In her position as cultural manager at the Paintbrush Factory Federation in Cluj-Napoca, Corina Bucea manages Hotspot.art, a multidisciplinary program of performance, exhibition, and educational activities. In addition to this, she is the PR and Communication Coordinator for the Festival Temps d’Image in Cluj and has also played key roles with the Romanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 2013. She has presented at and participated in myriad cultural management and cultural policy activities throughout Europe.

Corina strongly believes that the arts are a useful means of mediating difference and was eager to observe and work with artists on community engaged projects during her residency.

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Goran Ferčec is a novelist, playwright, and theater artist. His performance text Letter to Heiner Müller premiered at Zagreb Youth Theatre in 2011 and was subsequently presented at La MaMa in 2012. His 2011 novel There Will Be No Miracles Here gained a place on that year’s ten best novels list compiled by the Croatian Ministry of Culture. Goran has participated in residencies in Graz, Ljubljana, Skopje and in Codroipo in Italy and in workshops throughout Europe.

During his ArtsLink residency he hoped to investigate the position of workers at that particular moment in history.

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Aksana Haiko is the founder and Director of Kryly Khalopa Theatre and the director of KX Space in Brest. She recently premiered Chernobyl, a theatre piece documenting the history and social life of Belarus. She is a member of Magdalena, an international network of women in contemporary theatre. Her interests also include working with children, the disabled, and refugees.

As both an artist and manager she was very interested in developing a deeper familiarity with management strategies of community engaged theatre in the US as well as current theater trends involving marginalized groups and new technologies.

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As an actor and director, Enton Kaca has worked closely with the National Theater of Tirana for the past ten years. In addition, his work brought him to Italy’s Astragali Teatro several times where he successfully melded poetics with physical theater in outdoor, non-traditional spaces. His work is multidisciplinary in approach and he takes inspiration from classic and contemporary texts, to which he responds and corresponds with “social anthropological elements.”

During his residency, Enton welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with visual artists as well as theater practitioners.

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Monika Lipšic is an arts manager, curator, researcher, artist and producer based in Vilnius. She engages curatorial methods to investigate how history is constructed, the dichotomy of East-West, and other politically inflected subjects. From 2012 to 2016 Monika worked as a curator at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius. She currently works freelance, presenting projects at Contemporary Art Centre; Calvert Foundation in London; Nomas Foundation in Berlin; the Kunstverein in Amsterdam and more.

During her residency Monika enjoyed gaining deeper insight into the production of socially as well as historically engaged art practices.

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Arts Manager Nikita Makarenko’s initiative, the Ilkhom RockFest has been a welcomed addition to the slate of activities offered by the internationally regarded Ilkhom Theatre of Mark Weil in Tashkent.  In addition to producing the festival, Nikita is a musician and journalist who, in 2014, produced a textbook The Standards of Western Journalism for Arts Journalists which he then converted to an on-line resource.

During his residency, he hoped to gain familiarity with administration, fundraising, and the technical aspects of festival and music production in the US.

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Anton Ovchinnikov is choreographer, performer, composer, lecturer, poet, and organizer of the annual international dance festival Zelyonka Space UP in Kyiv. Since 2008, he is the artistic director of the Black O!Range dance productions company. The company was recognized as one of the most distinctive and original dance projects in Ukraine. In 2015, Ovchinnikov cofounded All-Ukrainian Association “Contemporary Dance Platform”. Main objectives of the Association are to support young Ukrainian choreographers, integrate contemporary dance into the modern cultural life of Ukraine and establish the national center of contemporary dance. In 2016-2021 Anton Ovchinnikov presented a few solo performances and created four multidisciplinary projects. In 2017, he was an ArtsLink International Fellow. Since 2018, Anton Ovchinnikov is the member of the expert panel of Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

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Features and posts
On creating work during war
Monochrome
Conversation with Anton Ovchinnikov and dance critic Polina Bulat, both from Ukraine, moderated by Simon Dove of CEC ArtsLink as part of BIPOD 22

A poet and translator, Marcell Szabó is a member of Jozsef Attila Circle: The Literary Association of Young Writers. Since 2014 has been the editor of Versum Online, an online journal of contemporary poetry focusing exclusively on poetry in translation. In 2015 he co-organized the Versum International Festival of Contemporary Poetry and his work has been presented at poetry events throughout Europe. 

Marcell was recently working on his third book of poetry which converses with North American poetic traditions. His literary interests include William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein and Francis Ponge.

During his residency he anticipated meeting translators, peer poets, editors, and publishers while continuing his research and his own creative work.

Adriana Totiková is a theatre director, dramaturg, playwright, actress and teacher with extensive experience in theatre as well as television. Her work has been presented at festivals in Europe and Japan. In 2013 she directed the Slovak town of Košice’s opening ceremony for the European Capital of Culture, an event that included 500 artists.

In addition to observing work and meeting other theatre practitioners during her residency Adriana hoped to work on projects that meshed with her interest in human rights and the difficulties faced by marginalized communities.

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A dancer, choreographer and lecturer, Canan Yücel Pekiçten is currently working on her PhD in Dance from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, where she was accepted after completing her BFA in Dance with honors at Yıldız Technical University. She also finished one semester abroad at the Folkwang University in Essen, Germany. In 2012 she was included in the Springdance Festival Residency in Utrecht, Holland and won first prize at the Gdansk Solo Dance Festival in Poland in 2016.

In addition to developing her own solo piece and seeing new work, Canan was keenly interested in broadening her experience of teaching movement both to professionals and non-dancers. During her residency, she also wanted the opportunity to engage with immigrant and women’s groups.

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