Aaron Finbloom, Executive Director of Big Questions
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the founder & director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he also facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. Finbloom has presented works internationally at venues which include: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 (New York), Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei (Berlin), UNAM (Mexico City), and MainLine Theatre (Montreal). He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York and The University of Portland. finblooming.com |
Netta Sadovsky, Relational Experimentation Specialist
Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she/they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA, and the assistant director at The Deep Play Institute (DPI). They provide individual and relationship therapy specializing in Internal Family Systems (IFS), working with kink, polyamory, the hardships of artmaking, and healing from relational trauma at West Philly Therapy Center. They also provide Psychedelic Psychotherapy at Voyage Healing in Philadelphia, with a specialty in using IFS with Ketamine Assisted Therapy. Netta is level 1 trained in Internal Family Systems, small group consultancy trained in Tavistock Group Relations, and is a student of Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama. They make artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer. |
Anna Costa e Silva, Ambassador of Doubt
Anna Costa e Silva (she/ her) is an artist, director, teacher and therapist. She works with constructed situations between people that challenge the limits between reality and fiction, self and other, experience and memory and exist in a hybrid space between art and clinic. Her projects happen in the intersections between visual, performing arts and social practice and unfold in installations, films and ephemeral situations. Anna holds an MFA in Visual Arts by the School of Visual Arts (NY) and a post graduate diploma in Reichian therapy from The Living Movement Analysis Center (Rio de Janeiro). She teaches ArtLife Practices at Parque Lage School of Visual Arts - an interdisciplinary laboratory she created, that unites art practice, healing, self fiction, trauma and contact. Anna has also been trained in aura reading, mindfulness meditation, reiki, U Theory, theatre, among other techniques. |
Indigo Esmonde, Destructive Director
Indigo Esmonde is an artist and songwriter living in Montreal. Currently, they are doing a performance art series about how to destroy your own ego. You can find their work at daydreamsandassociates.com and realitycalibration.com. Indigo has been described as 'brilliant and terrifying,' 'naive,' 'an acquired taste,' 'a bit overbearing,' 'the best at throwing online parties' and 'lives on their own planet.' |
Julia Gladstone, Team Member
Julia Gladstone is an artist and social worker. In her artistic practice, she operates within the expanded field of choreography to figure socialities. Forms take shape through performance, sculpture, video, relational encounters, and experimental pedagogy. Her work has been presented in France, Belgium, Israel, and across the U.S. She is a recipient of the DAAD Fellowship in Performing Arts, organizes Clouds Gathering performance festival, and is a certified facilitator of Deep Listening. She is currently providing therapy to elementary school students at Smedley Charter School. She received an MFA from University of Pennsylvania, and is in the process of completing her MSW from Simmons University. |
Khuyen Bui, Director of Paradox
Khuyen Bui is an author, speaker and well sought after guide who specifically works with purpose-driven leaders, community builders and coaches to level up their impact. Graduated cum laude from Tufts University studying Computer Science and Philosophy, he thrives in bringing analytical rigor into his fascination with human messiness. Khuyen enjoys writing & storytelling and has won several awards, notably Peter Drucker Challenge and The Moth Boston. His first book, Not Being - The Art of Self-Transformation, is about how our sense of self shifts from a separate entity into a wider sense of togetherness. He is currently based in Vietnam, pioneering this new yet ancient way of living, working and playing together, incorporating many modalities such as writing, coaching, contact improvisation, poetry, meditation and circling. His eyes lit up upon beautiful questions. Find him at khuyenbui.com |
Natalia Stroika, Vice President of Existential Games
Natalia Stroika (she/her +/-) is an Existential Game Maker/Destroyer. She is the creator of Ludic Liberation, a practice of collective play aimed at revealing & releasing our internalized limitations. You can read more about the Ludic Liberation philosophy at www.ludicliberation.com, join a monthly Ludic Liberation Lab to help R&D new liberatory game mechanics, read The Lab Report of past experimental results and existential game theory, or work with Natalia directly on tuning up or redesigning your Personal Existential Game (PEG). Natalia has a Doctorate in Learning Sciences and training in Transformational Social Therapy and the Warm Data Lab process. Natalia lives in so-called South Philadelphia and as mummer with the Vaudevillains New Years Brigade, she has been a hoagie, a tree, a rainbow, a butterfly, a feral cat mother, a fish, a planet, and a pterodactyl. |
Sarah Ledbetter, Embodied Hospitality Director
Sarah is a dancing writer and a body-based psychotherapist whose work has been presented or published nationally and internationally at such cool spots and publications as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Film, the Berlin Black Film Festival, Earthdance E|Merge Interdisciplinary Arts Residency, the Body Mind Centering Conference, floromancy, Fourth River, Right Hand Pointing, and R and R Literary Magazine. Her main interest is how the fiesta of being in a body flows reciprocally into creative, social, site-specific, and therapeutic process. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and Skull Valley, Arizona where her body-based creative and psychotherapeutic practice is anchored and winged. |
Aviva Avnisan
Aviva Avnisan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text and code. Using a host of emerging technologies including 3D scanning, augmented reality and virtual reality, she creates applications for mobile devices, interactive installations and technologically mediated performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language. Aviva is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media & Technology and Media & Journalism at Kent State University. |
Anique Vered
Anique Vered is an interdisciplinary researcher, curator and development practitioner renowned for the capacity to connect unexpected partners on unprecedented projects to mobilise impact. Through research-creation, public programming and participatory development innovations, I work at the intersection of community and network building, spaces of experimental learning and co-creation, decolonisation, and social innovation to unleash a new kind of networked agency. With fifteen years experience in communities and organisations across Australia, North America, Asia, the Middle East & North Africa, and Europe; recent projects include co-curating a Forum on Egalitarian, Sustainable Communtarian Organization for Art and Culture with Filipino artists and activists, as well as research and content for Diversity Arts Australia's Creative Equity Toolkit. |
Lina Moreno
Lina is a Latin American artist and educator based in Montreal. Currently, they are dedicated to providing project management support to strengthen the design of emergent processes within organizations. Lina holds an MA in Art Education from Concordia University and currently works as Head of Organizational Process Design at inPath. |