Liesbeth Bik is an artist based in Rotterdam. She is working collectively with Jos van der Pol as Bik Van der Pol, since 1995. Together, they explore the potential of art to produce and transmit knowledge, and investigate research methods that can activate situations to create a platform for various kinds of communicative activities. Their methodology expands the notion of the specifics of site responsive practice to include historical research, institutional collaboration, community participation and the investigation of political legislation and localized resistance.

Ann Demeester (Brugge,1975) is currently director of de Appel arts centre and head of de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam. She is on the editorial board of the magazines A-Prior and F.R. David and has written recent essays on Michael Borremans, Jennifer Tee, Salla Tykka and Nicolas Floc’h. After studying literature and linguistics within the field of Germanic Languages she worked as an editor and art critic for the Belgian national newspapers De Morgen and De Financieel-Economische Tijd. From 2000 onwards she worked as an assistant curator for Jan Hoet in both the SMAK, Museum for Contemporary Art in Gent (BE) and Museum MartA Herford (DE) where she realized exhibitions and projects with e.g. Luc Tuymans and Raoul De Keyser, Rui Chafes, Royden Rabinowitch, Rob Birza, Joe Scanlan and Bjarne Melgaard. From 2003 till 2006 she functioned as director of W139 production and presentation platform for contemporary art in Amsterdam and alongside programming, managed the renovation and acquisition of the art space. Demeester has recently been appointed curator – in collaboration with Kestutis Kuizinas -  for the Baltic Triennial in Vilnius which takes place in 2009.

Charles Esche (born 1962, England) is a curator and writer. Since 2004, he is Director of the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven. He is co-founder and co-editor of Afterall Journal and Afterall Books with Mark Lewis. In 2007 he was co-curator with Khalid Rabah of the 2nd RIWAQ Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine. In 2005 he was co-curator of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial with Vasif Kortun and in 2002 the co-curator with Hou Hanru and Song Wan Kyung of the Gwanju Biennial, Republic of Korea. Between 2000 and 2004 he was the Director of Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmo,Sweden.

Elena Filipovic is a writer and independent curator. Most recently she curated Marcel Duchamp: A work that is not a work “of art” at the Fundacion Proa in Buenos Aires and the Museu de Arte Moderna in Sao Paolo. She was co-curator, with Adam Szymczyk, of the 5th Berlin Biennial When things cast no shadow and was co-editor, with Barbara Vanderlinden, of The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe. In recent years, she also curated Let Everything Be Temporary, or When is the Exhibition? for Apex Art in New York and Anachronism at Argos Center for Art and Media in Brussels. She is currently completing a doctorate in art history at Princeton University and works as a curator at Wiels art centre in Brussels.

Annie Fletcher is an independent critic and curator who lives and works in Eindhoven. Currently she works as a curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. She was co-curator of the exhibition ‘Becoming Dutch’, and is co-curator and and founder of If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution together with Frederique Bergholtz.

Dieter Roelstraete (1972) was trained as a philosopher at the University of Ghent and currently works as a curator at the Antwerp museum of contemporary art MuHKA. His curatorial projects there include Emotion Pictures (2005); Intertidal, a survey show of contemporary art from Vancouver (2005); The Order of Things (2008); and the collaborative projects Academy: Learning from Art (2006) and The Projection Project (2006). In 2005 he co-curated Honoré d’O: “The Quest” in the Belgian pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale; in 2007 he curated solo exhibitions by Steven Shearer at De Appel in Amsterdam, and by Roy Arden at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He is an editor of Afterall and FR David (a journal published by De Appel arts centre in Amsterdam) as well as a contributing editor to A Prior Magazine. Roelstraete has published extensively on contemporary art and related philosophical issues in numerous catalogues and journals. He is also a tutor at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.

Henk Slager Studied philosophy, art history and general literature at both the University of Amsterdam and Amsterdam’s Free University. In 1989, he earned a Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam) writing an art philosophical thesis entitled Fomalistic Temperament. From 1989 to 1993, he was involved in a post-doc project researching the foundations of art and cultural science for Brussels’ Free University. In 1993 he established the Global Vernunft Foundation, which organizes and executes projects (exhibitions, symposia, graduate teaching programs, publications) concerning the interface of philosophy and contemporary art. Since 1994 Henk Slager has been tutor at the Curatorial Training Programme at De Appel Foundation in Amsterdam. From 1998-2004, he was a board member (Ass. Secretary General) of the International Association of Aesthetics and professor of Art Theory at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK, Antwerp). Currently Henk Slager is Dean of the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (MaHKU) and its professor of Artistic Research. He is on the board of Earn (European Network for Artistic Research).

Lisette Smits is an artist and curator. She was the initiator and curator of Casco, an artists initiative in Utrecht, specializing in the production of collaborative projects with artists. She also was editor of Casco Issues. Casco Projects include Home Design Service by Apolonija Sustersic (2001), Funky Baskenland by Asier Peréz Gonzaléz (2000) and First Woman on the Moon by Aleksandra Mir (1999). She is currently curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Maastricht, called Marres.

Jan Verwoert is an art critic based in Berlin. He has been a tutor and leader of the Imagined Communities seminar at PZI since 2005. He is a contributing editor to Frieze magazine and also writes regularly about contemporary art for such art magazines as Afterall, Metropolis M, Springerin and artists’ catalogues. He is author of Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous (One Work), (MIT Press/Afterall Books, 2006).