2020
Mon, 30 Nov 2020 5:00 PM
In late October, the Victorian government cut down an ancient Yellow Box tree to make way for a highway. Known to Australian Indigenous Djab Wurrung women as a sacred Directions Tree. Many wept as the tree was felled, and the media reported that police arrested around 50 people at the site.
This tree was near to a group of trees where First Nations women gave birth: the main Birthing Tree is believed to be 800 years old, and like other trees are respected by Australia’s Traditional Owners.
In homage to the sacred Directions Tree, in this AEGIS seminar we explored how two non-Traditional Australians have approached the life of trees.
Image courtesy of Louise Fowler-Smith.
Thurs, 19 Nov 2020 6:00 PM
Presented by RMIT’s Contemporary Art & Social Transformation (CAST) Research Group and RMIT Social Innovation Hub with RMIT Gallery, RMIT Vietnam and VICAS for the Vietnam Festival of Creativity and Design 2020, alongside the online exhibition 'Skilled Hand Shared Culture'.
Considerations of ‘sustainable fashion’ often stops at material and technical approaches. In this panel conversation we explore the concept of sustainable fashion in a more holistic way – how ‘sustainability’ is not only linked to the environment, but the sustainability of culture, heritage and creative work. From merging traditional techniques with contemporary design, to innovative ways of keeping creative work viable in an insecure, Covid-normal world, our speakers explore the connections between culture, creativity and sustainability.
Speakers include Thao Vu from Kilomet 109, Aleksandra Nedeljkovic from the The Social Studio, artist and curator Dr Léuli Eshrāghi with moderation from Dr Rimi Khan.
Image courtesy of The Social Studio, Art Comes First and Grace Dlabik.
Wed, 18 Nov 2020 2:00 PM
Presented by Contemporary Art and Social Transformation Research Group and Hong Kong Arts Centre and RMIT University
With introductions from Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert, Lecturer, Masters of Arts (Arts Management) specialising in curating at RMIT University and moderated by Dr Drew Pettifer, Program Lead of the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) in Hong Kong, this talk focused on Jaffa Lam's artistic practice with focus on three key projects including SINGING UNDER THE MOON FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW (pictured).
ABOUT Jaffa Lam:
Lam Laam, Jaffa received her BFA, MFA and Postgraduate Diploma in Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is now the Academic Head at the Hong Kong Art School and is also a senior lecturer and Sculpture Subject Coordinator, as well as the Project director of Jockey Club ICH (Intangible Cultural Heritage)+ Innovative Heritage Education Program.
She is a sculptor specializing in large-scale site-specific works of mixed-media sculptures and installations, which are primarily made with recycled materials such as crate wood, old furniture and umbrella fabric. In recent years, she has been involved in many public art and community projects in Hong Kong and overseas. Her works often explore issues related to local culture, history, society and current affairs.
Apart from solo exhibitions, Lam has been invited to take part in many local and international exhibitions, as well as artist residency programmes in Kenya, Taiwan, Bangladesh, China, United States and Canada, etc. In 2006, she was awarded the Asian Cultural Council’s Desiree and Hans Michael Jebsen Fellowship.
In 2009, she started a community project in Hong Kong titled “Micro Economy”. At the invitation of Hong Kong Arts Centre Jaffa staged the exhibiton: Jaffa Lam Laam Collaborative: Weaver, to highlight this project which was also shown in Japan’s Setouchi Triennale 2013 representing Hong Kong.
Economic Disobedience and Avenging the Imaginary in the Age of the Never-Ending Culture Wars28 October 2020, 12 noon - 1:30pm AEDTAre we tired of talking about the obvious value of culture yet? If indeed, according to the Australian government, that art is useless and culture has absolutely no value, this coven of creatives are brought together to plot an imaginary revenge that involves feminist futuring, witching brews, holograms, assassin laundromat cells and economythologies. Shall we? Please join Bek Conroy (AUS), Cassie Thorton (CA), Max Haiven (CA), Nancy Mauro-Flude (AUS) as they map a landscape beyond the culture wars. Bek Conroy is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and researcher working across site, community engagement, and performative interventions through artist led activity. Her recent suite of works have focussed on the intersection of art and economy and have included going on dates with economists and accountants around the world, setting up an artisanal ironing service for cis white men in exchange for emotional labour, and leading an artist led pedagogy for unfucking economy called the “Marrickville School of Economics”. Her work has been presented in Australia by Performance Space (NSW), Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW), Tin Sheds Gallery (NSW), Vitalstatistix (SA), HOTA (QLD), Urban Theatre Projects (NSW) RMIT (VIC), Monash University (VIC) among others. She has facilitated artist labs with Splendid Arts Lab (National), Artist Wants a Life (NT), Critical Path (NSW) and VitalStatistix (SA). Cassie Thornton is an artist and activist from the US, currently living in Canada. She refers to herself as a feminist economist, a title that frames her work as that of a social scientist actively preparing for the economics of a future society that produces health and life without the tools that reproduce oppression— like money, police or prisons. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. She is currently the co-director of the Re-Imagining Value Action Lab in Thunder Bay, an art and social centre at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada. She is also the steward of a mythoreal peer to peer health project called The Hologram until 2023 when it will become an autonomous decentralized practice.Nancy Mauro-Flude is an artist and theorist. Administer of a home-brewed feminist web server, she leads the nascent Holistic Computing Network and practices experiential pedagogy in her role as coordinator Emerging Digital/Media Cultures, Bachelor of Design (Digital Media), College of Design and Social Context @RMIT University. Mauro-Flude’s research contributes to the interdisciplinary space of feminist science and technology studies, computer subculture and performance art. Her art practice of radically intervening in public space through aesthetic application of network infrastructure, playfully and critically experiments with signal transmission in order to draw upon contested knowledges and advance broader understandings of emergent technologies as they arise as key actors in our embodied life.Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice and co-director of the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) at Lakehead University. His recent books include is Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts and Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization.
Hosted by the CVIN Radical Thinkers Series and CAST, and supported by the Design and Cultural Practice Enabling Capability Platform and the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS).Image credit: Art Workers Coalition. Art Workers Won’t Kiss Ass, 1969
Cultural Policy and Cultural Value: A Disconnect? Perspectives from Australia, the Netherlands and the UK21 October 2020, 5pm - 6:30pm AEDTIn addition to devastating the arts sector, COVID-19 has made it abundantly clear that Australia’s cultural policy has been long neglected. In place of a cohesive policy framework that recognises the complex ways that culture creates value beyond that which is economic, a patchwork of policy has arisen. Given the policy void and lack of long-term vision at the federal level, short-termism from different levels of government has taken place. This has resulted in a piecemeal approach to policy making in the arts leaving Australia’s cultural sector ill-prepared for the ravages of COVID-19.
Join CAST and the Cultural Value Impact Network (CVIN) Radical Thinkers Series for a presentation featuring leading thinkers who will be reflecting on Australian and international experience in cultural policy and discussing articulations of cultural value and how cultural policy might be reimagined.Panellists: Ben Eltham (AUS), Eleonora Belfiore (UK), and Arjo Klamer (Netherlands)Ben Eltham is a Lecturer in Media and Communications at Monash University (Melbourne) in the School of Media, Film and Journalism. Ben’s primary research interest is on Australian cultural policy for which he is well known both as an academic and also through his popular media engagement. In addition to a number of peer reviewed journal articles and monographs, Ben writes as a journalist and essayist for New Matilda and regularly contributes to Crikey, Guardian Australia, Overland and Meanjin.
Eleonora Belfiore is Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University in the UK. She the creator and editor of a curated blog The Cultural Value Initiative, which aims to bring together perspectives from academia, creative practice, arts management, policy-maker and media cultural commentary on questions of cultural value, arts and creative industries policy and cultural analysis.
Arjo Klamer is recently retired as a Professor at the Erasmus University. In cultural economics he is responsible for developing the value-based approach as a challenge to more orthodox ways of recognising cultural value. He has authored several books on this approach including Doing the Right Thing. In his retirement Arjo remains active in research and is currently writing another book and also developing a course on humane economics for Free University.
The Radical Thinkers Series is hosted by the CVIN and CAST, and supported by the Design and Cultural Practice Enabling Capability Platform, the Association for Cultural Economics International (ACEI) and the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS).
As curator of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2021, Jacob presented and discussed his curatorial work around making space for other voices. ABOUT THE SPEAKERJacob is a Samoan born Designer raised and educated in Auckland, New Zealand. With a background in Graphic Design from Auckland University of Technology and Postgrad in Multimedia Design from Swinburne University (Melbourne, Aus.), his current obsession is with the digital space and the intersections between art and design. Jacob is also a co-founder and former board member of the Blak Dot Gallery (Brunswick, Vic). Over this time Jacob worked to curate and promote the works of Pacific Artists and First Peoples artists in Australia and internationally.With many years of experience in Art Direction, studio management and design for various studios in Melbourne, ranging from advertising, publishing, motion graphics and product design and development. Jacob is currently a Senior Designer at Museums Victoria in the Exhibition and Interpretation Department.
MAPS Open Talk 2020: The power that we have...Listen up!
'The power that we have… Listen Up!' features Gina Bundle, Genevieve Grieves, and Paola Balla. In this short film series, three strong Aboriginal women reflect on and discuss their experiences of community consultation and collaboration with non-Indigenous settler educators and organisations. With extensive experience in the arts community and research practice, each woman recounts their lived experience of ‘so called’ Aboriginal consultation and collaboration and how things can go wrong. Filmed as a series of beautiful portraits with a personal flavour, these women offer generous advice on how we can engage in decolonising practices better as we come to terms with Australia’s colonial past.
This session was facilitated by Vicki Couzens, Jody Haines and Marnie Badham. The talk discusses the films created by artist, Jody Haines.
These films have been developed as part of project led by Vicki Couzens with Marnie Badham and Jody Haines: “Revisiting the Possum Skin Cloaks: Community Stories and Social Impact” funded by RMIT’s Strategic Capability Development Fund and supported by CAST research group and the School of Art.
Many thanks to Jody Haines for the editing of this recording.
CAST OUT LOUD:Mobility and reciprocity in ethical fashion design: rethinking creative work in more than local spaces
Rimi Khan presents her research examining how the making of ‘ethical fashion’ responds to the spatial imaginaries and networks of racialised and gendered labour that define the global fashion industry. It focuses on a Bangladeshi brand, Aranya, to consider the forms of transnational sociality and community-building it produces through its design collaborations. The mobility of Aranya’s creatives working in intercultural contexts challenges reductive visions of the global and local. It highlights different scales of creativity and solidarity that offer a way to reorient creative economy literature towards inclusivity and sustainability. These findings also help to move away from Western, individualised definitions of creativity, to an understanding of creative work that is reciprocal and relational.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER Dr Rimi Khan is a Lecturer in the School of Communication and Design at RMIT University Vietnam. Her research is broadly concerned with creativity, citizenship and cultural economy. Her most recent work examines creative labour and ethical fashion economies in Asia. Her book, Art in Community: The Provisional Citizen (2015, Palgrave), examines the institutional, aesthetic, and economic agendas that make communities creative, cohesive and productive.\
This talk was recorded on the lands of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. We respectfully acknowledge ancestors past, present and emerging.
Hosted by Rimi Khan and Rhett D'Costa and live streamed on Thursday, 6 August 2020.
We have literally reeled through a series of crises as a result of the Australian bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic, and have barely had time to slow down or reflect. How can we be creative with our care and engage in self care, radical care and crazy care during a time of upheaval?
Please join us for an event in four acts to be presented by Dominic Redfern, Ruth Desouza, Angela Clarke and Keely Macarow.
Image: Kathe Kollwitz Pietà (Mother with dead Son) 1937-1939
Hosted by Keely Macarow, Dominic Redfern, Ruth DeSouza and Angela Clarke and live streamed on Thursday, 16 July 2020.
It is a dangerous time.
COVID19 has shown us that we are vulnerable to a virus. But some of us are more vulnerable than others. The pandemic has laid bare our vulnerabilities and the inequities that accompany them, in particular the impacts of everyday racism. From the overrepresentation in the deaths of people from Black and minority ethnic communities in Britain, to concerns about the xenophobia and racism being experienced by people who appear Chinese. Amid the romanticising of health professionals as heroes, have also been glaring instances of institutional racism. More recently, people have eschewed edicts to physically distance themselves, to gather in rage and solidarity about police brutality in the US and Aboriginal deaths in custody in Australia.
In this presentation, Ruth De Souza will talk about one framework for addressing institutional racism developed by Indigenous Māori nurses called cultural safety. Originally developed to counter “unsafety” for Māori, it has expanded to consider other axes of difference including class, sexuality, gender, disability and more and is embedded in nursing education in Aotearoa, New Zealand and has recently become part of the Australian Nursing Code of Conduct.
Ruth will also talk about how she has operationalised the concept of cultural safety in her research and practice and explores what it means for her in Australia.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr Ruth DeSouza is a highly experienced multidisciplinary educator, researcher and consultant, specialising in cross cultural engagement, cultural safety, and the interface of digital technologies within CALD communities. Her background is in nursing where she has extensive experience as a clinician, researcher and academic in New Zealand and Australia and has published work on community engagement in the arts. Ruth is a 2020 RMIT Vice Chancellor's Fellow, based in the School of Art and a member of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform (ECP). Her fellowship project aims to engage health professionals in finding new ways to understand, co-design and implement sustainable cultural safety initiatives in a range of health contexts. Ruth has extensive networks across the Melbourne creative industries and is on the Fair Play project reference committee.
Hosted by Grace McQuilten and live streamed on Tuesday, 30 June 2020.
Join artist Ben Morieson for a screening and Q&A of his work, Fieldwork 3 – Los Colonias Notes, developed for the Habana Bienale in Cuba in 2019.
The first part of the artwork presented was an installation/performance work called Fieldwork II-The Colonies. This consisted of 70 shopping trolleys planted out with blooming sunflowers. The trolleys were placed alongside the Upfiled train line in seemingly random places. The public were invited to adopt the trolleys and take them to another place of their choosing. The idea was to create some friction between public and private spaces. The ‘abandoned’ shopping trolley is transformed into a transportable place of comfort and beauty.
In Cuba the second part of the project became slightly unhinged by the lack of shopping trolleys. The approach changed and it was decided instead to make the interaction between the community and the ‘transportable’ gardens, a narrative plot that could be filmed and presented as a story. This part of the project was made solely in Cuba with local technicians and the community of Old Habana.
As an artist over the last 30 years, Ben Morieson has worked with visual mediums including sculpture, installation and film.
Ben's art to date has included an array of presentations in different spaces including within the gallery, on site, and on the internet. His work can be described as ephemeral and occasionally permanent with the biggest body of work to date deliberately engaging the public in the urban landscape. It seeks to alter common perceptions and challenge the staus quo.
Ben has been the recipient of grants including the Australia Council Media Arts fund, Victoria Arts Projects fund, Victoria Arts Touring Fund and Cinemedia Digital Media Fund ( Film Victoria ). He has also had residencies including Australia Council Studio in Barcelona, Asialink residency in Echigo Tsumari Triennial, Japan.
In 2013 Ben completed a Masters in Public Art and his thesis concentrated on public space in the landscape. It resulted in a large scale project called Fieldwork set on a two hectare site in North Melbourne.
Image: Fieldwork 3, Film Still, 2019
Hosted by Fiona Hillary and live streamed on Tuesday, 23 June 2020.
Migration + Mobility + Art research group in CAST brings together researchers to share and connect in a fun and lively way, with the intention of developing future research initiatives.
Migration + Mobility + Art focuses on forms of migration and their critical impacts in the context of creative practices. With a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific region, it also examines the complexities and challenges of mobility.
This session introduces our new School of Art Senior Industry Fellow Eugenia Lim who speaks about her Easy Riders project.
We also hear from a few of our MMA researchers about their current projects, followed by a Q & A.
Image: Eugenia Lim and APHIDS, Easy Riders concept image by Bryony Jackson, 2018.
Hosted by Tammy Wong Hulbert and live streamed on Tuesday, 9 June 2020.
ARTS + EDUCATION: EQUITY & RISK ONLINE DISCUSSIONS
The Arts + Education research group are delighted to host a series of discussions over four weeks, focusing on educational practice as research. The series draws on the themes of equity and risk as ways of looking towards a post-COVID19 world.Dr Angela Clarke, Professor David Forrest, Dr Kelly Hussey-Smith, and Professor Kit Wise each host a session based on their education-based research, identifying practice-based projects they have been involved with as well as key texts.Each session consisted of a 30 minute talk, followed by 15 minute online discussion. The series was open to staff and HDR students across the school, as well as interested colleagues across RMIT. Readings will be shared in advance of each session.
Join Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert (Lecturer, Arts Management, RMIT University) and John Smithies (Executive Officer, Cultural Development Network, CDN) in a CAST OUT LOUD conversation about managing the arts in a pandemic via two local government perspectives on how councils have responded to pandemic restrictions. Duncan Esler, City of Greater Geelong, and Nathan Stoneham, City of Brimbank, bring different backgrounds and experiences from two Victorian councils - two of the more than 560 councils across Australia. Councils continue to be the front-line governments engaging directly with their artists and creative communities and each municipality has different issues and responses. This session will provide a brief overview of how this sector is responding, what is it that makes local governments different, and a chance to raise questions from practitioners and other local government officers with experienced members of the sector.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Duncan Esler is Co-ordinator of the City of Greater Geelong’s Arts & Cultural Development Unit, where he co-ordinates diverse arts events, projects and cultural programs with the aim of increasing participation in and attendance to arts & cultural activities and events throughout the Geelong municipality. Key projects include Council’s Live Music Action Plan, multi-award-winning Mountain to Mouth Extreme Arts Walk and night arts event Geelong After Dark, Creative Communities Grants program, and Council’s online cultural presence. He also has an advocacy and strategic advisory role within Council pertaining to arts and culture.
Nathan Stoneham is the team leader of the Community and Cultural Development team within the Arts and Culture Unit at Brimbank City Council. Based at St Albans Community Centre and the Bowery Theatre, the team supports community use of the centre, including the delivery of community arts programs, festivals and events, and youth programs. Nathan has trained in theatre, education and social work and is the recipient of Australia Council for the Arts’ Kirk Robson Award for community arts and cultural development. His independent arts practice explores transcultural collaboration, creating performances in community settings across the Asia Pacific Region.
John Smithies joined CDN in 2005 and has worked with the Board and a skilled team to support stronger planning and evaluation of cultural development activities in local government and its integration with regional and national public cultural policy. John has recently been appointed Honorary Senior Industry Fellow at the School of Art, RMIT University.
Dr Tammy Wong Hulbert is an artist, curator and academic teaching in arts and cultural management (Lecturer in Curating) in Melbourne and Hong Kong at RMIT University.
Image: Zoom stock image, 2020
Hosted by Tammy Wong Hulbert and live streamed on Wednesday, 27 May 2020.
*NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the first 15 minutes of this talk were unable to be recorded. The full written presentation from first guest speaker Duncan Elser can be viewed here.
What's the best way to change the cultural practices of an entire planet so that we'll willingly separate ourselves from one another to protect lives? Isolated in lockdown, how is it that people are craving creative experiences and rediscovering creative skills? Why won't our governments focus first and foremost on what stimulates and inspires us? Ah, but we're told: ‘There are more important things in the world than art right now.’ Meanwhile, our economy is in freefall, mental health is in crisis, and economic stimulus measures exclude the arts and education sectors whose work creates our future.
RMIT’s School of Art welcomes its newest Honorary Associate Professor Esther Anatolitis, Executive Director of NAVA, in conversation with it new Senior Industry Fellow, artist/lecturer Eugenia Lim, and Professor Daniel Palmer.
Esther Anatolitis fosters local, regional, national and international perspectives on contemporary arts issues as one of the nation’s leading advocates for the arts. Her practice rigorously integrates professional and artistic modes of working to create collaborations, projects and workplaces that promote a critical reflection on practice. With a strong background in visual arts, design, architecture and media, Esther has held leadership roles including Craft Victoria, Melbourne Fringe, SBS and Express Media, and most recently with Regional Arts Victoria. She is Deputy Chair of Contemporary Arts Precincts and has served numerous board, policy, advisory and juror roles. Esther is a former curator of Architecture+Philosophy, Digital Publics and Independent Convergence, and has taught into the studio program at RMIT Architecture, as well as at UNSW and the University of Sydney.
Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist of Chinese–Singaporean descent who works across video, performance and installation to explore how national identities and capital flows cut, divide and bond our globalised world. Lim has exhibited, screened or performed at the Tate Modern, LOOP Barcelona, FIVA (Buenos Aires), Recontemporary (Turin), Kassel Dokfest, Museum of Contemporary art (Syd), Dark MOFO, ACCA, Asia TOPA, Melbourne Festival, Next Wave, ACMI, FACT Liverpool and EXiS (Seoul). She has been artist-in-residence with the Experimental Television Centre (NY), Bundanon Trust, the Robin Boyd Foundation and 4A Beijing Studio. She is a 2018–20 Gertrude Contemporary studio artist and since 2019, is co-director (with Lara Thoms and Mish Grigor) of 25-yr-old artistic company APHIDS. In 2019–21, a major touring exhibition Eugenia Lim: the Ambassador will travel to eight museums across Australia, presented by Museums and Galleries of NSW and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Lim co-founded CHANNELS Festival, co-wrote/hosts 'Video Becomes Us' (ABC iView) and is represented by STATION.
Professor Daniel Palmer is Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Art at RMIT University. He writes regularly on photography and contemporary art. His most recent book is Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Image: Esther Anatolitis, photo by Alex FrayneThis talk was recorded on the lands of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. We respectfully acknowledge ancestors past, present and emerging. Hosted by Daniel Palmer and live streamed on Monday, 4 May 2020.
There is often a largely unquestioned assumption in public art that generating good feelings is measurable proof that a project was successful. If the audience has been made happy, then the project is often assessed as good. If the public are content after participating in an art project, then it is deemed that the work has engaged them in the right way. In this lecture I wish to problematise these assumptions and argue for the protesting, critically agitated and troubled public of public art.
Dr Amy Spiers is an artist, writer and researcher living on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation in so-called Melbourne, Australia. Her socially-engaged, critical art practice focuses on the creation of live performances, participatory situations and multi-artform installations for both site-specific and gallery contexts. Her work aims to prompt questions and debate about the present social order — particularly about the gaps and silences in public discourse where difficult histories and social issues are not confronted. Spiers has presented art projects across Australia and internationally, including at Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), the Museum für Neue Kunst (Freiburg), MONA FOMA festival (Hobart) and the 2015 Vienna Biennale.As a writer and researcher, Amy has published texts widely, including for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Auckland Art Gallery, Journal of Arts and Communities and Open Engagement. Spiers completed a Master of Fine Art in 2011 and a PhD in 2018 at the Victorian College of the Arts.Image; Miranda Must Go, Amy Spiers, 2017
Hosted by Fiona Hillary, Leader of Public Art in CAST, and live streamed on Tuesday, 7 April 2020.
2019
Rupture, Vibration and Residue
2018
The State of Art History, with Denmark in Mind – Griselda PollockVunilagi Vou – A New Horizon: Curating as Social Inclusion in Moana Oceania – Ema TavolaFestivity and the Contemporary: Worldly Affinities in Southeast Asian Art – David TehWho's Afraid of Public Space
