Fia Backström & Pradeep Dalal with Bill Dietz as respondant

Fia Backström attended University of Stockholm and Columbia University for her undergraduate degree and received her MFA eq. in photography at Konstfack Royal College of Arts and Craft in Stockholm. She works in a wide array of mediums, such as performance, photography, text, typography and layout, installation, objects and live events. Her work has been exhibited at numerous international exhibitions. Backström represented Sweden in the Venice Biennale 2011 and was included the Whitney Biennial 2008. She was the artist chosen for the Artist’s Institute season of fall 2015. Other exhibitions include MoMA, White Columns, Artists Space and The Kitchen, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Serpentine Gallery, London; The Baltic, Newcastle; Tranzit, Prague; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Greene Naftali and Murray Guy galleries, New York. A monograph of her work was produced for her representation in Venice. Her writings have also been published in magazines such as Artforum, Art on Paper, Pacemaker, and North Drive Press. She has received grants from Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden; Cneai in Paris; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. Backström has also been on the faculty of Princeton University, and has taught at Columbia University graduate program, LUCAD Lesley University, and School of Visual Arts. She has lectured widely on her work and has been a visiting artist in schools such as NYU, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design and MICA.

Pradeep Dalal is a Mumbai-born artist based in New York. His solo show was recently at Sala Diaz in San Antonio. His work has been exhibited at Callicoon Fine Arts, Higher Pictures, International Center of Photography, Murray Guy, New York Public Library, Orchard, PS122, and sepiaEYE in New York, the Miami-Dade County Library, Aljira in Newark, Tart Gallery in San Francisco and the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, Franklin Street Works in Stamford, Blackpearl Gallery and the Sumner School Museum in Washington, DC, and internationally at Galerie Duboys in Paris, Galeria Arroyo de la Plata in Mexico, Chatterjee and Lal in Mumbai, Vadhera Gallery in New Delhi and Galleria de Arte in Havana, among others. His photographs were included in TAKE on Art, BOMB, Grey Room, Blind Spot, Cabinet, and Rethinking Marxism. His artist book “Bhopal, MP” was excerpted in the book “Chandigarh is in India,” and his essay “A Bifocal Frame of Reference” was published in “Western Artists and India.” He is the co-chair of the Photography MFA at Bard College and directs the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant Program. He holds an MFA from ICP/Bard College and a MArch from MIT.

Bill Dietz is a composer and writer, born in Bisbee, Arizona. His work on the genealogy of the concert and the performance of listening has brought him to festivals such as MaerzMusik and the Donaueschingen Festival, museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, and Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, and into publications such as Performance Research, boundary 2, Blank Forms, and MusikTexte. Dietz’s large-scale public works have been realised in sites such as Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin, and along the entire city block of Im Stavenhof in Cologne. Since 2012, he has been co-chair of Music/Sound at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.