BIOS

Michael Kalivoda, born in Graz, completed his training as a cook, restaurant manager and tourism manager and studied transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts. He is also a certified olive oil expert. From 2015 – 2018 he worked as artistic director, chef de cuisine and managing director of the catering project « Migrating Kitchen » in Vienna. His focus is on the political aspects of our food production, dietary habits, self-organization, resistive practice and propaganda. His works include video and cooking performances, interactive sculptures and installations, photographs and plays. In 2015 he received the science grant from the City of Vienna. The « Migrating Kitchen » project received the MigAward in 2018 as part of the integration weeks. Michael Kalivoda has been working with wild herbs and plants in the kitchen for a long time and is currently completing his training as a certified herbalist.

Klaus Spiess directs the Arts in Medicine Program at the Vienna Medical University as an associate professor. His works address biopolitical issues in and beyond medicine. Developed together with artist Lucie Strecker his works have been shown at the Tanzquartier and the 21er Haus and at Brut; Vienna, Click Festival Helsingör, Muffatwerk Munich and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Installations at the Beall Center of Arts and Technology, Irvine, the Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, and at Ars Electronica, where he was awarded at the Prix. He has published at Performance Research, Kunstforum International, The Lancet, Leonardo, Technoetic Arts among others.

Lucie Strecker (* 1977 Berlin) works as an artist and researcher in the fields of performance art and BioArt. She is a Fellow of the Berlin University of the Arts and holds a senior postdoc position at the Art & Science department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, conducting the FWF Elise Richter PEEK project: “The Performative Biofact.” She is affiliated to the Arts in Medicine Program at the Vienna Medical University, working together with Klaus Spiess. Their performances and installations have been shown inter alia at Tanzquartier Vienna, the House of World Cultures, Berlin, the Beall Center for Art and Technology, Irvine, the Museum of Natural Science/Biofiction, Vienna, and the 21er Haus, Vienna.

Their works have been awarded the ZIM Performing Science Prize and a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. She has written about her work in Performance Research, The Lancet and with Diaphanes publishers and has taught or given guest lectures at the Berlin University of the Arts, the Medical University Vienna, Victoria University of Wellington, and the Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin.

http://www.luciestrecker.com

Felix Vidensky is a traveler, freelance artist and cook, who is organizing feasts, gatherings and exhibitions. Since he was running a farm he aquired an enormous knowledge about farming and food and is known as a specialist for organic highs. In the series of events Opium im Volk/Opium within the people, he used to cook with ingredients, that naturally contain psychoactive substances. He has published several food-oriented books: Des Hanfbauern Kochbuch, Feuer am Tisch and Organic High.

« Humanity and its cultural achievements cannot be explained without the use of drugs in food. » Felix Vidensky, 2022

Cellist Mara Achleitner was born in Palo Alto, California, and has lived in Vienna, Austria since 2003. After three seasons in the Orchestral Academy of ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mara was invited to become the cellist of ensemble LUX, a Vienna-based string quartet specializing in modern and contemporary chamber music. Mara is co-founder and cellist of Trio 37, a piano trio with Wiener Volksoper concertmaster Anne Harvey-Nagl and pianist Lindsey Huff. She a regular guest with the Koehne Quartet, with whom she performed in the Dschungel Theater in Vienna’s Museums Quartier and in the Albertina Museum. Together with Viennese composer Michael Mautner, Mara created and performed in the Konzett Concept Concerts at the Galerie Konzett in Wien, an interdisciplinary concert series combining modern art and music, including two string quartets by Austrian painter-composer Hermann Nitsch. Mara performs on a Joseph Grubaugh & Sigrun Seifert cello made in Petaluma, California in 1998. As principal cellist, Mara toured extensively with the Vienna Opera Ball Orchestra in Japan and throughout Europe. She also toured Japan five times with the Symphony Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper. Mara frequently performs with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and Ensemble Kontrapunkte in the Wiener Musikverein and the Wiener Konzerthaus. She received her Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance in New York City with professors Irene Sharp and Paul Tobias at Mannes College of Music, and her Master of Music from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston with Desmond Hoebig, former principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra. During her studies, Mara participated in the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo (Japan), the Aspen Music Festival (USA), and was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival (USA). While in Texas, Mara performed in the Houston Symphony Orchestra and held a position in the cello section of the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

Lena Fankhauser is a violist of Trinidadian-Swiss heritage born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She started playing the violin at the age of 4. She has received both her Bachelor and Master’s degree from the Julliard School of Music in New York City on a full scholarship. Fankhauser has toured worldwide, across numerous genres, and played in many halls including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Royal Albert Hall in London. As a passionate chamber musician, Lena Fankhauser founded a Chamber Music Festival in Bad Ischl and (CH)AMBER, an association for new chamber music. She is a founding member, contractor and manager of the film orchestra, Big Island Orchestra Vienna and a founding member and musical curator of Salon Souterrain.

https://www.lena-fankhauser.com

Born in Vienna in 1955, Wolfgang Seierl is equally active as an artist, musician and composer. He studied painting, philosophy, guitar, musicology, and composition in Vienna
and Salzburg. He received his PhD from the University Mozarteum Salzburg.
2000-02 participation at ISMEAM/Int. Summer Meeting for Electroacoustic Music in Sárvár/Hungary, 2003 grant of the state of Austria for composition/Staatsstipendium für Komposition, 2004 stay in India and residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts/USA,
2010 residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts/USA, composer and artist in Residence in the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival/USA. Compositions commissioned by (among others) Austrian Broadcasting Corporation/ORF, Int. Stiftung Mozarteum, Öst. Ensemble für Neue Musik, Ensemble Kreativ, Ensemble Wiener Collage, Vienna Recorder Ensemble, Ensemble Kontrapunkte, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien, Ensemble reconsil Vienna, Ensemble Sonne Ashiya/Japan. His work list includes orchestral, choral and chamber music, music for solo-instruments, electronic music, sound installations, space-, motion- and theater-related works.

DJ UNIVERSAL BEATNIK (Accordia Record Club / ORF Pratersterne)
In his function as DJ Universal Beatnik, Viennese media artist/musician/author Albert R. Farago (aka Al Bird Dirt and Al Bird Sputnik) plays « worldwide rare grooves », i.e. hot dance music from the remotest corners of the world. Music from decades ago, when records were still a mass medium and even offbeat novelty productions were created in the touching hope of taking the charts by storm – and sometimes even did … The variety of mixed genres and sub-genres seems inexhaustible, with priority given to 7″ singles that the Universal Beatnik dug up on early morning flea market tours: Girl-group pop from Singapore, belly-dance funk from Lebanon, yodel-rock-n- roll from the USA, minimal disco from Turkey, Schnitzelbeats from Austria … A sweaty affair that regularly drives music recognition software into a crash and only comes to an inebriated end in the late hours of the morning: « It’s been long overdue. We’ve been needing something new: Sophisticated boom boom! »

https://www.youtube.com/c/universalbeatnik

Hey my Name is Hummel, I‘m a non-binary Sex-Worker, Social- Worker and Bodyworker from Vienna. In these Aspects of my Life, I perform a lot of different roles, which are similar in some ways, different in others and mostly mean a lot of work for me. As a queer Sex-worker, being part of the sex-work Community, I experience, see and feel different struggles that occur with this profession. In political work, which also includes performing for me, I try to share some of my experiences and struggles and learn from others. In the times I don‘t spend with part of my life I call work, I try to live and get my energy from safer spaces filled with people that co-create these spaces with me.

Sugar Pa is a queer multi media artist, s_x worker (porn, escorting, camming) since 2018, sex workers rights; pleasure & community engagement activist, writer (missy magazine, referentin), facilitator freudensalon linz (anti- capitalist, sex positive space for exchange and workshops), sex&work @maiz autonomes zentrum von und für migrantische frauen* linz, producer of the movie “s_x work and relationship”, dedicated to creating and working collectively and to empowering other queers the way I am continuousely empowered by other queers. recently discovered performance art as artistic activism and coping mechanism for life in a white, binary, hetero normative and sexist surrounding. latest collaboration with ronit https://soundcloud.com/ronit_muadib/my-playground-my-power?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Denise VanDeCruze is an artist, traveller, and entrepreneur who infuses social justice and queer liberation in all of her endeavors. She owns and runs the Villa Vida – queer community cafe in Vienna. She is the founder of Black People in Vienna – a social group dedicated to fostering joy and community. Her many projects include the The Queer Feminist Festival, Black Austria – a documentary project, and The Queer Truth podcast.

Oscarine Bosquet, born in Marseille in 1964, is an author (poetry) and professor at the École Européenne Supérieure des Arts de Bretagne, site of Brest, coordinator of the master art « Forms of life and life of forms ».

Publications: Les 1 et les désorceleuses (à paraître en 2023 chez Al Dante), Mum is down, Al Dante, 2012 (trad. de Cole Swenson, Post Apollon Press, 2014), Participe présent, Le Bleu du ciel, 2009 (trad. de S. Riggs, La Press Iowa, 2013), Abstractions façonnées, Processus bleu, 2008, Chromo, Fourbis, 1997.
Publications en revues (extrait): « Parer » in Attaques, à paraître, 2023 ; « Danse d’écho » sur sitaudis.fr ; « Intime news », in Livraisons, 2007 ; « By day », The Poetry Project Newsletter, 2005 ; « Le mâle a de belles couleurs, la femelle est plus terne » in Action Poétique n°171, 2003 ; « Les Indésirables », in If, n°21, 2002, « Par jour », If n°13, 1998, « Bad observations » in Raddle Moon n°16, 1997 ; « Marguerite 1 », Action poétique n°142/143, 1996 ; « La route de Z», Action poétique n°129/130,1992.
Traductions: Idem de Michael Palmer (Format Américain, 1996), Participation aux séminaires de traductions collectives de l’abbaye de Royaumont entre 1994 et 1996 dont reprise de : Le livre de qui sont étaient de Benjamin Hollander (Créaphis, 1996).
Lectures publiques de 1993 aux « Établissements phonographiques de l’Est  » (Paris)…à 2015 Midiminuitpoésie #15, maison de la poésie, Nantes.

Silvia Bulgheresi has been studying how food can modify the biological information stored in our DNA, as well as the microbes we carry with us. She is teaching microbial epigenetics and microbial symbioses at the University of Vienna as an Associate Professor in Environmental cell biology. She is regularly invited to speak at scientific meetings all over the world and publishes in peer-reviewed scientific journals (last publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32260-w)

Jesus Crespo Cuaresma is Director of Economic Analysis at the Wittgenstein Centre and has an oversight function of three WIC Research Groups, Professor of Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), as well as and Research Scholar at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He studied Economics at the University of Sevilla (Spain) and received his PhD from the University of Vienna. He has published numerous articles in renowned scientific journals and acts as a scientific consultant to the World Bank and the Austrian Institute of Economic Research. Areas of Expertise: Applied Econometrics, Macroeconomics, Economic Growth, Human Capital, Economic Policy Research.

Dr. Helga Klug, psychoanalyst, training analyst, supervisor and lecturer at Sigmund Freud PrivatUniversität Vienna and Berlin. Research interests: social critique from a psychoanalytical perspective, literature and psychoanalysis, theories of intersubjectivity.

Alexandra Graupner is a cultural manager with a special focus on transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary art projects and artistic research projects and has been head of the AIL – Angewandte Innovation Lab since its foundation in April 2014. Having worked in the field of architecture for more than a decade, she knows how to read architectural plans – very helpful, especially now that we have moved to a new building – and is the mastermind behind AIL’s long-term strategy and its development over the years, together with the team. At AIL, her work focuses on helping artists, scientists, and external partners present and realize their interdisciplinary projects, connecting people from different fields, and providing a safe space for experimental ideas to develop. It is her goal to make the results of those projects comprehensible for a public audience and limelight the impacts they have on society. 

Klaus Spiess runs the cross-disciplinary Arts and Science program and the LASER art&science talks at the Medical University Vienna, where he is Associate Professor. He develops transdisciplinary performances/ installations on the subject of biopolitics performing at Budascoop Kortrijk; Tanzquartier Vienna; Belvedere/21er Haus, Vienna; Bemis Center of Contemporary Art, Omaha; Click Festival, Helsingør; ISEA, AIL Vienna, Muffatwerk Munich, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, among many other venue (together with Lucie Strecker). His installations have been shown at venues such as the Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, the Onassis Cultural Center, Athens, and at the Prix Ars Electronica Festival. He has published on the subject of his work in Leonardo, The Journal of Performance Research and The Lancet.

Born in Kinshasa (DRC), Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe grew up in France and pursued artistic studies. In 1998, she obtained the “Diplôme National d’Expression Plastique”, for her work of sculpture, at the School of Fine Arts in Tourcoing, France. She has since developed a reflection on the transformation of spaces, time, bodies on stage and in exhibition spaces in the form of performance / installation / sculpture.
In response to the rise of European populist parties, Elisabeth creates in 2017 a multidisciplinary Art Space: Château Rouge. In 2018 she sets up the concept of “Salon Souterrain”, a platform for discussions mixing different forms and artistic gestures. more

Indra Jäger, born in Frankfurt/Main, has been living in Vienna since 2000. After studying journalism and communication sciences she co-initiated and directed the art and culture association IM ERSTEN (2012-16). In her role as artistic director, she has conceived, accompanied and implemented over 100 projects at the interface of visual and performing arts. Through collaboration with artists from various disciplines, follow-up projects have developed. in which she works as a freelance curator, dramaturge, production and cooperation partner. Since 2022 she is part of the Salon Souterrain team.

Lena Fankhauser is a violist of Trinidadian-Swiss heritage born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She started playing the violin at the age of 4. She has received both her Bachelor and Master’s degree from the Julliard School of Music in New York City on a full scholarship.
Fankhauser has toured worldwide, across numerous genres, and played in many halls including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Royal Albert Hall in London. As a passionate chamber musician, Lena Fankhauser founded a Chamber Music Festival in Bad Ischl and (CH)AMBER, an association for new chamber music. She is a founding member, contractor and manager of the film orchestra, Big Island Orchestra Vienna and a founding member and musical curator of Salon Souterrain.
https://www.lena-fankhauser.com