Aaron Elia Schmitt (1988) Studies fine arts since 2012 at the Academy of the Fine Arts Karlsruhe Braunschweig University of Arts and University of Hildesheim with Prof. Corinne Wasmuth, Prof. Ulrich Eller, Dr. Helge Meyer Aaron works in the field of painting, literature, performance-art, sound. He is part of the Performance Network PAErsche based in Cologne. He currently lives in Braunschweig, Germany

Αkoo-o is a group of artists and researchers that use sound and mobility as vehicles of expression and social inquiry. Departing from different fields -such as visual arts, cultural studies, musicology, anthropology, literature, sound design, music composition and performance – we share a common understanding of sound as a cultural material that transgresses the limits of our disciplines; at the same time, we consider walking to be a cultural-artistic practice that carves pathways between our own theoretical milieus and leads to meeting points with others. Our work is based on research and includes the process of collaboration in our artistic practice, through workshops and participative, creative collaborations. Since our meeting in 2013 we have worked on common projects and engaged in vivid discussions that involve our interest on sound, mapping, promenadology, the relation between the arts, technological mediation and the city. *** photo credits: Akoo-o ***

Amelia Marzec is an American artist focused on rebuilding local communications infrastructure to prepare for an uncertain future. Her work has been exhibited at ISEA, SIGGRAPH, MIT, the ONCE Foundation Contemporary Art Biennial in Madrid, and is part of the Rhizome ArtBase. She has been a resident at Eyebeam, a resident at Harvestworks, a fellow at A.I.R. Gallery, a Tow Fellow at Columbia University, a grantee of the Research Foundation of CUNY, and a nominee for the World Technology Awards for Art. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, Wired, Make, Hyperallergic, Neural Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, NPR, and the front page of Reddit. She is a founder of the Radical Networks conference. She holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design, and a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. *** photo credits: Amelia Marzec ***

Anja Sauer recently graduated from the Master of Arts in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Giessen (DE). So far she has been working as a dancer and performer for other artists and simultaneously developed her own artistic work. As a choreographer Anja is developing a performative method to dissolve the human construct of time and space, emphasizing the role of the human body in this process. Her thesis is focusing on human orientation and obscurity in the theatre space. Anja lived, studied and worked in different European cities such as: Berlin, Antwerp, Montpellier, Helsinki. *** Photo credits: Jolijn de Wolf ***

Antigone Theodorou (born 1985) lives and works in Athens. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2009-2014). In 2011-2012 she attended lessons at Willem De Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 2016 she completed her MFA at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux Arts in Besançon, France. During this time she presented her thesis work Between two worlds: Performance & Animality under the performance research program "Le corps de l'artiste / The body of the artist". Through her artistic action, she explores the boundaries between the individual, the collective and the every day, in order to intervene. Between 2015-2016 she was the co-publisher of Asthenia an Athenian art fanzine. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and workshops in Athens, Thessaloniki, France, Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland. In 2015 she was awarded with the NEON Scholarship 2015 Postgraduate Studies Abroad, MFA (Master of Fine Arts) *** Photo credits: 1. Dimitris Papoutsakis, 2. Monika Sobczak, 3. Dimitris Priftis ***

David Hall writes in sentences and often works with materials already charged with significance. He has presented, performed, and exhibited his work internationally and holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. *** photo credits: David Hall ***

Fabian Löwenbrück is a postgraduate researcher in the area of social and biological psychology from Berlin, Germany. Since 2012 he has been performing as a mind-reader on various festivals and subculture events. His main areas of interest are experimental emotion research, social interactions, psychology of magic and superstitions and conspiracy theories. *** photo credits: Fabian Löwenbrück ***

Idella Craddock is a technologists working with the issues of human rights, the cult and artificial intellgience. *** photo credits: Idella Craddock ***

Ieke Trinks is a visual artist based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Malmö, Sweden. Her performance art is presented in several countries in Europe, South America, Canada and the USA. She’s part of the per- formance collective TRICKSTER and organizes PAE (Performance Art Event) in the Netherlands with artist Nina Boas. Ieke’s recent works are “Variety Show” (2015) and “Performance Monologues” (2016). Both are concerned with the documentation of performance art. “Variety Show” executed for New Performance Turku Festival (Finland) in- vests in the reproductions of Ieke’s earlier performance art doc- umentation through live-performance and audience participation. Performance Monologues are collections of audio recordings by art- ists describing one of their performances. The recordings enable Ieke to memorize and retell the spoken descriptions to a live audi- ence. The retellings are performed at several venues and occasions, such as De brillator (Chicago), Concordia (Enschede, NL), and Hej hej PALS (Fylkingen, Stockholm)

Jamie MacDonald is a stand-up comedian with a history of performance art and experimental theatre. His work has explored long-term bodily processes and navigating the spaces in between accepted categories. His recent work deals primarily with gender transition, masculinity, and queerness.

Joonas Siren (b.1983, lives/works in Helsinki, Finland) has graduated as Master of Fine Arts from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and also from the joint-study program Nordic Sound Art co-organized between five different Nordic Art Academies. He works with multidiscplinary methods, often using sound as an artistic material, but not in a musical sense. His works are mainly installations, usually containing computer programmed parts. One of Siren’s key interest is the concept of ephemereality, how ephemereal subjects like sound & light can break their inherent structure and form deeper tangible meanings. Another is the baudrillardian concept of virtuality, how everything is an hologram or hallucination of “reality”. The futuristic and transhumanist approach to singularity and how that could change the human condition is also one of the main inspirations to him. Science, technology and the notion of transcendence often meet in in Siren’s works. Photo credits: Joonas Siren

Julian Weaver is an artist, researcher & generalist who works primarily with sound. Recent works include Sound Little Island (La Rochelle, France 2017), Reading the Water (Lincoln, UK 2016), Watery Notions (Cork, Ireland 2016), On the Night Air (London, UK 2015) and The Last Walks of George Boole (Cork Ireland 2014). He is director of Finetuned, a company focusing on interdisciplinary research and curated projects that also provides creative and technical services to artists, galleries, universities and industry. *** photo credits: 1: Julian Weaver, 2: Evelyn Wilson, 3: Catherine Harty ***

Mari Ohno is an artist, based in London and Tokyo. Most of her works are sound installation and performance, which are focused on human perception, and natural/life phenomena. She was recently an artist in residence at Cafe OTO/Sound and Music Embedded programme in the UK. She is currently working towards a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Markus Airila works as Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. His own research interest is fusion energy, specifically the interaction of plasma (millions of degrees hot gas) with solid material surfaces. Besides research, he coordinates the participation of Finland in international fusion energy research. His personal interests include outdoor life, endurance sports and wood heating. *** photo credits: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC, ITER Organization***

After obtaining her MA in musicology, Russian literature and cultural analysis, Martine Mussies started researching mermaids in music. As an independent researcher, she is now working on a PhD on the topic of how modern media invite people to create new stories based on mermaid mythology. What fascinates her most about her subject is the way by which we shape fantastic creatures tells us so much about what it means to be human. Besides her research, Martine is a professional musician. Her other interests are gaming, crafting, reading, MOOCs, autism and karate. *** photo credits: Martine Mussies

Melanie King is currently studying towards a practice-based PhD at the Royal College of Art in London. She is a graduate of the MA in Art and Science at Central Saint Martins, it was here where she focused her research on the bubble as a metaphor for the brevity of life. Melanie is co-director of three organisations, Lumen Studios, super/collider and the London Alternative Photography Collective, all of which deal with the intersection of art and science in some way. In 2016, Melanie visited Helsinki to present at the Helsinki Photomedia Conference at Aalto University. Melanie has also presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico and created a world record cyanotype in Goa, India. *** Photo credits: Melanie King ***

Michael Dudeck is an artist and cultural engineer who decodes dominant cultural mythologies and re-codes them into contemporary fictions. His work is divided into four streams : The Religion Virus [an invented queer religion and prehistory], Punc Arkæology [a pedagogical software system] Crytical Mythopoesis [crypto-fictional meta-mythologies] and The Museum of Artificial Histories [an imaginary institution housing artifacts and alternate information systems]. He has performed, exhibited, screened and lectured in over 20 countries including Canada, The United States, Italy, Germany, The United Kingdom, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, France, Holland, Greece, and many more. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Art, Border Crossings, View on Canadian Art, and is included in the publications The Younger than Jesus Artist Directory [Phaidon], The Artist is Present [Moma] and Queer Spirits [Creative Time]. He has published three original artist monographs Parthenogenesis [2009] and Religion [2012] and The Genesis Complex [2014] and his fourth is underway. He is currently a doctoral student in Concordia University's Individualized Program. *** photo credits: Michael Dudeck in collaboration with Larry Glawson ***

Miloš Šejn (1947) works in the fields of visual art, performance and study of visual perception, and conducts workshops, such as Bohemiae Rosa. His artistic concept was formed in his youth when he undertook many trips into the wilderness as a reflection of an inner need to get closer to the secret of nature and observe the miracles that happen in it. He consciously is working in the areas of expressive language among text, visual stroke, body movement, voice, and expansion into space. *** photo credits: Milos Sejn ***

No Object is a multi-generational group of performance artists. We create durational performances in empty spaces into which we bring no materials other than our naked bodies. Working from a minimalist aesthetic, we focus on the potential of the body. By intuiting the collective impulse within our group we develop a sense of responsibility for our interactions in the world at large. Sympathy, empathy, trust, sharing and gaining strength and energy from the group are important components of the work. This practice requires us to be in the moment, conscious of each other and aware of our bodies in relationship to others and to our surroundings. *** photo credits: Henry Chan ***

Peta Lloyd is a solo performer and currently a PhD candidate at Oxford Brookes University. Her research entitled ‘Text+Body+Action=TextAct’ explores the making and using of text in performance and aims to include a layer of humour over underlying serious issues. She is co-founder of the Live Art and Performance Group which aims to promote and support the development of live work within the university and beyond. *** Photo credits 1:Aya Kasai, 2: Pier Corona

Pilvi Porkola is a performance artist, writer and artistic researcher based in Helsinki. She used to be fond of Baccara but doesn’t really like popcorn.

Ridwan Rau Rau is an independent performance artist who is using intuition and the body as a medium. He considers the public space as the perfect place to present an idea and to explore social codes and language. Rid wan Rau Rau is born and raised in the city of Jakarta, republic of Indonesia. He is part of the Rewind Art community that is actively making and doing performance art on the campus of the State University State of Jakarta. *** photo credits 1: Panji Jin Purnama, 2:Adi Bocor Priyatna, 3: Entri Somantr ***

Riikka Theresa Innanen is Finnish artist working as choreographer, dancer and visual artist Her work has been exhibited in North America, Europe and West Africa additional to Finland. She has been the featured choreographer of Tanssin Virtaa dance festival in 2014 and received several grants, including the artist bursary from Svenska Kulturfonden in 2011-12; and received paid residences such as in 1 year in Daghdha Dance Company in Ireland. In May 2016, a documentary film was broadcasted on YLE (Finnish Public Broadcast Company) directed by Barbro Björkfelt. Currently she is focusing on a collective processes and social activism refugees. Since graduating from School for New Dance Development (SNDO), Theatre faculty of Amsterdam School of the Arts in Holland in 1997 she has been also curating events such as Side Step festival and taught dance, composition and camera work, most extensively in Amsterdam School of the Arts 1997-2004. *** photo credits: Riikka Theresa Innanen ***

Rosie Swayne graduated from Northampton University having studied Performing Arts, but has spent much of her career on the UK band scene. Her inventive, often comic stylings are acclaimed on the UK folk/grassroots circuit both as the leader of quirky all female band Invocal, and more recently also as a solo performer. In Helsinki she is happily revisiting her theatrical roots, writing song based political shows. *** photo credits: Outi Condit ***

Salla Maria Hakkola is a harpist, composer, singer, improviser and performance artist active in multiple fields of music & art. Her music is equally likely to be heard on the classical concert stage, at folk festivals, indie-rock clubs, and experimental art happenings and has been performed by top symphony orchestras and artists of Finland. She has worked with contemporary artists in multiple genres such as choreographers, film and theatre directors and spoken word - artists. Since autumn 2011 Hakkola has been working as a composer and music advisor in Rovio Entertainment Ltd. composing music for the Angry Birds - mobile games, animations and other products of the company. In performance art Hakkola’s works focus mainly in two things: the corporality and the relationship with the body and the material at hand in space, and combining sound & music with performance art, inspired by the conventions and customs of performing and music-making in different music genres. Hakkola often performs with her harps, both acoustic and electric. *** photo credits: Marietta Mavrokordatou ***

Salla Valle (b.1990) is a Helsinki based performance artist who’s background is in visual art. She has performed actively in Finland for the last three years. Valle creates powerful images and situations by using minimal materials from the every day life. Lately she has challenged herself to work without objects and focused on time, infrastructure, sound and movement as her performative tools. *** Photo credits 1: Toni Lehtola, 2: Maija Mikkola, 3: Lena Vitória ***

Sandrine Deumier is an author, video artist and performer With her dual philosophical and artistic training, Sandrine Deumier constructed a multifaceted poetry focused on the issue of technological change and the performative place of poetry conceived through new technologies. Using material from the word as image and the image as a word vector, she also works at the junction of video and sound poetry considering them as sensitive devices to express a form of unconscious material itself. The process of writing and the mobile material of the image function as underlying meanings of reflux which refer to the real flickering and to their reality transfers via unconscious thought structures. Her work consists mainly of texts, digital poetry, multimedia installations and audiovisual performances in collaboration with composers. *** photo credits: Sandrine Deumier

Timo Viialainen (1981 Helsinki Finland) is a performance artist experimental musician and a sculptor. His performances manifest power in the form of strong sensual stimulus and ritualised personal experience playing with the expectations of one self and the audience. Location space and sound play an important part as the material for the performance and the aim is to find trigger points that penetrate the rational view of the events and give rise to intuitive experience. He started performing with sound projects in 2001 and in performance art in 2011 and has performed in different events and festivals in Europe North America and Asia. *** photo credits 1: Taina Valkonen, 2: Laura Myllykangas, 3:Antti Ahonen ***

Tomasz Szrama lives and works in Helsinki. He shifts between multiple disciplines, including photography, video, action and other time-based works. Regardless of the medium, a dominant thread common in his work is the use of methods of performance art. He has been performing internationally in various events and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America. He has also been an active organiser of live art events and festivals. *** photo credits 1:Mariusz Marchlewicz, 2: Draggen Alexandrescu, 3: Abel Loureda ***