There is another school of thought, however, that risk has its origins in the Arabic word rizq which means ‘gift from divine providence’. The space between cliff and gift seems like a prescient reflection of how we are currently negotiating risk in the creative arts. Depending on one’s frame of view within cultural organisations and university contexts, risk is either a set of properties to be managed, reconciled and neutralised; an electrical current essential for activating any kind of zeitgeist transformation; or something that oscillates within the broad spectrum between. This issue of Creative Matters attempts to take some risks with risk –presenting contributions that grapple with what this term or operation means in a world of seemingly ever-increasing dissonance. At a time when organisational systems are under duress and we negotiate disinformation, deepfake AI and the brutalities of global and local conflicts with their concomitant partisan politics, how might, or how can, creative practitioners navigate the myriad fault lines and at the same time preface a heightened and committed capacity for taking risks.
This issue of Creative Matters includes contributions from across the tertiary creative arts spectrum, to consider what risk means to scholars and practitioners inside and outside of the academy, and how it might be configured to build resilience, alterity and resistance to forces that seek to neutralise cultural complexity.
For an issue about risk in the institution, and how creative practices of all kinds might use it as research and pedagogical prompt, it was beholden on us to start here. In February 2025, Australia’s art and academic community was blindsided by a telling sequence of events – less a conspiracy, and more institutionalised and politicised diffidence. Khaled Sabsabi, a Lebanese-Australian artist known for his clear eyed and deep engagement with the complexities of geopolitics and intercultural relations was unceremoniously removed – just five days after he was selected alongside curator Michael Dagostino – as Australia’s representative for the 2026 Venice Biennale. The reasoning, to maintain social cohesion and ‘prevent a long and divisive debate’, was less a rationale than a mealy-mouthed throat-clearer. Soon after, Monash University followed suit when the prestigious, and usually unflinching MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art) decided to cancel a planned major exhibition that included Sabsabi’s work. The episode revealed the increasingly risk-averse, brand-sensitive landscape that universities now inhabit – institutions that once framed themselves as models for critical inquiry and debate – have become increasingly brittle, regulatory and fearful of losing control of narratives surrounding inclusivity and freedoms of speech.
This incident with Sabsabi and Dagostino was not just about the artist and curator, or two institutions. It was a diagnostic moment revealing the soft-tissue damage wrought by decades of neoliberal management.
Talking to the North American experience, Wendy Brown (2015) has cogently outlined how the university has shifted from being a site of civic formation to a service provider, where students have become paying clients and knowledge is calibrated against graduate employability and broad alignment metrics. Brown captures the stakes of our contemporary moment well. Neoliberalism, she says, ‘formulates everything, everywhere, in terms of capital investment and appreciation, including and especially humans themselves’ (Brown, 2015, p. 176). This logic hollows out the university’s historical mission of cultivating democratic citizens in favour of producing economic actors – or as Brown puts it, ‘human capital’ (Brown, 2015, p. 176).
This recalibration has not occurred in a vacuum, nor is it unique to the United States. Brown’s diagnosis of the declining status of the liberal arts in American universities overlays disturbingly well with the Australian experience of the arts in academia. The post-2020 fee hikes to arts degrees, policy shifts prioritising ‘job-ready’ graduates, and research funding realigned to industry needs are all symptoms of the same rationality. Brown writes that ‘this status for liberal arts education is eroding from all sides: cultural values spurn it, capital is not interested in it, debt-burdened families anxious about the future do not demand it, neoliberal rationality does not index it, and, of course, states no longer invest in it’ (2015, p. 180-181). This elides with Guthrie and Lucas’ recent article on the transformation of Australian universities where they evidence the reduction of the academy to one of a factory of ‘mass production… informed by the same logic of productivity and performativity that supposedly contributes to the success of capitalist enterprises’ (2022).
In this model, there’s less room for the troublesome work of critique, squeezed out by outcomes, where the university is reduced to a vocational throughline and servant to corporate culture.
In this context, we argue creative practice in all the disciplines the DDCA represents, has become a counter practice to the overarching neo-liberal economic and compliance logics the modern university corrals its workforce and students with. As a number of articles in this issue of Creative Matters suggest, risk is not just a liability to be minimised via OH & S checklists, ethics applications and pre-emptive reputational damage control, but a condition of meaningful inquiry. To court ambiguity, to lean into uncertainty and to stir up discomfort through material and textual practices – where process is as important as resolution – can elicit debate not only inside of the disciplines we practice in, but more importantly, like Sabsabi’s work, outside of it.
Experimental installation and public art practice, speculative workshops, playful pedagogy, documentary film and unsanctioned performances – these are the tools with which artists and academics can reclaim the neutral ground.
This issue of Creative Matters explores risk in a variety of contexts and modes of practice, as method as much as prompt. Generous contributors to this issue variously explore: a deep reflective analysis on cultural censorship and institutional brand management (Danny Butt and Dario Vacirca); how the anarchic spirit of adventure playgrounds might inform our approach to pedagogy and creative development (Nadia Odlum); how deferring judgment can generate insight rather than chaos, where the risk is found in pause (Paulina Larocca); and how the encroachment of generative AI reshapes not only what we produce but how we imagine creativity itself, and there’s risk in challenging that (Judith Bishop). The capacity to take a risk of course is relative to the perceived reward, a number of articles point to this tension in relation to generational, institutional and technological change (Sally Jane Norman) , while others find redemptive notes in practising creativity and criticality on-campus in novel and playful ways (Jessica Hughes and Sanne Mestrom). For all of the articles in this issue, they present risk as both method and provocation, and so remind us that the arts are much more than hood ornaments for the modern university, but in their nuance, between the cliff and the gift, they can still disrupt, they can complicate, they can resist and enlighten.
References
Brown, W. (2015) Undoing the Demos, Zone Books, New York
Browning, D. (2025) The Arts Show, April 2, ABC https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-02/khaled-sabsabi-speaks-out-creative-australia-venice-biennale/105118376 (Accessed: 2 May 2025)
Guthrie, J. and Lucas, A. (2022) How we got here: The transformation of Australian public universities into for-profit corporations, Social Alternatives, Vol. 41 No. 1.
Cameron Bishop (PhD) is an artist, writer, curator and Associate Professor in Art and Design at Deakin University. As a curator he has devised a number of public art projects including: Treatment (in 2015/17/23), Front Beach Back Beach, and Six Moments in Kingston, each in collaboration with David Cross. Ideas around place-making, and the body’s appearance and experience as a political, private, and social entity spur him make work about the shifting nature of the term public.
David Cross is an artist, writer and curator based in Melbourne, Australia. Working across performance, installation, video and photography, his art practice explores the relationship between pleasure, intimacy and the phobic often incorporates participation by linking performance art with object-based environments. Cross is currently Head of Academic Group Art and Design and Co-Director of PAC at Deakin University, Melbourne.
Main image: Posthuman Lecture Theatre Hack 2023, various artists, photograph Fiona Hilary