergence of Plastics Culture in Greece (1950-1970) (Athens: ION Publications, 2007), Women in Greek advertisements in the 1960s (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), Japan and the West: mutual influences in applied arts (1540-1960)-Seven Essays, (Paris: Éditions Universitaires Européennes, 2019),  and Greek Interwar Art and Design (1922-1939): An Overview (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023). He currently works at the University of West Attica as an Art and Design Historian and Industrial Design Lecturer. Areas of research interests: nineteenth century design, art and decorative arts history, Japonisme, twentieth century European popular, visual and material culture.

Glikery Ulunov is an STS scholar, poet, and media artist whose work focuses on the material practices of stigmatized phenomena—substance use, self-harm, and suicide. Their research explores the boundaries between authorized and unauthorized domains, particularly psychiatry and biohacking/misuse. Their studies and poetry seek to capture ruined, fragmented landscapes of post-Soviet territories and worlds.

Glikery is a research assistant for the Russian Psychiatry in a Transnational Context project at the Higher School of Economics. They hold an MA in Sociology from MSSES and the University of Manchester.

Michael Valiquette is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, book maker, and graphic designer, based in Troy, New York. Michael makes photographs that integrates border politics, accessibility, separation, secrecy, intimacy, and the complexities of human nature. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Siena College and has worked as a Graphic Designer and Photographer at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).

Natalia Vereshchagina is a senior lecturer in the Institute of Media at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia). She works at the intersection of cultural studies, media theory, and film studies, with a focus on narrative analysis. Her research interests include posthumanism, othering and media representations, and film theory. She has participated in projects related to posthumanism and media, outer space and media.

Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of Philosophy at Trinity College (CT, USA) and Privat-Dozent of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Author/editor of 26 books; author of 80+ articles and book chapters; translator of 11 books and of 90+ articles; he works primarily in the area sof aesthetics and political theory. Most recently, he published a book about the Austrian writer Peter Handke (2025). He is completing a volume examining the question of the arts (literature and theater, music, painting) in Alain Badiou's seminal work. This volume succeeds recent volumes on "Slavoj Zizek und die Künste" and on "Jacques Rancière und die Literatur". Furthermore, he is completing a volume that examines the contemporary constellation of biopolitics, aesthetics, and art by gathering theoretical and artistic perspectives from and/or on China, Japan, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Italy, France, Austria, and Germany. Publication date for both volumes will be end of 2025. Finally, he has begun working on a book addressing the disarticulation of "great literature" in the work of Elfriede Jelinek.

Trained as an architect in Hong Kong, Yidi’s work explores future infrastructure’s intersection with ecosystem and biointelligence. Inspired by collective behavioral analysis in social science, Yidi participated in research on cooperatives in the historic colonial context. Now exploring the ocean inspired by marine animality, Yidi gathered an interdisciplinary group meandering through art, architecture, future governance, climate advocacy, and ocean biodiversity conservation.

Scientific and Sustainability Connections: Now affiliated with FXB International Climate Advocacy, Fab City Global Initiative, and Distributed Design Platform, Yidi brings her creative aesthetics into biointelligence and sustainable work to empower citizen science and interspecies interaction.

Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko, PhD, is a lecturer and researcher teaching contemporary philosophy and art-science at AKI Academy of Art and Design ArtEZ since 2017. At AKI she has founded a biolab kitchen space and the BIOMATTERs, an artistic research programme that explores how to work with living matters. Her research focuses on post-humanism, ecocriticism, affect theory and new materialism at the intersection of art, ethics and (bio)technology. Selected publications include: “On Špela Petrič’s Performative Ethnography or How to Contaminate Automation” in Šum 2024; Špela Petrič and Agnieszka Anna Wołodźko,  “Awkward Intimacies” in Antennae 2024; Affect as Contamination. Embodiment in Bioart and Biotechnology, Bloomsbury 2023; “Ars Demones*2022*Manifesto,” in Footprint. Delft Architecture Theory Journal; “Demonological re-enchantments – or how to contaminate through intimate stories of commons without consensus,” in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research; ‘Living Within Affect As Contamination: Breathing In Between Numbers’ in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry.

Juntao Yang is a researcher, writer, and artist. Yang's critical writings and artistic practices focus on the traces of the operations of micro power in the specific field of visual and material culture, the visible or invisible conflicts and violence in daily existence, and the organization and fluid of the proxy of power. Yang is committed to resorting to Speech, sometimes hysterically, counteracts the silent power of ideology and the pervasive political apathy. Yang's current research focuses on planetary cinema and geological thinking, as well as toxicity and catastrophe media. Yang is currently based in New York and Nanjing.

Müge Yıldız is an artist-filmmaker and researcher at Aalto University. She has a BA in Cinema from Galatasaray University, further expanded her cinema education as an Erasmus exchange student at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, and completed her MA in Visual Cultures, Curating, and Contemporary Art at Aalto University on a Finland Scholarship. Her work blends experimental filmmaking with hybrid techniques while emphasizing sustainable practices. Her work has been showcased at major international film festivals, including the BFI London Film Festival and Images Festival in Toronto. She also participated in the Oberhausen Film Seminar and Istanbul Biennial Production and Research Program.

Annan Zuo is a more-than-human researcher and architectural designer. He holds an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Cambridge and currently works at Foster + Partners in London. In October 2025, he will begin a PhD in Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on post-phenomenology, intersubjectivity, more-than-human architecture, landscape recovery, empathy, and care.

Annan’s work has been featured at international platforms including the Venice Biennale, Edinburgh Fringe, the Media Architecture Biennale, and exhibited in institutions such as the Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum and Austin Unchained Gallery. He is the recipient of the 2024 BioDesign Challenge Grand Prize and has published with Springer Nature and Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. He has presented at conferences across cybernetics, systems design, bio art, and architecture, including RSD12, ASC60, and ISEA 2025.

He was nominated for both the RIBA Bronze and Silver Medals and is an active member of the American Society for Cybernetics and the Eco-centric Future Lab.

edna is multidisciplinary artist and scientist, blending sound art, experimental music, and digital performance. Her background in material chemistry and heritage sciences and her work on the origin of colours in the first colour photographic process resulted in her PhD graduation from the Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris) in 2018. In the framework of the SACRe doctoral program (Science, Arts, Création, Recherches) she initiated Arts/Sciences collaboration on photographic processes, and image formation. As an artist and trans woman, her work intersects vulnerability, body politics, and more recently AI. She uses DJing and live performances to challenge normative ideas about identity, technology, and censorship. Her recent performances in SOMA gallery in Marseille, Maloka Interactive Museum in Bogotá and Casa Bagre in Lima explored topics such as depersonalization, self-representation, and healing through collaborative, immersive sonic and visual experiences. Her scientific background uniquely informs her artistic practices and enables her to approach projects with a blend of analytical depth and creative experimentation.