This Is Not Art (TINA) is a festival within a festival within a festival within a festival within a festival. It’s a Babushka Doll of exciting increments, a national treasure which brings together some of the country’s most burgeoning national treasures. And this year TINA turned 10, marking not only a milestone but a darn good reason to put out an anthology celebrating new Australian writing, the beautifully titled Herding Kites.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, TINA is a group of festivals all brought together under the one umbrella. TINA includes Electrofringe (a showcase of electronic arts, including film), National Young Writers’ Festival, Sound Summit (a conference which explores experimental music) and Critical Animals (a bringing together of all things post-grad). Altogether this created over 200 events spanning five days from October 2 to 6, all situated in the homespun old world suburban sprawl of aging industrial giant Newcastle. Yes… Newcastle. Home to coal mining, TINA… and hoons. But more on them later.

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Nestled in among the multitude of projects and events was the very exciting Cipher Cites, a location-based game authoring tool built by graduate students from Queensland University of Technology working at the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID). The best part about this game was the fact that it got you out on the streets exploring the city, using your mobile phone web browser as a portal through which you answered site-specific riddles and were then directed on to the next location, the momentum and excitement gathering. What would have made this game fantastic was a cash prize – everyone would’ve simply started running at that point. But seriously, Cipher Cities has the software so you can create a role playing game for your own city. Check them out at www.ciphercities.com.au.

Elsewhere and One Hour Photo added a degree of coincidental fun to the festival. Run by Michelle Vandermeer of Shelbyville fame (http://shelbyville.typepad.com), One Hour Photo encouraged people to get out among the crowds and shoot 10 separate photographs, each revolving around a different theme. What ensued was a swathe of creative individuals getting out and about, shooting stripey things, urban rust, oldies having fun and a look at what happiness is. Seventeen individuals submitted 170 photographs, with some of the award winning shots appearing below.

At the more high-brow end of the festival post-grad students shared papers galore and even explored the poetics of time constrained performance with TimeKeeper Zero. Led by queer experimental poet Michael Farrell this experiment looked at what would happen if small pockets of chance-generated air time were randomly issued. Elsewhere and The Ekphrastic Agency issued customised art, a novel service which not only informed but allowed the participant to appear informative – always a good look. And hey, all customised art came with great opening lines.

For Amy Ingram, co-director of the National Young Writers Festival, TINA was not only a good reason to run around in a wedding dress (in the hope of proposals from rich bachelors willing to fund the festival) but a chance to reflect on the cultural significance of TINA.

‘TINA and NYWF are unique in that its attendees are mostly also arts practitioners,’ said Ingram. ‘It is a highly user generated festival – what you see at the festival is what the artists want to see and be involved in. TINA is also highly participatory there is less of a gap between the panelists and the punters encouraging collaboration and DIY – less queues to get that book signed by that 85 year old author by 65 year old little old ladies and more spunk, individuality and drive towards sustainability for young people in the arts.’

Of course, while this years festival has drawn to a close, next years is just about to swing into motion. If you would like to be involved in TINA 2009 then go to www.thisisnotart.org and register your interest. Oh… and while in Newcastle, watch out for hoons who take great delight in yelling out of moving cars. You could always arm yourself with some Hoon Haiku, a series of more prosaic shoutables one is able to yell back at said hoons.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell

Scott-Patrick Mitchell attended TINA along with eleven emerging WA writers with help from a grant from ArtsWA.