ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

We need to talk: with Tschabalala Self and Myles Russell-Cook

September 21, 2025·47 min·3 clips

Self defines submission as submitting to “the reality of you being a soul having a human experience.”

The room is clearly present. Before the show comes into view, the speaker pauses on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people and the Kulin Nations. It is not treated as a quick bit of protocol. The talk gives that acknowledgement some weight, staying with custodianship, country, and the generations carried through it. The mood is formal, but not stiff. You can hear the care in the handoffs, the thanks, and the way the conversation makes space before moving on. Beauty becomes the main pressure point. The interviewer describes the artist's commitment to beauty as a kind of resistance, not just a matter of style. The artist answers from lived experience. Moving to upstate New York in 2023 changed how she saw the natural world, especially its force and sublimity. Nature, here, is not a pretty backdrop. It teaches. She sets that against arts education and city life, where awe can get tied to human-made structures and old assumptions. Again and again, the conversation comes back to choice. Beauty is treated as a practice, a way of paying attention, and a way of making. The final question brings the scale down. Asked what viewers should take away, the artist hopes they learn something about her and, in the end, about themselves. The work is offered as a place for recognition, revelation, or a small shift in how a person understands being human. The ending keeps its warmth: thanks, applause, and institutional gratitude around an artist whose practice keeps returning to beauty, generosity, and change.

As heard by us

A grounded conversation about beauty, work, and resistance.

ACCA's new We Need to Talk series starts with a conversation about beauty as work, value, and resistance. The discussion stays close to the artist's own references: the natural world, arts education, and the move to upstate New York in 2023.

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Why you'd press play

If you want beauty treated as a serious artistic choice, this is your next play.

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