San Francisco’s Burning is not only a ballad opera for the stage, it is also a piece of historical fiction. Set in San Francisco in the days prior to the earthquake of 1906, it chronicles the interactions of a cast of characters whose lives intersect through murder, sex and urban planning reform. The musical, written […]
Footsteps on the dance floor remind me baby of you … To all of my on-the-floor partners, friends and colleagues. Every floor is a dance floor — Harrison I moved to Sydney in 2015. I was constantly hungry because I was nervous and unhappy. There is some food you can buy and eat for under […]
Fixations I might be addicted to problem solving. At least, it often preoccupies me. For example: if I take food that’s gone off and put it in the freezer, will that preserve more available nutrients for decomposition in the council’s green waste facility? Will the energy cost render this a futile gesture? And: how true […]
Rationalisation Writing in 1983, George Ritzer argues that McDonald’s exemplified the accelerated rationalisation of the broader society. As constantly reiterated in The Founder,[^1] a biopic focused on Ray Krok’s franchised expansion of the fast-food restaurant, McDonald’s became a ‘symphony of efficiency’. Over the years, Ritzer’s definition of ‘McDonaldization’ as a process that emphasises efficiency, predictability, […]
AREF SEA 793 ‘The principle reason for the three-way handshake is to prevent old duplicate connection initiations from causing confusion’ This poem is concerned by a means to address you.It is only about connecting. It is trying not to be Defensive. It’s no longer 1981 and we are not on Wilson Boulevardand we no longer […]
Elena Gomez is a poet, editor and researcher living in Melbourne. She is the author of Admit the Joyous Passion of Revolt (2020), Body of Work (2018) and several chapbooks and pamphlets. [^1]: Indrajit Ray, ‘Indigo in Bengal’ in Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed. H Selin (Dordrecht: […]
Mutual debt, debt unpayable, debt unbounded, debt unconsolidated, debt to each other in a study group, to others in a nurses’ room, to others in a barber shop, to others in a squat, a dump, a woods, a bed, an embrace.— Fred Moten and Stefano Harney Today, a brief lull between lockdowns, is for writing. […]
It feels too easy to write the abject — I puke all over myself and my organs fall out and I shit my pants and everything that was inside is out now. That’s writing the abject though, not writing about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the above example, it simply operates and exists. […]
on venus, the winds blow harderthey strip every surface, the air hostile // on venuswe are neighbours in nerves/ with chemical / with acid.[^1] In a moment defined by climate crisis and worsening inequalities under capitalism, the fantasy of utopia resembles nothing more than a nostalgic vision of the past. In this context, P. Staff’s exhibition On Venus (2019)presents […]
Teik-Kim Pok: I saw this one-liner on the internet — ‘My friend told me she wouldn’t eat beef tongue because it came from a cow’s mouth. So I gave her an egg.’ As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded it was hard to keep up with all the stories of food, both good and bad, that shaped […]
Atlantis Marine Park is an abandoned theme park and the centrepiece of the Yanchep Sun City development. It was built by notorious criminal entrepreneur Alan Bond in the small fishing community of Two Rocks in 1981, sixty-something kilometres north of Boorloo/Perth. Atlantis seems a curious name for a theme park in settler-colonial Australia — for […]
The Socialist Scholars Conference was a gathering of intellectuals, academics, community organisers, religious leaders and a who’s-who of grassroots and celebrity progressives. It happened to be taking place in New York and I was visiting nearby, so I was able to duck in to listen to a long weekend of speakers and panels. I made […]
The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognised that it’s fucked up for us. —Fred Moten Under a Burning White Sky As my experience of social life has become less and less about seeking or gaining approval from outside forces, a burden […]
Micröbius Tract(ion) is designed to be folded into a möbius loop. Holding the print lengthwise, make a loop, then twist it once, so there is one continuous surface. Join the narrow edges together with tape, stickers, glue, clips or pins. This work is the second iteration of its kind produced for Micro-(bial) Tenancies, curated by […]
I remember showing someone my box of poems and they said don’t you have a copy. And I gleamed no. I liked the perversity of the original. I would never lose this. — Eileen Myles, For Now In reality, however, the poet has given concrete form to a very general psychological theme, namely, that there […]
The library and the department store: the house of knowledge and the house of consumption. Upon closer inspection, they are modern temples where the communal ritual of excess expenditure takes place. Such sites have existed, with many different faces and many different names, for as long as the sacred has been practised. In other words, […]
Kenzee Patterson is a settler-colonial descendant whose art practice combines material experimentation with historical research, autobiography and language, motivated by the imperative to confront the ecological and socio-cultural repercussions of resource extraction and material displacement.
Amy Jane Parker is an artist, artist facilitator and disability support worker based in Naarm/Melbourne.
Dear J, I’ve been meaning to follow up on my previous letter for a while now, thinking I knew what I wanted to write but also nervous about the inevitable failures of assigning words; of failing to articulate their incomparability.[^1] In this letter I’d like to think about clinker, a residual geology of metalworking, as […]
What do we do about the extractive industries and their persistent and pervasive presence within the arts industry as sponsors, facilitators and (un)welcome benefactors? There is no easy answer to this question — the arts seem to be reliant upon the financial support of extractive industries, either through direct corporate sponsorship or indirectly, via funds […]
Kenzee Patterson is a settler-colonial descendant whose art practice combines material experimentation with historical research, autobiography and language, motivated by the imperative to confront the ecological and socio-cultural repercussions of resource extraction and material displacement.
As the COVID-19 pandemic caused Australian theatres, music venues, galleries and museums to close, the Federal Government’s response to the ensuing crisis raised the question of whether they view the arts as surplus to the economy. Government stimulus for the sector, both meagre and delayed, is unlikely to hinder the ongoing destruction of careers, infrastructure […]
Talia Smith is an artist and curator from Aotearoa New Zealand and now based in Sydney. She is of Sāmoan, Cook Island and NZ European heritage. Both her visual arts and curatorial practices explores notions of time, memory and familial histories, with a focus on the centring of diverse voices within the wider canon of […]
it’s all a new mythology … for our time … some sort of heroic … and it has created new mythologies and you better take them seriously. Yes they are out there and don’t ignore them — Werner Herzog Disney’s Star Wars spin-off series The Mandalorian is a model twenty-first century enterprise—an elaborate extraction machine […]