Culture and Creativity Seminar Series

Abstract

The museum, like the university, is a form of knowledge technology empowered by the European enlightenment and Western epistemology. This technology prioritises and enables a knowledge system based on observation, objectification, measurement, quantification and classification.

Many museums, including university museums have diverse collections including objects that have been decontextualised from their original setting and re-contextualised within the museum technology.

It is well known that material engagements with objects can provide cross-disciplinary bridges in pedagogy. This project attempts to extend the concept to explore how different forms of knowledge can be embedded into the materiality of objects and how different knowledge systems can be represented in the diversity of museum programs. The project consists of a series of explorations on bringing multiple knowledge systems into a variety of museum work (e.g. exhibition, cataloguing, education, research, and virtual reality augmentation).We are looking at examples of museum practice that experiment with multiple knowledge

systems (two horizons museology) for inclusion on our research website and in our workshop discussions. An essential element of each example of this form of museology is a combination of expertise in museum practice and the direct engagement of cultural knowledge holders in shaping the museum practices.

This presentation will outline the project to date, report on some examples of two-way museology and their specific museum contexts. The project is currently supported by ICOM and involves several partnerships.

Bio

Andrew Simpson is a postdoctoral research affiliate at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney on Gadigal Land. He has extensive experience in working with higher education museums and collections in different Australian universities. He is the editor of the University Museums and Collections Journal and has published widely including the recent book, “The Museums and Collections of Higher Education” (Routledge 2023). He is the current Chair of UMAC, (University Museums and Collections) an international committee of the global museum network ICOM (International Council of Museums).

Sandy O’Sullivan (they/them) is a transgender Wiradjuri person. They lead the Intimacies theme of the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures and they work in the Department of Critical Indigenous Studies, both housed at Macquarie University. They are a 2020-2025 ARC Senior Future Fellow with the program titled: Saving Lives: mapping the influence of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ creative artists.

This nationally funded work follows on from another major ARC project that explored representation and engagement of Indigenous peoples and communities across national museums – a program that ran for eight years and reviewed 470 museums. Since 1991 they’ve taught and researched across gender and sexuality, education, museums, the body, creativities and First Nations’ identity. Sandy has been a musician, performer and sound artist since 1982, holding national and international residencies.

This paper considers a preoccupation with entropic zones across American artist Robert Smithson’s seminal 1970 work of land art, Spiral Jetty, American novelist Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow, the Russian novelists Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic and its subsequent film adaptation, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 Stalker. In each of these cases, the unspeakable but omnipresent spectre of nuclear holocaust lurks as the summoner of entropy in its most apocalyptic form.

Bio
Patrick Flanery is Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. Prior to joining Adelaide, he was Professor at the University of Reading, and subsequently Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of the novels ‘Night for Day’ (2019), ‘I Am No One’ (2016), ‘Fallen Land’ (2013) and ‘Absolution’ (2012), which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, among others. In 2019 he published a volume of creative-critical nonfiction, ‘The Ginger Child: On Family, Loss and Adoption’. He holds a BFA in Film & TV from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a DPhil in English Literature from the University of Oxford.

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to PatrickFlanery_Presentation.pptx

Aura Country Terror Refrain explores cultural and philosophical concepts in relation to Dr Michael Mossman’s experiences with place and architecture. Framed through the lens of pedagogical approaches self-reflection and personal storytelling relative to his Home, Dr Mossman presents the key words of the presentation title in relation to influential recent trips to Berlin Germany. The presentation describes considerations of Indigenising the built environment, the vitality of human experience and the historical interactions with place across generations and into the future. Growing up in Gimuy (Cairns), studying architecture in Canberra, practicing and now teaching architecture on the Country of the Gadigal, Mossman invites participants to share their experiences of place and culture relative to their Home.

Bio
Michael Mossman is a Kuku Yalanji man, born and raised in Cairns on Yidinji Country. He now lives and works on Gadigal land and is Associate Dean Indigenous Strategy and Services at the University of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. He is also a registered architect who champions Country and First Nations cultures as agents for structural change in the broader architectural profession at educational, practice and policy levels.

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to MichaelMossman_Presentation.pptx

This talk looks at how conservative architectural historiographies in Australian architecture have led to the persistence of colonial tropes in architectural pedagogy. This approach critiques historical frameworks that privilege Eurocentric perspectives and metropolitan precedents in the production of architecture while sidelining vernacular voices, including indigenous, immigrant, and non-Western influences. By applying a subaltern lens, this study examines who was involved in the production of Australian architecture to reveal the limitations of art history approaches that prioritize architectural styles and individual architects. Conservative approaches divide architecture into ‘high’ and ‘low’ categories marginalize vernacular contributions and colonial networks of migration, forced or otherwise. The architect is privileged as the individual creator, denying the collaborative nature of architectural production and masking the complexity of colonial relationships between colonizer and colonized. The analysis aims to uncover the power dynamics that shape historical narratives, challenging prevailing Eurocentric viewpoints.

Bio
Dr. John Ting is an architect, researcher and educator at the University of Canberra, Australia, where he is the Course Convenor of the Master of Architecture program. He researches Sarawak’s architectural and construction history and prefabricated timber buildings in nineteenth century colonial Southeast Asia and Australia, where he examines the influence of vernacular and migrant labour, migration and colonisation on the production of architecture.

This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to JohnTing_Presentation.pptx