BallongMagasine has been mediating sound art in various settings since 1996, the aim has been to increase the recognition of audible art in the contemporary art field and in public space in general. Such as on cd, in clubs, cinemas, on radio, internett and in exhibition spaces. Our productions includes a wide range of sound art: narrative, playful, noisy.www.ballongmagasinet.com

Bik Van der Pol. Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol work collectively since 1995 as Bik Van der Pol. They live and work in Rotterdam.Their projects engage with functionality and site sensitivity, concerned with interaction at an institutional and intimate, local level. They engage with revitalization of memory in the present and with questions of knowledge, thus creating the necessary potential for a dialogue and an ever reforming discourse through which they develop an understanding of situations that surround us. They aim to improve situations, add what is missing, highlight what is in the dark and to open rather than close. Their working method is based on co-operation and they use this as a platform for various kinds of communicative activities. Exploring and activating such platforms is one of the main threads in their work.
www.bikvanderpol.net

Yvette Brackman (1967 New York ) is a visual artist living and working in Denmark. She has studied Art and Art history at the University of Illinois, Chicago (1997), since 2001 she has been teaching as a professor at School of Wall and Space, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her work investigates the relationship material production and social relations focusing on identity, displacement and borders. It explores the mixing of cultures in order to better understand ourselves in society.

Andrew Cannon is an arts organiser occupying a mid-point between artist and gallery, realizing ambitious projects for artists, often in the face of restrictive means. He studied Graphic Design at Camberwell School of Art and also holds a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Studies from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies. He has worked organizing projects for various artists as their assistant and has also held the position of Project Manager at the Kunstwerke Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. He has curated five exhibitions which has included the work of Saskia Olde Wolbers, Emma Kay, Gabriel Lester, Tonico Lemos Auaud and Daragh Reeves. He has also directed the music to the feature film Movern Callar. In 2006 he was selected for the Curatorial program at de Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam. He lives in London where he works as Gallery Coordinator for Stuart Shave Modern Art.
www.mr-cannon.com

Ctrl+Z Publishing is non-commercial and project based. Its publications are made for and by artist groups, artists and curators in the self organized field. It is based in Bergen, Norway and run by artist Arne Skaug Olsen and curator Anne Szefer Karlsen. Our aim is for Ctrl+Z to be an active part of the region’s art scene, at the same time as we connect our publishing policy to national and international practice and discourse. Ctrl+Z Publishing equals artistic practice with discourse, and aim to focus on and contest the both by concentrating on publications as an arena for development and mediation of contemporary art. Ctrl+Z is itself part of the self organized field, its profile is transient and the back catalogue is not defined by one aesthetic, political or institutional
programme. Our main concern is to independently investigate structural conditions for art production, art mediation and art discourse in the form of printed publications.
www.ctrlz.no

Ann Demeester (b. 1975, Brugge) is currently director of de Appel Arts Centre in Amsterdam. After studying literature and linguistics within the field of Germanic Languages she worked as a cultural journalist and art critic for the Belgian national newspaper De Morgen and De Financieel-Economische Tijd. From 2000 onwards she worked as an assistant curator for Jan Hoet in both the SMAK, Museum for Contemporary Art in Gent (BE) and Museum MartA Herford (DE). From 2003 till 2006 she was directing art space W139 in Amsterdam.
www.deappel.nl

Barnaby Drabble curates, researches and writes about artistic and cultural projects. Since 1998 he has worked in regular collaboration with Dorothee Richter on projects examining the field of curating under the title Curating Degree Zero. On the first year of the postgraduate program in Curating at the University of Art and Design in Zürich he was the co-director together with Richter. Now they are producing a new reader on the topic of critical curating. Since 2001 he has also regularly collaborated with the artist Hinrich Sachs with whom he established Drabble+Sachs, an office focusing on cultural research and action. Recent projects with Hinrich Sachs include: The Ny Stad Project with the students of the Umea academy of Art in Sweden (2004-05), the public art event Geneva Unplugged with Elin Wikstrom (2003) and the presentation TM Guerrilla at the Swiss Expo (2002). As an individual he has curated numerous exhibitions including I almost feel like doing it again... an exhibition about cover versions at K3 project space in Zürich (2005), New Visions a program of artistic interventions at London's National Maritime Museum (1999-2002), and Real Life Market Stall, a public art event with Ross Sinclair (1999). Between 1998 and 2001 he worked with the artists John Latham and Barbara Steveni documenting the history of the Artist Placement Group in preparation for the purchase of the group's archive by the Tate. He regularly contributes as a critic for art-magazines, works with artists on texts for catalogues and writes on various cultural issues for publications and websites. He is currently involved in doctoral research at the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies, Edinburgh College of Art. Gives lectures at postgraduate program in Curating at the University of Art and Design in Zürich. Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland and Edinburgh, UK.
www.drabblesachs.org | www.curatingdegreezero.org

Espen Sommer Eide (b. 1972) is a musician and philosopher from Tromsø currently living in Bergen. He composes solo-works under the name "Phonophani", and as part of the band Alog. His major releases includes three CDs on the record label Rune Grammofon: His self-titled debut album (originally released in 1998 on Biophon records - the record label of fellow norwegian musician "Biosphere"), Genetic Engineering (2001) and Oak or Rock (2004). Also he has released three albums as part of Alog: Red Shift Swing (1999), Duck-Rabbit (2001), Miniatures (2005) and Amateur (2007). "Miniatures" received the Spellemann award (Norwegian "Grammy") in the category of Electronica in 2006. In addition to touring Europe and the US extensively, Eide also has done a series of site-specific pieces. These projects includes composing and performing music for the 50 year anniversary of Le Corbusiers chapel in Ronchamp, France and composing and performing the opening concert and building an audio installation for the Northern Lights Festival in Tromsø, Norway 2007. Apart from making music Eide also was the director and curator of the Trollofon electronic music festival in Bergen (2001-2006), and the initiator of the ruralreaders.net and Arkivsirkus projects together with Nicholas H. Møllerhaug. www.alog.net/phonophani

Øyvind Pål Farstad (b. 1963) studied at The National Art Academy in Oslo and graduated from The Art Academy in Bergen in 1999. He has had a diverse artistic practice, where humour, in a peculiar form, is a characteristic. This humour often illuminate a social or political theme.
In his works Farstad often avoids implying that we are dealing with a work of art. His artistic practice is thus often on the edge – favourably with a underdog perspective – making the work more immediate. The work consists of artifacts, actions and opinions that we - at least primarely- relate to without filtering it through the category of art.
In one of his latest works: «The debate continues...» he used the newspaper «Lofotposten». In a series of letters to the editor from March untill June '06 he addresses topics of current interest in the small city of Svolvær. Using his own name and pseudonyms he addressed topics from different angles and let the arguments evolve through contributions from the participants.

Maaike Gouwenberg. After her studies of Fine Arts in Utrecht (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) in 2004, Maaike Gouwenberg (b. 1977, the Netherlands) became artistic director of the Utrecht based exhibition space ”Expodium, platform for young art”. Besides the projects she organized in Expodium, she traveled a lot with artist Maria Pask, was a guest teacher and did (inter)national talks about Expodium. She has besides fine arts an interest in theater, film and performance. At the moment she is working at If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, a rolling platform for performative arts, curators Annie Fletcher and Frederique Bergholtz. Next to this she is the producer, both of the projects in the artist in residence BijlmAIR, and the project Visual News. This upcoming November she will be the curator of The Black Magic Woman Award 2007, for which artists Katarina Zdjelar, Mounira Al Solh, Monali Meher and Anne Schiffer is selected.

Geir Tore Holm (b. 1966, Tromsø, Norway) lives and works in Oslo/Gildeskål/ Tromsø. Educated from the Academy of Fine Art, Trondheim (1995). Parallel to his individual practice he has been curating, writing, teaching and working with theatre. Together with Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Søssa Jørgensen he started Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in 2003. From 2006 he was Head of project, planning and establishing the new Academy of Fine Art at Tromsø University College. He works with social relations and power structures, often related to his Sami background; discussing individual identity and the larger cosmos, addressing social responsibility and ecological thinking.
Sørfinnset Skole

Marte Johnslien (b. 1977, Lillehammer) currently lives and works in Oslo. After graduating from the National Academy of Fine Art, Oslo (2005), she entered the Oslo Lusaka Fine Art Fellowship in 2006. The Fellowship is an exchange programme of professional, female artists between the National Academy of Arts, Oslo, and the National Visual Arts Council, Zambia. Marte was based in the capital Lusaka for one year. After returning to Norway she has carried on her practice as a sculptor and photographer, participating in exhibitions like Tempo Skien (Outdoor sculpture exhibition, Skien) and Synthetic Nature (D21, Leipzig). In collaboration with her exchange partner from Zambia, they have produced the end products of the 2006-2007 exchange programme; the first two volumes of the Oslo Lusaka Artists' Books.
www.martejohnslien.com

Søssa Jørgensen (b. 1968, Oslo, Norway) lives and works in Oslo/Gildeskål. Educated from the Academy of Fine Art, Trondheim (1995). She started to investigate sound art, together with Yngvild Færøy during the early nineties, parallel to her practice including performance and video making. She has been curating and writing on art. With Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Geir Tore Holm she started Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land in 2003. This led to a masters study (current) in landscape architecture at UMB, Ås.

Anne Szefer Karlsen (b. 1976) is an independent curator living and working in Bergen, Norway. Her curatorial focus is to create exhibitions both inside and outside of the white cube. Using exhibitions as a platform for communication and exploration, her aim is to present contemporary art to a wide and diverse audience. With a background in photography and video, she has a wide understanding of the visual arts field and a specific interestin still and moving images. She holds a BA (hons) Photography (1999) from London College of Printing, London, England and an MA Photography (2002) and post-MA in Creative curating (2006) from Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Bergen, Norway.
www.szefer.net

Jon Martin Kolnes was born in Stavanger the summer of '74. He grew up in the steep hills in Trengereid and spent much time in the scree with the excavator. Early interests were building cottages, roads, dams and tunnels. Kolnes first trained as a carpenter before he entered Bergen School of Architecture. Graduated in 2005 with the project Built Language. Sets up PLUR. Arkitektur together with Jakob Slettevold and Ole Andreas Bjelland. Plur. A shortened form of pluralism (pluralis). Plur is also the name of a small wedge used to cleave rocks and mountains.

Sissel Lillebostad is working mainly as an curator, writer and artist. Exhibited in separate- and group-shows over the years as well as organised international group-exhibitions. Taking part in several collaborative projects together with composers, choreographers, dancers and writers, both scenic versions and installations. Writing for several national art magazines. I have during the years curated international and local art projects and seminars. A couple of years ago I established together with Anne Szefer Karlsen and Malin Barth a collaborative platform, Curate.no, and we are now producing and curating various art projects in the public space of Bergen and the vicinity. Education: University of Bergen, History of Art (cand. philol), National Academy of Fine Art, Oslo and Bergen. Head of the MA course Creative Curating at Bergen National Academy of Arts. Active in different public organisations involved with city planning.

Åse Løvgren is a visual artist living and working in Bergen, Norway. In her activity as an artist she uses a large span of strategies, having an openness as to how to produce meaning and experience. Her projects include use of photo and video and more curatorial strategies in doing projects and curating exhibitions. In 2003 she started together with Karolin Tampere the collaboration Rakett which has done a number of projects since and has been shown at Gallerie Neugerriemschneider, Berlin, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin, Murmansk Art Museum, Russia amongst other. Løvgren has participated in a number of group-shows and organized projects. She holds a diploma of fine arts, a Bachelor in Art History from the University of Bergen and is currently doing a master in creative curatorial Praxis at the National Academy of the Arts in Bergen.
www.rakett.biz

Camila Marambio (b. 1979, Chile) began her curatorial investigations as a curatorial assistant at Lace, Los Angeles contemporary exhibitions. Later she dedicated her BA Thesis in Aesthetics to the search of a definition of curatorial practice in Chile and accompanied her theoretical work with a series of exhibitions at Espaciocal, a cultural center in Santiago. She went on to get her MA in modern art and curatorial studies from Columbia University and worked as assistant curator at exit art in New York city for two years, Independently she has curated numerous video art programs.

Stefan Mitterer (b. 1983, Zell am See) works with installation, events, music and sound, incorporating contextual and conceptual strategies to explore the structure of presentation and participation. Working in a collaboratively manner, artists, musicians, critics and curators are often invited to take part in the project/work to evolve the problematic of authorship, participation and network. In the field of sound Mitterers work is based around the concept of editing, editing as a tool for adding, excluding and re-working already finished material as well as putting audio work in a position of multi layered authorship. Stefan Mitterer is part of the duo Sex Tags together with Peter Anatol Mitterer, in this collaboration the artistic practice is focused on events, installations, drawing, sound and music. One of the ongoing projects are Sex Tags Mania, a record label which releases collaborative releases and side-projects with a base in techno music.
www.sextags.com

Helga-Marie Nordby (b. 1977) has a Cand Mag in Art History from The University of Oslo, and Master in Curating from Goldsmiths College. Nordby is Director of Young Artists`Society (UKS) in Oslo since 2005. She has curated several exhibitions. Among others: ,"The UKS Biennial 2004", "The Geometry of The Zodiak", "How Imitations Get Cornered by The Real", "Future Primitive", UKS (Oslo), "The Gift", Sparwasser HQ (Berlin), "Imagine The Universe Burst into Song I", Laura Bartlett Gallery (London), "Imagine The Universe Burst into Song II", Momentum Contemporary Art Festival (Moss).

Matt Packer studied on the MA Curatorial Programme at Goldsmiths College, London, from 2004 to 2006, and is currently Fellow in Curatorial Practice at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland. He has curated numerous exhibitions and projects, including the recent 'Overtake' exhibition at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, including work by Kerstin Cmelka, Mark Leckey, Jonathan Monk, and Tilo Schulz among others, also the forthcoming 'Beyond the Country' exhibition, including work by Sven Johne, Adam Chodzko, Bas Jan Ader, and John Bock. He has also curated independent projects, including the recent exhibition 'Ice Trade' at Chelsea Space, London, and 'Electro Harmonix' - a 7 inch vinyl record production featuring audio and visual work by Noah Angell, Florian Roithmayr, Sladjan Nedeljkovic and Einar Sneve Martinussen.

Franz Pomassl, Vienna based sound artist, works with the perception of sound, both conceptual and physically, with his projects that range from infrasonics sound installations, conceptual minimal techno releases and development of electro-acoustic machines and devices. Pomassl is engaged in the deconstruction and expansion of familiar ways of hearing with his installations that often are experienced aural, he explores where the acoustic reception lies, based on infra and ultrasound. Together with Anna Ceeh, Pomassl also runs Laton, a record label for exprimental electronic music and sound art. With Laton Pomassl has collaborated with artists and musicians like Carl Michael von Hausswolf, Mika Vainio, Sex Tags, Petteri Nisunen & Tommi Grönlund and Andres. Pomassl's work has been shown in several exhibition projects on the contemporary art scene such as Manifesta 2, Freq_out and Avanto Helsinki Media Art Festival.
www.laton.at

Rakett is a collaboration started in 2003, between the artists Åse Løvgren and Karolin Tampere. Rakett projects often function as lively, temporary platforms for collaborative, often interdisciplinary, production; we see the role of the initiator/curator to not only to create a framework and a stage but also to bring together different cultural producers, who often have never met before, to create a moment of potentiality. Implicitly and explicitly, our projects touch on a range of questions around (co)authorship, (im)material production, the role of artist and curator, and the potential of mobile and changeable platforms in the institutional infrastructure for art. www.rakett.biz

Dorothee Richter, art historian, author, curator, organised symposiums as Curating Degree Zero – an international symposium on curating, GAK, Bremen;(with Barnaby Drabble) 1998; Dialogues and Debates – feminist positions in contemporary visual arts 1999; The Quintessiental Hold of Images 2001 (with Sigrid Adorf and Kathrin Heinz), The Visuality of Theory vs. The Theory of the Visual, (with Nina Müntmann), was artistic director of Kuenstlerhaus Bremen, 1999-2003, initiated with B.Drabble 2003 Curating Degree Zero Archive, an archive, travelling exhibition and web resource on critical curating , www.curatingdegreezero.org , shown and re-interpreted with artists, curators, designers in: Basel, Genf, Linz, Bremen, Bristol, Lueneburg, Birmingham, London, Berlin, Edinburg, Milano, Seoul and Paris, from 2005 to the present day; research associate “Exhibition Displays” at School of Art and Design in Zurich, Director of the Postgraduate Program in Curating at the School of Art and Design in Zurich. www.curating.org, symposium: Re-Visions of the Display: Exhibition Scenarios, Their Readings and Their Publics, 28th-30th June, Migros Museum (with Jennifer John and Sigrid Schade, upcoming: publication: Curating Critique (ed. Drabble, Richter).

Annette Schemmel (b. 1979, Munich). After studying fine arts and their didactics in Munich, Berlin and Ljubliana, Annette Schemmel has graduated from Munich Art Academy in 2005. She worked as an assistant for Barbara Gross Gallery in Munich and as curatorial assistant at ZKMax Munich in 2004/2005. Since 2006 Schemmel is artist/curator at lothringer13/laden, an experimental art space run by the city of Munich. She took part in the Curatorial Training Programme 06/07 at de Appel art centre. She is currently working for the Munich representation of Sabarsky Collection, Inc., N.Y. From October 2007 onwards she will be obtaining the H + F Curatorial Grant at F.R.A.C. Nord-Pas-de-Calais/France.

Sex Tags is the artist-duo Peter Anatol Mitterer (b. 1982, Zell am See) and Stefan Mitterer (b. 1983, Zell am See), both graduated in Visual Arts from Bergen National Academy of Arts. Working mainly with installation, events, drawing and sound, the focus is on a conceptual and contextual framed execution of their work. The duo also runs the record label Sex Tags Mania, whereby they invite artists and musicians on collaborative releases, live performances and side-projects, additional text projects with invited writers are also published in paralell to the releases.
www.sextags.com

Henk Slager, PhD. studied philosophy, art history and semiotics. He is Dean of the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (www.mahku.nl), its professor of Artistic Research, and tutor Theory in the postgraduate Curatorial Training Program of De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam. Henk Slager also works as an independent curator, is a board member of EARN (European Artistic Research Network) and general editor of MaHKUzine, Journal of Artistic Research.

Karolin Tampere (b. 1978, Estonia, based in Norway) has an BA in Visual Arts from Bergen National Academy of Arts (2005) (including exchange periods at Contemporary Art Centre by Joseph Backstein in Moscow and Interdisciplinary studies by Jaan Toomik at Estonian Art Academy (EKA) in Tallinn). Together with artist Åse Løvgren she initiated the ongoing collaboration Rakett (2003-), which is a mobile platform for various activities ranging from curatorial practice to initiating our own collaborative artistic projects. The Rakett projects often function as lively, temporary platforms for collaborative, often interdisciplinary, production; where the role of the initiator/curator is to not only to create a framework and a stage but also to bring together different cultural producers, to create a moment of potentiality. Implicitly and explicitly, the projects touch on a range of questions around (co)authorship, (im)material production, the role of artist and curator, and the potential of mobile and changeable platforms in the institutional infrastructure for art. Karolin Tampere has been curating independently since 2002. In 2006 she started 'I LoveYourWork' at Landmark, the new media space of Bergen Kunsthall, Norway. This project is a series of performances focusing on artists working in a hybrid formate, in the crossover fields between music and visual art practice.
www.karolintampere.com

Magdalena Ziólkowska (b. 1981, Poland) has graduated in Art History at Warsaw University and is a PhD student at the Graduated School of Social Research (Warsaw). Her domain of research deals with museums discourse and creation of public sphere in Europe after 1970. She was curatorial assistant in foksal Gallery Foundation in 2002-2005 working on projects with Felix Gonzales-Torres, Santiago Sierra, Paulina Olowska & Lucie Mckenzie, Jeanne Faust, Monika Sosnowska, Goshka Macuga, Wilhelm Sasnal. She curated some solo projects with Cezary Bodzianowski (PL), Valie Export society (ES), Ryan Gander (UK/NL) and group projects like „It’s What Cicles Inside‘ (Zakret Gallery, Warsaw 2005 and exhibition of Polish artists for Artpool, Budapest (2005) Currently she is responsible for a web-base art database www.bazasztuki.art.pl and, as guest curator, she prepares a project for Van Abbe museum Eindhoven.