Author name: Giorgia Padovani

Femke Rotteveel is director of FOTODOK in Utrecht, a place where photography and pressing social questions meet. With a background in economic and social history — specialising in colonial history — and years of experience leading the international exhibitions department at World Press Photo and distributing funding to social enterprises and NGOs at the Dutch charity lotteries, Femke has always been drawn to the power of the image to shift perspectives and open up new conversations. Since 2017, she has led FOTODOK with a deep commitment to the idea that well-researched visual stories should play a far more prominent role in how we understand the world. Alongside exhibitions and education programmes, supporting emerging photographers is at the heart of what FOTODOK does. Through a variety of talent programs, FOTODOK nurtures artists who engage critically with image and society — including many whose work asks whose stories get told, and whose remain unseen.

Leonardo Vita is a composer, improviser, and sound artist active in electroacoustic music and sonic experimentation. Balancing composition and improvisation, he explores the relationships between gesture, physical environment, and soundscape through field recordings, prepared and extended instruments, electronic devices, creative coding, and graphic scores. He is part of several ensembles, including Vita-Sabato, Siano-Vita, Le O.R.E., BlueRing Improvisers Orchestra, BIG, Fonterossa Open Orchestra, and OEOAS, performing both in Italy and abroad. Alongside his live practice, he composes for films, documentaries, theatre, and multidisciplinary performances, and is co-curator of the project Ecologie Acustiche. His publications include the albums Mesopotamia and Xenia, as well as the volume Enzo Del Re: Il cantaprotestautore corpofonista.

Dino Piccinno is an electronic musician specialised in electroacoustic improvisation and a graduate of the Conservatorio “G.B. Martini” in Bologna. His artistic research is based on the use of synthesizers and amplified objects subjected to sound processing. He has taken part in festivals, concerts, and performances, collaborating with organisations and events such as Tempo Reale, RoBot Festival, and Milano Fashion Week, while also developing live sets connected to the underground electronic music scene. His musical practice combines experimentation, live performance, and sound research, moving across artistic, theatrical, and club culture contexts. He also has expertise in sound design, audio programming, and the construction of interactive devices.

Silvia Ferari graduated in Arts, Music and Performing Arts (DAMS) at the University of Bologna and worked as a curator at the Civic Gallery of Modena, organising exhibitions and events while overseeing exhibition and publishing projects. Since 2015, she has been working for the Emilia-Romagna Region, where she currently serves as Head of the Regional Museum System. Her work focuses on museum accessibility and cultural welfare. In the field of photography, she coordinates a project mapping regional photographic collections and promotes initiatives aimed at enhancing and interpreting the territory, including Paola De Pietri’s From Winter to Winter campaign and the exhibition series Images from the Countryside of Emilia-Romagna. She is also the regional coordinator for the project dedicated to the reorganisation and digitisation of the Guido Guidi Archive, funded jointly by the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Municipality of Cesena.

Armony, born Luca Armocida is a singer-songwriter, composer, and DJ. His curious personality is reflected in the versatility of his music and the wide range of genres he explores: from electronic productions and instrumental composition to music for film and visual media, all the way to the song form. His works reveal a remarkable ability to synthesise the experiences and musical styles from which he draws inspiration. Reinterpreting and blending diverse musical materials through an ongoing existential inquiry, he creates a language that speaks to our most intimate nature: evocative music marked by a distinctly lyrical character.

Komlan Daniel Agbenonwossi is a Togolese curator and art critic. A former programme director at the Paul Ahyi Museum in Lomé, he now develops an independent curatorial practice. At the heart of this practice lies a question: how can one tell their story from a territory without betraying themselves?
In 2023, he served as guest curator at the AKAA (Also Known As Africa) fair in Paris. A laureate of the KreAfrika program (Université Senghor / AFD), he engages with the conditions under which contemporary artistic and intellectual heritage is produced, preserved, and circulated across the African continent and its diasporas.
For him, the archive is not a neutral tool. It is a political act. An ethical responsibility, at once intimate and collective.