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
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.
Gabriel
Cameroonian refugee seeking asylum in Russia. EastEast does not disclose Gabriel's personal information for the sake of his security.
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.
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).
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.
Kirill Adibekov
Film curator at V-A-C Foundation and a Chevening alumnus (2018/2019). He holds an MA in Film and Screen Cultures from the University of Roehampton, London and was a member of the CICAE jury at Berlin International Film Festival (2018).
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.
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.
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.
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).
Rabih Beaini
Lebanese electronic musician, dj, and curator based in Berlin, head of Morphine Records.
Wael Binali
Qatari orchestral and film music composer, based in West Hollywood, California.
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.
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.
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.
Stefan Williamson Fa
Anthropologist and music producer from Gibraltar. His research and works focus on religion, music, and everyday forms of sonic expression in the Caucasus, Anatolia, and the Mediterranean. Stefan is a co-founder of Mountains of Tongues, a non-profit project which aims to promote musical diversity in the Caucasus.
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. Lives in Moscow.
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.
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.
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.
Bora Hong
Bora Hong has been curating various art and design exhibitions, as well as commissioning public art projects. She was the Director of Gallery FACTORY, Seoul, Korea, from 2002 to 2018, and remains its curatorial advisor to date.
Nastya Indrikova
Visual & Ethnographic Research Editor and Photo Editor at EastEast. Author of «Мурмолка», the channel on museum anthropology. She worked as a Photo Editor at Arzamas and Esquire Russia, took part in the expeditions of the Center for Typology and Semiotics of Folklore and the Educational and scientific laboratory of folklore studies of the Institute of Philology and History at Russian State Humanitarian University (Moscow).
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.
Rakhim Kalybaev
Photographer, designer, and musician. Lives and works in Tashkent.
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).
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.
Jenia Kim
Fashion designer, who lives in between Moscow and Tashkent. Founder of the J.Kim brand.
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.
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.
Vladimir Lyashchenko
Video essayist and film critic, teacher at the Moscow Film School. Graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Moscow State University.
Alexandra Mayboroda
Independent researcher based in Kiev. She holds a degree in philosophy and studies problems of material agency.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Margo Ovcharenko
Moscow based artist. 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 at EastEast. Co-founder of Syg.ma and Budka (Tbilisi). Author of the "Tashkent-Tbilisi" telegram-channel. This year he will join the Sandberg Instituut's "F for Fact" program.
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.
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.
Lesia Prokopenko
Senior Editor at EastEast. Researcher and writer with a curatorial background, she is studying Chinese Philosophy at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
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
Senior Editor at EastEast, editor-in-chief at Syg.ma and co-curator of the international competition programme at MIEFF. Studied philosophical anthropology at Russian State University for the Humanities. Lives in St.Petersburg.
Kamila Rustambekova
Photographer from Tashkent. She specializes in portrait photography and has an interest in fashion.
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.
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)
Ben Wheeler
Music Features and News 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.
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.
Andrei Zailer
Independent curator and program director, co-founder of experimental music and performance series TKANI. He is currently based in Tbilisi.
