Mykola Ridnyi is an artist, filmmaker, and curator. He studied at the National Academy of Design and Art in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and was already actively involved in art collectives and artist-run spaces before graduating in 2008. Ridnyi’s curatorial project Armed and Dangerous (2017–2021) led him to launch a platform for Ukrainian filmmakers. In 2022–23, he curated several Ukrainian film and video art screening programs at DAAD Galerie, Berlin; MAXXI, Rome; Museum Folkwang, Essen; and the National Gallery, Sofia. His installations, photographs, and films have been shown at a number of institutions and festivals. He is currently a fellow of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe’s Artistic Research Grant Program.

David Riff is a writer, translator, artist, curator, and former member of the art group Chto Delat. He has been a curator at steirischer herbst since 2018. Among other shows, Riff cocurated the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg (2010, with Cosmin Costinas and Ekaterina Degot) and headed the first Bergen Assembly together with Degot (2013). As an artist-curator, Riff is working on an ongoing long-term research and translation project about the Soviet aesthetic philosopher Mikhail Lifshitz, which, in 2018, resulted in a large-scale exhibition at the Garage Museum for Contemporary Art, Moscow (with Dmitry Gutov). Riff lives in Berlin.

(in English)

An event by the Friends of the Secession