Archives are Hot! Artists in the Archives - Day One

The Contemporary Art and Social Transformation (CAST) research group, based in RMIT’s School of Art and Next Wave, will host a day-long gathering at the Garden Building, RMIT City Campus, bringing together artists, archivists, researchers, and students to reflect on artistic activations of archives.

Through a series of presentations, discussions, workshops, walking tours and creative exchanges, the program will examine how archives can be activated as living, relational sites of memory, care, and resistance. We will delve into themes of caring for archives and collections, the vulnerability of archives, decolonising archival practices, and community-based approaches to storytelling and preservation.

The day will begin with Sofi Basseghi who will host a morning tour of Make Believe: Encounters with misinformation, and end with an engaged presentation by Torika Bolatagici and Vasemaca Tavola from the Community Reading Room Archive. Throughout the day, they will be joined by other artist researchers, members of the CAST community and affiliated industry partners. Together, we will consider how contemporary artists are reshaping relationships to archives, challenging dominant narratives, and creating new ways of thinking about cultural memory and its future.

This ticket includes:

9am – 10am: Seven Portraits – Unbound exhibition tour

With Sofi Basseghi

10am – 11am: Monuments tour

With artist researchers Dominic White (Trawlwoolway) and Amy Spiers.

11am – 12.30pm: Archives are Hot! – Panel

Insights into collections, current projects, and ways artists have engaged with their holdings with Savannah Smith from City of Melbourne, Nick Devlin from RMIT Culture, Nick Henderson from Australia Queer Archives, and Ana Tiquia from State Library of Victoria.

1.30pm – 3pm: Artists in the Archive – Panel

Explore how artists engage with archives not only as repositories of history, but also as contested spaces that shape narratives, identities, and cultural memory.

3.30pm – 5pm: Workshop with Salote Tawale and Torika Bolatagici

This collaborative workshop explores how personal histories connect to social and political narratives through visual mapping and collective storytelling, anchored in the Fijian dialogical form of talanoa. Presented by Torika Bolatagici and Salote Tawale

Next Wave

Next Wave is a leading not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to supporting early-career artists working across multiple art forms. Next Wave plays a defining role in the Australian arts landscape by empowering and advocating for early-career and experimental artistic practice in Australia.

This event is part of Next Wave's ALL School programming. ALL School is an artist-led learning program designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and idea swapping.

CAST

CAST produces art research that critically engages with social and public spheres with a particular interest in how artistic practices intersect with issues of equity, access and democracy.

Accessibility

The RMIT Garden Building is located at Level 5, Building 10, RMIT University 376-392 Swanston Street, Melbourne. This is a wheelchair accessible building with an elevator located behind Streat Cafe on Bowen Street (between Swanston and Russell streets).

Some on-street parking is available on LaTrobe Street. Trams operate along Swantson Street – get off at RMIT University stop and go to Bowen Street via La Trobe Street.

Artists in the Archive is supported by City of Melbourne