See what’s on from our base in Brunswick and beyond ↓

Wed 11 May - Sat 25 June
Performance & Conversation: Sun 19 Jun, 1.30pm
Presented in partnership with Emerging Writers’ Festival
📍 Brunswick Mechanics, 270 Sydney Road, Brunswick

Secretos de la Raíz - Innato is a multi-dimensional video installation that investigates ancestral knowledge, and the spiritual and physical connections shared across generations, cultures and continents.

Developed specifically for Countercurrents, the work is a new site-specific piece drawing on concepts developed for Secretos de la Raíz.

Originally performed as part of the 2021 YIRRAMBOI Festival, Secretos de la Raíz brought together 13 professional artists from a range of disciplines and cultural heritage to explore ancestral knowledge in the contemporary landscape.

In this new iteration, footage and multimedia from the original work made by Coya Films has been curated and crafted to create a new visual dialogue for projection across four screens at Brunswick Mechanics. Kathleen Gonzalez and Sermsah Bin Saad will connect with the installation and share their explorations - encapsulating heritage, spirit and soul as a symbol of Aboriginal cultural revival and resilience – in a performance and conversation on Sunday 19 June.

Artist Bios

Kathleen Gonzalez is a Melbourne-based Colombian contemporary artist, cultural art producer, ethno dance writer, artistic director and founder of Tunjos y Cantaros Ethnologic Dance Company & Ethnodanceology Art.

As a intercultural creative producer, Kathleen applies a curatorial framework of crossover practices to her work, encouraging resonance between art forms and utilising disciplines such as anthropology, musicology, ethnomusicology, and ethnography to facilitate community cultural exchange on ecological, political, and social conditions.

During the past two years, Kathleen’s creative work was challenged due to the social restrictions. Always striving for new original forms of movement and inclusive expression her practice now embraces new technological skills and opportunities.

Kathleen was recently granted art residencies with Regional Arts Victoria CWS, the Australia Council of Arts, Creative Victoria and Abbotsford Convent PIVOT 2021 Arts Program. As part of “BARRING YANABUL-YIRRAMBOI” STREET TO STAGE 2019-2021, Kathleen received an Arts Development Project grant, commissioned by the City of Melbourne.

Sermsah Bin Saad’s name in the Indigenous community is synonymous with theatre, television, film, festival circuits, opera, dance and choreography. He was in the top 14 on “So You Think You Can Dance Australia’ in 2008 and made history as the first ever Indigenous/Contemporary dancer on commercial television.

A Radio Broadcaster with his own show ‘Urban Dreaming’ about Bridging the Gap, Sermsah is also a facilitator on empowerment of cultural and spiritual development in education using the medium of the Arts as a tool to educate society. Above all his artistic achievements, Sermsah values his heritage. A proud Nyikina man from the Kimberley’s, he believes in “Liyan” a saying springing from his hometown of Broome/Derby WA meaning connection to country, spirit and instinctual knowledge.

Sermsah advocates through his facilitations for Aboriginal Australians on the terrible atrocities of colonialism and the displacement of his own people in his own country. He says, ‘We have been subjected to this for too long, since colonisation and it still continues systemically today. Enough is Enough. Sovereignty was never ceded.

Accessibility

The performance & conversation on Sun 19 June will be Auslan interpreted and will take place outdoors, in the Brunswick Mechanics courtyard.

In the event of wet weather, the performance will be moved indoors.

Brunswick Mechanics is a wheelchair accessible venue.

For further information on how Next Wave can support your access requirements, please contact our team on (03) 9387 3376 or email us at hello@nextwave.org.au

Artistic Director/Producer - Kathleen Gonzalez (Ethnodanceology Art)
Performer/Collaborator – Sermsah Bin Saad
Video Art - Brian Lee Silva (Coya Films)
Music Composer - Sebastian Barahona (Sound Epiphany)
Fashion Designer - Tamara Leacock (REMUSE)

Presented as part of Countercurrents a new public art commissioning partnership between Next Wave and Moreland City Council. Countercurrents is intended to support both site-specific and community-based public art projects.