Project Team

Lea OROŽ

A freelance professional dance artist based in London. For the past several years she has performed for fashion projects such as Issey Miyake, Another magazine, Numero magazine Berlin, Hermés, Burberry, Roksanda, Koibird Fashion Campaign and Buro Fashion Magazine to name a few. Throughout her dance career she has worked with various choreographers, companies and institutions such as Holly Blakey, Jose Agudo, Maxine Doyle, Alexandra Green, Benjamin Jonsson, Temper Theatre and Royal Opera House. She has appeared in TV series, film, commercials, music videos, and installations such as Immersive Art installation performance in Shoreditch house created by Hannah Marshall Studio, BBC series Mood, Brave New World, Nestle, M&S, Samsung, a music video from a major Greek artist Giannis Haroulis.

Lea has also been movement directing projects such as short dance promo video for documentary Born of Violence, short film Manema, as well as solo exhibition Othered in a region that has been historically Othered at Focal Point Gallery by British African-Caribbean artist, producer and activist Elsa James. She has recently performed her personal solo work collaborating with a cellist in Slovenia, as well as the crossdisciplinary project of Intertwining Arts “Vers le Mystère” in Austria, on the 20 character miniatures by Alexander Scriabin. The project was premiered in Graz in 2022 and the cinematic version of the artistic research/preparation process, discussion, and performance was successfully released in 2023.

NINJA GURU STUDIO

A Graz-based design studio founded by two freelance artists and sound designers Nick Acorne (Ukraine) and Valerio Zanini (Italy). Ninja Guru Studio works in the field of interactive art and design. The studio creates sound light installations, offers concept development as well as technical implementation for immersive interactive storytelling of exhibitions, museums, theater performances and business promotion. The studio's projects have been presented in Austria and throughout Europe.

The production and concept of the dance performance "SHE" by Ninja Guru Studio, in collaboration with Ukrainian director Nina Khyzhna, was awarded the Vivo d'Arte prize (by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, together with the Roma Europe Festival) and performed in Rome in 2020.

NAOKO KUSUNOKI

An independent artisan perfumer and olfactory artist from Japan, known for her expertise in crafting custom-made perfumes, facilitating workshops, and creating artworks using fragrance. She specializes in forging unique collaborations with artists across diverse genres, engaging in interdisciplinary projects. Presently, Naoko is actively involved in research related to olfactory art.

Her artistic journey has been marked by various exhibitions, such as scent design solo shows at physis, MA5 Gallery (Ryoten Ogata) and euphoria, Gallery Dazzle (Nobuo Iida), Tokyo, 2023, as well as taking part in group and duo exhibitions: Portraits in Scent, Olfactory Art Keller, New York, 2022; The House of the Living, a private house , Tokyo, 2022; Flower Park, Gallery Dazzle, Tokyo 2022; Mirrors and Windows, Okuno Building, Tokyo, 2021.

Naoko's educational background includes pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Kyoto University of the Arts in Kyoto and Tokyo, with an expected graduation date in March 2024. She further honed her perfumery skills by obtaining Perfumery Raw Materials and Fragrance Creation Level 3 Advanced certification from the Grasse Institute of Perfumery in Grasse, France, in 2021. She also holds a Bachelor Degree of Graphic Design from Kyoto University of the Arts’19, as well as a Bachelor Degree of International Politics from Aoyama Gakuin University in Shibuya, Tokyo’05.

YUNNAI ZHANG

A Chinese-born Graz-based installation & stage design artist incorporates possibilities of light, shadow, movement, and semantics into spatial installations that help create an interplay of the other artistic media and expand the exploration across the genres, by integrating strong symbolic connotations into the artistic environment.

At Christof Ressi's AVATARA in Graz, Yunnai was engaged in Features/Equipment and Virtual Environment design in 2021-2022. Collaborating closely with composer Christof Ressi, his responsibilities encompassed various aspects, including stage design, costume and makeup design, virtual environment design, the construction of virtual environments, creation of 3D assets, and interactive design. Simultaneously, at Der futurologische Kongress in Graz, he contributed to stage design: his duties involved stage design, plan drawing, stage construction, and graphic design.

Yunnai pursued his Bachelor's degree at the Shanghai Theater Academy in Shanghai between 2014-2018, focusing on Stage Design. Subsequently, he continued his academic journey at the University for Music and Performing Arts Graz in Austria, where he is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Stage Design.

BENEDIKT ALPHART

An Austrian-born and raised composer, curator, field recordist and sound engineer. His extensive experience in recording sound stems from his work as an audio engineer, frequently recording chamber ensembles and working on productions at Wien Modern, KULTUM Graz, and as a technical assistant at the Doctoral School for Artistic Research, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Benedikt has a number of field recording projects, such as Singing Dunes of Altyn-Emel National Park in Kazakhstan, as well as other nature sounds during his numerous recording expeditions in the Alps. He is currently pursuing his Master’s Degree at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, double-majoring in Sound Engineering and Composition, while being a curator at KULTUM Neue Musik Graz. Benedikt has been the sound producer of the Intertwining Arts project “Vers le Mystère” (2022).

ALISA KOBZAR

A Ukrainian composer, multimedia artist, video editing director, colour-grader, sound director, teacher, graduated from Kyiv National Music Academy (Ukraine) in 2014 (composition, instrumentation and musical informational technologies, prof. A.Roschenko and A.Zagaikevych). Since 2018 lives in Graz (Austria) and studies Computer music and Sound Art at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (with prof. G.Eckel) and works as a research assistant in art- and scientific projects of University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. She took part in numerous festivals, concerts, and residencies in Europe and outside of it, creating interactive electro-acoustic, immersive multimedia compositions and experiences for VR, web, and collaborative theatrical projects, researching data sonification, exploring the 3D sound and artificial acoustics, machine learning for motion analysis and sound interaction and much more. She often works as a human-computer interaction designer, VR game developer and motion tracking technician. 

Alisa graduated in 2017 from the ProCut School of Video Production (Ukraine) as a video editing director and colour-grader. In the field of video and filmmaking Alisa’s roles currently are conceptualising, video and audio capturing, video-editing, video graphics, colour-grading of artistic research projects (Inter_agency, Swap Space), documenting installations, performances, concerts, festivals, conferences, interviews, immersive experiences, artistic works, competitions as well as live-streams.

DENIS ZHDANOV

A Ukrainian pianist, music teacher, blogger, videographer, and entrepreneur, currently based in Austria, has studied piano professionally in Ukraine, Italy, UK, and Switzerland, with leading piano teachers such as V. Danilova, T. Abayeva, B. Fedorov, L. Margarius, G. Scott, E. Virsaladze, and K. Lifschitz. As a soloist Denis Zhdanov has performed with dozens of orchestras and has won prizes at prestigious international piano competitions – among his most substantial achievements are "Roma 2009: Chopin Prize" (1st prize), ”Czerny-Stefanska” in Poznan, Poland, 2011 (1st prize), "Maria Canals" in Barcelona, 2010 (1st prize and 3 special prizes), “Mai Lind” in Helsinki, Finland, 2012 (2nd prize),

In 2020 he worked as an assistant professor of Konstantin Lifschitz at the Hochschule Luzern-Musik in Switzerland, and in 2021 he taught piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. In Graz, three out of six of his university students won prizes at international competitions by the end of his one-year position.

Denis also intensively promotes his art and knowledge of piano playing on the Internet and gives online lessons to students all over the world. His expertise in both musical aspects and physiology of piano playing allows him to effectively help to a wide range of piano students. He recorded a CD with works by F. Chopin for the international A. Rubinstein Fond (Poland, 2010), as well as a CD with piano sonatas by A. Soler for the company "Naxos" (Spain, 2011).

Denis has mastered additional skills such as Piano Tuning and Videography, and since then regularly develops a library of his piano recordings and piano lessons on YouTube and Teachable. The highlights of recent concert seasons include his performances as a soloist with orchestras such as the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Poznan Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, the Festival Strings Lucerne, the Camerata Lucerne, and the Lodz Philharmonic in Poland. In addition, Denis is active as a soloist and chamber musician, and has recently premiered his film, which combines piano performance, videography and animation in Kunstkino Graz. As a videographer Denis Zhdanov frequently takes part in artistic research projects (“The Mainstream” by Janhavi Dhamankar, 2022, “Von Ich und Du zu Wir” by Jessica Kaiser, 2023) and he has shot and edited cinematic versions of four Intertwining Arts Projects: “Transience – painting after Scriabin and Vine” (2019-2020), “MESSIAEN: a Birdsoul” (2020-2021), “Vers le Mystère” (2022), and “The SCRIABIN SONATAS Reimagined, Part 2” (2023).

ED AKSELRUD

A Ukrainian-born award-winning video producer and editor based in Montreal, QC, Canada. His creative story began in the world of TV marketing, where he honed his fast-paced, kinetic editing style cutting trailers and promos for almost all the major TV networks and studios. Most recently, he has been an instrumental part of growing the video production operation at the global reforestation non-profit One Tree Planted. He created dozens of marketing pieces for the organization, spearheaded a series of narrated educational explainers, and produced original cinematic documentaries about their work, including his biggest project, the award-winning Keep Cool: Fortifying British Columbia. Ed created videos for HBO, Amazon, National Geographic, Paramount+, AMC, Cinemax, among others. He has filmed and edited the cinematic version of the first Intertwining Arts project: “CHOPIN: A Letter through the Parisian Years” (2016-2018), as well as the live performance of “The SCRIABIN SONATAS Reimagined, Part 2” (2024).