Michał Bieniek, studied at the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in
Wrocław; head of the Managing Board of the Foundation for Contemporary Art ART TRANSPARENT,
creator and general curator of the SURVIVAL Art Review; originator and coordinator of the
contemporary art gallery Mieszkanie Gepperta (Geppert’s Apartment). Twice, in 2006 and 2010, he
was granted scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and in 2004 was awarded
the Marshal of Lower Silesia Prize. In 2009 and 2010, nominated for the ‘Gazeta Wyborcza’ WARTO
Award, which he received in 2010. Since 2010 he has been a Research Student by Project at the
Curating Contemporary Art Department of the Royal College of Art in London. In 2011, he was granted
‘Młoda Polska’ scholarship.
Michaela Crimmin, curator, co-founder and director of Culture+Conflict. Her ongoing research
explores the relationship between the arts and societal issues, particularly artists’ perspectives on
environmental and other contemporary challenges, and artists’ engagement with public space. She is
a course tutor on the Curating Contemporary Art masters programme at the Royal College of Art,
programming two courses in 2013: ‘Art in the Public Domain’ and ‘Art and Globalisation’.
Her current work with Culture+Conflict aims to build support and recognition for arts and cultural
activity specifically in conflict and post-conflict situations. She has also recently been working with the
artist Joanna Rajkowska on a commission for the UK city of Peterborough as part of a programme
exploring how ‘citizen power’ can shape civic and democratic renewal.
She was previously Head of Arts at the RSA (1997-2010), a role that included commissioning the first
phase of the Fourth Plinth series in London’s Trafalgar Square, directing the Art for Architecture award
scheme, and latterly initiating and directing the Arts & Ecology Centre on behalf of the RSA and Arts
Council England. This five-year programme supported, promoted and debated artists’ responses to
current environmental challenges through a range of activities including artist commissions, a book,
and a series of events and international residencies. Prior to this she worked with artists in the public
sphere for over fifteen years of commissioning art with the pioneering public art agency, The Public Art
Development Trust. She is a member of the Higher Education Academy and lectures frequently
nationally and internationally.
Julia Draganović, a curator for contemporary art whose interest is focused on new artistic strategies
including art in public spaces, socially engaged practices and new media. She has curated shows in
Germany, Italy, Spain, the USA and Taiwan, including the curatorial projects of Bologna Art First 2010
- 2012 and at Art Miami since 2009. Draganović is a member of the committees of the Outdoor Gallery
in Gdansk (Poland), a board member of No Longer Empty, New York and a member of the Scientific
Committee of Mudam, Luxembourg. As founding member of the curatorial collective and platform for
contemporary art LaRete Art Projects, she is in charge of the International Award for Participatory Art
launched by the Legislative Assembly of the Italian Region Emilia-Romagna.
Institutional positions covered by Julia Draganović include Artistic Director of the Chelsea Art Museum
New York (2005-2006) and of PAN Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2007-2009).
Torun Ekstrand, project leader of Art Line which just received a Flagship status from the European
Commission. It is now part of the Action Plan for the Baltic Sea Strategy, the first Macro-regional
strategy in Europe. Culture is a part of the plan for development of the regions and Art Line is an
example of a South Baltic art cooperation network. Torun Ekstrand is a freelance since 2002, working
as curator and as project leader for public art projects in Artland. In 2011 she was awarded the
Honorary Award the Knight’s Cross of Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for promoting Polish art
in Scandinavia for many years. Torun Ekstrand has earlier worked at Art halls, museums and as
program manager of Crossmedia at the Blekinge Institute of Technology.
Dominik Lejman, visual artist, graduate of the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk, Faculty
of Painting and Graphic Arts; and the Royal College of Art in London with the title of Master of Arts.
Lives and works in Poznań and Berlin. Awarded numerous Polish and international awards, including
the ‘Polityka’ Passport Award in 2001 for ‘art that innovatively combines traditional painting with
contemporary media technology’. Deals with painting, which he merges with video projections; carries
out video-frescoes and works in the form of large-scale photo-wallpapers. Besides individual and
group exhibitions, he also contributes with many works presented in public space at, including Burn
Festival, Cracow, (2012);
It hurts, I can’t feel anything, Grand Theatre – National Opera, Warsaw
(2011); 60sec. Cathedral, SkyWay Festival Toruń and Valgus Festival, Tallinn (2011); Lumiere,
Durham (2011); Light Move Festival, Łódź (2011); Double Layer. Fossils and Gardens, European
Parliament, Brussels (2011); Second City, video frescoes Śródka, (cooperation: Galeria Starter)
Poznań (2010); Panoptical Machines, SkyWay Festival, Toruń, (2010).
Bettina Pelz, since 2000 the curatorial work of Bettina Pelz has been dedicated to interdisciplinary
projects in urban space, postindustrial environments and world cultural heritage sites. Internationally
she has been involved in projects in the arts in Australia, China, Egypt, Estonia, France, Germany,
Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, South-Africa and Switzerland, among others, since
2000 with focus on light as material and media in the arts. She is the founding curator of the awarded
festival formats “Lichtrouten” (Germany, since 2002), “Glow” (Netherlands, 2006 to 2009], “Narracje”
(Poland, 2009 to 2011) and “Lichtstroeme” (Germany, since 2011).
Martin Schibli, curator, critic and lecturer based in Sweden. Between 2006 and 2102, as a curator
and director of exhibitions, he transformed the Kalmar konstmuseum into one of the top institutions in
Sweden. During the last decade he curated about 80 exhibitions in eleven countries, including
Sweden, Russia, Germany, Lithuania and Poland, organised at museums, art galleries and biennials.
Last year Kalmar konstmuseum was also an official partner to the Berlin Biennale. His exhibitions
include individual displays of works by Artur Żmijewski, Marina Naprushkina and Georg Baselitz. He is
one of the main curators for the upcoming Shiryaevo Biennale in Russia, with other exhibition projects
planned in Russia, China and Chile. In Sweden he is also known for the book How to become a
contemporary artist in three days, a survival guide to the art world. Besides curating, he also lectures
regularly at universities and art schools.
Kuba Szreder, a graduate of the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University (Cracow). Curator of
the Free / Slow University of Warsaw. As part of his curatorial practice he organises public art and
research projects, convenes seminars and conferences, writes articles and edits publications. His
interdisciplinary projects actively engage in public the sphere, combine artistic practices with other
formats of cultural production, critical reflection upon the art world and thorough examination of
society. In the autumn of 2009 he started his PhD research at Loughborough University School of the
Arts, where he scrutinises the apparatus of project making and its relation to the independent
curatorial practice.
Agnieszka Wołodźko, studied at the Faculty of Painting and Graphic Arts of the State Higher School
of Visual Arts in Gdańsk between 1980-1986. Currently, her PhD Thesis is in preparation on
participation art in Scandinavia between 1990 and 2010 at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Works as an artist (dealing with painting, photography, installations,
sound, actions, artistic workshops for various social groups, and formulating ideas), curator and author
of texts on art, architecture and contemporary urban design, as well as topical problems faced by
modern cities. Participant in a plethora of exhibitions and artistic projects in Poland and abroad. Held
residencies in New York, Reykjavik, Helsinki, Graz, Bremen, Japan and Berlin. Published the
photographic album Japan 2002-2003. Photographic Diary (Ryszard Ziarkiewicz Publishing, 2005).
Since 2000, she has worked as an exhibition curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia in
Gdańsk.
Julita Wójcik, sculptor and initiator of artistic actions. Gained renown as a chronicler of provincial
domestic aesthetics. Addressing daily activities, her works blur the borders between reality and art.
Her vivid actions achieve effects through a minimum of involved means, such as peeling potatoes in a
gallery or reading Strzemiński’s Theory of Vision to grazing cows in the fields (Unistic Landscape,
2007), while her sculptures representing pre-fab housing appear as products of the allegedly feminine
activity of crocheting. Crocheting, sweeping the floor, gardening, building ponds in public spaces and
bird feeders, flowing kites – all this does not evoke immediate associations with art, but rather with the
experience of the everyday, as if from an already somewhat bygone era. Simple activities only gain
proper rank in their artistic context, which nobilitates them on the one hand, while deprives art of its
elitism on the other. Obfuscating the difference between the everyday and the artistic, Wójcik paints a
humoristic portrait of the human condition.
Graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk in 1997. In 2012, shw was
awarded the “Polityka” Passport Award and Storm of the Year Award. Multiple scholarship holder of
the Ministry of Culture in 2007, 2005, 2003, 2001, and in 1995/6. Scholarship of the Foundation for
Culture in 2001. Resident at, among other places, Art in General in New York in 2006, the Visegrad
Fund 2010. Works in public collections: Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Museum of Art in
Łódź, National Museum in Warsaw, Arsenał Gallery in Białystok, Society for the Encouragement of
Contemporary Art in Szczecin, HorseCross in Perth, Scotland, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Moderator:
Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz, (born in 1987 in Wrocław), art historian and curator. Studied art history at
London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, where she graduated from the MA seminar run by Prof Sarah
Wilson and Prof Boris Groys with her thesis devoted to the early days of Polish mail-art and strategies
of breaking isolation in the face of a specific social-political realm. PhD student at the Courtauld
Institute of Art, where she explores alternative artistic exchange networks in Eastern Europe and
South America. Writes on contemporary art and neo-avantgarde movements in authoritarian states in
the context of the idea of solidarity, cooperation and dialogue. Editor of the catalogue Exhibitionism,
co-curator of the international show EastWingIX, and the project Active Poetry devoted to Polish art in
public space. Miśniakiewicz has collaborated with, among others, the White Cube Gallery in London,
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Santa Cruz in Bolivia, Contemporary Muzeum in Wrocław, and
Biennale de Santa Cruz dela Sierra.