Olivia J. Bennett
is a writer, editor & critic.
She works across narrative development, editorial strategy and cultural insight for creative, design-led projects.
Her writing spans screen, sound, software and the systems that shape them.
She works across narrative development, editorial strategy and cultural insight for creative, design-led projects.
Her writing spans screen, sound, software and the systems that shape them.
“Epure takes inspiration from the strigoi of Romanian folklore, a spectral creature neither living nor dead. Seeking a conscious departure from the contemporary cinematic traditions of his home country – cultivated by the likes of Cristi Puiu and Corneliu Porumboiu – he ‘questions realism and its artificiality through soft ruptures.’”
“This tendency to perform progress while sidestepping its material implications is everywhere. An art university without an art gallery is as senseless as software without hardware. Just like a digital art collection with no evolving archival strategy, both suggest an infrastructure that no longer serves its cultural purpose.“
“Leaning on popular mythology and culturally specific rituals, Contact High’s curation splinters selfhood into a triad of spiritual negotiations. […] Transference becomes more than the repetition of self-perception—it is the continual practice of swerving into the light of a forked trajectory.”
Kenneth Suico, Nostos, Sing It To Me (Balikbayan), performance documentation, Contact High 2023, Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm (Melbourne). Photo: Machiko Abe. Documentation facilitated by Open Practice Studio. Courtesy of Gertrude and Performance Review.
Sophie Gargan, when did you stop laughing, 2023, performance documentation, Contact High 2023, Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm (Melbourne). Photo: Machiko Abe. Documentation facilitated by Open Practice Studio. Courtesy of Gertrude and Performance Review.
Diego Ramírez, I am a ‘diaspora’ Latinx. Hola. It means everyone back home thinks I am basic, 2023, performance documentation, Contact High 2023, Gertrude Glasshouse, Naarm (Melbourne). Photo: Machiko Abe. Documentation facilitated by Open Practice Studio. Courtesy of Gertrude and Performance Review.
“[Jaakko] Pallasvuo joins a burgeoning group of these artists turned curators turned critics or blanketed ‘content creators’, spiteful of the institutions that dare to govern them while pathologically averse to the criticism they bestow, taking to networking platforms to soothe their insecurity through memesis and mimesis[...].
“The vagary of the intersection [between art and technology] has developed a lexicon (both verbal and visual) that is being used by institutions to catfish audiences and artists into believing that they are delivering new work and providing genuine support.“
The Big Issue Australia
Issue #612
By Olivia J. Bennett
“’Prototype’s Care Package is all about works that are made for the digital realm, made for small screens and responsive to the present moment,’ explains [Lauren] Carroll Harris. ‘We’re already seeing artists changing the way they work and think through states of emergency, and this program reflects that. It includes artists making some of the first works I’ve seen that directly respond to the COVID-19 crisis.’”
Overland
Digital
By Olivia J. Bennett
“Taking proselytising outside of the gym and into the public, marathon-running has become the ultimate way to signal patriarchal and capitalistic virtues that are otherwise difficult to measure. The protagonists of Run Fat Boy Run and Brittany Runs A Marathon reveal that only through limitation do we feel as if we are without limits[...]“