Focus: Art/Culture
Salvatore Iaconesi
Salvatore Iaconesi was a designer, robotics engineer, artist, hacker, and Principal and Co-Founder of Art is Open Source, an interdisciplinary research laboratory focused on merging artistic and scientific practices to create better communities in the advent of emerging technologies. He was also President at the Human Ecosystems Relazioni Research Center, and Co-Founder of Nefula, Italy's first Near Future Design studio. A TED Fellow (2012) and an Eisenhower Fellow (2013), his work explored the growing intersection between sciences, technology, and art. As a way of commenting on and interacting with an ever-changing world, Salvatore produced video games, artificial intelligence, expert systems for business and scientific research, entertainment systems, mobile ecosystems, and…
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?Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir?
Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir is the Managing Director of Festa – Centre for CSR and Sustainability in Iceland. She was previously the chair of the board of the Icelandic Technology Development Fund, which supports innovation. She is also the co-director and script writer of the documentary InnSæi—the Sea Within (2016), which explores the art of flourishing, leading and innovating in an age of distraction and transformation. Following the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008, she designed and directed an innovative, cross-disciplinary university program, which was recognized by the Nordic Council for responding efficiently to the needs of today’s labor market. As a consultant, Hrund works regularly for the UN, specifically on gender and…
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Pablo Bereciartua
Pablo Bereciartua is Argentina's Secretary of State for Infrastructure and Water and is Founder and CEO of Bereco SA & Bereco Labs, Inc., a company focused on innovation, technology, and management. He is also the founder of other technology based companies such as B3 and Agro Appgrade SA. In the public sector, he has served as the director of infrastructure for the city of Buenos Aires, where he faced both enormous challenges and opportunities to apply new technologies to city and regional infrastructure. Pablo is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires and former dean at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology, where he focused on teaching and researching…
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Hyppolite Ntigurirwa
Hyppolite Ntigurirwa is an artist, activist, and founder of Be the Peace, an organization focusing on the use of art to halt the intergenerational transmission of hate and to promote the power of cross-generational healing. A child survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Hyppolite continues to promote reconciliation and peace throughout Rwanda. In 2019, he envisioned and conducted the “Be the Peace Walk,” a 100-day performance piece in which he walked across the country in commemoration of 25 years since the end of the genocide. Hyppolite was an international Artist in Residence with Arts Connect International in Boston in 2016. Since then he has worked as Arts Program…
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JIAN Yi
JIAN Yi is an independent filmmaker and food activist. In 2008 he founded the IFChina Original Studio, a citizen participatory media project, and he founded the Good Food Fund in 2017, which leads in promoting transforming China's food system transformation. They also run a Good Food Summit and a Good Food Festival in China every year. Yi's films have won international awards and shown at numerous venues across the globe including New York's MoMA. He made What's For Dinner? in 2009, the first China-made short documentary on meat consumption and its impact on the environment. He also co-founded the Food Forward Forum with Yale Hospitality in 2019. Yi has spoken/taught…
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Mari Bastashevski
Mari Bastashevski is an artist, writer, and a PhD candidate at the NTNU art academy in Trondheim, Norway. Her past works – usually a result of extensive online and field investigations – integrate manifestations of information, photographs, and texts to explore the role of visual presentation in creating and sustaining state-corporate power. Presently, she is engaged in a number of collaborative art and technology research initiatives examining the historical nexus between ecology, technological and cultural, environmental, and political violence. She has exhibited with Bonniers Konsthalle, Maison Populaire, MusĂ©e de l’ElysĂ©e, HKW Berlin, Art Souterrain, Noorderlicht, and has been published in Time Magazine, The New York Times, Courrier International, Le Monde,…
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Mi-Hyung Kim
Mi-Hyung Kim oversees the legal affairs for the Kumho Asiana Group, one of South Korea's largest conglomerates, a responsibility involving oversight of a number of companies involved in the manufacturing, construction, and transportation businesses. As a member of the Kumho Cultural Foundation, Mi-Hyung has helped promote the fine arts in Korea and abroad, and worked to unify and support the cultural community in Northeast Asia. Long committed to a peaceful Korean peninsula, she was instrumental in organizing the 2008 historic performance by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Pyongyang, North Korea.
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Huzir Sulaiman
Huzir Sulaiman works across different media, art forms, and genres telling stories that allow people to access complex ideas in simple, personal, human ways. A celebrated Malaysian-born playwright, his plays include the internationally acclaimed satire Atomic Jaya (1998), which asks what would happen if Malaysia decided to build an atomic bomb, and the award-winning The Weight of Silk on Skin (2011), a meditation on women, beauty, love and loss. He heads Studio Wong Huzir, a creative consultancy, and is a Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre, which the Financial Times (UK) called “a repository of much of [Singapore’s] best stage talent.” Huzir also writes for film, television and newspapers, and…
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Biola Alabi
Biola Alabi is an African media expert with over 25 years of local and global media experience. She is currently CEO at Biola Alabi Media Consulting, a content creation based in Lagos, Nigeria working across the world in broadcast, telecommunications, and digital industries. Biola was listed as one of the 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa by Forbes in 2013. She previously worked with leading brands DSTV, Africa's biggest pay-tv operator, Sesame Street, Bigwords.com, and Daewoo Motors. She oversaw the launch of AfricaMagic Hausa and Yoruba in 2010 and AfricaMagic Swahili in 2011: channels that have made considerable contributions to the promotion of indigenous languages and cultures in Africa. She…
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Marwa Rashid Al-Khalifa
Marwa Rashid Al Khalifa is a Bahraini artist who has a passion for mixed media art and photography. In order to explore and push new artistic boundaries, Marwa incorporates the use of different materials in her pieces, her work broaching a "spiritual aura" that invites the viewer to meditate and embark on a personal journey. Marwa has exhibited locally and internationally. She received the Bronze Palm Award in the Fine Art Category at the 3rd Visual Arts Forum for GCC Artists held in Doha, 2015. She previously worked as Director of The Crown Prince Training Program for Youth where she equipped young Bahrainis with education and training for the workforce….
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