Keynote Speakers

Mark V. Campbell

DJ, Scholar & Curator

Mark V. Campbell (markvcampbell.ca) is a DJ, scholar, and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations, hip-hop archives, and notions of the human. He is currently the Principal Investigator in the SSHRC-funded research project, Hip Hop Archives: The Poetics and Potentials of Knowledge Production, and founder of Northside Hip-Hop Archives. He is also the founder of The Afrosonic Innovation Lab, a team of artists, creatives, and scholars engaged in sound experimentation, music-making, and musicological analysis across the African diaspora. As a Curator, Mark has had shows at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Toronto), The Prince Takamado Gallery (Tokyo), Âjagameô (Ottawa) and Canada House (London). As a DJ, Mark has performed in Vienna, Austria, Kingston Jamaica and Tokyo, Japan in addition to 17 years on radio in Toronto.

His recent books include the monograph Afrosonic Life (2022), the co-edited essay collections We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel (2020), and Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production with Murray Forman (2023). Campbell is Associate Professor of Music and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He holds Research Fellow positions with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence and the Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada.

Helen Yung

Artist, Researcher, Consultant

Helen Yung (helenyung.com) leads the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence, and is an inter/transdisciplinary artist-researcher. Her practice ranges from bold experiments in What Art Knows, to creating, designing, and curating installations, interactions, interventions, exhibitions, and performances. What Art Has To Offer Immigration has successfully helped new immigrants and refugees become employed full-time in their fields of interest in Canada.

What Art Has To Offer Astronomical Thinking is an ongoing collaboration with theoretical astrophysicist Dr. Gurtina Besla and New York-based artist Samita Sinha. What Art Has To Offer ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies) is her latest project, which begins July 2024 in collaboration with medical director Dr. Chaula Mehta.

Yung has held artist-researcher positions with the Culture of Cities Centre, Dreamwalker Dance Company, and the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is a Salzburg Global Fellow, and a former board member for Social Innovation Canada and the Centre for Social Innovation.

Panelists

Matilde Cassani

Matilde Cassani moves on the border between architecture, installation, and event design. Her practice deals with the spatial implications of cultural pluralism in the contemporary Western city. Her works have been exhibited in many institutions, including Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York (2011); Biennale Architettura di Venezia (2012, 2014, 2018); Victoria and Albert Museum (2015); Oslo Triennale (2016); Chicago Architecture Biennale (2017); Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018); and Triennale di Milano (2019). Cassani currently teaches at NABA in Milan and at UNIBZ in Bolzano. Her works are showcasedin several museum collections including Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MAXXI in Rome, and Franz Hals Museum in Haarlem.
Website

Alessandra Ferrini

Alessandra Ferrini is an Italian London-based artist, researcher, and educator. Her practice is rooted in lens-based media, postcolonial theory, memory and critical whiteness studies, and historiographical and archival practices. She explores the enduring legacies of colonialism and Fascism, with a specific interest in the past and present network of relations between Italy, the Mediterranean region, and the African continent.

Ferrini's work encompasses various mediums and approaches, including installations, essay films, performance-lectures, and pedagogic and collaborative projects. She investigates Italian foreign and racial politics, notions of resistance, and self-reflexive and positioned cultural activism. She is the winner of the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022 and the 2017 Experimenta Pitch Award at the London Film Festival. In 2024 she is contributing to the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

Mauro Martino

Mauro Martino is an Italian-American artist, designer, and researcher renowned for his pioneering work in the integration of art, data, and artificial intelligence. As the founder of IBM Research's Visual Artificial Intelligence Lab and Professor of Practice at Northeastern University, Martino has had a significant influence on the fields of data visualization and AI art. Notably, his recent project "Strolling Cities," showcased at the 2021 Venice Biennale, marked the first artistic instance of poetry readings transformed into real-time film, highlighting the relationship between language, technology, and visual art. Further exemplifying Martino's groundbreaking approach are his exhibits 'NFT Revolution' (September 2022) at MEET | Digital Culture Center in Milan, 'Exercises in Style' (March 2023) displayed at the BCA Center in Burlington, and 'Milano - Factory of Future in Ars Electronica' (Linz) and Milan at Malpensa Airport (September 2023) These exhibitions represent compelling intersections of AI text-to-video technology and music.

Rebecca Moccia

Rebecca Moccia is an artist whose transdisciplinary practice explores the materiality of perceptive and emotional states that can emerge from specific social and spatial characteristics.

Rebecca Moccia’s works have been exhibited at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Guarene), International Short Film Festival (Oberhausen), Fondazione ICA Milano (Milan), Jupiter Woods (London), Fondazione Prada (Milan), Italian Cultural Institute (Brussels), Fondazione Morra Greco (Naples), Mazzoleni (London-Turin), Museo Novecento (Florence), MACRO (Rome), among others.

Between 2021 and 2023 Rebecca Moccia gained major international recognition for her work such as the international research grant issued by the Italian Ministry of Culture (Italian Council X - DGCC) for the project "Ministry of Loneliness," a collaboration with Magazzino Italian Art (New York), Outset (London) and Nanzan University (Nagoya); the ArteVisione Prize 2022 promoted by Careof, and the OGR Award, promoted by Fondazione CRT in the context of Artissima fair 2023.

In 2024, she will represent Italy at the 15th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) with a pavilion curated by Soik Jung. Rebecca Moccia is among the founding members of AWI - Art Workers Italia.

Moderator

Matteo Augello

Matteo Augello is a historian and lecturer based in London. His first monograph, Curating Italian Fashion: Heritage, Industry, Institutions (Bloomsbury, 2022), investigated corporate institutions and fashion exhibitions in Italy. Since 2023, he has been managing the programming of fashion events at the Italian Institute of Culture in London. He regularly works with museums in Italy, such as Palazzo Morando in Milan, and sits on the board of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como.

Lars Ebert

Lars Ebert is the Secretary General of Culture Action Europe (CAE), the leading European network of cultural networks, organisations, artists, activists, and academics. CAE maintains an ongoing dialogue and knowledge-sharing between the European cultural sector and policymakers.

In his previous roles as co-director of the cultural centre H401 in Amsterdam and deputy director of ELIA, Lars developed a specific interest and experience in participatory practices and art-based research that fuel his belief in the transformative role of culture toward more sustainable societies.

Recent publications include "Artistic Research as Productive Archiving", in Productive Archiving. Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities, edited by Ernst van Alphen (Amsterdam 2023), and European Academy of Participation: Benchmarks, Reflections and Challenging Practice on the Interface Between Academia and the Creative Sector (Hamburg 2023).