The decision concerning the selection of the projects will be made for the first time by a program board of five people. In future the program board will be responsible for all curatorial work and will be newly appointed for every festival edition.
The members of the program board for the 2023 edition are Davide Bevilacqua, Fina Esslinger, Mario Friedwagner, Marlene Hausegger, and Janina Wegscheider.
* Fina Esslinger
lives and works as an art historian, curator and art producer in Austria and Germany. She has been a board member of the Festival of Regions since July 2018. As an art manager she was/is working for dorf tv, The Future of Demonstration, the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, the Kyiv Biennale, La Biennale die Venezia, Viennafair and Ars Electronica. She teaches art and television at The University of Art and Design Linz. As a curator and art historian she has curated the Schaudepot of the Museums of the City of Linz, exhibitions for MUSA, Deutschvilla Strobl and others. She is the editor of the books: Astrid Esslinger. Painting Cut Out. and Zelko Wiener. Between 0 and 1.
Her focus is on contemporary conceptual, installation works and Austrian visual art with time-based media.
* Mario Friedwagner
is a trained ski jumper, cultural worker and studied education manager (MA). From 2005 to 2020 he managed the affairs of the association Freies Radio Salzkammergut in Bad Ischl.
During this time, he developed Free Radio into an initiative that is anchored in all three provinces of the Salzkammergut and can be heard on eight frequencies. Today he works at the interface of adult education, media production and regional development. He was a member of the application team for Bad Ischl/Salzkammergut – European Capital of Culture 2024 and is involved as a volunteer in the Kunsthaus Deutschvilla in Strobl. His role on the program board is to address art and culture in the countryside, issues of community involvement and the sustainability of art projects in the region.
* Marlene Hausegger
lives and works as a visual artist in Austria and Slovenia. She is particularly interested in public space. Her interventions and installations have been shown at Belvedere 21, Vienna; Art Lahore 22; Künstlerhaus, Bregenz; Vernacular Institute, Mexico City; Biennale Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina; bina, Belgrade; Stedelijk Museum, ‘sHertogenbosch; <rotor>, Graz; Project Space Viktor Bucher, Vienna; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; bjcem Biennale, Skopje. She teaches at The University of Art and Design Linz and and has been a member of the Panel for Art in Public Space Lower Austria since 2019. In 2018, she received the Austrian State Scholarship for Visual Arts.
http://mmhhh.com/
* Davide Bevilacqua
is a media artist and curator. Interested in network infrastructures and technological activism as much as in the frameworks of curatorial and artistic research under which artistic practices are presented and shared with audiences. His current research topics include internet sustainability and the environmental impact of technologies, digital greenwashing practices, and platform capitalism. He is part of the artist collective qujOchÖ, collaborates with the sound art gallery bb15 and with servus.at, an association working on open source internet infrastructure and online art and culture. He organizes the community festival AMRO Art Meets Radical Openness.
His role on the program board is to curate the digital part of the Festival of Regions and critically reflexive works in the context of sustainability and self-reflection of artistic practice.
http://davidebevilacqua.com/about.html
* Janina Wegscheider
born on 12.6.1977, grew up in Gallneukirchen and Katsdorf (Upper Austria). Studied visual media design at The University of Art and Design Linz. Since then working as a freelance artist and graphic designer.
From 2014 artistic exploration of blue printing and the establishment of an experimental workshop “Zeugfärberei” for dyeing and printing in an old school in Gutau (Upper Austria). The Zeugfärberei is the winner of the Upper Austrian Folk Culture Award 2020. Janina Wegscheider is chairwoman of the cultural association Alte Schule, which is located in the same building as the Zeugfärberei.
Her role on the program board is to involve and support local initiatives and artists.