#2 Cultures without borders?

Pauli Nafer (she/her) is a Malaysian, Düsseldorf-based independent dancer/performer. Before pursuing her dance studies in Germany, she started in the performing arts field with theater and continued her pathway with contemporary and Malaysian cultural dance training. In 2020, Paula completed her dance bachelor’s degree at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.

After her graduation, Paula started to work intensely with a German choreographer, Ben J. Riepe, for multiple productions until 2023, performed locally and internationally. In 2023, she collaborated with a Malaysian German-based choreographer, Raymond Liew Jin Pin, on a production titled “Maria Cencaru” focused on the oppression and violence towards queer bodies in Malaysia/Singapore.

Simultaneously, she also collaborates closely with Andras (Igor Meneses Sousa) and took part in several dance research. At the beginning of the year 2021, they had showcased their debut collective work “Imminent Arrival” in the program of Now & Next at tanzhausnrw Düsseldorf and “SPRUNGBRETT <> TANZRECHERCHE NRW 2021” scholarship. Recently, Paula performed an in-progress solo performance “PANDORA”, their latest collaboration, at PACT Atelier No.69.

Paula Pau: “By allowing ourselves to go through discomforts and difficulties, we will develop understanding and respect for people from different cultures.”

Vite Joksaite is a cultural manager, curator and art activist. Since studying Cultural Management and Cultural Policy (MA) at the Vilnius Academy of Arts in her hometown, she has been working on the question of how art can contribute to social change and how creativity can be made accessible to different target groups. She has initiated projects in public spaces, shopping streets, buildings of renowned institutions and railway stations. She studied Curatorial Studies (MA) at the Städelschule and Goethe University Frankfurt am Main to deepen her knowledge of the theory and practice of artistic participation and then volunteered at a refugee centre in her street.  A scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation gave her access to new networks and social issues such as ecology, human rights, migration and feminism. Vite is active in the LABSA association (www. labsa.de) and has been an integral part of the kitev team (www.kitev.de) for 4 years. She is also the founder of the village e.V. association, which explores and tests new ways of social cohesion.

Vite Joksaite: ‘I like to believe that a major shift in thinking is still possible. In itself, respecting basic human needs would be enough for a fairer global co-existence. You would think that it doesn’t have to be that complicated: Everyone can look inside themselves and ask: When do I feel comfortable, safe, not hungry, motivated, arrived and accepted? Then you should already know or at least have an idea of what you can and cannot do. In the best case scenario, this is also reflected in the legislation and not the other way round. That’s where we want to go!’

 Eva Liedtjens is an art historian and cultural manager (MA) in Cologne. Since 2020 she has been working at the Institute of Art and Art Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in the DFG-funded project ‘Contemporary Art in Istanbul: Ambiguous Spatial and Visual Politics between Religion and State’. She is pursuing her dissertation project on Ottoman manuscript painting in contemporary art in Turkey at the TU Darmstadt in the Fashion and Aesthetics department. Since 2024 she has been a member of the working group Art Production and Art Theory in the Context of Global Migration at the Ulm Association for Art and Art Studies.

She completed her studies in art history, ethnology and sociology at the University of Trier in 2009 with a Magister Artium. Since 2008 she has been working in the context of Turkey and Germany in curation, art education (including the Istanbul Biennial, New Talents Biennial Cologne, documenta 14) and cultural management. In research and education, she specialises in transculturally situated art studies. In particular, she specialises in contemporary art in Turkey, queer-feminist positions and the appropriation of traditional art forms in the present. Since 2015, she has been chairwoman of the cultural association Neola art projects e.V. The association is committed to contemporary art and culture from Turkey and Germany and promotes cultural diversity.

Eva Liedtjens: ‘I see my research as part of transculturally orientated art studies. I critically question my own positioning and that of the discipline in a Eurocentric power and knowledge complex and examine reciprocal exchange processes and interdependencies in art. In doing so, I show how traditional art forms are redefined in transcultural processes of appropriation, translation and mixing and how these dynamics deconstruct colonial, dichotomous patterns of thought.’