Gabriela Navas
http://www.antropologia.cat/node/27477
Architect and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Barcelona, Gabriela Navas is coordinator of the Research Group on Anthropology and Architecture of the Catalan Institute of Anthropology. Her line of research is the political economy of architectural production and the social impacts in urban reforms. She has published scientific articles on the subject and delivered courses that address the linkage of large urban projects in the management mechanisms and appropriations of space from everyday life. She has also worked in consultancies on the activation of urban centralities and informal neighborhood regulation in Latin American context. She is also member of the Observatory of Anthropology of Urban Conflict (OACU), Research Group on Exclusion and Social Control of the University of Barcelona (GRECS), the Catalan Institute of Anthropology (ICA), and the International Research Group on Architecture and Society (GIRAS).
Observatory of Anthropology of Urban Conflict
https://observatoriconflicteurba.org
The Observatory of Anthropology of Urban Conflict (OACU) is a research group composed of researchers and independent professionals belonging to several international research centers. The main challenge of the group is to activate and promote the study of the city and its social conflict by making the perspectives of urban anthropology, sociology, architecture, urbanism, human geography, criminology, etc. The OACU has coordinated and carried out different socio-anthropological research projects financed by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the City Council of Barcelona, the Inventory of the Ethnological Patrimony of Catalonia, the Institut Ramon Muntaner, and the Catalan Institute of Anthropology. More recently, the group has coordinated different courses of specialization in Urban Anthropology and published different books.
Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga
http://www.otherspaces.net
Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga works between the realms of art, architecture, and urban research to explore the possibilities inherent in the intersections between social and physical spaces. Such context specificity finds working manifestation in curation, artistic production, and collaborative organization, all of which point to an interest in structure as a dynamic of living and working together.
In 2006, Fotini co-founded PROGRAM—an initiative for art and architecture collaborations in Berlin. She was also one of the organizers of HomeShop, an artist-run space in Beijing, active from 2008–2013. She has been part of the organizing committee of The Public School Berlin and co-organized A Public Library in Berlin in 2015. She was a grantee at the Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin University of the Arts (2012–2013) and is a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2015–2017).
Tihomir Viderman
Architect, planner, and researcher for a number of years, Tihomir Viderman has been engaged in interdisciplinary research and teaching with a focus on culturally inclusive and emancipatory approaches to working with urban spaces. His interests lie in involved, intuitive, and explorative learning in lived environments, which is open in terms of result and reflexive of the agency of professionals in constituting or curbing cultural difference. He is editor (with Sabine Knierbein) of the volume titled, “Public Space Unbound. Urban emancipation and the post-political condition,” which is slated to be published in 2018 with Routledge, and a doctoral candidate with the project “Mental (re)production of Red Vienna: Dialectics between urban activism and planning in Vienna’s social democracy” at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space at TU Wien (Technische Universität Wien).
Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR)
http://skuor.tuwien.ac.at/
From TU Wien (Technische Universität Wien), SKuOR is active in urban research and academic-level education in Vienna, Austria, advocating a socio-political engagement in public space as relational space, which encompasses both physical arrangements and social space. It is pioneering in hands-on and action-based approaches to education and politics of space, pursuing an in-depth analysis of the plurality of knowledge and cultures in a transdisciplinary manner – within the university, between scholarship and practice, or from within the complexity of urban research. Its research and teaching activities have been intertwined with the City of Vienna’s Visiting Professorship for Urban Cultures and Public Space which systematically seeks to bring international perspectives on urban space into dialectics with Vienna’s lived space.
Jaime Palomera (La Hidra Cooperativa)
http://lahidra.net
Jaime Palomera coordinates the department of education of La Hidra cooperative. He has a PhD in Economic Anthropology and specialized in housing, urban transformation, and real estate-financial sector.
La Hidra Cooperativa is a political company that works in urban transformation, with the objective of joining to the set of professional and social practices that want to guarantee the right to the city. They are part of The Foundation of the Commons, a network formed by areas of self-training, research, and editing. The action of La Hidra is based on three services they offer to public, community or private entities: research, consultancy, and training. Through their work, they want to produce practical knowledge, intended to intervene in three strategic areas: urban economy, common goods, and peripheries. The work in these areas constitutes a critique of urban political economy, producing tools, data, and knowledge to identify the origins of urban inequalities and propose alternatives.
Miguel Georgieff
As Landscaper, Miguel Georgieff founded the collective Coloco with two partners in the year 2000. Working with multidisciplinary teams, his work focuses on landscape performances at all scales. In Coloco he develops projects of research, development, and participatory construction, emphasizing the meeting between the objectives of the communities and the inhabitants. Strategic studies for the integration of nature in urban areas have been central to recent work and collaborations with Gilles Clément in Lyon, Montpellier or Saint Etienne. Miguel Georgieff taught for thirteen years with Gilles Clément where they developed the works in the great territories of the Ecole du Paysage of Versailles. The current research with Gilles Clément continues in Lecce, Italy, on the idea of indecision as the motor of collective construction, with the creation of the Scuola del Terzo Luogo.
Coloco
http://www.coloco.org
Coloco brings together landscapers, urbanists, botanists, gardeners, and artists in a workshop of contemporary landscapes. From territorial strategies to the construction of gardens, they establish a relationship of continuity between scales and actors: the landscape is the set of living beings under the eyes of humans. The landscape, which is a common good, unites us all without exception. That is why they invite participants to work from that perspective. Maps, gardens or public policy, they lead the co-construction of these collective works that contribute to making our landscapes welcoming environments for biological and cultural diversity. Coloco has a vast network of experts, from botanical activism to ecological engineering. Coloco was created in 1999 as an independent collective, and in 2006, it acquired a SARL company to strengthen its operations and develop public contracts. Placing alone or associated with study groups or project management, it works with an international level efficiency. Coloco also knows how to create and accompany more polymorphous projects, bringing together public services, associations, activists, and volunteers to explore new relationships in collective reflection and construction. Coloco also devotes an important part of their work to the transmission and teaching of the view that we all participate in different formal and informal spaces.
Carla Boserman
http://www.carlaboserman.net
She is a teacher and coordinator of the Art Department at the BAU, University of Barcelona Design Center. She has been part of the Objetologías project, and participates in GREDITS (Research Group in Design and Social Transformation) where she is conducting doctoral research on epistemic objects and rare methodologies in art and design.
As a graphic reporter, she has participated in various projects and cultural spaces sensitive to experimental and collaborative practices such as Medialab-Prado and the Network of Collective Architectures. She has collaborated in pedagogical projects at the Vostell Malpartida Museum, MACBA, La aventura de aprender and lately in the CCCBLab with the project #Futurnet. For some time, she has collaborated on a project of culinary archives and political memory of the Barceloneta neighborhood. She writes, draws everything she can and has plans to take up pottery.
Roger Sansi & Josep Lluís Lancina
Rogser Sansi is a professor at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Barcelona. He has done research on Afro-Brazilian religion and culture, the concept of “fetish,” and is currently doing research on art and politics in Barcelona. His publications include Fetishes and Monuments (Berghahn, 2008), Sorcery in the Black Atlantic (University of Chicago press 2011), Money and Personalism in the Lusophone World (New England UP 2012), and Art, Anthropology and the Gift (Bloosmbury, 2015).
Josep Lluís Lancina is a pre-doctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the UB. He has done research on the relationships between “authenticity” and “musical identity,” and between “musical identity” and “local identity.” He is currently researching body movement in musical performances performed in various Barcelona music scenes. He is the author of the article, “In La Roca, hardcore is culture. DIY practices and the construction of a local identity” (Cuadernos de Arte y Antropolgía, Vol 6, No. 1, 2017).
Despina Sevasti
http://www.despinasevasti.com
Artist and educator usually based in Athens, Despina Sevasti is working with performance, text, painting, video, photography, sound, and whatever else makes sense, trying to quell her long-time obsessions: The ideology of “Greekness,” “crisis,” “white democracy,” the politics of teaching, feminism, archaeology, and other fun stuff. She has pursued her studies at the Dutch Art Institute (MA Art Praxis, 2017), Goldsmiths College (MA Contemporary Art Theory, 2006), Athens School of Fine Arts (BA Sculpture, 2004) and the University of Athens (BA Archaeology & History of Art, 1999). Despina has been teaching art foundation classes, painting, art history & theory in a variety of educational institutions in Athens since 2002. Though teaching is a significant part of her practice and her favorite labor, further professional endeavors include: Curator for the A-Station, Athens Centre for Contemporary Art (2002-2004); Project Manager for the 1st Athens Biennale “Destroy Athens” (2007-8); and Head of Communications for the 3rd Athens Biennale “Monodrome” (2011).
Nikos Doulos
http://www.expodium.nl
Nikos Doulos is an Amsterdam-based artist, born and raised in Athens. His interest lies in inclusive modes of knowledge production achieved through discursive practices and temporal interventions. In his work, he creates malleable situations/conditions as participatory infrastructures and “soft” knowledge generators. Walking holds a dominant place in his practice. His is the founder of NIGHTWALKERS – a collectively practiced nocturnal walking project investigating the contemporary identity of the flanêur.
He predominately engages on research trajectories under the umbrella of Expodium – an urban do tank investigating the role of the arts in urban transition areas. He teaches periodically at Kuvataideakatemia in Helsinki and he is the coordinator of Roaming Assembly – DAI Roaming Academy’s public program. He is currently a resident artist at Capacete-Athens (Athens, May – November 2017). His current research is generously supported by Mondriaan Fund.
Eva Marichalar-Freixa
http://www.evamarichalarfreixa.com
Devoted to education and the arts from a multidisciplinary perspective, Eva Maricharlar since 2003 has been a lecturer of the Department of Didactics of Arts and Sciences of the Faculty of Education, Translation and Human Sciences of the University of Vic-Central Central University of Catalonia, where she also serves as the Artistic Director of the Theatre Workshop. In 2013, she submitted her Final Project of the Master’s Degree in Inclusive Education, entitled Learning and creation through wandering: the Mussol experience, in which she carries out the initial stages of research into the pedagogical dimension of walking as an aesthetic practice. Since then, her artistic and academic research has mainly focused on walking practices and live arts, laying the foundations for her PhD, which researches bridges of communication between street arts and training processes outside the classroom.
She lectures in Arts and Community, one of the subjects of the Master’s Degree in Street Art Creation of the University of Lleida and FiraTàrrega. In recent years, she has also collaborated as a workshop instructor and facilitator in various training initiatives of the FiraTàrrega. In 2012, together with the visual artist Jordi Lafon, she founded Deriva Mussol, an initiative that encourages wandering as an opportunity to generate and share learning and creative processes, and which forms part of the Nursery Project of ACVic, Contemporary Arts Centre.
She writes, directs and performs pieces for her project Virginia Fochs, as well as for other artists or companies. Instability, improvisation, and movement are elements with which she feels comfortable and which often accompany her in a dialogue that oscillates between an introspective process focused on the research of origins and an outward-looking process related to social and community practices.
Sabine Popp
http://bergenateliergruppe.no/sabine-popp
http://topographies.khib.no/participants/sabine-popp-khib
Sabine Popp is a visual artist and current research fellow at the Department of Fine Art at the University of Bergen, Norway – Agential Matter (Invisible Landscapes). Her practice has been mainly based on site-specific temporary projects, following her interest in life in the High North and human beings’ engagement with their physical surroundings, often to be traced in working tasks and daily routines. She investigates transitional processes in materiality and their entanglements with socio-political changes.
