PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES Silvia Battista Silvia Battista is a visual and performance artist and scholar. She is currently Lecturer in Theatre & Performance Studies and MA Performance Co-Director at Liverpool Hope University. Over the past 20 years, Battista has engaged with a multidisciplinary set of artistic languages (performance, drawing, photography and video) and research methodologies (hermeneutics, phenomenology and semiotics). Her research lies in the intersection between visual art, performance, installation and theatre; particularly in the study of meditative and ecstatic practices or technologies employed for creative and epistemological purposes. She researches, teaches and publishes on contemporary performance and art, religion and spirituality, involving audiences, readers and students in reflecting on perception, ecology and our relation to inner and outer environments. Sarah Demeuse Sarah Demeuse makes exhibitions and books, translates, writes and reads about art and beyond. In 2010, together with Manuela Moscoso, she founded Rivet, an office focusing on longer-term projects in close collaboration with artists, often in formats and media other than exhibitions. Demeuse was a member of the curatorial team for the 9th Mercosul Biennial Porto Alegre and has independently worked on a variety of exhibition and mediation projects in Argentina (dixit, Agatha Costure), Brasil (32nd Bienal de São Paulo), Mexico (Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil), Spain (Espai Cultural Caja Madrid) and the US. (Goethe Institut New York, ISCP, Kiria Koula, P!, A.I.R.). She has taught the Exhibition Making Practicum at the Master in Curatorial Practice Program at SVA and teaches a hybrid studio-seminar at Barnard College about writing and graphic design. Ayesha Hameed Ayesha Hameed’s performance, audio, video and written work explores contemporary borders and migration, critical race theory and visual cultures of the Black Atlantic. She is currently a Lecturer in Visual Cultures and Co-Programme Leader of the PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has performed at SALT Istanbul, Nottingham Contemporary, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Mosaic Rooms, RAW Material Dakar, Arts Catalyst, Camden Arts Centre and La Colonie Paris. Exhibitions include Gothenburg Biennale 2019 and 2021, Dakar Biennale 2018, Showroom 2018, Konsthall C 2018 and Forensic Architecture at MACBA Barcelona. Her publications include Futures and Fictions (co-edited with Simon O’Sullivan and Henriette Gunkel Repeater 2017) and Visual Cultures as Time Travel (with Henriette Gunkel Sternberg, forthcoming). Diana Jeater Diana Jeater is an editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies and Emeritus Professor of African History at UWE Bristol. Her work interrogates everyday forms of power, focusing on gender, sexuality, religion, law, language and belief in Zimbabwe. Her published work includes two monographs, Marriage, Perversion & Power: the construction of moral discourse in Southern Rhodesia and Law, Language & Science: the invention of 'the Native Mind' in Southern Rhodesia. In addition to these two groundbreaking books on Zimbabwean history, she has published on history, anthropology, asylum law and digital humanities. She has an interest in teaching research skills and decolonising the academy and works on combining these interests in various projects. Her current research explores the material consequences of spirit beliefs for war, peace and reconciliation. Joasia Krysa Joasia Krysa is a curator and Professor of Exhibition Research at Liverpool John Moores University, a position she holds jointly with Liverpool Biennial. Formerly, she was Artistic Director of Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark (2012-15). She served as part of the curatorial team for Documenta 13 (2012) and co-curated the 9th edition of Liverpool Biennial (2016). Her research interests are located across contemporary curating and digital culture. Recent publications include the edited books Systemics, or Exhibition as a Series (Sternberg Press 2017), Writing and Unwriting Media Art History (MIT Press 2015), and chapters in Networks (Whitechapel / MIT 2014) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics (2015). She is currently an International Advisor for the first edition of the Helsinki Biennial in 2020 and Curatorial Advisor at Sapporo Triennale 2020. Pedro de Niemeyer Cesarino Pedro de Niemeyer Cesarino is an anthropologist and writer, specialising in the relations between anthropology, literature and the arts. He has conducted fieldwork among the Marubo of Brazilian Amazonia and has published several articles and books about mythology, shamanism and Amazonian systems of knowledge. He was professor at the Department of Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo and is currently professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Margarida Mendes Margarida Mendes's research explores the overlap between cybernetics, ecology and experimental film, investigating the dynamic transformations of the environment and its impact on societal structures and cultural production. She is interested in exploring alternative modes of education and political resilience through her collaborative practice, programming and activism. She curates across the world and was part of the curatorial team for the 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016) and 4th Istanbul Design Biennale (2018). In 2016 she curated the long-term research exhibition MATTER FICTIONS at Museu Berardo, Lisbon. She has directed several educational platforms such as escuelita, an informal school at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2017) and The Barber Shop project space in Lisbon dedicated to transdisciplinary research (2009-16). She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths University of London with the project Deep Sea Imaginings and is a frequent collaborator of Inhabitants, an online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting. Lennon Mhishi Lennon Mhishi joined the University of Liverpool as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Politics department in December 2017, having completed his PhD in Anthropology at SOAS University of London. Prior to coming to Liverpool, Mhishi conducted ethnographic research in Harare, Johannesburg and London. He is currently part of a project led by Dr Alex Balch which explores how the arts and humanities can be utilised in tackling contemporary slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa. His doctoral work explored the migrant and diasporic experiences of music, identity and belonging amongst Zimbabweans in London, whilst foregrounding these experiences as part of the genealogy of African and black presence and expressive culture in Britain. Je Yun Moon Je Yun Moon is a curator and writer from South Korea. She is currently the Head of Programmes at Liverpool Biennial. She has worked in art, architecture and performance at the Sonje Art Center, Anyang Public Art Project, Venice Architecture Biennale, Nam June Paik Art Center and the Korean Cultural Centre UK. She holds a doctorate in Curatorial/Knowledge from Goldsmiths College and an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Royal College of Art. Manuela Moscoso Manuela Moscoso is Curator of Liverpool Biennial 2020. She previous held the position of Senior Curator at Tamayo Museo, Mexico City. Originally from Ecuador, Moscoso is part of Zarigüeya, a programme that activates relations between contemporary art and the pre-Columbian collection of the Museo de Arte Precolombino Casa del Alabado, Ecuador. She was the Adjunct Curator of the 12th Cuenca Biennial and the Co-Curator of the Queens International 2011 Biennial. In 2012 she was appointed Co-Director of Capacete, a residency programme based in Brazil where she also co-ran the curatorial programme Typewriter. Her work and research focuses on artistic production that can articulate critical present endeavors, interrogating a linear history and univocal perspectives. Moscoso has a master degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London. .