Speakers in order of the program (the information is continuously updated)
Dr. Norbert Cyrus
Norbert Cyrus is a trained social and cultural anthropologist and received a PhD from Osnabrück University with a dissertation on "Labour Migration and Social Work." He is engaged in migration research since the mid 1990s with a focus on the governance of labour migration and the social rights of migrant workers, including migrants in an irregular situation. Since 2015, he works as a research associate at the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION at European University Frankfurt (Oder), with a particular focus on the analysis of the complexity of state borders. Currently, he is engaged as scientific advisor and evaluator in the EU-funded INTERREG-project "Aufbau und Umsetzung von Grenzinformationspunkten" - Establishing and Implementing Border Information Points, a joint project of Polish and German actors in the border region. His publishing record is broad. Three publications may be of particular interest for you: Insights from Complexity Thinking for Border Studies, and in German only: Good advised across the border and "From bounded seeing to seeing boundaries - the thematization of state borders in social sciences and fine arts, a paper that was prepared as contribution to the IGBK event Transitions/Neighbourhood (Übergänge/Nachbarschaft).
Julia Haarmann
Julia Haarmann has been managing director of the Stiftung Künstler*dorf Schöppingen since January 2021. Künstler*dorf is located in the rural Münsterland area in North Rhine-Westphalia and awards around 40 fellowships each year in the fields of visual art, literature and composition.
From 2010 to 2020, Julia Haarmann initiated and directed the artist residency CAT Cologne (Community Art Team) in Cologne. Her curatorial focus here was on social practices that incorporate its environment as resource, medium, and addressee at the same time. For more than ten years she worked for international galleries, in particular König, Berlin and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne. Julia Haarmann studied art history, sociology and English at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, the Sorbonne Paris and the Humboldt-Universität Berlin.
Brenda Guesnet
Brenda Guesnet (b. 1993, Bad Soden am Taunus, Germany) is a curator with an institutional and an independent practice. She is based in Brussels, Belgium. Since 2021, she is working as Curator and Deputy Director of IKOB – Museum für Zeitgenössiche Kunst in Eupen, in the German-speaking community of Belgium. At IKOB, she has curated solo exhibitions by Arthur Cordier, CMMC, Kristina Benjocki, Marcin Dudek, Veronika Eberhart, Francis Feidler, Helen Anna Flanagan, Alexandra Tretter, and Léon Wuidar among others, as well as the group exhibitions “Eat the Rainbow”, “All our Yesterdays”, and the “IKOB – Feminist Art Prize”. She also curates and coordinates the museum’s public, educational and residency programmes and produces the podcast ‘apropos’. Brenda Guesnet has been realising independent curatorial projects since 2015. She is co-founder of celador, an independent space in Brussels. She previously worked in the Artist Liaison department at White Cube (2017-2020) and as a curatorial assistant at Tenderpixel Gallery (2016-17), both in London, after completing an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London (2015-17).
Dr. Susanne Ristow
The head of program at LaB K Dr. Susanne Ristow is an artist, art educator and media scientist in Düsseldorf. She completed her doctorate in 2019 at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf on “Virus as Medium” and published the revised version of her doctoral thesis under the title “Kulturvirologie. Das Prinzip Virus von Moderne bis Digitalära” (De Gruyter, Berlin, 2021). She is a volunteer in artists’ associations in NRW and until a few months ago worked as a postdoc at the University of Frederick II of Naples with Federica Weblearning. She sees her central tasks at LaB K in dialogue with the art scene and in linking regional with national and international experiences of artistic self-organization.
Christine Heemsoth
Christine Heemsoth works for the Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste/IGBK and is part of the touring artists project team. touring artists is the German Mobility Information Point (MIP) and provides artists and creatives working internationally with information and advice on administrative issues from a German perspective. She also works for the Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler/BBK (Federal Association of Visual Artists), for which she is a member of the editorial team of its magazine. She studied Cultural Studies and Theatre Science at the University of Leipzig, and has worked in the visual arts sector for over 20 years, focusing on international exchange.
Natalie Giorgadze
Natalie Giorgadze is General Director at Culture Action Europe, the major European Network of cultural organizations. Natalie is responsible for designing and implementing the network's strategy. Her focus lies in community development, knowledge creation and transfer, as well as strategic communications. Additionally, she oversees the comprehensive planning of the organization's projects, activities, and teams. Natalie's background in NGOs includes roles within human rights and environmental networks. She is trained as a journalist and social psychologist and holds a postgraduate degree in Cultures and Development Studies from the Catholic University of Leuven.
Philipp Dietachmair
Philipp Dietachmair is a cultural practitioner with over twenty years of experience in international cultural cooperation. He began his career in Sarajevo, supporting post-war initiatives to rebuild student cultural life and higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is currently Head of Programmes at the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam, where he previously led arts and culture programmes across Central and Eastern Europe, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the Middle East, and North Africa.
He is co-founder of the Tandem collaboration programmes, which have connected hundreds of cultural and community organisations in more than forty countries. He also co-designed the Culture of Solidarity Fund, launched during the COVID-19 crisis and now a key European philanthropic platform supporting cultural solidarity actions, including in Ukraine.
His recent work focuses on socially engaged arts and cultural initiatives in non-metropolitan areas. He has contributed to publications and research on culture’s role in civil society and on more sustainable models of cultural mobility.
The AiR Cross Border Meeting is initiated by DutchCulture|TransArtists (Amsterdam) and the Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste (IGBK) (Berlin), organized in partnership with Greylight Projects (Heerlen), Landesbüro für Bildende Kunst NRW, and Kunsthaus NRW (Kornelimünster), in collaboration with Borderland Residencies Program, with the support of Pictoright Fonds and Goethe Institute Amsterdam.
