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.
Hai Anh Trieu 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 socialist coffee gathering that addresses decadence, colonialism, and class in both East and West Germany.
Trieu is the mother of a three-year-old child and lives in Berlin.
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,(no pronouns) 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, Siska was a key figure in Beirut’s early graffiti scene and a member of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بیروت. Siska’s 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. A former Villa Aurora fellow (2022), Siska’s 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, she trained as a medical-technical assistant, then obtained her high school diploma at evening school, and in 1973 began studying at the PH Erfurt. She failed there due to 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 GDR dictatorship. Through photography, weaving, Super 8 film, and performance, she developed her own "image of woman" with herself and her friends as models, both as an art and life pattern. Since 2009, she 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.
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.
Mia Göhring (*1995 in Berlin) 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.
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.
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.
The Constellations Archive (https://constellations-archive.net) was established in 2023 as an extension of the "Constellations Festival" in Berlin, organized by Poligonal (https://www.poligonal.de). 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.
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.
Hai Anh Trieu 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 socialist coffee gathering that addresses decadence, colonialism, and class in both East and West Germany.
Trieu is the mother of a three-year-old child and lives in Berlin.
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,(no pronouns) 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, Siska was a key figure in Beirut’s early graffiti scene and a member of the Lebanese hip-hop group Kitaa Beirut قطاع بیروت. Siska’s 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. A former Villa Aurora fellow (2022), Siska’s 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, she trained as a medical-technical assistant, then obtained her high school diploma at evening school, and in 1973 began studying at the PH Erfurt. She failed there due to 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 GDR dictatorship. Through photography, weaving, Super 8 film, and performance, she developed her own "image of woman" with herself and her friends as models, both as an art and life pattern. Since 2009, she 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.
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.
Mia Göhring (*1995 in Berlin) 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.
The Constellations Archive (https://constellations-archive.net) was established in 2023 as an extension of the "Constellations Festival" in Berlin, organized by Poligonal (https://www.poligonal.de). 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.