MPavilion

Narrate rounded out the final leg of MRelay 2016/17.

Storytelling is a tool for knowledge generation and cultural transmission. The telling of one’s personal journey can be used to share cultural history and create social cohesion. This session provided a speaker’s corner for the city, a platform for ideas to be heard and stories to be told. It was opportunity to hear from ethnically and culturally diverse voices, ages and genders. Here we investigated digital storytelling, personal and architectural narratives.

Our questions were: How can new technologies encode narrative, strengthen identity and build community? With the rise of artificial intelligence, we explore what it means to be human.

Narrate was hosted by Karen McCartney, writer and editor extraordinaire. Speakers included Aric Chen, curator of art and design at M+; Sam Cooney, publisher of The Lifted Brow; Jill Garner, Victorian Government Architect; Candy Bowers, actress, social activist; Adele Varcoe, producer and fashion designer; Kenny Pittock, Melbourne-based visual artist; and Lucy Adams, manager of homeless law at Justice Connect.

The third leg of MRelay considered the theme 'Pause'.

What happens when we stop—if we push a symbolic pause button on our lives? How is pause used as a diplomatic moment, a break in verse, a strategic instrument, a historical atonement or a connection to place? This session presented a chance to reflect on our past lives, imagined lives and future lives, and considered our environment and the surroundings we are in. How a moment of pause can result in a total reassessment and recalibration. In our technology-based society, we explored the significance of pause in creative practice, techniques of mindfulness, the importance of learning from history, paying respect to our elders and the unifying moment of a minute’s silence in a crowd.

Pause was hosted by Nayuka Gorrie, Indigenous writer and activist. Speakers includedKenny Pittock, Melbourne based artist; Julie Bernhardt, professor at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne; Penny Modra, writing and grammar nerd at The Good Copy; Sue Maslin, hugely successful film producer; Daniel Teitelbaum, head of content at School of Life Australia; Amy Muir, director of MUIR Architects; and Eugenia Flynn, CEO at The Social Studio.

The second lap of MRelay was Play.

What can be learnt from seeing Melbourne as a playground? Recent decades have seen a rise in playful practices in the public spaces, ranging from street art to skateboarding to parkour. From flash mobs to urban gardening. From performative interventions to location-based digital games. In social frameworks how can play be used as a tool to promote inclusion, and improve and increase life opportunities and boost community morale? Architecturally, how can the concept of play trigger us to rethink traditional urban infrastructure and address important social issues and challenges by creating new experience and new situations? How does being playful capture imagination and trigger creativity in public spaces? These were some of the talking points our speakers set out to to explore—namely the intersection between social engagement, interpersonal relations and the environments we inhabit.

'Play' was hosted by Christian Thompson, Australian-born London-based artist. Speakers include Mary Featherston, famed Australian designer; Natalie Thomas, Melbourne-based interdisciplinary artist; Amani Naseem, internationally acclaimed artist, researcher and games culturalist; Linda Sproul, manager of education and community programs for Museum Victoria; Rob McGauran, urban designer and architect; Bruce Gladwin, Australian artist, performance maker and theatre director; and Scott Price, ensemble member of Back to Back theatre.

MRelay 2016 jumped out of the blocks with the theme 'Cultivate'. We looked at the city as a place to nurture and, in turn, asked the question: how do we create a civic space that nurtures its inhabitants?

Can we as citizens be both productive (and products of) a city? How do we take responsibility for moulding its environmental and cultural fabric?

This session explored the power of collective consciousness and how human infrastructure can grow and maintain a healthy coexistence. From rooftop honey apiaries to asylum centre-run food trucks, to the promotion of gender equality and social enterprises, Melbourne is a resource for both edible and social opportunities. Through a myriad of interventions, all of us can acquire knowledge and develop skills that have longevity and impact on our community.

Cultivate was hosed by Peter Maddison, director of Maddison Architects and host of acclaimed television series Grand Designs Australia. Speakers included Catherine Brown, CEO of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation; Jefa Greenaway, director of Greenaway Architects, chair of Indigenous Architecture + Design Victoria; Russell Shields, Food Justice Truck manager at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre; Wendy Syfret, editor of i-D Australia; Amy Mullins, executive director of the Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia; Dr Michele Lobo, senior research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; and Kate Dundas, award-winning landscape architect and urban designer and radio presenter on 3RRR.

This event explored the concept of nothingness in scientific inquiry, sustainability, literature and cultures that express that they ‘do nothing’. Was it vague? There was nothing to worry about. This symposium brought together leading academics, thinkers and experimental artists to delve and dive, to poke and prod and explain to you, the very idea of nothingness.

On the night, international law scholar Hilary Charlesworth AM discussed the role of utopia (‘no place’) in international law; Dr Mark McMillan—a Wiradjuri man from Trangie, NSW— who researches in the area of human rights and presented the audience with all or nothing… unpacking Indigenous indifference to being legally “nothing”; founder and co-editor of the Lost Plays Database and lecturer in Shakespeare Studies Dr David McInnis explored the clues to lost plays that can be found in those which survive – clues to existence when nothing remains; Lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, and former astrophysicist, Dr Maurizio Toscano drew from the science of human consciousness, from the worlds of particle physics, cosmology and field theory to illustrate how nothing is the authentic source of the scientific imagination; Dr Trent Brown, research assistant at the Australia India Institute, spoke about how nothing has a power that we overlook in our relentless attempts to ‘do something’ and ‘be something’ as he discussed sustainability and food production; Oxford University’s Associate Professor in German and Comparative Literature Professor Barry Murnane spoke about how literature’s nothingness is extremely productive, and how writing allows nothingness to at least be evoked or somehow approximated within its fictional medium; Finally, rounding out the panel, director of the Australia-India Institute, Craig Jeffrey enunciated how young people in northern India refer to themselves as ‘doing nothing’.

At the close of the event, a sound installation was performed by nothing—a semi-automatic percussion system by sound artist Robbie Avenaim. At the talk's conclusion musician and producer Lisa Lerkenfeldt played a selection of music about nothing.

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This event was made possible by the Australia India Institute and the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation through funding for MPavilion’s series of events looking at design & science.

A leafy park, a noisy building site, a room with a view (or without) – for better or worse, the physical spaces we inhabit have a biological and psychological effect on us. Following January's 'Vital (De)signs: Sensing space through VR', we brought together a range of voices that discussed and debated the impact of the built environment on our health and wellbeing – and the game-changing potential of virtual reality. The panel included neuroscientist Professor Julie Bernhardt of The Florey Institute; architect and urban designer Dr Marcus White of Melbourne School of Design; and digital artist and academic Joel Zika of Deakin University.

Rose Hiscock moderated the session, formerly the Powerhouse Museum director and now the inaugural director of the Science Gallery Melbourne—an innovative new gallery dedicated to the collision of art and science, set to open in 2018.

This event is made possible by the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation through funding for MPavilion’s series of events looking at design & science.

In 2014 the State Government delivered its blueprint for Southbank’s Arts Precinct. The primary recommendations were driven by an urban design vision addressing the impermeable nature of the site and its disconnection from other parts of the city. Southbank is one of Melbourne’s densest residential neighbourhoods yet the lack of connection between the residents and the iconic cultural facilities remains only partially addressed.

Led by urban planner, theatre producer, choreographer and dancer Wendy Lasica and accompanied by a panel that includes MPavilion patron Naomi Milgrom, artist curator and writer Tai Snaith, architect and urban designer Rob Adams plus theatre and opera director Matt Lutton, this MTalks asked: What has happened in the last three years to address this? And if we want this part of Melbourne to “be vibrant and connected”, how can we make that happen?

Revisit Parlour at MPavilion to celebrate the launch of Marion’s List, a new public register for the women of Australian architecture. Marion’s List is created as a resource for those looking for expert commentary or input, and for those wanting to be involved in the people of architecture’s public culture—things like talks, panels, juries, teaching and much more! With Marion’s List, Parlour hopes that we need never again hear: ‘We asked a woman, but she wasn’t available.’ Marion’s List is also a space to be seen, a place to reimagine what an architect looks like and does, and introduce the myriad of women involved in Australian architecture and other built environment disciplines.

Hear Parlour’s Karen Burns and guest speaker Amy Mullins, director of the Women’s Leadership Institute of Australia, on why Marion’s List matters and the importance of women participating in the public culture of architecture.

Despite the fact that the built environment affects all of us daily, directing our movements and shaping how we live, it remains determined by a male-dominated property industry.

This panel focused on representation of women across all fields of decision-making in the built environment from policy to design, and looks at ways to support, promote and increase gender equality across the industry. Listen back to this MTalks panel, a part of the always-engaging High Density Happiness series of talks presented by Open Journal, and join Amy Mullins, Laura Philips, Danielle Savio and Angus McNaughton.

Many young people in northern India argue that to survive in the subcontinent today you need jugaad. This is a Hindi word which means “a hack”—the shrewd use of available resources to find an ingenious solution. The classic Indian image of jugaad is a wooden ox cart that has been fitted with a modern engine, but it can describe everything from a form of housing to a way of acting in a government office, from a style of clothing to an approach to managing labour—search jugaad on Google images to be enlightened.

For this fun and accessible talk, Craig Jeffrey examined how young people in rural India think about jugaad. Young people value the concept. But youth also argue that uncritical celebration of jugaad can let the state off the hook because it distracts attentions from the need to improve education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Jugaad may be both a form of agency and a symptom of marginalisation.