Lecture, This Way

An installation responding to Kim Donaldson’s 'From the Lecture - A Reminder of Life' (1996)

‘If orientations point us to the future, to what we are moving toward, then they also keep open the possibility of changing directions, of finding other paths, perhaps those that do not clear a common ground, where we can find hope in what goes astray. Looking back is what keeps open the possibility of going astray. We look back, we go behind; we conjure what is missing from the face. This backward glance also means an openness to the future, as the imperfect translation of what is behind us.’
– Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, UK: Duke University Press, 2006)

Loo Zihan, the 2015 Asialink artist-in residence at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), presents an installation responding to Kim Donaldson’s From the Lecture – A Reminder of Life (1996). Kim’s installation documents her father’s experience of caring for her brother who passed away from HIV/AIDS-related complications in August 1995.

Twenty years on, Zihan archives and re-presents Kim’s installation alongside documentation compiled from Zihan’s research visits to the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives (ALGA) over his two-month residency.

Lecture, This Way is sited within the residency flat on the VCA campus and opens up the artist’s private residency space for public view, highlighting the subject/object relationship and the role of the caregiver for the patient, the artist for the artwork, and caretaker for the archive.

This Asialink Arts Residency Project is a collaboration between Asialink, VCA and The Art Incubator and is supported by Creative Victoria.

  • Dildo mold created by Bruce Belcher. Object collected by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Melbourne.

  • Towels from Ken's at Kensington. Object collected by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Melbourne.

  • Pen, keychain and membership card from Pokey's Disco. Object collected by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Melbourne.