History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.[^1]— Michel-Rolph Trouillot On 11 September 1973 the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was deposed and murdered in a military […]
In the 1980s, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard asked, ‘Why does the World Trade Center have two towers?’[^1] The towers functioned, before Nine Eleven, as parallel surfaces mirroring one another. They became a symbol for the irrelevance of difference in a post-political world where acts disappear without consequence. A one-dimensional society. The symbolic eliminates difference in […]
There is a tendency in contemporary life for artists, academics, authors and activists to view Nine Eleven as the beginning of the Western world’s demise into fragmented populist nationalisms, reigniting the Cold War by substituting ‘Islamic terrorism’ for ‘Russian communism’. Although there is some truth to this myth, there is a danger when projecting American […]
Behrouz Boochani is translated from Farsi by Dr. Omid Tofighian, American University in Cairo/ University of Sydney. Hoda Afshar : In our different areas, we both make connections between real and fictionalised events, partly in order to question through art-making how certain narrative-truths are constructed. History and poetry, documentary and staged images, combine in our […]
On 5 January 2019, members of the far-right gathered on the boardwalk of St Kilda Beach to ‘Reclaim the Beach’. Organised by known fascists Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, the ‘Reclaim the Beach’ rally claimed to be a response to recent incidents of mugging involving African young people in the Port Phillip Bay area. Attendees […]
‘Hey Muhammad, guess what time it is?’ The sound of multiple mobile phone alarms fill the room. It is first period and my eldest son is sitting in his Year 12 English class. As the only Muslim, he finds himself at the centre of a persistent morning ritual. His classmates have their alarms set to […]
The white glove hovered momentarily over the ‘buy now’ button. One click away from souveniring a memento that might help it all click into place. The item in question: a pre-2001 Twin Tower snow dome, complete with an inauthentic looking Certificate of Authenticity. Once purchased it would make its way to my cache of accumulated […]
Critical Dias : How do we start? Maybe we can talk about the last two years, in all of our lives! In the book Reinscriptions (2017) that we’ve just published, there are two main texts that we’ve been writing over the past two years, when concerns about machine learning and algorithmic tech and data have […]
Embittered Swish is a performance art vehicle founded in 2016 whose first project was a trans adaptation and reformulation of Jean Genet’s 1943 novel Our Lady of the Flowers. Embittered Swish works across a fine art, theatre and club context and has shown work at Performance Space (PACT), Transgenre, La Mama Courthouse, firstdraft gallery, Australian […]
A few years ago I was interviewed with other trans artists by a cis white woman who makes self-reflexively queer art. When we were handed back the transcript, we saw that the word ‘trans’ — which we used with some flippancy in talking about our experiences of our bodies — had been appended with an […]
Spring several years ago, fellow Canadian artist Lisa Visser and I embarked on a two-week road trip, driving 5,300 kms from Toronto across the United States to Los Angeles, during which time a collaborative project emerged. The purpose of this road trip was to move Lisa to California, so that she could carry out graduate […]
Curating a Pasifik space is unlike other art spaces. My mother taught me that if you pick a plant, treat it, dry it out and weave it into a mat it is still a living, breathing thing and it needs to be cared for. Mats need to be used, to be swept, sunned out if […]
My Mum Elvie would draw lines. Lines that represented the coastline, curved lines for the palm trees with smaller lines for the bushy branches and leaves. A big sun in the sky and waves in the sea. Mum would draw a turtle and ask me, ‘Ella, what is this?’ My earliest memory of creating art […]
My left hand hangs down, weighted by a gold wedding band. My palm cups a circular space. Intruding into this space, a child’s fingers poke at my fingertips. My right hand grasps firmly at a fat baby’s waist. The baby reaches towards a man, but I lean away from him, offering my feet on a […]
Parallel Park was borne out of a desire to explore the shared experience of being in a serious queer relationship for the first time. It is the collaborative practice of Holly Bates and Tayla Jay Haggarty, two Brisbane-based artists who met while studying visual art at the Queensland University of Technology. Since 2015 the duo […]
to know yourself andto know each other is the revolution The very existence of our collective this mob is simultaneously intriguing and threatening to outsiders. Collectivising when bla(c)k* is instantly politicised by others; we can be blak** but not too blak, and we still need to exist within the systems that silence and oppress us. […]
1: I speak from a position of solidarity with victim/survivors (I think about the temporality implied in this language and think ‘endurer’ may be more apt) past, present, and future. Those who have shared their stories, those who have not come forward and those who never will. 2: This letter was in response to news […]
This transcript began as a conversation between Alex Griffin, Rosie Funder, and Sally Olds, and was edited into its final form by Rosie Funder and Sally Olds. Sally Olds : To me the thing that became painfully apparent was that I didn’t believe in poly as a political form. And all my energy and, uh, […]
The Victorian Pride Centre was a hard-won project that would secure a future built legacy for the state’s LGBTIQA+ community. It proposed a single building for health service providers, youth advocates, and festival and entertainment networks, underpinned by a performance venue and exhibition space, and an archive. Located on Fitzroy Street in the seaside suburb […]
Apparently a dog saved Robert Nixon’s political career, transforming him from swindling politician to sympathetic family man with a single strategically-timed intervention. This was in September 1952 and Nixon had just been accused of receiving illegal campaign contributions by his running mate, the Republican nominee Dwight Eisenhower.[^1] In a nationally broadcast television appearance Nixon pleaded […]
Prior to the most recent performance (or performative exchange) of Illusions of Self Motion at the National Gallery of Victoria in June 2018, Brook Andrew asked trawulwuy art historian Dr Greg Lehman, myself and current performance collaborator Ben Opie to discuss the connections between Illusions on Self Motion with Brook’s own work 52 Portraits and […]
Diana Baker-Smith : When I think about collaboration, I think about friendship. I think about our first collaborations at art school well over a decade ago, when we used to do performances in clubs and at warehouse parties. I think about conversations over kitchen tables, sharing beds in regional towns and handmade birthday cards. Making […]
In May 2018, New South Wales-based duo Make or Break (Rebecca Gallo and Connie Anthes) presented their site-specific performance work Unveilings at Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial. This conversation began then, and continued over email. Hey Anna, : When I think of public monuments I picture a white male figure cast in bronze atop a granite […]
Let’s get it on : My ‘straight’ (what even is ‘straight’? Who even is ‘straight’?) housemate made a bewildering comment on the way courting seems to work in my (queer art) world. ‘It’s very European. Very intellectual.’ I suppose you could see it as pretentious, or romantic, or pretentiously romantic, or romantically pretentious — exchanging […]