Sydney Design Week launches with a curated celebration of design and architecture through photography and film, featuring special previews of films Strata Incognita, Yesterday New Future (Liddell) and Homo Urbanus.
WELCOME
6pm Opening of Sydney Design Week 2023
SCREENINGS
5–9pm Strata Incognita (2023) is a short film by Grandeza Studio and Locument commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023
5–9pm Yesterday New Future (Liddell) (2023)by Merilyn Fairskye is a new photographic and social history recording commissioned by Powerhouse Photography. It captures the transformation of the Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley, NSW, from one of the world’s oldest operating coal-fired power stations to a clean energy renewables hub. Yesterday New Future (Liddell) examines the site as a microcosm of geological time, human settlement and industrial transformation
5–9pm Homo Urbanus (2019)is a cinematic odyssey by acclaimed artist-filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, which offers a vibrant tribute to public space. Taking the form of a free-wheeling journey around the world (10 films, 10 cities, 10 hours of films), these observational films put urban humanity under the microscope and encourage a closer look at individual and collective behaviour, interpersonal dynamics, social tensions, and the economic and political forces that play out every day on city streets
VISUALS
5–9pm AI generated image projections by Tom Blachford
MUSIC
5–9pm DJ Deepa
BAR
5–9pm Bar by Grifter
and are video-artists, filmmakers, producers and publishers who have worked together since 2005. The duo experiments with new narrative and cinematographic forms relating to contemporary architecture and the urban environment. Bêka and Lemoine focus on how the built environment shapes and influences daily life. Their unique and personal approach can be defined, in reference to French writer Georges Perec, as an ‘anthropology of the ordinary’. Bêka and Lemoine's films have been selected and awarded by major film festivals including Cannes Films Festival, Mostra del Cinema di Venezia, CPH:DOX, DocAviv, Chicago International Film Festival and Torino Film Festival. Their films have also been presented in the Venice Architecture Biennale (2008, 2010, 2014), the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016, the Seoul Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 and Performa 17 in New York.
Tom Blachford is a Melbourne-based artist and photographer who specialises in interiors, architecture and aerial photography. Blachford prides himself on translating space, texture and design intent into strong sets of images. He has worked with many of Australia’s prominent architects and designers, and his skill set encompasses residential, workplace, retail, hospitality and industrial spaces. Blachford’s photographs have featured in numerous publications including Wallpaper*, Vogue Living, Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest.
Merilyn Fairskye is a visual artist based in Sydney whose recent video and photographic work explores the effects of powerful events on humans and the environment. Current projects examining the relationships between technology, atomic landscapes and community have taken her on location to the Polygon in Kazakhstan, Sellafield in England, Chernobyl in Ukraine and other key nuclear sites, resulting in an art film, video installations and photographic series exhibited in Australia and internationally. Fairskye’s work has been presented in more than 180 exhibitions and festivals. Her feature-length art film, Precarious, was nominated for the 2012 Al Jazeera Documentary Channel long-form film award.
Grandeza Studio is a collective of architects, artists, educators and researchers founded in 2011 by Amaia Sánchez-Velasco, Jorge Valiente Oriol, and Gonzalo Valiente Oriol. Based between Madrid and Sydney, the studio studies late-capitalist spaces and narratives to identify and challenge the mechanisms that veil and normalise structural forms of violence. Grandeza Studio won the Golden Bee Award for the best international contribution at the XXII Triennale di Milano for its design of the Australian pavilion. Its work has been published and exhibited internationally.
Locument, founded in 2015 by Francisco Lobo and Romea Muryń, is a research studio based in Porto that combines filmmaking with architecture and urban research. They use architecture and film as analytical, critical and subversive tools to observe rapidly changing social conditions through the influential factors of technology, economy, politics and urban environment. Drawing from contemporary scenarios, Locument travels to unique locations that, while site-specific, reflect problematics that resonate throughout the globe.
