Yuiko Masukawa is a Japanese choreographer based in Melbourne, working with the classical form in contemporary contexts. In 2019, she was awarded an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant to undertake a series of structured choreographic secondments with the New York City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet and Japanese contemporary choreographer, Toru Shimazaki. She was recently selected to participate in Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographers Program throughout 2021 as well as Lucy Guerin Inc and Phillip Adams BalletLab’s new showcase program Out of Bounds. In 2021, she received funding from Creative Victoria and the Besen Family Foundation for her second development for After Party, an audio-visual installation with retired ballet dancers. In 2022 her new work “Why we are who we are” will be presented at the Bowery Theatre supported by the Be Bold Residency and Sidney Myer foundation.

Sam Mcgilp is a media artist working collaboratively in contemporary performance contexts, based on Wurrundjeri country in Naarm. His work spans film, performance, installation and online spaces. In 2020, he created BONANZA! with Harrison Hall and Juzzy Kane as part of Chunky Move’s Activators Program, which was screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2021 and was selected as a finalist for the Green Room Awards. In 2019, he was awarded an Australia Council professional development grant to undertake residencies at Kinosaki International Art Centre and Do-So Residency, Fujiyoshida. In 2021 he received a Creative Victoria Creator’s Fund grant to investigate how emerging technologies can create new dramaturgies for performance that centre the body.

Harrison Hall is a Choreographer, Performer and Digital Artist who’s work situates contemporary performance and dance in experiential art environments. With recent works traversing states of flux between the digital and physical realms utilising new technologies to augment and abstract the body. In 2020, he was awarded a Solitude1 Residency from Chunky Move and the Tanja Liedtke foundation in which he created Maelstrom alongside Luca Dante, a multi-channel digital choreography installation premiering at MARS Gallery (Melbourne) and Metro Arts (Brisbane) in late 2021. Through Chunky Move, he also presented BONANZA! with Sam Mcgilp, a PerformancexDialogue media artwork that included conversations with NAXS corp (Taiwan) and Lu Yang (China). This work was a 2021 Green Room Award Finalist and selected for the Melbourne International Film Festival 2021.

Creating as “hiwadrome”, Kazuhiko Hiwa makes video works on the theme of physicality and installation works using a wheelchair, which he himself uses. In addition, through “play”, a direct intervention in the public, he performs and makes work that questions various boundaries, relationships, and accessibility. Recent exhibitions include “Kanon : Kazuhiko Hiwa + Shiyoko Hiwa” (Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum /2020), “ARTISTS’ FAIR KYOTO 2021” (The Museum of Kyoto /2021), “Ripples in Water 2021” (Triangle Park, Former Minato Ward Children’s Museum / 2021), “Drawing Experiment 01 (Watari-Um Museum, On-sunday’s /2021)”.

Makoto Uemura is a director and lighting designer for contemporary performance based in Tokyo, Japan. His work focuses on giving voice to the memory of site and context while expanding the frame of the theatre through collaborations with musicians, choreographers, artists. He undertook undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Art and Design, Nagoya Zokei University, as well as a research degree investigating Advanced Art Expression at the graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. Since graduating he has worked as a director and lighting designer for contemporary performance and a researcher at Tokyo University for the Arts’ Performing Arts Centre. Recent works include: ”Egmont” (Tokyo University of the Arts Sogakudo / 2021), “Blind Letter 2020” (online / 2020), and the exhibition “Unmanned Theatre Festival” (Nakamachi no Ie / 2019).

Emele Ugavule is a Tokelauan Fijian storyteller. Her research and practice area of interest is Oceanic Indigenous-led storytelling, working across live performance, screen & digital media as a writer, director, creative producer, performer, educator and mentor. Her work explores creative processes and outcomes grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, and nurturing the vā where embodiment, cultural expression, digitisation and neuroscience intersect.

Linda Iriza lives and works in Kwinana, Walyalup, Boorloo and across many other borders in the hopes of a borderless liberated world. Linda Iriza is a Rwandan people weaver, creative producer and artist currently living on Nyoongar Boodjar. Her work centres African youth and continues to create community projects that bring them together physically and digitally. She does this through collectives like Soul Alphabet, where they support young Black and Brown creatives through events, art exhibitions, workshops and various other projects.

Natasha Ratuva (she/her) is a Fijian (Kadavu vasu i Bua) born and raised multi-disciplinary creative living on Ngāti Rakaiwhakairi whenua in the Wairarapa, Aotearoa (NZ). Using the mediums of photography, digital art, poetry, fashion and iTaukei traditional practices to ground her learnings and observations as Pasifika diaspora in Aotearoa. Natasha often harnesses colour and the human anatomy as tools of archiving memory, each hue and form embodying a story or cultural principle.

Amy Zhang is a Chinese-Australian movement artist that specialises in performance, movement direction and choreography. Her work spans across live performance, film, tv and digital art. Her practice is grounded in Chinese ways of knowing and storytelling through experimenting with the intersections of street style foundations and contemporary frameworks. She is currently exploring ways to build intimacy through the cross-cultural exchange of knowledge and movement.

Patrick Hase is a digital media artist and creative practice researcher whose focus is exploring the cultural and emotional impacts of extending ourselves through digital processes. His recent projects have used a mix of custom digital interfaces, experimental web design and collaborative a/v systems to create playful non-mimetic experiences across a range of offline and online spaces.

Anuraag Bhatia is an curator, artist, and DJ working in sound and community contexts. They have been Creative Director of Melbourne-based multi-art event series Cool Room since 2015, and their work builds community resilience and knowledge-sharing through curation and platform development, and explores the possibilities of digital tools to shape and modulate attention.

Commissioned Artists

Aarti Jadu is a multidisciplinary sound artist. ​She began her sound journey in the context of devotional music originating from India. Being a first-generation Australian artist, Aarti’s practice naturally bridges diverse ideologies for the survival of her own integrity. She fervently explores voice through electronics to greater understand energy and its potential in relationship. Her recent work in trauma-informed voice workshops and somatics, along with years of study in yoga and raga music, forged a path to collaborate with neurologists to communicate and discuss matters of human experience, philosophy and science.

Bec Fary is a white (Irish and English descended, with five generations of settler-coloniser family history on this continent) creative audio producer and practice-based researcher living and working on stolen Woi Wurrung and Boonwurrung land in so-called Footscray, Australia. Through acoustic entanglements of human and more-than-human soundings, Bec hopes to unfold complex interrelations between a recordist and a place, and their human and non-human neighbours.

E Fishpool is a Yuin artist based across Budawang and Walbanja Country. Their work maps processes of unlearning and (re)learning identity through sampling sound, dialect and field recordings.

Hei Zhi Ma 黑芝麻 (they/she) is an experimental sound artist based on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. Through djing and production, 黑芝麻 explores cultural identity and belonging, sensuality and queer love. To them, music is about community, sharing, and collaboration. Their cross-genre mixes and production merge experimental ambient, techno, and breaks with found sounds.

J (picnic, etc.) is a dj, musician and founder of the record label and publishing platform daisart.

Mohamed Chamas is an artist, game developer and poet based in Naarm (melbourne) who channels the ‘dijital djinni’; a rewiring agent for practice-based research. Chamas’ work evokes ancient mysticism to fuse and synergize with emerging technologies. This diffractively interfaces with religious studies, ludology, and critical theory.

Panda Wong is a poet, editor and washed up retail superstar working and living on stolen Wurundjeri country. With a focus on collaboration, her practice centres around grief and how it’s performed in virtual/meatspace.

Sam Miers is a newcomer artist born and based in Batemans Bay, Yuin Country. His work focuses on local practices of dialogic health. Sam is dedicated to a life in Batemans Bay working with Yuin and newcomers on song series and ceremony.

Tahlia Palmer is an interdisciplinary artist of Yuwaalaraay/Koamu and European descent who lives in Narrm / Melbourne. Her amby downs musical project explores history, identity and connection to Country through layers of distorted noise, cavernous reverberations and field recordings.