Instructions for the Healing Guide - Heide Museum of Modern Art

A series of participatory instructional pieces are presented to be enacted at particular locations at Heide by individual audience members. Each instructional piece or “exercise” is different and playful, metaphysical or physical, with the aim to elicit contemplation of self within the moment and place, or provoke a different experience/interpretation of Heide, ultimately aiming to create an edifying experience. Decontextualise, then reconstruct.

This work invites people to reflect on the many signs, messages and instructions we experience in our physical and digital worlds on a daily basis, like safety instructions, warnings, wayfinding, self-help guides and advertising. All of these require us to read, interpret and make a decision to follow or not.

This work aims to be instructional to a point, then the participant takes over, leading to different meanings and interpretations explored. This work is influenced by the Fluxes Movement and is an experiment in participatory practice that focuses on grounding audience members in themselves and in a series of locations, in this instance Heide.

Images captured from the day of install and presentation. 

Images of the instructions written by participants. 

Images of the preparation of instructions and poster for the exhibition with Architecture and Marketing students. 

Day one was a trip to Heide to experience the site, hear from a series of Heide staff about the history of Heide and future development, as well as an urban planner, artist and an architect. They day also included a view of the two site/s offered THE DOLL’S HOUSE and the HEALING GARDEN to develop our ideas and proposal for Project 1 and a student team task, mine being ‘ghost sign’s’ and hidden gems of Heide.

Heide Welcome and Introduction

Key interests:

• Heide referred to as a Living Museum having four historical layers: 
  1. Indigenous 2. Colonial 3. Modern 4. Contemporary
• Oak tree and River Red Gum Scar Tree
• Growing evolving space, what’s it’s future - Know : Now : Next 
• Invitation only – Exclusivity

Master Plan and Garden site and proposal - Mark Jacques, Landscape Architect, Urban Designer, OPENWORK
Aim: Weave all elements of Heide together creating a connected and cohesive creating an intuitive not prescriptive experience.

Example: Mark provided was the IKEA experience – know where to find what you want but can take a different journey – Curate your own journey.

Some of my interest and takings from Mark’s presentation were his reference to two different types of landscapes.
1. WILD: English, manicured, curated, tamed (top garden / Heide I)
2. REVOLUTIONARY: Indigenous land, plants

What interested me was the tension between the two but also the lack of knowledge of or information about the indigenous heritage, knowledge of site.

Challenges

• Disparate sculptures
• Poor wayfinding – visitation sequence – a lot get’s missed especially Heide I
• No cohesive storytelling (narrative) connected to wayfinding
• Typography is to prescriptive - Chronologically 1, 2, 3….
• Paywall? No one information place/entry
• Carpark’s driveway cutting Hedie I off from the rest of the site
• Heritage restraints
• Improved visual identity

HEIDE 5. Will be a bigger building/Museum that is multipurpose and will exhibit touring
exhibitions.

Kate Grace, Gardener: Site analysis, project and plant overview
Sites: Doll’s House and the Healing Garden 
My interest was in the Healing Garden

Aim: International Healing Space
Audience: Elderly, disabled or those who have experienced trauma - a demographic that is not catered for at Heide.
History: A failed Rainforest Garden planted by Sydney Nolan.
Intent: Key intent and passion of the reeds was to create a safe place for contemplation, learning, discussion and creative exploration, nurturing an arts culture.

Student Team Tasks: Ghost Sign’s

• A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner.

The group found visitor tagging all over the grounds but most significantly Shealton Lea was here on a metal plaque located on the basement door of Heide I. The team developed the campaign “Who is Shealton Lea” because there is no reference to him in Heide’s history and could be a hidden gem.

• Shealton Lea was the adopted child of Darell Lea (famous for Darrell Lea sweets) - He has
  been referred to as ‘the godfather of Melbourne poetry’. 

What this task highlighted
for me was the lived experience in the now, current context.

Artist Presentation: Natasha Johns-Messenger An Artist’s perspective at Heide

Sitelines 2017 (installations, photographs and light-works) 

Of interest was her approach to idea development. It was not through research, historical context and site investigation but through a lived in, physical approach in situ using mindfulness techniques. She attended Heide over a period of months and documented her mood, how her body navigated the space, changes experienced, weather, and used photography to document. Her aim to be Authentically Connected.

Where her excitement lies/sweet spot is the gap
between knowledge and perception!

BODY – Space in between – MIND

What you experience and what you perceive being out of whack and where the body is on high alert – Mirrors and deception, perspective and how the body moves through this. 

Her work creates a Cognitive Dissonance which my work, in the past has focused on. I’d like to explore this further and also look at Sensory Dissonance.

Jefa Greenaway, Indigenous Architect

Who Speaks for Land? History and Memory.
Facilitation of culturally responsive design – International Indigenous Design Charter.

Contribute to the building of cultural intelligence and celebrate connections and facilitate conversations with community.

Engagement Approaches – Imbed in the process not be an add on (cultural broach)

Learnings:

• The Yarra – The River of Mist #WaterProject
• Waterways frame country UoM New Student Precinct #WaterProject
• Country of the 5 Hills – Kulin Nation
• Songlines and Scar Tree: It may not be an artefact (eg; tree) but it’s the meaning and
  people’s knowledge and connection to it. 
• Cultural Overlay / Typography – Stars | Land | Waterways | Mountains | Animals | Insects 

Day two saw the group visit RMIT’s Creative gallery First Site to hear from Alice Matteau, followed by a presentation by Jo Mair Public Art, City of Melbourne and Artist Dr Sally Mannall.

Jo Mair, City of Melbourne – Creative Urban Places, Program Lead
Jo provided a snapshot of prominent public art in Melbourne from:

• Permanent works Vault Yellow Peril, The Purse, Eagle - very small annual budget (works over $200 K)
• Laneway Commissions project (old version of test sites)
• Current day new approaches that receive smaller funding but are their to test ideas and work in the public like Test Sites opportunity for artists with public art ideas to explore and experiment/prototype with temporary creative ideas (research and develop on site) in the Melbourne central city with support from the CoM (collaboration with other parts of Council such as Smart City Office and the Innovation District/ Uni of Melbourne UniSquare) and Biennial Lab a curated activations by and with artists on sites like QVM ($10 – 30K funding)
• Semi Permananet Raising the Rattle, 9000 Hours, The Good Life, Reco Lead Light Emu’s, Seed Pods ($40k – 150k)

Highlights for me included:

• Melbourne Principles: During the lab, participating artists reimagined ‘The New Rules of Public Art’. Published in 2013 by Situations, these rules acted as a catalyst for debate, fostering discussion about the role of public art. Responding to these original rules, Public Art Melbourne created a new list, The Melbourne Principles: New Rules for Public Art, while immersed in the Lab with artists at Queen Victoria Market. The rules were developed in collaboration with Claire Doherty, Director of Situations.
• The issues and challenges delivering on major public art works from a local council point of view.
• Southbank Major Public Art Commission – prior to Creative Victoria, State Government redevelopment of the Arts Precinct
• PARKing Day is a day for turning parking spaces into pop-up parks and art – Look into this and produce a group exhibition as part of parking day. (September) 
• The development of the next Creative City Strategy for council will commence shortly. Be a part of the engagement process for its development.

Artist: Dr Sally Mannall

Artistic intervention in specific sites can reveal a cultural moment - Garden as a highly complex cultural artefact.

Approach to Garden Sites:

• Historical
• Ideological
• Cultural              Conjure layered, associative readings of the garden Idea, Place and Action
• Environmental
• Personal

Gardens generate their own meaning: 

AS IDEA – what doe the garden tell us about cultural values?

AS PLACE – about belonging, events and activations.

AS ACTION – How is it maintained?

Heide Idea Development:

• British/colonial approach to landscape/garden as different to indigenous approach (Wealth, opulence and native, natural)
•      The front garden – how we want to be perceived
•      The back garden – how we want to be
• Imprinting yourself on the land
• Humans power, dominance and control in the landscape (and the absurd)
• Heuristic Knowing: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves - “a ‘hands-on’ or interactive heuristic approach to learning”

Keiran Boland, Makerspace RMIT

• A space to experiment, explore and realise creative ideas through exploration and
  collaboration.

Andy Tetzlaff, RMIT Intersect

• 6 spaces - PROJECT SPACE, SPARE ROOM, SITUATE, SITE EIGHT, the LIGHTSCAPES and SPEAKER.
• Dynamic program of exhibitions, residencies, creative laboratories, talks and events

Artists of interest to explore

• Mi Won Kwon - Site Specific
• Jonathan Jones, Skin and Bone 2016 – Funded by John Kaldor 
• Soa Paolo The Green Line (alys Frances) - Heide The Blue Line
• Claire Doherty, The Situationalists
• Future Library Video
• Ross Coulter, SLV, Paper Planes
• Olafur Eliasson, Waterfall
• Cat Jones, Empathetic Limb
• Denis Glover

Andy, Testing Grounds Get
involved: www.testing-grounds.com.au/

Lynda Roberts, Public Office

Snapshot of Melbourne’s PA history highlights – current day context – experience working
within a government institution and trying to forge innovative approaches to PA
– challenges of who decides what we experience and where?

Started at Testing Grounds and went through areas underdevelopment near the New Arts Precinct and NGV.

• Engaging community
  in decision-making - Institution v’s artist
• Leveraging
  partnerships assisting with small budgets for PA
• Playful approach
  to thinking in the public
• Institutions
  adoption of artists art and ideas (previously discouraged) NGV artwork taken
  inside – trogon horse
• NGV Artist activation
  – Security company (fired) – creative making change 

Dr Grace McQuitten, Social Practice/Social Enterprise

What really peaked my interest was:

• Engineering Relationships: eg; human behavioural research of buyers of products and social
  media metrics 
• Relational Antagonism: Claire Bishop eg Serra

Artists and arts role/s

• What is the role of art and artist in making change rather than representing it - True Democratic’s 
• Speak to the conflicts in society not just good things
• Provocation: What is our role as an artist: 1% movement – Walk on Wall Street
• How can we evaluate the artistic and aesthetic qualities of socially engaged art proactice?
• Is it possible for artworks to generate space for social critique at the same time as offering strategies for change?
• Can art, and indeed should art, attempt to create social change?

Ultimate I believe engaging in art/creativity it enables people to learn how to see things
(political, social, personal etc)  from other perspectives, lenses, and also become mindful or challenges their own set of lenses or perspective. Creates openness, compassion and exercises diplomacy.

Dr Marnie Badham

Research Question: What are the artistic and political strategies which inform the preoccupation of contemporary social practice artists with food production, consumption and
sharing?

Reconfigure the relationship between artist, art and the public

• Relational aesthetics: Art critic, curator, and historian Nicolas
  Bourriaud coined the term. A set of artistic practices
  which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of
  human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and
  private space. 
• Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics: Claire Bishop
• Going beyond knowing – principal of change
• Transnationalism: Cultural Tourism - Soft cultural diplomacy (residencies) working in communities not your own - Adapt content to different place – How do artists work in different places with cultural contexts – working in communities that are not your own.

Heide Development

• Concept of Destination Audience: Heide is a destination audience… could I mix this up?
• Reconfigure the relationship between the site, history and the public (context)

Met with Marnie and spoke about influencers for
projects:

• Jodie Hains – Film
• Elvis - The Countess Report
• Guerilla Girls – Data
• Michael Rokowitz, Parasite and Enemy Food Truck
• Constantina, Drag Queen – Indigenaity – box being observed – artefact

Jen Rae, Practice led Palaver – Creating in the Future

Example of art
extending beyond storytelling/reflecting and having an impact by contributing
to research and learning.

Role of the art
and artist in making or contributing to change.

Today we heard from Hugh Davies and presented our first idea for Heide Project 1 to all MAPS students and lectures. 

Artist: Hugh Davies TiMeR

Hugh began by describing an experience where Melbourne Museum had approached him to produce an artwork that was indigenous. As a non-indigenous art producer he questioned why he was asked and politely declined. He has since produced work of an indigenous nature but
though engagement with the communities.

Looks at how space is rendered physically and digitally, rituals of place, virtual rather than
physical and how cities are represented in video games digital/virtual reality - The architecture we navigate through a flat screen.

• Relates to Dr Troy Innocent’s Playable Cities Game 64 Ways of Being recently
  funded by Creative Victoria.
• Conference: Engaging for Impact
• Epiphenomenalism: a position on the
  mind-body problem holds that physical or biochemical events within the Human
  body are causal with respect to mental events – brain teaser to explore.

Heide Healing Garden (Project 1) A1 Poster Idea and Critical Symposium