MPavilion

Language is all around us. We overhear people speaking on mobile phones, we read huge quantities of words online, and we see phrases and idioms on billboards, on t-shirts and in shop windows. If every word were a drop of rain, we’d drown in a flood each and every day. But what are we to do with all this language? Listen to writer, editor and printer Robert Wood in this lunchtime session exploring how key thinkers—and their ideas—have shaped the field of poetry. Through interactive exercises, we’ll put some of their ideas into practice, and explore how we might apply their wisdom in our own lives. #MPavilion

Following her curious, caterpillar-like performances as The Buddhist Bug on opening weekend of the eighth Asia Pacific Triennial (APT8) at QAGOMA in Brisbane, Cambodian artist Anida Yoeu Ali came to MPavilion for an in-depth discussion with Sarah Bond, director of visual arts at Asialink Arts. Anida discusses her interdisciplinary practice—and, specifically, illuminates us about her APT8-commissioned works as ‘the bug’, an ongoing project that embodies ideas of otherness and hybridity, and highlights the transformation and renewal Anida sees in Cambodia’s changing rural and metropolitan landscapes. So settle in as Anida and Sarah delve into the realm of contemporary art practice in Cambodia and beyond.

Got an apartment to make? Join Chris McCue, director of architecture at Carr Design Group, for a workshop that saw an apartment collaboratively take shape, from floor plan to fittings and fixtures. Sharpen your pencils and start jotting down ideas. #MPavilion

What makes us Australian in 2015, individually and collectively? And how are our diverse selves represented in art, design and stories? Listen here and find the answers—via a panel discussion courtesy of video arts festival Channels and the UK’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT). A satellite event of the Human Futures Forum—an international “symposium on place” hosted by FACT at their headquarters in Liverpool—this talk was all about memory, time, space and contemporary identity.

Author and academic Dr Tony Birch, Dr Sara Wills (who teaches Australian migration issues, and who holds a particular interest in migrant memory), artist Steven Rhall (whose interdisciplinary practice responds to cultural landscapes) and artist Siying Zhou (who focuses on subjects such as nomad tradition, religion and globalisation) peered through the lenses of Australian visual culture, migrant history and storytelling to explore their roles in forming our modern-day Australian psyche. Join in the global conversation, #MPavilion

“If the Anthropocene is how we label our current geologic epoch, then its cultural corollary is the Anthroposcenic, an era in which our understanding of nature and culture are re-integrated.” —William L Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment, Reno, Nevada

Before his address at NGV International, William L Fox took a seat at MPavilion for a chat with Guy Abrahams (co-founder and CEO of CLIMARTE) in a lunchtime discussion about how art and nature are merging in this Anthroposcenic age. Is it good for art? Is it good for Earth? Can art help us through the environmental challenges we face—and have, in an extraordinarily large part, created? And should it? Listen back on the conversation, as William and Guy explored creative human interventions on the environment—and questioned if we can, or should, harness art’s power for our own benefit.

It’s time for Consortium, round two! This brought Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and Next Wave presenting the second in our series of conversations about the issues within (and surrounding) emerging and experimental art and design.

At our inaugural discussion, a panel of artists, writers and feminists spoke honestly and thoughtfully about art’s many invisible hands. This time around, we dived into the choppy waters of art and gentrification. Gertrude Contemporary director Emma Crimmings will chat to artists Zanny Begg, Sean Dockray and Phillip Adams about how gentrification creates a lack of affordable housing—and how this affects arts organisations.

How can galleries, studios, festivals and practices critically engage with the issues surrounding gentrification while creatively developing sustainable—and affordable—spaces for art? What will happen to art and artists if rent continues to skyrocket? #MPavilion

Between 30 November and 11 December 2015, COP21—the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference—will, after twenty years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

While nation leaders will make the ultimate decisions at the conference, contributions (or interventions) to the negotiations can and should come from everywhere across the world, from every part of society, from every person, young and old. So what can Melburnians do to make an impact, to make a difference, to have our voices heard? What about big cities and country towns, artists and NGOs? And will any of it make any difference at all?

Presented by Oceania’s division of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI Oceania), this panel included Cathy Oke, City of Melbourne councillor; Guy Abrahams, co-founder and CEO of CLIMARTE; and Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, climate change campaign manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation. Listen in and raise your hand as the discussion asks what climate action we can take to stay under the tipping point and how we can get our leaders to take notice—because what they decide to do about climate change affects us all.

Is the spirit of multiculturalism still alive in Australia today? Is it relevant? And who decides what it means, anyway? Listen back to a lively Wednesday night panel discussion featuring voices from the arts, the social sector and academia: Nikos Papastergiadis, director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures; Moya McFadzean, senior curator of migration and cultural diversity in the humanities department at Museum Victoria; Nur Shkembi, Muslim artist and curator; Nicholas Tsoutas, independent curator and writer; Frank Panucci is executive director of grants at the Australia Council for the Arts; and Ghassan Hage, Lebanese-Australian academic.

Discussing the role of the arts in challenging subscribed conversations about multiculturalism, the panel attempts to unpack exactly who shapes our cultural diversity discourse. Hold on to your headphones once the dust settles: the hour-long conversation will wind down (or up) with the psychedelic garage-pop sounds of Empat Lima. A dreamy occasion for further healthy rumination.

The spaces we inhabit—whether built, psychological or digital—are the foundations of our health and happiness. How, then, do our ever-evolving urban environments and shared public spaces guide the way we behave? And what can we learn from both science and design about the relationship between our mental and physical environments? Listen to our panellists—scientists Julie Bernhardt and Emma Burrows from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health; behaviourologist, urbanist and designer Jonathan Daly of Studio Huss; and moderator (plus writer, editor and publisher at Uro Media) Andrew Mackenzie—get stuck into a cross-pollinated discussion of 21st-century wellbeing and space.

Today, the choreographed and performed body is not confined to the studio or a black-box theatre; instead, it occurs in spaces initially dedicated to other art forms—or even in spaces that aren’t designed for art at all. Listen in to the first in our series of three Saturday afternoon salon conversations with acclaimed French choreographer Xavier Le Roy, co-presented by Dancehouse, that aim to link dance and choreography to current issues in arts and society, highlighting the connections between the thinking and moving body and contemporary aesthetic, cultural and political issues.

Along with choreographer-turned-urban-planner Wendy Lasica, dancer and performer Becky Hilton, artist and curator Mick Douglas, and artist and professor Lyndal Jones (today’s conversation facilitator), Xavier will explore the ways dance, performance and choreography have started to inhabit and transform the public realm—and vice versa—before ruminating on the ways in which these spaces promote diverse temporal, social and spectator experiences. How is choreography and performance transforming the way we understand our contemporary body in both urban and ‘inner’ space?