The Melbourne School of Design and Architecture Building calls attention to its transparent pedagogical design, its exposed materials. But in the act of ordering of bodies, they are also disciplined, they are brought into the fold; it is a building that absorbs people.

Artists Martina Copley and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Zac Segbedzi, Danae Valenza & Adelle Mills will pursue a set of implicit propositions coded into the MSD. They seek to unabsorb:

• the forces that shape it as site of knowledge production
• the space as a set of actions, practices and events
• the site as host to shared rituals of educational and corporate regimes
• decipherability and knowability
• institutional songcraft
• reaching and yearning

Over the two nights, the artists will perform the architecture in a series of discrete secretions. It is a new building, therefore it has a lot of secrets.

Thursday July 23, 6pm-10pm. FREE

Martina Copley
A listener’s guide to…bowing
Japanese Room, Melbourne School of Design

“ Unhinged from everyday patterns and graspings, the form of attention is a function of the form of attending.”

Alice Hui-Sheng Chang
Gentle steps with an open mouth
Atrium, Melbourne School of Design

“I’m interested in vocal groups as small social experiments in the diversity in human social interactions. I found people in improvising, with language removed, they still have their own personality and personal cultural attachments. Hence as a sound interaction, we can highlight each person’s character as well as the character of a group (eg. some people have a thoughtful serious nature, where some are evasive and changing, and some have narrower personal boundaries, and merge with people, etc). The space we are in plays a core part of influencing how we exist/interact.”

This event is part of Nite Art 2015.

Sunday July 26, 10am-4pm. FREE

Danae Valenza & Adelle Mills
back-lit and out-crop centre-place
Malaysian Theatre. Melbourne School of Design

“A pre-recorded conversation takes its place in the back-lit and out-crop centre-place of our lecture theatre scene. Figures that act with skill wedge their voices in between rolling translations. The theatre of the lecture is a blueprint for signs and signals to build before screens. Initiated lines are sent and collected like de-and-re complied papers so that hands and words can meet.”

Zac Segbedzi
Woodstock 2015
Basement Hall. Melbourne School of Design
Note: This performance will begin at 2pm

“Woodstock 2015: the brown acid is the only reality….“one does not simply take the acid, the acid is no longer a tab… ” A meditation on the redundancy of art and expression in the context of late capitalist schizophrenia.”