Considering ‘health’

Simone Frangi (he/him) is a researcher and art theorist working at the intersection of critical thinking, curatorial research and educational practices. Holder of a PhD in Aesthetics and Art Theory and a postgraduate degree in Critical Theory of Society, he is professor of Aesthetics and Visual Culture at ESAD Grenoble, where he co-directs the Research Unit “Hospitalité Artistique et Activisme Visuel”. He co-directs Live Works - Free School of Performance and the Agitu Ideo Gudeta Fellowship at Centrale Fies - Research Centre for Contemporary Performing Practices and the curatorial training programme A Natural Oasis? for BJCEM - Biennale de la Jeune Création de l’Europe et de la Méditérranée. In his academic, curatorial and pedagogical work, he questions, through the filter of artistic and visual practices, how the “bodies that we are” struggle to self-determine by negotiating with spaces of privilege and spaces of subordination. In methodological terms, he pays particular attention to normative attributions of gender, race and class in an intersectional perspective. Thematic focuses of Frangi’s research include the use of theory as a form of direct action, visual studies as a site of critical struggle, the political function of cultural research, and the broadening of the operation of art criticism to include social criticism.

Enrico Petrilli (he/him) is a research fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the Milan Bicocca University, where he is conducting a study on the security of the night. His research interests intertwine different fields of study, from the sociology of alcohol and other drugs to the study of nightlife. He has published in Italian and international academic journals and has written about clubbing, drugs, theory and the excremental renaissance in Zero, Prism, Not, CheFare, Il Tascabile and Dinamo Press. He recently published his first monograph ‘Toxic Nights. Sociality, drugs and electronic music to resist through pleasure” for Meltemi Editore and the volume edited together with Cirus Rinaldi, “Sociology of evil and other writings”, a collection of essays by Edwin M. Lemert for PM Editions.

Valeria Graziano (she/her) is a cultural theorist and organiser, currently a researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Rijeka, Croatia. Over the years she has contributed to numerous research-action initiatives both in the cultural field and in the context of social movements, focusing on popular pedagogy and the politics of conviviality; techniques of labour refusal; and collective practices of care and repair. She is one of the editors of the Pirate Care Syllabus (https://pirate.care).

Silvia Casini (she/her) is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen where she teaches courses to students in the humanities and in medicine. Her work is situated at the crossroad of visual culture, cinema, science studies, and the medical humanities. Her research, supported by grants coming from, among others, The Leverhulme Trust and the Carnegie Trust features in journals such as Configurations, Leonardo, Contemporary Aesthetics, Nuncius Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, The Senses and Society. She published two monographs: Giving Bodies back to Data (The MIT Press 2021) and, in Italian, ll Ritratto-Scansione (Mimesis 2016). Among her most recent publications there is “What counts as data and for whom? The role of the modest witness in art-science collaboration” (Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies, 2021). She is currently co-editing a special number on visual culture, trauma and the medical humanities for the film and media studies journal Cinéma & Cie.