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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.