Karl Holmqvist is an artist living and working in Berlin. His work often involves different types of writing in the form of poetry and spoken word. He has performed and exhibited widely at institutions including Beau Travail, Stockholm; The Brick, Los Angeles; Fridericianum, Kassel; Centre d’Art Contemporaine, Geneva; Power Station, Dallas; and Camden Arts Centre, London. He has participated in the Venice Biennial in 2003 and 2011 and Performa, New York in 2005, 2007, 2013 and 2023.

Constantin Brailoiu was born in 1893 in Bucharest, Romania. An ethnomusicologist and composer, he was a pioneering figure in the study of traditional music and conducted extensive research on Romanian and Eastern European folk traditions. In 1944 he founded the International Archives of Folk Music in Geneva, now part of the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève. Brailoiu died in 1958 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Georg Trakl (1887–1914) was an Austrian Expressionist poet, whose dark, melancholic German-language works influenced writers after World Wars I and II. Trakl trained as a pharmacist, and his poetry was supported by the patronage of Ludwig Wittgenstein.