[mscp] [arch+phil] Next Thurs: Ghosts of self and state

[Esther Anatolitis]

RMIT ARCHITECTURE PRESENTS
ARCHITECTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 2006 SERIES

APRIL: GHOSTS OF SELF AND STATE
Geraldine Barlow and Tom Nicholson
Thursday, 27 April 7:30pm in RMIT Theatre 8.11.68 
(Enter via Swanston St: Bldg 8, level 11, theatre 68 - to the right of
the lifts)

To what degree do the state and self mirror each other in their
construction? GHOSTS OF SELF AND STATE is a reflection on the
construction of history, and the potential for agency in contemporary
society. If the soul is the ghost in the machine that is the individual,
is there an elusive soul-like space within the mechanism of the state? 

Artists Moataz Nasr (Cairo), Tom Nicholson (Melbourne) and Markus
Schinwald (Berlin/Vienna) consider the relationship between the personal
and the political, between autonomy and group identification, as well as
the persistence of memory – its fragility, recurrence, and passage into
myth. Through the motifs of the mask, the actor, the storyteller and the
puppet the artworks study the public and private faces adopted by
citizen and state, individual and body politic.

The role of volition, mindfulness and free will is considered in
relation to the self – Can the mind direct and create change within the
mechanism of the brain? – and also the state – What power does the
individual have to create change?

Each artist frames an extended moment, beneath which historical trauma
drags, like a ghost-net in the ocean depths – the impact of war, of
colonial authority, and a community’s loss of its children. In each of
these works, the artists offer visions of possible ghosts of self, of
the selves we might be or become. Such echoes gather the past before us,
and ask what our role will be: as an audience, as autonomous reflective
beings and as agents in the world.


GERALDINE KIRRIHI BARLOW is Curator / Collection Manager at the Monash
University Museum of Art. She recently co-curated the exhibition
"Pavilions for new architecture" with Max Delany and previously
exhibitions such as "Before Night – After Nature" and "NEW04". Geraldine
has worked with Australian and international artists in roles at the
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, The Melbourne International
Festival of the Arts - Visual Arts Program; The Melbourne International
Biennial, "Signs of Life" in 1999 and Heide Museum of Modern Art.

TOM NICHOLSON currently lives and works in Melbourne. Nicholson’s
practice engages cultural and political realms through a variety of
‘actions’, which appropriate the idioms of protest, propaganda and art
history. Recent solo exhibitions include "Flag Time: Marat at his last
breath", Ocular Lab, Melbourne, 2006; and
"22.06.1911/30.10.2004:Documents after Marching Season", The Aurora
Project, Regent Theatre / IASKA, Kellerberrin, 2004. In 2005 he was a
finalist in the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture. Nicholson’s work
will also feature in the forthcoming 15th Biennale of Sydney 2006.

Architecture + Philosophy 2006 program:
– March 9: Nicolas Low (artist) Clean
– April 27: Geraldine Barlow and Tom Nicholson Ghosts of self and state
– May 8: Esther Charlesworth (Architects Without Frontiers)
– June 8: Dr Daniel Ross (Political and Social Inquiry, Monash
University)
– July 13: Anna Tweedale (architect and artist)
– August 10: Stelarc (performance artist and Visiting Professor, School
of Art and Design, The Nottingham Trent University; Adjunct Professor,
School of Contemporary Art, Edith Cowan University) 
– September 14: Dr Brian Morris (Design + Social Context, RMIT) Wrapping
and Unwrapping Shibuya: the texture of urban place
– October 12: Dr Anna Hickey-Moody (Education, Monash University)

Bookmark the site: http://www.architecturephilosophy.rmit.edu.au/