Venice Biennale 2021 Australian exhibit: In | Between
In the form of an immersive video, Australia’s virtual exhibit for this year’s Architecture Biennale presents a selection of works that explore the diversity and interconnectedness of the Pacific region’s complex cultural relationships. But, asks Louis Anderson Mokak, are we celebrating our achievements prematurely?
The Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, curated by Hashim Sarkis, poses the question “How will we live together?” and calls on architects “to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together.” Sarkis’s provocation is a compelling pitch, on the grandiose stage of the Biennale, in a time marked by continuing acts of racial injustice, settler colonialism, police brutality, and extensive damage, destruction and dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands.
Australia has the privilege of being one of only 29 countries with a permanent pavilion within the Giardini della Biennale, though this year operated differently, with some pavilions – including Australia’s – moving to a virtual exhibition to manage the risks posed by the pandemic. The Biennale provides an unparalleled platform for the profession to display its architecture – its projects, scholarship and responses to pressing challenges in the world. Within this context, it is vital to ask, for whom are we realizing this imaginative architecture? And, more importantly, who is in the driver’s seat as we design this future?
The Australian exhibit, co-curated by Jefa Greenaway and Tristan Wong, is titled In | Between. In conversation, Greenaway, a Wailwan/Kamilaroi man and architect, elaborates on the title:
“The project is a response to Sarkis’s provocation through understanding the connections ‘inbetween.’ It is seeking to look at the distinctions and shared experiences, the considerations and the intersections between culture, identity, place, environment, colonization – and its relationship to architecture.” The premise of In | Between is to explore the complex geographical, ontological and societal organization within what is now called “Australia” – through acknowledging the diversity and interconnectedness of its more than 270 distinct language groups and 600 dialects, as well as its relationships to neighbouring Indigenous communities in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The work is an attempt to challenge the colonial gaze and break down the falsity of the hegemonic settler colony that has denied the complexity, cultural breadth and relationality of autonomous Indigenous communities.
In | Between seeks to highlight architectural projects that have demonstrated a high level of ethical engagement and cultural responsiveness between non-Indigenous practitioners and Indigenous communities. It showcases architectural outcomes that are deemed successful because of processes that listen to and draw upon the knowledge systems, sacred stories and cultural practices of Indigenous peoples.
One of the most telling elements of In | Between is, in fact, outside the exhibit itself. In the “exhibitor project credits” at the bottom of the website, Indigenous communities are credited within the project team – as equal contributors alongside the architects. On the one hand, this resonates with me, as it calls for Indigenous peoples to be acknowledged as storytellers, knowledge holders, and designers themselves – subverting the assumed power and authorship of the architect as proprietor. However, on the other hand, why is it that this important indication of respect for the contributions of community sits outside of the virtual exhibition itself? It is this compromised recognition that prompts me to question whether power is equally shared, and whether reciprocity and mutual benefit is truly evident. I commend Greenaway and Wong’s decision to shift the power dynamic away from the architect as sole author and to acknowledge the key roles
played by Indigenous communities within architecture – though I feel a sense of dissonance as I engage in a space that has only partially served to elevate Indigenous voices, while uplifting the Australian architectural industry to a far greater extent.
The concept of “interest convergence” is pertinent here. Coined by critical race theorist Derrick Bell (1930–2011), interest convergence occurs when a majority group tolerates advances in racial justice only when it suits its own interests to do so. This limits how we view the Indigenous experience within the settler colony – and, by extension, diminishes the Indigenous struggle and resistance movement to eliminate racism, colonization and its structures of power. Correspondingly, it limits how we view the Australian architectural industry and its capacity to do more – as well as reducing Indigenous experiences down to perceived successful relationships with predominantly non-Indigenous practitioners. Worryingly, In | Between seems less concerned with the requests and actions of Indigenous peoples and more focused on applauding existing work by the industry, which sets itself up as the marker of success. The foregrounding of culturally responsive “Indigenous” architectural projects on a global stage, under the banner of the Australian Pavilion, leads me to believe that In | Between serves to perpetuate power by consuming visibility politics and directing interest towards the Australian architectural industry itself.
All the while, Indigenous peoples continue to deal with institutional disregard by an industry that has been able to thrive by marginalizing First Nations voices within its elite institutions, and enabling policies that continue the dispossession of Indigenous communities and the destruction of Indigenous lands.
Yes, there are changes emerging within the profession. A number of architectural projects and practices have evidently centred ethical processes built upon proper cultural protocols, engagement processes and sustainable systems, leading to positive design outcomes for community and Country. Recently, Dillon Kombumerri, principal architect at the office of the Government Architect NSW, has published a “Connecting with Country” framework that asserts the need for architectural practice to be in the right relationship with Country and its Traditional Custodians. In the last year, there has been a commitment from the Australian Institute of Architects to work closely on delivering the concerns of a consortia of First Nations practitioners alongside non-Indigenous ally-practitioners through the establishment of the First Nations Advisory Working Group and Cultural Reference Panel. One of the group’s first assignments has led to policy changes, with the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia’s recently reformed National Standard of Competency for Architects embedding First Nations perspectives for the first time. Finally, our voices are beginning to be heard within the architecture blueprint, where barriers and exclusionary measures have always existed, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have consistently been outsiders to the discussions around the policy table. But the work is only just beginning; full and proper implementation will be evidenced by partnership with, and control by, First Nations peoples.
My fear is that the Australian architectural industry is shamefully premature in believing that it has arrived at a point where it can wholeheartedly celebrate the work being achieved. It supports the convenient belief that the profession is “doing enough” – rather than stating loudly and clearly the need for the industry to change and to desist from maintaining systems of oppression. We can light lanterns, and be mesmerized by the glimmers within the darkness, but is this really answering Sarkis’s question, “How will we live together?”
Shining a light at this point in time gives a false impression of what work needs to be done in order for us to truly live together. To address what lies “in between” would be to confront the space between architecture’s complacency and comfort, and Indigenous peoples’ resistance and activism. To address the “in between” would be to speak to the need to reconstruct the existing systems that uphold extractive institutional powers against Indigenous peoples. To address the “in between” would be to radically revolutionize the conceptualization of architecture and bring Country into all facets of design consciousness. To address the “in between” would be to foreground Indigenous sovereignty, rendering visible the strength, wisdom and capability of First Nations peoples in all processes and operations of architectural practice – not only as cultural advisors, but as decisive changemakers and leaders within the industry. To address the “in between” would require a radical transformation of cognizance, which demands a preparedness to face head-on the reality of race, the brutality of settler colonialism and the structures that uphold colonial control. To address the “in between” would be to deal with an obvious truth – to move beyond window-dressing and to shift deeply entrenched instruments of power.
— Louis Anderson Mokak is a Djugun man from West Kimberley, based on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung country (Narrm/Melbourne). He is an interdisciplinary designer, writer and design consultant, and a member of the First Nations Advisory Working Group and Cultural Reference Panel at the Australian Institute of Architects.
In | Between can be viewed at inbetween2021.com.au until November 2021 and is scheduled for presentation at various exhibitions across the country in the following months.
For an interview with the creative directors conducted prior to the Biennale, see architectureau.com/articles/venicebiennale-2020-australian-pavilion-preview-in-between.
In | Between explores the gaps and the intersections between culture, identity, place, environment and colonization in architecture.
The large-scale video includes 20 projects across Australia and the Pacific region, crediting their Indigenous communities alongside the architects.