Encyclopaedia of a Movie Set

[floorplan details]

room for tenderness

fig. 5 – library: The New Exhibition Centre (once to have been a Museum), Southbank, Melbourne

I see, you’re just visiting Melbourne, a tourist, I understand, you’ve come to see where all the movies are made. Such passionate ones too don’t you think? We Melburnians little fear the struggles of love. Well, what have we got before us, ah yes, the Movie Set called the New Exhibition Centre. Yes yes yes, such a big controversy, but do you know how it began? Ah, well, not the Actors but the Architects. You see, the Directors

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Encyclopaedia of a Movie Set 

fig. 5 – library: The New Exhibition Centre (once to have been a Museum), Southbank, Melbourne

instructed the first Architect to base the Movie Set on the measurements of ‘guilt’. She agreed, of course, but little did they suspect that secretly she would base the measurements on, instead, ‘tenderness’. When the first stages of the Set were built the Directors realised, oooh, and did gloom besiege our hearts that day. The Architect was sacked, told that what she’d built ‘was not architecture’.  The second Architect assigned was not

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Encyclopaedia of a Movie Set 

[floorplan details]

room for tickles

fig. 5 – library: The New Exhibition Centre (once to have been a Museum), Southbank, Melbourne

informed of these misfortunes, nor that the Set was so far based on ‘tenderness’. Needing the prestige from such a job, this Architect agreed emphatically that the Movie Set would speak of guilt and guilt alone. However, her job was beyond difficulty as you can well imagine; for how does one build ‘guilt’ ion ‘tenderness’? Yes it does occur I’m well aware, but after many restless nights, feeling troubled, still unaware of the mea-

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Encyclopaedia of a Movie Set 

fig. 5 – library: The New Exhibition Centre (once to have been a Museum), Southbank, Melbourne

sured ‘tenderness’, she decided that her only recourse was to base the Movie Set’s measurements on the ‘overwhelming sensations of tickles’. This was soon extremely obvious, as was the wrath reeked by the Directors. And so a third Architect was employed. She, too, disobeyed – but hers became a final sentence – for the Directors, wearied by perpetual disobedience, had little strength to refrain. And so before us stands the Movie

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Encyclopaedia of a Movie Set 

[floorplan details]

room for the touch of a whisper

fig. 5 – library: The New Exhibition Centre (once to have been a Museum), Southbank, Melbourne

See, its measurements based on ‘tenderness’, the ‘overwhelming sensations of tickles’ and then, finally, the ‘intimate whispers beneath the dark of midnight’. Oh, yes, we Melburnians know the struggles of love.

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