Written by Claire Hargreave
Images courtesy of TINA (Alison Currie & DJ Scotch Egg)

This Is Not Art is Australia’s premier independent arts and new media festival. It’s a convergence of writers, electronic artists, independent music makers and creative researcher from across Australia and overseas. It’s an event combining four independent festivals, all on at once, over the October long weekend, in Newcastle NSW. This year they’re laying on five heady days of free workshops, exhibitions, performances, site specific works, an artists’ market and a zine fair, and four nights of killer gigs which are either free or very cheap. If you’ve never been before this year looks to be shaping up to be a very good opportunity to cut your teeth and get into the action.

Head to the website for tips and ideas about cheap travel, accommodation and the full program. www.thisisnotart.org

This Is Not Art’s festivals:

Electrofringe is in its tenth year of showcasing electronic arts and culture. This year they’re bringing site-specific subversions, rogue radio waves, wearable art, workshops, pub quizzes, exhibitions and special screenings. Everything you could wish for from across the field of across the fields of experimental electronic practices. Confirmed international acts include Tim Heckler (Canada), Leafcutter John (UK) and Sebastien Roux (France).

Critical Animals musters together honours and postgraduate students, those recently graduated and all other intellectuals, academics and thinkers interested in tackling critical contexts outside of the institutional framework. This year’s forums will play with concepts of obscurity and obsession, academic art/establishment battles, literal literary journeys and much more.

Sound Summit serves up independent artists, labels and people who work and play in the electronic and hip-hop scene. The 2007 program focuses on production skills, tools and creation, with masterclasses and performances run by front-running artists and industry personalities. Headliners include Aloe Blacc (Stone’s Throw, US), Mark Pritchard (Harmonic 33, Troubleman) and Foreign Heights (Syd).

National Young Writers Festival brings together Australia's most challenging and original your writers, publishers, performers and trouble makers for a festival intense over saturated ideas, debates and eloquent ramblings. Events cover everything from novels, poems and short fiction, to spoken word, song-writing, experimental theatre, blogging, new-media collaboration and more. Special guests include Shaun Tan, Anna Funder, Samuel Wagon Watson and Henry Reynolds.