Here is the official announcement of events for RISING 2024 in Victoria.
ANNOUNCEMENT
RISING announces an epic 2024 program of new music, art and performance set to ignite Melbourne this June.
RISING, Melbourne’s premiere festival of new music, art and performance, today unleashes its sweeping 2024 program, featuring 105 events, more than 480 artists, 23 new commissions, 6 world premieres, and 8 Australian premieres, set to take the city as a stage as winter begins from June 1 – 16.
Across sixteen nights, spanning three epic weekends, RISING will stretch down the spine of Swanston St and beyond as large scale installations, free public events and world-class contemporary music, theatre and dance, ignite the city’s streets, venues and hidden spaces.
Historic arcades and back alleys will come alive with art exhibitions, performances, micro-bars, art and dance classes. A transformed Melbourne Town Hall hosts a sprawling day party across the King’s Birthday long weekend. Epic and ethereal sound works echo from the Birrarung through the CBD, St Paul’s Cathedral becomes a site of mass music making, and First Nations art goes large at Fed Square.
“RISING 2024 is a festival that belongs to Naarm, Melbourne. Some of the most exciting voices in art, music and performance offer moments of catharsis and reflection with mass music making in a church or summoning the cosmos in our town square.” said RISING co-artistic directors Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek, “The most important part is coming together to be thrilled, bemused, shaken or delighted.”
Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events Steve Dimopoulos shared the enthusiasm, “A packed program of amazing cultural experiences will see RISING ignite Melbourne’s winter again in 2024, bringing visitors into the city to revel in this major event filled with art, music and performance.”
TRANSFORMING THE CITY
In 2024 RISING invites audiences to see Melbourne in a new light and experience the city’s transformed landmarks and hidden gems, from its labyrinthine laneways to its iconic gathering spaces.
Presented in partnership with MAPCO, and curated by Kimberley Moulton (Yorta Yorta) (Shadow Spirit, 2023) and Kate ten Buuren (Taungurung), Fed Square will transform into a vibrant forum of First Peoples’ art, politics, and cosmic connections with The Blak Infinite — an expansive free exhibition and public program at the heart of the festival. Anchoring The Blak Infinite is Richard Bell’s (Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman and Gurang Gurang) installation EMBASSY — inspired by the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy, pitched on the grounds of Canberra’s Parliament House in 1972. Bell’s piece continues the politically driven work of First Peoples, featuring daily film screenings and a program of talks with activists, writers and artists every Saturday of the festival.
Immersive nighttime projections share stories of Sky Country and the cosmos—lit up each evening in the square, transporting you into celestial knowledge. Tony Albert’s (Girramay/Yidinyji/Kuku Yalanji) large-scale artwork immerses us in themes of alienation, belonging and place through colour-filled installations and a children’s program. The big screen features speculative fiction from First Peoples writer Ellen Van Neerven. While Wadawurrung artist Kait James, uses collage to subvert the loaded visual language of souvenirs.
Along the Birrarung, First Nations soprano and composer Deborah Cheetham AO and audio artists Byron Scullin and Thomas Supple’s monumental sound work The Rivers Sing returns to RISING. It offers a nightly pause at dusk that blends field recordings with human voices, echoing waterway singing traditions. The work is a celebration of nature’s voice and a reminder of the river’s enduring song.
In a free, Australian-exclusive world-premiere, international dance-floor phenomena, SHOUSE, will conduct a rapturous coming together. In Communitas the duo invites over a thousand participants to form a mass-choir as they sing, dance and make sound vibrations for vibration’s sake. Beneath the hallowed vaulted ceilings of St Paul’s Cathedral, SHOUSE will lead a unique celebration, bringing together the beat of drums, a chorus of voices and a mass of humanity to forge new connections and strengthen old ones through an act of collective composition.
Over the past three years, Melbourne Art Trams have been dedicated to First Peoples artists working and living in Victoria. They have become emblematic of Melbourne’s unrivalled artistic spirit, enchanting commuters, and passers-by alike. This year, breaking free from a dedicated theme, curator Jarra Karalinar Steel has selected works that embrace artistic freedom, unleashing a kaleidoscope of narratives, styles, and perspectives reflecting the vibrant essence of First Peoples culture, art, and design.
Numbers don’t lie. In 2013, artist Richard Bell (Kamilaroi, Kooma, Jiman, and Gurang Gurang) debuted Pay the Rent in Melbourne/Naarm—a digital sign with rapidly accumulating numbers.
The staggering sum, zooming upwards in red digits, represents the calculated debt owed to First Nations people by the Australian Government since Federation in 1901. It’s over a decade since the work was first displayed. Since then, it’s travelled to Performa 15 in New York, documenta in Kessel, Germany, the Tate Modern in London and the Venice Biennale. Now returns to Naarm for RISING, spanning the facade of State Library Victoria.The festival’s pulsing hub and nightly social club Night Trade, made easy by Up, returns in 2024. This time, it delves deep into Melbourne’s hidden history as it sprawls across the network of laneways underneath the Capitol Theatre and connects through to Howey Place – the original home of Melbourne’s most eccentric and ambitious book shop and the first queer club in the city. Amongst the neon haze, discover installations, exhibitions, dumplings, micro-bars, interactive art, music and dance.
MUSIC
From Melbourne icons The Dirty Three in their first hometown shows in 14 years, to Western Sydney drill trailblazers OneFour, US hip hop icon Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) performing two sets including a headlining show at PICA (Port Melbourne Industrial Centre for the Arts), and the singular Swedish electro-pop singer and producer Fever Ray, in Australia for the first time, RISING’s contemporary music program will take over the CBD’s most iconic venues, weaving together a diverse lineup of the best musical talents from across Australia and the globe.
It was one of the great mic drops in rap history. In 2009 Yasiin Bey (then known as Mos Def) released The Ecstatic. It was his comeback after a Hollywood hangover. Critics loved it. Fans loved it. But, despite its success, Yasiin moved out of the spotlight not long after. The album isn’t even on streaming services these days. But you can get down to PICA and witness one the best rappers to ever do it take the stage and perform his masterpiece live for RISING, with Yasiin Bey: The Ecstatic Anniversary.
Tentpoling the festival’s mammoth middle long weekend, Day Tripper co-presented with Triple R is RISING’s day party takeover of Melbourne Town Hall and surrounding venues under a single ticket. A live mixtape of music, performance, art and film encompassing multiple rooms within the grand old Melbourne Town Hall, the glorious Capitol Theatre cinema and basement club Max Watt’s. The day trip is inaugurated by the Town Hall organ, unleashing a program of contemporary dance, brass bands, video works, sound works and a line-up that traverses post-punk, acid house, minimal techno, ambient, hip hop and disco. In his second RISING performance, and fresh from performing at Paris Fashion Week in January, is Yasiin Bey will pay tribute to his favourite tracks by the late, great rapper’s rapper MF Doom. The Town Hall will also be submerged in minimalist post-punk from London trio Bar Italia, adventures in soulful electronica from Indiana’s JLIN, Memorials — the new collaboration of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (WIRE) — DIY cult hero Richard Youngs and a euphoric set from 78-year-old Disco legend Asha Puthli. Across the road, Melbourne industrial icons HTRK celebrate their 21st birthday with an artist-curated line-up at Max Watt’s, and at the centre of it all is a free program of music film at the Capitol, plus much more to be announced.
In 2015, British Turner Prize-winning conceptual artist Jeremy Deller selected 24 consecutive hours’ worth of rock documentaries in Finland. Obscure gems screened alongside cult classics about the Rolling Stones, Björk and David Bowie. These were missives from the moment made by directors unafraid to do things like follow Johnny Cash to death row. Almost 10 years later Deller is reprising the 24 Hour Rock Show in the Capitol with a new, free line up of back-to-back music documentaries. Drop in, drop out, or settle in for the full 24 hours.
Hear My Eyes, whose cinema events see highly-creative contemporary musicians compose and perform a new score to a pre-existing film, return to RISING with Hear My Eyes: Hellraiser. They’ll bring together one of the most respected and audacious house and techno musicians, Hieroglyphic Being AKA Jamal Moss in collaboration with Melbourne’s own composer and visual artist Robin Fox to reframe the 1987 extra-dimensional horror classic Hellraiser, with an all new score and live laser performance, in the grandeur of the Melbourne Town Hall, happening across RISING’s middle weekend.Taking over the Town Hall from 8pm til late, is DJ and producer Moktar and friends. Moktar blends club and techno with traditional Arabic instrumentation, offering a unique sound that pays homage to his Egyptian-Australian heritage. His Melbourne Town Hall performance is an invitation to explore the vibrant intersections of culture and music.
Elsewhere over the long weekend, in their first-ever Australian performances, Fever Ray, the solo project of Sweden’s Karin Dreijer of The Knife. Off the back of their 2023 Radical Romantics record, glowingly reviewed by Pitchfork, NPR and The Guardian, Fever Ray will transform the Hamer Hall with their hauntingly beautiful and avant-garde electronic music. Their live show is gender-queer world-building fed through a singular, gothic vision. Pitch-shifted vocals, skate knotted grooves and glacial mountains of synth. It’s an icebox with fun-house mirror walls.
Mount Druitt’s OneFour brings their ground-breaking drill music to the RISING music line-up. They’re four Samoan-Australians who started making drill rap in a studio behind a fridge supply store. Now they’re Australia’s most successful hip-hop act. Their raw stories of crime, poverty and social dislocation have clocked over 150 million streams. Rap stars like A$AP Ferg, Dave and the Kid LAROI got behind them too. Now, RISING will host their first explosive headline show in Melbourne at Festival Hall.
Taking over Max Watt’s on the Sunday of the King’s Birthday weekend, UK producer Evian Christ brings banging trance anthems and a massive AV show exclusively to RISING. Christ has been lifting the genre up and up, into windy new heights of late. His debut album Revanchrist takes the mountain-sized arpeggios, the whispering pleas and the sugar-fed drops—then deconstructs them. Music for wide eyes, aching hearts and dawn-tinged bliss.
Closing out the festival, Melbourne icons The Dirty Three make their long-awaited return, offering transcendent live performances that melds rock, jazz, and folk into captivating instrumentals. Across two huge nights at Hamer Hall, they’ll mark their first headlining hometown shows in 14 years, with new music and the same raw, emotive energy that has defined their unique sound. Ever since their first gig at a Richmond pub in 1992—when Warren Ellis fastened a pickup to his violin with a rubber band to give it some extra snarl—they’ve been following their own path. The aching splendour. The meandering beauty. The mammoth swirl. The Dirty Three.
Brazilian deep-groove arranger Authur Verocai’s 1972 debut album is a masterpiece that blends ‘60s Tropicalia with lush jazz, funk, soul, samba and bossa nova. While it was initially overlooked and Verocai put away his creative ambitions, by the 2000s he was recording again, and hip-hop legends like MF Doom were sampling his grooves. Now the 78-year-old maestro is making his way to RISING to mobilise the Rio rhythm with a 30-piece orchestra at MRC.
US pop star Sky Ferreira is jetting her way to RISING—and Australia for the first time since 2015. She’ll bring her blend of pop and heavy metal heart to the intimate upstairs space at The Forum in what’s sure to be the hot-ticket performance of the festival. Known for her honest anthems and overcoming industry challenges, her performance is set to captivate with both new singles and classics from her decade-long career.Yves Tumor the enigmatic multi-instrumentalist and producer based in Turin, Italy returns to Australia, showcasing a groundbreaking mix of rock, psychedelia, and electronica. At The Forum, performance promises an exploration of sonic boundaries, delivering a visceral and soulfully chaotic experience that defies easy categorization.
In a special intimate performance, Dorian Wood, the LA-based composer will bring her art-infused orchestral pop to RISING Upstairs at The Forum. A big-voiced artist who challenges traditions, they’ve performed with Marina Ambramović, played with LA experimental orchestra Killsonic, and recorded minimalist jazz freakouts. Plus, they’ve transformed the songs of Fiona Apple, Sia and Prince, created 12-hour long chamber music experiences, and composed whispering metallic clouds of ambience.
Essex native Tirzah heads to RISING with a sound that dives deep into club vibes and submerged sonics. Having just collaborated with producer Mica Levi on new album trip9love…???, expect a mesmerizing performance featuring her haunting vocals and the minimalist, yet profound beats that have defined her unique space in music. Plenty of fans have been waiting for a tour since her 2018 cult classic Devotion. Catch her first-ever Melbourne appearance at the Forum.
American indie-rock veterans Blonde Redhead return with their first album in nine years, bringing their artful blend of noise-rock and pop to the Melbourne Town Hall. Expect a performance filled with bittersweet melodies and the band’s signature lush sound.
Iranian-Swedish sensation and Prince mentee, Snoh Aalegra, known for her cinematic soul, takes the Forum stage for RISING. Her unique blend of soul, R&B, and rap, marked by an intimate and smouldering vocal style, promises an immersive experience of emotional highs and reflective moments.
Good Morning’s Shawcross EP from 2014 is still as classic as it ever was. It’s so tuneful and wistful that, in more recent years, it went viral on TikTok and got sampled by A$AP Rocky. With their international fan base boosted, and now based in LA and London, they’re playing a rare hometown show at the Melbourne Recital Centre for RISING. It’s an acoustically deluxe venue befitting the orchestral sounds and crackles on Seven, their most expansive, ambitious album yet. Think Dick Diver, Liz Phair and Brian Wilson soundtracking a black-and-white musical about drifting into your thirties.
Jeremy Deller’s second project for RISING, Acid Brass, sees the UK artist in collaboration with Victorian Brass Bands, with a work that celebrates brass band music, acid house and Detroit techno. Working with community brass bands from around the state, musicians perform a repertoire of acid house anthems in a series of free public concerts across the CBD, inviting audiences to celebrate, revel and dance in a moment of mass participation.Shannon Michael Cane: A celebration of Someone Great pays tribute to a maverick of the Melbourne arts scene of the early 2000s. While behind the desk of Polyester Records and Outre Gallery, he was also throwing his infamous Witness Protection Program parties, and busy founding the groundbreaking gay zine, They Shoot Homos Don’t They?. In New York, he revolutionised art book fairs during his time at Printed Matter, all the while, passionately lifting up emerging artists and moving arts culture forward with his passion, vision and humour. In 2017, Shannon passed away, leaving a huge void among friends and an immense network of collaborators.
In the year it would have been SMC’s 50th birthday, it’s fitting RISING’s opening night party will smudge outside the lines in honour of his work and memory. There’ll be sets from local DJs a special show from New York’s Man on Man—the queer shoegaze, industrial pop group from boyfriends Roddy Bottum (Faith No More, Imperial Teen) and Joey Holman. Plus, a very special appearance from New York’s feral icon of the underground, CHRISTEENE.
Tuareg musical collective Tinariwen bring their soulful blend of rock, blues, and traditional African music to RISING. Their music, born from rebellion and exile, offers a transcendental experience that connects deeply with themes of struggle, resistance, and the universal quest for freedom. They’ve toured with the Rolling Stones and recorded with the likes of Nels Cline, TV on the Radio and Kurt Vile. From campfires to stadiums, they unite and mesmerise.
CRIP RAVE THEORY is a party and a proposition: a club night outside the club that draws on disabled/crip knowledge to create more intersectional and accessible party spaces. A chance for partygoers to show up and experience all parts of their identity. For the RISING addition at The Substation, and its Victorian premiere, the festival invites Aisha Mirza to the decks. Here from the UK, they’re a DJ, writer, councilor and creator of MISERY—a mental health-focused club night for queer, trans, intersex and non-binary black people and people of colour. DJ Bae Bae will be over from LA too. There’ll also be sets from Tinka, and CRIP RAVE THEORY founder Riana (aka Aquenta) with more to be announced.
THEATRE, DANCE AND PERFORMANCE
RISING’s theatre, dance, and performance program features world premieres, epic new commissions and works that challenge, entertain, and provoke.
At Melbourne Town Hall, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company present Big Name No Blankets, a rock ‘n’ roll story celebrating the trailblazing music icons, Warumpi Band and inspired by tales from founding member Sammy Tjapanangka Butcher. The epic new commission, co-directed by theatre icon Dr Rachael Maza AM and Anyupa Butcher cranks the amp and plugs into to the heart of Papunya via Sammy’s tales of the Warumpi Band — Australia’s original First Peoples rock stars, known for their anthems ‘Blackfella/Whitefella’, ‘My Island Home’ and ‘Jailanguru Pakurnu’.
An illusionist’s dinner party becomes an absurd meditation on human consumption in FOOD, an Australian premiere at MTC Lawler, from poetic illusionist and master clown from New York, Geoff Sobelle. Audiences gather round the stage-sized table where at first, Sobelle plays the fine-dining waiter. Then he’s off: tracing the history of food—way, way back into distant fields of buffalo and grain. It’s sensory time travel with a surreal sizzle. But make sure you eat before you come.
Chapter One of the Cadela Força Trilogy: The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella, sees Brazilian artist and director Carolina Bianchi travel through time and states of consciousness to confront a vision of hell. Direct from Europe where its premiere has drawn accolades and sparked controversy and conversation about the very nature of theatre and storytelling, this powerful work makes its Australian premier at Malthouse for RISING. Shaken by the death of Italian artist Pippa Bacca — who was sexually assaulted and murdered while performing a work about human kindness — Bianchi presents a performance-lecture. She presents vividly about the spectre of sexual violence that runs through the history of art, until she hits an impasse. Then things go dark.
8/8/8 is a durational performance work, a utopian, maximalist epic of experimental performance from Melbourne theatre-makers Harriet Gillies and Marcus McKenzie.The first part of the triptych, 8/8/8: WORK, presented at RISING 2022, was an 8-hour immersive experience, highlighting the absurdity and violence of modern workplaces. 8/8/8: REST shifts gears by delving into the unconscious on an 8-hour nocturnal journey through the many levels of Arts Centre Melbourne: a murky dreamscape where capitalist models of success are rejected, and individual identities are dissolved.
In a world premiere presentation from Lucy Guerin Inc, One Single Action (in an ocean of everything) sees dance duo Amber McCartney and Geoffrey Watson ride the internal and external rifts in a world fraught with interference. In and out of sync, they move in conflict and in harmony— through fragmented terrain that leads in one direction. In an attempt to interrupt the acceleration of our times and pause the relentless scrolling of their anxieties, they resort to a single desperate action.
Stretch the hamstrings. Strap on the protective headgear. Tune the snare and apply the bow resin. ONE SONG HISTOIRE(S) DU THÉÂTRE IV is an utterly frenzied rock concert spiked with lactic acid. The brainchild of Flemish artist Miet Warlop, it’s one song performed over and over by a squad of musicians. At the same time, they run an obstacle course of balance beams, treadmills and trampolines—until they almost collapse from exhaustion. And to witness it literally course through their veins—as they speed it up, break it down, and sweat it out to the finish line—is nothing short of inspirational.
Upstairs at the Capitol Theatre Salon, Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre present The First Bad Man – a performative book club that lives the fiction of Miranda July’s debauched classic. Four characters—Kitty, John, Rose and Freya— join a book club. Their first novel is The First Bad Man. Just like a regular book club, you don’t have to have read The First Bad Man before joining this performative book club. But you’ll get the chance—each person booking tickets for the performance will receive a copy of the novel, for good measure.
In Burnout Paradise at Malthouse, endorphin levels surge early, and harried euphoria takes hold, as four performers from Pony Cam Theatre Collective run over 15km on treadmills, manically multi-tasking before burn-out sets in. They simultaneously prepare a three-course meal, apply for an arts grant, recite a soliloquy from Hamlet, and call a game of Bingo with the audience… all the while running as if their lives depended on it.
In a new RISING commission, ECLIPSE at Melbourne Town Hall, a war is raging between two of Naarm’s fiercest kweens CERULEAN and Stone Motherless Cold, with special guests from across the multiverse. A First Peoples future-forward drag show that spans the ages—from the Big Bang(er) to the Paleocene, through the Beyoncé epoch and into the Blak queer future that awaits us all. Destroy the empire and dance among its remains in this world premiere.
S. Shakthidharan’s acclaimed Sri Lankan-Australian saga, the multi-award winning Counting and Cracking, makes its long awaited Victorian debut at RISING, co-presented with University of Melbourne Arts and Culture (UMAC) at the new Union Theatre. The breathtaking production, co-produced by Belvoir St Theatre and Kurinji and directed by Belvoir’s award-winning Artistic Director Eamon Flack, follows four generations over five decades from Sri Lanka to Sydney, and tests the complex strength of family love.
At the Immigration Museum, enter the innermost realm of iconic Melbourne dance company Chunky Move’s latest work where the walls quiver, and time contorts. You, Beauty is a cavernous and intimate performance experience that moves between hard exteriors and soft interiors. Inside the Immigration Museum’s stately Long Room, a giant undulating inflatable acts as an explorable theatre and a sculptural form. Two dancers converse with each other and the abstract mass, as it warps and stretches.
Arkadia, Melanie Lane’s new dance opera at Substation, invites audiences to step through a wishing well into a utopian realm. Inspired by Greek mythology, it’s a Garden of Paradise where gods, nymphs and aliens transform. Bodies unite and suspend as entities tense and stretch the in-between of the natural world and advanced technologies.
Queered Filipino myths surface through dance, installation, masquerade and haute couture costuming in artist Justin Shoulder’s ANITO at Arts House. Live soundscapes flood the space as performers morph between animal, plant, human and machine. It’s the latest evolution of his theatre-dance-art hybrid. A work of Filipinix future-folklore that charts humanity in a reverse spiral. Meet us at the RISING premiere for myths reimagined.At the Capitol Theatre, India’s most popular mentalist is is going to plunge into your thoughts and blow your mind. Suhani Sha, the pioneering superstar mind-reader has the unique ability to make sceptics believe and leave them smiling as well. Participate or spectate as Shah delves into the depths of mental mysteries, with enthralling charisma, linguistic deception, and mind-reading prowess. Let go of logic and let Suhani take over.
Also at Arts House, Ghenoa Gela with Force Majeure in association with ILLBIJERRI Theatre Company, present Gurr Era Op. Torres Strait Islander women dance and weave stories of connection and culture, as their homeland is threatened by rising seas and climate catastrophe. Led by choreographer Ghenoa Gela, they weave the wisdom of creation stories into an urgent call from the now.
In partnership with the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Out Loud is a free, new exhibition featuring the newly complete archive of the late Australian maverick photographer, Rennie Ellis. Best known for his fly-on-the-wall photography of celebrities, models, nightclubs and Australian suburbia, Ellis was the social documentarian of an era, capturing every slice of Australian life over a thirty-year period. For RISING, Rennie Ellis Up Late is a party curated by MzRisk, in the spirit of a photographer who didn’t just document the night, he got right there in it. Have a boogie with DJ Gavin Campbell, Rara Zulu, Voices of Halo, Crew-X and House of Diesel.
RISING
1—16 June 2024
RISING subscribers presale from 12pm, Tuesday 12 March.
Subscribe for instant presale access at rising.melbourne/subscribe
General public tickets on sale 12pm, Thursday 14 March
at rising.melbourne/subscribe
Book tickets to three or more eligible events in one transaction via the RISING website and automatically get 15% off the standard ticket price.
RISING is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and Visit Victoria.
Stay updated with your free Noise11.com daily music news email alert. Subscribe to Noise11 Music News here
Be the first to see NOISE11.com’s newest interviews and special features on YOUTUBE and updated regularly. See things first SUBSCRIBE here: Noise11 on YouTube SUBSCRIBE
