Opening Talks & Conversations

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show “World Soup : The Kitchen Show” in 1991, he has curated more than 350 shows.

 Obrist’s recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects (2015), Mondialité (2017), Somewhere Totally Else (2018) The Athens Dialogues (2018), Maria Lassnig: Letters (2020), Entrevistas Brasileiras: Volume 2 (2020), and 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021).

Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) was one of the most influential architects of her time, globally recognised for pushing the boundaries of architecture and related arts. Born in Baghdad, she studied Mathematics at the American University of Beirut before enrolling at the Architectural Association in London, where she was awarded the prestigious Diploma Prize in 1977. In 1979 Hadid established her architectural office, winning the coveted competition for The Peak leisure club in Hong Kong in 1983. Her first building, the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein, Germany, was completed in 1993.

Incorporated in 1999, Zaha Hadid Architects went on to complete major projects worldwide, such as Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (1997-2003), Phaeno Science Centre, Wolfsburg (1999-2005), MAXXI Museum, Rome (1998-2009), London Aquatics Centre (2005-2011/14), Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku (2007-2012), and Galaxy Soho, Beijing(2008-2012).

Hadid taught throughout her career, including at the Architectural Association, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize in 2004, and the first in her own right to receive the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Royal Gold Medal for her lifetime’s work in 2015. She received the Stirling Prize in both 2010 and 2011, was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2002 and made a Dame in 2012 for her services to architecture.

Photo: © Brigitte Lacombe 

Francesco Vezzoli's work highlights and subverts media conventions and the star concept. He started out by making embroidery portraits of pop icons before turning mainly to videos to tarnish media myths and poke fun at phony stardom. He does fake TV shows featuring world-famous celebrities, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, thereby exposing the share of fiction in the media.

Imitating popular media forms, the Italian artist strengthens the inherent ambiguity between searching for truth and building a narrative. His works experiment with this communication strategy to the point of depicting his own life and inventing his own death.

Stephan Crasneanscki (b. 1969, Odessa; lives and works in New York, US) and Simone Merli (b. 1978, Milan; lives and works in Berlin, Germany).

Composed of contemporary artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli, Soundwalk Collective integrate sound, film, and mixed media in site- and context-specific artwork. Evolving along multi-disciplinary lines, they have cultivated long-term creative collaborations with artist and writer Patti Smith, late director Jean-Luc Godard, photographer Nan Goldin, choreographer Sasha Waltz, and actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others.

Central to their artistic philosophy is the exploration of sound as a medium to navigate and interpret the complexities of human experience and environment. Their original score for Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed contributed to the film’s Golden Lion win at the Venice Film Festival.

Soundwalk Collective have performed and exhibited at a diverse range of institutions, including BAM, New York; MAC/CCB – Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre, Lisbon; Centre Pompidou, Paris; documenta, Athens and Kassel; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; kurimanzutto, New York; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Louvre Abu Dhabi; Manifesta, Palermo; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Onassis Stegi, Athens; Piknic Seoul, Reethaus, Berlin; Volksbühne, Berlin; and Zaha Hadid’s Mobile Art Pavilion.

Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist from Uzbekistan who came of age in the post-Soviet era and has established her artistic career between Paris and Tashkent. Interweaving rituals and dreams within the tapestry of everyday life, her films investigate the historically complex and multilayered culture of Central Asia. She graduated from Tashkent’s State Institute of Arts and Culture and Le Fresnoy, National Studio for Contemporary Arts in Tourcoing. In 2021, she founded the DAVRA research collective in Central Asia.

She has had solo exhibitions at Swiss Institute (2026), Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2024–2025), Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (2023), Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing (2023), and Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (2019). Her work has been presented in numerous collective exhibitions, including the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection (2026), the Fondation Pernod Ricard (2025), Venice Biennale (2013, 2022), documenta fifteen (2022), and major international film festivals. In 2022, she received the Eye Art & Film Prize, Amsterdam, and the Art Basel Gold Award in 2025.

Daniel Birnbaum is director of London’s Acute Art, a laboratory exploring art and technology. He is professor of philosophy at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and the author of numerous books on art and philosophy. From 2000 to 2010 he was rector of the Städelschule in Frankfurt and director of its Portikus gallery. He has been a member of the board of directors of Frankfurt’s Institut für Sozialforschung as well as of Nobel Media, which organizes all events and productions surrounding the Nobel prizes. Between 2010 and 2018 he was director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. He was co-curator of the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), the 1st Moscow Biennial (2005), Airs de Paris (with Christine Macel) at the Centre Pompidou (2007), and the 2nd Yokohama Triennial (2008). He organized 50 Moons of Saturn in Torino (2008), and Zero (with Tijs Visser) at Martin Gropius Bau (2015). In 2009 he was director of the 53rd Venice Biennial. He is a contributing editor to Artforum. Among his most recent projects are the VR exhibition Electric (Frieze New York, 2019) and the AR exhibitions Mirage (2020) at Beijing’s UCCA and The Looking Glass (with Emma Enderby) at New York’s The Shed and High Line (2021).