Adrian Marie Blount (they/them) or GodXXX Noirphiles is a California born- non binary- loving single parent - multidisciplinary/ time-based media artist residing in Berlin, Germany since 2016. Adrian has traveled throughout the United States performing in various reputable theaters. In Germany, Adrian directed Qweendom at Theater Oberhausen and has Art Directed for House of Living Colors’ notable production series, ‘Endangered Species’ for Orangerie, English Theater Berlin and Tanztage at Sophiensaele. Their solo works have been featured at Emerging Change festival at Uferstudios, Underworld: Mycelium at Ballhaus Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, English Theatre Berlin, Oyoun and more. They also have guest mentored and lectured at Universität der Künste Berlin. Additionally, they have been featured in productions at Volksbühne, Maxim Gorki Theater, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and beyond. Recently, Blount’s premier multi disciplinary sculptural installation was featured at the Germanisches National Museum.
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was a Black lesbian feminist, poet, essayist, and activist whose work shaped feminist, LGBTQ+, and civil rights movements. Born in New York City to Caribbean immigrant parents, she began writing poetry at an early age and earned degrees from Hunter College and Columbia University. Lorde described herself as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and used her voice to fight racism, sexism, and homophobia. Her influential works include The Cancer Journals, Sister Outsider, and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. She co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1981 and served as New York’s Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993. During the last eight years of her life, Lorde spent several years in Berlin where she played a key role in shaping the beginnings of the Afro-German movement and the anti-racism debate among White people.
Her legacy continues to inspire movements for liberation and equity all over the globe today.
COVEN BERLIN is a queer art collective focused on feminism, love, gender, and sexuality. Founded in 2013, it blossomed when some queers answered a Craigslist ad. Current members are Harley Aussoleil, Frances Breden, Lorena Juan, Judy Landkammer, Kiona Hagen Niehaus, and Louise Trueheart.
As a group, COVEN BERLIN wants to create an open sphere to defy systemic violence and inequality, and is devoted to emotional processing, collective healing, political reassessment, paying fairly, and supportive time management strategies. The collective nurtures cultural work, in Berlin and online, in the form of embodied affective research and digital hybrid curatorial approaches, always with a breath of humor.
COVEN BERLIN had an intense bout of years curating and being featured in exhibitions and events from 2018 to 2023. Since then, we have become something of a little snail: we move slowly, lay lots of eggs with many different partners in the form of long and short-term research projects, and slime around carrying our growing online magazine and full moon newsletter in our shell wherever we dwell, online and up close.
Our last project was SICK IN THE CITY in collaboration with University of Atypical (Belfast) funded by Cultural Bridge 2025. Our work has been shown at Gallery Kula in Belgrade (2023), Gallery Škuc in Ljubljana (2022), feldfünf and Villa Merkel in Esslingen (2022), ICI Berlin Writing Letters to Extraterrestrials (2021), Kunstpunkt, Berlin Art Week SOMABOG (2021), feldfünf e.V. DANK MEMES 4 DANK TIMES, AN INVITATION TO SINK INTO THE BOG (2021), Galerie Im Turm, Berlin BURLUNGIS(2020); GMK Galeria, Zagreb EXTRA+TERRESTRIAL (2019); Project Space Festival, Berlin PROBAND WERDEN (2019); Gallery of Academy of Fine Arts, Prague Neodaddyism 💯 (2019); nGbk, Berlin LUCKY(2018); Schwules* Museum, Berlin EXTRA+TERRESTRIAL (2018); Municipal Gallery Arsenał, Poznań, Polen BEDTIME (2018); Hybrid Art Festival, Madrid Labor or Labor (2018).
Dirk Sorge is a visual artist based in Leipzig and Berlin. He studied Visual Arts at the UdK Berlin and Philosophy at the TU Berlin. His works include videos, installations, performances, and computer programs. His way of working is conceptual and often research-based, e.g. with reference to museum collections or scientific questions. He is interested in the interweaving of (digital) technology, image production and world making. Recurring themes are automation, standardization, irrationality and hierarchization. Rule-based systems are often used to make aesthetic decisions and to question the idea of authorship. As an artist with a visual disability, some works are informed by his activism against ableist structures.
He has been working as cultural educator and consultant for inclusion in Saxony and Berlin for various museums, including the Berlinische Galerie, the Bauhaus-Archive and the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac).
Dirk Sorge is a founding member of Berlinklusion, a network that promotes the active participation of people with disabilities in art and culture.
Elisa R. Linn (Elisa Linn Roguszczak) is a writer, curator, educator, and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She teaches at Bard College Berlin and is pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under the supervision of Marina Gržinić. Her practice and research explore the effects of borders and “border thinking” on counter-publics at the intersection of art and activism in the GDR and post-reunification Germany. From 2022 to 2025, Linn was co-director of Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. In 2012, she co-initiated the curatorial collective km temporaer, and since 2021, she has been co-organizing the film club of the Polish Failures in Berlin-Mitte.
Franziska Pierwoss (she/her) is an artist working in performance and installation. She studied at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig and the Lebanese University of Beirut.
Her work explores site-specific installations and allows for unexpected encounters, fostering dialogue between individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Her performances have been presented at the Fast Forward Festival, the Sharjah Biennial, the Literaturforum Brecht-Haus, and nGbK, among others. With a strong focus on the politics of food, she examines its use as a political symbol and has spent years researching the social, political, and financial dynamics of waste management within her work. Since 2010, she has collaborated with Siska on Das Kino Projekt, a temporary cinema for public spaces.
Siska, born in Beirut and based in Berlin, is a multidisciplinary artist exploring sociopolitical narratives through archiveology, film, and performance. With a Master’s in Film and Audiovisual Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, he was a key figure in Beirut’s early graffiti scene and a member of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بیروت. His work often takes the form of extended cinema, blending cinematic codes with experimental narratives. Siska created and co-curated redeem ردیم at Haus der Statistik (2021) and in 2024 became artistic director of ADfD Alternative Monument for Germany, an AR memorial on migration. As a former Villa Aurora fellow (2022), his work has been shown internationally at venues like Martin Gropius Bau, Berlinale, Halle 14, Paris 104 and the Mosaic Rooms. Siska’s practice bridges visual arts, music, and performance, engaging with themes of memory, migration, and identity.
Born in Emleben in 1953, with 3 siblings, Gabriele Stötzer trained as a medical-technical assistant, then obtained her high school diploma at evening school, and in 1973 began studying at the University (PH) Erfurt. She struggled there with the ideologized content of her studies, was expelled in 1976, and imprisoned the same year for protesting against the expatriation of a critical singer. She spent a year in the Hoheneck women's prison. Afterward, she became an important female figure in the male-dominated underground art scene of the East German dictatorship. Through photography, weaving, Super 8 films, and performance, she developed her own "image of a woman" with herself and her friends, both as a model for art and life. Since 2009, Gabriele Stötzer has been exhibited and recognized internationally.
Gürsoy Doğtaş is an art historian and curator who works at the intersections of institutional critique, structural racism, and queer studies.
He has (co-)curated the exhibition „There is no there there“ (2024) at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, „Annem işçi – Who Sews the Red Flags?“ (2024) in the Museum Marta Herford or „Gurbette Kalmak“ (Staying in foreignness, 2023) at Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol in Innsbruck, as well as the festival “What would James Baldwin do?” (2024) in Berlin and the symposium “Public Art: The Right to Remember and the Reality of Cities” (2021) in Nuremberg. In 2022/23, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts. He received 2024 the QuiS Visiting Research Fellow at the Städelschule and the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Hải Anh Triệu is a German-Vietnamese artist and filmmaker. As the child of Vietnamese contract workers, she grew up in Munich. At the intersection of film, art, and performance, she explores identity work and the social and political architecture of various family and life structures. By pushing the boundaries of different media, she seeks to make the phenomenon of displacement in the diaspora both visually and physically tangible. Her latest short film, I Loved You First, premiered in 2023 at the Max Ophüls Prize in Saarbrücken. As part of a working grant in the field of film and video from the Berlin Senate, she is currently writing her feature film debut, which examines aging from a migrant perspective and explores how caregiving by Vietnamese family members can be organized in the future. Additionally, she highlights how the regulation of reproductive rights for Vietnamese women in the former GDR remains an unresolved chapter in the aging Vietnamese community. She is also currently collaborating with Josefine Reisch on a new performance piece titled You Don’t Have to Be Poor to Be Against Poverty - a feminist coffee gathering that addresses decadence, colonialism, and class in both East and West Germany.
Hải Anh Triệu is the mother of a three-year-old child and lives in Berlin.
İpek Burçak (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Istanbul and based in Berlin. She studied media and conceptual art at the School of Arts Kassel and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She works with various media, such as video, sound, installation, performance, and publishing. With a speculative approach, she investigates technologies as commons, neurodiversity, and legacies of resistance movements. She has shown her work and performed internationally, at Galerie im Turm in Berlin, SoMad in New York, Dia Chelsea, Depo Istanbul, and Kosminen in Helsinki among others. She was part of residency programs at Andreas Zuest Library in Switzerland and Anaïs Berck as part of the program Algoliterary Publishing in Brussels, Belgium. She is also 1/2 of Well Gedacht Publishing, an artist duo that engages in publishing practices.
Lola von der Gracht (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses photography, collage, installation and performance.
The central theme of her work is the exploration of identity, gender, belonging and community from a queer-feminist perspective.
With a collage-like technique, Lola combines photography, drawing, and poetry into fragmentary narratives, which interweave personal experience with collective memory. Her works create space for reflection and question social norms.
Often presented in public space, Lola’s art makes queer history visible and accessible. In addition to her visual art, Lola is the lead singer of the indie punk band NIP SLIP, which has performed internationally.
Mandhla. is a trans-feminine multi-media performance artist born and raised in Zimbabwe, Africa. As a current resident in Berlin and an avid performer for over five years in Germany she brings a blend of experimental R&B and Soul music intertwined with visual projections and performative dancing. Her music speaks of the daily trials that Trans*, enby and femme* immigrant bodies experience daily with love, identity, sex and acceptance.
A strong lover of visual beauty, fashion, the art of voguing and music, she promises to bring to you an experience that takes you to a world of beauty and divine epiphanies through fierce queer representation and black femme* power that speaks to the souls that have lived and continue to live through her work.
Melanie Jame Wolf makes artworks, performances, and texts about power, persona, and the phenomenon of 'show business': the liminal, the persuasive, the deceptive, the staged, and the performed in the political, the theatrical, and theeveryday. Her work explores the vulnerability of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle. These investigations are expressed through shape-shifting, and play with language in surprising and humorous ways. Spaces that have presented her work include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstmuseum Basel – Gegenwart, KW – Institute of Contemporary Art, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, nGbK, The National 2019: New Australian Art biennial, VAEFF - Film Festival NYC, Arts Santa Monica, Schwules Museum, Sophiensaele, Münchner Kammerspiele, Arts House Melbourne, Kasseler Dokfest, KINDL Berlin, Bärenwzinger Berlin, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, and Institute of Modern Art Brisbane.
Mia Göhring studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and History at the University of Leipzig. She has worked at various theatres and co-developed the installation performance “Spielplatz Namibia” within the theatre association Goldstaub e.V.. She is co-editor of the anthology “Flexen - Flâneusen* schreiben Städte”, which was published by Verbrecher Verlag in 2019.
With the flexen collective, she designs interactive performances and interdisciplinary literary formats that engage with urban space, feminism and public participation. Mia lives and works in Leipzig.
Nadin Reschke (she/her), born in the GDR, works as an artist, art educator, and art therapist in various social contexts. She understands her artistic work as a social practice and designs and creates processes that bring people together, stimulate dialogue, and create spaces for social action. In her work, she uses fabrics and textiles as sculptural materials, as carriers of collective history, identities, and individual experiences. Her work is feminist and critical of patriarchy, inviting viewers to discover patriarchal thought patterns in various areas of life and to critically engage with gender roles and social norms. Her recent works challenge the heterosexual norms of the city and call for feminist urban critique. Based on her own East German biography, Reschke has been researching archives on East German women's movements of the 1980s for the past 12 months. Her work is rooted in the tradition of feminist reflection while simultaneously opening new perspectives on collective and individual experiences.
Nora Eckert was born on March 14, 1954, in Nuremberg. Early on, she discovered her passion for the arts, which later developed into a critical engagement with them. Through her journalistic work, she aims to bring together meaning and sensuality, guided by a perception that reaches beyond the boundaries of academic specialization.
After finishing school in Nuremberg, she completed a two-year publishing internship in Giessen. It was a formative time that, among other things, taught her how to move forward. In late 1973 she moved to West-Berlin. This was the best and most consequential decision of her life. The city quickly became her beloved West Berlin, a source of inspiration in all areas of life. She found herself in a place that allowed her to become who she is. Since then, she has lived with the deep conviction that she is exactly where she is meant to be.
Paul B. Preciado is a writer, philosopher, filmmaker and one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and body politics. He has been Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens), Curator of the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice in 2019, and Head of Research of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA). His books, Counter-sexual Manifesto (Columbia University Press); Testo Junkie (The Feminist Press); Pornotopia (Zone Books); An Apartment in Uranus (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo), and Can the Monster Speak (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo) and Dysphoria Mundi. A Diary of a Planetary Transition (Graywolf and Fitzcarraldo) are a key reference to queer, trans and non-binary contemporary art and activism. He was born in Spain and lives in Paris. Preciado’s first film, Orlando: My political biography, premiered at Berlinale in 2023 and received four awards including the Teddy Award for Best LGBT Documentary and the Special Price of the Jury for Best Documentary.
The Constellations Archive was established in 2023 as an extension of the "Constellations Festival" in Berlin, organized by Poligonal. It explores vanished queer spaces in the city through artistic interventions, contemporary witness conversations, and archival work. The goal is to make these lost queer spaces visible and reinterpret their history through artistic means. The archive serves as a digital platform for the long-term documentation of the stories collected during the festival. It continues to grow, preserving the memory of marginalized communities.
Sara Ahmed is a a feminist writer and independent scholar. She works at the intersection of feminist, queer and race studies. Her research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures.
Until the end of 2016, Ahmed was a Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London having been previously based in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University.
Ahmed resigned from her post at Goldsmiths in protest at the failure to deal with the problem of sexual harassment.
Her primary focus now is on writing and research. She lives on the outskirts of a small village in Cambridgeshire with her partner Sarah Franklin and her beautiful dogs, Poppy and Bluebell.
Tanasgol Sabbagh presents her literary works through performances, audio pieces, video installations and musical collaborations. She is a co-founder of the artist collective parallelgesellschaft and the event series of the same name, which deals with political art beyond the framework of German core culture. Together with poet Josefine Berkholz, she founded the auditory literary magazine Stoff aus Luft: a format that highlights spoken and sound-based literature. Tanasgol lives in Berlin.
Wahid Paradis' journey into music began in school, spinning cassette tapes at school parties long before digital decks were a thing. By the late ’90s, he was an active figure in Beirut’s nightlife, playing in a range of bars and clubs across the city. After relocating to Rotterdam in 2001, Wahid committed fully to vinyl. He became deeply involved in the Dutch underground, playing and organizing hundreds of illegal parties and art events across the country. His AV rental company grew out of an illegal sound system, first emerging at squat-based Tekno (Gabber) parties—where Wahid often curated chill-out stages focused on electro sounds. Now based in Berlin, he plays eclectic sets shaped by decades of subcultural experience. He’s most at home in open-air environments or at events where the dancefloor isn’t king—where listeners are free to move, listen, and get lost. And more often than not, they end up dancing their asses off anyway.
Adrian Marie Blount (they/them) or GodXXX Noirphiles is a California born- non binary- loving single parent - multidisciplinary/ time-based media artist residing in Berlin, Germany since 2016. Adrian has traveled throughout the United States performing in various reputable theaters. In Germany, Adrian directed Qweendom at Theater Oberhausen and has Art Directed for House of Living Colors’ notable production series, ‘Endangered Species’ for Orangerie, English Theater Berlin and Tanztage at Sophiensaele. Their solo works have been featured at Emerging Change festival at Uferstudios, Underworld: Mycelium at Ballhaus Berlin, Münchner Kammerspiele, English Theatre Berlin, Oyoun and more. They also have guest mentored and lectured at Universität der Künste Berlin. Additionally, they have been featured in productions at Volksbühne, Maxim Gorki Theater, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and beyond. Recently, Blount’s premier multi disciplinary sculptural installation was featured at the Germanisches National Museum.
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was a Black lesbian feminist, poet, essayist, and activist whose work shaped feminist, LGBTQ+, and civil rights movements. Born in New York City to Caribbean immigrant parents, she began writing poetry at an early age and earned degrees from Hunter College and Columbia University. Lorde described herself as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and used her voice to fight racism, sexism, and homophobia. Her influential works include The Cancer Journals, Sister Outsider, and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. She co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1981 and served as New York’s Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993. During the last eight years of her life, Lorde spent several years in Berlin where she played a key role in shaping the beginnings of the Afro-German movement and the anti-racism debate among White people.
Her legacy continues to inspire movements for liberation and equity all over the globe today.
COVEN BERLIN is a queer art collective focused on feminism, love, gender, and sexuality. Founded in 2013, it blossomed when some queers answered a Craigslist ad. Current members are Harley Aussoleil, Frances Breden, Lorena Juan, Judy Landkammer, Kiona Hagen Niehaus, and Louise Trueheart.
As a group, COVEN BERLIN wants to create an open sphere to defy systemic violence and inequality, and is devoted to emotional processing, collective healing, political reassessment, paying fairly, and supportive time management strategies. The collective nurtures cultural work, in Berlin and online, in the form of embodied affective research and digital hybrid curatorial approaches, always with a breath of humor.
COVEN BERLIN had an intense bout of years curating and being featured in exhibitions and events from 2018 to 2023. Since then, we have become something of a little snail: we move slowly, lay lots of eggs with many different partners in the form of long and short-term research projects, and slime around carrying our growing online magazine and full moon newsletter in our shell wherever we dwell, online and up close.
Our last project was SICK IN THE CITY in collaboration with University of Atypical (Belfast) funded by Cultural Bridge 2025. Our work has been shown at Gallery Kula in Belgrade (2023), Gallery Škuc in Ljubljana (2022), feldfünf and Villa Merkel in Esslingen (2022), ICI Berlin Writing Letters to Extraterrestrials (2021), Kunstpunkt, Berlin Art Week SOMABOG (2021), feldfünf e.V. DANK MEMES 4 DANK TIMES, AN INVITATION TO SINK INTO THE BOG (2021), Galerie Im Turm, Berlin BURLUNGIS(2020); GMK Galeria, Zagreb EXTRA+TERRESTRIAL (2019); Project Space Festival, Berlin PROBAND WERDEN (2019); Gallery of Academy of Fine Arts, Prague Neodaddyism 💯 (2019); nGbk, Berlin LUCKY(2018); Schwules* Museum, Berlin EXTRA+TERRESTRIAL (2018); Municipal Gallery Arsenał, Poznań, Polen BEDTIME (2018); Hybrid Art Festival, Madrid Labor or Labor (2018).
Dirk Sorge is a visual artist based in Leipzig and Berlin. He studied Visual Arts at the UdK Berlin and Philosophy at the TU Berlin. His works include videos, installations, performances, and computer programs. His way of working is conceptual and often research-based, e.g. with reference to museum collections or scientific questions. He is interested in the interweaving of (digital) technology, image production and world making. Recurring themes are automation, standardization, irrationality and hierarchization. Rule-based systems are often used to make aesthetic decisions and to question the idea of authorship. As an artist with a visual disability, some works are informed by his activism against ableist structures.
He has been working as cultural educator and consultant for inclusion in Saxony and Berlin for various museums, including the Berlinische Galerie, the Bauhaus-Archive and the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac).
Dirk Sorge is a founding member of Berlinklusion, a network that promotes the active participation of people with disabilities in art and culture.
Elisa R. Linn (Elisa Linn Roguszczak) is a writer, curator, educator, and alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program. She teaches at Bard College Berlin and is pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under the supervision of Marina Gržinić. Her practice and research explore the effects of borders and “border thinking” on counter-publics at the intersection of art and activism in the GDR and post-reunification Germany. From 2022 to 2025, Linn was co-director of Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V. In 2012, she co-initiated the curatorial collective km temporaer, and since 2021, she has been co-organizing the film club of the Polish Failures in Berlin-Mitte.
Franziska Pierwoss (she/her) is an artist working in performance and installation. She studied at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig and the Lebanese University of Beirut.
Her work explores site-specific installations and allows for unexpected encounters, fostering dialogue between individuals with diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Her performances have been presented at the Fast Forward Festival, the Sharjah Biennial, the Literaturforum Brecht-Haus, and nGbK, among others. With a strong focus on the politics of food, she examines its use as a political symbol and has spent years researching the social, political, and financial dynamics of waste management within her work. Since 2010, she has collaborated with Siska on Das Kino Projekt, a temporary cinema for public spaces.
Siska, born in Beirut and based in Berlin, is a multidisciplinary artist exploring sociopolitical narratives through archiveology, film, and performance. With a Master’s in Film and Audiovisual Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, he was a key figure in Beirut’s early graffiti scene and a member of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بیروت. His work often takes the form of extended cinema, blending cinematic codes with experimental narratives. Siska created and co-curated redeem ردیم at Haus der Statistik (2021) and in 2024 became artistic director of ADfD Alternative Monument for Germany, an AR memorial on migration. As a former Villa Aurora fellow (2022), his work has been shown internationally at venues like Martin Gropius Bau, Berlinale, Halle 14, Paris 104 and the Mosaic Rooms. Siska’s practice bridges visual arts, music, and performance, engaging with themes of memory, migration, and identity.
Born in Emleben in 1953, with 3 siblings, Gabriele Stötzer trained as a medical-technical assistant, then obtained her high school diploma at evening school, and in 1973 began studying at the University (PH) Erfurt. She struggled there with the ideologized content of her studies, was expelled in 1976, and imprisoned the same year for protesting against the expatriation of a critical singer. She spent a year in the Hoheneck women's prison. Afterward, she became an important female figure in the male-dominated underground art scene of the East German dictatorship. Through photography, weaving, Super 8 films, and performance, she developed her own "image of a woman" with herself and her friends, both as a model for art and life. Since 2009, Gabriele Stötzer has been exhibited and recognized internationally.
Gürsoy Doğtaş is an art historian and curator who works at the intersections of institutional critique, structural racism, and queer studies.
He has (co-)curated the exhibition „There is no there there“ (2024) at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, „Annem işçi – Who Sews the Red Flags?“ (2024) in the Museum Marta Herford or „Gurbette Kalmak“ (Staying in foreignness, 2023) at Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol in Innsbruck, as well as the festival “What would James Baldwin do?” (2024) in Berlin and the symposium “Public Art: The Right to Remember and the Reality of Cities” (2021) in Nuremberg. In 2022/23, he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts. He received 2024 the QuiS Visiting Research Fellow at the Städelschule and the Goethe University in Frankfurt.
Hải Anh Triệu is a German-Vietnamese artist and filmmaker. As the child of Vietnamese contract workers, she grew up in Munich. At the intersection of film, art, and performance, she explores identity work and the social and political architecture of various family and life structures. By pushing the boundaries of different media, she seeks to make the phenomenon of displacement in the diaspora both visually and physically tangible. Her latest short film, I Loved You First, premiered in 2023 at the Max Ophüls Prize in Saarbrücken. As part of a working grant in the field of film and video from the Berlin Senate, she is currently writing her feature film debut, which examines aging from a migrant perspective and explores how caregiving by Vietnamese family members can be organized in the future. Additionally, she highlights how the regulation of reproductive rights for Vietnamese women in the former GDR remains an unresolved chapter in the aging Vietnamese community. She is also currently collaborating with Josefine Reisch on a new performance piece titled You Don’t Have to Be Poor to Be Against Poverty - a feminist coffee gathering that addresses decadence, colonialism, and class in both East and West Germany.
Hải Anh Triệu is the mother of a three-year-old child and lives in Berlin.
İpek Burçak (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Istanbul and based in Berlin. She studied media and conceptual art at the School of Arts Kassel and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She works with various media, such as video, sound, installation, performance, and publishing. With a speculative approach, she investigates technologies as commons, neurodiversity, and legacies of resistance movements. She has shown her work and performed internationally, at Galerie im Turm in Berlin, SoMad in New York, Dia Chelsea, Depo Istanbul, and Kosminen in Helsinki among others. She was part of residency programs at Andreas Zuest Library in Switzerland and Anaïs Berck as part of the program Algoliterary Publishing in Brussels, Belgium. She is also 1/2 of Well Gedacht Publishing, an artist duo that engages in publishing practices.
Lola von der Gracht (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses photography, collage, installation and performance.
The central theme of her work is the exploration of identity, gender, belonging and community from a queer-feminist perspective.
With a collage-like technique, Lola combines photography, drawing, and poetry into fragmentary narratives, which interweave personal experience with collective memory. Her works create space for reflection and question social norms.
Often presented in public space, Lola’s art makes queer history visible and accessible. In addition to her visual art, Lola is the lead singer of the indie punk band NIP SLIP, which has performed internationally.
Mandhla. is a trans-feminine multi-media performance artist born and raised in Zimbabwe, Africa. As a current resident in Berlin and an avid performer for over five years in Germany she brings a blend of experimental R&B and Soul music intertwined with visual projections and performative dancing. Her music speaks of the daily trials that Trans*, enby and femme* immigrant bodies experience daily with love, identity, sex and acceptance.
A strong lover of visual beauty, fashion, the art of voguing and music, she promises to bring to you an experience that takes you to a world of beauty and divine epiphanies through fierce queer representation and black femme* power that speaks to the souls that have lived and continue to live through her work.
Melanie Jame Wolf makes artworks, performances, and texts about power, persona, and the phenomenon of 'show business': the liminal, the persuasive, the deceptive, the staged, and the performed in the political, the theatrical, and theeveryday. Her work explores the vulnerability of the live moment and the body as an unruly political riddle. These investigations are expressed through shape-shifting, and play with language in surprising and humorous ways. Spaces that have presented her work include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Kunstmuseum Basel – Gegenwart, KW – Institute of Contemporary Art, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, nGbK, The National 2019: New Australian Art biennial, VAEFF - Film Festival NYC, Arts Santa Monica, Schwules Museum, Sophiensaele, Münchner Kammerspiele, Arts House Melbourne, Kasseler Dokfest, KINDL Berlin, Bärenwzinger Berlin, SOPHIE TAPPEINER, and Institute of Modern Art Brisbane.
Mia Göhring studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and History at the University of Leipzig. She has worked at various theatres and co-developed the installation performance “Spielplatz Namibia” within the theatre association Goldstaub e.V.. She is co-editor of the anthology “Flexen - Flâneusen* schreiben Städte”, which was published by Verbrecher Verlag in 2019.
With the flexen collective, she designs interactive performances and interdisciplinary literary formats that engage with urban space, feminism and public participation. Mia lives and works in Leipzig.
Nadin Reschke (she/her), born in the GDR, works as an artist, art educator, and art therapist in various social contexts. She understands her artistic work as a social practice and designs and creates processes that bring people together, stimulate dialogue, and create spaces for social action. In her work, she uses fabrics and textiles as sculptural materials, as carriers of collective history, identities, and individual experiences. Her work is feminist and critical of patriarchy, inviting viewers to discover patriarchal thought patterns in various areas of life and to critically engage with gender roles and social norms. Her recent works challenge the heterosexual norms of the city and call for feminist urban critique. Based on her own East German biography, Reschke has been researching archives on East German women's movements of the 1980s for the past 12 months. Her work is rooted in the tradition of feminist reflection while simultaneously opening new perspectives on collective and individual experiences.
Nora Eckert was born on March 14, 1954, in Nuremberg. Early on, she discovered her passion for the arts, which later developed into a critical engagement with them. Through her journalistic work, she aims to bring together meaning and sensuality, guided by a perception that reaches beyond the boundaries of academic specialization.
After finishing school in Nuremberg, she completed a two-year publishing internship in Giessen. It was a formative time that, among other things, taught her how to move forward. In late 1973 she moved to West-Berlin. This was the best and most consequential decision of her life. The city quickly became her beloved West Berlin, a source of inspiration in all areas of life. She found herself in a place that allowed her to become who she is. Since then, she has lived with the deep conviction that she is exactly where she is meant to be.
Paul B. Preciado is a writer, philosopher, filmmaker and one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and body politics. He has been Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens), Curator of the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice in 2019, and Head of Research of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA). His books, Counter-sexual Manifesto (Columbia University Press); Testo Junkie (The Feminist Press); Pornotopia (Zone Books); An Apartment in Uranus (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo), and Can the Monster Speak (Semiotexte and Fitzcarraldo) and Dysphoria Mundi. A Diary of a Planetary Transition (Graywolf and Fitzcarraldo) are a key reference to queer, trans and non-binary contemporary art and activism. He was born in Spain and lives in Paris. Preciado’s first film, Orlando: My political biography, premiered at Berlinale in 2023 and received four awards including the Teddy Award for Best LGBT Documentary and the Special Price of the Jury for Best Documentary.
The Constellations Archive was established in 2023 as an extension of the "Constellations Festival" in Berlin, organized by Poligonal. It explores vanished queer spaces in the city through artistic interventions, contemporary witness conversations, and archival work. The goal is to make these lost queer spaces visible and reinterpret their history through artistic means. The archive serves as a digital platform for the long-term documentation of the stories collected during the festival. It continues to grow, preserving the memory of marginalized communities.
Sara Ahmed is a a feminist writer and independent scholar. She works at the intersection of feminist, queer and race studies. Her research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures.
Until the end of 2016, Ahmed was a Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London having been previously based in Women’s Studies at Lancaster University.
Ahmed resigned from her post at Goldsmiths in protest at the failure to deal with the problem of sexual harassment.
Her primary focus now is on writing and research. She lives on the outskirts of a small village in Cambridgeshire with her partner Sarah Franklin and her beautiful dogs, Poppy and Bluebell.
Tanasgol Sabbagh presents her literary works through performances, audio pieces, video installations and musical collaborations. She is a co-founder of the artist collective parallelgesellschaft and the event series of the same name, which deals with political art beyond the framework of German core culture. Together with poet Josefine Berkholz, she founded the auditory literary magazine Stoff aus Luft: a format that highlights spoken and sound-based literature. Tanasgol lives in Berlin.
Wahid Paradis' journey into music began in school, spinning cassette tapes at school parties long before digital decks were a thing. By the late ’90s, he was an active figure in Beirut’s nightlife, playing in a range of bars and clubs across the city. After relocating to Rotterdam in 2001, Wahid committed fully to vinyl. He became deeply involved in the Dutch underground, playing and organizing hundreds of illegal parties and art events across the country. His AV rental company grew out of an illegal sound system, first emerging at squat-based Tekno (Gabber) parties—where Wahid often curated chill-out stages focused on electro sounds. Now based in Berlin, he plays eclectic sets shaped by decades of subcultural experience. He’s most at home in open-air environments or at events where the dancefloor isn’t king—where listeners are free to move, listen, and get lost. And more often than not, they end up dancing their asses off anyway.