Brian Fuata; YOU THE CROUD SCHTOOD LOUD HEAR OUT FOR BURGLARY
Astrid Lorange; DINNER RAT
Salomé Voegelin; MELBOURNE SOUNDWORDS
Catherine Clover; MELBOURNE SOUNDWORDS

Federation Square is one of the many ‘acoustic territories’ that make up inner-city Melbourne. However, its everydayness (thousands of commuters and visitors passing through, every day) can obscure its specificity, as a relatively recent (2002) major civic intervention (capacity: 15,000) that’s reliant on its successful operation of the kind of public and private partnering typical of late neoliberal regimes like ours. As a space, it resonates with the almost constant movement of bodies, light, litter – and wind. Sound is, more or less, mostly mangled, meaning the attention of spectators is functionally directed toward the visual. And at the top of the visual hierarchy of Federation Square, above the stage, is the Big Screen. No matter how banal or coercive its content may be, it seems to (as screens always do, don’t they?) command our attention. Sound is the subtext. Thus, the screen speaks mutely, to offer itself to us – viewer, artist – as a site for inscription, projection, dissolution.