Following the success of last year's event, UNDERGROUND FESTIVAL returns to HOTA in 2023 with an innovative program of provocative creative experiences.
Art, theatre, performance, music, and comedy - but not as you know it. Underground Festival is a truly immersive experience over three winter nights, in HOTA’s most intimate venues.
Underground Festival is a place for artists and audiences alike to take risks with interesting new ideas and experimental works.
Venture Underground and explore the worlds of AI technology that’s always listening, fast cars and hyper consumerism during a dictatorship, and eclectic electronic dance music under the glow of swirling screen visuals.
See a deeply intimate story of female madness, and the innovative freestyle dance born from the banks of the floodwaters of Ipswich. Dance with your subconscious and drift into the unknown as contemporary independent artists from this region and beyond invite you into their world.
Here is a sneak peek at some of the whimsical delights on offer during the program:
A harsh decade of unsettling factors in Brisbane’s far west has set in motion the blooming of a new style of movement; Flooding. A local dance style originating from Ipswich, QLD Australia as a response to the 2011 Floods and Australian suburban lifestyle. Flooding embodies distorted and grotesque characteristics that have grown from these experiences. A beautiful response to the trigger of challenging times. Performed by Flood dance collective, GroveMindz to an original soundscape curated by Maxwell “The Flood” Douglas.
RICH KIDS, A HISTORY OF SHOPPING MALLS IN TEHRAN | 13 July
In an interactive digital presentation - part onscreen, and partly in your hand on mobile. While the majority of Iranian's live under an oppressive dictatorship, the children of the country's elite live out their excessive and extravagant lifestyles on social media. Come and dive into the world of drug-fuelled parties, fast cars and hyper consumerism. Like any late-night internet binge, we start by scrolling through Instagram, but before we know it, we're taken on a whirlwind journey from revolution, to imperialism, to the entropy of the universe. It is darkly comedic and deeply revealing.
The Swamp is a place to dance with your subconscious, drift into the unknown and shapeshift as you wish. Swamp Fairies, curated by Hannah Brontë, invites you to submerge in the earthly delights of sonic magik! Witness real life Fairies perform for your pleasure! Artists will take you on a journey through the depths of mangroves, unfurling lily pads and leave you gently floating under the full moon. Leave your worries on the banks as we enter the SWAMP FAIRY portal.
Delicious and raunchy HUSH is a titillating blend of glamorous drag, grunge burlesque, soaring live vocal performances, and provocative dance. Step into a secret club that only lets you through the doors if you’re grunge enough, punk enough or know the bouncer enough... So how did you get in? Sexy, naughty and absolutely hilarious the club kittens from HUSH will transport you to an underground cabaret den of pleasure, passion and loose ends that will leave you dripping for more.
BATSHIT is a wildly theatrical, unexpectedly funny, and deeply intimate story of female madness. A requiem for Leah’s grandmother Gwen, BATSHIT draws on personal stories to explore the myths, fantasies and fears that keep us compliant, and the systems that let us down. Created by the killer creative team behind B*TCH ON HEAT and TERROR AUSTRALIS, this is the third solo work by psycho siren Leah Shelton, directed by Olivier award-winning performance artist Ursula Martinez (UK).
Mickey is the premiere work by dance-artist Brooke Stamp, conceptualised by the image ‘the line is a labyrinth’. Stamp explains this framework as exploring dance's subterranean, subconscious impetuses, trespassing into the worlds of spoken language and audial practice to ‘dislocate’ dance from its historical obligations to bodily form. An immersive dance performance, Mickey speculates on the rehearsal studio as a place of experimentation and production usually not seen by the public.
Check the Underground Festival home page for a full list of performances.
Have a few performances caught your interest? Receive a 20% discount off the total ticket price when you purchase tickets to two or more Underground events. Program and tickets here.