August 18–20, 2016
Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture
168 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne
Australia
By necessity, we tune in to some signals, and filter others out. In determining what is signal and what is noise, listening is political—all listening, all the time. As is looking: when we focus, we sharpen the subject, and exclude the rest. Consigned to the back, signals nonetheless continue to vibrate, permeating through the social and the architectural, into the atmospheric.
We want to stage a conversation about sound, art and public space. What if our own practices echo those of the larger forces that filter, groom and autotune political and aesthetic consensus? What do we hear when our listening is less selective? What processes transmit, in the background, and what alternative tuning would receive them? How might we amplify our own complicity in the correction of rogue expressions? Who is most guilty of saying nothing?
This experimental symposium brings together thinkers and performers across sound and art to consider:
–Disharmony between percept and concept
–Zero-sum games: art v state; non-state art; art’s non-state(s)
–Industrial culture in the culture industries
–(Music in) the spaces of art—on galleriability and ambient spectacularity
–Hatred of music; or the more unmusical the better
–Sensoria of the body politic
Featuring
Melbourne Art Foundation 2016 Lectures and Forums Program Keynote Speaker:
Ute Meta Bauer, Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore
Chunyin Rainbow Chan, artist, musician, Sydney
Clocks and Clouds (Kraig Grady and Terumi Narushima), band, The Austronesian Embassy of Anaphoria Island
Megan Clune, artist, composer, Sydney
Dennis Del Favero, artist, researcher, UNSW Scientia Professor, Sydney
Eric Demetriou, artist, musician, Melbourne
Sam George, artist, Melbourne
Travis John, artist, musician, Melbourne
Hou Hanru, Director of MAXXI, Rome
Evelyne Jouanno, Founder at Ars Citizen and Emergency Biennale
Caleb Kelly, writer, UNSW National Institute for Experimental Arts, Sydney
Seth Kim-Cohen, artist, writer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Johannes Kreidler, composer, artist, Germany
(no)signal, collective, Melbourne
Matthias Schack-Arnott, composer, artist, Melbourne
James Rushford, composer, artist, Melbourne
Masato Takasaka, artist, musician, Melbourne
Kalinda Vary, artist, Melbourne
Makiko Yamamoto, artist, Melbourne
Credits
Curated by Nikos Papastergiadis, Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela
The Melbourne Art Foundation would like to thank its long standing partners, The Australia Council and Creative Victoria.
Seth Kim-Cohen is a guest of Monash Art Design & Architecture
Johannes Kreidler is supported by RMIT international Artist in Residence program (iAIRt) and the Goethe Institut
With thanks to Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Gertrude Contemporary, Monash University Museum of Art, TarraWarra Museum of Art.
Melbourne Art Foundation is a not for profit organisation established in 2003 to promote contemporary art and living Australian artists.
Research Unit in Public Cultures (RUPC) – University of Melbourne focuses on transformations in public culture produced by new intersections of knowledge, media, space and mobility, within Australia and internationally.
Liquid Architecture is an australian organisation for artists working with sound.
