Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 19 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
‘We don’t have to accept our world as it is, the ways we’re told we should navigate it,’ Steve Lambert has argued. ‘The democratic ideal [is] that we’re not subject to culture: we can create it.’
The guerrilla artist and founder of the New York-based Center for Artistic Activism makes work that is funny, meaningful, accessible and often radical – raising questions about image culture, advertising and the basis of capitalism itself. At this Melbourne Fringe panel discussion, Lambert and Melbourne artist Jax Jacki Brown will talk about their methods and motivations in making work that seeks to change the world.
How can art ignite social change? When does activist art become preachy and boring?
Join us for this free conversation at the Wheeler Centre, as we delve into the fine balance of art and activism – from creativity and accessibility to strategy. Hosted by Mama Alto.
This event is presented in partnership with Melbourne Fringe and Arts House.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
Featuring
Mama Alto
Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva. She is a transgender and queer person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness and power in vulnerability. In addition to her excellence as a performing artist, she is a writer of intelligence and sensitivity.
She has performed original spoken word and pieces of new writing for Melbourne Writers Festival, Queerstories, Emerging Writers' Festival and Word In Hand. Her writing has been published in the Age, Archer Magazine, Querelle 2018, the Music, and Melbourne Recital Centre's Soundescapes, and she has contributed chapters to Queerstories (ed. Maeve Marsden, Hachette Australia 2018) and Living & Loving in Diversity (ed. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Wakefield Press and AGMC 2019).
In 2019, she was one of the playwrights selected for the MTC's Cyber Electric workshop and readings series. Her Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship will build upon the research and writing work on the concept of the diva which she undertook as one of the 2019 Creators supported by Creative Victoria's Creators Fund.
Jax Jacki Brown
Jax Brown (they/them) is an esteemed disability and LGBTQIA+ rights activist, writer, educator and consultant. Their tireless commitment to LGBTIQA+ disability human rights and advocacy has been recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
Jax utilises their experience as a queer, trans wheelchair user to explore intersectional identities. They view disability as a socio-political issue of intersectional equality, access, and human rights.
Jax also runs their own business in LGBTIQA+ disability rights and inclusion where they provide sought after guest speaking, education, workshops and training for community members and allies.
Jax is the co-chair of Inclusive Rainbow Voices: a new organisation for LGBTIQA+ people with disabilities. They have served on the Victorian Disability Advisory Council, Victorian Government’s LGBTI Taskforce Health and Human Services Working Group, and the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Disability Reference Group.
Jax’s work has been published widely online and in several anthologies: Queer Disability Anthology (2015), QueerStories: Reflections on Lives Well Lived from Some of Australia's Finest LGBTIQA+ Writers (2018), Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories (2019), Growing up Queer in Australia (2019) and We've Got This: Stories by Disabled Parents (2022).
Their memoir in the making, ‘Exile and Pride’ received Runner Up in the category 'Self Told Stories by Writers with a Disability' in the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards 2022.
View Profile
Steve Lambert
Steve Lambert was a Senior Fellow at New York’s Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology from 2006-2010, developed and led workshops for Creative Capital Foundation, co-directs the Center for Artistic Activism, and is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Purchase.
His projects and art works have won awards from Prix Ars Electronica, Rhizome/The New Museum, the Creative Work Fund, Adbusters Media Foundation, the California Arts Council, and others. Lambert’s work has been shown everywhere from museums to protest marches nationally and internationally, featured in over fourteen books, four documentary films, and is in the collections of The Sheldon Museum, the Progressive Insurance Company, and The Library of Congress. Lambert has discussed his work live on NPR, the BBC, and CNN, and been reported on internationally in outlets including Associated Press, the New York Times, the Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, the Believer, Good, Dwell, ARTnews, Punk Planet, and Newsweek.
Lambert made international news after the 2008 US election with the New York Times 'Special Edition', a replica of the 'paper of record' announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other good news. In the Summer of 2011 he began a national tour of Capitalism Works For Me! True/False – a 9 x 20ft sign allowing people to vote on whether capitalism worked for them. He has collaborated with groups from the Yes Men to the Graffiti Research Lab and Greenpeace. He is also the founder of the Center for Artistic Activism, the Anti-Advertising Agency, Add-Art (a Firefox add-on that replaces online advertising with art) and SelfControl (which blocks grownups from distracting websites so they can get work done).
In 2013 he was invited to speak at the United Nations about his research on advertising’s impact on culture. Steve is a perpetual autodidact with advanced degrees from an reputable art school and respected state university. He dropped out of high school in 1993.
Lambert’s father, a former Franciscan monk, and mother, an ex-Dominican nun, imbued the values of dedication, study, poverty, and service to others – qualities which prepared him for life as an artist.