Guest Curators

Ronald Bal is a visual artist mainly focusing on live art, storytelling, installation and lens-based media art. His work deals with danger and fragility in intimate systems and natural events. Inspired by social exchange, health, cyborg, history and ecology in the field of anthropology, he is currently focusing on the organic body and digital text. His work often leads to installations where repetition of images and body movement are combined to support its narrative structure. Ronald has been awarded with the 'Best of Graduates" exhibition at Gallery Ronmandos in Amsterdam and the first prize at LISFE artist competition in Leiden, and has done post-academic residencies at Dundaymorning@EKWC in Oisterijk and at C. Rockefeller Center for the Contemporary Arts in Dresden. His work is exhibited in several museums and project spaces including MAAT Museum, CODA Appeldoorn, the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Kunsthalle im Lipsius-Bau in Dresden, National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Grimmuseum Berlin, Goethe-Institute Niederlande and Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun. Festivals he particiapted in include Venice International Performance Art Week, Dhaka Live Art Bienniale, Performance Art Oslo, and Creature Live Art Kaunas. Bal graduated BA from ArtEZ in the Netherlands as a visual artist. He is the founder of the Open Performance Academy and Performance Art NL in Rotterdam and co-curator of P.S. Performance Site in The Hague. Learn more about Ronald on his website: https://www.ronaldbal.com/

Laine Kristberga is an art historian and researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Latvia. She holds a PhD from the Art Academy of Latvia. Currently her doctoral thesis, "Intermedial Appropriation as a Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Performance Art in Latvia in the Period of Late Socialism (1964-1989)" is being turned into a monograph that will be available in both English and Latvian. Laine also works as an assistant professor at the University of Latvia and teaches at the Art Academy of Latvia, Riga Stradins University, and Riga Business School. Her scholarly interests cover art, culture, and politics during the Cold War period. As director of the Latvian Centre for Performance Art, she is responsible for organizing the international performance art festival Starptelpa on an annual basis. Laine has contributed essays to several publicatons, among them Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere (Routledge 2018), which includes her chapter "Performance Art in Latvia as Intermedial Appropriation."

Claudia Brazzale is a scholar, choreographer, performer and teacher originally from Italy. Her performances and interdisciplinary collaborations have been presented at different venues in the US, Italy, and the UK (among others at Joyce SoHo, Dixon Palace, 92nd Street Y, DIA Center for the Arts, PS 122 in New York, Festival Fabbrica Europa in Florence and the Capstone Theatre Festival in Liverpool). Claudia has taught at Liverpool Hope University, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Princeton University (Lewis Center for the Arts), Rutgers University (Women's and Gender Studies Department), and the University of California - Los Angeles (World Arts and Cultures Department) and has held positions as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University (IRW) and the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Analysis at London South Bank University. In 2010-11, Claudia was the recipient of a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Association of Women to support her research at Rutgers University. Claudia holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master in Performance Studies from New York University. She is Programmer Leader of the University of East London's MA program "Contemporary Performance Practices."