CATAPULT.body | the micro-forum speakers
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Ibrahim Nehme - Beirut / Lebanon
Ibrahim is a creator and curator based in Lebanon and working on new media. His work is a cross-pollination between journalism, activism and creative expression, and could be understood as a series of attempts to shift the collective consciousness. Through his work, he is interested in activating transnational, cross-border forms of thinking that could give birth to new forms of politics and economics. Ibrahim is the co-founder of The Outpost magazine, Radio Mansion, and ‘a Dance Mag’. He has previously spoken at TEDx, 99U, magCulture, the Dubai Lynx, and QVED, among others.
links: instagram
Carole Guertler -
Zurich / Switzerland
Carole is an independent consultant in sustainable development, cultural & creative economies and media. She specialized in organisational development & capacity building, project and programme work, grant making and communication in the fields of philanthropy, NGO / NPO, social impact entrepreneurship and CSR. She has been trained in culture/arts, journalism/communication and NPO management/leadership; she works primarily in the Mediterranean & Middle East Region as well as in Western and Southeast Europe and maintains an international network and collaborations.
links: linkedin
Emma Jayne Park - Gretna / Scotland
Emma is a dancer, theatre maker, collaborator, facilitator, movement director, trainee intimacy coordinator, choreographer, advocate, micro-activist and occasional drag king. They asks questions and are obsessed with asking better questions. You can usually find them in the sea, drinking tea or dancing in sweaty clubs - often whilst simultaneously scrolling Twitter. From creating dance with rural communities to working in ‘established’ mid-scale theatres, their politics always underline their practice with a focus on narrowing the gap between ideology and actions, questioning inherited working structures and developing open source resources. Since 2018 their research has concentrated upon failure from both individual and societal perspectives. Emma is currently working on commissions from the Working Class Artists Group and DG Unlimited, and is an Associate Artist with the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. Their facilitation practice includes working with Federation of Scottish Theatre, IETM and The Global Cultural Relations Programme. Emma has also advocated for precarious workers rights as part of various community organising groups, with activity ranging from hosting healing spaces and speaking in both Holyrood and Westminster.
Maia Malas - Dubai / UAE
My passion is people, their stories and the fact that life is stranger than fiction. As a Development Producer, I work with Arab storytellers on great ideas from script to screen. I have a mixed bag of experience having worked on films, series, docs and programs with mainstream TV channels (BBC, OSN), independent content companies (Front Row, Misr International Films, Genomedia Studios); as well as media development organisations (BBC Media Action, Reuters, Internews, EU, UN). Currently heading development for Yalla Yalla at Front Row Filmed Entertainment, I am connecting and collaborating with Arab and international talent to ideate and design authentic stories told from an engrossing, brave, and at times, very funny perspectives, through series and film. My career started with the written word, in Jordan, as a young print journalist; before moving on to audiovisual content.Passionate about dance, progressive education and civil rights, I am a Jordanian Londoner living in Dubai with Syrian origins.
links: linkedin
Vasileios Boukis - Athens / Greece
Vasileios Boukis is a multi-disciplinary artist, engineer and musician based in Athens. His work frequently involves motion detection and analysis, electronics, projection mapping, lighting, game engines, generative (or not) visuals, music, virtual and augmented reality. His artistic expression emerges from the combination of these media and the process of resolving self-generated engineering “problems” that appear along the way. The methodology is evident in the work itself and beauty is not a crucial objective. Since 2009 he has worked as an immersive and interactive designer for a range of commercial clients including Google, Siemens, Campari, Mercedes, Netflix and Diesel as well as museums and other cultural institutions. In Athens he collaborated with 2monochannels on a large-scale interactive installation for the Greek pavilion of the 2008 Venice Biennale di Architettura (Athens by Sound) and “No Visa Day '', a projection mapping installation on the facade of Tirana University. In 2011 he joined YR, a creative agency based in London, where he developed interactive installations, lighting and stage design and visuals for music festivals as well as a t-shirt design software. In 2015, he moved to Berlin and participated in an artistic residency at Artificial Rome. During this time he developed an artwork entitled “Sidiros”, a high-wattage installation manipulating magnetic fields to create visuals from solidified ferrofluid in real time. From 2017 to 2019 he co-created and developed “TTT3000”, a startup that explored the possibilities of sports training with augmented reality, applied initially to the game of table tennis. In 2018 he participated in Jacob Collier’s “In My Room” world tour, where he operated a custom visual looping system that translated the real time audio looping of Jacob’s one man band performance. Other recent projects include “Kalliplokamos”, (a category C truck containing a 3-meter high sculpture of UV colored fluid pumping through 2 km of clear woven PVC tubes), three musical EP’s - the Mozavikos project, a funk punk quartet with focus on arrangement, the Jebooke EP, four tracks with analog synthesizers, Billybouki, a vulnerable electronic folk project. He loves referring to himself as he.
links: website
Reem Kassem - Egypt
Reem is a cultural producer & policy researcher, founder of AGORA for Arts & Culture, co-founder of Basita.live, and an Egyptian Cultural Manager and Researcher based in Abu Dhabi. She works as a senior performing arts programmer at the Cultural Foundation. She has 20 years of work experience in the Cultural and Creative Industries. Her work experience includes “Head of Performing Arts” at the Library of Alexandria (Egypt), and Founding Director of AGORA for Arts and Culture. She is an international fellow of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, a global fellow of the International Society for Performing Arts, a Chevening Scholar, a Clore Cultural Leadership Fellow, a Tandem Shaml and a Robert Bosch Stiftung Alumni. She is currently conducting her PhD. research at the University of the West of Scotland, where she is researching the role of virtual and hybrid arts and cultural engagement in developing resilience and helping societies emerge stronger from crisis.
links: website
Adrian Pepe - Beirut / Lebanon
Adrian is an artist and designer presently residing in Beirut, Lebanon. His work focuses on craftsmanship from socio-cultural, aesthetic, ecological and methodological perspectives. He studies the relational ties we form with objects over time; how they are made and replicated, transferred and adopted, how they change and adapt. His integrated approach interweaves culture, history, and performance with design, fashion, and interiors. Throughout his work, he performs a sort of creative shadowgraphy, crafting objects and experiences as tools to enable an open discourse on materiality, our morphing cultural landscape, and present condition.
links: website
Elaine Kordys - Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute / Scotland
I have always liked to move and to make things. There are many photos of me as a child in various costumes and set ups, dancing or making sculptures and drawings. One of my earliest memories is of poking about in my Nanas cupboards of scarves, dresses and shoes, the bright ones, the ones reserved for ballroom dancing. Then in time being invited to join her and my Grandad dancing and standing on my grandad feet weaving our way around the hall. Movement and art have given me the possibility to connect, to exchange, to be in relation to another and to express myself when words were sometimes troublesome. Now I’m 46 I don’t think much has changed except it is also my work. I trained in Dance and Visual Arts for my degree (95) then followed this by studying Dance Movement Therapy (98) and a Diploma in Film Making (08). I am presently studying on the MSc in Dementia Studies through Stirling University. Throughout this time, I have facilitated movement workshops with older people and people with dementia and been part of performances, films and many artistic adventures. In 2019 I set up Spin Turn Creative Movement and work alongside older people and people with dementia through movement and film. I work with the understanding that there are always routes into connection.
Ferdinand Richard - Marseille / France
Founder/director of A.M.I./Marseille (since 1985), multi-sectorial cultural development local platform, including extensive international cooperation programme and the first incubator for Cultural micro-businesses in France. Founding member of La Friche Belle-de-Mai/Marseille (since 1992), deputy director for 8 years, under the presidence of architect Jean Nouvel. First coordinator/expert of the International Fund for Cultural Diversity/UNESCO experts panel (2006/2015). President of The Roberto Cimetta Fund (2009/2019) and founding member/executive supervisor of The Fanak Fund (since 2019), Expert for the french Cour des Comptes on the international cultural actions of the French Governement (2013). Membre of the governing instance of the Institut du Monde Arabe in the Hauts-de-France Region/France from 2016 to 2019. Expert for Asia-Europe Foundation/"Mobility First" programme (2017/2020). Board member of the Observatoire des Politiques Culturelles/France (2002/2020). President of The European Forum for the Arts and Heritage, re-named today Culture Action Europe (1996/1999).
links: website
Dima Boulad - Dubai / UAE
Dima is a designer with over 12 years of experience helping private and public organizations improve their customer-centric practices and re-imagining their services and products across the MENA region. She’s currently a Design Research Lead at Palmwood. Her previous experience lies in Designing for Social Impact where she worked with several humanitarian organizations on innovating and human centered solutions. Dima launched @futures_dubai, the Dubai chapter of the Design Futures Initiative, a local community exploring the plurality of possible futures.
links: linkedin
Michelle Ellsworth - Boulder / USA
Though not a licensed scientist, technologist, or carpenter, Ellsworth nevertheless co-mingles these disciplines with dance to create solutions and/or demonstrations of peculiar geopolitical (and personal) phenomena. The pharmaceutical and political potential of dance interests her, as well as the value of broken and labor-intensive ideas. Among Ellsworth’s honors are a Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), a Doris Duke Impact Award (2015), a Creative Capital Fellowship (2013), and a USA Artists Knight Fellowship in Dance (2012). Highlights in her performing career include presenting at On The Boards, The Fusebox Festival, American Realness, The Chocolate Factory, Danspace, and at a few places in Europe.
links: website
James Tyson - London / UK
James Tyson works as a Programme Manager for Theatre & Dance at the British Council in London, where he advises on and facilitates projects connecting arts organisations and theatre & dance artists internationally with the UK arts sector. From 1999-2011 he worked as Theatre Programmer / Head of Theatre for Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales one of Europe's longest established multi-disciplinary contemporary arts centres, and subsequently as an independent producer and artist working on projects in New York City and across the US, UK and internationally.
link: website