Participants in the panel discussion

graduated in English and French Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and in Maritime Economy at the Maritime Faculty in Rijeka. Throughout her career she studied cultural management, cultural policies, and cultural relations in France at the Observatoire des politiques culturelles de Grenoble, Ecole Nationale d'Administration and Chambre de commerce de Paris, as well as at Zadar University (European Studies: Languages and Cultures in Contact).

She is presently the CEO of Rijeka 2020, the Agency responsible for the implementation of the project Rijeka - European Capital of Culture 2020 and was involved in the project from the very beginning, first as the executive coordinator and international relations manager for the Rijeka ECOC 2020 bid and then as the Executive Director for Development, Partnerships and Participation at the Rijeka 2020 company.

Her previous professional experience includes the position of senior advisor for international cooperation in culture at the Rijeka City Hall, work for the Rijeka City Puppet Theatre, work for the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and teaching positions at high schools in Rijeka. She was the president of the Alliance Française in Rijeka (2003 - 2018), and the vice-president of the European cultural network Les Rencontres - LIKE (2015 - 2019).  She is fluent in English, French and Italian.

is a musician and composer from Pakistan and London. She has lived and worked in Austria since 2001.
Her musical work includes compositions for solo instruments, voices and ensembles, radio art and sound installations, as well as electroacoustic and intermedia performances. Mani's approach to the audible informs her sonic language, which is based on an ongoing, subtle pulse, and which constantly questions melody, rhythm, time structures, and acoustics.

Outside of music and sound art, she leads the Klanghaus Untergreith association in Styria and the Mani doo cultural organization in Croatia, which develop cross-border projects in the Alps-Adriatic region and in Europe, such as the current initiative "RESCUE - Regeneration of Disused industrial spaces through Culture in Europe", co-funded by EACEA as a Smaller Scale Cooperation Project. RESCUE is a network that stretches from Italy through Slovenia and Austria to Germany.

Zahra Mani is a member of the E-Music Circle of the Austrian Composers' Association and its E-Music representative at ECSA (European Composers' & Songwriters' Association). In 2017 she was awarded the Outstanding Artist Award for Music by the then BMUKK (now BMKOES).
Zahra Mani's life and work are characterized by a fundamental openness that is evident in her music and cultural work. She crosses borders and creates interdisciplinary networks in order to anchor and consolidate art and culture in a communicative society.

 www.zahramani.com |  www.schormani.com  |  www.klang-haus.com |  www.rescue-eu.com

lives in Ljubljana and writes in Slovenian. He has published numerous volumes of poetry, novels and essays, which have been published in more than 20 languages. Several projects with musicians (Vito Žuraj, Jure Tori), visual artists (Stojan Kerbler) and filmmakers (Peter Zach and the film Beyound Boundaries).

He has received several international awards, including the International Horst Bienek Prize in 2016, the Best Translated Book of the Year Award in the USA in 2011, and the international Književno žezlo Prize, Macedonia, in 2010. He received the title Chevalier des Artes et Lettres from the French Minister of Culture, and is a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin and the German Academy of Language and Poetry.

Most recently published in German were his poetry collections "Über dem Himmel unter der Erde" (Hanser, 2019), and "Logbuch der Gegenwart: Aufbrechen" (Haymon, 2019).

 www.alessteger.com

born 1993, finished in 2020 her Master at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana, working on a thesis about the Yugoslav partisan monumentality in relation to landscape. In 2015 she founded the cultural magazine Robida of which she curates the content and the graphic design. She develops cultural projects which question the topics of landscape abandon and marginality of border areas with the association Robida of which she is the president since 2017. Occasionally she works in theatre and cinema as an actress and scenographer. Since always she collaborates with Stazione di Topolò | Postaja Topolove, curating the graphic design, taking care of the spaces and helping in the programming.

was born in 1983 in Sárvár and is a writer, songwriter, intermedia artist, performer and activist. She studied linguistics, communication science and German literature. She often stages her texts with performances and installations, which she documents on her website  kingatoth.com. Her work includes poetry, short prose, and plays; she writes not only in Hungarian, but also in English and German. Most recently, the poetry collection "Maislieder" and her art album OFFSPRING were published in 2019. In 2020 she received the Hugo Ball Förderpreis and the Bernard Heidsieck Prize (Centre Pomidou-Fondazion Bonotto) for her work.