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For 12 months, from 2021-2022, we distributed a reading (text/film/sound work)—around themes of site, ecology, creative practice, learning etc.—and an associated provocation for practice, ahead of gathering online to discuss our shared outcomes. The provocations took the form of an activity, exercise or question, and prompted particular ways of working/possibilities for practice in an open and generous environment. Responses to the provocations were not prescribed, and could be visual, written, pedagogical, performative or ephemeral. Responses could embrace or challenge the provocations.

We met from 5.30-7pm AEST/AEDT every month, typically on a Wednesday. This 90-minute gathering was divided into two blocks: the first half an opportunity to share responses to the activities/provocations, and discuss how they relate to participants’ broader practices, the second half used to discuss the reading.

The regular gatherings of Magnetic Topographies built towards collaborative excursions. Each excursion brought together key themes from the Magnetic Topographies reading and practice schedule, with participants, invited speakers/presenters, and local community members gathering physically onsite to learn from each other, share ideas, and listen to stories. The archive of readings and responses is on the board at the bottom of this page.



A Schedule of Magnetic Topographies’ past activities:


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WHEN: Saturday October 22 & Sunday October 23, 2022

WHERE: Yagarabul, Yuggera, Jagera and Turrbal Country - Meanjin / Brisbane. At 12 noon on Saturday we will visit the exhibition A redistribution at Metro Arts. We will then meet at Rocks Riverside Park at 2pm before walking to the Darra Cementco Bowls Club, where we will reconvene at 4:30pm. On Sunday morning we will meet for the sunrise at Nudgee Beach Reserve.

Welcome to the second in our series of MAGNETIC EXCURSIONS! This excursion will follow the passage of dredged coral from around Mud Island in Moreton Bay to the site of the old Queensland Cement and Lime Company works at Darra.

We will first meet at 12 noon on Saturday at Metro Arts in West End, where we will visit the exhibition A redistribution, a collaboration between Magnetic Topographies co-founder Kenzee Patterson and the Sydney-based artist Mitchel Cumming. We will then meet again at 2pm at Rocks Riverside Park, Seventeen Mile Rocks. From here we will walk approximately 3.2km to the Darra Cementco Bowls Club, where we will reconvene at 4:30pm. Here, we will watch a presentation by Professor Felicity Meakins from the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. After this we will have a chance to play bowls and eat dinner together. We will meet again on Sunday at Nudgee Beach Reserve at 5:00am to look out towards Moreton Bay and Mud Island while the sun rises.

You are welcome to join us for some or all legs of this excursion. Please RSVP via email by Monday 17 October to receive further details.




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> Wednesday October 19, 2022 at 5:30pm AEDT

Reading:
This month’s reading is an editorial written by Peta Rake and Léuli Eshrāgi for the first issue of The Clam’s Kiss / Sogi a le faisua, an online publication accompanying the first exhibition in the ambitious multi-year initiative Blue Assembly at the UQ Art Museum. The title of this first issue is Thinking through Oceanic Visual Cultures, and the title of the editorial and this month’s reading is Blue Assembly ~ Situating Knowing in the Majority World. Click here for a link to the text: https://www.theclamskiss.com/editorial

Provocation for practice:
This month’s provocation for practice has been provided by the authors of the reading, Peta Rake and Léuli Eshrāgi, and it reads as follows: “Go for a swim.”

Process this provocation through your practice in whatever way makes sense for you, and offer something to share at our next meeting.





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> Wednesday September 21, 2022 at 5:30pm AEST

Reading:
This month’s reading is I Know Such a Hidden Pool, by Bastian Fox Phelan. We are very fortunate to have Bastian join us for MT_07 to talk rock pools, creative practice, and much more!

Provocation for practice:
Share a Hidden Pool you have made or think or know about.




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> Wednesday July 27, 2022 at 5:30pm AEST

Reading:
This month’s readings have been generated in response to the first of our MAGNETIC_EXCURSIONS, which took place live and in-person on Wangal, Cadigal, and Bidjigal Country / Sydney in April 2022. The first reading is a zine created with our participants in a workshop facilitated by Tessa Zettel at Frontyard Projects. The second reading is a transcript of a conversation between MAGNETIC TOPOGRAPHIES co-facilitators Clare Britton, Therese Keogh and Kenzee Patterson, reflecting on the excursion and the broader project of MAGNETIC TOPOGRAPHIES.

Provocation for practice:
Spend time reflecting on the in-between spaces, the leftovers, the interstices, those wedged places, and the friendships that gather in them. Turn over the ways in which friendship is activated by location, the emplaced-ness of your relations.

As usual, you are welcome to share a response to this provocation for practice, but more importantly, this provocation asks you to sit in the fluidities and formations of creative friendship, in whatever shape makes sense for you.





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> Saturday April 23 & Sunday April 24, 2022

Our first MAGNETIC EXCURSION will take place on Wangal, Cadigal, and Bidjigal Country. On Saturday morning we will be walking a loop following Wolli Creek along the Two Valley Trail walk, reconvening at Frontyard Projects that evening. On Sunday morning we will again be gathering at Frontyard Projects.

This MAGNETIC EXCURSION will follow Wolli Creek through a sliver of bushland on Bidjigal Country. We will be treating this walk like a reading.

We will meet at 11:00am on Saturday at the Gough Whitlam Park Café in Tempe and then reconvene at 6pm at Frontyard Projects in Marrickville to have dinner and collectively look through the MAGNETIC TOPOGRAPHIES archive. We will meet back at 10:00am at Frontyard Projects on Sunday to make a publication together, facilitated by the one and only Tessa Zettel.


Feel free to participate in any or all of these planned events. Please RSVP via email by Thursday April 14 to receive further details, and for catering purposes.

Can’t be there in person? Email us your postal address to receive a handmade package from MAGNETIC TOPOGRAPHIES.





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> Saturday April 2, 2022 at 2:00pm AEDT

The fifth iteration of Magnetic Topographies will be presented online AND in-person at KINGS Artist-Run Initiative in Naarm/Melbourne. We are delighted to be presenting as part of the 2022 WRITING & CONCEPTS lecture and performance series.

Reading:

This month’s reading is the chapter ‘Making Histories’ from Anna Clark’s 2022 book Making Australian History, published by Vintage.

Provocation for practice:


The provocation for practice this month will be performed live by Tina Stefanou.



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> Wednesday February 23, 2022 at 5:30pm AEDT

Reading:

This month there are two readings: a three-part blog post from 2020-2021 written by AM Kanngieser titled To tend for, to care with: three pieces on listening as method, published by The Seed Box, an interdisciplinary and international Environmental Humanities research program; and the short story Dampland, written by Cass Lynch and published by Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts on the occasion of the 2021 exhibition Love in Bright Landscapes, curated by Annika Kristensen.

Provocation for practice:

Click here to listen to this month’s provocation for practice.




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> Wednesday December 8, 2021 at 5:30pm AEDT


Reading:

This month’s reading is Cycles, a chapter from Danielle Celermajer’s 2021 book Summertime: Reflections on a vanishing future.

Activation for practice:

An activation for practice will be delivered live by Victoria Hunt.

Feel free to respond to this material before or after our online meeting (or both).




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> Wednesday November 10, 2021 at 5:30pm AEDT

Reading:

This month’s reading is Buto (Tagalog, Noun: Bone, Seed) by Kaya Ortiz, which first appeared in the 2020 anthology After Australia, edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad.

Provocation for practice:






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> Wednesday October 6, 2021 at 5:30pm AEDT

Readings:
The first reading is A ship-shaped hole in the forest from Ellen van Neerven’s 2020 poetry collection Throat. The second reading is a chapter titled Men and Trees from Adriana Cavarero’s book Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, first published in English in 2016.

Provocations for practice:
Consider how your “postural geometry” affects the ways you interact with objects and materials in your life and practice. Take this outside. What effect does the position you embody have on other bodies? What does a shift in your posture entail? What do you incline towards? How can we approach posture spatially through practice, as an orienting and situating force within the world?