Caterina Benincasa (Italy)
Currently curator of the JRC SciArt project, Caterina is interested in exploring the intersections of art, science, heritage. She has a background in Physics, Philosophy, History of Science, Contemporary Art and World Heritage Studies. She is particularly interested in issues concerning art and science practices, the interface of epistemology and aesthetics, and questions relating to scientific rationality, artistic research and societal engagement. She has been visiting lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sassari (Italy), researcher in Contemporary Visual Art (France), researcher in Neuroaesthetics at Don Gnocchi Foundation (Italy), worked on Aerocene.org for Studio Tomas Saraceno (Germany), and for the ‘Modern Geometry and the Concept of Space’ research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Germany). In 2010 she co-founds Polyhedra.eu, for which she serves as creative director and treasurer. In 2013 she founds Innovate Heritage: Conversations between Arts & Heritage, a research platform aimed at fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange between the contemporary arts and the heritage field. In 2016 she designs and implements KLAS@MPI, an artist-in-residence and science-in-society programme of the Max Planck Society focused on Synthetic Biology.
publications
Benincasa C., Graney-Saucke E., Zehbe K (eds), Innovate Heritage: A Time-Lapse, Springer Verlag, 2022 (forthcoming).
Benincasa C., Trimarchi M., Neri G. (eds), Art & Economics in the City: New Cultural Maps, Transcript Verlag/Columbia University Press, Spring 2019.
Benincasa C., Perez Garcia R., “Wissen verbinden und vermehren”, Nachrichten aus der Chemie, Volume 66, Issue 4, April 2018.
Steeples E., Pérez-García R., Benincasa C. , “Art Bridging Science and Society”, ChemViews, Wiley-VCH Verlag, 6 February 2018.
Rodrigo Pérez García (Spain)
Rodrigo is a chemist interested in tangential points of the arts and science, especially within Nanotechnology & Renewable Energy, Turblence Dynamics, Neuroscience, Music, Visual Art and Literature. Currently working at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces (Germany), he holds a Masters in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling (The Netherlands) and has conducted research residencies in Bristol (UK), Perugia (Italy) and Kyoto (Japan). Co-founder of Polyhedra, Rodrigo coordinates and implements multi-disciplinary events, catalyzing connections between local realities and global cultures.
Arnau Horta, Caterina Benincasa, RPG “Give ‘Em Enough Rope” Poiesis & Precision forum – JHPA: Fudan University, accepted for publication 2021
Benincasa C., RPG, “Wissen verbinden und vermehren”, Nachrichten aus der Chemie, Volume 66, Issue 4, April 2018.
Steeples E., RPG, Benincasa C. , “Art Bridging Science and Society”, ChemViews, Wiley-VCH Verlag, 6 February 2018.
Virginia BERNARDI (IT)
A creative at heart, Virginia is keen to develop and support written, graphic and audio-visual projects. Always uncertain as to what her “field” might be, Virginia finds herself at home in transdisciplinary interactions at an academic and personal level. During her Undergraduate degree in Classics at the University of Cambridge (UK), she focused on the convergence of art, history, philosophy and literature. Her Masters’ in Identities and Cultures of Europe from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) allowed her to use different disciplines to uncover the origins of social structures and beliefs. Most recently, being a Trainee on the Science and Art project of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission drew her attention to the potential of art & science collaborations. Combining this experience with her studies led to a strong interest in how meaningful transdisciplinary encounters – by creating and fostering dialogues, empathy, and engagement – can restore the traumatic gaps created in identity and society by discrimination, turmoil and structural issues.
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Elliat Graney-Saucke (US)
Elliat is a documentary filmmaker, creative economy consultant, organizing curator and educator. Currently, Elliat is Executive Director of Seattle Documentary Association and Director/Producer of the feature documentary “Boys on the Inside,” about three Latinx ‘boys’ who have experienced incarceration in women’s prisons in the US. Elliat completed a multi-year National Endowment for the Arts Our Town oral history project for the National Performance Network (New Orleans) in 2018 and is now building the Arts Leadership Programming for the Certified Creative Districts of ArtsWA (Washington State Arts Commission). While based in Berlin, Germany 2009-2015, Elliat produced video, performed, organized international queer festivals and the cultural heritage conference Innovate Heritage, co-founded/co-directed with Caterina Benincasa. During this period, Elliat also obtained an MA in World Heritage Studies focused on cultural equity in contemporary performed heritage. Elliat has produced over 20 short films in 9 countries and has done 40+ screening in 13 countries.
www.elliat-creative.com | www.contrastvisionproductions.com
Contributors
Matilde Flori (Italy)
Trained as a philosopher, Geneva-based creative writer Matilde, with her terrific talent for Fashion and passion for the Contemporary Art scene, has been contributing to Polyhedra’s publication and activities since 2011.
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Dayal C. Strub (UK)
Dayal’s always been particularly fond of both the fine arts and mathematics, and is interested in the similarities that one encounters by thinking of them both as expressions of abstract thought, or the laws of nature. Dayal recently finished his PhD in mathematics at the University of Warwick (U.K.). Before that he studied in Bristol (U.K.), Copenhagen (DK) and Brussels (BE). Needless to say, he also enjoys learning languages. [web]
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Lidewij Wiersma (Netherlands)
Lidewij is a veterinarian/pathologist/virologist/immunologist. She studied and worked at the University of Bristol (UK), l’Ecole Nationale Veterinaire d’Alfort in Paris (France), University of Utrecht (Netherlands), Robert Koch Institute in Berlin (Germany) and Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam (Netherlands), where she completed her PhD on “Emerging viral respiratory zoonoses”. In 2015, she moved to Italy to work at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in Rome, where she was coordinating the laboratory unit of the animal health service. She is currently the CEO of the European Board of Veterinary Specialisation and sometimes consults for FAO.
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Federico Rinaldi (Italy)
Federico is currently studying History of Art Università degli Studi Roma Tre. He joined Polyhedra in 2012 and is now developing Polyhedra’s online library whilst being in charge of the activities at our Headquarters. Some of the awesome projects he’s working on will soon be featured on our website!
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