Mireille Berton is professor at the Department of Film Studies of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Her research focuses on the relationship between cinema and sciences of the mind, media technologies and the imaginary, and on the cultural history of spectatorship. The book based on her Ph.D. dissertation, The Nervous Body of Spectators. Cinema and Sciences of Mind around 1900 was published in 2015 (L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne). She also coedited with Anne-Katrin Weber a book titled Du Téléphonoscope à YouTube. Pour une archéologie de l’audiovision (Antipodes, Lausanne, 2009). She is currently working on a book manuscript about the representations of spiritism in the contemporary cinema and TV series.

Chris Dercon is an art historian, documentary filmmaker and cultural producer. In 2015 he was named as the future Intendant of Volksbühne Berlin from September 2017. He was previously Director of Tate Modern in London, Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and Witte de With – Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, as well as Program Director of PS1 Museum in New York. He curated and co-curated, amongst others, exhibitions of André Cadere, Dan Graham, Konstantin Grcic, Hans Haacke, Carlo Mollino, Helio Oiticica, Paul Thek, Ai Weiwei, Franz West and Bhupen Khakhar. He has published, contributed to and edited many catalogues, art publications, lectures and interviews worldwide. His current interest lies particularly with the development of the future museum. He has made extensive cultural research and co operations with cultural producers in Brazil as of (1988), North Africa – Levant as of (1992), Japan as of (1993), China as of (1999), India as of (2005), and most recently in West Africa, The Gulf and Saudi Arabia.

Elie During is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris–Ouest Nanterre and teaches a seminar on theory and contemporary art at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. His current research focuses on the philosophical implications of the space-time concept at the crossroad of aesthetics, metaphysics and the philosophy of science. His publications include Faux Raccords (Actes Sud, 2010), The Future Does Not Exist (B42, 2014), as well as several contributions to the critical edition of Henri Bergson’s complete works for the Presses Universitaires de France (Durée et Simultanéité, Le souvenir du present). He co-edited In actu: de l’expérimental dans l’art (Les Presses du Réel, 2009) and co-authored Qu’est-ce que le curating? (Manuella Éditions, 2011). Forthcoming: Temps flottants (Bayard), and Bergson et Einstein: la querelle du temps (PUF).

Anselm Franke is a curator and writer based in Berlin, Germany. He is head of the Department of Visual Arts and Film at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In 2012, he curated the Taipei Biennial, Modern Monsters / Death and Life of Fiction. His project Animism was presented in Antwerp, Bern, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Shenzhen, Seoul, and Beirut in various collaborations from 2010 to 2014. At the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, he has co-curated The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside (with Diedrich Diederichsen, 2013), After Year Zero: Geographies of Collaboration (2013), and Ape Culture (with Hila Peleg, 2015).

Dorothea von Hantelmann is documenta Professor at the Art Academy/University of Kassel where she lectures on the history and meaning of documenta and is involved in the constitution of a documenta research institute. Her main fields of research are contemporary art and theory as well as the history and theory of exhibitions. She is currently working on a book that explores art exhibitions as ritual spaces in which fundamental values and categories of modern, liberal and market based societies historically have been, and continue to be practised and reflected. She is author of How to Do Things with Art, a book on performativity within contemporary art.

Pierre Huyghe is a French artist born in 1962. He lives and works in Santiago, Chile. His most recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), LACMA Los Angeles County Museum (Los Angeles), Ludwig Museum (Cologne), The Artist’s Institute (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), and Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City).

Jeremy Lecomte is a researcher and theoretician working across the fields of political philosophy, cultural theory, art, architecture and urban studies. Graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2013 (Mphil Cultural studies), and from l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, EHESS, Paris, in 2009 (MA Political philosophy), he is currently teaching at l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, France, and a PhD candidate in Architecture at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre, in Manchester. His thesis is provisionary titled “The Transmodern City. Lagos, Urban Projects, and the Politics of Space (1880-2008)”, and focuses, through several case studies, on the interaction between urban projects, modernization, and informal dynamics of urbanization. He has recently published articles in Mute magazine (Speculative Architectures, 2013), and in Social Anthropology (Beyond Indefinite Extension: About Bruno Latour and Urban Space, 2013), available here. Jeremy Lecomte collaborates with artists and architects (recent collaborations include one with Yves Mettler in Standard Deluxe in Lausanne in 2012; and with Holzweg on a proposal for the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2015). He is co-founder and co-director of Glass Bead, a research platform and a journal concerned with transfers of knowledge across art, science and philosophy, as well as with their practical and political dimensions.

Professor Stephane Lojkine teaches French 18th century literature and literary theory at the University of Aix-Marseille, in Aix-en-Provence. He directs the Interdisciplinary Center for Literary Studies in Aix-Marseille (CIELAM) and the CRISIS Federation, which associates the research groups of the Maison de la Recherche, in the Faculty of Arts of his university. He founded in 2001 the Utpictura18 project, which aimed to study the relationship between text and image, primarily in 18th century painting and illustration, and ever since in a wider field and prospect. Utpictura18 displays now online more than 13600 pictures sorted and described in an open access database. Since the 2015 attacks in Paris, he has been organizing and presenting at the University, with Alexis Nuselovicci, a monthly webmagazine, La Parole aux humanités. He his the author of Diderot et le temps (with Adrien Paschoud, Presses universitaires de Provence, 2016), Le Goût de Diderot (with Olivier Zeder and Guillaume Faroult, Hazan, 2013), Fictions de la rencontre (with Pierre Ronzeaud, Presses universitaires de Provence, 2011), L’Œil révolté (Jacqueline Chambon – Actes sud, 2007), Image et subversion (Jacqueline Chambon, 2005) and La Scène de roman (Armand Colin, 2002).

Robin Mackay is director of UK publisher and arts organization Urbanomic, and editor of their journal Collapse. He has written widely on philosophy and contemporary art, and has instigated collaborative projects with numerous contemporary artists. He has also translated a number of important works of French philosophy, including Alain Badiou’s Number and Numbers, Quentin Meillassoux’s The Number and the Siren, Francois Laruelle’s The Concept of Non-Photography and Éric Alliez’s The Brain-Eye.

Celeste Olalquiaga is a cultural historian interested in the contradictions of modernity and the residual aspects of modern culture. Her books include Megalopolis: Contemporary Cultural Sensibilities (1992) and The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience (1998). An independent scholar, Celeste publishes, lectures and does artistic collaborations worldwide. She is the founder and director of PROYECTO HELICOIDE, a non-profit cultural association dedicated to rescuing the memory of El Helicoide, a modern ruin in Caracas, Venezuela.

Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University London, and a longtime editor of the British journal Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (Verso, 1995; 2011), Philosophy in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 2000), Conceptual Art (2002), Marx (Granta, 2005) and Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (Verso, 2013). Recent edited volumes include: The State of Things (co-ed), Walter Koenig/OCA, London/Oslo, 2012 (lectures from the Norwegian Representation at the Venice Biennale 2011) and Spheres of Action: Art and Politics (co-ed. with Éric Alliez), Tate Publishing/MIT, London/Cambridge MA, 2013. Catalogue essays include contributions to Manifesta 5, Tate Modern, 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Walker Art Center Minneapolis, Office of Contemporary Art Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Oslo, CGAC in Santiago de Compostela, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. He has also contributed to a range of international journals including: Afterall, Art History, Concreta, Cultural Studies, New German Critique, New Left Review, October, Telos, Texte zur Kunst. He was Principal Investigator on the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council project on ‘Transdisciplinarity and the Humanities’ (2011–13) and co-editor of the special double issue of Theory, Culture and Society on ‘Transdisciplinary Porblematics’ (2015). He was the keynote speaker at the World Biennial Forum No. 2, in Sao Paulo, 2014, Making Biennials in Contemporary Times.

Filipa Ramos (b. Lisbon) is a writer and editor based in London. Currently she is Editor in Chief of art-agenda, commissioning and publishing experimental and rigorous writing on art. She is a lecturer in art and moving image at the Experimental Film MA Programme of Kingston University, and at the MRes Art:Moving Image of Central Saint Martins/University of the Arts, both in London. Ramos is co-curator of Vdrome, an ongoing programme of screenings of films by visual artists and filmmakers, which she co-founded in 2013. Previously she was Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal, curator of the Research Section of dOCUMENTA (13), and coordinator of “The Most Beautiful Kunsthalle in the World” research project at the Antonio Ratti Foundation, Como. Interested in the ways in which art—and in particular moving-image based work—provides a site of encounter for humans and nonhumans, she has written, lectured, and curated exhibitions and film programmes on the topic and is currently editing an anthology of art writing on animals, to be published this upcoming Autumn. She has been a guest curator at several public and private institutions and her writing has appeared in diverse journals and catalogues.

Juliane Rebentisch is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the University of Arts and Design in Offenbach/Main, where she also serves as vice president since 2014. In addition, she is a member of the Collaborative Research Council of the Institute of Social Research (Frankfurt/Main) and acting president of the German Society of Aesthetics (2015-2018). Her main research areas are aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. Publications include: Ästhetik der Installation (Suhrkamp 2003)/Aesthetics of Installation Art (Sternberg 2012); Kreation und Depression. Freiheit im gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (co-ed. with Ch. Menke, Kadmos 2010); Die Kunst der Freiheit. Zur Dialektik demokratischer Existenz (Suhrkamp 2012; engl. translation forthcoming from Polity); Theorien der Gegenwartskunst zur Einführung (Junius 2013).

João Ribas is Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. He was previously Curator of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and of The Drawing Center, New York. Ribas is the winner of four consecutive AICA Exhibition Awards (2008–11) and of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010) and his writing has been featured in publications such as Artforum, Mousse, Afterall, Frieze, and the Exhibitionist, among others. His recent publication, In the Holocene, is published by Sternberg Press (2015).

Ludger Schwarte is Professor of Philosophy at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, after having been an assistant professor of image theory at the university of Basel (2006-2009) and a professor of aesthetics at the Zurich university of arts (2009). He studied philosophy, literature and political sciences in Münster, Berlin and Paris. Ph.D. in philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin 1997. Habilitation in philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin 2007. He was a visiting scholar at the university Paris 8, at the GACVS (Washington), at the Maison des Sciences de l‘Homme (Paris), at the university of Abidjan, at Columbia University (New York), at the EHESS (Paris) and at the IKKM (Weimar). His areas of specialisation are aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of culture, ontology, history of science. His books include Die Regeln der Intuition. Kunstphilosophie nach Adorno, Heidegger und Wittgenstein, München: W. Fink 2000,  Philosophie der Architektur. München: W. Fink 2009, Vom Urteilen. Berlin: Merve 2012, Pikturale Evidenz. Paderborn: W. Fink 2015.

Anna-Sophie Springer is an editor, curator, and the co-director of K. Verlag, a Berlin-based independent press exploring the book as a site for exhibition making. Her practice stimulates fluid relations among images, artifacts, and texts in order to produce new geographical, physical, and cognitive proximities, often in relation to historical archives. As a member of the SYNAPSE International Curators’ Network of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, she is the co-founder and co-editor of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series published as part of Das Anthropozän-Projekt. Sophie has written widely on exhibition histories and curatorial practices. Her most recent exhibition, 125,660 Specimens of Natural History (2015), was co-curated with Etienne Turpin at Komunitas Salihara in Jakarta, Indonesia, in collaboration with the Indonesian Institute of Science. Sophie received her M.A. in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and her M.A. in Curatorial Studies from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. She is currently conducting research for her Ph.D., which examines the financialization of tropical nature, at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.

http://k-verlag.com

Olivier Surel is a doctoral researcher at Université Paris Ouest. He focuses on the articulation of rationalism, naturalism and ontology between the Early Modern period and contemporary philosophy.

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher studying, designing, curating, and writing about complex urban systems, political economies of data and infrastructure, visual culture, art, and aesthetics, and Southeast Asian colonial-scientific history. Etienne is the founding director of anexact office, his design research practice based in Jakarta, Indonesia. The office is committed to interventive urbanism, curatorial and artistic experimentation, and applied socio-spatial research with a focus on mediation; the office operates as both a vehicle for inquiry and a platform for assembly with the objective of providing tools and methods for practices of mutual aid in the Anthropocene. As a researcher with the MIT Urban Risk Lab, Etienne organizes collaborative studies of Asian megacities and their various data polities. As a member of the SYNAPSE International Curators’ Network of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Etienne is the is co-founder and co-editor of the intercalations: paginated exhibition series as a part of Das Anthropozän-Projekt. He is the editor of Architecture in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2013) and co-editor of Art in the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2015) and Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Universitas Indonesia Press, 2013).

http://anexact.org

Charles T. Wolfe is a Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences and Sarton Centre for History of Science, Ghent University, and an associate member of the IHPST (CNRS-UMR 8590, Paris). He works primarily in history and philosophy of the early modern life sciences, with a particular interest in materialism and vitalism. He is the author of Materialism: A Historico-Philosophical Introduction (Springer, 2016), and has edited volumes including Monsters and Philosophy (2005), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge (2010, with O. Gal), Vitalism and the scientific image in post-Enlightenment life-science (2013, with S. Normandin), Brain Theory. Essays in Critical Neurophilosophy (2014), Philosophy of Biology before Biology (w. C. Bognon-Kuss, in progress) along with articles in journals including Early Science and Medicine, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Journal of the History of Biology, Multitudes, Perspectives on Science, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Recherches sur Diderot et l’Encyclopédie, Science in Context, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences and others. His current project is a monograph on the conceptual foundations of Enlightenment vitalism. He is also the Co-Editor of the Springer series in History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. Papers and other works available here.

Yuk Hui is currently postdoctoral researcher at the Leuphana University in Germany, he is author of On the Existence of Digital Objects (Minnesota University Press, 2016) and co-editor of the anthology 30 Years after Les Immatériaux: Art, Science and Theory (Meson Press, 2015).

Forthcoming guest speakers will be announced soon.

Tristan Garcia is a French writer and philosopher. His novels include La Meilleure Part des hommes (2008), Mémoires de la jungle (2010), En l’absence de classement final (2012), Les Cordelettes de Browser (2012), Faber. Le Destructeur (2013) and 7 (2015). His philosophical works include L’Image (2007), Nous, Animaux et Humains. Actualité de Jeremy Bentham (2011), Forme et objet. Un Traité des choses (2011), Six Feet Under. Nos vies sans destin (2012) and Nous (2016). Forme et objet was translated into English by Jon Cogburn and Mark Allan Ohm under the title Form and Object: A Treatise on Things (2014) and is available from Edinburgh University Press. Since 2015, he’s an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Lyon-3.

Vincent Normand is an art historian, writer, and occasional curator. He teaches at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. He is co-director and co-editor of Glass Bead, a research platform and a journal concerned with transfers of knowledge across art, science and philosophy, as well as with their practical and political dimensions. He has curated exhibitions at Centre Pompidou (Paris), David Roberts Art Foundation (London), Kadist Foundation (Paris), Fondazione Nomas, (Rome), LABOR (Mexico City), and Forde (Geneva). He gave talks at Witte de With (Rotterdam), The Artist’s Institute (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Banff Centre (Banff, Canada), or the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris). He is a member of Synapse – Curators International Network at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. His texts are published in various exhibition catalogues, edited volumes and journals.

Lucile Dupraz is an artist and writer born in France. She currently lives in Zurich where she has been writing, translating, and performing. She studied photography in London, and has taught art history at a women’s university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Previously at ECAL she co-edited the book Vertiginous Parallels (2013) with Julien Fronsacq.

Virginia Ariu is an artist born in Turin in 1992. Graduated with a Bachelor in Visual Arts from Albertina Fine Arts Academy in Turin, she is now attending the Master of Visual Arts at ECAL. Her work ranges over different media.

Una Björg Magnúsdóttir is an artist from Iceland, born in 1990. She graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2014 with a BA degree in visual arts. Since then she has lived and worked in Reykjavik, Iceland. Currently she is pursuing her master studies in visual arts at Ecal/University of Art and Design Lausanne.

Catarina Bota Leal was born in Faro, Portugal, in 1983. She graduated in Architecture at the University of Coimbra, and in the last few years has been working in several architecture studios in Portugal and Switzerland, as well as doing freelance work in both architecture and the visual arts. She is currently pursuing a Master degree in Visual Arts at ECAL.

Lena Brudieux is a french artist living in Lausanne. She graduated at the Fine Art School of Bordeaux in France, and she is now completing her Master at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne.

Francesco Cagnin is an Italian artist born in 1988. He graduated in Visual Arts at IUAV Venice. He’s now enrolled in the Master Fine Arts program at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne.

Loucia Carlier is a french artist, working both in Lausanne and Paris (where she recently started a collaborative art project with other french artists). She studied for at ENSAD / Superior school of art of Paris, before moving to Switzerland to graduate at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne.

Sara Cavicchioli was born in Italy, in 1989. She graduated from the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in Switzerland. After her studies she start to work architectural and artistic project for her own practice, studio SML, in Lausanne. She is now attending the Master of Visual Arts at Ecal.

Born in 1985 in South Africa, she’s completing her Master at Head-Genève. In her work as well as in her research, she questions the relation between experimentation, time, and space.

Jean Etchevers-Bourgois was born in Paris in 1990 where he studied interior architecture before switching to Fine Arts at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, where he received his Bachelor degree in Visual Art, and continued with the Master program. His practice sways between curating and art production through collaborations in multifarious activities.

Gabriele Garavaglia studied architecture and visual art. He is interested in the existing relationship between individuals, spaces and the on-going phenomenon of collective relevance in contemporary society as well as in the way of making these links tangible.

Antoine Goudard is a French artist living and working both in Lausanne and Rouen. He is graduated from ESADHAR (Rouen) with a BA in Visual Arts. He is currently completing his MA in Fine Arts at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. His artistic practice questions microscopic and macroscopic scales through games of proportions and images.

Catherine Heeb lives and works in Zurich. She is currently pursuing her Master in Fine Arts at ECAL. Her work is questioning identity by exploring cultural boundaries and the new forms arising therefrom. She studied Design at University of Arts and Design in Zurich and did Erasmus Exchange at Universität der Künste in Berlin. Since then she is working as a curatorial assistant and artist in different medias.

Francesco Nazardo divides his time between Lausanne, where he is completing his Master’s in Visual Arts at ECAL, and traveling for commissioned projects.

Matteo Pomati is an artist born in Milan in 1989. He lives and works between Lausanne, where he is currently studying Visual Arts at ECAL, and Milan, where he got a BFA at Brera Fine Arts Academy. He is co-founder of Armada, in Milan.

Giulio Scalisi was born in Sicily in 1992, moved to the US in New Jersey and then Milan where he studied Visual Arts. He then move to ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne to finish his studies in the Visual Arts Master program. His artistic practice revolves around images and their potentiality using medias like 3D Modeling, videos and installation.

Tomaso Semenzato, born in 1992 in Italy, is a video and performance artist living between Italy, Switzerland and the US. Graduated with a Bachelor in Visual arts and Theatre from the University IUAV of Venice, he is now attending the Master of Fine Arts at ECAL.

Kostis Sotiriou is a visual artist and an architect. Having studied at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne after receiving a Bachelor in Fine Arts and a Master in Architecture, his work comprises installations investingating notions of topography, memory and trajectory.

Ilaria Vinci is an artist born in Brindisi, Italy, in 1991. She holds a BFA from Brera Fine Art Academy in Milan and currently she is enrolled in the Master in Visual Arts program at ECAL. She is co-founder of the artist-run space Armada, in Milan. She lives and works between Lausanne and Milan.

Jeanne Wéry is an architect and an artist living and working in Lausanne. During her studies started practicing taxidermy in the Natural History Museum. Her work is based on natural phenomena and wildlife.

Born in Iran, in 1986, Shirin obtained a Bachelor in Mise en Scène from Tehran University. She collaborated for several projects between Tehran and Paris in the fields of theater and cinema. Implicated in both cultural and politic matters, she left Iran in 2012 to continue her studies at ECAL where she obtained her Bachelor in Fine Art in 2015 and is attending the Master Program.