Rights, Constitutional Law and Criminal Defense attorney, who recently retired after a 40-year career. He is currently writing a book centered around the prosecution of New Paltz, NY Mayor Jason West for marrying same-sex couples before it became legal. The story explores the nature of love and justice and the relationship between these two powerful forces.

His work includes representation of Dovid Krafchow, a Kabalistic Tarot card reader who was prosecuted for illegal vending on the Village Green in Woodstock, NY. In a case which received national media attention, Krafchow’s First Amendment rights were vindicated by the Federal Court,  overturning the conviction he received in the local town court. Krafchow was thereafter compensated by the town for his false arrest.

Coincidentally, another First Amendment case arose on the Village Green in Woodstock when singer John “The Baker” Eppard was arrested for singing the words “God damn”. Charged with Disorderly Conduct and Resisting Arrest, Mr. Schindler successfully asserted Eppard’s First Amendment rights to secure dismissal of the charges and compensation for the false arrest.

Mr. Schindler briefly represented Larry Whitehurst in what was New York’s first death penalty case under its 1995 death penalty statute, another case that had received national media attention.

In another First Amendment case, Mr. Schindler successfully represented a high school student who was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for writing a poem about a person considering suicide.

Mr. Schindler has served as Vice President of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. He is currently a member of the Ulster County Bar Association.

Bilyana Furnadzhieva is Bulgarian-born visual artist based in Paris since 2011.
graduated from École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs de Paris (2017), Ensaama Olivier de Serres (2013),
National School of Fine Arts Sofia (2011)
bilyana develops a visual artist practice and is the artistic director of crystal sound project – a musical ensemble
focused on cross-genre collaborations.
her work has been presented at SuperMarket ArtFair (Stockholm), Yun-Chia-Chia-Ying Visual Art Link (Taiwan),
Hangar 9 (Geneva), Or blanc (Château de Vincennes, Paris).
bilyana is the winner (two years in a row) of the Chaire Innovation et savoir-faire de la Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
and had 14 months residency at the Cité internationale des arts.
following regular creative stays during the past four years, she has developed a relationship with the artist residency
BKN Björkö Konstnod in the Stockholm archipelago.
she has also been involved in the development of the Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste since its creation in 2017.

Artist Statment:

I’m a visual artist working with natural materials, aiming to develop diverse artworks, for which I’m in pursuit of discovering new places and finding elements to use in my compositions. I have a special relationship with nature. Source of inspiration, photographic and drawing subject or almost unreal setting, it is always, in one way or another, present in my images.

After years of experimentation, I took a new direction during the lockdown in 2020 and I concentrated myself on searching the closest environment and getting inspired by the natural presence all around, in the city surroundings as well as the countryside areas. I started working on collages / assemblages and drawings combining natural materials and golden leaf and organizing them in series by geographical area or theme. This comparaison also questions the value of what surrounds us.

My idea behind these compositions is to confront the human mind, used to thinking in grids and the formal liberty of the natural creations. I’m inspired by the Byzantine icons, the Medieval and Renaissance’s
herbariums, as well as paintings and tapestries.

Often my works involve hours of walking around, collecting leaves, flowers, stones, soil, which I clean and treat with glues and varnishes to prevent their drying out and breaking naturally. My desire is to give new life to the natural elements I have chosen and make them equally esteemed as the durable and expensive materials associated with fine arts.

It is extremely important for me to show, through my works, the beauty of each leaf, each petal and the delicacy behind the lines on each stone. My work consists of organizing collections, herbariums and drawings that become a mental cartography of the places from which the elements were taken.
For several years, I also used natural watercolors and I’m still developing this technique. I also create my own color palette by finding plants and soils and extracting pigments out of them.

Nature is our primary reality. I have always been moved by the variety of its colors, its multiple shapes and its fascinating sounds. I delve into myths to find traces of the ancient witches. In my opinion, the role of the witch today is to get inspired as much as possible from forces and phenomenon and to translate them into a visual and sound narrative.

Crystal sound project is presented in the form of sculptures and musical performances, reflecting my desire to link physical form and music. I started out with the idea of making peculiar and unfamiliar objects of my own in search of unexpected sonorities. The research of the specific resonance of the sculptures is achieved through the use of porcelain and pure metal oxides, which create new timbres, specific to each object.

The corpus of my works combines precise elements, made by myself and raw elements, found during my moments of exploration. My musical pieces composed through the use of scores, are conceived as questions – answers between soundtracks, recorded instruments and parts played live. The pieces interact with the noises and the sound context in which they are performed, an evocation of passing time, the ephemeral and the transitory. For me the rhythms played are the primary language that makes our bodies vibrate.

who am I ? how I work ? : https://vimeo.com/492274896 //

Artist Statement

I am an interdisciplinary artist, performer and artistic
researcher working across voice, performance, memory,
participatory practice and site-responsive environments.
My work explores how artistic situations can create
temporary spaces of encounter, listening and shared
presence. Through voice, narrative structures and spatial dramaturgy, I am interested in thresholds:
moments and places in which identities, memories and perceptions shift, overlap or become temporarily
suspended.

A central part of my practice is A Suitcase Full of Notes, a long-term performative project travelling through
songs in their original languages from across the world. The project treats voice as a carrier of memory and
cultural crossing, inviting audiences to listen across languages before translating or defining them. The
suitcase itself functions as a portable archive — not only of songs, but of stories, images and fragments
gathered along the way.

Alongside my performative work, I develop site-responsive and curatorial projects that transform domestic,
transitional or symbolic spaces into relational environments, within my broader research framework,
Threshold Relational Practices.

Working Plan
During the residency at BKN (14–22 September 2026), I will develop a visual and narrative extension of A
Suitcase Full of Notes, focusing on a series of papercut illustrations connected to Malinka, a fairy tale I am
currently writing.
While the broader framework of the project remains rooted in voice, storytelling, listening and cultural
crossing, the main focus of this short residency will be visual research. I would like to use the atmosphere of
Björkö — its island landscape, birch trees, forest paths, light, distance and proximity to water — as a source
of inspiration for developing the imagery, rhythm and visual language of Malinka.
Malinka is set in an imaginary Northern landscape and resonates with themes already present in A Suitcase
Full of Notes: journey, memory, transformation, symbolic geography and the passage between familiar and
unfamiliar worlds. The suitcase may therefore become not only a container of songs, but also a portable
archive of stories, images and fragments.
During the week, I plan to work on sketches, papercut studies and a first visual sequence for the project:
Days 1–2 — settling in, orientation walks around Björkö, first sketches responding to the landscape
Days 3–5 — papercut studies, developing character and setting motifs for Malinka
Days 6–7 — consolidating a short visual sequence and if suitable preparing an informal sharing
Listening walks and informal exchanges with the place and the residency community may accompany the
process, but the most realistic outcome will be a small body of visual material rather than a finished
performance or sound work.
The residency may lead to an informal sharing of the process, presenting the first papercut illustrations,
narrative fragments and research notes developed in dialogue with Björkö..

Links

Webbplats: www.chiaragelmini.com

Projekt – A Suitcase Full of Notes: tinyurl.com/Asuitcasefullofnotes

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chiara-gelmini

Artiklar – Bora.La: bora.la/autore/chiara-gelmini/

Artiklar – Critical Point: www.criticalpoint.se/category/aktuellt-nummer/l=en

Artistic statment

During my time at Björkö Konstnod, I’ll be developing new work that continues my exploration of the relationship between environmental systems, image-making, and digital technology.

Working across analogue video and photography, I’ll be experimenting with abrasion, immersion, and inscription using materials gathered on-site – allowing the landscape itself to leave traces on the image. These altered film strips will then be developed further through analogue darkroom processes, where experimental layering techniques become another stage of translation between environment, light, chemistry, and image.

I’m looking forward to spending an extended period working within the Stockholm archipelago, where the continuity between observing, filming, collecting, developing, and making can unfold, enveloped within the same environment. 

https://marleighbelsley.com

instagram: @marleigh.belsley 

https://www.instagram.com/marleigh.belsley/?hl=en\

Artist statement

My practice has moved between performance, video, drawing, and painting, yet the medium has never been my primary concern. Instead, I am interested in how knowledge is constructed, transmitted, and embodied, and in the ways historical frameworks continue to shape contemporary perception. Rather than treating history as a source of references or visual quotations, I approach it as an active framework through which present-day questions can be examined. Working across visual research, installation, and archival material, I trace connections between scientific thought, philosophy, and cultural narratives.

My early performances emerged from an attempt to navigate conflicting cultural and personal realities — the gap between what I inherited and what I lived. Growing up between patriarchal traditions and contemporary urban culture, religious imagery and critical theory, I became interested not only in these contradictions themselves but in the structures that produce them. Over time, this shifted my focus from autobiographical narratives toward broader questions of representation, authority, and the production of knowledge.

Painting remains central to my work, not as a return to tradition but as a critical tool. The discipline of academic painting, together with my experience of church decoration, is embedded in my body through years of training. I often work with canonical images, established visual conventions, and historical narratives, recontextualising them through feminist perspectives, contemporary experience, and interdisciplinary research. My projects frequently combine historical sources, visual analysis, and speculative narratives to create dialogues between different periods, systems of thought, and modes of seeing.

My current research focuses on changing conceptions of the relationship between humans, climate, and the cosmos, from the Enlightenment to the present. I am interested in how scientific models become cultural imaginaries, and how artistic practice can translate complex systems of knowledge into spatial and visual experience.

Across my work, I seek to activate the past rather than reconstruct it: to treat it as material that stays open to question, to reinterpretation, and to being seen differently from where we now stand.

Working plan 

The research residency at Björkö Konstnod supported by an Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse grant 

Drawing on live data platforms, diverse concepts of time, and the tradition of astronomical clocks, I aim to create a contemporary version: Ecological Clock—an installation that communicates time and climate while placing local environmental conditions in a global context.

The acceleration of time—driven by the internet, rapid information exchange, and increasingly by AI—is widely discussed today and closely linked to the ecological crisis. In this project, I explore different perceptions of time and construct contrasting images of possible planetary futures, combining warning and hope in the form of the Ecological Clock.

The project draws on the tradition of astronomical clocks—public instruments that once synchronized social life by displaying time alongside celestial and environmental cycles. I encountered one inside the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre in Beauvais. In this clock, the Earthly City—all the time-related and astronomical knowledge known at the time—is crowned by the Celestial City, a mechanical puppet theatre that enacts the Last Judgment daily.The performance begins with a rooster that steps forward, flaps its wooden wings, and crows in a chilling, trumpet-like organ sound.

My idea for Ecological Clock is to use live data platforms—tracking flights, vessels, traffic, climate, satellites, air pollution, solar activity, and more—together with research into diverse temporal concepts to create a contemporary astronomical clock that communicates time and climate. I imagine it as an installation warning of possible global environmental catastrophe, echoing how the Beauvais clock reminded people of the Last Judgment.

https://alenatereshko.com

https://www.facebook.com/alena.tereshko

https://www.instagram.com/alenkij86

Artist statment:

With my practice I wish to sew together historical research and childish imagination through a distinct visual language. Coming from an alternative upbringing on Dartmoor I have found creating mythical landscapes to be a fecund method of bringing together the personal with the academic parts of my practice.
I move between paper and canvas, indoor and outdoor sites of creation, urban and rural, the imagined and the pragmatic, in order to unlock new imagery, and uncover new methods. I am constantly in a state of dreaming in my practice, weaving in myth and personal experience, rage and silliness, recapturing a girlish wonder and frustration with the world into my own imaginary creations.

Examples of my academic interests include an obsession with various outsider female figures, often sharing animalistic qualities, such as Mary Toft, a Georgian woman who claimed to birth rabbits. With this research I am seeking to develop an alternative logic, using intuition, curiosity, cognitive dissonance, tradition and anarchist ideals to create a space where I can work untethered by convention. I am seeking figures from the past to encourage me to trust intuition and move away from empirical understanding, to be gleefully illogical.

Working plan:
I have been cooped up in a city for the majority of the past 6 years, and I do not find it conducive to my creativity. As someone who makes and creates constantly, I need the space and location to fuel this work. I am currently intrigued by the transformation of scale, through small to large works, but also in folk culture, of stories of fairies and elves and giants.
I am obsessed with house iconography, having been mobile for 6 years without a permanent home. I want to build small paper house lanterns, and use my tent as a site of inspiration.

So much of my practice has been shaped by the need to transport it easily, and set up wherever I am, and I see this coming into the ideas I have around using this residency space. Making habitats in the woods or on the water, folding down and unpacking art works, hanging works on fabric across branches by ropes.

Website and socials:
https://www.galahills.co.uk/
@galamadesomething

Artist statment;

At the heart of my work lies a search for an encounter with another, greater reality, an experience of transcendence, which forms the very foundation of each individual painting. Using the circle as a fundamental form and fine lines arranged in a delicate grid, my images emerge slowly, allowing the lines to dissolve into one another. Between the contrasts of colour, vibrations arise that I imagine emit both light and sound.

Each painting is like an instrument whose strings must be tuned and calibrated to resonate at the right frequency. At the same time, it is light gradually brought forth through the interplay of colours and lines, a form of abstract impressionism. My painting process is intuitive and responsive; I come to the studio each day to meet my paintings with a “clean” and open gaze. Finding the right light and frequency requires care, tenderness, and even love.

Like the artist Agnes Martin, whose abstract expressionism was imbued with restrained, gentle, and subtle shifts, I seek a concentration on a sparse and precise emotional state in which feeling, rather than intellect, takes the lead. In recent years, I have been searching for my own path and my own inner voice beyond the intense noise that surrounds the art world.

Tina Willgren is a visual artist working with moving images, installations, and digital environments. She holds an MA from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2005). Her practice explores the technological and bodily frameworks through which we make sense of the world, often using glitch processes and chance-driven digital environments.

Recent exhibitions include “Fragments of a Present Adrift” at Bienalsur, Centro de Arte de la Universidad de La Plata, Argentina (2025), and the solo exhibition “Ramblings” at Vestfold Kunstsenter, Norway (2024). She has shown at venues including the Prague Biennale, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, and Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn. In 2022, she received a two-year working grant from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, and has held residencies at Kuenstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany and Riddergade AiR, Viborg Kunsthal, Denmark.

Website: Tina Wilgren

Laetitia Deschamps is a French-Swedish visual artist based in Stockholm, whose practice centers on figures and visceral explorations of corporeality.

Through painting, drawing, graphic works and installations,

she explores this body’s imagistic realm through various forms of transformation. A body that oscillates between fragility and resistance.

Website: laetitiadeschamps.com