Clinton Baird

MoSIC

MUSEUM of (Subsurface) INFRASTRUCTURE & CONTAMINANTS

With the population of Melbourne set to reach 8.5 million by 2050, rapid new underground infrastructure to facilitate the city’s growth has brought critical thought to Melbourne’s establishment conjecture of (Sub) Terra Nullius, a problem highlighting Australia’s problematic relationship to land and its embedded notion that ‘land is a sink.

With the European colonisation of Melbourne, discovery of gold and the rapid expansion of the city in the 19th century; waste products of both our built environments outputs and behaviour surmounted, causing detrimental damage to the subsurface (land, soil, and water-bodies) as well as to our own subsurface (disease & sickness).

For this the museum is interested in containing our subsurface infrastructure as well as the contaminants which run-off from our urban activity. In doing so my museum challenges the typical notion of encasement in the colonial view of the museum by rather framing and confronting situations of the urban subsurface in its place. In coming face to face with the outputs of our urban activity, the museum imbues in its fabric that infrastructure can be civic, speculating the value of waste in the future production of our city and cities globally.

booklet
View booklet (on issuu)