Peio Aguirre
Lives and works in Donostia-San Sebastián. Art critic, independent curator and editor. He has curated several international exhibitions as Archaeologies of the Future, sala rekalde, Bilbao (2007), Asier Mendizabal, MACBA Barcelona (2008), Néstor Basterretxea, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao (2013). Editor of The Great Method, Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory/ Revolver Verlag (2007), and Apolonija Sustersic. Selected Projects 1995-2012, MUSAC León/Sternberg Press (2013). He has published articles in art journals as Afterall, A Prior Magazine, Flash Art, Chto Delat? and e-flux journal among others. He is the autor of a number of monograph essays about artists. He writes in his blog Crítica y metacomentario.
Martin Beck
Martin Beck is an artist living in New York. He holds a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In conjunction with his artistic practice, Beck also writes about art, design, and architecture. Recent exhibitions include the particular way in which a thing exists at Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University in Montreal, Presentation at 47 Canal (2012) ; Remodel at Ludlow 38 in New York (with Ken Saylor) ; contributions to the Twenty-Ninth São Paulo and the Fourth Bucharest Biennales (2010) ; and Panel 2: “Nothing better than a touch of ecology and catastrophe to unite the social classes…” at Gasworks, London (2008). He recently published the volume The Aspen Complex (2012, Sternberg Press).
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a graphic designer, public artist and educator. Her work reflects a deep commitment towards inclusivity, community and forms of social engagement. In 1971 she founded the Women’s Design program at CalArts, and in 1973 co-founded the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. In 1981 she created the Department of Communication and Design at Otis/Parsons. She became the first woman to be tenured at Yale when she joined the faculty as the director of the graduate program in graphic design. Her public projects illuminate processes of communal meaning making that activate the social specificity of the project’s location: Biddy Mason: Time and Place and Omoide no Shotokyo in Los Angeles;Search: Literature in Flushing, New York; At the start, At long last in New York City’s Inwood A train station; Path of Stars in New Haven; step(pe) in Yekaterinburg, Russia; and ... therefore ... at the Hong Kong Design Institute. Her work in books, magazines, and newspapers includes the redesign of the Los Angeles Times, special issues of the Aspen Times, Everywoman, American Cinematographer, and Arts in Society. In 2010 she was named the Caroline M. Street Professor of Graphic Design at Yale University.
Monique Eleb
Monique Eleb is a psychologist and has a PhD in sociology as well as being qualified to direct research (HDR). Her work concerns the sociology of the habitat and the evolution of ways of life, the socio-history of habitation and the analysis of the conception of contemporary architecture. She is currently a member of the Laboratoire Architecture Culture et Société, XIXe-XXIe siècle (UMR/CNRS/MCC n°3329), of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Malaquais, which she created with Jean-Louis Cohen and has directed since 1990.
Pierre Lascoumes
Pierre Lascoumes is a Director of research CNRS at the Centre d’études européennes of Sciences-Po Paris. Holding a PhD in law and diplomas in sociology (Bordeaux) and criminology (Montreal), he has worked on environmental policy and the policies that battle against financial delinquency. His work on public action involves the regulation of socio-technical issues. He also works on the origins and implementation of the REACH regulations (control of chemical products) and on the recent evolutions in sustainable development policies and associated institutions (Grenelle, the reform of the central and decentralized services of the Ministry). He has published numerous books including the recent Une démocratie corruptible, arrangements, favoritisme et conflits d’intérêts, (Le Seuil, La république des idées, 2011) and Action publique et environnement, collection que sais-je, puf 2012.
Jeanne Quéheillard
Jeanne Quéheillard is a design theoretician and critic, and member of the AICA. She teaches at the EBABX - École d’Enseignement Supérieur d’Art de Bordeaux and at the ENSCI, Les Ateliers. As a curator, she has created the exhibitions: Présence Panchounette, Jean Prouvé, Meubles 1924-1953, Chose parmi d’autres, In progress, le design face au progrès, Ever living ORNEMENT.
She participated in the Paysage de table project with Jean-François Dingjian and the CRAFT and contributes to specialized magazines and publications such as: L’expérience de la céramique (Bernard Chauveau, Editions, 2007), Normal Studio, design élémentaire (Musée des arts décoratifs, 2010) and Les meubles à musique de Cocktail designers (les presses du réel, 2010), Ever living ORNEMENT (B42, 2012).
Benjamin Tong
Benjamin Tong is an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. He contributed to The Experimental Impulse Exhibition (2011) at the REDCAT Gallery, which reflected on the history of experimentation that influence art practices in Los Angeles. He also writes, arranges objects, and operates on multiple platforms of perform/ativity. He wrote and performed The Parrot Lecture (2012) at CalArts, with a transcript published by Golden Spike Press (Valencia). He has lectured at The Centre for Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths College (London). And more recently he was a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Berlin, where he worked on a theory of the awkward sublime, and a presentation of an imaginary film inspired by Charles Fourier and a sci-fi vision written in the future anterior. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a M.F.A. in Art from the California Institute of the Arts.