Soft Centre 2025
Expanding to 4 days and 5 venues, SOFT CENTRE 2025 presents a multi-sensory program of world premieres, boundary-pushing performances, immersive installations, and subversive club culture. From the cavernous White Bay Power Station to the Chauvel Cinema and hidden late-night venues, the festival gathers an international cohort of radical creators, including Ryoji Ikeda, Stelarc, Young Boy Dancing Group, Robin Fox, and Pink Siifu. This year’s lineup includes transhumanist performance, expanded cinema, algorithmic audiovisual environments, durational installations, and live music from dubstep to death metal. Highlights include Stelarc’s workshop and new work Amplified Body, discussions with Liz Pelly and Dana Dawud, and the Australian premiere of Team Rolfes’ VR-based The Mustang Speedrun. Saturday’s festival day showcases over 40 artists in an industrial-scale event program co-curated with NTS Radio and CTM Berlin, while Sunday’s closing concert offers ambient transcendence from Malibu and Aarti Jadu, culminating in Ikeda’s breathtaking Ultratronics. Fiercely interdisciplinary and politically attuned, SOFT CENTRE affirms its position as Australia’s leading festival of avant-garde expression, where art, technology, and collective imagination converge.
SOFT CENTRE is running from August 28 to 31, 2025
Image credit: Jordan Munns, Soft Centre, Carriageworks, 2022
