Strap yourselves in for the updated Critical Animals Program. If you’ve previously downloaded the program, throw it away. Put it in the recycling, write on the back of it, line your kitty litter. Whatever you do, don’t refer to it. Instead, look below or here for your up-to-the-minute schedule. (Current programs are dated 250909)
You’ll find the Visual Arts Program one post below, and for download here.
The full This is Not Art program can be perused and downloaded here.
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Thursday 1 October
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BIOGRAPHICAL BATHING
Thurs 1 Oct: 6.00 – 7.30pm
Newcastle Baths (Canoe Pool)
Two contrasting expressions of place and memory guide this journey into the auto/biography of thought. At this site-specific location one writer retraces her family genealogy through poetry, while the other considers the soundscape as a complete outsider. We look into the politics of habitation and un/belonging, as well as the familiarity and unfamiliarity of the experience of space as things we might all share, circumstances notwithstanding.
Featuring: Penny Duff, Lou Smith
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AIR
Thurs 1 Oct: 10.00am – 4.00pm
The Lock-Up, John Paynter Gallery
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Artist as Family
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THE ROPE DANCER ACCOMPANIES HERSELF WITH HER SHADOWS, REVISITED. 2008
Thurs 1 Oct: 11.00am – 6.00pm
Staple Manor
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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MEAT – ART YOU CAN GET YOUR TEETH INTO
Thurs 1 Oct: 12.00 – 5.00pm
Newcastle Art Space
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Todd Fuller, Amy Hill, Ell O’Connor, Aksara Harriram, Mel Chalker
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Friday 2 October
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CRITICAL ANIMALS WELCOME (INC RISK COLLECTORS LAUNCH)
Fri 2 Oct: 9.00 – 10.00am
City Hall: Banquet Room
The official opening of Critical Animals 2009! Come and meet fellow Critical Animals and make a home in our nest for the next three days. Served with tea, bickies and introductions, this event includes the opening of the Risk Depot, where you’re invited to leave, divulge, reveal, drop, splurt or excrete an unrealised risk for artistic duo Patches to catalogue.
Featuring: Britt Guy, Aden Rolfe, Patches (Stella McDonald)
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LIVING WITH THE SOUND OF MY MOTHERS PAST
Fri 2 Oct: 9.00am – 5.00pm
Hall outside City Hall: Banquet Room
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Hanif Baharin
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AIR
Fri 2 Oct: 10.00am – 5.00pm
The Lock-Up, John Paynter Gallery
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Artist as Family
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RISK COLLECTOR BOOTH
Fri 2 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Patches (Stella McDonald and Anique Vered)
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BURIED WITH MY RICHES, BITCHES. 2008
Fri 2 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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UFO PANELS
Fri 2 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Dr Jacquelene Drinkall
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NO FALSE IDOLS DOWN THE YOUTUBE
Fri 2 Oct: 10.00 – 11.30am
City Hall: Banquet Room
We all love pop culture! Shows like Australian Idol and Big Brother have managed to implant themselves within numerous facets of contemporary life across the globe. This panel questions how and why popular culture inspires and/or impacts on contemporary art practice. Does popular culture produce an accurate representation of our cultural life? Come along to quiz our experts!
Featuring: Elena Knox, Jenna Corcoran, Meredith Godley, Gerwyn Davies
Facilitator: Britt Guy
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DIY PINHOLE CAMERA WORKSHOP
Fri 2 Oct: 11.00am – 1.00pm
China Club Artshub
A matchbox, a coke can, a roll of film and some gaffer tape. Make art out of everyday flotsam (and fulfill your MacGyver urges) at this Pinhole Camera Workshop. Participants will make their own cameras, learn the requisite technique, and put it all into practice in a perambulation through the streets of post-industrial Newcastle. Make sure you bring a roll of film!
Featuring: Miriam Chatt
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THE ROPE DANCER ACCOMPANIES HERSELF WITH HER SHADOWS, REVISITED. 2008
11.00am – 6.00pm
Staple Manor
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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SOUNDING THE INFRA-ORDINARY
Fri 2 Oct: 11.30am – 1.00pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
An exploration of the sounds of the everyday, the organic and the human, in various states of documentation, mediation and reconstitution. Can a program mimic human composition? Can a recording fill the place of a loved one? How do we document the acoustic world? Critical reflection by three artists on their current sound practice and theory, across artificial compositional programs, audio installation and documented sound-walks.
Featuring: Jim Cuomo, Penny Duff, Hanif Baharin
Facilitator: Aden Rolfe
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MEAT – ART YOU CAN GET YOUR TEETH INTO
Fri 1 Oct: 12.00 – 5.00pm
Newcastle Art Space
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Todd Fuller, Amy Hill, Ell O’Connor, Aksara Harriram, Mel Chalker.
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GIRLS GONE WILD*
Fri 2 Oct: 2.00 – 4.00pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
The notions of boundaries, or lack of, when it comes to sex and gender. Engaging with both artists and academics we seek to understand the fine lines between stereotypes, freedoms, passivity and defiance. Promising furious lashings of ‘non PC’ thought, we vividly engage with the bizarre society we are told is ‘the norm’.
Featuring: Krissy Kneen, Marianna Leishman, Charlotte Farrell (What Makes Men Blush), Emma Maye Gibson (What Makes Men Blush), Lyndal Walker (Suffragette City)
Facilitator: Britt Guy
* Co-presented by Critical Animals and National Young Writers Festival.
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RING I
Fri 2 Oct: 2.00 – 2.30pm
Civic Park
Launch of Fiona Lee’s Ring I brick installation in Civic Park. A minimalist, site-specific installation which subtly juxtaposes ideas around place-making and consumerism. Using reclaimed kiln bricks arranged in the timeless symbol of a circle, Ring I aims to invoke an ethereal appreciation of the fragility of our environment and to define the surroundings in which it is placed. In its position within the soil we can recognise the circle as an object of nature and a framework we use to understand and describe our world.
Artist/s: Fiona Lee
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STANZAS IN MEDITATION IN THE PARK
Fri 2 Oct: 2.30 – 5.30pm
Civic Park
A public reading of Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas In Meditation in its entirety, as part of Stein 09 festivities. The public, continuous audition of the work will be an act of criticism emphasising certain essential qualities: its music, its process, that it is a monument, and that it creates an environment. Audience are invited to come and leave as they please, to witness this work and participate as readers.
Featuring: Penny Duff, Stu Hatton, Derek Motion, Michael Farrell, Ella O’Keefe, Jal Nicholl
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RAMIFICATIONS: INTENTIONS AND ACCIDENTS IN ART
Fri 2 Oct: 4.00 – 5.30pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
Can art really change behaviour? Does it really alter our mood? Are we really that transparent? Let these artists lead you down a well-trodden path of art and affect where mapping and understanding the divisions and collisions between art and the psyche are up for analysis and dispute.
Featuring: Fiona Lee, Danielle Bentley, Margi Brown Ash
Facilitator: Nic Vogelpoel
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LANDSCAPING AESTHETICS
Fri 2 Oct: 6.30pm – 7.30pm
Festival Club: Masons
Artists in an experimental collaborative conversation, talking across the boundaries and textures of art, performance, film, theory and the aesthetics of experience. Allowing artists to talk in the language that they think in, their artform.
Featuring: Gerwyn Davies, Hannah Kinlyside, Danielle Bentley, Hanif Baharin, Derek Motion, Dion Kagan, James Arvanitakis, Michael Farrell
Facilitator: Britt Guy
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INTIMACY AMBULANCE
Fri 2 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: 2203 Collective
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RING I
Fri 2 Oct: All day
Civic Park
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Fiona Lee
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Saturday 3 October
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LIVING WITH THE SOUND OF MY MOTHERS PAST
Sat 3 Oct: 9.00am – 5.00pm
Hall outside City Hall: Banquet Room
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Hanif Baharin
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CONTEMPORARY POETICS (LOOKING IN): THE PLACE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN POETRY
Sat 3 Oct: 9.30am – 11.00am
City Hall: Banquet Room
Is experimental poetry now the norm in Australia and what does experimental mean in 2009? Who makes up the audience for experimental poetry? Does the diversity in Australian poetic practice entail a progressive, permissive playing-field? This engaging and exploratory panel discussion includes readings by the panellists.
Featuring: Stu Hatton, Derek Motion, Michael Farrell, Jill Jones
Facilitator: Aden Rolfe
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AIR
Sat 3 Oct: 10.00am – 5.00pm
The Lock-Up, John Paynter Gallery
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Artist as Family
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RISK COLLECTOR BOOTH
Sat 3 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Patches (Stella McDonald and Anique Vered)
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BURIED WITH MY RICHES, BITCHES. 2008
Sat 3 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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UFO PANELS
Sat 3 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Dr Jacquelene Drinkall
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ROADKILL: COLLECTING AND STORING
Sat 3 Oct: 11.00am – 12.30pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
A guided tour through the processes of reviving, making new, and placing the discarded, in artistic and academic practice. What do these forms say about the artist as individual and/or collective? What historical breadcrumb trail are we leaving behind and is there someone eating up the pieces? An exciting collection of artists and academics who will transform the way we think about the old, the new and indeed the post.
Featuring: Ignorance Collective (Prof Jen Webb, Sarah St Vincent Welch, Paul Collis, Dr Kavita Nandan, Dr Jordan Williams, Dr Paul Magee)
Facilitator: Scott Brewer
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THE ROPE DANCER ACCOMPANIES HERSELF WITH HER SHADOWS, REVISITED. 2008
Sat 3 Oct: 11.00am – 11.30pm
Staple Manor
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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MEAT – ART YOU CAN GET YOUR TEETH INTO
Sat 3 Oct: 12.00 – 5.00pm
Newcastle Art Space
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Todd Fuller, Amy Hill, Ell O’Connor, Aksara Harriram, Mel Chalker
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CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS: MAGICIANS OF SOUND, FILM AND THE LIVE EXPERIENCE
Sat 3 Oct: 1.30 – 3.00pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
An opportunity for this year’s exhibiting Critical Animals to explain WHAT IT ALL MEANS?! Each artist will get the opportunity to show their work and receive critical feedback. Along the way we will discuss issues currently affecting emerging artists in the Australian contemporary art world.
Featuring: Trudy Clutterbok, Hanif Baharin, Patches (Stella McDonald)
Facilitator: Britt Guy
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MOLLY AND EVE
Sat 3 Oct: 2.00 – 2.30pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Victoria Bennett, Clare Rae
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ART AFTER THE FACT: THE PLACE OF CREATIVE PRACTICE IN TRAUMA AND COPING
Sat 3 Oct: 3.00 – 4.30pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
Art can be good for coping. This panel is about just that. These artists and thinkers have been indulging in, and making art to cope with trauma. What constitutes trauma and indeed what constitutes ‘coping’ are questions up for grabs. Be prepared to access the less talked about, often hidden, and always personal crevices of these artists as they take you on tours only they know the route to.
Featuring: Lou Smith, Carly Norman, Rachel O’Reilly
Facilitator: Nic Vogelpoel
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CREATIVE COMMUNITIES: MEAT ARTIST’S PRESENTATION
Sat 3 Oct: 3.30 – 5.00pm
Newcastle Art Space
The artists that make up local art collective MEAT are drawn together by the fact that individually, they don’t fit anywhere else, and neither does their work. Come and listen to them discuss, divulge and just downright argue about art, their work, and existing in a world with a tenuous grip on reality, far, far away from the suits and ties of the everyday.
Featuring: Todd Fuller, Amy Hill, Ell O’Connor, Aksara Harriram, Mel Chalker
Facilitator: Aden Rolfe
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FRAME-UP: THE PLACE OF THE ARTS
Sat 3 Oct: 4.30 – 6.00pm
City Hall: Newcastle Room
Ethics, science and the academy: positioning the arts against/within these frameworks, these papers outride the disciplinary borders. What can the arts know, and what are they responsible for? This panel will range across contemporary debates on the place of creative writing in the academy, art/science interactions, the unintelligible world and artistic reciprocity, and artistic framing as violence.
Featuring: Nina Stuhldreher, James Willoughby, Keegan Eastcott, Mathew Paul
Facilitator: Scott Brewer
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THE GREAT GATSBY BALL*
7.00 – 8.00pm
Festival Club: Masons
“People were not invited to Gatsby’s house – they went there.” So rogue your knees and roll your stockings down for a night of sequin-drenched debauch. Find your flapper, pack your top-hat and NYWF will put the ‘ALL’
in your ‘BALL’. Come party like it’s 1925!
Featuring: Kira Puru & the Very Geordie Malones, What Makes Men Blush, The Civic Big Band
* This event is presented by National Young Writers’ Festival; What Makes Men Blush (Charlotte Farrell and Emma Maye Gibson) feature courtesy of Critical Animals.
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INTIMACY AMBULANCE
Sat 3 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: 2203 Collective
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SUFFRAGETTE CITY
Sat 3 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Featuring: Hit and Miss (Narinda Reeders and Tai Snaith), Hotham Street Ladies (Lyndal Walker), Molly and Eve (Victoria Bennett and Clare Rae)
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FROSTING
Sat 3 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Hotham St Ladies
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RING I
Sat 3 Oct: All day
Civic Park
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Fiona Lee
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Sunday 4 October
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BREAKFAST POETRY COLLAGE READING
Sun 4 Oct: 9.00 – 10.00am
City Hall: Banquet Room
A selection of Australia’s most interesting experimental poets read their collaged and cut-up works. Come and join us for coffee, a croissant and some radical language play.
Featuring: Michael Farrell, Jill Jones, Stuart Cooke, Jal Nicholl
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LIVING WITH THE SOUND OF MY MOTHERS PAST
Sun 4 Oct: 9.00am – 5.00pm
Hall outside City Hall: Banquet Room
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Hanif Baharin
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AIR
Sun 4 Oct: 10.00am – 5.00pm
The Lock-Up, John Paynter Gallery
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Artist as Family
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RISK COLLECTOR BOOTH
Sun 4 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Patches (Stella McDonald and Anique Vered)
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BURIED WITH MY RICHES, BITCHES. 2008
Sun 4 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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UFO PANELS
Sun 4 Oct: 10.00am – 6.00pm
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Dr Jacquelene Drinkall
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CONTEMPORARY POETICS (LOOKING OUT): TRANSLATION, PRE-COLLAGE AND UNTAPPED INFLUENCES
Sun 4 Oct: 10.00 – 11.30am
City Hall: Banquet Room
Three glances at contemporary poetics and practice: pre-collage and cut-up in Christopher Brennan and Mallarme; translation as exemplary writing practice; and the comparative ecological poetics of Chilean poets Pablo Neruda and Leonel Lienlaf.
Featuring: Michael Farrell, Joel Scott, Stuart Cooke
Facilitator: Aden Rolfe
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MOLLY AND EVE
Sun 4 Oct: 11.00 – 11.30am
China Club Artshub
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Victoria Bennett, Clare Rae
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BOYS ON BOYS ON GIRLS ON GIRLS ON DYKES ON HOMOS*
Sun 4 Oct: 12.00 – 2.00pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
Queer literature, gay art, gender politics, girls who like boys, who like boys, who like girls…..Does anyone even care anymore? Is ‘queer’ a dead duck? Are we truly post-identity politics in terms of sexuality? Who are our Australian Queer arts Legends? Are we even interested anymore in specific homo, dyke, trans gay art? Whether you’re in or out this panel pits those die hard queer literary and arts gurus up against those who just don’t give a damn.
Featuring: Gerwyn Davies, Hannah Kinlyside, Maddy Phelan, Ianto Ware, Sam Stoker
Facilitator: Dion Kagan
* Co-presented by Critical Animals and National Young Writers Festival.
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MEAT – ART YOU CAN GET YOUR TEETH INTO
Sun 4 Oct: 12.00 – 5.00pm
Newcastle Art Space
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Todd Fuller, Amy Hill, Ell O’Connor, Aksara Harriram, Mel Chalker
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MOLLY AND EVE
Sun 4 Oct: 1.30 – 2.00pm
Sunday Fair
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Victoria Bennett, Clare Rae
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CONSTELLATIONS: WEATHER, UFOS, TELEPATHY AND THE COSMOS
Sun 4 Oct: 2.00 – 3.30pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
This is a meteorological discussion like no other, set on a cosmic voyage across the synoptic chart, from King Lear to the aesthetics of telepathy. A radical cosmology of papers investigating the universe of Carl Sagan (by a ventriloquised presentation), the effects of weather on narrative structures, as well as UFOlogy and the Weathermen. So strap in and let the interstellar wind lift your sails.
Featuring: Dr Jacquelene Drinkall, Astrid Lorange, Jennifer Hamilton
Facilitator: Scott Brewer
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NEURONS, PLASTICS AND INTERVENING: ART IN THE COMMUNITY
Sun 4 Oct: 3.30 – 5.00pm
City Hall: Banquet Room
We’ve been talking about art in communities, art as intervention, art and wellbeing, and traditional community cultural development schemes for long enough! Isnt it time we stuck our grubby little hands into melting pots, cesspools and situational comedies? Come and see how right we were – wait – how right we are. Every community needs art. Let us convince you that it’s our job to intervene.
Featuring: James Arvanitakis, Rebecca Conroy
Facilitator: Nic Vogelpoel
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DIVERSITY DINNERS
Sun 4 Oct: 5.30 – 7.00pm
Festival Club: Masons
Come and celebrate the end of another Critical Animals! An opportunity to revel in our intellectual glory, enjoy a glorious meal and engage with an artwork as it happens. As we wrap up another festival, we unite to enjoy the ritualistic aspects of sharing a meal, while noting the significance of each guest’s contribution to the table and indeed, to Critical Animals. Bring a plate of your favourite recipe and take part in an ephemeral performance installation which will in turn create a reflective audio work. Booze, food and art, what more could one mortal want?
Featuring: Emma Konnaris, Britt Guy, Aden Rolfe
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INTIMACY AMBULANCE
Sun 4 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: 2203 Collective
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SUFFRAGETTE CITY
Sun 4 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Featuring: Hit and Miss (Narinda Reeders and Tai Snaith), Hotham Street Ladies (Lyndal Walker), Molly and Eve (Victoria Bennett and Clare Rae)
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FROSTING
Sun 4 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Hotham St Ladies
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HIT AND MISS
Sun 4 Oct: Various times
Various venues
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Featuring: Narinda Reeders, Tai Snaith
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RING I
Sun 4 Oct: All day
Civic Park
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Fiona Lee
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Monday 5 October
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ARTIST TALK – AIR
Mon 5 Oct: 11.00am – 12.00pm
The Lock-Up, John Paynter Gallery
The Artist as Family discuss their Lock-Up residency based on toxic waste and alternative closed-cycle systems, with waste becoming productive and regenerative. They will speak about their art in relation to permaculture and introduce their Shed of Interrelation, an artist-in-residence-cum-WWOOFer shack under construction in Central Victoria. They will also give a background to their own community, including their involvement with the Hepburn Relocalisation Network.
Featuring: Patrick Jones, Meg Ulman, Zephyr Ogden Jones
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THE ROPE DANCER ACCOMPANIES HERSELF WITH HER SHADOWS, REVISITED. 2008
Mon 5 Oct: 11.00am – 3.00pm
Staple Manor
See Visual Arts Program for more info.
Artist/s: Miriam Chatt
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This program can also be downloaded here.
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