Relational Ecologies Intensive: Day One Strategy & Critique

Fri 21 Feb
9:30am

Malthouse Theatre, Bagging Room & Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Free

9:30am – 6:30pm

Led by Tristen Harwood, Strategy & Critique is concerned with pedagogy, property, aesthetics and land justice. This session considers how we might study and teach climate aware creative practices that attend to Indigenous land justice. Featuring guest presenters, Lauren Burrow, Laniyuk, Micaela Sahhar and Brooke Wandin, Strategy & Critique is a day of dialogue and practice, which uses a yarning circle model to facilitate artistic, poetic, and activist responses to land-back, land-clearing, and ecologically legible art glut.

Each speaker will present for 20-minutes followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Harwood. Participants will then be invited to join the discussion through yarning circles in the Ngargee courtyard led by the presenters, alongside other CACP members.

The program extends into the evening with Jakarta-based artist duo Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett who are calling out for participants to join a one-hour walking procession starting at ACCA and traversing the Birrarung (Yarra) river, before returning to ACCA for a lecture performance.

Bookings are essential for this program.

SCHEDULE

9.30am
Registration, morning tea, tea/coffee in the Malthouse Theatre, Bagging Room

10.00am
Welcome to Country 

10.15am
Tristen Harwood introduction

10.45am
Presentations by Lauren Burrow, Laniyuk, Micaela Sahhar and Brooke Wandin

12.10pm
Panel discussion

1.00 – 2.30pm
[BREAK]

1.00 – 4.00pm
Lab Notations with the Relational Ecologies Laboratory

2.30pm – 4.00pm
Yarning Circles in the Ngargee Courtyard

4.30 – 5.30pm
Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett Titik Api. Depart from Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
For more information and to register, click here.

5.30 – 6.00pm
[BREAK]

6.00pm
Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett lecture performance at ACCA
For more information and to register, click here.

6.30pm
Close

VENUES AND ACCESS

Malthouse Theatre

Malthouse theatre is located at 113 Sturt Street Southbank, VIC 3006. The Bagging Room is located on Level One, which can be accessed by lift. Read more about access here.

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)

ACCA is located at 111 Sturt Street, Southbank, in the Melbourne Arts Precinct. Enter from Sturt Street. There’s a tram stop nearby, and plenty of car parks and bike racks. It’s also a nice walk from Flinders Street train station.

ACCA is fully wheelchair accessible, with two accessible car park spaces just outside the entrance on Sturt Street and a wheelchair accessible bathroom. ACCA also has a wheelchair that is available on request for use by visitors. We also welcome Assistance Dogs in the gallery.

Read more about access and planning your visit here.

Ngargee Courtyard

The Ngargee Courtyard is located here, between ACCA and Malthouse Theatre.

GETTING THERE

On a Tram
The No. 1 South Melbourne tram goes right past our door. Get off at Stop 18. Any tram down St Kilda Road—jump off at Grant Street, Stop 17 and take a 3-minute walk.

On a Train
Any train to Flinders Street, then a 12-minute stroll through Melbourne’s sparkling Arts Precinct.

Cycling
Secure your bike to one of the many racks outside the foyer. There are also plenty of public Lime e-bikes & e-scooters within the vicinity.

Parking Options
Limited on-street parking is available on Grant Street, Sturt Street, and Dodds Street. Two Disabled parking spaces are just outside The Malthouse entrance on Sturt Street.

BIOGRAPHIES

Lauren Burrow is a recent Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship recipient (2023-24) and current candidate in the PhD program at Monash University. She has held solo exhibitions at Pli, Munich, 2022; Holden Garage, Berlin, 2021; and TCB Art Inc., Melbourne, 2019 and her work has been included in group exhibitions at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2025, LaTrobe Art Institute, Bendigo, 2024, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2023, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2021 and Hessel Museum of Art, New York, 2021. Lauren is an educator at the Victorian College of the Arts and co-President of Plumwood Inc., the committee responsible for care of Val Plumwood’s living archive.

Tristen Harwood (Ngalakgan) is a writer, critic, and editor. He is a Tutor in Critical and Theoretical Studies at the Victorian College of the Arts.Harwood is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT University, which looks to understand the historical relationship between carceralism and Indigenous art making. Harwood is a contributing editor at MeMo review and a board member of the Plumwood Committee.

Laniyuk is a Larrakia, Kungarakan, Gurindji and French political creative whose art practise is grounded in cultural, language and land reclamation. She writes and performs poetry, speculative fiction and short memoir, is a visual artist, gives lectures, moderates panels and runs workshops.

Micaela Sahhar is an Australian-Palestinian writer and educator. She has published on themes of narrative appropriation, questions of representation and the problem of archives in settler-colonial contexts, recently in Middle East Critique (2024) and Mashriq & Mahjar (2023). Her essays, poetry and commentary have been widely published, in Cordite, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit and the Sydney Review of Books among others. She is a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter fellow (2021) and a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund grant recipient (2022). Her first book, Find me at the Jaffa Gate: an encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family (NewSouth) will be released in May 2025. 

Brooke Wandin is a Wurundjeri educator, language worker and artist, and one of the Directors of Wandoon Estate Aboriginal Corporation. Language is a central focus of her practice, as she works to revive Woiwurrung language through research, teaching and the development of a Woiwurrung language database.

Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett are self-taught artist duo based in Jakarta. Their initial work is to place the imagination through performative intervention in the midst of chaotic public space of megapolitan Jakarta, which faces the dilemma of uncontrolled urbanization and pollution. The development of networks in art, activist and scientist circles has encouraged their artistic practice to progress toward the more profound and deeper circumstances. They are currently working on a long-term project related to geopolitical turmoil in the Ring of Fire – Pacific Rim, the most prone region to natural disasters as well as traumatic consequences which is caused by the persistent ideological violence. They see their high mobility as the main vehicle to participate in residency programs, research, field study and exhibitions especially in specific areas, which are paradoxical such as some heavenly yet deadly beautiful places on earth. Irwan and Tita wanted to find answers about planetary anxieties in regard to human existence by means of evolutionary perspective and to produce knowledge through arts related to injustice, humanity and ecology.