It has been our great joy to work in collaboration with The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) to bring you the eleventh issue of demos journal. Securing funding through artsACT for the production of this issue marks a significant moment for demos journal in...
The following are translated excerpts from South Korean poet and activist Song Kyung-dong’s essay collection, Dreamers Are Dragged Away (Silcheon Press, 2011). “One vibrant day in May” It happened on a Saturday during my high school years—a clear spring day when the...
So the woman’s dream is, by their and our hands, hysterical. (And not entirely woman.) Voices of expression and tins of regret. It seems that, despite all tendencies, we have stairs instead. Or steps. Or plans of steps, stepmothers and stepladders. Stemming...
Despite the wealth of scientific knowledge available to us today, true environmental justice seems to be an almost unattainable goal. The increasing number of transnational environmental problems has been met with an increasing global response through multilateral...
Data is extractable and its valence changes. Precarity in relationship > when we are situated in relationship to circumstance > when others situate us in relationship causally. White supremacy destabilises and shakes, only once in a while. Is white...
Speech is often found at the heart of debates concerning politics and the political, in particular the question of who and what counts as a speaking and rational being, and the passage from silent to speaking beings, from nonsense to sense. One notable attempt to...
In this article, I write about my experience of being a photographer during the celebration of the afterparty of the Black-Palestinian Solidarity Conference and share excerpts of an interview with Suzannah Henty, a co-convenor of the conference. ...
This article centers on the implications of Moria’s destruction and its repercussions for migrants who used to inhabit its overcrowded tents. Firstly, it discusses the implications of its existence within the nexus between border regimes and humanitarianism....
You can’t tell if your family gave up growing vegetables. Your Mum, gazing over, wishes for peaches. Our turmeric/sage/ parsley (the talking herb we call it in our family language) tastes like nothing. Night -time, in the garden, you observe minute LEDs...
In March 2020, COVID-19 created a situation of international chaos. No country from across the globe was free from the threat of the virus and the possible consequences of its spreading. This reality, familiar to most of us, accentuated a socio-economic crisis that...
My aunty had become terminally ill. The recently found melanoma had spread and was now rapidly taking over her body. I flew up to Queensland to see her with my family, not knowing then, it was to be the last time I would ever see her again.Bundaberg was hot. I felt...
‘We’ve received reports of a suspicious individual conducting surveys and photographing people’s boarding passes around Terminal 2 of Domestic Airport.’ Two Federal police officers approached me. Both are Anglo-Australian men almost twice my...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this article contains the names of deceased persons. All readers are respectfully advised that this article contains references to deaths in custody that may cause distress. This is a story of two...
If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it. Anne Carson You take photos of the auction, the world’s straightest Mardi Gras. They fill the street like the opposite of rubble. You have no skin here; you raise $100 000 and...
Inspired by the Tamil saying, “மாற்றம் ஒன்றே மாறாதது”(matrum ondrae maaraathathu) Translation: Change is the only unchangeable thing The bird sits alone, Waiting, and mulling boredom, Feeling like dust float. Change, ablaze unchanged,...
Yajo* lived in place that has produced some of the most brilliant, distinguished academics and professionals. In fact, it once had a flourishing democracy, producing some of the best theorists on state-formation. However, Yajo comes from a place with...
Innocence is an important cultural marker. As I and others have written elsewhere, it holds powerful significatory value as a contested and complicated sign which entangles richly with other forms of meaning (Wekker 2016, Kanjere 2019, Tuck and Yang 2012, Fellows and...
Introduction If you are to follow the path of River Code in Yogyakarta and then navigate your way under the Gondolayu Bridge you will come to Kampung Code, a riverbank settlement in Yogyakarta made up of brightly painted houses and murals. This settlement has...
I need to breathe Get up, look at that news Markers of enslavers Tearing down Pushed in the water Like them chains Clanking to the ground Like the bodies of ancestors past Forgotten in the water? ‘So-called australia. Born a prison, still a prison’ are the words of...
Blood orange sun burning and tar melts under peach haze while house sails obscure in custard winds coughing hacking strangling to breathe and soft fur faces are singed and bloodied birds falling are like dying while flying like drink driving and trees turn to less...
Precarity and the conditions that underpin precarious living are not arbitrary. Rather, they are the engineered products of prioritising the interests of the few over the many. Such precarious living was the reality of the residents of the Grenfell Tower, who in 2017...
Tilly Houghton was a friend to many at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) and demos journal, and worked on and contributed to this issue of demos journal. We have been given permission by Double Dialogues to reproduce the following piece of Tilly’s, in...
, at some lunch table not a desk at the University of Sydney , smoking on campus which is definitely illegal now , opening up my old student email account , to discover two weeks after the fact , my ‘creative’ PhD has been awarded an ‘academic’ prize , named after...
stood before an automated door that refused to acknowledge my existence I thought but I’m here & yes I do remember when time online was less anxious—not a threat to national security democracy of course an election is not a cake walk though strolling...
It was 2017 and Trump had just been elected. Women’s marches had sprung up in many places and on my television screen. The image of thousands of women standing shoulder to shoulder, coming together to advocate for shared goals — could feel inspiring; it could look...
After Zora Neale Hurston Tima carried a long-legged ease about her, thundering strides of a leader, full lips and wide eyes and melanin. She would raise her hand like the switch in Adelaide weather, abrupt and sure, delivering answers in Maths like they were meant to...
I used to think I had the privilege of being at arm’s length from the politics of disability. I strongly supported anti-racist politics, but being “able-bodied” and without caring responsibilities, the disability studies and the disability rights movement was not a...
We exist through our bodies and in relation to other bodies – human, animal, ecological. This issue of Demos explores the ways in which the body moves through the world – how it labors and loves, how it treads the duplicitous thresholds of legality, how it is...
The demos journal editorial team decided to explore the topic of crisis before the summer of bushfires and the outbreak of this global pandemic (and its economic and social shockwaves). We were already living in a time of political and social crisis, whether it was...
‘Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.’ – Ibn Khaldun The pandemic crisis has...
The health-cum-economic crisis of COVID-19 has exposed many weaknesses of contemporary governance. These weaknesses are associated with representative democracy, which simply offers citizens a right to vote every few years, a mere choice between a small number of...
In the morning, the noise of the trucks from the distant freeway has stopped. There is just the sound of the wind blowing on the gate outside my window and, every now and then, a bird tweeting. I wheel my bike onto the street. There are only five reasons to leave...
Panorama Blackness is a pleasure. I can imagine the long line of women who look like me & wonder where their bodies end & mine begins. Flesh of chocolate A face checked by the hand of God. My DNA is made of blood, sweat & tears.’ I was formed by the...
Our days of rest are passed in silent prayer Before the promise of our teenage courtship Convinces us to do away with care And sees us come together, lip to lip. Within his bed and veiled in whitest sheet, Our hidden love evades forbidding eye, As I anoint and humbly...
The story of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas and Greed (KNAG) begins in 2012. A handful of older women joined an anti-coal seam gas (CSG) group in Lismore NSW. They wanted to take action when the Northern Rivers area of NSW was being targeted for CSG mining by...
The word crisis refers to different meanings. It can refer to a tension of two or more different “forces” or tendencies, whose clash creates a conflict (for example, in van der Poel, 2019). Another meaning of crisis is the idea of a decisive moment of change. For...
Early on the morning of 2 March 2020, a small vessel full of refugees from across the Middle East arrived at the shores of Lesvos. It was the latest of the over 70 irregular boats documented since the turn of the year. Locals gathered nearby. Videos quickly circulated...
This is no time of crisis. Crisis is a tempest roving shore to shore Not gentle rain on subtle tour. A crisis forges sickles for every Soul. Scoops up the seconds, craves every hour, Reaches past the cupboard and eats the cobwebs. A crisis inks over everything, writes...
Masculinity is in crisis. This is a readily agreed upon view amongst many scholars, pop psychologists and media figures alike. Examining declining educational achievement, high suicide rates, and a growing cohort of ‘angry men’ determined to reclaim a lost sense of...
“In every crisis a piece of the world, something common to us all, is destroyed. The failure of common sense, like a divining rod, points to the place where such a cave-in has occurred. Hannah Arendt, ‘Truth and Politics’, Between Past and Future Hannah Arendt’s...
Draw me a picture of mountains, child. Sketch creatures, trees, flowers, butterflies and birds flying, swept high by winds in wild skies. Together, we will name these denizens of nature, make up words to pattern silent pages, (echoes of our almost empty world,...
Calvin hauled the mattress out of the boot. He had it draped over the bonnet and up the windscreen by the time Ngaire back. ‘The blokes in the first car say about twenty hours,’ she said as she climbed up beside him. She could feel the windscreen wiper poking through...
During the CHL review, numerous academics and professional associations wrote letters to the ANU Vice Chancellor in support of CHL and its community and against the cuts. Demos Journal’s editorial team thank the respective associations for their kind permission to...
The review of the School of Culture, History and Language, which commenced in 2013, was an opaque process. It began with a shambolic retreat in which academic staff were invited to come up with ‘blue sky’ thinking about how the School could become great. The event was...
LK: The School of Culture, History and Language review of 2013, was that a big one? Yes, it was a big explosion. LK: Were the professional staff involved? Well, they always said, ‘you are involved’, but they already had their mind made up about how things were going...
James Church is the pseudonym of a former CIA operative who writes remarkable detective novels set in North Korea. His main character is an oddly plausible and endearing North Korean detective named Inspector O. In addition to his novels, Church also writes columns in...
On a bright morning in March 2016, I came to my office at the Australian National University (ANU) with an extremely heavy heart. I heard that my primary supervisor was one of the academics losing their positions due to the school review. I could not help swearing all...
In 2016, I worked as a part of Language Diversity at ANU, to stop proposed cuts to programs in the College of Asia and the Pacific’s School of Culture, History and Languages (CHL). While working with the group, I learned valuable lessons about the university. 2016 was...
Excessive managerialism, neoliberalisation and casualisation are some of the main challenges that are threatening the viability and the values of the university today. Sara Ahmed argues in her book On Being Included: On Racism and Diversity in Institutional...
The education market Two distinct understandings of the corporation have become entwined with one another in the contemporary public university, which has caused confusion and uncertainty as to its character and purpose. The not for-profit corporation was established...
I firmly believe that universities and academics have the potential to do good; to contribute to a more just, sustainable and peaceful future for our world by advancing public knowledge and understanding. Universities should cultivate the ability in our students to...
antistudy these days suggest economy 10 to six five & a half days; read widely but with sycophant calculation in order ‘not to fail’ this, don’t sit too long on this bench construing politics from sunshine— now that language is the subject of your ambits it’s...
Levels of insecure employment within the university sector are increasing. Casual and contract staff have no guarantee of on-going employment. However casual and contract workers (both academic and professional staff) make up 50% of the workforce and this figure is...
‘A Ruse to Mislead’: An insider’s account of the review of the School of Culture, History and Language at ANU The curtain is drawn back to reveal the tumultuous planning behind the CHL review. IN ESSAY ‘I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally’ By Lina...
Australian universities are now more reliant on casualised labour than at any other point in their history. While university management may see this as a positive trend, this essay argues that both the nature and scale of casualised labour have had almost wholly...
Rosie Joy Barron is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education, where she is involved with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). For this issue of demos journal, I decided to ask Rosie if she’d chat with me about her research...
In March of 2019, during a rally, Donald Trump threatened to execute an executive order requiring “colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research funds” (Shepardson & Johnson 2018). The details are foggy on exactly what this order...
How can I ever tell you what is really like? How do I explain the will necessary to get up each day, to go and work somewhere that I know doesn’t value me? How do I explain the impact that those bemused looks have when I encounter yet another obligatory bureaucratic...
A shifting margin pivots on desire to assimilate under the purview of theorists who say the goodies are for the earning. Publishing is your real estate. Texts incise – a colleague says efface – bodies matter too I say though a text is a gulp drawn to signal this...
“When some day we enter the university – that is to say, when we occupy and decolonize it – we will not merely open the doors and redecorate the walls. We will destroy both so that we may all fit in.” – Boaventura de Sousa Santos Many academics – especially those who...
I find it fascinating how in the short time since I graduated from my university’s Diploma of Languages in 2016 and its PhB Bachelor of Philosophy (Arts) in 2017, both programs[1] have been scrapped.[2] Yet while I was somewhat shocked to hear the news, I can’t say I...
“ffffffffffffff.” Fricative relationship between us. “ffffffffffffff.” Like my grades then; fourteen’s a difficult age. “ffffffffffffff.” Filial defiance, common among boys. “ffffffffffffff.” My utterance became your fists, falling plosives, blow after blow, ...
Kambri is an island, a detachment that floats separate to the rest of campus. This “cultural precinct” and “community space” features a flashy bookstore, cafés, student services, and open-plan study spaces. Students at the Australian National University are meant to...
Academic labour is grounded in long-established, and sometimes hard-won, scholarly traditions that help to shape and direct academic disciplines and secure the trust of the wider public in the results of that labour. It should be no surprise, then, to find that...
Although universities have developed differently in each country, essentially all universities are similar: they are communities of students and scholars. Universities are communities where we realise social problems, raise issues and discuss how we could solve the...
Welcome to our university, where you will experience the best education the world can offer. Our focus on teaching excellence, and our endeavour to provide you learning tailored to your needs [1] will create an environment that will facilitate your journey to becoming...
Much clanking in the rhododendrons, knights in the garden Black knights, white knights, knights of the haiku table Goes at pashing and tableaux of Glenrowan, garden knights Much enjoyment of metal frustration, knights in garden Larkspur, machine parts: satiric...
This is an edited version of an address to an NTEU election forum in April 2019, when the author was Greens candidate for the seat of Canberra. Universities are a critical site not just of learning, but also of social change, of progress, of democracy. Universities...
The Matters of Concern Collective (MoCC) is a group of academics and PhD students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds who have come together in response to existing conditions in universities in Australia. MoCC operate in a horizontal structure, and work...
Lina Koleilat interviews Raewyn Connell the author of The Good University: What universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change, (Monash University Publishing, 2019) LK: Shall we start with your definition of what a University is? RC: There’s a formal...
As the students’ representative of my department, I had just came out from a small but, significant, battle about the Postgraduate and Research Students Associate’s (PARSA) budget allocation; an outrageous amount of money for ‘social activities’ (which I read as...
Between 1952 and 1963, British forces dropped nine nuclear weapons and nine thermonuclear weapons between Woomera and the Western Australian border, within contamination distance of urban centers. The Menzies-led Australian government of that time was wholly complicit...
The nation turns its face towards the wall and does not see the dying child. But she is here. She lies amongst the flowers that spread their seas of blue across suburban gardens. Her shallow fevered breath inhales the distant scent of moss and earth. The colours on...
Technology is making us robots. It feels like an absolute cop out to begin a piece by gesticulating about the age of technology – but hear me out. In a recent media consumption frenzy, I came across RadioLab’s recent experimentation with the Turing Test which...
I. Introduction “Every person with disabilities has a right to respect for his or her physical and mental integrity on an equal basis with others.” — Article 17, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities All individuals are entitled to bodily integrity—the...
Image credit: Kon Kudo. Dear soft rubber, hard metal dress me: one part at a time interject with vanit y, shoulders nearby hold arm above head press face against windscreen stay MALLEABLE ...
Image by Farhad Bandesh. The following artworks, writing, poetry and music come from four asylum seekers—Mustafa, Abbas, Farhad, and Behrouz—who have been detained for the past five years by the Australian Government on Manus Island and Nauru. Hundreds of refugees...
What else have I dreamt of, waking in twisted sheets as the blue dawn walks the slope at the end of our beach? The hands have memory, the breath too. In the sky, a letter in cloud, a rune of ending, written without hands, without breathing. The hands have memory, the...
The East Asia-Australia Flyway is a migratory shorebird highway that over 8 million birds use to travel between the Arctic Circle and Australia.[1] Countless tiny birds make this amazing journey each year, however their path is now being impacted by climate change...
One of the ways I experience dance is as a series of body images.‘instilled,’ a solo dance performance (2010) contains many elements that express how I image body, both mine and others. These include images that are visceral, infant-like, in-culturated as woman, as...
Goulburn Hospital The women of my family end up in hospital beds Surrounded by the people they spend their lives looking after It’s not meant to be ironic But it feels strange Our bodies owned by something else In the hospital beds I’ve visited the women I’m part of...
Justine Poon is a PhD student at the Australian National University. Her thesis topic: “How a body becomes a boat” examines the ways in which law, political discourse, imagery, and metaphors shape how asylum seekers are treated and perceived in Australia. Far from the...
Linda Martín Alcoff, 2018. Rape and Resistance: Understanding the Complexities of Sexual Violation. Cambridge, Polity Press. Available Online: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Rape+and+Resistance-p-9780745691916 In 1977, Foucault made the controversial proposition that...
Walking the dog up the track through the gums and kangaroos, down through suburbs crawling into the morning. The dog (a dingo cross?) browses the roo poo, which people think gross but which provides a certain consolation: at least one of us knows how to transact with...
‘Bodies, is that all we are?’ This was the response from a colleague of mine when I was discussing a monograph I had recently published entitled Cultural Responses to Occupation in Japan: The Performing Body during and after the Cold War (2016). The wry humour was...
Throughout history, humans have utilised their bodies to fight against different forms of oppression and shape their political and social landscape. From Ghandi to the Occupy Movement, the marginalised and oppressed have used their bodies to gain visibility and shine...
Well Then Introduce Myself to Me If you – happen to consider yourself female. And you are, alone at midnight (Tuesday morning) It can be good practice to strip down naked even though it is nearly ten degrees and you fucked your heater with red wine...
Student activism has been a defining feature of university life for as long as there have been universities. Young, idealistic, energetic and caught in the throes of an exciting yet tumultuous period of growth and exploration, it is unsurprising that students are...
Inherent to the objective of student unionism is the furthering of member interests. Historically and presently, higher education and university administration policy have been seen as counter to these interests, prompting student representatives to explore various...
When most people think of contemporary student activism, they think of students campaigning around federal education policy or local campus issues. Student environmentalism or student protests in support of refugees might get a mention. However, students also have a...
In 1971, when the South African Springboks toured Australia and played at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Judy Turner was on of 49 people arrested protesting against South Africa’s apartheid policy. After an elaborate, month-in-the-making scheme concocted by ANU students to...
At the 2017 December Arts and Social Science Graduation Ceremony, Geraldine Fela – a dedicated education and refugee activist – delivered the following graduation address. Containing none of the usual platitudes of graduation speeches, Geraldine instead took the...
Beneath the shade of large arch’s awnings there is a rectangular window through which you can see out onto rubble. ‘A Bold New Campus’ is how a placard below the window describes it. These are the remains of Union Court, a place that for many students was synonymous...
The history of Canberra can be cut many ways. It is, for all intents and purposes, a history of a semi-alpine valley imposed with the burden of Capitol – scoured clean and designed for 25,000 inhabitants, the abstracted ‘smooth faeries’ of Ian Warden’s[1] musings. In...
We’ve left the university I walked out wearing my red flag around my shoulders You left wearing a beret, chanting: ‘The workers, united, will never be defeated’ We left As the campus turned into the dollar sign that it is. A dollar sign Which provides delicious...
Professor John Buchanan is the Head of the Discipline of Business Analytics at the University of Sydney Business School. From 1979-1984, he was an undergraduate student of History and Law at the ANU. During that time, he helped establish the ANU Left Group, a large...
I picked up a banner for the first time and joined the fight against fee deregulation as a second-year student in 2014. The experience of being part of a vibrant and winning campaign is crucial for any activist – personally, I came to realise we have the power and...
Action on higher education policy is a core aspect of activism at universities. While this work is important and necessary, something is fundamentally missing from our demands and our narratives. Education activists demand the opportunity for everyone who wishes to...
A few messages later and there’s Ten or twenty of us in a park near Braddon, armed with banners and badges, a megaphone, desperation and rage. We’ve tried everything else years in the making and it only gets worse. Garema Place doesn’t cut it any more. ...
The refugee campaign in Australia has been one of the most visible and tenacious movements of social activism of the last four of five years. In it, many thousands of people have fought to estabilish a basic principle – that people seeking refuge should not be locked...
“Full-time troublemakers”. This is how Chris Swinbank describes student activsts he camepaigned with during his time at the ANU from 1968-1971. After reading about Chris and the anti-apartheid campaign in a chapter of The Making of the Australian National University:...
My earliest memory of parental-encouraged activism is when, at the age of ten my mum told me to go harass the Premier of Queensland. To give context, my mum was involved in the campaign to stop sand mining on Stradbroke Island (known as “Straddie”), a beautiful and...
Chris Swinbank: Involved in anti-apartheid activism, anti-Vietnam War activism and student support for the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, late 1960s-early 1970s Oh I would never get depressed, the battle went on always. It was like a full-time...
– by Roxley Foley, introduction by Odette Shenfield At the 2015 National Union of Students National Confernece, the Labor Right faction (Student Unity) submitted a motion supporting nuclear energy. The motion lauded South Astralian Premier Jay Weatherill’s...
This work is inspired by the generations of female activists in the ANU community. All the faces are based on images of activists from the ANU archives. Based on archival images (below) from the ANU Open Research Repository and the Women’s Electoral Lobby history...
I have often wondered what it would have been like to be an Australian feminist in the 1970s. To be frank, I have always thought it would have been wildly fun and, accordingly, have often wished I had been born in the late ‘50s. This is not just because of the tube...
When I was a child, my parents were part of a group called of Friends of South West Rocks. They, along with a few other local greenies, were outraged when the Council approved a development that would destroy a pristine environment and cut off a wildlife path used by...
The future is arguably the defining concern of progressive politics. We strive for a better future, and believe the present is insufficient. It is fundamentally conservative to suggest that how it is now is as good as it will ever be. However, politics at both a...
Like many students, I came to university hoping to find a way to make the world a more just and sustainable place. After a few environmental science courses that explored the causes and consequences of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, food insecurity, and...
Rick Kuhn is an Honorary Associate Professor in Sociology at the ANU. Since his first appointment at ANU in 1987, he has researched and taught in political economy, the history of the labour movement, race and racism in Australia, and Marxist economic theory. His book...
– Judy Kuo and Tom Swann in interview with Odette Shenfield When Fossil Free ANU began in 2011, it was one of the first fossil fuel divestment campaigns in the world. At the time, the coal seam gas company Metgasco was planning on fracking in the Norther Rivers of...
SOS is Students of Sustainability, a unique, social and environmental justice gathering held every July by the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN). It started in 1991, in Kamberra (Canberra) with a small group of ANU undergraduates. Since then it has taken...
Growing up, I was obsessed with science fiction. For one glorious, youthful summer I read nothing but science fiction from the 1960s. I’ve seen Starship Troopers at least 18 times by now, and hearing the opening fanfare to Star Wars will always make my skin tingle....
In the aftermath of the 2009 Urumqi Riots in Xinjiang, I realised at the age of 10 what the Chinese label of the event meant; merely four simple characters: ‘hit, smash, snatch, burn’. Yet I could not fathom what would possess Uyghurs, my people, to harm...
“If I had planned it, I should never have made the sun at all… And if there were only the moon there would be no reading and writing.” A metaphor is a sign of weakness she says the language showing its limits going out to the edge and tipping over conceding I have no...
Photo: Robert Hall The 1960s, student activism and the Vietnam War conjure images of protest, change and radicalism. At the time, radical Australian students were referred to by politicians as ‘political bikies who pack-rape democracy’ (Billy Snedden, 1970) and have...
For over fifty years, the collective voices of student activists have echoed up from Australian universities to our policy makers. From the Civil Rights movement and the 1965 Freedom Ride to advocating for Aboriginal rights in rural New South Wales, championing...
Julianne Schultz and Brendan Gleeson (eds), 2016. Griffith Review 52: Imagining the Future, Text Publishing, Melbourne. Available online: https://griffithreview.com/editions/imagining-the-future/ Every day, we shape our tomorrows by discussing the future. To shape a...
Most relationships are not without conflict or worry, and navigating these issues is entirely normal and healthy. That said, some factors may be beyond the control of those within the relationship, and as such can impose a burden within that space that makes them feel...
Increasingly, in the books I’m reading and the conversations I’m having—about climate change, about automation and the future of work, about the many current and coming crises—the conversation keeps spiraling back to ‘capitalism is the problem’. And most of the time,...
This is the text of a talk given in Canberra on 15 February 2017 for a ‘Philosophy in the Pub’ event at Smith’s Alternative. The brief for tonight’s event was to talk about philosophy, and post-truth and populist politics. Well, what is there to say and what do I have...
“Shame on you!” That was one of the many slogans yelled and used often over the past few years at protests held by thousands of people in Washington against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Jones, 2000). In the last decades the world has seen...
– Claire Gardner interviewed by Odette Shenfield Claire Gardner is a recent graduate from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society. She spent her Honours year researching visions of the apocalypse amongst climate activists with 350.org. We sat down to...
It’s a beautiful place a lot of Americans are eyeing like the Martians in War of the Worlds, to layer over with silos; end of the world condominiums where lighting is utmost to combat depression, where the prairies play on an endless loop in windowless rooms, where...
What obligations, if any, do we owe future generations? This question lies at heart of some of the most important debates in contemporary society. What are we to do about climate change? Should we protect natural resources or prioritise present economic development?...
Broken Hand Series is a collection of photos by Chloe Tredrea, which explore the daily routine of her father, Terry. Unable to work after a cycling injury, Chloe’s photos attempt to investigate her father adapting to an idler lifestyle.. The images are captured solely...
With the election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit and the rise of right wing populism, we have supposedly entered the post-truth era. Truth is not only under suspicion, it is irrelevant. For many who hold such a view of recent events, the culprit responsible for...
The following notes respond to a prompt asking legal academics at ANU to write a short message to law students who chose to study law because they cared about justice. For such students, law school can be a disillusioning and alienating place. The intention of these...
New Age spirituality is a sociological mystery, and as a subject of academic enquiry, incredibly difficult to analyse. Participants engage with a variety of practises that originate from many different cultural sources. Most individuals aim, in one way or another, to...
Resistance can fuel our passion, validate our convictions or break our spirit. The pursuit of resisting may be undertaken out of necessity or through choice. With these motives in hand we will judge the convictions of others and be strongly judged in return. Here at...
In October 2013, students and staff at the University of Hawaiʻi painted this mural on their campus in Honolulu. The mural was painted in protest of the University’s involvement in plans to build a thirty-metre wide telescope on Mauna Kea, a very sacred place for...
it took a cutting of my skin by a mouthful of teeth– from two places [it came] fixed margin by margin; hold cities under breast neither could swallow it like the daffodils; rising their heads in late winter bursts with colour when they grow tired...
Sometimes resistance is not violent. Sometimes, it is reinforcing what is peripheral to a culture because the roots of it are still in the homeland. The Kashmir Valley, at the foot the of the Himalayas, endures both kinds. My family, as far back as we can trace, are...
Readers be warned: bringing up genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at a dinner party could just be the 21st century equivalent of bringing up feminism or conscientious objection in the early 1900s. I have committed this techno-era faux pas and it did not end well....
Sumithri Rekha Venketasubramanian. Soo-mi-three (roll the r, short vowel sounds for the first two syllables) Ray-khaa (aspirate the k a slight bit) Veng-cut-uh-soob-ruh-mun-yun (pretty straightforward). Or Sumi (Soo-mi) for short. Not Sue-mee, keep the vowel sounds...
Soul You have not earned the right to use this word, a white professor said to the Persian girl as he ran his eye over her poem. And filled with shame (at her own presumption) she scratched out four letters that she had not earned the right to use. The word...
Much of the discourse surrounding Myanmar discusses its struggles with identity formation as an obstacle to its otherwise huge potential for growth and development (Dittmer, 2010) (Perry, 2007). After decades of isolation, Myanmar emerged out of its cocoon only to...
The radio alarm this morning leaked a slow dark stain. Some deaths are quick and almost fine. These have caused the stars to reel in pain. Take my morning cup of Earl Grey tea, take the slow swell of quiet sun through the autumn glass. Take the polished surface of the...
Understanding resistance, and social phenomena more broadly, has traditionally been the domain of the social scientist who stands above the everyday to bring to light what was previously unknown about our own lives. However with the emergence of affect theory, which...
Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: reflections on the end of a civilization. By Roy Scranton. Published 2015 by City Lights Books, 142 pages. In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton sets out from a concept that will be familiar to those concerned about...
She learns shame when she’s 11 years old. When their cackles echo through her nightmares and snarl to the rhythm of the 8 o’clock bell. -ding- dong-ding-dong – Her eyes follow the herds as they reluctantly pull apart – pushing and shoving, teasing and hugging – and...
Last December, the leader of the Islamic State posted portions of a call-to-action on Twitter intended for Muslims around the world. The words were cut from an audio recording, in which Adu Bakr al-Baghladi declared that taking up arms and “joining the fight” urgently...
Resistance is a battle cry. Resistance can move mountains. Resistance, in many ways, has defined the shape and limits of the modern world. But what occurs within its contours? In his book Alter Politics and Radical Imaginary Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage...
In July of 2016 four violent attacks in three different German cities claimed the lives of 13 people. The first anti-terrorism policy draft published in the aftermath of the attacks suggests increased surveillance, more police and more thorough background-checks on...
– Ramsey Kanaan interviewed by Odette Shenfield PM Press’ Stall at the World Social Forum At the 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal, I sat down to talk to Ramsey Kanaan, founder of PM Press. PM Press is a radical publisher based out of Oakland, California. I first...
Before the establishment of the modern state, characterised by its clear delineation of territorial boundaries, Immanuel Kant penned his essay Perpetual Peace. Among his conditions for what would secure a truly lasting peace was the Third Definitive Article – what he...
‘Look’ is based on a media image of a young boy displaced by conflict. It uses the gaze of the subject and the audience to address the power of witnessing. The audience is free to view the image without confronting the gaze of the subject, or the reality of the...
– Matthew Zagor interviewed by Odette Shenfield Matthew Zagor is an Associate Professor in Law and a specialist in refugee law. Last semester, I was privileged to study his course in refugee law. As an educator, he incites in his students passion and dedication for...
Then came the Wide Game. It seemed a strange name to the uninitiated like Bronte, but meant only, it seemed, that they weren’t confined to their Scout Halls around the region and could wander far – and wide. Camp Trafalgar, where all the different troops met up, was...
In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the impacts of climate change would lead to the relocation of millions of people around the world.[1] More recently, as our attention is captured by reports of nations being swallowed whole by...
BEACHED WHALE The black fender of a car; a thousand plastic bags that tried to become (new) lungs. SKYSCRAPER At night a thousand furious eyes. Blank in the day, revealing...
Australian incarceration rates are at an all-time high, prisons are overcrowded, and the majority of people who spend time in prison re-offend; it is time that prison reform was on the political agenda. In June this year, the Australian Red Cross released...
Of and For Our Bodies – Zoya Godoroja-Prieckaerts In April this year, Zoya Godoroja-Prieckaerts worked together with Clare Jackson to create an exhibition called Tensions Between at the CCAS gallery in Manuka. They used this opportunity to explore the similarities and...
Humans tend to throw up walls upon encountering ideas we don’t understand. Spectrums of experience are broken down into boxes; identities have their variations chiseled away until they become square-shaped pegs for square-shaped holes. Thus, with boundaries delineated...
The concept of cultural mixing is strongly felt in today’s world where the boundaries between nation states, people and communities are more porous than ever before. On the border between the United States of America and Mexico, generations of Mexican migrants have...
I created this body of work because I was fascinated by the way that identity is shaped through the relationship between parents and children. The identity of a parent and child becomes intertwined, both depending on the other for illumination, shape and...
http://azzahsultan.com/Fibre-Art A lot of the misconceptions directed at Muslim women pertain to false ideas about how Islam treats women. In my art piece Strings, I created portraits of five different Muslim women from different ethnic backgrounds and embroidered a...
‘The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts’ C.S. Lewis, 1943[1] ‘Through the My School website we have for the first time developed a national index of socio-educational advantage for every school in the country that allows us...
The darkness in the room is ripe and heavy, giving off the heady scent of bodies, breathing. In another language only breathing sounds the same. I shift an arm and she moves too, my double in the bed next door. Skin rubs against cheap sheets and rustles, soft – the...
– Olivier Krischer interviewed by Annette Liu and Esther Carlin As you enter Wei Leng Tay’s exhibition ‘The Other Shore’, you are drawn in by the darkness. The space is contained, and the dark grey walls allow the lightboxes mounted on the wall, and in frames on the...
‘It is the rule of the border in general that the refugee challenges … it is the justice of national sovereignty itself that the body of the asylum seeker refutes.’[1] The poor often find themselves at society’s boundaries, borders and margins. Their bodies hover at...
In my piece Home Sweet Home I wanted to look more deeply into what it means to be an American Muslim woman. I posted a message on the social media websites: Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram requesting Muslim women to donate scarves in the colours red, white or blue. I...
The study of history is in many ways an attempt to learn from the past; in some cases, so we do not repeat its mistakes. Yet we forget all the time, due to neglect, and limited human capacity to process information. Wilful forgetting is, however, a way that we...
The first of these two letters was written by Rodney Kelly, a descendent of Cooman, the original owner of the Gweagle Shield. Rodney’s letter was sent to the British Museum, requesting that the shield, which was the centerpiece of the recent Encounters exhibition at...
The rails shriek over here Pass silver-eyed birch bordering lush cornfields, defining amber wheat. Hey Maria, in the northern forests, pines tall and trim, are well-kept like a fine beard. Young soldiers of time, Standing guard for the mill. I saw again,...
[13/03/2016 10:56] Mum: “Tomorrow is nonbu” [10:59] Me: “Nonbu is nombadai right” Mum: “Yep” Me: “The one with the yellow string where we praise men to the stars” Mum: “We praise everyone” Me: “I clarify only. It’s supposed to be right” Mum: “Ya” Me: “Ok. Send...
I am a privileged, white Australian on the precipice of a new career as a conservator. My training is in the classical western tradition of conservation, which favours the material integrity of an object above any intangible value that may be applied to it. This...
It has recently been an active time around the Australian National University, with voices pooled to fight for shared interests. We are fighting significant cuts to the School of Culture, History, and Language, vast changes that will impact life at the Bruce and...
It is 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics, when my parents decide to emigrate to Australia. Their grounds are valid — they are tired of high crime rates, class and racial tensions, insidious stories told by witch doctors. But I am eight, intrepid and anxious; their...
The Three Graces (2014) 120 cm x 90 cm, oil on canvas. The Three Graces is a work I hold very dear as it was painted in homage to my two of my best friends at a time when I was in dire need of them. The work always serves as a reminder of the importance and power of...
Hanan, from Egypt holding a sign reading: “I am with the uprising of women in the Arab world because my freedom is not a gift from anyone I was created free and I will take my rights and impose my freedom.” The online remains a yet unchartered, ungendered space. A...
1. The Dead Sea We float lazily in the thick and warm water, careful not to let our faces dip into the mineral concoction. The thick water restricts you from making sudden movements. You slowly learn patience, as you simply accept a lazy attitude. I had to learn...
Bricks of antiquity flaking mortar and dust of Adam’s bones wherein words encrust modern day ballads, cheap songs echo in search of a god to enslave and here it stays as times new roman and pooling ink. (a forgotten murder) Who have built thus these iron bars? William...
In the summer of 2011 I was consumed, as I suspect many fifteen year olds are, with the dual pursuits of Photoshopping images of celebrities to make them look like they were about to make out, and Googling gay youth groups. Though reasonably successful in one arena, I...
– Gus McCubbing interviews Roxley Foley Due to the work of Gary Foley, the Foley name is synonymous throughout Australia with Indigenous rights activism. However, at a touch over thirty years of age, Roxley Foley, the son of Gary Foley, was the official custodian of...
My interest in environmental conservation was inspired early on by an acquaintance with a pair of old-school activists. I was young and impressionable, and their infectious reverence for the ocean’s natural beauty awakened in me sensibilities I hadn’t appreciated...
The atmosphere is a community asset that belongs to all of us. The problem is that it is currently an open access resource—anyone can emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with no consequences to themselves—but with huge cumulative consequences to the climate and...
Recent decades have seen a protracted attack and painstaking demolition of the traditional or ‘old’ university and an associated purging of academics. The rise of managers and ‘managerial’ doctrines were supposed to make universities more efficient and productive,...
“Knowledge for Sale” is one of a series of posters that address the corporatisation of universities. The posters are the result of a collaborative research project between Dr Ivo Lovric, a recent graduate from the ANU School of Art and Professor Margaret Thornton, ANU...
Yes, Let’s! Lets A-politicise all that became somehow political. Until the politics is taken out of politics And the underground of revolution becomes a gathering of silent bodies. We don’t have a will to change the world, We want To control it, To strategise until...
The red leaf on the left is covered with iron ore dust, the leaf on the right has been cleaned. When plants are covered with dust they can no longer photosythesise, meaning they slowly die, taking with them the culture and societies that depend on them. Photo by Sean...
“To demand justice […] involves every activist in a philosophical problem” – Judith Butler[1] Judith Butler, the American philosopher and gender theorist, has long intimated a democratic theory; or, as she has sometimes called it, a theory of “a sensate...
I find myself walking through familiar scenes, scenes of utter devastation, trees with no leaves, corrugated iron that once were people’s rooves twisted and folded around trees, scattered, wet clothes amongst the remnants of homes. These scenes are somewhat less sad...
The Pinstriped Prison: How Overachievers Get Trapped in Corporate Jobs They Hate. By Lisa Pryor. Published 2008 by Picador Pan MacMillan Australia Pty Limited, 1 Market Street Sydney, 272pp. In the 1950s and 60s, top students from elite universities aspired to careers...
Avara. First year at Fenner. South Tower. Seventh Floor. Came from near Maitland. Julian. Second year at Fenner. South Tower. Seventh Floor. Came from Yass. Soni. First year at Fenner. South Tower. Seventh Floor. Came from Alice Springs. Dan. First year at Fenner....
this city does not care for me i am nothing to her cold indifference as if you never left as if i never learned but i have heard out there somewhere someone with a brain just like mine and a voice like English summer calling out my name in the...
We are already on the way to a new climate normal. Whether that normal is one decided by us or for us is yet to be determined. We’re experiencing longer and hotter summers, and more extreme and frequent natural disasters.[i] Air pollution is killing 7 million...
Roots provide the basis for life, yet we often take them for granted. This work provides a composition of the interdependent and harmonious relationship between human and nature. The interplay of nature, education, and other forms of socialisation results in the...
There is a paradox in left wing ideology. The left wing often supports underdogs in an effort to ensure equality. Yet the underdog always carries baggage that can be directly opposed to left wing philosophies. As a progressive person, should I support the supressed,...
A discussion of cultural appropriation often begets one of two extreme reactions. The first is a denial of any possibility of cultural exchange outside the original culture. The second often comes in the form of a cringe-worthy whitesplain of the – to paraphrase –...
Photograph by Johannes Dietschi This poem is from Hopscotch, a collection of poems concerned with notions of nostalgia, neighourhoods, family, and larger collections of people; ‘College, Collagen, Collision’ in particular examines how and why people come or are...
Friday 01/04/2016 From: Mai Nguyen Subject: Being Asian in the West Dear Dr Kim, I hope you don’t mind me emailing you out of the blue. Last year I took your course on “Contemporary Issues in International Relations” and found it very enriching. Thank you very...
Those who follow International Relations might have notice the curious rise of the “Thucydides Trap” as the vogue concept among leaders. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has dropped the reference on numerous occasions at international summits abroad.[1] It...
Modern identity politics is often denigrated; depicted as an irrational mass shouting defiantly about their experiences; a moment of politics that erases the good old fashion posturing of parliamentary debate. While identity politics, like all politics, operates in...
In 2015, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, announced his support of Western Australian Premier Barnett’s plan to close nearly half of the state’s two hundred and seventy-four remote Indigenous communities.[1] This proposal, which spurred much public criticism and...
Within Hannah Arendt’s classic New Yorker essay, ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ (1963) and subsequent book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), an alternative explanation for the origins of the human capacity for evil are explored. Her famous...
– Translated by Louis Klee & Milena Selivanov War and Poetry: A Journey Through My Russian Roots – by Milena Selivanov I am writing from St Petersburg, Russia, where I have returned after seven years in Australia. This is my father’s hometown and it’s not my...
In aspiring to publish those voices that are marginalised, misrepresented and ignored by mainstream publishing, it was inevitable that we would come to muse on the meaning of silence. Silence is commonplace in political rhetoric and yet it is seldom critically...
For the most part, scholarly literature illustrates silence as a state that is predominantly characterized by an absence.[1] The defining features most frequently attributed to silence are absence of sound[2] and speechlessness.[3] It is not only this notion of...
Aditi Razdan interviews Udeni Appuhamilage Meet Udeni Hanchapola Appuhamilage: a Fulbright Scholar, a clinical psychologist from Sri Lanka with experience in trauma, psychosocial, and humanitarian work, “3 Minute Thesis” winner and an academic at ANU’s school of...
January 26, the ‘Great Silence’ and a new kind of love As the Canberra winter retreats and the magpies unforgivingly begin to swoop, I am reminded that soon enough another summer will roll around, bringing with it another Australia Day. Each year on January 26 we are...
The Story Behind the Little Red Toolangi Treehouse – Odette Shenfield interviews Hannah Patchett In 2013, Hannah Patchett spent a month in the Little Red Toolangi Treehouse to protest logging in the Toolangi State Forest. During her time there, she garnered widespread...
I’m knee deep in my newest purchase: a giant maze of unique fingerprint arabesques spread out before me that delineate Namadgi and Brindabella National Parks. I couldn’t be more thrilled. While focusing almost obsessively on the complexities of the map I can already...
Let’s go hiking man, I need to go hiking he said to me. I suddenly agreed thinking that everyone needs to get outta town, sometimes. So we sped down the road out out out to wilsons prom where we once as schoolchildren went, he directed: left, right, straight, stop!...
In my life, art and pop culture have helped me understand and navigate the confusing world around me. There are few things more intimate than reading, watching or hearing something that resonates with your interior world, but for many of my formative sexual or...
I am a feminist. I have a powerful body made of solidarity, Built on the strength of our call for justice, Found through the fists of time, Silenced by constant exploitation. I am a feminist. I have won that right at least. Won the right to be disadvantaged, Won the...
Gender and Peace-Making in Israel-Palestine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in 2000, called for the mainstream involvement of women in conflict resolution and management. The Resolution intended to promote equal participation in peace...
He is thirty-five centimetres taller than I am. I want to love and fly, I tell him, when we are naked for the first time. (He is the first boy to see me naked). Sunday afternoon plays like a reel of film in my mind; in every frame there is some part of my body – the...
I’ve always thought that queerness was about living and thriving in the margins. It’s about fighting for rights, right? And ‘rethinking relationships’, and challenging dominate ideas about the body. Evidencing the pervasiveness of this idea, many members of the...
– Isabel Mudford interviews Kellum Steele Could you tell us a bit about how you came to be living in Wadeye, after growing up in Melbourne? For my whole life I’ve wanted to learn about Aboriginal culture and gain an acceptance from my people. It was hard growing up...
“Silence was a deeply established tradition. Men used it as a form of self-protection; it saved those who had experienced the horrors of war from the emotional trauma of experiencing it all over again in the telling. And it saved women and children, back home, from...
“What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman’s face?” Audre Lorde The importance of the third wave of feminism is that it is meant to cater to every different conception of what it means to be a woman,...
I didn’t see the trucks pull up. An odd cargo was not unloaded overnight. There haven’t been any inexplicable disappearances. Those were not strangers in town. I received no unusual mail, had no calls. The fires were not deliberately lit. Everything is as I left it....
That child’s hand above your head; the hand of a little girl long dead. Kakadu. Djidpi Djidpi. Two blocks of ochre. One grinding hollow. A grinding stone. Five moments of pressure. Thirty reed brushes. Voices echo off the high sandstone ceiling: thirty young lilts and...
Politics is a noisy place. This can be seen its everyday machinations: parliamentary speeches, the bustle of protests, various heated discussion on the value of free speech. This essay seeks to investigate how western political philosophy has placed a primacy on...
Manifesto Comrade, Comrade, Can you feel the revolutionary foment? The fog of ideology is lifting from our eyes – let us complete our historical mission! We listened on with equal parts admiration and revulsion, swayed before your certainty. You had the look,...
Coal seam gas through the eyes of a QUT Big Lift student “I don’t think you’re listening. I don’t think anyone is listening.” Grief can never be simplified to a process. Mourning a loss is more than crying heavy tears that lead to inevitable acceptance. When a...
If you live in metropolitan Australia, chances are you rarely think about soil erosion. If you live in a regional or remote area, you probably battle with wind and/or water erosion on a daily basis. That is the reality: soil erosion is ever-present in Australia with...
– Odette Shenfield interviews Scott Ludlam On December 1st, in the wake of the Paris attacks and during the Paris Climate Negotiations, I sat down with Greens Senator Scott Ludlam to talk about national security. Why do you think the discourse of national security is...
Czeslaw Milosz introduced the Western world to ketman, or the practice of concealing ones true motives or beliefs to give the outward appearance of conforming to authority. A Polish poet, novelist and diplomat who survived Nazi, and later Soviet occupied, Poland...
THREE There were trees outside when they arrived. One day, he sliced everything down. There’s only quiet, filling the room until she’s choking – she used to hide it better but it’s harder, now, and she can’t grasp the edges of it and he doesn’t try. He’s happy in the...
It was one of my first shifts back at work and everyone was lamenting the tragedy of the Paris terror attacks, when one colleagues turned to me and said, “I hope it wasn’t one of the people you helped through Greece that did it.” Everyone stopped and stared at me, but...
The kind of silence I wish to discuss permeates everyday life: mental health, particularly in developing countries. Having done previous research[1] on development and humanitarian organisations’ lack of critical engagement with psychosocial emergencies and...
On the first anniversary of my mother’s passing, a letter was forwarded to me from the Holocaust Centre. My mother had been prominent in Holocaust Education. A woman in Wisconsin was writing a book and looking for my mother to provide her with background...
Held-square, something un-defined above sets short bare legs running. A grey metal shod cane keeps one man from fighting but not from war. Lone family sedan stopped at curb has eyes peering out windshield. Heavy coats insulate all to-some degree. There is an absence...
For too many people, our world is broken, and too many of us have stood silently for too long. There is too much hate, intolerance, and disadvantage in the world, but local, state, national, and international law all fail to produce solutions. We have forgotten that...
No evidence that cockroaches tell time by the large plain face of the clock we bought from Kmart to replace the clock that fell and smashed my cobalt teacups. At the same hour every night they make the long journey from the immovable dresser to the bookshelves. We say...
“We’ll be live in five.” I feel something on my forehead. It hovers there like a nascent thought awaiting identification, categorisation, validation. “…four…” Maybe it’s a flower. I feel it growing. Blossoming out from a bud. Opening to the...
To introduce the exciting diversity of voices that make up the first edition of Demos Journal, we embark upon a reflection on the relation between democracy and creativity itself. Demos Journal set out to create something new: a community committed to deconstructing...
1. Respublica Scotorum I took this photograph a week or so before the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. The placard, leant on a rucksack on an autumn pavement, was part of a spontaneous political demonstration in the centre of Glasgow for a Yes vote in...
Artist Statement This short film explores the current political issues surrounding refugees in Australia, focusing on their social rejection. It draws from my family history of persecution and migration. I want the work to remind people that the world is not made up...
“The ocean is at its best today.” It was hard to believe how this sentence which, on the surface, seemed so optimistic, could be so depressing. An individual’s engagement with creation is inherently personal. For some, the idea of creation is deeply embedded in...
– Photographs and interviews by Elena McGannon Artist Statement Four years ago, after being isolated and raped on a night out with friends, a female district attorney told Danielle Tansino that the man who raped her would not face prosecution because “jurors don’t...
Without presenting myself as an authority on racial identity politics or African-American culture, this essay discusses the way in which creative media has been a forum for resistance and an affirmation of difference in identity politics. While this essay focuses on...
When we first released our opening theme, we included this blurb to kickstart some responses: “To create, creativity, the power to create, creative resistance – things as elusive as they are central to what makes us human. It may be difficult to define what it means...
… Through many years of To me creating Creating can be the most I find it hard to grasp the word “create” and Every now and then Sometimes I survive by creating, I don’t know where I would Create? Make a mess and pick up the pieces....
Public Funding and Why it Matters If we start with the basic idea that the arts, in their many forms, from theatre, music, and film to visual practice, enrich, challenge, and comfort us, then it seems clear why liberal democracies such as Australia support public...
Electric. To be risk averse in this neighbourhood is not an option. With pylons passing high overhead to connect others to the grid, residents climb and dangle makeshift cables that carry high voltage electricity down to their homes. It is not uncommon for sections of...
In a 2005 article for The Guardian, Robert Macfarlane lamented the lack of a cultural response to climate change, asking: ‘where are the novels, the plays, the poems, the songs, the libretti, of this massive contemporary anxiety?’ Since then, a rapidly expanding body...
While there is no single understanding of democracy, there is broad agreement that it involves a people allowed to meet and speak freely, with the right to choose and question its governing body. Yet, in Australia, children have little experience with active...
Ascending Loving your scrutiny, Agreeing with your Calculated appraisal, This conversation Is a staged renovation Of my crumbling insides. You aspire towards Beauty And frown at me, As I linger at the antiques. You’re busy nitpicking, Sorting into piles Of keep and...
In a recently published book, Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, the Sociologist Maurizzio Lazzarato considers the question of what genuine creativity and innovation would look like in late capitalist societies. When creativity and...
For a long time, I remained convinced that the only difference between myself and others was the permanent scowl I carried with me everywhere. The turmoil of my internal state and several failed attempts to deal with it were expressed outwardly as extreme...
I can’t deny how much I already feel this. But my focus refuses direction, won’t be blinked into moistened clarity. Muffled by a hum, just behind my ears. Whispering hushed tales of possibility. Yet I dare not speak it, that it be spooked beyond reach and out of...
– Esther Carlin interviews Claire Louise On a cold Tuesday around midday I met with Claire Louise, a fellow first year Visual Art student, at the ANU School of Music café. She was dressed in a layered way with a long skirt and denim jacket, and I remember the...
Emphatic Exordium The concept of a ‘people’ is a distinctly weird one. Everything about it seems tendentious and unclear; even grammatically, the expression “a people” appears to teeter uneasily between singular (“a person”) and plural (“people”). You can see then why...
You could be forgiven for thinking, or even believing, that you have a say in decisions that impact your life because you live in a democracy. “I vote. Therefore, I have a say.” But what if you wish to have a say in a different, more profound way? Participatory...
Tallara Gray is an activist with Seed and studies visual art at the University of Queensland. Linnea Burdon-Smith spoke with her about Seed, activism, her art and upbringing. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Maroon, which is a rural community in South East...
Introduction The Greek debt currently totals somewhere around 240 billion euros. Throughout what has come to be called the Greek debt crisis, the actions of the European Union has left commentators perplexed and in search of an explanation. The handling of the Greek...
This image comes from a fleeting moment from the car window as we drove home from Castlemaine along the Hume Highway one late Autumn evening. All colour was drained from the landscape rendering the hills, grass and trees deep purple browns and inky blues. The sky...
In Australia marriage equality waits impatiently for political sanction. Already, it has received the sanction of society, with public opinion polls consistently showing majority support.[1] Possibly by the end of this year all Australians will be able to marry the...
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