Exercises of the ~ man (v) : found dialogues whispered to drying paint

Abstract

For the SITUATION symposium at RMIT in Melbourne I proposed to arrange an exhibition from afar. Instead of working from my own intense presence in Melbourne's Design Hub I forced myself to be physically absent. This meant I had to relay all thoughts and actions to a third party. For this task the symposium-organisers selected Alis Garlick, an undergraduate student in interior design as a collaborator. Through verbal, written and physical dialogues we constructed and traversed an interdisciplinary landscape that contained both clarity and obscurity. The common ground turned out not to be the hub, but the immaterial site of our dialogue itself. It was represented as a constellation of physical objects - exhibited in the design hub - accompanied by a book that disclosed the full spatiality of the project.