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State of Play: Political Art in 2017

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As co-directors of Forest Fringe, Andy Field and Deborah Pearson champion theatre that is daring, disorderly, DIY and often deeply weird. An experimental arts organisation that grew out of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007, Forest Fringe now produce ‘microfestivals’, hosts residencies and commissions new work around the world.

Wherever they go – and their work takes place in unlikely locations, from London buses to Shanghai slaughterhouses – the Forest Fringe approach calls into question the means of art production and the structural obstacles to creative expression. All the while, Forest Fringe maintain a spirit of adventure, risk, exchange and even utopianism.

In Australia for a residency with the Melbourne Fringe, Field and Pearson will discuss with host Emily Sexton the intersection of art and politics. Is art inherently political? When are artists seen as legitimate political commentators and when are they dismissed? And, in this politically heated moment in the UK, what do Field and Pearson want live art to do – and to be?

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Presented in partnership with Melbourne Fringe.

Featuring

Deborah Pearson

Deborah Pearson is a live artist and playwright.  Her work has toured to four continents and fifteen countries, and has been translated into five languages.  She recently published The Future Show with Oberon books.  She is the founding co-director of UK artist collective Forest Fringe.  Debor... Read more

Andy Field

Andy is a theatremaker, curator, and co-director of the performance collective Forest Fringe. He has toured his own contemporary performance work across the UK and internationally. Andy also writes on performance and in 2012 completed a PhD imagining new relationships with the New York avant-gardes ... Read more

Emily Sexton

Emily Sexton is a former Head of Programming for the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas. She was the recipient of a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2014. Previously, she was Artistic Director of Next Wave (2010–14), where her key achievements were a radical rethink of an ar... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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