Presented at Blak Dot as part of Critical Mass.

This exhibition situates itself at the intersection of Indigenous knowledge, exchange and embodiment.

Alternative knowledge systems are currently gaining cultural capital, and we are witnessing the art academy actively courting Indigenous knowledge systems into its fold as a form of “decolonising”. We might ask: is it decolonising or recolonising?

To decolonise is a continued project of the Anglo-Celtic value system. Therefore it is imperative to ask: who benefits from the labour of such research?

We are interested in how alternative knowledge systems can be employed beneficially in artistic research, while considering the implications and ethics in the turn towards Indigenous knowledge systems within the art academy.

Artists: Ashley Perry, Megan Cope, James Tylor, Bronte Perry, Gabi Briggs, Quishille Charan and Tamsen Hopkinson.

Writing and research papers: Hannah Presley, Brian Martin, Sara Daley, Tyson Campbell and Moorina Bonini.

Opening ceremony performance (Thu 12, 6pm – 8pm): Bella Waru and Carly Sheppard.

How do you reconcile your relationship with a Tory-voting, Margaret Thatcher-loving, right-wing military official with your own left-wing values and politics?

Renowned theatre-maker and performer Bron Batten returns to Melbourne to present Waterloo, a new live-art performance that deconstructs the artists’ fraught relationship with a high-ranking member of the military, and in the process, questions the deep-seeded constructs of our own human morality.

Developed in residence in Maubourguet, France and at Vitalstatistix, Adelaide.

Image Credit: Bryony Jackson

NEUROMANTIC – a queer cabaret: is the first solo show from prolific qpoc Melbourne based performance artist Cynthia Sobraty. A palpable collision of theatre, storytelling, poetry, original music, drag, childhood and fantasy, this performance delves into the technicolour darkness of the liminal spaces of life.

From describing the ramifications of gender binaries as a queer acid trip version of Fred Rogers, to exploring white assimilation as a crooning grotesque pantomime of latex world leaders, Cynthia examines themes of nuance and radical vulnerability through a curious lens of whimsy and caricature. An exercise of taking up space and making the invisible visible.

Image credit: Jacinta Oaten

MASCinprogress is a raw, punk, sonic conjuring of queerness by Adelaide electronic music and performance duo GIRL. It follows their acclaimed 2018 show, ‘Sentients’, which was the first in a trilogy of multimedia performance works focusing on themes of climate justice, masculinity and queer identity.

Featuring music from their forthcoming debut album, MASC uses experimental sound, spoken word, projection and movement to wreak havoc on the concept of masculinity before gaffer-taping it back together again.

Image credit: “Fearless and fiercely experimental” Luke Penman – PlayPausePlay

In Kurdish, Jîyan means ‘life’. The stem of the word, ‘jîn’ translates to ‘woman’. In this immersive exhibition, dancer/choreographer of Kurdish Celtic origin, Leila Lois and photographer/curator, Michaela Meadow explore the sacred, life-giving connection of woman to nature. JÎYAN is a multi-sensory experience, with performances and workshops running over the weekend.

Image credit: Michaela Meadow

For this specially-curated Writing & Concepts lecture series, Ripley Kavara and Writing & Concepts invite queer visual and performing artist, and Aboriginal health worker Peter Waples-Crowe (Ngarigo) to explore the intersections of identity and arts practice. This session will be followed by a critical talk by emerging visual artist Arika Waulu (Gunai/Gunditjmara) and Solomon Island educator Hunhak Gale.

The event on 28 September is Auslan interpreted and interpreters have been booked through Auslan Stage Left.

The Motherless Haus presents a hyper-powered Bla(c)k-led drag show: one hour of desperate lip-sync drama and spiritual ego discovery. Eight drag artists look to astrology, science fiction, cartoons and queer iconography to dismantle and honour the archetypes we resist and inhabit.

Choose your path through this night of ego unrest, follow your instincts and walk alongside the characters, dress in your evening best and have a time with The Motherless Haus.

Image credit: Jean-Paul Weaver

Time Loop is dancer and DJ Alexander Powers’ premiere choreographic work, a solo that uses past, present and future as its medium. Imagined utopia’s are always relational to the failures of the present. In queerness, in identity, in practice, we can reach forward into a world that does not yet exist. Time Loop uses the always growing past as a base for this ongoing tension between what is and what could be.

Set to a live score of noise and drone by Bridget Mary Chappell, Time Loop is an attempt toward a moment that cannot be achieved.

Image credit: Alex Dubois

Telling the story of the Solomon Islands as it faces the converging challenges of the 21st century, Heart for Solo is an exhibition by Patrick Rose designed to showcase the songs, faces and natural beauty of the unique and diverse set of islands in the Pacific.

This diverse collection of visual material, sourced from around the country, includes everything from kastom songs to church choirs, sublime sunsets to mining sites. The exhibition is an invitation to spend time reflecting on the images and music of the region.

Haunting the Flesh is a ceremonial exploration of growing and becoming. Through multidisciplinary performance modes Papaphilia and Mossy attempt to capture the excesses of being that spill out in the daily conflict between bodily autonomy and settler notions of human civility – such as racial, sexual and gendered “purity”.

In this performance they will tell personal stories about their lived experiences as gender diverse subjects that are sexualised through lenses of femininity and associations of womanhood, and racialised through the complex visual tropes and societal structures of whiteness in Narmm.

The pair will construct an experimental sound and dance experience that sees their bodies respond to aural and political chaos, attempting endlessly to bypass the harsh realities of heteronormative authoritarianism.

Image credit: Jordan K Munns

Presented at Siteworks as part of Critical Mass.

A panel of BIPOC critical thinkers construct an imagined future. Tracking back to the present, they bare the socio – legal and political architectures that imprison and kill ideas, bodies and futures.

What might we do to intercept and subvert the necropolitical conditions where flesh, the law, and black humanity reside and die. All is discussed by a strong panel of Critical Thinkers:

Dr. Nilmini Fernando is a Sri Lankan born migrant settler of colour currently living and working in Narrm on the stolen lands of the Kulin Nation. She is a Postcolonial/Black Feminist scholar and educator who focuses on critical intersectional and race praxis in settler colonial sites to advance authentic transformation and push new paradigms from the ground up. With a background in radio, spoken work and theatre of the oppressed, Nilmini was an originator of Loving Feminist Literature- a collective of artists/academics/activists who bring the intellectual, philosophical, political, literary and spiritual contributions of Black, Indigenous and global feminists of colour to public spaces.

Claire G. Coleman is a writer from Western Australia. She identifies with the South Coast Noongar people. Her family are associated with the area around Ravensthorpe and Hopetoun. She wrote her black&write! fellowship-winning book Terra Nullius while travelling around Australia in a caravan.

Timmah Ball is a non-fiction writer whose work is influenced by working across urban planning, zine making, and other creative forms. She grew up in Birrarung-ga/Melbourne but her heritage is Ballardong Noongar from Western Australia on her mother’s side. In 2017 she won the Westerly Magazine Patricia Hackett Prize and has written for a range of publications including Cordite, Un Magazine, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin, The Griffith Review and other anthologies.

Flesh, the law and black humanity aims to stand outside of white Western colonial frames to discuss, theorize and address the outcast locations of the intellect, literature, art and bodies of First People, raced and gendered others in the settler colony.