ruangrupa (abbreviated as ruru) is a contemporary art collective based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Founded in 2000 by a group of seven artists, ruangrupa provided a platform in South Jakarta for organising exhibitions, events, and festivals, also conducting publishing services, workshops, and research.

ruangrupa functions as a non-profit organisation that supports contemporary art within the urban and cultural contexts of Indonesia and beyond, often involving artists and practitioners from other disciplines such as the social sciences, politics, and technology. The collective also supports the development of video art through research, documentation, and their biennial video art festival, OK Video, first held in July 2003.

As a collective, they co-directed documenta fifteen , which took place 2022 in Kassel, Germany; notably the first Asian group and the first art collective to curate the large-scale international exhibition.

While the collective has no fixed number of members, ten of the group's core members engaged in the directorship role, including director Ade Darmawan, Ajeng Nurul Aini, Daniella Fitria Praptono, Farid Rakun, Indra Ameng, Iswanto Hartono, Julia Sarisetiati, Mirwan Andan, Narpati Awangga, and Reza Afisina.

In 2022, ruangrupa topped the ArtReview Power 100 list for their defense of artistic freedom amidst the controversies of documenta fifteen, as well as their influential mode of nonhierarchical working that continues to inspire ongoing collaborations across the art world.

Federico Campagna is an Italian philosopher and writer based in London. His latest books are Prophetic Culture (2021) and Technic and Magic (2018). He is Critical Fellow at the Royalty Academy Schools in London, Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, and a director at the radical publisher Verso Books. He is the host of the podcast Overmorrow’s Library for the Centre of Contemporary Arts in Geneva. He is currently working on a new book on the history of world-building imagination in the Mediterranean.

Carolyn Steel is a leading thinker on food and cities. She is the author of the award-winning Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives. (2008) and Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World (2020). Her concept of sitopia, or food-place (from the Greek sitos, food + topos, place) has gained broad recognition across a wide range of fields in design, ecology, academia and the arts. 

colectivo amasijo, created in 2019 in Mexico City, is comprised of women of different professions, different ages and from different parts of Mexico. The collective rises from the will to care, conserve, and celebrate. Creating the conditions to actively reflect on the origin and diversity of food, de-hierarchizing knowledge and focusing on the “doings” (haceres) as a way of learning. They listen to the narratives of women close to the land and cook collectively as a way to share, learn, and relate. Through food, the interdependence of language, culture, and territory becomes visible.

Since three years Philipp and Suzanne work together as more-than-human collective and trans-local food studio. Tracing the roots and routes of different foods across histories, geographies and cultures, they develop site-specific services, formats and frameworks to reimagine what and how we eat. Departing from their interest in sweetgrasses, the immersive family of grains and cereals foundational to all human settlement, they tell edible stories that activate all senses and seek to inspire caring relationships between people and land. 

Currently, Philipp and Suzanne are reviving ancient techniques for food preservation and storage through the development of a permanent public art work for Dogo Residenz für Neue Kunst and Toggenburg Tourism (CH) to be opened in fall 2025. In addition, they are researching orchard culture and forgotten fruit trees for Nova Gorica and Gorizia, European Capital of Culture 2025 (SI) in collaboration with Robida Collective (IT). Besides, Philipp and Suzanne offer consulting services to those in need and develop workshops and educational programs for organisations in various areas, such as Design Campus Dresden (DE), Plantahof School of Agriculture (CH) or Tourismus Region Klagenfurt (AT). 

Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa is an anti-disciplinary architect, curator, researcher, and educator operating at the intersection of academia and the cultural sector. His work utilizes a cross-disciplinary approach, integrating architecture, institutional design, filmmaking, and alternative curatorial practices to explore the critical spatial forces shaping our time. He often creates institutional and para-institutional platforms to develop research-driven projects that couldn’t be realized otherwise under more normative forms of research or practice.
An ongoing project is Foodscapes, a long-term research initiative focusing on the systemic, ecological, and political implications of our planetary food systems and the architectures and territories underpinning their existence.

Abena Offeh-Gyimah is a writer, a researcher, a food consultant, and an advocate for an indigenous food sovereignty system.

She's worked at Black Creek Community Farm as a coordinator for the youth farming program, with Building Roots as an urban gardener coordinator, with North York Community House as a Strong Neighborhood Coordinator, and currently project manager with the Jane Finch Community Research Partnership.

Her food business, Adda Blooms, seeks to work with small scale farmers to bring ancestral foods worldwide. Her blog (https://abenaoffehgyimah.com/) seeks to explore the intersections between food, culture, and equity. Abena’s passionate about preserving indigenous plants, seeds, and seeks to work in collaboration with small scale African farmers to grow and preserve ancestral foods.

Philip Maughan is a writer and researcher based between London and Berlin. He writes regularly about food, technology, unorthodox science and culture, and is one half of the food philosophy platform Black Almanac.

Black Almanac is a speculative design-research platform that sees artificiality, alienation, and desire as key ingredients in the transformation of the global food system.
The project brings together concepts, tools, case studies, and people for whom equitable, nutritious, sustainable and joyful cuisine is the minimum viable requirement for food in the century to come.

The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is an artist-led think tank launched in 2010 by Cathrine Kramer (NO) and Zack Denfeld (US) that examines the biotechnologies and biodiversity of human food systems. They have completed research and exhibited in Asia, Europe and North America, collaborating with scientists, chefs, hackers and farmers. Their mission is to map food controversies, prototype alternative culinary futures, and imagine a more just, biodiverse & beautiful food system.

The Center’s work has been published in WIRED, We Make Money Not Art, Science, Nature and Gastronomica and exhibited at the World Health Organization, Kew Gardens, Science Gallery Dublin and others.

Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. Her research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity, evolution, symbiosis, and ecology, particularly of the less studied fungal groups, such as the insect-associated Laboulbeniales. She is a co-founder of the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, which seeks to jointly protect Armenian sovereignty and biodiversity. Patricia also studies philosophy of science, queer ecology, and queer theory, exploring how mycology and other scientific disciplines are situated in and informed by our sociopolitical landscape. Her work, The science underground: mycology as a queer discipline, bridged the relationship between queerness and mycology. Her forthcoming book, Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, will be published by Spiegel & Grau.

Hicham Khalidi (1972) has been director of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (NL) since 2018. As a Post-Academic Institute, the Jan van Eyck offers residencies to international artists, designers, writers, curators and other artistic researchers and makers. Khalidi was the curator of the Dutch entry for the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. From 2015 until 2018, he worked as associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. He was also the curator of the group exhibition ACT II for the Sharjah Biennale in Beirut in 2017, cultural attaché of the Sydney Biennale in 2016 and chief curator of the Marrakech Biennale in 2014. As a curator, Khalidi is interested in the context and conditions related to contemporary art and art-institutional practices and specifically in how the climate emergency, the accumulation of crises and processes of colonialism affect these practices. He considers curatorship as working in service of and in coalition with others.

Noa Jansma is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates commonly accepted cultural beliefs by challenging their validity or purpose through seemingly naive questions. Her work focuses on the relationship between humans and their (ecological) environment, using food as both a subject and a medium. The questions she raises often intersect philosophy, the material-spiritual duality, and politics, resulting in diverse outcomes such as culinary performances, video installations, and educational programs.

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His writings span the fields of ecological theory, phenomenology, and political thought. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and monographs, including Plant-Thinking (2013); The Philosopher’s Plant (2014); Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger (2018), Political Categories (2019), Pyropolitics (2015, 2020); Dump Philosophy (2020); Hegel's Energy (2021); Green Mass (2021), Philosophy for Passengers (2022), The Phoenix Complex (2023), Time Is a Plant (2023), and, with Edward S. Casey, The Place of Plants (2023). For more information, consult his website michaelmarder.org (http://michaelmarder.org/).

Lelani Lewis creates inspiring experiences with her innovative and vibrant approach to food. Hailing from South London with Grenadian and Irish heritage, Lelani grew up amongst the diversity of cuisine; learning the ins and outs of global flavours from a young age with favourites such as bara and sweet potato pie.

Becoming obsessed with developing a mainstream platform for Caribbean food, Lelani wanted to demonstrate just how unique and diverse Caribbean cuisine is, combining her love of bringing people together around the table and paying homage to those who came before her.

The rich histories of the islands provide a deep well of inspiration for Lelani to further explore the cultural impact of food, and how the world’s ingredients unravel beautiful –and tragic– stories.”

Dr. masharu is an earth eater and an earth lover, a founder of the Museum of Edible Earth. masharu’s projects combine scientific research with a personal approach and cultural practices. In 2011 they obtained a PhD in Mathematics and graduated with honours from the Photo Academy Amsterdam. In 2013-2014 they participated in the art-in-residency programme at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam.

Nonhuman Nonsense is a research-driven art and design collective working in the realm of social dreaming and world-making. Their projects engage with the nonhuman: animals, objects, ecology, technology, and the spectres between and beyond categories. They use nonsense as an antidote to “common sense” – embracing paradoxical stories to explore the ethical and metaphysical layers of our relationship with the (nonhuman) world. The collective creates contradictory scenarios & propositions in which they appropriate ideas from fields such as science, computing, law and mythology. Nonhuman Nonsense enjoys curiosity, cherishes compassion, and recognises that separating the human from the nonhuman is nonsense.

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. She is the author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine and The Madonna Secret. Her memoir The Body is a Doorway: A Journey Beyond Healing, Hope, and the Human is forthcoming from Running Press Spring 2025.

Based between Madrid and Sydney, GRANDEZA STUDIO

(Amaia Sanchez-Velasco, Jorge Valiente Oriol and Gonzalo Valiente Oriol) is a collective of architects and artists founded in Madrid in 2011. Their work studies late-capitalist spaces and narratives to identify – through critical analysis – and challenge – through political imagination – the mechanisms that veil and normalize structural forms of violence.

GRANDEZA STUDIO´s work hybridizes methodologies that entangle with research, critical spatial practice, writing, performance, design, filmmaking and pedagogy.

Parama Roy is a Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on issues related to postcolonial theory and literatures; Victorian studies; appetite, consumption and taste/food studies; and animal studies. She is the author of three books, including, Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions and the Postcolonial (Duke, 2010), States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia (Zubaan, 2009), and Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (University of California, 1998).

Mercedes Villalba writes poetry and nonfiction, mostly about nature, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, where she researches art and landscapes in the energy transition. She is the author of “Fervent Manifesto” (2019) and “A las Plantas” (2022). She studied Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín in Buenos Aires and at The New School for Social Research in New York and has published articles, poems, translations, and essays in Spanish and English. Every once in a while, she makes zines and small-run prints. Her ‘Fervent Manifesto’ was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalá and Kiwcha.

Asunción Molinos Gordo is a research-based artist strongly influenced by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. In her practice she questions the categories that define “innovation” in mainstream discourses today, working to generate a less urban-centric way of understanding progress.

The main focus of her work is contemporary peasantry. Her understating of the figure of the small or medium farmer is not merely as food producer but as cultural agent, responsible for both perpetuating traditional knowledge and for generating new expertise. She employs installation, photography, video, sound and other media to examine the rural realm driven by a strong desire to understand the value and complexity of its cultural production, as well as the burdens that keep it invisible and marginalized.

She has produced work reflecting on land usage, nomad architecture, farmers’ strikes, bureaucracy on territory, transformation of rural labour, biotechnology and global food trade.

Molinos Gordo won the Sharjah Biennial Prize 2015 with her project WAM (World Agriculture Museum) and represented Spain Official Section at the 13th Havana Biennial 2019. Her work has been exhibited at venues including V&A Museum (London), Delfina Foundation (London), ARNOLFINI (Bristol), Jameel Arts Center (Dubai), The Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Darat Al Funun (Amman), Tranzit (Prague), ART BASEL Miami Beach (US), Cappadox Festival (Uchisar-Turkey), The Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki), Museo Carrillo Gil (Mexico), MAZ Museo de Arte de Zapopan (Mexico), MUSAC (León, Spain), CA2M (Madrid, Spain), CAB de Burgos (Spain), Matadero (Madrid, Spain) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain), among others.

She obtained her B.F.A. from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she also pursued her Master in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice. She is currently studying Anthropology and Ethnography at UNED (Spain).

Molinos Gordo is represented by Travesia Cuatro gallery in Spain and Mexico.

Darren Le Baron is a world renowned educator in Ethnomycology and Psychedelic studies. Based in the UK and the Caribbean he is also a grassroots community activist and influencer. With a background in Creative Arts, Organic Horticulture and Permaculture, he is the creator of the Shroomshop, a Mushroom Cultivation initiative that engages local communities, schools and business enterprises alike.