Manu Arregui 

Manu Arregui (Santander, 1970) lives and works in Bilbao. His artistic practice lies at the intersection of technology, politics, and material sensibility, exploring how forms can operate as devices of thought and affect. Since his earliest works, Arregui has maintained a critical stance, integrating the transformations derived from feminist and LGBTIQ+ struggles into his own aesthetic, attentive to non-normative bodies and genealogies.
He holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Basque Country. His works have been included in important international contemporary art exhibitions and fairs. In 2002, he was awarded the Marcelino Botín Foundation’s Plastic Arts Scholarship, in 2004 he won the Caixa Galicia First Prize for Video Creation and Digital Formats, in 2007 the Altadis Prize for Plastic Arts, in 2014 the Arco Electrónico Award, in 2015 the Propuestas Vegap Award, and in 2018 the BBVA Multiverso Scholarship. His work is represented in the collections of the ARTIUM Museum in Vitoria, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the MUSAC Museum in León, and the Reina Sofía National Art Museum in Madrid, among others.

Mieke Bal

(Heemstede, 1946) Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam and founding director of ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis). Her work, essential to understand the development of literature, art history and visual culture of contemporary times, has approached cultural objects through an interdisciplinary perspective in which literary theory, semiotics, feminism, art history, cultural studies and postcolonial theory come together. His areas of work range from classical antiquity to migratory aesthetics. Among her numerous books are Of What One Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedos Political Art (2010), Loving Yusuf (2008), A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002), Quoting Caravaggio: Contemporary Art, Preposterous History (1999), Reading ‘Rembrandt’: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (1995) or Narratology (1979). In Spanish have been translated, among others, Tiempos trastornados (Akal, 2016), Conceptos viajeros en humanidades (CENDEAC, 2009) or Una casa para el sueño de la razón (CENDEAC, 2007), texts that have been introducing her work in the Spanish and Latin American territory, and that have made her a central reference for Visual Studies in Spanish.

Mieke Bal is also a video artist and her work has been exhibited internationally. Her experimental documents on immigration include A Thousand and One Days, Colony and the installation Nothing is Missing. She sporadically exhibits as an independent curator.

Jana Jan and Genoveva 

Jana Jan is the mutant sound creation and research project of Itziar Markiegi, a transdisciplinary artist, illustrator, and noise artist who experiments and collaborates with different artists on graphic and sound projects and improvisations. Since 2010, she has been exploring noise, error, and feedback as creative resources, combining self-built tools, altered devices, and the involvement of the body in installations and performances. Her practice understands sound, gender, and technology as open and hackable constructions. She has participated in various collective exhibitions and festivals, creating interactive installations and sound performances, and in projects such as Magmadam, Fffist, Emankore, LeunDura, Ruider4…

Genoveva. Professional sound technician and multidisciplinary artist with experience in active projects such as Ligament Amalgamate, Genoveva Ferrocide, RUIDER4, Normal y Genoveva, and Impurezas Art. She has taught creative workshops on topics such as building instruments with recycled and sustainable materials. She is president of Donations Project (Barcelona/Bilbao), an artistic and social association that organizes events, residencies, and activities around sound, performance, and inclusion. Genoveva Visuals is the analog part of the visuals: she creates DIY worlds with objects that connect with sound artists. Her work is a symbiosis between sound and craftsmanship, reminding us how powerful handmade technology still is.

Pol Guasch

Pol Guasch (Tarragona, 1997) is the author of Napalm en el corazón (Llibres Anagrama Novel Prize 2021), which has been translated into a dozen languages: “A world of desire and survival, the aftermath of the apocalypse marked by different languages, a repression difficult to identify and a writing as mysterious as it is beautiful” (Mariana Enriquez). She has written the books of poems Tanta gana (Francesc Garriga Prize 2018) and La parte del fuego (López-Picó Prize 2021). In 2022 he received the Talent on Board Award at the Eñe Festival in Madrid and the 42 Revelation Award in Catalan. The English translation of Napalm in the Heart has been named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker. His latest novel is En las manos, el paraíso quema (Anagrama, 2024).

Diego Marchante

Diego Marchante “Genderhacker” (http://genderhcker.net) is a transfeminist activist, transmedia artist and teacher. D. in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, since 2008 he works as a professor of Audiovisual and Gender Studies at the Facultat de Belles Arts of the University of Barcelona. In 2011 he published Archivo T. A transfeminist and queer archive (http://archivo-t.net), an archive of social movements and artistic practices that have addressed gender issues in the Spanish context from a queer and transfeminist perspective. Her work has been exhibited at Can Felipa, Caixaforum, Fabra i Coats, Sala d’Art Jove, Centre de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona CCCB, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona MACBA and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reinsa Sofia MNCARS. In 2020-21 his project Gendernaut. Queering the 90’s (http://gendernaut.net) was selected in the call for research stays at MNCARS, in the context of the project Our Many Europes – Europe’s critical 90s and The Constituent Museum (OME), beneficiary of the call for proposals of the EACEA of the European Union, and organized by the confederation of European museums L’Internationale. He has published several texts in various books such as Transfeminismos. Epistemes, frictions and flows (2013), Queer barbarisms and other esdrújulas (2017), New (ego). Cuerpos conectados. (2021) and Glossari of Common Knowledge Vol. 2 (2022).

ORLAN

ORLAN is one of the most internationally known French artists.

She is not tied to any material, technology or artistic practice. She creates sculptures, photographs, performances, videos and video games, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and robotics (she has created a robot in her image and likeness that speaks with her voice) using scientific and medical techniques such as surgery and biogenetics. For her they are only means, the idea prevails and the materiality pursues.

ORLAN makes her own body the medium, the raw material and the visual support of her work. It takes place as the “public debate”. She is an important figure of body art and “carnal art”, as she defined it in her 1989 manifesto.

Her commitment and freedom are an integral part of her work. She defends innovative, questioning and subversive positions in all her work. ORLAN constantly and radically changes the data, which overturns conventions and “prefabricated thinking”. He opposes natural, social and political determinism and all forms of domination, male supremacy, religion, cultural segregation and racism, etc.

Always mixed with humor, often parodic or even grotesque, his provocative artworks can shock because they shake the pre-established codes.

ORLAN won the E-reputation award, which designates the most watched and followed artist on the Web.