Presented in association with Vitalstatistix
Unlikely is a transdisciplinary journal, which aims to open unexpected spaces for artistic exchange and conversations across mediums, disciplines and continents. Unlikely engages its audience and contributors in a two-stage process of live event, presenting creative practitioners’ works, followed by a peer reviewed electronic publication.
This year’s theme, Resistance, carefully considers the term ‘resistance’ as an umbrella for broader considerations of movement, power, disobedience, rebellion, refusal, objection, opposition, tension, and conflict.
To consider resistance on unceded Aboriginal land, including Kaurna Country in our case, is to remember the ever-present legacies of colonisation and exploitation. To resist—from its most modest quotidian expression to large-scale community action—implies an action against something, be it injustice, the status quo, and/or entrenched power.
To resist might be to stand one’s ground and refuse to act as one is being told one must. Or to be unruly, to break the rules, to experiment and to push the boundaries. It is to be reminded of long (sometimes forgotten, sometimes ignored) histories of activism for civil and environmental rights across the world.
For this live art event, Unlikely: Resistance, Kim and Melody are curating a thoughtful and challenging interdisciplinary program that includes performances by artists, dancers, writers, performance makers, and activists. The event will include workshops, readings, screenings, and performances – all responding to, or experimenting with, the theme of resistance.
Creative team: Curated by Kim Munro and Melody Ellis
About the artists
Melody Ellis is a writer and artist and lecturer in creative writing and is a member of the non/fictionLab research group. Her work is informed by fictocritical approaches to writing and scholarship, as well as to a commitment to collaboration and to collective thinking and making. Melody was a founding co-director of the artist run initiative, Gallery WREN (2001-2004). She has worked for numerous artist-run initiatives and Biennales including un Magazine, West Space, The Biennale of Sydney and the Athens Biennale. Her most recent curatorial work includes a collaboration with Sandra Bridie at Bus Projects entitled ‘Walking in the configuration of infinity’ (2021).
Kim Munro is a documentary maker, writer and lecturer in media at the University of South Australia. Kim’s work sits at the intersection between immersive and interactive technology, community, and social and environmental issues. She has made films that have been screened on television as well as film and arts festivals. Her current projects include The Art of Work is a Work of Art about the formative years of Vitalstatistix and The Futorical Society in regional Victoria.
Image courtesy of the artists