People
Celina Baljeet Basra
Celina Baljeet Basra is an art historian, writer, and curator based in Berlin. In her work she explores the politics of food and labour as well as concepts of care. As a curator Celina has worked in several Berlin art spaces, including Galerie im Turm and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, as program coordinator at Times Art Center Berlin, and at the 10th Berlin Biennale. She is part of the curatorial collective The Department of Love.
Celina Baljeet Basra is part of Unexpected Lessons
More on Celina Baljeet Basra here
Arnbjörg María Danielsen
Arnbjörg María Danielsen is a theatremaker and curator working in the cross-sectional oasis between contemporary music, theatre, and opera. Her interdisciplinary practice combines artistic production, dramaturgical and curatorial approaches.
Arnbjörg María Danielsen is part of the curatorial team of Goethe Morph* Iceland
More on Arnbjörg María Danielsen here
Janne Gregor
Janne Gregor, born in Berlin, is a choreographer, performer and member of the steering group of a dance education center in Berlin. As previously happened with next… I, with next… II Janne Gregor and her team are continuing to connect artists from different continents, generations, and cultures via dance.
Janne Gregor is working on next... II (Mali/Iceland)
More on Janne Gregor here
Sóley Frostadóttir
Sóley Frostadóttir, editor-in-chief Dunce Magazine and practicing choreographer, will be writing texts and creating sketches based on the workshops and conversations that spring from the question of “How we have always wanted to live” and this will become a concrete documentation of the Goethe Morph* Iceland project.
Sóley Frostadóttir contributes to morph* talks
More on Sóley Frostadóttir here
Ahmad Hamad
Ahmad Hamad is an artist, ornithologist, and bird breeder, attached to the Walther von Goethe Foundation. Born in Syria, Ahmad Hamad has lived in Germany for 6 years, where he works as a caregiver.
Ahmad Hamad works with the Walther von Goethe Foundation
More on Ahmad Hamad here
Omra Harding
Jack of All Trades, Omra is a combination between educated and self-taught. A foundation degree in photography, Bachelor degree in European Theatre Arts in a UK Drama school covering acting, directing, performance, devising, in addition to a multicultural background has enabled her to have an ability to come up with unconventional ideas. Passionate about cinema and theatre since she was little, interested in constantly furthering her skills in the support of the multilayered portrayal of the human experience.
Omra Harding is part of next...II (Mali/Iceland)
More on Omra Harding here
Chef Kabui
Njathi Kabui is an eclectic Chef with a passion in Food Justice, a Leading expert in Food Literacy, a Medical Anthropologist and an Organic farmer. He is actively involved in promoting Food Literacy as a public speaker, a blogger, an author and a social commentator. Chef Kabui considers himself as an organic chef, who has intentionally designed his own disruptive cuisine. He calls this cuisine, “Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine” which promotes a mix of indigenous and healthy foods for the sake of sovereignty, health and food justice.
Chef Kabui is contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on Chef Kabui here
Ayesha Keshani
Ayesha Keshani is an artist, museum worker, and PhD candidate in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University. Her research practice explores the tensions between coloniality, cosmos and nature in Southeast Asian natural history museums. Working through video, sound, image and text, her work circulates the interstices and many lifeworlds of the Sarawak Museum, Malaysian Borneo and the restive possibilities for cosmopolitical museology amidst planetary crisis.
Ayesha Keshani is contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on Ayesha Keshani here
Mahret Ifeoma Kupka
Dr. Mahret Ifeoma Kupka is an art scholar, freelance writer, and curator at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. In her exhibitions, lectures, texts, and interdisciplinary projects, she addresses the issues of the future, memory culture, representation, and the decolonization of art and cultural practices. She is a member of the advisory board of the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland e.V. and spokesperson for the Neue Deutsche Museumsmacher*innen.
Mahret Ifeoma Kupka is part of the curatorial team for Unexpected Lessons
More on Mahret Ifeoma Kupka here
Lucky 3
Lucky 3 (est. 2019) is a collective founded by Darren Mark, Dýrfinna Benita Basalan, and Melanie Ubaldo; Icelandic artists of Filipino origins. Their voices speak of diaspora-of people experiencing constant displacement, renovation and salvaging heritage in the face of cultural loss. With an unapologetically unabashed honesty and vulnerability, the collective addresses issues, but not limited to; the Filipino immigrant experience in Iceland, displacement and racism.
Lucky 3 are contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on Lucky 3 here
hn. lyonga
hn. lyonga is a Black, Queer, multi-genre writer and curator of words, concepts, and perspectives. Born and raised in the Bakweri culture of Southwest Cameroon to a working-class family, he learned that a story is both a location and a practice. His scholarly and personal interests include anti-Black racism, language in speculative Black literature, and the fixity of land as infrastructure. He is a co-founder of the Black Student Union at Humboldt University in Berlin, pursuing a master's degree in American Studies. He is a member of the AK Museums und Sammlungen at Decolonize Berlin e.V. and the board of curators of BARAZANI.berlin – Forum Kolonialismus und Widerstand.
hn.lyonga is contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on hn. lyonga here
Jumana Manna
Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and occasional writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.
Jumana Manna is contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on Jumana Manna here
Wolfgang Müller
Wolfgang Müller, born in 1957, is an artist, musician and author from Berlin. Among his artistic projects are the House of the Deadly Doris and Walther von Goethe Foundation. Further Wolfgang Müller established the science of misunderstandings, through which he investigates the origin of misunderstandings.
Wolfgang Müller is part of Walther von Goethe Foundation
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Neo Musangi
Neo Sinoxolo Musangi is a queer feminist living in Olkejuado, Kenya. Neo works in art and academia; is a senior research fellow at the Center for Art, Design and Social Research (CAD+SR), a founding member of the Black Planetary Futures Collective and, teaches Gender Studies at St. Lawrence and American University.Neo Musangi is part of Unexpected Lessons
More on Neo Musangi here
Njoki Ngumi
Dr. Njoki Ngumi is an author and feminist thinker based in Nairobi. She has worked in the private and public health sectors in Kenya and is now a member of The Nest Collective, as well as the Learning and Development Coordinator for HEVA – Africa's first creative business fund. She is particularly interested in working with youth, women and minorities, public education and socio-economic equality. With The Nest Collective, she was most recently involved in the International Inventories Program.
Njoki Ngumi is part of the curatorial team for Unexpected Lessons
More on Njoki Ngumi here
Kettly Noël
Kettly Noël is an actor and choreographic artist. Since her youth in Haiti she was attracted to dance. After getting to know American, then French modernity, since the mid-1990s Kettly Noël has been primarily working with partners in Benin and Bamako. Her works are forged in contact with harsh realities. Convinced that Africa must care about what it means to the world, passionate about the idea that dance is one of its deep forces, it nevertheless draws a future that transgresses any confinement of identity.
Kettly Noël is part of the team for next... II (Mali/Iceland)
More on Kettly Noël here
Uriel Orlow
Uriel Orlow’s practice is research-based, process-oriented and often in dialogue with other disciplines. Projects engage with residues of colonialism, spatial manifestations of memory, social and ecological justice, blind spots of representation and plants as political actors. His multi-media installations focus on specific locations, micro-histories and forms of haunting. Working across installation, photography, film, drawing and sound his works bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence.
Uriel Orlow is contributing to Unexpected Lessons
More on Uriel Orlow here
An Paenhuysen
Dr. An Paenhuysen is a curator, historian and author based in Berlin. Since 2019 she is the Director of The House of The Deadly Doris. The cultural historian will document the public research taking place at the Nordic House in September 2022, directing her attention primarily to situations and objects that are often regarded as not "important" or "minor": menus, tickets, to-do lists.
An Paenhuysen works on Walther von Goethe Foundation
More on An Paenhuysen here
Charmene Pang
Charmene Pang was born and raised in Geneva into a family from Hong Kong. Shortly after graduating from SEAD (AT) in 2018, Charmene Pang joined the Iceland Dance Company under the artistic direction of Erna Ómarsdóttir, where she appeared in various creations in collaboration with artists such as Halla Ólafsdottir, Damien Jalet, Sigur Rós and Olafur Arnalds. Charmene has also choreographed a short duet Hommages for Iceland Dance Company’s festival Social Dist-Dancing (live and video version), as well as a short video Brume. Alongside her work as a company member, she participated in projects in Salzburg,
Charmene Pang is part of next...II (Mali/Iceland)
More on Charmene Pang here
Isabel Raabe
Isabel Raabe is a curator and project developer from Berlin. She studied Contemporary Dance and later cultural management and curated numerous interdisciplinary international art and cultural projects. She is interested in curatorial and artistic strategies that deconstruct Western perspectives and traditions of thought. She recently initiated RomArchive - Digital Archive of the Roma. Isabel Raabe initiated the project TALKING OBJECTS which consists of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB and the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE, a digital archive for decolonial knowledge production to be launched in 2024.
Isabel Raabe is part of the curatorial team for Unexpected Lessons
More on Isabel Raabe here
Richard Radzinksi
Richard Radzinski is a philosopher, biologist, and artist interested in the structures, language, and images of fascism. His participation in the Walther von Goethe Foundation will focus on the research around Eva Braun’s unknown trip to Iceland.
Richard Radzinksi works with the Walther von Goethe Foundation
More on Richard Radzinski here
Liz Rosenfeld
Berlin-based artist Liz Rosenfeld works in film/video, performance, 2D and writing practice, on topics such as the sustainability of emotional and political ecologies, cruising methodologies, and the queering of memory in past and future histories. In their project for Goethe Morph* Iceland Liz explores queer connectivity, crossing thresholds, and making sense of desire through the beautiful and brutal landscape of Iceland.
Liz Rosenfeld is contributing to morph* talks
More on Liz Rosenfeld here
Colette Sadler
Colette Sadler is a choreographer and interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin. Graduating from the Laban Centre London she worked internationally as a dancer and performer until 2002. Since 20026 Sadler’s choreographic works have been shown Internationally in numerous dance and visual art contexts, including at Kaai Theatre Brussels, South Bank Centre London and TRAMWAY amongst many others. In 2019 she collaborated on a robotics and movement research project with Kings College London and curated the multidisciplinary art symposium "Present Futures” in Glasgow. She is currently developing a new Interdisciplinary performance work ORACLE LEAVES.
Colette Sadler is contributing to Growing Body of Evidence
More on Colette Sadler here
Thomas Schaupp
Thomas Schaupp is a dance dramaturg and curator. Initially trained as a medical laboratory technician, he later embarked on new paths and completed a bachelor's degree in theater studies and art history in Berlin. While still a student, Thomas started working as a dramaturg in the dance scenes of Berlin and Bucharest, soon after devoting himself fully to freelance work. Since then he has worked internationally with choreographers and performing arts institutions across Europe and beyond.
Thomas Schaupp is part of the curatorial team of Goethe Morph* Iceland
More on Thomas Schaupp here
Sabine Scho
Author and photographer Sabine Scho engages with nature and nature politics in her works. Her project The Origin of Value – The immaterialization of the whales asks how the myths around the sperm whales and Iceland as a whaling nation changes when whale watching and researching today is more profitable than whale hunting.
Sabine Scho is contributing to morph* talks
More on Sabine Scho here
Chao Tayiana
Chao Tayiana's work focuses on the application of digital technology to the preservation and dissemination of African cultural heritage. She is the founder of African Digital Heritage (Nairobi) and co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa initiative, as well as the Museum of British Colonialism. Chao Tayiana holds an MSc in International Heritage Visualization from the University of Glasgow/School of Art and worked for the Science Museum Group as a software developer for digital museum exhibits. She was awarded the Google Anita Borg Scholarship for Women in Technology.
Chao Tayiana is part of the curatorial team of Talking Objects Lab
More on Chao Tayiana here
Moritz Thorbecke
Moritz Thorbecke (aka Supertopcheckermo) was born in Recklinghausen, Germany in 1983 and started to take drum lessons at the age of 9. At the age of 14 years he started to write songs and founded his first
band. Today he is living in Berlin where he produces music for his live loop project MO ET MOI as well as for Theatre and Dance Performances and movie soundtracks. Furthermore he plays drums in several bands (for example KISSING CLOUDS and TWIN TWIN). Since 2020 he is also producing remixes, edits and mash-ups - such as the title track for “Next...1” and “Next...2”. Besides he gives lessons for drumming as well as for music production.
Moritz Thorbecke is part of next...II (Mali/Iceland)
More on Moritz Thorbecke here