Matters Guide to Melbourne Design Week
• Seasons in Blak Box. Photo by Barton Taylor, courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
Words and photos thanks to Melbourne Design Week, an initiative by the Victorian Government and the NGV.
With over 300 talks, symposiums, exhibitions and events, navigating Melbourne Design Week is no easy task. In an effort to distill some of the great ideas and activities that will be going down in Melbourne over the next two weeks, we've put together a list of events by some of our favourite artists, designers and thinkers.
College of the Curious
College of the Curious is an experimental obstacle course by Local Peoples applying multidisciplinary expertise and tools for creative thinking that can be missed in traditional education. The obstacle course will explore students' skills, attitudes and alternative thinking within a unique, learning landscape shaped for curiosity. Bring an open mind – your ATAR and Uber rating won’t help you here.
March 14. More info and free registration here.
100 Jobs of the Future
In an ever-evolving employment landscape, your dream job might not exist yet. Powered by Deakin University's extensive Research, Local Peoples' ‘100 Jobs of The Future’ is an interactive exhibit that sees participants examine their skills and attitudes to architect their future dream job.
March 14. More info here.
Matters Journal Issue Four Launch
The fourth issue of Matters is landing on Saturday, March 14! We're throwing a party for our readers and contributors, with a reading by Roz Bellamy, tunes by Xan, drinks thanks to Bodriggy Brewing Co. and Handpicked Wines, and a preview of our new card game, Talk Matters.
The launch is presented in partnership with our publisher, Local Peoples. Issue Four’s theme, ‘Learning the Future’, is inspired by Local Peoples’ research and design experience, tapping into in-house research and design knowledge to explore a range of ideas and concepts at the forefront of future learning.
March 14. More info and free registration here.
Seasons In Blak Box
Seasons in Blak Box is a multi-part sound work exploring the role of plants in the Kulin seasonal calendar. Audience members are invited into Blak Box – an award-winning sound pavilion designed by renowned architect Kevin O’Brien – to explore climate and seasonal variation as a cultural phenomenon, not just a weather event.
This event is curated by Aboriginal broadcaster, radio journalist, writer and sound artist Daniel Browning. Key Indigenous artists Parbin-ata Carolyn Briggs AM, Isobel Morphy-Walsh, Aunty Joy Murphy AO and Justice Nelson along with featured artists Fay Stewart-Muir and Mandy Nicholson weave story, language and anecdote in a deeply moving evocation of country.
March 12 - March 22. More info and tickets here.
• Metahaven, Eurasia (Questions on Happiness), 2018. Installation view at Institute for Contemporary Arts, London, 2018. Photo courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
• BLAKitecture- Outwards or Inwards. Photo Courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
Bas Van Abel: Dark Matter
In an age of hyper-connectivity, the mobile phone is a symbol of instant communication, but we’ve lost touch with the source of how it is made, who made it, where it comes from and the social and environmental consequences of the production process. Bas van Abel is the founder of Fairphone, the producer of the world’s first sustainable, modular smartphone and the fastest growing tech start-up in Europe. This keynote speech addresses the role of design-led business models for a future of sustainable technology.
March 18. More info here.
MTalks: BLAKitecture: Outwards or Inwards
MPavilion’s third annual BLAKitecture forum brings together Indigenous built environment practitioners on the Yaluk-ut Weelam land of the Boon Wurrung people. This year’s forum aims to centralise Indigenous voices in conversations about architecture, the representation of histories, the present state and the future of our built environments. It examines the insider-outsider dichotomy from an indigenous perspective: Standing at the edge of a site and looking in, or standing in the middle and looking out? How we can be more connected to place in our design approach, and how is place connected to a wider dynamic system?
March 16. More info here.
Metahaven: Field Report
This exhibition by renowned design team Metahaven looks at how new forms of media – specifically video media – are reshaping our experience of time. Metahaven and its work consists of filmmaking, writing, and design, and is united conceptually by interests in poetry, storytelling, propaganda, and digital superstructures.
The exhibition features the inaugural presentation of their major film and sound installation Eurasia (Questions on Happiness), 2018 in Australia. Eurasia is itself a work of art and a field report on the incongruencies of lived experience through digital media.
March 6 – May 9. More info here.
Symposium: The New Normal: The City as Synthetic Cinema
The New Normal was a two-year “speculative urbanism” think-tank run by the Moscow-based Strelka Institute. It investigated a renewed contemporary condition, and emerging opportunities for the reinvention and rearticulation of discourse in the face of the emerging technologies.
This symposium specifically examines "the City as Synthetic Cinema", bringing together various voices from adjacent backgrounds whose entry points both into the “synthetic” and “cinema” challenge conventional assumptions and explore radical new potentials.
March 12. More info here.
Film Screening: Hotel Yugoslavija
Erected in Novi Belgrade in 1969, the Hotel Jugoslavija was a mythical place. It was both a symbol and a witness to the different moments that shaped former Yugoslavia. With this journey through the times and spaces of the building, the director – of Yugoslavian origin by his mother but born and raised in Switzerland – explores both a collective unconscious and a part of his own identity.
The Australian premiere of Hotel Yugoslavija is curated by Richard Sowada – one of Australia's leading film critics and curators.
March 15, 18 & 21. More info and tickets here.
How we can be more connected to place in our design approach, and how is place connected to a wider dynamic system?
• 2019 NGV Architecture Commission In Absence by contemporary Indigenous artist Yhonnie Scarce and Melbourne architecture studio Edition Office. Photo courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
• Simona Castricum. Photo by Alex Dubois, courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
• Photo by ©Anna Kate Blair, courtesy of Melbourne Design Week.
MTalks: Experimental Architectural Writing
This writing workshop explores the relationship between architecture and writing – or, more specifically, the ways in which writing can expand and enrich our relationships with built environments.
Anna Kate Blair, a writer and cultural historian from Aotearoa, will explore a range of creative techniques for engaging with structures, introducing participants to a number of creative strategies to expand architectural and literary practice.
March 14. More info an tickets here.
Pirate Radio
NGV hosts Pirate Radio, a weekend broadcast from the Melbourne Art Book Fair with readings, reviews, music, a cavalcade of literati drop-ins, and banter with passing trade.
Hosts and guests include Melbourne sound studio Liquid Architecture and Rotterdam’s De Player; Artists Ben Landau, Jalen Lyle-Holmes and Sarah Walker; and literary collectives Field Theory and The Good Copy. Listen live at the NGV International forecourt or stream the antics via the NGV website.
March 13 - March 15. More info here.
BioCities: BioMelbourne
BioCities: Living Architecture exhibition investigates points of departure in the way we think, design and live within future urban systems. Through a series of architectural concepts located in Melbourne CBD, this exhibition explores how biological design could help us create more resilient and regenerative cities. It will also investigate how the built environment can shape new societal and cultural narratives, and help us mend our relationship with nature.
March 12 - March 22. More info here.
In Absence: Yhonnie Scarce And Edition Office
The 5th annual NGV Architecture Commission In Absence is a collaboration between contemporary artist and Kokatha and Nukunu women, Yhonnie Scarce, and Melbourne architecture studio Edition Office. In Absence is an architectural installation that invites audiences to better understand the fallacy of the premise of Terra Nullius by revealing and celebrating over 3000 generations of Indigenous design, industry and agriculture.
March 12 - March 22. More info here.
Simona Castricum
Simona Castricum is a musician and architecture academic from Melbourne/Naarm/Birrarung-ga. As a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, her work explores gender nonconforming experiences in architecture and urban space. In this talk by Writing and Concepts, she will explore how transfeminine and non-binary music spaces manifest as architectural space; what strategies can we engage to find safer spaces that destabilise normativity and sexual and gender binaries?