Catalyst 2 Read & Reviewed

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3. Festival Fever 4. On Holidays with The Holidays 6. Musings from SXSW 8. Portrait of a groupie 10. The cinephile’s dilemma 11. Melbourne Moonlight Cinema 12. What’s with the 3D revival?

13. Degrassi 14. SE Asian sights & sounds 16. Cow up a tree and friends 18. Go on then, look up 19. The art of light and space 20. What does a sound look like?

24. A VIP tour of LMFF 26. Both sides of the looking glass 32. Reviews

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Editors: Annabel Smith Jane Vashti Ryan Josh Fagan Senior photographer: Daniel Gregoric Special thanks to Anita Sengupta and Paul Motherwell for their fashion photos Sub editors Nick Duxson Nam Nguyen Maria Matina Tira Burgess Rob Baird Intern Didem Caia Contributors: Claire Bolge Morgan Benson Alicia Byrnes Ted O’Connor Josh Fagan Diane Fallaw James Fettes Soren Fredrickson Joshua Hellar Asuza Hyde Kat Mahina Marissa Shirbin Sam Van Zweden Jane Vashti Ryan Courtney Ward Juliette Wittich

Editors’ letter Another edition, hot off the press for your pleasure, readers dear.

“What’s tricks?” We hear you cry.

And we reply: “Lemme tell ya!”

Tricks is: A Feast for Your Eyes and Ears.

What did you love about teen TV when you were a kid? Cast your mind back to yester-year with Soren Frederiksen, who clings to the days of old, when Degrassi’s Joey Jeramiah was what was what.

Marissa Shirbin takes us inside the world of instillation art and challenges the fluorescent light in your kitchen with The Art of Light and Space.

Special guest writer Joshua Heller writes from South by South West (SXSW) music conference, Austin, Texas. He’s a comedian from L.A. with a penchant for silly haircuts and a thirst for salad after a meat and beer fuelled 10 days down south.

Australian band The Holidays hit SXSW this year and Josh Fagan caught up with them before they left.

Festivals come under the spotlight in Kat Mahina’s Festival Fever.

Australia sports so many of the damn things, with new names popping up on the summer radar every year. But are they all worth hitting? Or is this a trend with a use-by date?

Speaking of trends, James Fettes airs his grievances on what he sees as the crying shame of 3D TV and film: Do we really want to feel like we can reach out and grab Tracy Grimshaw’s face as she presents another gutwrenching edition of A Current Affair?

And how could an edition of all that is seen and heard forget the queen of seeing, hearing – and grabbing? Juliette Whittich introduces the groupie queen Pamela des Barres – sixties sex icon.

There’s plenty more to titillate the senses, so read on dearies! And look forward to Catalyst edition three: Meet & Greet. Whether they live next door on the other side of the world, we’ll be introducing you to a few characters worth meeting.

Letters to the editor are always welcome, so get in touch if you’ve got something you want to tell us, or our readers at large.

Cheers,

Jane Vashti Ryan, Annabel Smith & Josh Fagan catalyst@rmit.edu.au

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Kat Mahina

Festival fever

The festival circuit in Australia just keeps on growing. Every year there are new festivals at new venues with new line-ups. Kat Mahina asks, is this a festival boom with a bust hot on its heels? Or is this new wave of festival fever the way we can expect to take in our favorite bands from now on?

St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival is the one summer party that caters to every skinny jean-wearing hipster’s musical wet dreams.

Melbourne’s leg of the festival called the Footscray Arts Centre home, and the 2011 event went off without a hitch. The torrential downpour the night before wasn’t enough to deter the sold-out crowd from rocking up early to stake out their places at the stages; eager to catch a glimpse of their favourite bands. Highlights of the day were locals World’s End Press, and their raucous disco funk party, The Antlers ethereal dulcet tones, Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav drinking from the Maribyrnong River and surviving, leaping around madly with Yeasayer, being blown away by Deerhunter and falling in love with Gotye all over again, at one of his first local shows in years. Being a pretentious indie-music-loving wanker myself, I look forward to being silly and swooning over bands at Laneway every year.

But do you know where it all began?

The dirty, rubbish-filled, rat-infested laneways that snake their way through the central business district have always had an air of intrigue and mystery about them.

Given their seedy reputation from times long gone, they are the perfect places for niche nightspots where only the coolest of the cool know there’s a bar hidden away at the bottom of the dank alley. It was a bar such as this that spawned St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival. In 2004 Jerome Borazio (former owner of the late and great St. Jerome’s bar on Calendonian Lane) and Danny Rogers blocked off the laneway and threw a party with The Avalanches. Seven years later, the festival is now one of the many gigantic summer touring circus’s that hits up Mel-

bourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland. 2011 saw Laneway give Asia some love with the inclusion of Singapore on the festival circuit, as well as co-hosting the Austin or Bust party at the inaugural South

By Southwest Music Conference in Texas this month.

We’re spoilt for choice with music in Melbourne. With new festivals cropping up every year and the good old favourites forever expanding, it does raise questions about a sustainable future for festival culture in our fair city and indeed the rest of the nation. In recent months there has been much media gossip about ‘festival fatigue’, with Australian punters tired of forking out the big dollars for tickets. Summer 2011 saw festivals like Big Day Out and Good Vibrations offering half price tickets and a ‘bring a mate for free’ option to the events that didn’t sell out.

Good Vibrations suffered a lot this year with none of the festivals selling out, leading to a fantastic day at the Melbourne leg, with plenty of clean toilets available, only small queues for food and drinks and the general behaviour of the crowd good, as opposed to the sold-out crowd at Soundwave where half the day was spent waiting in queuing for food, drinks and bathrooms. Many punters left the festival on a stretcher courtesy of the good folk of St. John’s Ambulance, who had many a crowd-surfing/circle-pit-related injury to attend to.

From December through to March we are inundated with Meredith, Falls, Pyramid Rock, Summadayze, Rainbow Serpent, Big Day Out, The Hot Barbeque, Laneway, Playground Weekender, Good Vibrations, Soundwave, Future Music, Golden Plains, Creamfields, etcetera etcetera, and with the venues increasing capacity and the price of tickets increasing every year, punters have to choose wisely as to where they spend their hard-earned dollars.

Back in the early days of Meredith Music Festival the event pulled in a few thousand

Photo Mehan

people and the tickets were a mere sixty dollars. In 2010, the site capacity was 11,500 and a ticket for the weekend set you back a cool $290, making it one of the cheaper camping festivals with Pyramid Rock selling their three-day passes for a good $300, and Falls Festival Lorne asking for an astronomical $400 for their latest event. Regardless of the price the festivals continue to sell out every year and in spite of some events reporting poor ticket sales in the season just past, the majority of punters see the prices as reasonable for the amount of talent on a festival line-up.

The whole experience a festival provides, with the grand atmosphere, market stalls, stages devoted to theatre works and plenty of freebie show bags along with the plethora of musical talent reels the crowds in every year, making the media calls of festival saturation seem unwarranted. New festivals will have a hard time establishing themselves in the competitive market, with many of them ending up being a disastrous lesson for the curators - remember when the organisers of Blueprint Festival went into hiding? But the main contenders are here to stay with their major problem being attracting artists who will get the people through the gates instead of going to the other festival down the road.

This is the big marketing draw-card that Laneway Festival and their ‘boutique indie’ approach has going for them compared to the other summer festivals who genre-hop in the hopes of attracting a larger crowd.

My one complaint regarding 2011’s event was that even though the site had moved to a more spacious area, the punters were still packed in like sardines, making it very difficult to navigate between the stages or see anything once you got yourself there. No different from when the event was held in the city really, except the intimate appeal of the festival is forever lost to the corporate need to earn more money. I still prefer the days when Laneway was held in an actual laneway, but nonetheless, I’ll be saving my dollars to head back for more in 2012.

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Josh Fagan Australian band The Holidays are taking their summery sounds to the world. The four young lads from Sydney have built a strong following alongside other local acts such as Cloud Control and Boy and Bear, and are now playing the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Texas. Drummer Andrew Kerridge spoke to Catalyst’s Josh Fagan about SXSW, playing it cool with girls and apparently growing up in Zetland.

You’re in America for the SXSW festival, tell us about that, what are you looking forward to about it?

Yeah it’s crazy. It’s gonna be really busy, which is exciting and a little bit daunting at the same time cause we’re doing 10 shows in nine days. But it’s exciting, there’s about a million bands there so I’m sure the vibe is gonna be great.

It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

What bands are you looking forward to watching at the festival?

There’s one band called Twin Shadow who I’ve only sort of got into recently, it’s just this guy who’s got a really cool record. We actually get to do one show with him, which is gonna be awesome.

What about the other Australian groups playing there, Boy and Bear, The Jezabels, Miami Horror, will there be a bit of a get together over there?

I think so, we’re doing a couple of shows called the Aussie BBQ where a lot of those bands are doing gigs so I’m sure we’ll get to hang out with all of them. We’re already friends with a few of the bands like Hungry Kids of Hungary and Boy and Bear so it’ll be good to have a few familiar faces over there.

The SXSW website lists The Holidays as a band from Zetland, Australia? I don’t know too much about Sydney, but is Zetland a totally different area from Sydney?

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(Laughs) I don’t know who put that down, yeah we’ve seen it a few times and we’ve just been like, ‘what is going on?’ It’s an area in Sydney just near the airport. But we’re not from Zetland and we don’t hang out there, but it sounds kind of cool I guess.

You guys won best debut album and were nominated for the album of the year at this year’s Australian Music Prize. Did you see that coming?

Not really, I didn’t know too much about it, I kind of knew the debut album prize was like the baby prize compared to album of the year. But no we didn’t really see it coming.

Especially because the album’s been going quite steady and slow so it was great to have critics and people in the music industry recognize us. We were so chuffed you know.

And I heard the prize was not too shabby.

something a bit new, keep it fresh and exciting. We started off quite guitar-rock, we didn’t have any synth or percussion or anything like that. I never would have expected the sound we’ve got now but I’m loving the way we’ve started to pick up.

Have your influences also changed over time?

Vampire Weekend are one band you’re often compared to.

Yeah that definitely was something that was in our mindset, heading in the direction of a summery Vampire Weekend vibe. But once we started writing the Post Paradise album we didn’t keep them in mind. I can see similarities for sure but we didn’t really try to emulate their style. For me, with the record I personally kept to rhythms and drums as a bit of inspiration, I wasn’t too concerned with structures of songs, arrangements or melodies too much.

Now Andrew you’re the drummer in the band, does that mean you get the most interest from female fans?

It’s pretty sweet, it’s a trip to LA with a week recording in the studio. We’re gonna hold off until around September then have a week just to write some music and enjoy a bit of LA action.

You first started back in 2006, are you now where you hoped you’d be five years on?

In terms of profile this is more than we thought we’d get ‘cause it was just for fun at the start we weren’t really sure what was gonna happen. When we got our first gig we were so stoked, we couldn’t believe we were doing a show.

Has the music developed a lot since you’ve been together?

It sort of had a major shift two years ago after our second EP we sat down and thought we really needed to come up with

No, I think Will the guitarist does actually, he just keeps it quiet and smooth, that tends to work for him. I don’t know I try and keep it a little bit separate going after girls ‘cause when you go for girls that are into your music, if you take it to that sort of direction it can get a bit weird. They can have this perception of you, if they listen to your music, you’re on a bit of a pedestal, so I like to just sort of be mates and have a chat about music.

Yep, fair play. What’s the next step for the band?

We’re just gonna keep getting the album out there and getting as many people to listen to it as possible, just keep shooting the way we’re going, try tour overseas more. Getting a second record as well is on our minds, we’re still writing, trying to keep things fresh so we don’t go a bit nuts playing the songs off the album all the time.

Where do The Holidays like to go on holidays?

Well apart from going overseas to SXSW, which isn’t really a holiday, I like going camping down by the beach, wherever.

Just getting away from the city, enjoying a bit of a nature vibe.

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j LA comedian Joshua Heller hit up one of the world’s biggest music and film festivals, South

by Southwest music conference, last month.

Austin, Texas, swarms with music lovers every March, when the festival takes in over 90 venues and lasts 10 days. Joshua penned a note for us, musing on the abundance of beer, meat, jug bands and next door neighbours.

SXSW is not like other music festivals. It’s an entire city converted into a field day. There is live music everywhere. The sounds of distant basslines interrupt performers in front of you. There is too much to do.

j Club DeVille became crowded. It was hot and the line for free Red Stripes was outrageous. I walked towards a friend’s showcase on the other side of town. Sixth Street was lined with SXSW weekenders staring at jug bands (using a jug player and a mix of traditional and home-made instruments).

As we passed Venue 222, I heard a familiar song. Das Racist were rapping Rainbow in the Dark. We let security pat us down, then watched the last minutes of the performance. The trio seemed totally drunk; the crowd sang verses better than the rappers.

j I couldn’t find the bar where I was due to meet some friends.

I got a text. The showcase was on West Sixth Street. I walked six more blocks. A Spanish band was performing at a Yelp party. (Yelp is a website that Americans use to decide which restaurant to eat at. If they don’t download the app, they’ll go hungry.)

j Polock are from Valencia, they play a hard straight-forward indie rock, which I guess isn’t that straight forward, but they do it well. I helped myself to a free glass of dragonfruit flavoured rum. I instantly regretted that decision. I switched to a cup of caramel popcorn.

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I walked into the convention centre. A singer-songwriter who could only fill a small coffee shop at best, was tasked with performing a venue that seats 700. There were a dozen people inside, mostly charging their cellphones along the wall. The singer thanked the crowd, and walked off stage.

I walked to a booth sponsored by a disgusting Pepsi-owned iced tea. It was offering free cocktails across from the convention centre. A DJ was giving a seminar on Ableton Live to the crowd. They were more concerned with their cocktails. I may have been the only person there who cared what he had to say. I stood close to his set-up, and asked him about the ‘global BPM’ and ‘quantisation’. He was informative, but a happy hour is not the time to be giving a seminar.

j Los Angeles bedroom beatmaker, Baths, performed in a gallery just east of the highway. His signature heavy beats over ethereal background choirs resonated with the small crowd.

The promoter handed me a drink ticket. I wished that I wasn’t offered so many free drinks.

j I spent the duration of this trip eating meat and drinking beer and coffee. I realised I hadn’t eaten a salad in days. I walked to Jo’s. A block away I ran into my L.A. next-door neighbour. We talked about how funny it was that we’d run into each other on the other side of the country. It was the longest conversation we’ve ever had.

j There was a crowd around an ice cream truck. People were sitting on top of moving vans and food stands. Jack White performed two songs: a Texas blues rock song and Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground. After his quick set he announced that he’d signed hobo bluesman Seasick Steve to his Third Man Records imprint. I think he headlines festivals in Europe. His power intermittently cut out, but he continued to engage the crowd. The show ended abruptly and people lined up to buy records from the back of the ice cream truck.

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The Holy Spirits perform at Hot Mama’s Espresso in Austin during SXSW. Photo Mehan

I explained to a Canadian photojournalist about Jack White and his new talent. She told me they’d arrived directly from Canadian Music Week, which is exactly the same as SXSW, just in doors, because Toronto is cold. We exchanged Twitter handles. I went in search of something green.

j I drank a caffeine-free Sparks (caffeinated booze) for no reason at all. I was at a bar that could barely give them away for free. A guy tried to hustle me into a game of three card monty while I watched a rap battle on Sixth Street. A New York Times writer texted me to see Surfer Blood at Emo’s.

j The band had amassed a large following in under a year. They channelled the early Beach Boys with distortion pedals. I told someone that I liked the band, but was embarrassed to listen to the album, because a neighbour who’d said he could hear me having sex in my apartment gave me the disc during a brief moment of communality brought on by rolling blackouts.

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Small Black set up their gear in the hotel room of GQ Washington correspondent Ana Marie Cox. The band, normally known for a deeply-textured echoey ethereal electronics were performing an ‘acoustic’ set for a podcast. I was half the audience as they played a Best Coast cover and version of Despicable Dogs. This stripped-down performance revealed an attention to song-writing and lyricism.

j Australians in leather jackets were talking to Austin rappers underneath a bridge. I thought they were making a drug transaction. But the rappers said ‘aight man, here’s my e-mail address. Send me those beats when they’re ready’. I thought about false impressions and internationalism.

j Isaiah from San Antonio asked me if there were lots of hipsters in Brooklyn. He said he liked the same kind of music as hipsters do, but his problem was that all hipsters are alike.

He sad San Antonio was boring, but that he liked that the city embraced its’ Hispanic heritage. He said goodbye and walked off to watch a band perform atop a picnic table.

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Photo Goinha

Let’s spend the night together...

Juliette Wittich Pamela Des Barres did more than just watch and listen to her rock idols in the 1960s. Dubbed the ‘super groupie’ she made an art form of loving and listening and she is etched in the minds of an entire generation as either darling or tramp. Juliette Wittich takes a closer look at the woman who redefined the way we listen to music.

I have always admired groupies. Not the fame-seekers. I’m talking about the real deal.

People who feel so transported by a sound that they need to do more than just listen, they need to reach out and grab it.

Pamela Des Barres was that kind of groupie, a shining example of the way we used to love our music and still could, if we didn’t care so much about critiquing The Hottest 100 and going to the ‘right’ gigs.

Born in Reseda California to a housewife and a brewery worker, ‘Miss Pamela’ was wellplaced to take her passion for the bands – posters of whom plastered her bedroom walls – into the real world.

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Initially a dedicated Beatles fan, it wasn’t until she was in high school and The Rolling Stones first hit Californian airwaves, that Pamela discovered the raw sexuality of Rock n Roll. The new style of music moved her - and so did the men who were making it.

Just one glimpse of a promotional photograph of Mick Jagger was enough. Here was a man making music, the likes of which had never been heard, and doing it in pants tight enough to make her parents nervous. He was, in her words, ‘the most thrilling, naughty, sexy man I had ever seen’.

The spark that started with her discovery of Mick and the Stones lit the fuse to what would later become a firecracker explosion of sexual awakening in the Free Love era, one that would encompass rock luminaries Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, Gram Parsons and Jim Morrison.

In 1964, sixteen-year-old Pamela befriended schoolmate Don Van Vlieght, also known as underground rocker, Captain Beefheart. They began hitchhiking to Sunset Strip to watch emerging local bands like The Byrds and The Doors. ‘All you had to do was hang out on the Strip and you’d meet them,’ she said in a recent interview.

Van Vlieght introduced Des Barres to The Rolling Stones’ Billy Whyman and Charlie Watts during their 1965 tour. One night after a gig they headed to The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. While Van Vlieght and Watts smoked and listened to jazz, Pamela worked up the courage to knock on Mick Jagger’s door. He opened it. Naked. ‘Instead of running into the room, I ran in the other direction. I was just too young to know what to do at that point, but I knew what I wanted to do,’ she said.

Pamela decided to learn and perfect her sexual technique by moving through the men of the Los Angeles music scene – she did eventually bed Jagger. She quit school and took up waitressing and other odd jobs, including babysitting Frank Zappa’s two children, just to be close to the action on Sunset Strip. Not that there was a chance she would miss anything.

Her growing reputation and eclectic dress sense soon attracted the gaze of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page – Pamela made him cowboy shirts and in return he let her sit on top of his amplifier during gigs.

But the love affair was short-lived. In 1972 Jimmy left Pamela for a 14-year-old groupie named Lori ‘Lightening’ Maddox.

After the break-up her infamy grew and she earned the moniker ‘Miss Pamela The Groupie Queen’ - famed for bewitching, dating and (as rumours go) fellating the greatest rockers of the era.

Her detractors also labeled her anti-feminist and a whore.

But far from feeling exploited, Pamela recalls a magical giveand-take in all her antics. ‘We inspired the guys as much as we were inspired by them. It was very equal. They loved us because we dared to have a blast.’

She may have moved towards womanhood in the laps and dressing rooms of rock’s elite, but being a delicious distraction is not her only tribute. Way before The Runaways popped their ‘Ch-Ch-Cherry Bomb’, Pamela was a member of the first all-girl experimental rock outfit Girls Together Outrageously.

Founded by Frank Zappa they, opened shows for Mother’s Of Invention and pressed a record.

“ It’s never gonna come again and I just thank my lucky stars that I was right in the middle of it” Despite this, controversy about the men in her life was never far away. Tales of Jimmy Page giving her the drug Mescaline, derived from the Peyote Cactus, before a 16-hour sex session are rife; as is the story that at just seventeen she stirred The Doors’ Jim Morrison to cheat on his girlfriend.

To this day she will not answer questions about the doomed genius and offers only that he was ‘dreamy, poetic, dangerous and exquisitely beautiful’.

In 1977, ‘Miss Pamela’ confirmed her claims as a ‘one-on-one kind of girl’ by marrying Silverhead front man Michael Des Barres. They had a son before divorcingw in 1991.

She has published four memoirs: I’m With The Band: Confessions of a Groupie (Helter Skelter, 1987), Another Little Piece of my Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (Helter Skelter, 1993), Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon (St Martins Press, 1996) and Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (Chicago Review Press, 2007). She is also a registered minister who performs Rock ‘n’ Roll weddings, writes a column in Italian Rolling Stone and is the dedicated partner of country musician Mike Stinson - twenty years her junior.

Recently, a documentary based on her third book Let’s Spend the Night Together aired on VH1, and there is talk of an upcoming HBO film version of I’m With the Band starring Zoë Deschanel.

Now 62-years-old, Pamela is happy to reminisce about a life lived backstage, but she stresses the importance of not living in the past. ‘The time I lived through in the 1960s and early 1970s, music was revolutionary. It’s never gonna come again and I just thank my lucky stars that I was right in the middle of it’.

Like her or not, you can’t deny Pamela Des Barres is an icon from a time when the new music made us want to change our lives. We still have music that powerful. The question is, do we still have hell-raisers, like Pamela, to love it with all of their hearts?

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SparkCBC

Alicia Byrnes Should the personality of a filmmaker affect the way we view a film? Alicia Byrnes asks why it is that she can’t bring herself to love a flick made by a media-savvy dunce.

After critics praising films such as Avatar and Precious in 2009, I was itching for some decent films to arrive come Oscar season in 2010. Fortunately, an array of films delivered the goods, one of which was Blue Valentine. I was left tearyeyed just watching Ryan Gosling croon with a ukulele in the trailer, and the film itself stuck with me for days. Unfortunately, all of this brilliance was overshadowed after I saw the film’s writer and director, Derek Cianfrance, interviewed at a director’s roundtable. Cianfrance comes from a documentary background, and spent twelve years producing Blue Valentine. During the course of the interview, I couldn’t help but be struck by the likeness of Blue Valentine’s male lead to Cianfrance. Gosling’s character’s appearance, mannerisms, and sensationalised way of speaking seemed fashioned after the writer/director himself. At this particular roundtable interview, Cianfrance was joined by the likes of Darren Arronofsky, Peter Weir, and Tom Hooper. As he drivelled on about the sixty-six dafts he composed of the script for Blue Valentine, and then later discarded on the first day of shooting, an unsettling wave of suspicion washed over me; was this really the same guy who made me cry over a movie trailer? Cianfrance proceeded to tell an anecdote about what he imagines to be the stereotypical ‘megalomaniac’ vision of a director: holding a megaphone and barking orders. However, Cianfrance sees himself as a director who holds the megaphone up to his ear, to listen. That same sinking suspicion returned when I heard Cianfrance in an interview later that week telling the same anecdote.

Cianfrance’s methods are also questionable. He asked Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling to live in a house together with their film-daughter for a month during shooting.

The pair lived on a budget, cooked, cleaned and did family activities together, so as to gain insight into the lives of their characters. However, Cianfrance had the audacity to take

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things even further; one evening he asked Gosling to seduce Williams up to their pretend bedroom. To Gosling’s credit, he declined and slept on the couch.

As I’ve accumulated more and more information about Cianfrance and the making of Blue Valentine, my dislike for the filmmaker has mounted. In light of this I am left questioning whether the film really was as brilliant and affecting as I initially felt it was.

Two other prominent filmmakers of 2010 were the Coen Brothers. Every piece of promotion I have read or heard for their film, True Grit, left me believing the pair are incapable of stringing a sentence together. In view of this, the consistent quality of their films seems outrageous. Unlike our friend Cianfrance, the Coen Brothers are fastidious about keeping their filmmaking secrets under wraps. They talk in circles, evade questions, and pose unrelated ideas to each other in order to maintain their enigmatic demeanor. This almost makes enjoying their films frustrating; it’s like fantasising about the appearance of someone you met on the internet, then meeting them in real life and realising they have two heads.

The films of the Coen Brothers are finely tuned machines, with storyboards and outlines firmly in place prior to shooting. In opposition to the showmanship of the actors in Blue Valentine, the Coen Brothers require their actors to stick entirely and whole-heartedly to the script; every move is mapped out before the actors have performed it. While I find this method a little too close to Cianfrance’s megalomaniac metaphor, who can fault the films produced by the Coen Brothers?

In keeping their actors on such tight leashes and honouring the words of their carefully honed scripts, they consistently create masterpieces and get away with acting like mumbling idiots in interviews. Meanwhile, the pseudo-surnamed Cianfrance ostensibly practices self-promotion in his encounters with the media, but his actors’ performances are a testament to themselves. While 2010 brought a slew of decent films, it also begged the question of whether you can truly appreciate a film if you don’t respect the filmmaker.

This message led me to my only criticism of the Moonlight cinema; watching the screen was sometimes difficult. I found myself on more than one occasion drawn to gaze at the leafy backdrop of the gardens, framed by the glittering city lights.

It seems a testament to the city, and strangely synonymous with Mr. Suzuki’s mantra, that I was able to lay on this lush grass, surrounded by such picture-perfect greenery, yet the skyscrapers of the CBD sat only minutes away.

Giddy with the success of my first date, I put on my best dress and rushed off to the St Kilda Open Air Cinema, held on the roof of the St Kilda Sea Baths. With an eclectic mix of quirky comedies, retro classics and great Australian documentaries, it soon becomes clear why I encountered such difficulty trying to purchase tickets here.

Diane Fallaw After realising she’d been taking the old gal for granted, Diane Fallaw decided to fall in love with her hometown Melbourne again. She had three dates at three different outdoor cinemas to reignite the flame.

A couple of months ago, I decided to fall in love with my city again. I had been taking Melbourne for granted for too long.

As happens within any long-term relationship, I became too comfortable – I had settled into a snug routine, stopped trying new things and was starting to forget why we were together. I decided to re-ignite the ‘spark’ between us, and what better way to rediscover romance than with the steadfast tradition of dinner and a movie?

Based on the assumption that three dates were enough to determine the future of a relationship, I planned to visit and compare all three of Melbourne’s outdoor cinemas, with the secondary motive of uncovering a little more about what makes this city so loveable.

My first date was with the Ford Fiesta Moonlight Cinema, held on the Central Lawn in the Royal Botanic Gardens. I roped my ever-obliging (actual) boyfriend into coming with me, and it wasn’t long before I realised we were on a group date with over 100 others. The garden was packed with cuddling couples sprawled across the lawns on picnic blankets, each adorned with an array of gourmet dips, cheese and wine – an improvement on popcorn and choc-tops, one might say.

I restrained my unabashed desire to see the Disney chick-flick Tangled, and chose instead the screening of the environmental documentary, Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie.

The film, aired in collaboration with Melbourne’s Sustainable Living Festival, promoted the message of living ‘in balance with the natural world that sustains us’.

Admittedly, my excitement could well have been attributed to the buzz of mingling twenty-somethings, but the idyllic beachside setting undoubtedly played a part. And, as if this wasn’t Aussie enough, live acoustic sets from emerging local talent performed on stage beforehand, as the crowd sank schooners of James Squire and rubbed elbows around the bar.

Last but not least, I came to dating partner number three, Rooftop Cinema and Bar. By far the most alternative of the three, Rooftop sits on the uppermost level of Curtin House in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, perched above the famous Toff in Town and Cookie night spots.

Adorned with synthetic grass and fifties style deck chairs, Rooftop oozes retro cool. If your everyday attire involves any combination of Ray Ban Wayfarers, a plaid shirt and Cheap Monday jeans, then this place is your Mecca. Its décor and art house film selection is perfectly aimed at artsy, inner-city hipsters, particularly of the film-buff variety.

It later occurred to me as I stood at the Rooftop bar, devouring the panoramic view of our twinkling, twilight city, that I had fallen back in rapturous love with my hometown. And, far from the arduous effort I had predicted, Melbourne wined me, dined me and swept me off my feet with very little resistance.

The landscapes, experiences and people I encountered during my three romantic movie dates proved to me that I had simply never looked for what was right before my eyes. The open-air cinema trend appears to me a perfect example of one of many small things – often overlooked – that give this city its cultural credit. It is safe to say, no doubt, that Melbourne and I will be renewing our vows.

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Photo pinboke_planet

The rise, fall and rise of 3D James Fettes After enjoying a heyday in the 1950s, that three-dimensional trend is back with a vengeance.

James Fettes asks why we’ve been drawn to the phenomenon of 3D TV and cinema for a second time, and whether it’s better time around.

Society loves a good trend. Fad, gimmick or novelty, civilisation seems eternally compelled to converge upon the latest craze.

2010, of course, was no different. In the last year alone, we’ve seen explosions in ‘Lad’ culture, Indie culture and Justin Bieber culture. But one stands out for me – the rise of 3D cinema. That’s right my friends, I have decided to look back on the year cinema finally collapsed into the fiery pits of the third dimension.

Film has a long record of capturing the hearts and minds of audiences. From 1939s epic Gone With The Wind to 2010’s Inception, everyone loves a good film. In the 1950s, new discoveries heralded an entire new dimension in cinema – that is, the third one – coincidentally, the same dimension we live our daily lives in. But by the 1960s, people clued in to a little known fact about 3D films: they suck. Little more than a novelty, classic 3D waned in popularity over the next few decades, finding itself confined to educational IMAX features about outer space and Jurassic discoveries.

But 2010 heralded the unprecedented

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revival of three-dimensional cinema, kickstarted by Avatar (2009) which tenuously sits somewhere between a ‘masterpiece’ and an‘atrocity’. Hollywood’s ‘me-too’ approach signaled an avalanche of headache-inducing cinema. To understand the magnitude of this resurgence, have a look for the website built to cater for people who have fallen into depression because they do not have blue skin and do not live on Avatar’s ‘Pandora Planet’. Before long, we saw a new Saw, a new Resident Evil, a new Step Up and even a Smurfs film in 3D. I’m not one to cry ‘CONSPIRACY!’ in the face of corporations very often, but something needs to be said about the pricing of this ‘innovation’. Village Cinemas adds a $3 surcharge to 3D films, claiming that it covers the cost of their 2000 new 3D projectors.

Village also happens to charge an extra $1.50 for VMAX sessions, which is apparently also for new equipment. True to classic swindling form, if your cinema has VMAX theatres, you’d better believe that’s the only place they’ll be screening 3D. This means that an adult faces the prospect of spending $21 just to see Piranha 3D. Don’t expect these prices to drop just because they’ve made back their investment in the technology.

As you might know, this brave new world in three dimensions is no longer confined to our movie complexes. 3D TVs stand as a shining example of a brand new gadget nobody wanted, and yet 2010 soon became its year in the spotlight. Samsung, Sony and Panasonic proclaim that, just a few short years after investing in a high definition TV, consumers are once again behind the bend.

Here’s why: For some unknown reason, you and your family are desperate to watch Avatar in 3D, at home. Firstly, a 55inch 3D TV from Samsung would set you back around $3200. Great, now you can enjoy Avatar in the privacy of your own home, right? Wrong. Before you can enjoy your new telly, you’ll need three extra 3D shutter glasses for your family, weighing in at $400.

A 3D Blu-ray player will cost you at least $300, making you close to $4000 poorer.

But there’s a catch – the 3D Avatar Blu-ray is an exclusive package deal with Panasonic TVs. With eBay being your last resort, you’ll have to drop a further $150-odd dollars on the highly sought after disc.

It seems funny that despite the limited availability of 3D movies, 3D televisions are missing a core function across the board: Television. There is next to no 3D content for television, and in Australia, even Foxtel has limited its support to the occasional sporting event. Might I ask though, is 3D TV even necessary? Do you really want to be able to reach out and grab Tracy Grimshaw’s face during another gut-wrenching episode of A Current Affair? I didn’t think so.

I’m not going to bother going into the potential health risks, the contradiction to our economic climate or irrelevance to our generation. The one concession I will make to all of this – and I’m sure you’ll agree – is that 2010 did provide one example of stellar cinema that proves the worth of 3D: The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

Degrassi and me

slightly doughy, yet likeable character, certainly had a point.

Gossip Girl and Degrassis other modern equivalents by comparison seem plastic. Teenage characters appear to be played by abnormally articulate twenty-four year olds, who punctuate their polished scripts with snippets of last year’s teenspeak that seem outdated and weird.

Barbie dolls like Chuck Bass skip along the Manhattan skyline with an entourage of their dolled-up friends, chugging caviar and bathing in champagne. Like kings, they stroll about their 60 storey castles, making the rest of us feel like dirty rascals beneath them.

The kids of Degrassi St were those rascals. They were our Canadian copies, identical but for their accents and dress sense.

That connected us and made their lives a part of ours.

When Caitlin broke with Joey Jerimiah, I had to leave the room; when Clode went to the boys’ toilets and took a gun to his face, I found it too intense. And, when the fat, oafish Dwayne contracted AIDS and came at young Jerimiah’s face with his chubby claws, well, I had a spasmodic kind of fit.

Photo grrlie

Soren Frederiksen Do you go for Gossip Girl? The O.C? Is it Vampire Diaries that flicks your switch? Or perhaps you take guilty pleasure in Glee.

Soren Frederiksen takes a moment to pause and reflect on the state of telly for young people these days, and wistfully remember a time when Degrassi ruled the screen, and Joey Jeramiah’s hat was more recognisable than Blair Waldorf’s pampered scowl.

In a dark room at the heart of Melbourne’s ACMI complex, filled by an impressive array of wizbangs, gizmos and patiently waiting thirty-somethings, Josh Kinal and John Richards, hosts of the Boxcutters entertainment podcast, take the stage.

The topic for the night’s discussion is Degrassi Junior High, a Canadian TV show aimed at the teenagers of the 1990s, with whom I have developed a strange and passionate relationship.

The Degrassi theme song is – to me – less a cheesy introduction to a teen drama than an invitation to sing, dance, perform and let my dignity slip unwarranted around the living room, only to be further trampled as the credits roll, the theme song plays again and the opportunity to embarrass myself once more arises.

To those who watched it when young, Degrassi was ‘a lifereflector’, according to Kinal. “This show was really about regular humans like you and I,” he said. “That’s something that kids today are getting less of, perhaps.”

Preaching to a supportive and nostalgia-soaked choir, this

Well, that’s how mum later explained the agonised, hysterical performance that took place in my living room that day. Like the brakes of a runaway freight train, I screeched at my television, powerless yet determined to avert a tragedy that seemed inevitable.

It may seem a little strange to some that a shabbily strungtogether kids’ show from twenty years back can inspire such a display, but I have always viewed Degrassi as if it were not simply a TV show but a spectator sport.

The scripts have been written and the episodes filmed long ago. Yet, the urge to loudly warn w’s Lucy Fernandez of her teacher Mr Colby’s paedophilic intentions has never escaped me. Nor has my determination to see the end of that blundering, blubbery fool Nancy (curse her) and her irritating sunny disposition (curse it) ever abated, with her occasional intrusions on set prompting forth a shower of guttersnipe abuse, as if by raw hatred alone I could strike her from the screen.

This practice of cheering the heroes, heckling the villains and advising the confused of Degrassi’s bustling corridors may seem a little strange, but it would seem more so if targeted at the trust funded babies of Gossip Girls’ Upper East Side. No, these wine-swilling, coke-snorting sociopaths would stand absolutely impervious in the face of my guiding commentary.

Their world, glazed in honey and filled with fashionable young doll-people, is too far removed from my own. It is too artificial in its design for me to engross myself in its problems in the same way I have with Degrassi.

‘Gossip Girl’s’ fictional aristocracy is interesting to an extent.

However, what makes a snapshot that reflects reality more fascinating than one so artificially enhanced, is the idea that we are a part of the world that it portrays, and thus have the power to meddle in the affairs of those whom it depicts.

I revel in this delusion, and so we all should. TV shows such as these are meant to be passionately enjoyed, not stoically ‘appreciated’. So pull up a foot-stool, immerse yourself and pass me that box of pizza Shapes beside you. Nancy will be on soon and I want to set a trap.

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Southeast Asia provided an action-packed adventure for Catalyst’s intrepid and largely inebriated reporter

Ted O’Connor

Over summer I went to Malaysia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, and I wish to do the trip a bit of justice without the usual onslaught of clichés. People have read enough verbal scintillation about timeless French facades and back drops of glistening floating markets with steaming rice paddies, so I’ll provide you with the highlights of a 20-year-old romping about with four of his best mates.

AirAsia was our mode of transport out of Melbourne and as soon as we boarded the plane, discoveries were made as to why it’s the world’s cheapest airline. But it got us out of the country without fuss and landed in Kuala Lumpur. During the bus ride into Kuala Lumpur from the airport I discovered the city was designed by an imaginative 10-year-old boy. The thoughtful little fella

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started by designing one ordinary house and put about 200 of these identical dwellings in the one area, like a commission suburb.

This principle extended to blocks of flats and an outrageously gargantuan skyscraper, of which he decided to make two. Then for his own enjoyment he made a huge building that looks like the Jedi temple, a monorail that weaves through the city, and then crammed every other available space with trees.

Whimsical observations aside, the food is flavorsome, the beer is cheap and plentiful, and the locals enjoy a good laugh when tourists like myself foolishly have a chew on a chili and then dive for the ice cream section of the neighbouring 7/11.

Laos. If you enjoy looks of disdain from uppity back packers, pronounce it ‘Lay-os’, emphasizing the last syllable with a distinc-

tive Aussie twang. It doesn’t matter how you say it, it is the least pretentious and most strikingly attractive place I’ve ever been.

Most people my age go to Laos to take part in a glorious activity called ‘tubing’ in a little town called Vang Vieng. Occasionally you meet a sensitive metaphysical type, who warns you that Vang Vieng is a debaucherous hell full of philistines and other uncultured types and the preferable option would be to take an eco-tour deep into the hill tribes, but I can do that in 30 years time with my third wife, so the hill tribes were put on hold.

Tubing involves floating from one riverside bar to the next on a tyre tube, having all number of cheap and often free beverages.

Just to extend this to levels of limitless joy there are swings, water slides and flying

foxes. Tubing does attract the Stephen Milne and Luke Steele from Empire of the Sun types, roaming with their non-personality, genially vapid mates, traveling in noisy groups of nine. Their main endeavors are to dominate the bars’ attention with plenty of double-tuck-pikes into the water followed by enthusiastic look-at-me hair flipping to the mildly miffed crowd. Their other pastimes include running up to the dance floor and trance-dancing in quite a serious, self-involved fashion to try to garner impressive looks from the opposite sex. This is so great to watch it’s disappointing these people are in the minority.

to appreciate this scene of pure nirvana. So typically, after being stunned for a minute all we could say, was: ‘do you know what this view needs? A Target, a McDonalds and a concrete three-story car park’.

I was sad to leave Laos, but I was about to have the best five days of my young and woefully unfulfilled life at Full Moon Party, on Kho Phanghan island in Thailand. The first thing we did was adjust our body clocks for the days ahead by staying up until five and waking up at midday. Essentially we lived

festive they’re feeling and will take a couple days to a couple weeks’ holiday with the extended family. Every local told us with wild excitement about the fireworks that would be set off and we’d nod and smile, because lets be honest, they’re brilliant when you’re four years old but the gasps and wows run dry when you grow up. Well by god they came roaring back. It was jaw dropping; something I would have thought only Gandalf could pull off. The last bang just about brought back a few seconds of daylight.

A couple days later I arrived back in Melbourne. After growing up in Mortlake in Victoria’s southwest I’d always assumed it provided all the excitement one could ever need - but this assumption has been pushed aside.

Getting off the plane, the sky was too blue, there wasn’t enough traffic, no one on the street asked if I would like to purchase narcotics or bed a prostitute, the parks and streets were too clean, the traffic was too orderly and every tradesman wore hard hats and high-visibility T-shirts. That trip certainly did rattle my ideas-box. And I can’t wait to get back there.

“It was jaw dropping; something I would have thought only Gandalf could pull off.”

It really isn’t the swings and beer that’s the best part of tubing - though they claim a photo finish for second it’s meeting someone at the first bar and declaring they will be the best man at your wedding. One such man was an outstanding Englishman, who, upon finding out we were Aussies, quipped, ‘there are two things that could survive a nuclear holocaust, cockroaches and Ricky Ponting’.

Luang Prabang in northwest Laos was next.

It’s the old capital and ‘old’ really is the appropriate adjective. Architecture from its French Indochina years and traditional Laos housing is surrounded by the Mekong and the slightly smaller, but equally scenic Nham Khan rivers, whose banks are covered with smallish crops not usually found outside medieval movies or dusty old paintings. This can be all soaked up at riverside bars and restaurants, but climbing to the top of the monastery on the hill in the middle of town and seeing a view devoid of anything ugly, modern, or downright tacky is the best way

like possums and each night got better as thousands more filled the beach until full moon night when 30,000 young heathens danced until the sun rose and got up to all manner of mischief. We started the night on Changs, an unusually festive beer with around six percent alcohol content that can put anyone in a lively mood, before progressing to drinking from buckets. You never forget your first bucket. Well actually there is a fair chance you might – in fact I would love to have seen the incredulity on my face, as I watched nine shots, Red Bull and lemonade being tossed together. The night went by in flashes of brilliance and will be remembered as one of the wildest I’ll ever have.

Lastly, we visited Hoi An and Hanoi, during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year holiday. This is when the locals will gauge how charitably

FREE BEER “YOU WON’T GET”

BUT YOU CAN BUY WINE AT $5­$6 PER BOTTLE special deal for RMIT students log on to www.gowine.com.au enter the voucher code below VOUCHER:

gormit

15 EXPIRES 5/5/11

Melbourne by landmarks Clare Bolge

Melbourne: A city historical yet fiercely modern in design, famously incorporating the old, the new and the strange. Clare Bolge takes you on a tour of Melbourne’s best loved landmarks.

This tour of Melbourne, as marked by the unusual, begins in the hub of the city at what is now the Melbourne Central shopping centre. This part of town is a goldmine for raised eyebrows thanks to the fantastically eclectic architecture of RMIT University alone. There is also the easily overlooked and often skateboarded upon Architec-

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tural Fragment, better known as the sinking library, on the corner of Swanston and Latrobe streets. This somewhat postapocalyptic Melbourne replica of the State Library’s roof corner and column, juts out of the pavement immediately in front of the actual library. Strangely familiar, it is easy to forget what an odd marker it is to the historic and, presumably, very stable building. But the real winner of What’s Odd in Melbourne Central is the enormous Coops Shot Tower that, in an innovative approach to overcoming pesky heritage listings, has become the centre piece of the new shopping centre. Once used to make lead pellets for shotguns, the 50 metre tall red brick tower is now used as a home for the R.M. Williams store. Make your way past the

akubras, however, and you can, if harbouring an unfulfilled desire to learn more, find a tiny museum dedicated to this unusual landmark’s unusual history. Onward to the Bourke Street Mall, home to one of the city’s greatest seasonal landmarks – the Myer Christmas Windows. If you didn’t know it already you would quickly be reminded of the area’s commercial appeal by our next strange city landmark - the big, reddish Public Purse. Simply resting outside the converted GPO as though misplaced by someone, albeit a 30-foot-tall someone, this piece of public art has been a Bourke Street and Melbourne attraction since 1994. Not to mention a really convenient meeting space in one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. Now, in this part of this city it would be

Photos by Daniel Gregoric

unfair not to mention the enormous, controversial and undeniably odd landmark that is Federation Square. Much more prominent than our other landmarks that often fall into the category of ‘oh I never realised how weird that is’, Federation Square screams ‘I’m bloody outrageous’.

But heading down to the waterfront, Docklands is an absolute treasure for weird-seekers. The unusual approach taken to one of Melbourne’s youngest developments means that pricey apartments and upscale restaurants sit alongside outlet shopping and American bulk-buy supermarkets in this part of the city. And that’s not to mention the massive draw-card-turned-disaster that is the busted Southern Star Observation

Wheel, a landmark for all the wrong reasons.

But the Docklands has always housed some wonderful and exceptionally weird art displays, one of which has become a wacky waterside landmark. The life-sized Cow up a Tree sculpture sits in the middle of the Harbour Esplanade on Dockland’s public art walk. It depicts, as might be obvious by the title, a very square black and white cow suspended by her hindquarters and elongated neck in a bare tree. This peculiar landmark was inspired by Gippsland floods that left local cows in a similar predicament, moving artist John Kelly to recreate the scene in Melbourne’s own weather-battered waterfront.

Finally, we’re on our way out of the city centre to check out our last unique Melbourne landmark, in the form of the Skipping Girl Vinegar sign on Victoria Street, an illuminated red icon of advertisement in Abbotsford. The cute little girl jumping rope atop a building has been casting a dull red light onto expensive nearby apartments on and off since the 1930s. The fact that there was a public appeal to get the sign switched back on added to Little Audrey becoming heritage listed is proof enough that we Melburnians really do love a spot of history, art and branding all rolled into one.

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Jane Vashti Ryan

cleaner abseiling off a 50 storey building, and you can’t beat glimpsing the odd sky-writ marriage proposal.

People don’t look up very often. Straight ahead is a pretty comfortable place to rest your eye balls after all. We look at eyelevel supermarket shelves and eyelevel advertisements. We stare at the back of peoples heads or look at our feet on the train home, plus we tend to have our faces buried in a portable screen most of the time.

You notice strange things when you look up, too. Doors that don’t seem to lead anywhere, mysterious blacked out windows, people hiding in trees and ratbags at windows gawking though binoculars.

So here is my proposition. Look up. You’ll be amazed at what you see.

Long term Look-Uppery will deliver strong results. You’ll see the seasons change, sky rises built, and you’ll probably remember to change the batteries in your smoke alarms more often too.

But I like to look up to notice the smaller, simple things.

Like roof top gardens in the middle of the city and the fact that three buildings in a row can perfectly embody three completely different periods of architecture. Clouds. People smoking in apartment windows while they watch the world go by. Blossoms. Dried out toilet paper globs on public toilet roofs. Graffiti.

Strange new brands of mustard on the top shelf at the supermarket I like seeing birds wrestle with precarious perches on out hanging tree branches, and I love seeing possums curled up asleep in the middle of the day. I love getting a wave from a window

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You feel the sun on your face, and glimpse the horizon more often, which is excellent for your mental health I also reckon when you practice looking up, you become more engaged in your immediate surroundings. A mate of mine says you can always tell when someone is a tourist, because they look up a lot, and I’d say that’s true. Thousands of people come to Australia from all over the world to visit Uluru each year, and yet I don’t know many Australian’s who have been. When it comes to having a good look around, the principle is exactly the same, and it means we miss out seeing all the interesting stuff.

I’ll wager there are plenty of tourists who have marvelled at the splendour of the Majorca House building on Degraves St in Melbourne. And I’d say for every one of them there is a local who drinks their coffee in its shadow every morning and never noticed it.

So try it for a day.

Look up and let us know what you see…

First published in Crikey.com.au

The art of light & space

Marissa Shirbin

Do you cook your dinner under a fluoro light?

Is there a lamp by your bed, or do you just use an overhead and throw something at the switch when it’s lights out? Marissa Shirbin explores the effect light has on the way we look, feel and see by hitting up a few instillation exhibitions around Melbourne.

Not so long ago I read a book titled The Sensual Home. No it wasn’t about home-style Tantric massage techniques, nor modern-slash-funky diva-doonas. It was about creating spaces that acknowledge all of our five sophisticated senses - sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Author of the book, Isle Crawford, said “As modern life threatens to become increasingly standardised, suburbanised, sanitised, unnatural and uniformly lit without shadows and places to hide from the probing glare of the everyday, the home is, for many of us the last bastion of the senses.”

Ok, although it is a little rich to discuss the lighting of a share home, or the feel of university’s supposedly ergonomic, tilting, swiveling, gas-lift chairs, this sensual stuff does make good sense to me. Our uniformly lit classrooms, shopping centres and public transport, our lemon hospital-grade scented bathroom, and the tasteless brownies from Pie Face are all so dull, aren’t they? I think this ‘sense’ stuff is why installations – although it’s dreadful to say so – are so hot right now in Melbourne’s art scene.

“You’re inviting me to see your plaster sculpture? Huh! How about a plaster sculpture made of ice-cream containers filled with strawberry-scented dry ice, accompanied by some sonic exploration and cavernous lighting from yours truly?”

Bam! Over the past six months I have been to more installationbased exhibitions than those good ol’ exhibitions where pictures are simply hung on white walls. So basically I don’t think I am alone with this whole ‘sensual’ thing. Everyone seems to be wanting more stimulation. Particularly when most of us spend our days and nights staring at the 13 inch screen known

as our laptop. Sticking local, Fitzroy’s Gertrude Contemporary Art Space has some killer art installations. In February I went to Dylan Martorell’s lunchtime screenings in Studio 12.

The studio was filled with a bunch of found, once-discarded objects like plastic containers, poles, netting, string, and that shiny silver stuff people put on their steering wheel to keep it from getting hot. The lighting was dark and red, and an old TV screened Javanese village performances. Downstairs, in the front window of the gallery, was Martorell’s giant watercraft suspended from the ceiling. It made sound. And let me tell you, it was pretty awesome.

Last October I went to another installation-type event as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. It was Heiner Goebbels Stifter’s Dinge (Stifter’s Things) and it was the best freakin’ thing I have ever seen. Goebbels is a German composer, music director and professor.

Towards the back of the room were leafless trees and loads of pianos played by mechanical arms. Long drainpipes ran the length of the room with post-packs at the end randomly banging to make thumping sounds. Stories were read out loud and some visuals were projected above the audience, and then (and then!) three empty holes began filling up with water.

Once complete, the pools of water started bubbling, then it started raining in the theatre, and then the pianos and the leafless forest rolled towards the audience. It was completely odd.

But there’s a whole festival for sound art. The Bogong AIR Festival was held in February this year and comprised of sitespecific ‘interventions’, both live and recorded. There was state-of-the-art gear all over the sleepy alpine village.

Whether this whole art installation thing is a fad or not doesn’t bother me. I think the more time us students spend online, the more we will crave to hear, taste, touch and smell things. Decking out our homes and going to galleries seems expensive and unnecessary to some of us, but that’s not what this is about. Next time you go to the market buy unwashed ‘real looking’ potatoes instead of those tasteless glossy ones.

Or, put a lamp on in your home instead of unnecessarily blasting your housemate’s complexion with five fluorescent ones.

You will be better for it. Seriously.

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All photos Daniel Gregoric.

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Fashion...

a collection of photos from the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival this photo by Daniel Gregoric

Graphica fashion show

An exhibition of textiles, fashion & accessories, presented by Link Arts & Culture as part of the L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program. Graphica showcased the talent and expertise of RMIT students & recent graduates.

Pictured clockwise from above: Transparency V Opacity by Abby O’Neil; Spinal Curvature

by Kristen Edmond Cleal; Melissa Martinez and Raquel Portez, Shades of White by Melissa Martinez; Fed Square Floral by Camilla Stirling; Daphne Shum, Untitled by Talia Shcirripa.

All photos by Marc Morel.

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Inside the LMFF...

Aspiring public relations gal, Courtney Ward, takes us behind the scenes for the VIP opening of one Australia’s biggest fashion events.

On 9 February, set in the picturesque gardens of Government House, the 2011 L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival officially went underway. There was no shortage of glamorous guests, French champagne or canapés, which made for a spectacular opening to the annual festival.

The program launch served as a preview to tempt those aspiring, onlooking fashionistas to purchase event tickets.

The guests poured in at around 5pm, where they mingled on the perfectly groomed lawns under he sun’s late afternoon rays. Among these guests were beauties Lara Bingle, Megan Gale, Jesinta Campbell and up-and-coming Samantha Harris – this season’s face of Seafolly. Actress Melissa George – this year’s face of the festival – also graced us with her presence, And of course, there was no lack of Australian designers, including Alex Perry, who would be staging a large-scale catwalk show during fashion week.

Premier Ted Baillieu gave a speech to officially

Photos by Anita Sengupta & Paul Motherwell

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Courtney Ward launch the festival. He was quick to confess his fashion sense extends to ‘boardies’ and ‘budgies’, which stands worlds apart the calibre of fashion one would expect to see throughout the festival.

A preview of some designers’ works was on display during the premier’s speech, with seven mannequinesque models posing in Australia’s finest threads on a staircase. The girls glistened in J’Aton, Collette Dinnigan, Megan Park, Gwendolynne, Toni Maticevski and of course, Alex Perry. The frocks were in shades of gold, beige and blush, no doubt this season’s tones.

If you’re wondering why I was there, I decided to volunteer at the festival this year for some fun, and to gain some work experience in public relations. It was the first VIP event I had worked at, so I was intrigued and my expectations were exceeded. I didn’t anticipate speaking to celebrities and being close enough to watch their every. My tasks were fairly mundane, handing out programs, ushering and arranging seats, however, the experience was invaluable. Seeing all the public relations girls in their towering heels and toting clipboards proved to be the glamorous, yet hardworking stereotype I was hopefully anticipating. Definitely worth a peek if you’re in the neighbourhood when next year’s L’Oreal Fashion Week rolls round.

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Both sides of the looking glass Azusa Hyde Fashion model Azusa Hyde compares Audi Fashion Festival in Singapore to L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion week and challenges what you think you know about life in the fashion industry.

Since the onset of L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival (LMFF), the city has been dotted with promos reminding us of Australia’s apparently buzzing fashion industry and local talent. Designers and brands exhibit their works through a series of shows, and if you happen to stumble upon a public event around town, the gorgeous men and women on parade are easy to envy. Their sole job requirement seems to be strutting down a runway for fifteen minutes, striking a mixture of pouty/fierce poses and generally oozing their attractiveness to all.

Seeing the hype reminds me of my own experience at Audi Fashion Festival (AFF) 2010 in Singapore, a modern event not un-like Melbourne’s, albeit with a few interesting (and, dare I say more impressive) differences. Last year, the festival’s participators included some of the biggest industry icons, such as Carmen Kass – ex-Victoria Secret model and face of Christian Dior perfume J’adore - as well as Roberto Cavalli, legendary Italian fashion designer.

Working alongside names like these is definitely exciting, but what so many forget when they think of modelling is that it is work, and not as easy, breezy (and cheesy) as those ‘Covergirls’ on TV make it out to be. I saw that the elegance and glamour that spectacles like AFF are far from a real reflection of the chaotic and truly unglamorous working conditions behind-the-scenes.

A typical day would require models to report at show venues at 6.30 am for rehearsals and then wait for what could be four to five hours of hair and make-up. After beauty, they wile away the time reading, chatting or sleeping – often on a cement floor as scarce backstage furniture is reserved for those of higher importance.

Before your mind leaps to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno and his interview with Heather Hann on the hardships of turning at the end of a runway, models – like anyone – appreciate a little industry satire. Event staff are usually so highly strung they work themselves into a frenzy at the thought of a model being ‘misplaced’. I remember the look of pure panic that appeared on one supervisor’s face when I told her I needed to use the bathroom. As well as insisting that we exchange mobile numbers, she also took several polaroids to add to her ‘in the toilet’ file and made me promise to call should I

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Photo by Anita Sengupta

encounter any problems getting back. In all honestly, I was more hurt than bemused by her lack of faith in my navigation skills.

Despite the occasional humorous moment and how easy it sounds to do nothing all day, the hours are long and often painfully boring. Models are not allowed to leave the venue, and must be careful not to disturb the carefully applied make-up or set-in hair-rollers (which is not easy when fifty bobbypins are scraping the sides of your skull at every head-turn).

When show time is drawing near – around 7pm – first looks are called and models change into their assigned outfits. The show usually won’t start until around 8pm, will last around thirty minutes, then after a quick change most will usually rush to a last-minute casting for a job later that week. By the time the day is over, it’s nearly 10 pm.

That’s a 15-hour day, for seven days in a row, and contrary to popular belief, the pay for most shows like this rounds off to little more than 10-15 Singapore dollars an hour. Compare that to Australia’s minimum wage standards and you’re often better off waiting tables. Consider travel costs, rent, living expenses, being on-call 24-hours a day and the fact that half these models are still teenagers (many earning income to provide for families back home), and it’s easy to see why those who can throw in the towel after a few months of fulltime work.

That being said, the knowledge you gain on the job is priceless. A look behind the curtains an hour before opening reveals artists, musicians, choreographers and creativity that would astound even those most cynical of consumerist events. When a model opens a show with amplified sound, lights in place, wearing a gown that sparkles with movement and has taken months to create, you can only commend the producers and be thankful for the view.

Being a spectator at fashion events like LMFF and AFF (or if you’re in the area and lucky enough to get an invite, Milan or Paris Fashion Weeks), is well worth the experience; even if all you want is the goody-bag of free nail polish and sachets of anti-wrinkle cream, or a chance to get your face in some party press photos.

Just keep in mind that if you see a girl exiting the venue who’s 6 feet tall and looks ready to pounce, try not to judge – she’s probably 16-years-old, overworked, underpaid, and has a call time before sunrise the next day.

All outfits by Jack London Photos by Paul Motherwell

Men’s fashion

27

Food & drinks TASTY ORGANIC RAW VEGAN GLUTEN-FREE FAIRTRADE Find us at: RMIT city campus food court Building 8 Level 4 360 Swanston St Melbourne

OPEN:

10.30am - 3.30pm every weekday during semester

28

Photos taken from the MET Welcome Back Carnival party.

All photos by Jamie Theodore For more information on the RMIT Major Events Team www.facebook.com/rmitmet

Neighbourhoods across the country will be selling and salvaging household goods at the national Garage Sale Trail, which rolls into Melbourne this month.

A group of young people from Bondi came up with a creative and entrepreneurial solution to the growing amount of waste and landfill in Australia – a mass garage sale.

The Trail was launched in March 2010 to alleviate the scourge of illegal dumping on the streets of Bondi in Sydney by encouraging locals to sell all their old stuff at the same time.

Founder and director Daryl Nichols said the stunt saved about 15 shipping containers of trash and treasure from landfill and pumped about $100,000 into the local economy. Today the trail has expanded and is wheeling around the country. With 7.4 million garages in Australia, there’s a lot of potential trash to be saved and money to be made.

As well as also being good for the environment, Sustainability Victoria CEO Anita Rope explains that garage sales are a great way of re-using our precious resources so that they don’t end up in landfill.

“It was about creating awareness of the dumping prob lem, promoting re-use and bringing everyone together in a grassroots community event.” Ms Rope said.

Yumi Stynes, Garage Sale Trail ambassador

“This is a real community event, so we’re encouraging people to host their own or join-up with their neighbours, local club, church and mates to host a sale,” Daryl Nichols said.

“It’s a great way of de-cluttering your cupboards and making a little extra pocket money,” he said.

It’s free to participate. Simply log onto www.garagesaletrail.com.au to register or download the Garage Sale Trail App.

Carrie Sze

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RMIT arts events

With art exhibitions, workshops and performances underway in RMIT Link Arts there’s a massive range of opportunities for RMIT students to sink their teeth into. Here’s what’s happened already and what’s coming up for you to get involved in.

Theatre show

RMIT Link Arts & Culture puts on three stage shows each year and all students are invited to take part. The first show for 2011 is shaping up to be the biggest one yet – it’s a production of The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, a one-act play by Peter Handke and Gitta Honegger which takes place in a busy city square. All action, no dialogue, hundreds of characters, this play can feature as few as 25 actors, or as many as 450!

We managed to drum up a whole lot of actors at orientation, so now rehearsals are underway and planning is set in motion to stage the show outdoors in the grounds of RMIT. Keep a date free from 25 to 28 May, 8pm, and come along to see it. More at: www.link.rmit.edu.au/the_big_show

Help with residency overseas

There are loads of opportunities for artists – but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Our two ALAB (Arts Law/ Arts Business) workshops this Semester will help you out. On Wednesday 4 May at 3pm, hear a panel discussion from experts and arts practitioners who know all about Residencies and Travel for artists. At 4.30pm learn the secrets to making your resume stand out and applying for grants. Workshops are free but bookings are essential.

RSVP to jodie.lawson@rmit.edu.au

Exhibit your work in a fine arts gallery

Located in the vaulted basement of Storey Hall, right under RMIT Gallery, First Site Gallery is a unique space for student exhibitions. The gallery showcases new exhibitions every two weeks during semester and all current RMIT students are eligible to apply for a show. The deadline to apply for second semester shows is Friday 20 May. Contact Curator Simon Pericich if you would like more information on simon.pericich@rmit.edu.au If you would like to display your work on a smaller scale, there are two Artspaces on the city campus, which exhibit monthlong shows for free. For info on the Artspaces, contact jodie. lawson@rmit.edu.au

Release your true funk style

Every Saturday at the Multicultural Hub, RMIT Link Arts & Culture puts on free street dance classes for all RMIT students to take part in. Taught by a group of Melbourne’s best hip-hop dance teachers and suitable for all levels, these classes are what you need to take you to b-boy or b-girl glory. To enrol, email cassandra.scott@rmit.edu.au

Free lunchtime movies

Movies are screened at Kaleide Theatre, Building 8, Level 2, on Wednesday lunchtimes. On 13 April it’s Japanese animated flick Ponyo from the amazing Studio Ghibli (who also brought you Spirited Away and Howls moving Castle) and on 20 April it’s the film that got all the Oscar buzz, The Social Network.

Watch out for next month’s wild western film festival. The full program is listed at www.link.rmit.edu.au/freecinema

programs airing now on STUDIO A: LIVE on Monday nights at 8:30pm.

Tommy Little returns, bigger than ever, as host of the live variety show. The charming host and comedian has been taking Australia by storm, with sell out shows and guest appearances.

Join Tommy and the Studio A cast for a knock out season of exclusive interviews, celebrity guests, live sketches, stand-up acts, live music and much, much more. This is Studio A’s 5th Season.

IN PIT LANE: LIVE every Tuesday night at 9:30pm.

Now in its 15th year In Pit Lane is Melbourne’s most watched prime-time motor sport magazine show. It has a unique blend of humour, live interviews, race action and up to date local and international news. In Pit Lane brings its audience all the latest news from the world of motor sport with a special focus on the grassroots motor sports, the Asia-Pacific region, and the categories and series not usually covered by the mainstream media. In Pit Lane is a diverse mix of high performance motoring and motor sport news.

TOUGH TIMES NEVER LASTS; with Michael Kuzilney and Aleta Howe: Every Wednesday night at 9pm.

From the creators of A Life In Crime, Tough Times Never Last is an interview program that features a range guests who have battled adversity throughout their lives. Through their stories of personal struggles, professional failures, criminal mistakes, health problems and more, Tough Times inspires and demonstrates that no matter what adversity you face you can get through it. As Antenna Award winning host Michael Kuzilny says Tough Times Never Last, but tough people do!

underEXPOSED: Every Thursday night at 10pm.

This new Australian TV show promotes talented filmmakers through the presentation of rarely seen short films.

Sit back and relax while host Naomi Davis takes you on a roller coaster journey of unknown delights sure to inspire and excite.

If you want short films we’ll expose them! Tune in to underEXPOSED.

NOTE: Channel 31 is now found on Digital 44 30

BIG NEWS – RUSU Scavenger Hunt entries are NOW OPEN. What does a whole loaf of toast, a midnight naked swim in a fountain, campaigning FOR the slaughter of dolphins and a game of leap-frog down the length of Bowen Street have in common?

They can make you a WINNER. That’s what.

RMIT University, like other reputable higher education institutions, is steeped in tradition.

Part of this rich, exciting tradition is the chaotic and highly competitive annual RUSU Scavenger Hunt. Each year, students from various academic disciplines, social circles and clubs form teams and race around the city in a 24hour competition. There are HUGE cash prizes up for grabs and plenty of laughs and excitement to be had – it’s a great way to get to know your city AND your university with your closes uni mates!

Each team registers and pays an entry fee of $5 per player (all of this money is thrown back into the prize pool for the winning team). A book of clues is given out at the exact starting time and teams have 1 full day to complete as many tasks and gather as much evidence as they can to score as many points as possible. Every two hours RUSU posts bonus challenges through our facebook and twitter – our favourite bonus challenge from last year involved interrupting a Melbourne Uni accounting lecture! Madness ensues, nude students run across campus (check out the pix!) and it all ends in a huge party where we count the points and award the prizes!

So, get your friends together – entries for the massive SCAV HUNT 2011 will open Monday 11 April. Entry forms will be available from all RUSU information counters or online – payment per team is required at the time of registration (payment only in person).

For more info:

W: www.su.rmit.edu.au FB: www.facebook.com.au/RUSUpage T: @RMITSU E: danielle.mengel@rmit.edu.au

31

Book Reviews 13, rue Therese

The Road

By Elena Mauli Shapiro Headline Review ISBN: 9780755374229 RRP: $29.99 Reviewed by

By Cormac McCarthy Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9780330513005 RRP: $21.95 (other publishers available) Reviewed by

Sam van Zweden Sadly for Elena Mauli Shapiro, a clever gimmick alone does not make a book good. Being an absolute sucker for gimmicks – particularly visual ones – I was disappointed to find that this ambitious debut novel failed to pull me in.

As a young girl, Shapiro came upon a keepsake with pictures and letters belonging to a Louise Brunet. As an adult, she has fictionalised the owner of this box, using its contents to tell a story. This idea appealed to me and turned out to be quite sweet.

Set in the first half of the twentieth century, 13, rue Therese is frame structured by Trevor Stratton, an American scholar who comes across the keepsake in his office drawer. As Stratton goes through the box, we are shown his ‘findings’ through ‘documentation’. The artefacts form a visual component, along with Stratton’s recounting the owner’s story. This is a tale brimming with sex, impulsiveness, confusion, death and all in equal parts.

The images throughout are engaging, anchoring the otherwise scattered narrative. I like to see an author brave enough to play with form in her first novel; unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to realise that this is pretty much the best the book has to offer.

It’s hard to figure out whether the confusion in the text is intentional or not. Having spread the story over parallel timelines, past and present chronology often became mixed up.

The book’s objective is to show that times collide and stories muddle, but I felt that much of the confusion was unnecessary – more so the result of bad structural planning than sweet, mingling storylines.

Shapiro’s decision to have a man narrate what is an incredibly personal tale of a woman discovering and enjoying her sexuality in the 1920s, seems strange. At times she uses masculine language that seems incongruous with this tale of female consciousness and sexual awakening. Louise – through Stratton – talks about her ‘waning menses’, ‘her hysterical womb’ and her anger becomes a ‘silent female storm’. Shapiro deserves points for pulling off what was certainly a difficult narration, though it did suppress what could have been a lovelier story.

Where Shapiro opts for simplicity, the prose shines. A man who wishes for a female child but has produced only boys, ‘his life is continuously saturated in boyness’ is a prime example, but unfortunately this isn’t enough to instill order and coherence to the messy narrative.

This debut novel from Elena Mauli Shapiro has a great visual gimmick and this may just be enough to get you to the end.

Moments of great writing are there, but overall the execution is fumbled, and ultimately this novel seems overly ambitious.

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Morgan Benson During the summer, amidst the snowstorm of books I collected and read to pass the time, I was recommended Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by a friend of mine. His praise for the novel came with an assurance that it was no taut, page-turning thriller. Having read McCarthy’s incomparable No Country for Old Men, thriller was what I thought I’d get. The Road was summarised in The Times as “a work of such terrible beauty, that you will struggle to look away”, an assessment I found to be most apt. McCarthy captures with lyrical beauty, the incandescent relationship of a father’s struggle to protect his son – a relationship that forms the backbone of this masterpiece.

The story takes place within a post-apocalyptic future, in what was once the most prosperous country on earth. Two characters exist in McCarthy’s narrative: The Man and The Boy. Names are never applied to the characters, which heightens the desperate quality of the relationship between the weary travellers.

Nothing matters within the scarred and ashen world beyond survival, and the relentless trek along the road to “The South”.

Other survivors of McCarthy’s apocalyptic world constantly plague the man and the boy. Marauding gangs roam the remaining roads in search of food and gasoline, while the cannibalistic “Blood Cults” march through the barren wastelands, in search of people to enslave and to eat. For the father and his son, the world is a place to be viewed with caution and fear, with every day representing a painful struggle for survival. Always starving, always cautious and aware, the father knows only one thing; he must protect his son, for if this child “is not the word of God, then God never spoke”.

The simplicity of the story and McCarthy’s minimalist writing style serve to illuminate the powerful bond that exists between the father and son, as their world literally crumbles around them.

The Road is certainly not a light read, but for those looking for a dark, beautifully written and often inspiringly tragic novel, you need look no further. If you approach this novel properly and manage to come to terms with the starkness of McCarthy’s writing, The Road proves to be one of the most rewarding short novels I have come across, in both its beauty and its atrocity.

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