19. Focus Award // Fachhochschule Dortmund // 18. – 20. May 2011

Ute Noll

Ute Noll

Ute Noll holds regular exhibitions of international photography in her Stuttgart art gallery UNO ART SPACE. The gallery is part of the ON PHOTOGRAPHY & ILLUSTRATION Agency, which conceptualizes and supervises a large variety of projects in the fields of art and applications.

As co-curator, she published the photo book Hijacked 2 in 2010. It shows comprehensive series of photos by 16 Australian and German photographers. In June 2010 an exhibition of the same name was opened at the Australian Center for Photography in Sydney featuring 130 exhibition prints. It will tour Australia until the end of 2011. Ute Noll was guest curator of issue # 15 (in 2008) of the international documentary magazine OjodePez on the topic »I want to be happy«.
For six years now Ute Noll has been part of the curator team of the »Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie« and for almost three years she has been introducing a young international

talent in the »Photographie« magazine every month – each entry covering several pages. She teaches photo editing at the technical colleges in Dortmund and Bielefeld. She has been a jury member for many photo competitions such as the »Canon-Profifoto-Förderpreis«, »Deutscher Fotobuchpreis«, and »Europäischer Architekturfotografie-Preis«. In addition she regularly nominates photographers for competitions such as the “PDN 30” by Photo Distric News, NYC. For many years she has been invited to international portfolio reviews and festivals such as the »Fotofest Houston und Paris«, the »Rhubarb-Rhubarb Festival« in Birmingham etc.

Her main focus is on exhibitions and publications of photographers presenting a specific topic from their point of view and who set themselves apart by an outstanding and contemporary pictorial language, including both documentary and staged works.
www.on-photography.com

Barbara Wendling

Barbara Wendling

Barbara Wendling is a managing partner of her own agency for cultural management and communication in Dortmund. Among the customers for her public relations and advertising agency are the Stiftung Zollverein, the Hochschule Hamm-Lippstadt, the Fachhochschule Dortmund as well as mid-sized companies from the region. Over the last years she has especially developed the area of culture and creative economy into yet another field of competence.

Barbara Wendling  is the initiator and operator of the social network KREATIVE KLASSE RUHR. This active communication platform offers creative enterprises a market entry in the Ruhrgebiet by providing them with presentation space; it also serves as a market place for creative services, products and jobs. The annual highlight of the activities is the KREATIVE KLASSE RUHR festival with its approximately 200 events all over the Ruhrgebiet.

Apart from working at her agency, Barbara Wendling is a lecturer for design entrepreneurship at the Fachhochschule Dortmund for the Design Department; she also works as a freelance lecturer for »Branchenentwicklung Kreativwirtschaft« (creative industry development) at the private University of Witten-Herdecke.
www.agentur-wendling.de

Andreas Broeckmann

Andreas Broeckmann

Dr. Andreas Broeckmann is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin and Dortmund/Germany. He is the Founding Director of the new Dortmunder U - Centre for Art and Creativity and has curated exhibitions and festivals in major European venues, incl. transmediale and ISEA2010 RUHR. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK, and lectures internationally about the history of modern art, media theory, machine aesthetics, and digital culture.
www.dortmunder-u.de

Peter Bitzer

Peter Bitzer

After completing a basic commercial training as well as his A-Levels in a continuing education programme, Peter Bitzer (born 1954) studied German Language and Literature as well as Politics in Marburg. After finishing his studies in 1986 he first worked in marketing and distribution for various newspapers and magazines. He held the position of Head of Distribution at the »Bilderberg – Agentur der Fotografen« from 1990 to 1992 and as of 1993 he took the position of Managing Partner for »laif Agentur für Photos und Reportagen GmbH« www.laif.de. Ever since 2010 Peter Bitzer has had a photo editorial lectureship at the Fachhochschule Dortmund. He has been acting as a jury member for competitions such as »Canon Profifoto Förderpreis« among others.
www.laif.de/peter-bitzer

Oliver Langbein

Oliver Langbein

As of 2005, architect Oliver Langbein (Dipl.-Ing. Architekt) has been one of the founding members of »osa - office for subversive architecture«, Netzwerk für Kunst, Architektur und Stadtentwicklung (Network for Art, Architecture and Urban Development). He has been the head of the »Darmstädter Architektursommer« since 2010 as well as a member of the steering committee for the »Architektursommer Rhein Main / Frankfurt-Darmstadt-Offenbach-Wiesbaden« (Architecture Festival). Langbein hosted workshops for osa and Sitios at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel & »The Knot« in Warsaw. He has been lecturing at the Technical University of Darmstadt (TUD), the Hochschule Darmstadt (h_da), the Coburg University of Applied Sciences and the University of Kassel ever since 2003 as well as holding workshops and seminars for osa.

An exhibition (Contemplating the Void) took place at the Guggenheim museum in New York in 2010 which featured a contribution by osa.
www.osa-online.net