We invite you to be a catalyst for new Australian artworks. Listening Acts will be a unique exhibition and performance event in Melbourne. This ambitious project bringing together an exciting and diverse cohort of lead artists working across multiple artforms to create bold new works that deconstruct, reframe, and challenge conventional notions around the act ...
Chamber Made
Listening Acts: Ten New Work Commissions

GOAL
$50,000
Field of Interest
- Arts and culture
Target Population
- General population
- Young people (6-25)

Based on Wurundjeri Country in Naarm/Melbourne, Chamber Made cultivates adventurous multi-artform practice to disrupt and rewrite conventions of live performance. A commitment to collaboration, an appetite for innovation, and an ongoing fascination in the intersecting spaces between artforms drives the company through its fourth decade with renewed energy. Our works speak directly to a 21st century Australia enriched by the meeting of cultures
The company is led by acclaimed performance-maker and director, Tamara Saulwick, whose works are defined by a deep, abiding engagement with sound and music. Saulwick’s distinctive style has developed over many years of dedicated collaborations with some of Australia’s leading music practitioners, positioning her perfectly to lead and shape Chamber Made’s complex and nuanced cross-artform work and creative processes.
Chamber Made is renowned for cultivating adventurous collaborations between composers, sound artists, directors, performance-makers and media artists, disrupting and rewriting conventions to discover new forms of expression. Bringing contemporary composition and performance dramaturgy together in ever-shifting forms, our works have been presented in theatres, recital halls, lounge-rooms, galleries, on iPads and online. Chamber Made has presented over 100 performance seasons in Australia, NZ, Asia, Europe, USA and South America. The company has commissioned over 55 new Australian works and engaged countless artists since it was founded in 1988.
Please see vimeo.com/912432153 for examples of our recent works.
Project Summary
We invite you to be a catalyst for new Australian artworks. Listening Acts will be a unique exhibition and performance event in Melbourne. This ambitious project bringing together an exciting and diverse cohort of lead artists working across multiple artforms to create bold new works that deconstruct, reframe, and challenge conventional notions around the act of listening.
What is it to listen? What is it to listen imperfectly? Or indeed, to listen perfectly? And how can technology facilitate, interrupt, complicate or confound acts of listening to draw attention to what may remain in its wake? Ten exciting Australian sound artists have been asked to consider these questions in a groundbreaking series of works exploring the profound and multi-faceted nature of listening.
The works will explore the innumerable ways that listening (or not) shapes our existence, from the relationship between sound, memory and place, to bodies and power as experienced by the Stolen Generations, the sounds of medical treatment, the intimacy of binaural listening, unexpected conversations (with AI) and the reverberations of intergenerational trauma. Whether sound or screen based, live performance or installation, the constant thread will be this attention to the notion of listening.
By providing support, you will directly and meaningfully impact the career of an Australian artist and allow audiences to experience listening anew.
Lead artists are: Aviva Endean, Biddy Connor, Monica Lim, Rebecca Bracewell, Anna Liebzeit, Alexandra Spence, Thembi Soddell, Tamara Saulwick, Hannah de Feyter, Marlene Radice (please see attached bios).
Project Outcomes
The exciting outcomes of Listening Acts include:
- A curated series of immersive, genre-defying performance works and installations that challenge audiences to radically rethink what it means to listen
- 10 bold new works led by 10 women - Australian artists who collectively work across sound, film, installation, composition and contemporary performance
- Premiere season across three days in 2025 as part of a major arts and technology festival in Melbourne
- Employment and audience-building for Australian artists
- Works with an inbuilt consideration of access for deaf and hard of hearing audiences, First Nations audiences and those from different cultures, and people with different physical and mental disabilities
- Orientation towards attracting younger audiences to the live and visual arts through partnering with a major festival
- An opportunity to spark dialogue and drive cultural change around the social and societal role of listening
Budget Breakdown
TOTAL BUDGET: $135,610
FUNDING
Funding source | Amount |
---|---|
Creative Australia (confirmed) | $63,610 |
City of Melbourne (unconfirmed) | $20,000 |
Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres (confirmed) | $2,000 |
Funding gap (unconfirmed) | $50,000 |
EXPENSES
Expense item | Amount |
---|---|
Artist New Work Commission Fees | $6,000 per new work (NB. each artists received $2000 concept development fee in 2023) | $60,000 |
Collaborating Artist Fees (performers, lighting & costume designer) | $8,600 |
Production & Technical Fees | $9,960 |
Producing Fees | $4,900 |
Oncosts (superannuation, workcover & holiday loading @21%) | $13,982 |
Access Costs (First Nations & access consultants; child care contribution, as required | $3,650 |
Production & Travel Costs (installation fabrication, equipment hires, performance materials) | $21,635 |
Marketing Costs | $3,500 |
Documentation of the works (stills & video) | $5,400 |
Contingency at 5% artistic & production costs | $3,983 |
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