This Is Not Art (TiNA) is a national festival of new media and arts organized in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia each year over the October long weekend since 1998. [1] [2] TiNA is dedicated to the work and ideas of artistic communities not generally included in other major Australian arts festivals or institutions. [3] The program includes the festivals Electrofringe, the National Young Writers' Festival, Critical Animals, and Crack Theatre Festival.
The name This Is Not Art was adopted in 2000 to reflect the very different but interconnected events of the festival. [4] It takes its name from a piece of graffiti on what was Newcastle's tallest building, [5] Latec House (now completely refurbished and converted to apartments), which had been derelict for several years. The name also refers to the content of the event, which is outside the ambit of traditional Australian arts festivals. [6]
This Is Not Art evolved from the National Young Writers Festival and National Student Media Conference which were established in Newcastle in September 1998. In 1999, The National Young Writers Festival combined with the Electrofringe Festival (which had previously been an independently organised part of the now defunct Newcastle Fringe Festival) and moved to the October long weekend. In 2000, the addition of Sound Summit (then known as the National Independent Electronic Labels Conference) and several other smaller events necessitated the invention of an umbrella term to cover all of the disparate events. In 2002 Vital Focus Productions (now Minski Media) made a 25-minute open source documentary about TiNA called Dancing to Architecture - a motion picture about TiNA. For the first 3 years, This Is Not Art was directed by Marcus Westbury who had previously been the founding director of The National Young Writers' Festival.
Each year TiNA is produced by Octapod in partnership with arts collectives and organisations from across Australia. In 2015 TiNA will once again present programs from Crack Theatre Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival and Critical Animals.
Over its lifespan a wide variety of guests have appeared at This Is Not Art including:
Kevin Blechdom, Sage Francis, Cold Cut, The Light Surgeons, Caribou, Concord Dawn, Mad Professor, Anticon, Fat Cat Records, Paul Reed Smith, Little Nobody, b(if)tek, The Herd, Hrvatski, Thomas Frank, John Safran, Stephen Mayne, Margo Kingston, Nasenbluten, Marieke Hardy, DJ Scotch Egg, Leaf Cutter John, Tim Hecker and many more.
Newcastle is a metropolitan area and the second most populated city in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It includes the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas, and is the hub of the Greater Newcastle area, which includes most parts of the local government areas of City of Newcastle, City of Lake Macquarie, City of Cessnock, City of Maitland and Port Stephens Council.
The University of Newcastle (UON), informally known as Newcastle University, is a public university in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Established in 1965, it has a primary campus in the Newcastle suburb of Callaghan. The university also operates campuses in Ourimbah, Port Macquarie, Singapore, Newcastle CBD and Sydney CBD.
The Adelaide Fringe, formerly Adelaide Fringe Festival, is the world's second-largest annual arts festival, held in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Between mid-February and mid-March each year, it features more than 7,000 artists from around Australia and the world. Over 1,300 events are staged in hundreds of venues, which include work in a huge variety of performing and visual art forms. The Fringe begins with free opening night celebrations, and other free events occur alongside ticketed events for the duration of the festival.
The Adelaide Festival of Arts, also known as the Adelaide Festival, an arts festival, takes place in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in March each year. Started in 1960, it is a major celebration of the arts and a signficant cultural event in Australia.
The Hunter School of the Performing Arts is a government-funded co-educational selective and specialist primary and secondary day school which offers a comprehensive curriculum with a performing arts specialty, located in Broadmeadow, in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia.
The National Young Writers' Festival (NYWF) occurs annually in the city of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, over the New South Wales' Labour Day Holiday Weekend in late September/early October. It is the country's largest gathering of young and innovative writers working in both new and traditional forms including zines, comics, blogging, screenwriting, poetry, spoken word, hip hop music, journalism, autobiography, comedy, songwriting and prose.
Electrofringe is a presenting platform for experimental electronic and technology-based art in Australia. Electrofringe is a non-profit arts organisation and annual festival.
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David Berthold is one of Australia's most prominent theatre directors and cultural leaders. He has directed for most of Australia's major theatre companies, as well as in London and Berlin, and has led several key arts organisations. He was Artistic Director of Brisbane Festival, one of Australia's major international arts festivals and Queensland’s largest arts and cultural event. Through his tenure of five festivals, 2015-19, Berthold transformed the Festival into Australia's largest major international arts festival, presenting more works to more people than any other, with an audience of more than one million people.
Blackrock is a play by Australian playwright Nick Enright that was first performed in 1995. It was adapted from a 1992 play by Enright, A Property of the Clan, which was inspired by the murder of Leigh Leigh in Stockton, Australia in 1989. The plays were both well received critically but attracted criticism from both Leigh's family and the media because of the fictionalisation of an actual murder. Despite repeated statements from Enright that the plays were a work of fiction, they have both often been considered by viewers to be a factual account. A Property of the Clan was shortlisted for a New South Wales Premier's Literary Award in 1993, and Blackrock won the AWGIE Award for Best Play in 1996. Blackrock was developed into a feature film of the same name in 1997.
Octapod is a non profit arts organisation based in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. It acts as a producer and facilitator of creative projects in the Hunter region.
Marcus Westbury is an Australian urbanist, festival director, TV presenter, writer and broadcaster. He is based in Melbourne, Australia where he filmed the TV series Not Quite Art. for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation screened during October–November 2007.
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Vanessa "Van" Badham is an Australian writer and activist. A playwright and novelist, she writes dramas and comedies. She is a regular columnist for the Guardian Australia website.
The Dungog Film Festival was an annual event held in the Hunter Region town of Dungog. Dungog Film Festival was a not for profit arts organisation that was dedicated to celebrating and promoting Australian screen industry. The festival was committed to education and nurturing the health of the Australian film and TV industry through a range of dynamic initiatives. Some proceeds of the festival have gone towards preserving the James Theatre. The festival aimed to support the Australian Film and TV Industry in a non-competitive environment that exclusively showcased Australian screen content.
Brett Bailey is a playwright, artist, designer, play director, festival curator and the artistic director of the group Third World Bun Fight. He was the curator of South Africa's only public arts festival, Infecting the City, in Cape Town, South Africa, from 2008 until 2011. His works have played across Europe, Australia and Africa, and have won several awards, including a gold medal for design at the Prague Quadrennial (2007).
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Emma Handy is a British actress best known for her West End stage work and her role as DC Paula McIntyre in the ITV1 award-winning drama series Wire in the Blood in which she appeared for five series.