Humboldting!

Born in Edmonton, Canada, in 1965, Darren O’Donnell is a multi-award-winning Canadian writer, director, performer and has travelled worldwide as the artistic director of Mammalian Diving Reflex. With projects such as Torontonians, upLIFTers and Mit Ohne Alles, he has developed projects that break unusual ground in cultural work, especially with young people. Darren O’Donnell’s work is based on mutual trust and balanced communication among all participants. On this basis, equal collaborations are created with groups underrepresented in the cultural sector, especially young people.

His numerous publications on this artistic form of participation include Social Acupuncture (2006). In 2018, he published “Haircuts by Children, and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract”, which proposes the cultural sector as a place to explore a new social contract with children.

is a creative producer working primarily in theatre and film. Her curatorial practice focuses predominantly on socially engaged projects for, and with, people who do not normally work in the arts and cultural sector. She regularly collaborates and tours with the Canadian performance group Mammalian Diving Reflex. She recently produced the Australian Back to Back Theatre’s first feature film SHADOW. The film was made in collaboration with an ensemble of actors who are perceived to have intellectual disabilities. She is currently producing a 20-part animated series with Back to Back Theatre featuring a group of young people who identify as disabled, which will air on ABC TV in early 2022. Other projects in development to be unveiled in 2022 include collaborations with plants, scientists, virtual reality technology, live theatre, young people and senior citizens in Australia, Italy, Germany and the UK.

Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. miltonlim.com

Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. His research-based practice revolves around the themes of language, labour, democracy, and economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. patrickblenkarn.com

Together, Patrick and Milton explore urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games. Among their works are: asses.masses, a video game designed to be played live from beginning to end in a theatre and culturecapital, a performing arts economy trading card game. They are also the co-founders of videocan, the Canadian national video archive of performance documentation. Milton and Patrick’s projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Argentina, Germany, Mexico, Eu countries, and the UK, in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Catalan.

Rhian Hinkley is a filmmaker and artist based in Melbourne. For ten years he was director of Nebula a portable arts and performance space run by Arts Access Victoria, creating collaborative theatrical and installation-based shows across the state of Victoria. His sculptural practice includes commissions from the City of Melbourne and exhibitions at multiple galleries including the Ian Potter Gallery of Art in Melbourne.  He has a longstanding relationship with Back to Back theatre, creating the video components of The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (2019), Lady Eats Apple (2016), Ganesh Versus The Third Reich (2011), Food Court (2008) and Soft (2002). He has directed numerous versions of the Democratic Set and Radial film projects including in Hong Kong (2019), Edinburgh (2015), Freiburg (2016) , Berlin (2017) and Dundee (2018). In 2020 he was the director of photography and editor of the short feature Shadow which premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin Texas 2022. He has worked as designer on a number of collaborations with choreographer Sandra Parker including the shows Out of Light (2009), Document (2011), The Recording (2013), Small Details (2016), as well as the gallery installations Replacement (2022)  and All Day and All Night (2019). Other dance production credits include I Could Pretend the Sky is Water by Trevor Patrick (2011), Origami by BalletLab (2006) and Aorta (2014) by Stephanie Lake for Chunky Move. Film Credits include Buckstop (1997) winner of the Directors Award for technique at the New York animation festival, Face of the West (2000), finalist in the Tropfest Film Festival.

Ivy Hinkley’s artistic practice focuses on fashion, textiles, and photography, addressing the way that society tends to dismiss crafts as ‘women’s skills’ instead of incredible artforms. This stems from an aim to valorise craft through photographic, knitting and sewing works, by displaying them as ‘pure art’. Ivy is interested in exploring the role of craft in contemporary art and the way these skills are passed down through generations of women.

In 2013 she was mentored by Melbourne based costume designer Shio Otani, across her dance-based costume design and making. In 2018 -2019, she launched, designed and led an online fashion business, Maude Fashion. She continues designing and creating costumes and clothing, including working on costumes for a number of dance and film projects including Chunky Move’s Aorta (2013), Back to Back’s Shadow (2022) and her self-directed film Adorn (2022). She is interested in processes of collaboration and is keen to explore the way in which creativity can be shared and expanded within collaborative and group settings.

Her textile piece ‘Transformer’ was displayed in the 2022 Top Design exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, and a three-part photographic series which explored tradition, heritage, and lineage, was awarded the exhibitions ‘artwork acquisition’ prize. Her work has been exhibited in the 2022 Centre of Contemporary Photography in Fitzroy, Victoria.