MAKE OR BREAK: TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT
Started: 2021 ~
Time/labour: ︎
Thanks to: Workshop partners Accessible Arts, Brand X, CuriousWorks, Inner West Council, Utp
advocacy // relational // institutional critique // workshop // open source
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Image: Make or Break, Terms of Engagement workshop at Brand X, Gadigal Country, December 2024. Photo by Seiya Taguchi.
Time/labour: ︎
Thanks to: Workshop partners Accessible Arts, Brand X, CuriousWorks, Inner West Council, Utp
advocacy // relational // institutional critique // workshop // open source
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Image: Make or Break, Terms of Engagement workshop at Brand X, Gadigal Country, December 2024. Photo by Seiya Taguchi.
TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT is a resource for artist self-advocacy and building better, more equitable relationships between artists and institutions. It is a document, a workshop, and an open-source tool. It is how Make or Break starts conversations with people who want to work with us.
Make or Break’s own Terms of Engagement is a living document that can be found online here. Artists and collectives are invited to adapt and use this as the basis for their own terms of engagement. We are developing an open glossary of terms, where artists can add their own to a growing list for anyone to draw from.
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Since 2024, Terms of Engagement workshops have been devised for Accessible Arts, Brand X, CuriousWorks, Inner West Council, and Utp. For workshops, contact makeorbreakart@gmail.com.
V1.0 of Make or Break’s Terms of Engagement was devised following a series of Thinking in Fours conversations in 2021 with Ju Bavyka, Lauren Carroll Harris, Clare Cooper, Jamie Lewis, and Emily Sexton. Thank you for sharing time, frustrations, energy, and ideas.
Make or Break’s own Terms of Engagement is a living document that can be found online here. Artists and collectives are invited to adapt and use this as the basis for their own terms of engagement. We are developing an open glossary of terms, where artists can add their own to a growing list for anyone to draw from.
~
Since 2024, Terms of Engagement workshops have been devised for Accessible Arts, Brand X, CuriousWorks, Inner West Council, and Utp. For workshops, contact makeorbreakart@gmail.com.
V1.0 of Make or Break’s Terms of Engagement was devised following a series of Thinking in Fours conversations in 2021 with Ju Bavyka, Lauren Carroll Harris, Clare Cooper, Jamie Lewis, and Emily Sexton. Thank you for sharing time, frustrations, energy, and ideas.
MAKE OR BREAK: TIME OUTSIDE
Started: 2023
Time/labour: ︎
Thanks to: Helsinki International Art Program & Creative Australia (HIAP Residency for collectives)
observation // object // speculative fiction // text // drawing // translation // non-human
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Image: Make or Break, TIME OUTSIDE, 2023. HIAP Open Studios / Spring 2023. Photo by Sheung Yiu.
Time/labour: ︎
Thanks to: Helsinki International Art Program & Creative Australia (HIAP Residency for collectives)
observation // object // speculative fiction // text // drawing // translation // non-human
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Image: Make or Break, TIME OUTSIDE, 2023. HIAP Open Studios / Spring 2023. Photo by Sheung Yiu.
TIME OUTSIDE is a long-term research project: a shelter for art collectives, critical thinkers and institutions to radically rethink how artists contribute to social, environmental and political change. As part of Make or Break’s residency at Helsinki International Artist Programme on Suomenlinna Island, Helsinki, Finland, the public is invited into the beginnings of this research. Visitors to the studio can select an object, leave their phone in its place, and respond to a prompt with writing, drawing or diagramming.
As an early experiment for TIME OUTSIDE, Make or Break share methods for writing and thinking collectively. These are prompts for ways to think, sense and act differently; a beginning in turning away from human-centred timescales and orientations to the world.
The invitation starts here:
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‘We’ve been collecting materials on and off the island. Human-made things that roll in with the sea, fall out of pockets or drift away from picnics. Weeds that grow prolifically and without permission; other weathered flotsam. And the occasional gift from a tree or bird.
Think of these as tools for thinking with. We are turning our attention towards critters, plants, materials, and other rhythms and things happening in this place, to learn with them.
Hold the object you have selected in your hand. Spend some time with it… feel the textures of its different surfaces, edges, materials. Try to imagine its relationship to this place and record your response.’
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This residency was supported by Creative Australia and HIAP.
As an early experiment for TIME OUTSIDE, Make or Break share methods for writing and thinking collectively. These are prompts for ways to think, sense and act differently; a beginning in turning away from human-centred timescales and orientations to the world.
The invitation starts here:
~
‘We’ve been collecting materials on and off the island. Human-made things that roll in with the sea, fall out of pockets or drift away from picnics. Weeds that grow prolifically and without permission; other weathered flotsam. And the occasional gift from a tree or bird.
Think of these as tools for thinking with. We are turning our attention towards critters, plants, materials, and other rhythms and things happening in this place, to learn with them.
Hold the object you have selected in your hand. Spend some time with it… feel the textures of its different surfaces, edges, materials. Try to imagine its relationship to this place and record your response.’
~
This residency was supported by Creative Australia and HIAP.
MAKE OR BREAK: FIRST SENTENCES (IN COLLABORATION WITH SIGRID MACDONALD)
Started: 2023
Time/labour: ︎︎︎
Thanks to:
Writers: Sigrid Macdonald, Make or Break, visitors to DONHR project at Lismore Regional Gallery
Translator/Glosser: Sigrid Macdonald
Designer: Ella Cutler
Illustrators: Sigrid Macdonald, Ella Cutler
Auslan translator and performer: Janelle Whalan
Video editor: Miška Mandić
Venue partner: Lismore Regional Gallery
Auslan // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // translation
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Image: Sigrid Macdonald and Make or Break, First Sentences, 2023, photo by Make or Break.
Time/labour: ︎︎︎
Thanks to:
Writers: Sigrid Macdonald, Make or Break, visitors to DONHR project at Lismore Regional Gallery
Translator/Glosser: Sigrid Macdonald
Designer: Ella Cutler
Illustrators: Sigrid Macdonald, Ella Cutler
Auslan translator and performer: Janelle Whalan
Video editor: Miška Mandić
Venue partner: Lismore Regional Gallery
Auslan // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // translation
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Image: Sigrid Macdonald and Make or Break, First Sentences, 2023, photo by Make or Break.
FIRST SENTENCES is a collaborative book and video series that asks you to get curious about Deaf culture and the importance of accessibility. It contains a selection of first sentences written and signed by people from Lismore, generated in response to a creative writing prompt that Make or Break devised for their Department of Non-Human Resources (DONHR) project.
In the book, each original English sentence has been interpreted in Auslan and recorded as a video, and then translated back into English. First Sentences highlights conceptual and linguistic differences between Auslan and English as a way to encourage curiosity about languages and to share the theatre and poetry of Auslan, an image-based language with no written equivalent.
The book design allows the book to be unbound and remixed, and there will be releasing a free, accessible ebook in the near future, with image descriptions and an introduction to the design of the book.
This project was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW, Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery.
In the book, each original English sentence has been interpreted in Auslan and recorded as a video, and then translated back into English. First Sentences highlights conceptual and linguistic differences between Auslan and English as a way to encourage curiosity about languages and to share the theatre and poetry of Auslan, an image-based language with no written equivalent.
The book design allows the book to be unbound and remixed, and there will be releasing a free, accessible ebook in the near future, with image descriptions and an introduction to the design of the book.
This project was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW, Arts Northern Rivers and Lismore Regional Gallery.
MAKE OR BREAK: HYPERLOCAL HEADLINES
Started: 2022
Time/labour: ︎︎︎︎︎
Thanks to:
Writers: Maria, Lena, Flor, Liliana, Coni, Lelia, Hasib, Fi, Esther, Anna, Shalome, Amy, Jessica, Michelle, Luke, Miska, Tess, Shian, Ju, Ursula, Alex & AI text generator (GPT3)
Producers: Tess Maunder, Hasib Hourani
Tech assists: Ben Barnes, Wilson Wu
Photographers: Wild Hardt, Aaron Claringbold
Venue partners: Siteworks, Twosixty and Queen Victoria Women’s Centre
public broadcast // citizen journalism // community // media // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // technology // non-human // A.I.
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Image: Make or Break, Hyperlocal Headlines, 2022, installation view at Twosixty, Brunswick, Victoria. Photo by Wild Hardt.
Time/labour: ︎︎︎︎︎
Thanks to:
Writers: Maria, Lena, Flor, Liliana, Coni, Lelia, Hasib, Fi, Esther, Anna, Shalome, Amy, Jessica, Michelle, Luke, Miska, Tess, Shian, Ju, Ursula, Alex & AI text generator (GPT3)
Producers: Tess Maunder, Hasib Hourani
Tech assists: Ben Barnes, Wilson Wu
Photographers: Wild Hardt, Aaron Claringbold
Venue partners: Siteworks, Twosixty and Queen Victoria Women’s Centre
public broadcast // citizen journalism // community // media // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // technology // non-human // A.I.
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Image: Make or Break, Hyperlocal Headlines, 2022, installation view at Twosixty, Brunswick, Victoria. Photo by Wild Hardt.
HYPERLOCAL HEADLINES takes place as a series of artist-facilitated creative conversations and collective storytelling and writing sessions that imagine the future of news. Participants become citizen journalists for a day, learning to collaborate with AI technologies, understand media bias and language, and explore how the ways we tell stories can impact collective futures.
Participants’ narrative and poetic speculations are broadcast as website interventions and across large scale digital news tickers, to answer questions like: how does language influence our world view, or reveal our biases? Will the future of news be hyperlocal or distributed? Who writes it, how is it accessed, and who controls it?
Hyperlocal Headlines is an iteration of Make or Break’s ongoing project Influence Operation (2019-) which to date has invited citizens to join a series of focused workshops to adopt strategies of power in pursuit of questions around truth, influence and subjectivity.
Influence Operation was first commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre. Hyperlocal Headlines was commissioned by Next Wave for Next Wave Festival through Kickstart. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program.
MAKE OR BREAK: CITIZEN J
Started: 2022
Time/labour: ︎︎︎︎
Thanks to: UTS students Abbie, Amy, Annie, Diego, Eleanor, Helen, Jack, James, Jay, Jessie, Joseph, Julien, Kent, Kimberley, Lucy, Rahul, Sean, Seja, Solei, Sophie, Rodger and Timi, and anonymous AIs
citizen journalism // media // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // technology // non-human // A.I.
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Image: Make or Break, Citizen J, 2022, worksession in progress at UTS. Photo by Jacquie Manning.
Time/labour: ︎︎︎︎
Thanks to: UTS students Abbie, Amy, Annie, Diego, Eleanor, Helen, Jack, James, Jay, Jessie, Joseph, Julien, Kent, Kimberley, Lucy, Rahul, Sean, Seja, Solei, Sophie, Rodger and Timi, and anonymous AIs
citizen journalism // media // futures // collaboration // speculative fiction // text // technology // non-human // A.I.
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Image: Make or Break, Citizen J, 2022, worksession in progress at UTS. Photo by Jacquie Manning.
CITIZEN J is a collaboration between art collective Make or Break and tertiary students who are interested in understanding media subjectivity and the tools being developed and used by media empires, corporations and nation states to influence our understanding of truth. This project enables students to play with a series of critical and creative tools – including media analysis, language shaping, news scraping, futuring, speculative writing and machine learning – to generate a series of future newsfeeds.
Citizen J manifests for audiences as a continuous stream of speculative headlines and stories displayed live on LED news tickers at the university and online via a digital intervention on the university website. These headlines and stories are updated as the project unfolds, and are generated through a range of processes: “personalised” headlines devised using collaborators’ social media and search histories; current headlines scraped from news sites and re-imagined through machine learning; headlines and stories from imagined futures developed in collaboration with AI.
Citizen J is an offshoot of Make or Break’s ongoing project Influence Operation (2019-) which to date has invited citizens to join a series of focused workshops to adopt strategies of power in pursuit of questions around truth, influence and subjectivity.
This project is supported by Create NSW’s Audience Development Fund, a devolved funding program administered by Museums & Galleries of NSW on behalf of the NSW Government. Influence Operation was first commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre & Next Wave Festival, with support from the Australia Council of the Arts.