Torsion, Curated by Kyle Weise 9 Dec 2023–27 Jan 2024 Metro Arts, Meanjin/Brisbane In 1993 I was ten years old and wanted for few things except for a pair of Nike Airs. When my classmate, Stephen, intentionally stabbed the point of his compass through the clear window of his red and white Air Max, I […]

I One of the great critiques of ‘philistinism’ — or what today we could call badauderie — is Nietzsche’s four 1873–76 essays published together as Unfashionable Observations. To the surprise of anyone who mistakes Nietzsche — as he so often is mistaken — for a sieg-heiling proto-fascist, we do not find him here proudly marching […]

Unlike the broader associations of horse racing, dog racing is typically associated with the working class due to its lower cost of participation, proximity to urban centres and evening race schedules. Bred specifically for racing, greyhounds possess an innate prey drive that compels their unrelenting pursuit of the lure. Despite their reputation as sporting dogs, […]

In some quarters of the contemporary art market, a ‘genre’ has emerged. Steeped in esoterism, this art is a blend of New Age spirituality, pastel colours, neon, and Frankie magazine aesthetics. It is de-skilled, anti-disciplinary, wonky, cute-yet-nefarious, mischievous and somewhat eerie. It evokes feelings of unease — it would be mistaken to refer to this […]

Now one uses artworks to lure poor, exhausted, and sick human beings to the side of humanity’s road of suffering for a short lascivious moment…— Friedrich Nietzsche (1887) All that is ever put on display is on the pornographic side of things…— Botho Struaß (2007) The image has lost its power. It has been drained […]

The contemporary art world loves to establish a boundary, if only to demarcate the terms of its own transgression. This is particularly evident with regards to the notion of ‘outsider art’. Originated by Roger Cardinal in a 1972 text, the phrase is today used in reference to a vast array of practices, including naïve art […]

In his book The Culture of Narcissism (1979), Christopher Lasch uncannily predicted the perilous state of the contemporary subject. He anticipated a cultural landscape surplus with images of desire rendering the subject beholden to an amalgamation of preexisting material confronting them through the pervasive mediums of photography and the ever-present wallpaper of screen culture.1 In […]

In the flâneur, the joy of watching is triumphant. It can concentrate on observation; the result is the amateur detective. Or it can stagnate in the gaper; then the flâneur has turned into the badaud.  — Walter Benjamin. 1 Deborah Edwards, Senior Curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales: Just a point of judgment then. […]

Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the […]

The popularity of the confessional mode testifies, of course, to the new narcissism.—Christopher Lasch (1979).  When people today speak of “real life,” what they usually mean is the global media market. And that means: The current protest against the museum is no longer part of a struggle being waged against normative taste in the name […]

Examining the artist as gawker; with consideration to the migrational history of Lebanese hawkers in Melbourne’s marketplace, Keiso and Peters consider the artistic interplay of production and spectatorship that amounts to a position of becoming entertainers of their own production loop. Here the lost labour movements condition of waiting for work necessitate a certain political […]

By the nineteenth century, the badaud — which translates to ‘bystander,’ ‘gawker’ or ‘gawper’ — was recognised as a ubiquitous modern social type.[1] According to the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (1867) ‘the badaud is curious; he is astonished by everything he sees; he believes everything he hears, and he shows his contentment or his surprise […]

To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!– E M Cioran I am stuck, thrown. Wait, no, we all are. It’s all heading nowhere fast. The ‘End of History’ is over and we’re caught in an awkward lurching motion, traumatised by the past […]