Sydney Festival and MAU Forum presents
5th Pacific Thought Symposium - Bringing Forth the Ancestors

Between performances of Tempest: without a body, MAU Artistic Director Lemi Ponifasio convenes the first Pacific Thought Symposium to be held on this side of the Pacific.

This symposium is a rare opportunity to share different views and cultural philosophies and to provoke and propose new ways to grapple with Pacific thought. Ponifasio’s theme – Bringing Forth the Ancestors – seeks common ground with Sydney’s Indigenous and Pacific communities.

Comprising a panel of artists, cultural leaders and dynamic thinkers from the Pacific, communities in Australia and Asia.  Taking the work of Lemi Ponifasio as a leaping off point the panellists and audience will meet to discuss some of the questions and issues surrounding the rights of indigenous people in the age of extreme commodification and consumption as evoked by MAU’s Tempest: without a body. 

It has been said that MAU’s work exists in the "time of the ancestor", not a time fixed or a time that was, but as a culture that moves with us in the present.  As a theme Bringing Forth The Ancestors proposes that even if the body exists in a bleak present the ancestor still lurks in the vitality that the body inherits, even in pain and destruction.

Confirmed panellists include:
• Lemi Ponifasio (MAU) – Co convener
• Rhoda Roberts (Dreaming Festival, Pacific Arts Alliance) – Co convener
• Tame Iti (MAU)
• Leali’ifano Albert Refiti
• Hufanga ‘Okusitino Mahina
• Dr Katerina Teaiwa (Australian National University)

To view the Inner West 2010 Minisite, click here.

Photo: Ingvar Kenne