Punctum’s Public Cooling House is part art house/part bath house. It takes some of the big questions surrounding our ‘water future’ and turns them into an experience of reflection in an altered time flow. A uniquely dry-country approach to a chillout, it provides a public gathering place to beat the heat in our increasingly hot and dry times.
Our Public Cooling House combines a contemporary interpretation of desert architecture with natural materials and cooling practices to create a poetic system of public cooling. Drawing from simple and ancient evaporative cooling techniques and including soothing cooling pools, it presents water works by exceptional artists responding to how we might contend with heat waves, water scarcity and brown outs.
A biologist might say it is a semi permeable system of ‘membranes’ surrounding fluid living systems. For audiences in a climate change setting, it’s a cool place for a hot future.
Concept, Artistic Direction: Jude Anderson
Design and Construction Coordination: Morwenna Schenck
Associated Designer: Margot Lapalus
Project Management: Adrian Corbett
Associated Producer: Erin Milne
Construction Assistant: Jimmy Naylor
Attendants
Briega Young, Josiah Lulham, Britt Plummer, Tanguy Trillet, Max Kowalick, Karen Burns, Dominic Weintraub, William Strom, Hugo Williams, Tegan Lang
Soundscape by Jacques Soddell with the voices of Fatima Qurbani, Janet Bromley, Rebecca Wuor, Rhoda Makur and Po Tu Tu
Documentation
Miles Bennett
Dianne Domonokos
Images taken at 2017 Refuge at Arts House, Melbourne - Bryony Jackson
Part of this work premiered at Arts House as part of the Refuge project.
.jpg)
The Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund is provided through Regional Arts Australia, administered in Victoria by Regional Arts Victoria.
