Antidote 2019

Overview

UPDATE: AUGUST 30, 2019 — Sonic Youth guitarist and vocalist Kim Gordon has cancelled her Antidote appearance due to health reasons. Ticket holders will receive a refund from the Sydney Opera House. Antidote is now only running for one day, on Sunday, September 1.

Antidote — the Sydney Opera House festival of ideas, action and change — will return for its third round this August, bringing with it an all-star lineup of the world's leading minds and pioneering creatives. They'll facilitate and lead the necessary conversations of our time during a day of talks on Sunday, September 1.

This year, the festival has partnered with the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, which will co-curate two sessions focusing on authoritarian environments, free speech and debates on society's most controversial issues, as well as a panel on climate change (and whether the media has reported on it accurately). Other key topics in this year's program include 'fake news', national identity, the weaponisation of social media, creative responses to political and social turmoil and the surveillance of 'big data' and the resurgence of binge cultures.

Included on the massive international lineup are Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie, Rappler founder Maria Ressa (one of TIME Magazine's People of 2018), Black Lives Matter activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero DeRay Mckesson, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll, and Russian cyber security journalists (and co-founders of the respected Agentura. Ru) Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.

Also making appearances is Thae Yong-ho, the former North Korea deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom; Mausi Segun, the executive director of Human Right Watch's Africa Division; and Lina Attalah (TIME Magazine's New Generation Leader), co-founder of Egyptian newspaper Mada Masr.

Australian heavy hitters to join the party include ABC International Affairs analyst Stan Grant, The Guardian journalist Brigid Delaney and The Sydney Morning Herald's national editor Tory Maguire, who will host a live recording of the podcast Please Explain.

On Monday, July 15, a second round of speakers were announced, including Denise Ho, a key figure in Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, The Washington Post's Beijing Bureau Chief Anna Fifield, CEO of First Peoples Disability Network Damian Griffis and Peter Greste, an award-winning foreign correspondent. New panels have been added, too, and see the addition of talks on alternative models of housing, the economics of disability, the mapping of Australia's colonial frontier massacres and pop culture obsessions.

Antidote's popular workshop series will return, too, featuring a collective tarot reading, a 'how to' hairdo tutorial for dads, native tea making and a free Auslan workshop thanks to the Deaf Society.

In terms of interactive art, you'll find a free exhibition by Delhi-based photographer Gauri Gill on the Western Boardwalk, a short film about social connections in the Lounge and Sydney artist Jason Phu's public performance work, which features a "procession of masked 'spirits' protesting against humanity's impact on the earth". Watch out for that one.

Image: Letícia Almeida