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From artist-run initiatives to academic networks, Dr Andrew Brooks has carved a distinctive path through the intersections of research, teaching and creative collaboration. A lecturer in media and culture in the School of Arts & Media, Brooks is also a writer, artist and co-founder of the critical art collective Snack Syndicate.Ìý

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m a lecturer in media and culture based in the School of the Arts & Media. My work focuses on race and racism, policing and abolition, and the aesthetics and political economy of social movements. I’m interested in trying to uncover the historical dynamics of contemporary crises, to understand how we might intervene in them. This work is interdisciplinary and I’m an active member of a number of different research groups including: co-director of the »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ Media Futures Hub; investigator with the ; member of the »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ Centre for Criminology, Law and Justice; and founding member of the .Ìý

My background is in the creative arts and I spent time working in artistic collectives and artist-run initiatives before beginning a PhD at »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ Art & Design in 2013. I continue to work collaboratively with Astrid Lorange as the critical art collective  and remain committed to producing creative critical research. After I finished my PhD, I did what many do and taught on a session-by-session basis across fine art, critical theory and literature programs at several different institutions. I was fortunate to work as a deputy editor at the Sydney Review of Books before landing an ongoing teaching and research job at »Ê¹Ú²ÊƱ in 2020. I currently teach courses that examine the histories and politics of data and media technologies.Ìý

What or who sparked your interest in this area of research?

In part my research emerges from the experience of negative racialisation and seeks to make sense of the different forces across history that have naturalised racial hierarchies, and that continue to leave some people vulnerable to premature death. Another significant influence on my research was my various experiences of collective life, from playing in bands to working in with artistic collectives to co-writing to collective politics. In many ways, my research is trying to better understand how and why political or artistic movements form, and what sustains them. Sharing the classroom with students as an experiment in collectivity sustains my interest in this study.Ìý 

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on two monographs. The first, Shouts and Whispers: Fugitive Listening and the Politics of Noise, is a study of the noise of contemporary social movements that take the form of things like riots and blockades. The book considers the relationship between global economic downturn and racialised state violence by listening to the noise of collective dissent. The second, The Art of Unmaking: Abolition and Aesthetics in Australia, is a co-authored project with my long-term collaborator, Astrid Lorange. The project examines the relationship between contemporary art and abolition by reading paintings by Vincent Namatjira and Helen Johnson; installations by Archie Moore and Raphaela Rosella; and the 1972 protest action, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy alongside key moments in the history of Australia as a settler colony. The project tracks the centrality of police power to settler-colonial rule and its racial regimes. Extending from these two projects, I’m in the early stages of research looking at the role automated technologies play in the policing of public space, especially in relation to protest.

What do you find most rewarding about being a researcher?

I love that research affords the capacity to follow problems into history to uncover their internal dynamics. I’m influenced by the cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall, whose scholarship was always oriented to the possibility of intervention: in ideology, discourse, politics, representation, and so on. For me, this approach requires embracing the sociality of study, recognising that it is something best done with other people both inside and outside the walls of the academy. It’s a thrill to have your ideas extended, challenged, critiqued, affirmed by friends, comrades, colleagues and students.

What advice would you give to someone about to transition into academia?

I’m hesitant to give advice, considering the constantly shifting terrain that is the higher education sector. Perhaps the one thing I would suggest is to try to find a way to make the work you do sustainable from the beginning. For me, that has depended on finding other people who approach research with a similar ethos.

To learn more about Dr Andrew Brooks' research, projects and achievements, visit his Researcher Profile.