Performing Statelessness is a creative and practice-led research initiative that foregrounds stateless communities’ voices and lived experience to investigate what it means to be stateless in the context of Australia. This project extends established legal notions of ‘stateless’, generally used to discuss national citizenship and stages an encounter between practicing artists who identify as having a First Peoples, asylum seeker or refugee background to understand the connections between their communities.
The pilot workshop was developed in partnership with The Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, University of Melbourne and was staged at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum. The workshop brought together artists Ajak Kwai, Ez Eldin Deng, Genevieve Grieves, Kate ten Buuren, Uncle Robert Bundle, Rubii Red, Dr Ruth De Souza, Ruth Nyaruot Ruach, Tasnim Sammak, Dianne Jones and wāni La Frere.
Performing Statelessness provides a space to collaboratively explore innovative and culturally responsive methods in the creative arts that foster collective political imaginaries and address shared issues faced by First Nations and diaspora communities.