Line-up

Dr. Orna Guralnik is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and writer. She is faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, and on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is the therapist and consulting producer of Couples Therapy, airing on Showtime/Paramount+.

Eyal Rozmarin, Ph.D is a psychoanalyst and writer. He writes at the intersection of the psychological and the social, about the relations between subjects and collectives, and about belonging. Eyal is Co-Editor of the book series Third Way Psychoanalysis, and on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He teaches at various venues, and keeps a psychoanalytic practice in New York. His upcoming book is titled "belonging and its discontents."

Pianist, composer, producer and author. Lives in Zurich. Instruction in piano and percussion from the age 8. 1997 Graduation from the 'Musikhochschule Zürich'. 1998-2001 studies in philosophy, linguistics and musicology at the University of Zurich. 2003/04 stay in Japan for half a year. Ongoing work on his RITUAL GROOVE MUSIC as pianist and composer. Leader of the music ritual group MOBILE (since 1997; with Sha and Nicolas Stocker) and the zen-funk quartet RONIN (since 2001; with Kaspar Rast, Sha and Jeremias Keller). For special projects and compositions he also collaborates with artists and ensembles like Laurie Anderson, Sophie Clements, Third Coast Percussion, Bang On A Can All Stars, Les Percussions De Strassbourg, Basel Sinfonietta, Britten Sinfonia, RIAS chamber choir Berlin, the ballet Zurich or the architects of OOS. Instructor for ‘Practical Aesthetics’ (2000-2003) and workshop leader at the 'Musikhochschule Zürich/Winterthur'.

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. He has written 25 books, including Team Human and Survival of the Richest, coined concepts like "viral media" and "screenagers," and created the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like and Merchants of Cool. He is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens College.

Hailing from Flanders, Belgium, Stavroz is a four-piece blending electronic music with acoustic, organic and cinematic elements. Founded by IJsbrand De Wilde and Gert Beazar, the project evolved into a live band with Maxim Helincks and Pieter De Meester, developing a distinctive sound that has earned them international recognition. Their breakthrough EP The Ginning reached Gold status in France, topped Hype Machine, and earned Vinyl of the Month from Germany’s Faze Magazine. Their hit Gold Town later topped Beatport’s Electronic Top 100 and featured in GTA 5. Today, Stavroz have amassed over 100 million streams and more than 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Their intimate yet dramatic live performances and DJ sets have taken them to stages including Coachella, Fusion Festival, Wonderfruit, Pukkelpop, Strawberry Fields, Tropico and Three Points Festival. They have also performed a celebrated Cercle session at Fort Saint-Eynard in France, further establishing Stavroz as a distinctive force in contemporary electronic music.

Will Storr is an award-winning author, journalist and leading expert on storytelling, psychology and human behaviour. He is the bestselling author of The Science of Storytelling, The Status Game, Selfie and, most recently, A Story Is a Deal, which explores how the science of storytelling can be used to communicate ideas, influence others and inspire action. Throughout his career, Will has explored what drives human behaviour: why we believe what we believe, how stories shape our understanding of the world, and the powerful role that status plays in our personal and professional lives. An award-winning journalist, Will has written for publications including The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Times and Esquire. His investigative work has taken him around the world and earned recognition from Amnesty International, One World Media and the Association for International Broadcasting. Today, Will brings his research and insights to audiences around the world, combining psychology, neuroscience and compelling storytelling to help organisations and individuals better understand how we think, communicate and connect.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head (2002), Quetzalcoatl Returns (2006, originally published as 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl), and When Plants Dream (with Sophia Rokhlin). His early works helped to initiate the new psychedelic renaissance and consciousness movement. His 2017 book, How Soon Is Now, explored the systemic changes needed to avert ecological collapse and near-term extinction. He was featured in Joao Amorim’s 2010 documentary, 2012: Time for Change, which promoted a holistic approach to redesigning our civilization, centering the value of indigenous knowledge systems. He has written features for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Wired, and elsewhere. He is a regular contributor to Purple Magazine. He has been a columnist for Dazed, The Art Newspaper of London, Art & America, and other magazines. He cofounded the pioneering web magazine, Reality Sandwich. He speaks at festivals and conferences around the world.

James Beacham is a CERN Large Hadron Collider physicist, Higgs boson co-discoverer, and dark matter researcher who advocates for next-generation particle accelerators. A prominent science storyteller with a massive TikTok following (@jbbeacham), his popular TED Talk "How we explore unanswered questions in physics" has over 1.6 million views. He speaks globally at venues like SXSW and the Royal Institution, frequently appears on the BBC, PBS, and National Geographic, and explores the intersections of AI, quantum computing, society, and art. James is also an experimental filmmaker and the founder of several global research initiatives transforming how physicists search for new phenomena.

Vibrant is a musical experiment that blends electronic and acoustic elements — analog synths and live instruments — brought together by a group of friends united by a shared intention: to explore themselves and transcend their limits. The group is composed of 3 Modular Synth players, Vincentiu, Evelin and Kiva, Mihai on Base Guitar, Razvan on Electric Guitar, Calin playing the Clarinet, Kaval and an assortment of other acoustic and percussion instruments and Maria on Vocals. For this edition, Vibrant expands its circle with four special guests: --> Briana Francesca Orezeanu: dance --> Dan Ionescu: visuals --> Elena Preda: painting --> Emilia Raducanu: dance

Trung Bao is a Vietnamese vocal artist, media artist, creative technologist, and founder of Fustic., a Hanoi-based creative technology studio. His practice explores the human voice across sound, body, data, image, and physical form, bridging contemporary art and emerging technology. His work, including *Voice Gems* and the *1000-Year Voice Gems Archive* with Reeps100, has been presented at international museums, festivals, and cultural platforms. He has been recognized by Forbes Vietnam 30 Under 30, DAZED100 Asia, and the EU-Vietnam Sustainable Design Award.

Chiwawa is a Polish beatboxer, vocal artist, and experimental performer known for her distinctive musicality, technical range, and contemporary approach to beatbox. As one of the leading women in the international beatboxing scene, she has helped expand the artform beyond competition into expressive performance. Together with Trung Bao, she forms BAWA, a Polish-Vietnamese duo whose vocal experiments have reached over 100 million views worldwide.

Isabella Nardini is a Brazilian artist and experience designer whose practice explores participation as an artistic medium. Working across performance, rituals, walking experiences and relational installations, she investigates how small shifts in the forms of encounter can interrupt everyday automatisms and open space for presence, imagination and collective meaning. Alongside her artistic practice, she has designed large-scale participatory experiences for cultural institutions and global organizations, bringing the same research into museums, festivals, companies and public spaces across different countries.

Topaz is an Emmy Award–winning writer, director and experience-design architect. He is the founder of The Skin Deep, a studio advancing human connection in the digital age. He builds transformative experiences across digital media and in-person settings, using each medium to cultivate and deepen human relationships. He studied philosophy at UC Berkeley and Oxford. In 2015 Topaz launched {THE AND}, a global documentary project that functions as a growing archive of human relationships. It is a record of the emotional and relational truths revealed through conversation. The project spans filmed series, card decks, live experiences, and interactive toolkits. It forms an ecosystem built to enable meaningful dialogue and more resilient relationships. His book 12 Questions for Love (Penguin Random House), distills this practice, rooted in more than 1,300 conversations, into a framework for high-fidelity relational inquiry. It has been translated into five languages.

Mehdi Aminian is a musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker, and ethnomusicologist. He is the founder of Roots Revival, established in 2013 to bring musicians from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds together through intercultural exchange. His musical journey began with Persian music and the Ney during his adolescence in Iran. Experiences across Europe and Southeast Asia, together with his passion for Sufi literature, poetry, and traditional music, have shaped a distinctive approach that transcends genre boundaries. Through projects such as Maramureș, Doina Revival, Together, Aramaic & Sufi, and Woven Sounds, Mehdi explores connections between musical traditions and communities, with a particular focus on documenting endangered musical heritage. With an academic background in Humanities, Music, Ethnomusicology, and Computer Science, he combines artistic practice with ethnography, anthropology, and digital humanities. He is currently pursuing doctoral research at the University of Vienna, in collaboration with the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW), documenting singing traditions associated with carpet weaving in Iran.

Marinela Ardelean is an international wine expert, author and founder of Wines of Romania, the leading platform promoting Romanian wine worldwide. A wine judge, consultant and co-founder of RO-Wine, she works at the intersection of wine education, market strategy and cultural diplomacy—helping regions define their identity and tell their story on the global stage.

Lara Schütz is a master baker, the first Romanian bread sommelière, beer sommelier and certified expert in the sensory analysis of bread. Born in Romania and currently living in Austria, Lara has been in love with the divine smell of freshly baked bread since her childhood, thanks to her grandmother Maia. Later, she rediscovered the fascination for sourdough bread through her husband, an Austrian who would carry bread in his luggage when he was working as an expat in Romania. A philology graduate, Lara gave up her career in education and chose instead to focus on educating the palate. Her great passion for bread led her to become a true specialist in the field, with professional training in Canada, Germany, France and Austria.

Raluca Matache, co-founder of Zăvoi, works across design, technology and creative practice. Zăvoi grew from her interest in how people interact with the worlds around them, creating space for childhood to unfold through instinct, curiosity and open-ended play. For UNFINISHED, Zăvoi will curate and build the festival’s children’s area, combining guided making, discovery and unstructured play within an evolving landscape of objects and materials.

Mere Pere is a creative space in Bucharest, built around curiosity, play and the joy of making things together. A place for children and grown-ups to explore art, discover new ideas and spend time creating — with a little room for things to happen differently.

Anda is one of the two founders of Caise Verzi, a nature-inspired play space in Bucharest. Her work explores what happens when children are given less direction and more freedom to discover, imagine and create their own experiences, while creating a space where parents can slow down, connect and make time for themselves too.

Roxana is a regenerative farmer from Transylvania and a cultural thinker. When she’s not growing and delivering vegetables she writes to her online audience of more than 30k followers about the intersection of rural living in Romania, ecology, climate, biodiversity, precarity, feminism and culture. She does so with the outlook of a hopeful revolutionary, proposing instead of despair or equanimity, a space where the posibilities of country living are endless.

Avisek Majumdar is a seasoned Yoga teacher, Ayurveda practitioner, and wellbeing consultant, is keen to teach us. Avi is the founder of Conscious Living Romania and Prakriti School of Yoga, where he leads regular classes and workshops. His practice, often blending immersive sound baths with principles of Hatha Yoga & Yogic psychology, resets you into understanding that your mind and body are your playground.

Suflu is the space between notes—the invisible place where music comes alive before it is heard.” Suflu is a trio formed by Corina, Arthur and Cristian, exploring the intersection of ethnic music and contemporary sound. The project proposes a sonic language built on three pillars— voice, handpan and traditional ethnic instruments—over which electronic layers are added to amplify and recontextualise the source material.

Mohamad Zatari is an improviser & sonic storyteller from Aleppo, Syria, currently based in Bucharest, Romania. His artistic work is dedicated to decolonizing sound and deconstructing Western perspectives on non-Western music scenes, maintaining a political stance against white supremacy. He studied classical/contemporary composition at the National University of Music Bucharest (2021), mentored by Mihaela Vosganian. He has been active with the AL.Ehtifal Project, a flexible body of musicians from different backgrounds who come together to create identity layered soundscapes through improvisation.

Running has been part of my life since 2018, and I'm proud to be a member of the adidas Runners Bucharest community. Over the years, I've completed three international marathons, in Athens, Istanbul, and Berlin, and developed a passion for both road running and mountain trails. Beyond running, I'm an avid hiker and love spending time outdoors, exploring new places and staying connected to nature. For me, sport is about much more than performance. It's about energy, community, personal growth, and the joy of continually pushing my limits. I believe movement has the power to bring people together, create meaningful connections, and inspire us to become the best version of ourselves.

Running has been a defining part of my life since 2018, when I took on my first race, a half marathon. Since then, I've completed numerous road and trail races, including three international marathons in Istanbul, Boston, and Berlin, as well as a 45 km mountain ultramarathon. As a member of adidas Runners Bucharest and an official pacer at multiple races, I've discovered that running is about much more than kilometers and finish lines. It's about community, connection, and the confidence that comes from challenging yourself. Running has become my greatest passion, and I love sharing that passion with others by helping people take their first steps into the sport. Whether you're an experienced runner or just getting started, I'm excited to share the energy and joy that come from moving together.

Liu Chengyin is an architect, senior guqin teacher and founder of the Juntian Miaoyin Guqin Society. Trained by several renowned guqin masters in China, she has developed a playing style distinguished by serenity, balance and a subtle interplay between strength and delicacy. Her practice explores the instrument’s contemplative aesthetics, approaching music as a way of cultivating attention, inner harmony and a deeper sensitivity to sound.

Weirong Li is a landscape architect, tea curator and experience designer creating tea-focused cultural programs and tasting experiences. She is the founder of Lonely Panda Tea & Culture Studio and Pink Table—projects developed in Bucharest and Paris that explore tea as a medium for perception, hospitality and contemporary culture. Her practice brings together spatial design, sensory exploration and the social experience of sharing tea.

Carlos L’Abbate brings a yoga practice that combines postures, breathing, and presence. An invitation to move and strengthen the body, slow down, and reconnect with ourselves, while exploring something very simple: we are all different, with different bodies, minds, stories, and ways of seeing the world, and yet beneath all these differences, we share the simple experience of being here, participating in the same one life.

Julian von Dueffel is an embodiment facilitator, breathwork practitioner and human performance mentor exploring a simple question: What becomes possible when we move beyond the thinking mind and begin listening to the intelligence of the body? A former engineer and international corporate leader, Julian spent more than a decade understanding systems, performance and complexity in the external world. His path eventually turned inward—from optimizing systems around us to becoming curious about the systems within us: breath, the nervous system, emotion, intuition and our capacity to connect. Today, his work brings these worlds together. Through breathwork, movement, cold exposure, nervous system regulation, embodiment and human connection, Julian creates experiences that move between intensity and stillness, challenge and surrender, structure and flow. Rather than simply understanding transformation intellectually, participants are invited to experience it through the body. His approach draws on extensive training in breathwork, the Wim Hof Method, embodiment, trauma-informed practices and men’s work, alongside his own ongoing exploration of human potential and conscious performance. Based between Brazil and Europe, Julian works internationally with individuals, leaders, organisations, retreats and festivals. Whether immersed in city life, kitesurfing, hiking or stepping into periods of retreat, his curiosity remains the same: how much more becomes available when we stop trying to think our way through everything—and learn to sense, relate and listen to what the body already knows?

Anna-Sophie Brüning is a German conductor, musician and author who has worked with orchestras, opera houses and choirs across Europe and the Middle East for more than twenty years. Her artistic path has brought her into contact with musicians and thinkers such as Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, but has also taken her from international concert stages to prisons and conflict regions. Moving between different disciplines and worlds, she writes for the stage and teaches in contexts ranging from universities and schools to the Bronnbacher Stipendium for young business leaders. She has served as temporary artistic director of projects such as M.O.V.E. – Culture Without Borders with young refugees in Istanbul and Ghetto Classics in Nairobi. Her work moves between classical repertoire, contemporary music and interdisciplinary forms combining music, dance, literature and visual art. At the heart of her work is the question of how the sacred might find a new place on contemporary theatre and opera stages.

Sara Ezzell is an American/Cypriot freelance dancer, choreographer, and movement facilitator based in Germany. She has danced professionally with the St. Petersburg Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Bundesjugendballett, and Hamburg Ballet before becoming a free artist in 2019. Sara creates new work through interdisciplinary collaborations with composers, visual artists, musicians, conductors, and spiritual practitioners, and shares her performances and workshops across Germany, Europe, China, and India. With each new encounter, her body becomes a sounding board for diversities to meet and expand through their weaving. Her collaborators include the innovators Ghaku Okazaki, Xiao Fu, Marina Baranova, Daniel Bucurescu, Tristan Köster, and Anna-Sophie Brüning, as well as institutions such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Beethovenfest Bonn, intercultural music ensemble "Seyyah", Paper Tiger Theater Company, Flora Fauna project, and even the humanoid robot "Ameca". Alongside her professional artistic practice, Sara facilitates projects that spark expression through movement for many communities, including youth, the elderly, refugees, people with diverse abilities, as well as anyone aware they are hopping around in a body. Sara’s most powerful work lies in expanding how and where dance happens, and who gets to be a part of it. Her movement workshops are informed by her many years of traveling through the great potential of the body through improvisation, humor, and deep listening, as well as her Taiji practice in the lineage of Master Waysun Liao.

Sushree Diya Om is an Indian mystic and monk born and raised in London. Before monastic life, she lived through abuse, addiction and homelessness. Emerging from these difficult circumstances, she eventually studied law and went on to work as a model, presenter and actress in England and India. She began her path of renunciation and self realization in 2013, before becoming fully ordained in 2018 by her Guru, Om Swami. She has spent years in meditation, silence, and solitude, including extended periods in the Himalayas, and her passion for service has brought her to share meditation and mindfulness practices with all people, including youth and refugees. She also supports those in need in hospitals and hospices. Sushree Diya writes a blog where she shares her story at merrymonk.me.

Bianca Oance simply really loves music. And dancing. Her sets are a mix of whatever gets her excited at the time, house, soul, baile funk, hip-hop, R&B, future beats, old favourites and tracks you might have forgotten about. She doesn’t care much about staying within one genre, as long as it feels right and keeps the dance floor moving. A familiar face behind CINCIN, the series she co-founded in Bucharest, over the past years she’s played in clubs, at festivals, long daytime sessions and in plenty other places in between. You’ll rarely catch her standing still behind the decks. They call her Bianca Dance for a reason.

Rooted in Bucharest's underground scene, Maria Antoaneta is knows for her eclectic and evolving sound - a seamless fusion of techno, drum & bass, electro, acid, breakbeat and house. Guided by curiosity and emotion, she explores the spaces between genres, shaping sets that are as dynamic as they are personal. Always open to new sources of inspiration, Maria's Music reflects a deep connection to rhythm, atmosphere and the energy of the dance floor.