Some Like It Cooler

Ritika Biswas (b. 1995, Kolkata) is a nomadic curator and artistic researcher whose praxis enmeshes eco-criticism, experimental aesthetics, and forms of justice. She holds a Liberal Arts degree from Yale-NUS College and an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge. She was a curator at New Art Exchange Gallery, Nottingham (2019-2021), co-curator of the fifth iteration of Museum Without Walls, and Artistic Director for the 2021 Sea Art Festival, ‘Non-/Human Assemblages’, for the Busan Biennale. She has curated significant exhibitions such as ‘—scape’ at Project 88 Gallery Mumbai (2025), ‘Spectres of Our Own Making’ at Gwangju Biennale (2024), ‘Nine Nodes of Non-Being’ at 421 Arts Campus Abu Dhabi (2023-24), and the collaborative research platform ‘Littoral Chronicle’ (2023-ongoing) among others. She was the 2024 Curator in Residence at Fondation Fiminco in Paris and the 2022 International Research Fellow at MMCA Seoul.

Pony Books is a Gothenburg based cooperative bookshop specialising in independent queer and arts publishing. They will have a table in the café selling printed material connected to the conference theme.

Johnny Chang (b.1988 US-TW/SE) is a Stockholm-based interdisciplinary designer, artist, and researcher working across visual communication, graphic design, publishing, lecture performance, and writing. His practice engages with the sense-making (and breaking)—or poetics—of visual language and material culture, nourishing collective capacities for sensing, feeling, and being. 

Chang’s artistic practice and research attends to questions of care, access, and tactics for gathering, listening to resilient knowledges from below that emerge from diaspora liminality, community memory, and social movement archiving. Through a citational practice, he works with the re/de/composition of material and symbolic-discursive residues to reflect on conditions and processes of social reproduction and relation. https://livingwithimages.info/

Sanskriti Chattopadhyay is conducting A PhD in film at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, on decolonial possibilities of cinematic image. She has two post-graduate degrees in Film Direction and Screenplay Writing (Film and Television Institute India, India) and in Literary and Cultural Studies (The English and Foreign Language University, India). She is interested in the cultural heritage of the landscape she was born into which informs her work. She has presented papers on artistic practices as decolonial expression, Alternative spiritualities, Literary studies, cinema studies et al. Her publications include various articles at journals like – Anales de history del arte, Swaraantar, and Caesurae. She has also been a part of several artistic research projects – at the Hungarian School of Fine arts (Budapest), SAAR Gothenburg, Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland (2021), Film University Babelsberg, Konrad Wolf (2020, 2019) and BRICS collaboration with WITS Film and Television, SA and Valand Film Programme, India Chapter (2018). 

Yaw Atuobi (they) is a writer and culture worker currently based in Accra.

Esé Emmanuel (they/she) is a writer, artist, curator, etc. currently based between Iowa City, Lagos & Accra. They work at the intersection of West African cultural history and Black poetics.

littoral zone[s] is a collaborative archival, artistic research, and pedagogy project. Informed by alternative writing and thinking practices, it anticipates, challenges and animates the notion of the coast—both as a geographic/ecological space and an ideological framework—to open up discourses of intimacy, relationality, aesthetic responsibility, and power.

fields harrington (b. 1986) is a Brooklyn-based artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance, video, photography, drawing, and writing. harrington investigates the political, social, historical, and economic forces shaping the production of empirical knowledge, with a particular focus on science. His work critiques how ideologies—such as racism and the enduring financial logic of slavery—have shaped scientific practices that uphold systems of oppression. By revealing the intersections between knowledge production and the abstraction of power, harrington challenges the construction, transmission, and weaponization of knowledge.

harrington has a BFA from the University of North Texas, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and studied at San Antonio Community College. He was a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program. He has presented solo exhibitions at the David Salkin Gallery, KAJE, Petrine, and Y2K Group. He has exhibited in group shows at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Parsons School of Design, 52-07 Flushing Avenue, and Automat Gallery. fields harrington was an L.A.B. researcher in residence at The Kitchen in collaboration with The School for Poetic Computation and participated in the research residency Site to be Seen at RAIR.

Jessica Hemmings is Editor-in-Chief of PARSE.

She studied Textile Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and Comparative Literature (Africa/Asia) at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Edinburgh is published under the title Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth (kalliope paperbacks: 2008). She is editor of In the Loop: Knitting Now (Black Dog: 2010), The Textile Reader (Berg: 2012 / second edition Bloomsbury: 2023) and author of Warp & Weft (Bloomsbury: 2012). Her editorial and curatorial project Cultural Threads (Bloomsbury: 2015) was accompanied by a travelling exhibition Migrations (2015–17).

Jessica edited PARSE Journal issue 18 Thinking in Motion and co-edited issue 19 Powers of Love with Jyoti Mistry, issue 15 Violence: materiality with Ole Lützow-Holm and issue 11 Intersections with Kristina Hagström-Ståhl and Jyoti Mistry. Recent writing includes the Afterword to Humanitarian Handicrafts: History, Materiality, Trade (Manchester University Press: 2024), “Toward a Minor Textile Architecture” in Entangled Histories of Art and Migration (Intellect: 2024) and “Crafting Extremes in Andreas Eschbach’s The Hair-Carpet Weavers” in Text/Techne (Bloomsbury: forthcoming). From 2020-2023 she was the Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands and is currently Professor of Craft at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and Professor II at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Hsuan Hsu received his PhD in English from UC Berkeley. He is a Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, where he works in the fields of American literature and culture, environmental humanities, critical ethnic studies, sensory studies, and cultural geography. His publications include Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge, 2010), The Smell of Risk (NYU, 2020), Air Conditioning (Bloomsbury, 2024), and articles in journals such as American Literary History, ISLE, Panorama, Camera Obscura, and Jump Cut. He has on the editorial or advisory boards of several journals, including Literary Geographies, American Literature, Genre, Multimodality and Society, and Venti: Air, Experience, Aesthetics. He has received fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He is currently completing a short book on Olfactory Worldmaking and co-editing (with Ruben Zecena) a special issue of Senses and Society on the topic of Migrant Sensoria.

Jamie Hudson is an artist and DJ based in Gothenburg.

A resident of NTS Radio for the past decade, he hosts Sendspaace, a show of exploratory, panoramic mixes that explore the margins where sounds meet.

A regular fixture in Gothenburg’s nightlife, Jamie brings his hybrid musical sensibility to club residencies and events across the city and beyond.

Onkar Kular is Professor of Design at HDK Valand, Academy of Art & Design, University of Gothenburg. His practice has been disseminated internationally through commissions, exhibitions, education and publications. He has guest-curated exhibitions for The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, Karachi, and the Crafts Council, UK. He was Stanley Picker Fellow in 2016, Artistic Director of Gothenburg Design Festival in 2017, Co-Artistic Director of Luleå Art Biennial in 2022 and curator of the sonic festival, Bass Cultures, How Low Can You Go! Falkenbergs teater, Sweden in 2023. He is the co-editor of Urgent Pedagogies Journal Issue #6, Earthed Imagination (2023) and Urgent Pedagogies Journal Issue #9, The Right to design (2024).

Elizabeth is an artist, educator and research director. Her interdisciplinary practice utilises new media, oration and public programming to interrogate post-tropical environments, psychospiritual traditions and the neo-gothic.

She has exhibited work at V&A Museum (London, UK), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai, CN), Asian Film Archive (Singapore, SG), Espace Niemeyer (Paris, FR), Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (Taipei, TW), Nguyen Art Foundation (Saigon, VN), Jimei x Arles (Jimei, CN), Sinema Transtopia (Berlin, DE), UNSEEN (Amsterdam, NL), Foto Tallinn (Tallinn, EE), DECK (Singapore, SG), Photo London (London, UK), Odessa Photo Days (Odessa, UE).

She is an Associate Lecturer who teaches cross programme in the School of Media and Communication at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.

Dr Jacina Leong is an artist-curator, educator and researcher engaged in critical processes of community engagement, arts leadership, cultural strategy, and curatorial practice.

From 2023 to 2024, Jacina was Acting CEO/Director for Next Wave, a leading not-for-profit arts organisation that, since 1984, has played a pivotal role in supporting early-career practitioners working across multiple art forms. She is the former Co-Director of Bus Projects (2021–2022), Public Programs Curator at The Cube (2012–2017) and Ipswich Art Gallery (2009–2011), Gallery Manager at Jan Murphy Gallery (2011–2012), Creative Producer for the Creative Industries Precinct (2008), Sessional Academic and HDR supervisor at RMIT University and La Trobe University (2020–2023), mentor for the ACMI CEO digital mentoring program (2022), and co-founding member of the Guerrilla Knowledge Unit (2017).

Jacina is currently Co-Chair of Bus Projects, a Sessional Academic at RMIT University School of Art Industry Advisory Committee, and guest curator for La Trobe Art Institute.

Erin Marberger, Director of Climate and Sustainability, Anchorage Museum
Simonetta Mignano, Climate Initiatives Coordinator, Anchorage Museum

The Anchorage Museum is a museum for people, place, planet, and potential, in service of a sustainable and equitable North, with creativity and imagination for what is possible. It is a place of ideas and transformation, narratives and perspectives, resilient and relevant communities, responsive to a rapidly changing world toward a better future for all. The Anchorage Museum sits on the traditional homeland of the Eklutna Dena’ina. The museum is committed to recognizing and celebrating the culture and language of the Dena’ina people.

Gerrie van Noord is an editor/curator of publications and educator who has been involved with PARSE Journal since 2016. Her practice focuses on publications as sites for articulation in relation to both artistic and curatorial practices, and she is particularly interested in expanded understandings of collaboration. For Artangel she produced the ‘Afterlives’ publications (1997–2002) and for Book Works she commissioned the ‘Fabrications’ series of co-publications (2006-09). She was managing editor of the critical anthologies The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice?(2016), How Institutions Think: Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse (2017) and Curating after the Global: Roadmaps to the Present (2019), as well as Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art (2022). She worked with Olivia Plender on the book Rise Early, Be Industrious (2016) and a website of the artist’s entire body of work (2021) and edited Curling Up with Reality (2021), a selection of Isabel Nolan’s writing. Moist recently she co-edited Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life (with Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 2023), Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (with Paul O’Neill and Elizabeth Larison, 2024) and Curious (with Paul O’Neill, 2024). Gerrie was a Visiting Lecturer on the MFA at the Glasgow School of Art (2003–15), Associate Lecturer on the MA Arts Policy & Management at Birkbeck, University of London (2006–19) and is now Tutor (Research) on the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. She has a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London (2021).

Parsa Sanjana Sajid is a writer, researcher, and cultural practitioner. She works across disciplines spanning digital, visual and literary cultures, social spaces and movements, migration practices, and gender justice. Her writings have appeared in the Funambulist Magazine, Migrant Journal, Caravan, New Internationalist and March among others. She is working on an upcoming co-edited volume on national imaginaries to be published by Routledge and has an upcoming text-video essay on spatial and temporal negotiations around mazaars in the […] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research. Most recently she curated a group show titled Disquietous (November—December 2024) on the imbrication of data, corporeality, digital and physical spaces at Kalakendra in Dhaka, Bangladesh and a multi-venue Palestinian film series called Cinema Palestine Bangladesh (December 2024) also in Bangladesh. Previously she developed an oral history project on the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent focusing on emigres from India to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).

Sara Sassanelli is co-founder of Alice Agency and Associate of CONDITIONS studio programme. Until 2024, they were Curator of Live at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) where they programmed across dance and electronic music, with a focus on emerging artists. Their work explores collective and enthusiastic cultures that form around raving and how these manifest in multidisciplinary practices. Their most recent ICA programme, this dark gleam (2024), showcased artists engaging with formal technique, social dance, pop culture, and punk sensibilities. Currently, they are collaborating with Eve Stainton, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Billy Bultheel, and Jose Funnell, among others. Previously, they have worked at Tate, Goldsmiths, and the Royal Academy of Arts, and have programmed events at Ormside Projects, Somerset House Studios, Southwark Platform, Guest Projects, Arts Admin, Fierce Festival, and Block Universe. They programme across dance and electronic music.

Recent programming includes: NX FUIMO by Tamara Alegre (2024), GONER by Malik Nashad Sharpe (2024), Afterlife by Louis Schou Hansen (2024) IMPACT DRIVER by Eve Stainton (2023), minus one series (2022 – 2023), Dykegeist by Eve Stainton (2021), The Last Breath Society by Martin O’Brien (2021), Rave Trilogy by Rebecca Salvadori (2020) The Tender Interval: Studies in Sound and Motion (2020), a convening exploring the transformational qualities of sound and dance practices and an all-night takeover of ICA by collective INFERNO (2020 & 2023).

Based in Malaysia, Wen Di Sia is a writer and researcher with an interest in Indigenous arts and culture, particularly in topics such as Indigenous knowledges, cosmologies, and eco-critical thoughts. She was trained as a journalist, spent 10 years in the advertising industry, and now dedicates herself as a collaborative partner to Indigenous Malaysian (Orang Asli) communities through her collective, Gerimis Art. In 2018, she started Gerimis Art, a collaborative artistic and archiving collective that co-produces artworks and cultural content with Orang Asli contemporary artists, artisans, and communities. Together with Orang Asli collaborators, the collective showcases Peninsular Malaysia’s indigenous histories, traditions, and ecological wisdom via artworks, photography works, publications, installations, workshops, and exhibitions. Through their body of work, the collective strongly advocates for the Orang Asli’s customary territories and the return of these lands to their custodianship.

Cara Tolmie spends much of her time oscillating between contexts as an artist, musician, performer, DJ, pedagogue and researcher. Her practice at large investigates the complexity of the bind between the voice and body – of how voice can traverse internal and external realities of both the sounder and listener and how it can research various qualities of embodiment, both pleasurable and disorienting. She is currently finishing a PhD at Konstfack, Stockholm, in critical sonic practice. 

Marina Otero Verzier is an architect and researcher whose work sits at the intersection of critical spatial practices, ecology, technology, and activism. In 2022, she received the Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize for a project on the future of data storage. She is a Lecturer in Architecture at Harvard GSD and Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York, where she leads the ‘Data Mourning’ clinic, an educational initiative focused on the intersection between digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe. She collaborated with the Supercomputing Center of the DIPC to develop alternative models for storing data, such as the project Computational Compost, first presented at Tabakalera. Otero was also invited by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation to participate as an expert in the development of Chile’s first National Data Centers Plan, together with “Resistencia SocioAmbiental – Quilicura” and other local communities on the front lines of extractivism. Otero was the Head of the MA Social Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven (2020-2023) and  Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (2015 to 2022). She  has curated exhibitions such as ‘Wet Dreams’ at Mayrit, CentroCentro (2024), ‘Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction and Rebellious Mountains’ at Galería Municipal do Porto (2023), ‘Work, Body, Leisure’ at the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), and ‘After Belonging’ at the Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016).  Otero is the author of En las Profundidades de la Nube (2024), a book on data storage and sovereignty in the AI era. The book proposes new paradigms and aesthetics for data storage, integrating architecture, preservation, and digital culture.  She has co-edited Automated Landscapes (2023), Lithium: States of Exhaustion (2021), More-than-Human (2020), Architecture of Appropriation (2019), Work, Body, Leisure (2018), among others.

Elsa Casanova is a designer and artistic researcher exploring the structures that shape our cultural imaginaries, using image production, object hacking and performance as her main research/production tools. She has recently been an artist-in-residency in Matadero developing The Banality of Talking about the Weather, an investigation on the influence of meteorological representations in our relation with the climate crisis. The project has been awarded by Barcelona Crea and Sala d’Art Jove grants, and has been presented in TBA21 and Miró Foundation.

Víctor Betriu is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Wageningen University, where he critically analyses the concept of responsible innovation through Simondon and Derrida. His academic interests revolve around deconstruction and poststructuralist thought in relation to the philosophy and ethics of technology. He also has experience in critical and speculative design practices at DOES Work.

They have been collaborating to explore the productive tensions between philosophy and art.