Contributors
Daniele Barbieri
Daniele Barbieri is an Italian semiologist. He is interested in textual analysis and, more generally, in issues concerning visual, image narration and poetry, themes on which he has published twelve books (two translated into foreign languages) and more than 400 articles. He has taught at the University of Bologna (1995-96 and 2001-2009), the University of Rome (1996-98), the University of Urbino (2001-2009), the Polytechnic of Milan (2007-2008), SUPSI of Lugano (2007-2013), the University of S.Marino (2014 to date), at the ISIA of Florence (1996-97) and Urbino (1996 to date), at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna (since 2007, where he is now a permanent member) and the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts of Turin (2012-2013).
www.danielebarbieri.itMarco Bertozzi
Marco Bertozzi is a filmmaker who contributed to the rebirth of the Italian documentary film with a strong commitment to theory and cultural promotion. He has taught Documentary Cinema in Rome, Lugano, Quebec and, currently, at IUAV in Venice. His books constitute important historical-theoretical reflections for a renewed approach to documentary cinema and have been adopted in several film schools and university courses. He has worked as a film curator for exhibitions on Italian cinema, was part of the team that designed the Fellini Museum in Rimini, and was the director of Corto Reale. Gli anni del documentario italiano, a 27-part programme for the national TV station, RAI Storia.
Maria Betteghella
Maria Betteghella is a freelance travel writer based on the Amalfi Coast. She writes non-fictional travel stories inspired by a deep connection with people and places. Her work includes providing in-depth, culture-driven tours and researching sustainable approaches to the travel industry. Maria holds two master’s degrees, one in Philosophy and another in Psychology. She enjoys outdoor Mondays, off-road adventures and chance encounters. You can experience her soulful narratives on her Linkedin Profile.
Gaia Cambiaggi
Gaia Cambiaggi is a photographer whose varied portfolio includes portraiture and commissions to document architectural projects and man-made landscapes. Her work has taken her across Europe, Asia and Central and South America. As a long-standing digital refusenik with an analogue heart, she prefers to shoot on film. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and published internationally in magazines, books, newspapers and art reviews including The New York Times, The Guardian, Domus, Abitare, Rolling Stone and Tank. Gaia holds an MA in Photography from the London College of Printing.
www.gaiacambiaggi.netFilippo Caon
Filippo Caon is a musicology student at the University of Trento. He is also a runner, and writes about sports and mountains. He is a regular contributor to outdoor magazines, for which he has written reportages in France, the United States and other locations in the Alps. In recent years, he has tried to contribute to the Italian ultrarunning scene through the development of informal sports groups and the organisation of independent events, pursuing an open, inclusive and essential vision of sport. He sees long-distance running not merely as a sport but as a cultural fact, through which to tell stories and bring people together.
Enrica Casentini
Enrica Casentini is an Italian artist based in Paris. Her work spans drawing, sculpture and installation, through which she investigates our collective or personal experience of space. She has been awarded prizes and has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including: the Saatchi Gallery, London, Officine Saffi gallery, Milan, Palazzo di Archiginnasio, Bologna, Hackney Museum, London, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje. She was a resident artist at Amfora studio, Finland and Kammerhof Museum of Gmunden, Austria. Her work was recently selected for the prestigious 14th Westerwald Prize, Westerwald Museum, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany.
www.enricacasentini.comInstagram: @enricacasentini
Gaëtan Chevrier
Gaëtan Chevrier is a trained designer and self-taught photographer. He perfected his practice through workshops in Paris and Arles and since 2006, he has been working as an independent photographer. His artistic work focuses on the representation of the landscape and how this is transformed by the human hand. In parallel, he undertakes commissions for architects and urbanists, always maintaining a sensitive and human approach towards built and developing spaces. In 2019, he co-founded with Jérôme Blin the photography publishing house 'Sur La Crête'. He lives in Nantes, and works in France and abroad.
www.gaetanchevrier.comInstagram: @gaetanchevrier
Joey Chin
Joey Chin (1986) is an artist and a Pushcart-nominated writer and poet. Her work is located at the intersection of text, narrative and visual art, staged through poetry, acts and modes of reading, and various disruptions. Her key focus is in the development of personal communications between the self, markings of territoriality, and the inner conversations between the two. She explores etymologies and language use of the Chinese and Greek language through the English lyric and prose. Joey holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong, and her work has received scholarships, grants, and awards from numerous organisations including ArtHub Asia, Asia Europe Foundation, the Royal Over-seas League Arts (United Kingdom), the Dorothy Cheung Foundation (Singapore), the National Arts Council (Singapore), the Run Run Shaw Library (Hong Kong), and the Society for Humanistic Anthropology (US).
www.joeychin.comMaurizio Cinquegrani
Originally from Venice, Maurizio Cinquegrani is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. After the dark and beautiful winter months spent at the Swedish Film Institute all those years ago, and mentioned in this article, Maurizio has written widely about film, memory, history and place and his work includes the monographs ‘Of Empire and the City: Remapping Early British Cinema’ (2014) and ‘Journey to Poland: Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust’ (2018).
Vittorio Curzel
Vittorio Curzel is a psychologist and holds a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Padua. He is author and director of documentary films, RAI radio programs dealing with film music (‘I suoni del cinema’) and with the music of nomadic peoples of the world (‘Canto Nomade. Musiche, parole e immagini di popoli in viaggio’), essays. He designed and coordinated the Centro di Documentazione Visiva of Trento. He was a professor at the Universities of Bologna and Trento and director for the study, research and documentation of the territory, at TSM – Step Trentino School of Management – School for the Governance of the Territory and the Landscape. In 2016 he established the Chorus FilmFactory, a company dedicated to the production of documentary films.
Filmography: 2018, ‘Storie di terre e d’acqua: Adige Etsch’ (German vers. ‘Geschichten von Ländern und Wasser: Etsch Adige’); 2011, ‘Fino a quando …’ (‘Wie lange noch…’); 2006 ‘Nach Dresden’; 2000, ‘Art note book n.1: Paolo Tait’; 1994, ‘Canto dell’arte contro la guerra – To Sarajevo’
Kevin Dyer
Kevin lives in the UK and is Associate Artist for Farnham Maltings, Associate Writer for Theatre Porto, associate for the Welsh Arts Council and Lead Artist for Storm in the North. He was recently digital writer in residence for international writing organisation ‘Writing on the Wall’. He has also been resident writer at Queens Uni, Belfast. He works as a dramaturg and writing mentor, and has won or been shortlisted for many playwriting prizes. These include: Winner of ‘Inspirational Playwright Award’ presented by Assitej International at their World Congress in Cape Town; Winner of ‘Best Play’ at the UK Theatre Awards for his adaptation of ‘The Hobbit’; Winner of the Writers’ Guild of GB ‘Best Play for Young Audiences’ with ‘The Monster Under the Bed’; twice winner, ‘Olwen Wymark Award’ for supporting other writers. He has been long-listed, shortlisted, and published many times as a writer of short prose fiction and as a poet. He has just finished his first novel, ‘Marion’. It’s about being different and struggling to be free – in a quirky, parallel sort of way – because Marion is a cow. He works internationally, most recently in Canada and Australia.
www.kevindyer.co.ukAntigoni Geronta
Antigoni Geronta is an architect and independent researcher based in Greece. She holds a PhD in Architecture (Polytechnic University of Catalunya, 2019) and a Master’s degree in Theory and Practice of the Architectural Project (UPC, 2011). She is co-founder of the association AntiArq established in Barcelona which takes an interdisciplinary approach between anthropology and architecture, conducting classes, workshops and seminars. Using the ethnographic method as an analytical tool of the socio-spatial structure of everyday life, her research and practice are concerned with the hermeneutics of architectural experience through time, childhood, community life, urban conflicts and dialectics of power. She is also a member of the Research Group Observatori Antropologia del Conflicte Urbà (OACU) and Grup de Recerca en Exclusió i Control Socials (GRECS) of University of Barcelona.
Riccardo Giacconi
Riccardo Giacconi studied fine arts at the University IUAV of Venezia. His new solo exhibition will be presented at Grazer Kunstverein, as part of the steirischer herbst festival. His last film premiered at Visions du Réel, Nyon. He is a PhD candidate at PhDArts (Leiden University / KABK Den Haag).
www.riccardogiacconi.comTommaso Gorla
Tommaso Gorla is an Italian artist and researcher. He is interested in visual agency and in the affective role of images within processes of memory and recollection. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from EHESS, Paris. He currently teaches Critical and Contextual Studies at London Met and is an associate lecturer in Anthropology at Accademia Santa Giulia, Brescia.
www.tommasogorla.co.ukPhil Goss
Phil Goss was born in Bristol in 1984. He studied English Literature BA, at Edinburgh University. Later he went on to study Visual Communication MA, at the Royal College of Art in 2013. Goss has had solo shows in London and Athens and has shown at the V&A museum, Evelyn Yard Gallery, Josh Lilley Gallery, Aldeburgh Look out Tower, Geddes Gallery and London Design Festival; designed print for Folk and Paul Smith and has produced bespoke interiors for Alex Eagle, Blacks, Fix126, Santoremedio; and is currently the Director of the Centre for Recent Drawing in London.
www.philgoss.co.ukSarah Gray
Sarah Gray is a Senior Research Analyst for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. By engaging with discourses from different fields Sarah aims to promote interdisciplinary research approaches to Africa. She has an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford and Graduate Diplomas in Arabic and Law. She has lived in London, Paris and Beirut and is currently studying for a PhD in History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Giorgio Guernier
Giorgio Guernier is a film-director based in London. He has a bachelor’s degree in History and a master’s degree in Screenwriting. His documentary feature film, Suburban Steps to Rockland (2017), has been presented at various film festivals around the world, receiving critical acclaim. It has been sold internationally and recently, has been bought by SKY UK. Never A Master Plan, his second feature film and drama debut, is currently in post-production. Giorgio also writes, edits and produces.
www.imdb.com/name/nm6736835Hania Halabi
Hania Halabi is a Palestinian Architect from Jerusalem currently working at Balmond Studio in London, which she first joined as the personal research assistant of Cecil Balmond OBE, to help with his latest research on a new theory of form. Within the studio, she also worked on a collaborative project with Utopia that aims at reimagining the future of slums in Mongolia through the application of emergence theory in planning. In 2014, Hania was awarded Goldsmiths Humanitarian Scholarship to pursue her masters at the Center for Research Architecture where she developed her interest in the interplay between space, power and conflict. In 2015, Hania joined the UK-based team of ‘Open Gaza’ project at Westminster University, pursuing individual research, which inquires into the relationship between Architecture, Time and Emotions. This project was later presented as part of the ‘Architecture, Democracy & Emotions’ conference, held at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin in 2016. Her most recent research entitled ‘Mind the Trap: A Glimpse into Occupied London’ was presented at London Design Biennale in 2018.
www.haniahalabi.comRyland Johnson
Ryland Johnson is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Shreveport. He has more than a decade in service in both public and academic libraries. In addition to performing practical library work, he studies the philosophy of space and place, with emphasis on architecture, libraries, informational spaces, psychogeography, haptics, and flow. He holds an MA in Information Science and Learning Technology (Library Science) from the University of Missouri and an MA in Philosophy from SUNY Stony Brook. All of his photographs were taken on his phone.
Alžběta Kovandová
Alžběta Kovandová is a documentary film director and researcher, originally from Prague, Czech Republic. She is currently based in London, works as a freelance filmmaker and is undertaking a PhD in ‘Film: Practice as Research’ at the University of Kent. Her PhD project lies in between documentary film and anthropology and focuses on the topic of home in London. Alžběta has made several short documentary and experimental films, which were screened at international film festivals and shortlisted for awards such as the best Czech short documentary award or Magnesia Award for the best student film. She has completed her Bachelor’s degree at the Department of Documentary Film at FAMU in Prague and subsequently studied Master of Research in Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University.
www.alzbetakovandova.comUgo La Pietra
Born in 1938, Ugo La Pietra studied at the Polytechnic in Milan, receiving a degree in Architecture in 1964. During this time, he made research on visual arts and music. Architect, artist, designer and researcher in the expansive area of communication systems, he presents his research through works and exhibitions; he has been the editor-in-chief of many magazines, also teaching in various Universities and Art Schools. His works are within important Museums’ collections around the world.
www.ugolapietra.comAlessandro Laita
Alessandro Laita (1979) and Chiaralice Rizzi (1982) graduated in Visual Arts from IUAV in Venice in 2009. From 2010 to 2015 they worked as assistants for the courses of Antonello Frongia, Lewis Baltz and Adrian Paci. Their artistic practice revolves around the relationships between landscape, image, memory and their representation. In their work, which spans various media, images become stories, going beyond the simple visual understanding of them to raise questions around photography as practice. In 2016 they were awarded the Lewis Baltz Research Fund and published their first book with MACK (London). They have received scholarships and residencies as artists in Venice (Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation – Italy), Winterthur (Villa Straüli – Switzerland), Saratoga Springs (YADDO – U.S.A), Paris (Citè Internationale desArts – France). They live and work in Milan.
www.laitarizzi.comMrs Aubrey Le Blond
Dario Li Gioi
Dario Li Gioi was born in Erice (Trapani) and works as a freelance photographer based in Rome. In 2016 he founded L.I.S.A. Collective with Santolo Felaco and Gian Marco Sanna. In his photography, he explores social and anthropological issues. He studied documentary photography at Officine Fotografiche, Rome and continued at WSP Photography, Rome. His work has been published in books and magazines including, L’Espresso, D di Repubblica, Phaidon, Nobel Prize, Witness Journal, Lensculture, Vice Italy, and Click Magazine. His Gymnasium series won first prize at the MIFA sports category in 2015, and has been exhibited in 2016 at WSP Photography, Rome, Italy, and in 2019 at Studio Tiepolo 38, Rome, Italy. In 2021, his work The Hidden Zoo was finalist for the Short Story Award, Festival della Fotografia Etica.
www.darioligioi.orgBárbara Lissa
Bárbara Lissa and Maria Vaz work as a duo since 2017, with the duo PAISAGENS MÓVEIS. Both have a Masters in Arts from UFMG and a trajectory in Literature (UFMG) and Visual Arts (Guignard/UEMG). They deal with the relationship between memory and forgetfulness, from poetic fictions and within the personal and collective universe, having a great part of their works dealing with environmental issues. They were selected by several festivals, among them the Pierre Verger Prize, in Salvador (2021) and the Fest Foto, in Porto Alegre (2022). In 2021 they published the photobook "Três Momentos de um Rio", which was exhibited in several cities, among them Arles, in France. In 2022 they held a solo exhibition at BDMG Cultural/ Brazil, were invited to the exhibition Flesh and Stone, in Timisoara, Romania, and to the exhibition "Cosmopolitics" with national itinerancy. They are members of the platform Women Light and Women Photograph and work with editorial production on the ARCHIVO platform, Portugal-London.
www.paisagensmoveis.comSusana Ljuljanovic
Susana Ljuljanovic was born in Rome in 1987. She works and lives in Bologna, Italy. Her pictorial research explores the features and uniqueness of a person and their identity. Identity is considered through the body that acts as a mediator between us and the world.
www.susanaljuljanovic.comSimone Ludovico
Born in Biella in 1977, Simone Ludovico is an Italian photographer who works as a teacher at secondary school (scuola media). He graduated in Territorial, Urban and Environmental Planning at the Polytechnic of Milan, with a thesis on the relationship between cartography and photography as a means to build specific territorial overviews. Since 2010 he has collaborated with institutions that work with people with mental and physical disabilities, as well as economic and social hardship. In 2013 and 2014 he worked with the Voghera prison conducting photography workshops with inmates. Since 2015, he has worked in different schools (primary and secondary), organising projects concerning the exploration of urban space.
www.simoneludovico.itFantina Madricardo
Fantina Madricardo is a researcher at the Insitute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR- CNR) in Venice, Italy. She obtained a degree in Physics from the University of Padova, Italy and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Hamburg, Germany. In 2008, she was post-doc fellow at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. Her main research topics are applied geophysics and underwater acoustics with focus on seafloor mapping and geomorphology. She is interested in semi-automatic classification of seismic and of multibeam echosounder data for seabed sediment characterisation, benthic habitat mapping and geomorphometric analysis.
Pedro Maia
Pedro Maia is an artist and researcher. He is a Professor in the Drawing Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), and a Guest Professor at the School of Architecture Lusófona University of Porto (ULP). He holds a PhD in Drawing and is presently engaged in an ARS&URBS Research Project connected with the representation of urban panoramas of the Iberic Peninsula with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Granada. Maia has been a practising artist since 1988.
Chiara Martini
Chiara Martini specializes in international migration, and has gained research and social intervention experience in Italy, Bosnia, and Greece along the so-called “Balkan route”.
Marcello Modica
Marcello Modica is an urban planner and PhD, currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Udine. His main research interest is on urban and territorial transitions, with a special focus on the regeneration of former productive sites and infrastructures. Through his research, he promotes the integration of theoretical and design-driven research with professional photography. His scholarly and photographic projects have been published and exhibited internationally.
www.marcellomodica.comAndrea Morbio
Andrea Morbio studied Anthropology at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale in Paris. He has presented artistic and research projects in various museums and institutions, including the 16th edition of the Rome Quadriennale and the Mudec – Museum of Cultures in Milan, with a work on Sarita Colonia. Along with Riccardo Giacconi, he is the author of the RAI radio documentary ‘Il Ritorno del Vendicatore’, on the shortlist for Prix Italia 71. He works as a Content Specialist at Logotel, Milan.
Andrea Mubi Brighenti
Andrea Mubi Brighenti is a professor of Social Theory and Space & Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. His research topics focus on space, power and society. His books include “The Ambiguous Multiplicities: Materials, episteme and politics of some cluttered social formations” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), “Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and “Territori migranti” [“Migrant Territories. Space and Control of Global Mobility”] (ombre corte, 2009). He is the founder and editor of the independent online web journal “lo Squaderno” (www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.net) and has launched the publishing project “professionaldreamers”.
www.losquaderno.professionaldreamers.netEmanuele Nicolotti
Emanuele Nicolotti is an Italian playwright, writer, and design researcher, based in Berlin. He wrote plays and audio performances for institutions like Fondazione TeatroDue in Parma (Italy) and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels (Belgium). His current narrative work focuses on creative nonfiction stories that deal with the relationship between individuals and the social environment in which they exist.
Brian O’Neill
Brian F. O’Neill is a sociologist by trade, and writer/photographer by passion. His work is concerned with issues of urban infrastructure, environmental politics, and mobilities. He currently holds the position of Ocean Nexus Fellow in the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance at the University of Washington. He has published numerous books, articles and essays in both popular and scholarly outlets, such as Nature Water, The Society Pages, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, and many more. In 2021, Brian began his “Transects Sequence” of artist books with Beach Boulevard (published with Immaterial Books), wherein he draws from the scientific tradition of utilizing certain geographic segmentations of territory as a means to social structural, but also affective, investigation.
www.brianfoneill.net
www.immaterialbooks.com
Laura Phillips
Laura Phillips is a Sagittarius, non-smoking artist who lives and works between Bedminster, South Bristol and Southmead, North Bristol. Her work investigates the complexity of obsolescence and precarity as narrative devices. Phillips uses a mixture of photochemical processes, sounds and digital imagery and often makes work through conversation and collaboration. She makes films and plays waterphone in the audio-visual project Viridian Ensemble, who perform live improvised music and images (both digital and analogue) to produce an ethereal blend of film and noise which reimages folklore and femininity. Their recent releases include The Prelude commission for The Quietus and Aerial Festival 2020. Her work has been acquired by the Arts Council England Collection, and previous presentations of her work include at International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020); Supernormal Festival (2019) Oxfordshire; NAWR at BBC Studios Swansea (2019); and Arnolfini (2019/20), Bristol.
www.lauraphillips86.co.ukFrancesca Piazzoni
Francesca Piazzoni is a Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, School of Architecture. Her research explores the politics of public space with a focus on design justice, insurgent urbanisms, and critical heritage. A licensed architect, Francesca started interrogating authenticity by practicing preservation in Italy, Lithuania, and China, where she designed several “fake” towns herself. These experiences translated into a book titled The Real Fake: Authenticity and the Production of Space (Fordham University Press, 2018).
Flavio Pintarelli
Flavio Pintarelli is a writer from Bolzano, Italy. He studied communication, semiotics and image theory at the University of Siena. He focuses on the exploration of digital, visual and urban cultures. He has published for several magazines, including ‘Internazionale’, ‘Prismo’, ‘The Towner’, ‘Rivista Letteraria’, ‘Vice’, ‘Il Manifesto’. He has also authored two books: ‘Su Facebook’ (:duepunti publishers) and ‘Stupidi Giocattoli di Legno’ (Agenzia X).
Giorgio Pirina
Giorgio Pirina is a research fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca' Foscari University in Venice, member of the Laboratory of Social Research (Laris) and collaborator of the Cidospel research group of the Department of Sociology and Economic Law of the University of Bologna. In his research he has dealt with production chains, digital and platform-based labour as well as the exploitation of labour and nature.
Amedeo Policante
Amedeo Policante is a critical theorist and historian of political thought, based between the Brenta Dolomites and the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of two recent monographs: I Nuovi Mercenari: Mercato Mondiale e Privatizzazione della Guerra [The new Mercenaries: The Global Market and the Privatisation of War] (Ombre Corte, 2014) and The Pirate Myth: Genealogies of an Imperial Concept (Routledge, 2016). His most recent project – On Molecular Production – will be published next year by Pluto Press.
Anna Positano
Anna Positano is a photographer and an independent researcher with a background in Architecture and Photography. Her work explores the relationships between landscape, architecture and society. Her projects have been exhibited internationally at events such as as La Triennale di Milano, La Biennale di Architettura di Venezia, Unseen Photo Fair, Camera Torino, Cornell University, and MAO Ljubljana. In 2019 she was the recipient of the production grant of Graham Foundation. Alongside her artistic and research practice, she undertakes commissions for architects and magazines, and teaches Photography at IED Florence.
www.theredbird.orgNuvola Ravera
Nuvola Ravera is an artist and researcher whose research ranges from artistic disciplines to anthropology, psychology, and pedagogy. Through exploring ethno-clinical mediation at the Sagara Study Centre in Pisa, she investigates artistic practice as a means to reconfigure social alienation and subjection. She works with psychotherapists, anthropologists, biologists, and architects and proposes a hypothesis on the psychic residue of places through practises of cohabitation between natural world and man-made landscapes. She has exhibited her work and collaborated with institutions such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Turin, Macro Rome, Transmediale Berlin, Villa Croce Genoa, World Social Forum of Inhabitants Tunis, Ex Lanificio Naples, Atelierhaus Salzamt Linz, Fabbrica del Vapore Milan.
www.nuvolaravera.itRod Rhys Jones
Rod graduated in Civil Engineering from Imperial College London, studying land surveying under the polar explorer Alfred Stephenson. He joined the British Antarctic Survey as a surveyor in 1964 and after a few months updating the map of Stanley in the Falkland Islands, journeyed to the research base of Halley Bay in the Weddell Sea. He was one of the party of ten that travelled to the Tottanfjella in 1965 and then journeyed by dog sledge to the Heimfrontfjella where, with the South African geologist, Lewis Juckes, he discovered leaf fossils which helped to show that Southern Africa was linked to Antarctica in the supercontinent Gondwana about 250 million years ago. After 18 months travelling through the Americas and sailing across the Pacific, he returned to London where he spent a number of years as editor of an engineering magazine and worked with engineering companies GKN and Oscar Faber. In 1978 he set up a management and marketing consultancy. Between 2001 and 2020 he was Chairman of Friends of Imperial College, organising scientific lectures and visits for the public. He is Chairman of the British Antarctic Monument Trust, set up to create memorials to those killed in British Antarctic Territory in the pursuit of science.
If you would like to be alerted to the publication of Rod’s forthcoming books about his Antarctic and American adventures please send him an email rod@rhysjones.com
Hana Riazuddin et al.
Hana Riazuddin is a doctoral candidate in Geography at King’s College London and director of The Body Narratives. Her research reflects on questions of young people’s mental health and wellbeing within the wider debate on urban and social transformation. Twitter: @hanariaz
Hannah Adeniji is a 16-year-old girl who lives in Lambeth and is interested in how her community is changing and how this affects people.
Amina Bouh a 16-year-old girl, lives in Lambeth and is fascinated by her community’s growth and how it has altered the behaviour of the people from her area.
Shamso Ali is a very curious 17-year-old girl who has a great interest in studying neuroscience. She is obsessed about the neurochemistry of the brain and wants to make her own documentaries surrounding the unseen truth about mental health.
Olamide Bamigboye is a 17-year-old girl from South London who is passionate about turning stories into power.
Francess Conteh is a 17-year-old girl and has lived in South West London her whole life. Although she’s moved around a lot, one thing that is prominent in all the areas she’s lived in is the variety of cultures and heritages; she wouldn’t change it for the world! She has a keen interest in music and the environment around her and would like to portray this through her work.
Elizabeth Kuyoro is a 16-year-old girl from South East London, she’s has an interest in her community, the diversity, and the changes within it. She hopes for there to be a change very soon.
Shahani Richards is a young, God-fearing female who is always ready to take on a challenge. She is always willing to explore and try new things and accepts that taking risks doesn’t always guarantee a happy ending.
Amina Sesay is a 17-year-old from South London. She’s lived in the city since she was eight weeks old and just can’t see herself leaving! Her interests include the study of black history, black archives, Anime, travelling, cooking and fashion.
Chiaralice Rizzi
Alessandro Laita (1979) and Chiaralice Rizzi (1982) graduated in Visual Arts from IUAV in Venice in 2009. From 2010 to 2015 they worked as assistants for the courses of Antonello Frongia, Lewis Baltz and Adrian Paci. Their artistic practice revolves around the relationships between landscape, image, memory and their representation. In their work, which spans various media, images become stories, going beyond the simple visual understanding of them to raise questions around photography as practice. In 2016 they were awarded the Lewis Baltz Research Fund and published their first book with MACK (London). They have received scholarships and residencies as artists in Venice (Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation – Italy), Winterthur (Villa Straüli – Switzerland), Saratoga Springs (YADDO – U.S.A), Paris (Citè Internationale desArts – France). They live and work in Milan.
www.laitarizzi.comMili Romano
Mili Romano is an artist and curator. From 1986 to 2020 she taught Cultural Anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Her interests move between literature, video art, photography, installations and public art projects. Her work investigates the memory of places and the processes of transformation and progressive erasure of indoor/outdoor, public and private spaces. Public art projects that she has curated include: Accademia in Stazione (1997-2005), a series of site-specific interventions made by young artists at the Bologna railway station; Container (2007-2008), a mobile public art observatory-laboratory (in collaboration with Gino Gianuizzi); Italia (2011), a participatory project for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy (MAMbo, Bologna); Heart of Stone (2005-2016, www.cuoredipietra.it) a project involving the community and the territory of Pianoro (BO) in a long process of re-appropriation of its history and places.
She has collaborated with the Brown University of Providence and the University of Bologna, and lectured in many Italian and foreign universities and Fine Art academies. She edited the Italian versions of works by M. Bachtin, F. Dostoevsky, A. Puskin, J. Thomson, J. Gracq, R. Daumal. Her publications include: Il Miraggio e la minaccia. Visioni di Pietroburgo in versi e in prosa, CLUEB 1994, Città della letteratura. Immagini e percorsi, CLUEB 1996; aRITMIe. Ultime visioni metropolitane, CLUEB 2003; Cuore di pietra. Quaderno numero uno, CLUEB 2007; Cuore di pietra. Quaderno numero due, Pendragon 2009; Con la città che cambia. Percorsi e pratiche di Public Art, New L’INK 2014, Cuore di pietra/ Lavoro. Quaderno numero tre, Bologna, Fausto Lupetti Editore, 2016.
Silvia Segalla
Silvia Segalla is an Italian researcher and mountain enthusiast who lives and works in different cities in the Veneto region. She holds a Ph.D in Social Sciences from the University of Padua and, since 2015, has been working in an alpine refuge in the Belluno Dolomites.
Ruth Helen Smith
Ruth Helen Smith is an artist based in Devon, England. As well as painting, she runs a gallery, art residency programme and teaches. Working in the medium of oil paint, she is interested in the relationship between humans and the material world: how we shape matter, write meaning into it and are shaped by it.
www.ruthhelensmith.co.ukRalph Steinegger
Swiss photographer Ralph Steinegger has lived in Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, New York, Istanbul, Singapore and now Shanghai. He uses analogue cameras to document mostly cities and show their contradictions, hidden sides and poetry. In 2018 his book “The city with many names” was published by Urbanautica Institute and in 2022 he was shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society's, International Photography Exhibition.
www.ralphsteinegger.comInstagram: @_ralphs_
Mark Stuart-Smith
Mark Stuart-Smith is a visual artist and researcher. He teaches art history at the City Literary Institute, London, and also runs art workshops for homeless adults in central London. Mark completed a PhD on silence in the work of the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz in 2013 (Birkbeck) and holds an MA in Cultural Memory (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London). His main research focus is on the history and memory of Francoism in Spanish art since 1945, and art education and homelessness. Recent articles have included ‘Opticality and Ventriloquism in Juan Muñoz’s The Wasteland (1986)’ (Art History, November 2017), and ‘From Mousike to Synaesthesia: New Interdisciplinary Agendas in Music and Visual Culture’ (Art History, February 2016, 173-181). The text published here relates to an upcoming exhibition of drawings and photographs: Peripheral landscapes: images of rural Spain and Wales. February 19-23, at the Four Corners Gallery in East London.
markstuartsmith.co.ukBrandon Sward
Brandon Sward is an artist, writer, and doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago who lives and works in Los Angeles. He was a quarterfinalist for the VanderMey Nonfiction Prize, was shortlisted for Disquiet International’s Literary Prize, and was an honourable mention and finalist for the New Millennium Writing Awards. He has participated in many residencies, group shows and his first solo show, How the West was lost, opens at Stone House Art Gallery in October 2021. His words can be read in publications such as Flash Art, BOMB, Hyperallergic and Chicago Review.
www.brandonsward.comRaz Talhar
Raz Talhar was born in Malaysia and is a self-taught photographer. After working for over 2 decades as a freelance artist and designer, he now peruses his own personal photographic projects, with particular interest focused on the interactions at play between human society and the natural landscape.
www.raztalhar.comGianluca Tesauro
Gianluca Tesauro learned how to swim in the Amalfi coast, how to design in Milan, how to communicate in London and how to shoot in New York. Now he is trying to do all these things in the same place, but doesn’t know where yet.
www.gianlucatesauro.comChristopher Thomson
Christopher Thomson is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. His work concerns notions of home and the significance of place and landscape, often exploring the marginal spaces that give clues to our contemporary condition. His books include ‘The New Wild: Life in the Abandoned Lands’, ‘Travels Through Absence’ and ‘The Place Between’. The film ‘The New Wild’ premiered at various international festivals in 2017 and is now being distributed theatrically throughout Italy by Tucker film.
www.christopherthomson.netFabio Valerio Tibollo
Fabio Valerio Tibollo (Rome, 1989) lives and works between Rome, Paris, and New York. He graduated in 2017 from Università Iuav di Venezia (IT), concluding his studies in time-based art at UNSW in Sydney (AU). In 2021, he attended a Specialized Master in management of cultural heritage and activities at ESCP Business School in Paris (FR). Over the years, he has taken part in several group shows such as “Elvis Has Left the Building” at Istituzione Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice (2014), “Prologue” at Three Foot Square in Sydney (2015), “Log In” at Darb 1718 Contemporary Art and Culture Centre in Cairo (2016), and “Political Kitchen” at the Society of the Friends of the Virus in New York (2021). Fabio Valerio Tibollo's artistic practice is focused on different uses of photography, but he also experimented with video, drawing, and installation. His works allow us to peek at someone else's daily moments. Usually captured in the streets of the big cities he lives in, those subjects are depicted in moments of simple activities revealing all their humanity.
Giulio Todescan
Giulio Todescan was born in Vicenza in 1981. He graduated in Communication Sciences from the University of Bologna, is a professional journalist, works at the Blum communication agency and collaborates with Corriere del Veneto. He is co-director of the documentaries Good luck, Vicenza (2007) and L’acqua calda e l’acqua fredda (2015) and one of the organisers of Working Title Film Festival. He is president of the association Laboratorio dell'inchiesta economica e sociale – Lies.
Lorenzo Valloriani
Lorenzo Valloriani is an Italian photographer from Florence, where he lives and works. His work focuses on documentary photography concerning man-altered landscapes. He has published for several magazines and journals including, Float magazine, Fotografia Europea, Booooooom, Of the land & us. His was was also included in the publication QP2 (Questo Paese) – an editorial project by Fulvio Bortolozzo.
www.lorenzovalloriani.comInstagram: @lorenzovalloriani
Jérémie Vaudaux
Jérémie Vaudaux is a self-taught photographer. He studied humanities & literature in Lyon and later, a master‘s in journalism in Bordeaux (Institut de Journalisme de Bordeaux-Aquitaine). For the past year, he has been on the road living in his truck. His practice of words and images revolves around the concepts of space and the human perception of it.
jeremie-shanti-vaudaux.frInstagram: @vodoje
Maria Vaz
Bárbara Lissa and Maria Vaz work as a duo since 2017, with the duo PAISAGENS MÓVEIS. Both have a Masters in Arts from UFMG and a trajectory in Literature (UFMG) and Visual Arts (Guignard/UEMG). They deal with the relationship between memory and forgetfulness, from poetic fictions and within the personal and collective universe, having a great part of their works dealing with environmental issues. They were selected by several festivals, among them the Pierre Verger Prize, in Salvador (2021) and the Fest Foto, in Porto Alegre (2022). In 2021 they published the photobook "Três Momentos de um Rio", which was exhibited in several cities, among them Arles, in France. In 2022 they held a solo exhibition at BDMG Cultural/ Brazil, were invited to the exhibition Flesh and Stone, in Timisoara, Romania, and to the exhibition "Cosmopolitics" with national itinerancy. They are members of the platform Women Light and Women Photograph and work with editorial production on the ARCHIVO platform, Portugal-London.
www.paisagensmoveis.comJohn Vincent
John Vincent is an artist based in Letchworth Garden City working with video, photography, digital art and oil paint. Experimentation with digital media has led to further exploration of his interest in technology and the interplay of analogue and digital media often manifesting in surreal and dreamlike imagery and sound. In recent years the subject matter of Vincent’s work has been informed by local history and is usually sourced from archives and other research or from a personal geographical relationship with a location. Alongside this are notions of a contemporary suburban Gothic with elements of horror that touch on science fiction and time travel with a distinctly British feel. These ideas have led to the exploration and representation of eerie atmospheric interpretations of everyday life.
www.johnvincent.co.ukFilippo Vogliazzo
Filippo Vogliazzo (1987) is an artist from Milan currently based in Berlin. He studied Visual Arts at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. His research focuses on the role of objects as parts of our surroundings, and what perception of ourselves they might indicate within a context. He thinks that as products of contemporary technological evolutions, the objects around us are hyper-objects, applications of traditional functionality, addressed by social conventions and employed by power structures that impact on our daily lives. Regulating norms, behavioural patterns, social spaces are challenged through his practice, merging different areas of study in a new critical perception of reality in order to question the constraining dynamic of elements that shape our surroundings. With an interdisciplinary practice that spans from investigations into materials, symbols and architectural forms to questions of poetic nature, with a discreet sensibility he attempts to explore how we act according to the space we move in.
www.sabatonotte.comSteve Wheeler
Steve Wheeler decided that he wanted to become an artist at the age of four. He learned to draw before he started school, confounded the expectations of his working-class roots by going to art school, and went on to exhibit his work internationally. As an artist, he has worked in collaboration with musicians, performers, and writers. He is an experimenter who is always looking for new ways to explore the human condition through words, sounds, objects, and images.
www.stevewheeler.org.ukAlex Wilk
Alex Wilk is one of the co-founders and editors of Anima Loci. She works between research, design and editorial projects for the arts. Her personal projects take visual and textual formats: she has taken part in art residency programmes, exhibitions and today she enjoys exploring her research interests through writing. Alex holds an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London.
www.visivastudio.org/alex-wilkPhilipp Zechner
Philipp Zechner is a photographer interested in urbanity, man-made objects and the deeper implications of the seemingly ordinary: the visible world as a gateway to our imagination. His works have been shown and published internationally. Publications include, Tokio im Licht der Nacht, Berlin 2008, Frankfurter Nächte, Frankfurt 2013, and Tokyo Radiant, Ludwigshafen 2016.
www.philipp-zechner.comJonathan Zenti
Jonathan Zenti is an independent radio producer based in Milan, Italy. He was a finalist at the ‘Prix Europa’ twice, a winner of the ‘GanBéarla Award’ (2015) of the ‘Hearsay Audio Festival’, Ireland and a ‘Third Coast International Audio Festival Award’ recipient in 2018. In 2016, his podcast ‘Meat’ was one of the finalists for the ‘Radiotopia Podquest’. He is the curator of ‘Mondoascolti’ within the ‘Internazionale’ festival held in Ferrara, he is a content curator for ‘Voxnest’ and Creative Director of ‘Agave Production Studio’. Jonathan is a founder and board member of ‘MIRP – Meeting of Independent Radio Producers’. His works have been broadcast by Radio RAI, BBC, CBC and many other radios and podcasts around the globe. He is the author of the currently ongoing podcast, in Italian, ‘Problemi’.
www.jonathanzenti.it