Who's Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank Series

Listen now to the third conversation in the Think Tank series as part of the forthcoming exhibition Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Presented in partnership with Art Projects Australia (APA), this session will be moderated by ACCA’s Public Programs Coordinator Bianca Winataputri and include contributors Dewi Cooke, Eleanor Jackson, Sim Luttin, Michael Camakaris and Ed Service.

ACCA is pleased to co-host further Think Tanks over the coming year to consider a wide array of considerations pertinent to the exhibition and the work of our partner organisations and co-hosts. The Think Tank discussions will continue to feed into the critical concerns of the overarching Who’s Afraid of Public Space? project, contributing to a polyphonic and polycentric understanding of our increasingly complex public realm.

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #3 – Visibility and Accessibility

This panel discussion explores ideas of safety, movement, surveillance, physical distancing, visibility and invisibility within Melbourne’s public spaces.

Think Tank Moderator Nur Shkembi, artist, curator and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne, and Curatorial Advisory Group member for Who’s Afraid of Public Space?, is joined by esteemed local cultural contributors including Idil Ali, writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser; Antony Hamilton, Artistic Director, Chunky Move; Nicole Kalms, Associate Professor in Department of Design and founding director of Monash University XYX Lab; and Steven Rhall, artist, curator and PhD candidate at Monash University.

This Think Tank is fourth in the series presented by ACCA and produced as part of 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?'

MTalks—Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #4: Movement of People & Safety in Public

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

Listen to our talk with artists Kim Ah Sam, Teelah George, Joel Sherwood Spring and Salote Tawale on their new works presented as part of 'Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions'.

This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 29 June 2024. Please note the quality of this podcast is interrupted towards the end of this recording. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Read more: https://acca.melbourne/program/artist-talks-kim-ah-sam-joel-sherwood-spring-and-salote-tawale/

Artist Talks: Kim Ah Sam, Teelah George, Joel Sherwood Spring and Salote Tawale

Listen to our talk with artists Andy Butler and Nicholas Smith on their new works presented as part of 'Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions'.

This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 13 July 2024.

Artist Talks: Andy Butler and Nicholas Smith

Listen to our panel discussion focusing on the lineages of queer histories on the present. Featuring the research and practices of three speakers, Angela Hesson, Patrice Sharkey and Elyssia Wilson-Heti, who variously engage with queer subcultures, aesthetics and histories, the panel will consider how these legacies have shaped or reshaped the diverse range of LGBTQI+ representation today.

This podcast was recorded at ACCA on Wednesday 21 August 2024. Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/panel-discussion-living-queer-histories/

Image: Nicholas Smith, 'chris' 2024, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artist and Haydens Gallery, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Panel discussion: Living Queer Histories

Listen to Yhonnie Scarce and Lisa Radford in conversation with Vikki McInnes, discussing their artistic practice and publication 'The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives)'..

'Concrete Archives' is the culmination of Radford and Scarce’s fieldwork to local and international sites of nuclear colonisation, genocide and memorialisation. Published by Person Books, 2024

The podcast was recorded at the book launch of 'The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives)' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art on Thursday 17 October.

Concrete Archives Book Launch | Panel Discussion: Yhonnie Scarce & Lisa Radford with Vikki McInnes

Title wall

Listen to our talk with artist Tina Stefanou, curator Elyse Goldfinch (and special guests) on her new exhibition 'You Can't See Speed'. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 05 April 2025.

'Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed' attends to the interconnected and multisensory experience of film beyond vision. The exhibition continues Stefanou’s interest in the voice as medium, from spoken sonic soundscapes to vocal techniques such as humming.

It also expands on her methodology of deep, long-term, co-creative collaboration and socially engaged practice involving interspecies-communal-performance making. Her diasporic, working-class ethic and approach to making challenges institutions of power and capitalistic logics, embedding the commons – from the planetary to the everyday – within her life and work.  

Image: Tina Stefanou and Matthew Cassar, artist talk, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2025. Photograph: Sarah Walker

Artist Talk: with Tina Stefanou

This Think Tank is the first in a series of public forums that will take place over the next twelve months that will both feed into and highlight the ideas and concerns of ACCA’s forthcoming 2021 research, publication and exhibition project, 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?'

This forum featured key thinkers in public culture, art and design to consider the impacts of the rapid turn to the digital, messaging around fear, accessibility, as well as other recent global discussions and debates around the contested nature of public space, and the shifting character of public culture.
 
Speakers: Dr Marnie Badham; Eugenia Flynn; Dr Grace McQuilten;  Professor Nikos Papastergiadis; Nur Shkembi and moderated by ACCA Artistic Director and CEO Max Delany.

Recorded on 29 April 2020. Graphic recording and hero image by Sarah Firth.

For more information visit:  acca.melbourne/program/think-tank-whos-afraid-of-public-space/

ACCA Think Tank #1: Who's Afraid Of Public Space?

A lively digital discussion, Think Tank #2 will engage with ideas of collaboration, collectivity, community engaged practice and the commons, as part of the Think Tank series as part of ACCA’s forthcoming exhibition Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Presented in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC), and moderated by FCAC Artistic Director and co-CEO Daniel Santangeli, the panel will include contributors Eugenia Flynn, Kent Morris, Roberta Joy Rich and Kate Sulan. Read more about the speakers via the link below.

ABOUT 'WHO'S AFRAID OF PUBLIC SPACE?'
Developed with an assembly of advisors and collaborators, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? is a research, publication and exhibition project which ACCA is developing over 2020–22.  ACCA has partnered with Abbotsford Convent, Arts Project Australia, Blak Dot, Bus Projects and FCAC to present a dispersed program of exhibitions and projects that consider critical ideas as to what constitutes public culture and to ask who might it be for?
More information: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/whos-afraid-of-public-space/

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #2 – Collaboration and Community

Conversations and events from Melbourne's flagship contemporary art space

Who’s Afraid of Public Space? Think Tank #3 – Visibility and Accessibility

ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

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