MAIN CURATORS
LIESE KINGMA
STADT NACH ACHT | FREI[T]RÄUME | SPACE OF URGENCY | Berlin, Germany & Amsterdam, Netherlands
Since 2016, Liese Kingma has been the main curator and concept developer of the FREI[T]RÄUME conference. Through her work, she has managed to unite artists, activists, spaces, urban changemakers and political change makers in stroboscopic motion. Next to the curational work, shei a project developer of the Space of Urgency Platform. With her work in Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna and Helsinki, she has been sparking interaction and collaboration between self-organized socio-cultural actors and local governments towards implementing simplified access to space for self organized culture. Together with the Space of Urgency team, Liese is currently advising the Free Space Policy developments in Amsterdam as well as building the online space of Urgency platform , For FREI[T]RÄUME 2021, Liese is the main project lead & curator.
University of Applied Arts Vienna | Nxt Museum | Amsterdam, Netherlands
CO-CURATORS
JOICE BIAZOTO
Program Manager | Actors of Urban Change | MitOst e.V. | Berlin, Germany
Joice Biazoto is a communications expert, nonprofit project manager and facilitator. She has a background in radio and print journalism and international nonprofit public relations as well as cross-cultural, cross-sector communications training and consulting. She is passionate about co-creating safe(r) spaces for horizontal, intersectional and collaborative creative processes. Joice is also a singer and member of the feminist, queer and body-positive vocal collective Heart Chor. For FREI[T]RÄUME, Joice represents the work of Actors of Urban Change and co-curates the Spaces of Adaptation program.
Multidisciplinary artist , DJ & Curator | Mina collective | XenoEntities Network | Berlin, Germany & Lisbon, Portugal
PEDRO MARUM is as a multimedia artist, DJ, curator and writer based in Berlin whose practice and research focuses on queer rave culture and its implication on social and urban politics, collective sound & care practices and feminist hacktivism. Marum is a member of the collective XenoEntities Network in Berlin. In Lisbon, Marum is a co-founder and resident of the queer rave collective mina, and co-runs the music label ‘suspension’ is a co-founder of the community cultural space Manta, and of the cultural association Rabbit Hole working with performance and visual arts since 2011.
Climate activist & Performer | Ecolise | Berlin, Germany
Fundraiser, performer and climate activist. Developing community led environmental projects at ECOLISE, opening spaces to talk about the climate induced societal collapse at Camp Collapse and promoting a socio-ecological transition through self-organization with Spaces of Adaptation.
PARTICIPANTS
TAYO ALEMI (AUTHENTICALLY PLASTIC)
Artist | ANTI-MASS | Kampala, Uganda
As an Artist based in Kampala, Uganda, Authentically Plastic’s sound is necessarily political. They run a roving, riotous, club night in Kampala called ANTI-MASS; which opens up space for femme, queer & experimental artists in an increasingly repressive social climate. Risk-taking in this political environment informs Authentically Plastic’s sound, which has an accelerated, densely layered, improvisational feel.
ANITA KEVIN (DJ TURKANA)
Artist | Anti-Mass | South Sudan
DJ TURKANA aka Anita Kevin is a South Sudanese DJ , Rapper and producer played Nyege Nyege festival and CTM Festival 2020. Played Boiler Room in isolation in 2020. Often playing at Underground parties in Kampala, also under Anti Mass a series of roving, riotous, art & music happenings based in Kampala and Fourmanysisters a femme spirit female collective party under Nyege Nyege. Currently working on a compilation / collaborative project between Nevernormal and Anti mass, the compilation will result from collaborative experiments between African and Afro-diasporic artists. Turkana is also spending time working on her EP with Hakuna kulala in Kampala. Constantly pushing to learn new things and eager for knowledge and experiencing people and music. Genre of music: Hard dance, Experimental and Combinations of most genres. Radio guest shows- NTS, Nevernormal, Rinse FM, Pan African Music and more.
Co-Founder of Nyege Nyege | Kampala, Uganda
Co-founder of Kampala based collective and incubator Nyege Nyege. In addition to organizing ongoing parties and an artist residency, the collective runs two record labels and a multi-day annual festival. At 9,000 attendees, it is the biggest electronic music festival in East Africa.
Collective | Chile
The Las Tesis Collective is a feminist artistic group performing in Chile. Their art seeks to hold into account state institutions that perpetuates violence, and became widely known in 2019 through the song “A Rapist in Your Path”, which resonated with women’s movements in the whole world and soon became an anthem for women’s rights. In May 2020, LasTesis published a new song alongside the Russian feminist group Pussy Riot. The song denounces police violence against women in Latin America, reflecting on the raise of domestic violence levels since the start of the pandemic and the economic inequalities that are contributing to the deaths of thousands of workers who cannot access adequate living and health care. As a result of their artistic manifestation, the four members of LasTesis are currently being investigated due to reports of intimidation against the police – filed and investigated by Chilean police officers who work in the region where they live. The LasTesis Collective stated: “They want us in the kitchen, confined to the tedium of the domestic, to the private sphere, silenced, invisible. They want to make us return to that place of subordination to which we have historically been confined”, adding that “This only demonstrates the systematic abuse of power by this institution, equating poetry with the true violence which they perpetrate, denying the space to metaphors, art, activism and the legitimate denounce that since October the people have been shouting everywhere”.
ELA KAGEL
Managing partner | SUPERMARKT | Platform Cooperatives Germany | MoneyLab Berlin | Berlin, Germany
Ela Kagel specializes in the intersection of culture, technology and economy. As both digital strategist and cultural planner she develops innovative approaches to public infrastructure and self-organization. From this perspective, she has produced media art exhibitions, designed spaces for cultural exchange and helped establish digital platforms, networks and communities. During her time as program curator for the Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture in Berlin, Ela developed the Free Culture Incubator, a series of workshops and events based on free and open culture. Central to Ela’s practice is supporting bottom-up initiatives deeply rooted in particular communities of practice. In 2010 Ela co-founded SUPERMARKT, an independent hub for digital culture and collaborative economy in Berlin. Ela still serves as managing partner of SUPERMARKT and organizes the year-round program of events, workshops and community gatherings. In 2019, Ela co-founded Platform Cooperatives Germany together with other pioneers of the cooperative, digital economy. In 2021, Ela has kicked off MoneyLab Berlin, a series of events on the topics of sustainable finance, inclusive tech, community-based currencies and progressive monetary systems. Her current work focus is building a network of platform coops in Germany and supporting cooperative start-ups in their initial stages of development.
DisCO.coop | Commons Transition | Guerrilla Translation | Hervas, Spain
Stacco Troncoso is an avid synthesizer of information and a radical polymath working towards elemental, people-led change on a burning planet. Stacco lives, breathes, teaches and writes on the Commons, P2P politics and economics, open culture, post-growth futures, Platform and Open Cooperativism, decentralized governance, blockchain and more as part of DisCO.coop, Commons Transition and Guerrilla Translation.
MAR CUNHA
Kosmicare | Lisbon, Portugal
Mar is a PharmD, working on harm reduction and drug checking since 2017. They currently work with Kosmicare, a NGO that provides harm reduction information and materials, a psycare and psychological support and harm reduction brief counselling and a drug checking service at raves and festivals across Portugal, as well as a drop-in center in Lisbon. Besides drug checking, Mar focuses on harm reduction within the queer community, collaborating with mina, Suspension and Ravelength.
GIBRAN TEIXEIRA BRAGA
DJ & Anthropologist |NUMAS | Sao Paulo, Brazil
Gibran Teixeira Braga is a Brazilian anthropologist, DJ and producer of electronic music parties. He is a researcher at NUMAS (Center for Studies on Social Markers of Difference) and at PAM (Research in Musical Anthropology), a postdoctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo and a visiting postdoc at Freie Universität Berlin. The scholar is currently engaged in a comparative research about the São Paulo and Berlin scenes of independent electronic music, focusing on issues about gender, sexuality, race, class, politics and the creation of safe spaces and communities in these scenes.
Artist & Activist | Spiral Tribe| London, UK
Mark Angelo Harrison is a founding member of the techno collective Spiral Tribe, as well as an artist and activist. Two of his current projects are: Space Pirates From The Future (a possibly fictitious, experiment in time travel) which is raising funds for re-wilding nature projects, and Forward The Revolution, a collaboration between members of Spiral Tribe and FSJS (a group of French lawyers who support free party sound systems that have been attacked by the police).
Musician | Haifa, Israël
Coming all the way from Haifa City, music producer Moody Kablawi is diving deep into a novel fusion of Trip Hop , Disco and Jazz. He released his first EP “Mazaji” at 15 that was dealing with social and political topics from a Palestinian point of view born and raised inside Israel. He toured Europe and the USA with different ensembles in his late teens and has put together numerous music and creative projects. In 2017, Moody performed for the first time as a one-man show showcasing 2017’s album “Shashi” (“Screen”), which is from his own production, at the inaugural Palestinian Music Expo in Ramallah and on stages in Switzerland, Berlin and London. After releasing his 2018 music video "Ma Fi Ma'ani", Moody started to develop his own funky sound. In 2019, Moody released "Mali Mal" (GOT NO MONEY) music video shows a pixelated Kablawi walking through pixelated streets, as he experiences a different vision of his surroundings due to his Nystagmus Horizontal - often called ‘dancing eyes’ due to it causing involuntary eye movement. In the same year, he has moved to Berlin where he released his new Disco EP "Blurry" touching 80's sounds and techno elements performing with his vocoder diving deep into the sound of Electro with his middle eastern touch.
Artist & Event Organizer | TS Raver | Berlin, Germany
Rafi is an artist and organizer based in Berlin. He organizes TS Raver, a queer nightlife project that positions peer-led harm reduction teams as anchors for critical care. Rafi currently studies Neuroscience and Neuro-Acupuncture with a focus on community-based models of care and therapeutic practice.
City Developer | Development Incubator Space- De Drukkerij | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Eva is a bottom-up city developer. She is driven by a relentless passion, commitment and devotion for the community and the utilization of urban areas. Eva relishes the areas that are deserted no-go zones – which cities have all over the world. Areas that are negatively encapsulated by their identities as neglected residential or industrial areas. Branded by their past they seem inaccessible and difficult urban cases to crack. Yet, Eva manages to surpass their abandoned destiny and offers new functions. A challenge she tackles by breaking the presumptions through mobilizing the surrounding community and introducing other people and disciplines that enhance the creation of ideas and solutions.
NAJA ORASHVILI
Film Director & Artist | Bassiani/Horoom | Act4culture | 17Maisi | Tbilisi, Georgia
Naja is a film director, artist, activist researcher and communications strategist. She was one of the representatives of Electronauts - a foundation dedicated to Electronic music and innovative pop-culture. For years, she has been producing TV shows about music and cinema, fighting for equal human rights as part of the White Noise Movement. Naja is also an author of Women’s Solidarity March, a public feminist rally for gender equality and also board member of Equality Movement - for LGBT/Queer rights. Author of “System Must Be Destroyed” - a widespread youth protest rally in 2012, protesting civil inequality and requesting democratic changes in Georgia. She’s founder of Act4culture / The Cultural and Creative Industries Union of Georgia and Project manager in United We Stream Tbilisi.
She’s founder and author of the concept and idea of techno club BASSIANI/HOROOM, which not only provided the underground bases for all new social movements in Georgia, but also evoked a cultural Revolution, manifested as a globally famous, massive Dance protests dubbed as Rave Revolution in the main streets of Tbilisi in 2018. Naja is an author of concept of Horoom Nights - the first and biggest Queer party series.
Author and initiator of Spectrum - a creative collective of artists, researchers and publicists who study and elaborate the non-dominant cultural thoughts and practices, she is a Member of Queer Collective The Fungus Project.
Her works and thoughts have been part of numerous international exhibitions, festivals and panel discussions including FREI[T]RÄUME; Amsterdam Dance Event; Fusion Festival, ; Social Design, University of Applied Arts,Vienna; Budapest Underground; Nuits Sonores & European Lab, Brussels and many more.
Campaign Designer & Artist | Guerrilla Foundation | Waking Life | Berlin, Germany
Ivan March is a part-time campaign designer, music & arts festival curator, podcaster, and full-time SciFi nerd, butt pirate & counterculture fanatic. He is the Communications Director of the grassroots-social-movement-backing Guerrilla Foundation based in Berlin and Cultural Curator of the Waking Life Festival in rural Portugal. Beyond resting in hammocks, his main concerns are exploring how rave culture, political art, queer theory and solarpunk can guide radical societal transformation. He talks a lot about analytical psychology, gardening, pleasure activism, drug policy reform & self-organized communal living. He digs anime, long distance cycling, LSD & free diving.
ARNO BOUMA
Cultural Manager | Space of Urgency | Berlin, Germany
Arno Bouma is a cultural manager and project developer. He specializes in the support of self-organized actors and building bridges towards decision makers. Previously managing a cultural community centre in Amsterdam, he is now part of the Space of Urgency project and board member of Kollektiv Spieltrieb e.V. in Berlin. He works closely together with self-organized cultural spaces as well as public administrations throughout Europe to improve the access to urban space for bottom-up cultural actors.
Activist & Producer | Electronauts | Act4culture | Tbilisi, Georgia
David Lezhava is a long-time activist for electronic music and nightlife culture in Tbilisi. In 1990s as the head of music programming/producer on Channel 2, laid the grounds for the appreciation of modern Georgian music and youth subculture. For 7 years he served as a director of Electronauts, a foundation that had a massive impact on the development of Georgian electronic music scene. With the advent of Covid-19, he co-founded CCIU Georgia, a non-profit umbrella organization and through its Act4culture platform raised funds to aid Georgian electronic music entities and artists.
Curator, Consultant & Night Mayor | Night Mayor Foundation | Trans Halles Europe | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ella Overkleeft is concept developer, curator and consultant. Through various arts and culture projects she stimulates social innovation within urban and rural environments. She is the co-founder of The Night Mayor Foundation in Amsterdam and she is the Capacity Building Manager at Trans Europe Halles in Sweden, where she focuses on empowering independent cultural spaces all over Europe. Ella is as much an activist as a spiritualist, and with a set of strong believes and an holistic approach, she aims to push things forward by stimulating human interaction and connection.
Journalist & Promoter | Bassiani / Horoom | Tbilisi, Georgia
Giorgi Kikonishvili is one of Georgia’s most outspoken Gay activists, journalist, publicist and music promoter. His works and collaborative initiatives in the fields of writing, civil activism, music and club culture interplay with each other to investigate, study and present the social and cultural issues from queer/feminist and non-dominant perspectives. He’s the co-founder and board member of Equality movement; Author of project Muzame - curating the live performances of alternative/DIY artists in Tbilisi. Co-founder of Horoom Nights – prominent Queer party series at BASSIANI; Author and initiator of Spectrum - a creative collective of artists, researchers and publicists who study and elaborate the non-dominant cultural thoughts and practices.
ILJA MINAEV
Cultural Activist | ClubCommission | Love Foundation | Berlin, Germany
Cultural activist, sociologist, promoter, raver, DJ and project manager at Clubcommission Berlin, Ilja Minaev has gained different perspectives on club culture and alternative cultural spaces throughout the years. Growing up in Moscow, experiencing the political pressure and closure of alternative spaces, made him aware of the importance of free and autonomous cultural space for the city and the society. Ilja has deepened this awareness with the knowledge and research that he conducted during his studies in history, political sciences and cultural sociology. Through his active participation in the cultural scenes of multiple European cities he has gathered insights into different spaces and modes of cultural production. In the past years Ilja has been coordinating the Free Open Air Round Tables and supporting FEF Freiflächen Entwicklung Fortbildung project at Clubcommission Berlin. Since 2020 he is also member of the extended board of Love Foundation e.V, the German part of the global network of cultural activists that raise funds for WASH projects in collaboration with Viva con Aqua. This year Ilja is part of the projects Kultur im Grünen and Draussenstadt, as well as Tag der Clubkultur at Clubcommission Berlin.
LUCAS COUNTER
Project Creator | Space of Urgency | Kollektiv Spieltrieb | Berlin, Germany
Project creator in the Berlin based Kollektiv Spieltrieb e.V., and co-founder of the Space of Urgency project. Much of the aim of Lucas' work is to orientate new approaches in city planning that resonate with the voices of different groups pursuing different values, cultures, rights, and spaces. In doing so, his projects thread together actors and perspectives from cultural collectives to city administrations.
Founder | BAM-C | United We Stream Balkan | Sarajevo, Bosnia
He was born in the same year as CDs and the .COM domain. Inspired by Lego
and Rave Culture, he blends everything through advertising. With constant thirst for more
Architectural industry his interests and experiences in design led him to work at the 2010 Libyan State Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo, to serving as a lead event manager at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2015, to producing projects at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture in collaboration with DARCH fromETH Zurich.
Mersel has been active in the Sarajevo Creative Industries scene since the early 2000s. More recently, he recognized the potential for the networking of the music industry in the Balkans and launched the BAM-C Balkan Advanced Music Conference, now running for three years. His passion project is Klabika that brought Solomun to his homeland, and in a 5-year circle he managed to close the city’s main street to throw a 15K-strong rave in 2019.
He is the president of the Association for Procreation and Development of Future Ideas – Neocor in Sarajevo, and over these past two years has concentrated his efforts on the MICE Industry. Currently he is working with BAM-C on a global initiative United We Stream for the Balkans and Rave Culture, he blends everything through advertising. With constant thirst for more Architectural industry becomes s an adventure and his experience in design led to working on the 2010 Libyan State Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo, to serving as a lead event manager at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2015, to producing projects at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture in collaboration with DARCH from ETH Zurich.
IVER OHM
Art & Cultural scientist | Hidden Institute | Berlin, Germany
Iver Ohm works as an independent art and cultural scientist. He studied art history, art education, philosophy, cultural studies and project management and has taught in recent years at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Bern University of the Arts, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the University of Bremen. In addition to his work at the Hidden Institute, he is active in various cultural and urban policy initiatives and projects in Berlin. His main fields of interest are on intersections of culture, public spaces, self-organized spaces and urban governance.
AGNES RAGUSE
Co-Founder | Rave Awareness + support f(x) - Schnittstelle für Awareness | Berlin, Germany
JAY JORDAN
Author & Activist | ZAD Notre Dame des Landes | Nantes, France
Labelled 'Domestic Extremist' by the police, and ' magician of rebellion' by the press, Jay Jordan is the co-founder of the direct action movements the ‘Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army’ and ‘Reclaim the Streets’. Now with the 'Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination' JJ brings artists and activists together co-designing tools of disobedience. Author, art activist, part-time sex worker full time trouble maker, Jay inhabits the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, an autonomous liberated zone where direct action cancelled an airport project.
Director & Documentary film-maker | Cameltown | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jan Beddegenoodts is a director & documentary film maker with a background as a photographer and the mayor of Cameltown. The last 10 years he has been creating films about resistance, rave-culture and everything in between art and activism. He uses a cinematographic style to portray people with their passion and struggles. His work zooms in on a micro-reality to bring urgent matters to a world wide audience. You can watch his films online at www.cameltown.org
Collective | Berlin, Germany
Kollage Kollectiv is a Berlin-based art collective composed of autodidactic multimedia explorers with a shared vision and driven by a strong ethos. They transform recycled materials into interactive installations through innovative design, engineering and technology. The fundamental truth of our times is that resources are finite. Thinking in cyclical rather than linear terms can change that, reusing and repurposing disposables to maximize their potential, they artistically demonstrate how trash is a source of inspiration and wish to democratize the making of art.
Dance artist | lecken berlin | Berlin, Germany
Maria Francesca Scaroni (IT/DE) is dance artist, living in Berlin since 2004. She crossbreeds somatic practices and speculative interests with witchcraft, healing, performance and choreography. She hosts workshops re-purposing post modern dance legacies towards technologies for mutual empowerment. Maria performs in Meg Stuart’s works, with whom she collaborates since 2009. Since 2016 she is a member of queer collective lecken berlin.
Founder| THF Radio | Torhaus Berlin e.V. | Berlin, Germany
Ayosha is one of the founder of THF Radio and Torhaus Berlin e.V. and organises these platforms at the Tempelhof Airport Building with a community of people. He works in different constellations on applied research and design projects in social and cultural contex, professional and improvised industrial design projects (products and furniture), exhibition design and curation as well as research-based projects.
Co-curator | Cxema | ХІТЬ | TIGHT | Kyiv, Ukraine
Maya Baklanova is an active player in the Ukrainian music scene. She was responsible for communication and co-curating at Cxema - an Ukrainian independent cultural organization generally known as the biggest rave party in Eastern Europe. Apart from being actively engaged in various offline and online music and social activities, Maya is co-running the online platform for contemporary music and visual art TIGHT and the queer-party series ХІТЬ.
YANNET VILELA (N3T4) & JESPER FREDERIKSEN (JESPERINO)
VJ & multimedia artist + DJ & producer | escape 010101 | BQestia Soundsystem | Peru
Yannet Vilela is a VJ, multimedia artist, curator and creator of the virtual and interactive space escape 010101: platform that brings together various artists from different parts of the world, whose objective is to incorporate visual art, music and other media in a single space. Member of BQestia Soundsystem with which she works carrying out audiovisual events under the projects: Loud Peru and Soundsystem in the park.
Jesper Frederiksen is a DJ and electronic music producer from Denkmark, living in Peru. His main focuses are in Techno, Hard techno, Dub techno, Dub, Dubstep & Bass music. He is the co-creator of the artisan sound system BQestia Soundsystem developed in Peru. At present, he is developing in music creation and sound design through VCV Rack & the production of audiovisual events enhanced with BQestia Soundsystem.
JOEKENEL VAN DER PIJL
Musicologist & Process Manager | Expedition Free Space | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Joekenel Van der Pijl is a musicologist turned process manager for the city of Amsterdam. She has 15 years experience managing projects in the cultural and social sectors, and is currently facilitating Amsterdam’s ‘Expedition Free Space’, which has the goal to empower and provide space for self-organized cultural, social and ecological initiatives throughout the city.
JULIAN JANSEN
Urban planner | Expedition Free Space | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Julian Jansen works as a senior urban planner at the Department of Urban planning and Sustainability of the City of Amsterdam. He is specialized in demography, housing market and the relation between (alternative) culture and urban development. The last two years he worked on the development of a new policy for Amsterdam's free cultural places, the so-called Expedition Free Space. Julian also works as a volunteer on the board of the Amsterdam underground music venue OCCII.
DEBBIE GRIFFITH
Cofounder & VJ | Spiral Tribe / SP23 | Sound Conspiracy | Dharma Techno | Marseille, France
Debbie Griffith aka Feenix13 is one of the co-founders, organizers & designer / space decorator of Spiral Tribe – the radical underground sound system from London created at the end of 1990. When the sound system got chased out of Britain in 1992 and travelled to Europe, Debbie coined the word 'Teknival' to describe a new kind of festival event in France, with techno music being a central focus. At the end of the 1990s she fulfilled a similar role with 'Sound Conspiracy' which organised many huge and successful donation-only parties in Italy, and then travelled overland with the sound system to India. Based near Marseille since 2000, she has been resident designer for the Audiotrix record label. In 2008, the creative core of Spiral Tribe formed SP23 and have been performing live together ever since. Debbie is the resident VJ. In 2015 with a french meditation teacher, she co-created 'Dharma Techno' , a new concept of silent meditation retreat with an evening of live Techno. This unusual and heartfelt project brings together the worlds of silent meditation and electronic music.
Urban researcher | TU Wien | METU Architecture | Yolda Initiative | Ankara, Turkey
Burcu is an urban researcher and doctoral candidate at TU Wien and METU. Her practice positions itself among architecture, urbanism, landscape, and politics blended with research, advocacy, and activism. She is interested in bridging links between everyday life, urban co-production and decolonisation, community building and empowerment, critical spatial practices, cultural landscapes, and social and spatial marginality connected with gender studies and refugee studies. Amongst others, she has practised in Berlin, Vienna, İstanbul and Ankara. She currently holds the Nature & Culture Programme Officer position at Yolda Initiative.
LAURA SOBRAL
Urbanist & activist | A Cidade Precisa de Você | ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa | TU Wien | Porto, Portugal
Laura Sobral is a brazilian urbanist, a right-to-the-city activist and a co-founder of the Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você [The City Needs You Institute], a CSO that improves public spaces through collective social actions. She is a researcher at ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and at TU Wien, and the author of the book Doing it Together – cooperation tools for the city co-governance (ZK/U Press).
Social Ecologist & Urban Activist | id22 | Berlin, Germany
Michael LaFond is a US-born project manager and community developer, who relocated to Berlin 20 years ago and has been involved with Berlin housing market as an observer and activist ever since. He is a social ecologist, urban activist, and a Commons & CoHousing Expert. He is the founder of id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability. He teached seminars at the TU Berlin Housing and CIEE Design and Sustainability. His interests lie in the connexion between art, architecture, and community development. His research and practice is oriented towards social ecology, self-organization, urban democracy, cooperatives, and edible landscapes.
THIMO GAWLIK
Event organizer & educator | z.kollektiv | Initiative Awareness e.V. | Berlin, Germany
Thimo lives in Berlin and is part of the event and music scene since 2009. As co-founder of the event collective z.kollektiv he organizes parties, festivals and cultural actions. Through longstanding closeness to the nightlife, a shattering awareness of various forms of discrimination at events emerged. From the constant confrontation, mutual sensitization, educational work and practical awareness, the topic of discrimination-sensitive events became a subject close to his heart. Since summer 2021 Thimo is part of the project "Awareness in the Event Context" of the Initiative Awareness e.V. from Leipzig.
MIRIAM HECHT
Co-founder | Initiative Awareness e.V. | Berlin, Germany
Miriam is the co-founder of "Initiative Awareness e.V", a Leipzig based initiative to spread the idea of intersectional anti-discrimination, focusing on strategies including every part of event organisation. She has previously co-founded a Club based Awareness Team, volunteer at safer clubbing projects (Alice Project, Drug Scouts). Currently, Miriam is undergoing further education in the field of audio engineering as well as Supervision/Coaching.
LUCIA DI PAOLA
Just transition officer | ICLEI Europe | Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
Lucia is a facilitator, project manager and policy advocate. She has a degree in Sustainability Science at Lund University and is Just Transition officer at ICLEI Europe, where she supports local governments to integrate social justice into urban sustainability.
PUÇANGA
Songwriter & music producer |IG | Portugal
She is a Portuguese songwriter, composer and music producer. Her latest album “Fazer da Trip Coração” was released earlier this year.
ROUVEN WALTER
Event organizer | Entropie Festival | Berlin, Germany
Rouven started working on events when he was 16. One of his first projects was the "Kontrollverluste Festival". Afterwards he worked together with several collectivs, who organised illegal raves and other partys at squats and clubs. Since he already gained some experience in the field, he decided to study event technology and management in Berlin. Meanwhile he contibuted his knowledge to "Entropie Festival", that came to life by the collaboration of his friends and himself.
Strategic head | RVTK - revoltekk | BASIS – Vinschgau Venosta | South Tirol, Italy
Hannes Goetsch is a transdisciplinary strategist, enabler and sound-instigator working in the field of cross innovation and urban-rural development processes from Venosta valley, South Tyrol, Italy. He is a trained machinist and qualified metal production engineer, quit Language high school and focused on practical, in-service education from the age of 20. Hannes is a cooperative networker, lateral thinker and niche culture organiser experienced in acting in an intercultural context. As ideator and strategic head of “BASIS – Vinschgau Venosta”, founder of the music collective “RVTK - revoltekk”, chairman of the cultural association “Kognitiv – Verein für Wahrnehmung” and member of the “Drahthaus” collective he has always been active in the empowerment of people.
Event organizer | Exist Festival | 1\2 ANTS | Aqaba, Jordan
Odai Masri, known as ODDZ, has been active in the Ramallah’s underground scene since 2006, organizing events and pushing the electronic music and cultural scene in Palestine. A driven soul by a musical history of various electronic content and projects. Founder and curator of Exist Festival, and 1\2 ANTS, a harsh industrial techno project, employing pounding beats and devastating kick-drums in a harsh soundscape informed by classic techno and modern industrial elements in order to narrate the political and social panorama of Palestine. He previously used to run the first Palestinian electronic record label Harara records and Palestine online radio startion Radio Nard.
Project & event management specialist | Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Lejna is a project and event management specialist, with the dream of improving the future for herself and others to come. She dedicated her career to institutions and organizations that have a positive impact on the culture, society as well as individuals. Lejna has many years of experience in project implementation in the framework of music and entertainment industry, non-formal education of youth, as well as environmental protection and circular economy. Her formal educational background is in the field of political science and currently she is furthering her studies in the area of mass communications and PR.
WILLI HEJDA
(counter)culture worker| AwA_stern |4lthangrund | IG Club Kultur|Vienna, Austria
__willi Hejda ... is a (counter)cultural worker from Vienna. They have been working between, for and in self-managed and emancipatory contexts for years. They organize for different locations, and do educational work on topics like participatory (self-)organizing, right to the city and awareness issues. _willi is part of the core team of AwA_stern and part of the Awareness Institute.
STEVEN RASPA
Associate Director of Community Events | Burning Man | San Francisco, USA
Steven Raspa is Associate Director of Community Events for Burning Man Project and a founding member of its global Network. He is a passionate advocate for nightlife and culture, an artist, community organizer, producer, and regularly speaks on the arts and urban planning. He has consulted with hundreds of organizations and performing groups over 25+ years and frequently speaks about conditions that allow imagination to flourish and cities to be innovative, livable and culturally vibrant. Recently he served as cultural adviser on emerging platforms that are taking Burning Man community and culture into digital frontiers.
DJ | Spiral Tribe / SP23 | Berlin, Germany
Ixindamix has been involved in the European Underground scene for over 25 years, from the early days of Acid House and Travellers free festivals in the U.K through to the first free parties and Teknivals around Europe followed by a relentless gigging schedule spanning 2 decades, bringing up a family and running a successful record label in the meantime. Now living in Berlin she is involved in various projects and is at present exploring new ways of playing improvised live sets with some of the vast array of new hardware which is being produced, the evolution of music technology being a constant inspiration. The Synthesizer remains her all time love and playing it live a key part of her signature sound. She also continues to DJ a variety of different styles in both vinyl and digital formats.
YANN KERSAINT
Geographer | Stiftung für Kulturelle Weiterbildung und Kulturberatung | Modelspace Project | Berlin Funds Urbane Praxis | DRAUSSENSTADT | Berlin, Germany
Yann Kersaint is a geographer whose research focuses on the production of space and vulnerability in postcolonial urban environments in the Caribbean, Europe and the US. Since 2021, he works at the Stiftung für Kulturelle Weiterbildung und Kulturberatung. In this capacity, he co-manages the Berlin Funds Urbane Praxis and Call for Action DRAUSSENSTADT as well as the Modelspace Project in cooperation with the Berlin Senate and the Clubcommission. Prior to this, he was a researcher and lecturer at the University of Münster. When not behind a screen, he is gardening, cooking and organizing parties or field trips.
Founder & DJ | CLUBcultureALL | Berlin, Germany
Catalina Lopez has been working as a TV journalist specialized in the cultural and arts sector for almost two decades. The countless other ventures she dedicates herself to range from managing musicians to curating parties, from feature film production to event organization. As the founder of the online show "CLUBcultureALL" and as DJ Alma Linda she combines her passion for artistic expression with her strong urge for political and social change.
JUDITH PAPE
Social Scientist, facilitator & campaigner | Extinction Rebellion Germany | Transformation Haus und Feld | Berlin, Germany
Judith is a freelancing social scientist, facilitator and campaigner at the intersection of democracy and climate justice activism. She regularly facilitates open neighborhood assemblies, where neighbors learn self-organization and start community projects. At Extinction Rebellion Germany, she helped building diverse and resilient local communities since 2018. With Transformation Haus und Feld she campaigns for the establishment of a socio-ecological Transformation Center at the former airport Tempelhof in the heart of Berlin.
Drag queen & choreographer | Berlin, Germany
Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, and Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, writer, and moderator living and working in Berlin. Her practice is situated within, and inspired by, the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance.
DJ & producer | Berlin, Germany
Alada is a brazilian DJ & music producer, and part of his evolution and purpose, as an artist and character, brings a new vision for those who understood as "music", "art" and "genre". Always with a paradigmatic break approach, his work is high in emotion and sexuality. Now based in Berlin, German
DIMITRI HEGEMANN
Founder | Tresor | Happy Locals | Berlin, Germany
Dimitri Hegemann was born in 1954 in a small village in Westfalia. He moved to Berlin because he didn't find a platform where he could realise his visions for alternative living. So he started studying Musicology at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1978. His world began observing the night in West-Berlin and there he started to become active in the music scene.
Between 1982 and 1990 he organized five Berlin Atonal Festivals - new codes in vision & sound. In 1986, he opened a store in an old shoe store, inspired by the Dadaist movement, called Fisch Buero. This space was registered on Misses Fisch, who was a phantom. In 1988 he opened the acid house club called UFO.
After the wall came down, Dimitri and his friends opened the legendary techno club Tresor, which was located between the two infamous walls - in the heart of the reunited city. Tresor became the birthplace of the biggest youth movement of the last century - Techno.
In 2005, the city of Berlin made a big mistake and sold the ground where Tresor was located to a boring insurance company and Tresor had to move out. In March 2007, Hegemann found a new home for the club in an abandoned power plant in the middle of Berlin. The so called Kraftwerk Berlin is now home for art events throughout all genres.
His last concepts are the Happy Locals and the Academy for Subcultural Understanding. He considers himself a cultural activist and space pioneer - aiming to turn industrial ruins into cultural spaces. Only art can save small cities to not vanish into meaninglessness.
DJ, MC, radio host & sound artist | micro.radio | Amman, Jordan
Sharaf Saleh, is a DJ, MC, radio host and sound artist. Sharaf’s sound is inspired by various moods and genres such as anxiety induced moments, dark disco, nu disco, experimental sounds and abstract improvisations with sound that touch bases within different mediums, tension levels capping at some moments while also releasing in another.
Sharaf also co-founded micro.radio, a hybrid, Amman-based community platform dedicated to exploration and discovery. Consisting of a multi-channel online broadcast, and a physical studio space at the heart of Jordan’s capital Amman, the platform explores music, culture and the city through the lens of a new generation, unbound by genres of methods.
IVO KRUG
Activist & initiator | Tek Bunkeri | MOCI | Tirana, Albania
Floating between Berlin and Tirana. Activist and initiator of the civic and cultural space Tek Bunkeri, and the trans-regional grassroots network Mobile Open Culture and Innovation - MOCI. Encourages intersectional and cross-cultural grassroots collaborations and creation of commons as an alternative to existing funding paradigms and development cooperation logics in the Balkans and South-Caucasus. Working towards stronger urban-rural linkages and self-organized learning spaces.
ERICH JOSEPH
Project manager | Clubcommission Berlin | Inherencia | Berlin, Germany
Erich Joseph is project manager of the Free Open Air Initiative at Clubcommission Berlin. The project is aimed at young organizers of open airs and offers a network for knowledge transfer and exchange among each other through workshops, round tables, newsletters and the Telegram Group. In addition to his work at Clubcommission Berlin, Erich is also the label owner of Inherencia, a promoter and musician. He started his career in the music industry by organizing unregistered open airs in 2014. Now the focus of his work is to provide a transition for young promoters to run registered open air events.
Head of Global Development | United We Stream | Klub Ostkreuz | Berlin, Germany
Extended board member and Head of Global Development United We Stream e.V. Danaja is a cultural manager focusing her work on free open air initiatives in Berlin and abroad. She is part of the collective Klub Ostkreuz. In 2020 she began working for United We Stream initially as a social media manager. Her work now entails coordinating the global department, communication and partnership strategics. In the past year most of her projects touched on the transformation of analog cultural practices to their digital form. For Envisioning Free Space Conference - Frei(T)räume Danaja focuses on the topics of Space of Urgency and assists in partnership management and overall project management.
