DEFAULT Masterclass is conceived to be a context to discuss, imagine and put forward sustainable ideas for how art can interact with the regeneration of former industrial spaces.
During the ten days participants will develop their research approach in intense workshop and seminar sessions held by leading curators and artists, art managers and representatives of cultural and artistic organisations from the European and the Mediterranean area.
Current faculty and lecturers include:

● Alfredo Cramerotti

(for AGM Culture) is a writer, curator and artist based in the UK. His cultural practice explores the relationship between reality and representation across a variety of media and collaborations such as TV, radio, publishing, internet, media festivals, writing and exhibition curating.
Among his recent research and curatorial activity: Co-curator, Manifesta 8 European biennial of contemporary art (2009-2011); curator, QUAD Derby (2008-present), co-curator, CPS Chamber of Public Secrets (2004-present) and AGM Annual General Meeting (2003-present); Editor of the Critical Photography book series by Intellect Books.
Recent publications include the book Aesthetic Journalism: How to inform without informing (2009).

● Hannah Conroy

(for AGM Culture) is a UK-based curator. Her recent projects include co-curating the archival space AGM 10: Collectivus CPS at Manifesta 8, Region of Murcia (2010); directing the transitory platform for experimental film and moving image Castle and Elephant, Coventry, UK (2009 -10), and co-curating international discussions and symposia for AGM (2010-11). Hannah held the positions of curatorial assistant for Chamber of Public Secrets at Manifesta 8, Region of Murcia (2010), and was project coordinator for the city-wide fringe festival Sideshow, UK (2010).

● Ana Hoffner

is a Serbian writer and performer working in the fields of queer and migratory/(post)colonial politics. She studied Fine Arts and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is performing internationally  (Secession, Vienna; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; Muzej 25. Mai, Beograd, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin etc.). In her last research project „Queer perspectives in and on Europe“ s_he was working on homonormativity and queerness as sexual politics of european unity. Currently s_he is a PhD in Practice student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

● Andrea Lissoni

Andrea Lissoni, PhD, is an art historian and a researcher in the field of contemporary art, with a particular interest in moving images. He curates specific art projects and exhibitions, employing this activity as a research instrument. In 2000 he founded the International Festival Netmage and the art network Xing, which he has co-directed since then. He curated the exhibition Circular (San Siro Stadium, Milan, 2005), and he co-curated the exhibition Collateral. When Art meets cinema (Hangar Bicocca, Milan; Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo, 2008). In 2009, he started the research and curatorial projectPARADES, within this project he produced and curated the parade by Arto Lindsay Multinatural Blackout, which was part of the 53 Venice Art Biennale. Since 2007 he is Chief Editor of Cujo Magazine, whose most recent publication is the artist’s book Primitive, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He is, since 2009, the sound and video curator of Hangar Bicocca (Milan), where he curated JO, by Cameron Jamie and Keiji Haino (2009), End, a retrospective of artist and filmmaker Carlos Casas (2010), The movement of people working, an installation by Phill Niblock (2010). He also co-curated with the director Chiara Bertola the exhibition Terre Vulnerabili (2010-2011). He recently has been appointed curator of the XVII Advanced Course in Visual Arts of Fondazione Antonio Ratti of Como, for which he prepared the first Italian solo exhibition of artist Susan Hiller.

● Andrei Siclodi

is a Curator, author, and cultural worker based in Innsbruck, Austria. He is the director of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen in Innsbruck, and the founding director of the International Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (since 2002).
Curatorial projects include Private Investigations, a series of exhibitions and lectures focused on research, acquisition, and processing of knowledge in contemporary art practices at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen,  Kunstpavillon and Stadtturmgalerie, Innsbruck (2005/2006); Nikolaus Schletterer – Daylight, MNAC Bucharest (2006/2007); Franz Kapfer – Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland / For God, Kaiser and Fatherland, Kunstpavillon Innsbruck (2009); Verhandlungssache / Matter of Negotiation (Madeleine Bernstorff, Ana Hoffner, Brigitta Kuster, Mona Vătămanu & Florin Tudor, Ina Wudtke, Inga Zimprich / The Faculty of Invisibility), Kunstpavillon Innsbruck (2010).
Editor of the publication series Büchs’n’Books – Art and Knowledge Production in Context which includes Social Engine (Ed.: Violeta Vojvodić and Eduard Balaž, 2008);  Aesthetic Journalism. How to Inform Without Informing (Alfredo Cramerotti, 2009); Black Sound White Cube (Dieter Lesage & Ina Wudtke, 2010); Franz Kapfer – Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland / For God, Kaiser and Fatherland (Ed.: Andrei Siclodi, 2011).
● Celine Condorelli

is a British artist. She works with art and architecture, combining a number of approaches from developing structures for ‘supporting’ (the work of others, forms of political imaginary, existing and fictional realities) to broader enquiries into forms of commonality and discursive sites, resulting in projects merging exhibitions, politics, fiction, display, public space, sound, writing, and whatever else feels urgent at the time.
She is the author/editor of Support Structures on Sternberg Press, 2009, and one of the founding directors of Eastside Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Birmingham, UK; she has been teaching and lecturing since 1999.
Recent works include Something Stronger than Skepticism, Alias, Krakow Photomonth (2011), “Il n’y a plus rien”, Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Townhouse, Egypt and Oslo Kunstforening (2011-12), Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010), Revision, part 1 and 2 (Artists Space, New York, 2009, and Cell Projects, London, 2010), Curtain Show (Eastside Projects, 2010), Life always Escapes (Wysing Arts, Cambridge, and e-flux journal 2009).

● Filipa Ramos
is a portuguese art critic based in Italy. She is Assistant Teacher for the course of History of Contemporary Art at the Accademia di Brera, Milan and at the Visual Arts Laboratory of the IUAV/University of Venice. In 2009, she launched the new Gallery of Massimo De Carlo in London, where she studied, lived and work for the past four years. She is the co-author of the book Lost and Found – Crisis of Memory in Contemporary Art (Silvana editoriale, Milan, 2009) and contributes for several international magazines. She is currently Associate Editor of Manifesta Journal, member of the advisory board of Art and Research magazine and project manager at Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como.

● Gregor Neuerer
is an Austrian artist based in Vienna where he attended the University of Applied Arts and became in 2008 Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts. Neuerer´s work with existing architectural settings and realities is based on his understanding of the built environment as a media, similar to a picture or film. In this sense a building is not only seen as a structure but also as a platform that makes our understanding of a place visible. He uses photography and drawing as mediums to explore site-related conditions and to construct new and fictive understandings of place.  Recent works include group exhibitions and projects: Dazwischen, Untersuchung des Raumes, cur. Rosanna Dematté, Robert Gander, Institute for Art History -University of Innsbruck (2011), Neither From, Nor Towards… Did you, upon awakening today, see the future from the still point of the turning world?, cur. Antonia Majaca/Ivana Bago, Art Pavillion Zagreb (2010), Östereichischer Grafikpreis, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2009). Among the recent solo projects: site specific installation Left but a trace, cur. Tereza Kotyk, Cornerhouse – Manchster (2008), Zwischen Schreiben und Lesen, Art in Public Space Project with the community of Ybbs an der Donau, Austria (2008).

Julia Draganovic

is a German born independent curator and art critic with a particular interest in new artistic strategies and art in public spaces. From June 2009 through June 2010 she is guest curator of No Longer Empty, New York.
From January 2007 through February 2009 she was the Artistic Director of PAN | Palazzo delle Arti Napoli. She was the project leader for PAN’s partnership in the Art Radio Live project by the PS1/MoMa New York at the Venice Biennial 2007. From 2005 through 2006 she signed as Artistic Director of the Chelsea Art Museum, New York.
Draganovic has curated shows in Germany, Italy, Spain, Taiwan and the United States and has lectured in Europe and the United States. Her essays where published in innumerous catalogues and art books as well as in the Kunstzeitung, Arte, Arte e Critica and Flash Art.
● Lewis Biggs

Artistic Director Liverpool Biennial (UK). Until July 2011, Lewis Biggs was Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Liverpool Biennial 2002 ‘broke the rules’ by focusing on newly commissioned art, much of it for the public realm, researched collaboratively and realised by a team of locally based curators. This approach (common to Skulptur Projekte Münster, Echigo Tsumari and one or two other recurrent exhibitions) has proved highly successful. Liverpool Biennial is now established as a significant contributor to the international spectrum of biennales, with this process being widely studied and adopted.
Since then, the company has become one of the UK’s leading art commissioning agencies working in the public realm, dedicated to ‘engaging art, people and place’ through artists working in public space.
Lewis was Director of Tate Liverpool from 1990 to 2000, (Curator of Exhibitions and Displays 1987-90); an exhibition officer for the Visual Arts Department of the British Council (1984-87), and Gallery Co-ordinator for Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol (1979-84). As joint Curator / Director of Art Transpennine98 (with Robert Hopper) his focus moved beyond the museum / gallery context. He is currently a Director of Another Place Ltd, an art commissioning agency concerned with transformational art in the context of place making. He is also a Director of Culture Campus Ltd, a partnership between Liverpool’s Universities and major regional arts organisations dedicated to enhancing postgraduate studies and employment in Liverpool.
Lewis is a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art at Liverpool Art School, and an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University. He is on the Board of International Advisors to the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, and is General Editor of Tate Modern Artists (a series of books on contemporary artists appearing since October 2002).

● Pietro Gaglianò

is art critic and scholar of contemporary languages. His main interest concern the relationships between visual art experiences and theoretical system of performing arts and experimental theatre; the urban, architectonical and social context as stage for contemporary artistic practices; the application of arts at the geopolitical emergency matters. He edited books and catalogues of collective and solo shows (with the publishers Editoria&Spettacolo, Electa, Shin, Pendragon, Maschietto Editore, Titivillus). He collaborates with reviews as “Arte&Critica”, “Inside”, “Artribune”, “Exibart”). He develops didactic activity in public and private institutions. Currently he is resident to the Teatro Studio of Scandicci as curator of interdisciplinary projects.

● Yesomi Umolu

is a London-based curator, writer and researcher whose practice deals with interrogating the politics of translation and participation across a wide range of critical spatial practices.
In 2011, Yesomi is curator-in-residence at the Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen. Her recent projects include co-curating the archival space AGM 10: Collectivus CPS at Manifesta 8 (2010), co-curating the exhibition John Smith Solo Show, Royal College of Art (2010); collaborating on Department 21, Royal College of Art (2010), and curating Performing Localities at Iniva (2009).
Yesomi has held positions as a Curatorial Assistant for Chamber of Public Secrets at Manifesta 8, Region of Murcia (2010), Public Programme Assistant at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2009) and Project Coordinator at Tate Modern, London (2005-8).
She is a regularly invited critic and seminar tutor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College of London.