TALKS AND A ROUND TABLE

 

Talks:

Forever creating, innovating and hybridizing

 

Round table:

Widening the field of the possible, spaces to explore

 

Patrick J. Gyger (CH)

Trained as a historian, Patrick Gyger directed the Maison d’Ailleurs (House of Elsewhere) up to 2011. There he mounted more than thirty exhibitions and doubled the museum’s holdings. In 2008 he opened its Jules Verne space. He has produced or collaborated on numerous books, CDs, films, and other publications. He was also artistic director of the Utopiales at Nantes (2001 to 2005). Since January 2011 he has directed the Lieu Unique in Nantes (France’s national centre for contemporary arts) with an approach that combines Utopianism and interdisciplinary practice.

 

Lorenzo Malaguerra (CH)

Lorenzo Malaguerra, director of Crochetan Theatre in Monthey, Switzerland, is also a geographer, an actor and a stage director. He directed around twenty theatrical projects in western Switzerland and France. He regularly collaborates with Jean Lambert-wild on shows on the boundaries between theatre and digital art. He is also active in the field of opera and musical theatre.

 

Chu-Yin Chen (F)

Chu-Yin Chen directs the INReV (digital image and virtual reality) laboratory and co-directs the ATI (Fine Arts and Image Technology department) at the University of Paris 8. She is also a digital artist whose works are situated at the point of convergence between art and science (3D animations, installations, and paintings).

 

Cédric Plessiet (F)

A maître de conférences at the ATI (Fine Arts and Image Technology department) of the INReV (digital image and virtual reality) laboratory at the University of Paris 8, Cédric Plessiet is currently researching preview techniques for film-making along with motion capture and modelling for video games.

 

Andrzej Bednarczyk (P)

A Polish author, Andrzej Bednarczyk is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Cracow, where he directs the department of painting. He is active in numerous fields: painting, graphic arts, photography, drawings, installations, and art books. His work has been shown at more than 170 exhibitions in 27 countries, and he has had several dozen one-man shows.

 

J.J. Shih (TW)

The Director of the MoCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) at Taipei on Taiwan (ROC), J.J. Shih is also an art critic, a member of the programme committee for public art of the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture, and a consultant for the National Culture and Arts Foundation.

 

Camille Scherrer (CH)

Camille Scherrer has a diploma in design from the ECAL (a university of art and design in Lausanne). She is a Swiss designer in the field of visual communication and interaction. She is seeking new fields to explore at the intersection of art and technology.

 

Marc-Olivier Gonseth (CH)

Trained as an ethnologist, Marc-Olivier Gonseth has been the Director of the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchâtel since 1 March 2006. After his arts degree in ethnology, linguistics and modern French, he worked as an assistant (1983-87), then as a chargé d’enseignement (1989-91), in the Institute of Ethnology of the University of Neuchâtel. He has conducted research in the Jura and the Pays d’Enhaut (Switzerland), in France, in the Philippines and on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

 

Eng-Hiong Low (CH)

The overseas Director of EPAC, Eng-Hiong Low is one of the latest artists, according to Frank Popper, the theoretician of art, to join the international kinetic art movement. He excels in monumental performances which, in common with kinetic art, place the body of both the artist and the spectator at the centre of the artwork. He is a co-founder of the biennial Imaginary Landscapes competition and the Sequence Foundation. He is also the architect of the collaboration between the EPAC and several universities on Taiwan.

 

Patrizia Abderhalden (CH)

A Swiss artist, Patrizia Abderhalden is the founder and Director of EPAC (the academy of contemporary arts). The structure of the school is based on a pedagogic approach that favours the empirical, so that artistic experimentation forms an integral part of the student artists’ education. She has also reached out to create collaborative ventures with other European universities. This collaboration extended to Asia in 2008. In 2007 she founded the Sequence Foundation, which she presides, to promote sequential art and narrative imagery in Switzerland.