The American choreographer Trajal Harrell gained global recognition with his series of works Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church and is now a regular guest on the international dance and visual arts circuit. The unique style of Trajal Harrell’s works is a result not just of the unusual way in which he combines dance languages that might seem very distant from each other, such as voguing, post­modern dance and butoh, but also and above all of the fragility and humour that pervade all his work. Aesthetically, his pieces are always an homage to the people standing on stage. He clothes them in carefully ­selected fabrics, draws major inspiration from developments in haute couture (which he sometimes uses on stage directly), and his highly personal style of movement turns his performers into unusual and autonomous beings. He also performs in most of his pieces himself. In recent years, his work has not just been increasingly adopted in the visual arts world; he has also directed a succession of powerful pieces for the theatre. These include for example his reworking of Sophocles’ Antigone, the free adaptation he developed of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and with Maggie The Cat a new look on Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Since 2019 Trajal Harrell is in-house director at Schauspielhaus Zürich, where he directs a a dance company, the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. With this company he has staged The Köln Concert, Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow and Deathbed in Zürich.

LASTESIS is a Chilean feminist performance collective from Valparaíso, Chile, consisting of Daffne Valdés Vargas, Paula Cometa Stange, Lea Cáceres Díaz and Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem. The collective is dedicated to the dissemination of feminist theory through performance; specifically through an interdisciplinary language that combines performing arts, sound, graphic and textile design, history and social sciences. Through their performative means, LASTESIS relentlessly address sexualised violence while translating feminist theories into a practical multimedia format.

River L. Ramirez (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based artist, comedian and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program Pervert Everything for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Ramirez has appeared on the HBO comedy series Random Acts of Flyness and in the final season of Comedy Central’s Broad City.
Ramirez has written for High Maintenance, The National Lampoon Radio Hour. Ramirez can be seen in a recurring role in the HBO comedy series Los Espookys opposite Fred Armisen and, opposite Glenn Close, in John Cameron Mitchell’s musical anthology podcast Anthem and featured as Charly in BIRDGIRL. Named one of Comedy Central’s Up Next Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco Cluster Fest comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, Under the Radar Festival. A regular correspondent on the Viceland channel, Ramirez has performed at Caroline’s, UCB, Ars Nova, The Chris Gethard Show, and the Brooklyn Comedy Festival and many more.

Simon Senn was born in 1986 and lives in Geneva. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD) and a Masters from Goldsmiths College, London. At first glance, his work seems to suggest that he is a socially engaged artist speaking out against a certain kind of injustice. However, his works often show an ambiguous approach that explores aporias rather than articulating appropriate criticism. Even if his videos or installations are usually based on a certain reality, fiction often intervenes. Be Arielle F is his first work for the stage, with which he won the second prize for the promotion of the performing arts Premio in 2019.

Originally from Martinique, Rébecca Chaillon spent her childhood and youth in Picardy. She studied performing arts in Paris. From 2005 to 2017 she worked in the theater company Entrees de jeu directed by Bernard Grosjean and founded her own group in 2006: La Compagnie Dans le Ventre. She created the monologue L'Estomac dans la peau (winning text CNT/ARCENA in the Dramaturgies Plurielles category in 2012) as well as short performative forms that have been presented at many performance festivals, but also at venues such as La Ferme du Buisson and at the Scène Nationale d' Orleans. Her next work Monstres d'amour (je vais te donner une bonne raison de crier) is a duet with her main collaborator Elisa Monteil, about cannibalism in love and Issei Sagawa. In 2016, Rébecca took part in documentaries about pro-sex performers by Emilie Jouvet My body my rules and Open the Voice by Amandine Gay about women of African descent. Rébecca Chaillon wrote lyrics, danced and performed in Delavallets Bidiefono's work: Monstres/On ne danse pas pour rien and collaborated with Yann Da Costa in Loveless, with Gianni Gregory Fornet in Oratoria Vigilant Animal, Anne Contensou for Elle/Ulysse, Arnaud Troalic in Polis .
Her latest work on women's football and discrimination, Où la chèvre est attachée, il faut qu'elle broute, was created at the Ferme du Buisson in November 2018 and has been shown in Rouen, Dijon, Montreuil and Orleans. In 2019 she conceived and performed the performance Sa bouche ne connaît pas de dimanche – fable sanguine with Pierre Guillois as part of the 2019 edition of Long live the subject (Avignon Festival / SACD). In 2020, Rébecca will become Associate Artiste at the Théâtre de la Manufacture – CDN in Nancy.

Jaha Koo (b. 1984) is a South Korean theater/performance maker and music composer. His artistic practice oscillates between multimedia and performance, all of which include his own music, video, text and installation. His performances are closely interweaved with politics,history and his own personal issues. Koo majored in theatre studies (BFA) at Korea National University of Arts and studied at DasArts (MA) in Amsterdam. He’s been living and working in Belgium for the past few years. The History of Korean Western Theatre is his first production created at the Ghent-based and internationally touring arts centre CAMPO. GuJAHA is the pseudonym of Jaha Koo as a music composer. His most recent EP was Copper and Oyster.

Since 2014, Koo has been working on his Hamartia Trilogy. This trilogy thematically focuses on how the inescapable past tragically affects our lives today. The first part of the trilogy, Lolling and Rolling, was first presented by Zürcher Theater Spektakel in 2015. The second piece, Cuckoo, was premiered at Steirischer Herbst Festival in 2017. Already in Lolling & Rolling and Cuckoo, Jaha Koo zoomed in on themes that embody a clash of Eastern and Western culture. From cutting string of tongue to make it in the West, to the heavy personal toll of Western interference on a macroeconomic level. The History of Korean Western Theatre is the final part of the trilogy.

Jeremy Nedd is a Brooklyn (New York) born choreographer and performer who has been living in Basel for some time. Nedd has had engagements at the Semperoper in Dresden (2010-2012) and Ballett Basel (2012-2016). As a guest performer he is associated with Schauspielhaus Zürich, where he has worked with Trajal Harrell, amongst others. Nedd has realised and presented his previous productions at Kaserne Basel, ROXY Birsfelden, Tanzhaus Zürich, Arsenic (Lausanne), Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and Münchner Kammerspiele. In 2017, Nedd was a Premio finalist (Newcomer Award for Theatre and Dance Switzerland) and a recipient of the Atelier Mondial scholarship in South Africa. Most recently, he completed a Master’s degree in Expanded Theatre at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

Impilo Mapantsula is a global network of high-level professional dance artists who specialize in pantsula, a South African urban dance form. They are a professional organization that promotes the development of pantsula dance and culture, creates formal standards, and acts as an industry representative. The organization aims to document and protect the living legacy of pantsula and support dancers in professionalizing and further developing their art. Impilo Mapantsula creates learning opportunities and supports artistic creation and self- expression through educational, artistic and professional programs, with an emphasis on job creation, international collaborations and exchange programs.

Samira Elagoz (b. 1989, Helsinki) is a filmmaker and performance artist, currently living between Amsterdam and Berlin. For several years, he dedicated his artistic practice to researching and filming cis-men and first encounters with male strangers while still a female artist. Today, Elagoz identifies as a transmasculine with a high femme past. His works are very personal and deal with significant social and political issues of our time (sexual violence, male gaze, loneliness in the digital age, etc.). He has toured his works worldwide in various international performance art, film, and visual art contexts.

Dorothée Munyaneza left Kigali with her family at the age of 12 in 1994 and moved to the UK. She studied music at the Jonas Foundation in London and social sciences at the University of Canterbury before moving to France. In 2004 she wrote and performed the soundtrack for Terry George’s film Hotel Rwanda, and in 2005 performed on the album Anatomic by Afro Celt Sound System. In 2010 she released her first solo album, recorded with the producer Martin Russell, and in 2012 she worked on the album Earth Songs by the composer James Brett. She establishes a dialogue between music and other means of expression, for example combining Afro-folk, dance and texts by Woody Guthrie when working with the guitarist Seb Martel, or mixing dance, poetry and experimental music with the musician Jean-François Pauvros, the choreographer Ko Murobushi and the composer Alain Mahé. Also with Alain Mahé she has worked on in situ performances at the Pompidou Centre and at the Mucem, as well as creating original choreographic pieces. In 2006 she met François Verret and performed in Sans Retour, Ice, Cabaret and Do you remember, no I don’t. Since then, Dorothée Munyaneza has worked on the international dance scene with Nan Goldin, Mark Tompkins, Robyn Orlin, Rachid Ouramdane, Maud Le Pladec and Alain Buffard. In 2013 she founded her own company, Kadidi, and presented Samedi Détente in November 2014 at the Théâtre de Nîmes. The show then toured extensively, with some 100 performances in France and abroad. Unwanted, her second show, has been performed for the first time in the summer of 2017.

This project is created by Studio MoreThanThat - an artistic research practice that focuses on the intersection of architecture, immersive theatre and storytelling. Taking a phenomenological approach in their work, the studio focuses on creating environments that are centred around the sensory spectrum (touch, smell, taste, sound and sight) of the spectator. Their projects playfully delve into perception and memory of space, as well as critically question the dominance of visual stimuli in our surrounding environments, often obscuring or de-emphasizing ‘the need to see’ in a performance. The studio has been involved in various multi-sensory performances in Czech Republic (since 2017), experiential and exhibition design projects in India, Czech Republic and UAE (since 2015) and inter-disciplinary artistic research across Europe.

The artists in this performance are Nitish Jain (India), Ivana Atanasova (Macedonia) and Lara Hereu (Catalonia) and they are currently based in Prague. They met during their master studies at DAMU and discovered a shared interest in creating devised and poly-lingual performances that invite audiences into unique atmospheres, tactility and storytelling. Ivana and Lara are performers and professional actresses and they studied Authorial Acting while Nitish (founder, Studio MoreThanThat) is an architect and scenographer by background.

The Nest Collective is a multidisciplinary collective living and working in Nairobi, Kenya.
Founded in 2012, the Nest Collective has created works in film, music, fashion, visual arts and literature, such as the critically-acclaimed queer anthology film Stories of Our Lives, which has so far screened in over 80 countries and won numerous awards. In 2013, the Nest Collective also founded HEVA—Africa’s first creative business fund of its kind—to strengthen the livelihoods of East Africa’s creative entrepreneurs. In 2018, the Nest Collective founded the Strictly Silk program—a dance party and multimedia space that centres joy, safety and community for women and non-binary people of all origins, faiths and generations.
Our work—being born in Nairobi—makes strongest reference to African urban and contemporary experiences, establishing this as our primary datum for inquiry on our histories and reflections about possible futures. While our work often responds to and is aware of interconnected issues at a global scale, we primarily address Kenyan young men and women, and are excited when the work speaks to other audiences. In 2022, we are participants of documenta fifteen.

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (b. 1983, based in Vilnius) works as filmmaker and theatre director. In her creative practice, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė explores the gap between objective and imagined realities, while challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way. Her recent full-length film-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival this year and is touring extensively in film festivals around the world.

Vaiva Grainytė (b. 1984) is a writer, playwright, and poet. Her creative practice usually crosses the confines of deskwork and becomes an integral part of an interdisciplinary polylogue in the form of radio plays, operas, site specific performances, and musicals. Her book of essays Beijing Diaries (2012) was nominated for the Book of the Year award in the adult literature category and included in the top twelve listing of the most creative books for that year. Vaiva’s poetry debut Gorilla’s Archives was published in 2019 and according to critics recognized as a distinguished voice of neo-avant-garde poetry.

Lina Lapelytė (b. 1984, based in Vilnius and London) is an artist, musician and composer. Her performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia. Lapelytė’s works were presented at KIM?, Riga, Rupert, Vilnius (solo exhibition), gallery 1857, Oslo, the Modern Art Museum, Malmo, MACBA, Barcelona and DRAF, London. Upcoming shows include Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris; Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Kunsthalle Praha.

Alexandra Bachzetsis is a choreographer and visual artist based in Zurich (CH). Her artistic practice unfolds at the interface of dance, performance, visual arts and theatre. She creates spaces in which the dancers's body can establish itself as an artistic and critical instrument. Much of Bachzetsis' work is concerned with how popular culture provides the raw material for gesture, expression, identification and imagination in the constant creation and re-creation of our bodies and forms of identification. Within this framework, she explores the reciprocal influence between the use of gesture and movement in 'popular' or 'commercial' genres on the one hand (online media, video clips and television as a resource), and in 'art' on the other (ballet, modern and contemporary dance and performance). The question of how we all perform and enact our bodies and ourselves - through stereotypes and archetypes, through choice and cliché, through labour and spectacle - remains fundamental to Bachzetsis' work.

Her work has been and continues to be presented in numerous contemporary art spaces and museums: including Kunsthalle Basel (2008), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2013 and 2015), Tate Modern (London, 2014) and Jumex Museum (Mexico City, 2014), as well as international biennials such as the 5th Berlin Biennale (2008), (d)OCUMENTA 13 (Kassel, 2012) and the Biennial of Moving Images (Geneva, 2014). In 2016, she participated in the Public Programmes The Parliament of Bodies and Continuum at documenta 14. In January 2017, she presented Massacre: Variations on a Theme at MoMA in New York. In 2017 she was part of documenta 14 in both Athens and Kassel. In 2018 Alexandra Bachzetsis presented her performances Private: Wear a mask when you talk to me and Private Song at High Line New York. An Ideal for Living (2018), a solo exhibition at the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris and the performance Escape Act (2018) at the Pact Zollverein in Essen (DE). Chasing a Ghost (2019) commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago and 2020: Obscene are currently touring Europe.

Lexi Fleurs is a Bulgarian artist who lives between Switzerland and Bulgaria. She is a student at HEAD Genève, where she spends most of her time, unless she is on the road looking for trouble. Her works are inspired by the absurdity of Balkan pop culture, the relations between the "former East" and the "former West", queerness and homophobia and other trendy questions. Her practice owes as much to cultural and institutional criticism as to camp-y comedy. She is a painter, a photographer, a filmmaker, a performer, a writer; or in other words, a wannabe capitalist goddess.

Lili Mart0 lives and works between Bulgaria and Geneva. She studied in HEAD where she did her Bachelor's degree. She is currently doing a residency at PICTO while organising exhibitions at TOPIC in Geneva.
Lili mainly works with text incorporated in installative performances. She is obsessed with extraterrestrial language, bitches (particularly long haired ones), sex, relationships, daily life poetry, disorders, bodies and dance which are recurring patterns in her practice. Wannabe curator, looking for clowns who always end up getting slapped on the wrist.

Vera Boitcova is a Russian Helsinki-based performance artist, theatre director, playwright, political activist, long-time nomad (lived and worked in US, UK, China and Germany). BA in Musical Theatre Directing (St-Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy) and MA in Theatre and Performance (Queen Mary University London). Coordinator at Eve's Ribs. Curator/organizer of Eve's Ribs Festival and QueerFest. Curator of Fairytales for Girls (2019) published and translated in Russian, English and German.

Milena Frericks, born in Berlin, is a long-term student living in Gießen. Her interest in theatre is rooted in political youth theater in Moabit. This experience still influences her artistic focus. Her artistic interest consists in discovering new worlds in details, as well as dealing with the contradictions of life and the combination of the supposedly incompatible.

Jan Harnecker is a 21 years old installation and multimedia artist born in Wiesbaden. Living there for 20 years, he faced many problems and advantages of being a young inhabitant of this older growing and bourgeoise city. Since 2021 he lives in Offenbach and studies Fine Arts at HfG Offenbach.

Elinor Hasselberg studied visual arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne between 2017-2022 and is currently enrolled in the post graduate program Comparative Dramaturgy and Performance Research at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She makes live performance, VR, AR, and video art that depict subjectivity in crisis through experimental narrative strategies. She has exhibited at IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art Eupen, Theater Dortmund and BoBiennale.

Josefine Köhler is a freelance scenographer and artist. Her focus is on site-specific installations, often in public space, where she deals with the architecture of the public sphere, as well as the visibility of power structures. Among others, she has had self-initiated exhibitions in public space such as this is a female crisis (2020/2021) and what we observe (2021), and most recently in an institutional setting at the Frankfurter Kunstverein.

Christy Ma is a person from Hong Kong looking to initiate conversation through art. Body. Being. Sharing. BA in Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (Contemporary Dance). Joined Guangdong Modern Dance Company and City Contemporary Dance Company and performed internationally. Christy’s motivation comes from utilising different forms or mediums. Her works ruminate on the humanities in relation to social and politics, and to seek a way of life through art.

Ching-Wen Peng was born in Taipei, Taiwan. In 2013-2018 she worked as a dramaturg in a self-founded theatre group, The Cyclops Troupe, in Taiwan. Her award-winning fantasy novel The City of the Windows (2017) was published in a collection. The same year, 2017, she relocated to Germany and started master study of dramaturgy at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Since then she continues to explore different performing forms, such as film making, sound design, and non linear novel writing.

Dace Šteinerte was trained as a theatre actress in Latvian Academy of Culture in Riga. Her wish to explore more freedom of expression brought her to performance art and sound art and eventually she moved to Berlin. There she performed at Collegium Hungaricum, CTM Festival, Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, etc. Her work is mainly concerned with visual and body-based performances in which audiovisual communication plays an important role.

Laura Yurtöven is a Wiesbaden born and based Performance and Action-Artist. Until 2020 she discovered her talents in cologne when the corona pandemic led her the way to her hometown again. She was part of several Video Projects, Film Projects as Head of Art Department. In 2022 she was officially part of the Internationale Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden with a Dance and Music performance with her sister and partner: La Gaia Scienza - Die Zärtlichkeit des Erbguts.