JUNE 2016
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
DIRCKSEY
what’s on
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Do you have a cool event coming up? Let us know. k.turpin@ecuguild.org.au
JUNE - JULY MONDAY
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TUESDAY
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WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
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Jess Day begins residency @ Another (Gallery space run by ECU artists)
Hatched @ PICA until 17 July
Edith Cowan Visual Arts Collective publication realeased
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SATURDAY 4
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Exams Start
Joondalup Community Xhibition Open
SOTA Festival @ Elizabeth Quay (FREE Event)
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SUNDAY
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twentyONE+ exhibition opening @ Spectrum Project Space
Semester Break
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Writers’ Night ML (Free Pizza)
Edith Cowan Visual Arts Collective Artists Talks @ Another 7PM
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Writers’ Night JO (Free Pizza)
26 Support ECU Cheerleading Club @ CUA Rock and Cheer
Writers’ Deadline
Jess Day residency closing event @ Another
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Artists’ Deadline
State School Teachers Union of W.A:10:30 Techie Brekkie @ Dome Cafe Osbourne Park
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17 ECU Joondalup Open Day
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24 Back to uni tomorrow
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Contributors: Michelle Aitken Sarveshwaran Arumugam Corey Booth Sita Carolina Sun-Mi Clyburn Audrey Foote Enna Jean Dure Khan Joseph de Kock Caitlyn Latham Casey Mathaba Karina Miyazaki James Paddock Melody Schnauer Zachary Sheridan
Editor: Kitty Turpin k.turpin@ecuguild.org.au
Music Editor: Mae Anthony music.dircksey@gmail.com
Advertising: Tom Reynolds t.reynolds@ecuguild.org.au (08) 9370 6609
Films Editor: Sarah Stopforth film.dircksey@gmail.com
dircksey.com.au
Art & Literature Editor: Rhys Tarling art.dircksey@gmail.com
Artists: Sita Carolina Luke Clark Kaysie Hilton Zal Kanga-Parabia Marziya Mohammedali Hannah Schultz Andrew Tran Special Thanks To: Cover Photographer: Zal Kanga-Parabia Follow him on Instagram @zalkp Logo: Sella Winadi
Next Theme: The Sex & Gender Jamboree Mon 20 JUN 5PM Contributors Night ML Building 10.307 Thu 23 JUN 6:30PM Contributors Night JO Building 9.207
The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Dircksey Editor(s), sub-editors/ section-editors, Edith Cowan University or the Edith Cowan University Student Guild. Reasonable care is taken to ensure that Dircksey articles and other information are up-to-date and as accurate as possible, as of the time of publication– but no responsibility can or will be taken by the abovementioned entities if an issue of Dircksey has any errors or omissions contained herein.
Online print just got better.
pictondiy.com.au
CONTENTS REGULARS
ARTS & LITERATURE
3 Calendar 6 Editorial
21 Here&Now16/GenYM 22 Feature: Zal 24 Paying Our Rent 25 Book Reviews
FEATURES 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20
On Home 12,000 km with Cal Exchanged For the Better The Time I Volunteered Overseas 5 Tips to Completing Your Bucket List A Home Away From Home For my 20th birthday, I got: Australia! Once A Moonie A Country Girl Feminism and Petticoats Please Come Soon to Pick Him Up Don’t Go Outside, It’s Safe At Home! The Anchor of my Holiday
MUSIC 26 27
A Worldly Journey Music Reviews
FILM 28 29
Down Mystery Road… Film Reviews
Photo by Marziya Mohammedali See more at facebook.com/kikeidotnet
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
PRESIDENT’S NOTE As we didn’t recieve the Guild President’s report, you can use this space for your exam study notes:
EDITOR’S NOTE This issue is all about life away from what we considered “home”. With uni break coming up we share our memories of our last holidays, leaving our hometown, and sharing our culture with the student community. Third issue of Dircksey and I’m still alive. Can you believe we’re half way through? I was overwhelmed with the response for this issue. So many of you were eager to participate and tell your stories, especially your stories of coming to Australia. We had an amazing article sent to us by Georgina Gregory. Unfortunately it was too long to be printed in this issue, but cutting anything from it would have been a crime. Running Through The Rice Fields is a heartbreaking and human recount of a journey to Australia. I highly recommend everyone to read the article on our website (dircksey.com.au/2016/04/runningthrough-the-rice-fields/). And if you have anything that you feel can’t be jammed into 1000 words, or in response to any of these articles, please do send them to us! We can publish them, and much more, on our brand new website: dircksey.com.au This issue will hit the stands during exams (yes, you’re procrastinating with Dircksey, you’re forgiven), but the articles written and art created was done during the assignment period. I am incredibly humbled that we got the amount of contributions we did during this stressful time. I cannot thank everyone who contributed enough. Hope you all survive exams and have a safe, relaxing holiday. The Dircksey squad will still be working in our ex-storeroom-that-flooded-a-few-months-ago over the break on bringing you the next issue: The Sex and Gender Jamboree.
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DIRCKSEY
On Home
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Art by Hannah Schultz
by Zachary Sheridan Look, I need to start out by saying this is a lame-ass, touchy-feely story. I began thinking about where I was this time last year, and remembered how much of a jerk I was in one particular instance. I was in Hong Kong. I was with two close friends, overlooking the city’s perpetual skyline, drinking Pina Coladas. This whole trip had been on the back of a few years’ worth of reasonably hard study and this was my reward. What a reward, right? Well, no, not to me. Despite my good fortune, I kept thinking to myself (like a real jerk) that something was missing… Home. However, not in any sense I’d understood it before. Now, before I explain that, I wanted to reflect on some other interpretations. Whilst writing this, I asked some friends and family what “home” meant to them. One said Red Square - Adelaide’s equivalent of The Deen. Another said grooving out to Beyoncé. Other answers included being comfortable, lying in bed all day, and knowing all the sounds your house makes. My brother said it used to be stretching out on the floor in the backroom while the dim winter sunlight poured through the window, warming him, with our old cat, Ginger, lying draped across his body.
they looked out unto some imaginary place where home was. Of course, it wasn’t there – they were seeing it in their mind. In Hong Kong, I was thousands of kilometres away from my actual abode in Adelaide, but it wasn’t that physical thing I missed. You see, my whole life I’ve always felt like I’m missing out on something. I’m a classic sufferer of FOMO (fear of missing out). I always thought there was some big Great Gatsby-do happening on the other side of the globe. There I was, at the centre of it all, when it finally clicked that whatever I was looking for was never external to me. It was inside, and it’d been there all along. I’d just momentarily forgotten my weird, internal home. In there housed a million memories that made me - playing garbage trucks with my nephew, watching the footy with Mum, building giant hills of sand at Aldinga Beach, and now, drinking cocktails. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that when it comes to home, and especially if you’re away from it like me, just look inside and remember that you’re always carrying it with you. TL;DR – home is where the heart is.
What struck me is obviously how “home” is different to us all, but at the same time, it really is always with you. When I asked people, their eyes refocussed and FEATURE / 7
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
12,000 km with Cal
Art by Luke Clark
by Caitlyn Latham Home is important to me. I haven’t always had a home, spending ages 15 to 19 couch surfing and in ever-changing transitional housing. As a result, I clung to any house that seemed to be a sustainable place to live, and was saving to buy my own abode.
back seats and set up a makeshift bed around hills and forests and lakesides. in the boot. Together, my car, Cal, and I Beautiful – but deadly if you were to drove out of the town I had been living lose concentration for a second. in, and off to our new adventure. Early on I discovered Cal’s radio I dreamt of sleeping next to mountains didn’t work, so we drove blasting this – in reality my first night was a bit of a terrible pop compilation that I had blow. I was terrified. I’m still not sure picked up for $2 at a charity shop So nobody was more surprised than of what – monsters, being alone, or from the speakers. From the bottom me when I decided to pack up my the cops arresting me, but I ended up of the South Island, to the top of things, leave the little bit of home that sleeping in a hostel. the North Island, I screamed lyrics I did have, and move to New Zealand. including ‘WE’RE LIKE DIAMONDS I knew nobody over there, would My next night was a little more IN THE SKY’ and ‘SAY SOMETHING once again have no place to live, and adventurous. I slept under a bridge I’M GIVING UP ON YOU’ out of the was completely leaving any ounce of next to a lake. I awoke to the most window, scaring fellow tourists and comfort behind. beautiful sunrise peering through kiwi birds alike. my windows. I smiled as I opened my Once there, I was intrigued by the eyes, and that was the beginning of Despite bumping into friends along backpacking culture: people were my addiction. the way, it could be pretty lonely on travelling around the islands, living the road by myself. But with so many out of their cars. Not because they From then on I fell asleep to the moon other people living in their cars, had no other choice – but because rising above mountains such as Mt you’re never completely alone. they wanted to. Because to experience Cook, and woke to brilliant artworks of There was always someone at the gas waking up with mountains, beaches orange, bringing each new day to me station to have a laugh with, or at the and forests peeking into your back over rocky beaches. I could stop where camp stop to share ideas of where windscreen is one of the most breath- I wanted when I wanted – checking to go next. I picked up hitch hikers, taking experiences you can ever dream out hot pools, waterfalls and the including a pair of French brothers, of encountering. wacky Moeraki Boulders. There was and heard the most wonderful stories something exhilarating in the idea that of their travels, and made friends of I wanted in! A complete rookie – I I had nowhere to be, no one to answer many different nationalities. went for the first cheap station wagon to. For someone who was a stickler that popped up in my search. A navy for stability, it was the most freeing We travelled 12,000 kms in total, Cal blue, 1998 Toyota Caldina. She came experience of my life. and I. It was a relatively cheap and complete with snow chains, a boot that effective way of seeing one of the most wouldn’t stay open and an oil leak. I One of my craziest memories was beautiful countries in the world. It handed over the $1500 and drove off in driving up the west coast of the South put me completely out of my comfort her, pleased with my buy. Island, and it was snowing. As a zone and onto an adventure. But that’s relatively new driver, this scared the what being away from home is all A mate gave me a blow up mattress. absolute hell out of me. I took it slow, about, right? It was a journey that I will Another donated blankets, and I skidded several times and turned a few treasure with me for the rest of my life. bought myself a crate which I filled corners unsure what was beyond – but It tickled my travel bug, and I would with noodles and a $20 gas stove from I survived. The roads over there were recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone the department store. I lowered the nothing I’d ever seen before, twisting – including you. 8 / FEATURE
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
exchanged for the better by Michelle Aitken
Last year I went on exchange to Taiwan. I try not to talk about it. When people ask how it was, I say “yeah, great!” rather than going into a blow-by-blow account of the entire semester I was there. When I returned home, one of the stranger experiences was filling in a government survey asking me things like how ‘inspirational,’ ‘motivational,’ the previous five months of my life had been. Exchange is all of those things. But what has stayed with me the most was the experience of living away from home, and the way that my perception of my self and my place in the world has shifted. What I had thought to be universal truths turned out to be products of my own cultural heritage that I could leave behind without losing any part of me. I left Perth ready to prove myself in the great world, and with an intense need to be as perfect as possible with as little trying as possible. I planned to absolutely kill it at exchange. Instead, on the other side of the experience, I’ve learned that it’s fine to be terrible, and to just keep on going. So here is a list of things that suck about student exchange. And how I had a radiant, life-affirming, eyeopening time messing up again and again. Easy things become hard Preparing to go through a checkout at the grocery shop is hard enough when you know you’re going to be able to understand and talk to the cashier. Doing it in Mandarin is a lot scarier. The whole way down to the shops from campus I would practise phrases like ‘No, I already have a bag,’ and “I don’t want a membership card,’ and ‘hello!’. I’d be so stressed by the time I got to the checkout, I’d probably mess them up anyway. But every week they would forgive me and I would return to buy food and not starve. People might point and laugh (you can also point and laugh at yourself) The young, the old, teenagers of the opposite sex… I had a lot of pointing fingers directed my way. I was paranoid, partially due to my own hyperawareness of how much I
stuck out, literally, in standing a head taller than most people. I made friends with a lot of babies on the subway. It’s a proud moment to have a baby smile and laugh at you, rather than scream in fear or disgust. But hey, it doesn’t really matter. People can laugh if they want, and it’s fine to join them. A whole new set of domestic habits can throw you for a loop Apparently it’s common practise in Taiwan to stay up til 2 or 3 in the morning. Which is fine, until you’re living in a small sized coffin-like bed in a dormitory with three other people and want to go to sleep a lot earlier than that. I wasn’t too keen on other ideas such as dousing the entire room with peppermint oil every time a bug was sighted, or needing to wear house slippers inside, and normal shoes outside, but NEVER house slippers outside or normal shoes inside, and NEVER EVER just socks. But when I considered why I didn’t subscribe to these habits, and the answer was because my mum doesn’t, I realised that I could just get over it. It’s OK to not achieve anything in a day I’m not saying that a person deserves a gold star for getting up in the morning, catching the train somewhere, and coming home, but darn it, sometimes I felt like I deserved one. I boarded a plane absolutely convinced that I would use my time to the fullest; write a new play, make a dance, transform into a native Chinese speaker, somehow be instantly rich and famous upon my return… But instead, I learned about the tiniest and most beautiful things. I released a flaming lantern into the sky, went into a shop selling only false eyelashes, walked a mountain trail, had coffee at a randomly chosen spot on the subway, looked inside temples... The acts of looking and listening became so much more fulfilling than my desire to be an agent, always pushing myself forwards. So yes, exchange was enlightening. Just not in the way that competitive, forward-focussed, instant-perfection-seeking pre-exchange me had expected. And of course, I’m still all of those things, but now I know I can take that me to anywhere in the world, and she may do terribly, and she may mess up, but she will survive, and learn, and pause to smell the roses.
FEATURE / 9
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
The Time I Volunteered Overseas...
Photo by Enna Jean
by Enna Jean In 2012 I had the opportunity to go on my high school’s yearly mission trip to Antipolo, a province in the Philippines, for two weeks. It was my first time travelling out of Australia without my family and the first time to a completely different culture, where we had to carry a roll of toilet paper with us, unless you wanted to pay for sheet of toilet paper. The words’ “mission trip” might be unsettling to those non-religious types, but if what you guys are picturing is a bunch of graduates spending their time preaching and handing out Bibles (or the classic Bible basher scenario) you are wrong. Our jobs there were simple: to work on rotations on building a school in the local area, assisting in the orphanage and travelling to other slums and handing out food, sporting supplies like skipping ropes and basketballs (basketball hoops can be located on nearly all of the streets), those who mastered the skill of balloon animals did that and the others made pipe cleaner dolls to hand out, and just spending time with the children there. It is an experience I am glad I had as it makes you look at the world differently. Many people go on these trips thinking they will make a difference to the world, trying to make it a better place, and in a way I do agree with the popular belief. However, the difference you make is only for that moment and for a certain amount of people. It is impossible for one to go there and think that they are changing the world, that is under the control of the government and not something that we can personally control. Being away from home on those two weeks wasn’t too hard for me, before leaving on the trip it was like I got to live in one of those poorly written soap dramas. Once we started to get down in the cement or mud (depending on what we were working on) it was like all the worries and dramas back at home were gone. When you get off the bus in one
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of the slums and are greeted by children smiling from ear to ear, you forget these first world dramas and issues that you have and start to be grateful for what you actually have in life. So feel like you are ‘trapped’ at home and got some extra cash to spare to travel overseas, why not look into some aid work of some kind? Sometimes all you need is a change of scenery and experience a different lifestyle without the things we are used to. There are many organisations out there that offer trips to these countries. Why not try something new for your next holiday? Thinking about volunteering? Here are some organisations to get you started: World Racers A Christian based mission group that travels to eleven countries in eleven months. AVID Supported by the Australian Government, Australian Volunteers for International Development (AVID) is about supporting developing countries by sharing skills from a selected assignment you have chosen. Antipodeans Abroad An organisation that is both in New Zealand and Australia. Suited more for students with options such as Gapbreak or Unibreak. K.I.M. Kids International Ministries (K.I.M) was the group my school was in partnership with. They are a faith based group that now works in four different areas in the Philippines.
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
g n i t e l p om C 5 Tips to t s i L t e k c u B r You by Karina Miyazaki I don’t need to tell you how to make a bucket list. It’s easy and you know what you want to do better than anybody else. Everybody has things that they would love to one day accomplish, which can wildly differ from person to person: wild childhood fantasies or daredevil activities, travelling all around the world or life achievements like getting married. But how often to people actually follow through with their bucket lists? Too often I hear that it’s too hard and it requires too much time, that they have an inability to save enough money and other such reasons… but that they would love to do it someday in the future. A far distant future which may never even arrive. Make your bucket list more than a dream. Make your bucket list a reality. Here’s a few ways to spice up the idea of completing a bucket list. Dream big, dream small
The buddy system
Mix it up! When we think of bucket lists, we often think of big, expensive experiences like travelling or thrillseeking activities. Try including the small and cheap along with the flashy and expensive. Have you ever knitted a beanie? Why not give it a try? You could donate blood, complete a jigsaw, or make that YouTube video you’ve always wanted to. Including the smaller, less expensive – but no less fun – things makes a bucket list look that much more achievable. There are tutorials for just about everything on the internet – anyone can learn how to do anything, for free!
Do you remember in primary school, when there was the buddy system – where your buddy went, you did too, and vice versa? You’re bound to know some people who want to try the same things as you: so why not do them together! Alternately, you can create a pact: you can help them cross something off their bucket list and they can do the same for you. Feel like learning a foreign language? Work together and you can both garble foreign grammar! Having someone to encourage you can do wonders – just make sure you like your buddy!
Make it a competition
Sure, you can do this anytime: but why not create special rewards for certain things on your bucket list? If you manage to do three things on your bucket list, then you can treat yourself to whatever it is you’ve been wanting. Five things? Ten things? The bigger the number, the bigger the reward! Creating goals and striving to achieve them sounds like an obvious strategy,
How about a game of bucket list bingo? Create your bucket list, organize it into a table and find a friend, a colleague, a stranger on the internet – anybody – and compete to see who can reach bingo first. Set a prize: perhaps the loser could buy the winner dinner or something similar, because as students we all know a free meal is awesome.
Treat yourself
but it’s amazing how well it works, and the itch for something new may be a better motivator than you might think. Always wanted to go to Hawaii? Maybe that can be your final bucket list item for completing the rest! Just do it As the great poet Shia LaBeouf with his amazing moves has said: just do it. Easy to say, not quite so easy to do. Yes, it’s cliché, obvious and frustrating to hear when you feel there are many obstacles in your way, but sometimes it can be as simple as that. Have a day off? Try something new. Step away from your comfort zone, and do the things you couldn’t imagine you could. New experiences await, and the memories will be worth it. Book a holiday, a skydiving trip, a dance class. Go ahead: you can do it!
ARTS & LITERATURE FEATURE / / 11 11
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
A Home Away From Home by Sita Carolina It’s been almost 13 years since my family and I migrated to Australia. I am the oldest of three children and I was 11 years old when we first arrived. My parents decided to take my siblings and I to Australia in search of a better education and a better standard of living. The decision to move was a fairly short process. Coming to Australia was a bit of culture shock, not to mention the issue of the language barrier when we arrived.
from forgetting to buy something before the store closed in the first year of living in Australia.
I come from a huge family. Both my parents have a lot of siblings and we are all very close to each other. When we first moved the year was 2003 and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter didn’t exist. Although email was around, kids rarely used it. Broadband internet was a new thing. Needless to say, keeping in touch with family back The 11-year-old me didn’t know home was difficult. And even if much English. See, the Indonesian we did, nothing beats a face-tolanguage has no tenses and hardly face conversation. For the first any exception rules; learning four years of living in Australia I English is definitely a challenge was counting down to the next for most Indonesians. I remember time we were going back home. I for the first couple of years my became quite obsessed, setting a writing could have up to five timer and staring at it. different tenses in one sentence – I’m not even exaggerating. Luckily I noticed the vast difference in the curriculum in Indonesia was food at school, as well. What ahead of Australia, so I could I had for recess and lunch was guess what the teacher was talking very different to what my friends about in classes like mathematics. had. Until now, I still usually eat rice three times a day - breakfast, The Indonesian teaching method lunch, dinner. For my family, is basically: “I am the boss, I am there’s no difference between always right, you cannot ask me breakfast, lunch and dinner foods. why or prove me wrong, you I’d only seen it in movies that learn exactly what I tell you.” people eat cereal for breakfast, Every few weeks we would have a salads and sandwiches for lunch, test, and every quarter an exam. and steak or other meats for Attending an Australian school, dinner. On camp, we got served I noticed they value discussions exactly that and I thought I was and encouraged us to ask why. living in a movie! There weren’t many theories to remember and tests to do. This, in The tradition in Indonesia is addition to the language barrier, to share the joy with everyone took quite a bit of adjusting. else so I would take my friends out to eat on my birthday and We were totally inconvenienced pay for their meal. They would when we learned that stores, then bring presents for me and including supermarkets, at the invite me to their birthday meal. time closed at 5PM, whilst normal If for some reason you couldn’t closing time for retail stores in do that, you would simply bring Indonesia is between 9 to 10PM. goodie bags or a little souvenir You wouldn’t know how many to school and hand them out to times we had a mini panic attack everyone in class. Here, you’d
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Photo by Sita Carolina treat the birthday person to their meals and give them presents. I took souvenirs from Indonesia to school for my birthday in Year 7. Everyone was very confused. I have learned a lot from experiencing two very different cultures (and all the other cultures I’ve learned about briefly along the way). From these experiences I have the privilege to pick-andchoose the best way of living for me. I am glad that I moved to Australia, and I consider both countries to be my home.
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
For my 20th birthday, I got: Australia! by James Paddock For 7,300 days I was kept safe under Blighty’s wing, but the abysmal economic situation eventually forced us out – plus the weather. Honestly, I think that was the main reason. Emmigrating from England to Western Australia was very much an ordeal for my family of four, culminating in the final week of hell. Worth it, of course – we ended up with a whole new continent to explore, but hell, I honestly wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The plane journey was 30 hours and we took off in the early morning. That kind of schedule is impossible to plan sleep around. Mother and I were sleep-deprived on the morning we were due to leave, having pulled an all-nighter.
year at that point, and we weren’t getting any decent offers. But in an unfortunate turn of events, the house still hadn’t actually “sold”. We weren’t going to get the money from it until the mortgage company deigned to complete the transaction – and the phones had just been cut off by our provider, so we couldn’t contact anyone about it. So now a sum of money in the hundred thousands of pounds, rightfully ours, was just floating in the ether somewhere. Joy. The final few minutes before we were delivered by taxi to Heathrow were a blur of frantically stuffing suitcases with belongings, without much forethought. We left many valuables behind, yet ended up having about sixteen fully-packed bags to carry with us to the airport, many of which were large and unwieldy, like the open-top bags with handles consisting of what felt like titanium-wrought rope that dug into the flesh when held for mere seconds, and other bags which were frayed and unreliable for storing what they were allocated, but there just wasn’t time to distribute things in a sane fashion. Sanity as a resource was in direly short supply by now.
I slept for most of the second flight – a comparatively endurable 5 hours – but I’d still not technically had a decent slumber in about 72. The lack of sleep was undoubtedly getting to us all. I found it increasingly difficult to talk to either of my parents without inadvertently sparking off some sort of full-scale nuclear war. It was understandable – with a matter as relentlessly complex and variable as the emmigration process, the annoyances and inconveniences snowball, and everyone just becomes a bomb. You have to ask when it will all end.
Next destination: our rented accommodation, and let’s just say it was insubstantial. I was personally happy to have somewhere to sit down finally. To the entire family, we might as well have booked a week in an iron maiden. It was at least clean, Frost, the first of the winter season, but terribly confined – especially laced the earth outside. Mother considering the sheer number of Britannia was awake and angry with luggage bags we had – and at $900 us. The house started to freeze over. It AUD a week, for what was essentially always seemed a physical impossibility a backyard shed with some beds in it, how frigid our old farmhouse was no one was happy with that. We were capable of becoming. A lack of proper still waiting for the mortgage company insulation/hot water system, from the to withdraw their heads from their house being four centuries old might sphincters and put the money from our have been why, it felt colder inside than house sale into our laps. At this point it was outside. The eventual departure from the house the auction happened upwards of five (which had been our humble dwelling weeks but we simply had to tolerate the Add the sensation of dying from for the last six years) was so rushed situation, and each other, for a week or pneumonia onto sleep deprivation and desperate, there was no time for so, until the funds came through and and crushing stress and you have last-minute regret. And I was so cold we could actually do things out in this a beautifully disastrous cocktail of by this point that I couldn’t have gotten crazy new world. emotions we were all quaffing liberally. away from that frigid, hollow iceberg of a house fast enough. We found a house to rent in the burbs Awakening after an hour’s nap in one of and are still living there now. We the (totally stripped-down bedrooms) I don’t remember much of the journey survived, in the face of these myriad had me in possibly one of the foulest to Heathrow airport, I slept for most of uncertainties. I commend my parents moods I’ve ever been in. Downstairs, it, but on the next leg of the journey, eternally for enduring. They had to set my family were preparing to leave the a 12-hour flight, I was seated in front everything in motion – a whole array of house, to be relayed to the train station of some kind of damnable thrashing commitments and sacrifices I cannot and then Heathrow, and everyone was she-demon. On an hourly basis, she begin to fathom., The process took in the same stinking rotten mood as I would wake up, realise nothing was 3 years from start to finish. They have –for good reason. wrong, and instantly shatter this set a much more detailed report about of circumstances by screaming in it than I could hope to conceive, and We’d sold our old house at auction demand of a death that would never be attempt to make funny. earlier that month – a last resort, since delivered. People, overpopulation is a it had been on sale for more than a problem – just don’t have babies.
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Once a Moonie by Sun-Mi Clyburn I was born a Moonie* to an African-American father and French mother and have been a drifter for most of my life. I remember a time when I was happy, when I felt I belonged and was loved for who I was. That all changed when my parents volunteered for a mission in Poland, Eastern Europe. I was only seven and adapted quickly. I grew to love many aspects of Poland. I knew the language, history and politics better than most people, but I would never be allowed to feel I was part of society; I would never fit in. 69% of the Polish population today don’t want people of colour living within their borders. They’re somewhat forgiving if you are at least of the same religion, which we were not. Complete strangers spitting at us, staring at us, calling us names, telling us to ‘go back where we came from’ or ‘just die’ was our daily bread. You grow a thick skin and even find some humour in the situation, but you never feel safe; you’re always in survival mode. When I was in middle school my sister and I joined a youth centre. We became very active, made a lot of friends, volunteered for events and peer-support activities and I wanted to become a youth leader. We never spoke about our religion, but when the board found out we were Moonies, they kicked us out without warning or hesitation, convinced that a ten and fifteen-
year-old could brainwash the whole centre. They held anti-cult workshops, told everyone to stay away from us under threat of expulsion or other disciplinary measures. They also threatened us with the police if we ever came near the centre or spoke to any of the members. Within a matter of weeks all the kids would cross the street when they’d see us. After that it was clear to me; I would never be happy, as long as I stayed in Poland. I also came to understand that I would never be happy, as long as I remained in the Unification Church. I was an outcast in society, but at the time, I at least had the church community. I felt safe there. That was my home if I ever had one growing up. The more of a minority you are in a society the harder you have to fight to keep your faith alive. That struggle became harder every day. I was expected to take on my parents’ mission and go through with an arranged marriage and for many years that was my dream as well. I believed that was who I was meant to be; who I wanted to be. I studied the doctrine so thoroughly that if you sat down with me today, I could give you two weeks worth of lectures on the subject. That was my life and my identity. Being the inquisitive, knowledgethirsty person I am, I did a lot of research in history, philosophy, politics, theology, scripture and history of religion. I thought that a deep understanding of
my religion and its roots would strengthen my faith. However, as it often does, knowledge had the opposite effect; with every new piece of information I learned, my reality began to unravel. Once you start to question or do anything outside of “God’s principles”, you feel guilty and that you are a disappointment to everyone. You learn that people aren’t there for you no matter what and are all too eager to judge you, because their faith gives them all the answers. I found more kindness, compassion, unconditional love and generosity in the “outside”, secular world. When I eventually left my parents’ church and moved to Australia six years ago, I’d lost everything I’d ever known, I had no idea who I was. I had no identity therefore I couldn’t have a home. It took me years to figure all those things out. All the challenges, heartbreak, experiences and amazing people I met along the way have made me who I am today. There is still an underlying sadness and grief, but overall, I think I’m at peace. I can finally say I like who I am, what I’m doing and where I’m heading in life. Living in Australia gave me that. It gave me the freedom to be and accept who I am; not who I’m expected to be, or who I want to be to meet those expectations. Australia has its flaws, like any place, but there is no other place I’d rather call home.
* The Unification Church is a conservative religious movement founded in Korea in the 1950s by Rev. Sung Myung Moon. The members of
the Church (also known as Moonies) believe that the founder is the messiah and all children born after their parents’ Blessing (the Church wedding ceremony) are without original sin and thus engrafted onto God’s lineage. It is an obligation for all born into the Church to marry another Blessed Child, most commonly through an arranged marriage. It is common practice to match people from so-called enemy nations: Jews and Germans, French and English, Polish and Russians, Koreans and Japanese. The belief is that the only way to world peace is to make your enemy your family. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and any sexual conduct outside of marriage is forbidden. Anything that is associated or could lead you to any of these things, such as piercings, tattoos, make-up, certain music, films, style of dance and fashion are frowned upon. The Unification Church recognises many holy texts, however they have their own - The Divine Principle - which is an interpretation of the Bible, written supposedly by divine inspiration by Rev. Moon at the beginning of his mission.
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A Country Girl
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Photo by Sita Carolina
by Audrey Foote
I’m Audrey and I come from a small town called Tammin, which is located in the central Wheatbelt of Western Australia. The town site only has a population of 200, and with the addition of 250 farmers, it makes a total population of 450. We are a close-knit community, but there is not a lot to do as far as entertainment is concerned. I have lived in the country for most of my life except for short, intermittent periods where I have lived in Perth. I came down to Perth this time to stay at a place called Neami (a sub-acute centre for people who have a mental illness). Neami is a preventative program to stop people from getting admitted into one of the psychiatric hospital wards in Western Australia. While I have been here I have engaged in group work, one-on-one work and also in a cooking group. All of this has boosted my self confidence so that I can live a better life out in the community. I came down to Perth via the Prospector, which is one of the trains that service the area where I come from. This train runs twice on Monday and Friday, and only once for the rest of the week. The other train that services Tammin is called the Meriden Link and this train runs once a week on a Wednesday. So as you can imagine, living in Tammin can be quite isolating but we are lucky to have at least one train that goes past every day. The things that I look forward to when I come down to Perth is going to the shopping centres, going to the movies, and the many take-away outlets that are available. Our nearest major shopping centre is eighty kilometres away but we do have a small grocery shop (IGA), which is only twenty kilometres from us. When it comes to movies we have to either wait until they come on Foxtel, or if you don’t have Foxtel then you have wait until it comes on DVD or on the television. Tammin does have a roadhouse and a pub but they sell the regular roadhouse and pub food that you can get anywhere. The things that I do miss about my home town is looking up at the stars at night. Even though you can look at the night sky in Perth it is not as clear or as bright as looking at the stars in the country areas. I also miss the scenery and
wildlife. Some of the scenery and wildlife in Perth is good, but it is nothing like getting up each morning and looking out your bedroom window at the farming areas or seeing the birds. There are many advantages to living in Tammin, such as everyone knows one another, but that can also be a disadvantage because everyone knows everyone’s business; there is no such thing as a secret in my home town. You can always go out and leave your door open knowing that there is a zero percent chance that someone will break in. The disadvantages of living in Tammin is that there is no public transport except for the trains so if you don’t drive, like myself, then you have to try and arrange your schedule around the person who is going to be driving you to do your shopping or go to the doctor (which are both twenty kilometres away). Also there is not much to do for young people unless you are into bingo, playing lawn bowls, going to the pub or the CWA (Country Women’s Association). The advantages of living in Perth are that you have all of your necessary amenities, such as doctors and hospitals, close to you or you can get there by public transport. Public transport is another advantage of living in the city because even if the buses or trains are not running then you always have the option of hopping in a Taxi to get to your destination. There are also many things for both the young and the old to do such as going to the zoo, cinemas, Adventure World and shopping centres. In Perth you also have the advantage of meeting and becoming friends with people from all walks of life. The disadvantages that I can see about living in the city is that you have to be security conscious when you are at home and when you are in the community and not everyone has a personal relationship with their neighbours. Perth is a fun and convenient place to live but I was raised in the country my whole life, so the country will always be the place that I call home. Even though I may move to Perth for study and work, I was raised in the Central Wheatbelt. This area will always have a place in my heart and I will always return to it. FEATURE / 15
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Feminism and Petticoats: My Miss Pinup Australia Journey by Dure Khan For those unfamiliar with it, Miss Pinup Australia is an annual event where women from all over Australia are invited to participate in a journey of self-discovery set to the tune of the 1940s and 1950s. Miss Pixie Roberts, the owner and founder of Miss Pinup Australia created this platform as a means for everyday women to conjure that little bit of glamour, and inject an extra boost of self-confidence in their daily life. The event is unique in its level of engagement between participants, their audiences and sponsors. Participants are encouraged to seek friendship and support from one and other and are provided guidance in the form of mentorship from previous title-holders. A large social media presence means that participants can choose to share their pinup journey publicly through their Facebook fan pages or privately through participant Photo by Jennifer Villalobos only Facebook groups. Help is never too far away and there is “You’re entering a beauty pageant? a real sense of sisterhood and I don’t understand? This is so not community about Miss Pinup how we have raised you. This is so Australia that I felt wasn’t possible not YOU?” in the world of pageantry. Last month, I sat across a dining table from my mother and father and told them about a secret project I was working on- myself. And as expected there was much discontent in my household when I revealed to my folks that I was participating in one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious vintage pageants. Neither of them could comprehend how their feminist daughter could be interested in something they considered the opposite side of the feminist spectrum. But this is the precise beauty of the whole situation. Participating in Miss Pinup Australia is making me question everything I thought I knew about myself.
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There have been days where I have questioned my sanity in entering Miss Pinup Australia. What business did someone like me have entering a globally recognised pageant that celebrates the golden yesteryear? I have never been considered conventionally attractive and I am clumsy; my ability to catwalk could be outshone by a baby deer. I really don’t blame myself for being riddled with self-doubt; I straddle two cultures, neither of which has ever reassured me of my value as a woman. Yet something compelled me to join the 2016 season of Miss Pinup Australia and my journey so far leading up to the state finals has
made me look into myself and the two cultures I am part of. As a young girl, raised by an ardent Pakistani feminist, I wasn’t granted Barbies and Disney princess movies. I had Mechano, Lego and gender neutral soft toys. In a culture that valued masculinity and male children, my mother saw femininity as a hindrance to success, a viewpoint she still holds on to. I can see where she was coming from. She was the studious daughter amongst the pretty cousins who were all married off by the age of 20. My mother spent her days in medical school libraries and her weekends making human biology notes. Marriage was the last thing on her agenda and adopting an androgynous style and traditionally masculine demeanour kept her off the radar as a bridal prospect. That is until her father got gravely ill and she could no longer afford to go to college. Then, much like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, my mother was at the mercy of cousins and aunties who pushed her kicking and screaming into the world of high femme. She married my father in 1986. I was born in 1987. She never became a doctor. My mother used to read paragraphs from Naomi Wolfe’s The Beauty Myth out loud while I did my homework, her voice bouncing off the walls of our apartment, as she watched the pot of dhaal simmering on the stove for dad’s lunch. “Arm yourself with knowledge. Become financially independent. Be like a man.” These were things she so often repeated to me from as early as I can remember. From the onset of childhood I associated overly feminine things with weakness and complacency. I saw marriage as sacrificing independence.
DIRCKSEY
I saw beauty rituals as a kowtow to the patriarchy. Reflecting upon the lessons I learnt from my mother on one hand and my Pakistani aunts and grandmothers on the other, I now realise where so much of my body image issues stem from. My mother taught me being viewed as feminine made me appear weak and laughable. My aunties and grandmas taught me that being feminine made me appear desirable. Neither of the two views allowed room for traditional femininity to be empowering and something to be embraced. Making eye contact has always been difficult for me. Smiling is equally painful. I had been taught to avoid eye contact with others out of respect and also to avoid the “wrong kind of attention”. Till fairly recently I walked with a constant stoop, my shoulders hunched over to make my chest seem flatter and myself seem smaller. I recognise these not only as vestiges of a society that was intent on desexualising its women but also as a tool used by women to keep themselves out of harm’s way. Eve teasing and street harassment are common place back home. Accidentally smiling at someone, seeming too confident in your gait and merely being born with a bigger bust than your cohorts lead to some uncomfortable conversations. “Don’t push out your chest like that. It doesn’t look nice” “Don’t smile too wide, people will wonder if you’re having an affair with someone” “Don’t look your elders in the eye, do you have no respect?” “Wear baggier Kameezes (shirts), people will think you’re trying to garner attention”
All these and more are the involuntary mantras of a young woman who despite having changed scenery, having adopted a feminist outlook and a devil-may-care attitude, is still unable to stand up straight and smile for a camera on cue. My physiotherapist constantly gripes at my bad posture, telling me that I would eventually ruin my back beyond repair. She doesn’t understand that my bad posture was pinched into me by my aunties at weddings, parties and gatherings. It was going to take some time for me to unfurl and not view this posture as an act bursting with sexuality because that is how it had been ingrained into my psyche.
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
it in vintage clothing with the explicit understanding that my feminism was defined by the contents of my head and heart and not by the contents of my wardrobe. I recognise now that if respectability politics come into play in the workplace or university life, if people assume that I am submissive or less deserving of respect because of how I present myself, it comes down to flaws in their ideologies and not flaws in mine.
I can understand the reluctance of my parents to accept my participation in Miss Pinup Australia and I can understand why people I know are quick to dismiss it as frivolity. What started out as a fun, light hearted romp Being exposed to newer forms of on the femme side for me has feminism throughout university quickly become a self-affirming thanks to the Edith Cowan journey where I am unlearning Women’s Collective and the old behaviour patterns as often as Network of Women Students I am learning new things. In the Australia conferences allowed end all I can say is my Miss Pinup me to reassess my position on Australia journey has served many presenting femme. My friends and purposes. It has provided others I would gather round painting a means to view a subculture and each other’s nails in the women’s a point in history from a nonroom while discussing equal anglocentric perspective. It has pay rallies, pro choice poster provided me with a platform to concepts and workshops we discuss important issues regarding would be attending at interstate unrealistic beauty expectations in conferences. In a similar fashion, Australia and abroad. But to me through the Miss Pinup Australia it has also been a valuable lesson workshops, I learnt that how in learning to come to terms with I chose to present myself, and myself as a feminist and decorate myself didn’t take away not letting others define my from my feminism so long as I feminism for me. did it for myself. We were taught You can find out more about me my to shrug off the 50s wallflower facebook page and instagram: stereotype and take on the facebook.com/midcenturymermaid mantle of “strong, intelligent, @midcentury_mermaid beautiful woman”, a mantra Miss Pixie had us recite at the start of each workshop. I took on my mother’s strong lessons in bodily autonomy. I took into stride Miss Pixie’s selfaffirming mantra and dressed
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Please Come Soon To Pick Him Up by Sarveshwaran Arumugam
Cold breeze rushes over my arm, leaving me with goose bumps. Stars twinkle above my wet hair. My red pants and black singlet drenched with sweat after a long dance class puts off anyone getting close to me. Rushing through the white rusted gate I can see my sister craning her neck out through the window in the porch, watching for who is coming. “Is it the pizza guy who was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago? Or my husband who promised to get me Chocolate Indulgence from Secret Recipe?” Who knows what flashes her mind at that moment. The only thing I can think of: “Did you feed them?” That’s the only thing that bothers me.
Ranger was in a ward, sick and weary, drips attached to his veins, refusing to eat and drink. My poor little guy. I visited him every single day with tears rolling down my cheeks. Yet, I was strong, believing in the Supreme Energy that one day he will be playing with his favourite red ball at home. Despite the vet losing hope, leaving us stranded behind the glass doors of his ward with the shocking news that Ranger’s survival rate was only 1%, I was still holding on to my hope.
My dogs mean the world to me. I am the proud owner of a Labrador Retriever mix and a Toy Poodle. They both turned six a few weeks ago, and I wasn’t there for their birthday. I rescued both of them.
I got the call on a bright sunny day, walking down the street to my university for some boring class. An unexpected call from the vet - it couldn’t make me more anxious. I rushed to the shade to answer the call. The words I heard from my vet were truly unexpected. It left me speechless.
The big one is Ben 10 (named after the cartoon Ben 10). His mother and siblings were snatched away by “doghunters” on the old, spooky street of Klang in Malaysia. The smaller guy is Ranger (named after the Korean movie: PoweRANGERs) and was rescued from an abusive “pet shop owner” – if she could be called that. She had kept him in a small kennel with no food and water for days just after his mother had delivered him. Puppies need to be breastfed for at least the first 6 weeks of their life, but my little sweetheart was never given this chance as he was abducted at just 2 days old. What a cruel world. Ben was diagnosed with Atopy Dermatitis and Ranger is a survivor of Parvo Virus (one of the deadliest viruses to dogs). Ranger’s nightmare was not just experienced by him, but all of us at home. The memory of him not having an appetite and crying day and night for 7 days straight is still fresh in my mind. I would never want to go back to this time in my life again.
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Only prayer was my strength at that time. I trusted in the Lord and He didn’t forsake me.
“He is totally fine. Indeed, biting the drip tube and barking so loud he is disturbing other dogs.” “Please come soon to pick him up.” Tears of joy filled my eyes. Never have I thanked God more than that moment in my life. That day made me realize that my two dogs are the only things that I look forward to come home to after a long day. Coming away from home, the home that I spent with those two angels, is surely the toughest decision I have ever had to make.
don’t go outside, it’s safe at home! by Michelle Aitken art by Andrew Tran
While this may sound a lot like a justification for a weekend spent in bed watching TV shows on a laptop, it is also a message that resonates across the stories of cultures from Ireland to Japan to India. The home is a safe haven; a place of solace and protection, but also of confinement, especially for women. In the past, men were expected to move in social and business circles, as breadwinners, land-owners, and heads of families. Women were confined to the domestic sphere, in which they filled the role of homemaker; as a wife and mother. Many fairy tales convey messages of warning for women who venture away from home, beyond the garden gate. This spatial departure from the home is loaded with connotation of rebellion, especially sexual transgression. In being confined geographically to the home, and kept from wild places such as forest glades, or moors purple with lavender in bloom. The female body, perceived as wild, natural, and unruly is effectively subjugated and domesticated. One Summer afternoon a young woman heads into the forest alone to pick wild strawberries. She stops in a clearing to rest, and dozes off in the sun, basket of berries and bonnet lying beside her. To anyone familiar with fairy tales, this sweet and innocent image comes with a foreboding undertone. Is there a cunning wolf lurking in the shadows? A witch in the guise of an old woman,
ready to lure the girl into her secluded cabin? What evil or ill-will manifests as a result of the girl’s departure from the safety of the domestic and intrusion into this marginal landscape? In 19th century Ireland, a woman wandering into a field at night, wearing just a shift, could be abducted, and replaced with a fairy changeling-impostor. While identical in appearance, the new woman would be withdrawn, sulky, insubordinate, unwilling to either satisfy her husband or fulfil her duties around the home. The husband confides in the local religious leader, and the changelingimpostor (or can we be clear and call her the disruptive woman?) is either beaten violently until the old wife has returned, or is burned to death. The allusion to sexual transgression in this tale is evident. For what reason would a woman be standing in a field in her nightie? For behaviour outside of gendered norms, she is punished. Legends such as this convey a complex message, part of which is that wives should remain in the home, and any departure from this containment may be punished, both by the danger of supernatural encounters, or the thinly veiled domestic violence made permissible by the construction of ‘changeling-imposters.’ Fear of women in control of their bodies and their sexuality is inherent in such cautionary tales. The association of the rebellious woman with the
supernatural is a common theme across the world, where ghosts and spirits pervade the cultural consciousness. Women who die before marriage and without leaving filial descendants to care for them in the afterlife become particularly troubling ghosts. In death, alienated from a home or the associated ties of family, these women pose a threat to the living. During Ghost Month in China, the seventh lunar month, offerings are made to appease these ghosts and protect the living from being seduced and possessed, drowned in rivers, or otherwise harmed women away from the home are denied peace in death, and again the message of restriction is clear. Today, we consider exorcisms, spirits, and fairy abductions as things of a distant and superstitious past. However, I can say that often when I venture out in public, I face catcalls and street harassment. I also often hear the concerned admonition ‘Just don’t go out! It’s safe at home!’ Is this not just two sides of the same sword? A new tactic for telling me that leaving my house, my washing and ironing, my chastity, is a dangerous idea? I reject the system that tries to strip women of their agency to move within the world. I want to defend our right to be away from home, even when we are made to wish we were curled up in ugg boots and an armchair. It will take more than abduction by fairies to keep me this side of the garden gate.
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
the anchor of my holiday by Melody Schnauer
Want to hear a joke? It starts like this: A Kiwi/Australian teenage girl, an Italian 10-year-old and a Spanish children activities manager are all sitting around a table on a boat, playing a game of cheat. They fling around numbers in Italian, since she can’t speak it fluently, but by God she learned enough at high school. The Spanish man speaks at least five languages and acts as a translator, while the kid uses his favourite English word often… ‘Cheat’. They are all having a great time, when the girl’s grandmother comes into the room. And starts to yell at her. Okay, it wasn’t really a joke, but it starts off sounding like one. When I was seventeen, I graduated from high school. My Nana was so happy, she decided to reward me by taking me on a month-long cruise. Trust me, it was great. I saw Komodo Dragons, finally bought a PSP, and met zany people. I was given free drinks by old American and English men who wanted to prepare me for college drinking, and met an Indian photographer that thought I was drunk every time we saw each other. I could go on and on about the things I saw and experienced, and about how much I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, this story is not about how happy I was. Rather, it is about how hard that month was with my Nana. First let me say that I absolutely love her and am grateful that she went on this amazing holiday with me. Still, it wasn’t easy spending a full uninterrupted month with her. She is a widow, only lives with her dog, and is very used to doing things exactly as she wants to. I, however, am not used to her lifestyle, and my habits clashed with hers in ways that made us… irritated. She didn’t expect me to sleep until 10 everyday or stay up until 1 am. She wanted me to join her with her arts and crafts, and I preferred to wander around the boat. She wanted me to be more interested in the harbours and docking into ports. I never cared much for boats in general. I would go up for ten minutes, take a few candid shots, and go below deck. In my defence, there were crowds up there, watching the boat dock. I’m not a fan of crowds, so I ran away.
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When we docked into Singapore, Nana (who was now very sick… cruise ships do that) told me to go see the harbour with her. I went up to the dock with my camera and looked for her. The deck was so crowded that I couldn’t find her. I took my normal pictures, and tried to find her again, only to fail. At that point, I was bored and frustrated, so I did what most angsty teenagers do. I rebelled! I went below deck against her command! I’m so edgy that way. Skip forward to me playing a game with those fine fellows, and Nana barged in and caused a scene. She reminded me that this was a ‘once in a lifetime event’ and that I wasn’t taking advantage of it. She even said that I wasn’t grateful that she’d taken me on this adventure. I was embarrassed out of my mind. While I understood her points, I didn’t think that she was being completely fair.I tried to defend myself, but being a teenager, I probably sounded bratty to her. She shut me down, and told me to come up to the deck – sit down and shut up. In the end, we weren’t compatible travelling partners. We loved each other, and did have some great times, but it doesn’t erase the hurt and betrayal. It took me a couple of years to fully forgive her for yelling at me. I may have hurt her more than I realised as well, and perhaps I should ask forgiveness. I am able to see the humour now that I’m a bit older and wiser. So if I ever go on a trip like this again, I’ll make sure to do it with someone that I not only know, but know very well, because the open road is no place to get to know someone.
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
HERE&NOW16/GenYM Words by Rhys Tarling
Practical Magic by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah
What are the responsibilities of an arts curator? There are many responsibilities included in curating a show, from creating an appropriate theme based on the artists or artworks you select to sending out contracts and drawing out floor plans for the artworks in the gallery. You have to work independently and with a team, so good communication is vital, as well as being really prompt with the diverse duties you need to undertake. Do the pieces on display for HERE&NOW16/ GenYM borrow from the style of traditional Islamic art? No, they don’t except for a few works by Zahrah Habibullah and Suzi Elhafez which are inspired by some of the forms present in Islamic art but they are of course interpreted in interesting and personalised ways. The majority of works are contemporary art pieces with no connection to what is termed ‘Islamic art’ today, but a discussion on what ‘Islamic art is’ is for another time! What are your goals following the opening of HERE&NOW16/ GenYM? My goals following the opening will be focused on generating important discussions with the FORUM, which is on April 30. I have dreamt of having Stefano Carboni, with curators like Rusaila Bazlamit, with the artists to really go deep with our discussions on Islamic art, contemporary art and Muslim artists. These kinds of conversations are rare in the world, and so I am really looking forward to documenting the outcomes of this for further study. I’m also keen on discussing the works with teachers and making sure the marketing campaign on the artists runs smoothly. *** The Forum was a space for the artists to discuss the personal context that informs their art, present some pieces that aren’t in the exhibit, and answer questions. I was expecting variations of explanations on the concept of ‘Islamic Art’ – an education, in other words. This expectation was there, in part, because contemporary art from Muslims is underrepresented in Australia, with one major exception: the Islamic Museum of Australia in Melbourne. Which opened in 2014. The artists weren’t there to fulfil the role of contributing A Positive Voice, they asserted. And that was true because they were complicated – funny, intelligent, well-spoken, a little perplexed at having to explain their art, sometimes frustrated and sad – themselves.
I had a brief conversation with Hamida Novakovich, the curator for the HERE&NOW16/ GenYM exhibition at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery. The exhibition features artwork from nine contemporary artists, whose distinctive work is only tied together by their experience of growing up Muslim in Australia. I also was in attendance for the Forum, an event that followed the opening of HERE&NOW16/GenYM. The diversity of the art was sublime. From Abdul Abdullah’s photography that playfully reinterpreted iconic American imagery (Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima and V-J Day in Times Square) to ceramic artist Idil Abdullahi’s decaying porcelain pieces; a beautiful – not pretty – light shone on the plight of young Muslims who are inadvertently poisoning themselves by whitening their faces. Rubaba Haider and Fatima Mawas delved deep into the introspective and personal. Haider creates intricate renderings of cloth and thread through gouache on paper. Through her frayed art, she articulates the infinitesimal and fragile threads that bind our relationships. She presented work that was created during a harrowing time – her mother in the hospital with her future uncertain. Mawas, a filmmaker, presented her short film Fighting For Air. It was a gritty piece on the tension between being a young Muslim woman and desiring things that are independent of that. Mawas sought to craft the story of a complex and three dimensional Muslim woman – something she’s not finding in the mainstream narrative that’s parcelled through the news, film, and television. Really, it was about making something that her and her friends could be entertained by and relate to. Sculpture artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah also touched on the larger cultural narrative of the Muslim, one that invariably invokes terrorism and radicalised youth. It’s a narrative that has nothing to do with where he’s been or his life, he said. His sculptures were labours of love, so detailed and true to life that they were like little machines that immediately and viscerally evoked empathy. The questions from the audience generated a lively dialogue on the multitude of contradictions that forms an identity, which makes useful material for art. There were a couple of clueless, though well intentioned, questions that elicited groans from the less clueless. The groans on behalf of the artists were unnecessary – they’re poised and graceful people who’ve heard and experienced worse. HERE&NOW16/GenYM is a free exhibit that will run until July 16.
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Zal Kanga-Parabia is a Australia based musician, freelance photographer and creative director with a passion for people, travel and arts. Working overseas performing music and capturing moments, Zal has a love for understanding people and cultures all around the world. He also has the craziest hair in Perth.
DIRCKSEY ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Zal Kanga-Parabia
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Night came. I’m still so sick. My ears popping every time I ascend to over 2000m, which is most days. I drink an abundance of tea, so much so that the tea bag is literally empty when I pour water, I drink only hot water. I look at my screen booking my tickets from Reykjavik to New York and feel my eyes slowly tiring. I’m really exhausted. Hiking, skiing, playing 2 shows and exploring around everyday really has taken its toll while I’m feeling unwell. My ears are so blocked I can’t hear a word unless people stand in front of me and my eyes feel like they’re leaping out of my sockets. My nose bleeds most of the time I go high. It’s not so good. But I’m not going to waste my time lying in bed all day. I continue skiing and in the evening of the second last day we walk up to a cabin for dinner on a mountain near Arosa. It’s a hard walk while queasy, and along one even while not, and it’s raining. Nightfall comes and I’m feeling extremely tired. My body is giving in but I keep walking, I’m pulling a sled too and bring my camera out to take some photos as we walk up. Half way up I start to black out and fall asleep. I’m sweating a lot and my mind is saying that it’s a bad idea you’re here. You should be in bed. We keep walking and maybe 20 minutes later, after climbing steep ice that lets you slip every step, we get to the cabin. I’m glad I went. Dinner was broccoli and cauliflower soup. My shirt was so wet with sweat Anna thought I got caught in the rain as I trailed a distance behind. I laughed and took it off, wearing my sweater as we sat at the wooden table under the warm lights.
stay. I’m going away now, my last day in Switzerland. Chur, Arosa, Zurich. I can’t comprehend the sights that I’ve seen. The brightness of white snow through goggles while skiing downhill. “Just feel it” says Simon when I say I literally can’t see anything. The snows falling hard and I take my camera. I have to, these memories are too precious to let fade into a blob of unused memory that withers over time. Simon, Anna and I were up skiing. They hadn’t seen each other for a few years too. I really liked seeing them talking and chatting, it made me smile, and remember the times we had 3 years ago.
The setting sun reflects off the lake that leads down into the mountains where we
DIRCKSEY ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
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Paying Our Rent by Mae Anthony So what’s happening in the year 2016? There are people within many faculties of WAAPA and greater ECU working with the Aboriginal Performance programme in order to facilitate successful learning outcomes. “We’ve just recently had sessions with Mary King (English performer and writer). Patricia Price (Co-ordinator of Classical Singing and Opera Studies) approached For any person traveling far away me and offered classes to us. Which is from home, there are going to be just overwhelming because that is total inherent difficulties such as relocation inclusion. It’s cutting the crap.” and finances. Many Aboriginal and In previous years, overseas visitors Torres Strait Islander students have that come to WAAPA were very rarely additional commitments of caring accessible to Aboriginal Performance Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait for elders and children as part of students. In the early days we started off students travel from areas all over the their cultural responsibilities. This in a tiny broken-down studio with no country to study at the WA Academy often requires them to return to their air-conditioning, and the job included of Performing Arts (WAAPA). The communities for extended periods. poking around and questioning why Aboriginal Performance program is a Producing documentation such as the program wasn’t advertised in any one-year intense performance training birth certificates for Abstudy regularly ECU brochures. Things have changed VET course that selects students causes delay in payments, making food significantly. Rick reports, “When from places far and wide to study and and accommodation problematic when Hugh Jackman comes all of Acting and develop their skills. Head of the course they have no family to stay with. Others Musical Theatre get invited, and so do is Rick Brayford, who has held the can suffer homesickness from being we. John Cleese comes – same again. It position for the last sixteen years, the separated from their families, often for never used to be like that, so what we’re first three up in Broome, and down here the first time, and some circumstances, seeing now is great.” at WAAPA for the remaining thirteen. a death in a community may lead Rick describes it as, “Using theatre, to extended absence due to cultural What an exciting program to add to acting, and performance training as responsibilities. Rick comments, the WAAPA catalogue, and what’s a vehicle for other life skills. For their “I get many applications from remote great about it, is that audiences discipline, for their “days work for a and regional areas of Australia. get to immerse themselves in the days pay” type of attitude, the notion Something everyone should know performances they put on, and of self-determination, just as the rest of is that the rate of teenage suicide get involved with all of the things the courses here at WAAPA do, whether in certain areas is off the planet. So the program has to offer. If I took it’s acting, dance, or opera.” sometimes we get talented students anything away from my time talking who have travelled from areas of high to Rick about the program, it’s this: The students work on plays throughout trauma, and we have to do whatever “Nobody lives on someone else’s place the year, receive training in short we can to lend a helping hand, so they for nothing. It’s a crime. Birds don’t film, prepare for an audition into the have the best shot at gaining training do it, bees don’t do it, so why should three-year WAAPA Acting course, and and employment.” we? We’re paying our rent here by the round it off with a final end of year support infrastructure that we’ve got for full-scale production. Rick remarks, Many applicants may speak English our Aboriginal students. That’s a start “The course let’s them know what they as a second or third language, or for us as far as paying our rent.” want to do and don’t want to do. They have had limited exposure to regular discover other avenues they might schooling hence literacy and numeracy Too right, Rick. want to explore, which can be all sorts standards may be sub-standard for of things offered here at WAAPA, and tertiary entrance. The program has A tiny grain of salt speckled in a stream statistically, the on-going education dedicated tutors on campus to assist of consciousness that is so deep it numbers are very good.” The course with this, and many other strategic cannot be seen. All the same, a tiny can lead them into performance in forms of support in place depending on grain, and then another, and another. theatre and dance, stage management, individual needs. Let’s see how far we can take this. It’s lighting, design, and costume, whilst time to pay up. also developing employability skills You think it’s difficult traveling to university on the bus from Fremantle, Nedlands, or even Swan View? Granted, you will do this on a regular basis – to and fro, back and forth – but imagine if home were somewhere else entirely. Derby is 2,383km from Perth, and Darwin a staggering 4,040km. Port Hedland is 1,638km, and Broome is 2,230km. Australia is a very diverse country. One moment you are in the city and all you have to do is drive two hours north or south and you are in an entirely different physical and cultural terrain.
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such as sight-reading, applying the appropriate performance elements to an array of diverse works, and developing professional skills to ensure paid employment. It also helps them to find out what they want to do with their skills and shows them how they can use performance as a way of expressing their own stories and experiences.
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
BOOK REVIEWS Wild
Old Jazz
Cheryl Strayed, 2012
Mike Williams, 2003
At twenty six years old, Cheryl Strayed had hit rock bottom – her only good parent, her mother, lost an excruciating battle with cancer, her marriage dissolved, and she was addicted to heroin and meaningless sex with strangers. With not much in the way of stuff left to lose, Cheryl, an inexperienced hiker, hiked alone across eleven hundred miles of the west coast of America. An unsentimental memoir, Wild is an affecting journey of a screw-up who takes charge of her crumbling life, mile by lonely mile. Strayed writes with conviction and skill – she plucks the random, senseless tragedies that have haunted her, and shapes them into a narrative that is compelling and layered with humour and pathos. Despite the grief and sadness that is baked into the DNA of this story, it’s genuinely hopeful – the self can truly be actualised in the harshest and most desolate terrain.
Perth writer, Mike Williams’s first published work of fiction Old Jazz is a poetic story of love and life. Frank Harmon, a middle age poet living in southern Western Australia, receives a call from a woman claiming to be his sister with news that would change his life: his estranged father is dead. This sets off a chain of events that lead him to England, obsessed with needing to know more about his father’s and mother’s past. William’s has an interesting prose style, akin to that of French literature. Speech is written in lines, with, more often than not, no detail of who said what. At first this style can be stunting, however it captures the focus of its audience and becomes effortlessly easy to read when in-tune with the flow of the novel. Old Jazz is a refreshing piece of literature with an engaging plot.
Rhys Tarling
Kitty Turpin
The Albanian
Big Sur
Donna Mazza, 2007
Jack Kerouac, 1962
The Albanian is Donna Mazza’s literary debut, and winner of the 2005 TAG Hungerford award for fiction. Our narrator is Rosa, a kooky but cautious young woman from Bunbury who, on a whim, sells her car and travels to Dubrovnik, Croatia, a city jaded by political strife. After spending time wandering without a purpose among the famous streets and architecture, she is propositioned by a seemingly wellmeaning local, but all is not as it seems… The Albanian did not strike me as an instantly gripping page turner, but once past the first few chapters, the style of writing becomes quite unique and compelling; Mazza effortlessly blends in poetic stanzas within the chapters, adding layers of detail that contribute immeasurably to the books themes and motives. The Albanian can be read as a cautionary tale or as a meditation on independence and maturity. It features some wonderful passages on Yugoslavian architecture, as well as areas of prose that bring to mind the likes of Donna Hart or Doris Lessing.
Big Sur is a messy and intermittently captivating book. The prose is maniacal; both in its desperate and panicky tone, and its disregard for the conventions of grammar. The spontaneous prose is characterful, but it’s a suffocating experience to read walls of texts with nary a comma or full stop in sight. The story depicts Jack Duluouz’s mental and physical entropy due to a gargantuan fan base and alcohol addiction. He seeks respite in his cabin in Big Sur, on the coast of California. The wilderness, for this Kerouac standin, provides a different sort of pain. There are huge swaths of this book that are gibberish; he might as well have been writing in Martian for all I could understand. And then there are some passages that could only be written by a human being who’s been gifted with the terrifying powers of perceiving all. Always challenging and sometimes rewarding.
Joseph de Kock
Rhys Tarling
Read a book lately? Send us your review: art.dircksey@gmail.com
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DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
A Worldly Journey from Trivandrum to Australia Words by Mae Anthony
Photo by David de Souza
Tao Issaro is an Indian musician and composer originating from the state of Kerala. Describing himself as a hybrid Indian kid (of South and Central Indian states) with a mixture of Australian blood. Tao moved to Australia in early 2015 to complete his Bachelor of Music at WAAPA and is now researching an honours thesis on Cross-Cultural Collaborations in Music. Prior to this, he has taken part in nearly 2000 shows across 30 countries. He has a background in Indian Classical music, Jazz Drum-set, Indian Contemporary World music, playing with commercial Indian rock bands for television, and countless cross-cultural collaborations. Influenced by genres of Trip hop, R&B, and Black American R&B reimagined with Jazz and Hip Hop, as well as his cultural Indian roots, Tao is what one might call an open suitcase. I had the monumental fortune of sitting down with him to talk about his music, culture, and upcoming projects.
When did you begin playing and composing music? TI: I started late, at age thirteen. My parents were hippies, letting me run free as a kid and not wanting to force anything upon me. Before my interest in music blossomed, I was a dancer from age nine. Then I went through this phase where I became interested in being a techie in sound and light design. When I was eleven, I was working on a production involving a drum-kit player and I started receiving lessons. Not long after, it became an interest, but it wasn’t until I was fourteen that I started to take it seriously and I’ve been drumming ever since. For composing, I’d say the last eight years. Have you done any notable performances, or have any upcoming performances, that involve showcasing your works to unfamiliar audiences? TI: First thing that comes to mind is the Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms. It’s important to mention that I don’t have any background in Western Classical music, so they called us for this show because they were featuring Indian Classical music for that particular season. Naturally, we were stoked. I was playing for this Indian folk-band and playing some heavy Indian tunes, so very percussive, rockallusive tunes with a lot of shouting. On the first day there was an orchestra playing, us on the second day, and the third was another orchestra. I was worried that it would be this huge mismatch, but we did it and it was fantastic! People really appreciated it. In fact, Jimmy Page came to watch our show. That was amazing and he came up to me and introduced himself. Coming up, I have written a forty-five minute long piece for the September season of Defying Gravity that features two wonderful Persian artists from Iran. It’s a major cross-cultural collaboration and I will be taking many original tunes written by them and rearranging them for Western percussion ensemble, along with my compositions as well. I’m very excited about presenting this to Australian audiences. To what degree would you say that you integrate the music of other cultures into your own compositions? TI: To a high degree. According to what culture I’m working with, I try to do as much research as I can into their culture. I’m fortunate though because any cross-cultural collaboration I have done has involved me working directly with the people of that culture, so I’ve never had to read 26 / MUSIC
as many books as you’d think. For me, it’s enough having that person’s perspective, to have their perception of their culture and draw inspiration from that. I think when you’re doing collaborations with other cultures, it’s important to enter the zone completely neutral, and not take in too many pre-conceived notions of what you want to achieve in the music. Have you found many differences in the way Australian culture values music as opposed to your native Indian culture? TI: India is not a unified country. We call it India, but it’s essentially twenty-eight different countries sharing one piece of land. In India, the music on its own is not as popular, as in Australia which follows this Western capitalist ideology that is built around money and a live music industry. In India, the music is for religious, social, or spiritual purposes. It is very different, even Indian Classical music is mostly performed for some spiritual reason, and you often see people meditating in the audience. I can’t make mass generalisations because the country is too big and extremely diverse, but in my experience family jamming is a huge practice in a way that it is not here. Is there anything you hope to communicate through your music? TI: I believe that people should stop being afraid of things and people that they don’t understand. If you have true understanding about where someone else is coming from and about why they might be saying something that doesn’t match up with your views, there can only be love and peace. You don’t have to talk. When you understand something you can take a complex thing like cultural diversity and turn it into two or three words. In a musical setting nobody cares if you’re Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because all of those barriers break down and you get a glimpse into someone else’s way of life through their music. That’s why it’s so powerful because you don’t need words to explain someone’s culture when you have music: it’s the most impactful and emotional thing you can communicate to a human without having to say any words. Hopefully by presenting music of other cultures and the immense beauty they have to offer will help people realise that maybe there is something to these ancient cultures that we don’t understand. And that that’s okay, because it’s okay to not understand.
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
MUSIC REVIEWS Beyoncé
Lupin
Beyoncé, 2013
Kara, 2010
In light of Beyoncé’s huge success with Lemonade, I decided to look back at Beyoncé’s self-titled album from 2013. It combines the R’n’B sound Beyoncé is known for with electronic beats and droning bass. The album centres around themes of sexuality, relationships and femininity, ranging from her relationship with her daughter, through to the price of ‘beauty’ in our society. While all the songs by themselves have merit, and the album is cohesive, some songs blend together, and softer songs sound out of place beside the harsh bass and beats. My favourite of the album was “Mine” featuring Drake; speaking of the anxiety of couples, while musically moving between a soft piano part and a mellow beat. A great album which showcases Beyoncé’s talent, but is mildly inconsistent as a whole album.
K-pop has come a long way over the last 10 years. Originating in South Korea somewhere in the early 1990s, the rise of K-pop boy and girl groups in the mid-late 2000s such as Kara, Girls’ Generation and SHINee catalysed its progression to becoming a well-established popular music genre in Western countries. Lupin is the third mini-album by K-pop girl group Kara. Released in 2010, it takes me back to the time when I was discovering K-pop for myself. The catchy, upbeat melodies were characteristic of early “2Kteens” K-pop, along with the classic “dark-butcute” theme of the title song, “Lupin”. This mini-album is accessible to someone making the first step into the K-pop world, and there is a song to suit anybody’s style preference, from the cute tones of “Tasty Love” to the slower “Lonely”, and it never fails to make me nostalgic for the good old days.
Melody Schnauer
Casey Mathaba
Antropophagus
Gurrumul
Mater Suspiria
Geoffrey Gurrumul
Vision, 2015
Yunupingu, 2008
Antropophagus is not an album to be listening to at 11:30PM alone in your bedroom, nor would you ever want to stumble upon the cover art in the dead of night with only your phone torch to light it. Luckily it was only released digitally with a limited 200 copies on vinyl. Mater Suspiria Vision are a classic witch house group from Afghanistan. If you haven’t heard of witch house it is a ridiculous sub genre of electronic dance music that focuses on creating creepy and unsettling vibes. I still can’t believe I got through this album. Every song sounded the same – creepy, weird, bullshit. The album dragged on for a whole 45 minutes with loops of strange languages being spoken by woman and children played over some drivel of a synth sound. Even I could play those synth riffs and I’m not much of a musician.
Gurrumul is the debut album by Aria Award winning Indigenous Australian Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Like a lark, his beautiful voice is refined and complex, and extends to lavish heights in flight. The poetry transcends the listener and deeply sketches pieces of supreme artistry, connecting the concept of his home and the love of his country and community. I’d recommend listening to the CD which comes with a leaflet containing lyrics and the English translations. Deep-seated storytelling evokes poignant images of the natural landscape, strengthening the theme of “home” coursing through the veins of this album. This dances hand in hand with the peaceful harmonies throughout and evoked an immensely gut-wrenching listening experience. Besides the odd exception, I have never found myself so immersed in acoustic music and it was truly one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had.
Kitty Turpin
Mae Anthony
Have an EP, CD or Single coming out? Send it to us at: music.dircksey@gmail.com
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DIRCKSEY
ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
Down Mystery Road… Ivan Sen: Storyteller of a Generation by Sarah Stopforth Ivan Sen is one of Australia’s most successful Indigenous filmmakers. A jack-of-all-trades, Sen directs, writes, does his own cinematography, composing, editing and casting for many of his projects. From Inverell, New South Wales, his mother is Indigenous and his father European. Sen studied at the Australian Film and Television School and made his feature film debut with the acclaimed Beneath Clouds (2002), which screened at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, won the Premiere First Movie Award at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival and won Best Director for Sen at the 2002 Australian Film Institute Awards. On April 2 it was announced that Ivan Sen’s new film Goldstone (2016), the unofficial sequel to thriller Mystery Road (2013), will be the opening film at the sixty-third Sydney Film Festival on 8 June 2016. Sen revealed, “You get the sense you must offer something special to be invited back to open the Festival for a second time, and we hope that Goldstone does do that.” Goldstone is Sen’s fifth Feature Film, among numerous documentaries and short films, after successful features Beneath Clouds, Dreamland (2010), Tommelah (2011), and Mystery Road (2013). Goldstone stars Aaron Pederson (retuning as Detective Jay Swan from Mystery Road), and Oscar-nominated Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver Linings Playbook). The film received funding support of $530,000 from Screen Queensland and a whopping $1.17 million from the Screen Australia Indigenous Unit. Australia has a band of successful Indigenous filmmakers among Sen, from Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah), Rachel Perkins (Bran Nue Dae, Radience), and Wayne Blair (The Sapphires).
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Indigenous stories not only should be told, but need to be told− especially through the medium of film. Movies are the best vessel to express the many cultural issues Sen confronts in his movies, from the treatment of Aboriginal people by the Australian Police, and the continued segregation (both conscious and unconscious) between white Australians and Indigenous Australians. Under film’s guise, a filmmaker can influence people that have never experienced what they are watching, and a truly gifted filmmaker will help an audience to empathise with and understand these experiences. After watching Mystery Road, I am convinced that Ivan Sen is that filmmaker. Not only can he tell a story that is visually compelling, but also crafted a beautiful screenplay that is so effortlessly executed and communicates its core message with clarity and style. So when Goldstone comes out in a few months, I urge you not to see a ‘mainstream’ film, but instead head to your local Luna Cinema, and see Sen’s latest feature. I can pretty much guarantee that you will feel and understand more about yourself, others different to you, and the Australia onscreen before you. Ivan Sen’s Goldstone premiers at Luna Palace Cinemas on 30 June 2016. For more information go to: lunapalace.com.au
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ISSUE 3: AWAY FROM HOME
FILM REVIEWS
Lagaan: Once Upon A Time in India
Sherpa
Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001 Lagaan: Once Upon A Time in India is a great launch pad for those uninitiated in Bollywood. The daunting runtime aside, Lagaan is an accessible, entertaining sports fairy-tale told on an epic scale. Set in India 1893, a sadistic English captain goads the poor villagers of Champaner into a wager; their taxes (and livelihood) for a cricket match. A charismatic farmer Bhuvan (so charismatic, indeed, that he catches the eye of the Captain’s sister) spearheads the challenge and forms a ragtag team. The story has a familiarity – in a Rocky meets Seven Samurai kind of way – however Lagaan transcends typical sportsdramas with enormously high stakes, eccentric characters, and an important subtext. This David and Goliath battle is set against the backdrop of a much bigger story - British Colonial history in India – and deals with it using restraint and humour. Lagaan is an enormously entertaining film, well worth a visit.
Jennifer Peedom, 2015 The Himalayas, home of the Sherpa people, provide the backdrop for Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom’s breathtaking documentary on the 2014 avalanche that killed sixteen Sherpas. Originally there to document the working conditions of Sherpas following the “Everest brawl” the previous year, Peedom’s film took a turn when the unanticipated disaster illustrated the exploitative and dangerous business that fulfils foreigners’ egos. At Sherpa’s heart is Phurba Tashi, who is about to climb Chomolungma (Everest) for the twenty-second time. Tashi epitomises the struggle. He must provide for his family, but the risk is great. Questions are raised: where is the respect for the mountain, and where is the respect for the people, whom without, no one could have climbed Everest? Sherpa is visually majestic and heartbreakingly gripping. As a yak bell’s jangles amidst the silence of the mountains, you know you are there and that the story is real.
Corey Booth
Zachary Sheridan
The Great Beauty
Kabei: Our Mother
Paolo Sorrentino, 2013 La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) is a tale of 65 yearold Jep Gambardella, a socialite trying to rediscover the meaning of his life. After a successful ‘novelette’ published in his early twenties, he is able to retire early into a life of self-indulgence. The film’s style is very polished, and very Italian, showcasing the beauty of Rome. The picture is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s aesthetic. It also takes elements from Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (The Good Life) and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation in terms of story and substance. Not only does the film show the beauty of reality, but also the beauty of the imagination. Whether that is his drug infused imagination, or the sober one, I do not know. “Do you see the sea?”
Yoji Yamada, 2009 Kabei: Our Mother is fundamentally a story of the struggle women face during wartime. Set in World War II Japan, a mother of two children, lovingly called Kabei, comes to grips with her single life, as her husband is branded a communist and sent to jail. During a time where there was no greater crime than thinking against your country, where honour is valued over reason, Kabei works hard to keep her daughters in good spirits, while her whole world is crashing around her. But even in war torn Japan, romance can still blossom, and life, as it always does, moves on. Kabei: Our Mother is an emotional movie that transcends Japanese borders – it can be understood in any country that has faced war, and cuts deep to any audience. Be ready with a box of tissues for this one.
Sarah Stopforth
Kitty Turpin Watched a movie recently? Send us your thoughts at: film.dircksey@gmail.com
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