MARK YOUR CALENDAR: #UNFINISHED18 will take place September 27th – 30th, 2018!
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Adina Popescu - is a philosopher and entrepreneur, creating platforms that integrate nascent technology in order to generate impact and to empower bottom‑up movements. She is currently working on a immersive Climate & Environmental Platform called Earth. Adina is a highly‑visionary artist in the field of new media and cultural experiences, and especially in the field of VR and AR. She is a global and avant‑garde thinker, able to cross over multiple disciplines, while never losing the sense for integrity and ethical guidelines.
Adrian Stanciu - is a leading organizational strategy consultant in Romania and adjoining countries with a small and very selective consulting practice. His work has touched dozens of organizationa in the region, of different sizes and industries ramging from e-commerce to banking, from insurance to software development. His specialty field is organizational cultural change and management. His consulting work touches both the organizational and human capital side of the company and the business strategy side and, more importantly, the synergy between the two.
Aja Monet - is an internationally established poet, educator and human rights activist of CubanJamaican decent. Harry Belafonte has called Aja Monet “The true definition of an artist”. Her craft is an indepth reflection of emotional wisdom, skill, and activism. The youngest individual to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, she is recognized for combining her spellbound voice and powerful imagery on stage. In her poetry Monet poses questions about the power of the imagination and metaphor in how we engage with local and global issues, like racism, colonialism and sexism. Monet is active with community organizing through her work with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project. Monet was a featured speaker at the Women’s March on Washington DC where she read the title poem of her latest book My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter (Haymarket books 2017). Monet’s other books include InnerCity Chants & Cyborg Cyphers (2015), and The Black Unicorn Sings (Penmanship books). In addition, she collaborated with poet/musician Saul Williams on the book Chorus: a literary mixtape (MTV books/Simon & Schuster).
Archie Lee Coates IV - is a founder and partner at PLAYLAB, INC., a New York-based creative studio founded in 2009. With no particular focus, they explore themes using art, architecture, and graphic design to initiate ideas. Past projects include: giant worm tents for the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Storefront For Art & Architecture, a rebrand of America for SFMOMA, and a compilation of all the times Joaquin Phoenix has walked in his films, titled Walking Phoenix. In 2011, the studio co-founded the quarterly publication CLOG, and in 2010, co-founded + POOL with Family New York, an initiative to build the world’s first water-filtering floating pool in New York. PLAYLAB, INC. is: Archie Lee Coates IV, Jeff Franklin, Anya Shcherbakova, Dillon Kogle and Phil Gibson. BR met Archie at Unfinished 2018 and challenged him to a fast Q&A.
ALFREDO JAAR - is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He is known as one of the most uncompromising, compelling, and innovative artists working today.
His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MOCA and LACMA, Los Angeles; TATE, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MAXXI and MACRO, Rome; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlaebeck; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; Tokushima Modern Art Museum; M+, Hong Kong; and dozens of institutions and private collections worldwide.
Andrew Herzog - is a partner at HAWRAF, a studio using design to apply new ideas, technologies, and methodologies to their work with clients and self-initiated projects. Before HAWRAF, Andrew worked at the Google Creative Lab where he designed AI-assistive drawing tools and a wall installation made-up of 5,880 arcade buttons. His personal practice involves using tools, materials, and actions that are commonplace as a way to probe art making. He is a professor of Interaction at the School of Visual Arts and The New School. His work has been featured at the Cannes International Festival for Creativity, the Art Directors Club, and in 2017 he was named to PRINT Magazine’s “New Visual Artists: 15 under 30” list.
Anne Thevenet-Abitbol - has been Prospective and New Concepts VP at Danone since 1998. She is responsible for the development of every new idea that has the potential to take the Group forward, whether in terms of marketing, HR, social or societal issues. In particular, she was responsible for launching the brand of organic yogurts “Les 2 Vaches” in 2006, and she opened the “Aux 2 Vaches” restaurant in 2012. Starting in 2010, she has designed and led the EVE Program, an intercompany women leadership seminar, attended by around forty companies, as well as EVE Asia Pacific and EVE Africa, and since 2012, the OCTAVE Program, which is focused on improving generational relationships within companies, and the impact of new technologies. In partnership with Utopies, she has also co-created the Noé Program on sustainable innovation. She just launched “The Danone of the World”, a range of yogurts inspired by different countries which aims to open tastes and minds.
Antonio Eram - is a Romanian entrepreneur and angel investor. Along with a team of then enthusiasts, he started NETOPIA in 2003, then with a goal of providing state of the art mobile marketing services. Since then the company evolved, and it became the leader in Romania for payments services. Achieving impossible is not a task, it is a purpose, and all our actions should go towards that. Antonio, along with its team created a whole range of services, all of them becoming market leaders.
Embracing new technologies and ideas through innovation is the key to success. Even though progress is, in Antonio's philosophy, just a failure went wrong, with many to be learned for becoming perfect. This is evolution.
Ayesha Gulalai Wazir - Ayesha Gulalai Wazir was born in Pakistan's South Waziristan, the tribal area on Pak-Afghan border famous for having been a stronghold of the Taliban.This area is ultraconservative especially for girls & women, & in the absence of girls' education & women rights, at age 7, Ayesha Gulalai vowed to change the miserable condition of the girls & women & empower them. She took her inspiration from her revolutionary & free-thinker father who encouraged her ambition to fight for her area & country like Joan of Ark. In an area where girls/women were confined to four walls, Ayesha broke free from the shackles of those ultraconservative cultural norms by speaking up in public in local tribal jirgas ( local tribal elders' council), madrassahs, mosques, boys' schools & colleges talking about women rights, human rights , democracy, importance of education, eradication of drugs & gun culture, environmental pollution, child Labour, growing population,etc.
Barbara Soalheiro - Founder at Mesa&Cadeira, Barbara Soalheiro has a prodigious career in several fields of the creative market. After graduating, she was selected for Editora Abril (the biggest publishing house in Latin America) New Talents program, was soon hired as an editor and, by the time she was 26, became the youngest editorinchief in the company – in charge of the teen brand Capricho, she ran an operation that included a magazine (which doubled its readership on the first year of Barbara’s tenure), a website, a range of licensed products and a set of events.
Cosmin Haias -
Daniela Palimariu - works as an artist and co-founder of Sandwich art space in Bucharest, Romania. Her art practice includes livable environments and objects, installations, semi-private events and drawings, all of which understate the ambiguity of human relations, the need for personal space, play and daily subversions.
Dragos Stanca - is an entrepreneur and investor with expertise in media and digital transformation. Dragoș is the founder of the publishing, b2b networking and digital transformation events platform UPGRADE 100 – built around the community of the former iCEE.fest festival, launched in 2012.
Duncan Wolfe - Duncan Wolfe is a photographer, director, and creative director based in Los Angeles. He worked as a filmmaker and digital strategist working with the Office of Digital Strategy inside President Obama's White House, documenting the final two years of the administration.
Esther Perel - Esther Perel is a Belgian psychotherapist of Polish-Jewish descent who has explored the tension between the need for security (love, belonging and closeness) and the need for freedom (erotic desire, adventure and distance) in human relationships.
Fady Chreih - Fady Chreih is the CEO of REGINA MARIA, one of the leading private healthcare networks in Romania and the only Romanian healthcare organization with international accreditations.
With a background in banking, Fady Chreih is passionate about creating sustainable and accountable organizations, with an emphasis on organizational behaviour. Together with more than 5,000 employees and consultants, Fady is now focusing on delivering excellence in healthcare.
Farah Nayeri - Farah Nayeri writes on culture for The New York Times. Based in London, she was previously the arts correspondent of Bloomberg. She has also written for the arts pages of The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. Originally from Iran, Ms. Nayeri began her journalism career as a reporter for Time in Paris. She later became a Paris correspondent of Bloomberg, the Rome bureau chief, and the European economics correspondent. In 2003, she was assigned to Baghdad to cover the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Gabriel Diaconu - Gabriel Diaconu, MD, is a specialist in psychiatry and psycho-traumatology, with a professional experience of more than 10 years in the field of mental health.
In Romania he is the Medical Director of MindCare, the Center of excellence in psychiatry and psychotherapy of the MedLife network. He is, concomitantly, the Co-Chair of the WPA Section on Consequences of Torture and Psychological Abuse, Associate Investigator of the McGill Group for Suicide Studies (MGSS), and Associate Member of CRISE (Centre du Recherche dans le Suicide et Euthanasie) of UQAM (Universite du Quebec at Montreal).
Golan - Golan is a three piece band based in Bucharest, Romania. Alex, Mihai and Ernesto's different backgrounds and skills combine in a unique blend of eclectic harmonies. Using live instruments, sampling and DJing, the trio brings a much needed human touch to today's electronic music. Their sound is melodic and dreamy while at the same time making you dance your shoes off. Get ready for the Golan experience!
Ian Daly - is Head of Brand Strategy at Live Nation. Ian has been writing and thinking about culture since 2003, when he was senior writer for Details at Conde Nast in New York City. His stories have taken him everywhere from The Congo to backstage with Ozzy Osbourne.
Iulian Stanciu - is the CEO and shareholder of eMAG, the Romanian online retailer. He is one of the most successful entrepreneurs, investors and managers in Romania and is involved in several business in the country and abroad, leading over 3,000 direct or indirect employees on the local market. Iulian Stanciu is known for being highly involved in the selection of all his employees and to have instilled very progressive rules and templates in the company’s recruitment practices, management and staff dynamics.
Jaro Varga - is a Slovak visual artist and curator based in Prague. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, and also participated in student exchanges at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw and Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in the USA.
Jason Silva - is an Emmy-nominated and world renown TV personality, storyteller, filmmaker, and sought-after keynote speaker and futurist.
Jason is known for hosting 5 seasons of the Emmy-nominated, global hit TV series Brain Games, on the National Geographic Channel, broadcasted in over 171 countries.
A global keynote speaker, Jason has given talks at events for Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Adobe, Electronic Arts, Cannes Lions, Tribeca Film Festival, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, 20th Century Fox, Cosmopolitan, PHD Worldwide, Google Zeitgeist, TED Global, The Economist, and more.
Joel Evey - is a creative based in New York & Philadelphia. Both his personal and professional practices have been shaped by his use of graphic experimentation as a medium to communicate with an emerging native-user generation. In his work, Joel pushes the boundaries of contemporary visual ideologies, breaking formal taboos in thoughtful and visually arresting ways in order to challenge notions of what constitutes "good.” Joel is also an independent educator and is currently Senior Creative Director Global at Gap.
Josh Begley - is a data artist and app developer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the creator of Metadata+, an iPhone app that tracks United States drone strikes.
Begley is the director of two short films, Concussion Protocol (2018) and Best of Luck with the Wall (2016), both produced by Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras. His films have screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Met Breuer, the New York Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Jeffrey Franklin - is a cofounder and partner at PLAYLAB, INC., a New York based creative practice founded in 2009. With no particular focus, PLAYLAB, INC. explores themes that interest them, using art, architecture, and graphic design to initiate ideas.
Julien Britnic - is a copywriter and cultural remixer. His classic book cover remixes were featured in newspapers and blogs all over the world including Huffington Post and El Mundo.
Kimberley Motley - is an international human rights and civil rights attorney from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is also an activist, author, and former Mrs. Wisconsin-America 2004
Kitra Cahana - has been the recipient of a World Press Photo award, a Senior TED Fellowship and the ICP Infinity Award. Born in Miami but raised in Canada and Sweden, Kitra Cahana earned her B.A. in philosophy from McGill University and her M.A. in visual and media anthropology from the Freie Universitat in Berlin.
Luca Zamoc - was born in 1986 in Modena. Since his early age, he was inspired by influences as different as comics, mythology and human anatomy. His work range between several media such as digital, mural, comic and handmade illustration. His work investigates the relation between Man and Nature through Mythology, and the relation between Mythology and Man through Nature. He’s been working and living in different cities like Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Istanbul, and Barcelona. He’s currently living and working in Milan.
Maria Toorpakai Wazir - is a professional Pakistani squash player. She dressed like a boy for the first 16 years of her life in order to participate in competitive sports as a Muslim girl, using the name Genghis Khan, fully supported by her Muslim parents.
Marinela Ardelean - is a wine critic, author and juror in international wine competitions such as Mundus Vini (Germany) and the Michelangelo International Wine and Spirits Awards (South Africa). In her home-country, Romania, she is known for organizing RO-Wine |The International Wine Festival of Romania, while in Italy, her second home, she is one of the wine curators for the notorious Merano Wine Festival. Representing Foss Marai as Brand Manager since 2012, she has also recently become Global Brand Ambassador for the Romanian Vinars Brancoveanu, a high-end range of wine distillates.
Murielle Lorilloux -
Nicolás Jaar - is a Chilean sound maker born in New York in 1990. Among his notable works are the albums Space Is Only Noise (2011), Pomegranates (2015) and Sirens (2016). He is known in the club world for his various dance 12" EPs he put out from 2008 to 2011. Since his first album, he has embarked on more explorative directions, performing a five-hour improvisational concert at PS1 and releasing a large volume of experimental recordings through his label Other People (including works by like-minded artists Lydia Lunch, William Basinski, and Lucretia Dalt). In 2015 Jaar scored Dheepan by director Jacques Audiard (winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015). Jaar is also half of the acid rock band Darkside.
Numen - is a collective working in the fields of scenography, industrial and spatial design and conceptual art. The group first formed in 1998. as a collaborative effort of industrial designers Sven Jonke, Christoph Katzler and Nikola Radeljković under the banner For Use.
Oana P. Vainer -
Patricia Cohen - covers the national economy for The New York Times and is the author of "In Our Prime: The Fascinating History and Promising Future of Middle Age". Ms. Cohen joined The Times in 1997 as Ideas Editor to create and launch the Arts & Ideas section, and later oversaw the paper's theater coverage. An award-winning reporter, she has written extensively about ideas, books and the arts, and worked as an investigative reporter in the Culture Department. She won the international Prix Annette Giacometti for a series of articles she wrote on art forgery, and is a recent winner of the Nathaniel Nash Award for excellence in business and economics journalism.
Pavel Braila - came to the visual arts by a somewhat circuitous route. His degree is in engineering, but he always wanted to be a chef. He had an amateur interest in photography, and was invited to a summer art camp run by the Chisinau Center for Contemporary Art (K:SAK) in 1996 to document the activities there. This art camp, Carbon Art, was instrumental in developing the experimental and contemporary art scene in Moldova, introducing new genres and media, such as performance and video art.
Pete Davis - is a writer and civic reformer from Falls Church, Virginia. He has co-founded a variety of civic projects: CommonPlace, a web platform for local community engagement; Strong Returns, a prison reform project; Getaway, the nation’s first-ever venture-backed tiny house startup; and The Democratic Alternative, an effort to raise up democratic ideas within the Democratic Party. He is the author of Our Bicentennial Crisis: A Call to Action for Harvard Law School's Public Interest Mission, his opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Daily News, Aeon, The Guardian and America Magazine, and he is the co-host of the Current Affairs podcast. From 2013-2014, he served as the labor and poverty coordinator for Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law. He graduated from Harvard College in 2012 and Harvard Law School in 2018. Learn more at PeteDavis.org
Peter Conrads - is co-founder and managing director of SLOW; a Berlin-based laboratory for the creation of extraordinary places around the world with the aim to re-align the hospitality idea through sustainable, careful construction of a community, combined with classic, locally oriented gastronomy and highest design.
Admire Kamudzengerere - ’s work explores identity, politics, and society, often informed by the multifaceted structural and social issues that have marked Zimbabwe’s last decade. Working in various media, he frequently reveals an unequal world in which the powerful ride roughshod over the weak. His monotype selfportraits, intense and indefinable, speak to personal struggle, self definition, and father-son relationships, but are also pieces of a universal puzzle invoking a unifying human thread—the fil rouge of community and ancestry.
Rachel Monosov - Bridging photography, video, performance and sculpture, Russian-born Rachel Monosov delves into cultural notions of alienation, territorial belonging, gender, and identity. Nature serves as a source for the artist’s imagery and objects, which can be interpreted as both symbolic and indexical. While her early career focused on autobiographical works steeped with a desire to grapple with her personal history, in recent years her work has reflected a rootless present rife with broader social implications.
Symposium - - Vasilis Marlantis and Alex Muresan are two self-taught filmmakers, photographers and creatives who started SYMPOSIUM as an art and clothing project. Designed to fight stereotypes and preconceived ideas, it showcases artworks made by young Romanian artists on t-shirts. However, as the project evolved, it became wider. SYMPOSIUM became a symbol, a project which represents the unknown. It sets out for people to have a new perspective on what they think they know. SYMPOSIUM has the goal to raise questions and start "a philosophical discussion" which will hopefully change people's perception of the world in which they live. The first collection of t-shirts was realised in collaboration with UAD Cluj and will launch exclusively at UNFINISHED Festival.
Tehching Hsieh - was born on December 31st 1950 in Nan-Chou, Taiwan. Starting in the late 1970s, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a ‘Thirteen Year Plan’, inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art.
Vlad Tenu - is a Romanian architect based in London, operating at the intersection of design, art, fashion and technology. From architectural design to art installations and teaching, his work involves a continuous explorative research into spatiality, scale and materiality. Inspired by the underlying processes of nature, his workflow is a symbiotic mix of art and science including mathematical and programming techniques materialised into sculptural artefacts, jewellery, garments, product design or architectural pieces.
He also co-founded FORÆVA together with the fashion designer Lana Dumitru, a multidisciplinary design lab that has debuted with a project in collaboration with Swarovski - a sculptural dress that has been worn by Björk on stage as part of her Utopia tour in July.