The IMA, Gertrude Contemporary, Landings, and Discipline co-present Public Meeting: Weak Signals/Low Batteries, a screening of the Karrabing Film Collective’s When the Dogs Talked (2014) accompanied by a discussion. The meetings will take place at Gertrude Contemporary on 19 December, and at the IMA on 20 December.

The Karrabing Film Collective’s short feature film When the Dogs Talked blends documentary and fictional modes to track the lives of the people who made it.  As the film shows, finding ways to live life can be exhausting—we often run out of batteries. The film offers at least one way in which a group of people might recharge their batteries. But where can the film itself find a place?  Is the rapaciously expansive world of contemporary art such a place? Can the abstract globality of contemporary art be brought back to earth?

Led by Landings and Discipline, these two public meetings, one in Melbourne and one in Brisbane, will bring diverse voices to bear upon the film’s semi-fictional account of life across urban dwellings and Aboriginal homeland, questioning how choices can be made amid the incommensurable conditions of settler-colonial politics.

Key invited guests will structure a ‘plenum’ in which the voices of members of the public will be facilitated to join in.  Guests will include members of the Karrabing Film Collective, including Linda Yarrowin and Trevor Bianamu; Elizabeth Povinelli, Columbia University, New York; Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Melbourne; Rachel O’Reilly, critic, poet, and editor; and Richard Bell, artist.