Nigel Rolfe is recognised as a seminal figure in performance art and its history.
Born on the Isle of Wight, Nigel Rolfe lives and works in Dublin. His work, which spans live performance, photography and sound, has received international acclaim and has been exhibited or performed in venues such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Franklin Furnace in New York and the Institute for Contemporary Art Gallery in London, throughout Europe, North and South America and Asia. Retrospectives of his work have been held at the Irish Museum Of Modern Art in Dublin, the Musee D’Art Moderne de la Ville De Paris and the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing. He has exhibited in Biennales in Dublin, Paris, Sao Paulo, Busan, Gwangju and Venice and presented in numerous international art fairs. Galleries in Dublin, Paris and New York represent his work.
Paula Fitzsimons is an Irish visual artist utilizing modes of live performance art, photography, moving image, sound, text and expanded drawing technique to make time-based works of art. She works with ephemeral, natural and found materials such as foam, dust and orchids. Her art practice is informed by movements such as FLUXUS, GUTAI and ARTE POVERA, in a world of things, to convene and orchestrate a weave of material crisis as an art practice without edges.
Paula Fitzsimons was awarded a PhD at the Royal College of Art London for her practice-based work titled ‘Up Against the Wall: A Journey in Culture, from Resistant to Dynamic, Encountering The Limit in the Process’ in 2023. Paula has exhibited works in Ireland, Britain, Italy, France, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, South Korea and Dubai.
Michele Bernabei is an Italian composer trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist performer. He combines electronic music, trumpet, and live visuals.
Michele studied jazz trumpet and composition, as well as classical and contemporary composition, in Genoa, Turin, Milan, and Graz. During his studies in Computer Music and Sound Art at the Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik (IEM) in Graz, he developed MiBeAT—a hybrid electroacoustic instrument that merges a classical trumpet with a wireless MIDI controller and light sensors, allowing the performer to shape sound, video, and lighting in real time.
Imants Daksis is a Latvian songwriter, singer, composer, and artist. He has written several hundred songs and released nine critically acclaimed music albums that received six nominations for the Latvian Music Annual Award Zelta Mikrofons and one nomination for the Austra Award. Additionally, he has participated in various music projects spanning different genres, contributing to nine more albums. His studio recordings have included collaborations with numerous professionals from Latvia’s music scene and beyond. His musical influences are world music, ritual music, film soundtracks and 1960’s psychedelic rock (in lyrics and sound).
Kevin Daryl Ferdinandus (born in Coburg, Germany) is a media artist and videographer exploring the function of digital machines in ideological and political systems and networks. Focussing on errors, he challenges the notion of technological perfection and infallibility and draws attention to the inner workings of digital media and networks.
His works take digital form, primarily as video or image, without being limited to these media. What unites them methodologically is the use of the wrong tool, the wrong software, or deliberate sabotage of the mechanical part of production. This often results in an alienating aesthetic, revealing organic-looking structures and patterns within the digital realm.
Peter Fritzenwallner (born 1983 in Neukirchen am Großvenediger, Austria) is a contemporary Austrian Artist working across painting, sculpture, storytelling, video, and primarily performance. He studied Visual Arts at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna and received the Austrian Staatsstipendium for Fine Arts.
Fritzenwallner’s work is based on a dynamic interplay between narrative and material practice, in which narrative structures serve as the basis for sculptural and performative explorations, while at the same time the practical engagement with materials shapes and guides the stories told. His work has been shown internationally, including Austria, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, Sydney, India, the United States, France, Bulgaria, and China.
Robert Gruber (born 1979 in Styria) is an Austrian artist, writer and curator. His work encompasses visual art, photography, performance, and theory. He studied scenography, visual communication and music theory in Vienna, Oslo and Berlin and holds a PhD in philosophy.
Gruber has been awarded the Austrian Staatsstipendium for Photography as well as a studio grant from the Federal Ministry of the Republic of Austria. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the United States.
He is founder and artistic director of gottrekorder – association of artists, and independent art space based in Graz and Vienna, where he has curated numerous exhibitions and collaborative projects with both Austrian and international artists.
Kathrin Hanga (*1988 Vienna) studied at Sorbonne Nouvelle, L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq Paris, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Tokyo University of the Arts. Her background in theater and film have led her to search for kineticism in her photography; the search for spontaneity only allowed through the honing of her technique and craft. Through the medium of film photography, and the use of analog printing techniques, Hanga creates images that dwell in the space between fact and fiction. Hanga works as a curator for the artist collective Gottrekorder e.v. and is part of the artist collective Ueno Syndicate. Her work was shown in New York, London, Tokyo and Vienna.
Laura Hatting (born 1994 in Leipzig) is a visual artist and musician. She studied Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts. Her artistic practice and work ethic are hybrid, transdisciplinary and often time-based and/or site-specific. Hatting works across writing, music, performance and drawing, and translates her drawings into ink, print and sculpture.
In her practice, she merges all skills from all fields that are her life—may they seem incompatible or not. As her black metal alter ego GNEVER, she creates music performances with voice and electric guitar that combine visual art, black metal, science fiction, and philosophy. Her current work explores the dissolution of the real in favour of more “productive” concepts within a capitalism confronted with resource scarcity. Laura works and lives in Vienna.
Anna Hofbauer is an Austrian artist, curator, and lecturer based in Vienna. Her artistic practice centers on sculpture and photography, with a background in stage design and sculpture studies in Vienna. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe and Asia, as well as international sculpture symposiums and artist-in-residence programs.
She received a studio grant from the Federal Ministry of the Republic of Austria (Staatsatelier). From 2010 to 2015, she co-founded and curated at the exhibition space BLACKBRIDGEOFF 空间 in Beijing, where she organized group exhibitions and film programs. Hofbauer is a lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Mersedes Margoit is a Latvian video artist. Although studied photography in London, she developed a stronger interest in video, establishing her own niche in the experimental filmmaking scene. She is an active member of the Baltic Analog Lab artist collective in Riga, Latvia and works with 16mm and Super 8mm analog film, as well as digital video. Mersedes Margoit is working professionally in Riga for over 3 years now.
Markus Redl is an Austrian artist working mainly in sculpture, drawing and text. He studied at the University of Fine Arts Vienna in the class of Erwin Wurm and has a background in German Philology and Philosophy, and Psychology.
Redl’s artistic practice is a continuous effort to engage with the world through extensive knowledge of literature, natural sciences, and philosophy. His works often challenge traditional expectations of material and form, combining conceptual depth with technical precision. In 2004, he began working on a “library of stones”. Redl has also realized large-scale projects that combine architecture and landscape, figuration and abstraction. His work has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions.
Lissie Rettenwander is an Austrian composer, singer, performer and voice and sound artist. Born in Kitzbühel, she grew up on a farm in Gundhabing, where her musical journey began. Rettenwander uncompromisingly embraces the balancing act between tradition and avantgarde.
As a composer-performer, she works with voice, zither, accordion, guitar, metronomes, tuning forks, fabric songbirds, shepherd’s calls, electronics, spaces, and the mini amplifier Vox. In her soundscape, multi-timbrality and polyphony emerge in one. Lissie is based in Vienna and works as an art teacher in Vienna-Simmering.
Céline Struger is an Austrian artist working in sculpture and site-specific art. Her focus lies on the redetermination of sites and their original genius loci, dealing with issues like post-capitalism, mythology and collective consciousness. She often uses water as a sculptural medium, interacting with various materials to create dynamic surfaces and evoke themes of fluidity, erosion, and decay.
The artist was recently awarded with the studio grant in Paris by the Austrian Ministry of Culture (2023) and exhibited at studio PRAM gallery (solo, 2024), Barvinskyi Art Gallery (group, 2024) Picture Theory NY (group, 2024), She BAM! Leipzig (solo, 2023), Artocène Chamonix, France and Dalseong Daegu Contemporary Art Festival in Daegu, South Korea (group, 2023). In 2022 and 2021 she showed at MQ Art Box (solo) in Museumsquartier Vienna and Loggia Vienna (solo) and TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (group). Céline Struger is based in Vienna.