Curators

Rolf Bächler
Rolf Bächler, a centre of competence in animation (founded 1951 in Zurich), never made any serious attempt at any occupation outside this field, and hardly ever skipped an opportunity within. In other words: a hopeless case. He prefers to simply call it an animated life.

Jasmin Basic
The flm historian and curator works as coordinator and programmer for several festivals in Switzerland and abroad. In the past, she collaborated with HEAD Geneva, Cinemathèque of Tangier, La Virreina Barcelona, the Croatian Audiovisual Center, French Cinémathèque, Centre Pompidou, Cahiers du Cinéma and Forum des Images in Paris.

Rene Bauer
René Bauer is a lecturer for Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK). He develops independent games for la1n.ch, experiments the boundaries of games for and-or.ch and co-organises the gameZfestival. ch. In addition, he is interested in collaborative interfaces and platform development for nic-las.ch and imachina.ch.

Christine A. Bloch
Christine Annette Bloch studied Film, History of Art and German Literature in Lausanne and Basel and Dramaturgy in Berlin. Apart from her activities as a cultural journalist and publicist, she also works for various international film festivals and as a script consultant (VeDRA) for screenwriters and film production companies.

Nobuaki Doi
Nobuaki Doi is a programmer, researcher and critic on animation and works as a scriptwriter. He is one of the co-founders of CALF, a collective of Japanese independent animators that produces DVDs of Japanese independent animation and introduces excellent foreign animation films to Japanese audience through special screening events

Pascal Etzensperger
Pascal Etzensperger, born in 1986 in Baden, obtained his degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Luzern. He is also involved in numerous cultural projects, for example, the music and art open-air “Festival des Arcs” or “PETZI,” a non-profit music club, among others. He curated the “Welcome to the crisis” film series for the [project21] student organisation. He has been a member of the Fantoche team since February 2014.

Valerie Jaccard
After completing her studies in Film, English and German at the University of Lausanne, Valérie Jaccard returned to Zurich to work in film production and distribution. Thereafter, she continued her studies at the Zurich University of the Arts and obtained her MAS in Cultural Media Studies. Before joining the Fantoche team in 2010, she worked for the International Short Film Festival Winterthur and VideoEx in Zurich.

Mela Kocher
The germanist with a doctoral degree works as research associate in the specialization Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2007 her dissertation on the aesthetics and narratology of video games was published. Her hobbies are street and alternate reality games.

Igor Prassel
Igor Prassel was born in 1971 in the Slovenian coast town Koper. From 1992 he is running a monthly animation film program at the Slovenian Cinematheque. He was a jury and program selection member at important international animation and short film festivals. In 2014 he was appointed as commissioner for animation film at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC). In 2004 he founded the International Animation Film Festival Animateka, where he is the artistic director.

Philomena Schwab
Philomena Schwab has a degree in Game Design and works as a research assistant in the Game Lab at the Zurich University of the Arts. In parallel, she completed an internship in Game Marketing at Blindflug Studios. She has her own graphic and interaction design company.

Claudia Spinelli
The art historian has worked for 20 years in the art field, curating exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, lecturing at universities and contributing articles for the trade, daily and weekly press on a regular basis as an author. She has directed Kunstraum Baden since 2010.

Christian Ströhle
The film theorist, language and art historian Christian Ströhle has been working for five years at the Federal Office of Culture (Switzerland) in the film funding section, where he was head of film culture, education and new media. In 2012 he initiated a transmedia series of events at several international film festivals to get the transmedia movement in Switzerland kick-started.

Beat Suter
Beat Suter works as lecturer for Game Design at the University of the Arts Zurich, Switzerland and at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart, Germany. He manages the Game Lab of the  University of the Arts Zurich together with René Bauer and is co-organizer of the international gameZfestival in Zurich.

Karin Wehn
Karin Wehn is a media associate and curator for animation and digital media. Her research interests include how the production, distribution and aesthetics of animation have been affected by the digital and how animation and other art forms remediate each other. She also focusses on subcultural art forms often related to computer and video games such as Machinima, the Demo scene or Let`s play videos. Karin Wehn lives in Berlin.