The Drawing Room

What does it mean to look at Hong Kong as a local? To acknowledge the weight of history amid the current struggles for independence.

Blue Island, the new film by Chan Tze-Woon blurs the lines between documentary and re-enactment, between past and present, and uses cinema to interrogate what it means to be part of Hong Kong.

Mohawks, piercings, studs, and boots: when the punk rock scene first started in Australia, the symbols were as loud as the music.

It was a rejection of authority; a challenge to the conservative politicians and police, who pushed back hard.

But it was also a community, a generation of activists, and a scene that left a lasting musical legacy.

In her debut feature documentary, Age of Rage, Jennifer Ross has taken a look back at the Australian punk scene of the 1980s and 1990s.

Over a decade of writing, recording, releasing and touring, Big Scary gathered an enviable reputation, building to critical acclaim and the commercial success of their 2016 album, Animal.

The band stepped off the relentless treadmill of the music industry for a time, but last year they announced their return with the synth-led Daisy, and they've quickly followed that up with the new album, Me and You.

In the Drawing Room, Tom Iansek and Jo Syme chat about growing up, gaining confidence, and freedom as a mark of success.

When Douglas Rushkoff was invited to speak at an exclusive retreat, he prepared for questions like 'Bitcoin or Ethereum?'. What he wasn't expecting to be asked was "How do I maintain authority over my security force after 'the event'?"

War, disease, climate change, societal collapse, whatever it was that would signal the end of society, these men wanted his opinions on the best ways to survive and thrive in the aftermath.

And that got him thinking about why some of the most privileged men in the world were expecting everything to come crashing down.

In the Drawing Room, Douglas chats about the problems with eternal growth, finding what really matters, and his latest book Survival of the Richest.

How does the place we live in shape the way we live? And does the built environment define our roles within the home, and our relationship to the people and the world outside of it?

Tatiana Bilbao is a prize-winning architect and in her installation piece at the NGV, she examines the communal washing spaces that were once common, and how modern society has hidden the impact of domestic work.

Honor Eastly's ABC podcast, No Feeling Is Final, was a searingly honest examination of mental health and her search for answers to the big questions: of what it means to feel helpless and why we should strive to stay alive.

It went on to spark conversations and win awards around the world, and Honor became a key advisor to the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System.

Now, No Feeling is Final is taking on a new form: as a live stage show. In the Drawing Room, Honor and her sister, Amy Haywood, talk about the show and how their own relationship has changed since the podcast was released.

Premiering at the Cannes film festival earlier this year, Thomas M Wright's sophomore film, The Stranger, is inspired by a real act of unthinkable violence, but isn't a movie about the violence itself.

Instead it examines the cost of befriending a man you believe to be a killer, in the service of bringing him to justice.

In the Drawing Room, Wright talks about good and evil, darkness and light, and the cost of telling stories.

For millennia, people have sought out the finest scents, first exploring nearby lands and eventually creating trade routes which spanned the globe.

But what repels or attracts us so strongly to a particular smell?

And if you had to describe the scent of a rose, could you do better than calling it 'rosey' or 'floral'?

In the Drawing Room, Elise Pearlstine explains the science, the stories, and the language of scent.

History has many layers and, often, underneath a simple surface, is a deep and complicated past.

That is perhaps especially true in Australia, where the tens of thousands of years before colonisation can be obscured by more recent events.

In their new exhibition together, the red thread of history, loose ends, renowned Australian artists Judy Watson and Helen Johnson take to the canvas to investigate the continent's past and their own reaction to it.

What does it mean to be part of a community? And to what extent are we defined by our relationships?

In the Drawing Room, Sally Olds takes us from largely forgotten fraternal orders to the communal experience of a nightclub, explores post-work politics and polyamory and discusses her new collection of essays, People Who Lunch.