Major Project 2024: Vessel/Hand of God.
Vessel (2024)
Vessel is an exploration of the ephemeral complex of sensations to be found within person, place and partnership. This project uses bodies and spaces as sculptural tools to explore the visible manifestation of internal conflict, tension as it manifests within our relationships with one another and in the spaces our bodies occupy. These spaces, and the people we share them with shape and are in turn shaped by us. They become a constantly shifting repository of our current identity; both constrictive and complimentary. Our environment, our bodies and our relationships both can at times leave us feeling trapped and vulnerable and at others can be a source of comfort, joy and relief.
Within the intimate confines of the bodies and buildings I call home, away from prying eyes, I can become who I am when I feel safe, the restless tension and fear that I repress through the day comes to the surface and manifests in a kind of quietude I find greatly comforting. The tension rushes up to disperse through my body and mind, And then it’s gone. I think this discomfort, these intense moments of melancholic tension are a consequence of how I chose to live my life, and this series of images is a tribute to the home and people I love, and who I trust to experience this cycle of catharsis alongside me.
Social Documentary 2024: les enfants sont grognons/(Mahmoud’s Hall) قاعة محمو
Ciaran O’Dwyer 30/06/2024
When I interviewed students in Mahmoud’s hall they were terrified.
Not one of them conceded to being on the record in any form, they were too scared to share their identity, and too stressed to speak on the goals behind their own organising efforts with any meaningful fervor. Any information I gained was through casual informal conversations that I had with student activists as they gradually became confident in my politics and comfortable in the presence of my person.
In general I would consider myself among many other young political malcontents who feel disillusioned with the game of global politics; but personally after viewing the public response to the genocide in Gaza, and the abject failure of any significant academic, political or commercial entity to remedy this sentiment through any significant action at all; I have almost no faith at all in universities, especially wealthy ones like Melbourne; to stand behind their students when they engage in organised political action on campus.
The days in which universities took pride as melting pots for new ideas, and as bastions for political action are a distant fantasy. Now they appear to follow the money like everyone else. Maybe they always did.
I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
Ultimately, I feel Melbourne Uni’s decision to expel or not expel student activists from campus through violence (police) is not one guided by compassion or a desire for fairness in the opportunity for students to organize and engage in political action, but guided rather by the university’s desire to minimise headlines. Especially headlines that might threaten to put a dent in the university’s purse.
My intention when arriving at Melbourne Uni on the 19th of May was to take more photographs exemplifying the role of protest in the city of Melbourne’s history and broader culture, however my experience gaining access to the occupied building, as well as the interactions with people I met whilst shooting inspired me to narrow the scope of my project to focus specifically on the occupation of the Melbourne University Arts West Building (Mahmoud’s Hall) as a microcosm of a growing sentiment among Australians young and old, a growing sense of dissatisfaction with political action at large, and a disillusionment with our leaders and institutions.
The resulting images are an analysis of the dialectical relationship between student activists and the academic institutions that both begrudgingly facilitate their action, and also depend on them for their own existence.
Melbourne Uni treasures its prestigious name, and proudly touts alumni such as Julian Assange and The 14th Dalai Lama, who earned their recognition through radical political action, and yet when this generations potentially brightest minds come to take their first steps towards changing the world through political action, Melbourne Uni elects to side with Raytheon (and other defence companies).
In theory it should be the role of a university to platform its students and amplify their voices, but instead the new norm seems to be for universities to contain and stifle any attempts at organized political action, not quite silencing protest, but making it deeply unwelcome. Minimising its effect.
The passive aggression prevalent throughout the signage posted by the university is the focus of my photo series. They won’t say it out loud, but you can read between the lines of the writing on the wall.
Through bogus claims of health risks and unlawful activity, the vague but nonspecific threats of police action and internal disciplinary action, as well as some good old fashioned deceit, the university eventually got what it wanted.
One day after I took these photos, placated by a pledge from Melbourne Uni that it would disclose its dealings with defence companies and arms manufacturers, the students packed up, went home, and ended the occupation of Mahmoud’s Hall.
No further word has been heard about these promises of disclosure, leading many, myself included, to see them as a mere trick employed by the University of Melbourne to hasten the ending of the occupation of the Arts West Building.
Despite not following up on the promises of disclosure, the University of Melbourne it seems has plans to follow up on the threats of disciplinary action against student activists. Many Uni of Melbourne students have since been targeted through CCTV footage, and have received emails from university officials promising further investigation and disciplinary action regarding their involvement in organised political action in and around the Arts West Building.
My personal takeaway is this: the ultimate goal of the actions of any university, now more than ever, lies outside the interests of any particular group of students, but rather lies in the interest of preserving capital.
Its not that I think the universities are necessarily pro genocide, I just think institutions responsible for shaping the individuals who will shape the future should feel more responsibility to do right by their students, they should feel a responsibility to give them the tools necessary to create a better world for future generations. But they evidently don’t.
There’s no floral finish that can do this piece of writing justice, ultimately the political and military actions (or lack thereof) that spawned the events that spawned this project are foul and I’m sick of thinking about all of it.
Above all else I think it’s significant that people recognize why the student occupation was named Mahmoud’s Hall.
Student activists renamed the building ‘Mahmoud’s Hall’ in memory of Mahmoud Alnaouq, a 25-year-old Palestinian student killed along with his family in an Israeli airstrike on 20 October 2023. Mahmoud Alnaouq had accepted a scholarship to study in Australia, with a Master of International Relations at the University of Melbourne being his first preference.
“Their demands are we stop doing what we are doing”- Ethan, student media liaison, (person who eventually let me into the building. also the only guy who would give me a quote on the record.)