The Resilience of Sisyphos

Carmen C. Kruse
cckruse.com
Carmen C. Kruse is an Austrian-German opera director who works across both the classical repertoire and contemporary opera. Her productions are characterised by an in-depth, psychological engagement with social issues and their impact on individuals. Drawing on personal testimonies and community contributions, she creates immersive experiences that reconfigure the relationship between orchestra and dramatic action, crafting stage worlds that inspire, empower, and connect.

Dominik Förtsch
dominikfoertsch.com
Dominik Förtsch is a German actor, composer and performer and lives in Vienna. After studying performing arts, he worked as an actor, singer and dancer on various stages. He is currently completing a degree in composition with a focus on media composition, applied music and electroacoustic composition. He has been part of MuPATh since 2021 and is interested in experimental and immersive formats with a focus on interdisciplinary and collaborative processes, often based on documentary and biographical material.

Lisa Horvath
lisahorvath.at
Lisa Horvath is a theatre maker, stage designer and visual artist. She studied stage and costume design at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and applied theatre studies in Gießen. In 2015, she was honoured with the Outstanding Artist Award from the Austrian Ministry of Culture. Since 2013, she has been developing her own works at the interface of performance and installation. She often works with expansive constructions using different media such as video, light, sound or interactive elements. She is particularly interested in playful, changeable and immersive spaces. She also works with artists and groups from the independent scene, with engagements at the Staatstheater Augsburg, Landestheater Niederösterreich, Next Liberty Graz, Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Theater in der Drachengasse, Kosmos Theater Wien and at festivals such as La Strada Graz and the Dramatiker:innen-Festival.

Samu Gryllus
samugryllus.info
Samu Gryllus studied jazz bass and pedagogy at the Liszt Academy Budapest, composition and experimental music at the UdK Berlin, media composition at the mdw Vienna, and undertook doctoral research in instrumental theatre at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. He also studied at Wesleyan University (USA) and took masterclasses with George Aperghis, Peter Eötvös, and Jonathan Harvey. Gryllus works as a composer, researcher, teacher, and curator. He has composed chamber operas for Sophiensaele Berlin, Theater an der Wien, the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, and the Hungarian State Opera; his most recent chamber opera Geiseloper premiered at Musiktheatertage Wien 2022. His sound installations have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Arts, Museum Ludwig Budapest, and the Design and Architecture Gallery in Tallinn. From 2014–2021, he was artistic director of the Transparent Sound Festival in Budapest. He currently teaches at the mdw and leads the Institute for Composition at Vienna Music Institute. Gryllus is a member of the artist group iKult, the IGNM, and the artistic director of HoME – Oral History Sonification. He regularly teaches workshops in Soundpainting, a multidisciplinary sign language.

Wen Liu
wenliu-music.com | thestudiomars.com
Wen Liu is a multidisciplinary composer and media artist known for works that merge music, visual art, dance, theatre, and technology into immersive and interactive experiences. Her passion for exploring the intersection of science, technology, and storytelling drives her innovative approach to contemporary art.

She is the founder and artistic director of the M.A.R.S. (Music & Arts ReSound) Festival and Studio M.A.R.S. (Music Art Research Science), a visionary collective at the forefront of multimedia storytelling and immersive opera.

Liu has received numerous awards, including the S+T+ARTS ReSilence EU Artist Residency, the Ö1 Talentebörse Composition Prize, the Austrian State Scholarship, the City of Vienna Music Grant, fellowships from the European Music Accelerator and Goethe-Institut's “AI to Amplify,” the Francisco Escudero International Composition Competition, and the Theodor Körner Prize.

Her works have been featured at major international festivals such as La Biennale di Venezia, Ars Electronica, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Wien Modern, Expo Shanghai, ManiFeste IRCAM, Steirischer Herbst, ZeitRäume Basel, Crossings Johannesburg, Taschenopernfestival Salzburg, Festival Mixtur Barcelona, and Stockholm Fringe Fest. She has also been an artist-in-residence in Johannesburg, Singapore, Aix-en-Provence, Luxembourg, and La Monnaie, and serves as a mentor for the SEWEM European Women Music Programme.

Conny Zenk
connyzenk.com | radperformance.at
Conny Zenk is a media artist working at the intersection of performance, video, and sound art. Since 2017, she has curated the participatory event series RAD Performance. Her transdisciplinary, research-based practice involves media performance using digital interfaces, loudspeakers, and projections in site-specific and urban contexts. She collaborates with artists from the fields of dance, theatre, and film, as well as with musicians in audiovisual concert formats.

Zenk studied Digital Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and stage/film design. She also studied Gender Studies at the University of Vienna and electroacoustic and experimental music at the University of Music and Performing Arts. From 2008–2012, she co-founded the performance collective ffid and has since explored connections between contemporary circus, visual music, sound, and performance.

Her works have been presented at numerous international festivals, including Mixtur Festival, Donaufestival Krems, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal, and Rencontres Internationales Paris. She has also participated in residencies and received grants from institutions such as ACF London, Sonje Art Center Seoul, Beijing Dance Academy, and Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussurdiardja Yogyakarta.

STUDIO DAN
studiodan.at
Studio Dan was founded in 2005 as a large ensemble of the JazzWerkstatt Wien and has since evolved into a flexible instrumental group and cross-genre collective. Studio Dan pursues a vision that goes far beyond performing music: grounded in the conviction that artistic work can act as a counterweight to regressive, nationalist, and capitalist forces, the group takes a clear stance.

They develop educational formats, engage with public space, realise ambitious productions for young audiences, and build networks that extend beyond the art world. The collective is particularly interested in artistic positions that consciously resist current trends in art and music. Studio Dan has always worked in heterogeneous constellations – in terms of artistic backgrounds as well as across generations and gender identities.

MuPATh - music performance art theatre
MuPATh, founded in 2008 by bass-baritone Rupert Bergmann and composer Samu Gryllus, is an Austrian association dedicated to promoting and developing innovative projects in the performing arts. Through its diverse international collaborations, MuPATh makes a significant contribution to the contemporary arts scene. With a strong focus on the future, the organisation realises groundbreaking projects that transcend artistic boundaries and explore new, collaborative forms of working.

Tara Khozein
Tara Khozein is a soprano, theatre-maker, improviser, teacher, and song-maker. As a multidisciplinary performer, she explores the intersections of classical singing, pan-idiomatic vocal sounds, concert music, and physical theatre. She holds an artist diploma from the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and a bachelor’s degree in classical vocal performance from New Mexico State University.

In Santa Fe, she directed circus, immersive, operetta, and children’s performances, developed her improvisation practice, and collaborated with Theater Grottesco and Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, where she later served as content director for immersive performance. Since moving to Budapest in 2019, she has continued to teach globally via her online voice studio.

Her recent work includes lead roles in two world premieres by Ondrej Adámek (Connection Impossible, INES), vocal performance in Once Within a Time by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass, and creative direction for Stereo Akt’s Soundfishing. She starred in Samu Gryllus’s interactive opera Geiseloper and performs in Budapest’s free improvisation scene with groups like Kat and the Devil, PONT, and the Budapest Improvisers Orchestra. Her discography includes duo albums with Rhonda Taylor, Thea Soti, Etienne Rolin, and Carlos Santistevan. Her songwriting features in Aida Shirazi’s Yearning, Every Dawn. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Budapest.

Marie-Theres Auer
Born in Graz in 1997, Marie-Theres Auer studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies, Musicology, and Contemporary History and Media at the University of Vienna between 2018 and 2023. During her studies, she worked as an assistant director in both spoken and music theatre (including at Wiener Staatsoper, Salzburger Festspiele, and Theater in der Josefstadt) and as an administrative assistant at the Elfriede Jelinek Research Centre of the University of Vienna and MUK.

She has been part of UniT Graz’s Forum Text since 2020. In 2022, she won the audience award of the Hans Gratzer Fellowship at Schauspielhaus Wien for her play Granatsplitter, which deals with collective memory and forgetting. Since the 2023/24 season, she has worked as dramaturgy assistant at Schauspielhaus Wien. In October 2024, her text Amor und premiered there as a solo performance featuring Maximilian Thienen.

Aleksandra Bajde
aleksandrabajde.com
Aleksandra Bajde is a Slovenian composer, singer, performer, cultural manager, and researcher based in Vienna. She studied jazz vocals, music composition, international relations, and European studies in various European countries. She is a multi-time recipient of grants from the Austrian Ministry of Culture.

In 2020, she was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize for composition and was selected for the European Music Council Fellowship Programme (2020–2022) and the Global Cultural Relations Programme of the Cultural Relations Platform in 2021.

Her music has been performed across Europe at prominent venues and festivals, including Porgy & Bess, Brucknerhaus Linz, Leicht über Linz, Crossroads Festival, and Wien Modern in Austria; November Music and Operadagen Rotterdam in the Netherlands; Oper Köln in Germany; Ljubljana New Music Forum and Cankarjev dom in Slovenia.

Her core interest lies in exploring and experimenting with the endless expressive possibilities of sound while forging new connections with other art forms and genres. She is founding director of the Culture and Sustainability Lab and currently works as a project manager at the Austrian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (IGNM) and as a lecturer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw).