Arts Centre Melbourne and Arts Access Victoria has revealed the 2024 program for Melbourne’s ground-breaking Disability-led arts initiative Alter State, taking place across the city from 2 – 13 October.
The initiative is a major arts and disability event engaging artists and audiences across Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand). Alter State features more than 100 Deaf and Disabled artists performing and participating in performances, events and talks in-person and online across ten venues over 12 days.
Alter State 2024 Creative Lead Jodee Mundy OAM, a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) and disabled artist, said this year’s theme Disabled Futures: a glimpse of what’s to come provided exciting opportunities to interrogate what it means to be a Disabled or Deaf artist in Australia right now and what could be done to create a more equitable future.
“Alter State’s ambition is to alter the current state of the arts and culture we are producing and consuming.? For too long we have seen on our stages, books and screens, stories created and facilitated by people who have no direct lived experience or connection with Deaf and Disabled people,” said Mundy.
“Alter State is leading the way by investing directly into our own talent, creating employment and our own market – it is about us and made by us. Authenticity is so hot right now and this is what we are showcasing, showing up as our authentic and imperfect selves and showing others how to do the same.”
Arts Access Victoria CEO Joshua Pether said Arts Access Victoria was proud to co-present Alter State in 2024. “As Arts Access Victoria celebrates 50 years in 2024, we turn to the future and imagine the next 50 years in this program at Alter State,” said Pether. “We can’t wait to spend a vital two weeks with Deaf and Disabled artists and audiences. We are signing a manifesto to the future.”
The Alter State 2024 program features performance, contemporary art, film, workshops, a two-day symposium and two parties. It is accessible, intersectional and relaxed “with radical care at its heart” featuring Auslan interpreting, live captions, audio description, mobility access and quiet spaces at the events.
Supported by Creative Australia, this year for the first time the program includes an Alter State First Nations Deaf and Disabled Arts Program curated by Arts Access Victoria’s incoming CEO and artist Joshua Pether.
Alter State begins on 2 October under the guidance of Aunty Di Kerr, Wurundjeri Traditional Owner and Alter State’s inaugural Elder in Residence, with a First Nations Deaf and Disabled Yarning Circle, inviting all those with lived experience to gather, exchange, yarn about art, culture, ceremony and Disability.
The official Welcome to Country takes place on the Arts Centre Melbourne forecourt to honour connection to Country and for healing to Deaf and Disability communities who are now and have historically been segregated from the arts and society at large.
Audiences can attend The Manifesto, Arts Access Victoria’s installation open on the forecourt throughout the festival to share their hopes towards a collective manifest for the future.
Disabled Futures: Opening Night invites audiences to collectively witness moments of the intimate, the taboo and utterly hilarious from some leading Australian artists.
From 2 – 6 October, acclaimed Restless Dance Theatre’s production of Private View invites audiences into a world of secret desires and dreams, exploring taboo subjects of love and sex through diverse personal experiences.
On 3 and 4 October the Alter State Symposium will feature key notes, panels and industry roundtables with artists, dancers, and performance makers, including artist and industry leader Caroline Bowditch and Michelle Ryan, Artistic Director of Adelaide’s Restless Dance Theatre.
For one week, and supported by the Department of Education’s Strategic Partnerships and Victorian Challenge and Enrichment Programs, children and teenagers will be entranced by Polyglot Theatre’s When the World Turns touring Victoria’s specialist development schools and the Alter State Academy, a series of masterclasses led by professional Deaf and Disabled artists for Deaf and Disabled high school students including award-winning comedian Alistair Baldwin and writer Carly Findlay OAM.
From 3 – 16 October, The Other Film Festival will be held online via ACMI Cinema 3 showcasing Deaf and Disabled-led international cinema.
The program also includes a performance by award-winning artist Eliza Hull at the Melbourne Recital Centre on 5 October and an Alter State take over at Arts House featuring an Amy Claire Mills exhibition, the world premiere of Melinda Smith OAM’s Conduit Bodies and Kath Duncan’s work in development, Specials about her experience growing up attending a special school in the seventies. There will also be a Tactile Creations workshop by Erica Tandori, at the NGV.
Alter State 2024 will wrap with the Alter State Closing Party: Disabled and Sexy at Arts House co-hosted by Jodee Mundy and Australia’s Deaf Drag queen darling Mademoiselle Coco who will be signing numbers in Auslan.
This night features a line-up of Melbourne’s hottest award-winning Disabled artists including NAIDOC Winner Kitty Obsidian, comedian Thomas Banks, Neighbours star Nathan Borg, circus performer and Paralympian Sarah Birdgirl.
Alter State 2024 runs 2 – 13 October. For more information and full program, visit: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au for details.
Image: Jianna and Maddy star in Restless Dance Theatre’s Private View – photo by Matt Byrne