Concrete Archives, Infrastructures of Memory w. Yhonnie Scarce and Lisa Redford

Please join us for the next instalment of the Critical Management Studies Seminar.

'Concrete Archives, Infrastructures of Memory'
Yhonnie Scarce (VCA) and Lisa Radford (VCA)

Monday 6 May, 4:15pm-5:30pm
John Medley Linkway (Level 4), University of Melbourne Parkville campus.

Upon invitation from Kokatha/Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce, together with Lisa Radford, the artists travelled pre-pandemic, across the world to visit sites imbued with significant histories of devastation, including Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Maralinga, New York, Wounded Knee and former Yugoslavia. An archive of human history and loss, these sites in the form of architecture (brutalist buildings, monuments and memorials) and imagery (photographs, diarised accounts) contributed to the development of the project The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives). An evolving and open online archive and exhibition, this project to date has included the work and voices of more than 100 artists, writers, and historians contextualising local histories and sites of Aboriginal people and the shared experiences of trauma on history, conflict, and representations of citizenship within an international context.

The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) paved a way for the emergence of a larger project, Infrastructures of Memory on the role of political memory in archives, art and military sites. Including the experience and knowledge of art historian Wulan Dirgantoro (UniMelb), media theorist and artist David Burns (RCA) and Juliet Rogers (UniMelb) who works across trauma, law and violence,  this iteration of the project examines the relationship between cultural memory and military history, specifically that of Australia and the Asia Pacific via three key sites Maralinga, Orford Ness and Buru Island.

Memory is always contested on colonised land, most painfully in relation to sites of violence and trauma. Political memory is embodied in and composed of sites of contestation. We ask what composes and comprises an infrastructure of memory, the role of infrastructure on memory and consider as a key concept, infrastructure as an Indigenous knowledge-practice. This discussion will trace the project through its conception via fieldwork, exhibitions and archives to its present moment.

https://www.artandaustralia.com/online/online/image-not-nothing-concrete-archives.html
https://finearts-music.unimelb.edu.au/events/fsmg/the-image-is-not-nothing
https://www.ace.gallery/whats-on/exhibitions/the-image-is-not-nothing-concrete-archives

Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Scarce’s interdisciplinary practice explores the political nature and aesthetic qualities of glass and photography. Her work often references the ongoing effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people; in particular, her research has explored the impact of the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands.
Lisa Radford is an artist and writer. Emanating from and around the practice of painting and writing, she explores the effect and affect of artefacts (art, text and otherwise) at the moment of encounter. This exploration of the shared socio-political space between things — images, place and people, is conducted with and around others (Sam George, Yhonnie Scarce) as a way to examine what is both spoken and beyond speech. She shares some of these thoughts publicly and intermittently in The Saturday Paper.