Witness Spotlight Witness Performance

Ben Keene investigates how BLEED 2020 pivoted to existing entirely online after Covid-19 hit in March this year















What happens when you have to change everything? As the pandemic drags on through 2020, we’re all finding out







BLEED – a performance festival co-produced by Arts House in Melbourne and Sydney’s Campbelltown Arts Centre – was originally envisioned as a two-week event that explored the connections between digital life and the everyday, with a mixture of online and staged works. When Australian theatre went dark in March, plans that had been in train for more than a year had to be completely re-imagined.







For this Spotlight special, Witness podcast producer Ben Keene talks to Arts House artistic director Emily Sexton, radio artist and BLEED advisor Miyuki Jokiranta, Arts House associate producer Samira Farah and dancer and choreographer Angela Goh about how BLEED 2020 transformed from futuristic speculation into a meditation on the immediate present, and what the pandemic has meant for their work and their lives.







This Witness Performance podcast was commissioned by Arts House, City of Melbourne and Campbelltown Arts Centre and forms part of BLEED 2020, presented in partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre.







BLEED is a biennial festival of live digital events curated by Arts House and Campbelltown Arts Centre from June 22 to August 30. Check out the program here.