Woah. What a weekend of productivity. A Critical Animals ’13 status update:

On Friday we went on a Newcastle adventure to scout ’13 venues, and while we’re not going to give too much away just yet, we’re getting very, very excited. Whilst away we caught up with some old friends in Newie, including our  favorite team at United Services who we can confirm will return to host our beloved Nights at the Gun Club. We’ve also got some new venues rolled tentatively up our sleeves which are going to take this year’s program above and beyond; more on this later.

Sat’dy was spent in a reverie of program delights, fueled by caffeine, postal notes and crackers. The quality and diversity of the applications has been truly overwhelming – everything from authorial legitimacy to indigenous architecture, autism and creativity to correct apostrophe usage, digital genetics to psychodynamic exercise tapes, and mathematics to the mythology of Lady Gaga… our heads are still spinning. We’re putting together a program both worthy and reflective of the past ten years of critical thought: new connections, good friends and wild ideas. We’ll be looking at where we’ve been and where we’re going, as well as taking a moment to take stock of the contemporary critical climate. Hopefully we’ll be shaking a few ex-directors out of our family tree to come along for the 10 year party.

And believe us kids, there will be a party.

Sunday was spent with the wonderful Tina.org family. Lots of coffee, brainstorming and good cheer. With all these plans we sometimes we forget that CA is only one slice of a very creative pie. We can’t express our gratitude to be working with these people.

We look forward to keeping you updated throughout the year. Keep well, keep thinking, we’ll speak to you soon.

Critical Animals xx

Darling Animals.

There’s one week left to get your proposals in. We’re already seeing some brilliant ideas rolling in and can’t wait to see more. Did we mention it is our birthday? We’re 10! All we want for a present is you, your enthusiasm, ideas and creative passion. Panels, papers, projects, exhibitions, forums and any other crazy ideas you might have. We want to hear them all.

Check out the call out here

http://criticalanimals.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/call-for-proposals-2013-final.pdf

Proposals due April 1st.

Hey there Faithful Followers and New Recruits,

This year Critical Animals and This is Not Art will take place in Newcastle, NSW from 3-6^th October, 2013.

We are now calling for proposals for the 2013 Festival. To mark our tenth-anniversary we hope to make this year bigger, better and full of surprises. But we need your help!
Got a project, work in progress or burning idea you need a forum to discuss? Drop us a line.

Download the Call Out details  – Call for Proposals 2013

Submit proposals, ideas and any questions to criticalanimals@gmail.com by April 1, 2013.

Please feel free to circulate this call-out to your networks.

We can’t wait,

Tulleah, Sophie, Beau and Eleanor.
Critical Animals 2013
www.criticalanimals.org

However, before we make any fresh announcements, we would like to thank our wonderful outgoing director Julia Shaw.

There is no way that Critical Animals ’12 (or ’10-’11) could have happened without Julia’s guiding hand. Julia took the time to teach us all that she knew and her grace, generosity and intelligence were assets instrumental to our project. Her leadership will be missed but rest assured she will remain an important member of our Critical Family.

The lovely Julia is the babe on the left.

Keep posted for updates in the upcoming weeks.

Critical Animals ’13 x

(P.S. CLICK ON THE PHOTO.)

It’s that time again, we’re looking for someone to join us make this wonderful festival happen.

The Critical Animals Creative Research Symposium is looking for a new Co-Director for the 2013 and 2014 Festivals. The successful applicant will work alongside current directors Beau Deurwaarder and Sophie Lamond and Festival manager Tulleah Pearce

Interested researchers, thinkers, artists and organisers should send a CV and covering letter to criticalanimals@gmail.com. Applications due MIDNIGHT FRIDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, 2013

Click Here to view the position description.

We can’t wait to hear from you,

Beau, Sophie and Tulleah.

A Review from a dedicated Critical Animal:

In the weeks following Critical Animals ’12, we were offered this review by Melbourne based writer, Timothy Balfour, to publish on our site:

These are times of change, in the sense specific to rates of change. Change is happening all the time, at every micro-infinitesimal moment – here is the site of the new. But you already know that because you are reading a review of CRITICAL ANIMALS 2012, a festival that has undergone much change of late, whilst still adhering to the strictest of tenets and the most assiduous of principles.

This year’s symposium had both young and old blood at the helm, the mixture of which manifested a vibrancy to the weekend that complimented the thorough organisation and compositional deftness of previous years.

Panels ranged across discursive planes concerning performative diversity, the relationship between artistic Practice and its old flame Theory, construction of creative Identity, phenomenological encounters with spaces Real and Virtual, the state of engagement with the State via Symbols, and Fluidity in experimental literary/visual Production (deep breath) to say the least! Add to these incisive, considered and at times highly adventurous forums a literal menagerie of readings, performances, exhibitions and launches.  A hyper-colour spectrum of critical interactivity!

At times it feels like the affect of all that creative energy indeed changes one at a phenomenal rate, with those in attendance entering the symposium at the Lock-up on the Friday and exiting out the doors of the Gun Club on the Sunday, barely able to recognise a Self they once called their own.

In speaking with a fellow festival-goer in the time following, I found there was a distinct thematic that seemed to permeate CA 2012, one that may have occurred unconsciously or indeed at the hands of subtle orchestration: the adjunct/disjunct of theory and practice across all forms within the contemporary creative landscape. From this, when I say that these are times of change, I sense that Critical Animals understand this fact all too well. They understand the importance of a vessel (or arc, if you desire), a sanctuary in which difference can be articulated, where a discourse of experimentation and expression has free range, is protected from the threat of mono-cognitive executioners. A space in which we can uphold the right to critical thought.

We are occupied, preoccupied, with critical discourse. It is a preoccupation with connection, with the in-between of a past/future learning-teaching, a playing in the space of the seeing and acting present. We covet the new, yet preserve what has been for the sake of what must come. I say ‘we’ because CA, for me, is the encouragement of participation and communication, a trust in some commensurability with the Other, no matter how Big or small he, she or they is/are. Whether you be poet, play-write, journalist, dancer, architect, warrior for social justice, pioneer of psychology, budding geo-politician or just plain interested, you can be a critical animal. It’s your right.

Make sure to get to Novocastria for This Is Not Art in 2013 for a collective forum that can only increase in its vital capacity.  Critical Animals is an integral event for everyone who considers their world from the perspective of difference, growth and change.

T. Moth Rheopard

(Vice-President of the Rheopard Corrective)

Melbourne.

Critical Animals 2012 – Artist Meet and Greet

Blind Date: When Theory Meets Practice with Matthew Abbott, Eva Bujalka and Harriet Parsons

Immutable Balance with Dr Angela Philp (UoN), Vivienne Rogis and Elizabeth Bellamy.
Presented with the University of Newcastle

Dance Jam: A Discourse on Diversity with Min Mae

Fast vs Slow Critical Practice followed by a screening of Patrick Kelly’s “Detour off the Superhighway”

Constructing Identity in Contemporary Performance with Hossein Ghaemi, Travis Englefield and Kate McDowell

Centre for the History of Emotions event: Bodies in Distress with Gabe Watts, Una McIlvenna, Carolyn McKay and Mimi Kelly. The event included an installation by Mimi Kelly and a
performance by Grace Turner of the Conservatorium of Newcastle.

Josh Harle’s workshop ‘Walking the Digitial City’ and Josh Harle, Chris Harle and Evelyn Kwok discuss their work on ‘The Space Panel’.

The launch of ‘ATLAS’ – Chris Cottrell, Josh Harle, Evelyn Kwok and Marilyn Schneider. Thank you to Scott Brewer from the University of Newcastle for launching our exhibition.

Breakfast Reading Session at Good Brother Espresso with Malcolm St Hill, Sam Moginie, Danuta Raine and Owen Kirkby. Presented with the University of Newcastle.

An afternoon at the Royal Exchange: Hyper/Reality and Political Dissolution and Experimental Writing and the Force of Fluidity.

An evening of Poetry at the Gun Club: New Quarrels: Innovative Poetry and the Poetics of Knowing and launch of Keri Glastonbury’s ‘Grit Salute’ and Derek Motion’s ‘lollyology’.

We were truly blown away by everyone that made this year’s TiNA as impressive as it was.
A HUGE THANK YOU to all Critical Animals artists and audiences. Special thanks to our major sponsor, The University of Newcastle (Thanks to Professor Kevin McConkey for the continued support) and our sponsor the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at UTS (Thanks to Professor Van Leeuwen). Thank you to the Octapod and Auspicious Arts. To Aden Rolfe, Keri Glastonbury, Ella O’Keefe, Yolande Norris, Astrid Lorange, Scott Brewer and Angela Philp. Thank you to Dean at the Royal Exchange; Elissa, Chris and Steph at Good Brother; Emily and Dennis at the Lock-up.  A huge Thanks to Pat and his crew at the Gun Club. Thanks to Robbie and Dale for their tech genius (and an extra special thank you for staying back on Sunday night!) Thank you to Pip, Chad, Zoe, Ben, Geoff, Gareth, Jane, Nick, Jen and Sarah! Thank you to Kosta and Wednesday for your help.
See you all next year and please keep in touch.

Critical Animals 2012
Julia, Tulleah, Sophie and Beau xx

Breakfast reading session at Good Brother cafe 10am Sunday 30 September

Sam Moginie is a poet and musician living in Sydney. He is currently completing his PhD at the University of Sydney, working on Australian Poetry in the 1970′s.

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Malcolm St Hill is a poet and prose writer who is completing a PhD at the University of Newcastle. His work, a study of his grandfather, draws heavily on poetry as a means of exploring the inexplicable, and mapping responses to trauma. His work explores the creation of character in creative non-fiction and how voice is given to those previously mute.

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Owen Kirkby is poet from Sydney University who has won several prizes and has been published in voiceworks and BLOCK journal.

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Danuta Raine is a PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle. She will read from her work “Dragon and the Queen of Poland”. The novel is set in contemporary Newcastle with a narrative sequence which follows the experiences of a 20yr old forced labourer in rural Westfalen Germany.

presented with the University of Newcastle.

The directors have landed in Newcastle and we’ve been madly getting things ready for your arrival. We can’t wait!

Our Sexy Program outside The Royal Exchange

Mad Prepping

Beau, our Lanyard Hero

In the lead up to TiNA I’ve been thinking a lot about what this festival means to us all, and how it operates within the national mechanics of our creative communities. I think our festival name says it all:

                                                                This is Not Art

If TiNA’s not art, then indeed, what is it? An arts festival? A weekend celebrating art? A gathering where artists talk shit about art, or rather, what isn’t art, or an arts festival, or even what isn’t a weekend celebrating art? TiNA is certainly something, and indeed, that something, hate to break it to you, is art.

In thinking these thoughts I invariably fall back to philosophical mastery of my buddy Gilles Deleuze. He’d have dug TiNA, especially Critical Animals. Deleuze dedicates much of his writing to artistic and experimental practice, and the cultural imperative of threads of innovation that compromise the tapestry that envelops our society. Deleuze’s artist experiments with form, with the very structures that inform our form, and in doing so, expands the contours to which the assemblage of convention holds assembly. To be an innovative writer, Deleuze contends, one must become something “other than a writer”; to become what is not a writer. An artist, likewise, to keep up the pace, must become something other than an artist, to produce something which is not art. …see where I’m going? Or shall I continue?

We’ve spoken about writing, albeit briefly. National Young Writers Festival provides the instrumental tools for the youth of literacy to mature and develop their skills, and discover their own written style and prose. It’s also a great piss up, and a chance to meet lit babes. Crack Theatre, in line, is a stimulating showcase of experimental performance, an elating engagement with expression and entertainment. Crack creates a Newcastle-wide stage for recitals that punctuate the crevice between dramatised delivery and fringe experimentation, whether through dance, improvisation, or other challenging gestures.

Critical Animals, the sub-festival to which I’m dedicated, unleashes a collective orchestra of creative and clever critters whose critical chorus seems to facilitate and explicate the afore mentioned sub-festivals. Scurrying between plinths of research and theory, as well as vivid vocations of practical application, the speakers at Critical Animals consider exactly how artistic agency enters the equation, when it does so, and why it does so. They’re critical of their answers, too.

Let’s think about this once more. To create is to bring something new into the world. Innovation is an implicit introduction to this something. Creation, in its broadest sense, is the opportunity to meet and encounter something new, to see, hear and feel things differently, and moreover, to think differently – whether it’s inspired by a painting, a video, an idea, a song, a zine or even just a striking conversation. This something, let me say again, is art, the invitation to an artistic vision outside of the invitee’s current field of sight.

For fun, let’s get all poststructural about this: This is Not Art is ART. ok?

Hopefully next weekend will make things clearer. As a Melbournite, I understand the difficulties inherent in traveling the distance north, in prepping the carpool, in taking time off work. But I urge you, if you can, let the benefits outweigh the hesitations. This time next week make sure you are not where this is not art is not happening…or like, just come, deal?

Show your support through http://thisisnotart.floktu.com/, spread the word and bring your friends, and looking forward to seeing you all there!

Beau Anthony,
Critical Animals Program Coordinator

Ceci n’est pas une pipe by René Magritte