Bronwyn Lace (1980, Botswana) completed her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2004.
Site specificity is one of the things that stirs her imagination into life. Lace focuses her practice on the relationships between art and other fields, including physics, museum practice and philosophy. She elects to work with found, recycled and repurposed elements and often builds her intricate installations responsively and in situ.
Lace’s exhibitions include 2019 CrossSections and Climbing Through The tide, a group exhibition curated by Başak Senova travelling from Tunis, Tunisia to Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Finland; 2018 : MIRROR | MIRROR, a solo exhibition at Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa; 2017: Bred in the Bone, a solo exhibition at Circa, Cape Town, South Africa; Dead Gardens, a group show curated by Olimpia Bera, Cluj Napoca, Romania; 2016: KulturKontakt, a group exhibition as part of the Austrian Federal Chancellery 2016 residency, Vienna, Austria; Bronze, Steel and Stone, group exhibition at Everard Read, London, UK; 2015: Response, a two person exhibition, Johannesburg, South Africa; Response, an exhibition presentation delivered at the National Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington, USA; 2014: Teeming, solo exhibition at SpekePhotographic, Johannesburg, South Africa; 2013: Resuscitate, solo exhibition at Nirox Project Space, Johannesburg, South Africa; 2012: A Tendency Towards Complexity, solo exhibition at CIRCA on Jellico, Johannesburg, RSA.
In 2013, Lace co-completed a commissioned book and film related to collaborative community projects she has co-initiated in South Africa. Lace is currently the co-director of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Founded by William Kentridge, the Centre creates and supports experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects. Lace lives and works in Vienna, Austria.
Johannes Jaeger (1973, Switzerland) is an evolutionary systems biologist and natural philosopher. He studied biology at the Universities of Zurich and Basel, and has an MSc degree in “Holistic Science” from Schumacher College, Devon, UK. He received his PhD thesis in genetics from Stony Brook University, NY, U.S.A. in 2005. After a short stay at the Zoology Museum of the University of Cambridge as a postoctoral researcher, he led an interdisciplinary research group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona from 2008 to 2015, where he studied the evolution of gene regulatory networks. Jaeger was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study/Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2014/15. He then became the director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) in Klosterneuburg near Vienna, where he was active from 2015 to 2017. Since 2017, he is a freelance researcher and philosopher, with an annual guest lectureship at the Dept. of Molecular Development and Evolution of the University of Vienna. He is associate faculty at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna. In addition, he was a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden (2017/18), a fellow at the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaries (CRI) in Paris (2018/19), a fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) (2020), and a gues lecturer at the University of Cambridge. At the moment his is occupying the D’Alembert Research Chair of the Institut d’Ètudes Avancées (IEA) in Paris, and is serving as a philosophical consultant for the EU Horizon 2020 project Crowd4SDG, where is working on the epistemology of citizen science.
Jaeger is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications in internationally renowned journals (Nature, eLIFE, PLoS Biology, Biology & Philosophy, etc.; details available at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Wk8kppcAAAAJ&hl=en). These publications span the disciplines of genetics, developmental and evolutionary systems biology, dynamical systems theory, model optimization (machine learning), the philosophy of biology, and epistemology. Jaeger’s approach to research is fundamentally transdisciplinary. He has developed a new perspectival view on evolutionary biology, available as an online lecture at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8vh-kVsYPqOKJOboONJIQBd8ds0ueM_W. It will be published as a scientific monograph in the future. As director of the KLI, he has gained valuable experience in managing an interdisciplinary research institution. In particular, he has set up several successful arts & science collaborations , one of which resulted in a publication in Leonardo (Anderson et al. 2020, Leonardo 53: 256). In addition, Jaeger is giving workshops on the topics of creativity and philosophy for scientific researchers at various national and international academic institutions (CRI Paris, IST Austria, Donauuniversität Krems, Webster University Vienna). Jaeger is the director of the Venice Summer School in Evolutionary Developmental Biology since 2011.
Basak Senova is a curator and designer. She studied Literature and Graphic Design (MFA in Graphic Design and Ph.D. in Art, Design and Architecture at Bilkent University) and attended the 7th Curatorial Training Programme of Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam. As an assistant professor, she lectured in various universities in Turkey and in 2017 she was the resident fellow at the University of the Arts, Helsinki in co-operation with HIAP and Associate Professorship by the Higher Education Council of Turkey. Curently, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien) and also teaches a seminar course “Case Studies” for Master students at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien).
Senova has been writing on art, technology and media, initiating and developing projects and curating exhibitions since 1995. She is one of the founding members of NOMAD, as well as the organizer of “ctrl_alt_del” sound art project and “Upgrade!Istanbul”. She is the editor of art-ist 6, Kontrol Online Magazine, Lapses book series, UNCOVERED, Aftermath, Obje’ct, The Move, The Translation, Scientific Inquiries, Cultural Massacre, Ahmet Elhan-Ground Glass and Lines of Passage (in medias res) among other publications. Senova is one of the editorial correspondents of ibraaz.org and Turkish correspondent of Flash Art International. She curated Zorlu Center Collection for two years (2011-2012) by also acting as the editor of its publications. Senova acted as an advisory board member of the Turkish Pavilion in Venice Biennial and also the Istanbul Biennial. She is a member of the editorial board of Pass, International Biennial Association’s (IBA) journal.
Senova was the curator of the Pavilion of Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale. She co-curated the UNCOVERED (Cyprus, 2011-2013); the 2ndand 5th Biennial of Contemporary Art, D-0 ARK Underground (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2013 and 2019). She acted as the Art Gallery Chair of (ACM) SIGGRAPH 2014 (Vancouver) the curator of the Helsinki Photography Biennial 2014 and the Jerusalem Show VII: Fractures (2014). In 2015, she curated the Pavilion of Republic of Macedonia at the 56th Venice Biennale, in 2016, Lines of Passage (in medias res) Exhibition in Lesvos and in 2019 the inaugural exhibition of B7L9, Climbing through the Tide in Tunis. Senova completed a long-term research-based art project CrossSections that took place in Vienna, Helsinki, and Stockholm (2017- 2019). At the moment she is running a research-based educational programme “The Octopus Programme” at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien).
Marcus Neustetter (1976, Johannesburg) earned his undergraduate and Masters Degree in Fine Arts (2001) from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Interested in cross-disciplinary practice, site-specificity, socially engaged interventions and the intersection of art and activism, Neustetter has produced projects, performances and installations across Africa, Europe, America and Asia that search for a balance between poetic form and asking critical questions.
Accolades include: World Technology Award for the Arts 2015, NY; Artist Fellow, the Smithsonian National Museums of African Art and Air and Space, Washington DC; Sweep, public performance commission, UNESCO International year of Light, Mexico; Renaming the City, commission for Ars Electronica Festival, Austria; Into the Light, solo exhibition, Wits Art Museum, South Africa; Absent Collection, installation, Cairotrinca, Egypt; Sud Triennial 2014/2017 participant, Cameroon; Vents de Rose Numerique participant, Senegal, Mali and Martinique; Temporary Museum of Art, Havana Biennial, Cuba; artistic director of ISEA2018Durban, South Africa; Searching Darkness, ISEA2019, South Korea; Award-winning planetarium show The Vertical Journey, South Africa; large-scale permanent public and private commissions in Johannesburg and Cape Town; Imaginary Futures, commissioned virtual experience performances in response to COVID19, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Neustetter has been the co-director of the contemporary art production collaboration The Trinity Session since 2000, and is an adjunct professor with Nelson Mandela University. He lives and works between Johannesburg and Vienna.