D Y N A M I C S O F A I R RMIT Gallery C O N T E N T S C O N T E N T S C O N T E N T S 04 Foreword 06 Introduction 14 Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry 48 Artist bios + project descriptions Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy F O R E W O R D Since 1997, RMIT Gallery has teamed with the Goethe-Institut to present 24 touring exhibitions, including the scholarly Gerhard Richter – Survey (1998) and Klaus Rinke’s recent drawings (2008) and the very popular 2017 exhibition, Fast Fashion: The Dark Side Of Fashion. The breadth of subject matter has been wide and the quality consistently outstanding. Dynamics of Air is a partnership between the Republic of Germany’s worldwide cultural institute and RMIT Gallery. From the point of view of trans- cultural partnerships, this project, which included a comprehensive public program of visiting scholars and artists as well as a catalogue, is unique. We are delighted that along with the Goethe-Institut, we have been joined by the Austrian Embassy, Canberra; Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN); British Council; Instituto Cervantes; EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), as financial supporters of this exhibition. The outcome has enabled us to showcase the best of Australian, German and European discourse around the shared and intangible atmospheric medium that is air. The project has been driven by curators, Senior Lecturer Dr Malte Wagenfeld, RMIT University and Professor Jane Burry, Dean School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology. Along with their vision and research, RMIT Gallery is delighted to showcase the work of RMIT’s high-profile researchers with connections to industry. I express my appreciation to Sonja Griegoschewski, Director, Goethe-Institut, Australia, for her strong support and belief in the curators’ vision. I also thank her colleague, Gabriele Urban, Cultural Program Coordinator, for her work across all aspects of the exhibition and public program. Jane and Malte, the exhibition curators, are to be congratulated for the outstanding realisation of this project, as well as Nick Devlin and his team of installers; Evelyn Tsitas, Senior Communications and Outreach; Maria Stolnik, Gallery Operations Coordinator; Meg Taylor, Exhibitions Assistant and Gallery Assistants; Sophie Ellis, Thao Nguyen and Vidhi Vidhi. Finally we warmly thank Professor Calum Drummond, DVC Research and Innovation and Vice-President; Professor Paul Gough, PVC and Vice President, College of Design and Social Context; Jane Holt, Executive Director, Research Office, Research and Innovation whose combined on-going support has enabled our program to flourish in 2018. Helen Rayment Acting Director Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy 05 I N T R O D U C T I O N Dynamics of Air is a prime example of the Goethe-Institut’s active global network and our ongoing interest in stimulating and enriching international discussion about sustainability and the future of our cities. Building on the long relationship of cultural exchange with RMIT Gallery, this exhibition came about after two years of discussion, many trips and meetings between Europe, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as a consultation with the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his delegation during their state visit to Australia in 2017. The Goethe-Institut is excited to again partner with RMIT Gallery on this occasion to explore complex scientific research on air and the challenges faced when designing for urban environments. Sustainability has already been a focus of our last exhibition at RMIT Gallery in 2017: Fast Fashion: The Dark Side of Fashion. Dynamics of Air is yet another prime example of how the future depends on our vision and ideas for a healthy environment. German engineers, architects and artists are well-known for their creative and sustainable approaches to design problems, and we are delighted to bring four of them to Melbourne for the exhibition and public program events: Professor Thomas Auer (Stuttgart/Munich), artist Edith Kollath (Berlin/Weimar), Professor Friedrich von Borries (Hamburg/Berlin) and his alter ego Mikael Mikael. This project with RMIT Gallery evolved in the true spirit of our former collaborations, which have always been a joint effort to present the best ideas from Germany, Australia and elsewhere. The results will certainly initiate further exchange between designers, scientists, engineers, students and academics in Melbourne and elsewhere. The Goethe-Institut would like to thank the inspired curators Dr Malte Wagenfeld and Professor Jane Burry, as well as our partners at RMIT Gallery for helping to realise this major new exhibition and the associated extensive public programs. In my role as the President of EUNIC Australia (European Union National Institutes for Culture), I am also happy to bring more European partners on board including Austria, UK and Spain. It was a great pleasure working with everyone involved in this project. Sonja Griegoschewski Director Australia, Goethe-Institut Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, opening night 07 Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (Phil Ayres, Petras Vestartas, Danica Pistekova & Maria Teudt), Denmark, Inflated Restraint, 2016, coated textile membranes, fan unit, ducting, courtesy of CITA and the British Council 08 Foreground: Background: Edith Kollath, Germany, Cameron Robbins, Australia, (L-R) nothing will ever be the same, 16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013; 2009-2018, kinetic artwork: 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014; motors, programming, fabric, 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013; aluminium rod, courtesy of the 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013; artist and the Goethe-Institut all works: pigment ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart 10 11 Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry With our deepening awareness of human impact on global climate and the implications this holds, there has been a collective shift in the way we conceptualise air and atmosphere. We no longer think of it as part of the vast empty expanse of outer space; the earth’s surface ceases to define the periphery of our planet. The conceptual and perceptual planetary boundary has expanded, air and atmosphere are an indivisible part of our globe and our lived life, and how we deal with it has consequences. Dynamics of Air taps into a growing international body of creative and scientific investigation into our relationship with, and experience of, air, atmosphere and climate, which reflects this conceptual shift from the material, solid and fixed towards the immaterial, fluid, transient and temporal; from cerebral aesthetic judgement to phenomenological experience; from a desire for certainty to an embracing of complexity. The exhibition developed out of a mutual fascination for the dynamic qualities of air and atmosphere, which we have both been exploring in different ways for over ten years. My captivation with the matter and poetics of air lies in a lifelong curiosity about environmental forces and the kinetic, dynamic, temporal and experiential. Following a lengthy investigation into air phenomena, how we experience climate and how we might design with air, I am now investigating and designing experiential ‘air’ environments and, integral to this work, my intention is to stimulate people to think about interior air environments more openly – to let go of the concept of ‘comfort’ and embrace the richly diverse and ever changing qualities of air: atmosphere and experience; and to inspire a move away from energy intensive and often unhealthy hermetically sealed, mechanically conditioned air. This requires innovating more desirable alternatives, but it also requires a shift in expectation and mind-set, away from the highly predictable, solid-state and neutral towards the dynamic, sensorially rich and temporally variable. Malte Wagenfeld For me it is about how the architectural design process can bring about much needed changes to both the phenomenal experience of the atmospheric interior that Malte has alluded to and the urgently needed revolution in the way we service and consume energy, and contribute heat from buildings. A principal role of architecture is to modulate 14 the atmosphere. As buildings have gotten fatter, and expectations of temperature and constancy have changed, the atmosphere within has become more mechanically and numerically controlled, and less part of the overall architectural conception and design. Design technologies give us the opportunity to move beyond just flexibly modelling what can be seen in architecture to being able to link the behaviour of air and what you feel to our design models. Air is a very complex phenomenon to model. To do this meaningfully, architects and designers have to work with aerospace and mechanical engineers, computer scientists, and others to develop ways to simulate environments and design with them both virtually and physically. Jane Burry The exhibition is a live research lab where these ideas and concerns are staged in ways that enable visitors to experience and explore, and to be sensorially and intellectually stimulated. Rather than an end in itself, the exhibition is a site of investigation in which participants audition ideas, curate experiences of air and atmosphere, observe and discover, as a critical part of an ongoing conversation. The work presented involves a broad transdisciplinary