Uncommon Knowledge: Larissa Hjorth on the lives, deaths and afterlives of social media

In a few years time, there will be more dead people than living people on Facebook. Explore how social media affects how we think about life, death, afterlife and the everyday with Professor Larissa Hjorth. In this lecture, Hjorth will consider the role of social media in art practice to consider how emotional and social playbour is presenting new forms of digital intimate publics. Drawing on her research and recent book, Haunting Hands (with Katie Cumiskey 2017), which investigates practices of loss and trauma in, and around, mobile media, Hjorth will discuss how loss and grieving on social media creates new ways of understanding the relationship between life, death and afterlife in everyday life.

Please note, doors open from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.

Tickets: $35 includes complimentary cocktail on arrival made by the Melbourne Gin Company

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and currently the Design & Creative Practice ECP Platform director at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience working in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, collaborative creative practice and socially innovative digital media research.

Since 2000, Hjorth has been researching the socio-cultural dimensions of mobile media and gaming cultures in the Asia–Pacific and has published a dozen books on the topic with presses such as MIT and Oxford University Press. Recent solo exhibitions include The Art of Play at Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (July 2015). She co-curated Design & Play at The Design Hub with Lisa Byrne (April 2016) which included artists and designers exploring play. Hjorth has been a CI on five Australian Research Council grants as well as numerous arts funding and fellowships including Australian Council for the Arts New Media fellowship, Japan Foundation, Brain Korea fellowship, Asialink arts residency and Australia Council Tokyo studio.

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Uncommon Knowledge: Eugenia Lim: The Australian Ugliness

How does architecture shape identity? How do artists, architects, power-brokers, nation-states, immigrants and insurgents make and mark territory?

Join artist Eugenia Lim as she explores the space between the personal and the geopolitical, selfhood and sovereignty. In this lecture, Lim will draw from her research, archives and experiences to navigate a subjective journey through architecture, earthworks and islands.

Please note, doors open from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.

Tickets: $35 includes complimentary cocktail on arrival made by the Melbourne Gin Company

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist of Chinese–Singaporean descent who works across video, performance and installation. In her work, Lim transforms herself into invented fictional personas who traverse through time and cultures to explore how national identities and stereotypes cut, divide and bond our globalised world.

Lim’s latest project The Australian Ugliness surveys the role of architecture in marking a society and shaping national identity. The work has been titled after the bestselling book by Robin Boyd, arguably one of Australia’s most prominent architects and Modernists. Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness denounces the conservative, kitsch and decorative tastes of post-war 1950s Australia, warning against parochialism and insularity. In Lim’s project of the same title, she will build upon Boyd’s ideas, transporting them into 21st century Australia.

Lim’s work has been exhibited internationally at the Tate Modern, London; Gallery of Modern Art, Melbourne; ACMI, Melbourne; HUN Gallery, New York; and FACT, Liverpool. She has received a number of grants and residencies through the Australia Council for the Arts, including a residency at the Experimental Television Centre, New York and an exchange at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Recent residencies include Bundanon Trust, Illaroo; 4A Studio, Beijing; and the Robin Boyd Foundation, Melbourne.

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST:

Uncommon Knowledge: Gabrielle de Vietri: The stolen Picasso and activism in art

Gabrielle de Vietri is an Australian-based artist with a concept-driven, socially-engaged collaborative practice. Her work has taken the form of pedagogical systems, community events, interactive public performances, documents, invented languages, fictional historical insertions, lectures and gardens.

For her Uncommon Knowledge lecture, Gabrielle de Vietri will explore the theft of Picasso’s famous Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria in 1986, by the Australian Cultural Terrorists who demanded better State funding for the arts. Through the frame of this still-unsolved act of dissent, this lecture will explore disobedience as a creative act.

She is co-director (with curator Will Foster) of A Centre for Everything, an on-going pedagogical experiment and curated series of politically-engaged creative events. As well as institutional work, Gabrielle has created significant commissions for CLIMARTE, Public Art Melbourne and ACCA Regional Touring. Her work is held in various collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, University of Melbourne, City of Yarra, State Library of Victoria, City of Melbourne, and private collections.

Please note, doors open from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.

Tickets: $35 includes complimentary cocktail on arrival made by Starward Whisky

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST:

Uncommon Knowledge: Peter Waples-Crowe on Sexuality and Aboriginal Community Health Work 

Peter Waples-Crowe is a Ngarigo queer visual and performing artist based in Melbourne. Waples-Crowe has been a multiple finalist for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, the Victorian Indigenous Art award, and received the Koori Heritage Trust Acquisition Award.

For his lecture, he will discuss how Aboriginal community health work has given him a unique perspective as a community cultural development worker and practicing artist, influencing his art and sense of identity.

Alongside a successful solo career, Waples-Crowe is notable for his collaborations with other artists, performing with Anna Leibzeit and Kaz Adams as post-punk apocalyptic disco group The Treaters since 2012. Recently he has undertaken collaborative works with non-Aboriginal artists, including Katie Jacobs and Ingrid Tufts for Dingo Spirit, for which he was a finalist in the 2017 Craft Victoria Awards. More recently his collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Megan Evans produced an exhibition Squatters and Savages at the Ballarat Regional Art Gallery in 2017 and Benalla Art Gallery 2018 (currently showing).

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Please note, doors open at 5:30pm for a 6pm start.

Tickets
Casual Pass $35
Includes complimentary cocktail on arrival by Starward Whisky.

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Uncommon Knowledge: Fiona Hall on Global Politics, Brexit and the EU

One of Australia’s best known contemporary artists, Fiona Hall represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with the exhibition Wrong Way Time.  At the heart of this revered work was the tension between global politics, world finances and the environment. For ACCA’s 2018 lecture series Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests, Fiona Hall will discuss the climate of disunity and conflicts within the European Union, Brexit and conflicting ideas for society, drawing on research for a new work in development All along the watch towers commissioned by the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France.

Fiona Hall is best known for extraordinary works that transform commonplace materials into vital organic forms with both contemporary and historical resonances. She represented Australia in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015, she had a solo presentation as part of dOCUMENTA (13) in Germany in 2012 and her work is held in major institutions nationally and internationally.

Listen to the podcast:

Tickets now available
Season pass $200 (all eight lectures) / casual session $35
Includes complimentary cocktail on arrival by Starward Whiskey

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Uncommon Knowledge: Joel Stern on Eavesdropping

Joel Stern is a curator, musician and artist; Co-Artistic Director (with Danni Zuvela) of Liquid Architecture; and Co-Founder of the organisations OtherFilm and Instrument Builders Project. For his lecture, Joel Stern will discuss the contemporary resonances of ‘eavesdropping’ under conditions of the modern surveillance state, post-Snowden; the incredible proliferation of listening devices (smart phones etc); and increasingly algorithmic forms of regulation and governance.

The term ‘eavesdropping’ has its roots in 18th century legal texts that describe malicious listeners, hidden from view, who would ‘frame slanderous and mischievous tales’ about who and what they hear. The term also appears in mythologies, for example, when gods and angels were depicted as ‘listening-in’ on the world from the beyond.

However, an expanded definition of ‘eavesdropping’ may be viable, and possibly productive — one that isn’t malicious, but, rather, foregrounds an ethical politics of listening. To that end, Stern has undertaken research into artistic and activist modes of listening and arrived at three rubrics — overhearing, listening-back and earwitnessing — as pathways for navigating and understanding these practices. These three terms and their possible application will be further explored by Stern in this lecture.

Eavesdropping is also the subject and title of an exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at The University of Melbourne, curated by Joel Stern and Dr. James Parker in a collaboration between Liquid Architecture, the Melbourne Law School and the Ian Potter Museum of Art from July to October 2018.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Joel Stern is Co-Artistic Director (with Danni Zuvela) of Liquid Architecture, and Co-Founder of the organisations OtherFilm and Instrument Builders Project. Through these initiatives and with other institutions, Stern has worked to initiate festivals, publications, exhibitions, screenings and concerts in Australia and internationally since the early 2000s. As a musician, he performs solo and as part of the groups Soft Power and Sky Needle. Stern is currently a PhD candidate in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, Melbourne.

Please note, doors open from 5:30pm for a 6pm start.

Tickets: $35 includes cocktail on arrival made by Starward Whisky

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Uncommon Knowledge: Ronnie van Hout on UFOs and amateurism

Master of slapstick existentialism, Ronnie van Hout’s large scale sculptures, installations and photographs tread the line between humour and the macabre.

In this lecture van Hout will discuss his lifelong interest in UFOs: exploring the truth behind flying saucers, alien abductions, and the future of planet earth in relation to art and feeling special.

Ronnie van Hout  is a New Zealand-born and Melbourne-based artist, and the recipient of the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair commission. Throughout his career van Hout has pursued warped renditions of the self-portrait genre, using his own body as both subject and material. His work has be presented in numerous institutions in Australia and internationally with solo exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art (2010), Institute of Modern Art (2010), Centre for Contemporary Photography (2015).

Listen to the podcast

Tickets now available
Season pass $200 (all eight lectures) / casual session $35
Includes complimentary cocktail on arrival by The Melbourne Gin Company

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Uncommon Knowledge: Bill Henson: The Wilderness Within: The body as the last frontier

To launch ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests, internationally renowned photographer Bill Henson will explore his lifelong fascination with the human figure.  Henson, who represented Australia in 1995 at the Venice Biennale, and has works in every major public collection in Australia and has exhibited widely internationally. The tension between representation, voyeurism, the gaze and the body will be further explored.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

 

ABOUT UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE
ACCA’s 2018 lecture series, Uncommon knowledge: artists on their special interests gives eight artists a microphone and an hour to speak about topics that inspire their art and thinking. Featuring a trans-generational cast of artists, Uncommon Knowledge brings together elements of history, lifestyle, philosophy, sound studies, sexuality, cultural politics and more, to challenge us to think differently about society and the world around us.

Presented by Abercrombie & Kent, these hour-long lectures will be presented monthly on Monday nights at 6pm from April through to November. Each lecture will be accompanied by a complimentary unique cocktail created by our partners The Melbourne Gin Company and Starward Whisky.

Tickets now available
Season pass $200 / casual session $35