ISSUE 3
THIS IS...
DANDY : a collection of talents, thoughts, ideas, inspirations, aspirations, desires, hopes, trends and traditions based on the gay lesbian bisexual transgender intersex queer community of Sydney. DANDY : a magazine designed to showcase the initiative and talent of our community. It fills an inexcusable gap in the media. DANDY : it's not an oiled, buff, beefcake magazine. It isn't thinlyveiled porn. We are curious, interested, pleasing to the eye.
no
ote
Holla bitchez! Welcome back to DANDY! This issue marks our third edition of Dandy, and what an adventure it has been so far! This issue of Dandy we talk being raised in a same sex family, chat to Dion Lee and Rafael Bonachela, Brendan Maclean, Christine Manfield, Mel Buttle and many others. Thank you all for the support so far, our readership gets bigger each issue and we love what we do. Dandy is always on the look out for new writers and talents so please hit us up if you have any ideas!
MWAZELTOFF!
scr XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
N0 3 DANDY IS sebastian andreassen cyna strachan RICHARD SAWYER
COVER IMAGE Jack terrey
THANKS TO KAINE SULTAN BABIJ, RAFAEL BONACHELA, Chris Browne , PATRICK CASEY, TRAVIS COOK, ASH CORBETT ,David DOBSON, JACK DUNBAR , SAMUEL HODGE , TERRENCE HUMPHREYS, jAMES LILLYCOT, ELLIOT LAUREN, DION LEE,HARRY LEVY, APRIL LONG, Brendan Maclean, CHRISTINE MANFIELD, John Paine, Michelle Retford, JAMES SAUNDERS, JASON SCHembri, Katherine Sherrie, LUCY TANN, Jake TerreY, CARL TINDALL, JONNY SEYMOUR, MARCUS WHALE.
CONTRIBUTORS James BesanAlle, Mel Buttle, Pat Bateman, Liam Casey, Tessa Curran, Adam France, Jack Freestone, Robert Grigor, Elise Ho, ADEN KNAAP, Ellen Porteus, ROWAN SAVAGE, Monique SChafter, Ashley Scott, Lucy Tann, Ben Walker.
CONTENTS
N
0
02-04 Opinion Piece Monique Shafter 05-06 Talks Gay Mel Buttle 07-09 Pride and Politics Friends with No Benefits 10-11 Reviews 105-106 Homoscopes Zodiac Marmalade
N2 0
14-17 18-21
22-27 28-31 32-35
Queering Rearing Something Stupid Brendan Maclean The Spice Queen Christine Manfield Collarbones Twenty10
N3 0
40-43 The Athlete James Saunders 44-47 The Lawyer April Long 48- 51 The Dancer Kaine Sultan Babij
N4 0
54-63 64-77 78-81
Art Of Collabration Rafael Bonachela and Dion Lee Raw
Cleveland’s 82-104 Esime Aves Riends Eam Be
N
0
- WRITTEN BY MONIQUE SHAFTER -
TOTES GAY, GAY-ISH, PRETTY GAY EXCEPT WHEN TRICKED BY AN ANDROGYNOUS HOTTIE?
For the past 12 years I’ve only had sex and relationships with women, so it’s pretty safe to say I dine exclusively at the Y. I’ve only ever fallen in love with girls, but I still find men attractive and occasionally fantasise about them. Manly men. Not even feminine ones. Does that dilute my gayness? There are so many different levels of human attraction — emotional and physical, romantic and sexual, fantasy and real - that the labels used to signify which team we bat for don’t really capture the full story. In the real world I dig chicks so I tick the L box, but I’m conscious my sexuality isn’t so black and white. We queers wave the rainbow flag after all. Some instincts you act on and some are better left to fantasy because the idea is more attractive than the reality. I guess it’s the same as lesbians who get off on gay boy porn. You’re probably not gonna go there, but for some reason it’s still a turn on. Some folks might say that means you’re a bit bi, but does it count if you don’t want to fuck guys in real life? I have no idea.
THE MORE FOLKS I SPEAK TO THE MORE I REALISE HOW SEXUALLY COMPLICATED WE ALL ARE. EVERYONE FITS SOMEWHERE ON THE SPECTRUM BETWEEN GAY AND STRAIGHT AND IT’S NO BIGGY IF YOU SLIDE AROUND A BIT, BE IT IN YOUR HEAD OR IN YOUR BED. I have gay boyfriends who pash their straight girlfriends on the dance floor whenever the party goes off. I have lesbian pals in their 30s who have hooked up with guys just to double check they’re not missing out on anything. In some instances this has totally reaffirmed their gay identity, in other cases they’ve come out as bi. But it’s perfectly cool to taste-test a bit of man/lady love. Very few of us are gold-stargays who as youngsters had the certainty of a 100 percent homo identity. Most of us had awkward straight sex first. Most of us didn’t know what we were doing. Some of us still don’t. My first sexual experiences were with dudes and they definitely weren’t unpleasant, just boring. I didn’t realise how awesome sex could be until I got down with the ladies. It was the heart and hormones smashing together at once that made it amazing. I only discovered what I liked after allowing myself to experiment. One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed over the past few years is how my trans male friends have totally smashed through the sexuality pigeonholes. I know a number of trans guys, who prior to transitioning identified as lesbians, only to discover their sexual attraction to men after starting on T. Some now identify as bi, some as gay men, and some identify as straight even though their lover is a woman who in any other circumstance would identify as a lesbian. It’s all so ambiguous. I love it. When it comes to sexual orientation, labels are things we can only stick on ourselves because only we know what we want, what we don’t want, or what we might want at any given time. It’s all very colourful.
TALKS
GAY
My name is Mel Buttle and I am a fag hag. I’ve been hagging it up since approximately 2003, with over ten years of experience as a fag hag, I feel like it’s time to share my story with those considering a career in fag haggery. Firstly answer yourself this question, are you ready to spend every Friday night holding his satchel while he dances to ‘Fantasy’ by Mariah Carey, well if he likes Mariah, she may not be your fag’s spirit diva, but regardless, you’ll need to start doing bicep curls to build up arm strength for carrying your fag’s man satchel, pushing your way though the crowded dance floor of gay bars and you’ll need upper body strength to fight off lesser women wanting to cut your grass and hag it up with your fag. Are you willing to do this? Well, then you’re ready to be a fag hag.
My first official fag hag duties were to a guy called Adam, who was my best friend when I was studying drama-teaching, surprise! We were all each other had, I was not girly enough to be in the girls’ group and he was shunned by the boys, thus an intensely symbiotic fag hag relationship was born. Adam came out to me in second year, by using our code. Whenever we’d each scored a mad pork we’d say ‘it rained at my house last night’. Subtle and so unnecessary, but if you can’t have a secret language with your gay best friend, what’s the point of living? One day, just before Theatre History, while we were lining up in the corridor outside the lecture hall, away from the others, as they couldn’t handle our combined fabulousness, Adam said, ‘Mel, it rained at my house last night, and it was raining men’. It took a while for the penny to drop; I was 21 and had just come out of an all girls boarding school, where ironically there wasn’t much homosexuality, well not overtly anyway. I mean what 16-year-old girl doesn’t sleep in her best friend’s bed and pat their hair all night to help send them off to sleep? Adam went bright red and looked down at his shoes, I punched him in the arm and shouted, ‘you’re gay! You mean to tell me we could’ve been talking about boys together this whole time!’ He was the first of many boys to come out to me, I honed my haggery on him. Here’s a comprehensive guide of what I know about being a fag hag.
You will need to be able to remember who’s fucked who, when and how good it was TO BE A GOOD FAG HAG. Maybe make a flow chart foR your bedroom wall to get you up to speed. Through a series of trial and error, I quickly learned what gay guys like to drink, preferably vodka with some kind of fizzy aspect - gay guys like to party. Never bring a gay man a rum and coke, it’s such a straight boy drink, not to mention the calories from the all the sugar. A safe bet for new fag hags is to buy your selected fag a Bacardi and lime, a vodka lemonade or a glass of champagne. Stick to simple, high alcohol content drinks and you’re sure to impress. Get across gay drama, you’ll have to memorise a lot of names. A lot of gay guys have similar names, my friend Josh has had three boyfriends called Tom. As a hag you’ll find yourself saying things like, ‘Tom Tom? Or veiny arms Tom?’ You will need to be able to remember who’s fucked who, when and how good it was in order to be a good fag hag. Maybe make a flow chart for your bedroom wall to get you up to speed. Grindr is a way of life now, expect to be pouring your heart out about your problems while he presses ‘load more guys’ and types ‘any cock pics?’ he’s not being disrespectful, it’s just how it is. He’ll be there for you later, when a super cute twink isn’t chatting to him from about 2.4km away. Know what a top, bottom and versatile is, then when you’re bored on the bus play Top or Bottom? Guessing how everyone on the bus would fuck. Perhaps my most important piece of wisdom for new hags is this, never forget that he is gay, he will always be gay, he will never ‘turn’ for you. Just enjoy the friendship, and never hope for anything more. You will just waste your twenties and end up emotionally eating your way though your thirties. Speaking from personal experience Mel? Um, no, stop it, you are, whatever.
PRIDE AND POLITICS
FRIENDS WITH NO BENEFITS
IF THERE’S ONE THING THAT UNITES ALL HUMANS – aside from growing confusion about Glee – it’s our desire to divide one another into categories. According to a study by the University of Massachusetts Amhert, babies as young as 9-months old differentiate faces of their own race better than those of other races. Gender divisions start even earlier, creeping into everything from behavioural patterns to number association. WRITTEN BY PAT BATEMAN
This impulse to categorise is rooted in our evolutionary biology: primitive humans that developed short-cuts for distinguishing friend from foe survived and spawned, while the more open-minded were eaten by woolly mammoths. But while this taxonomical instinct may be natural, “nature” Katharine Hepburn once observed “is what we are put in this world to rise above.” And so we have, sort of.
THE PROBLEM WITH ALL THIS PIGEONHOLING IS NOT JUST THAT IT IGNORES PEOPLE’S INHERENT INDIVIDUALITY AND HUMAN DIGNITY IT ALSO CREATES BLIND SPOTS TO THE INJUSTICE DIRECTED AT US BY MANY OF OUR SO-CALLED “ALLIES One of the over arching themes of the last century has been the long, painful process towards recognising that discrimination lives in the pigeonhole (yes, it cohabits with a pigeon) and that diversity is not just normal, it’s a good thing. Few have gained more from this process than our own community. “Gay is Good” was not just a useful slogan for the Gay Liberation movement of the 1970s; it was a direct assault on all the cruel classifications used to subjugate sexual orientation and gender identity minorities. So it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most egregious cases of pigeonholing and tribalism are found in our very own community. When a group dedicated to supporting gay monogamy was set up in January this year, I was stunned by how many rushed online to label its founder a “homocon” – a homosexual conservative – and lament the existence of this contrived subset of the LGBTI community. I can’t even print the abuse that’s hurled at the Liberal Party float at each year’s Mardi Gras parade because the asterix on my keyboard isn’t working. The coordinates for this LGBTI tribalism aren’t just political. Being gay and religious, for example, is a contradiction in terms for all too many. Bisexual? You’re probably just confused. Don’t talk like the gay characters on TV? You’re “straight-acting”, like some Uncle Tom for heterosexuals. For a run-down on some of the more extraordinary categorisations used for race and age in our community, just have a look at Grindr. The problem with all this pigeonholing is not just that it ignores people’s inherent individuality and human dignity, it also creates blind spots to the injustice directed at us by many of our so-called “allies”. Consider Julia Gillard: she sinks marriage equality and personally intervenes to help churches keep discriminating, and yet still many gay rights advocates refuse to take off their kid gloves because they cling to some outdated, unreciprocated loyalty to the Left. They save their activism for real power players like Cory Bernardi and Jim Wallace (cough). Again it goes well beyond politics. Rapper Azealia Banks got away scot free with calling Perez Hilton a “faggot” on twitter (her sales even increased) because she remains an icon for large parts of our community. The even more iconic Jodie Foster gives one bizarre Golden Globes speech and is forgiven for decades spent in the closet choosing not to empower less fortunate members of her community at a time when it really mattered. GLAAD even called her an “LGBT warrior”. Like our early human ancestors, our fledgling community – politically self-aware for the first time in the middle of a very dangerous century – once had to make quick distinctions between “friends” and “enemies” just to survive. But when marriage equality can be approved by a Conservative Prime Minister in Britain and rejected by an atheist Labor Prime Minister in Australia, it’s time to recognise that our “friends” are only as good as their last act of friendship and that our “enemies” are certainly not within.
CLOUD ATLAS
PAPER BOY
On paper, Cloud Atlas shouldn’t work. Based on a novel widely regarded as unfilmable and adapted by the directorial trio of Andy and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), this 171-minute-long film frequently courts cinematic disaster.
Directed by Lee Daniels (Precious) Paper Boy is set in Florida 1969 when a racist sheriff is murdered and Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) is convicted. Journalists Ward Jan (Matthew McConaughey) and Yardley Adcheman (David Oyelowo) travel to interview Van Wetter in his death cell.
Aden Knaap
The film’s labyrinth of wildly divergent plots, genres, periods and locations seem to confirm its potential unwieldiness. Hopping between six stories – from a 19th-century seafaring epic to the passionate correspondence between two young men in interwar Britain, to the absurd escape of a band of geriatrics, to the futuristic sci-fi ‘Neo-Seoul’ to the tribal conflicts of a post-apocalyptic island – the plot hurtles along at a breakneck pace. And yet somehow Cloud Atlas works. Visually the film is beautiful, from seductive panoramas of island wilderness to haunting visions of a dystopian future, with the multiple stories masterfully stiched together, ensuring the film remains exhilarating. Mirroring the narrative’s concern with human continuity, each actor appears and reappears throughout the six stories, changing age, gender and (controversially) race along the way. Tom Hanks alone manages to squeeze in appearances as an Irish gangster swathed in gold chains, a tattooed tribesman, a venal landlord complete with oversized prosthetic nose and a doctor who appears to have taken his fashion cues from a leprechaun. Exploiting this, Hugh Grant finally displays interest in being taken seriously as an actor, adopting perhaps the most effective means possible of doing so – not looking like Hugh Grant. Cloud Atlas is wildly ambitious, desperately philosophical and unapologetically extravagant. But ultimately it’s all the better for it.
4 stars Cloud Atlas opens February 28.
Cyna Strachan
The journalists are accompanied by Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) a woman in love with Van Wetter and Ward’s brother Jack Jenson (Zac Efron). Bless is determined to prove Van Wetter’s innocence (although it’s clear he’s a weirdo) bringing tack and slutiness from the word go. I found myself disappointed when realising I was only forty minutes into Paper Boy as it’s all over the place. The film starts off with Anita (Macy Gray) narrating the racial aspects behind the murder, with the film then focusing more on the relationship between Bless and Jenson, and everything in between. Chopping between character backstories, Jenson and Ward’s family issues, alligators, urinating on people’s faces, hey it even touches on S&M. Paper Boy tries to focus on too much, with the story becoming lost. However. there are some strong performances that must be commended. Nicole Kidman pulls off the slutty Bless courageously, keeping a straight face whilst being instructed to touch herself in front of three other men, in jail. John Cusack is great as the crazy Hillary Van Wetter and I must say Zac Efron is developing into a dreamboat. The film is tacky, a little boring but a bit fun in a 1970s dirty porno kind of a way.
2.5 stars Paper Boy opens February 28.
In our first issue of Dandy we interviewed young filmmaker Damian Dunstan about making a documentary about the private lives of Sydney’s Grindr users. Over the course of nine months the project has developed into a 8 part webseries, focusing on the stories of three Sydney based twenty something Grindr users. Damien Dunstan spent two months filming, focusing on getting emotionally raw confessions from his subjects around sex, rejection, body image and race. “Many people think Grindr is just about sex. Really, it’s so much more than this. Because people are so brutally honest on the app, Grindr really shines a light on our most immediate personal desires and beliefs, not all of which are as harmless as we would want to believe.” In the four years since its release, Grindr has experienced an exponential rise in popularity. The app is used by over 3.5 million people worldwide, 198,000 of which are based in Sydney making it Grindr’s fourth largest city. This web series marks the first documentary on the social impact of the app. “We’ve facilitated a lot of people meeting that have never met before,” Joel Simkhai - the creator of Grindr - states in the web series. “For me that’s the real purpose of the app.” Make sure you check out The Grindr Guide, which will be released on youtube on the 3rd of March 2013, the Sunday after the Mardi Gras parade. @TheGrindrGuide facebook.com/thegrindrguide youtube.com/thegrindrguide
C O MI N G S O O N
THE GRINDR GUIDE
2 N 0
2
QUEERING REARING?
WRITTEN BY
R O WA N S AVA G E
THE FACTS: I WAS CONCEIVED AND BORN IN A LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP. I HAVE TWO SISTERS. WE WERE BORN IN ENGLAND IN THE 80S, WHEN LESBIAN PARENTING WAS TAKING OFF THERE, AND WE HAD LOTS OF FRIENDS IN A SIMILAR SITUATION. IN AUSTRALIA, THERE AREN’T SO MANY ADULTS WHO WERE BORN INTO A QUEER RELATIONSHIP, ALTHOUGH THE NUMBER’S GROWING ALL THE TIME. MY DONOR STILL LIVES IN ENGLAND, AND WE STAY IN TOUCH, BUT WE DON’T HAVE A ‘PARENTAL’ RELATIONSHIP. UM, I ENJOY SUNSETS AND LONG WALKS ON THE BEACH?
In other words, notice that I just gave you a chunk of intimate autobiographical information. When you come from a queer family, your life can become public property: casual acquaintances think they have a right to interrogate you about how your family came into existence. It doesn’t occur to most that they might be a bit taken aback if I asked them what position their parents were in when they were conceived. That said, it can feel good to let the world know that we exist, and to give any help that we can to prospective parents, or to parents or kids who might have questions.
THE ONLY THING THAT’S VITAL IS LOVE
No-one is really normal. The important thing for me is not to claim that queer families are ‘normal,’ but to challenge the idea that being normal is something we should aspire to. Nor is there a ‘right way’ to do queer parenting. As it currently stands, if queers want to have kids it usually has to be planned, and that often means that parents have put a lot of thought into how they want to go about having children and how they want to raise them. In my book, that can only be a good thing. But queer families come into existence and organise themselves in all kinds of different ways, and that’s something to be celebrated – and something exciting, to see the evolution of the thing we call a ‘family’! If there’s anything my own experience has taught me, it’s that biology has nothing to do with family. The only thing that’s vital is love. People (ignorant people) sometimes ask whether growing up in a queer family can ‘make the kids gay.’ I don’t believe that sexuality is biological, but I don’t believe it’s necessarily a choice, either – besides which, gay and straight aren’t the only possibilities. My parents always made it clear that, no matter what my sexual or gender identity, I would be welcomed and accepted for who I was – so, whatever that might be, there was never a question of repression or denial. Some ‘gaybies’ will identify as queer and some won’t, but in either case, we’ve grown up in a queer environment, and (often) experienced ourselves, in our formative years, as belonging to a queer community. As greater numbers of ‘gaybies’ hit adulthood, this might lead to fruitful questions about what ‘the queer community’ is.
I hope that, as a result of my family background, I’m a more compassionate person, someone who thinks about ethics, who’s able to empathise with others who experience injustice and discrimination, able to stand up and be the voice that identifies that injustice and calls it to account. I don’t do any of these things perfectly, but they’re values that I hold for myself, and ways that we can all make the world a better place. I’ve sometimes been asked to speak at events alongside people who are opposed to queer families. I never agree to do this, because there aren’t two sides to this story – not two legitimate sides, anyway. I don’t believe I should have to justify my family, as if homophobic discrimination is one acceptable perspective among many.
Because I had lesbian mothers I was bullied a lot in the early years of high school, making that a very difficult time for me – and the school had no idea how to deal with it. I hope it’s different today, and I think it will be for some, but not for everyone. Things are changing in positive directions, and it seems like a lot of ‘gaybies’ now will grow up in a situation where there’s some critical mass and where society knows about their existence; but on the other hand, for all the prejudice I encountered in the schoolyard, in the 80s and 90s no-one used ‘that’s so gay’ as a pejorative, so we can’t assume that we’re steadily moving toward a less homophobic environment. On a number of occasions in my adult life, I’ve run into guys who teased or bullied me at school, and they’ve apologised, and sometimes explained that it was because of their denial about their own queer sexuality. I was glad that they apologised, and sorry to hear about their struggles – but it’s also important to recognise, for myself, that I’m not here to absolve anyone, or to be written into other people’s narratives about their own journeys.
WE WERE UNDER PRESSURE TO PRESENT A PERFECT IMAGE
Growing up in a queer family we were under pressure to present a perfect image to the world, because we were always aware that any problems we might have could be used as ammunition by homophobes and bigots. But queer parents and their kids are human, and we’ll experience the issues and the hard times that come to everyone, for one reason or another, in the messy places that are human society and the human psyche. Like all humans, the forms those difficulties take will be shaped by our family background; like all humans, some of them will be around the issues that critics of queer families target (gender and sexuality, particularly). The so-called debate often goes on as if those of us in the best position to know what it’s like to grow up in a queer family aren’t around to speak in our own voices, as if we’re invisible. Just by being here we can show that our families are in no way inferior to stereotypical heterosexual families; but it’s also important that people from queer families don’t feel that as a burden, trying to live up to an impossible ideal of perfection.
In all their glorious humanity, the love that creates queer families and binds them together is so clear that I’ve often wondered how people can stare that in the face, and yet call them wrong; I’ve often wished that society was a more accepting place. I have never once wished that my family was anything other than what it is. A more supportive, loving environment, I couldn’t imagine.
SOMETHING
STUPID
WRITTEN BY LIAM CASEY PHOTOS BY ASH CORBETT
WHETHER YOU REALISE IT OR NOT, YOU’VE ENCOUNTERED BRENDAN MACLEAN. YOU’VE HEARD HIM PRESENTING ON TRIPLE J, OR SINGING ONE OF HIS OWN SONGS ON FBI. AT THE VERY LEAST, YOU’VE SEEN ONE HIS WITTY TWEETS IN YOUR FEED. WITH A ROLE IN ONE OF THE YEAR’S BIGGEST FILMS AND A NEW ALBUM RECORDED WITH ONE OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST RESPECTED PRODUCERS, HE’S ABOUT TO GRAB A LOT MORE OF YOUR ATTENTION. Emerging from the Sutherland Shire six or seven years ago in a cavalcade of grandma cardigans and dangly earrings, Brendan Maclean has carved out a niche for himself as a lovably weird poster boy in Australia’s queer and artistic communities. With a handful of singles and years of experience performing around Australia, Maclean has learned some hard lessons in being an unsigned musician. However, he’s also used his platform as a broadcaster and writer to advocate for independent artists: he’s publicly (and often unpopularly) railed against institutions like Newtown’s Sandringham Hotel and Emergenza Festival for taking advantage of young performers. He recently shared a story about how he got duped by a company called Off The Record who charged him $700 for appearing on a compilation CD. (He thought the $700 was his fee.) “Everybody wants your money,” he says flatly. “If people believe in your product, they can take the money later: they can take a percentage. It’s what a good agent does, it’s what a good producer does; because they believe in your work and want to work with you. But these people, they want to take your money and see you fail so they don’t have to give it back. They do not care about the artists that they’re slapping on the compilation discs. “For so long, I had been surrounded by good people: Triple J, FBi, 4ZZZ, 3RRR. I didn’t expect someone to be looking to fuck me over.” Still, he says, it’s better to learn these lessons sooner rather than later. He’s got a new record in the works and, he reckons, “if it goes well, I’m certain other people are gonna wanna grab the cash”. For now, the cash is coming from Pozible, a crowd-funding service that allows the public to pledge money to projects they believe in.
that’s my job to entertain people “I used to hate Pozible,” he admits. “I really did. I used to make a lot of fun of it: Oh, I need to buy some eggs, can I have $50,000 please? [At first], I don’t think we understood what it was for; we just thought, Oh, this is different, and this isn’t a record label. Yay! Have my money! I’m glad I waited a little while because I feel like I’m being a bit more responsible with it. I think people were running on the goodwill of their fans, but now, I like that I’m showing you my budget. Everything that I will pay for, here it is, and I will give you a great product in the end.” The response was so positive that Maclean quickly bumped the project from a 7 track EP to a full-length album. The lead single is Stupid, a mid-tempo pop song that Maclean wrote on his iPad, and the whole thing’s being produced by Paul Mac. “ It’s Jens Lekman for an even more pop audience,” Maclean explains. “I want to try making people dance – because I love Robyn, I love Kylie and all that – but I hope people still hear the songs, as well as the studio sound.” Those who pledge money can be rewarded with anything from a digital download to a private performance by Maclean in their own home. At $500 to $800 (depending on whether he has to fly to get to you or not), these performances are a steal, as Maclean is about to become a hot commodity. He’s playing Klipspringer in Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the Great American Novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Among his co-stars: Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. “Every day was magical,” he says of his time on set. Even though the film’s release date has been pushed back, Maclean assures us “it’s going to be incredible. Baz is my hero. I trust that whatever he’s doing, whatever the delays are for, will make the movie better.” He’s also wrapped up a role in Tracks with Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver (“I play some cunty city guy, a wanky student from Melbourne – which kind of embodies me completely”) and is considering a few theatrical projects. But that said, 2013 is going to be a year of music for him. “I’m sitting back from Triple J,” he says. “I’ve presented music; now, I want to be presented. It just feels like it’s my turn, my year to do something incredible.” Although Maclean is confident that right now, his focus is music, he doesn’t know where that focus will shift in future. “I’m an entertainer,” he says with a shrug. “That’s my job: to entertain people. However that is, I’ll find it. Right now, it’s music. Maybe I’ll start dancing more on stage, I dunno. As long as the people in the audience are happy, I’ll be happy.”
WRITTEN BY
ELISE HO
In what must be a source of satisfaction for her, Christine Manfield has confounded the expectations of numerous Asian diners by appearing at their table when, impressed with her food, they have asked to talk to the chef. They look, she says, with “absolute shock” at her face, her white skin, and they exclaim, “You’re not Asian – how do you know about all this stuff?”
Manfield has long been one of Sydney’s most respected chefs. A crack hand at cooking with chilli and spice, Manfield was always a little less ordinary for growing up on meat and three veg then making her name cooking food from regions not native to her. For much of the time though only food hobbyists and spice lovers knew much about her work. Then, last year, she entered the public consciousness with her stylishly architectural rendition of the Golden Gaytime ice cream on the finale of MasterChef. It was a signature dessert with a fabulous name – “Gaytime Goes Nuts” – and it audaciously announced its creator’s talent. Only someone with pluck would provide the pressure test dish for a MasterChef finale after the test had been so definitively set by Peter Gilmore’s phenomenal snow egg in 2010. But then Manfield seems comfortable being bold. Manfield’s cooking is characteristically ballsy. The critic Pat Nourse wrote of eating at Universal: “It’s no-retreat, no-surrender all the way, with fullbore flavours in just about every mouthful, pop, pop, pop.” Hers isn’t food eaten, half-tasted, in the background to conversation. “I like assertive flavours,” says Manfield, “I don’t like wimpy food.” She’s known for producing vibrantly multicultural, complexly detailed fare. No dish originates from a single culinary culture; her ever-changing menu is a tapestry woven of threads gathered from all her extensive travels. Manfield’s knowledge of the cuisines from which she draws is deep, informed by travel and research. She stresses the importance of integrity when cooking like she does – of being authentic to the palate in the nuance of flavour – but she doesn’t bind herself to following age old rules.
“It’s flavours and techniques that I’m very drawn towards, but I don’t always use them in a traditional way. I’ll take techniques and ideas but then I’ll twist them and turn them, take them off in a different direction.” “It’s about broadening parameters for everybody,” Manfield often says. It’s about pushing past the boundaries of cultural and culinary preconceptions until diners who trust her enough to relax into her food – and it takes more trust than usual to eat the food of an individualistic chef – start to see the world painted from Manfield’s universal palette. “I essentially cook the food I like to eat,” says Manfield, who doesn’t want to be “boxed in” to any simple culinary description. It makes for an idiosyncratic and unpredictable dining experience – but, it would seem, one that’s always exhilarating. In an industry dominated by men at the top, Manfield never doubted her ability to succeed. “I’ve always associated myself with strong women,” she says, and when she saw women like Stephanie Alexander running some of the best restaurants in the country in the mid-1980s, she decided to give her dream a go. She’s seen the “invisible sort of ceiling” that seems to prevent women from becoming restaurant owners but it’s “out there somewhere” for Manfield and not above her head. She’s become the sort of role model that she looked up to when she started: the simple example of a woman who made it. Manfield’s also not afraid to be more than one minority at a time. She placed Universal in Darlinghurst because the location attracted her “for where it is within our gay village, our community.”
She’s “always been very honest and very out,” believing that laying her cards on the table would beat rumours before they started. It worked: she’s never had any problems, from colleagues or the media. She’s cheekily provocative too – “Gaytime Goes Nuts” is proudly so named to force customers to articulate it, and to reduce those who can’t to pointing abashedly. Manfield owes much of her talent to being “blessed with a very finely tuned palate.” She has naturally always been “able to pick up the nuance of flavour” and “able to know intrinsically what works together” – an intuitive sense that she doubts can be fully taught. You can’t become a successful chef on the back of talent alone, though.“There’s a whole lot of different factors, it’s not just about how good your palate is,” Manfield explains. “There’s a whole other side of how resilient you are, how mentally, physically and emotionally tough you are... You’ve got to be able to constantly challenge your own ideas and invent, and also re-invent. You can’t stay static.” Now, re-invention is beckoning again. Recently, Manfield announced that she will be closing Universal in April to pursue other projects. Universal was never meant to be around for
long; it was intended as the bright, brief punctuation to end her time in the restaurant business. “I came into [Universal] with an exit strategy because I knew it was my swan song, my finale,” she says. When the restaurant runs, Manfield is omnipresent, working in the kitchen and watching the execution of every dish, every night. But she has other projects that have kept her dynamic and inspired. “If you’re consumed within [your business], you go nowhere, and your world becomes very small.” She writes prolifically (she has published seven award winning food books), teaches, and hosts gastronomic tours, mostly to India, and it’s time for these projects to take over centre stage from the restaurant. Manfield’s world now is going to be far from small, and no longer centred on a brightly spice coloured restaurant in Darlinghurst. “I sort of always said in my old dotage I wanted to just be a gypsy,” muses Manfield. Leading bands of travellers, following the scent of spice and the leads of local bon vivants – it’s not hard to picture the unconventional Manfield perfecting that transformation.
- PHOTOS BY ELLIOT LAUREN -
IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE YOU COULD DIE AT ANY MOMENT WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND IN LOVE AND REALLY IMMATURE ABOUT IT.
JAMES BESANVALLE CHATS TO MARCUS WHALE AND TRAVIS COOK FROM COLLARBONES.
Their emoticons caught each other’s eyes across a crowded Hilary Duff chat room, but little did they know this would be the start of a very fruitful friendship. It was a post about Animal Collective from Adelaide’s Travis Cook that caught the attention of Sydney’s Marcus Whale. From there, they quickly discovered a mutual passion for music and a lot more in common than their love for Hilary Duff. It wasn’t long before these interstate friends began collaborating predominately online, eventually establishing themselves as the “long distance internet teen pop” sensation, Collarbones. Tell me, how exactly did you guys meet? T: I can’t really remember the moment… M: You wrote a post about Animal Collective and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a cool kid!’ And I went to his profile on this forum and saw that he was from Australia and he was sixteen and a boy. So I was like, ‘Nice, someone I can relate to!’ And then we started talking on MSN messenger, where all the magic happens. How do you collaborate? T: The majority of the communication is still done online to this day but we just see each other a lot more because we’re touring, so we have more chances to make stuff. Not that we do it all the time, because we prefer just to hang out…
...MAYBE THAT WOULD FULFIL PEOPLE’S THOUGHTS OF US BEING THE AUSTRALIAN VERSION OF t.A.T.u When I downloaded some of your tracks from your SoundCloud, the genres came up as Gothic Rock, Slow Jam and Porn Groove. How would you guys describe your sound? T: Porn groove is probably the most accurate out of those. What does that even mean? M: Just the kind of groove that you hear in porn! Who had the new album name first - you guys or Kesha? Together: Us! T: After we had already named,I found out that Kesha had a single coming out really soon called ‘Die Young’ and I was like, ‘How about that’. M: And it was released on the same day as our album! Crazy! I’m not going to sue her though… And why ‘Die Young?’ M: I suppose it’s more like an implication than literal. There’s a lot of dramatic material on the album, which is about the extremity of youth experience and naivety. The supreme feelings that you experience all the time when you’re hormonal, when you don’t understand what it is to not be loved back – and it all seems like the end of the world. It almost feels like you could die at any moment when you’re young and in love and really immature about it. Do you have a favourite off the new album? T: I’m still pretty keen on Hypothermia M: It’s (Hypothermia) the most effective all-rounder and the song I’m going to feel the least embarrassed about in the future. Lyrically it’s the most polished, I felt sincere writing the lyrics.
On a scale of 1-10, how much do you guys try to be the Australian version of t.A.T.u? T: Last night, we discussed doing a Tim and Eric surrealist sketch of Marcus and I making out, so maybe that would fulfil people’s thoughts of us being the Australian version of t.A.T.u. The noises will have to be a big part of it. M: It has to be really gross. T: Just really grotesque. Yeah, I think we could doa little bit more because we’re not quite as homoerotic as t.A.T.u. M: Travis has a girlfriend by the way. Well, t.A.T.u weren’t actually gay M: That’s right, it was all a sham! It was all a sexy sham... Marcus, you’ve said in the past that some of your songs have been about boyfriends and exes – Why do you think your songs about your ex haven’t been quite as popular as Taylor Swift’s? M: My ex boyfriends aren’t as famous as Taylor Swift’s ex boyfriends… yet! She went out with John Mayer and shit… I feel like I know more about Taylor Swift and her break ups than I do about some of my friends… You’ve remixed from Willow Smith to t.A.T.u… How do you decide what songs you’re going to cover? M: We haven’t actually covered anything in ages! We were going to do ‘Closer’ by Nine Inch Nails because I thought it would be hilarious. It would have this house sort of beat with the chorus saying, “I want to fuck you like an animal.” It’s really angsty so I thought if it had this really groovy house beat, it would just end up sounding like
normal diva house, but just a bit more obscene. You guys played at the Big Day Out this year – how was that? T: I DJed at the silent disco and it was kind of bizarre, but in a good way. I had to climb a ladder to get to my little stage. Animal Collective played before me and I had friends wearing the headphones dancing to whatever I was playing. Like a remix of Lana Del Rey singing, “My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola” and Linkin Park. It was fun! You’ve got some pretty funky moves when you’re playing, do you practise any of it beforehand? M: I have in the past practised dancing a bit. But I suppose I go to enough dance music shows these days that I just end up dancing there and using that. It’s not really practising. I guess it’s just like dancing in my room to music, if I feel compelled. T: Dancing around the house is practice enough for me!
M: Sometimes you just get overwhelmed. I think we’re both just constantly listening to music, too, and perhaps the impulse may arise. The latest one of those episodes – yeah, they’re kind of episodic – was ‘Emotions’ by Mariah Carey. I just rediscovered it in that moment and lost my shit. It was incredible. What’s on the cards in the near future? M: We have a lot of shows. We’re playing probably about 3 shows a week for the next couple of weeks, then we’ve got a few weeks off and then we’re doing a tour with PVT and then a bunch more tours. Any goals for this year? T: Apart from supporting Beyonce, I’d really like us to tour overseas somewhere. America, Europe, anywhere really. M: All the places! I’d like to tour all of the places please.
TWENTY 10 Tucked away in a small side street of Chippendale, there is “a place to be you, with the support that you need” – that is the philosophy of Twenty10 the support service for young people of diverse genders, sexes and sexualities, their families and their communities. I talked to Terence Humphreys, about what goes on at Twenty10, and what they’re all about. Robert grigor talks to Terrence humphreys from twenty10
the general public believe that people come to TWENTY10 BECAUSE THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THEIR SEXUALITY OR GENDER.
With Twenty10 celebrating its 30th birthday last year, I began by asking Terence to tell me a little about the early days of the organisation, and where it all began. “Twenty10 was created in the early 80s by a group of social workers who recognised that there were a lot of homeless young gay men in Darlinghurst at the time.” The origins of the group’s name comes from the Darlinghurst postcode 2010, and initially it was created as a refuge, with a focus on housing and crisis housing. “It continued as a refuge service for many years, up until about 8 or 9 years ago, when it then turned to focus on expanding those services,” Terence explains. “Things like a drop-in program, counselling, and mentoring program, and the other services that we offer today, which act as a complete wrap around service.” These comprehensive support services and networks that Twenty10 offer are what it is best known for, yet even the term ‘support service’ can still appear a little vague or ambiguous, especially in the context of helping young people of diverse genders and sexualities.
“I think the general public believe that people come to Twenty10 because they have a problem with their sexuality, or gender. They may be exploring or questioning what gender or sexuality means to them, but often that’s not the main reason why they’re here. Often their problems are family, friends, school, housing or health related” Essentially, Twenty10 isn’t just a support service for people struggling with their identity, but also for the range of other hardships which may or not have a direct correlation to their sexuality. “Certainly we have clients who have other presenting issues, such as mental health issues, or problems with drugs and alcohol, and we often work with other services to provide an appropriate level of support.” Twenty10 is not just a single service, but more of a support network. “We can’t provide all those services, all the time; that’s outside the scope of the agency. But we can work in conjunction with other organisations to provide that support and make sure they get what they need.”
BUT WE’RE NOT A WE SUPPORT THE MAKE THEIR OWN
As I listen to Terence describe the organisation, it becomes clear the nature of their support is to help young people in helping themselves, and getting them back on their feet. “When clients come to Twenty10, they’re in charge of making the decisions about what support they need. Sometimes if you go to other services, they will do an assessment of you and then tell you what you need, whether you need counselling, or if you need to go to this group or person. But we’re not a prescriptive service. We support the young people to make their own decisions, and help them get the information that they need, so that they can make their own informed decisions.” However, while Twenty10 is thoroughly dedicated to the direct one-on-one support of their clients, they also maintain a strong social presence, and have a lot of interaction with the community. “We do a lot education within the community on LGBT issues,” Terence informs me, with reference to the Proud Schools program, the
anti-homophobia program that was still being trialled by the Department of Education at the time of writing, and Twenty10’s involvement with the project. “We also do a lot of training for the NSW Police, for people in the GLLO Program, which is their Gay and Lesbian Liaison Officers, as well as School Liaison Officers, and lots of other partnerships.” Being the Community Capacity Building Manager, and having a background in workplace training and adult education, Terence’s obvious passion for the work highlights that there are lot more behind-the-scenes efforts by Twenty10 than most people actually realise. As the conversation flows from Twenty10’s clients, to the staff that work here, Terence is quick to point out the huge role that volunteers play in the services provided by the organisation. “Volunteers play a really important role in enabling us to offer the level of support that we have here are Twenty10. Funding only goes so far,
A PRESCRIPTIVE SERVICE. THE YOUNG PEOPLE TO N DECISIONS
and there is always more support that we would want to offer, so it enables us to run a lot of different programs that we couldn’t do without volunteer support.” Another way Twenty10 has been able to expand its support services is through a merge with the Gay and Lesbian Counselling Service (GLCS), a decision that has been years in the making. “The two organisations used to cohabit in our old premises in Newtown, and they’ve also shared other resources and staffing. It was a long process, and it had to be weighed up and risk managed, with lots of consultations over a long period of time. Neither organisation wanted to potentially jeopardise the long term support that we offer the community by making a decision that would later come to grief.” The merge has allowed for an even broader range of LGBT services to come together under one roof.
“It might sound like a cliché, but what we’ve become is better than the sum of the parts.” There will be a rebranding of the combined organisation, but right now Terence assures me the primary focus is still on providing the very best in their support services. With scores of community support behind them, and an exciting new merge that is sure to see some big plans come into fruition, Twenty10’s plans for the future now look bigger and brighter than ever. After chatting with Terence, I’m filled with a warm, optimistic feeling, knowing that there are hard-working people like him at Twenty10, helping to make our community a safer, healthier and happier place.
www.twenty10.org.au
N
3 N 0
PROFILE
WRITTEN BY RICHARD K SAWYER PHOTOS BY JAKE TERREY
THE ATHLETE
Men often tell James that he doesn’t look Aboriginal. It’s that old line – “Where are you from?” – and when he tells them, they’re sometimes disappointed, “I thought you were Brazilian or African.” Usually, they don’t even recognise the racism bound up in their backhanded compliment. “I tell them they should meet my family. We’re not from the desert and we’re not from the Top End. We are from Western Victoria and we were one of the first groups to be taken over and nearly wiped out. So no, our faces aren’t on postcards, or tourism brochures. Until you spend time with us, you’re not going to know how we look. But my family is beautiful.” James’s father is a Gunditjmara man who was raised on the Lake Condah Mission. His mother, who is half Austrian-Scottish and half Wiradjuri, moved from the bush to become one of Australia’s first Aboriginal models. James, however, was raised in Queensland after his father left the family when he was seven. “It was hard. I had memories of my uncles and aunties down on the South Coast and we missed them a lot.”
Still, James insists he has a close extended family, “anytime someone would come to Queensland they would visit us.” When he was eleven, James and his younger brothers visited Lake Condah, to see his family and their traditional lands. These are some of his fondest memories. “If you’re an Aboriginal person in Australia, it is important to know where you’re from and have a connection to your country, because that is what makes you who you are.“ Back in Brisbane, James’s mother immersed the family in the local Aboriginal community. “My mother really pushed us to be involved. Too many Aboriginal people separate from the community. She knew that she wanted us to have a strong identity.” Perhaps that maternal desire was protective: school could be difficult for an Aboriginal kid and, as James explains, sometimes “kids just didn’t like it if you were Aboriginal.” James recalls walking with family to the bus stop and having people in cars yell out “filthy Abbos.” Somehow, he remains forgiving, “it didn’t ruin my perceptions of non-Indigenous people; I never thought that everyone was like that. I just thought that these people were uneducated and they’re missing out.”
Growing up, some of James’s role models were gay. “My mother had lots of gay friends. She hadn’t worked for twenty years; my father didn’t let her. So when she met these men who were living through the gay rights movement of the 1990s and were forging an identity, she became really close to them. She could see some common ground.” James would go to their houses for dinner and found himself enamoured of their lifestyles, ‘they had their own houses that they renovated, they had artwork, they travelled, they lived the life that I thought was cool. And they weren’t angry: a lot of the men I had been around in the past were so angry.” So coming out years later wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. James also had a gay older brother who had ”paved the way in the family” seven years earlier. James may have had a supportive family, but that didn’t make his first moves among the gay community easy. What he found was that coming out meant new ways of being boxed in. “Everyone in the gay community has a little box they get put in. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed – I had been my whole life. I thought the whole point of coming out was to be yourself. To go into a small, insular community so hung up on these labels … it made me slightly bitter. I felt like I didn’t belong to that community.”
At 19, though, an opportunity came that would radically reshape James’s attitude toward the gay community: a chance to play for the Sydney Convicts. “I heard they were going overseas to play in New York. I had two suitcases and $300 and I moved to Sydney to follow them.” What James found was that the Convicts offered a totally different gay world; one replete with men of every size and shape. “It’s great to be involved with people who aren’t judging you based on aesthetics; they just see you as a teammate. The Convicts helped me become more comfortable with myself as a gay man and so then in turn I could go into the gay community and not judge.” “You have to know who you are in order to function and survive in the gay community, because it can really chew you up and spit you out, especially in a city like Sydney.”
THE L AW Y ER
April grew up “gypsying” up and down the Central Coast; a childhood of fishing and sharing seafood with family. “I have a big family – four sisters and a brother – plus my cousins. I was never a lonely kid.” From a young age, April was encouraged to be proud of her culture. Spending time living with her grandfather strengthened her connection to her Aboriginal heritage. “For me, being Indigenous is all about community - connecting with others and sharing stories. Storytelling is such a powerful medium. I used to sit around as a kid and listen to my uncles’ stories. I found it so exciting; I was like a little sponge.” Her family’s stories all came from or were somehow about their land. “Being on country is such a special feeling. That is why I think the welcome to country is really, really important. Even now when I go to a new place, I want to be smoked and have that ceremony and feel welcomed on someone else’s land. Land is really critical.” “I don’t think Australia has really come to grips with how we are going to have coexisting rights to land from a legal perspective. How is that going to happen in a way that gives Aboriginal people meaningful ownership over land and allows them to engage in their cultural practices? And, at the same time, recognises that the land has to be shared?” April is starting this year as an Associate Lecturer in the Law Faculty at the University of New South Wales. She is also taking up a role as the Programs Manager for the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence. Last year, she helped found the National Indigenous Leadership Academy (NILA); an organisation that encourages young people to take social action around issues that fuel their passion in their local community. The Academy organises a leadership camp for young Indigenous people.
After the camp, the group keeps in contact through a social media platform similar to Facebook. “It lets people blog about action they are taking in their community and we have online hang outs to catch up.” April’s passion for Indigenous advocacy springs from her longstanding cultural pride. More difficult, though, has been her journey to embrace her sexuality. “I had a lot of internalised homophobia. I remember walking along talking to myself, saying ‘you are not going to be gay. You are not going to do this to your family.’” When she did come out, family reactions were initially negative; heartbreakingly, especially from her grandfather, “It was horrible. We didn’t talk for awhile.” Despite initial problems, her family has learnt to negotiate a place for April’s female partner. “It’s really interesting how my family has come around to where they are now. My grandfather and my partner are now really close.” “I was at my Grandfather’s golf club recently and one of his mate’s grandsons was trying to crack onto me. I ended up saying, you know, “I’m sorry, I’m gay, there’s no way.” And the guy wouldn’t believe me, “No you’re not!” he was saying, and he yelled over to my grandfather, “Arthur, is she gay?” And he said “Listen, son - she’s a homosexual! Now piss off!” Which I thought was really, really cute.”
April is also starting to get more involved in advocacy around same-sex rights, something she finds very exciting. “I marched in the Aboriginal Mardi Gras float last year. It’s a perfect way to say, ‘I’m proud of my sexuality but I’m also proud of my culture.’ I think I have a good relationship with the lesbian community in Sydney, now. Most of my friends are gay … Or they’re Aboriginal.“ Her most vocal advocacy to date, though, has focused on the law as it affects Indigenous Australians. “We need to remove the races power from the Constitution. It’s the only constitution in the world that still allows for discrimination on the basis of race. That’s not on the table yet, though. The first thing will be recognition of Indigenous Australians in a preamble to the Constitution.” “It will have no legal effect and I would like to see more substantive reform – perhaps an agreement making provision, as in the Canadian Constitution. But that’s way up the road. I think people get really frustrated with the little steps that have to happen, and so do I, but they’re really necessary.”
A campaign that April is particularly passionate about is justice reinvestment. which focuses on responses to crime. “At the moment, the response is imprisonment and we know that that doesn’t work, especially with Aboriginal juvenile offenders. So justice reinvestment encourages the spending of money on community programs that are preventative.” “There is absolutely an identity crisis within the Aboriginal community. What do we do now that we don’t wear laplaps and we don’t have spears? How do we live our lives and practice our culture in big cities? For a lot of young Aboriginal people they think, ‘my uncle has been to jail, my dad’s been to jail,’ there’s almost a family in jail waiting for them. I’m really passionate about young people not seeing prison as a rite of passage. People are referring to another stolen generation there are so many young people being imprisoned.”
THE DA N CER
Kaine has found a place where he fits completely. “I got a telephone call from Stephen Page. He said I had ten days to pack up and move to Sydney. If I did that, I could dance with Bangarra.” That phone call, in 2011, was the end of a long process of self-discovery for Kaine. A time in which he mapped out for himself what it meant to be a contemporary Aboriginal man – and a same-sex attracted man. Kaine was born into a rich melting pot of cultures. His mother is part Afghan and part Aboriginal. Born in Alice Springs, she moved to South Australia, where she met Kaine’s father, a Croatian Roman Catholic who had moved to Australia at seven. They fell in love, learned one another’s languages and had four children. “I grew up in a house full of culture. Our wallpaper was sheet music from the 1920s. My brothers and sisters and I would always dance and sing together. It was a really beautiful way to grow up.” Even though Kaine’s cultural background was mixed, he was raised knowing the importance of his Aboriginal heritage: his mother painted the front wall of the house with a big Aboriginal flag. “We were born into this culture and we never questioned it.” With his mother and siblings, he travelled to Alice Spring to his ancestors’ traditional lands; “it was humbling.”
Growing up with a white father and a black mother in a small mining town, Kaine keenly felt the pain of historical tensions. “In the 1940s and 1950s there was an Aboriginal township right near where the big smelter is now. When the town went through its big boom, all the Aboriginal people were moved out and the township was burnt to the ground. There is still a lot of that mentality in town: all the Blackfellas live on one side of town and all the Whitefellas live on the other side. There’s a sort of wall that has been put up. “ “Growing up, I was just balancing on that wall. We lived in the black end of town but my Dad worked in the mines. So I was in the middle of these black and white worlds.”
Still, surrounded by a loving and happy extended family, there was something else different about Kaine. “I had always known I was gay but exploring it was a different thing altogether.” Growing up in a small country town, Kaine says he had little exposure to the possibility of leading a gay lifestyle. There was, he says, no potential for him to have come out while living in Whylla. “I hadn’t been through the things I had to go through. I had to get out of town and gain freedom and experience life.”
After leaving Whylla, Kaine met a man and fell in love – returning home for a visit, he couldn’t keep it a secret. “I was driving in the car with my mum one day and I said, ‘Guess what? I’ve got a boyfriend.’” Her reaction was supportive – and so was that of his extended family, “In my family, it doesn’t matter who you go to bed with, it’s who you are as a person. Once you come out, you break down that wall that you’ve been holding up for so long and it gives you a sense of freedom.” Bangarra’s latest work, BLAK, explores the changing ways in which young people experience rites of passage as they transition into adulthood. But Kaine is quick to point out that there is a tendency for discussions around rites of passage to be overly simplistic. “What is the definition of becoming a man? Is it turning 18 or 21? Is it having your first drink? There are so many social conventions about what it means to become a man: getting married, having kids, buying a house. But what if you’re a gay Aboriginal man? What is it then? Is it going back to country where your mob is from? Is it going to your first gay club?” Social discourse about embracing manhood seems to fail to take account of personal difference. “For me, there was more initiation to being a gay man than there was to being Aboriginal or being a man in general. It’s a different world altogether.”
Kaine’s understanding of himself as an Aboriginal man has also changed over time. “It is more than just knowing that you have that heritage. Growing up there was a lot that we didn’t know. Our family’s image of what it was to be Aboriginal was what other people thought it was. A lot of things that kids would say at school, whether it was racially targeted in a good or bad way, you think you should live up to that or that’s how it should be.” Kaine has come to see Aboriginality as an identity beyond genetics. “You can choose to grasp it or not. But if you do, it can give you a sense of pride and purpose. If I didn’t identify with being Aboriginal and going on that path of discovery, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
4 N 0
4
T
h A
o
hE R
t
F
The best creative collaborations draw out new possibilities that are unimaginable when artists work alone. They cross genres, cliques, schools and styles and propose something new. As part of an upcoming triple bill, Sydney Dance Company Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela has choreographed a new work that fully explores the creative potential of collaborations. Entitled Emergence, the work features costumes designed by fashion designer Dion Lee as well as music by singersongwriter Sarah Blasko and composer Nick Wales. I spoke with Rafael and Dion about their collaboration, Emergence and the fortuity of Instagram.
THE ART OF COLLABO o ll RATION
By Richard k. sawyer.
PHOTOS BY JAKE TERREY, BEN SYMONS, PETER GREIG
c
o
ra
a
a
t io
b‑
n
How did your collaboration on Emergence come about? RB: I was aware of Dion as soon as I moved to Sydney. I saw his work in some way – perhaps in a magazine, on the net, or through someone else. I am always asking about and looking for creative talent. A lot of the time for me it starts with seeing an image. You see an image and you connect with it or you don’t – when I saw images of what Dion was doing I felt I could connect with it. Then I realised that he was coming to our shows, though I hadn’t met him – and I thought, “maybe he also likes dance?” DL: I had been attending the shows since Raf became Artistic Director. I have always been interested in contemporary dance and the Sydney Dance Company in particular. So I had already thought about a collaboration and wanted to do it. I am completely not linked to the contemporary dance industry in any way but it is something that I’ve always found really inspiring. When the opportunity arose, it was something that I was really looking forward to doing. RB: But truly our collaboration is as simple as Instagram. I started following Dion on Instagram and every time he would post an image I was liking it, liking it, liking it. Instagram is so convenient – you can check it every five minutes if you want to (though I try to be a little better than that). You can be waiting for the bus or having a cup of tea. It is a great way for people to express what they are doing creatively in images. So I was following Dion on Instagram and I thought, okay let’s meet. So someone called him and asked if he wanted to meet me and the next day we had coffee. If I can have a conversation with someone – we don’t have to talk about work because his work speaks for itself – then that’s really important. I learned that not only is he talented but he is also so lovely and easy to talk with. We connected – it could’ve been the other way around, but it wasn’t. Dion, what excited you about working on costumes? Was it something new for you? DL: The costumes are built from all the elements that I’ve explored in my own work as a fashion designer. Nonetheless, I definitely had to change my approach. Costumes are less about occasion or suitability and more about expression and movement. One of the big things becomes mobility and how people move their body. I had to be aware of these aspects, but at the same time I wanted to forget some of the ideas of traditional costumes design in order to create something that feels a little more displaced.
I tried to introduce some structure and tailoring to the costumes. In a fashion design context, it is all about how the body can change clothes. But dance changes this context; it becomes about movement. The moving body is a much more powerful medium than a static photograph or a runway presentation. Did Rafael’s choreography inspire you in the way you designed the costumes? DL: From an ideas perspective, what I find really beautiful about Raf’s work is the patterns and formations he creates, both on a singular level and as a whole when you see the company combine. I was kind of looking at how each piece could work with the other – how the relationship between two dancers could link two dancers Raf, you tend to collaborate with people who are not from within the contemporary dance world. Why do you think that is? I think they bring an interesting perspective from a different world. Sometimes people in contemporary dance can take themselves too seriously. It can be better to work with someone from within popular culture in order to push things in a new direction. This also hasn’t always been my choice. I have responded to situations that have come before me and taken up opportunities that have come to me, throwing myself into new worlds and developing new relationships. Are you referring to your work choreographing for pop stars like Kylie Minogue? Do you think working with people from that pop world has affected your willingness to take risks as an artistic director now? Yes, I guess so – because I’ve been in that world and I’ve absorbed a lot from it. I made those connections and it has become part of me. I’m more open to it as a result – it isn’t something that is very far away from me. Working with people from within popular culture can be very magic and can bring a lot of great things to what you do. There is also a lot of familiarity with pop artists and fashion designers amongst the general public. Contemporary dance can be intimidating and scary to people. If you mix it with popular culture you can reach new people and break some barriers. People who have never been to see the Sydney Dance Company hear about our work with Dion Lee and they might come to see the show and realise that contemporary dance doesn’t have to be alienating. Instead, the collaboration makes it new and fresh and dynamic.
o "
Costumes are less about occasion or suitability and more about expression and movement
e
you need a machinist, a model and so on – there are so many ways that the people around you contribute. Any truly creative process is going to be reactive in some way – reacting to people, time, context, things that happen along the way. And that is the good thing about being a designer; that ability to work with people across different industries. The process of collaboration allows me to surround myself with people who motivate and inspire me. In designing the costumes, I spent time watching the piece coming together. It is so organic to put together a dance. What I love about dance is that there is not too much rationilsation in what they’re doing; it is more about responding to things on an emotive level. Watching Rafael and the dancers in the studio, it is about what conveys the right feeling and not over thinking and over analysing the work.
Do you agree with the idea that there are ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of cultural expression? RB: There are no categories of ‘high’ or ‘low’ culture – the only categories are good and bad. Good pop, bad pop; good opera, bad opera; good ballet and awful ballet. There is nothing like a great pop song – and if it is great, then it is just as genius as a good symphony could be. The same goes with fashion. Some great fashion can also be considered art - but not all fashion designers are good artists. There is good and there is bad in everything and that is all. So, does collaboration improve an artist’s work? RB: Well, I would love to think so – because I keep doing it! But working on a collaborative creative work is not necessarily an easy ride. I try not to always work with all the same people or only with new people. When you collaborate, you can go back to places you’ve been before. It can place you in your comfort zone. Therefore, it’s about developing a constant and then bringing in a new point of view. This helps to push you in different directions. DL: It definitely does. Being a fashion designer, there is no way you can put together every part of a collection;
Fashion is different because it is the ultimate marriage of art and commerce. Ideally, they necessarily coexist rather than one outweighing the other. I’m not so much referring to how many items of clothing you sell. But when you’re designing clothes you make them relevant to people’s lives and this grounds fashion and brings it down to earth in a way that is different from an art form like dance. What does the idea of emergence mean to you? RB: There is not one single meaning for emergence – it is like a vortex once you begin to uncover its many meanings. My starting point was that emergence is when two or more things come together to create a mystery. In science, if you think of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – you could never predict that together they will make water. It’s unexpected. This unexpectedness, this mystery, is emergence. DL: I think the idea of emergence is relevant for any creative process. For me, emergence is that ambition to create something new and unique but allowing it to happen through a natural, organic process. It is about finding something that you wouldn’t initially seek out but allowing yourself to be influenced by the people and circumstances that surround you. Any creative process is about pushing yourself forward – surrounding yourself with projects and people you love – emergence is always relevant.
R A PHOTOS BY JASON SCHEMBRI
HAIR & MAKEUP BY CHISATO CHRIS ARAI @ DEBUT MANAGEMENT
Tamarin
Toby
Carl Tindall COLAB
CHRIS
tim
MADGE
JONNY SEYMOUR MUSIC PRODUCER
RICHARD SAWYER DANDY EDITOR
BROOKE
SAMUEL HODGE PHOTOGRAPHER
DAN
WRITTEN BY ASHLEY SCOTT
EVER THOUGHT WHILST HAVING YOUR MORNING COFFEE, “I COULD BE SAVING TIME HERE AND SHARPENING MY DO?” WELL, LOOK NO FURTHER BECAUSE CLEVELAND’S HAS ARRIVED IN TOWN. THE RECENTLY OPENED CAFE / BARBERSHOP HAS YOU COVERED FOR EVERYTHING FROM AN ESPRESSO TO A PAGEBOY TRIM. I CAUGHT UP WITH THE MAN BEHIND THE SCISSORS, PATRICK CASEY, AND THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE, HARRY LEVY, TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEIR NEW PARTNERSHIP VENTURE.
So, first things first, what’s the story? How did you guys meet and decide on this project? P:The idea came together about a year ago, we were put together by a mutual friend. Harry and his friend had been working and running cafés and came up with the idea for Cleveland’s. Originally it was going to be a bit like a barbershop but I wasn’t really too keen on doing a barber shop so it became more of a salon. I think retailers are inevitably going to end up going down this road of sharing a space between two brands or products that speak to each other. With Cleveland’s, hair and food is mutually beneficial; they have a symbiotic relationship. Of course, having a coffee, getting your hair done, pampering yourself. P:Yeah people who enjoy one typically enjoy the other. But we also want to turn the space into a creative hub and have other concepts such as jewellery, artworks, etc. H: I guess the fact that this building is an old barbershop helped the concept. It was the same guy here for 60 years, so we’ve kept a few things from the old shop like the sign; even the chairs are in the same spot as he used to have the chairs. With the style of the salon, was it a conscious choice between you guys? Or did the original space dictate the style?
P: I think everything happened organically, but the choices weren’t passive. The chairs were one of the first things to come. Because of the glass wall we needed to break it up a bit so we got the curtain which has a barbershop feel, the lights play off that too. It did come together organically but I think the tiles and the signage had a bit of a Deco 30s/40s classic vibe, so we took note of that. So it’s a barbershop style of cut here for the boys, but what is your women’s work like? P: I’ve always worked in high end beauty salons, I’ve worked in Brad’s (Ngata), prior to that I was working at Synergy Hair, so always very classic, very fashion orientated kind of hair. For me, the word “Classic” is going to keep coming up because that’s the way I was trained, you’re not going to come in and get tricky kind of spiky cuts, I don’t do that. You’ve both come from previous places that have more of a serious atmosphere, is this a change of pace for you guys, being that this is a warm and relaxed environment? Was it just that time in your careers to do something for yourselves? H : We’ve both worked in our fields for about a decade and both worked in many well regarded places including restaurants, cafes and salons and I think we both reached a point where we’d just about learnt enough and we were ready to do it on our own. it’s a very relaxed laid back pace and we try to make everyone feel very comfortable, at ease and have a nice experience. At the same time we don’t want to just be a gimmick, we want to do an amazing coffee, a great breakfast and have someone get a really nice haircut, and we don’t want to just be that place where you can have a coffee and a hair cut. P :Yeah, professionalism and an attention to detail is paramount.
professionalism and an attention to detail is paramount
ESOME AWES RIENDS EAM BE
Shot by Jack Dunbar Assistance from Benjamin Tan Styled by Nadia Hernandez and Hilary Thackway Sculptures by Megan Hanson Worn by Millie Hall
Very special thanks to Eloise Tunchon, Emilia Batchelor and Vanessa Robinson for the clothes, Damien Butler for the space, Chloe Hazelwood and Sebastian Vaccaris for the good company. All clothes by Starstyling Worldwide bar holographic shoes, foot glam and jumper pants.
† † †
HOMOSCOPEmalade r a M c a i d Zo
WRITTEN BY JACK FREESTONE
P!NK
Maya
Feb 29th- May 10th
May 11th- July 16th
As the warm moon of summer sets, you may feel your fire wearing thin. Traditionally Pinks reignite their zest with a little kick boxing, maybe a splash of cage fighting and then a little dash of protein. Yet with Maya’s moon pressing on your eastern front you may feel inclined to finally indulge your feminine side. Despite being forever critical of the mani/pedi, Pinks may soon find themselves shopping up a storm with Paris or even talking diets with Jessie Simps. Give it a few months and with one failed reality show under the belt and one sex tape in the pipeline your new perspective will be complete!
As the warm moon of summer sets, you may feel your fire wearing thin. Traditionally Pinks reignite their zest with a little kick boxing, maybe a splash of cage fighting and then a little dash of protein. Yet with Maya’s moon pressing on your eastern front you may feel inclined to finally indulge your feminine side. Despite being forever critical of the mani/ pedi, Pinks may soon find themselves shopping up a storm with Paris or even talking diets with Jessie Simps. Give it a few months and with one failed reality show under the belt and one sex tape in the pipeline your new perspective will be complete!
Christina
Lil Kim
July 17th- November 2nd
November 3rd- February 28th
You may feel that the disruptive moon of Lil Kim has recently disabled your centre of gravity. Yet with Pink’s eclipse on the horizon you question the foundation of your identity. Distance and space from self will again return you to your Jeanie in a bottle. Dear Jeanie, what rubs me the right way? Despite heartfelt philosophical inquiry you still can’t feel your vibe. Alternate your appearance as you have always done. From seductive goth, to loose flapper and back to innocent teen once more you might just discover yourself in the annals of your own aesthetic. However, be mindful of the fact that you may end up looking as if you belong next to the buffet counter at a pizza hut wearing some sort of velour tracksuit. Just remember: you are beautiful no matter what they say.!
While it may be fair to cast doubt on your future and warn you against your own inconsistencies and character it certainly wouldn’t be wise. Over the past years Lil Kims have successfully warned many other moons that if they eclipse her they might just end up dead or shot. The result has been both constant loneliness and relentless exposure to the sun. Keep relying on your bling to keep you company and your nipple tassels to keep you chilled and you will be just fine.
ISSUE 3