What? Panel discussion and community conversation

When? 6pm – 7pm, Tuesday 30th June, followed by open discussion and Q and A.

Where? On the grassy oval at Raymond Park, near the Pineapple Hotel.

This discussion will take place on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people. We acknowledge their Elders past and present, and the powerful lineage of political organising and theorising that continues to this day. Sovereignty over these lands has never been ceded.

Why Raymond Park?
In solidarity with the protests of the people incarcerated by the Immigration Department in the Kangaroo Point Hotel, and alongside the work of Refugee Solidarity Meanjin in blockading the compound to prevent any of the men being forcibly removed, Brisbane Free University is temporarily reconfiguring as a Blockade Free University, to co-host a series of panel discussions and public conversations about solidarity and complicity, representation and racial violence, borders and prisons, interrogating overlapping colonial strategies of racial control, surveillance and governance.

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The panel:
Kristy-Lee is a First Nations Actor, Writer and Broadcaster. Member of WAR, BASE & Creator of Voices of the 3%.

Aleea Monsour is a Lebanese Australian artist and community theatre practitioner from Brisbane, Queensland. She is passionate about the power of theatre and the arts as an agent for change and being able to engage with people from all walks of life. She is personally inspired to engage with the stories of communities and in particular the voices of women and young people in theatre and art.

Rachel Choi is a film producer and lawyer. She is currently in post-production on her first feature PARIS FUNERAL, 1972 which was shot on Super16 with non-actors in Australia, France and Italy. In making this film and processing the deeply felt learnings along the way, Rachel has become preoccupied with relational filmmaking and documentary ethics. She is interested in art, community engagement and social justice and has explored ways to contribute in these areas, sometimes having the magic opportunity to combine them all.

Anisa Nandaula is a nationally recognised spoken word poet, play writer, educator and published author. She is the 2016 Queensland Poetry slam champion and runner up for the Australian poetry slam championships. In 2017 she published her first book Melanin Garden and won the XYZ Innovation in Spoken Word Prize. Anisa is also the co-founder of the arts collective Voices of Colour which creates spaces for migrant, refugee and first nations artists to share their work.

Facilitated by Muhib Nabulsi, a Meanjin-based writer, scholar and member of the Palestinian diaspora, and current facilitator of the BFU radical reading group.

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This event!
We’re kicking off this series of BFU talks with a broad discussion about representation: in politics, art, protest and beyond. How and why do we tell stories? Who gets to be an expert? What are the ethical implications of representing other people and other struggles? And how might thinking critically about representation give us tools for reflecting on solidarity, complicity, and liberation?

The discussion will go for around an hour, but we encourage everyone to head over to the Blockade afterwards and continue the community reflections.

We will also livestream the event via the Brisbane Free University facebook page. We will endeavour to keep up with comments on that stream and pose questions on behalf of the online viewers.

Accessibility information:
The venue is a public park.
There is an all-access bathroom with a changing table.
We will try to provide some comfortable seating, but some participants may need to sit on the floor. Please let us know if you need comfortable seating and there is none left.
Children are welcome to come to this event. We do not have dedicated child-minding, but we are happy to welcome all input from children in attendance.
We will not have an AUSLAN interpreter available.
We can provide transcripts from the event on request.