Farfara 2031 engages in a collaborative methodology, working in parallel and with a horizontal structure. This collaborative and co-methodology also extends to the project’s multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted project methodology.
Adnan Hadzi || Adnan is a resident academic at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta. His latest research project involves the use of immersive technologies for the Immersion Lab University of Malta (ILUM) project, for which he has recently been awarded a Research Excellence Award. The ILUM consortium consists of the Immersion Lab of the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences [MAKS], University of Malta, the Visual Narratives Laboratory [VNLAB] of Lodz Filmschool, Poland, the Immersive Lab [IL] at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland, the Department of Architecture, Design and Planning [DADU] at University of Sassari, Italy.
Gerald Nestler || Gerald is an artist, writer and curator who combines theory with speculative art practice to explore what he terms the “derivative condition” of contemporary life. Through the lens of data modelling and algorithmic governance, he tests methodologies, narratives and fictions that form a world-producing apparatus and shape the experience of the present by preconfiguring the future.
Rita Orlando || Rita is a trained architect; since July 2015, she has been part of the Matera-Basilicata 2019 Foundation team, focusing on networking, management and follow-up of projects. She was responsible for the ECoC Innovation Lab developed within the Matera programme.
Technopolitics || Technopolitics is a transdisciplinary platform of artists, journalists, researchers, designers and developers who jointly develop innovative formats at the intersection of art, research, science, and pedagogy. In a world facing different crises and challenges, from social to political, from urban to environmental, from imagined spaces to constructed ones, Technopolitics are understood as practices of conception, revision and use of technological artifacts that operate as common goods, and may counteract the dominant models of technological application.
Time's Up || Time’s Up is an international group of artists founded in 1996. The "Laboratory for Experimental Situations" develops a wide variety of spatial installations, some of which can be classified as interactive and others as digital art. They use tools from the arts and design, mathematics, science and technology as well as sociology and cultural studies - in order to create playful future scenarios, often designed as games, based on intense community outreach workshops.
The Farfara 2031 creative team have worked collaboratively over many years, in areas ranging from cultural policy, artistic programming, diplomacy, and, of course, European Capitals of Culture.
Margerita Pulè || Margerita is an artist, curator, researcher and cultural manager, with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Malta. She is founder-director of Unfinished Art Space, an independent and nomadic space showing contemporary art in Malta, through which she engages in an open, collaborative and symbiotic curatorial practice. She is also a founder-member of the Magna Żmien Foundation, which digitises 20th century analogue home archives, forming a community archive accessible to researchers and artists. She is currently carrying out a 12-month Research Sabbatical awarded by Arts Council Malta.
Maren Richter || Maren is an Austrian international curator and cultural manager. In 2019, she was nominated as the curator of the 1st Windhoek Biennale in Namibia, which she is currently remotely advising on the organisational structure through COVID-19. Most recently, she served as Curator of Contemporary Art for the European Capital of Culture, Valletta 2018, from 2016 to 2018. Prior to that, she co-curated the 1st Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, among others. She was Artistic Director of Regionale (Biennale for Contemporary Art of the Province of Styria) from 2010 to 2013 and was project developer and curator for the ECoC Linz09. Her work focuses on participatory art and public space, (socio)political artistic practices, performative knowledge production and artistic research work and methods located between juridical, political, economic and emotional indicators. She is also co-initiator of the international project 'Grammar of Urgencies'(GdU). GdU engages with dwindling habitat, utopias, mythologies but also unknown dimensions of time, space and form in a dialogue about permeable, more vulnerable concepts of space and new landscapes of knowledge.
Karsten Xuereb || Karsten lectures and manages projects addressing cultural policy and relations in Europe and the Mediterranean at the University of Malta. He is a member of the scientific committees of Brokering Intercultural Exchange (https://managingculture.net/) and The Phoenicians' Cultural Route (http://fenici.net/en/), the latter on behalf of the Maltese cultural association Inizjamed (https://www.inizjamed.org/). He carries out research at the UNESCO World Heritage Nomination Project at the Ministry for Culture in Valletta. His writing and audiovisual material including papers, videos and a weekly radio programme on the university radio station Campus FM are accessible at https://culturalpolicy.blog/.
Toni Attard || Toni completed his postgraduate degree in cultural management and policy at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh as a Chevening scholar. He is a founding member of Opening Doors, an NGO for the artistic development of adults with learning disabilities. He is also an actor and theatre director and served as Festival Director of ZiguZajg international festival for children and young people for 4 editions until 2015. He is now founder-director of Culture Venture, providing advisory services and research into strategic policy and development.
Raphael Vella || Raphael Vella is an artist, educator and curator based in Malta. He has a PhD in Fine Arts (University of the Arts London) and has exhibited his works in many international exhibitions and venues, including Palazzo Bembo (parallel event at the Venice Biennale), Domaine Pommery (Reims, France) and Modern Art Oxford. He is also a full professor at the University of Malta and he co-curated the Malta Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017 (Homo Melitensis: An Incomplete Inventory in 19 Chapters).
Farfara Family
The Farfara 2031 Artists in Residence seek new questions in a time of the transition for humanity (shifting from ‘biological’ to ‘geological’ agent) and the role of the digital or virtual space for new narratives.
Uzoma Orji || Uzoma (Nigeria) is a visual/digital/web artist and creative/spiritual technologist. His work is concerned with sublimating reality through art, building worlds we can dream towards and tools we can dream with, and exploring ancestral spirituality through a modern-day lens.
As an artist he observes and then creates representations of society and of history; visual metaphors that unpack his millennial Igbo Nigerian cultural context and explore post-colonial crises of identity. From this point of reflection his work seeks to conjure visions of a future we can dream towards and be inspired by today. As a technologist he is interested in how the digital can be used to access ancestral truths in the present day.
He has been in residence at QUAD Derby (UK) and the Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Lagos) and was a Digital Earth fellow 2020/2021. His exhibition and speaking credits include Lagos Photo Festival (Lagos), Abuja Art Week (Abuja), CultureHub ReFest (USA), 1927 Art Space (Greece), Format Festival (UK) and Allied Media Conference (USA). He is a 2021 Prince Claus Fund seed awardee.
He lives and works among the serene hills of Abuja, Nigeria.
Anna Fehres & Luke Conroy || Anne (The Netherlands) and Luke (Australia) are a multidisciplinary artist duo based in The Netherlands. Their practice engages with socio-cultural topics in meaningful yet playful ways, utilising humour and irony as essential tools for critical reflection and expression. The outcome of their work utilises an ever-evolving multimedia and audio-visual practice which includes photography, digital-art, video, sound, VR, textile, text and installation.
The duo’s interest in socio-cultural topics is informed by Anne’s background in documentary film and audio-visual design (Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium, 2013) and Luke’s background in sociology, visual-art and education (University of Tasmania, Australia, 2013). In their work they are especially interested to engage with projects where broader socio-cultural events, processes and systems at a macro level can shape and be shaped by personal experiences at a micro level.
In order to access new and unique micro-level experiences, the duo frequently work in a variety of diverse cultural and environmental contexts. Working across ten countries to date, their practice draws inspiration by immersing themselves in new human and ‘other-than-humans’ communities. In these communities they draw inspiration from research, collaboration, and observation, allowing space for mutual exchange between themselves as ‘outsiders’ and the ‘insider’ community members.
The duo have previously been successfully awarded a variety of grants and funding through International organisations including: the European Cultural Foundation, Goethe Institut, Stimuleringsfonds (The Netherlands), Arts Tasmania (Australia), Australia Council for the Arts, Stroom Den Haag (The Netherlands), CultuurSchakel (The Netherlands), Viborg Kunsthal (Denmark), Hošek Contemporary (Germany), Ministry of Culture of Karelia (Russia), Municipality of Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Filmboard Karlsruhe (Germany) Artist Residencies Enschede (The Netherlands) and Takt Berlin (Germany).
Alexandra Olympia Peristeraki || Alexandra was born in a suburb outside of Athens, Greece. After graduating with an MA in Digital Media - Critical Computing at Goldsmiths University, her aim is to explore how technology has affected the world socially, politically and culturally. Her main mediums are text, dismantled hardware and video, all weaved together with Web 1.0-influenced HTML. She tends to comment on her personal relationship with the digital as well as the violence of class stratification and heteronormativity. Currently, she is exploring hardware as found material and the potential of upcycling it for a more sustainable tech future as well as alternative digital ecosystems that can support its inhabitants without giving away their digital rights.