Maipelo Gabang (she/her) is a Botswana-born and South African-trained artist-researcher, educator and embodied practitioner working at the intersection of choreography, movement research and performance. Through her practice, she draws from and attempts to memorialise the sociocultural perspectives, expressions and knowings of racialised (as Black) southern-African women. Maipelo is currently a doktorand (Phd) in Performative and Media-based Practices at Stockholm University of the Arts where her research project explores the processes of place-making by Afro-diasporic women situated in the Nordics and Scandinavianess.

Justin F. Kennedy (b. 1983, aka JFK) is a Berlin-based community dance/vocal artist, educator, curator, and dramaturg originally from Ay Ay (St. Croix, US Virgin Islands). Their multidisciplinary practice merges durational choreography, vocalization, and contemporary ritual to research themes of Apocalypse and Chimera through an Afro-Pessimist/Futurist lens. JFK’s work spans performing and visual arts, and often emerges as speculative opera, street intervention, and music. 

A frequent collaborator with artists: Shannon Funchess, Tino Sehgal and Jeremy Shaw, JFK has presented their work internationally—including Apocalypso (2025), Signs(2024), and UNFURL: a lucid science fiction (2020)—at institutions like Sophiensaele, Martin Gropius Bau, the Hammer Museum LA, Fotografiska Museum Berlin and ImPulsTanz Vienna. Additionally, they teach their movement and vocal research as a guest professor at institutions including HZT Berlin, SNDO Amsterdam, Bard College Berlin and USC Kaufman.