Viktor Misiano. Born in Moscow in 1957. From 1980 till 1990 he was a curator of contemporary art at the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. From 1992 to 1997 he was the director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CAC) in Moscow. He curated the Russian participation in the Istanbul Biennale (1992), the Venice Biennale (1995, 2003), the São Paulo Biennale (2002, 2004), and the Valencia Biennale (2001). He was on the curatorial team for the Manifesta I in Rotterdam in 1996. In 1993 he was a founder of the Moscow Art Magazine (Moscow) and has been its editor-in-chief ever since; in 2003 he was a founder of the Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship (Amsterdam) and has been an editor there since that time, as well. In 2005 he curated the first Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2007 he realized the exhibition project Progressive Nostalgia: Art from the Former USSR in the Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Prato (Italy), the Benaki Museum, Athens, KUMU, Tallinn, and KIASMA, Helsinki. From October 2010 he is a Chairman of the International Manifesta Foundation. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki University for Art and Design. He lives in Moscow (Russia) and Ceglie Messapica (Italy).

Dora Hegyi is curator, living in Budapest. Organizer of exhibitions and events in institutional and non-institutional context. Between 1996-2003 curator at the Ludwig Museum Budapest, since 2005 program director of tranzit. hu. In this framework running exhibition, discursive, educational (Free School for Art Theory and Practice) and research projects in local and international collaboration. Selected exhibitions: 2002 Budapest Box. Hidden Scene of the 1990s (co-curator), 2003 Moszkva Ter (Gravitation), interational exhibition in public space, 2004-2005 Tell a Line what a Sphere is (series of work on paper exhibitions), 2006 Stage, Auditorium Backstage (curated by tranzit.org), 2008 curator of Periferic 8 Biennial 8 (Art as Gift) in Iasi, Romania, member of tranzit.org curatorial team of Manifesta 8 in 2010.

Ieva Astahovska (1979) is an art scholar, critic and curator. She is working in the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (since 2005), where she leads research projects about contemporary art writing (Tresspassers. The Art of the 80s, 2005, research on Latvian Soviet period nonconformist heritage, 2009–2010, publication 90ies. Contemporary Art in Latvia). She has lectured and published texts about contemporary art in art press and catalogues and written the book School about history of Janis Rozentāls Rīga Art High School (Neputns, 2006). She was co-curator or the exhibition And Others. Movements, Explorations, Artists in Latvia. 1960–1984.

Mari Laanemets (PhD) is an art historian and researcher at Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Recent projects include the exhibition and publication Environment, Projects, Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972-1985 at the Estonian Museum of Architecture, 2008, with Andres Kurg, There Life Would be Easy at Art Laboratory Berlin, 2008, and the exhibition of Amy Croft at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, 2011. She is the author of numerous essays on contemporary art, amongst others on Mladen Stilinovic in his book On Money and Zeroes (Revolver, 2008), and on Geometry and Utopia in the book Symbolic commissioner (Sternberg Press, 2011).

Andres Kurg is an architectural historian and researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He is the coeditor of Environment, Projects, Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972–1985 (Tallinn, 2008). He has published articles in Journal of Architecture, Interiors, A Prior Magazine and contributed to exhibition catalogues on the post-Socialist urban transformations and spatial conflicts. His current research looks at the architecture and design of the Soviet Union in the late 1960ies and 1970ies, in relation to technological transformations as well as changes in everyday life.

Linara Dovydaityte ( Kaunas) (PhD in art history) is a lecturer and vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas. She writes on art and politics under the Soviet regime, Post-Soviet memory politics in museum practices with a particular interest in the critical culture theories including feminism. She has (co)edited several collections of essays (including Performing History from 1945 to the Present, 2010; Art and Politics: Case-Studies from Eastern Europe, 2007, and On Art Criticism: Fictions, Fears, Solutions, 2004) and exhibition catalogues-readers (including Lithuanian Art 2000–2010: Ten Years, 2010; Emission 2005/2006 – CAC, 2007, and Emission 2004 – CAC, 2005). From 2002 to 2010 she worked as a curator and co-editor of the quarterly CAC Interviu: conversation about art at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius.

Mark Allen Svede’s essays about Latvian art, visual and material culture have appeared in books published by NYU Press, Berg, Macmillan, Rutgers University Press and Latvijas Vēstnesis, as well as in numerous exhibition catalogues, journals and encyclopaedias of art and culture. For ten years he served as the acquisitions advisor to the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, now at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University. In addition to working as a residential architectural designer and running a tree farm, Svede teaches in the Department of History of Art and the Film Studies Program at The Ohio State University.

Sven Spieker teaches in the Comparative Literature Programme; the Department of Art and Art History; and the Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in European modernism, with an emphasis on the Eastern European avant-gardes, contemporary art – with an emphasis on Eastern Europe -, and critical theory. Spieker has published on topics ranging from the Russian avant-garde (Malevich, Rodchenko, Dziga Vertov) to late 20^th-century art in Russia and Western Europe (Ilya Kabakov, Boris Mikhailov, Marcel Duchamp, Martin Kippenberger). His essays and articles have appeared in German, Russian, Swedish, Polish and English. Spieker has organized several international conferences (most recently, The Office in the Studio: The Administration of Modernism at the University of Jena, Germany). Spieker’s latest book publication focused on the archive as a crucible of European modernism (The Big Archive, MIT Press, 2008). Spieker is the editor of ARTMargins (www.artmargins.com).

Vit Havranek is a theoretician and organizer based in Prague. Since 2002 he has been working as a director of the initiative for contemporary art tranzit.cz. Since 2007 co-founder of tranzitdisplay, resource center for contemporary art, lecturing Contemporary art at the AAAD, Prague. He was a member of tranzit.org, one of the three curatorial teams of Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010).

He has curated and co-curated exhibitions amongst which are: Manifesta 8; Monument to Transformation, 2007-2010, Centro Monthermoso Vitoria, Spain; City Gallery Prague, CR; tranzit workshops, Bratislava, Slovakia, Le Plateau, Paris and other locations ; tranzit – Auditorium, Stage, Backstage, Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2006, I, series of exhibitions in three acts, Secession, Vienna, Austria; Futura, Prague, tranzit workshops Bratislava, 2006; Definitions of Everyday Prague Biennale 2; 2005; Lanterna Magika, Espace Electra Paris, France 2002; Jiří Kovanda, DUMB, Brno, CR, 2004 and others.

He is an Associated Editor of  jrp | ringier art publisher (tranzit series: Atlas to Transformation, Jiří Skála, Kateřina Šedá, Jan Mančuška, Jiří Kovanda and others), edited and co-edited books and catalogues Autobiographies, 2006; The Need to Document, 2005; Lanterna Magika, 2002; action, word, movement, space, 1999. He has written for contemporary books, catalogues Manifesta 8, Silvana Editoriale, 2010; Promesses du passé, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010; Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art, Sternberg Press, CCS Bard, 2009; Voids, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Bern 2009; Right About Now, Valiz, 2007; Yves Klein, Centre Pompidou, Springer Wien New York, 2007) and art magazines (Umělec, Springerin, Flash Art, Manifest Journal and others).

Jelena Vesic is a Belgrade based independent curator, art critic and editor. Her theoretical and practical research is dedicated to the politics of representation in art and visual culture, practices of self-organisation and examination of (institutional) conditions of (cultural) work. Her curatorial practice often experiments with frameworks, methodologies, contextual and collaborative aspects of presentation of art. Her recent curatorial projects include: Lecture Performance, Museum of Contemporary Art and Koelnisher Kunstverein, Cologne-Belgrade, 2009/2010; Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art: RETROSPECTIVE 01, Museum 25th of May, Belgrade, 2009; No More Reality: Crowd and Performance presented in Depo (Istanbul) and De Appel Institute for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam, 2008/2009; The Case of Students’ Cultural Centre – Belgrade in the 1970s, shown in ŠKUC (Ljubljana), Galerija Nova (Zagreb), CCA/pro.ba (Sarajevo), Salon of Museum of Contemporary Art(Belgrade), Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe) and Transit (Budapest), 2008/2009.

Jelena Vesic is also the editor of Prelom Journal and member of Prelom kolektiv (www.prelomkolektv.org).

Piotr Piotrowski (Poznan) is a professor ordinarius at Art History Department, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, which he chaired between 1999-2008. He also was the co-editor of the annual journal Artium Quaestiones (1994-2009), Director of the National Museum in Warsaw, 2009-2010, and Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Museum in Poznan, 1992-1997. Visiting Professor at Humboldt University (open contract: 2011-2012), Warsaw University (2011), the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College USA (2001), Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2003), and Central European University, Budapest (2002, 2009). He was a fellow – among others – at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, Washington D.C. (1989-1990), Columbia University (1994), the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ (2000), Collegium Budapest (2005-2006), and the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2009). He is the author of dozen books including: Meanings of Modernism (1999, 2011), In the Shadow of Yalta. Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, (2005, 2009), Art after Politics (2007), Agoraphilia. Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe (2010), and Critical Museum (2011). For his scholarly achievements Piotrowski received among others Jan Dlugosz Award for the best book of the year (In the Shadow of Yalta), Krakow 2006, and Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory, Barcelona 2010.

Eda Čufer (Ljubljana) is a dramaturge, curator and writer, whose essays on theatre, dance, and visual art have appeared in many books and journals. She is a founding member of the art collective NSK. During the 1990ies she worked extensively with NSK’s visual art unit, the Irwin group, on a number of conceptual projects, and edited several books relating to those projects, including NSK Moscow Embassy: How the East Sees the East, Transnacionala (Highway Collisions Between East and West at the Crossroads of Art), and (together with Victor Misiano), Interpol: The Art Exhibition Which Divided East and West. She also collaborated with the international dance group En-Knap based in Ljubljana; and the performance and visual artist Marko Peljhan and Project Atol. Between 2002 and 2004 she co-curated the exhibitions In Search of Balkania (Neue Galerie/ Graz) and Call Me Istanbul (ZKM/Karslruhe). Her essay on dance notation systems appeared in the book Chronotopographies of dance published by Emanat in 2010. She is in the process of finishing a new book, Art as Mousetrap, with the support of a grant from the Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation. This new project concerns the Shakespearean “stratagem of mousetrap”, and its relevance for contemporary performative and activist art. She has been living in the United States since 2005, where she is an adjunct professor at the Maine Collage of Art.

Amy Bryzgel received her PhD from Rutgers University in 2008, where she specialised in Non-conformist Art from the Soviet Union. In 2004, received a Fulbright grant to spend one year in Latvia doing research for her doctoral dissertation. She remained in Riga until 2009, when she moved to Scotland to begin a position as a Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where she currently teaches courses modern and contemporary art. She has just recently completed her book manuscript titled Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia and Poland since 1980, which is forthcoming with IB Tauris. Her paper will present case studies from her book that situate Latvian and Polish performance artists both locally and globally within the genre of performance art.

Stella Pelše (b.1972) is art historian and critic, since 1993 researcher at the Institute of Art History, Latvian Academy of Art. Has studied at the Latvian Academy of Art, Art History Department (1990–1996), PhD for the research “History of Latvian Art Theory: Definitions of Art in the Context of the Prevailing Ideas of the Time (1900–1940)” (2004, publication in 2007). Contributor to the long-term project of Latvian art history on the internet. Research interests: art theory, history and criticism, aesthetics, contemporary art. Publications: scientific papers in magazines and compilations of articles; exhibition reviews in the daily newspaper Diena, Visual Arts Magazine Studija, catalogues and internet resources.

Epp Lankots (Tallinn) is an architectural historian and a researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Institute of Art History. Her principal research interest is the material culture and architecture in Estonia during the Soviet period. She has written on social differentiation in the Soviet domestic sphere and nomenklatura apartment houses in Tallinn in Quo Vadis Architectura? Architectural Tendencies and Debate from the late 1930ies to early 1950ies (Helsinki, 2008). She has also published articles on the problems of cultural heritage of the Soviet period and she is one of the initiators of a national programme for valuing the 20^th century built heritage. Currently she is working on her PhD dissertation about the historiography of modern architecture in the Soviet Estonia and its possible critical readings. She has published related articles in Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi/Studies on Art and Architecture.

Barbara Büscher is professor of media studies / intermediality at the Academy of Music and Theatre Leipzig. She has published numerous essays on independent theatre, postdramatic live art, performance theory and media art, art and technology. Since 2009 her research focuses on questions of historiography of performance and media art and on performance / performing archives. She is copublisher of the online journal MAP – media / archive / performance (www.perfomap.de/current ). The second edition “Decisions and Appearance” includes her contribution on intermedia and performance in GDR.

VilnisVējš, Mag. art. – art critic, artist and curator. In 1994 he graduated the Latvian Academy of Art, he has also studied stage directing at the Latvian Academy of Culture in 2002. In the 90ies he worked as a stage designer for theatre plays at the National Theatre of Latvia, Daile Theatre and others. From 2000 – 2004 Vējš expressed himself as a painter. He has also been the curator of several exhibitions. He has published reviews and essays in the newspaper Diena, visual arts magazine Studija (in 2008 the editor-in-chief), compilations of essays and catalogues. He is a researcher of Latvian nonconformist art in the Soviet Period and was the head curator of the exhibition And Others. Movements, Explorations and Artists in Latvia. 1960 – 1984 in Riga Art Space (2010. Since 2010, Vējš has been a PhD candidate at the Latvian Academy of Culture with a thesis on Latvian experimental theatre in the Soviet Period.

Anu Allas is an art historian, working as a lecturer and researcher in the Institute of Art History at the Estonian Academy of Arts and preparing the doctoral dissertation focusing on the interpretations of the notion ‘play’ in Estonian theatre and art of the 1960ies. She has written articles on different phenomena in Estonian art during the Soviet period and on contemporary art. Her main research interests include neo-avantgarde art and theatre in the former Eastern bloc countries during the 1950ies –1980ies, as well as play and performance theories.

Iliana Veinberga (1984) is an art historian, free-lance curator and journalist. Currently she is a PhD student at the Art Academy of Latvia researching Industrial vehicle design in Latvia, which is a continuation of her Master’s thesis on industrial vehicle design in the Soviet Latvia (1941-1990). Her main academic interest is the history of Latvian industrial design and its interrelations with other forms of material culture (folk art, craft, applied art, etc.) in the context of broader social and anthropological structures.

In parallel to the academic research she works as a freelance manager culture-orientated projects deliberately avoiding working for any particular institution in long-term and curates art activities of diverse forms and in collaboration with independent artists, specialists from other fields of knowledge (biologists, philosophers, etc.), governmental institutions, nongovernmental organisations, etc.

Maija Rudovska (1982) is an independent curator and art historian from Latvia, based in Riga. In her research she deals with architecture of the Soviet era in Latvia and its relationship with stylistics, politics and social sphere. She has previously curated/co-curated such projects as Regard: Subversive Actions in Normative Space (Moderna Museet, Sockholm, 2010), Hardijs Ledins (1955-2004) - Zeitgeist and the atmosphere of a place (Riga Art Space, Riga, 2009), Candy Bomber - Young Latvian Painting (Latvian National Art museum, Riga, 2007/2008), etc. Rudovska holds a Master’s degree in Arts obtained at the Art Academy of Latvia and a Bachelor’s degree in pedagogy of visual art obtained at the University of Latvia. She completed Curatorlab curatorial studies at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, year 2010, and started working on her PhD thesis at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Marija Dremaitė holds a PhD in History of Architecture (2006, thesis on Industrial Architecture in Lithuania in 1920-1940) and is a lecturer at Vilnius University. She was employed as an historian of architecture at the Centre for Cultural Heritage in Vilnius. Her research focuses on the industrial history and architecture, modern architecture, urban planning, and social and technological contexts of modern architecture. She was a researcher at the Nordic-Baltic research project „Industry and Modernism“ where she investigated political planning and architecture in the Post-War Soviet Baltic States. She  has written (with colleagues) a book „Architecture in Soviet Lithuania“ (publication forthcoming in 2011).

Zsuzsa László is a researcher, curator, and art critic based in Budapest,Hungary. She is doctoral candidate in Art Theory at the Eötvös Lóránd University, Budapest. She has currently been involved in various projects of tranzit. hu, such as “Art Always has its Consequences” (2008-2010). Previously she taught at the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (2008-2009) and the Institute for Art Theory and Media Studies, ELTE, Budapest (2005-2007). She was the assistant curator of Periferic 8 (2008), worked for the Studio of Young Artists (2006-2008), and as an art mediator (2004-2006). Her research interests are institutional critique, text based artworks, exhibition history and theory.

Sándor Hornyik born in 1972 and graduated in art history and aesthetics in 1999 at Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest. He got his PhD-degree in art history in 2005 with a thesis on the relationship of avant-garde art and modern natural sciences (It was published as a book in 2008 entitled “Avant-Garde Science”). Recently, he deals with theoretical issues concerning the field of visual culture and visual studies, and writes articles on contemporary art and film as well. In 2007-2010, he was a postdoctoral fellow of János Bolyai Grant. Now he is preparing his second book entitled “Aliens in a Sin City. Art Histories and Visual Cultures” that deals with the mutual relationship of critical theory, entertainment industry, and contemporary art. He works for the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Dovilė Tumpytė (1978) is a senior curator of the Art Information Centre of the National Gallery of Art (a subdivision of Lithuanian Art Museum) and a lecturer at Vilnius Academy of Arts. She was (co-)curator of exhibition and education projects in Lithuania and abroad, including the International exhibition of film and video art A Million And One Days (2010, NGA, Vilnius), video screening programs Body. Gestures, Postures and Beyond (2010), At the Speed of Architecture (2009, NGA, LT), Young Baltic artists exhibition Space Oddity (2009, Lille, FR), young Lithuanian artists’ exhibition Down the Rabbit Hole: Meeting the Familiar (2008, Rael Artel Gallery: non-profit project space, Tartu, Estonia; 2009, Riga Art Space, Riga) etc. In collaboration with other partner-institutions she co-curated and organized the international seminar and workshop series for art specialists Three Uses of the Knife (2009, 2010, Vilnius), a series of guided tours by artists and theoreticians Histories&Meetings (2009, 2010, NGA), ran curator-in-research program and platform for discussions (Who is afraid of the curator?) (2008-2009, Vilnius) and others.