DECODING RACE, AI, ALGORITHMS & AUTOMATION The tech we use impacts our lives. They aren’t neutral objects but can have particular worldviews baked-in to the very operation of them. It can be overwhelming to begin to challenge those cultural biases when a lot of mainstream conversation on technology is wrapped up in speculation and paranoia. How do we make sense of all this? On today’s show we begin to decode some of this with guest producer Dr Sarita Herse in conversation with feminist techn...
Jul 31, 2023•43 min
On Race Matters we head to Damascus, Syria as we are joined by researcher and creative Mia Shouha, co-founder and director of Souq. In an intimate chat, she shares how artists create in a complex, post-war context and craft through autonomy and imperialism resistance to find magic and connection. Alongside her collaborator Romy Cole-Groth they’ve begun working on a project that elevates the value and dignity of Syrian craft, collecting beauty in a time of crisis. To learn more about Souq and how...
Jul 10, 2023•40 min
Content note: this talk will mention Black deaths in custody, policy brutality, grief and mention of torture. These are told from the lived experience of our guest and how this shapes their response to the conversation. In some instances this is described in detail to shed truth, so we ask that you go gently and decide when the time is right for you to listen in. On today’s show we’re asking: What if our institutions were life-affirming, instead of death-making? This is the question at the heart...
Jun 26, 2023•42 min
RADIO SKID ROW X RACE MATTERS SOLIDARITY SYNDICATE This week we dedicate our airwaves to the trailblazing, radical output of Radio Skid Row 88.9FM . An honor to be joined by Aaliyah-Jade Bradbury - she’s host of Skid Row’s Blak Friday / Koori Connection , and comes from a lineage of radio makers and storytellers at Skid Row and beyond. She’ll be joining us to talk through the power of community radio and how we can continue to support the work that they do. Plus, some tracks curated by Aaliyah! ...
May 29, 2023•25 min
Our friends Marina & Xuan at Amplify Bookstore are back for another anti-racist Book Club takeover! The episode spans works around invisible labour and recovering knowledge systems. In the first half we hear them delve deep into a contemporary fiction by Balli Kaur Jaswal. Mystery meets sharp social commentary with Now You See Us shedding light on the lives of 3 domestic workers in Singapore. The plot thickens as one of their friends gets accused of murder and the rest of them try to figure ...
May 22, 2023•38 min
Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller from NSW’s North West freshwater plains. Her work has long been dedicated to breathing life into objects and story of the past through song, language revival and she continues to be heavily involved in the teaching and sharing of culture in both her Sydney and Yuwaalaraay communities. Her work spans music , composing, music direction and her debut novel titled Song of the Crocodile was winner of the 2017 Black&Write! Fellowship. She joined us to cha...
May 16, 2023•40 min
Everyday is a good day to support and buy from Black artists . Formerly known as Black Bandcamp - Black Artist Database has a simple premise: to get more Black people paid for their music. It’s a crowdfunded resource of artists, aimed at bringing cultural and material support to the Black community. Alongside artists and DJs; they throw events, skills-building workshops and now have a podcast . It's also a project that seeks to call out the effects of white supremacy on creative access and daily...
May 01, 2023•26 min
What is the balance of curation and community-consultation especially when cultural identities are so fraught and disparate? How can a community-rooted event still serve as an invitation for learning and connection across differences? These are some of the themes that we explore with our guest this week, Hajer Al-Awsi. Alongside her new role festival director of the inaugural SWANA Film Festival , writer, arts worker and founder of Iraqi Diaspora Creatives Network . She joined Race Matters to ch...
Apr 24, 2023•27 min
On today’s show we’re exploring what it is to continue to tell stories across evolving digital landscapes and the need to teach younger generations to care for, learn and grow alongside Country. That’s done in creative ways with the multimedia, First Nations theatre production Saltbush . It’s a production that follows two friends, discovering and growing an understanding of the land; and how that challenges and provokes their personal journeys - doing this by using painting, dance, sensory camer...
Apr 16, 2023•27 min
Race Matters were joined by Catherine Madviza, project lead of Codebreakers - an innovative output working alongside young people in Western Sydney to critically engage with social media, carving space to explore their identities, and advocate for social change in creative ways. Alongside its social platforms, Codebreakers in unique in that it has multiple ways of engaging with community and bridging that often-abstract bridge between community and policy-makers. Hear from Catherine on how they ...
Apr 12, 2023•26 min
Content note: This talk describes instances of transphobia and a mention of black deaths in custody. These are told from the lived experience of our panelists and how this shapes their response to the questions as well as their creative practice. Whilst not described in detail, we ask that you go gently and decide when the time is right for you to listen in. What role does art have in inciting social change? How can alternative ways of making and connecting be an antidote to oppression? Can crea...
Apr 03, 2023•46 min
Fjorn Bastos is someone who speaks and moves with intention. As an artist, Fjorn works primarily in sound and a style of narrativised performance under the name Papaphilia . Her 2021 album - ‘Remembrance of Things to Come’ is a pulsing and abstract exploration of time and grief. As a researcher and community organiser - she’s also long been an outspoken voice for anti-racism, anti-colonial resistance and isn’t one to just speak without action. Her work is committed to interrogating and resisting...
Mar 20, 2023•38 min
A very special guest host this week, Sezzo: kōtare/kingfisher turned proud Ngāpuhi DJ, writer, curator, and medical student. She stepped on to the mic bringing with her a profound and loving dialogue with her kin Grayson and Hāmiora visiting from Aotearoa for World Pride. Their conversation spanned questions like "what is World Pride on stolen land?" and delved into First Peoples solidarities, the unique challenges and gifts of Takatāpui experiences, decolonial connections and cosmologies and wh...
Mar 07, 2023•47 min
What would it mean to consider the radical potential of love, empathy, and pleasure— as an antidote to oppression and disconnection? Mimi Zhu doesn't want to romanticise love. Their debut title "Be Not Afraid of Love" is devoted to answering this, sharing in a way that is intimate and heart-tugging. Our conversation with them maps the pain and violence that can stop us from knowing how to enact and receive love, intimacy, queer kinship, and how loving action can be a tool for social change. Mimi...
Feb 20, 2023•28 min
What does it mean to engage with the stories of the forcibly displaced? What happens when those people seek support in each other - and what does solidarity with that movement look like for queer people, leading into a time like World Pride? Shareeka Helaluddin spoke with Renee Dixson, co-founder of the Forcibly Displaced People's Network (FDPN) ahead of their 2023 Queer Displacements Conference . Through Renee's own journey, and the work the FDPN does for LGBTQI+ people who have been forcibly d...
Feb 13, 2023•27 min
An emotional one ... Sara's last show. Join us as we revel, celebrate, cry, remember the four formidable and inimitable years that Sara Khan has offered us. It’s hard to say what Race Matters would be without her, and the depths of knowledge, power, care, laughter she has given to this show and FBi radio more broadly. There aren’t enough words to describe how much Sara has changed the landscape of radio and what it is to have content led by and for First Nations and people of colour. Listen in f...
Dec 12, 2022•48 min
Content note: this story revolves around racial trauma and has mention of trauma, anti-Asian racism, colourism and references to statistics on suicide and self harm. Whilst not discussed in detail, we ask that you go gently, surround yourself with some comforts, or come back to this at a time that feels okay for you. What are the impacts of racism when it comes to our minds, bodies and spiritual wellbeing? In today's story, we hear from FBi presenter Maleeka Gazula ( Up For It! ) as she maps her...
Dec 05, 2022•40 min
Too many incredible writers of colour, not enough time to read and do them justice! We are excited to be airing the first episode of BOOK CLUB with our friends at Amplify Bookstore - a site dedicated to Black, First Nations and writers of colour. Hear co-founders Xuan and Marina on how they started Amplify, what makes an Amplify book (it's not just about race and racism!), and the curation they wanted to introduce to us. The books discussed in this episode were~ The Book of Form and Emptiness by...
Nov 29, 2022•24 min
A treat to be in conversation with Kombumerri man, sound artist and performer Rowan Savage aka salllvage ; who has long-worked at the intersection of queer club music, performance and connection with Country, helming a truly unique creative output. Hear him chat on the power and politics of deep listening amid the current exhibition NURA: Deep Listening, currently on Cement Fondu alongside Barkindji artist. We also chat about the textures and techniques that explore Indigenous Futurisms in his a...
Nov 21, 2022•29 min
A special announcement on today's show ... Plus, producer Shareeka Helaluddin held a personal conversation with creative S. Shakthtidharan. Shakthi is a Western Sydney storyteller with Sri Lankan heritage and Tamil ancestry; and a writer, director and composer of original music. His first play, Counting and Cracking , galvanised audiences across the globe, as it traced the story of Sri Lanka’s descent into civil war. This week the debut of his next work the Jungle and the Sea unfolds into anothe...
Nov 14, 2022•37 min
This week, Darren Lesaguis sat down in a deep chat with Andrew Brooks - who's one half of the critical art collective Snack Syndicate - alongside Astrid Lorange. Together, they make texts, objects, installations, and meals. Their collection of essays, Homework , was published in 2021 by Discipline. Andrew Brooks lectures in Media Cultures at UNSW, is a founding member of the Infrastructural Inequalities research network , and the author of poetry collection Inferno (2021). Hear them chat about s...
Nov 07, 2022•34 min
Content note: This episode contains mention of the violence faced at the hands of brutal regimes. We ask that listeners go gently, particularly if this content relates directly to the lived experience of you and your community. We are honored to be joined Iranian artist Hoda Afshar on the ongoing feminist revolution unfolding in Iran. She brings to light the Kurdish roots of this movement, the neglect of Western media; and untangling the right for autonomy and expression for Muslim women from th...
Oct 24, 2022•32 min
Content note: this episode describes acts of homophobic violence mentioned in a film and from lived experience. Whilst not discussed in detail, we acknowledge that these instances could be distressing for audiences, and ask that you take care if you choose to engage. If you are in need of support, Qlife offers free and anonymous support via call on 1800 184 527 or online chat. An introspective episode as Darren and Sara reflect on what compels them to make art or find their "why" in creative pro...
Oct 10, 2022•34 min
We were privileged to be joined by Gumbainggir historian, educator, activist Dr Gary Foley who for decades has played a central part in some of the most pivotal civil rights movements for First Nations justice. He's been part of community-led services including Redfern’s Aboriginal legal Service, the Aboriginal health service in Melbourne, and National Black Theatre; and continues to be an outspoken advocate for First Nations' justice and self determination. In 1972 a documentary called NINGLA-A...
Oct 04, 2022•32 min
How do we tell the stories of those who have been diminished or ignored in the writing of history? How do we do justice to the lives they lived, or to the people they were? How does where we come from connect to where we are headed? These are some of the questions put forward in a new anthology by LIMINAL , an anti-racist literary and art platform based in Naarm. A collection from the longlist of the Liminal and Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize, the book is titled, Against Disappearance . The essa...
Sep 26, 2022•33 min
Darren and Sara reflect on four years of Race Matters: how the show has evolved over the years, shaped their relationship and where the future of Race Matters lies. We then hear an interview with multidisciplinary artist Riana Head-Toussaint after the debut of her club night Crip Rave Theory . It was an event created in response to inaccessible and exclusionary club spaces, centring and celebrating all bodies that are sidelined in traditional nightlife culture. We’ll learn about how she created ...
Sep 19, 2022•38 min
Sara and Darren are back, chatting through a recent film and how it brought up feelings around having your lived experience as a marginalised person "extracted" and coopted from you. We then hear an interview by Shareeka Helaluddin with artists Victoria Pham and James Nguyen . Ahead of a series of workshops they'll be facilitating at the Sydney Opera House, they chatted about the work they’ve been doing to recover a Vietnamese drum called the Đông Sơn. Hear about how this led to their collaborat...
Sep 06, 2022•43 min
Activism: a word thrown around a lot especially in the last few years, but what does it actually mean? Does it still carry the same power as it once did? How do we differentiate from change-makers and clout-chasers? In the final piece of the Beyond Borders series Binta Yade speaks to three community facilitators and social organisers across the black diaspora in Naarm and the UK to upend what we assume social change looks like, and the long legacies of organisation and solidarity across the blac...
Aug 29, 2022•57 min
Two conversations exploring the complexities of queerness and masculinity. First, Darren chatted to First Nations playwright Dylan Van Den Berg about his upcoming work at Griffin Theatre, White Fella Yella Tree . We'll hear from Dylan about how this play came to be, what queer blak love on stage looks like, and what we take away from the theatre. We then hear from Tian and Thy from DEiFY - a platform that centres the experiences of queer, trans, intersex people who also identity as black, First ...
Aug 15, 2022•34 min
Self-described as having ‘been in the ABC for a hundred years’, Jason Om has been around the block. A Walkley-winning reporter, author of All Mixed Up and household name for many, Om joined the Race Matters team to chat unearthing vulnerable work about grief, ABC’s apology on racism in the workplace, and the gay community’s ‘dirty little secret’ (hint: racism). All Mixed Up is available at all good book stores. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Aug 08, 2022•30 min
