‘Scrolling Intimacies: A Library Walk’

(Start inside the entranceway … doors slide open … walk towards foyer … find the columns .. cafe sounds … step into the columns .. touch concrete .. stop here …)

(Walk walk carpet ... stomp stomp … plonk bag on table … unzip and take out a bunch of stuff ... books ... pens .. wallet… etc…)

(You’ve come into the library through sliding glass doors. Take note of this cocoon of sound. You’re standing in a foyer framed by 10 perfectly rounded cement columns as tall as the enclosed sky itself)

Sssshhhhhh!!!!

Start inside the entranceway … doors slide open … walk towards foyer … find the columns ... café sounds … step into the columns ... touch concrete ... stop here

Make your way to the circular column near the front desk

You want the one that stands forever facing a four-sided pillar from the Caulfield Library of the recent past.

Found it?

Now you’re here, place yourself in the spot between the new column and the old pillar. Just enough room for one, maybe two

(While observing social distancing)

You stand facing the rocky surface of 1972. It’s been holding here like a functional monument to every south east education centre

This pillar is fossilised within a humanitarian history and cut from a gorge of technical ambition, to then be painted over in the shade of modernised expectation

Let's walk through it

Step through the column and imagine yourself through the eyes of others as you perform this short act for them

While signalling to yourself that this work has begun

Now make your way to the far windows, a little closer to the café and stop for a moment when you reach the red wall

As I talk, you’ll simply be asked to detect signs of networked intimacy

Instead of describing what I mean, I need you to imagine the images I give you

In these images you might see people resting in loosely positioned seating, phones in hand and concentrating over their various screens

Take in the colour of the red and pearly wall

Give or take

Rose Nolan, the artist offers us this wall as if it were an approximate sum

A sum for someone to read then move on from

Giving or taking as they go

Ok ... Move towards the far windows now

Your headphones gives some legitimacy to the way you're looking around

In networked space, the more technology the more likely you are

Walk towards the soft furnishings and imagine yourself through the eyes of others as you walk by

To the far windows now, find the centre of the aisle and pick a seat

There are a few people around, all of them equally likely

Take in what they’re doing, are they wearing headphones too?

Keep sitting

Look through the glass windows at the gums outside and pick one

Notice this one in particular, take in its markings, the shape of its trunk, how it stands in the landscaped courtyard, whether it faces the other trees or appears inward

Staring at this tree, try to imagine what the person closest to you is doing

Without looking, take in their appearance, the shape they make in this part of the library

One, tree

Two, people

Three, tree (1972)

Four, get up, let's go (1973)

(1974)

(1976)

(1979)

Walk back towards the front past the café (1981 ... 1983)

Keep walking forward (1985)

(1987)

When you reach the pillar (1991) take a left (1993) past the self-borrowing machines (1995)

(1999)

(2001) And once you reach the stairs (2003) make your way up

(2005 ... 2006 ... 2009)

(2011 ... 2014)

(2015 … 2017)

At the top of the stairs, turn left and walk towards the printer station

Now make your way over to the elevator

Walking forward

And when you get there, find the screen

You took the stairs from 1972, but in 1933, the premier who inaugurated this campus claimed our lack of “technical knowledge” had for too long seen us look to German experts

He said, in our fight “for commercial supremacy” this campus emerged

But looking at the screen, consider that the experts were already here, and working with advanced communication systems for unspoiled epochs

Some of the first mobile messages, messages which foreshadow the ones you see on the screen, came from Wurundjeri Woi-wurung design

In what today we might call a two-step authentication system, the message stick relied on five corporally bound steps

The message was pictographically carved

Sent on foot with a trusted go-between

Then delivered as both memory and object, before being buried in the earth where it would disappear much like today’s disappearing messages

And ... as with medieval seals, at times a lock of hair would ensure its authenticity

Now look out beyond the screen, and into the tall Kulin grasses, wetlands and conduits that were

While the pillar downstairs fossilises our recent past, this wooden technology was so advanced ...

It was designed to disappear

Now turn towards the centre of the library

You can come back to the screen later ... for now head towards the void and follow the sounds from the café beneath you

Walk alongside the xylophone poles

And shhhhhhhh meet the soft hedges, running your hand along top, make your way to those sounds …

Students sit and click, they learn … while you move to the sounds from the café

Find a seat …

Sit down, smell the smells and hear the sounds

(radio voice)

The sound of standard piano jazz makes it way upwards amid the corridor of windows and screens

(Shhhhhhhh) Equally standard interludes of hard tapping and the release of steam (Steammm) is a reminder that the music is framing an experience for us (the music resonant with its own physicality and a barista ...)

A barista working with both hands (is watched from up here) calmly moves cups along sections of his machine and onto the counter for collection

The jazz music resonant with its own physicality

(Fridge door closes, soft seal, coffee ...)

The music and the coffee making (Shhhhhhhhooooooooop) a labour of the hands that is simultaneously mobile and concentrated in executions

(The sound of standard piano jazz makes it way upwards ... Equally standard interludes of hard tapping and the release of steam is a reminder...)

That the music is framing an experience for us

Ok, it’s time to move to the other side of the library

Head towards the back corridor where the windows face the mountains

(Voices murmur, coins change, coffee up, get up)

When you get to the quiet study zones, I want to show you something

Head toward the south-east corner, through a corridor of quiet classrooms

You're in the quiet study zone now

Look to the eastern corner

Where you might hear the road

And see the

(Two women sit with a gap between them...)

两个女人坐在一起，彼此之间留有空隙，难以分辨他们的关系，但近得足以让人好奇。她们挤在这原本不拥挤的角落，意味着她们认识彼此，而她们分享同一个橘子表明了他们的亲密关系

(... small enough, so as to question if they are here together. Their proximity in this otherwise uncrowded corner explains their connection, but the scattered fruit of a shared mandarin signals their intimacy)

Others tap and slide throughout the space. Whilst stationed, quiet, they are attached. One person reads a book.

And here ...

One of few available panels of white sky turns the room into a soft box ...

It’s perfect for taking photographs of skin

Let’s head back to towards the printing station

Turn and head south, past the bathrooms

When you reach the glass offices, take the spiral staircase up to level 3

You’re on level 3 now. In a sea of choice, I’d like you to wander out into the open space ahead ... and to find a seat

(seat)

Now you’re settled (settled), notice the uniformity of this place (uniformity)

Where study itself presents as an image (itself)

Consider this image; the hands resting firmly on chins (chins), the slowness of breath, eyes gazing downward (eyes), legs propped beneath bodies (bodies) to quell the inevitable numbness of prolonged concentration (numbness)

This is an image of work, cloaking a network (network) of interpersonal connection thronging in the digital marginalia (marginalia) beneath work’s surface

Offered as a place for work (work), it is also place where absorption and distraction (distraction) substitute one and another

Like two snails glued, to the other's tail (glued)

But then the social glides along your screen, distraction eventually outshining absorption (absorption), takes you its direction

Ennui, mist, and a quarry of voices

A screen fills you as you fill it

Turn back towards the spiral stairs

Heading north, toward the large void, you’ll come into a forest of titles

Passing the stairs, watch the eyes watching you

Passing a warlord, rendered anonymous by Tony Garafalakis

Move into the stacks

And when you come to the other side ...

take a left

(Punishment and Progress ... New Entrepreneurs ... Criminal law ... Taxation Law ... Six Crimes in the 50s ... Marketing ... Principal Sentencing ... Compliance Guides ...)

(Family Trust ... Statehood ... Master Tax ... Solomon's Knot ... Environmental Consequences of Law ... Havens in a Storm ... Laws of War ... Management Analysis ... Obedient Servants ... Adventures in Law ... The Gatekeepers ...)

(Macroeconomics ... Affirmative Action Debates ... Globalisation ... Fighting Power ... Life Under Cloud ... The Rise of China ... Group Work ... Making Capitalism ... Going Local ...)

You're out of the forest, and you're going left

Make your way over to the far corner

See the frames that are built for seating?

Let’s pretend the frame is a doorway, leading to a room full of women artists

Let's see who's home ...

(Hey! Is that you Jennifer … or is it Janet?)

In the lists of Lutz Bacher, J is for judge (judge!)

J is also for Jennifer (Jennifer!) and jousting (jousting!)

And Janet (Janet!)

Juror (juror!), J is for judgement (judgement!) and jealousy (jealousy!)

J is for jobless (jobless!) and joker (joker!)

And juvenile (juvenile!) and jouissance (jouissance!)

Juxtaposition (juxtaposition!), J is for jump (jump!)

(And from the campus green, a blueprint scheme)

Agatha? Is that you?

A is for Agatha (Agatha!)

A is for Angela (Angela!)

A is for actor (actor!) and auteur (auteur!)

A is for alchemist (alchemist!), anarchist (anarchist!) and avenger (avenger!)

A is for artist (artist!), A is for addict (addict!)

A is for Angela (Angela!)

(Look for Angela in the screen)

A is for Adelle (Adelle!)

F is for folly and foley artist

And K is for knock knock, who's there?

K is for Kate Daw, born 1965 Perth, died 2020 Melbourne

L is for Lutz Bacher, born 1941, died 2019

Come on, we'll go now

Towards the lifts

You're on Level 3, and you're walking away from where the café would be

You’ll meet the pillars again, one smooth, one rough

You’ll remember 1972 and then you’ll come to another screen

Try to walk through them, it's a middle path

These structures might transport you somewhere, like the obstacles we find in books (like the obstacles we find in books)

Welcome back to the Chorus of Instant Messengers

If you're at the lift, you may have been watching the video for sometime

But now I want you to go up

Take the lift to Level 4, where this audio tour will end

(Quick! Get out of the lift)

You’ve come out of the lift, you're facing one of the four information screens playing A Chorus of Instant Messengers

I’d like you to see these messages as a part of the texture of the library, made visible

Something textural though invisible occurs when commanding the voice of the writer, say when reading aloud

Finding your voice (finding your voice) so to speak, is a performative undertaking

But to read aloud in the library turns more heads than the sound of texts

The Chorus of Insant Messengers looks at two images ...

One of Sappho the great Archaic poet and the other, a Pompeiian couple posing, scroll in hand, and stylus to mouth

Having ascended the provinces, making their way into Pompeii’s middle classes, it is said that this couple were new to wealth

It is said, that for such a couple to have chosen to be depicted in close relationship with the written word, shows those who were literate in ancient Rome, chose to display the fact

You can pause to read these messages, or you can come with me over to the 700s now, where I will finally leave you

Head north east, toward the back of the library

Walking walking … over to the stacks again ... find the windows … always find the windows …

Listen to the cars outside … wind and trees brushing onto glass ... freeway breeze

Move to the stacks ... pick up the soft books … open one and rain pours down

Briefly … close it ... the rain stops

Put the book back, slide it onto the shelf ... walk walk, leaves are rustling

Walk towards the tables ...

Carpet hedges … past the silence … over to the long tables ...

Plonk ... body sits down ... slides and lifts ...

Leaves though the heavy books … heavier than most … heaving … heavy … pages …

When you're done, get up, walk to the void ... listen to the lift ...

Walk into stairwell ... past the lifts ... footsteps are louder .. bouncing off sounds …

Descend the stairs that hug the side of the library now …

Quiet study (ShhhhhShhhhhShhhhh!)