The Ten Best Things to See at Next Wave 2014

Few festivals in Australia have the energy and dynamism of Next Wave. Even though it has just hit 30 years of age, the festival is still bouncing around in fluoro lycra, staying out in galleries all night, and finding the best emerging artists from home and abroad. This year Next Wave boasts a lineup of 239 artists over a month-long program in locations all across the city. And, with a real life fight club and a yoga dance party, the work on show is unlikely to disappoint.

Themed 'New Grand Narrative', festival director Emily Sexton defines this year's offering as "a rallying call". "Many institutions that operated throughout the 20th century are cracking," she says. "These institutions have deep, deep flaws, and in this time of transition – to what, we don't know – we offer this festival and these artists, as a series of potent visions for a new world, and the relationships within it."

Accordingly, much of the work on show is concerned with outsider stories. From the festival's keynote initiative Blak Wave to a puberty-themed games arcade made by transgender artist Jackson Fydim Stacy — Next Wave tackles the big issues with thoughtful detail and a little bit of a cheeky grin.

The Testosterdome

Puberty is a time of our lives often wilfully forgotten. The hormones, the hair, the social awkwardness and general awfulness... the mental scars rival the ones left over from our acne. But with this work, Sydney artist Jackson Fydim Stacy asks us to reexamine the maligned rite of passage in the best way possible. In the simplest terms, Testosterdome is a puberty-themed video games arcade. Instead of Dance Dance Revolution, Stacy gives us Sad Boy Hoop Shooter — a game in which we "slam dunk our repressed emotions"; the obligatory race-car game is transformed to a way of chasing girls. All of this does however come with a message. Stacy is a queer transgender artist who described the process of coming out and taking hormones a kind of "second puberty" — a complex time of transition that's not as easy to forget as teenage wet dreams.

Fort Delta, May 1 - 11, Free

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Next Wave Director, Emily Sexton, once described this artist's work as having an "eloquent politics", and this latest offering is no exception. From March 1 - 11, Phuong Ngo will be living in plain sight at No Vacancy Gallery with the same rations his parents had on their 10-day boat journey to Australia in 1981. In an act with obvious but important political implications, Ngo invites audience members to sit with him during the work and fold origami boats out of bank notes while listening to narrative recordings of other Vietnamese refugees. On the final night these boats will be burned in a huge, ritualistic fire.

No Vacancy Gallery, May 1 - 11, free

A Wake: Kids Killing Kids

This show is a bit of an anomaly. In 2011, four young Australian writers travelled to Manila to collaborate with local artists from the Sipat Lawin Ensemble on an adaptation of the famous novel Battle Royale. The show attracted huge crowds as each performance birthed a cultish and worrying following. Then the writers decided to translate their experience to the stage in last year's Fringe hit Kids Killing Kids. This new show will tell the same story from the perspective of their Filipino collaborators. Is it overkill (for lack of a better word)? Time will tell. Either way, this is what it looks like when theatre-makers go full-on Inception.

Arts House, May 1 -4; 7-11, $18 - $23

Maximum

Arts House, May 1 - 4; 7 - 11, $18 - $23

The Blaktism

Screen Space, May 1 - 14, free

Deep Soulful Sweats

Ever thought your yoga class would be more entertaining if there was some good dance music cranking? Maybe you've been dissatisfied with a night clubbing because you felt disconnected from your chakras? Either way, this yoga class come dance party has all your unspoken prayers answered. That's right — it's a yoga dance party. Punters are advised to come dressed in lycra, stretch valour and the same colour clothing as your star sign (just go with it), and all other instructions will be given at the door. Though no yoga or dance experience is necessary, participants should be willing to let loose in the LED mayhem. After all, what is a yoga dance party if not the perfect place to relax?

Can We Please Play the Internet?

New media artworks about "the internet" and "the Facebook" and the "total lack of privacy in our networked society leading to a enormous cultural and artistic shift in our generation" can often be a bit naff. Everything always leads to Skynet references and inevitable doomsday predictions. What's refreshing about this show is its light tone. Can We Play the Internet is a joint exhibition at West Space featuring the work of Janine DeFeo & Paul Zaba (pictured), Andrea Buren & Eleonora Sovrani, Angus Tarnawsky & Nathan Liow and Ilya Milstein. If you've ever wanted to see Google Image search results printed and mounted on all four walls of a white room, this is the show for you.

West Space, April 11 - May 11, free

Smell You Later

Various loactions, May 1 -11, free

Altertruism

Technology, hedonism, and performance seem like the making of a great party, but the work of Brisbane collective Golden Solution is a little more complex than that. From May 2 - 10, Michael Candy, Kiah Reading and Andrew McLellan will be confronting their audience with some particularly trying social experiments. Hosting Shower Party at Goodtime Studios on May 2, the group have crafted a system where guests can serve themselves cocktails, but each drink adjusts the correspondent water level in a giant martini-shaped goldfish tank. To induce further guilt, both the lighting and music are also controlled via motion detectors in the tank. Other happenings include a drones hovering over your head at BUS Projects, and a public symposium "for the future automation of our civil life".

Goodtime Studios, May 2 - 10, free

The Club 3.0

This is a real life fight club. I repeat: a real life fight club. The work is brought to us by one of the festival's few international commissions — Dutch collective, New Heroes — and it looks to be every bit as gritty, dark and political as both the seminal 1996 Palahniuk novel and subsequent David Fincher film. "This is not a play," the event reads. "It's a fight club in which people can fight, talk, blow up ideas and rebuild them again. This is a club where you search for your role in society." Covering topics as dense and diverse as climate change, asylum seekers and the economic crisis, New Heroes will be calling upon willing audience members to let out frustration via their fists. But don't worry — although we may have just broken the first rule — if this is your first time at fight club, you don't have to fight.

Arts House May 1 - 4  & 7 -11, $18 - $23

For a full program of events including ticketing information, check the Next Wave website.