Criticism in the Digital Age

Jane Howard is a contributing editor at Kill Your Darlings, and a freelance arts journalist, critic and researcher with a focus on performance. Her work has appeared in publications including ABC Arts Online, RealTime, Meanjin and Junkee, and her experimental criticism projects have been supported by organisations including the Lifted Brow and the Performance and Art Development Agency.

Translated into multiple languages, she has worked for the Guardian across Australia and in Asia, and her work has been commissioned in Scotland, Canada, and the Czech Republic. She was the director of the 2016 Digital Writers’ Festival and coordinator of HIVE at the 2017 Adelaide Film Festival. She is currently writing a book about art and grief.

Alice Rawsthorn is an internationally renowned design critic, whose columns for the International New York Times are syndicated worldwide.

Her latest book, the critically acclaimed Hello World: Where Design Meets Life, published by Hamish Hamilton, explores design’s influence on our lives – past, present and future. Based in London, Alice is a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery and the Michael Clark Dance Company, as well as chair of trustees at the Chisenhale Gallery.

Dr Yun-Cheol Kim is a professor at School of Drama, Korean National University of the Arts. He is president of the International Association of Theatre Critics.

As a freelance writer, he has been contributing theatre reviews and critical essays to all the major national daily newspapers, weeklies, and theatre journals. Now he is the editor-in-chief of the IATC Webjournal Critical Stages.

He has published ten books, out of which two are collections of theatre reviews, Are We Moving into the Era of the Theatre of the Ugly?, and Between Chaos and Hybridity. He was awarded Critic of the Year twice, in 1994 and 2005.

In 2008, he received from the Korean government the Medal of Culture for his contribution to the development of Korean theatre and criticism. He is now commissioned to write a book on contemporary Korean theatre in English, which will be published in 2014.

In July, 2013, he was appointed as director/chairman of the Korea National Archive of the Arts.

Deborah Jones retired from the Australian newspaper last year after 25 years as a writer, critic and editor working primarily in the arts. She was also executive editor for five years.

Deborah has an honours degree in drama from the University of Newcastle, completed mainly part-time while she worked as a journalist. She then worked for three years as a drama tutor at the university.

She joined the Australian’s Sydney bureau in 1987 as a sub-editor and in 2001 became arts editor, a position she held for nearly 10 years. More recently she edited the Review section and became national dance critic for the paper, a role she still fills. Deborah also reviews musical theatre and, occasionally, opera and theatre for the paper. She has been Sydney correspondent for the London-based magazine OPERA for seven years.

Deborah blogs at deborahjones.me, where she writes mainly about dance, theatre and musical theatre.

Dylan Rainforth is the editor of Art Guide Australia. He also writes a weekly visual art column for the Age newspaper and contributes to a range of Australian art magazines and journals.

Katrina has been Director & CEO of ACMI since 2015. She has a particular interest in supporting cross-disciplinary practice and an extensive background as a commissioner, creative producer and festival director. Her previous roles include Head of Arts for the national broadcaster ABC TV as well as founding Director/CEO of Adelaide Film Festival. The Festival’s $1 million AUD AFF Investment Fund was recognised with a week-long celebration at MoMA in 2011. She is on a number of arts and advisory boards, and in 2020 was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to performing arts, screen industries and visual arts administration.