Machine / Icon / Monument is a collaboration in developement, between Melanie Wilson, Louise Blackwell and Hawkins Brown Architects.
It is a large-scale durational ensemble performance installation about female endeavour and political will, in which a group of women build and then take down a massive structure in public space.
Machine/Icon/Monument presents the endeavour of a group of diverse women constructing a large architectural sculpture in a public city centre space. The group build the structure over the course of a day in an eight hour durational performance, the last hour of which includes music and choral singing.
The structure, once built, can be used and interacted with by the public, and can remain for a weekend or for up to two weeks. During its residency, the structure will house a series of public debates, talks, music and events on themes related to the status and future of female work and gender roles, the city as a space for radical ideas and the future for communal public space.
At the end of its stay, the structure is taken down in a mirrored performance.
The project offers positive representation and memorialisation of female endeavour and challenges gender roles through the sight of women undertaking hard construction.
