Chamber Made Hi-Viz Satellites fosters international artist exchange and collaboration
The lab is part of Hi-Viz Satellites, a three-year partnership between Chamber Made (Melbourne, Australia), Punctum Inc (central Victoria, Australia) and SAtheCollective (Singapore). The programme has evolved from Chamber Made’s Hi-Viz Practice Exchange, which was established in 2018 to provide a rare meeting place for women, non-binary and gender-diverse artists working across multiple artforms to come together and share practice.
The goal of Hi-Viz Satellites is to foster international exchange and collaboration. It is an exploratory environment where artists have time and space to share their experiences of collaborating and the particular opportunities and pressures of cross-cultural collaboration. By providing a space where experienced artists come together, the programme builds capacity and strengthens the sector. There is rarely time for reflection and critical thinking about collaborative processes during the pressure-cooker environment of developing works but taking learning from these unique processes, sharing them, and applying them provides a raft of benefits for artists, companies and organisations.
Photo Credit: Pia Johnson
The lab cohort consists of fourteen artists from Australia, Taiwan and Singapore, selected via expressions of interest, each of whom has an interest in bringing different artforms together and working collaboratively. While the labs are very much a peer-to-peer exchange environment they are being co-facilitated by sound artist Madeleine Flynn (Australia) and theatre practitioner Han Xuemei (Singapore) who are generating conversation and sharing around arts practice, creating fruitful new connections between these artists. From the labs it is anticipated that one or two collaborative works will emerge and be supported through development by Chamber Made for potential presentation.
Chamber Made has a strong history of providing contexts within which artists can work across and beyond their artform and collaborate at both national and international levels. This includes a number of performance works forged via cross-cultural collaboration. Hi-Viz sits within the company’s artist and artform development suite of programmes, designed to provide support and scaffolding to artists at different points in their careers.
The first iteration of Hi-Viz in 2018 was so popular that registrations had to be capped. In 2019 the programme expanded to include a second day of interactive workshops. In 2020-21 Chamber Made took Hi-Viz online and offered it as a free, one-day event. Registrations soared to several hundred, with attendees from across Australia and overseas, demonstrating that the need for the day was still urgent. In 2021 the company initiated a guest co-curatorship, engaging Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe, Amos Gebhardt and Aviva Endean to deepen and broaden artist and community engagement.
Photo Credit: Diana Domonkos
Hi-Viz is a powerful tool for building communities of practice around cross-artform work. From its inception ago the programme has grown and expanded to connect artists across time and geographies in meaningful dialogue and exchange. Chamber Made is continually reflecting on the programme and how it can best serve the needs of artists and the sector. In doing so the company aims to nurture artform and artist development, build new networks, deepen dialogue and exchange, and seed collaborative relationships to foster a national and international community of practice around cross-artform work.
The 2023 Hi-Viz Satellites lab intensive and exchange day will be hosted by the University of Melbourne.
A short video about Hi-Viz Satellites can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/803769918?share=copy