Who we are

The Cyposium was organised by a loose collective of artists and researchers working in the field of cyberformance – live performance that uses the internet as a performance site, connecting remote players and audience via telecommunications technology in lively real-time events.

During the CyPosium, some of the organising team took visible roles such as facilitating and moderating discussions, and stage managing the event. There were also many less visible but equally important roles such as documentation, publicity, maintaining the web site and technical support and training for the platforms.

Those involved in the organisation included:

Thanks very much to DIT (Katarina Đorđević Urošević, Jelena Lalić & Milan Đurić) for design work and Martin Eisenbarth for web hosting and tech support.

Bios

Annie Abrahams has a doctorate in biology from the University of Utrecht and a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Arnhem. In her work, using video, performance as well as the internet, she questions the possibilities and the limits of communication in general and more specifically investigates its modes under networked conditions. She is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. Abrahams creates situations meant to reveal messy and sloppy sides of human behaviour, to trap reality and so makes that reality available for thought.

Christina Papagiannouli Born in Greece in 1985, London-based theatre director and musician Christina Papagiannouli gained a Degree of Harmony at the age of 17. The next year she entered the Drama Department of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) where she studied for five years on different theatre’s specializations. In 2006 she studied as an exchange student (Erasmus) for one year at the Drama Department of University of Kent. In 2009 she finished her music studies with a degree in Violoncello and she returned to United Kingdom, in order to start her MA in Theatre Directing at University of East London. Today she is concentrating on her practice-based PhD at UEL with thesis title: Etheatre Project: Directing Political Cyberformance.

Helen Varley Jamieson is a writer, theatre practitioner and digital artist from New Zealand, based in Germany. She holds a Master of Arts (Research) from Queensland University of Technology, investigating cyberformance – live performance on the internet – which she has practiced for over a decade. She is a founding member of the globally-dispersed cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision, a co-founder of UpStage, an open source web-based platform for cyberformance, and co-curator of online festivals involving artists and audiences internationally. She is also the “web queen” of the Magdalena Project, an international network of women in contemporary theatre.

Suzon Fuks is an intermedia artist, choreographer and director exploring the integration and interaction of moving image through performance, screen, installation and online work. Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship recipient from 2009-2012, she is Copeland Fellow & Associate Researcher at the Women Studies Research Centre at the Five Colleges, Massachusetts from August to December 2012. Suzon is co-artistic director of Igneous since 1997, founding-member of ActiveLayers, and the initiator and co-founder of WATERWHEEL.

Nathalie Fougeras is a media artist, performer, art director who lives and works in Sweden. She holds a post-graduate in Arts Décoratifs in ENSAD Paris (ARI – interactive research workshop of the National Art School) and studied at Université Paris 1 and Paris 8 Hypermedia and the Arts (Doctor of Science, Technology and Aesthetics of Arts). She was the producer of the “Stream On You” event in the Digital Center for  Media Art in Brussels. Since 2012 she is the art director of streaming festival HÖRLURSFESTIVAL  for live performance in Sweden and is co-curator for the network Upgrade Östersund-Stockholm. Nathalie’s artwork explores a critic reading of the media that shifts the reading into an installation or performance. In Nathalie´s installation acts are about the dispersion as well as the attraction-repulsion for ubiquity.

Katarina Đorđević Urošević was born in Bel­grade, Ser­bia and grad­u­ated from the Acad­emy of art in Novi Sad, in paint­ing. She has com­pleted a first year within Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Post­grad­u­ate Stud­ies at the Depart­ment of Dig­i­tal Art at the Uni­ver­sity of Art in Bel­grade and holds a cer­tifi­cate from the  IT Acad­emy of Dig­i­tal design. Cur­rently she works and lives in Bel­grade, as an activist, painter, digital artist and web mas­ter … and is try­ing to make new plat­form for web per­for­mances. Kata­rina is a mem­ber of the Inde­pen­dent Asso­ci­a­tion Panel of Art DIT (Dig­i­tal Inter­ac­tive Trip­tych) and edi­tor of  “Izlazak” (an inde­pen­dent jour­nal­is­tic intel­li­gence web­site of cul­tural devel­op­ments in the region and the world) and intended site “Ogledalce” for small busi­nesses (also the data­base of com­pa­nies and adver­tis­ing space).

Vicki Smith is a visual media artist and educator from a remote region of Aotearoa/NZ. She works to link communities of practice, developed the distance education school WestNet and is especially interested in how connectedness can aid development through assiduous use of art, science and technology, especially for youth. Vicki is one of the original members of Avatar Body Collision, who instigated the cyberformance venue UpStage and she creates, teaches and co-curates the annual festivals there. In her virtual as well as her real life she is exploring new technology to observe connections to the old and is on a creative exploration of sailing, celestial navigation and the paths of early voyagers to these lands. Vicki is volunteer on the West Coast Kete community story project, and trustee for Sailing for Sustainability and the Aotearoa Digital Arts Network.