An MProjects led by Space Saloon in collaboration with Samuel Holleran
Each season, MPavilion commissions a series of unique creations and residencies for visitors to engage with during the MPavilion summer program.
This year, as part of MPavilion’s February program theme “Rituals: Marking Life”, the project “Public Protocols” explored notions of public space through digital and physical performative practice. The project was led by experimental design collective Space Saloon with Melbourne-based artist/researcher Samuel Holleran and a group of 20 participants aged between 18-25.
A series of weekly Zoom meetings and creative actions culminated in a weekend of digital-physical performances that traced and explored the mundane and novel ways we use the city through bodily movement, temporary installation, and visual documentation.
Each week, participants reacted to particular questions around personal and public space according to the weekly themes: Rituals of Lockdown, Rituals of Reverie, Rituals of Derive, and Rituals of Routine. Through a series of performative mappings, investigative reports and actions, they collectively reinterpreted the ways in which Melbourne is used, lived in and perceived today.
For the final activation, the surroundings of MPavilion and the Queen Victoria Gardens became the testing grounds for physical Zoom windows, sidewalk picnics, a compliment stand and many more inventive ways of challenging the norms of being in public.
With the project designed to move experiences between digital and physical spaces, each activation over the project period was documented and has been uploaded to an interactive website archive—where the project continues to evolve—which can be explored here.
The Public Protocols Participants included
Aislinn King, Anna Mueller, Audrey Avianto, Cathy Chan, Elaine Wang, Enzo Lara-Hamilton, Hayden Brown, Jack Cohen, Jarel Cheah, Jessica Tanto, Lily Thomson, Loughlin O’Kane, Lucinda Kolitsis, Mia Palmer-Verevis, Reuben Daamen, Rhys Cousins, Sophia Petropoulos, Sophie Cochrane, Tess Nettlefold, Will Scobie
This project was supported by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
