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Chair: Dr Marnie Badham, Senior Research Fellow, CAST, RMIT School of Art
Unbound Collective Sovereign Acts of (Anti)Memorial Love
The Unbound Collective reflect on the transformative potential of a series of Sovereign Acts in public spaces through language, song, mixed-media projection, site-specific performance and love poetry. This is ‘anti-memorial’ activism and intergenerational memory made visible; a means to repatriate love to all those who have historically been contained, impacted, and excluded within and beyond the mortar and boundaries of colonial institutions, archives and imposed cultural precincts. The Unbound Collective is Ali Gumillya Baker (Mirning), Faye Rosas Blanch (Yidinji/Mbarbram), Natalie Harkin (Narungga) and Simone Ulalka Tur (Yankunytjatjara), also with violinist/composer Katie Inawantji Morrison (Yankunytjatjara). They address notions of ethical practice, cultural responsibility, and repatriation of story through enacting memory and storytelling, and offer poetic interrogations of state colonial institutions, practices and archives through performance and mixed-media projection and sovereign (re)representation.
Djon Mundine
Remembering and Forgetting –Forgiveness and Not Forgetting
We must remember – a monument is a structure erected to memorialise a person, place and/or event of great significance to a society. A memorial is an art object in the widest definition, a song, a sacred space, a simple ritual, an image, to strongly embed an emotional memory into the societal psyche. It is an artwork in the widest sense of that definition, that automatically draws out sorrow or joy from members of that society. Monuments are erected by the victors. Memorials are of the mind and carried in the heart.
Djon Mundine OAM is a member of the Bandjalung people of northern New South Wales, and is an independent curator, activist and writer. His career has helped revolutionise the criticism and display of contemporary Aboriginal art, including through prominent curatorial positions held in many national and international institutions, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Queensland Art Gallery. Between 1979 and 1995 He worked as art advisor at Milingimbi in the Crocodile Islands and at Bula-bula Arts in Ramingining in Arnhem Land where he originated and oversaw the Aboriginal Memorialproject. In 1993 he received the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the promotion and development of Aboriginal arts, crafts and culture. In 2005-2006 he was Research Professor at The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, Japan.
Genevieve Grieves and Dr Amy Spiers Closing remarks and reflections
