In this year’s Interdisciplinary Forum, we consider the possibilities of REPAIR.

Bringing academic expertise and artists’ perspectives together for this popular annual event, we’ll embark upon an engaging day of presentations and discussions on the subject of REPAIR.  How can we move from extractive ways of being, working and engaging to more sustainable, enduring and ethical possibilities? How might we repair our bodies, societies, environments, relationships? Who guides us in this work? What might a repair ethos look like, and how might it be creatively imagined and implemented? We will explore aspects of REPAIR through the lens of disciplines as diverse as medicine and geography, and highlight the potential of creative practice as integral to this conversation.

In a special collaboration with co-convenors from Architecture & Philosophy in the Department of Architecture, Building and Planning, this year’s forum will have an emphasis on repair in the context of the built environment. Creative presentations will include interventions by visiting MacGeorge Fellow Dr Helen Stratford, well-known for her feminist activism, performative architecture and research; and artist and writer Therese Keogh, whose practice operates at the intersections of sculpture, geography and landscape architecture. A panel will include a reading by Tony Birch, Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne.

View full program on our website.

About Interdisciplinary Forums

The Ian Potter Museum of Art Interdisciplinary Forum is an ongoing, annual series presented by The University of Melbourne’s Museums and Collections Department. Each Forum seeks to address pressing themes of our time, and features academic researchers from across the University of Melbourne, alongside contributions by creative practitioners, proposing art-making as a form of knowledge creation alongside other academic fields of inquiry. Previous Forums have explored the themes of WATER, LANGUAGE, MACHINE, CONSENT, CARE, and TIME.