Contributors
Together with artists, designers, entrepreneurs, scholars, and scientists, we search for particularities and commonalities that make up the magical mosaic of today’s world
Passepartout Duo
Formed by pianist Nicoletta Favari and percussionist Christopher Salvito. Their from-scratch creative approach led them to devise an evolving ecosystem of handmade musical instruments accompanying them on their ongoing travels.
Bloodburn
Qatari musician and game designer.
Mississippi Records
Label and record shop originally founded in Portland in 2004, known for their reissues of old and rare soul, R&B, blues, punk, and folk from around the world.
Senyawa
Musicians Rully Shabdara and Wukir Suryadi from Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Their works explore the aural elements of traditional music in the framework of experimental music practice.
Koyil
Moscow-based musician and selector Lev Zhitskiy, focusing on experimental electronic music and folk traditions of the world.
The Mainline Group
Art and research duo of ancient storytellers armed for a discussion with the technosphere working internationally. Its two lungs are Lena Kilina (PhD, UNICAMP)—a visual anthropologist and performance artist; and Sofya Chibisguleva (MA, Royal College of Art)—a writer and sculptor. Their genres and tools of cultural engagement include sound art, audiobooks, art therapy, and printed media.
Muqata'a
Musician and beat-maker living between Berlin and Ramallah, Palestine. His photo on our contributors page was taken by Raouf Haj Yihya.
Radio is a Foreign Country
A not-for-profit radio platform and mixtape series featuring cut-ups of international radio broadcasts (AM, FM & shortwave), sound travelogues, and obscure regional folk and pop music from the global hinterlands.
Hive Mind Records
vinyl led label specializing in vintage and contemporary sounds from around the globe.
Gabriel
Cameroonian refugee seeking asylum in Russia. EastEast does not disclose Gabriel's personal information for the sake of his security.
MSYLMA
Singer-songwriter and producer from Saudi Arabia, who combines experimental electronics with pre-Islamic and Quranic poetry sung in classical Arabic.
re:arc Institute Practice Lab
re:arc institute's space of learning by doing which works directly with architects and professional practitioners to prototype new models for philanthropy in architecture. It supports the realization of site-specific, self-initiated, and community-led projects that address local social and ecological challenges.
Distributed Cognition Cooperative
Research unit established by Anna Engelhardt and Sasha Shestakova to research post-soviet (de)coloniality. By exploring the relationship between material bodies and abstract machines, DCC aims to disentangle post-Soviet space from the notion that it is a single unified zone and to present it instead as a heterogeneous range of socio-economic histories and cultures.
Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze
Tbilisi-based artist duo. Working mainly in public space, in their artistic projects they bring written or spoken words to different places in cities. Since 2020, Mariam and Detu moved their practice to the digital reality and started to use a video game engine to create videos and interactive installations. Their main topics of interest are: people and cities, contemporary rituals and mythology, heterotopias, lost and forgotten stories and history, words, words, words.
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
YHCHI is Young-Hae Chang (Korea) and Marc Voge (USA). Based in Seoul, they write and animate texts set to their own music. They gave the 2020 Renato Poggioli Lecture at Harvard University.
Metahaven
The work of Metahaven consists of filmmaking, writing, and design. Recent solo exhibitions include Turnarounds, e-flux, New York (2019), Version History, ICA London (2018), Earth, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018), Hometown, Izolyatsia, Kiev (2018), and Information Skies, Auto Italia, London (2016). Among recent group exhibitions are Ghost:2651, Bangkok (2018), the Sharjah Biennial (2017), and the Gwangju Biennale (2016). Recent publications include PSYOP: An Anthology (Koenig Books, London, 2018), and Digital Tarkovsky (Strelka Press, Moscow, 2018).
Foundland Collective
Formed in 2009 by South African Lauren Alexander and Syrian Ghalia Elsrakbi and since 2014 is based between Amsterdam and Cairo. The duo collaboration explores under-represented political and historical narratives by working with archives via art, design, writing, educational formats, video making, and storytelling. Throughout their development, the duo has critically reflected upon what it means to produce politically engaged work from the position of non-Western artists working between Europe and the Middle East.
Kadapat
A music project founded by Barga and Yogi, based in Bali. This musical endeavor incorporates Balinese gamelan (jègog and gènder) alongside electronic elements as a means of exploring sonic expressions. Aspects of mysticism such as black magic, legends, and mythology are both interpreted and deconstructed within the realm of imaginative play and satire concerning issues surrounding their lives.
Library for Architecture
Independent platform for discussing theory and presenting new concepts in architecture dedicated to fostering discussions on architectural theory, showcasing innovative ideas, and offering a model workshop adjacent to the library. Situated in the heart of Yerevan, the library serves as an open platform for students specializing in architecture, as well as a hub for professionals and enthusiasts alike. The library brings together 12 co-founding architectural studios, emphasizing not only the potential for professional discourse but also alternative approaches to honing practical skills. Photo by Anna Prilutckaia
Inoyama Land
Formed as a synth duo in 1977 by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. In 1983, their first album produced by Haruomi Hosono, "Danzindan-Pojidon," was released on the Yen label with a 2020 vinyl re-release. In the 1990s, the pair became involved in sound design for various sites such as museums, international stadiums and installations.
Sergey Abashin
Anthropologist and historian, professor at the European University in Saint Petersburg, the author Nationalisms in Central Asia: In Search of Identity and Soviet Kishlak: Between Colonialism and Modernization, co-editor of the anthology on modern migration Living in two worlds: rethinking transnationalism and translocality.
Christina Abdeeva
Works with staged and landscape photography. Graduated from the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow and Ecole nationale supérieure Louis Lumière in Paris. Lives and works between Paris and Moscow.
Mariat Abdulkhamidova
Life-researcher, multimedia artist. Currently based in Linz, Austria.
Mina Abouzahra
Designer and furniture maker specializing in Moroccan crafts. She studied at the Wood and Furniture College in Amsterdam. During her last year of study, she worked in Morocco. In 2013, once back in Amsterdam, Mina founded her design studio. Since then she travels regularly to Morocco.
Alaa Abu Asad
Artist, researcher, and photographer. Language and plants are central themes through which he develops alternative trajectories where values of (re)presentation, translation, viewing, reading, and understanding can intersect. His work takes the form of writing, film, and interactive installations, in which he visually represents his research and explores the boundaries of languages.
Elizaveta Abushinova
Translator and specialist in Chinese Studies. She graduated from the A.M. Gorky Institute of Literature and from the Interuniversity Faculty of Chinese, IAAS at Moscow State University, and took part in an internship program at Peking University. She now lives and works in Beijing.
Ira Afanasyeva
Artist. Born in Tikhoretsk. Graduated from the Department of Art and Graphics of the Kuban State University and the self-organized Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art. Master's student at the School of Design at the Higher School of Economics. Member of the Businki Art Cooperative. She works with printed graphics and textiles exploring the themes of everyday life and coexistence. Lives and works in Krasnodar and Moscow.
Nabi Agzamov
Architect and an urban designer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, currently based in Moscow. His work focuses on designing a more sustainable and resilient urban environment. He worked and studied in New York where he was a student of Ziad Jamaleddine at Columbia GSAPP Urban Design Program.
Rouzbeh Akhbari
Artist and filmmaker based in Lisbon. He is currently conducting fieldwork in Oman and Azerbaijan as part of the research informing his doctoral dissertation at University of Toronto’s school of geography and planning.
Kamilla Akhmedova
Stylist from Tashkent, founder of 7/1 bureau. She has worked as an editor for Uzbek magazines and currently organizes public talks on fashion and consults with local brands to help them improve.
Veronika Aktanova
Artist and amateur filmmaker, originally from Ishimbay, currently based in Moscow. She considers herself an unofficial student of Guram Abesadze and Ivan Vyrypaev. Inspired by modernist artists, she began to practice drawing and painting on her own. Graduate of the BAZA Institute (2017).
Elyas Alavi
Poet and visual artist with a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, sculpture, installation, moving image, poetry, and performance. His work often examines the complex intersections of race, displacement, gender, religion, and sexuality, addressing hyper invisibilities and challenging received notions of culture and belonging. More specifically, his work complicates histories in the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region and explores the links between the globalized condition, colonialism, and the implications for the mobility and displacement of Black and Brown bodies.
Wael Al Awar
An architect and founding partner of Dubai- and Tokyo-based firm waiwai. He founded waiwai (formerly ibda design) after returning to the Middle East from Tokyo. Wael layers his interests in natural phenomena into an architecture of light, time, structure, and landscape. He seeks to create an architecture that is more than fabrication, that remains open to adaptation. His site-specific designs encourage unexpected experiences. Wael curated the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021, which was awarded the Golden Lion. (photo credit: Jacopo Salvi)
Hafsa Alkhudairi
A Saudi/Iraqi writer, artist, curator, and researcher. Her interest lies in the ideas around art collections and family inheritance, as well as the concepts of feminism and pop culture.
Morehshin Allahyari
Iranian-Kurdish media artist, activist, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relationship between technology and art activism.
Khawla Almarri
Emirati cultural researcher and writer. Her academic interests include the history of the Arabian Gulf and its cultural heritage and identity. Dr. Khawla Almarri is the author of “Heroes and Villains: A Conversation Between Evil and Good in the Middle East” (2019) and “Interview with a Collector: A Closer Look at Qatari Collectors and Their Stories”(2021) in cooperation with the Mal Lawal exhibition organized by the National Museum of Qatar. Dr. Almarri is also the founder of Eduqate, a research lab devoted to documenting Arab Gulf history, Khaleeji culture, identity, and social integration in the GCC.
Shua'a Ali Al Muftah
She graduated from the Richmond University of London with a degree in Computer Science. Her inspirations, which drove her self-teaching methods of painting, are drawn from great abstract expressionist artists such as Franz Kline and Joan Mitchell. Shua'a is based in Doha where she is working on further developing her method—enabling a space where she can recall the past, analyze the present, and imagine the future.
Sara Almutlaq
Curator, writer, and interdisciplinary visual artist living and working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With a background in architecture and critical theory, she approaches her practice through a speculative, research based and deconstructive methodology that aims to unravel to audiences the meta-narratives that act as umbilical cords for society. Through this lens, and during her time at Saudi’s Ministry of Culture, Sara has developed residency programs, artwork commissions and long-term cultural asset strategies that aim to both entertain and educate. She was intimately involved in the inception of the Ministry’s upcoming New Media art center, Diriyah Art Futures, and the newly launched Fenaa Alawwal.
Hala Alsadi
Yemeni culture journalist and creative manager with a versatile background in business, technology, media, and creative production. Currently works in the avenues of creative industries between digital design, journalism, and communication. Her current research and journalistic work is positioned at areas of intersection in multimedia and tech, exploring archives, new media, and internet alleyways. Alsadi holds a BS in Information Technology Management pursued in Lebanon and the USA and a Joint Master of Art in Journalism, Media, and Globalisation completed across Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Pavel Amirov
Broadcaster, DJ, and selector focused on local music scenes from different parts of the world and varied periods of its history. Based in Belgrade.
Alexander Anufriev
Photographer with international experience. He graduated from the Rodchenko Art School (2017), won the “Silver Camera” (2015) and also won the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards (2017).
Arjun Appadurai
Indian-American anthropologist recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. He is the Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, where he is also Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge. Arjun Appadurai has authored numerous books and scholarly articles, including Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (Duke 2006), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minnesota 1996; Oxford India 1997), and Failure (co-authored with Neta Alexander; Polity, 2019).
Non-Extractive Architecture
An ongoing project aimed at collectively rethinking the balance between the built and natural landscapes, the role of technology and politics in future material economies, and the responsibility of the architect as an agent of transformation.
Aktan Arym Kubat
Film director, screenwriter, actor. Born in 1957 in the village of Kuntuu, Kyrgyzstan. Graduated from the Kyrgyz State Art School. Winner of numerous international film festivals. Member of the European Film Academy and the Asia-Pacific Film Academy
Azad Asifovich
Curator and art researcher with a background in political science, culture studies, and curatorial studies. He is interested in relationships between artistic practice, contexts and its representation. Azad was a research assistant for the Azerbaijan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. In 2016, he curated the first French solo show of Oksana Shachko, an artist, activist, and co-founder of the Femen movement. In 2018, he was invited by the Zadkine Museum (Paris), to create their performance programme. Since 2019, he is the associate curator at Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform (Baku).
Asiya Bareeva
Graduated from the A. N. Kosygin Moscow State Textile University. During her studies, she was working as a freelance stylist. Upon graduation, she launched her own clothing brand Asiya Bareeva, as well as a line of ceramic objects.
Mari Bastashevski
Artist and writer. At the moment, she spends a lot of time thinking through the tripartite relationship between animals, humans, and technology. She works as a lecturer and is a Ph.D. Candidate at Kunstakademiet in Trondheim Norway, and as a researcher with ALICE laboratory at EPFL in Lausanne. She is also an editor at Humanimalia, an open-access journal of human/animal studies soon to be relaunched in the omnivorous void between the two, in Utrecht, Netherlands. You can learn more about her work at www.maribastashevski.com or reach out to her directly at maribastashevski@gmail.com and twitter.com/maribst
Medina Bazargali
A multidisciplinary artist, developer and curator, born in 2001 in independent Qazaqstan. Bazargali is practically experimenting with sound, algorithm, video, VJ, 3D, and installation. Framework-wise she is focused on researching ironic and exaggerated political realities, where the Internet, new algorithmic superstructures, and (post)-totalitarian regimes are flowing together.
Rabih Beaini
Lebanese electronic musician, dj, and curator based in Berlin, head of Morphine Records.
Łukasz Biederman
Born 1977 in Szklarska Poręba, lives and works in Wrocław, Poland. In his photography, his special interests are in documenting urban spaces, with an emphasis on locations wrapped in a specifically mysterious atmosphere. His collected works can be found in the artist's blog Rewiry paranormalne (Paranormal Zones) and on his website.
Patrick Bienert
A German photographer who works on long-term projects of portrait, landscape and documentary photography. He predominantly documents youth culture and transformation on the borders of Eastern Europe.
Akhmat Bikanov
Artist and architect. He lives and works between Moscow and Nalchik.
Bruno Birmanis
Fashion designer based in Riga, Latvia. “I grew up in a family of theater actors, TV journalists and architects, and all of these areas are reflected in my perception of the world. For me, fashion creation is a tool for narrative, communication and mood creation, so I can be fully identified as a multidisciplinary artist. I am a creator focusing on fashion and art, culture and design. I curate ideas somewhere between untamed mind and sophistication, curious brain games and simplicity.”
Alima Bissenova
Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the School of Sciences and Humanities, Nazarbayev University. She specializes in urban anthropology, anthropology of Islam, intellectual history, and post-colonial studies.
Daniil Borisov
Music collector based in Belgrade, Serbia. Part of the SHIT HAPPENS music community.
Bermet Borubaeva
Cultural worker and researcher based in Bishkek. She researches the political economy of urban ecology. Bermet is a co-founder of a number of initiatives: “Preobrazhensky Cooperative,” a comic strip about invisible labor “Ya.Eda,” a mobile game “Migrant School,” #БишкекСмог (Bishkek Managed), #ФудшерингвБишкеке (Foodsharing in Bishkek) and the Bishkek School of Contemporary Art. She has been taking part in numerous international and regional projects as well as writing on urban ecology, labor, gender equality, and contemporary art.
Olga Brednikova
Sociologist, leading researcher at the Center for Independent Sociological Research. Graduated from the European University at St. Petersburg. For over 20 years she has been engaged in urban studies and research on migration from the post-Soviet region.
Oleksandr Burlaka
Kyiv-based artist and architect, works with photography and exhibitional display. Oleksandr was the member of Melnychuk-Burlaka group (2007-2011) and Grupa Predmetiv (2011-2016), co-founder and member of the curatorial and activist interdisciplinary group Hudrada (Ukrainian for "Creative Committee"). As a photographer, he contributed to Kiew Architekturführer by DOM Publishers, Balcony Chic and Orthodox Chic by Osnovy.
Space Caviar
An architecture and research studio operating at the intersection of design, technology, politics and the public realm. Founded in 2013, the office uses built work, exhibitions, publishing, writing and film to investigate and document contemporary modes of habitation and the spatialization of social and political practice.
Vladimir Chernyshev
Artist from Nizhny Novgorod. He focuses on working with the endangered cultural landscape, creating large-scale site-specific installations that do not have final versions and change under the influence of the environment.
Yiannis Christidis
A sound anthropologist, ethnographer, and designer. His academic and artistic research focuses on the cultural aspect of sound, its functionality in everyday activities and the relationship between the listeners and their place.
Andy Connell
Professor of Ethnomusicology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, whose research is primarily in Brazilian popular instrumental music, focusing on issues of identity and musical globalization.
Cosmin Costinas
Senior Curator of Exhibition Practices at HKW-The House of World Cultures, Berlin, and co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024). He was the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong (2011-2022) and co-curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022).
Francesca Crotti
Architect, co-founder of SOCII, and an initiator of Kibe-Projekt. Her focus is the rehabilitation of former public infrastructure with social activity, emphasizing commons.
Salma Samar Damluji
Architect, Professor, Binladin Chair for Architecture in the Islamic World at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut, and coauthor of the book Hassan Fathy: Earth & Utopia (2018)
Sarah Davachi
Composer and performer of electroacoustic music from Canada. Her projects are primarily concerned with psychoacoustics of aural spaces, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures. Davachi holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Calgary and a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. She is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at UCLA and is based in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Masha Demianova
Photographer based in Moscow. Before turning to photography, she studied journalism and worked as a photo shoot producer. She has taken photographs for Dazed, i-D, Vogue, Metal, Purple among others.
Anna Deryabova
Artist, graduated from the Department of Graphic Arts at the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts. Works mainly in the technique of printed graphics.
Christina Dimitriadis
Uses photography as a medium to express an autobiographical stance based on human relationships in terms of the concept of identity. Her work has been exhibited internationally, solo shows includes City of Athens Arts Center, Badisches Landesmuseum Schloss Karlsruhe, Galeria Studio (Warsaw), Citizen’s Art Center (Kanazawa), Galerie Deux (Tokyo) and Eigen+Art Gallery (Berlin). She lives and works in Berlin.
Iskandar Ding
Linguist and blogger based in London, United Kingdom. He holds a BA in French and Linguistics from Oxford University and is currently finishing his MA in Iranian Studies at SOAS University of London. He blogs about the shared lexical heritage of the Persianate cultural sphere on his blog Vājabāz, as well as Persian language and literature for the London-based institution Persian Language Online.
Turmunkh Dorjkhand
Journalist, screenwriter, director producer of numerous projects. Winner of 23 international film festival awards. Member of the Mongolian Association of Free Democratic Journalist’s. Was granted the American film scholarship in New York and a Fellows Grant from the Tehching Hsieh in 2001.
Ion Dumitrescu
Performer, musician and writer, co-conspirator of various speculative entities from Bucharest and abroad.
Olivier Duport
Сo-founder of FLEE and the residency program Extra Muros, he is a French-Austrian photographer and curator with a focus on urbanism and social questions surrounding music.
Liya Ebralidze
Translator, interpreter, and researcher in Muslim female (self-) representation and Muslim cultures in Russia. Currently based in Moscow, Russia.
Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil
Egyptian architect considered by many as the foremost contemporary authority in Islamic architecture. For designing in traditional styles, he is also a representative of New Classical Architecture.
Rati Eradze
An electronic music student from Tbilisi, Georgia. Delving into various musical territories, his practice mainly circles around exploring the conventional; the already well-known.
Stefan Williamson Fa
Gibraltarian anthropologist based in London. His work explores the role of sound, food, and the senses in Islam, particularly in Anatolia, Iran and the Caucasus. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London (2019) and has held research positions at University of Birmingham, Lund University, and University of Oxford. His current research project investigates contemporary Muslim foodways and food encounters in the UK and Spain.
Harun Farocki
The German filmmaker, video artist, and theorist is known for his film-essays, in which he assembles found and original footage to explore issues such as the power of images, the intersections between war and technology, and the role of labor in capitalist society.
Hassan Fathy
Egyptian architect (1900-1989) who devoted himself to creating residential architecture for the poor. He used traditional materials and ancient construction methods, designing entire residential neighborhoods at minimal cost. He taught architecture for many years at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo University.
Anna Filippova
Editor and film producer. Graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations with a major in Turkish language and from a business school in San Francisco. Anna writes about the cinema and musical culture of Turkey and West Asia, as well as the growing role of women in cultural and political processes of the region.
Alex Fisher
Writer and curator from Buffalo, New York, who received a master’s in design studies with distinction from Harvard's Graduate School of Design in spring 2023. His research interests are in the lyricism and lingo of the built environment and (re)formations of legacy, especially in post-socialist contexts.
Elizaveta Fokina
Special Features and News Editor at EastEast. Author of non-acid arab telegram-channel. Independent researcher on contemporary art from Arab region. Graduated from the RSUH with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic language.
Evgeniy Galochkin
Co-founder of the Moscow formed label and promo group TOPOT, producer and curator of the Farsh and Richterfest festivals. He explores and documents the Russian (and not only) experimental scene, focusing on improvisational music. Now is living in Tashkent and exploring Central Asian experimental music and art.
Evelina Gambino
Lecturer and researcher based between London, Cambridge and Tbilisi. Her research is concerned with a situated analysis of global logistics. She has done ethnographic work around several flagship connectivity infrastructures in Georgia and the South Caucasus. In collaboration with artist and director Tekla Aslanishvili she has produced the experimental documentary “A State in A State” (2022). She is currently completing a monograph that proposes a feminist, materialist approach to the study of infrastructural failure.
Mikhail Garder
Anthropologist, translator. Graduated from the Department of European Languages of the Russian State University for the Humanities, holds an MA in folklore studies.
Mark Gergis
A London-based Iraqi-American artist, producer, audio-visual archivist, and founder of the Syrian Cassette Archives.
Uri Gershovich
PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Jewish Culture at the Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University, researcher at the Center for the Study of Jewish Civilization in Russian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Lesia Goleva
Head of Outreach and Partnerships, Contributing Editor at EastEast. Born in Kyiv and currently based in Berlin. She has studied Chinese philosophy and worked in culture and PR.
Nailya Golman
Editor and film critic, event organizer. She worked as a manager of the Powerhouse and Pluton music venues, at the moment she is part of Unity Moscow. Nailya also works with family history: for several years she has been collecting songs that her grandmother used to sing in Tatar.
Zoey Gong
Traditional Chinese Medicine chef and nutritionist. Born in Shanghai, China, Zoey now lives in New York City, where she hosts pop-up medicinal dinners and collaborates with various brands to teach the wisdom of medicinal cooking. She is the founder of Five Seasons TCM, a boutique wellness brand that shares and modernizes the knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) food therapy through educational content and functional products.
Lillie Gordon
Ethnomusicologist, writer, editor, and musician focused on the violin in Egypt. She loves teaching about music in context, playing music that gets people feeling and dancing, and writing about music, colonialism, women in sports, and other topics.
Jess Gough
Self-taught film photographer, living and working in London, UK. She has produced several bodies of work in book-form and has worked on a number of long-form commissions for publications including Atmos, Document Journal, and the FT. She has an ongoing collaboration with the architecture research group Material Cultures, which involved a photography commission for their book project Material Reform, published by MACK in 2022.
Varvara Grankova
She graduated from the Free Workshops Contemporary Art School. She won the Arte Laguna Prize 2020 and was the finalist of the tretiakovprize. Her works are a part of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art collection.
Maria Gribova
Cinema scholar, master of art criticism and contributor to Cineticle online journal.
Inti Guerrero
Berlin-based curator and educator, he is the co-Artistic Director of Ten Thousand Suns: the 24th Biennale of Sydney, and PhD supervisor at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. He was tutor of the Curatorial Studies postgraduate program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts- KASK, Ghent (2021-2023); Artistic Director of bap - bellas artes projects in the Philippines (2018-2022).
Tinatin Gurgenidze
Co-founder and artistic director of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. She studied architecture and urban design in Tbilisi and Barcelona. Currently, she is working on her PhD thesis concerning the (post-) Soviet mass housing settlement of Gldani, a suburb of Tbilisi. Lives and works in Berlin.
Shen Haobo
Chinese poet, publisher, and the co-founder of Xiron Books based in Beijing. He was born in 1976 in Taixing, Jiangsu province. His latest collection of poems, Night of Hualian, was published in 2019.
Ivan Heidel
Artist and musician. Graduate of the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. Works with intuitive and staged photography as well as collage.
Alejandro García Hermida
PhD in Architecture and MA in Conservation and Restoration of Architectural Heritage from the Madrid Polytechnic University School of Architecture, where he has been Associate Professor since 2019. His professional practice has been devoted to traditional architecture and building and the restoration and study of historic buildings, largely in Spain and Morocco, along with the creation and management since 2012, thanks to Richard H. Driehaus, of the initiatives run today by this Foundation. He is also the CEO of Kalam Corporation in the USA, a board member of the NGO Terrachidia and cofounding Vice-Chair of INTBAU Spain.
Ute Holl
Professor for media studies/media aesthetics at Basel University. Her research focuses on a media-history of perception and on the epistemology of audiovisual media. She has published on film and cinema as well as on the media-history of acoustics and electro-acoustics.
Bora Hong
She has been curating various art and design exhibitions, as well as commissioning public art projects. Bora Hong was the Director of Gallery FACTORY, Seoul, Korea, from 2002 to 2018, and remains its curatorial advisor to date.
Yuk Hui
Philosopher from Hong Kong dealing with digital objects and the politics and poetics of technology, a computer engineer working on an alternative architecture for social networks, the author of books and articles on the philosophy of technology, media theory, and cybernetics, and a student of Bernard Stigler.
Mothanna Hussein
Music curator and visual designer based in Amman, Jordan.
Thomas Ibrahim
Architect, co-founder of SOCII, and the initiator of Kibe-Projekt and INHABIT! in Tbilisi, Georgia. His projects are focused on collective imagination and production of space, and the symbiosis between people and environment.
Vlad Ilkevich
Music and pop culture writer, editor and translator from Belarus, author of the По една песен на ден telegram channel.
Nastya Indrikova
Photo Editor and Researcher. Author of a Telegram channel on museum anthropology "Murmolka". Worked as a Photo Editor for Arzamas educational project, Esquire Russia and EastEast media project. Fellow of DAAD (HU Berlin. Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, 2018), V-A-C Foundation grant program for artists and researchers (2022-2023), resident at Misk Art Institute (2023).
Tamuna Ingorokva
Pioneer of Georgian fashion industry with two decades of design experience. Today INGOROKVA is one of the country’s most talked about luxury womenswear labels that creates collections featuring masculine cuts mixed with feminine touches. Inspired by personalities, moods, ambitions, desires, and the present, Tamuna Ingorokva presents timeless looks shaped by modern culture and art.
Debora Ipekel
Worldwide FM and NTS Radio host and co-founder of the Zel Zele record label.
Nabihah Iqbal
London-based musician, producer, DJ, and broadcaster.
Saodat Ismailova
A filmmaker and artist who was born and came of age in Uzbekistan. She graduated from Tashkent State Art Institute in Uzbekistan and Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France. Her works, frequently based on oral stories with women as lead protagonists, explore systems of knowledge suppressed by globalized modernity and meditate on memory, spirituality, and immortality.
Ana Iwataki
Curator, writer, translator, and organizer from Los Angeles.
Mohamad Ziad Jamaleddine
Assistant Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (NY), and co-founder of L.E.FT Architects (Beirut/NY). Practitioner and scholar with a research focus on architecture in West Asia and North Africa, rigorously interrogating topics such as religious architecture and religiosity in public space.
Li Jing
Graphic designer and illustrator based in Shanghai. She loves travelling with her sketch book and exploring new ways to make digital art while at home.
Choy Ka Fai
Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body.
Rasha Kahil
A Lebanese creative director and visual artist living and working in London since 2004, she is currently the creative director of the Financial Times’ HTSI magazine. She was formerly co-founder of art direction studio Barbara Creative and has previously held positions at ES Magazine, British Vogue and Dazed magazines. She completed an MA in Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art in 2009 and has since exhibited visual projects in solo and in group shows and art fairs internationally, including in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Zurich and Beirut. Her work, primarily focused on gender and identity, merges photography, text, video and installation.
Mari Kalabegashvili
Multimedia visual artist and cultural practitioner based in Georgia. Her research-based practice draws from collaborative and interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing processes and works with the given environment to pose the question of what happens after “ever after”. Apart from her individual praxis, she is currently involved with the Parallel Class Project creating alternative educational initiatives for high school students in Georgia.
Rakhim Kalybaev
Photographer, designer, and musician. Lives and works in Tashkent.
Yukiko Kaneko
Art educator and curator. Master’s student of the University of British Columbia since August, 2021. From 2011 to 2021 she worked at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre (ACAC), Aomori Public University. As a chief curator of the ACAC which mainly runs artists’ residencies, she was taking key responsibilities for managing curatorial team and all programs organized at the ACAC. Besides, she has been working as an art educator, planning and carrying out educational and exchange programs such as workshop, school programs, gallery tour, etc. Major projects includes ISHIDA Takashi solo exhibition “Light on the Arc” (2019, ACAC), Artist in Residence Program 2018 “Dynamic Garden in Full Motion” (2018, ACAC).
Joosung Kang
Graphic designer based in Helsinki and Seoul. He participated in exhibitions such as Typojanchi 2019: 6th International Typography Biennale (Culture Station Seoul, 2019), The Lives of Others (Factory2, 2018, Seoul), TypoCraft Helsinki (Lokal, 2017), Urban Gastronomy (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2016, Seoul).
Nikolay Karabinovych
An artist and curator born in Odessa, Ukraine, and based in Antwerp. He works across various media such as video installation, performance, sound, and sculpture. He explores the social histories of Eastern Europe, drawing from collective and personal memory by means of analytical, conceptual, or interventionist tactics.
George Keburia
Self-taught Georgian designer, he founded his fun-loving eponymous label in 2010, presenting a surrealist collection saturated with outlandish concepts and references. The style of Keburia is a mix of underground and classy looks. His collections present a modern interpretation of femininity with the use of raw and provoking silhouettes, exaggerated shapes, mixing light and heavy fabrics.
Bulat Khalilov
Ethnographer, journalist, co-founder of the Ored Recordings label, specializing in field recordings of authentic traditional music from the Caucasus, Russia, and the world. Lives and works in Nalchik.
Diana Khamis
Researcher, translator and philosopher. She was born in Moscow, grew up in Lebanon, and now lives in the Netherlands. A graduate of the American University of Beirut and Bonn University, she studies determinations, delimitaions, the construction of imaginary worlds and the self-construction of nature.
Ramaz Kiknadze
Architect and designer engaged in the research of vernacular building traditions of the Caucasus. He is the co-founder of Onis Skola—an educational exchange between the Royal Danish Academy, VA[A]DS FreeUni, and the Oni Carpentry School—which focuses on the wooden building traditions in the rural Racha region. He graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts and is a lecturer in the faculty of Architecture at VA[A]DS Free University of Tbilisi.
Teresa Yejoo Kim
Korean-American ethnographer, writer, and creator who lives and works between Los Angeles and Seoul. She studied literature, film studies, and anthropology in New York, London, Seoul, and Chicago. Yejoo is currently a PhD student in anthropology at UCLA and is interested in border logic, peacemaking, infrastructure, sovereignty, militarization, and media theory and production.
Jenia Kim
Fashion designer, who lives in between Moscow and Tashkent. Founder of the J.Kim brand.
Christopher Kirkley
Archivist, artist, curator, and director from Portland, Oregon who runs the label Sahel Sounds dedicated to music from West Africa.
Jun Kitazawa
Artist working with community-based projects. Born in Tokyo. Got a PhD from Tokyo University of the Art. In 2016, Kitazawa was listed in Forbes' 30 Under 30 Asia and selected as a fellow of Japan Foundation Asia Center. Jun currently lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Niki Kohandel
An artist, filmmaker and facilitator based in London. Working at the interplay between the analogue and the digital, she uses obsolete recording devices and her imperfect knowledge of languages to document stories and re-narrate her family's tales.
Alina Kokoschka
Berlin-based curator, writer, and researcher. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies and investigates contemporary Islam at the intersection of things, images, and script. Alina founded the contemporary archive, virtual showroom, and open research network “Hawass. Contemporary Islamic Aesthetics”.
Bogna Konior
Writer and an academic, focusing on digital culture, philosophy of technology, and new media. She is currently a research fellow at NYU Shanghai, Interactive Media Arts department and at the AI and Culture Research Centre. Her recent work can be found at www.bognamk.com
Olga Kononova
Architect and artist currently based in Odessa. She graduated from Odessa State Academy of Architecture, and is an alumna of the 2015/2016 Hybrid Urbanism program at Strelka Institute. Olga works with a range of projects from urban scaling to the research of local architectural forms. She is interested in the embodiment of space in cinema and art, sensual perception of architecture in daily life and on-screen.
Egor Korneev
Expert in the history of the Arabic region and Islam. He researches sufism from the historical perspective as well as in the regional context of contemporary Western Asia. Egor Korneev graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2019. He is based in Moscow.
Polina Korotchikova
Art history PhD, researcher at the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and Central Asian Art at the Moscow State Museum of Oriental Art.
Olya Korsun
Artist and researcher working across film, text, experimental pedagogy, and spontaneous flower arrangement.
Konstantin Koryagin
Independent researcher, author and filmmaker, senior editor of EastEast. Graduated from the Master's program in Social Philosophy at the European University in St. Petersburg and the editing lab at the Moscow School of New Cinema. He was a free-lance student at the Art and Media program at the Berlin University of the Arts. Currently lives and works in Berlin.
Artem Kosmarski
Anthropologist, sociologist of science, expert in Asian and Islamic studies. He is the director of Neon.University, a project dedicated to teaching rare, difficult, and uncommon subjects, and a senior researcher at the Institute for Cultural Studies at Moscow Higher School of Economics.
Katrin Kovalyonok
Artist. She was born and raised in Kyrgyzstan. Graduated from the Faculty of Art and Graphics of the Kuban State University and the self-organized Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art. Works with graphics and video, creates installations with social media material. Lives and works in Krasnodar.
Artem Krapivin
Head of programming for the EastEast Radio stream, co-founder of Enthusiast Records, part of the team of the Moscow FM radio station Radio Kultura 91.6.
Victoria Kravtsova
Feminist researcher and manager of cultural projects. She was born in Smolensk as is currently based in Berlin. Victoria works with the topics of feminism, decolonization, and anti-racism in the former USSR states.
Pisitakun Kuantalaeng
Visual and sound artist. graduated with a BFA in Sculpture, School of Architecture, Art, and Design – King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. His practice represents a decisive break from many of his Thai peers: he questions fundamental and increasingly global values without merely decrying the fact of corruption or offering neat palliatives.
Eugene Kuchinov
Philosopher, historian, translator, editor of the lmnt < elementary [...] data recorder > platform, research assistant at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. Among his interests are ontological and epistemological anarchism, panpsychism, philosophy of technics. He read lectures during a public program to accompany Tomás Saraceno's Moving Atmospheres (Garage Museum, Moscow) and the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art (Ekaterinburg). Lives and works in Kaliningrad.
Kirill Kulagin
Film director, film tutor. In my work, I try to show real people and tell real stories, giving a voice to those who often go unheard. Director of the films “Let It Soul” and “When Yesterday Comes Again.” Winner of a Cannes Lions award. Edited a short film starring Willem Dafoe.
Ikuru Kuwajima
Artist, photographer, and writer based in Moscow. He was born in Japan and studied photojournalism in the Missouri University, USA. He has been traveling a lot and working on personal projects in Eastern European and Central Asian countries.
Su-Ying Lee
Independent curator living in Toronto, Canada or Dish With One Spoon Territory (Southern Ontario). Her work has taken place across Canada, in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Quezon City (Metro Manila). Su-Ying Lee's website.
Nikita Lin
Writer, curator, researcher, producer in the fields of contemporary art, architecture, design, media theory, science and technology studies. She graduated in 2014 from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently lives and works in Shanghai.
Mitya Lyalin
Photographer from Moscow, Russia, now based in Yerevan, Armenia. In his commercial work, he specializes in advertising, still life, reportage, architecture, and portrait photography. He is a co-founder of Nkar Studio in Yerevan, which specializes in still life photography.
Vladimir Lyashchenko
Video essayist and film critic, teacher at the Moscow Film School. Graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Moscow State University.
Dastan Madalbekov
Young director and scriptwriter born in 1995 in Talas, Kyrgyzstan. Dastan graduated from VGIK as a film director at the workshop of V. Menshov. His short "Son of the Sun" (2022) won the UNICEF Award at the Zinebi International Festival of Documentary and Short Films of Bilbao.
Lorin Mai
Lorin is a fashion designer and artist who creates projects at the intersection of Russian and Kurdish cultures.
Amal Malki
She is the Founding Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation. Before that, she was the Executive Director of the Translation and Interpreting Institute, which she founded in 2011. Dr. Al-Malki holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of London-SOAS, her research interests include the negotiation of identity between East and West, media representations of Arab women, and postcolonial literature.
Giorgi Margishvili
Architect. He studied architecture in the Georgian Technical Institute, Faculty of Architecture, from 1977-1981. He has practiced in numerous design bureaus and independent offices, where he has authored over 40 design projects and participated in several exhibitions. In addition, Giorgi writes and teaches about Georgian architecture history, and is Lecturer in the Architecture and Engineering faculties at Free University since 2020.
Anastasia Marukhina
Curator, researcher and cultural producer, currently based in Berlin. Currently together with the artist collective Slavs and Tatars she curates their new project space Pickle Bar in Berlin. Together with CCA Zarya Vladivostok she conceived and curated a research program Contact Zones: Far East (CCA Zarya Vladivostok, 2017-2020). She curated a number of exhibitions among which are Fabian Knecht. Zerbrechung (CCA Zarya, Vladivostok, 2017); Morse Code: Distress Call (Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2014); Chto Delat? Perestroika. Twenty years after: 1991-2011 (Kölnischer Kunstverein, 2011).
Alan Marzo
Сo-founder of FLEE as well as the annual itinerant music residency program Extra Muros, Alan is an art and film director interested in intercultural questions and transmedia practices.
Yan Matusevich
Writer, researcher, and amateur DJ exploring the intersection of migration, politics and pop culture in Central Asia. He is currently completing a PhD in anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research focuses on the transnational migrant communities linking Central Asia to Russia, Turkey, and South Korea.
Maria Mavropoulou
Born in 1989, she lives and works in Athens, Greece. Maria is a visual artist using mainly photography while her work expands to new forms of the photographic image, such as VR, LiDar scans and screen captured images. Her work and research focuses on the new realities created by the connectible devices and the contradictions between the physical and the digital spaces that we inhabit. More information can be found on her website.
Alexandra Mayboroda
Independent researcher based in Kyiv. She holds a degree in philosophy and studies problems of material agency.
Hisham Mayet
A record collector, filmmaker, and co-founder of the Seattle-based label Sublime Frequencies.
Achilles Mbembe
Cameroonian philosopher, political theorist, and public intellectual. He is a Research Professor of History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Romance Studies at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University. Mbembe is an author of several books, among which are De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine (On the Postcolony) (Paris, Karthala, 2000; University of California Press, 2001) and Critique of Black Reason (Duke University Press, 2017).
Scott McCulloch
Works with prose, essay, and sound. His writings have appeared in 3:AM, Australian Book Review, Southerly, at the University of Paris Diderot, at the Writers' House of Georgia, and elsewhere. Scott was a recipient of the Marten Bequest for Prose 2017–19, put toward the development and realisation of his first novel, Basin. He's been living in eastern Europe since 2014.
Jonas Mekas
American cinematographer and poet of Lithuanian descent, one of the leaders of new American cinema and “the godfather of New-York avant-garde cinema.” He invented the genre of diary film essay, worked with Andy Warhol and artists of the Fluxus movement and cofounded Anthology Film Archives—the first independent center for preservation, study, and demonstration of experimental cinema.
Enkel Mema
Better known by his stage name DJ Nkee, he is a music producer and DJ based in Tirana, Albania. He is also the host of the 'Rap Talk' program on sol89radio, where he covers the Hip-Hop industry both overseas and in his hometown.
Amine Metani
Musician, director of the Shouka label, and curator of the Arabstazy platform.
You Mi
Curator, lecturer at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. You Mi works with ancient and futuristic technologies and networks. She is one of the curators of the 13th Shanghai Biennale (2020–2021).
Walter Mignolo
William H. Wannamaker Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies and Professor of Literature; and Director of the Center for Global Studies and the Humanities at Duke University. His books related to these topics include: The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995); Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of Decoloniality (2007), Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking (2000), The Idea of Latin America (2006), On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, Praxis co-authored with Catherine Walsh (2018) and The Politics of Decolonial Investigations (2021).
Ksenia Mikhailova
Artist and photographer. She studies everyday life through the genre of still life. Lives and works in Moscow. More of her work can be found on her website.
Anna Mikheeva
Independent researcher, artist, and occasional DJ. She primarily explores topics related to awkwardness and contentious social situations, ranging from minor misunderstandings to significant interpersonal and intergroup conflicts. EastEast announcements editor.
Vincent Moon
An independent filmmaker, photographer, and sound artist from Paris known for his work as the main director of Blogotheque's Take Away Shows and for his label Collection Petites Planètes. More information can be found on the label's site, as well as on Bandcamp and on Instagram.
Yeva Muradyan
Рhotographer, animation film director, and artist from Armenia. Yeva is currently working on a photobook depicting her childhood neighborhood, Charbakh. She illustrates the comic series Absurdistan Chronicles and directs a culinary show, also titled Charbakh.
Hayk Muradyan
Yerevan-based amateur cook, professional sculptor, furniture maker, and a storyteller. He is also a co-author of the Charbakh cooking show.
Katya Muromtseva
Ekaterina Muromtseva was born in 1990 in Moscow. In 2017, she graduated from the Rodchenko Art School. She studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University. Muromtseva works with different media, including installations, video and graphics.
Fahmi Mursyid
Contemporary musician, composer, sound designer, and producer based in Bandung, Indonesia.
Gyula Muskovics
Curator and artist based in Budapest, Hungary. As a Ph.D. student at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, he researches avant-garde fashion in Eastern Europe with an emphasis on the work of Hungarian fashion designer Tamás Király.
Alexey Myslitsky
Photographer, traveler, independent researcher and curator. Was born in Adygea, grew up in Western Siberia, and studied at the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Film and Video program.
Ian Nagoski
Music researcher and record producer specializing in early 20th century musics in languages other than English. Founder of the Canary Records label. Lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
Péter Tamás Nagy
Art historian/archaeologist of the Islamic world with a background in Arabic textual sources. In his current work in Doha, he investigates the architectural heritage in Qatar, focusing on royal palaces built in the twentieth century.
Nawal Nasrallah
An award-winning U.S.-based Iraqi food writer and historian, English literature scholar, and translator from Arabic into English. She is best known for her cookbook featuring Iraqi cuisine, Delights from the Garden of Eden, and for her annotated translated editions of medieval Arabic cookbooks
Otar Nemsadze
Co-founder of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. He holds an M.Arch degree from the Georgian Technical University and an M.Sc. in Urban Management and Development from the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is currently doing his PhD at Tbilisi State University, focusing on land ownership and conflict.
Alieta (Tatuna) Nikolaishvili
Georgian designer based in Tbilisi. She graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts and established her brand in 2009 under the name Tatuna. She is known for her extraordinary pattern cuts, minimalistic lines and pastel colours. Enjoys drawing, sketching and pattern cutting. Her clothes are handmade from luxurious fabrics and her creations are sold worldwide.
Tom Noonan
Record collector and creative based on Wurundjeri country in Melbourne Australia, and together with Johnny El P created El Gran Mono in 2018.
Rory O'Neill
Reading for a PhD in Daoist philosophy at East China Normal University, Shanghai. He is the creator of enuffing.com—a website with drawings and words, mostly about Chinese philosophy. Rory does drawings and editing for illustrated Zhuangzi stories on the YouTube Channel Philosophy in Motion.
James Onley
Director of Historical Research at the Qatar National Library, responsible for identifying new historical content for the Qatar Digital Library in archives around the world, negotiating digitization partnerships with those archives, and for facilitating new research on Gulf Arab history and heritage. He holds a D.Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford and specializes in the history and heritage of the Gulf Arab states. He is the founding Editor of the Journal of Arabian Studies, the leading journal in the field of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies.
Tosin Oshinowo
Куратор второго издания Архитектурной триеннале Шарджи, нигерийский архитектор и дизайнер из Лагоса. Она является директором и основателем Oshinowo studio, основанной в 2013 году. Работала над рядом гражданских, коммерческих и жилых проектов по всей Нигерии и известна своим социально ориентированным подходом к архитектуре, дизайну и урбанизму.Фото Eram Gallery, Courtesy of Sharjah Architecture Triennial
Ganna Ostapenko
Ukrainian photographer, videographer and producer based in Qatar.
Margo Ovcharenko
Kyiv based artist, currently in Moldova. She graduated from Rodchenko Art School in 2011 and Hunter College MFA program in spring 2015. In 2010–2011, Margo was a resident at FABRICA S.P.A. (Treviso, Italy). Her zine Country of Women was shortlisted for Paris Photo–Aperture photo first photobook award in 2018. Since 2019, she's been teaching photography at Rodchenko Art School.
Furqat Palvan-Zade
Editor-in-chief of EastEast, independent curator, researcher, and filmmaker. Since 2014, he has worked on the syg.ma project – a community-driven publication and an expanding online archive of texts on society and art. In 2023, he started a Ph.D. program at Yale’s Slavic and Eurasian Languages and Cultures department.
Balázs Pándi
Hungarian drummer, record collector, and cook. He has worked and toured with various acts from all around the world including Venetian Snares, Merzbow, and Trevor Dunn.
Augustine Paredes
Filipino artist and photographer based in Dubai. Recently, he self-published his first artist book entitled Conversations at the end of the universe. He was born on a Thursday.
Temra Pavlovic
Media artist currently living in Amsterdam. Her work can be found on website.
Kseniya Petrova
Journalist and growth editor, based in Moscow. She graduated from HSE Master's Programme in Applied Cultural Studies and worked as a writer and a growth editor at Wonderzine.
Daniil Pleshak
Philologist, journalist, and Ph.D. candidate at Saint-Petersburg State University. He is interested in Byzantine and Old Russian literature, medieval religious thought, narratology, and critical theory.
Ulyana Podkorytova
Moscow-based multidisciplinary artist. Through the field of inner/personal mythology and pseudo-folklore, she addresses the loss of identity in the face of globalization. The fruits of which can be seen encapsulated on video, voice performance and painting. Her recent exhibitions, among others, include “Ray’ok”(Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 2020), Slash (Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, 2016), Single Copy (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018).
Manishankar Prasad
He is a PhD Geography student at the National University of Singapore, who writes about post oil Khaleeji futures. You can also find Manishankar on Twitter: @change_thinker
Anna Pronina
Anna Pronina is a historian and curator based between Tashkent and Vienna and working on Soviet heritage of Central Asia in light of national and cultural policy. She also runs the channel "Non-Central Asia" on Telegram.
Sasha Puchkova
Artist. She was born in Baikonur and is currently based in Moscow. Sasha has a background in design and art history. She graduated from the Rodchenko School and completed the curatorial course What Could / Should Curating Do? in Belgrade. She is interested in phenomena arising at the intersection of online and offline processes, as well as in historical paradoxes and white spots.
Alexander Radaev
Historian, writer, and author of the popular telegram-channel “Parnassky Peresmeshnik” about the history of world culture.
Bella Radenović
Art historian and environmental activist, based in London. Bella is doing a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and her thesis focuses on the visual culture of medieval Georgia. Her research interests include cross-cultural exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus, materiality of inscriptions and collective patronage of art in mountainous regions such as Svaneti. She is the editor-in-chief of immediations, Courtauld's annual peer-reviewed journal.
Nikita Rasskazov
Curator of music programs at the V–A–C foundation and artistic program at Mutabor, clarinetist, and occasional DJ whose interests are focused on issues of the political in music, phenomenology of sound, and non-professional and community-based music practices.
Yoel Regev
Philosopher, PhD at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, associate Professor at the «Stasis» Center for Practical Philosophy of the European University at Saint Petersburg.
Markus Reymann
Co-Director of TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, a leading international art and advocacy foundation created in 2002 by the philanthropist, art patron and ocean advocate Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, representing the fourth generation of the Thyssen family's commitment to the arts and public service. TBA21-based in Madrid, with situated projects in Venice and Córdoba-stewards the TBA21 Collection and its outreach activities, which include exhibitions, educational offers, and public programming.
Maksym Rokmaniko
Designer and researcher whose work explores new forms of urban living enabled by emerging technologies. Maksym is the director of The Center for Spatial Technologies.
Kirill Rozhentsov
Managing editor at EastEast. He studied finance at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and philosophical anthropology at Russian State University for the Humanities. Part of the SHIT HAPPENS and SEC music communities.
Irakli Rusadze
Founder of Situationist. Sophisticated forms, quirky tailoring, and elemental colors are the hallmark of the brand. He easily gained recognition within and outside of the country by raising important subjects through fashion. The collections are characterized by reflective geometric constructions, strong lines, and sharp shoulders. They feature silhouettes, cuts, details, and proportions of Georgian traditional clothing. Every outfit reflects the region’s history, identity, and way of life.
Kamila Rustambekova
Kamila Rustambekova is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her work has been featured in publications such as i-D, Calvert, Buro Kazakhstan, Novastan, Bird in Flight, and Klassiki. She has participated in exhibitions including "Baesianz presents KIN" at the Guts Gallery in London, UK, and the "New East Festival: A Celebration of Contemporary Photography" at IDEAL Barcelona in Spain, among others. Kamila is a member of Women Photograph since 2023.
Polina Ryzhova
Literary critic, producer at Individuum publishing house, cohost of the Polka podcast dedicated to Russian literature. Worked as an editor for Gazeta.Ru. Her texts have been published in Gorky.media, Seance.ru, Wonderzine, The Village, and Russian Reporter. Graduated from the Journalism Department at Moscow State University of Foreign Affairs with specialization in Hindi and Urdu.
Ege Şahin
works in composition, sound art, and improvisation and researches social issues through the lens of sound studies. Born in Turkey and a migrant in the Netherlands, he collaborates with various forms of experimental multi-media practices nearing the spheres of electroacoustic music.
Marinos Sariyannis
Historian, born in Athens. He has been working as a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean Studies/FORTH since 2007, specializing in Ottoman social, cultural and intellectual history. Since 2018 he directs the project “GHOST — Geographies and Histories of the Ottoman Supernatural Tradition: Exploring Magic, the Marvelous, and the Strange in Ottoman Mentalities”, funded by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant). His monograph entitled A History of Ottoman Political Thought up to the Early Nineteenth Century was published in 2019.
Karina Sembe
Interdisciplinary scholar, author, editor. PhD in World Literature, PhD Candidate in Hispanic Studies, Teaching Fellow, Boston University. Main research areas: social mobility of African Diaspora in the Americas, power relations, politics of the archive, methodological challenges of the Humanities and Social Sciences, integration of the Humanities beyond academia.
Yulia Shafarostova
Artist. Born in Krasnodar. She graduated from the self-organized Krasnodar Institute of Contemporary Art. Member of the Businki Art Cooperative. She works with installation, graphics, and photography, exploring the mythologization of personality and space. In her work, she attaches great importance to local situations and contexts, making them universal and accessible to all. Resident of the workshops of the Garage Museum, participant of the 2nd Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art "A Beautiful Night for All the People". Lives and works in Krasnodar.
Afrah Shafiq
A multi-disciplinary artist based in Goa, India. Her work takes hybrid forms that bring together various genres and formats. She often seeks ways to retain the tactile within the digital and the poetry within technology.
Sepand Shahab
Composer and sound artist living in Los Angeles. His pieces combine field recordings, simple electronic sounds, and open instrumental parts in an attempt to include the performing environment in the listener’s experience.
Andrey Shental
Аrtist, critic and curator. He holds a Master’s degree from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London and currently he is writing a PhD in philosophical aesthetics at Goethe-Universität (Frankfurt). From 2016 to 2019 he co-curated the Philosophy Club at Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow. He curated and took part as an artist in several exhibitions, contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to various international publications.
Jafer Shifa
Book seller from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. He is a founder of one of the biggest book stores in the city called Jafer Books.
Gigi Shukakidze
Co-founder of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial. Gigi completed his studies at the Georgian Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning. He lives and works in Tbilisi, where in 2013 opened his own architectural practice Wunderwerk, with a broad range of projects and an experimental-analytic direction. Since 2016 he is an invited independent expert for the Mies Award Prize.
Olga Shurygina
Born in Russia, Olga is a multimedia artist creating her projects in Uzbekistan, her mother’s homeland. She graduated from the Moscow Art and Industry Institute in 2013. In her works, Olga uses a variety of media—from subject art, installations, and performance, to social research and cinema. She addresses the topic of her female gelealogy: both her grandmother and mother came from Uzbekistan. Olga treats the country as a timeless space, a portal where she finds answers to questions.
Olga Slepukhina
Arabist. Graduated from the Department of Oriental Studies of the St. Petersburg State University, she is currently doing her postdoc at Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) and working oh a dissertation on Yemeni ethnocultural identity.
Artiom Slota
Researcher and activist. He graduated from the Institute of Philosophy at the Saint-Petersburg State University and specializes in the nationalisms within Muslim societies. Lately, he has been taking part in various Russian and international human rights initiatives helping migrants and refugees. He is the founder of the dõst project dedicated to diversity policy in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucausus.
Maria Smagar
Historian, editor, specialist in medieval European manuscript culture, and a Ph.D. candidate at Moscow State University.
Nikolay Smirnov
Moscow-based artist, geographer, curator, and researcher. He took part in the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial (2019) and the 2nd Riga Biennial (2020); was a resident at Para Site (Hong Kong, 2019) and Villa Vassilieff (Paris, 2017–2018).
Vik Sohonie
A Grammy-nominated producer who is committed to decolonizing image-making industries. Vik’s work in music and journalism centers around ensuring the West is not the sole interpreter of our world and uses his record label, Ostinato Records, to provide a soundtrack to the resistance.
Suzanna Spertsyan
An Armenian-born writer and stylist based in Paris. Her work explores the space between personal narrative and appearance by combining auto-fictional writing and costume design.
Nikolay Steblin-Kamenskiy
Specialist in African studies. He studied the Amharic language at the Faculty of Asian and African Studies at Saint Petersburg State University and sociolinguistics at the Faculty of Anthropology at European University in Saint-Petersburg. He is interested in contemporary Ethiopian culture and is currently working on his thesis dedicated to labor migration in Ethiopia, as well as studying African collections at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera).
Denis Stolyarov
Russian art historian, specializing in the institutional history of contemporary art. He is currently living in London after receiving a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Nahla Tabbaa
Artist, potter, cook, gardener, educator, program curator, project manager, and culinary ethnographer.
Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena
Musician and ethnomusicologist currently located between Denver, Colorado and Bali. He is in the midst of research, composition, and production on baleganjur and heavy metal music through the lenses of performance, cosmology, and environmentalism.
Makar Tereshin
Social anthropologist and documentary photographer. He is a PhD candidate at University College London, where he is part of the ETHNO-ISS project. His research interests concern material culture studies, environmental and visual anthropology with particular ethnographic focus on Russia and Kazakhstan. Currently, Makar is working on a project exploring politics and ecology of the Russian space programme in Central Kazakhstan.
Tamiko Thiel
Artist. Tamiko Thiel was awarded the 2018 Visionary Pioneer Award by the Society for Art and Technology Montreal for her (now over 35) years of media artworks exploring the interplay of place, space, the body, and cultural identity. She was the lead product designer on the Connection Machine CM1/CM2 AI supercomputer, in 1989 the fastest computer on earth, which is now in the collection of MoMA NY. Tamiko began working with virtual reality in 1994 as a producer and creative director of Starbright World (1994–97), in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. Her first VR art installation Beyond Manzanar (2000) is in the collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, and her AR commissions include Unexpected Growth for the Whitney Museum, now in the permanent collection.
Madina Tlostanova
A transdiasporic (Circassian-Uzbek) feminist thinker and fiction writer and a professor of postcolonial feminisms at the Department of Thematic Studies (Gender studies) at Linköping University (Sweden). Her most recent books are Postcolonialism and Postsocialism in Fiction and Art: Resistance and Re-existence (2017), What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (2018), and the forthcoming A new Political Imagination. Making the Case, co-authored with Tony Fry (2020)
Vera Trakhtenberg
Art critic, curator of the Cultural Creative Agency. She worked as a curator of the START project at WINZAVOD. The exhibitions she produced include Phantom memory of a beautiful era, MUZEON, 2014; Sculptures that we do not see, Central Exhibition Hall “Manezh,” 2015; Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. Personal File, IEC Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, 2015 (co-curator); Faith in a Deep Crisis, Victoria Gallery, Samara, 2019. Vera Trakhtenberg is also a lecturer at the School of Design, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
Anka Tsitsishvili
Creative director and buyer of IERI Store, co-founder of INDEXflat. Anka acts as a fashion advisor for brands and fashion businesses, launches show-rooms in Moscow and Paris, curates exhibitions of contemporary artists. She studied and established her career in Moscow, but now she is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Anka has a son Ilia and raises him together with her boyfriend, a famous contemporary artist Alexey Dubinsky.
Lina Tsrimova
Born in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria. She completed two master's degrees in Moscow and Paris. Currently based in Paris, in 2021, Lina defended her PhD thesis on the history of the 19th-century colonial wars in the Caucasus at École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). The thesis focused in particular on the Circassian oral tradition and on how Circassians narrated these wars.
Wang Tuo
Born and raised in Changchun, China, Wang Tuo currently lives and works in Beijing. He was an Artist in Residence at the Queens Museum, New York from 2015 to 2017. He won the China Top Shorts Award and the Outstanding Art Exploration Award for Chinese Short Films in Beijing International Short Film Festival 2018. Wang Tuo is the winner of the Three Shadows Photography Award 2018 and the Youth Contemporary Art Wuzhen Award 2019. He was awarded a research residency at KADIST San Francisco 2020. In 2021, Wang Tuo will have his first institutional survey at UCCA Beijing. You may find more information about the works of Wang Tuo on his website.
Zoé T. Vizcaíno
Visual artist with a background in psychology, working primarily with video installations and photography. Born in Mexico City, Zoé T. Vizcaíno is based in Madrid.
Aslı Uludag
Artist based in Istanbul. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MA in Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University. The work of Asli Uludag explores the materiality and spatio-temporality of techno-scientiic, architectural, and legal structures that organize the relationship between existents. With her practice, she generates tools which make visible their politics and ecological implications.
Tigran Usikyan
Author and amateur grappler based in Yerevan. Tigran is currently working on Olympica, an archive project focused on Armenian sports clubs. He is also filming a cooking show called Charbakh.
Sumayya Vally
Founder of Counterspace, focusing on hybrid identities in African and Islamic contexts. She redefined Islamic art as the Artistic Director of the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale and designed the groundbreaking 20th Serpentine Pavilion. Vally's contributions to architecture have earned her prestigious awards, including an Honorary Professorship from UCL and a gold medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.Photo by Lou Jasmine
Lena Vanina
Journalist, screenwriter, and director. Author of the series "The Last Minister," "The Optimists," and "The Survivors." Director of the film "When yesterday comes again". Film tutor for adults and teenagers.
Andrey Vasilenko
Curator and film critic. Studied architecture and philosophy at the Far Eastern Federal University. Since 2019, he has been a curator at the V-A-C Foundation. Andrey Vasilenko curated several exhibitions, film programs and retrospectives, including Ten Theses on Architecture, Mind the Gap: Contemporary Video Art of Taiwan, Wang Bing: The Helpless Age, Discovery, Discovery and other projects.
Nadezhda Vikulina
Works with Russian, American, and Polish poetry and translations. She studied literature at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University and holds an MA from the University of Oregon. Born in Dimitrovgrad.
Eleonora Vio
A multimedia journalist based in Italy. She mainly covers climate and energy issues, radicalism and women's stories. She has worked in many conflict areas, especially in the Middle East and Africa; investigated the radical right in Europe and developed a documentary on the mining sector in Congo. Since 2020 she has been working on energy transition and the relationship between environmental damage and conflict. At the outbreak of Russian aggression in 2022 she was in Donbass for some research on the subject and since then she has been working on war crimes and trafficking of various kinds. In 2023 she curated the Palestinian issue of the book-magazine The Passenger edited by Italian publishing house Iperborea. Eleonora has received various awards and collaborates with leading Italian and international media.
Jesse Vogler
Architect and educator. His writing and projects address the entanglements between landscape and law, and take on themes of work, property, expertise, and memory. Jesse is a MacDowell Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and in addition to his art and research practice, is a land surveyor, co-directs the Institute of Marking and Measuring, and teaches across landscape, architecture, art, and urbanism. He is based out of Tbilisi, Georgia, where he is Professor and Head of the Architecture Program at the Free University of Tbilisi.
Iaroslav Volovod
A curator at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a contributing curator of numerous contemporary art exhibitions. Volovod is a graduate of St. Petersburg State University, where he studied Hindi and Sanskrit majoring in Indo-Aryan Philology. He received an MA in curatorial studies from Bard College, New York.
Mira Wallis
Research fellow and PhD candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology and the Berlin Institute for Integration and Migration Research (BIM) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In her PhD project, she investigates crowdwork in relation to different forms and practices of (im)mobility that shape this form of digital and home-based platform labour.
Julia Watson
Best selling author, a TED fellow, and a leading expert of Lo—TEK nature-based technologies for climate-resilience. Her eponymously named consultancy brings creative and conceptual, interdisciplinary thinking to clients with big questions who are interested in systemic and sustainable change.
Harriet Wennberg
Executive Director of INTBAU, having joined the charity in 2010. She has a Master’s in Architectural History, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Deputy Chair of the Georgian Group. Harriet has lectured and taught internationally on art and architectural history, and has written articles for digital and print publications.
Ben Wheeler
Senior Editor at EastEast. Experimental musician, сomposer and musicologist, co-founder of Mountains of Tongues organization. He performs regularly at venues and festivals around the Caucasus and has contributed to the soundtrack and sound design for multiple independent films. He also organizes the annual Caucasus All Frequency Festival, and hosts and produces the podcast Caucasus All Frequency.
Tucker Wiedenkeller
Writer, musicologist, and musician focusing on the Middle East and Mediterranean. He has spent years living in Egypt, studying, working in the music scene, and writing about its music both as a journalist and as an academic researcher. He is particularly interested in the confluence of traditional and contemporary styles and the manifestation of trance and ecstasy in modern, technological contexts. He plays multiple instruments. If not in Cairo or Istanbul, he is likely in the Sonoran Desert.
Henk Wildschut
Dutch documentary photographer based in Amsterdam. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and travels a lot, working on personal and commercial projects.
Howard Williams
Record collector, distributor, and DJ. He is the founder of Japan Blues and has a long running show on NTS radio by the same name.
Carlo Xavier
DJ Producer, Carlo Xavier AKA Kobra 3000 is no newcomer when it comes to forward thinking sounds. Carlo has been curating high energy sets exploring future modern sounds grounded in deep foundational influences for almost two decades. His Portuguese/Macanese family heritage has nurtured Carlo’s profound appreciation for Lusofonic music and complex rhythms, and his record digging trips across Northern Brazil and Colombia have seen Carlo curate releases for cult record label Analog Africa.
Zhu Xiaowen
Artist and writer, based in Berlin. Her work is concerned with how things and beings migrate across time (historical and contemporary) and space (borders and boundaries) with a particular interest in personal witness and testimony. Zhu Xiaowen has received the Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship, TASML Artist Residency Award, Marylyn Ginsburg Klaus Fellowship, Jury Award of DOK Munich, among others. She is a guest lecturer at Heidelberg University and the Assistant Director of Times Art Center Berlin. Read more on the artist’s website.
Cyril Yeterian
musician and composer of Lebanese-Armenian origin mainly touring with his unclassifiable duo Cyril Cyril and north-east African western punk pop band Yalla Miku. Founder of the record store and label Bongo Joe based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Jeffrey Ying
Collector and designer who lives between Shanghai and the US. His interests include obscure 1970s disco as well as Chinese and Japanese art.
Faina Yunusova
Interdisciplinary artist living between Uzbekistan and Germany, navigates the complexities of her cultural background, seeking to create artistic representations that resonate with depth and authenticity while embracing the fluidity of contemporary existence. In her artistic practice, Yunusova focuses on self-reflection and societal inquiry, exploring themes of memory and communal expectations in the digital age. She is also engaged in postcolonial studies within Central Asia, with a focus on the hybridity & fluidity of cultural identity and self-exotization. Her expansive portfolio spans monumental painting, photography, video, digital art, artificial intelligence, performance, and installations. Photo by Anna Kuznyetsova
Andrei Zailer
Independent curator and program director, co-founder of experimental music and performance series TKANI. He is currently based in Tbilisi.
Hamdam Zakirov
Poet and record collector, living in Helsinki. He is one of the authors belonging to the renowned Ferghana school of poetry, whose poems have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Hamdam has been performing as a DJ and taking part in various events and festivals in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, and Israel since 2016. He records mixes that feature Soviet grooves and hosts a podcast dedicated to popular Uzbek music.
Yelena Zhelezov
Artist working with sculpture, video, and text, based in Los Angeles and Belarus.
Timur Zolotoev
Journalist and Senior Editor at Strelka Mag, the online magazine of Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.
Anna Zoria
Artist living and working in Canada and France. She makes work about doing nothing, anticipation, boredom, and repetition.
Sergei Zotov
Historian, winner of the Enlightener Prize for his book The Suffering Middle Ages. Paradoxes of Christian Iconography, PhD student at the University of Warwick (UK) and Associate Research Fellow at the Duke Augustus Library (Germany).
