Liquid Architecture (LA) is Australia’s leading organisation for artists working with sound and listening. LA is based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, at the Collingwood Yards art precinct. Our program sits at the intersection of contemporary art and experimental music, expressed through a range of presentation, publishing, research and commissioning activities.
BACKGROUND
Born in the complex artistic climate of the late 1990s, LA is a millennial imagination of Australia’s vibrant experimental sound culture. Founded in 1999, over the following 15 years, under the direction of Nat Bates, LA grew from being a boutique local event into Australia’s leading festival of experimental, electronic, improvised and avant-garde music.
In 2014, the organisation pivoted with an injection of ideas and resources, and the appointment of Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela as the organisation’s artistic leadership. The duo dissolved the festival model in favour of something more open, unpredictable and experimental: a year-round, curatorial program of boundary-pushing public events, happenings and situations untethered to any one discipline, ideology or format.
Forever expanding and evolving to meet our horizons, the cultural institution we know today as Liquid Architecture is fuelled by the ideas and energies of our team and augmented by the expertise of our board and advisors.
Under the leadership of Kristi Monfries alongside Creative Producer Rohan Rebeiro, Creative Producer James Howard and Programs Coordinator Ronen Jafari, the new direction will expand on this legacy to build strong foundations and relationships with sound experimentations from First Nations, Diasporas, Asia and the Pacific.
Grounded locally but working globally, LA is a dedicated platform for artists engaged in experimental sound practice, sustained and energised through conversation and research, and realised in collaboration with people in our community and beyond.
We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung as the Traditional Owners and sovereign custodians of the Country on which we practice. We extend our respects to their Elders past and present, and to all First Peoples.
Team
BOARD
DANNY BUTT (CHAIR) is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practice at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, where he is also Coordinator of Research for Design and Production. His book Artistic Research in the Future Academy was published by Intellect/University of Chicago Press in 2017, and he is on the Editorial Board of the Journal for Artistic Research and is co-convenor of the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network. As a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) he worked for intergovernmental agencies such as United Nations Development Programme and ASEAN on new media and development and was editor of the book Internet Governance: Asia Pacific Perspectives (Elsevier/UNDP 2006). He works with the Auckland-based art collective Local Time. He moved from Gadigal country in Sydney to Port Chalmers / Koputai, Aotearoa New Zealand in 1993, performing improvised sound and releasing recordings through the 1990s with Peter Stapleton and Kim Pieters in the groups Rain and Flies Inside the Sun (with Brian Crook); with Michael Morley in the Tanaka-Nixon Meeting; and as Cobweb Iris.
REBECA SACCHERO (DEPUTY-CHAIR)
Rebeca Sacchero is a Producer with extensive experience across multiple Metro Melbourne Inner North Local Government Areas. Rebeca understands the local government context whilst also having relationships and experience in small to medium arts orgs. She has been working in the space of community engaged practice and is passionate about creating arts access for under-represented communities. She has a strong track record of successful projects with youth, the LGBTQIA+ community, CALD communities and seniors. She has worked across visual arts, performing arts and digital media, with a range of government and private stakeholders. These include major festivals, local and state Government, ARI’s, schools, community health orgs, and social enterprises. She completed a degree in Art History and Curatorship at Monash University in 2017 and in 2019 was selected for Leadership Victoria’s LGBTQIA+ Leadership program. She also runs her own community building electronic music events in which she has toured international artists, and is a DJ.
MARK NOLEN (TREASURER) is a Certified Practising Accountant with extensive experience in the creative industries sector. He is currently Management Accountant at ACMI, having previously worked in a similar role at Film Victoria. Along the way, he has helped countless singers, actors, and even clowns get their taxes in order – no laughing matter! When not crunching numbers, you can find Mark sitting back with a fine drop of Scotch whisky, soaking up some even finer tunes.
CLAIRE BREDENOORD (SECRETARY) is an education designer and creative producer with experience in non-profit arts organisations, higher education and start-ups. She has a background in socially engaged arts practice and publishing, most often working across disciplines to produce multimodal projects. Most recently, Claire has contributed to the launch of Industri Education, a live music education organisation aiming to provide pathways into industry, as the Operations and Education Lead. A notable achievement has been collaborating with live music industry stakeholders to design new courses in technical production. Claire holds a Juris Doctor and a Master of Arts and Community Practice. She aims to continue developing her diverse skill set and passion for relational community practice to contribute to First Nations peoples’ fight for justice.
MONICA LIM (MEMBER) is a Melbourne-based pianist and composer of classical contemporary and experimental music. Born in Malaysia and then migrating to Australia in her teens, Monica initially practiced as a Tax Consultant for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, before pursuing her own interests in business and the arts. She has produced work for theatre, contemporary dance, installations, and film, as well as solo and ensemble instrumental pieces. She is interested in new cross-disciplinary genres and forms as well as combinations of new technology with music. Monica is currently undertaking a PhD at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne in interactive technology, AI and gesture-led composition. Monica is co-founder of Project Eleven, a philanthropic initiative which supports the contemporary arts and serves on the boards of the Melbourne Recital Centre, the Substation as well as the Member’s Council for Musica Viva.
NARETHA WILLIAMS (MEMBER) is an accomplished practitioner in the Australian creative industries sector. An established artist and music producer, she is a seasoned industry professional with extensive experience across a dynamic range of appointments. Naretha has worked with leading Australian companies and First Nations initiatives, flagship festivals and events, has toured internationally and won several awards. Credits include: St Kilda Festival, Bless Your Blak Arts Festival, Australasian World Music Expo, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival, Science Gallery London, Chunky Move, Performance Space New York, The Melba Spiegeltent, Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, Sydney Myer Music Bowl, Sydney Dance Company, and Melbourne’s Flash Forward.
GAIL PRIEST (MEMBER) is a sound artist and writer based on Dharug and Gundungurra land (Katoomba, NSW). Her work spans soundtracks for dance, theatre and video, solo electro-acoustic performance as well sound installations for gallery contexts, both solo and in collaboration. She has performed her live compositions and exhibited sound installations nationally and internationally including in Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands. In 2015-16 she was awarded an Emerging & Experimental Arts Fellowship from the Australia Council. She has undertaken numerous radio commissions and releases music on her own label Metal Bitch Recordings as well as Flaming Pines, Endgame Records and room40. She curates events and exhibitions and writes fictively and factually about sound and media art, working for RealTime magazine for over 15 years. She has been on the board of Performance Space (2011-2014), and a peer assessor for the Australia Council. She has just completed a PhD in creative sound theory at UTS. www.gailpriest.net
DAVID CHESWORTH (MEMBER) is an artist and composer, known for his experimental, and at times minimalist music, who has worked with electronics, contemporary ensembles, film, theatre, and experimental opera. Together with Sonia Leber, David has created installation artworks using sound, video, architecture and public participation. Exhibitions include ‘56th Venice Biennale (2015), ‘19th Biennale of Sydney (2014), and Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013-14). Festivals featuring Chesworth’s music and sound works include Ars Electronica; Festival D’Automne de Paris; Bang on a Can Marathon, New York, Biennale of Sydney; Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals; and MONA FOMA. Early in his career he was co-founder of post-punk band Essendon Airport and for five years was coordinator of the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, Melbourne. David is a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching auditory archives.
INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY GROUP
PATRICK HARTONO (MEMBER) Born in Makassar 1988, Patrick Gunawan Hartono is an Indonesian electroacoustic composer and audiovisual artist. He earned a BMus in Composition (Cum laude) from Rotterdam Conservatory with Minor Study at The Institute of Sonology, MMus in Sonic Arts from the University of London, Goldsmiths, and Live Electronic Course from IRCAM, Paris. In 2017 he won the ICMA audience award for his generative audiovisual piece “Matrix Studies” and the 1st Prize for WOCMAT 2019 International Electroacoustic Music Young Composer Award. Most of his works use the sound of Indonesian traditional music instruments, computer-generated sound/images, field recordings; transformed, rearranged, modulated by mathematical rules, real-time interaction, and controlled random operations. Patrick is currently based in Melbourne, Australia, to pursue a doctoral degree at the University of Melbourne while actively involved in local and international electroacoustic/computer music communities.
STAFF
Kristi Monfries (Director)
Lucreccia Quintanilla (Director until April 2024)
Rohan Rebeiro (Creative Producer)
Ronen Jafari (Programs Coordinator)
James Howard (Creative Producer - proud Jaadwa man)
LA ASSOCIATES
Helen Grogan (Associate Advisor - Liquid Archive)
Tiarney Miekus (Associate Editor - Disclaimer)
Laura McLean and Suvani Suri (Associate Curators - Capture All)
INTERNS
Olivia Stephen
Jess Phillips
Contact
We welcome conversation, ideas and feedback at any time.
info@liquidarchitecture.org.au
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104/35 Johnston Street
Collingwood VIC 3066
AUSTRALIA
LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
SOUND INC
ABN 73128090237
ASN A0050679K
Privacy Statement
Liquid Architecture (LA) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information obtained and stored about its audience or clientele, including users of this website.
We understand and appreciate that our audience or clientele and users of this website are concerned about their privacy and the confidentiality and security of any information that may be provided to us.
This policy applies when Liquid Architecture determines what information will be collected or disclosed, or how any information will be processed.
We take a broad understanding of what constitutes ‘personal information’. We understand ‘personal information’ to include any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. An identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.
Liquid Architecture is bound by the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Commonwealth Privacy Act and is compliant with the Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012.
We may, from time to time, review and update this Privacy Policy to take account of new laws and technology, changes to Liquid Architecture’s operations and practices and to make sure it remains appropriate to the changing legal environment.
THE TYPES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION LA COLLECTS
The type of information Liquid Architecture collects and holds includes (but is not limited to) personal information, including sensitive information, about:
- Contact information including email address, phone number, names, gender, organisation, role.
- Connection information including linkages and referrals between people.
- Financial information including amounts paid to LA, donated to LA, or received by LA.
- When you visit our website, our server maintains an access log that includes the following information: the visitor’s IP address, the date and time of the visit to the site, the pages accessed and documents downloaded, the previous site visited, and the type of browser used.
- When you visit our website, cookies are stored on your device that provides information to Google Analytics to give us statistical information about our visitors.
HOW PERSONAL INFORMATION IS COLLECTED
LA collects personal information in a variety of different ways depending on the type of contact that is made with the organisation. We collect personal information both from individuals directly and from third parties.
- Subscribing to LA’s newsletter via the website, in-person or other means
- Visiting LA’s website
- Registering for LA’s programs of events (eg. performances, workshops, lectures)
- Purchasing a ticket for LA’s programs of events via a ticketing system
- Making an online enquiry
- Making an individual donation to LA
- Becoming a sponsor
- Submitting a proposal to LA
- Providing written feedback to LA
- Through agreements with programming partners to add addresses to our mailing lists
- Images of persons might be collected during documentation of an LA performance
- If you become a LA Associate, Volunteer or Board Member
LA may also collect personal information over the phone, in person or by electronic correspondence in order to undertake its regular administrative operations
WHY PERSONAL INFORMATION IS COLLECTED
LA collects personal information in order to service the needs of its staff, audience and partnerships. This information is only used with your consent. Your personal information may be retained and used for the following purposes:
- To communicate with staff, artists, associates, volunteers, or Board Members
- For communicating about upcoming programs and services offered by LA and its partners
- For documenting LA performances and events
- To communicate to LA audiences on behalf of other arts or government organisations offering information regarding their products
- For artistic program research and organisational continuous improvement purposes
All details are kept secure at all times and any individual may request their information is not used for direct marketing, research or any other purpose.
DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
LA will not sell, lend, disclose, or give personal information of its audience or clientele to external individuals or organisations without first obtaining the customer’s consent.
LA may, however, disclose your personal information or financial data (information exchanged in transactions relating to donations, ticket purchasing or any other product sold):
- To our insurer or legal advisors for the purpose of obtaining insurance coverage, obtaining professional advice, and managing risks.
- To our payment services providers or financial institutions. LA will share transaction data only to the extent necessary for processing, refunding, or dealing with queries about payments.
- In a situation where such disclosure is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that LA is subject to, or in order to protect the vital interests of a person.
LA will not disclosure personal information to recipients in another jurisdiction unless that jurisdiction has a privacy regime at least as equally protective as Australia. LA will always ask for specific consent before disclosing personal information to a recipient in another jurisdiction.
PERSONAL INFORMATION ACCURACY
LA is committed to ensuring all personal information it collects is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, the accuracy of this personal information to a large extent depends on the information provided by its clients. LA asks that all clients:
- Advise us if you become aware of any errors in your personal information.
- Advise of any changes in their personal details, such as address, email address and phone number.
YOUR RIGHTS
At any time, any person has the right:
- To know what personal information LA holds about them and how it has been used
- To correct or alter any personal information LA holds about them
- To have the personal information about them erased
- To withdraw consent for the collection, retention, disclosure, use or processing of personal information
- To make a request or inquiry, write to info@liquidarchitecture.org.au
WEBSITE
The LA website contains links to other sites. LA is not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites. LA encourages users when they leave the site to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personal information. This privacy statement applies solely to the activities of LA.
GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (GDPR)
LA operates occasional European artistic programming and partnerships, and complies with the data protection policies required by the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) since 25 May 2018.
OUR DATA SECURITY POLICY
LA takes steps to prevent the personal information it holds from misuse, loss, interference or unauthorised access.
LA will also destroy or de-identify personal information when it is no longer needed, or when requested.
ENQUIRIES
If you would like further information about the way Liquid Architecture manages the personal information it holds, please contact LA via info@liquidarchitecture.org.au.
Feedback & Complaints
Liquid Architecture (LA) is committed to respecting feedback and complaints and continually improving our processes. This policy is intended to ensure that we handle complaints fairly, efficiently and effectively. We encourage feedback as part of improving our audience experience and artistic programming.
You can provide feedback or make a complaint via email via email to info@liquidarchitecture.org.au.
HOW DOES LA HANDLE FEEDBACK AND COMPLAINTS?
Upon receiving feedback or a complaint, LA will acknowledge receipt of the feedback or complaint; and request further information if necessary and advise how the issue is likely to be resolved.
LA will not respond to feedback or complaints that violate State or Federal laws, or suggest that others do so; contain profane, violent, abusive, sexually explicit language or hate speech; or are bullying, harassing or disruptive in nature.
Where possible, complaints will be resolved at first contact with us. When appropriate we may offer an explanation or apology to the person making the complaint. Where this is not possible, we may decide to escalate the complaint to LA’s CEOs or Board. Where a person making a complaint is dissatisfied with the outcome of our review of their complaint, they may seek an external review of our decision.
We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that people making complaints are not adversely affected because a complaint has been made by them or on their behalf.
All complaints are confidential. We accept anonymous complaints if there is a compelling reason to do so and will carry out a confidential investigation of the issues raised where there is enough information provided.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR MY COMPLAINT TO BE RESOLVED?
The time it takes to resolve a matter depends on the issues raised and any enquiries that need to be made. As a guide, LA aims to acknowledge written feedback and complaints within 1 business day of receipt (if an email address or phone number is provided); respond to all written feedback and complaints within 5 business days of receipt.
LA will consider the matter closed if you indicate that you are satisfied with the response, or LA does not hear from you within 10 business days after sending you its response.
WHAT IF I’M NOT HAPPY WITH THE RESPONSE?
If you are dissatisfied with LA’s response you are encouraged to contact LA to request an internal review. You should outline in writing why you are dissatisfied with the response; and the outcome you are seeking. LA will provide a further response within 10 business days of receiving this information.
If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of our review of their complaint, you may seek an external review of our decision (by the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission for example).
Australian Charities and
Not-for-Profits Commission
Advice team: 13 22 62
Online Form
TICKET REFUNDS AND EXCHANGES
LA may provide an exchange or refund of a ticket if problems arise before, during or after an event. LA encourages our audience to try to resolve problems as soon as possible after they arise so that we have the best opportunity to find a solution.
The Voice in Cinema, or the Acousmêtre and Me
Michel Chion
Born in 1947, Michel Chion is a composer, filmmaker, historian and writer – and arguably the world’s foremost thinker on sound in cinema.
In the 1970s he was a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), the influential collective led by composer and theoretician Pierre Schaeffer dedicated to furthering the art of ‘musique concrète’ through experiments in audiovisual communication, audible phenomena and music in general. It was at the GRM that Chion composed arguably his most famous work, Requiem, a noisy and surreal deconstruction of the Funeral Mass made whilst pondering the “troubled minority of the living, rather than the silent majority of the dead.”
Since the 1980s, Chion has written extensively on the relationship of sound and image in the cinema, publishing in 1990 what many consider the definitive theoretical guide to the subject, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. In this momentous book, Chion advances a whole new lexicon for describing audio-visual concepts, via the works of Jacques Tati, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard and others. On reading, film scholar Claudia Gorbman was moved to name him “a poet in theoretician’s clothing.”
For this event, Michel Chion will present a lecture performance tracing a history of the ‘acousmêtre’ – Chion’s term for the mysterious off-screen voice in cinema, through his own oeuvre and the works of Bresson, Lang, Syberberg, Spike Jonze and more.
notes by Michel Chion
Lecture performance based around Chion’s two short films Le Grand Nettoyage, 1975, 5′; and Eponine, 1984, 13′.
Acousmêtre – a kind of voice-character specific to cinema that derives mysterious powers from being heard and not seen. The disembodied voice seems to come from everywhere and therefore to have no clearly defined limits to its power.
When I published my essay La Voie au Cinéma in 1982—where I proposed the theory of acousmêtre, a word I invented and which had a certain resonance thanks notably to the English translation by Claudia Gorbman of The Voice in Cinema (Columbia University Press, 1999), and the writings of Slavoj Zizek—I had already ‘lived’ this concept. I had lived it both in my life experience – like any child – and also through certain films that particularly marked me, such as Bresson’s A Man Escaped, Hitchcock’s Psycho, Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and Syberberg’s Parsifal based on Wagner’s opera. And I lived it through my own creative works based on absence and suggestion like Requiem, the 1973 musique concrète composition full of “characters” and “scenes” one does not see, or the short film Le Grand Nettoyage, 1975, a sound film without words.
When I began to write and shoot my film Eponine in 1975, I wanted to consciously ‘test’ this and other concepts of analysis with a film; the character of a mother without a face; the suggestion through sound of an outside world that one never sees (since the film takes place within the walls of a house from which one does not go out); the creation of an imaginary topography. The success of this film showed me that the concepts ‘worked’. Thus, for me, theory is not a dead demonstration. A living theory must be drawn from a personal experience.
In this lecture-performance, I will share projects, sketches, essays, personal creations (including for a future film), alongside excerpts from Bresson, Hitchcock, Lang, Syberberg, and Spike Jonze, who, as some have said, renews the idea of acousmêtre. I’ll present these materials sometimes deprived of sound, sometimes deprived of images, sometimes associated with other images and other sounds, and sometimes accompanied by my own live voice. I will show how easy it is to ‘live’ and to experiment with audio-visual combinations.
M.C., April 9, 2017
Presented in partnership with the Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA and Institut Français
We acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera people as the custodians of the land in which this event takes place, and we recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.Partners
Michel Chion
Born in 1947, Michel Chion is a composer, filmmaker, historian and writer – and arguably the world’s foremost thinker on sound in cinema.