At La Trobe Art Institute, Storytelling Liberation Public Programme tested the broader project’s proposition that storytelling could become an anti-discipline in academia and the arts. Through an International Women’s Day event, a film screening programme and a workshop, contributors and participants explored feminist and anti-colonial storytelling methods, brought together by shared purpose, traversing the disciplines of contemporary art, history, anthropology, Pacific, Black and media studies, among others. The programme positioned these public events as artforms—the collective process of learning from each other’s practices—valuing the collective aesthetic experience of dialogue and collaboration as much as the other components of the project, like the films and installation elements. Presented at one of Australia’s leading university galleries, it brought the international voices in feminist and anticolonial practice involved Storytelling Liberation together for the first time, debating the project’s proposition in dialogue with the exhibition’s audience.<p></p>
NTRO Output Type
- Live Performance of Creative Work
NTRO Output Category
- Live Performance of Creative Work : Other
Place
Bendigo, Victoria, AustraliaVenue
La Trobe Art InstituteNTRO Publisher
La Trobe Art InstituteStart Date
2025-03-08End Date
2025-06-07Medium
live-streamed and in person public conversation, film screening programme and workshopResearch Statement
Storytelling Liberation Public Programme formed a live and dialogical component of Storytelling Liberation, a multi-year project that experiments with storytelling as an anti-disciplinary formation traversing academia and the arts. The programme enacted the project’s methodology, which brings together feminist and anticolonial approaches from socially engaged art, visual anthropology, oral history and anti-colonial and feminist activism. Conceived as both artwork and research practice, it explored how storytelling can operate as a collective method of study and a structure for building alliances across disciplines, cultures and activist contexts.
Comprising three parts—an International Women’s Day event, a film screening programme, and a workshop—the public programme became a collaborative workspace for enacting and transmitting the project’s methods. Each element modelled storytelling as a situated and relational practice: the live event brough the project collaborators into dialogue to debate the project’s central propositions and reflect on the process; the screenings situated the storytelling methods demonstrated in the films deeper within their original contexts; and the workshop invited participants to practise and adapt the methods in their own contexts.
The research significance lies in both the way it advances the public programme as a feminist artform—a performative, conversational and collective mode of research—and how it demonstrates the transdisciplinary methodology of Storytelling Liberation in action, showing how learning from each other’s methods is a way to collectivise around shared purpose, rather than discipline. Presented at La Trobe Art Institute, one of Australia’s leading university galleries, the programme brought together significant international and local voices in feminist and anticolonial practice, amplifying the reach of the project beyond the exhibition.Size or Duration of Work
3 monthsAffiliation
Alex Martinis Roe, University of Melbourne
