- School of Communication and Arts
University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD 4067
AUSTRALIA
- Art History, Art Theory, Philosophy of Time, Science Fiction, Pierre Huyghe, Expanded Cinema, and 169 moreContemporary Art, Museum Studies, History and Memory, Australian Aboriginal art, Models of Curatorship, Melancholia (Art), Sound Art, Critical Theory, Continental Philosophy, J.G. Ballard, Robert Smithson, David Lynch, Utopia and Science Fiction, Feminist science fiction, Philip K Dick, Ontology, Andrei Tarkovsky, Historiography, Time Travel, Philosophy of Time Travel, Speculative Realism, Object Oriented Ontology, Speculative Materialism, Quentin Meillassoux, Reinhart Koselleck, Historiography (in Art History), Temporality (Time Studies), Metaphysics of Time, Weird Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Art and Science, Timelessness, Magic, Psychedelics, Curatorial Practice (Art), Geophilosophy, Melancholy, Ecocriticism, Deep time, Dark Ecology, Cultural Anthropology, Materialism, Dark Energy, Archeoacoustics, Jakob von Uexküll, Hauntology, Altered States of Consciousness, Surrealism, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Isabelle Stengers, Voodoo Quantum Entanglement, Cult, Experimental and Avant Garde Film, Time Studies, Space and Time (Philosophy), Queer temporality, Philosophy of Science Fiction, Jacques Derrida, Science-fiction in literature and visual arts, Crystallography, Sculpture, Modernism (Art History), Land Art, Earth Art, time crystals, Colonialism, Haptics, Drawing, Australian History, Contemporary Australian Art, Australian art history, Tom Nicholson, Art and Activism, Australian art, Memorials and the Memorial Art-Work in the Public Arena, Art and Politics, Political posters, Art and Time, Mourning and melancholia, Walter Benjamin, Sound, Animism, Roger Caillois, New Materialism, Laurent Grasso, geontologies, Sound Fossil, Georges Didi-Huberman, Heterochrony, Quantum entanglement, Animals and non-humans, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Speculative Aesthetics, Fossils, Photography, Installation Art, Perspectival Philosophy, Cloud, History of Perspective in Painting, Ambient Perspective, Medio Ambiente, Spectatorship, Constructivism, Utopia, Kasimir Malevich, Balloonmania, Public Sphere, Telematics, Dance Research, Translation theory, Creative processes in contemporary dance, Biennales, War Studies, Museology, Marcel Duchamp, David Lynch, Painting, cinema and visual arts, Situationist International, Dada, Non-Places, Japanese contemporary art, Internet Art, Art Theory and Politics, Experimental Music, Sound sculpture, H.P. Lovecraft, Photography Theory, Contemporary Photography, Andreas Huyssen, Thomas Demand, Songlines, Cosmopolitanism, Performance, Dystopian Literature, Installation (Art), Pop Art, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, William S. Burroughs, Samuel R Delany, Telepathy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Grandfather Paradox, Visual Arts, Queer Theory, Queer Studies, Transgender Studies, Feminism, Feminist Theory, Queer time and space, Phenomenology of Temporality, Temporality, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Aboriginal History in Australia, Black Power, 1960s Australian Cultural History, Decolonization, Queer spaces, Culture and the Anthropocene, Pacific Islands art, DEMATERIALIZATION, Social Experience of Time, Race and Ethnicity, Posthumanism, Black Atlantic, Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler, Future Studies, Minorities, Black feminism, and Science Fiction and Fantasyedit
- Contemporary art historian with a research focus on art and time. Publications include 'Robert Smithson: Time Crysta... moreContemporary art historian with a research focus on art and time. Publications include 'Robert Smithson: Time Crystals' (2018), 'Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe' (MIT Press, 2012) and the co-edited anthology 'Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction' (Surpllus, 2013). Currently working as Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Queensland.edit
Over the past two decades, French artist Pierre Huyghe has produced an extraordinary body of work in constant dialogue with temporality. Investigating the possibility of a hypothetical mode of timekeeping - “parallel presents” - Huyghe... more
Over the past two decades, French artist Pierre Huyghe has produced an extraordinary body of work in constant dialogue with temporality. Investigating the possibility of a hypothetical mode of timekeeping - “parallel presents” - Huyghe has researched the architecture of the incomplete, directed a puppet opera, founded a temporary school, established a pirate television station, staged celebrations, scripted scenarios, and journeyed to Antarctica in search of a mythological penguin. In this first book-length art historical examination of Huyghe and his work, Amelia Barikin traces the artist’s continual negotiation with the time codes of contemporary society. Offering detailed analyses of Huyghe’s works and drawing on extensive interviews with Huyghe and his associates, Barikin finds in Huyghe’s projects an alternate way of thinking about history--a “topological historicity” that deprograms (or reprograms) temporal formats. Huyghe once said, “It is through the montage, the way we combine and relate images, that we can create a representation of an event that is perhaps more precise than the event itself.”
Barikin offers pioneering analyses of Huyghe’s lesser-known early works as well as sustained readings of later, critically acclaimed projects, including No Ghost Just a Shell (2000), L’Expédition scintillante (2002), and A Journey That Wasn’t (2005). She emphasizes Huyghe’s concepts of “freed time” and “the open present,” in which anything might happen.
Bringing together an eclectic array of subjects and characters - from moon walking to situationist practices, from Snow White to Gilles Deleuze - Parallel Presents offers a highly original account of the driving forces behind Huyghe’s work.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/parallel-presents
Barikin offers pioneering analyses of Huyghe’s lesser-known early works as well as sustained readings of later, critically acclaimed projects, including No Ghost Just a Shell (2000), L’Expédition scintillante (2002), and A Journey That Wasn’t (2005). She emphasizes Huyghe’s concepts of “freed time” and “the open present,” in which anything might happen.
Bringing together an eclectic array of subjects and characters - from moon walking to situationist practices, from Snow White to Gilles Deleuze - Parallel Presents offers a highly original account of the driving forces behind Huyghe’s work.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/parallel-presents
Research Interests: Art History, Installation Art, Contemporary Art, History and Memory, Translation theory, and 36 moreGuy Debord, Continental Philosophy, Contemporary French Philosophy, Bakhtin, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Science Fiction, Hauntology, Michel Foucault, Philosophy of Time, Topology, French art, Historiography (in Art History), Film Remakes, Cinema, Video Installation, Cinematic Time, Time Travel, Sound Art, Situationist International, Edgar Allan Poe, Temporality, Utopia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational aesthetics, Utopia and Science Fiction, Historicity, Duration, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Participatory and Relational Arts, Contemporary art history, Theory of Montage, Pierre Huyghe, Reinhardt Koselleck, and Philippe Parreno
Lines towards Another is the first anthology on the work of Australian contemporary artist Tom Nicholson. Spanning drawing, sculpture, public actions, sound, installation, video, and performance, Nicholson's work since the 1990s has... more
Lines towards Another is the first anthology on the work of Australian contemporary artist Tom Nicholson. Spanning drawing, sculpture, public actions, sound, installation, video, and performance, Nicholson's work since the 1990s has engaged with critical questions around history, politics, narrative, and representation. Informed by the colonial history of Australia, and motivated by the work of Aboriginal Australian activists, his practice at its most fundamental level examines the role of images and monuments as both catalysts and potential barriers for the creation of histories, reimagining their forms through modes of commemoration. Presenting new research on the artist and providing an unprecedented overview of two decades of work, the book features eleven essays and two interviews, alongside richly illustrated project pages and texts by the artist.
Contributions by Tony Birch, Bridget Crone, Jacqueline Doughty, Anthony Gardner, Anneke Jaspers, Ryan Johnston, John Mateer, Shelley McSpedden, Mihnea Mircan, Grace Samboh, Ann Stephen. Copublished with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Nicholson-Lines-Towards-Another/dp/3956793978
Contributions by Tony Birch, Bridget Crone, Jacqueline Doughty, Anthony Gardner, Anneke Jaspers, Ryan Johnston, John Mateer, Shelley McSpedden, Mihnea Mircan, Grace Samboh, Ann Stephen. Copublished with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Nicholson-Lines-Towards-Another/dp/3956793978
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Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction is an anthology of new writings by artists, curators, art historians and writers who are self-confessed science fiction fans. The linking point is the idea of science fiction as a platform for the... more
Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction is an anthology of new writings by artists, curators, art historians and writers who are self-confessed science fiction fans. The linking point is the idea of science fiction as a platform for the building of alternate art histories. This collection is concerned with the ways in which science fiction might be performed, materialised or enacted within a contemporary context. Featuring essays on Stanislaw Lem, Robert Smithson, J.G. Ballard, Eduardo Paolozzi, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Andrei Tarkovsky, R.A. Lafferty, and Stanley Kubrick as well as texts on time travel, philology, geophilosophy, loops, speculative realism, dystopias, telepathy, surrealism, pop, Mercerism, and contemporary art.
Edited by Amelia Barikin and Helen Hughes with contributions by: Adrian Martin, Amelia Barikin, Andrew Frost, Anthony White, Arlo Mountford, Brendan Lee, Charles Green, Chris McAuliffe, Chronox, Damiano Bertoli, Darren Jorgensen, Dylan Martorell, Edward Colless, Helen Hughes, Helen Johnson, Justin Clemens, Lauren Bliss, Matthew Shannon, Nathan Gray, Nick Selenitsch, OSW, Patrick Pound, Philip Brophy, Rex Butler, Ryan Johnston, and Soda_Jerk.
Edited by Amelia Barikin and Helen Hughes with contributions by: Adrian Martin, Amelia Barikin, Andrew Frost, Anthony White, Arlo Mountford, Brendan Lee, Charles Green, Chris McAuliffe, Chronox, Damiano Bertoli, Darren Jorgensen, Dylan Martorell, Edward Colless, Helen Hughes, Helen Johnson, Justin Clemens, Lauren Bliss, Matthew Shannon, Nathan Gray, Nick Selenitsch, OSW, Patrick Pound, Philip Brophy, Rex Butler, Ryan Johnston, and Soda_Jerk.
Research Interests: Philology, Art History, Installation Art, Dystopian Literature, Contemporary Art, and 28 moreInstallation (Art), Utopian Studies, Surrealism, Philip K Dick, Science Fiction, Apocalypticism In Literature, Speculative Realism, Philosophy of Time, Dark Ecology, Pop Art, Stanley Kubrick, Australian Aboriginal art, Andrei Tarkovsky, Time Travel, H.P. Lovecraft, J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Robert Smithson, Samuel R Delany, Telepathy, Geophilosophy, Aliens, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Philosophy of Time Travel, Contemporary Australian Art, and Grandfather Paradox
In considering the relationship between time and melancholy, this chapter offers a fascinating account of the temporal constitution of melancholia across a diverse variety of works, including by Albrecht Durer, Anselm Kiefer, and Hans Op... more
In considering the relationship between time and melancholy, this chapter offers a fascinating account of the temporal constitution of melancholia across a diverse variety of works, including by Albrecht Durer, Anselm Kiefer, and Hans Op de Beeck. Arguing for a positive understanding of the melancholic as a figure outside of time, it shows how the particular intensity of melancholia hinges on its capacity to bridge finitude and infinitude, with specific reference to motifs of suspension. The argument draws upon writings by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Georgio Agamben, providing key insights into melancholia as a form of radical temporal ambivalence.
Ebook at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429468469
Ebook at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429468469
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In this materialist analysis of prints and drawings by contemporary Australian artist Tom Nicholson, Amelia Barikin situates the artist’s practice in a longer art history that includes the late twentieth-century charcoal drawings of... more
In this materialist analysis of prints and drawings by contemporary Australian artist Tom Nicholson, Amelia Barikin situates the artist’s practice in a longer art history that includes the late twentieth-century charcoal drawings of Georges Seurat and Robert Morris’s Blind Time Drawings from the early 1970s. In so doing, Barikin shows how even Nicholson’s figurative prints and drawings generate a type of abstraction or “blindness”, in their pursuit of what she calls “haptic historiography”.
https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/lines-towards-another/
https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/lines-towards-another/
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In offering an alternative to dominant readings of entropy in Robert Smithson's practice, Amelia Barikin and Chris McAuliffe show how the figure of the 'time crystal' in his works acts as a radical metaphor for endlessness, and as a... more
In offering an alternative to dominant readings of entropy in Robert Smithson's practice, Amelia Barikin and Chris McAuliffe show how the figure of the 'time crystal' in his works acts as a radical metaphor for endlessness, and as a visualisation of static, frozen time. Chapter from catalogue produced to accompany the exhibition 'Robert Smithson: Time Crystals' at the University of Queensland Art Museum and Monash University Museum of Art, Australia, in 2018. https://shop.monash.edu/robert-smithson-time-crystals.html
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An analysis of the ways in which contemporary art can challenge distinctions between animate and inanimate materials. The chapter uses the figure of the ‘sound fossil’—a term that refers to the audible traces of the Big Bang—as a... more
An analysis of the ways in which contemporary art can challenge distinctions between animate and inanimate materials. The chapter uses the figure of the ‘sound fossil’—a term that refers to the audible traces of the Big Bang—as a provocation for addressing new materialisms in contemporary art. Drawing from art history and philosophy, Barikin’s ‘mineral ontology’ proposes an ethics of being in which the living–non-living binary may no longer apply. The argument primarily focuses on a long-duration project Making a Record (Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald) by Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson (2009–2014), and includes reference to Quentin Meillassoux’s theorization of arche-fossils, Roger Caillois’s work on the writing of stones and Jacques Derrida’s notion of the trace.
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The idea that the work of art has the capacity to break temporal borders or create its own time zone is troubling to chronological models of history that rely on linear notions of causality, provenance and origins. The challenge is to... more
The idea that the work of art has the capacity to break temporal borders or create its own time zone is troubling to chronological models of history that rely on linear notions of causality, provenance and origins. The challenge is to generate a model of contemporary history capable of addressing the prismatic shapes of contemporary time. Fractured, anachronic time-zones are not easily reconciled with models of temporality that envisage the flow of time as a linear progression from the past through the present to the future. Neither is it possible to continue to base interpretations of the past on a unified temporal schematic. Do we instead need a 'science fictional' history of art, one that speaks to the unreality of time? This chapter proposes that temporal entanglements in the work of contemporary artist Laurent Grasso can be understood as a form of SF history writing.
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Essay by Amelia Barikin and Victoria Lynn for Pierre Huyghe solo exhibition at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Australia, 2015
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Originally published in Nicole Schweizer (ed.), Julian Charrière Future Fossil Spaces, Musée cantonal des Beaux-arts, Lausanne & Mousse Publishing, 2014.
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"Theorist Nikos Papastergiadis and art historian Amelia Bairkin's contribution explores the notion of 'ambient perspective' and sensory awareness from the period of the Renaissance onward. In deconstructing the term perspective into its... more
"Theorist Nikos Papastergiadis and art historian Amelia Bairkin's contribution explores the notion of 'ambient perspective' and sensory awareness from the period of the Renaissance onward. In deconstructing the term perspective into its basic etymology - 'looking through' time and space at once - the authors reveal how the act of observing is in fact indissociable from movement. Far from being understood as a mathematical tool in the composition of works, perspective, here, is articulated as a 'metaphorical frame' that we bring to bear on a work through our modes of attention. Just as our contemporary reality, which steeps us in countless bits and tracks of information and data that cannot be comprehended from a single standpoint, immersive artworks can only be understood 'through a mode of ambient awareness'. They thus do away from hierarchical relationships between figure and ground. By privileging the space in-between, so as to redistribute agency between artwork and viewer, such projects 'enact a relationship that is at once temporary and situational, dispersed and contingent', and thus 'assemble a world' rather than merely point to it." [Hlavajova and Hoskote, editorial, 2015]
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Throughout the twentieth century, artists and theorists have converted the methodologies of art museum curatorship into artistic tropes to be activated and yet concealed. This chapter is composed of two related texts that confront the... more
Throughout the twentieth century, artists and theorists have converted the methodologies of art museum curatorship into artistic tropes to be activated and yet concealed. This chapter is composed of two related texts that confront the notion of theory at the museum with reference to artists’ ideas of their
works as model “museums in hiding.” However, the present chapter is not concerned with a survey of the many well‐known instances of artists who have mined museum archives (for instance, Mark Dion, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser,
Martha Rosler) but with a particular instance of museological representation: the atlas. In the first part of the chapter, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green identify what they call the “memory effect” of the artistic atlas through which many artists and theorists – from the early twentieth century until now – have
constructed and thus rethought the effect of memory, describing this effect from the point of view of working artists. In the second part, Amelia Barikin presents a case study of Brown and Green’s work – and a specific type of
museum – with particular attention to the mnemonic function of the Australian War Memorial. The curatorial synthesis of a modern memory effect is seen both as foundational to the formation of such museums and as a significant
driver for the contemporary enactment of memory, in this case within Brown and Green’s art.
works as model “museums in hiding.” However, the present chapter is not concerned with a survey of the many well‐known instances of artists who have mined museum archives (for instance, Mark Dion, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser,
Martha Rosler) but with a particular instance of museological representation: the atlas. In the first part of the chapter, Lyndell Brown and Charles Green identify what they call the “memory effect” of the artistic atlas through which many artists and theorists – from the early twentieth century until now – have
constructed and thus rethought the effect of memory, describing this effect from the point of view of working artists. In the second part, Amelia Barikin presents a case study of Brown and Green’s work – and a specific type of
museum – with particular attention to the mnemonic function of the Australian War Memorial. The curatorial synthesis of a modern memory effect is seen both as foundational to the formation of such museums and as a significant
driver for the contemporary enactment of memory, in this case within Brown and Green’s art.
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This chapter examines the interplay between new modes of cultural communication, transnational subjectivity, and the forms through which museums seek to enhance public engagement. The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in... more
This chapter examines the interplay between new modes of cultural communication, transnational subjectivity, and the forms through which museums seek to enhance public engagement. The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, Australia, is taken as a case study for the emergence of an alternative form of contemporary subjectivity within the new museum. The aim is to demonstrate
how ACMI’s initial curatorial, architectural, and experiential directives were designed to produce, rather than classify or represent, emerging forms of cultural consciousness. ACMI’s willingness to experiment with innovative representational
technology is, as such, framed as a strategic attempt to position itself as a pioneering new media institution and to engage in the production of alternative forms of cultural citizenship. The concept of “ambient aesthetics” is finally proposed as a
key conceptual framework for evaluating how contemporary museums might articulate a new kind of “flexible” citizenship within a transnational public sphere.
how ACMI’s initial curatorial, architectural, and experiential directives were designed to produce, rather than classify or represent, emerging forms of cultural consciousness. ACMI’s willingness to experiment with innovative representational
technology is, as such, framed as a strategic attempt to position itself as a pioneering new media institution and to engage in the production of alternative forms of cultural citizenship. The concept of “ambient aesthetics” is finally proposed as a
key conceptual framework for evaluating how contemporary museums might articulate a new kind of “flexible” citizenship within a transnational public sphere.
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Originally published in Sue Cramer (ed.), Emily Floyd Far Rainbow, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2014, pp. 59 -65.
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In 1927, the British aeronautical engineer J.W. Dunne published a treatise in which he suggested that dreams were comprised not only of images of the past, but also incorporated memories of the future. In developing this radical theory of... more
In 1927, the British aeronautical engineer J.W. Dunne published a treatise in which he suggested that dreams were comprised not only of images of the past, but also incorporated memories of the future. In developing this radical theory of pre-cognition, Dunne hit upon a major revision of the philosophy of time, offering a model temporality in which the past, present, and future were wholly conjoined. This chapter extrapolates on Dunne's research to discuss the emergence of science-fictional time zones in Pierre Huyghe's work.
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Focussing on the artists' proposal to stage a simultaneous banner march and hot air balloon flight through Shepparton, Australia, this text considers gestures of collaboration and negation with reference to Malevich, utopias, and flight... more
Focussing on the artists' proposal to stage a simultaneous banner march and hot air balloon flight through Shepparton, Australia, this text considers gestures of collaboration and negation with reference to Malevich, utopias, and flight paths.
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The KINK collective (from which we write, collectively), was borne out of a desire to create a platform dedicated to the rich history of queer Australian art in all its varied forms. One method of combatting the issues outlined here—and... more
The KINK collective (from which we write, collectively), was borne out of a desire to create a platform dedicated to the rich history of queer Australian art in all its varied forms. One method of combatting the issues outlined here—and it is perhaps one of the most common in the diverse field of queer theory—is to pay attention to gaps: attending not to what is in the archive, but to what has been left out. There is no archive without an outside, without an exteriority, as the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida (notably in his canonical text Archive Fever), reveal. Any attempt to capture the vast terrain of queer experience that has been regulated, modified, silenced or repressed from the archival imaginary is, in Marshall and Tortorici’s words, ‘a struggle against reading evidence straight, not least because the very idioms and institutions for the production of archival knowledge continue to be so deeply enmeshed in colonial matrices of value, authority, access, and power’.[5] And we would add, not just colonial matrices, but also the patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, heteronormative, racist, misogynist matrices that continue to make up the core of institutional memories. The issue, then, is not with the reparative location and restoration of “evidence”. It is with acknowledging that evidence around the visibility and interpretation of queer experience is always in question, always needing to be read against the grain of the framing devices that seek to regulate and disguise its productions, meaning, and reception. What counts as history, and for who does it count?
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/5029/queer-australian-art-history-kink-in-the-archive/
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/5029/queer-australian-art-history-kink-in-the-archive/
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Robert Smithson’s text “The Monument” (ca. 1967) is an outline for an unrealized film, tracing the production and exhibition of his first Nonsite work. It reveals that archival material was an active element in Smithson’s practice, a... more
Robert Smithson’s text “The Monument” (ca. 1967) is an outline for an unrealized film, tracing the production and exhibition of his first Nonsite work. It reveals that archival material was an active element in Smithson’s practice, a material presence traversing archive and oeuvre, mirroring his theory of Site and Nonsite.
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Translation is a key concept for interpreting cross-cultural exchanges. This article tracks the development of a transnational dance project by Rebecca Hilton and Soonho Park, presented in conjunction with Federation Square Melbourne and... more
Translation is a key concept for interpreting cross-cultural exchanges. This article tracks the development of a transnational dance project by Rebecca Hilton and Soonho Park, presented in conjunction with Federation Square Melbourne and Art Centre Nabi in Seoul in 2011. It involved the performance of a live telematic dance that occurred in both cities and was transmitted via the use of large screens. The interaction across these physical and mediated spaces produced a dynamic exchange of learning and communication. Through our active involvement as curators, participant observers and the gathering of audience
participation data, we discovered that the corporeality of the dance placed both the addresser and the addressee in the context of the social practice of translation. In this
context, we note that artistic projects can provide an embodied experience of the forms of heterolingual address and cross-cultural translation as analysed by Naoki Sakai. We
conclude that the fascination for engaging in transnational communication was stimulated by the cross-cultural process of translating gestures.
participation data, we discovered that the corporeality of the dance placed both the addresser and the addressee in the context of the social practice of translation. In this
context, we note that artistic projects can provide an embodied experience of the forms of heterolingual address and cross-cultural translation as analysed by Naoki Sakai. We
conclude that the fascination for engaging in transnational communication was stimulated by the cross-cultural process of translating gestures.
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This article considers how networked large urban screens can act as a platform for the creation of an experimental transnational public sphere. It takes as a case study a specific Australia-Korea cultural event that linked large screens... more
This article considers how networked large urban screens can act as a platform for the creation of an experimental transnational public sphere. It takes as a case study a
specific Australia-Korea cultural event that linked large screens in Melbourne and Incheon through the presentation of SMS-based interactive media art works. The article combines theoretical analyses of global citizenship, mobility, digital technologies, and networked public space with empirical
analyses of audience response research data collected during the screen event. The central argument is that large public screens can offer a strategic site for examining
transformations in the constitution of public agency in a digitized, globalized environment. The idea of ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ is finally proposed as a conceptual
framework for understanding how new forms of transnational public agency in mediated public spaces might operate.
specific Australia-Korea cultural event that linked large screens in Melbourne and Incheon through the presentation of SMS-based interactive media art works. The article combines theoretical analyses of global citizenship, mobility, digital technologies, and networked public space with empirical
analyses of audience response research data collected during the screen event. The central argument is that large public screens can offer a strategic site for examining
transformations in the constitution of public agency in a digitized, globalized environment. The idea of ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’ is finally proposed as a conceptual
framework for understanding how new forms of transnational public agency in mediated public spaces might operate.
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Interview with Alexie Glass and Natasha Bullock, curators of 2012 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
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Interview with Charlotte Day and Sarah Tutton, curators of 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
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Article on Lyndell Brown and Charles Green's photography in relation to War Art and the framing of conflict
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Interview about Pierre Huyghe's project 'A Forest of Lines' at the Sydney Opera House for the Biennale of Sydney, 2008
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This paper examines the operations of contemporary historiography within a culture marked by both amnesia and excess. The works of German photographer Thomas Demand lay the groundwork for this discussion. For Demand, historiography is... more
This paper examines the operations of contemporary historiography within a culture marked by both amnesia and excess. The works of German photographer Thomas Demand lay the groundwork for this discussion. For Demand, historiography is both subject and methodology. His photographic remakes of archival media images clearly articulate the limits and possibilities of historical production today. This emergent historiographic model, epitomised in Demand’s practice, takes as its point of departure a radical shift in event culture: a fundamental transformation of the means by which events are now constituted, transmitted, translated and finally understood. As Baudrillard notes, “events now have no more significance than their anticipated meaning, their programming and their broadcasting.” If we give credence to this provocation, how then is it possible to demarcate discourse from facts, events from discourse, and history from fiction? Thomas Demand’s practice suggests that representations of events are perhaps more precise than the events themselves.
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Roy Ananda says of his work: “For several years the influence of horror and science-fiction literature has lurked at the periphery of my practice. The most recurrent and pervasive influence seems to be the work of American pulp author... more
Roy Ananda says of his work: “For several years the influence of horror and science-fiction literature has lurked at the periphery of my practice. The most recurrent and pervasive influence seems to be the work of American pulp author Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937). The murky, pseudo-mythology that underpinned Lovecraft’s nihilistic tales of cosmic horror–today known as the Cthulhu Mythos–continues to be augmented and expanded upon by legions of authors, artists, gamers and fans to this day. The inventory of bizarre entities, nightmarish locales, alien artefacts and forbidden tomes that constitutes the Cthulhu Mythos growsever larger and with R’lyeh Maquettes I find myself contributing my own portion of user-generated Mythos content.'
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Since we last spoke is an exhibition of works by Raquel Ormella and Andrew McQualter that feature elements of interactivity and collaboration. From the anonymous exchange between the author of political graffiti and a local council, to... more
Since we last spoke is an exhibition of works by Raquel Ormella and Andrew McQualter that feature elements of interactivity and collaboration. From the anonymous exchange between the author of political graffiti and a local council, to the mapping of dialogues between an artist and economists, the exhibition explores social, political and philosophical concerns via a mode of practice that may best be described as conversational. Eschewing the didactic mode of address common to much politically or socially motivated practice, Ormella and McQualter present objects and images that seek to engage a viewer in a process of dialogue or exploration.
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Exhibition catalogue for 'The Sound Playground', an exhibition of commissioned experimental instruments and sound sculptures by Rowan McNaught, Emma Lashmar, Rod Cooper, Albert Mishriki & Ros Bandt for Liquid Architecture Festival of... more
Exhibition catalogue for 'The Sound Playground', an exhibition of commissioned experimental instruments and sound sculptures by Rowan McNaught, Emma Lashmar, Rod Cooper, Albert Mishriki & Ros Bandt for Liquid Architecture Festival of Sound Arts 2010.
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Exhibition catalogue for Christopher Koller retrospective at Kings ARI, Melbourne
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Exhibition catalogue text
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https://curamagazine.com/digital/pierre-huyghe-variants/ There are time ripples on this island. Monstrous mutations spawned by the patterns of algorithmic codes. A simulation of a milieu, replicated from a copy and set to grow, begins to... more
https://curamagazine.com/digital/pierre-huyghe-variants/
There are time ripples on this island. Monstrous mutations spawned by the patterns of algorithmic codes. A simulation of a milieu, replicated from a copy and set to grow, begins to create its own anomalies. Exiting the simulation, they appear in three dimensions, in materials of wood, wax, silicone, sugar, metal, sponge, or salt. Images from the past exposed to artificial neural networks become alive again in the present, contaminated by differentials which are fed back through the system in real-time. A network of hidden sensors drives a living image at the center of the forest: an image that sees, rather than shows, the conditions of its own existence. Variants-already a plurality, already differing from itself and other iterations of itself. Its purpose is to replicate, mutate and survive. Like a virus.
There are time ripples on this island. Monstrous mutations spawned by the patterns of algorithmic codes. A simulation of a milieu, replicated from a copy and set to grow, begins to create its own anomalies. Exiting the simulation, they appear in three dimensions, in materials of wood, wax, silicone, sugar, metal, sponge, or salt. Images from the past exposed to artificial neural networks become alive again in the present, contaminated by differentials which are fed back through the system in real-time. A network of hidden sensors drives a living image at the center of the forest: an image that sees, rather than shows, the conditions of its own existence. Variants-already a plurality, already differing from itself and other iterations of itself. Its purpose is to replicate, mutate and survive. Like a virus.
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Kink is a cross-disciplinary working group researching and formalising a history of queer Australian art. Our work is defined by an interest in publishing, scholarship, advocacy, and public access. We are deeply passionate about... more
Kink is a cross-disciplinary working group researching and formalising a history of queer Australian art. Our work is defined by an interest in publishing, scholarship, advocacy, and public access. We are deeply passionate about generating new and open resources for and about the Australian LGBTQIA+ visual arts community. Below, each of our group's current members offers a reflection on a text that is significant to their current thinking, research, or outlook, and to our framing of a queer art history.
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Curated by Amelia Barikin and Chris McAuliffe, Robert Smithson: Time Crystals was the first exhibition in Australia dedicated to the work of American artist Robert Smithson (1938–1973). Best known for his radical land art of the 1960s and... more
Curated by Amelia Barikin and Chris McAuliffe, Robert Smithson: Time Crystals was the first exhibition in Australia dedicated to the work of American artist Robert Smithson (1938–1973). Best known for his radical land art of the 1960s and early 1970s, Smithson is now widely recognised as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Based on intensive archival research, the project generated a new understanding of Smithson’s approach to time that challenged the dominance of entropy in existing scholarship on his practice. Presented at UQAM and MUMA with the support of the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Holt/Smithson Foundation.
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Pierre Huyghe: TarraWarra International was the first solo exhibition in Australia by renowned contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe. Co-curated by Amelia Barikin and Victoria Lynn, the research focused on Huyghe’s investigations into... more
Pierre Huyghe: TarraWarra International was the first solo exhibition in Australia by renowned contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe. Co-curated by Amelia Barikin and Victoria Lynn, the research focused on Huyghe’s investigations into time and temporality, highlighting art’s potential to generate science-fictional time zones that offer alternatives to linear models of chronological time. Featuring a diverse array of media including film, sculpture, photography and living ecosystems, the exhibition was accompanied by a new book on Huyghe’s work co-authored by Barikin and Lynn, and an extensive array of public programs including a symposium, sound art performances, and film screenings.
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Robert Smithson’s text “The Monument” (ca. 1967) is an outline for an unrealized film, tracing the production and exhibition of his first Nonsite work. It reveals that archival material was an active element in Smithson’s practice, a... more
Robert Smithson’s text “The Monument” (ca. 1967) is an outline for an unrealized film, tracing the production and exhibition of his first Nonsite work. It reveals that archival material was an active element in Smithson’s practice, a material presence traversing archive and oeuvre, mirroring his theory of Site and Nonsite.
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This paper is based on an ARC Linkage grant on the use of large screens as communication platform for an experimental transnational public sphere. The project involves linking large screens in Melbourne and Seoul for three 'urban... more
This paper is based on an ARC Linkage grant on the use of large screens as communication platform for an experimental transnational public sphere. The project involves linking large screens in Melbourne and Seoul for three 'urban media events'- 'SMS_Origin' and ''; 'Hello' and 'Dance Battle'. We argue through these experiments that large screens situated in public space in metropolitan centres offer strategic leverage for understanding the potential for networked media to form public sphere
Research Interests: Geography, Dance Studies, Contemporary Art, Public Art, Collaboration, and 15 moreAustralia, Public Sphere, Urban, Transnational Communication, Public Space, Telematics, Korea, Transnational, Public Sphere and Public Space, Screen Culture, Media Space, Cultural Public Sphere, Situated, Metropolitan Area, and Federation Square
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'This roundtable article investigates the “critical archive” as a material concept in the fields of artistic production, art historiography, curatorial practice, and criticism. Twelve critics, artists, art historians, and curators respond... more
'This roundtable article investigates the “critical archive” as a material concept in the fields of artistic production, art historiography, curatorial practice, and criticism. Twelve critics, artists, art historians, and curators respond to a series of questions related to the idea of the archive as a critical agent in the field of art. The roundtable examines different historical and institutional permutations of conceptions of a (self-) critical archive and its possible impact on our understanding of the relationship between art and historical evidence.' Spieker and Danbolt 2014 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ARTM_a_00091
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Contemporary art history pays tribute to the living dead. It is an epistemology founded on zombie knowledge. In the ‘living present’, the past appears as an undead thing. Zombie history is re-animated in the long now, gifting art with a... more
Contemporary art history pays tribute to the living dead. It is an epistemology founded on zombie knowledge. In the ‘living present’, the past appears as an undead thing. Zombie history is re-animated in the long now, gifting art with a weird, contemporaneous immortality. Works of art are then always already contemporary, for everything that persists in the present is always already undead. This leads to the broader understanding of ‘contemporaneity’ as a malleable temporal plane in which everything that has existed, or that will exist, is re-animated in the present, its affect undiminished by the so-called passing of time. Zombie histories, like zombies, are a materially driven phenomenon that makes no distinction between subjects and objects. Things – as well as subjectivities – are imbued with affect. Objects – as well as people, plants and animals – become vehicles for meaning. The ‘world picture’ or ‘world art’ created out of this terrain is, importantly, made primarily of things.
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This lecture discusses David Lynch's long-term dialogue with Surrealism, from his earliest experimental films to his most recent works on paper. Contextualising Lynch's practice within a Surrealist history of art and cinema (with... more
This lecture discusses David Lynch's long-term dialogue with Surrealism, from his earliest experimental films to his most recent works on paper. Contextualising Lynch's practice within a Surrealist history of art and cinema (with reference to works by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Cocteau and Fernand Léger), it pays particular attention to concepts of psychic automatism, concrete irrationality, and dream work.
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'We are living in a science fiction novel that we all collaborate on', or so says sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson. From techno-culture to advanced weaponry systems, the dreams of history have become the scientific realities of today.... more
'We are living in a science fiction novel that we all collaborate on', or so says sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson. From techno-culture to advanced weaponry systems, the dreams of history have become the scientific realities of today. What does this mean for contemporary art? This lecture explores the emergence of 'science fictionality' in the work of a number of contemporary artists including Aleksandra Mir, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gurksy and Pierre Huyghe. It suggests that the presence of science fiction in art is now determinable through analysis of behavioural structures and speculative methodologies rather than the investigation of icons, signs and objects. This shift not only revises previous understandings of science fiction art but also offers another way of approaching the work completed by a vast selection of artistic practitioners in recent years: a means of identifying patterns as yet unrecognised in the science fictions of contemporary art.
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Public lecture for Harrell Fletcher exhibition 'The Sound We Make Together' at National Gallery of Victoria, Fed Square
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Public lecture and gallery tour for 'Andreas Gursky' exhibition at National Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Rd, Melbourne
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Review of Stephen Russell exhibition at A-CH Gallery, Brisbane Scenario One. After the apocalypse, those artists remaining on Earth have been forced to retreat into their studios to assemble quasi-functional structures out of the... more
Review of Stephen Russell exhibition at A-CH Gallery, Brisbane
Scenario One. After the apocalypse, those artists remaining on Earth have been forced to retreat into their studios to assemble quasi-functional structures out of the material detritus of super-modernity. Channelling a half-remembered litany of forms and contexts, they attempt to construct tool-kits for survival in a newly formed wild.
Scenario One. After the apocalypse, those artists remaining on Earth have been forced to retreat into their studios to assemble quasi-functional structures out of the material detritus of super-modernity. Channelling a half-remembered litany of forms and contexts, they attempt to construct tool-kits for survival in a newly formed wild.
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Review of Sonic Spheres: TarraWarra Biennial of Art 2012
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Feature-length review of Rapt! 20 Contemporary Artists from Japan
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Review of exhibition by Aslan McLennan and Michael Ascroft at Victoria Park Gallery, Melbourne 2006: "How does readymade art tackle advances in technology regarding the effortless access to existing information, which may address the... more
Review of exhibition by Aslan McLennan and Michael Ascroft at Victoria Park Gallery, Melbourne 2006: "How does readymade art tackle advances in technology regarding the effortless access to existing information, which may address the particular provocations, strategies and outcomes of certain state and military operations? When analysing current power struggles, does the appropriation of publicly accessible media for artistic purposes - from civilian body count figures, to anti-US guerrilla groups' beheading videos - classify as incitement?”