ResearchResearch

Sandi Hilal is an architect, artist, and educator who has developed a research and project-based artistic practice that is both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. Together with Alessandro Petti, she founded Campus in Camps, an experimental educational program in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. Currently, she holds the position of Lise Meitner Visiting Professor at Lund University Department of Architecture and the Built Environment. Additionally, she serves as the Co-Director of DAAR, Decolonizing Architecture Art Research, an architectural and art collective co-founded by her in 2007 with Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman in Beit Sahour, Palestine. Her work with DAAR earned her the prestigious Golden Lion for Best Participation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2023.

Renan Laru-an (born 1989, Berlin/Sultan Kudarat) is a researcher, curator and the artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study ‘insufficient’ and ‘subtracted’ images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects. Laru-an is a founding member of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), a recently initiated public institution for contemporary art temporarily housed at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum. Renan has been (co-)curator of the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022); the 6th Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); the 8th OK.Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); and other exhibitions. Laru-an’s was Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International.

RESOLVE is an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across Europe, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment. Much of RESOLVE’s work aims to provide platforms for the production of new knowledge and ideas. An integral part of this way of working means designing with and for young people and under-represented groups in society. Here, ‘design’ encompasses both physical and systemic intervention, exploring ways of using a project’s site as a resource and working with different communities as stakeholders in the short and long-term management of projects. In this way, design carries more than aesthetic value; it is also a mechanism for political and socio-economic change.

Kate Rich is an artist and trader (AU/UK). Since 2003 she has run Feral Trade, a long-range economic experiment using the spare carrying capacity of the art world to transport groceries internationally. Present and recent affiliations include volunteer finance manager at Bristol's artist-run Cube Microplex, system administrator for the Irational.org art server collective, member of the Community Economies Institute, and feral economist in residence with the Sail Cargo Alliance, an assembly of traders, brokers and ship owners looking to revive the ancient art of running cargo on wind-propelled ships. She is also a member of the FoAM network of transdisciplinary labs, where her work is concentrated in the emergent research entity of the Institute of Experiments with Business (IBEX). As part of that research, she is establishing the programme of the Feral MBA, a radically different kind of training course in business for artists and others. Her ongoing preoccupation is to move deeper into the infrastructure of trade, administration, organisation and economy.

Aric Chen is General and Artistic Director of the Nieuwe Instituut, the Dutch national institute and museum for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam. American-born, Chen previously served as Professor and founding Director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai; Curatorial Director of the Design Miami fairs in Miami Beach and Basel; Creative Director of Beijing Design Week; and Lead Curator for Design and Architecture at M+, Hong Kong, where he oversaw the formation of that new museum’s design and architecture collection and program.