Listen to artists Lauren Burrow and Nicholas Mangan as they discuss their works featured in the exhibition 'A Biography of Daphne'.

​‘A Biography of Daphne’ is a curatorial project that revisits the Classical myth of Daphne as the starting point for an investigation of trauma and metamorphosis, symbiosis and entanglement in contemporary art. Daphne, the nymph who turned into a tree to evade the assault of the god Apollo, is a figure in, and of, crisis, but also a symbol of resistance and transformation.

Read more here: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/a-biography-of-daphne/

A Biography of Daphne Artist Talks: Lauren Burrow and Nicholas Mangan

Employment: Art, labour and changing modes of working

This program is part of ACCA’s 2021 Lecture Series, Experimental Institutionalism: Contemporary Art and Curatorial Ecologies and features two short lectures by Alana Kushnir and Julieta Aranda followed by a conversation with ACCA Curator Miriam Kelly.

Alana Kushnir explores collaboration, labour and scaling-up the artist’s studio in the context of the contemporary art ecology, and Julieta Aranda examines our relationship – as beings, as humans, as artists, as cultural workers – to the toxic environments that we have created.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Alana Kushnir an art lawyer, curator, art advisor and Director and Founder of Guestwork Agency based in Melbourne, Australia. She is the Principal Investigator of the Serpentine Galleries R&D Platform Legal Lab and a sessional lecturer at The University of Melbourne, teaching subjects on curating, contemporary art and art law.

Julieta Aranda is an artist and co-director of the online platform e-flux. Her artistic practice spans installation, video, and print media, with a special interest in the creation and manipulation of artistic exchange and the subversion of traditional notions of commerce through art making. 

Read more, including full speaker biographies here: https://acca.melbourne/program/experimental-institutionalism-employment/

Read more about the series here: https://acca.melbourne/series/experimental-institutionalism-2021

Experimental Institutionalism: Employment with Alana Kushnir and Julieta Aranda

Electronic: Modelling the digital present and tools for the future

Speakers: Seb Chan and Sahej Rahal

Seb Chan is the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where he is responsible for a holistic, multi-channel, visitor-centred design strategy for the institution. Until August 2015, he was Director of Digital & Emerging Media, at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. There he led the museum’s digital renewal and its transformation into an interactive, playful new museum reopened after a 3-year rebuilding and reimagining. His team’s work won awards from the American Association of Museums and Museums and the Web, One Club, D&AD, Fast Company Innovation by Design, Core77 Design Awards, and has been featured in Slate, The Verge, Fast Company and elsewhere.

A sculptor, coder, painter and performer, Sahej Rahal is a graduate of the Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Art, Mumbai. He has been a recipient of a number of residencies including Bar1, Bangalore, 2011; FUTUR foundation, Zurich, 2011; INLAKS Shivdasani Foundation sponsored residency at KHOJ international artists’ association, New Delhi, 2013. Rahal has presentd work in major solo and group projects, including recently at Akademie Schloss Solitude & ZKM Center for Art and Media, Stuttgart, Germany in 2018, at the Vancouver Biennale and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2019, in the 2020 Gwangju Biennale, and as part of Transmediale.

Experimental Institutionalism: Electronic with Seb Chan and Sahej Rahal

Listen to N’arweet Carolyn Briggs AM, Sarah Lynn Rees, Andrew Atchison, Stephanie Pahnis, Lauren Crockett, Nicola Cortese, Timothy Moore, and John Tanner as they share their approaches to transforming ACCA’s four galleries to become civic spaces: Gathering Space: Nargee Djeembana, Education Space: Creating Art in Public, Reading Space: The Common Room, and Project Space: The Hoarding.

Artist Talks: Who’s Afraid of Public Space? – Onsite exhibition spaces

Join artists Jon Campbell, Guled Abdulwasi, and Laresa Kosloff at ACCA as they discuss their commissioned works as part of Who’s Afraid of Public Space? offsite projects.

Artist Talks: Who's Afraid of Public Space? – Offsite projects #2

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the first in their series of discussions about experimental modes of sharing information.

Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library unpack the role of the contemporary art librarian.

Forum Series: Distribution
What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information?

The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information.

Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Distribution series #1: Introduction to Art Librarianship

Listen to ACCA’s Artist Educator and Curator of the Education Space Andrew Atchison with artists Ross Coulter, Eugenia Lim and  James Nguyen for a discussion about art and working in public space. This program is associated with the Education Space: Creating Art in Public, a hybrid studio, classroom and gallery designed to promote active participation with, and careful consideration of, public art practices and the diverse and inventive approaches artists adopt when creating artwork for public space.

Artist Talks: Education Space with Ross Coulter, Eugenia Lim and James Nguyen

Urbanists and planners need to engage in broader and messier practices if they are to design inclusive and accessible public spaces. The production of space is as much a social and political process, as a physical one, and identities of places are often latent, contested and invisible. A new genre of artists and creative practitioners are engaging in public space, using site-based practices that catalyse new uses, build new constituencies, and amplify marginalised voices.

Moderated by Mel Dodd, this roundtable event brings together five leading creative practitioners from Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) – Gene Bawden, N’arweet Carolyn Briggs, Emily Floyd, Timothy Moore and Sarah Lynn Rees – all working in the public realm, to reveal a more representative city and explore the ways we can make spaces truly public.

Making Spaces Public

Creative practice researchers: Prof Carol Brown, Dr Troy Innocent, and A/Prof Linda Knight, chaired by Rachel Iampolski addresses how artistic practices offer insurgent modes for developing reconnection with urban spaces after a prolonged lockdown, and sustained anxiety around public spaces.

The panel shares their practical and creative approaches for being in the world and the key role that insurgent artistic modes will play in redeveloping our confidence in public space. The experimental visual art practices, digital and gestural drawing, sound art and sonic practices, walking, creative movement, performance and installations explore emotion and affect, aesthetics, the sensorial as well as conflict, tension and congestion, and activism and play in the post-pandemic urban space. Collectively the panel advocates for the generative potential of insurgent modes for urban reconnection.

Insurgent modes for urban reconnection: Scaling, augmenting, and counter-mapping public space

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the final in their series of discussions about the values of the public library.  Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library discuss the purpose and complexities of developing a community library collection and archives.

Forum Series: Distribution

What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information?

The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information. 

Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Distribution series #3: Publishing Art Serials

This conversation was recorded in association with the exhibition 'Frances Barrett: Meatus', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 19 June 2022.

In this conversation we hear from artist and curator Frances Barrett and from Daniel Mudie Cunningham, who is head of Programming at Carriageworks.
 
'Frances Barrett: Meatus' forms part of Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship, an initiative designed to support a solo exhibition by Australian-based female artists who work in performance and installation. Over the past two years this has included exhibitions at the Museum of Old and New Art, and Carriageworks, and at ACCA, as well as a nationally touring iteration.
 
In this conversation, Frances and Daniel discuss 'Meatus', as well as the influence on both their practises of the late Australian performance artist Katthy Cavaliere, whose life and work is honoured in the exhibition series.

In Conversation: Frances Barrett and Daniel Mudie Cunningham

This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022.

In this Artist Talk we hear from exhibiting artists Lucina Lane, Betty Muffler and JD Reforma.

Artist Talks: Lucina Lane, Betty Muffler and JD Reforma

Listen to our Artist Talks with Gian Manik, Jason Phu and Jahnne Pasco-White.

This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022.

Artist Talks: Gian Manik, Jason Phu and Jahnne Pasco-White

Listen to the lecture by editor Mykaela Saunders speaking on the critically acclaimed anthology 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'.

'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW' is the world’s first anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us.

This critically acclaimed anthology was a collective undertaking, and editor Mykaela Saunders discusses how she worked with others at each different stage of the project. From the first conception of the anthology through to publication and beyond, Mykaela has ensured that the project has been built from good relationality – the very stuff that all healthy communities are made of.

Mykaela Saunders is an award-winning Koori and Lebanese writer, teacher and community researcher, and the editor of the critically acclaimed 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW', the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP).

This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Thursday 4 August 2022, 6–8pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-concepts-lecture-with-mykaela-saunders/

Image: Cover, 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'. Courtesy Mykaela Saunders and University of Queensland Press

WRITING & CONCEPTS Lecture with Mykaela Saunders

Listen to the in conversation with artist Paul Yore and Nick Henderson, volunteer committee member at the Australian Queer Archives, and Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. They will be discussing Yore’s extensive survey exhibition 'Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH', unpacking the past fifteen years of his practice, with a focus on the major new immersive installation commissioned by ACCA.

This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Saturday 1 October, 5–6pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/paul-yore-in-conversation-with-nick-henderson

Image: Paul Yore, 'WORD MADE FLESH' 2022, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis.

Paul Yore In Conversation With Nick Henderson

This recording is part of a video commissioned for 'Writing in the Expanded Field IV: Touching Feeling Writing' developed in conjunction with ACCA’s exhibition ‘Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH’ (23 September – 20 November 2022). The digital publishing project exploring new compositional modes and publics for art writing will be released in early 2023.

Credits: 
Rebecca Bracewell, sound editor 
Sofie McClure, videographer 
Lucinda Strahan, editor and program leader 
Loni Jeffs, editorial coordinator 
Michaela Bear, participant 
Ange Crawford, participant 
Mig Dann, participant 
Rachel Keir-Smith, participant  
Carmen-Sibha Keiso, participant 
Shari Kocher, participant 
Josephine Mead, participant 
Nasim Patel, participant 
Sofia Stavrou, participant 
Denise Thwaites, participant

Presented in partnership with RMIT University non/fictionLab.

Read more and watch the video here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-in-the-expanded-field-iv-touching-feeling-writing/

Writing in the Expanded Field IV: Touching Feeling Writing (Audio-only)

Listen to artist Mithu Sen in conversation with Max Delany, ACCA’s Artistic Director & CEO, alongside special guests Irina Aristarkhova, Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and Digital Studies Institute of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Deepanjana Klein, Director of Acquisitions and Development, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). 

They discuss Sen’s major solo exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE', which surveys the past two decades of her compelling art practice, including a series of major new installations.

This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Monday 24 April, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA).

Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/mithu-sen-in-conversation

Image: Mithu Sen, Museum of unbelongings 2016. Courtesy the artist

Mithu Sen in conversation

Listen to writer and curator Laura Raicovich discuss the artworks and methodologies that inform Mithu Sen’s exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE' in relation to Raicovich’s own practice which calls for institutional change to improve cultural spaces.

This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Tuesday 16 May, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA).

Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/laura-raicovich-undoing-and-redoing/

Image: Opening event, 'Mithu Sen: mOTHERTONGUE' 2023, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Casey Horsfield

Laura Raicovich: Undoing and Redoing

Through a series of media and artworks, Mimi Ọnụọha’s performance lecture explores absence, knowledge, and how what is missing is still there.

Mimi Ọnụọha Performance Lecture

Roe v. Wade is overturned while gene editing is opening entirely new reproductive futures. What does kin mean as reproductive technologies shift our relationships? How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it begins?.

‘The Surrogate project began with a desire to serve as a surrogate. During the pregnancy, the parents would have an app I made that provides 24/7 access to all my biodata, and an interface to control me. So in essence, they could have complete control over my body in which their baby is growing.

The past few years of the pandemic have reshaped our bodily boundaries. We’ve swabbed and spit in tubes and traded ownership of our bodily substances in an attempt to feel safe. But these fluids hold the data of our DNA, our personal information, and our identity.

I’m fascinated by the ways we’re taught to interact with data, and how this shapes the way we interact with each other. Central to my work is a critique of the simultaneous technological and social systems we’re building around ourselves. What are the rules? What happens when we introduce glitches?’

Lauren Lee McCarthy In Conversation With Jenny Kennedy

Listen to the performance lecture 'Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae, or, Does an AI God Have an Ass?' by exhibiting artist Zach Blas exploring the idea of religious-un/conscious thriving in today’s tech industry. Charting his encounters with various artificial intelligence gods, Blas tells of a computational world of divine judgment and devout submission, where artificial intelligence exists alongside mystical glyphs, occult sigils, captured bodies, and corporate transcendence. Through a consideration of religious sermons, offerings of worship, and spiritual iconography, an AI religiosity is traced, in which flesh becomes biometric and emotional crying transmutes into a symbolic language of holy quantification.

Zach Blas Performance Lecture

Listen to performance lectures 'Loops, Echoes, Phonophanies, and other Détournments' by Suvani Suri and 'Listening to Misrecognition' by Thao Phan, as well as an Artist Talk with Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne on their new digital commission 'Offset'.

Suvani Suri with Aasma Tulika, Uzma Falak, Shareeka Helaluddin, Mehak Sawhney

What is the sound of racialisation? How might we listen to misrecognition? What does machine error tell us about the precision of racism? And how can the tools of a racist system be used to transcribe new forms of resistance?

This experimental presentation is a collaboration between feminist technoscience researcher Thao Phan and Machine Listening, an ongoing investigation and experiment in collective learning, instigated by artist Sean Dockray, legal scholar James Parker, and researcher, curator and artist Joel Stern. Part lecture and part performance, this event brings together critical work on race and algorithmic culture with new techniques for dissecting and analysing automatic speech recognition, applied to personal and public archives drawn from Thao’s life and research. It features a discussion and demonstration of the Word Processor tool, developed in 2021 by the Machine Listening team and Reduct, a US-based tech company co-founded by the artist Robert Ochschorn.

Thao Phan Performance lecture: Listening to Misrecognition

Listen to exhibition artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne for a talk about their new digital commission 'Offset' on the ACCA Digital Wing.

Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne Launch of 'Offset'

Listen to the artist talk with Maria Kozic speaking about her iconic series 'Calendar Girls' 1999 presented in ACCA’s current exhibition 'From the other side' (9 December 2023 – 3 March 2024).

Maria Kozic works across painting, sculpture, photography and film. Her practice has often drawn on the depictions and tropes of women, monsters and creatures in horror and exploitation films. Through the lens of gender and feminist politics, she is known for engaging with cult cinema, music, popular culture, advertising and DIY punk aesthetics.

Maria Kozic has been included in major solo and group exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Posteritati Gallery, New York; Soho Arts Festival, New York.

Maria Kozic is represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne.

This recording was made at ACCA on Saturday 17 February 2024.

Maria Kozic Artist Talk

Listen to ACCA's lecture 'Building a post-revolutionary world through the 8th Yokohama Triennale' with Carol Yinghua Lu, art historian, curator, and current Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. Alongside Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu is also co-Artistic Director of the 8th Yokohama Triennale 2024.

Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/building-a-post-revolutionary-world-through-the-8th-yokohama-triennale/

This recording was made at ACCA on Monday 26 February 2024.

Lecture with Carol Yinghua Lu

Listen to ACCA's in conversation with Barbara Creed, author and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne alongside Lisa French, Professor and Dean in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.

This program was recorded on Wednesday 28 February as part of the official book launch of Barbara Creed's new book 'Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema'.

Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/book-launch-barbara-creed-return-of-the-monstrous-feminine-feminist-new-wave-cinema-2022/

In conversation with Barbara Creed and Lisa French

Listen to ACCA's in conversation with Laure Prouvost and Annikka Kristensen, following a screening of 'They Parlaient Idéale' 2019.

This program was recorded on Monday 18 March at ACMI as part of ACCA's exhibition 'Laure Prouvost: Oui Move In You'.

Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/screening-and-keynote-with-laure-prouvost-in-conversation-with-annika-kristensen/

Keynote with Laure Prouvost in conversation with Annika Kristensen

This episode featuring Idil Ali is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-four-idil-ali/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE: 
In this episode of Six Walks, storyteller Idil Ali guides you through an extended period of over ten years of gentrification at the Carlton Housing Estate. Based on her personal perspective, having grown up and witnessed the effect of this gentrification on both herself and her community, Idil attempts to dig up memories buried underneath an updated infrastructure.

Idil Ali is a proud Somali woman raised by the east African community in the Carlton flats. A settler on unceded Wurundjeri land, Idil embeds her belief in freedom, sovereignty and resistance into her work as a writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser. 

Curator: Annika Kristensen
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation. 

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 4: Idil Ali on the Carlton Housing Estate

This episode featuring Tony Birch is part of Six Walks an audio walking tour series commissioned by ACCA – Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

Find bio, access notes, images and further information here: https://acca.melbourne/six-walks-episode-one-tony-birch/

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
Tony Birch’s walk, along a section of the Birrarung (Yarra) river from the Children’s Farm at Collingwood to the Fairfield ‘pipe-bridge’ and surrounding country, is located on the land of the Wurundjeri People of the greater Kulin Nation. Each time we walk we consider the privilege of being on Wurundjeri land and pay respect not only to their Elders – past, present and emerging – but all of their people. The Birrarung River is an ancient waterway. It precedes the birth of what we know today as Port Phillip Bay by tens of thousands of years. Prior to the formation of Port Phillip Bay and Bass Strait, during the end of the Ice Age, the Birrarung flowed across a land mass known as the Bassian Plains, that joined what we know today as Victoria and Tasmania. The ancient Birrarung eventually flowed into the Southern Ocean. While the contemporary Birrarung River has changed significantly over thousands of years, we know that the original bed of the Ice Age river remains, and can be located around 100 metres below Port Phillip Bay at the heads of the bay. The significance of this geological, cultural and spiritual reality should not be lost on us as we walk by the river today. We are sharing a story of both the past and the present, enmeshed in the country beneath our feet.

Tony Birch is an award winning author. He is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio, a regular guest at writers’ festivals, and a climate justice campaigner. Read the full bio via the link above.

Curators: Annika Kristensen and Miriam Kelly
Audio technician: Simon Cotter

ABOUT THE SERIES:
Six Walks has been conceived to be ideally listened to in situ, with headphones on a personal mobile device. Maps, directions and access notes are available with each walk to assist with orientation.

ACCA reminds participants to be aware of their surroundings and to adhere to road safety guidelines at all times. Please note that when undertaking a walk, participants must assume personal responsibility for any liability, injury, loss, or damage in any way connected with their experience of Six Walks.

Six Walks can also be listened to from anywhere and at any time and Text versions of each walk are available for download.

ACCA acknowledges the support of Creative Victoria in the development of the Six Walks series.

Six Walks Ep 1: Tony Birch on the Birrarung

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Popular tracks by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)