Artists in the Archive is a two-day program of workshops, talks and activations, developed in collaboration with CAST, Saluhan and An.Other Collective.

Join us for the full two days or book for the sessions you want. Full schedule and booking information below.

Day One: Artists in the Archive
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The Contemporary Art and Social Transformation (CAST) research group, based in RMIT’s School of Art, 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 Salote Tawale from Fijian art and research collective Qele ni Kalokalo. 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.

Day two: Honk! If you archive…
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Saluhan Collective presents Honk! If you archive…, an art bus tour for artists, archivists, and their allies, co-curated with The Great Book Return. Crossing both sides of the Birrarung, the ride blends curated snacks and bootleg bus games with exhibitions and curator talks at every stop.

Extending Fugitive Archives—an exhibition series curated by MJ Flamiano and Catherine Ortega-Sandow—this program examines how community-led archives come into dialectical tension with institutional archives. It also considers how artist-led initiatives can serve as transformative tools for collective organising and knowledge production.

The tour begins at RMIT City Campus with a program by An.Other Collective, continues to MADA Gallery for Fugitive Archives: A spoken future, and concludes at Dukkana in Coburg for Fugitive Archives: The future is already here, curated by Anna Emina El Samad and Celine Saoud. The evening ends with the exhibition opening, featuring a special activation by Majed Fayad. Pack your primary sources and get ready to honk—because the archive is on the move.

Full Schedule

Friday 17 October: 9am-10am
Seven Portraits – Unbound’ exhibition tour
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Join artist research Sofi Basseghi, collaborator Salme Geransar and Curator Linda Short at the State Library of Victoria for an artwork talk of Seven Portraits – Unbound (2025) is a multichannel video installation that explores notions of freedom expressed by Persian-speaking female poets across the past millennium, interpreted through performance. Drawing on and reimagining Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Peykar (Seven Portraits) and 16th-century Persian miniature illuminations of this tale from the State Library of Victoria’s collection, the work weaves fact and fiction to reflect on women’s voices in history while resonating with contemporary socio-political contexts.

Friday 17 October: 10am-11am
Monument tour
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Join Palawa man and artist researcher Dominic White (Trawlwoolway) and white settler artist researcher Amy Spiers on a tour of some of the monuments and public artworks around RMIT campus that will draw on both their research-based socially engaged, performative art practices. Grounded in their different positionalities and mutual interest in the histories archived on our streets through commemorative public art, together they will prompt attendees to consider the shared pasts and embodied memories that are, and are not, evoked by the artworks in the city’s (stolen) public spaces. Artworks discussed include Standing By Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner (2016) by Brook Andrew and Trent Walter and Wurrunggi Biik: Law of the Land (2019) by Vicki Couzens.

Friday 17 October: 11am-12.30pm
Archive Presentation
This session brings together representatives from four different archives to share insights into their collections, current projects, and ways artists have engaged with their holdings. Each speaker will offer a short presentation highlighting the scope of their archive, examples of artist collaborations, and opportunities for creative engagement. Savannah Smith from City of Melbourne, Nick Devlin from RMIT Culture, Ange Bailey from Australia Queer Archives, and Ana Tiquia from State Library of Victoria.

Friday 17 October: 1.30-3.00pm
Panel Discussion
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Chair: Jacina Leong Panellists: Alexander Williams aka Pug, Nataša Čordašić, and Fayen d’Evie
This discussion will explore how artists engage with archives not only as repositories of history, but also as contested spaces that shape narratives, identities, and cultural memory. Working in, with, and against the archive, the panelists each navigate questions of absence, bias, and power—seeking to uncover, disrupt, and reimagine what is preserved and what is erased. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A, inviting reflections and further provocations.

Friday 17 October: 3.30-5.00pm
Workshop with Torika Bolatagici and Salote Tawale
Torika Bolatagici and Salote Tawale workshop

Saturday 18 October: 10am-12pm
Workshop and Gathering with an.Other Collective
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Fieldnotes of Being, Together Workshop Follows on from An.Other Collective’s recent September exhibition and the Kickstart program. Fieldnotes on Being, Together returns as a relaxed drop-in workshop. Come whenever you like, stay as long as you like, and create your own ‘field notes’ to add to our growing archive of collective gathering, caring, struggling, making, and eating.

Saturday 18 October: 12.30-5.30pm
Honk! If you archive…
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Saluhan Collective presents Honk! If you archive…, an art bus tour for artists, archivists, and their allies, co-curated with The Great Book Return. Crossing both sides of the Birrarung, the ride blends curated snacks and bootleg bus games with exhibitions and curator talks at every stop. Visting Dukkana and MADA Gallery, retuning to RMIT - transport provided.

This event has been made possible through the generous support of City of Melbourne