Block Party | Jina He with Harris Kwong

Block Party, 2016, Video, 1m 04secs, looped

Block Party is an animated moving-image work that reimagines Melbourne’s Lonsdale Street legal district as a playable urban panorama. Developed in collaboration with Harris Kwong, the work responds to the unusual spatial relationship among law courts, police, legal offices and nearby adult services.

Through the language of early platform games, the animation introduces a small pixelated figure moving through the street, shifting the city from a fixed civic environment into a virtual stage. The work reflects my broader interest in how physical places and digital worlds overlap. In everyday life, we often understand the city through boundaries, functions and zones; however, these divisions are also social, cultural and emotional. Block Party uses humour and virtual logic to question how urban space is scripted, controlled and performed, while inviting viewers to encounter a familiar Melbourne street as something strange, playful and open to reinterpretation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jina He is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and registered architect based in Melbourne. Her work spans public art, architecture, placemaking, animation, projection, light installations, and participatory urban experiences. She explores how civic spaces embody memory, identity, movement, and social tension, often employing playful visual systems, reflective surfaces, language, sound, and digital media to transform perceptions of the built environment.

With her architectural background, Jina approaches public space as both poetic and pragmatic: shaped by materials, cultural narratives, movement, and daily use. Her works often blur the line between physical and virtual worlds, encouraging viewers to see familiar urban spaces from new perspectives. Her projects have been showcased through public art commissions, festivals, urban activation initiatives, and screen platforms, collaborating with local councils, cultural institutions, and creative programs across Victoria and beyond.

ABOUT SCREENWORKS: 

SCREENWORKS provides a dedicated screen space for video and moving-image work for Gasworks’ creative community. Each month a different work will be shown, celebrating the dynamism that screen-based media can offer. 

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