Writer

Emma Braslavsky is a writer, curator, and director. The meaning and future of humanity are her main topics. She has published multiple award-winning novels, audio art, art works, and exhibitions, such as the story "Ich bin dein Mensch," a spin-off from the award-winning novel Die Nacht war bleich, die Lichter blinkten (2019), which was nominated for the German Science Fiction Award and was made into a film. She published her fifth novel, Erdling, in November 2023. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

During her residency, Emma Braslavsky will be working on her novel Gummi (Rubber), which tells Charles Goodyear's vision of the future from the perspective of his two wives, Clarissa Beecher Goodyear and Fanny Wardell Goodyear, thereby putting them and his family front and center. Through this shift in perspective, she hopes to uncover a new facet of what the future is made of. In the U.S., she is currently planning her research on the two women whose influence on her husband's success has so far gone unnoticed.

Composer

Biliana Voutchkova is a thoroughly engaged interdisciplinary artist, violinist, composer-performer, improviser, and curator working internationally as a soloist and in collaboration with renowned artists. She is a faculty member of the Bern Academy of Arts (HKB) and founder and curator of the DARA String Festival. Through the prism of listening, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities. These include concert performances of improvisation, contemporary composition, and original/site-specific work, exhibitions, long durational and multidisciplinary performances, audiovisual works, and installation formats with a focus on the interconnection between inner world and sound space.

During her residency Biliana will work on two projects directly connected to Villa Aurora and the city of Los Angeles: One will be the collection of audiovisual material and the creation of sound portraits from the different indoor/outdoor spaces at Villa Aurora and the hills and mountains in the greater Los Angeles Area. The other one will be an investigation of the timbral qualities of Villa Aurora’s pipe organ.

Visual Artist

Joram Schön, born and raised in Berlin-Moabit, is an artist and filmmaker. He studied fine arts at UdK Berlin in the class of Thomas Zipp. He has participated in several group, duo, and solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad. In his drawings he combines nature and urban observations. He preserves urban change in his critical questions about topographies and architecture. He is currently doing his master's degree at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KMH), combining the mediums of drawing and filmmaking to realize autobiographical short stories.

For his residency, Joram Schön plans to realize two chapters of his film essay The Journey of Abu J. – from Dönninghaus to the Sinai in Los Angeles. His cinematic-narrative essay explores the limits and possibilities of Western-style burial culture, taking thematic detours along the way.

Joram Schön is a Villa Aurora Fellow courtesy of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Visual Artist

Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell, born in New York, grew up in Berlin, and lives and works in Halle (Saale). She studied communication design at Burg Giebichenstein and completed her bachelor's degree in 2021 with a focus on illustration in the class of Prof. Georg Barber. In 2023 she completed her diploma in textile art in the class of Prof. Caroline Achaintre. Fern processes her personal and digital reality in the form of tapestries. Here, the boundaries between good and evil become blurred, as well as the boundaries between self-medication and addiction, chaos and harmony. The dining table is a recurring element in her works.

Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell is Villa Aurora Fellow of the Art Foundation of the State of Saxony-Anhalt.