Baden was part of a special collaboration between Test Sites and the 2017 Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival to develop work for the public realm. This included mentoring and support for artists to develop new ideas for the public realm. Baden then went on to present his work at the Barring Yanabul event during Yirramboi.
His artistic practice questions notions of contemporary dance/lineage in relation to what it means to have an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Island contemporary practice and methods of decolonisation through an artistic medium. He is interested in the relationship between rural and urban landscapes and how escapist tendencies can have repercussions on long-term mental health and a sense of home and belonging. He identifies as a queer artist and explores how his arts practice can transform and indigenise spaces to express ideas of intersectional and critical thinking.
Baden was a participant of the Indigenous Choreographers Residency at Arts House, the Time Place Space Laboratory and most recently a delegate at the Water Futures conference as part of Asiatopa.
In the Absence of
'In the Absence of,' was about asking the general public to assist in creating the work by holding a pose from the fresco, 'Howitt's Rescue of King'. This fresco is one of a series of four, around the base of the Burke and Wills Statue just next to Melbourne's City Square. Whilst in the pose they listened to a short podcast which attempted to shift the frame of the Burke and Wills story to highlight the complexities of decolonising a heavily western architectural space.
In this test Baden explored the lack of representation of the Boonwurrung and Woi Wurrung language groups along the main streets of Melbourne. "I focused on the glorified Burke and Wills statue which depicts the expedition of the supposed first 'men' to cross the 'great continent of Australia'. Questions arose of why there was no attempt for Melbourne to become bilingual in the sense of there being a stronger presence of the local languages throughout the CBD."
With the help of five facilitators Baden developed a shared vocabulary to introduce and ask the general public to participate in the test. This was an attempt to create a live version of the fresco parallel to it that would be in a constant flux due to the nature of the task and length of the podcast.