Even though temperatures are dropping, Melbourne’s culture calendar is just heating up. This winter, two of the city’s biggest cultural institutions, ACMI and Rising, are teaming up for a multi-sensory exhibition, celebrating music’s cultural impact and paying tribute to vinyl.
From May 22 to August 31, The Vinyl Factory: Reverb will bring together some of the leading figures working in video and sound to deep dive into different eras of music, through large-scale moving image works, immersive sound installations and interactive vinyl experiences.
Spanning the early days of techno to contemporary digital art, you’ll see work from celebrated artists including Canadian media artist Stan Douglas; British-Nigerian filmmaker and visual artist Jenn Nkiru; American fashion visionary Virgil Abloh; US filmmaker and music video director Kahlil Joseph; London-based photographer and video artist Gabriel Moses; South African artist William Kentridge; Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller; British poet and sound artist Julianknxx; Argentinian performance artist Cecilia Bengolea and German electronic music and sound art innovator Carsten Nicolai.
Highlights include hands-on access to Technics turntables with remixable loops; a fantasy rap battle; and access to The Vinyl Factory’s archive, which features 100 vinyl pressings with works by Marina Abramović and Thom York.
There’s also the chance to pick a record and take it into the Listening Room, which by day functions as a space designed for deep listening before playing host to one-off sessions from artists after dark. The line-up has been curated by Triple R music specialist Yasmine Sharaf and MESS’s Co-Founder and Artistic Director Robin Fox.
And if that’s not enough, cinephiles can also get their fill as participating artist Kahlil Joseph has curated a program of music-centric films to screen at ACMI. Running from June 4-22, Selector: Kahlil Joseph will screen Wong Kar Wai Fallen Angels, Neptune Frost, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and to open and close the festival, you can catch the Australian premiere and director’s cut of his own film Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
Following a critically acclaimed extended season in London (where The Vinyl Factory was founded), the exhibition now lands in Melbourne as their most ambitious project to date, bringing together two decades of installations and collaborations.
The Vinyl Factory: Reverb is on from May 22 to August 31 at ACMI. General tickets are $25 with discounts available for students, concession, groups and children.
Grab yours here.
