The content of her work is concerned with global matters like human rights, peace and war, love and hate, social and environmental issues. Inari Virmakoski has been working as a performance artist since 1994 and represented Finland in several International Performance Art Festivals and events around the world, in Asia China and Indonesia, in Africa Mozambique in South America Chile and Peru, Europa Italy, Germany, Poland and Norway, all Baltic countries, Russia and Belorussia., XIV Interakcje Live Art Festival in Piotrkow Trybunalski Poland, Fringe festival in Recklinghausen, Germany, Karlsoy Festival in Art Programme Stoy in Norway, Performance Compost at Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki, Perfolink- Chile Festival in Santiago de Chile were the most important activities in 2012.

Working and staying in Africa for eight years affected her life and art deeply.

Art production has been built upon overtly and subversively expanding and evolving communicative language and contexts. aiming to stimulate interaction and critical consumption of art. taking his multi-sensory advocacy from the streets to the internet and galleries, mideo has crafted political yet humorous work and social discourse realized both collectively and individually. as an artist-organizer, he has consistently addressed issues of haphazard globalization vis a visidentity and skewed acces to productive assets.

Racquel De Loyola is actively engaged in the international network neworldisorder and women artists group Kasibulan. She previously curated Authorized Extremist a live art component of 2008 tutoK-2talk Creative Convergence. In 2007 she was shortlisted to Ateneo Art Awards for her “Subsisting Sustenance” which was presented in 2006 in Toronto Canada for 7a*11d, as Ramon Lerma described, “Framing stillness and motion, the collision of space and intervention in Racquel de Loyola’s subsisting sustenance performance delivers a sensorial spectacle that leaves viewers shocked and awed. Haunting ululation presages the entry of the artist who, caked in talcum and garbed as the multi-breasted Bagobo goddess Mebuyan, weaves her own melodious yowling into a hair-raising bel canto-style duet”. She is now developing her new performative project “Satisfaction” which already presented in Manila, France, and Germany. With a growing reputation in the international cross-disciplinary art circuit she is frequently invited to various art events abroad. She was awarded the prestigious Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists Awards in 2009

Many of my friends are in prison, far away and inaccessible. There are over 2000 political prisoners in Burma. Some have been sentenced to 56 years of imprisonment, some 65, some 102. All are committed to their fight for freedom and justice in Burma, and for our people. I am lucky because I am not in prison like them. But I always think of them: how they spend their time in the prison, and how they have sacrificed. I cannot help them to be free. So I am doing this performance as a tribute to them and what they have done for us. In this performance, I explore the “poun-zan”: a form of torture common in Burmese prisons, in which prisoners must hold a physically excruciating and psychologically humiliating position for a long period of time. My performance is their real performance in those prisons. I hope you can feel it.

I am an artist who consistently questions the purpose and function of art. I have a genuine interest in hybrid forms and works that cross artistic boundaries. Working from a Shape (the rediscovery of perception) philosophy, I am engaged in creating live performance and mediated works based in the act of ritual as a medium of artistic expression towards the ignition of the imagination through contemplation.

Whitney V. Hunter is a NY-based performance artist and independent curator from Chicago. www.whitneyhunter.com

ABDOU MBOUP [SENEGAL]

Abdou MboupAbdou Mboup was born in the small town of Kebemer, Senegal to a family of oral historians and musicians. Having studied traditional drumming under the tutelage of his family, Abdou soon became a key figure in the development of the Mbalax style (Senegalese dance music). In fact in the early 1970s, he was the first musician to incorporate various traditional instruments into Senegalese popular music. A few years later, he joined the renewned Dakar based group Xalam, which he toured Europe and Africa under the patronage of south African trumpeter, Hugh Masekela. By the 1980s, Abdou was living and working in Paris, There he attracted the attention of the American trumpeter Jon Hassell, with whom he recorded and performed at the 1982 Womad festival in London, England. Soon therafter, he became the percussionist of Eddy Louiss’s band with whom he toured and recorded for the next ten years. Concurrently, Abdou taught percussion at Loisirs et Culture music school in France and founded the jazz fusion band Sixun. In the years to come, Abdou’s career has only expanded. He has toured and recorded in Africa, Europe, America, Southeastern Asia, Japan, Nepal and India. From the 1990s until now, Abdou has written original composition for Jean Luc Ponty, Pharoah Sanders Tom Tom Club and Randy Weston.