From musical borrowings to dance-moves, from clothing and art to stories and ideas, it’s time to talk about where to draw the line between legitimate cultural exchanges and damaging cultural appropriation. As we see more clearly how power shapes culture, the relationship between artistic freedom and protecting culture is shifting rapidly. With the court of social media always ready to prosecute, it’s time for a bigger discussion about who owns culture, who is stealing it, who is entitled to borrow, and how to pay a fair price.
Corrie Chen is an award-winning filmmaker and a highly sought after television director. Her work ranges from comedy to drama, fiction to documentary, and has screened extensively at academy-accredited film festivals around the world. Born in Taiwan, Corrie is naturally drawn to stories that explore the themes of identity and belonging. Her directing credits include the upcoming miniseries Bad Behaviour for Stan; SBS series New Gold Mountain and the digital original Homecoming Queens; the Emmy-nominated Mustangs FC; Five Bedrooms, and Wentworth. In 2020, she was named one of the Asian-Australian Leadership Summit’s 40 Under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians.
Coby Edgar is a Larrakia, Jingili, Anglo, Filipino, queer, cis-woman from Darwin. She is currently the curator of Strategic Projects, First Nations at the Powerhouse Museum and has worked in the arts industry for over a decade.
Dr Luara Ferracioli is Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She grew up in Brazil but moved to Australia in 2006. Her main areas of research are the ethics of immigration and family justice. She is the author of Liberal Self-Determination in a World of Migration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022).
Daniel Browning is an Aboriginal journalist, radio broadcaster, documentary maker, sound artist and writer. Currently, he is the ABC’s Editor of Indigenous Radio and presents The Art Show on Radio National, the national broadcaster’s specialist arts and journalism network. A visual arts graduate, Daniel is also a widely-published freelance arts writer and former guest editor of Artlink Indigenous, an occasional series of the quarterly Australian contemporary arts journal. He is the inaugural curator of Blak Box, a specially-designed sound pavilion commissioned by UTP, which amplifies the voices of First Nations artists. His anthology of collected writing on contemporary Indigenous art to be published by Magabala Books is forthcoming. Daniel is a descendant of the Bundjalung and Kullilli peoples of far northern New South Wales and south-western Queensland.