Opening Night: CRTL + SHIFT with Dr Xanthe Dobbie

Featuring official opening and ‘welcome’ from:
Professor Katie Stevenson, Dean of Arts
Associate Professor Shane Homan, Head of the School of Media, Film and Journalism
Festival Director Dr Whitney Monaghan

In a moment marked by accelerating technological change, political uncertainty, and cultural upheaval, Creative Directions 2025 calls on us to CTRL + SHIFT: to challenge systems of power in media and imagine bold, collective transformations. Interdisciplinary artist and researcher Dr Xanthe Dobbie brings their queer, cyberfeminist, and critically playful practice to this conversation for a special opening night event to celebrate the launch of this year's festival.

Blending live-streamed theatre, AR, VR, and remixed pop culture that serves as a form of cultural preservation, Dobbie's work invites us to CRTL dominant systems of power through queer and feminist disruptions and SHIFT our relationships to the images, infrastructures, and myths that govern digital life. This special opening session includes a Q&A hosted by MFJ student Johanna Michelle Lim (Master of Cultural and Creative Industries), inviting dialogue on how we can rewire and reboot the ways we understand and engage with media, culture and technology as sites of joy, resistance, and creative possibility.

Stick around after the event for drinks, canapes and some great networking opportunities.
Doors open at 5.30pm. Followed by opening night drinks.

Guest Speaker: Dr Xanthe Dobbie (Artist and Academic)

Moderator: Johanna Michelle Lim (Master of Cultural and Creative Industries)

To see the full Creative Directions program, please visit monash.edu/arts/creative-directions

Please note that general photography and videography for marketing and social media purposes may take place at this event. If you do not wish to be included, please notify a staff member upon arrival.

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