Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a poet working on unceded Gadigal land. A poetry editor for Voiceworks and alumnus of the Banff Centre’s Emerging Writers Intensive, their work has been shortlisted in the 2020 Blake Poetry Prize, awarded third place in PRISM International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and second place in Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize. They […]

un Magazine: Could you tell us a bit about your country? Fiona Foley: I was born on my Country, which is Maryborough. We have two tracks of land. We have six islands and one of those islands is Fraser Island, also known as K’gari — it’s the largest sand island in the world. On the […]

My friends keep sending me grants and opportunities. I appreciate it, I really do. It’s nice to know that people are thinking of me. But I never want to apply for a grant again. I can’t. My body recoils. It feels like taking my skin off for nothing. We’ve all been talking a lot this […]

Whatungarongaro te tangata toituu te whenua (As man disappears from sight, the land remains) Indigenous struggles against capitalism and imperialism are often struggles orientated around land. As Maaori, we base our rela- tionship with land on reciprocity, physically and ethically com- mitting ourselves to land through a just and sustainable give and take. We even […]

# # # # # David Egan is an artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. All drawings courtesy the artist, 2020. This text is also available as a radio play performed by Brennan Olver, Katherine Botten, Clare Longley and Lucreccia Quintanilla, with music by Wet Kiss.

Autumn Royal is a poet, researcher and educator based in Narrm/Melbourne. Autumn is an associate editor for Liquid Architecture’s Disclaimer journal and interviews editor for Cordite Poetry Review. Lorilee Yang is an artist who lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne).

Dhyakiyarr vs The King Wally Wilfred’s sculpture Dhyakiyarr vs The King delves into the story of Dhakiyarr, a respected Balamumu leader from north-east Arnhem Land. In 1932, five Japanese and two white trepangers were speared at Woodah Island in Blue Mud Bay. The fishermen had violated territorial rights, threatened local people with guns and raped […]

In 1911, during the wet season, Northern Territory police officer Constable Johns arrested Ayaiga, also known as ‘Neighbour’ and three other Aboriginal men accused of robbing a white man’s hut. Johns shackled the four prisoners and they began the 32-kilometre journey to Roper Bar Police Station on foot, escorted by Johns on horseback. Arriving at […]

By definition, there is no master sketch for what such a thing might look like. It can only be an experiment. — Maggie Nelson Section 1: A Portrait of the Writer as a Failed Urbanist In Carceral Capitalism, Jackie Wang stares into an abyss of hopelessness, acutely aware that prison abolition is as implausible as […]

When I leave Lujayn’s room and I turn off the light, I turn off the dark as well. The paradox of form and void is that each exists by virtue of the other’s appearance and also by virtue of the other’s disappearance. The dark exists because there is light; this is obvious. You turn on […]

Alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, the anti- monument movement has been growing. In Bristol in the United Kingdom, a statue of slave trader Edward Colston was dragged down and dumped in the river; in the United States, ‘statues of Christopher Columbus have been beheaded.’[^1] In Australia, although colonial statues have largely avoided destruction thus […]

Franz Kafka’s short story ‘The City Coat of Arms’ (1931), begins with a group of people who all agree that it would be a great idea to build a tower. ‘At first all the arrangements for building the Tower of Babel were characterized by fairly good order … perhaps too perfect.’ Arrangements are made for […]

Dear E, I read in an article that the letter ‘E’ is what you preferred to be known as towards the end of your life.[^1] I’m accepting this, as I cannot ask you or seek your consent. It’s 2020. I am writing about your famed decision to boycott women in 1971, and a selection of […]

I was sprinting when I first heard Hannah Weiner’s voice. I’d developed a habit of running along the Merri Creek and, instead of listening to music, I would listen to audio recordings of poets reading and talking. I’d picked the recording almost at random from the PennSound archive, having never read her work before. It […]

Under a white London sky in October 2019, I entered the deep red interior of Alexa Karolinski and Ingo Niermann’s exhibition Army of Love at Auto Italia South East. Two wall- wide films were playing in conjoined spaces. The first, Army of Love (2016), is a kind of documentary-campaign for the larger Army of Love, […]

A shift towards advocating for full representation within the arts sector has encouraged an increase in programming across artist-run and institutional spaces that supports and prioritises culturally diverse artists. However, there is still a need to address the underrepresentation of curators from a variety of backgrounds employed within these cultural organisations. If the curator’s etymological […]

This essay narrates the direction of contemporary art practices in post-1998 Indonesia through a discussion about care, viability of artists’ projects — using Parasite Lottery, Gudskul and Serikat Sindikasi as case studies — and the sustainability of cultural ecosystems. It provides historical accounts of how these initiatives emerged in contemporary Indonesia, and the ways that […]

do you need some hope? a friend told me I need a taser. fear and violence. I felt no one would talk to me. having no one to share your achievements with everytime that you create a new world. I’m sorry I care about you. I’m afraid to ask for more of your time. I […]

To walk through the main roads, small alleys, places or neighbourhoods that a mass protest has touched is to negotiate tilted grounds. What used to be the flatness of the everyday — double-deckers’ squeaky engines, fences and traffic lights managing anonymous bodies, endless lines of advertisements — now acquires a different shape. Protest sites of […]

A woman in light blue jeans kneels over a sex doll. Its synthetic, rubbery legs are splayed across a bed as she casually probes its mouth with her fingers. A moment later she fields an enquiry on a cordless phone. ‘We usually go by appointments,’ she politely states in German, as she adjusts the doll’s […]

Unknown barely survived a massacre that decimated her people. Sometime around the mid-1800s, hidden beneath shrub, she watched as vicious intruders collected her clan’s lives, one by one, until no soul stood. As silence fell, she travelled through grass picking up her feet faster and faster, until she hit a heavy speed, fast enough to […]

We move together, with no body left behind —Sins Invalid When you’re non-disabled, a comfortable place to sit down is not something that you spend much time worrying about. You probably wouldn’t even think about it until you needed it and it wasn’t there. Living with my disabilities (which include arthritis), a place to sit […]

In Octavia Butler’s science-fiction novel Parable of the Sower a character remarks: ‘There has to be more that we can do, a better destiny that we can shape. Another place. Another way. Something!’[^1] This plea is rooted in a near-future dystopian Los Angeles, an irritating and disfigured city that has been destroyed by climate change […]

It is not kind to laugh at other people’s art. Seated on a grass lawn a few blocks away from Fringe Festival’s new home in Trades Hall, the three of us shared a moment of comedy thinking about the radical potentialities which might emerge as moustache twiddlers collide with staunch trade union militants. Connecting the […]