Bani Brusadin is a contemporary art curator, educator and researcher with a background in communication studies, cultural production, and creative activism. Since the early 2000s his work revolves around unconventional communication and artist tactics, technological dreams/nightmares, planetary-scale infrastructures, and all the possible feedback loops between them.

Full bio 👇🏿 / Bio en español / Bio en català
About The Fog of System (2021)
About Synthetic Minds (2024)
Recent talks & Selected texts 👉🏿 Research
Instagram @nonsensebani

"I think that artists' imagination is sometimes able to cut through this thick set of layers, acting as a connector between material facts and collective intelligence in the huge (but thrilling) task to experiment with new models, in any field: from perception to economy, from cognition to terraforming, from social justice to the cosmos."

"I don't see 'technology' simply as an extension of our body or a new medium to express ideas. It is more than that: human intelligence and passions have always been somehow synthetic, a hybrid mixture of habits, materials and geochemical reactions."

"So, as I feel naturally attracted by any kind of blind spot, exception, anomaly, I cannot but look at society, its power systems and infrastructures, too, by this oblique angle. From this perspective their original design is less interesting than their flaws and inconsistencies."

Full bio

Bani is currently working as curator of the 5th Industrial Art Biennial in Istria (Croatia), teaming up with Italian curator Giulia Colletti (Castello di Rivoli, CURA Magazine).

Since 2022 he is the curator of the DONE program, a research project by Foto Colectania Foundation in Barcelona. Between 2023 and 2024 Bani collaborated with Medialab Matadero as author and mentor for LAB03 - Synthetic Minds, a year-long creative production program. In the same period of time he also worked as strategic advisor on art, technology, and society for the City of Barcelona, as well as jury member for art grants. Between 2022 and 2023 Bani worked as a member of the curatorial team of the 2023 edition of transmediale, one of the oldest and most renowned festivals of art and digital cultures in Europe.

Previously, Bani conceived Freeport, a prototype pilot for an independent study program about creative / critical strategies for a world of humans and machines (and else). Between 2018 and 2021 Bani developed a few programs in collaboration with the Center of Contemporary Culture Barcelona CCCB (2018) and Matadero Madrid (2019, 2020), as well as independently. 

Between 2018 and 2019 he co-curated the Tentacular festival at Matadero Madrid and in 2021 he was one of the three international mentors in the first edition of Cultures d'Avenir, a joint project by the CCCB Barcelona, Centre Pompidou Paris and HKW Berlin.

Bani is currently based in Barcelona where in 2004 founded The Influencers, a festival about unconventional art, guerrilla communication and radical entertainment (together with artists Eva & Franco Mattes). Over fifteen editions the festival spanned over very different moments in the history of digital and post-digital cultures, hosting some of the most relevant emerging artists, radical designers, rebel technologists, unusual activists, and independent researchers on the international scene. The festival was co-produced by the CCCB Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona since its inception, and was supported by the City of Barcelona and the Catalonia Regional Council since 2005.

In the past he was part of the team of directors of Masters & Servers (2014-2016) and The New Networked Normal (2017-2019), two European cooperation projects focused in the evolution of art and critical digital cultures, realized in collaboration with organizations such as Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Transmediale (Germany), STRP (Netherlands), the CCCB (Spain), Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art (Slovenia), Drugo More (Croatia) and Link (Italy). Earlier, he worked as project manager for one branch of the Desacuerdos research project, led by Marcelo Expósito for the MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (2004). Bani was also an active member of the art and activist project Las Agencias and Yomango (2002-2007).

His long-form essay The Fog of Systems was published by Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana in 2021. Shorter essays and articles appeared in publications by Routledge, IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Fundación Foto Colectania Barcelona, A*Desk, Matadero Madrid, Inmaterial journal, Temes de Disseny journal, among others.

He regularly teaches in BA and MA programs, lectures, moderates panels, works as jury member, researcher and advisor for public and private institutions. He especially loves mentoring design students, emerging artists and curators.

Bani Brusadin holds a PhD in art production (University of Barcelona, 2016) and currently teaches about network cultures and communication at the Communication and Cultural Industries BA program at the University of Barcelona (2013, ongoing), as well as in MAs in Digital Art Curatorship at Esdi (Sabadell, Barcelona - 2012, ongoing), Data & Design at Elisava (Barcelona - 2021, ongoing), Design and Emergent Futures (Elisava & IAAC, Barcelona - 2024, ongoing), Film and Screen Studies (ESCAC, Terrassa - 2024, ongoing). In the past he taught about technology, society, dystopia, critical interaction in several BA classes at Elisava (2008 - 2024). In 2018 he co-chaired the international academic congress Interface Politics - After Post-Truth, organized by BAU Design College Barcelona in collaboration with Hangar and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. He was guest co-editor of Elisava Design School's Temes de Disseny research journal (2021).

He was the receipient of several grants for travel and research for his projects, among which the Research Grant from OSIC (Generalitat de Catalunya) in 2007 and 2020.