Issue 1:
CREATING DEMOS
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.
Res Publica: The Early Days of a Better World
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...
We Were Lucky
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...
A Different Kind of Wave: A Creative Essay
“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...
Red My Lips: Portraits
– 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...
Affirming Difference in ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’
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...
To Create
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...
Picking up the Pieces
… 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....
State of the Arts
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...
Sonder: Photography Series
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...
The Apocalypse is Easy: Limitations of our Climate Change Imaginings
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...
Beginning Democracy in a School Library
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...
Two Poems
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...
Disruptive Creativity
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...
The Romanticisation of the Tortured Artist
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...
Reclamation
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...
The Creator: An Interview on Art, Religion and Mental Illness
– 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...
How to Create a Demos
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...
Participatory Resource Management as an Alternative Democracy
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...
Indigenous Youth Fighting for Climate Justice
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...
The Greek Crisis: A Democratic Deficit
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...
Creating a Memory
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...
Power and Participation
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...Past Issues
