Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons
15.08.2023 – 30.09.2023

WILD HOPE: Conversations for a Planetary Commons

Experience a world where imagination and urgency unite, where art, research and design become agents for change to address the climate crisis.

Welcome to Wild Hope, an extraordinary exhibition and public program that invites you to embrace a radical shift towards ‘planetary thinking’ – where place-based community living is intimately linked with sustaining our environments.

We live in an age of disruption, facing interconnected challenges unconstrained by national borders – climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics and forced migration. In response, we must understand oceans, air, rivers, soil, minerals, forests, glaciers and species biodiversity, among other things, as beyond borders and therefore a collective responsibility. We must learn from Indigenous knowledges and practices and work together to compassionately shape our shared future.

Design Hub Gallery showcases visionary works by artists, designers, and creative practitioners who are embracing a shift towards this ‘planetary thinking’ in innovative ways.

Wild Hope: Conversations for Planetary Commons dares us to have wild hope in dark times.

Practitioners include: Marnie Badham and Tammy Wong Hulbert; Vicki Couzens; Dean Cross; D&K (Chantal Kirby, Ricarda Bigolin) with Žiga Testen; Jessie French; Kate Geck; Marc Gibson; Pirjo Haikola, Tom Park; Kirsten Haydon; Openwork, Sarah Lynn Rees with RMIT ICON Science; Alex Le Guillou; Grace Lillian Lee; Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker & Joel Stern); Clare McCracken, Rebecca Najdowski and Polly Stanton; Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov; Caitlyn Parry & Helen Duong; Maj Plemenitas; RMIT Architecture Immersive Futures Lab and Superscale (Patrick Macasaet, Vei Tan, Shuming Ivy Zhou and Zechen Huang); David Rousell and Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles; Greg Semu; These Are The Projects We Do Together (Millie Cattlin and Joseph Norster)

Exhibition Curatorium: Naomi Stead, Fleur Watson, Wendy Steele, Katrina Simon

Exhibition graphic design: Stuart Geddes

Part of the City of Melbourne’s Now or Never festival

RMIT PlaceLab, is partnering with Regen Melbourne to present the satellite exhibition Measuring What Matters: Co-creating a City Portrait for Melbourne.
We all want to be a part of measurable action for our planet, but where do we start to make a change in our city?
You’re invited to challenge the reality of our global meta-crisis (a web of interconnected challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss, to rising social inequality and loneliness) and redefine our collective aspirations toward a thriving future for our city. This work-in-progress prototype installation and its accompanying workshop series call for a reimagined Melbourne/Naarm, a city that meets the needs of its inhabitants within our planet’s finite resources. Through the ‘City Portrait’ platform, we explore Melbourne’s social and environmental strengths, and shortcomings. To help us trek a new path and ask; how do we measure progress towards a hopeful future?

In the face of confronting data, the ‘City Portrait’ asks visitors to embrace a ‘wild hope’, rethinking how we work, live, and connect with one another. This collective action invites us to reshape our understanding of Melbourne/Naarm’s commons and to invest in a thriving future for our city and planet.

The exhibition is open at RMIT PlaceLab Melbourne between Monday 21 August – Friday 29 September, Monday – Friday, between 12pm – 4pm.

Public Program

Between the Cracks: Unleashing the Transformative Power of the Dirty Green City

Design Hub Gallery, Saturday 19 Aug, 2 – 3pm

In this live exploration, Queer Screen Production Practices in Australia (QSPPA) challenge conventional notions of urban greening.

For more information, please click here.

This program is part of Now or Never.

Planetary Civics – Indy Johar Keynote

The Capitol, Monday 21 Aug, 6.30 -8.30pm

London-based social entrepreneur, architect, and visionary thinker Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs presents a keynote address to launch the Planetary Civics Initiative at RMIT.

For more information, please click here.

This program is part of Now or Never.

Measuring What Matters: Co-creating a City Portrait for Melbourne

This work-in-progress prototype installation, and accompanying workshop series call for a reimagined Melbourne/Naarm, a city that meets the needs of its inhabitants within our planet’s finite resources. A collaboration between Regen Melbourne, RMIT School of Design and RMIT PlaceLab.

Healing and Reconnecting to Country and Each Other, Wednesday 23 August, 4-6pm, PlaceLab Melbourne

A participatory workshop exploring our personal relationships to healing and reconnecting with people and place, and what it means for this to be a critical part of addressing big, systemic issues in our city through our work and personal actions.

For more information, please click here.

Drawing our City’s System, Wednesday 30 August, 4-6pm, PlaceLab Melbourne

A collaborative workshop creating communal, interpretive drawings of Melbourne’s systems and our individual and shared relationships to them.

For more information, please click here.

Painting a Portrait of Wild Hope, Wednesday 27 September, 4-6pm, Design Hub Gallery

What does ‘wild hope’ for our city look like, and what is the role of the ‘City Portrait’ in prompting, generating and strengthening action towards this vision?

For more information, please click here.

Making Wild Hope

Design Hub Gallery, Friday 25 August, 12.30-1.30pm

Join artist Jessie French, graphic designer Stuart Geddes and Wild Hope Curators Fleur Watson and Katrina Simon for a discussion on sustainable exhibition making practices.

For more information, please click here.

In Conversation: The Giants with Bob Brown

Design Hub Gallery, Tuesday 29 Aug 6 -8.00pm

Join Bob Brown, filmmakers Rachael Antony and Laurence Billiet and ABC Life Matters host Hillary Harper, in this special event as they discuss behind-the-scenes stories and the pressing need for collective action.

For more information, please click here.

This program is part of Now or Never.

Planetary Auditions

Design Hub Gallery, Saturday 2 September, 2 -4pm

Explore the intersections of sound, listening, ecology, machine learning and AI with performances and talks by artists, researchers, and musicians.

For more information, please click here.

This program is part of Now or Never.

2-2:20pm Sarah Barns

2:30-2:50pm Santiago Renteria

3:20-4pm Machine Listening

Book Launch, Climate Child Imaginaries

Design Hub Gallery, Tuesday 5 September, 5-6.30pm

Celebrate the release of a comprehensive book about how children’s imaginings can inform our understandings of climate change.

For more information, please click here.

To follow the Old Ways

The Capitol, Wednesday 6 September, 6-8pm

Join us for a screening and panel discussion led by Vicki Couzens and members of The Southern Ocean Protection Embassy Collective (SOPEC) and learn about the fight to protect sacred Sea Country.

For more information, please click here.

Everyday Oceans

Design Hub Gallery, Friday 8 September, 11am – 5pm

Join us for an ocean take over in Wild Hope. Explore the art of Oceans Research and Climate Action Network (ORCA) members Fiona Hillary, Rebecca Olive and Jordan Lacey, who explore explore oceanic knowing through sound, film and virtual reality.

ORCA aims to facilitate ecological exchanges that encourage new possibilities for imagining ways of living with bodies of water, to create a fluid archive of human, more-than-human and oceanic entanglements. Exploring oceans as a global commons, making themselves vulnerable to human-ocean entanglements helps them imagine new relationships and possibilities with multispecies places.

Thinking with water through diverse media and in response to a range of aquatic locations, ORCA invites audiences to think about their relationships with the ocean in new, multi-sensory and multimedia ways. In this pop-up event, time-based works explore oceanic knowing through sound, film and virtual reality.

Wear out mode –

Design Hub Gallery, Thursday 14 September, 1-4pm

In this floor talk and Masterclass Assoc. Prof Ricarda Bigolin of D&K and Ziga Testen will talk through the treatment of textiles as text and instructional prototypes to reveal new uses and ways to ‘wear out fashion’.

For more information, please click here.

The Long Table: Garden as commons

Design Hub Gallery, Saturday 16 & 30 September, 12.30-2.30pm

Join Jen Lynch and Emily Sia Lian Wong, along with other featured practitioners for an in situ collective meal and discussion, with ingredients gathered from locally grown gardens and sourced from local food makers.

For more information, please click here.

Children’s book reading: The ant, the Plant, and the Caterpillar

Design Hub Gallery, Thursday 21 September, 11.30am-12.30pm

Discover the life cycles of the Eltham Copper Butterfly and the importance of protecting endangered species and ecosystems.

For more information, please click here.

re/Wild/ing Melbourne

Design Hub Gallery, Thursday 21 September, 4:30-5:45pm

Bringing together designers, human geographers and the City of Melbourne, this session explores key questions facing the design disciplines, as they engage with future-proofing our city.

For more information, please click here.

Sea and seeing

Design Hub Gallery, Saturday 23 September, 3-4pm

Join us for an immersive event pushing the boundaries of fashion today. Witness the ongoing collaboration between designers Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd (S!X , Melbourne) and the Brasilis Collective (Brazil), alongside other local Australian creative practitioners, to redefine luxury by transforming single-use plastics from ocean garbage patches into luxury fashion items.

Australian Participants:
Angela Finn
Hannah Berry
Emma Blackmore
Marni Stuart
Text by Sean Ryan
Projection by Vanessa Duque Camacho
Choreography by Laura Banfield
Models by Jira Models
Hair by Simon Setter

Music by Jimmy James

Make-up by Ebony Barrera

For more information, please click here.

Children’s writing workshop: To the trees…

Design Hub Gallery, Tuesday 26 September, 2-3pm

Children share and write about their emotions and dreams, fostering collective care for our planet.

For more information, please click here.