Merve Kazokoglu
University lecturer for contemporary chamber music and artistic director of the Earquake Ensemble at the Detmold University for Music.
Born in Ankara, Merve Kazokoğlu started her clarinet studies in 2002 as a DAAD-Scholar at the Detmold University for Music, where she also studied chamber music and graduated with honors. In 2007/08 she was a scholar at the international Ensembly Modern Academy in Frankfurt am Main, 2008 she was a young soloist with the state Symphony Orchestra in Istanbul and 2011 she was a scholar at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. In 2014 she was invited as a guest soloist to the summer concert of the state government of Nord Rhine-Westfalia. Kazokoğlu is particularly dedicated to new music a soloist and chamber musician. Her performances were broadcasted by WDR, NDR and Deutschlandfunk, among others. She has a special relationship with the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen. With the production of „The Little Harlequin“ by Carlus Padrissa (La Fura dels Baus) she was a guest in Vienna, Moscow, Munich and Hamburg. In 2016 she was on stage, playing the role of Eva in the much acclaimed new production of THURSDAY from LIGHT at the Basel Theater. This preformance was named “Performance of the Year” by the opera world. Since 2016 she has been teaching contemporary chamber music at the Detmold HfM.
Axel Kreiser
Teacher for special tasks (metalwork) at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf.
Alex Kreiser studied at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and graduated from Tony Craig‘s master class. He lives and works in Cologne and Düsseldorf. With his company “Real Material – Manufaktur für Möbel und Objekte“ he realised objects for artists, designed individual pieces of furniture and theater equipment. In his sculptural work, he developed with help of banal steel pipes and the combination of concave and convex surfaces a complex language of forms. Since 2009 he has managed metal sculpture facility at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. 2016 Alex Kreiser had a teaching position for sculpiting at the Alanus University of Alfter.
Claudia Schmacke
Teacher for special tasks (modeling) at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf.
Claudia Schmacke studied at the Kassel University and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam as well as at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. She lives and works as a freelance artist in Berlin. She works in the field of sculpture, installation and new media and in her work researches questions of temporality and perception especially in correlation with the element water. Her work has been shown in numerous national and international solo- and group exhibitions and she has realized many permanent installations in public spaces (most recently 2013 Fellowship Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, USA / 2011 KWW-Scholarship, Künstlerdorf Schöppingen / 2010 DEW21 Kunstpreis, Dortmund). Numerous teaching assignments and lecteures at international universities. Since 1998 she has been a teacher for special tasks at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.
Peter Schumbrutzki
Artistic director of the studio for digital art at the Art Academy in Münster and freelance artist in Berlin.
For years he has been working in the field of moving images, media art comprOVisions and works theoretically and practically with various time-based media, such as film, video and multimedia and he develops concepts and ideas for mediaproductions. As an artist, Schumbrutzki experiments with new technology and deals with aesthetic and philosophical currents in time-based media and cinematography. In this field he realised music- and mediaperformances. In his Work as a mediaperformer he his mainly focused on time and translation. His art practice is characterised by process and transformation.
Liz Haas
Professor for Networks at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.
In 1995 lizvlx founded the collective UBERMORGEN together with Hans Bernhard. As net.art pioneers with a global following and a strong influence on young artists, they are willing to take risks and push the boundaries of art, technology and aesthetics. Their main body of work consists of internetart, installation photography, softwareart, performance and uses the convergence of digital media, to produce and publish online and offline.The unique strength of UBERMORGEN is their precise (visual) language combined with a radical understanding of space and time, their obsessive curiosity and their merciless experimental research-methods combined with their intimate knowledge of art history and their experience with the global contemporary art market.
UBERMORGEN has received several awards such as the Swiss Art Awrad, the ARCO Award, the Ars Electronica Award, the Transmedia Award and the IBM Award.
Bruno Klimek
Professor for Scenographical Education / Singers / Opera at the Folkwang University of Arts.
Experience with theater at the Tübinger Zimmertheater. Since 1982 he has participated in numerous theater productions in Berlin, Bonn, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Essen, Hamburg, Köln, Mannheim München, Nürnberg, to name a few. 1996 – 2000 he was an acting director at the national theater in Mannheim. Opera productions – mostly in his own sets – in Aachen, Bielefeld, Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Gießen, Innsbruck, Koblenz, Krefeld, Nürnberg, Oldenburg, Weimar, at the national theater in Belgrad and at the Veinna Volksoper. Publications of radio plays, theater texts, translations and essays. Exhibition in Bad Dürkheim, Bielfeld, Dortmund, Nürnberg and Vienna. Teaching job at music universities in Karlsruhe and Düsseldorf. Lecturer in the graduate programm “Heretopia“ at the Folkwang University of Arts. 2016 he received the Austrian Music Theaterprize for directing Adrianna Lecouvreur at the Tiroler Landestheater.
Stephan Brinkmann
Professor for contemporary dance at the Folkwang University of Arts.
Stephan Brinkmann received his dance training at the Folkwang University of Essen, he also studied theater, film and television studies, sociology and German at the University of Cologne and completed an additional degree in dance education at the Folkwang University. At the University of Hamburg he received his doctorate with a dissertation on forms of memory in dance („Remember movement. Forms of memory in dance“, published in 2013). He was a dancer and choreographer at the Folkwang Tanzstudio for two years before he became a permanent member of the ensemble of the Wuppertal Pina Bausch dance theater in 1995 and danced there until 2010. There he was involved in the creations „Nur Du“, „Fensterputzer“, „Masurca Fogo“, „O Dido“ and „Wiesenland“ and danced numerous pieces from the repertoire of the Wuppertal dance theater. He has worked in the films „Sprich mit ihr“ by Pedro Almodovar and „Pina“ by Wim Wenders, among others. He created dance pieces for various institutions as well as national and international companies. He has also received numerous awards for his choreographies. As a training and rehearsal manager he was engaged at the Staatstheater Kassel in 2007, re-studied “Nur Du” at the Tanztheater Wuppertal in 2012, and in 2013, together with Barbara Kaufmann, reconstructed Pina Bausch’s Tannhäuser Bacchanal. His teaching activities also take him to numerous national and international institutions.
Melissa de Raaf
Professor for Dramaturgy and cinematic story telling at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne.
Born in the Netherlands. Melissa de Raaf was a member of the selection comitee of the Impakt festival in Utrecht until 2004. Since then she has lived in Germany and is a teacher at the Academy of Media Arts since 2018. With her debut feature film “Felicia über alles“ (2009 together with Răzvan Rădulescu) she received international attention and has since been associated with Romanian auteur cinema. Her work as a screenwriter and director moves in an international, cross-border area in which different cultures are brought into conversation with one another.