Testing Grounds
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Testing Grounds
Upcoming Calendar
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WORK WITH US: We’re seeking a new Site Manager!
Testing Grounds
Call out
16.12.20 - 17.01.21
Testing Grounds is looking for a person to be our new Site Manager! Reporting to the Program Director and the General Manager, the Site Manager is responsible for keeping the site accessible and operational, as well as some administrative and event duties.
It is a casual role with varied hours, involving general site and equipment maintenance, using tools, problem-solving and assisting to produce projects on site in a hands-on and practical way.
First Nations, Queer, POC and CALD arts workers are encouraged to apply.
Email us if you have any questions regarding the role or how to apply
Image: Continuously Under Construction, 2019.
[ community ][ infrastructure ]
0411
Nocturnal Relay
Jonathan Homsey & Georgia Kartas
Work in development
12.01.21 - 31.01.21
Nocturnal Relay (working title) is a propulsion of poetry and choreography exploring the fragility of reality. As society embarks upon a virtual/physical hybrid journey, this work aims to provide critical discourse around illusions. Nocturnal Relay will be created as a literal relay, with Saint Jorge working during the day on site and Jonathan Homsey working throughout the night, both virtually and at Testing Grounds. It concludes with a short film, free to the public, in March 2021.
Nocturnal Relay explores symbolism and ambiguous imagery, from Rorschach drawings to long exposure photography, as a real time journal on psychological discernment; it aims to see-saw between phantasmagorical clocks and the inevitable destruction of our bodies.
The work is rooted in their own internalised stigma around using intuition as their main source of methodology. They will prototype and interrogate illusions using binaural audio and placing virtual reality cameras suspended upside down in the centre of Testing Grounds.
Still Conditioned Lamentation Series, 2018. Image by Maylei Hunt.
[ dance ][ development work ][ LGBTQIA+ ][ performance ][ poetry ][ queer ][ residency ]
0406
Queer-Ways (Melbourne)
Luciano and Georgia Keats
Work in development
12.01.21 - 31.01.21
Luciano and Georgia Keats, in partnership with the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archive(ALGA), present Queer-ways: Retracing Melbourne’s Queer Footprint. Queer-ways maps the queer cartography of Melbourne, combining queer stories and voices of Melbourne’s past and present into a permanent, interactive record of being queer in Melbourne.
Working in collaboration with ALGA, we will locate queer landmarks, venues and queered spaces significant to Melbourne’s queer history. A digital map of this data will be publicly available, encouraging people to physically/digitally explore Melbourne on a self-guided queer walking tour post COVID-19.
The digital map will be turned into illustrations by LUCIANO and Georgia Keats. These illustrations will become interactive through the AR app EyeJack. Stories of each area will be recounted by recordings of queer voices and supported through subtitles viewable in the app, ensuring the project remains accessible to diverse audiences.
Image of the artists courtesy the artists.
[ LGBTQIA+ ][ participatory ][ public art ][ queer ][ research project ]
0412
Sugarbush
Roberta Rich & Naomi Velaphi
Work in development
12.01.21 - 31.01.21
Sugarbush (working title) is a collaborative project led by Naomi Velaphi and myself, both an extension and departure from the previous Afropodes project I was developing at Testing Grounds. Through an online journal format the aim is to explore our exchange with the continent that is steeped in many layers. We learn of sites and histories based on mostly western research, imagine tastes and smells of cities unknown and hold tight connections with family and friends we hope will endure in limited but meaningful moments.
Through a continued exercise of exchange with peers located on the continent, Australia and family connections, this focused dialogue allows our identity to unfold, remain and prosper. These dialogues aim to create an online repository of audio interviews, video and still image content that centres the voices and experiences of the southern African diaspora and our relationship to this, as well as strengthen relationships, and creative partnerships with southern Africa and diaspora of the settler Australian context. The journal will house Parts* with two currently in development one centred on creative relationships and the other on language and family.
Image of the artist, courtesy artist.
[ podcast ][ research project ][ residency ]