Newcastle’s annual This is Not Art (TiNA) festival is back in 2010 for its 11th year, taking place from 30th September – 4th October. The festival presents Australia’s most exciting and emergent exhibitions, screenings, performances, panels, workshops, talks, gigs, interventions, live art, and special events in five days of creativity and absolute madness. The festival features over 400 local, national and international artists in a combination of writers, performers, thinkers, independent and industry musicians, creative researchers, electronic artists, dilettantes, and much, much more.
This Is Not Art 2010 is a collaboration between The Crack Theatre Festival, Critical Animals, Electrofringe, National Young Writers’ Festival and Sound Summit
Festival program highlights include:
· In response to the city’s lack of public street art, TiNA will be commencing WalkARTbout, which will showcase the talents of artists from all backgrounds to revitalise the inner city by actively engaging with the arts community.
· The premiere performance of queer DIY Theatre troupe Sisters Grimm's The Rimming Club.
· An instalment of celebrated Melbourne variety night The Last Tuesday Society in their patented brand of lo-fi, am-dram, theatrical mash up, rock n' roll vaudeville.
· Shh's Blind, As You See It, an extraordinary fusion of physical theatre, opera and puppetry that traces the story of a young woman as she loses her vision.
· Bitter black comedy Up to your Arse in Alligators by The Masters of Space and Time, a razor-sharp depiction of Australia's inspired attempt to engineer a utopian ecosystem through the introduction of the cane toad.
· Our very own Year 12 Formal, in which audience becomes performer, performer becomes audience and the hormones flow as freely as spiked punch. Curated by famed deviant Hadley and featuring light, sound, music and chaos by the Spill Collective, Svelt and Dead DJ Joke.
· Panel discussion: Critiquing Criticism - I Can't Believe it's not Better. With cultural and creative critics Lisa Dempster, Fenella Kernebone, Andrew Ramadge, Naomi Milthorpe and Shaun Prescott. Co-presented with Macquarie University Faculty of Arts.
· Panel discussion: Coterie in the Arts: We're All in it Together. With Keri Glastonbury, Mike Rosenthal and Ben Byrne. Co-presented with The Writing Cultures Research Group, University of Newcastle.
· Panel discussion: Thought in Motion: Ekphrasis, Creative Citation and Embodied Theory. With Hayley Singer (performance/cultural theory), Gareth Jenkins (poetry/philosophy), Miranda Wheen (dance) and Nick Keys (poetry/performance). Co-presented with University of Newcastle.
· The Human Theremin- Luke makes art with strangers. His mother told him not to, but he does it anyway. Now he needs your bodies. Luke has constructed a machine that transforms him into a Human Theremin, and he needs you to play him!
· Weird tales of deepest darkest America in the American Gothic Ball.
· Grassroots activists, writers and mainstream journos discuss the challenges of navigating the politics, economics and science of contemporary environmental journalism in ETS' and Ecosystems: Environmental Writing in an Election Year.
· Sketch the Rhyme is an interactive hip-hop game show where speed drawing meets rapping meets live hip hop beats.
· Jason Forrest (USA/Berlin) is an electronic musician working in a variety of styles. His sample-based music has been a pioneering force in the experimental music community and he has been credited as being a leader in the emergence of the Breakcore genre. www. myspace.com/jason_forrest
· The songs of Grouper (USA) aka Liz Harris epitomise the potentials of textural songwriting. www.myspace.com/grouperrepuorg
· Songs (Sydney) make echo heavy drone pop that gives modern music the cold shoulder. www.songssongs.net
· The Grand Debate- Featuring: Kirsty Brown (Sound Summit), Adam Gauci (Curse Ov Dialect), Andrew Ramadge (mess+noise, news.com.au), Elmo Keep (The Internet Is Punk), Everett True (Plan B), Fenella Kernebone (ABC Art Nation, Triple J Sound Lab). The Grand Debate examines the unique relationship musicians have with critics - whether professional or armchair and discuss: who are the guardians of 'taste', why do they matter and what happens when they love or dislike an artist.