Curators’ Biographies   TRINE RYTTER ANDERSEN Born 1962 in Gram, Denmark. Lives and works in Aarhus, Denmark Trine Rytter Andersen is a visual artist and independent curator. With a background in classical drawing and modern sculpture, her practice has for the past ten years inscribed itself in conceptual and performance arts: first during her studies at The Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus; later through the collaboration with Tina Lynge and Grethe Aagaard in the context of the artists group artillery. Starting from a deep personal interest, Andersen's artistic practice focuses on social, economical/commercial, and political structures. In her work, she addresses and analyzes different aspects of power in search of alternative positions. In the context of artillery, these positions are tested in different contexts, often addressing the audience on a direct and individual level by inviting them to participate in a process of investigation and reflection on equal terms with the members of the group. As a curator, Andersen investigates positions that establish and emphasize a play between art and politics. Art is able to subvert ingrained patterns of expectation usually based on either/or solutions by posing new questions and unveiling new answers, which in turn inspire to different actions. Andersen's strategy is not an attempt to subordinate art to politics or vice versa, but to reflect the two different principles of meaning by bringing them into play with one another without reducing the one to the other. Through this juxtaposition of art and politics, art becomes a co-producer of meaning and possible positions in society and is pulled out of its exclusive, institutionalized framework and thrown into the limbo of opposite voices struggling for life and space. Andersen has been involved in curatorial processes in conjunction with various artist based exhibitions and actions, such as Det Tyvende Århundredes Lys (Aarhus, Denmark, 1998); as co-curator of the Danish section of Artgenda (Hamburg, Germany, 2002) and De udvalgte (Aarhus, Denmark, 2002); and as project coordinator and co-curator of Aarhus Festival of Contemporary Art 2004. Over the years, she has written a large number of texts on art and artists for different Danish daily newspapers, catalogues, and books.  KIRSTEN DUFOUR Born 1941 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives and works in Copenhagen Kirsten Dufour is a visual artist, who works with a number of different groups, which all attempt to unite artistic and political practice. Selected group projects include: YNKB – Outer Noerrebro Cultural Bureau (an artist group project founded in fall 2001, which is active in a local area of Copenhagen and has participated in The Prague Biennial 1 (Czech Republic, 2003) and Spacemaker (Munich, Germany, 2004)); “LET US SPEAK NOW” (a feminist video artists and activists archive presented in Revolt, She Said (Forde Exhibition Space, Geneva, Switzerland, 2004)); Jubilæum 96 (a documentary exhibition on Danish female artists, Q Exhibition Space, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004); and “5 MILLION PEACE MARCH: Lets talk while we walk” (exhibition and seminar at Overgaden – Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004 and Beirut, Lebanon, 2004). Selected seminars include: “Get that balance” (Hamburg, Germany, 2001); “Engaged Art Seminar” (Singapore, 2002); “City Transformers” (Gdansk, Poland, 2002); “Mothers of Invention” (MoCA, Vienna, Austria, 2003); and “Art and Activism in Feminism” (NWSA 2004 Conference, Milwaukee, USA, 2004). Selected artist text books include: TTA. Løgstør 1975-1987 (text and documentation in collaboration with Finn Thybo Andersen); Art Radio Talks (art on street level from five different cities in the Baltic countries, 1998-2000); and Martha Rosler talks (publication from the “Tea for 2000” seminar, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2000). Articles and publications include: “Art as Activism – Activism as Art,” in The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 1-2, January-June 2002; “How Can Critical Space Be Maintained,” in Planet 22, spring 2002; “Maintaining Critical Spaces in Urban Societies Today: How Artists Operate – A Report from an Activist Artist Kirsten Dufour,” in Focas: Forum on Contemporary Art and Society, Singapore 2002; YNKB Tema 1-7, Copenhagen 2002-03; and “What do we know about solidarity,” (forthcoming publication on feminism in Denmark). Curatorial projects include: “Art on Street Level: How to Succeed” (seminar in Copenhagen, Denmark, 2000 organized in collaboration with the Danish Contemporary Art Foundation); “Kunstfragt – Artfreight” (conference at YNKB, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2003). Selected bibliography: Lars Bang Larsen, “Social Aesthetics: 11 Examples to Begin With in the Light of Parallel History,” in AFTERALL, no. 1, 1999 and Lars Bang Larsen, “Canon Club Days,” in NU, no. 3, 1999. For more info, please visit: www.planet22.net, www.ynkb.dk, and www.5millionpeacemarch.org. TONE O. NIELSEN Born 1967 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives and works in Copenhagen and Los Angeles, USA Tone O. Nielsen is an independent curator and co-founding member of the artist-curator collective Goll & Nielsen. She holds an MA in Art History from the University of Copenhagen (1994) and an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from UCLA – University of California Los Angeles (2002). She has curated a number of exhibitions in Europe and the US and presently holds a theory position at The Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus, Denmark. Nielsen characterizes her curatorial practice as critical. Regarding the medium of exhibition as a think tank or laboratory situation in which the present order can be criticized and alternative models produced, her projects exist in the field between art and activism, aesthetics and ethics. Her exhibitions unfold as social processes of interrogation into current socio-political issues that value the input from audiences, exhibition participants, and curator equally. Always interdisciplinary, Nielsen's projects involve agents from both the cultural, political, and social fields and merge the processes of research, production, discourse, and display into one. To Nielsen, an exhibition is a social process of information and meaning exchange, which is capable of arming all parties involved with tools for self-empowerment and critical analysis of the order we are living in and (in)voluntarily contributing to. She believes that it is in the meeting between different agents and their strategies of critique that alternatives to the status quo are created. Selected individual curatorial exhibitions include: Democracy When!? Activist Strategizing in Los Angeles (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, USA, 2002); Rocker by Choice (section in the exhibition I Am A Curator organized by Per Hüttner, Chisenhale Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2003); with love from 6.C (Noerrebro Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004, in collaboration with Åsa Sonjasdotter and students from 6.C, Rådmandsgade's School, Copenhagen). Selected Goll & Nielsen projects include: Vandervoort Place (East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA, 2000); The Evening School (Gallery Signal, Malmoe, Sweden, 2001); OIENL – The Organization for Information on the Effects of Neo-Liberalism (Efterårsudstillingen 2002, Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2002); and Niagara Falls Artist Host Program (forthcoming at Mercer Union Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada, 2004). Projects online: www.artleak.org/DemocracyWhen, http://uid.dk/coma/exhibitions/Sim_CoMa_files/index.php, and www.withlovefrom6c.dk. ANJA RAITHEL Born 1971 in Esbjerg, Denmark. Lives and works in Aarhus, Denmark Anja Raithel is an art historian and independent curator. She received her MA in Art History from University of Aarhus, with study sojourns in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Berlin, Germany. She has taught video art at the University of Copenhagen as an External Lecturer. Since 1999, Raithel has been a member of the exhibition space rum46 in Aarhus. Since 1995, rum46 has produced a number of exhibitions in its gallery spaces as well as in public space. rum46 consists of nine artists and theoreticians, who with their different professional backgrounds constitute one of the few experimental spaces for contemporary art in Aarhus. In addition to presenting shows by young and emerging artists, rum46 curates larger international projects. During the period of December 2002 – December 2003, rum46 realized the processual and interdisciplinary art project Feast/Hospitality in the city of Aarhus. In the words of Anja Raithel, “Feast/Hospitality focuses on the reciprocal relation between host and guest, pointing to the construction of 'us and them' in an attempt to show that these constructions exist in a relation of interdependence, which constantly needs to be reevaluated and redefined. Within this process of reevaluation and redefinition opens up the possibility for actions that are able to counter the stereotypical models of exclusion and inclusion fostered by intolerance. Approximately thirty Danish and international participants examine the notion of hospitality through artistic actions, artworks, debates, and reflections, proposing alternative models to the present socio-political situation in which hospitality has been put on hold.” Raithel's curatorial practice centers around the dialogical, during which the exchange between artists, theoreticians, and audiences/other participants becomes the driving force, capable of initiating critical counter publics. Lately, her curatorial practice has focused on opening up a space for ethical and aesthetic reflection that is able: to problematize static formations of opinion, to affect the foundation for exclusion and inclusion, to deconstruct stereotypical perceptions, to encourage the acceptance of difference, and to create resistance towards inverted nationalistic sentiments. Projects online: www.rum46.dk.