Hosted by Wesley Enoch WELCOMING WORDS - APAM'S KEYNOTE EVENT

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Willoh S. Weiland

Willoh S.Weiland is an artist, writer, curator, producer and the Artistic Director of Melbourne based interdisciplinary organisation Aphids.

Aphids creates epic contemporary artworks that combine music, performance, new technologies and site-specificity. Their projects are large scale, cutting edge and socially engaged. As part of Aphids in collaboration with Lara Thoms, Lz Dunn, Martyn Coutts, Tristan Meecham and Thea Baumman, they have presented works at most major Australian venues and festivals and toured work internationally to Asia, Europe and the Americas.

As an artist her trilogy of works Forever Now, Void Love and Yelling at Stars (2008-2015) explore the relationship between art and infinity and have been created with an elaborate partnership network including the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University and the Deep Space Communication Network, Florida. She is interested in creating impossible premises and then fulfilling them, how to work with nonartists to create contemporary artworks, liveness as a grand possibility and also poetry. She is a member of the live-art collective Field Theory and in 2015 she won the Anti Festival International Live Art Prize.

Darren O’Donnell

Darren O’Donnell is an urban cultural planner, novelist, essayist, playwright, director, designer and performer.  He holds a BFA in theatre, a M.Sc. in urban planning and studied traditional Chinese and western medicine at the Shiatsu School of Canada’s professional training program. He is the founder and Artistic and Research Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex.

His books include: Social Acupuncture (2006), which argues for aesthetics of civic engagement and Your Secrets Sleep with Me (2004), a novel about difference, love and the miraculous. His stage-based works include White Mice (1998), [boxhead] (2000), A Suicide-Site Guide to the City (2004), Diplomatic Immunities (2007), All the Sex I’ve Ever Had (2012) and Promises to a Divided City (2014). His performance works include Nightwalks with Teenagers, Haircuts by Children, Eat the Street and The Children’s Choice Awards. His urban cultural planning clients include The London International Festival of Theatre, The Metropolitan Region of Rhine-Neckar, Germany; The West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada.

Mammalian Diving Reflex is a research-art atelier based in Toronto conducting culturally explorative work since 1993. The artists of Mammalian are committed to the creation of "social acupuncture"—playful, provocative, site-specific, and social-specific participatory performances that extend the reach of theater-based productions, gallery-based participatory installations, video products, art objects, and theoretical texts. The team has successfully carried their energies into the fields of urban planning, writing, directing, art history, education, photography, videography, filmmaking, acting, playwriting, and qualitative and quantitative research.

Nakkiah Lui

Nakkiah is a writer/actor and Gamillaroi/Torres Strait Islander woman.

She is a cowriter/star of "Black Comedy" ABC and is a monthly columnist for The Australian Womens Weekly Online. She has been an artist in residence at Griffin Theatre Company (2013) and was playwright in residence at Belvoir from 2012 - 2014. In 2012, Nakkiah was the first recipient of The Dreaming Award from The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Arts Board of the Australia Council. The same year, Nakkiah was also the inaugural recipient of the Balnaves Foundation Indigenous Playwright award. In 2014, Nakkiah was the recipient of the Malcolm Robertson Prize and a Green Room Award for Best Independent Production.

Nakkiah’s previous works include; "This Heaven’ Playwright", Belvoir 2013 and Finborough Theatre 2015, "I Should Have Told You Before We Made Love (That I’m Black)" Playwright, You Are Here Festival 2012, "Stho Sthexy" Playwright, MKA Melbourne 2013, "Blackie Blackie Brown: The Traditional Owners of Death" Playwright, Bondi Feast, Tamarama Rock Surfers 2013. "Sovereign Wife" Dramaturg, Melbourne Theatre Company 2013. "Black Comedy" Writer/Actor. ABC, 2014, "Blak Cabaret" Playwright, Sydney Festival/Malthouse Theatre Company 2015, "Kill the Messenge" Actor/Playwright, Belvoir 2015. Nakkiah is also a young leader in the Australian Aboriginal community and has contributed to The Guardian and Junkee. She has appeared on "Q&A" and "The Drum" on ABC.

Kee Hong Low

Kee Hong is currently Head of Artistic Development (Theatre) at the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, Hong Kong SAR China. West Kowloon Cultural District is Hong Kong’s most ambitious cultural project in the last 20 years. Stretching across 40 hectares of reclaimed land, the district will be one of the largest cultural projects in the world with a variety of arts and cultural facilities that will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances and arts and cultural events. The ambition is to develop the district into Hong Kong’s new hub for the performing arts where it will showcase the best and the brightest. The aim is to attract top artists and art professionals, audiences new and old into the district as the place to create, produce, learn, perform and celebrate all forms of performing arts. The mission is to develop an environment of professionalism where the next generation will learn in and embrace as their own.

He was the Artistic Director and General Manager of the Singapore Arts Festival from 2009 to 2012.  Then organized by the National Arts Council Singapore, the Festival played an important symbiotic and catalytic role in the development of the artistic and cultural life of Singapore.  The Festival saw its turning point in 2010 as it embarked on a new phase of development under the leadership of Kee Hong. Key changes and initiatives include turning this international arts platform into a Creation and People’s Festival and a year-long participation program, com.mune to sustain the Festival’s engagement with the public beyond individual shows staged during the Festival period.

Formerly, Kee Hong was the General Manager of the Singapore Biennale, developing it from its inception in 2006 to the largest international contemporary visual arts platform in Singapore. As part of Singapore Biennale, Kee Hong was also actively involved in curating and serving as curatorial consultant to property developers in commissioning iconic permanent public art projects. Clients include Far East Organization for Orchard Central and Sinoland for Fullerton Heritage.

From 2002 to 2005, Kee Hong was the Associate Artistic Director of TheatreWorks (Singapore).  During his appointment, Kee Hong introduced a whole new genre of creative works that recalibrates the bounds between art, science and ‘live’ performance.  This process began with a new laboratory called the DAVINCIPROJECT.  From the notes, discoveries and wild ideas hot-housed in the DAVINCIPROJECT emerged collaborations like pulse.i am alive: installation + theatre + club (April 2003) and Balance: Space • Time • Movement (August 2003) that played to critical acclaim.  For Balance, Kee Hong was awarded the Best Director and Best Set Design awards at the 4th Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards.  Kee Hong is also an active Lighting Designer and was awarded Best Lighting Design for his work on Checkpoint Theatre’s production of Language Of Their Own at the 7th Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards.

Previously a seasoned performer on the international arts festival circuit, he has toured extensively to Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and Indonesia from 1995 to 2001.

He also served as writer, researcher, dramaturg and Associate Director on several regional projects including the Continuum Asia Project/Mekong diaries (LAOS), the Flying Circus Project and the DVD series on Southeast Asian Performing Arts and Artists. 

Kee Hong is also an active scholar, holds a Masters in Sociology with on-going research interests in cultural policy, urban planning and architecture, performance studies, vernacular and contemporary culture and arts of Southeast Asia.  He has taught at the National University of Singapore (Sociology) from 1997 to 1999 and his academic writings have been published by Routledge and other critical journals.