Facing the 2020 global Covid-19 pandemic we were challenged to find a new format that allows for conversation and exchange, deep thinking, and creative questioning. The pandemic had exposed what had been barely hidden: the global rifts of poverty and wealth, the differences in health care along race and class, the failure of capitalism to address urgent crises, and power-plays in political systems to exploit fear and widen those gaps. We will always remember the summer of 2020. There will always be before the pandemic and after the pandemic. We are on a fulcrum moment in history. Why not, we asked ourselves, use this gestation period to explore, to note and mark, to exchange, and to create a collective document, a dynamic archive. Could the Dora Maar House and the Provence Academy offer a place where artists, like those in the Dance Macabre, might bear witness from their unique perspective?

Christoph Klütsch: Dr. phil. Christoph Klütsch is an art historian and philosopher, with fifteen years of teaching experience at German and US-American Universities. His special interest is contemporary art, critical theory as well as the history of Provence. He worked as concept developer on many exhibitions and multimedia publications and he speaks regularly at conferences all around the world. From 2015-2018 he was the academic chair of SCAD Lacoste until he founded the Provence Academy. He lives in Saignon, France. Daniel Plettenberg: Daniel Plettenberg/Didine van der Platenvlotbrug, a founding member of the Provence Academy, is a political activist, performer and comedian. SHe also gives lectures in philosophy and is member of a think tank of the German Government. Along with artists and activists from all over Germany, SHe is creating a museum on the perception of femininity in the former red light district St.Pauli. Gwen Strauss: Gwen Strauss is based in Southern France where she has been the Director of the Dora Maar Cultural Center, an artist residency program based in the Dora Maar House and a cultural center in the historic Hotel de Tingry. She is the author of several award-winning books for children The Hiding Game, The Night Shimmy, and Ruth and the Green Book, a book of poetry, Trail of Stones. She has a forthcoming non-fiction book The Nine, which follows the true story of her great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp.