Cinematic Space: Sustainability, Transformation & Identity
Global modernity, accelerated urbanism, and information-mediated human existence raise questions concerning our relationship to our histories and our environments - and to ourselves. Reconciliation of culture and technology, tradition and progress, and sustainability and development, require inventive ecological strategies and organisations.
Panellists include key note Dr Ross Gibson (University of Technology), Jesper Wachmeister (Director, Kochuu: Japanese Architecture, Sweden) Sean Pickersgill (University of South Australia); Dr Kathi Holt-Damant (University of Queensland) and convened by Chair Stephen Loo (University of South Australia) and Dr Jacki Cook (University of South Australia).
Stephen Loo (Convenor) is a Senior Lecturer and the Program Director of the Architecture Program. He teaches design and theory with specific foci on urban design, cross cultural studies and digital experimentation. Steve’s general research interest is on the relationship between ontology and the production of theory. He has published on topics such as banality and the generic within an imperative for a new theory of subjectivity in capitalism; the relations between language, affect and life; image and the machinic as part of a biophilosophy of the contemporary subject, alternative ethico-aesthetic and ecological models for human action; and the indeterminacy of experimental digital thinking. Steve is a practicing architect and Partner of architectural and interpretive practice Mulloway Studio; and strategic planning, urban design and learning research collaborative partnership Mulloway Fisher. He is also the producer of a short experimental film, The Whyalla Project, with UniSA’s architecture and communication students.
Prof Ross Gibson makes books, essays and films. He also produces multimedia environments and ICT systems for museums and public spaces. His books include: The Diminishing Paradise (1984); South Of The West (1992); The Bond Store Tales (1996); Exchanges (1996, Editor); Seven Versions Of An Australian Badland (2002); and Remembrance + The Moving Image (2003, Editor). His Films Include: Camera Natura (1985), Dead to the World (1991) and Wild (1993). His major exhibitions include 'Remembrance + The Moving Image', 'Street X-Rays', and 'Crime Scene', the latter being part of a suite of multimedia productions entitled Life After Wartime, made in collaboration with Kate Richards. Between 1993 and 1996, he was senior consultant producer during the inaugural phase of the Museum of Sydney. In 1997 -- 98 he was the Australia Council's Fellow in New Media. From 1999 to early 2002 he was Creative Director for the establishment of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image at Federation Square in Melbourne. He is now Research Professor of New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Dr Kathi Holt-Damant is a senior lecturer at the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture, University of Queensland. Graduated from the University of Natal (SA) with a BArch degree (RIBA recognised) before specializing in design research at the University of Melbourne with a MArch (by design) degree. She has completed a PhD at RMIT University in "Lines of influence: spatial constructs in architecture and film". Doctoral research included a semester as visiting scholar under Professor Kenneth Frampton and Dean, Bernard Tschumi at Columbia University, NY (1997). Has lectured at the University of Melbourne, Deakin University and RMIT University. Practising director of Holt Damant Associates (Melbourne & Brisbane) and a founding partner of Bureau (Melbourne and NY), together with Mark Damant and Thomas Leeser, focusses on experimental projects in architecture, interior and urban design, and multimedia installations. Research interests comprise multimedia exploration into urban environments, strategic infrastructure and urban development. Theoretical interests broadly cover architectonic space from German aesthetic theory and early Modernism to contemporary architecture and spatial strategies used in cinema.
Jesper Wachtmeister is a producer, director and editor, educated at the California Institute of the Arts where he studied directing, editing and practiced cinematography on a number of short films and documentaries. A collaboration with Latvian director Juris Poskus resulted in the experimental short film Sunday Morning which was awarded Silver at Chicago International Film Festival 1994. This continued with the production of their Los Angeles/Moscow documentary 110/220 (cinematographer, co-producer, editor). Devoid of commentary this film puts the massive urban environment in strictly visual terms, approaching it from a distance of a perfect stranger. 110/220 was awarded best film at Ann Arbor Film Festival Michigan. In 1998 he directed and edited the documentary 102 years in the Heart of Europe – a portrait of Ernst Jünger, a collaboration with writer Björn Cederberg. Except from being a portrait, the film envisions Jünger’s theories concerning mans relationship to the machine, he death of God and the triumph of the Titans. This film has been broadcasted at the major Nordic TV-stations and shown at a number of festivals in Europe and the rest of the world. Concurrently he also did the video installation Perspectives at Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, during the exhibition Wounds, consisting of archive films depicting the same historical events as seen from different ideological horizons. In 2001 he directed and edited Bruno is backabout the Swedish functionalist pioneer, furniture designer and architect Bruno Mathsson. The film opened Year of Architecture 2001 at Museum of Architecture in Stockholm and has been broadcasted in Scandinavia and shown at a number of festivals worldwide. Apart from the TV-productions, in 2001 he produced, directed and edited an experimental documentary about natural and artificial environments in Japan, an uncommented view of mans relationship to nature and constructed environments today: Shakkei – Borrowed Scenery, a film that reached its audience through international film festivals and galleries. His most recent film Kochuu – Japanese Architecture, Influence & Origin is the first documentary produced in his own production company Solaris Film Production.
Sean Pickersgill teaches design, history and theory and digital design at the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design, University of South Australia. He has also taught and researched at the University of Western Australia, and Curtin University. He has published on theoretical issues in architectural historiography, and is currently indulging an obsession with games and film by introducing this content into architectural design studies. Sean is currently completing a PhD by artefact and thesis within the School of Architecture at RMIT.
Dr Jackie Cook is a senior lecturer in Communications and Journalism at the University of South Australia. She has taught in Universities in Australia, New Zealand and the People’s Republic of China for over twenty-five years, also maintaining a professional involvement in traditional media - especially radio. She contributes regularly to both radio and TV broadcasting for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and for Community and Commercial networks. More recently she has focused on the social and cultural positioning of new media, teaching courses on the cultural analysis of the new technologies, and developing new on-line subjects analysing multimedia. She publishes regularly on issues of media practice in contemporary Australian radio and television, and has a PhD on Australian talkback radio.
Dr Kathi Holt-Damant is a researcher, teacher and practitioner in architecture and urban design at the University of Queensland. Currently working on an international collaborative project funded by the Australian Research Council: ‘Emerging futures for South East Queensland’. Complex spatial relationships between travelling, living and working are being reappraised in terms of quality of the urban environment (ecological sustainability, public transportation, security and open space systems). Multimedia applications and cinematic editing are employed to offer new insights into working with existing urban conditions. Such techniques were first explored in a theoretical studio project with Thomas Leeser (Columbia University, NY) entitled: ‘the architecture of navigation II & III’, later exhibited as a trilogy of installations on the Melbourne Festival in 1998.
When
2:00 PM Sunday, 27 February
Grainger Studio
Ticket Price
Free
As Part Of
Architecture + FilmAbout Cinematic Space: Sustainability, Transformation & Identity
180 minutesPartners
