People

Keren has worked extensively in Pacific arts and cultural development as an artist, curator, collection manager and project coordinator for organizations such as Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Parramatta Artist Studios, the Australian Museum and the Historic Houses Trust of NSW.

In 1998 Keren curated ‘weave’ for Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. Part of the Pacific Wave Festival, ‘weave’ was an inter-generational, cross-cultural artist residency, exhibition and workshop program of Indigenous and Pacific weavers. This was followed by Te Ara Tipu in 2000, an artists’ residency and exhibition of Sydney-based Maori graffiti artist/carver, Haro (A.K.A. Chris Bisset) at Archill Gallery, Auckland. Keren also coordinated the initial ‘Weaving Garden’ project at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, a project aimed at revitalizing and maintaining Indigenous women’s weaving practices.

Keren was a founding member of the Pacific Wave Association, a NSW-based arts organisation established to develop and present Australian-based contemporary Pacific arts. As part of the organising committee she worked on three major Pacific arts festivals in Sydney in 1998, 2003 and 2004. Keren is also a practicing artist and in 2004 she was awarded an ArtsNSW Western Sydney Artist’s Fellowship to weave a Trans-Tasman kahu kuri (garment based on traditional Maori dog-skin cloaks).

Her cloak combined elements from both Australia and New Zealand and was based on research into museum collections. In 2007 Keren’s work was exhibited in Campbelltown Arts Centre’s News From Islands, an exhibition exploring engagements within the Pacific diaspora of Western Sydney and beyond. She also coordinated the News From Islands Community Project facilitating engagements between members of Western Sydney’s Pacific communities and museum collections. In 2010 Keren collaborated with Maori Installation artist Maureen Lander on Parramatariki for Parramatta Artist Studios, an exhibition and workshop program exploring the notion of ‘celebration’ within the Pacific.

In 2013 Keren was guest curator for Campbelltown Art Centre’s Towards the Morning Sun, an exhibition of nine artists of Pacific heritage who celebrate, engage with and interrogate elements of culture and explore complex historical, political and cultural ideas. In 2014 Keren co-curated Stitching the Sea for Blacktown Arts Centre (in partnership with the Australian Museum) an exhibition focusing on the story telling traditions and narratives contained within the cultural practices and ancestral objects of the people of the Pacific. Keren holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts (UNSW) and a Master of Liberal Arts (Museums and Collections) from ANU. In 2012 she began work as a Technical Officer at the Australian Museum. Currently, she is Creative Producer with the Pacific collection at the Australian Museum.

Ruby Hoette is a designer/researcher seeking to expand what constitutes fashion practice. Her critical and experimental approach proposes alternate modes of engaging with and producing fashion. By framing the garment as a unique artefact carrying traces of social, cultural and economic interactions and transactions her work explores fashion in context and unpicks the complex relationships between object and system.  Ruby is a Lecturer in Design and Programme Lead for MA Design Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Ludovica graduated at the National Film and Television School and together with seven other filmmakers she founded the Kitchen Sink Collective in London. She works as a filmmaker between Italy and the UK.

Born in Bangkok, raised in Java, Mo'ong is a composer of experimental music and creative concepts sought through research and exploration. His main area of study is music Nusantara, or the music of Indonesia.

He started his studies in western classical music with a major in double bass, but soon moved back to his roots to explore the wisdom of Javanese folklore, and continued his master studies in the arts at Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Surakarta (Solo), with a major in music composition.

Mo'ong has been involved with a variety of national and international projects in many different genres of music. He has been involved with the musical side of multi-disciplinary art projects such as modern dance, modern theater, contemporary puppet theater, installation art and performance art.

Mo'ong has also worked as a sound designer and written music for several independent films.

Kirill Burlov started to dance when he was four and has dedicated his life to this art form ever since. After five years of ballet and performing in the folk dance group ‘The Pearl’, he was selected by the Riga Ballet School, from where he graduated in 1996. He followed his passion of dance with the study of choreography at the Latvian National Academy from 2000, from where he graduated in 2004, while performing solo parts in Latvian National Opera House from 1996.  In the UK he has performed as a soloist with Northern Ballet Theatre and The Cathy Marston Project. 

Since 2003 he has choreographed two ballets for the Latvian National Opera House - ‘Emils Darzinsh’(2004), and ‘Story About Clever Farmer’ (2005). He joined Ballet Rambert in 2007 and has choreographed six workshop pieces since. In London his pieces have been performed at venues including the Bernie Arts centre, The Place, ROH2, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Recently he has been commissioned to choreograph a contemporary piece in collaboration with the visual artist Abigail Reynolds to celebrate the opening of Rambert's new building.

He has organised a full-length contemporary dance evening for the Cesis Music and Arts Festival and has participated in other dance festivals. He recently performed his solo full length story “Ļightness”, composed and organised by Kristaps Petersons, at the Latvian National Opera House. After his performance at the Stuttgart Dance Contest, he was invited to dance with the Michael Clark Company, and to participate in the creation of a performance for the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

He has also recently collaborated with Michael Finissy, participated in an evening of Tango with Ksenija Sidorova, and performed a Baroque solo piece in collaboration with Johannes Pramsholner. He is also an organiser and an artistic director of the Batlic Art Form Festival.

Nikolaus Gansterer studied Transmedia art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and completed his post-academic studies at the Jan van Eyck Academy at Maastricht, in The Netherlands. He is cofounder of the Institute for Transacoustic Research and the sound-collective The Vegetable Orchestra. Currently he is lecturer at the Institute for Transmedia Art and guest professor at the Zentrum Fokus Forschung at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. During 2014 - 2017 he led the inter-disciplinary artistic research project 'Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line', funded by the PEEK-programme of the Austrian Science Fund.

As an artist and performer, Nikolaus Gansterer is deeply interested in the links between drawing, thinking and action. His practice is grounded in a trans-medial and trans-disciplinary approach, underpinned by conceptual discourse in the context of performative visualization and cartographic representations. He focuses on mapping processes of transience by developing experimental modes of notation and translation. Through a consequent recombination of methods and settings from various fields, he arrives at unique lines of connection and division, questioning the imaginary threshold between nature and culture, art and philosophy unfolding their immanent structures of contingency.

Gansterer is author of the book 'Drawing a Hypothesis - Figures of Thought', (Springer, 2011) on the ontology of shapes of visualisations and the development of the diagrammatic perspective and its use in contemporary art, science and theory. He is also the co-author of 'Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line', (De Gruyter, 2017) on the complex character of performative and embodied configurations. 

Nikolaus Gansterer is internationally active in performances, exhibitions and lectures. Some recent presentations of his work include: 14th Sharjah Biennial (upcoming); Brisante Träume/Volatile Dreams, Marta Herford Museum, Herford (upcoming); Con-notations, Villa Arson, Nice; Drafts, The Drawing Centre, New York; Graphology, MUHKA, Antwerp; The Drawing Room, Blickle Foundation, Karlsruhe; The Plague of Diagrams, ICA, London; The Bottom Line, SMAK, Ghent; Drawing Now, Albertina Museum, Vienna; Trajectories, Drawing Hub, Berlin; Architecture of Interaction, Chisenhale Gallery, London; Hard Rock Walzer, Villa Manin, Udine; Potential Dialogues, RCM Art Museum, Nanjing; Wrong time, Wrong place, Tent, Rotterdam; The Stone Road, KEX, Vienna & Argos, Brussels; Structures, Transmediale, Berlin; Sound Escapes, Space Gallery, London; Mifan, AnniArt Gallery, Beijing, Story behold. Story be told., Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Moving Patterns, ACF, New York.

Dr Simon Layton is a historian of European imperialism, specialising in global and oceanic approaches to the past. He is interested in the influence of sea-power in the age of empire, particularly at the chokepoints of global trade in the early modern world. He completed my doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 2013, where he lectured in World History for two years before joining Queen Mary. He has also taught at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, and at the University of Otago in New Zealand. 

His research delves into the global history of ‘piracy’ as a concept and practice, focusing particularly on the period of British imperialism in the Indian Ocean world. He explores various discourses of sovereignty, law and criminality in world history, especially as they pertain to empire-building and maritime violence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• World History
• British Imperial History, 1600-1857
• Early-modern empires in Asia and the Middle East
• Histories of maritime violence
• Cultures of radicalism, subversion and resistance

Martina Moor is is a freelance filmmaker and film editor based in London.