Fall into Focus program Isis Cabolet The Netherlands Screenwriting, dDrecting, Acting www "I always try to find humor in the pain and beauty in the mess." The reason I started writing was because I was fed up playing sexist or uninteresting female roles. I had never even considered becoming a director, partly because I unconsciously believed that men were simply better suited for leadership positions. Who would listen to a small, young woman with highly ambitious ideas and no film school background? Because the scripts I write are always deeply autobiographical, a cinematographer friend convinced me to direct my own work. From the very first day on set, I felt completely at home and I can no longer imagine a life without it. I make darkly comic films about people who struggle, often fail, but always keep striving for happiness. Damla Yalcin Turkey Bioart, Textile, Painting www In her creations, she employs sewing and embroidery techniques, often opting to produce installations that involve the viewer. While transferring traditional elements into contemporary art, she utilizes new media. The synthesis of these approaches takes viewers on a journey exploring concepts of space, memory, identity, and the relationship between humans and nature. The aim is for the audience to accompany the artist on this journey. Her works aim to demonstrate how we fill our living spaces with the dialectics of life, showing how we gradually root ourselves in "a corner of the world." Through her art, Damla Yalçın explores how harmoniously we coexist with nature in our living spaces. Following her thesis, she conducts research and production on bacteria, yeast, and fungi in the field of bioart, continuing her exploration and contributions to this artistic realm.

November Yuma Nishimura Tokyo, Japan Visual Art, Photography www Yuma Nishimura was born in 1995. Visual Artist, Photographer. He has been creating projects with the idea of leaving one’s existence behind for future discovery as the concept. By considering internal and external structures, he elucidates the ideal state of the next level of humankind, where their physical body and consciousness are no longer connected, due to clones, AI, etc. Mary Mulholland London, UK Poetry www I write poetry. My second pamphlet, 'the elimination game' (on ageing), launched this summer from Broken Sleep Books. I came to poetry following careers in journalism (I still do that, and edit a poetry magazine) and in psychotherapy, and I am greatly interested in existential and spiritual matters, health, the environment. That makes me sound really intense, but I believe I'm also quite funny, in a dark way. I'm a mix of introvert/extrovert so love to perform – I started the poetry platform Red Door Poets (where I and others do live interviews and readings on Zoom) – but when not performing I tend to shun the spotlight and am ok with solitude. My hope in coming to Arteles is to complete a manuscript of poems I've been working on for years concerning secrets and mystery I've uncovered in my maternal line from Guyana, which at its heart is an exploration of a mother/daughter relationship. I'm looking forward to the meditation/ yoga/ sauna and creative stillness of Arteles and trust this will work wonders. Lisa Smith Australia Theatre maker, Writer www Lisa is a theatre maker, director and writer who is passionate about initiating and leading making processes that create original work for theatre that is bold, narrative driven and deeply collaborative. Lisa’s creations are predominantly text-based works for performance that centre female or femme stories and perspectives. Her work is often deeply personal, inviting audiences to share in gentle reflection and conversation about the experiences we share. In recent years, her work has largely centred around explorations of grief and loss, as well as the meeting points between lived experience and the imaginary. Her works are often whimsical, playful and tender, using humour and gentleness to create connection with her audiences. Lisa uses curiosity as the guiding light in her practice.

Madison Wetzell Brooklyn, USA Playwriting www While currently based in Brooklyn, I grew up in Thailand and have lived in many places. I write dark comedies that wrestle with cognitive dissonance, especially in relation to queer and leftist politics. I’m interested in the ways our big political and philosophical commitments breakdown and collide in their practical implementation, and how we come to believe things that are untrue or bad for us. I’m fascinated by subcultures, twisted group dynamics, and the micro-politics of power. I find a lot of humor in the ways tragedy and crisis can suddenly reveal the absurdity of ordinary life. Alongside more traditional plays, I make work with audience interaction, non-traditional staging, and shows for very small audiences. Dustin Freeman Kingston, Canada Immersive theatre, Text, Algorithms www "CCD to ATP and back again" I am a Canadian ex-pat living in NYC. All my work intermixes my experience making immersive theatre, and new human-computer interaction models around novel tech capabilities. I am interested in modes of expression that transmit tacit knowledge, and ecological validity. I am a current visiting scholar at NYU, studying subtle forms of implicit turn-taking in group conversations, in-person versus over videoconferencing. Previously, I worked on neuromotor interfaces at Meta Reality Labs, where I learned how to create translations between neuroscientists, game developers and product managers. After a sabbatical, I am now focused on bringing coherence to the casual photo and video capture that we do impulsively with devices throughout our everyday lives. My immersive theatre interest came from a long experience performing and directing long-form (Harold) improv, and LARP. From 2016-2019, I ran an online theatre company. Hilariously, I paused this work right before the pandemic began. My design of audience interaction is inspired by Theatre of the Oppressed. I-Chih Fang Tainan,Taiwan Illustration, Free writing, Photography www "I believe the world is a playground full of love and stories." Hi! I'm I-Chih, a cross-disciplinary artist from Taiwan. Basically, I weave my ideas together using photography, writing, and drawing. My whole creative journey started with the fun of secretly passing around comic strips when I was a kid—I just loved sharing stuff and watching people's faces! That's why my work is always about life, love, and the world around us. Lately, I've been really into topics like human rights, history, and natural healing. I'm passionate about figuring out how to take these heavy subjects and make them relatable, approachable, and easy to touch. I firmly believe that art is a form of non-verbal communication that can change how people see things. So, I create picture books, poetry, and art teaching projects. I aim to connect back to my own childhood memories, finding fun ways for kids and adults to make art that can bring them closer to themselves, and hoping to give the audience a kind of "poetic moment." I look forward to traveling with this "playground spirit," initiating dialogues on local memory and free writing, and ultimately, composing a love letter to the world..

Freddie Jen Cohen Alger, WA, USA Painting, Sculpture, Poetry www "Everything is precious, nothing is precious." Freddie Jen Cohen (born 1983 in Lake Charles, Louisiana) is a Canadian American artist who lives and works in the mountains outside of Bellingham, Washington. Articulated by depictions of space, light, and color within and between bodies, Freddie's multidisciplinary art practice reflects felt or imagined emotion, fluctuating between enchantment and obsessive. Her work is a meeting ground for the visceral and contemplative, comprised of poetry, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and video. She is interested in the development of structure and method as a route to seek safety, and the letting go of control for sake of vulnerability. She embraces both love of nature and cynical love of the man-made. No matter the medium, her present fixation is on negative space... the space for solitude, quiet, air, spillage. Each work is the holding of a moment. This holding, this pause, originates from Freddie's immersion in nature and enriching lessons gained through witnessing all life that surrounds her. Having longheld love affairs with all things dirt, fluid, shiny, darkness, and destruction, rural living has allowed Freddie and these loves to evolve. Materiality always finds its way. Isabella Chien Taipei, Taiwan Performance, Writing, Floral installation www "A dream made of flowers, voices, and quiet light." I am Li-Wen Chien, a multidisciplinary artist and performer from Taiwan. My work moves between performance, floral installation, and writing—exploring how voice, body, and nature can become languages of healing and presence. Trained in the Meisner technique, I approach creation through attentive listening: to emotions, to materials, and to silence. My recent work Dream a Dream for You interweaves theatre and floral art to explore memory, dreams, and the resilience of women. Charlotte Marten USA / Germany Writing, Speculation, Science www "Imagined futures, interesting presents" I am a speculative fiction writer and scientist who draws on my research in bioengineering and artificial intelligence to create stories about possible near futures and alternate pasts. I write primarily fiction and some nonfiction essays alongside my scientific work as a researcher in biomedical artificial intelligence. In my scientific work, I study how we can mathematically model complex biological systems. My current work focuses on understanding high-dimensional spaces created from biological datasets, particularly those taken from large surveys of different bacterial species found in different environments. I am particularly interested in the interconnected, nonlinear interactions present in biological and ecological systems, which can be modeled using mathematical equations, networks, and machine learning. While my writing is informed by science, I primarily write fantasy or slipstream fiction which is not "realistic" in terms of what is physically possible. Instead, the grounding in my work comes from the setting and characters, which are usually directly drawn from our world and focus on themes of power structures, ethics in the face of imbalanced systems, and individual agency. I have written short stories about body snatchers, genetically engineered mammoths, liars who turn into birds, and Californian water rights manifesting as ghosts. See the list of all the Arteles residents here