Anadolu Kültür
is a civil initiative, based in Istanbul and committed to fostering mutual understanding through arts and culture, and has been working as an NGO on the sharing of culture and artistic production, focused on community development, participation, and a multi-stakeholder approach. Through the sharing of arts and culture, Anadolu Kültür seeks mutual understanding and sensitivity that can overcome regional differences and prejudices.
http://www.anadolukultur.org

Diyarbakir Arts Centre (DAC)
was established between two cities, Diyarbakir and Istanbul. The centre, based in Diyarbakir, aims to bring the people, artists and creative energies of these two cities together for collaboration on artistic and cultural production. DAC has a mission to promote the works produced by local artists and thinkers whose voices have not been heard over the recent decades. DAC evolved into a stage where artists from all around the globe work together in multicultural and multidisciplinary projects which transcend geographic, linguistic and political divides.
http://www.diyarbakirsanat.org

The Dutch Art Institute (DAI)
one of the Master courses of the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts targets energetic young artists with an inquisitive attitude towards traditional ‘centres’ and their hierarchies, by providing them with a transnational platform for exchange and dialogue with peers as well as with established makers and thinkers. One week per month (11 times per year) students and faculty gather in Enschede or elsewhere and form ‘fleeting collectivities’ where tailor-made connections between artistic practices and private and public domains are developed. By means of its fluid curriculum that integrates theoretical reflection, curatorial knowledge production, ollaborative ‘handson’ projects as well as independent artistic research, the DAI empowers the students critical relations with the (art)world. Thus students can come to their own understanding of what needs to be challenged and reconfigured.
http://www.dutchartinstitute.nl

The National Taipei University of Education
plays an important role in the development of primary education and professional primary school teachers’ programmes in Taiwan. NTUE has been further involved in conducting numerous research projects funded by the Ministry of Education and the National Science Council. This has made NTUE a leading figure in various academic fields, especially in education, arts and music programmes. National Taipei University of Education is an important contributor to the development of Taiwan as an educational center in the Asia-Pacific region.
http://english.ntue.edu.tw/

NIASD
The Netherlands Institute for Academic Studies in Damascus, is a Dutch foundation which aims to advance and maintain academic relations between Syria and the Netherlands. In relation to this the institute also aims to advance and maintain the relations between both countries in the fields of culture and international cooperation. NIASD is administrated by Leiden University and financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University. NIASD is located in Damascus and operates in Syria under the supervision of the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education, on the basis of a contract between that Ministry and Leiden University.
http://www.niasd.org

Zico House
is an open stage (based in Beirut) for everyone who wants to contribute to civil society with a focus on artistic practice. Moustahpa Yamout, an important cultural developer who in 1990 began to stimulate cultural activities, created Zico House in 1999 in the Yamout family estate. It lives on in the activities organized by Moustapha and his collaborator Rola Kobeissi. Zico House produces an annual street festival, hosts debates and exhibitions of contemporary art, NGO s in the need of office space, or, when necessary, offers shelter to refugees.
http://www.libanvision.com/zico.htm

Participants:

Machteld Aardse
is a visual artist living and working in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007. Her works – often interventions in public space – ncorporate a number of different media including drawings, video, performances and projections.
http://www.machteldaardse.nl

Nisren Abasher
is an artist who lives and works in Khartoum. She mostly works with sculpture but also remediates her sculptural works in video and animation projects. She has been involved in a number of collaborative projects in public space in Khartoum after her participation in Here as the Centre of the World in 2007.

Abubakr Abd Elgadir Mohamed Elsayed
is an industrial designer living and working in Elkadrou and Khartoum. In 2007 he participated in both the Khartoum and Enschede workshops of the project Here as the Centre of the World.

Aşkın ADAN
lives and works in Diyarbakir. She works with video, photography and painting. She is currently a master student at Ínönü Üniversty in Malatya (Turkey) and also work as an art teacher at a primary school. Recent exhibitions include the group show entitled Art as a Permanent Dialogue - Language Situations, at Hasan Paca Palace, Diyarkakir, 2008, and The First Uchisar Artist Meeting, at Klaxon Cultural Centre, Istanbul, 2009.

Dagmar Kriegesmann
lives and works in Germany. Her artistic practice centers around sound installations and sound performances. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007 and is currently a tutor at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt.

Seçkin Aydin
lives and works in Diyarbakir. He is a painter who also works with video, installations, and performances. In 2008 he participated in the exhibition Art as a Permanent Dialogue - Language Situations, Hasan Paca Palace, Diyarbakir.

Tammam Azzam
is a painter and graphic designer currently living and working in Damascus, Syria. He graduated in 2001 from the Fine Art Faculty at the University of Damascus. He recently had a show at Ayyam Gallery, featured as part of Ayyam’s recently launched Shebab Project, Dubai, 2009.

Bani Bannwart
lives and works in the Netherlands and Switzerland. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. He works in the fields of painting, mixed media and installation.
http://www.banibannwart.com

James Beckett
was born in Harare (Zimbabwe) and currently lives and works in Amsterdam. He works across various media. Along with being a member of the Dutch based musicians collective N-collective, Beckett has his own registered tartan, the pattern of which is based on vintage digestive experiments: Beckett-Beaumont #7039)
Recent exhibitions include Limburgerhof (the agricultural extractarrangements) at Wilfried Lentz in Rotterdam, and Dalmine (and other industry extract-arrangements) at Luettgenmeijer in Berlin.
http://www.jamesbeckett.tk

Sjanet Bijker
lives and works in Groningen, The Netherlands. After her graduation from the Faculty of Arts Minerva in Groningen, she studied at the Dutch Art Institute, and raduated in 2005 with a specialization in Public Art. Her work investigates the boundaries between art, design, theatre and daily life. She has worked as a programme coordinator and later as a programmer of the artist-residencies at Kunsthuis SYB, the Netherlands, until 2008.
http://www.sjanetbijker.com

Lilet Breddels
is an art historian living and working in Amsterdam. She is director of the Archis Foundation, a cultural think tank dealing with spatial reflexivity and publisher of Volume Magazine. Archis initiates projects and debates all over the world to provide cities in need with clues and concepts to revive the public domain, to re-energize its urban spirit and to revitalize its trust in dialogue as the essence of civic life.

Paula Bugni
is an artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She mainly works with photography. Fascinated with projections, the materiality of light and slide photographs, she incorporates the photographic medium into video and performance. After graduating from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007 she participated in Reloading Images, an interdisciplinary artistic research platform and collaboration project of artists and scholars from Syria and abroad. She currently works as a freelancer for a visual arts web magazine entitled Ramona.
http://www.paulabugni.com.ar

Libia Pérez de Siles de Castro and Ólafur Árni Ólafsson
live and work in Rotterdam and Berlin. They make conceptual and multimedia art. They recently participated in the exhibitions Principle Hope, Manifesta 7 and Be(com)ing Dutch Van Abbe Museum (2008) and had a solo exhibition, Everybody is Doing What They Can, at Reykjavik’s Art Museum (2008). They were also prize winners at the Prix de Rome (NL) in 2009 with their new video work Lobbyists.
http://www.libia-olafur.com

Tony Chakar
is an architect, a writer and an artist with an intense relation, both on an emotional as well as on an intellectual level to Beirut, the city where he has lived since 1968, the year of his birth. His works, including Four Cotton Underwear for Tony: Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, Town- House Gallery, Cairo, also shown in Barcelona (Tapies Foundation) and Rotterdam (Witte de With) as part of Contemporary Arab Representations, a project curated by Catherine David (2001-02); Beirut , the Impossible Portrait: The Venice Biennial (2003); We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask (with Walid Raad), Frankfurt (2003); Various Small Fires: The Royal College of Art, London (2007). Memorial to the Iraq War: ICA , London, (2007) has received worldwide acclaim. He regularly contributes to European art magazines, and teaches History of Art and History of Architecture at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux arts (ALBA), Beirut.

Ali Cherry
is a graduate in Graphic Design at the American University in Beirut (2000). He completed his Masters degree in Performing arts at DasArts, Amsterdam. He mainly works with video and performance. His recent shows include Fantasy for Allan Kaprow, a group show at the Contemporary Image Collective - CIC , Cairo, May 2009.

Lucy Cotter
is co-curator of Here of the Centre of the World. She lectures in Art Theory at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and is a tutor on the Ph.d. Arts programme, a collaboration between the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and the University of Leiden. She is currently completing a Ph.d. in cultural analysis at the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation entitled Curating, Cultural Capital and Symbolic Power. She publishes regularly in international journals and guest-edited a special edition of Third Text focusing on Irish art and culture. She has previously worked as an artist and in organizational and educational apacities in museums and galleries in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

Daniëlle Davidson
lives and works in Amsterdam. She makes drawings, paintings, videos and installations. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. Together with her sister Evelien, she was nominated for the 2008 Black Magic Woman Award with a film on their project about the phenomenon of ‘Birthright’ in Israel.
http://www.danielledavidson.nl

MŶzgin Deniz
is a visual artist living and working in Diyarbakir.

Nikos Doulos
obtained a bachelor degree in painting from the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA ). In 2006 he was awarded with a scholarship in photography from the State Scholarship Institute (IK Y). He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in August 2008 and has been living in the Netherlands ever since. His artistic practice remains diverse and extends from participation in group shows and public space interventions to stage design and art direction. He is currently engaged in a public space project initiated by EXPODIU M platform voor jonge kunst in Utrecht.
http://www.nikosdoulos.com

Maciej Duchowski
is a painter living and working in Warsaw, Poland. He graduated in 2008 from the Dutch Art Institute and is currently working as an assistant teacher at the painting department in the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw. His recent exhibitions include Codzienne Wiadomo´sci, Galeria Łazienkowska, Warsaw, 2008, and Actualni Obraz (The Present Image), Krolikarnia, Warsaw, 2009.

Rik Fernhout
was specialist for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Sotheby’s auction house for almost 14 years. In 1997 he decided to concentrate on painting and writing. He joined the Dutch Art Institute in 2000, first as a tutor, later a course manager. At the DAI he was responsible for the organization of projects such as The Big Communication (Nanjing, China), and the Damascus and Diyarbakir workshops of Here as the Centre of the World.

Lin Fong - Yi
is a visual artist living and working in Taiwan.

Manel Esparbé i Gasca
is an artist, curator and teacher living and working in Amsterdam. He studied at the AKI in Enschede and later joined the programme of De Ateliers, then based in Haarlem. As an artist he produces visual as well as ‘olfactoric’ art. He is head of the DOG time department (the evening school) at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and he recently participated in their teachers exhibition Censored Pornography, De Service Garage, Amsterdam, 2009.

Pascale FÉghali
received her BA and her MA in Sociology of Art from the Sorbonne in Paris. She obtained her Ph.d. in Visual Anthropology at Paris X, Nanterre in 2007. Her thesis was entitled Cinematographic exploration of Sanayeh district in Beirut (book and DVD with a series of documentary films published in 2009). Féghali’s broad professional experience ranges from lecturing at Universities in Beirut to various positions within French and Lebanese broadcasting companies. In 2001 she became the founder and director of the acclaimed Ayloul Festival for theatre, dance and video in Beirut, whose aim is to produce and promote works of young Lebanese artists and present avant-garde works by international artists to a Lebanese audience.

Özkan Gölpinar
was born in Turkey. He lives and works in Amsterdam as a programme manager for the Netherlands Fund for Fine Arts Architecture and Design. Besides that he is active as a consultant in the field of Art and Media. Over the last fifteen years he has worked as a journalist and writer for Dutch newspapers like the Volkskrant and Trouw and magazines such as the Groene Amsterdammer. Gölpinar has published several books, documentaries, essays and theatre plays.

Julien Grossmann
(France) is an artist mainly working in the fields of installation and music, he currently lives and works in Rotterdam. His work triggers the underlying mechanisms of the mediums of sound and image by diverting their representational methods into theatrical settings. He recently participated in an exhibitition during Wieder-Aufbau 5 at HotelBich (Nadine) in Brussels. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008.
http://www.juliengrossmann.com

Prof. Huang Hai - Ming
is a curator, art critic and chairman of The Department of Cultural Industry in the National Taipei University of Education. He is also director of Nanhai Gallery in Taipei. He gained his BA in Fine Arts in 1972 at the National Taipei University of Education. He continued his studies in France, where he graduated as a Master of Installation Art Theory in 1988 and became Doctor of Science and Technology of Art in 1995.

Ghassan Halawani
lives and works in Beirut. His work involves animation, illustration and photography. He recently participated in Le Salon d’Automne at the Musee Sursock, Beirut, 2009.

Rana Hamadeh
is an artist from Lebanon currently living and working in Amsterdam. She received her MFA from the Dutch Art Institute in 2009. In her work, that includes lectures, performances, conversations and installations, she constructs (fictive) relations between historical narratives, images, objects and language. Her work was shown in the Be(com)ing Dutch exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008, and in the Museum-as-Hub series at the New Museum, New York, 2009.
http://www.ranahamadeh.nl

Abdelmoniem Abdallah Hamza
is a painter and sculptor. He graduated from the College of Fine and Applied Arts, Sudan University of Science & Technology. Beside his work as a painter he runs an art gallery in Khartoum and works as a teacher at the College of Applied Studies, Khartoum. He also worked as a facilitator for a number of workshops taking place in Sudan covering issues concerning peace education and mine-risks-awareness (ABRAR ).

Liu Han - Chi
lives and works in Taiwan. He is a video artist. In 2008 he participated in the exhibition Room 19 in Taipei.

John Heymans
studied applied mathematics and philosophy of science, technology and society at Twente University in Enschede, the Netherlands. He researches the philosophy of early electronic music as well as specially made reconstructions of the instruments from this period. He was the first Scholar on Stage at the Department of Modern Art History of Leiden University and has been involved as a staf member in the Dutch Art Institute’s programme since 2003, currently in the role of thesis coordinator. Besides this, he is active as a literary essayist.

Chao Hsin - Yi
is a visual artist, also working as an art teacher in Taiwan. Currently she is doing a Ph.d. at the Department of Architecture at the National Taiwan University of Science & Technology.

Kevin Immanuel
is a poet, writer and artist working mainly with text and performance. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2009. He is currently living and working in Canada. One of his recent performances was shown within the DO LMUS project curated by Emilie Oursel at Nieuwe Vide, Haarlem, 2009.
http://www.kevinimmanuel.com

Erwin Jans
studied Germanic Languages and Literatures (Dutch, English, German) and Drama and Theater at the University of Leuven (Belgium). He worked as a dramaturg at several important theaters in Belgium and Holland. He is currently working as a dramaturg at the Toneelhuis in Antwerpen. He teaches on theater in the programme of Cultural Studies at the University of Leuven. He publishes on literature, theater and culture. His latest book is Interculturele intoxicaties. Over kunst, cultuur en verschil.

Jolanda Jansen
lives and works in the Netherlands. Her practice consists of performance, video and installations. After graduating from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007 she initiated the artist initiative STeC. Her recent exhibitions include l’EAU, a performance with pianist / composer Marlijn Helder, BINK 36, Den Haag, 2008 and Exhibition Nutshuis, organized by Villa Nuts, Platform for young artists, 2009.
http://www.jolandajansen.nl

Khaled Khalifa
was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1964 and holds a BA in Law from Aleppo University. He now lives in Damascus and has written many successful screenplays for TV series as well as for the cinema. He also writes regularly in different Arabic newspapers. To date, he has published three novels. In Praise of Hatred (Amisa, Damascus, 2006), was short-listed for the Arab Booker in 2008. In this novel, set in his native Syria, he narrates the experience of oppression under fundamentalist organisations. Currently he is writing about the war in Iraq and the life of journalists under fire.

Bassam Al Khouri
is a Damascus based visual artist working with video as well as realizing art projects in public space. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2005 and initiated the Damascus workshop of Here as the Centre of the World organized by the Dutch Art Institute. Since 2006 he has been organizing workshops with children in collaboration with the National Museum of Syria, Damascus.

Anna Korteweg
lives and works in the Netherlands. In 2008 she gained her MFA from the Dutch Art Institute. Her work is mainly focussed on drawing. She also uses her drawings for videos and animations. Her work investigates the relation between places and memory. She recently participated in the 2009 Shatana Artist Workshop, organized by Makan House, Amman, and the Triangle Art Trust.
http://www.annakorteweg.com

Kristiina Koskentola
is a visual artist living and working in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007 and works with different media including sculpture, video, photography and installation. The concept of the abject, cultural representations of ugliness, misunderstandings, and memory are issues that reccur in Kristiina’s work. She recently launched her new publication Trans-Actions — On Kristiina Koskentola, published by Thousand and One Publishers, Amsterdam, 2009, in Zendai MoMa contemporary art museum in Shanghai.
http://www.kristiinakoskentola.nl

Ricardo Liong - A - Kong
born in Paramaribo, studied at AKI , at the department of Painting and Graphics. In the middle of the 1980s he started making artist books, which since 1991 are published under the imprint Ambassade van Bukistan. Drawing, making books and installations is his ‘core business’. As a member of staff at the Dutch Art Institute he is active as an instructor of digital tools and as the web manager. He lives and works in Hengelo, near Enschede, the Netherlands.
http://www.bukistan.nl

Gerco Lindeboom
is a cross media artist working and living in the Netherlands. He works with GS M-visuals and makes interventions in urban structures. He is co-founder and project manager of MobileVideoNet. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2006 and was a guest tutor at DOG time, the evening school of the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
http://www.mobilevideonet.com

Ruth Linnemann
an artist of German and Dutch descent currently lives and works in Damascus. In her practice she works with various media and also organized art projects in public space. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2006.

Reine Mahfouz
is a photographer living and working in Beirut. In 2001 she started her Nomadic Studio, an ongoing photography project. Since then, Nomadic Studio has been moving across public spaces, private events, and gatherings. As the Nomadic Studio is contingent upon the space and the people that occupy it, Reine revives and puts under attention old photographic practices that appeared at the beginning of twentieth century.
http://www.nomadicstudio.blogspot.com

Rania Mamoun
is a writer who was born in the Sudan in 1979. She currently lives in Wad Medani and is employed at the Informatics Department at the University of Gezira. Her short stories have been published in magazines (Banipal No 30, 2007) and anthologies of Sudanese literature. She has recently published a book with short stories entitled The Thirteen Months of Sunrise(Azminah Publishing, Amman, Jordan, May 2009)

Rofaida Makki
is a painter living and working in Khartoum. In 2008 she participated in The Return of the Gastarbeiters, an exhibition curated by Noa Treister in Požareva, Serbia.

Bechara Malkoun
lives and works in Beirut. He is an architect and works at Atelier Hapsitus, Beirut.

Astrid Marit
is a video artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007. She recently led workshops for children at the National Museum of Syria in Damascus. In March 2009 she left Amsterdam for a bike ride to China via Kazachstan together with Chris Meighan.
http://www.astridmarit.com

Chris Meighan
is a visual artist working with various media including video, installations, sculptural works and drawings. Aside from art and design, his interests include electronics, music, computer programming, and building things (of many kinds). Prior to his studies at the Dutch Art Institute (2006-2008) he worked as an interior designer, having graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. In 2009 he left the Netherlands for a one year bike ride to China via Kazachstan together with Astrid Marit.
http://www.chrismeighan.com

Tao Mei - Yu
is a video artist living and working in Taiwan. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. Her videos mostly consist of humorous short commentaries on social appearances.

Carlijn Mens
lives and works in Schoorl, the Netherlands. She paints, draws and makes video installations and animations in which she incorporates her drawings. She gained her MFA at the Dutch Art Institute in 2009, in which year she also had a solo show at Ottilia Pribilla Gallery, Antwerp.
http://www.carlijnmens.nl

Jae - min Kim
is a photographer living and working in Seoul, Korea. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. One of his ongoing projects is New Index, a hotographic archive consisting of images that reflect the photographer’s observations of locations conditioned by their different histories and social contexts. This project is an attempt to investigate the possibilities of making a ‘new index’ for ones perception.
http://www.jaeminkim.net

Susannah Mira
is a visual artist currently living and working in Texas. She studied at the Dutch Art Institute, from 2005 to 2006. Her latest sculptural work unites recognizable forms in foreign situations, employing both cast-off materials and humour to highlight dialogues on fabrication and resourcefulness. Not content to work in the isolation of the atelier, her practice is also informed by large-scale collaborative undertakings. These environmental projects are efforts to rethink patterns of everyday life through spatial, ecological, and community oriented means.
http://www.susannahmira.com

Duha Mustafa Mohamed
lives and works in Khartoum. She is a painter, textile designer and printmaker. In 2008 she participated in a workshop organized by the University of Amsterdam and Albogaa theater festival in Khartoum.

Kawa Nemir
is a poet, translator, editor and publisher. He was born in 1975 in I˘gdır, in the far east of Turkey, a town on the border of Armenia, Nakhchivan and Iran. He studied English Language and Literature in Ankara and Istanbul. He now lives in Istanbul, and Diyarbakir where he works for Lîs Publishing House. He has been translating and publishing major works of English, American and Irish poetry, fiction and drama from William Butler Yeats, Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound to The Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare in the Kurdish language. His own poetry has been disseminated so far in three published volumes.

Adamantia Nika
is a video artist living and working in Athens. Her works are mainly visual diaries that narrate in a condensed and poetic fashion her personal daily observations and perceptions.

Hester Oerlemans
is a visual artist living and working in Berlin. Having started as a painter, she focussed in the 1990s on works that are realized at unexpected places in the public domain. A recurring thread in her works is the mixing of different worlds and playful interventions and comments on the daily reality.
http://www.hesteroerlemans.com

Viola Onderdelinden
lives and works in Utrecht and Amsterdam. She studied at the Dutch Art Institute in 2006. She makes installations with different media including sound, light, projection and found materials. Her works are often site-specific. Lately she collaborated in several projects with Stichting SteC, including Flatland in Delft, 2009.
http://www.viola-onderdelinden.nl

Erkan Özgen
is a visual artist living and working in Diyarbakir. He mainly works with video and photography. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions across Europe including Beyond Paradise, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam/NL, The New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, 2008, Article 23, Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana, 2008 and Catching Breath, Stadtkino, Basel, Switzerland, 2008. He is a participating artist in the 11th International Istanbul Biennial, 2009.

Pei (Liu Pei - Wen)
a sound artist born in 1977 and based in Taipei has dabbled in a variety of digital domains, but has concentrated on sound design, composition and streaming video art since 1999. Pei studied at the Sydney College of Art in Australia and her work has been influenced by neo-dada, freeform jazz as well as avant-garde electronic musicians and minimalist painter/composers. She has composed pieces for animation, theatre projects and installations. Pei is currently based in Taipei. Recently she showed her sound installation Syzygy at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, June, 2009.

Scott Ponik
is a graphic designer born in the USA . He graduated from Werkplaats Typographie, ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, The Netherlands, in 2008.
http://www.scottponik.com

R . Radhakrishnan
is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Critical Theory at the University of California, Irvine. He is also affiliated with Women’s Studies, African American and Asian American Studies. Author of Diasporic Mediations: Between Home And Location (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), Theory In An Uneven World (Blackwell, 2003), Between Identity and Location: The Cultural Politics Of Theory (Orient Longman, India, 2007), History, The Human, And The World Between (Duke University Press, 2008), he is currently completing Edward Said: A Contrapunctual Dictionaire (Blackwell 2010) and a collection of essays, When Is The Political? His essays have appeared in a wide range of international journals and collections. He also is the author of a volume of poems in Tamil, Moved, But Not In Time and the translator of contemporary Tamil fiction into English.

Omima Hasab El Rasoul
is an artist from Khartoum. She works as a sculptor and as a restorer at the Sudanese National Museum. In 2002 and 2003 she had solo exhibitions at the Sudanese Studies Center in Khartoum. In 2004 she participated in the Sudanese Ethiopian Friendship exhibition at the German Cultural Center and in 2006 she participated in the Sudanese Exhibition at the Ministry of Culture, Riad, SaudiArabia.

Sónia Ribeiro
lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. She works with photography, video and installation. She studied at the Dutch Art Institute from 2005-2006. Recently she showed her work Deconstructions at the library of Lisbon’s Photographic Archive, 2009. This work, consisting of a series of images relates to her 2008 video Her Geometry that she presented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
http://www.soniaribeiro.com

Bassel Al Saady
lives and works in Damascus, Syria. He is a sculptor and works mainly with iron. His work was presented in the exhibition Damascus Arab Capital of Culture 2008, in the section including the new generation of Syrian artists.

Hrair Sarkissian
is a photographer from Syria currently studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. He is a participating artist in the 11th International Istanbul Biennial,
curated by What, How and for Whom/WHW, 2009.

Julian Scaff
lives and works in the Netherlands. He graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2006 and makes media (video and audio) art, public/ environmental art and lectures in media art. He is head of the Media Communications Department at Webster University, Leiden. Among his latest shows were New Eyes on Landscape, at Zico House in Beirut and Poppy Circles, at Anza Borrego Desert State Park in California.

Gabriëlle Schleijpen
is the course director of the DAI (see under Dutch Art Institute in this section) for which she designs and runs an innovative and engaged programme. As an integral part of her educational concept she initiated Here as the Centre of the World (at its very beginning still unnamed) and later co-curated it together with Lucy Cotter and Alite Thijsen. Next to her position at the DAI she is head of Studium Generale, the transdisciplinary lecture programme of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, for which she curates an extensive line up of interrelated lectures, seminars and field trips. She is also part of the editorial team of The Old Brand New, an interdisciplinary collaboration between several art organizations and institutions, as well as chair of the board of If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, a rolling curatorial platform.

BariŞ SeyÎtvan
is a visual artist from Diyarbakir. He works with video and various other media. In 2009 he participated in the exhibition entitled Personality Crisis at Outlet//Independent Art Space in Istanbul.

Chong Shun - Da
is an artist living in Taipei. He works with mixed media. In 2008 he took part in the section Taking of Photographic Framing, of the exhibition Very Fun Park in Taipei.

Tatia Skhirtladze
lives and works in Vienna and Tbilisi. She graduated from the Dutch Art institute in 2008. She makes her work through analogue and digital art techniques; sitespecific installations as well as performances in public space. Skhirtladze participated in the exhibition GAMES. Their Present-Day Role in Art and Politics, at the Kunsthalle Vienna Project Space, July 2008.

Kamila Szejnoch
is a sculptor living and working in Poland. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. She won the Berlin based Szpilman Award in 2008 - awarded to works that exist only for a short period of time and whose forms consist of ephemeral situations. Her most recent work Holy Machine was shown at Atelier Fribourg-Nord, Switzerland, 2009.
http://www.kamilaszejnoch.com

Huang Ta - Kuei (Steve Huang)
lives and works in Taipei. His practice consists of action art, installation art and graffiti. He recently participated in the exhibition LV(Locality Viewpoint) in Taiwan, at Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taipei (2008).

Iris Tenkink
is based in Enschede and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She obtained her MFA at the Dutch Art Institute in 2007. Her work fuses linguistics, theory, film and video, performance and spatial concepts. Recent projects she participated in include the Aurora festival (2008) in Norwich, UK and Be[com]ing Dutch at Caucus in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2007).

Alite Thijsen
is co-curator of Here as the Centre of the World. She is an artist and law graduate living and working in Amsterdam and educated at the AKI in Enschede and the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden specializing in law and administration in developing countries, migration law. The different aspects of intercultural dialogues and frictions are at the core of her work. As founder of Zet foundation she organised since 1994 a number of international exchange projects in Burkina Faso, China, Canada, United Kingdom, Morocco and Senegal and was invited to participate as an artist in projects in Benin, Egypt, Mali, Morocco and Senegal. Her video Rue Ponty (Dakar, Senegal) was awarded with the juryprize of Hou Hanru at the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennal in Japan (2004). Among other projects and exhibitions she participated in the Be[com]ing Dutch exhibition at the Van Abbe Museum (2008). She also regularly publishes on art and culture in Africa.

Jerlian Tsao
lives in Taipei, Taiwan. She writes, translates and co-owns a small press that publishes Chinese experimental literature and American cyberpunk novels. She is currently working on a book concerning the perception of space in seventeenth century China.

Lui Tsui - Lun
is a visual artist living and working in Taiwan and Germany. She makes video and sound works. Her video entitled This Love was selected to be shown in the 59 Seconds Video Festival launched by Art Project 59, 2009.

Vitto Valentinov
graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2006 with the film Falling on the Fovea, a work made in collaboration with Kristina Ianatchkova. It was shown in the
MuHKa in Antwerp as part of The Projection Project, an international exhibition curated by Mark Kremer, Edwin Carels and Dieter Roelstraete in 2006. Upon his return to Bulgaria he decided to shift his focus from installation and media art to filmmaking and enrolled himself at the National Academy of Film and Theater Arts in Sofia in order to become a professional film director.

Boy Vereecken
is a graphic designer currently living in Brussels. He graduated from Werkplaats Typographie, ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, the Netherlands, 2008. Together with Kasia Korczak he founded a studio that sees graphic design primarily as a vehicle for producing and distribuing content. He is part of the Slavs and Tartars collective.
http://www.korczak-vereecken.com

Pavlina Alexia Verouki
lives and works in Athens, Greece. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2007. Her works involve videos and installations. She recently participated in the Second Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece, 2009.

Marianne Vierø
is a visual artist living and working in Amsterdam. In 2006 she was a student at the Dutch Art Institute. Currently she is a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her work involves photography, installation and sound. Lately it was shown in the Arsenale Novissimo, the Rietveld Arsenale, Venice, 2009.
http://www.marianneviero.com

Emily Williams
is an artist/curator living and working in Haarlem, the Netherlands. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2008. She works with objects, performance and
writing, where these mediums also inform and motivate her curatorial work. In 2008 she participated in the exhibtion PostDordt at the CBK Dordrecht. In 2010 she will be guest curator of Nieuwe Vide art space in Haarlem.
htpp://www.emilywilliams.nl

Xue Mu
lives in Amsterdam and Nanjing, China. She studied at the Dutch Art Institute from 2004-2006. In 2005 she initiated A_C_N (A Childish Nothingness), an on-going visual art project that focuses on her personal living experience, to reveal the unspoken/unspeakable parts of life without addressing them in known forms. The outcome involves groups of drawings, diaries, (found) objects, environments, installations, short animation and video clips. Recently she staged the event A Floating Highway as part of an art in public space project that particulary concerns the Highway A1 in the east of the Netherlands. Four aircrafts produced a ‘flying cloud’ that covered a 130 km long track along the A1 on 30 May 2009.

Chang Yan - De
lives and works in Taiwan. He works with mixed media. The latest exhibition he took part in was the section Talking of Photographic Framing, of the exhibition Very Fun Parkin Taipei.

Raed Yassin
lives and works in Amsterdam and Beirut. He is a video, sound and visual artist, a musician (double bass, tapes and electronics), and a part-time curator. His work is based on themes related to the media, the city, the history of contemporary art, Arabic cinema, pornography, pop culture, disasters, and archives. He is currently is an artist in residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam.

Yen Yitzu
is a performance artist/director, with an MFA at the Dutch Art Institute. Her performance Reflect/ Cover, was shown in 2004 within The Ninth NIPAF Asia Performance Art Series 04 in Japan. In 2008 she produced and directed a group performance Could I Sleep Well? in Enschede, the Netherlands. In 2009, she showed her installation/ performance Tree Hole in Amsterdam upon the invitation of the Amsterdam Bright City performance event Software.

Juhee Youn
lives and works in Seoul, Korea. She graduated at the Dutch Art Institute in 2006 and recently participated in The Moving Public Art Center, a public relational art project in Seoul, 2009.
http://www.iamaartist.com

Yang Zhen - Quei
is a visual artist living and working in Taiwan.