Maybe I'm making all of this up?

I reckon it began as an experiment.

In 2010 an idea occurred: to make an experimental art event where artists made work collaboratively while an audience looked on.

“In 2010 an idea occurred”

I remember not being there, for the first Adhocracy. I think I was actually in Launceston for the first Junction Festival that began as a Regional Arts Australia Conference.

I do remember however having a couple of meetings (probably via skype, due to me always being somewhere regional) with Jason Sweeney and Emma Webb regarding a creative / art process orientated and driven event where the audience was invited to whatever occurred.

I do remember the event was more or less in name only and was a gift to Emma from previous Creative Producer of Vitalstatistix, Jane Fuller, to make up and mould as she sees fit.

I don't remember the program or who was involved but reading the program the event reads more like a game with a set of rules and five provocateurs. I think it was based on a condensed version of an exercise that was recalled from a Time_Place _Space residency.

I also remember being present … or maybe it was another skype, actually, I don't remember being in a room with anyone ever to discuss the project. Maybe I'm making all of this up? But I am listed as an Adhocracy Producer Mentor?

“I don’t remember being in a room with anyone ever to discuss the project. Maybe I’m making all of this up?”

I also remember being present to hear what had occurred that evening, and that both Jason and Emma felt that artist care and the audience intervention/experience needed to be more nuanced, selective, scheduled, ad-hoc but at the behest of the artist and curated just as much as the artists selected for the program and it certainly didn't need to be articulated as a game (WTAF were we thinking?).

I may not remember a lot of this. But I do remember the important learnings reflected from that first experiment.

The next year, with good, caring and intimately ambitious hands, they arrived at a structure and form across a couple of evenings that became the now well-known template for all Adhocracys since.

In 2015-2017 I had the pleasure of collaborating with Emma co-curating two PADA programs of commissions (our little/large curatorial side project).

It was here I began to understand that at the core of Emma's curation practice was deep thinking, listening and responding to the proposals in front of her. Emma also channels her activist practice into the curation, pulling highly distinct, pertinent, contemporary threads, of current themes and global fascinations to form the curatorial and programming mix of Adhocracy. Queer lenses, environmental frameworks, social and political readings, First Nation voices, feminist contexts and more have pervaded the various seasons of Adhocracy across the decade. All just a little too prescient, all just into the near future, all just into the now.

“Emma also channels her activist practice into the curation, pulling highly distinct, pertinent, contemporary threads, of current themes and global fascinations to form the curatorial and programming mix of Adhocracy”

Happy Birthday, Adhocracy, keep being the now, keep bringing the future, keep being experimental, keep making mistakes, keep succeeding, keep just containing safety.

Keep it up.