The theme of Retrofuturism is a loaded one for First Nations people. In much of Aboriginal philosophy, time is non-linear. Who are we to measure the ceaseless eternity and timelessness of nature? What is progress, history and human experience to cultures whose self-awareness can be tracked into Deep Time—that is, time beyond what scholars deem “prehistory”, a space that belies definition by age or era. Aboriginal people had lunar calendars as well as solar calendars like the one we use today. Our concepts of time do not reflect an uneasy shuffle forward, but rather reflect the unending cycles and patterns of nature. It is reflected in our material culture—progress is not defined by us by the complexification of material, but rather the adaptability of mob to changes in the natural environment. There, I think, belies an irony at the heart of the standard “Acknowledgement” format—we always are, and always have been, and always will be. Our elders are past, present and emerging, because to us—time is governedby Country, rather than our experience of it.
Farrago would like to acknowledge this transcendent ownership and kinship of Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Kulin people to the country on which Farrago is produced, as well as the other clans of the Kulin nation—the Bunurong and Wadawurrung people on whose land the University of Melbourne has campuses. We acknowledge the stories and knowledge First Peoples maintain of Country, Sky Country, and Water Country, paying respect to knowledge holders both present and Dreaming.
University
Spiers
Theodosiou
Matthews
Li
Cronn
Day at UniMelb: Southbank Campus
Chen
Facets of Madness: The Waste of Death— Contorting Grief into Madness
Ferdinando
WIP Around the Workshop: Exposition Exposed
Ulyanov, Creative Literature and Writing Society (CLAWS)
in Translation
Morgan
Phenomena: Dog Days and Everydays
Pantsis
on the Dancefloor: Tales From Late-Stage Hospitality— The Retiree
Azzopardi
Apocalypse
Zikic
and Rituals: Jamming and Vibing Ourselves out of a Sticky Situation
Di Bartolomeo
Craft Guide: Pop-Up Cards
Chen
the Mountain:
Adversity in Celeste Aries
Gunatilake
Joyce
the Characteristics of Autistic Fiction
Morris-Gray
Charlotte Waters
Jasmine Pierce
Nishtha Banavalikar
Stephanie Xin Hui Cheng (@gohan.bubbles)
Akash Anil Nair
Alexia Shaw
Ben Levy
Brighton Wankeaw
Carmen Chin Christina Savopoulos
Emma Xerri Jordan Di Natale
Josh Davis
Lochlainn Heley
Madison Barr Mae Horsley
Selina Zhang Trang Dau
Alex Reardon
Alexandra Thomas Alexia Shaw
Amber Liang
Anindya Meiv Bella Farrelly c.a.
Carmen Chin Cass Klempfner
Chathuni Gunatilake
Christian Theodosiou
Christina Savopoulos Cyberculture Club Eva Rees-Wemyss
Frank Tyson Georgia King
Hannah Hartnett
Imogen Smith
Jia Yi Kylia Koh
Joanne Zou
Jocelyn Saunders
Jordan Di Natale
Louis Dickinson
Maddy Cronn
Marshall Matthews
Meg Bonnes
Narii Salmon
Otto Lowe
Patrick Mercer
Patrick Sexton
Stephanie Xin Hui Cheng
Tanuki Tess Corbel
Weiting Chen
Xiangyun Li Yoshika Hida Zoe Keeghan
Donna Ferdinando Helena Pantsis Jack McMahon
Roman Ulyanov, Creative Literature and Writing Society (CLAWS) Marcie Di Bartolomeo Rupert Azzopardi S Theocharides
Riley Morgan Sophia Zikic Weiting Chen
Aries
Chathuni Gunatilake Emma Xerri Ishan Morris-Gray
Aeva Milos Alessandra Akerley Archie Bear Bayley Horne Brighton Wankeaw Dominique Jones Ella McCartney Joel Duggan Jordan Di Natale Josh Davis Kayra Meric Max Dowell
Megan Tan Tan Miriam Litwin Patrick Sexton
Rebecca Reubenicht Selina Zhang Tianyu Wang Vanessa Chan
NEWS SUBEDITORS
Asimenia Pestrivas Beau Kent Daisy Assauw
Emma Barrett George Tyurin
Le Thuy Linh Nguyen Max Dowell
Rico Sulamet
Sarah Pemberton Stephanie Umbrella Zara Feil
Aeva Milos Ava Nunan Breana Galea Clem McNabb
Helena Pantsis Izma Haider Jaz Thiele
Laura Charlton Leah Macdonald Mary Hampton Melana Uceda Nalini Jacob-Roussety Nina Adams Romany Claringbull Rowan Burridge Xiaole Zhan Zoë Hoffman Zoe Keeghan
Alexandra Thomas Allegra McCormack Bella Sweeney Bridget Schwerdt Clem McNabb
Emma Barrett Frank Tyson Gwynneth Thomas Helen Tran Leah Macdonald
Livia Kurniawan Mary Hampton Millie McKellar
Samson Cheung Sara Vojdani
Sarah Pemberton
Sophie Lodge Sunnie Habgood Susan Fang Tegan Lyon Yoly (Yuzheng) Li Zoe Eyles Zoë Hoffman
STAFF WRITERS
Alain Nguyen Animesh Ghimiray Bella Farrelly Daniel Snowden Emma Barrett Emma Xerri Felix Kimber Joel Duggan Joel Keith Kae Girao Laura Quintero Serrano Maggie Slater Maggie Stoner Nicholas Speed Nicole Bernadette Jalandoni Sophie Breeze Velentina Boulter
Amber Jepsen Amber Liang Arielle Vlahiotis Ashlea Banon Ayushmaan Nagar Birdy Carmen Casey Boswell Cathy Chen Chau Hoang Edie Spiers Ella Cao Evan Goulios Grace Reeve Indy Smith Ivan Jeldres Jessica Norton Joanne Guo Leilani Leon Manyu Wang Matilda Lilford Meadow Nguyen Melana Uceda Monica Yu Niamh Corbett Nina Hughes Pamela Piechowicz Riley Morgan Sally Yuan Weiting Chen Yicheng Xu Zoe Eyles Zoë Hoffman
Alexi O’Keefe Anannya Musale
Andrea Ann Win Lim Chau Hoang Christopher Prawira Emilia Weeden Janna Dingle Lana Eastaugh Maggie Ung Melana Uceda Phoebe Lee Sabrina Ke Qin Ting Samantha Shing Timothy Willett Vincent Escobal Yicheng Xu
Akash Anil Nair Alexandra Richardson Ben Levy Brighton Wankeaw Chaital Vasta Chen-Yang Lee Chong Jia Wen Christian Theodosiou James Hunter Jashan Deep Singh Joshua Davis Kayra Meric Maddy Cronn Michael Sadeghi Mollie Crompton Rebecca Vincent Suwanthi Elpitiya Acharige Tonia Pan Trang Dau Yvonne Le
Aeva Milos Alexia Shaw Beatrix Brenneman Isabella Ross Lochlainn Heley Maia Everist-Migliore Olivia Ryan Padmo Widyaseno Rhea Chatterji Sherry Tay Tanisha Khan Zac Eaton
Elina Pugacheva
Issy Abe-Owensmith
Joel Duggan Nikita Mohar-Williams Pamela Piechowicz
Saanjana Kapoor Samson Cheung Sarah Pemberton
Thalia Blackney Zhiyou Low
Alexia Shaw Ashley Mamuko Bayley Horne
Danqing Zhu
Genevieve Byrne Gloria Yu Madison Barr
SOCIAL MEDIA Crystal Koa Eliza Routley
Janna Dingle Madison Barr Mae Horsley Rachel Manning Samantha Shing Tejas Gandhi Trang Dau Vivien Hooper Weiting Chen
This magazine is made from 100% recycled paper. Please recycle this magazine after use. Farrago is the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Farrago is published by the General Secretary. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UMSU.
Retrofuturism is an artistic movement that pays homage to how past societies imagined their future, and our present. It’s a unique intersection of past and future, where they meet eyes and find themselves reflected, or perhaps refracted, bouncing off each other’s visions. It’s the act of remembering a bold and brazen hope, and in a time of crisis, digging deep into its roots to extract the seeds which might help us imagine a bright future. Imagining the world from the gleaming eyes of the past is an act of empathy and intuition, but it has a utilitarian function. It’s a coping mechanism; a talisman which helps us to move through the world with greater ease.
Stories and pieces of art are spaces to which we—on a personal but also a collective level—can withdraw from an often dire reality. They form tiny worlds which run on different timelines to ours; sites to which we can tether a hope that might otherwise hang anchorless. They give us the strength to accept all the potential grimness of the future, and not to buckle under it. That’s not to say that immersing yourself in art is always a happy experience. Artworks and stories can be micro-utopias, but they can also be heterotopias, spaces defined by Foucault as somehow ‘other’; sites of resistance wedged innocuously within, and yet disrupting the landscape of, the real world. We hope the brilliant pieces we’ve been lucky enough to publish in 2022 have given you morsels of joy, or strength.
Student publications provide a platform for students to tell authentic stories and make diverse art. It’s a safe space where we can get personal; where we can experiment creatively and venture into the absurd. We’re incredibly privileged to live in a country where we’re able to publish these stories without significant threat of censorship. That being said, recently, Semper Floreat, the University of Queensland student publication, received media backlash for publishing a guide to ethical shoplifting, and an editor of On Dit, the Adelaide University newspaper, was terminated by a student union with a conservative majority. We also recognise that even when a publication is not under particular threat, not all students have access to the safety blanket it provides—for instance, international students with censorship laws back home, or closeted queer students for whom artistically expressing their queerness always poses risk.
We support student media that pushes the boundaries of artistic forms, and that reaches outward to challenge the status quo. Farrago—which, by definition, is a confused mixture of different things— endeavours to carve a cross-section of the minds of the student population. By developing concrete edition themes in 2022, we ran the risk of streamlining this, but we were consistently blown away by the infinite range of angles from which students came to these themes. Each edition became a kaleidoscope of opinions and emotions.
This is mirrored in the vibrant community which surrounds all we do. Our projects are the product of rich, productive collaboration—between writers, subeditors and illustrators; between reporters, staff writers or radio hosts with a common interest; between managers and team members, all of whom are volunteers. Many of these contributors have never met each other in person, and yet treat each other’s work with care, creativity and awe. We’re equally grateful to those who consistently show up to events and hang out in our office, bringing people together and fostering a sense of community.
We’re incredibly proud and grateful to have had the chance to captain this ship for a year, and we know that next year’s talented editorial team has big plans for this vibrant little community. We can’t wait to see them shine.
– Charlotte, Nishtha & Jasmine
2022 has been a whirlwind of a Farrayear. Emerging from two years largely spent in lockdown, we plunged headfirst into bustling campus life and in-person events. There’s inevitable knowledge and muscle memory that’s lost when the physical office goes mostly unused for two years. We’re incredibly grateful to our collective of passionate student creatives who have been patient with us, learnt the ropes alongside us, and worked hard to make this a year filled with community connection and creativity.
Our Fodder managers, Emma and Jordan, and more recently Lochie. Thank you for being constantly on top of things, managing massive teams and an entire radio station by yourselves around the clock. It hasn’t been easy, if our email chains with Emma at 3am are any proof, but it’s been so rewarding to see life back in the Fodder station. Emma and Lochie, thank you sincerely for being our liaisons between hosts, AVM and the other chaotic obstacles always thrown your way.
Our Fodder Blog managers, Carmen and Christina. You’ve been so amicable to our constantly changing schedules and timelines, managing around the clock content independently. You are both truly brilliant—all I have to do is float an idea and suddenly in a week I see it manifested from gig guides to interviews. Thank you Carmen especially for working tirelessly on the new website. We can only hope there are more exciting things for Fodder yet to come.
Our witty & wonderful satire managers! Bayley, you shaped the identity of the team and gently supported its members to create
satirical mini-masterpieces. Thank you to Maddy and Alexia for your consistent (and consistently strong) contributions, and for enthusiastically keeping the team afloat in Semester 2.
Our social media superstars—Trang, Mae and Sam—for churning out vibrant posts that can not only grab, but maintain, the attention of doomscrollers. An admirable feat! Thank you for bearing with our last-minute ideas and whims.
Our news team managers, Selina and Josh, have gone above and beyond, assuming the leadership of the news team after Jo was called away to Sydney on short notice! Thank you for so gracefully taking on responsibilities which would normally be in the realm of an OB. We’re in awe of your journalistic rigour, investigative spirit, dedication to deadlines, and witty live tweets.
Our photography managers, Ben and Akash, for keeping our editions beautifully vibrant and visually striking. Thank you for keeping the team together, keeping on top of equipment, and sharing your knowledge and expertise. We have certainly learnt a lot from the both of you and are incredibly grateful for the skill you brought.
Our video team managers, Pavani and Brighton, who worked tirelessly to revive a long dead project. Thank you for your passion and your skill. Thank you especially to Brighton for elevating the team to greater heights with your communication, vision, and leadership. May Farrago Video live on.
Our representative on Students’ Council, Annalyce—we’re floored by your attention to detail, ethical rigour, and inside-out
knowledge of the workings of UMSU. Thank you for standing up for student media, and for keeping us all accountable.
Our Above Water Editorial Assistant, Rowan—we wish we could be as organised and patient as you are! Thank you for your lifesaving spreadsheets, and for being a welcoming representative of the anthology when prospective contributors had questions.
Our Queer x Media facilitator, Joel—for braving unexplored waters and steering the ship of our new collective! You’ve given direction and structure to this tight-knit, humble lil bookclub. Thank you for keeping conversation rolling with your deep passion for each text we discussed, and your impeccable monologues on Henry James.
To my dear reporters and subbies, thank you for tolerating me I was demanding, impatient, and unnecessarily mean. I sent long emails, disappeared for days, rewrote pieces, often cruel. You reporters and subbies have been nothing but patient with me—thank you for giving me your passion and skill. I am not sure it was spent well on me. I hope you all recognise the talent and astuteness you all possess. Be good. Go well.
—Jo
You have been so patient with me. From my typos in all my emails, to accidentally sending the wrong author’s contact address in my 4am subediting assignments, you always follow through. I could not have asked for a better team this year. We had a lot of shake-ups in our little department this year— introducing new things, for them to sometimes succeed and often fail, but we all somehow managed to make it to the end. Godspeed my fiction-averse babies.
—Nishtha
Creative subeditors! I’ve been blown away by your passion, persistence, and willingness to try new things. Thank you for diving headfirst into forms and genres you’re less familiar with; bearing with my late-night, long, error-ridden emails; mastering those deadlines; and communicating with new writers in the gentlest way.
—Charlotte
You wonderful, talented, creative beings! Thank you for all your incredible work this year.
A key part of Farrago’s identity is its impeccable artworks, and the magazine would simply not be the same without your creative input and expertise. It’s not an easy task to illustrate another person’s piece of writing, and even harder with tight deadlines and multiple commissions (on top of actual uni and life commitments!). You have all been so incredible this year, and made my role an absolute delight.
The Design Team—thank you for bringing Farrago’s website and social media to life. It’s been so exciting to have a brand new suite of graphics for every edition and event. The value of your work for the Media Department is immeasurable.
Illustrators—thank you for putting up with my many emails, and last minute illo requests. You are absolute legends, and you cannot know how many times I have been blown away by your work when it comes into my inbox! I can’t wait to see what other creative projects you get into in the future. You have such a gift, thank you for sharing it with us!
—Jasmine
***
Our teams span a broad range of talents, and every single volunteer forms a crucial drop in the melting pot that is student media. Endless thanks to our columnists, Fodder hosts, Fodder Blog writers and subeditors, photographers, videographers, satirists, social media angels, and election coverage baddies.
Thank you for attending our events, donating your precious time to proofreading our mags, and keeping the spark alive in a community that’s weathered two years of lockdowns. We’re particularly grateful to those who submitted their writing and art to us, or applied to join our volunteer teams. Shooting a cold email can be a daunting process, especially when said email contains incredibly personal art. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for entrusting us with your talent. Some editions had up to five times as many submissions as we could fit in the print mag, which made decision-making excruciatingly difficult. We hope you continue submitting, applying, and getting involved.
CME has helped us on a near-daily basis, constantly going over and beyond to reply immediately to our stressed out queries, unoptimised social posts, and endless poorly managed basecamp projects. We, and UMSU, would be nothing without your guidance.
Thank you Amy for being so responsive and on top of things when the silly little Media Department brought you strange requests. Thank you now to Millie who has also gone out of her way to help us organise op subs, check articles, aid us in responding to strange requests, all whilst dealing with the chaos of everything else.
Ciara, we apologise for always being in your inbox. From budget questions to copyright and access questions, we are so clueless. Little doe-eyed deers in the night we turn to you for light.
The forever student unionist and absolute girlboss who supports us in all our endeavours to keep institutions accountable. You’ve been so patient with us, and gone above and beyond to help us every time we ran into your office or inbox with yet another ethical pitfall to work through.
Thank you Tim for holding our hands through every step of hiring a student contractor for the first time, despite it being your first time too! And for trying your very best to get our other volunteers paid, paving the way for future conversations.
Thank you Ida for hosting our launches with such ease. Thank you, especially Tim, for being a good friend. The bartenders in Sydney do not come close to you.
Thank you for never scrutinising our budget or spending, and instead, always choosing the performative aesthetic route. Never change.
To Creative Arts, our partners in so many of this year’s activities, thank you for being patient with us and always amicable to partnerships. So many of our events just would not have happened without your support—from just attending to helping us build an entire Above Water publication, it’s been a pleasure to work with you. Thanks especially to Marcie for your prompt and incredibly thoughtful messages; for going above and beyond even when times were tough; for supporting us at all our events; and for the wonderful, witchy, creative ideas that add so much colour to our collective.
Our new collaborations this year have been so much fun! Thanks for being patient and hearing us out when we came to you with a very last-minute collective idea. We can’t wait to see Queer x Media collaborations blossom in future years.
Each Acknowledgement of Country this year has been deeply meaningful and so beautifully written. We’re in awe of your patience with us, and your kindness and promptness(!) every time we’ve come crawling back to you at the last minute to sheepishly, apologetically, ask this favour again. It means so much to us.
Thank you for bringing our ideas to life! We are so indebted to your expertise, and the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to produce such a beautiful printed product. Thank you especially to Andy, for putting up with our never-ending quote requests, last minute changes, tight deadlines, and terrible attempts to describe what we want with minimal understanding of printer jargon. You’ve gone above and beyond every time, and it has been such a delight to work with you. Thank you for being so wonderful!
We still message you almost every week seeking your advice. COVID made things really difficult for all of us–we’ve had to collectively learn and discover things no one ever thought to tell us. Lines of communication between years have been destroyed, leaving us to rebuild so much of Farrago from incomplete images of its past. But all of what we’ve done so far has been because of your help. Thank you especially to AIlish and Pavani. From checking off participants at our very first launch, to still emailing us old plans and invoices, we love and appreciate you so much.
You are inheriting a live landmine. Be gentle, be cautious but do not be afraid. Even if things blow up, you can always recover. We look forward to seeing what you do. If we can request one thing from you; do not maintain the status quo. Strive for more, strive for better.
Thank you for putting up with our meltdowns and emotional spirals, cheering us on from the sidelines, and gently reminding us that it will all be okay in the end! We couldn’t do it without you.
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Admin, admin and more admin! I have been busy doing your standard Gen Sec duties. But I love me some admin so it’s all okay! I have been writing agendas, minutes, emails and chairing meetings. I am pumped for the end of semester and excited to tick off my big and overwhelming to do list before handing over to a new Gen Sec in November. As always, stay safe and take care of yourselves. Love, Millie.
We’ve had a huge year in the C&S Department, and I’m so grateful to Benito, Fiona, Maria and my Clubs Committee for getting us through it! It has been wonderful seeing the massive impact of our return to campus on the successfulness of our clubs and societies—so many events and so much free food! We’ve also achieved some necessary policy work in camps & harassment prevention. I’m happy to say that our department will be in great hands next year with Kimmy & Renee! Signing off now, Ellie :)
Tastings has come and gone, and there will be a dazzling Above Water Launch with UMSU Media to end the year. It has been such a blast to work as your Creative Arts Officers! Thank you to everyone for being involved with our events and initiatives, whether it has been our collectives and grant rounds, or our arty parties, workshops, open mics and festivals. Thank you for your support and patience as we moved from the ol’ Union House to our new home in Arts & Cultural.
It is the eleventh hour of our term, but soon you will have Sav and Abbey as your new Creative Arts OBs. We look forward to what they will accomplish next year and how they will build and expand on our work!
We are at the tail end of 2022, and we have achieved a whole lot more than we thought possible during our term. From fighting for more transparency with on-campus COVID-19 safety measures, to advocating for equity in dual delivery and student services, a whole new handbook on common Uni processes for students, working alongside the Queer Department against transphobia in the classroom and drafting a new UMSU policy for Consultation with First Nations people. It’s been a year, to say the least, but we are so excited for Mary and Taj to keep up the good fight!!
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We held the first ever Blak Ball! We want to thank everyone who came out to the event to help us celebrate Blak Excellence. We were so happy with how the night turned out and are really looking forward to recreating the success of the night next year.
Gundui Bunjil has been printed and we will be holding the Launch Party sometime this semester. The newest edition looks amazing, and we look forward to sharing it with everyone.
We got re-elected, and are really looking forward to a second term as your Indigenous Office Bearers.
A report was not submitted.
The Department was vacant at the time of publication.
Queer Ball was a resounding success! We were thrilled with the attendance and there were some seriously amazing costumes. Can’t wait to show off the photos. The 2022 edition of CAMP is also just around the corner, and we want to thank our editors Aries, Cyn, and Zhiyou with their tireless work on it. Otherwise, we’re doing our best to adjust with the new move, keeping our collectives going while we move into the new queer space.
We’ve made it! Congrats on making it through the semester! We’ve loved seeing your faces at our BBQs on Tuesday lunchtimes, your moves and grooves at the Southbank Ball, and the incredible productions, concerts, exhibitions, and films that you’ve put together across the semester! It’s been amazing being your Southbank OBs this year! We will see you all again next year on campus and out in the big world doing big things!
A report was not submitted.
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In August, it was revealed that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly appointed himself to five ministerial positions between 2020 and 2021. At least three of the incumbent ministers were unaware of this decision, including then-Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and then-Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews. Although these clandestine appointments are technically legal under Australian law (since the governor-general is not required to make public declarations), Labor and the Greens are calling for an independent inquiry into whether Morrison exploited his executive powers.
The newly elected Labor government has announced a 2023 referendum to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament. According to the UNSW Indigenous Law Centre, the referendum will ask voters whether they think the constitution should recognise a First Nations body, which will provide advice to the parliament about laws or policies affecting Indigenous people. The government is facing pressure to call the referendum quickly, before the 2024 election, but also take their time in ensuring it has the highest possible chances for success.
Amid already heightened US–China tensions, Nancy Pelosi, speaker in the United States House of Representatives, added fuel to these diplomatic flames by visiting Taiwan in August (what was it with August this year). The highly controversial move was perceived as direct evidence of America’s support for Taiwanese sovereignty, in open defiance of China’s goal to reassimilate the island. Pelosi’s trip triggered an increase in China’s military activity around Taiwan, with more than 20 military planes entering the latter’s defence zone on the day of her arrival.
The federal government’s Jobs and Skills Summit, a flagship Labor election promise, concluded with commitments to boost permanent migration, reduce work restrictions on pensioners and international students, and explore a move to industry-wide enterprise bargaining. The Liberal Party refused to attend the summit, with opposition leader Peter Dutton labelling it a “stunt” and “a disaster for our economy”. The summit failed to commit to increasing paid parental leave, a key gender equality measure, despite pressure from unions, business groups, and crossbench MPs.
Community for UMSU have swept to victory in the 2022 UMSU General Elections, winning the offices of President, General Secretary, Welfare, Activities, Queer, Environment, Disabilities and People of Colour. Stand Up! won Education (Public and Academic), Activities, Women’s, and Clubs & Societies, whilst Independents for Student Democracy (ISD) and Independent Media were uncontested for Southbank and Media respectively. Indigenous was retained by Brittney Henderson and Harley Lewis under newly-formed ticket UniMob, and newcomer Rhys Browning has taken over Burnley from retiring OB Kaitlyn Hammond. Community won 13 positions on Students’ Council; Left Action won three; and Stand Up!, ISD, Independent Media, and new ticket Rebuild won one each.
Highlights of the election included unauthorised election material alleging Rebuild is a Liberal-backed ticket, Community making separate non-compete deals with Stand Up! and Left Action, and a whopping nine OB positions elected unopposed.
Queen Elizabeth II, monarch and head of state of 15 countries including Australia, died in Scotland on September 8, immediately igniting debate over her personal and institutional legacy. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a National Day of Mourning (read: national public holiday) on 22 September, in remembrance of the Queen’s ‘‘extraordinary life of service”. Indigenous groups across the country held antimonarchy rallies in response, with the Melbourne/Naarm march led by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance and Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe attracting thousands of attendees protesting the monarchy’s involvement in ongoing colonisation. The Queen’s death dominated the media landscape for almost a fortnight, with journalists from The Age and The Guardian criticising their own publications for giving the story disproportionate weight and excluding Indigenous voices in the initial coverage.
NagarThe National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has condemned the University of Melbourne’s decision to remove the double-vaccination requirement for staff and students to attend campus, raising concerns over the transparency and effectiveness of current COVID regulations.
The COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements Policy was repealed on 18 July amid a resurgence in COVID cases and hospitalisations throughout Melbourne’s winter period. The University cited changed Victorian pandemic orders and the declining effectiveness of two-dose vaccinations against new variants as reasons for the change.
However, the NTEU argues it is another example of the University’s inadequate communication and openness with the staff and student collective.
“Throughout the pandemic, the [University] leadership has decided to live in a fantasy land fuelled by poor consultation exercises while everyone else ... is left to pick up the pieces,” said David Gonzalez, Secretary of the NTEU’s UniMelb Branch.
The NTEU are calling on the University to release the results of a series of ventilation audits conducted in early 2022, and to declare the full number of exposure sites identified in Semester 1. By making this information public, the NTEU believes students and staff would be better informed about the risks of coming to campus and the measures taken to mitigate them.
The University has consistently refused to release either dataset, claiming in meetings with University of Melbourne Student Union that the complexity and volume of the data could lead to misinterpretation and unnecessary avoidance of on-campus classes and activities.
Annette Herrera, the NTEU’s UniMelb Branch President, questioned the University’s reticence in releasing COVID-safety data.
“It might change the behaviour of staff and students, but I don’t understand why that’s a problem,” she said.
“It’s a good thing for people to have that information so that they can make the workplace safe, instead of pretending like there’s no problem.”
These concerns over the opacity of COVID regulations are also shared by students, many of whom believe it poses a risk to their health and safety on campus.
“Refusing to release information around measures to promote COVID-safety and the number of exposure sites is arguably bound to create tension for students who may be reluctant to further attend campus,” said first-year student Adam Galletti.
“This, paired with the decision to remove vaccination mandates, will inevitably see a decrease in student attendance on campus, which is a worry given that the University endeavours to shift to more in-person delivery of content.”
Andeli Zuzic, an immunocompromised third-year student, took a leave of absence due to health concerns and is unlikely to return due to concerns over the University’s COVID-safety measures.
“It’s not even like students who are vulnerable can stay home and join online when they feel unsafe, because many classes are dropping online options completely now. Students are required to choose between their wellbeing or their education, and that is appalling,” they said.
“While I do understand the point of [two-dose vaccination] not being particularly effective, if they aren’t doing anything else to protect students it becomes abundantly clear how little regard they have for their vulnerable students, and gives a poor impression of their overall stance on the importance of COVIDsafety measures.”
The University did not address Farrago’s specific questions on COVID transparency, and instead referred to their publicly available Coronavirus website.
Launched in 2020, the University of Melbourne Food Relief Programs have been addressing growing food security concerns faced by many students. The program supports registered students by providing them with free fruit, vegetable boxes, and frozen meals.
With the recent increase in everyday prices from fruit to petrol, and the expected rise of inflation to 7.75% in December of this year, the cost of living is impacting every single student in some way, shape or form. In response, the University is working with other organisations to assist students during these difficult times.
“The University partnered with SecondBite initially in May 2020 to provide meals to students in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic … [and the University] currently [has] over 4,100 students registered for our Food Relief programs across SecondBite and the Fresh Food Project,” said the University of Melbourne spokesperson.
Although students within the program are grateful for the tremendous support, they are also in desperate need of more assistance.
“With the dismal fall of [the] UMSU [University of Melbourne Student Union] Welfare Breakfast, there are very few programs that purely assist with supporting students on a day-to-day basis … I am incredibly grateful for the SecondBite program, I only wish we had more programs like it!” said Claire, a fourthyear Science student.
Students have also been forced to make challenging choices and sacrifice many essential requirements just to receive these much needed meals.
“The allocated times vary each week, and in all honesty, I have had to skip out on [many classes] just to collect my fruit boxes and frozen meals. That’s the price I have to pay, I guess,” said Marcus, a second-year Arts student.
The University has always prided itself on doing its best for students, and with the cost-of-living crisis continuing to wreak havoc, its ongoing support is vital for students in desperate need.
“The University is actively prioritising enhancements to the student experience inside and outside the classroom, while we continue to offer a comprehensive suite of support services to students,” its spokesperson said.
Graduate Student Association (GSA) President Jesse GardnerRussell is also working alongside the University to ensure
students are cared for during these difficult times.
“Having faced food insecurity myself in my undergraduate studies, this is an issue very close [to my] heart … students have been dealing with the cost of living crisis for years.”
In 2017, one in seven domestic students were regularly going without food, and three in five domestic students said their finances were a source of worry. This has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, which has seen increasing numbers of graduate students facing food insecurity, and reduced satisfaction with Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) results regarding graduate support services. As a result, Gardner-Russell, the GSA and the University are determined to make changes.
“In order to help address food insecurity, we have begun our free daily healthy breakfasts program, coffee vouchers and food vouchers. This is in addition to our monthly free food truck, ” said Gardner-Russell.
The UMSU Welfare Department has also stepped in with the Union Mart program, where students can receive free food and household supplies, twice a week throughout every week of semester.
The cost-of-living crisis is disappointingly not going to end soon. No one really knows when the post-COVID price rises will stop. Yet, many are still hopeful that assistance can be provided.
“We welcome the work the University is doing with the SecondBite program and laud UMSU for their initiative on the Union Mart … Together we can fill the gaps and help more students through this challenging period,” said Gardner-Russell.
In spite of these hopeful food-relief measures, the National Union of Students is adamant the abundant costs of university fees are compounding students’ food insecurity, and that ultimately, more assistance is needed to ensure students can have more than just a meal on the table.
If you are reading this and in need of financial support, the University Financial Aid team offers students support and advice tailored to individual circumstances, and a range of loans and grants are available.
For more information on what support services are available to students, visit: https://students.unimelb.edu.au/student-support
From 2023 onwards, the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) will be required to pay the University almost $400,000 in property outgoings when it relocates to the newly built student precinct.
This diverts significantly from their prior tenancy agreement in Union House, where they paid only a “peppercorn” rent—a small payment satisfying the minimum requirements for a contractual agreement. This was in recognition of UMSU’s importance as a student activist organisation, rather than as a commercial tenant.
The union has been advised that these new payments will go towards subsidising utilities, cleaning, landscape management and security services needed for the student precinct.
But their interim CEO Phoebe Churches has raised concerns over the potential for these charges to undermine proper expenditure of the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF).
This fee, paid annually by students, is allocated by the University towards services which provide them with direct benefits.
Disbursement of the SSAF is stipulated by the 2003 Higher Education Support Act (HESA), which allows funding for services like legal and financial support, and amenities such as sporting facilities.
Under the HESA, UMSU can use the SSAF to pay for any required infrastructure which supports them in providing activities and services benefiting students.
However, Churches has pointed out their allotted SSAF funds will now be diverted towards paying the new property outgoings levied by the University.
“Whether it is intended or not, allocating SSAF funds to UMSU and then taking that money in the form of [rental] charges back to the University is a kind of ‘SSAF laundering’,” she said.
“To be clear, I am not alleging this is an intentional strategy,” she explained. “However, regardless of the intention … the effect remains that SSAF collected to be spent on allowable activities will be diverted back to the University, free from any requirements to be spent on SSAF-related services or programs.”
by TanukiThe University declined to make a statement on the matter, citing ongoing consultations with UMSU.
Instead, the University spokesperson offered a general comment on the Student Precinct.
“The Student Precinct Project is one of the largest investments the University has made at the Parkville campus, and demonstrates the University’s commitment to improving the student experience.”
UMSU President Sophie Nguyen has argued that these charges will have a tangible impact on the Union’s ability to fund important student services.
“I think with the amounts of funding we get, we should be putting it into our autonomous departments, our student welfare services, and our Legal and Advocacy Department rather than space charges—another way the University can get our SSAF back into their budgets,” she said.
Although the University has since agreed to allocate UMSU extra SSAF funds for the new property outgoings, students remain concerned over the union’s ability to provide services and activities once these charges take effect.
“The new student precinct is a great upgrade and I’m already enjoying using it as a study space, but it’s a shame that it may come at the cost of less funds available to
UMSU,” said Max Treutlein, a third-year Science student.
“To be allocating money to the Union, only to then take it back in space charges seems somewhat counterproductive,” he continued.
UMSU intends to utilise further discussions with the University to ensure both students and the Union will not be disadvantaged by these new payments.
“The fact is, the University uses [the] SSAF for its own student experience programs, while making billions in revenue … UMSU’s funding should be going directly to students, [to] make tangible differences to their lives,” said Nguyen.
Swifties’ Society (Taylor’s Version) is a University of Melbourne club which has just been affiliated by UMSU. The club was created in response to many Unimelb Love Letters (UMLL) pleading for a space for Taylor Swift fans.
Bachelor of Arts graduate Chelsea Fabiani started the club by creating a group chat stemming from reactions to a UMLL post. Followers of the page responded by creating a group chat of around 200 people. From what started as a grassroots Messenger group chat, members started to find solace and community in this space. Fabiani, with the help of current club president and second-year Science student Azalea Rohaizam, decided to officially get the club up and running with enthusiastic support from the UniMelb community.
After the 6–8-month process of getting the club started up, Rohaizam and Fabiani were surprised with the overwhelming support of prospective committee members. “We probably should have put in more positions,” said Rohaizam, and described it as “quite like a fight to the death”. Now, the committee is comprised of six people, which is a relief to Rohaizam and Fabiani.
“Up until affiliation, Azalea and I were doing everything together,” said Fabiani. Both ran the club like it was official with an active social media presence and the running of the group chat.
This enthusiastic support for the creation of a Taylor Swift society reflects the fact that Taylor Swift has been a pivotal part of people’s lives; for some, their love of the singer began in early childhood or adolescence, and for others later on in their life. Regardless of their background, millions of people have found solace and a sense of community through Taylor and her music. Due to this, it is unsurprising that clubs relating to Swift have
been created. The University of York’s Taylor Swift Society (SwiftSoc) was established in 2015 and Taylor Swift societies have been established at Macquarie University and the Australian National University.
With over 200 clubs affiliated by UMSU, the Swifties’ Society now ensures that there is a space for UOM students to share their appreciation for Taylor Swift in a safe and nurturing environment. Lifelong fans and newfound Swifties can appreciate everything being in the Taylor Swift fandom has to offer, in a space where being a fan of something conventionally feminine is encouraged and not criticised.
“Music is such an important thing for a lot of people,” said Fabiani. “A lot of people [in the group chat] talk about things not even Taylor-related, just because they feel so comfortable and safe in there to speak about whatever they need to.”
“You find that a lot where a lot of people support the same artist; you sort of have that deeper emotional connection because there’s a common understanding of what this artist means to you, how they’ve helped you. So, people know that this is a safe, non-judgmental space.”
The Swifties’ Society has many events planned for the future after holding a successful picnic a few weeks ago. With plans for future events with listening parties, we can assume that a fantastic event will be on offer in anticipation of Taylor’s 10th studio album Midnights, out 21 October.
For information on how to get involved in the Swifties’ Society (Taylor’s Version) feel free to email them via unimelbswifties@gmail.com and follow them on Instagram! @unimelbswiftiesociety
Written by Jack McMahon
Dear Diary,
I have now been able to settle into my role as PM and I must say, that last bloke we had in really made it look a lot harder than what it is. Amidst his many failures, which I am sure will be his remaining legacy, he came out and claimed that he doesn’t trust in governments, or the United Nations. What? I do not understand, in the slightest, how he could say something as bizarre as this? It’s a disgrace, and a true slap in the face for the Australian population that was subject to his leadership of overall incompetence. I would add too, that he has resumed his position on the backbench where he will be making at least $200,000 per year. So perhaps he does not trust the government, but is happy to take the pay? As time goes by, I become more and more grateful that he is not in any sort of position of power and look forward to hearing very little from him going into the future. Two of my main pledges made during my election campaign were to pursue better climate change action within Australia, as well as to establish an Indigenous voice in parliament. In my last month I have worked towards both with all parties and members within parliament and feel like we are making genuine progress. With that said, I just feel like I can never make The Greens happy. The Labor party has committed to a 43% reduction by 2030, but we are also going to continue to invest in and allow the opening of new coal and gas projects. People are saying the 43% is not enough, and that the continued opening of other projects runs contradictory to what we have been saying about addressing climate change, and to them I say, well, it’s kind of hard to justify really. Oh well.
On the establishment of an Indigenous voice in parliament, I was proud to be able to announce the drafted wording for the proposed referendum, at the Garma Festival. The creation of the body to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice would be an incredible step in the right direction for positive change. Unsurprisingly, there have been critics. Even more unsurprisingly, Pauline Hanson has led the charge against the establishment of the body. She gleefully declared it to be “Australia’s version of apartheid”, which seemed even for her slightly extreme. She noted that I was stoking division, that she owned her land and finished by telling the Senate that Senator Thorpe was racist. It truly was some of her best work in recent times, although it terrifies me slightly that people who support her will also be voting in said referendum.
Completely unrelated to Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, I have committed to a comprehensive reassessment of the Australian Defence Force which will identify what gaps we may have in our defence strategies and assets. Of course, however, this has nothing to do with China, really nothing. I told the media that it was a matter for them, meaning the US, because I obviously couldn’t say what I truly thought, which is essentially along the lines of: WHY?
Anyway, maybe those submarines will be useful?
Until next time, PM
Piechowicz
Political experts have suggested that the war the world is dreading might not break out in Taiwan or China, nor continue in Ukraine, but rather, erupt between Australia and North Korea.
Australia was never known for its belligerence. However, the recent ban of mullets in North Korea deeply enraged an alarming number of proud mullet enthusiasts from across the ocean.
Let’s hear from one of them.
“Yeah, mate. This mullet here, is where the Australian essence lies, mate. I don’t care what that dictator in North Korea says. This is our NATIONAL TREASURE. You can take away me car, you can take away me house, but you ain’t gonna take away this hair! What you do, Kimmie boy, is an ungrace to me and my mates…”
“I think you mean ‘disgrace’?”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever floats your boat, mate.”
—Danqing Zhu
“I did so many interesting things today!” she sobs. “I went out for brunch, I saw a cat, I helped deliver a baby on the street, and I took a blood oath with the antichrist. But of course it has to go off when I’m at home for the FIFTH DAY IN A ROW!”
BeReal has declined to comment.
—Madison Barr
“First we have to wear masks on PTV, now we have to wear them on stage too??” said protester Keith Drudge, who neither sings nor owns a myki. “This show is unwatchable Andrews government propaganda. I just hope Popcorn and Mirrorball can stay strong. Also Zombie is definitely Heidi Klum.”
—Alexia Shaw
The goon-soaked days of dancing to Lime Cordiale on South Lawn are no more, as open days have become a home for infinite brochures and a free pen or two.
“The highlight for me was getting a voucher for 10% off Schnitz, but I had to elbow my way through about 50 other scummers to get one,” a disappointed student said.
—Madison Barr
Katarina Martinez, whose last four boyfriends were all emotionally unavailable skater boys, stumbled upon one of Tate’s many misogynistic TikToks on Tuesday evening and has not shut up about him since. “You guys he’s misunderstood,” Martinez said to her friends over brunch. “He just needs the right woman to change his perspective, there’s a heart of gold in there I swear.”
When Martinez went to the bathroom, her friends gave a collective groan. “Well, at least this one’s got a car,” said one friend with a sigh.
—Alexia Shaw
Despite writing numerous essays about coloniser violence, Matthew now claims his mourning of the Queen has prevented him from completing his assignments on time. “While the public holiday has helped a little, I think I need another five business days to really process this loss,” his email to a tutor read. According to an inside source, Matthew has fully committed to the bit by joining the student Monarchist Society.
—Alexia Shaw
The group chat has been spicier than ever after share house resident decides the others aren’t pulling their weight. “I just think it’s super disrespectful to leave a glass on the bench,” they wrote in the chat. “I left my dishes unwashed because I had an assignment last week and my cat died two years ago, but when you guys leave things out it’s just plain rude.”
Their housemates have reportedly been active on Fairy Floss since the exchange occurred.
—Madison Barr
On Saturday night Bruce Fieldings attempted to comfort his distraught daughter, who could only get out the phrases “Roe v. Wade” and “we lost” between her sobs. “There there,” said Fieldings, who has not read the news since 1983. “I’m sure with a bit of extra training, Wade will come back stronger than ever in the next fight.”
He then entered his kitchen to discover his wife crying over the same match. Fieldings was surprised. He didn’t realise his family were such big wrestling fans.
—Alexia Shaw
The sunset was familiar. It glistened on my skin, peach fuzz risen as pricks of shadows. On the balcony of our friend’s apartment, I looked ahead. Smoke escaped from someone’s chimney, and without looking, I could tell you were smiling. You’d pretend to take a puff—a cigarette joke. Ray-Bans slid over your scrunched up nose; it was reflex—the way my finger pushed them back over your eyes in one swift motion. I sank into my seat, stretched my legs on the table across. Then, the smoke particles disappeared into August’s breeze. Gone with the sunset.
Poof, you said.
It happens when spring begins. I breathe the air and it tastes like hope. The breeze brushes against my cheek and it feels like everything will be okay. The sky is wispy blue and it looks like childhood, that feeling of the holidays are almost here, and I will be free
I remember summers in the garden, heart full of childhood joy. I remember days full of play, days that felt like years in imaginary worlds.
This feeling isn’t that. It is nostalgia in reverse. It is good times will come to you again, and they are coming soon.
There’s just something about meeting high school friends after years of not seeing each other that transports me back in time. I remember my parents dropping me off and picking me up when we hung out, but now my friends are the ones driving me around. It’s surprising how our dynamic stayed the same and they still treat me like a little sister, even when our brunch dates turned into bar nights, and instead of talking about homework, we talked about our careers. I still feel like the sixteen-year-old girl they knew, just a little wiser and definitely more fashionable.
fuzzy worm on a string for christmas / lost its eyeballs / blockbuster around the corner / scoured the discount shelves for stale stories / the difference between a dollar and two / milkbar man never too trusting / a legion all his own defending his goods / from the jostle of our schoolbags / paddle pop painting my tongue in sunset / i didn’t faint on the superman escape / i held bugs bunny’s hand / and that was even better / hundreds and thousands crackling against my molars / blockbuster became liquorland / asphalt corner grew up / it doesn’t know i still have a child inside / i never got the worm to fly
WRITTEN BY FRANK TYSON
Sharp pinks and glowing reds. Palm trees speeding past a white Lamborghini underneath the looming digital sun. Heavy synth and punchy drum loops playing through an unwieldy, shining silver boom box. Stuck somewhere between the 1980s and a future that never came to pass, synthwave is an aesthetic that persists across the pop culture landscape. As an unashamed fan of synthwave in all its media forms, it’s the first thing I associate with retrofuturism.
Films, TV, video games and music have all presented their own synthwave media. As products of the ’80s, Blade Runner or the music of Jean-Michel Jarre might serve as the backbone for synthwave, but its maturation has occurred throughout the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. To my eye, synthwave represents far more than ’80s nostalgia. Many would assume synthwave to simply be a romanticisation or re-packaging of popular ’80s iconography and media, but its complexity is perhaps why it has been so persistent in recent decades. Admittedly, the ’80s are its cultural basis, but its true flourishing post-Y2K means that it has a distinctly anachronistic flavour. While media like Blade Runner have their impact on it, their gritty, dystopian tilt is filtered out—replaced by vibrant neon colourscapes, endless digital worlds and superficial insertions of ’80s iconography. The allegories and subtext of ’80s media, such as the societal damage occurring under Reagan- and Thatcher-era neoliberalism, is switched out for the question, “What if Miami Vice and Tron met in a blender?” Perhaps synthwave best reflects the failed utopia of 21st-century life, and the desire for media that preferences pure, uncut escapism over underlying social commentary.
More than other retrofuturistic aesthetics, synthwave is undoubtedly more style than substance. Notably, there is a tendency for synthwave to be used in service of parodying 1980s cheesiness. The 2015 short film Kung Fury is perhaps the purest example of this trend, in which all of synthwave’s aesthetic values are used emphatically to punch up the absurd tropes of ’80s action films. While it leans heavily into the ridiculous (including an original song by David Hasselhoff, time-travelling Hitler and Viking dinosaurs), Kung Fury contains some fantastic visual interpretations and a wholly original synthwave score. Blood Dragon, the 2013 expansion to video game Far Cry 3, similarly utilises the synthwave aesthetic with a parodic sensibility towards ’80s media. Taking place in the “future” of 2007, Blood Dragon puts the player
in control of cybernetic soldier Sergeant Rex “Power” Colt tasked with killing a rogue colonel on a neon-soaked tropical island. The game is undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek, but even while being so manages to produce a unique use of the aesthetic—once again producing a high-quality synthwave soundtrack (from Australian duo Power Glove) and successfully transplanting synthwave onto the digital bones of a “modern” video game. It seems that synthwave thrives in being self-deprecating—fully embracing parody and historical inaccuracy to produce genuinely “new” cultural products.
Much like its visual motifs and the keyboards of its music, synthwave is purely synthetic. The neon lights, digital landscapes and compressed sound files that define it are far removed from any semblance of mundane reality. It reeks of inauthenticity and caricature but looks back with fondness, while presenting its own unique twists. Whether synthwave bastardises its influences or engages in a fabricated retro aesthetic is a rabbit hole not worth falling into. The important thing is we don’t categorise it as simply an aesthetic of nostalgia. While children of the ’80s would likely appreciate synthwave on a more nuanced level, most producing and consuming its media are likely too young to truly compare it to a lived reality. Consider, for instance, the “nostalgic” qualities of Stranger Things and the popularity of its pseudoromantic depiction of 1980s middle America amongst the TikTok generation.
Nevertheless, there’s obvious limitations to the use of the synthwave aesthetic. As we’ve established, it comes with a certain type of winking self-parody which doesn’t suit every thematic structure. There’s also the fact that while the aesthetic is striking, it is well-defined and potentially leaves little room for creative expression. Despite this, its persistence from the 2000s (and arguably the ’80s) through to today proves that it has cultural longevity on its side. Maybe it’s too derivative. Maybe it’s too superficial. Whatever criticisms synthwave undoubtedly deserves, there’s a magnetism that it has over our media world that is strong enough to wipe a VHS tape.
Most importantly, synthwave so inelegantly embodies the concept of retrofuturism: taking inspiration from an era that never truly existed, projecting a future that will never be.
Yicheng
No amount of portable chargers and KeepCups could have prepared me for life as a “mature age” student. I spent my first morning on campus walking in circles, cursing the names of the distinguished academics whose buildings kept magically reappearing in my path. My usually keen sense of direction was stifled by the blindingly bright young faces of my peers, most a decade my junior. Prancing from one place to the next with the utmost conviction, they all seemed to know exactly where they were going.
I asked a kind-eyed stranger who was sticking pride posters to a power pole for directions. I liked how they were accidentally dressed like the protagonist from an ’80s sci-fi.
“Of course,” they said. “I am headed that way myself.”
“Rad,” I said, awkwardly, gratefully.
As we walked, Eighties Kid started slinging polite, small-talky questions my way. I tried to veil my insecurities with manic enthusiasm, using words like “passion” and “career”, but outward self-assurance has never been my strong suit. I realised I was not at all convincing when my guide took me on a detour through a garden they deemed “the perfect place to go to cry”. I didn’t feel much like crying though. What I really yearned for was some kind of exit strategy. A semi-horrific incident would do—any viable
excuse to leave this place which I felt only the super-young deserved. At a glance, there seemed to be a serious deficit of impending accidents I could get amongst, so I supposed sobbing under a pretty tree would have to do.
When I was growing up, little girls were told they could be whatever they wanted to be, so long as they dressed in tutus and dreamed of successful careers as princesses. Like many eccentrics, I struggled with that narrative—although not for lack of trying. I did not occupy the fringes of post-feminist ’90s cultural expectations with conviction or pride, I just mistook “you can be anything you dream of” to mean it was entirely acceptable for me to spend the better part of my childhood scaling furniture with cutlery stuffed into the sides of my knickers screaming “I’m Lara Croft!”
I wasn’t impervious to the status quo either. I did my fair share of swooning over the Backstreet Boys, but the closest I came to princess aspirations was my brief obsession with Xena (which in hindsight was certainly fuelled by a deeply suppressed sexual yearning for Lucy Lawless).
As I got older, I left behind my half-naked cosplay habits and became entranced by a series of equally ambitious and fleeting career goals: palaeontologist, orchestral violinist, interpretative dancer. Regardless of
which transient dream I chose to pursue, it was not to be realised in the city that raised me. The rapid gentrification of Melbourne’s inner north and the looming demands of another baby on the way forced my mum to move us to the sticks of regional Victoria. I was plucked from a life alongside creatives, kooks, and queers, and plonked into the social circles of blossoming racists and homophobes—just in time for my formative years.
In my first life, I was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, permitted to roam freely on the outskirts of cultural absurdity thanks to the progressive liberalism of the big city. In my new life, the smart kids got beaten up by the cool kids. I was quick to learn that a thirst for knowledge was not an accepted social currency in this new world, and that throwing your arm in the air with the utmost veracity to answer a question was a crime worthy of school yard persecution. Whilst I had a healthy teenage disdain for my physical appearance, I preferred to keep my face where it was, so I banished my academic interests to a shadowy corner of my personality. An act of social self-defence, it felt easier to embrace the status quo than resist and face constant ridicule. So, I underwent a cinematic-montageworthy transformation into a fully-fledged trouble child with an unwavering disdain for authority, a steady weed habit and a growing collection of facial piercings.
Throughout the foggy chaos of those teenage years, I became convinced that bongs and wagging were pretty much the only outlooks for kids like us. The kids living in the sticks who spent their weekends throwing rocks into the air and waiting for them to come plummeting down onto each other’s heads in a resourceful and marginally less fatal iteration of Russian roulette.
I folded to my new truth and joined the ranks of the unofficial drop-out club. I no longer committed my time to art, music, and the pursuit of knowledge, choosing instead to loiter in inappropriate places with questionable people. I still had the struggling artist narrative and envisioned myself living in dilapidated share houses, eating exclusively mie goreng so I could budget for druggy parties. Eventually, even that seemed overly ambitious, and I accepted my devolution into aspirational indifference without resistance.
Whilst I’m sure I am not impervious to the mechanics of time, I seemed to wake up one day to the sudden disappearance of my twenties. I felt my already fragile world shifting as I entered a coming-of-age period we aren’t warned about in sex ed. That precious time in a person’s life where you are supposed to emerge from a cocoon of youthful ignorance as someone who has their shit together. Too young to complain about your age; too old to forget to pay your bills or use words like “rad”.
Time has always been on my mind. It seems to be inherent to the human condition that no matter how much of it we have, we never have enough. But it wasn’t the emerging lines on my face or the boy at the bottle shop
who didn’t bother asking for my I.D. that informed me of my fleeting youth; it was the feeling of not belonging on the campus of my dreams.
Uni had me intimidated by younger crowds, something that feels both new and old to say. I was marinating in a scalding pot of age-related insecurities, but I refused to boil over and expose the messy remnants of my wasted time to my peers. I disengaged from conversations about birthdays, age, and high school, utterly convinced that other students would recoil from me like a loud fart when they found out I was amongst the first generation to spend my weekends teaching a Furby to say “fuck”. Time is an ever-diminishing currency, and I could feel myself slipping into poverty, confronted by a realisation I had wasted so many years, and intimidated by the time-wealthy people around me. Were we to be pitted against each other for job opportunities, I was certain potential employers would use depth of crow’s feet as the deciding factor, so I started nightly applications of retinol cream.
I know my ambivalence towards a latent university experience is unreasonable, but it is relentless, nonetheless. After all, I did not sign up for this. Well, I did in the literal sense. I filled out my personal details, provided proof of my passable intelligence, and pleaded with the government to pile on the HECS debt, but I didn’t expect to be doing it all on the precipice of thirty. My impulsive excitement mutated into deep remorse for the years I had left behind. The collective they tend to say “your thirties are like your twenties but with money”. The flesh-and-blood me begs to differ. I know I am young, and I know I have time, but the narrative goes that I should have figured it out by now.
Despite being acutely aware of the triviality of my anxieties, in the first weeks of my degree I struggled to shake myself from a doomed state. I was never much of a planner, but I have always been a dreamer, and stumbling through my proverbial prime a decade behind in life feels more like a nightmare.
I had fractured moments of resilience, remaining hopeful I would come across other anxious interlopers. Surely, I couldn’t be the only student who didn’t consider Nirvana to be retro? I would scan the faces of each of my classmates with a Terminator-level attentiveness, hoping to pick up on some visible exhaustion that could only be earned through an extra decade or so of lived experience. You could say I came close once, having spotted someone who clearly occupied my same age bracket. I wondered if perhaps we could share a brief bond over nothing more than our tenuous otherness. I thought it was a ballsy move when she placed her belongings at the front of the class on our first day, but upon realising she was the tutor I figured that was for practical reasons. With moments like these, it is difficult to believe I am yet to cry in the garden, but there is still plenty of time.
Written by Meg Bonnes
Now, more than ever, young people are embracing technology written off as obsolete. According to The Guardian, vinyl sales hit a 25-year high in 2015 and have been steadily growing since, with The New York Times claiming that “Vinyl Is Selling So Well That It’s Getting Hard to Sell Vinyl”. Is the recent push towards embracing obsolete technology just fuelled by nostalgia, or is there merit and sustainability to using older tech? I will explore this phenomenon through a retrofuturist aesthetic which emphasises dated technology, affectionately titled Cassette Futurism.
Cassette Futurism evokes familiar retrofuturistic images from the late 20th century—anything from the payphones of the 1950s to Nokia cell phones of the late 1990s. Think cassette tapes, film photography, fax machines, and CRT monitors. It is best exemplified by films, television and video games such as Akira, Blade Runner, Cowboy Bebop, Alien, Neon Genesis Evangelion, or more recent video games like the Fallout series and Quadrilateral Cowboy
Much like the wider genre of cyberpunk, Cassette Futurism sidesteps earlier, Tomorrowland-style, utopian views of the future. Instead, it often tells post-apocalyptic stories of nuclear and climate disaster. Although more recent retrofuturist works are the results of nostalgia, many Cassette Futurist artists of the late 20th century imagine the future through the lens of their current technology.
For one, Mobile Suit Gundam’s 1979 debut kicked off an ’80s and ’90s craze for futurist science fiction and robots. Subsequent “mecha” anime in the ensuing decades such as Neon Genesis Evangelion eschewed sleeker designs for classic,
angular designs. The adoption of retro influences extends to the soundscape. For example, Cowboy Bebop’s ’70s influences are evident in its jazz-influenced soundtrack, with episode names paying homage to music icons like Queen, Aerosmith, and the Stray Cats.
However, one genre-defining example is the massively influential 1988 animated film Akira. Its environment art blends the familiar and the unfamiliar: familiar 1980s technology and infrastructure in a chaotic imaginary city. Released in 1988 but set in 2019, on man-made island “Neo-Tokyo” after the destruction of Tokyo in 1988, its imagery reflects the technology available at the time—but reconstructed into dense, surreal arrangements of elevated highways, neon lights and connective pipes and tunnels. In a similarly dystopian vein, Neon Genesis Evangelion’s world presents a late-20th-century vision of 21st-century climate tragedy. It is set in 2015 after the melting of the Antarctic ice caps incites environmental and societal collapse. The drones of cicadas are ever-present, with the world thrown into a perpetual summer.
Our environment, as well as our imagination of what climate change would look like, has changed drastically since the 1990s. Scientists have predicted global warming since the 1970s, but we have been increasingly observing its effects in the last decade. Similarly, technology also looks very different than we expected: we’ve lived through 2015 and 2019, and they weren’t anything like Back to the Future Part II, Neon Genesis Evangelion, or Akira imagined them to be. Much like the science fiction writers and artists of the late 20th century, we also imagine the future through the lens of the “futuristic” technology we see around us—for them it was CDs and LED,
and for us, the trend leans more towards sleek, parabolic forms, minimalist design and shining surfaces, reminiscent of Apple’s designs.
Apple’s aesthetic is emblematic of a kind of inaccessibility—for example, the round edges for which it was granted a patent in 2012, and its use of trademark law to prevent the sale of third-party parts while also refusing to sell official repair parts to consumers. Products’ slim, light designs house delicate, difficultto-replace batteries, and their tiny screws require specialised screwdrivers. The use of adhesive to seal certain products such as AirPods creates a sleek look, but leaves consumers attempting to replace a battery by melting the adhesive with a hair dryer. So for repairs, users are limited to the services of Apple technicians, where it is often easier to trade in a broken phone for a new one than pay for expensive repairs.
In Aaron Perzanowski’s book The Right to Repair: Reclaiming the Things We Own, he writes:
“From technology, to pop culture, to politics, the drive to break with the past in order to make room for a more promising future is pervasive, if often unfulfilled. Why fix a decade-old internal-combustion car when you can replace it with an electric one? Why repair a three-year old laptop when a new one is lighter, faster, and comes in your choice of color? … But we have to be careful to separate those contributions from mere product differentiation masquerading as innovation.”
Devices with increasingly short lifespans exacerbate the issue of electronic waste, which is very difficult to recycle or dispose of sustainably. Over 70% of the toxic waste in America is made up of electronic waste, or “e-waste”. The trend towards streaming and server-dependent technology over direct ownership also changes the way we interact with the media we consume. Remote disabling, or “bricking”, occurs when products dependent on a remote server can be disabled by the company where it is located, losing features or functionality altogether.
The emergence of streaming over physical ownership can also disempower the artists employed by streaming platforms. Although Spotify makes it much easier to find new artists, their way of operating means it takes millions of streams for artists to make minimum wage. Furthermore, HBO Max recently removed many titles from its service with no notice, leaving their creators blindsided and devastated, and with no legal way to access their own work. Julia Pott, creator of Summer Camp Island, a series which was pulled from HBO Max, writes on Twitter in response: “We worked late into the night, we let ourselves go, we were a family of hard-working artists who wanted to make something beautiful, and HBO MAX just pulled them all like we were nothing.” Owen Dennis writes in his Twitter bio: “Creator of #InfinityTrain, a show that got pulled from @HBOMax and can now only be pirated.”
That might be where we see the recent popularity of analogue media come in, like Urban Outfitters’ sprawling shelves of vinyl or the increased sales of cassette tapes. Lately, there is a push towards owning things you love via DVD rather than just streaming it on a platform that may abandon it at any time. For music, buying individual copies of records, whether that’s as an MP3 or in vinyl on Bandcamp, has the bonus of directly supporting artists—for smaller artists, these individual purchases can be significant in comparison to Spotify’s insignificant remuneration.
While the trends lean towards sleek, cheap, and irreparable products, Cassette Futurism rejects a convenient and technologically perfect future. Instead, it asserts the opposite—“futuristic” tech is enduring, able to be repaired, something that will stay with you. It finds beauty in the clunky, the unwieldy, the non-aerodynamic, the DIY, and the obsolete—the curved screens, the blinking lights, and the LCD displays. Maybe that’s the relationship with tech we need right now.
Ashlea Banoncontent
Written by Alexandra Thomas
You might’ve seen them around. Trudging down Smith Street in cargo pants and Salomons, these oat-latte-drinking and streetwear-repping white settler folk are the archetypal 86 tram line commuters. And you might’ve even heard that they’ve come up with a typically virtue-signalling name for their carefully cultivated aesthetic: #Naarmcore.
#Naarmcore is a TikTok aesthetic at the centre of critique from Indigenous communities, particularly those of the Kulin Nation. Naarm, also spelt Nairm or Narrm, is a traditional place name used by the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung language groups to describe the Melbourne CBD or Port Phillip Bay area, respectively. In a recent statement, Victorian Aboriginal-led fashion label Clothing The Gaps said, “Using Aboriginal language to fit a trending aesthetic dismisses the 65,000 years history and depth of Aboriginal cultures, languages and practices.” #Naarmcore appropriates Indigenous language as a virtue signal that centres white people. Z Du Ressac, a University of Melbourne student from Wakka Wakka Country says it exemplifies how Indigenous language is “just taken away by white people, who frolic about with our titles”. Being a white settler, the impact of #Naarmcore travels beyond my lived experience, yet the discussion around it has made me reflect on how careless virtue-signalling can cause harm.
#Naarmcore has now morphed into a meme used by settler folk online as a form of self-irony, but also to make fun of participants of the aesthetic. When settler folk make #Naarmcore jokes, it represents an established pattern of using Aboriginal culture as a punchline. Z says, “I refused to identify as Aboriginal for a large part of my life, because I was embarrassed. Because people make fun of us, all the time. I was embarrassed to dance, I was embarrassed to practise culture, and it’s the same thing.”
#Naarmcore also reflects a global trend of gentrifying a historically affordable streetwear style. Originally a countercultural fashion phenomenon of the 1980s and ’90s, this style of dark colours and baggy silhouettes has become a global industry worth around $185 billion. The increasingly high price tag to participate in a style important to and popularised amongst Indigenous communities “turn[s] something that was their culture, or something they embraced, into something completely unattainable … I don’t think that people who are creating or leaning into the “Naarmcore” aesthetic are aware of it,” Z says.
#Naarmcore is disrespectful, colonial and harmful. But it’s nothing new. At the heart of #Naarmcore is a notion that anything is up for grabs for white people.
Grace Reeve#Naarmcore isn’t just a local and isolated manifestation of this idea, either. The global rise of #CleanGirl on TikTok also exemplifies whiteness’s obsessive drive for possession and exploitation.
The Clean Girl aesthetic generally includes gold hoop earrings, neutral colours, slicked back low bun or ponytail, and items from brands like Swedish ready-to-wear company Djerf Avenue. Bella Hadid and Hailey Bieber are lauded as icons of this trend. But the #CleanGirl’s rise has been followed by an eruption of online discourse critiquing the trend’s inherent racism.
Critics of the Clean Girl target how it takes styles popularised amongst Black, Brown and Latinx communities and fashions them onto those bodies that are deemed by white supremacy to be most attractive. White women are validated for using these styles in these online spaces in ways that WoC have never been. Tandie Banana, a third-year philosophy student at the University of Melbourne with an interest in aesthetics and beauty politics, says, “the slicked back edges—sis—Black girls have been doing that for years. But nobody called them clean girls.”
The celebration of white women as Clean Girls also suggests that out there exists a group of UnClean Girls. In this way, the Clean Girl aesthetic links whiteness and cleanliness. As Tandie describes, “#CleanGirl associates cleanliness with beauty and purity. It’s a little loaded, and a little racially charged.”
Narratives of uncleanliness have been loaded onto communities of colour for centuries. Z reflects that within the Indigenous community, “Skin bleaching is seen as a cleaning process. I have done it before. I’m not brown, I just have tanner skin, but for so long I thought that I was inherently dirty, because my skin was just one shade different. The idea that whiteness is cleanliness means that people who aren’t white feel inherently unclean.”
However, a scroll through #CleanGirl on TikTok is populated not only by white girls, but also by BIPoC participating in the trend. While agreeing it’s great to see that people are trying to diversify the trend, Tandie says “it’s so backwards to think we have to move from the outside in to try and diversify the aesthetic when the aesthetic itself is already taking bits and pieces from Latinx, Black and Brown culture that’s existed for years.”
Both the #Naarmcore and the #CleanGirl trends indicate that what is popularised as beautiful in the online aesthetic space is overwhelmingly constructed by and for a white audience. This goes beyond these two trends. The Dark Academia aesthetic romanticises colonial Eurocentric education only accessible to the white, male elite. The #CottageCore trend has been criticised for idolising colonialism. The #ThatGirl trend has been condemned for promoting capitalistic white feminism.
But at this point these discussions have become repetitive thinking loops mistaken for critical thinking. White people on social media continue to superficially acknowledge the criticisms of BIPoC who laboriously explain why these aesthetics are problematic without genuinely engaging with
these issues. Ideologies of racism and colonialism continue to influence online trends, and nothing changes.
TikTok requires rapid content creation and rapid opinion creation, all the time. Tandie says, “Because TikTok is so fastpaced, you’re not taking the time to unpack your prejudices and biases.”
These trends were born from carelessness, most likely without the intention to hurt the communities they have impacted. However, this carelessness originates from a lack of thought which is a specific privilege afforded only to white, able-bodied, straight, cis-gendered folks.
These trends and hashtags are entangled in a gnarly etymology, produced by the many. Tandie says, “The Clean Girl kind of just emerged. What does that say about us? [It] reflects our collective subconscious ideas about beauty, with racial cleanliness narratives sneaking their way in.” The collective creation of these trends indicates that white people online have a shared responsibility to reflect on what they mean, how they came to be, and how to stop the repetition of the histories and narratives they represent.
Yet, within circles on TikTok where these critical debates on trending aesthetics are occurring, it seems like the same conversations are being repeated, yet nothing is changing. Z, who deleted TikTok due to its repetitiveness, resonates with this. They point out that “as much as we think we are fighting for something when we get into those critical discussions, like ‘Here’s the next issue that we need to take on,’ it’s the same thing in a different font, every time, and it’s sickening”.
TikTok can make critical thinking accessible to a wider audience. But, Z says, “People are just declaring things … it’s always an announcement and never a discussion.” Z points out that this self-righteous declaration of moral opinions is akin to Christian preaching. A convincing preacher accumulates followers. Similarly, we begin to lean on certain creators to do our critical thinking for us. Z says, “Not a lot of people reflect on what they’ve seen on TikTok. They don’t think about it or practise it in their own personal life. All that’s said is ‘Oh so true’ and that’s all that’s done about it.”
Until white people begin listening to BIPoC critics in ways that create material change, the online space of aesthetics will continue to perpetuate white ideals of beauty, and the discourses around how each trend is uniquely problematic will continue to repeat. Z says, “White people need to realise their role in the situation, where they need to educate themselves, and educate other white people and have these conversations.”
Z urges that “it’s really important to be aware of the language that you use, and the attitudes you have. People are suffering, all the time. It’s really shitty for things to turn into a joke, or into a trend, when people are suffering.”
Repetitive critical thinking loops about aesthetics, as exemplified by #Naarmcore and #CleanGirl, do nothing to give land back to Traditional Custodians of this land, or to support communities of colour. Something needs to change.
What happened to the future? When looking back upon art and music throughout the 20th century you are bombarded with ambitious imaginations of what the future might look like. The Jetsons, Blade Runner, and Jungle music are a few of the countless examples of this. Since then, it has become clear the great promises of the future from decades past never materialised. Speaking with friends illuminates not only the current generations’ pessimism for the future, but the complete inability to imagine a future different from today. If we continue down our current path we will be left with a world where every attempt to look forwards will only look backwards, where all hope for humanity will be gone. Reclaiming our lost hope for the future is the first step we must take to defy this postmodern reality. If we fail, the future will not merely consume us with sadness and despondency, it will fail to actualise entirely.
To understand how the current situation has arisen, we must first look to the past. In the decades following the Second World War, the cultural zeitgeist was dominated by experimental art and music that fuelled our dreams of the future. This explosion in experimentation was powered by the post-war welfare state and higher education maintenance grants, which constituted an indirect source of funding for experiments in pop culture between the ’60s and ’80s. Free university tuition from the mid-’70s to ’80s in Australia had the same effect, as it alleviated young artists from the pressures of pumping out art which had to be immediately successful and provided them with the resources necessary to produce the new. However, postFordist economics and the subsequent ideological attacks on public services, which continue today, destroyed the spaces
in which artists were allowed to thrive. This, paired with the monopolisation of radio, meant consumers’ tastes in art became commercialised, leading to a tendency to turn out what was already successful. The necessity to withdraw from society to produce the new became almost impossible.
Mark Fisher, a cultural critic and philosopher who spent much of his work on the condition of late-capitalist culture, borrows a term from Franco Berardi: “the slow cancellation of the future”. By this he means, there is no longer real and significant cultural movement or development, life continues but time has somehow stopped. Postmodern culture has given up on the modernist challenge of innovation and exploring the new. We are trapped in a graveyard where every tombstone is a failed promise for the future. Today, even the word futuristic no longer holds within it an image of the future. Or as Fisher puts it: “If electronic music was ‘futuristic’, it was in the same sense that fonts are ‘gothic’.” Fisher contends that what it means to be in the 21st-century is to have 20th-century culture on high-resolution screens and distributed by high-speed internet.
As a result, re-used and re-branded cultural elements of the past dominate pop culture to such an extent that it feels almost impossible to create something new. This yearning to consume what has already come before is a by-product of the impossible demands of modern work culture. Where free time is a rarity, it is no wonder we have become passive zombies who are slaves to the cheap tricks of the culture industry. Berardi argues: “The intensity and precariousness of late-capitalist work culture leaves people in a state where they are simultaneously exhausted and overstimulated.” This leaves us always looking for a quick fix which we find
in the familiar and dopamine-induced rush that nostalgic satisfaction of the past affords us. Pop culture has become a decrepit haunted house where the ghosts of the past have become our only escape.
Examples of this are all too easy to find throughout every area of pop culture. Last year, six of the top ten highest grossing films at the box office all had origins in the 20th century: Spider-Man: No Way Home, No Time to Die, F9, Godzilla vs Kong, Venom, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Similarly, series like Sex Education mix together cultural signifiers from different decades; it belongs neither to the past nor to the present. This jumbling up of time creates art that is in effect “timeless”. New music artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Greta Van Fleet adopt what were previously counterculture sounds and assimilate them into the culture industry. Greta Van Fleet often sounds almost indistinguishable from bands like Led Zeppelin to unfamiliar ears. Like Fisher argued, “Just because something is current doesn’t mean it is new.”
Even in the fashion world, clothing companies—from fast fashion brands to luxury houses—are recycling trends from decades ago. For instance, Schiaparelli, under Bertrand Guyon, often alludes to classic designs from the house in their new shows, even re-imagining old looks like the lobster dress; Hedi Slimane, whose designs are heavily inspired by ’70s rock-and-roll culture, is often criticised for repeating the same looks year after year at Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Celine; and on the red carpet, with Kim Kardashian recently wearing one of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dresses to the Met Gala. Here the ghost of the past haunts us to such an extent it materialises in this quasi-resurrection of the dead. While it can be argued that art and trends are cyclical, all we have today is cyclical.
As we continue to go further into the cancelled future, we reach an impasse. Time keeps moving forward while culture stops. Although the future is dead and an infinitely repeating virtual past has taken its place, its absence is like a bony grip
on your shoulder which disappears as soon as you turn your head. Fisher calls this “hauntological culture”, a concept he borrows from Jacques Derrida that was originally concerned with the spectre of communism.
Fisher argues the figure of this haunting spectre cannot be fully present, but it marks a relation to what is no longer or not yet. We can apply this in two aspects: 1) what no longer exists but remains effective, which is found in the repeating of the past in art, and 2) what has not happened yet but is effective, an anticipation that shapes and undermines the present state of things. This of course being the promises of the future that never materialised which haunt us. However, we are no longer haunted by modernist culture, we are haunted by its disappearance. Fisher applies “hauntology” to musicians like William Basinski, the Ghost Box label, The Caretaker, and Burial. What unites these artists is their overwhelming melancholy produced by the acknowledgement that the promises of modernism have evaporated. However, these artists refuse to give up on the desire for the future, they refuse to accommodate to the closed horizons of postmodernity.
In this same vein as these hauntological musicians, we should refuse to give up on the future. We must use whatever hope we have left to reclaim the forgotten promises of the future lest they be lost forever. We must exorcise the ghost of the past and refuse to adjust to the present moment. By salvaging the future, we can wake up from this nostalgic haze which has turned us into lifeless consumers. When Greta Van Fleet comes on the radio, whether we like it or not, we should say “I can’t accept this”. As Fisher asserts, once we focus on “the shocking difference between what we thought might have happened and what actually happened”, it is impossible to passively continue in our current condition; five years since Fisher’s passing, this call to arms only rings truer as each year passes. The only question now is, how much time do we have left?
by Evan Goulioscontent warning: mentions of anxiety and depression, spoilers for Celeste!
The “masocore” genre of video games is defined by being purposefully difficult to beat, often requiring immense skill or strategy, and known for engendering the kind of frustration that results in broken controllers or expletives hurled at the screen. One fascinating example of a masocore game is Maddy Thorson’s award-winning platformer Celeste. Since its release in 2018, it has been paradoxically lauded for its accessibility and wide range of appeal to not only new entrants to the genre but also veterans and speedrunners. Despite its difficulty, with a focus on quick reflexes and tight button inputs, Celeste is not a game about punishing the player. In fact, the player’s success is built into the very infrastructure of the game. Naturally, triumph is not a foregone conclusion—the game refuses to hand an easy victory to you, and much of Celeste’s power as a love letter to resilience comes from this refusal to babysit the player. Success, when it does arrive, was not awaited passively. It was hard won in the face of struggles that span the game’s design and story.
Although you can customise your name, the main character of Celeste is generally known as Madeline. Her quest is intensely personal, and a little obtuse to the people surrounding her. Despite her struggles with anxiety and depression (and a blatant lack of mountain climbing experience), she has taken it upon herself to climb Mount Celeste to prove to herself what she is capable of. Along the way, she is challenged by a shadowy doppelganger known colloquially as “Badeline”,
who is referred to in the game properly as “Part of You”. The game itself is a gauntlet of platformer challenges, each taking up a single screen populated with various obstacles that you must climb and dash around. Once mastered, the platforming for each screen lasts less than 30 seconds. However, the process of mastering it takes far longer and necessitates long sequences of failing over and over, to the extent that there are inbuilt reassurances reminding players to not feel selfconscious about their death count.
Despite being not as devastatingly difficult as other masocore platformers, Celeste still presents a robust challenge, especially to those who aren’t typically participants within the genre. However, unlike many of its contemporaries, Celeste does not seek to engender frustration in its players. Rather, it cultivates an approach of determination and experimentation, which is built into its ultimately quite lenient death mechanics. Colliding into spikes or careening off the map does not restart the entire level, merely bringing the player back to the start of the screen. There is no real negative consequence to dying, apart from self-consciousness. You are never meaningfully penalised for learning how to navigate Celeste. Instead, the game is encouraging, shrinking your staggering journey into screen-by-screen puzzles so that you get as much time to practise for as long as you need. Thorson (and by the end of the game, Madeline, and the player) understands that achieving great things is a matter
by Riley Morgan
of small, successive, cumulative victories rather than one big leap. Mountains are climbed step after step; Celeste is conquered screen after screen.
Madeline’s anxiety and depression are central to her story. It’s why she’s climbing the mountain after all, and why Badeline, a manifestation of her worst fears and insecurities, is so dedicated to stopping her. There is a clear parallel between the physical struggles of climbing a mountain (or mastering a challenging platformer game) and the psychological struggles of living with mental illness. Despite being “Part of You”, Badeline is an active antagonist for most of the game, overwhelming Madeline with aggressive clones that make missteps a doom sentence or otherwise coaxing other characters to attack Madeline directly. Yet still, she remains “Part of You”, and here is where we find Celeste’s next lesson. Resilience against the external world is all well and good, and is indeed a skill that is crucial to cultivate. But it is resilience against the internal, and continuing to pursue one’s goals despite any doubts, that is truly what’s important to one’s journey. Ultimately, the distinction between Madeline and Badeline is collapsed—they combine into one force, and the climactic act of the game follows a dialogue of growing understanding between the two of them. Mechanically, Badeline’s influence allows Madeline to quite literally reach heights that she couldn’t access before. The enemy is not the enemy at all. Rather, it is a vicious yet misguided manifestation of doubt, which is not defeated but instead accepted and embraced to achieve something more.
Unlike effectively any other canonical game in the masocore genre, Celeste has an Assist Mode that you can activate at any time to make the process of playing easier. It grants you game-defying abilities (infinite stamina, slowing the game’s speed, and so on) that make finishing Celeste effectively possible for anybody, regardless of skill level. It also raises questions for a game that is ostensibly
a part of the masocore genre. Why the Assist Mode if Celeste is meant to be unforgiving? How is somebody meant to learn and improve if they are essentially being handed the key to victory? The answer lies in the implicit trust that Celeste puts into the player; a trust that informs everything from the daunting but doable platformer puzzles to the dark but ultimately tender story of mental illness. The game goes out of its way to let you know that Assist Mode is not the ideal way to play the game, while still refusing to put it behind any barriers, thus allowing the player to decide the difficulty of their journey. This may, at first, feel like a cheapening of the game’s challenge, and of the wider story of resilience. Anecdotally, however, this is not the case.
I know many people for whom Celeste was the first properly challenging platformer game that they finished in its entirety, without triggering Assist Mode at any point. Although my experience with platformers such as Hollow Knight set me up nicely to finish Celeste, I was still wildly frustrated at many points by the tantalising capacity for success. The game does an excellent job of pacing a player’s skill development, centred around the intoxicating thrill of finally conquering a screen to propel a player further on. It was reassuring to know that it was there for me to use at any moment. However, it was also galvanising; I was determined to beat the game without Assist Mode, to prove to myself that I could. This is the trick of Celeste. It breaks down a seemingly insurmountable task into easy, bite-sized sequences, showing you the path up to the mountain’s peak as clear as day. It is a game that tricks you into resilience, by proving to you that you are capable, again and again, of overcoming the problem that you face.
Celeste is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.
by Riley MorganMelbourne’s music scene is unrivalled. There’s always space and time for live tunes in every corner and crevice of the city on almost every night of the week—only if you know where to look. There are ear-shattering punk-rock jams, slow, groovy jazz or earworm pop in sticky-floored bars or in larger-capacity city venues; there’s something for everyone in Radio Fodder’s carefully curated handbook of good times, good booze and good music.
Without further ado, we invite you to have a gander at our picks for our most anticipated gigs to celebrate the final two months of 2022! As usual, we’ve included a mix of larger-scale, mainstream international headliners as well as local gigs hosted at more modest, smaller scale venues. We might be approaching our third consecutive year of COVID-19-related curtailments, but our local live music scene will need all the support you can possibly provide them.
When: 5 November
Where: Gasometer Bandroom, Collingwood Price: $
Fresh off the recent release of their latest track ‘Teddy’, the indie-pop four-piece—a band formed by four Mornington Peninsula high school friends—are embarking on a cross-country trek in support of their latest music. They’re known for their electric stage presence; rich in dance and singalongs, their shows embody the richness of what it means to be in the presence of live music and live art. Teenage Dads are also gearing up for more music releases in the near future, so concertgoers might be in for a cheeky sneak peek.
When: 8 November
Where: The Forum Price: $$
Wallows are a staple for any indie-pop fan, which is why it’s so exciting that they’re headed to our humble little city for their currently ongoing world tour. Even if you’re not a loyal follower, you may have heard some of their discography via viral TikTok trends. But perhaps this may be a sign for you to dig deeper if a night of good fun and soft, catchy tunes appeals to you—they’re performing in support of March’s Tell Me That It’s Over album. Bonus: they’ll be joined by Brisbane dream-pop artist Hatchie as their opening act, so it’s really two for the price of one.
When: 18 November
Where: Palace Foreshore, St Kilda Price: $$$ Born and raised in the north-eastern English town of North Shields, Sam Fender catapulted to mainstream fame with the release of his Seventeen Going Under album last year. He has the perfect discography for anybody who winds down to anthemic rock coupled with affecting, politically charged lyricism, but we imagine witnessing his music live would be an out-of-body experience.
KESHI When: 22 November Where: Palace Foreshore, St Kilda Price: $$ Kevin Nguyens of Victoria, this one’s for you. You’re probably already acquainted with who keshi is, but for those of you who don’t and are keen on gentle, meaningful and independent music-making from an Asian artist, keshi might be the one for you. He’s currently on his HELL/ HEAVEN tour of Asia-Pacific, and is set to hit Australian shores for a show in Melbourne. It comes hot on the heels of his recently released album GABRIEL too, so even longtime fans will have some new music to jam out to in his presence.
When: 26 November Where: Sidney Myer Music Bowl Price: $$$ Vance Joy’s upcoming shows across the country have been touted as an unforgettable homecoming for the musician—after achieving global recognition with hit singles like ‘Riptide’, ‘Mess Is Mine’, ‘Fire and the Flood’ and ‘Lay It On Me’, among others, Vance Joy is officially a folk powerhouse to be reckoned with. This upcoming tour is set to be his biggest tour yet, as well as the perfect chance for us to celebrate the best of what Australian music has to offer.
When: 12 December
Where: Corner Hotel, Richmond Price: $$
Shortly after Dry Cleaning dropped their sophomore record Stumpwork in October, Dry Cleaning are set to arrive down under for stops across Australia in December, off the back of an extensive tour across North America and Europe. As their debut headline tour of the nation, Dry Cleaning are the perfect introduction to the contemporary English post-punk scene, for anyone willing to dip their toes into something new.
When: 23 & 24 November
Where: The Forum (23), Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre (24) Price: $$$
Big Thief are an integral artist for anybody who would describe themselves as a fan of indierock and/or folk music. There’s no surprise as to why they’re so popular among the indie scene—their music sounds ethereal live. Perhaps this was why they’ve decided to grace Melbourne with a two-night show as some of the first few shows of their Spring 2023 tour, in celebration and promotion of their affecting new album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
When: 3 December
Where: Melbourne Cricket Ground, Richmond Price: $$$
Classic rock band Guns N’ Roses are ushering the return of stadium rock with their one and only Melbourne show this December. This isn’t the only occasion their upcoming gig is celebrating: it will also be the first time Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan reunite on stage since 1993. Not only will it be a bucket-list concert, you’ll also be witnessing music history in person. Not a bad deal, if you ask me.
When: 24 & 25 November
Where: Max Watt’s Price: $$
Sunk Loto’s series of shows across Australia are especially important for the band; they mark the Australian metal pioneers’ return to the live stage. Their oeuvre is a classic amongst metal aficionados: 2003’s Between Birth and Death has been long revered as one of the most influential home-grown metal outfits of the early 2000s. Sunk Loto have a rich history and acclaimed discography—what else is there to ask for in a perfect gig?
When: 13 & 14 December
Where: Rod Laver Arena Price: $$$
If The Killers didn’t define your iPod playlists in the early 2000s, you clearly weren’t doing it right. Coming to Australia for the first time since their 2018 tour of Australasia, The Killers are on the road for their Imploding the Mirage tour of live classics and 2000s nostalgia.
When: 10 December Where: Palace Foreshore, St Kilda Price: $$$ Prolific Australian psych-rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will be bringing the electric new music from the three studio albums they released in October—Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava, followed by Laminated Denim and Changes—to the Palace Foreshore. They’ll also be joined by Perth’s Stella Donnelly and Melbourne punk rockers CIVIC.
When: 17 December
Where: Rod Laver Arena Price: $
Despite hailing from Australia, Keith Urban’s upcoming The Speed of Now tour stops across the country will mark his first in over two years. That means fans will get the chance to witness hits from his tenth studio album live in the flesh from the four-time Grammy winner himself.
Illustrated by Indy SmithBeing a university student is a convoluted affair— having to juggle academics, extra on-campus activities and part-time work, for starters—that leaves little room or time for pursuing your passions, especially in artistic and creative pursuits. But when they provide you with an outlet for self-expression, stress relief and a chance to rediscover yourself, no one should have to sacrifice what they truly love to do. This is the reality student musicians Lucy Lorenne and Billie Raffety face on the regular: as future torchbearers of the Melbourne music scene while balancing their studies simultaneously, they are a beacon of inspiration and hope.
A Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Melbourne with a major in Anthropology, Lucy Lorenne is the frontwoman of her band, Lucy Lorenne & The Early Birds. They are reconnected high school friends and have been creating music and performing together for the past year and a half. Their most recent music is their debut minialbum, released in May this year, titled Summers Gone
With experience as both a solo act and as part of her band called Petrichor, Billie Raffety, VCA jazz and improvisation student, has a whopping six years of know-how and practice as a burgeoning musician ready to make a name for herself.
Radio Fodder sat down for a chat with both Lorenne and Raffety to hear their thoughts on creating music and their self-reflection as student musicians.
Lucy Lorenne: I would describe our music as guitar-led, indie-pop-rock with honest lyrics, soulful instrumentation and heartfelt storytelling. Over the years, I’ve performed in a range of jazz, blues, soul and funk line-ups which have all had an influence on my vocal sound. As for the overall vibe, I have taken the storytelling style from the folk music I grew up listening to and the instrumentation of indie-rock music I listen to currently. More specifically, I believe our music is relatable. If I can create music that people feel as though it’s been written for them, then that’s what this is all about. I believe art exists to communicate, send messages, tell truths, raise awareness and that’s what I aim to do in my music.
Billie Raffety: I was lucky to grow up listening to a diverse pool of music, from local folk artists such as Mal Webb and Kate Rowe to classics like Deep Forest and Frank Zappa. My music has inherited elements from these and has also adopted a jazz influence thanks to my studies and experiences singing with big bands.
I would say that I now create music that reflects who I am and expresses the events of my experience as a person. The sound of this expression, i.e. the music itself, is fluid and changes often.
LL: My earliest memories of music are singing Phantom of the Opera with my brother, when I sang Avril Lavigne to my class in grade 1 and at the same age, singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ dressed up as Dorothy. There was always a range of music listened to as I grew up from Hi-5 to Billie Holiday. Then, when I was old enough, I was captivated by Taylor Swift’s songwriting which inspired me to start learning guitar. My dad bought me my first guitar when I was 11 and taught me how to play. I’ve been writing songs ever since then (including my primary school graduation song haha) and soon after, I was busking, playing piano and performing in musical theatre. I was also introduced to open mics at the same time and that was my first experience of getting up in front of a crowd. I think that’s when I realised that on stage is where I feel most alive.
BR: I was about 12, sat in the back row in the gym of my high school in Tasmania; the year 10 stage band was performing. The moment the ensemble began to play (they were good but keep in mind that the band was made up of about 30 16-year-olds), my arms were spotted with goosebumps and the hairs became raised on my neck. I knew that I needed to get involved because it was the coolest thing I had ever heard.
RF: How do you work together as a band? For you, how does it compare to making music on your own?
LL: Half of us used to play in a band together during high school so we’ve been working together for a while. We’re all really good friends which means we always have too much fun in rehearsals and have the best time on stage together. It makes the whole process of doing this thing called music even better, having that extra support and people to share the passion with, is super special to me. I think collaboration is really important, working with the band really helps my vision be realised. Having other artists add their own flare, different ideas and perspectives, skills, expertise, and creative input really helps the songs come alive.
RF: What has been the most difficult part of making music in Melbourne?
LL: I would say the hardest parts about making music in general are the self-doubt that creeps in, the constant comparison to other artists, second guessing whether you’re pursuing the right thing, wondering if people will like your music, the competitive nature of the arts etc. I think social media and the pressure of having an online presence plays a big role in those feelings. However, these platforms also offer musicians a way to connect with other artists and open the door to many incredible opportunities, especially in the Melbourne music community.
BR: As I moved from interstate at the beginning of this year, the most challenging factor has been making contacts and learning the city itself. I think working up
the confidence to just flat out ask for gigs has been the achievement I’m most proud of, as well as meeting talented and like-minded musicians at uni. Trusting your abilities and learning to be okay with rejection is something that I am working on, however, this city has so many opportunities available for young artists. Once your foot is in the door and you work hard to keep it there, you’re set!
RF: Where do you think the future of music in Melbourne lies?
LL: Melbourne has an amazing reputation as a live music capital with thousands of talented musicians, passionate venue owners, booking agents, management agencies as well as a musicloving audience. I think we are still feeling the postCOVID craving for live music which is awesome for all those people. However, gender inequalities are still prominent in the music industry. We can avoid that imbalance by ensuring equal numbers on festival line-ups; more women and non-binary artists in industry roles such as sound engineers, cooking agents, roadies; equal representation in industry boards; quotas; equal nominations for awards; and generally, more women and non-binary music icons. I truly believe that the cultural view must change, and the industries must reflect this change but also, these industries influence our cultural view, so both need to be worked on.
RF: What advice do you have for fellow student musicians?
LL: My advice is to get out there, be a do-er and get things done. Make a list of your dreams and goals and then actually make them happen. However, I believe it’s really important to maintain the balance between the professional side of music and the parts you first fell in love with. Remind yourself to step away from the emails and strict practice and take time to jam, write and create. In the end, this is meant to be the best fun so don’t let yourself lose that.
BR: I am only at the cusp of understanding my own journey but there is something simple that I have learnt: balance is so important for maintaining a healthy relationship with creativity. The times where you are non-stop need to be offset with rest and calm. Think of musical movement and activity as a breath in… you have to breathe out eventually, so mindfully setting aside time to be still and “breathe out” is a gamechanger. I was pleasantly surprised with how much this simple approach helped my creative processes overall.
You can follow Lucy Lorenne & The Early Birds on Instagram and Facebook @lucylorenne.music, and search ‘Lucy Lorenne’ to hear their music on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Follow Billie Raffety’s musical pursuits on both @braffss and @petrichor._.band on Instagram.
Written by Chathuni Gunatilake
The fan whirrs on and on, its blades blending into one smooth white circle as its wind cools my sticky skin. The maid is preparing dinner, the smell of curry powder and the gentle scraping of a coconut spoon settling into my senses. The TV is going, some modern-day drama depicting a high school romance; my mother and I sit on the sofa, her mending one of my socks. The needle passes back and forth between the cloth and her hand, tracing a hypnotic dance, an occasional flash of silver catching my eye. All the while, her face remains a picture of calm serenity, a great artist at work before their masterpiece.
I sit in a pair of boy shorts and my father’s old oversized t-shirt, reading my book but only half there, my mind preoccupied by thoughts of food and the imminent knowledge of the scheduled power cut soon to come. Just as I turn the page of my novel, click!
The room is plunged into a sudden darkness, the TV goes quiet, the AC switches off with a “bee beep”. The emergency light turns on, engulfing us in a dim blue light, creating pulsing shadows that move with every breath, expanding and filling the room, a cocoon of silent darkness. My mother’s vintage dark wood almirah suddenly looms over the couch, its wood an added layer of depth, blending seamlessly with the shadows; the couch becomes an unbearable comfort as sweat collects in every crevice of my body. In the full silence that occupies the space of the light that once was, the birds seem to chirp louder, the mynas and the kaputas (crows) singing a discordant harmony with their cricket counterparts. The walls between houses become paper-thin, and voices float out into the street; the neighbour’s children discussing their homework, the seeya (grandpa) next door reading out loud from the newspaper to his wife. In the kitchen, the sound of a spoon tinging against the side of a glass cup rings through the air as the maid prepares tea; in the next moment by mother and I are holding steaming cups, the smell of rich milk tea filling my nose. The next hour and a half pass by at the pace of a sloth; in the absence of light and electricity, my mother and I sit on the red polished floor, her fingers running through my hair as we discuss our plans for the future, my time at university and the current state of the country. The rhythmic massaging of my scalp sends me into a dreamlike state of near sleep, my mother’s voice coming to me in snatches like a lullaby, her fingers twirling around my hair. Just as I begin to drift into sleep,
The AC turns on, its noise cutting through the silence like a knife. The main lights shine down strongly, nearly blinding my night eyes, and the fan starts up again with a slow “shwee shwee shwee”. The TV turns on, and my ears are filled with its noises, instantly pulling me out of a languid state of bare consciousness. Outside, the streetlights start up with a crackle and pop, and the voices from my neighbours go quiet as the noise of appliances takes over. Everyone goes back to their mundane domestic tasks, and that time of quiet lightless solitude is forgotten, fading to the back of minds, like a dream the moment you awaken.
by Manyu Wang
Picture the white-clad, practically nude members of an obscure cult surrounding a lone figure in a rickety treehouse. The decapitated bodies of a dead mother and grandmother are one among the crowd, and the head of a long-dead sister sits crowned atop a mannequin. The journey to this point has since been fraught with death and grievance; sigils hidden in plain sight on a fateful telephone pole and between the pages of a photo album; beheaded pigeons, anaphylactic shock and a dollhouse whose figurines strangely mirror and predict a family’s every move; desecration, betrayal, the infernal and the bloody.
The box office numbers speak for themselves: Ari Aster’s Hereditary, in addition to being one of the highest-grossing horror films of the decade, is a worthy predecessor to his 2019 Midsommar. While Midsommar is a ravenous, growling hunger for revenge, Hereditary is rife with grief; that unwanted, unexpected, maddening emotion that consumes and ravages the minute its tight leash is loosened. Of course, some similarities between the two films do exist. Both feature cults, both make one feel things one would rather not feel, and both push the limits of humanity, the human mind and human sanity to the brink with a kind of unapologetic arrogance and apathy. Hereditary inhabits the place between sanity and insanity, induced by grief that pushes one from mere blues to resentment, revenge, wallowing, and a vortex of whirling, clawing, murky, muddy darkness.
The tale begins with the death (inevitably) of our protagonist Annie’s mother, with whom she maintained a pseudo-estranged relationship. Annie grieves her mother’s death, but is more occupied with the generational trauma inflicted upon her by a dysfunctional, death-littered, hallucination-prone family and childhood. This grief is not what drives her to madness, however. The metaphorical spark that sets it all ablaze takes the form of the decapitated body of her daughter in the back seat of her car, discovered in the wee hours of the morning; and her son hidden away in his room in catatonic, guilt-ridden shock.
What follows is disturbing to say the least, and the undercurrent of a stalking cult, the discovery of a body in the attic and an assortment of frolicking ghosts are not to blame. Annie and her family begin to spiral, each resenting the other for a death neither would have logically been responsible for. Yet, logic proves to be fickle and flighty as Annie is persuaded to try and summon
the spirit of her daughter, only to be possessed by a spirit far more malicious than a ten-year-old girl can possibly be. A series of events ensues as the resentment between Annie and her son grows: a figure hidden in the shadows, freak cult members and spontaneous self-combustion; and in the eye of the spinning vortex of darkness, Annie’s desperation and grief leaks through the cracks in her facade into an explosion:
“Well, now your sister is dead!” she screams. “And I know you miss her, and I know it was an accident, and I know you’re in pain, and I wish I could take that away for you. I wish I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but your sister is dead! She’s gone forever! And what a waste.”
Her jaw is contorted; her posture stiff, rigid and almost painful to look at; her eyes are about ready to pop out of their sockets; and every tired wrinkle is highlighted in low candlelight. We, the viewers, are brought to the reality that grief overflows from mental pain to physical anguish, and can manifest in the material. Hereditary ends with the finality of the destruction of Annie’s family. As expected from the typical horror movie, the cult overpowers them all; and after many possessions, floor-to-ceiling crawling, traumatic begging, headbanging and murdering, the supernatural triumphs over the preternatural; grief and imbalance triumphs over reason and sanity.
We are reminded of the maddening power of grief; of grief as the “other”; the emotion to be regulated and controlled. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states so succinctly, “Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger … This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable.”
Humans are creatures of emotion, and more often than not, that lack of regulation over one’s emotions is simply the basest form of madness, transforming even the most well-adjusted adult into a being encompassing the most primal elements of life. Perhaps the cults, ghosts and subtle easter eggs scattered throughout Hereditary serve as landmarks in the horror film canon. However, it is its raw depiction of human emotion that has succeeded in sneaking its way into the viewer’s skin and bones, and leaving a lasting impression embedded in one’s very pores.
by Niamh CorbettSo you’re sipping your favourite whiskey in the cosy firelit confines of your reading chamber when your phone goes off. Bah! There goes your late-night brooding sesh, and you were just getting into it. The call’s coming from someone called “Plot-Critical Caller”, so unfortunately you have to answer. Someone’s yelling at you from the other end.
“Do you have a TV nearby? Turn on the news! You have to see this!”
“See what? What’s going on? Who is this?”
“Just watch, trust me, you’re gonna want to see this!”
Surely if it were so urgent they could explain right there and then, but no, they just hang up… You grab the remote conveniently laying on the table by your side and turn on the TV conveniently in front of you. Conveniently, it lands on the news channel.
A bright red BREAKING NEWS banner is overlaid across the bottom of an image that looks like outer space. Pinpricks of stars on a black background, nothing else. And there’s no voice-over from the news anchor or anything…
Then the orchestra blares, and the yellow text of the Star Wars opening crawl starts marching up the screen.
AS YOU ALL KNOW, it reads, THE READER IS READING THIS COLUMN ABOUT EXPOSITION. WHAT’S THAT YOU ASK? WHY, AS WE ALL KNOW EXPOSITION IS THE SUBTLE ART OF INSULTING THE AUDIENCE’S INTELLIGENCE WITH AS BLATANT AN INTERRUPTION TO THE STORY’S IMMERSION AND PACING AS POSSIBLE… OR WAIT HANG ON A SEC, I MIGHT BE GETTING MY NOTES MIXED UP… BUT ANYWAY, BEFORE CONTINUING LET’S FIRST GO BACK TO WHERE IT ALLLL BEGAN… ***
Exposition—all stories gotta do it. The dramatic reveal of Shady Jake’s backstory. A crash course on the political state of play between the Great Big Ol’ Houses. What sort of science stuff is responsible for the multiverse shenanigans in this universe.
Obviously, it’s critical to have some of these things explained for the story to work, but it’s also often an aspect of storytelling prone to some unfortunate heavyhandedness. While amusing to dissect in retrospect, in the moment, bad exposition commits some of the worst storytelling sins. Like nothing else it can break our immersion and take us out of the story, and it can simply make us bored. Why is this character we just met suddenly giving us a rundown of their whole life story? Who asked? And will this be on the test?
I think this is made clear if we consider good use of exposition. It’s the kind of thing you don’t really notice. It’s information we readily take on board that keeps us hooked and propels us through the narrative, uncovering new dimensions and colours to this fictional world. You’re too busy being immersed, eagerly absorbing the backstories and revelations to notice the hand of the storyteller.
But aside from comparing the good and bad, what’s so interesting or important about exploring the workings of story exposition?
Exposition isn’t just those infodumping moments to help walk us through the plot. It’s not about just conveying facts. Those are just the naked iceberg tips, starkly jutting out of the sea. Really, it’s the art of managing the delivery of information in a way to essentially manipulate the audience into thinking and feeling a certain way. To make you believe in a fictional world and better identify with the characters. To get the intended emotional climax at the end. To subtly warm you up to a certain worldview. To simply keep your attention. Or even convince you to buy a product. The principles at play aren’t just limited to movies, books, and TV. Anytime someone wants to get you to believe something, be it through speech, text, or screen, a fundamental tool in their repertoire will be the basic but crucial consideration of what is said, what isn’t, and in what order.
So even if you’re not really into creating stories of your own, I don’t think there’s ever any harm in trying to better understand the workings of the stories we encounter, entertainment or not. But maybe I’m getting a bit too carried away there.
Back to the details. All stories ultimately start as a blank canvas onto which the storyteller paints meaning for you to see. At the start we don’t really know what we’re looking at, what’s going to happen. Or where, when, why, how, or to whom it’s going to happen. But we know it’s going somewhere, so we can’t help but predict how all the individual strokes will piece together into a unified image. In fact, it is believed parts of our brain have evolved specifically to deal with and understand narratives, so when in story mode our brains take these things very seriously. After all, good stories tend to teach us directly or indirectly something about how to become a better person, which can sure help with surviving and thriving in our social world. So as part of that, when we’re in story mode, we’re consciously and unconsciously analysing every little detail for significance, evaluating it for how it contributes to some bigger picture. Especially when the storyteller seems to draw particular attention to that detail.
So before even thinking about how to present the information, we must consider whether the audience even needs to know
it at all. Every bit of detail is a brick building up the structure of the story, or so our brain expects. Finding out that a section of bricks the artist started drawing in the corner of the painting is just a random collection of bricks, completely unrelated to the chateau that’s the actual subject of the painting, is a little confusing. And if you’ve for some reason emotionally invested yourself in said bricks, quite disappointing too.
Generally, movies don’t suffer as much from this problem, as screenplays just aren’t very long. Books however, with their luxury of length, are famous for their proclivity for masterfully not getting to the point and bogging things down with pages and pages of “uh… ok?”. There are after all so many interesting things about this world I the author have dreamt up! The reader must know all about them! Now!
To keep people engaged and on track, informational leanness and choosiness is needed. Deciding what to include should always be done in reference to the “point” of each scene. How does it start, what happens and how does it end? Who are the characters and how do they change? What should the audience think and feel by the end of it? Only the information necessary for all that to make sense in a believable and engrossing way is required. Nothing more. Easy as that.
Except defining that “only” is, as you could imagine, not easy at all. Storytelling is more than just a sequence of steps. It’s supposed to be art, or something. Stopping to point out some seemingly inconsequential detail can impact the overall effect to a sometimes surprising extent. So really there is no right or wrong answer for what is important enough to include. Yes, everything you’ve read about how to write is bullshit. But I think you can always rely on this trick: does removing the thing in question ruin the logic, flow, or impact of the scene? Or does it strengthen it? (And of course, external feedback is always a godsend.)
Being careful with the dosage and delivery of exposition is also crucial, as exposition is a natural enemy of pacing. This
is often because when the story pauses to explain stuff, nothing exciting is happening. One great way to combat this is to combine exposition with something else. Details can be slipped in amidst an emotional argument between friends, where we also learn something about their characters. Or the real classic, having the point of view character be someone who’s learning the ropes in this world, so moments of exposition aren’t just a lesson for us, but for the character too. And of course, it’s always hard to swallow page after page or minute after minute of dry, exhausting details. Don’t infodump. Break it up a little. Perhaps consider infosprinkling?
Except, sometimes a good infodump is just what we need. Like a juicy revelation about how the dystopia is set up, or the unexpected twist being explained by the villain close to the end, like a car crash in slow motion that we’ve suddenly realised we’re in the very centre of and have been the entire time.
The key here is that by the time the glorious, unapologetic dump comes around, we’re in fact desperately hungering for it. We’ve been given so many puzzle pieces up to this point, but know something critical is lacking, and need that final revelation to put it all together, to see the whole picture in all its splendour. If the relevant questions were planted in the audience’s mind first, answering them (ideally in a way that is satisfying yet raises even more questions—keep those suckers hooked) makes even long stretches of sheer, uncut exposition palatable. I think this is ultimately the main key to good exposition. To make sure the information being “exposed” is the answer to a question that’s already in the audience’s mind, or if it wasn’t, convincing them that it really ought to have been.
But that’s all for this episode folks! Will Shady Jake get his revenge against House Sinister and safely teleport away to his home universe in time for dinner? Find out next time!
Illustrated by Casey Boswell
content warning: discussions of body horror, mutilation, and surgery, mention of transphobia, mention of sex
Written by Cass Klempfner
I have been feeling a certain kind of way about movies as of late. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to be excited for new releases, and more and more disappointed with the releases I have been seeing. Instead of going to the movies to see new releases, I’ve instead been going to see more classic films; Princess Mononoke screening at the Lido for the 25th anniversary of its release, ACMI doing retrospective screenings of Wong Kar-wai’s gorgeous films, or the Astor Theatre’s inspired double features. My trouble with new releases seems to stem from an issue of how film is treated, particularly by distributors, and I’m not the only one to notice it. Namely, Martin Scorsese, in his 2021 essay for Harper’s Magazine about Federico Fellini, states that “the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content’”.
It can seem a bit elitist to say “they don’t make them like they used to” but there is a truth to it. Through the proliferation of streaming, and the widespread adoption of algorithms to help decide what people engage with, as well as the monopolisation of the industry, particularly by Disney (as also discussed by Scorsese), film production and distribution is a trickier business than it once was, not even mentioning the impact of COVID-19 on theatres. Simply, it seems as if there are not as many “good” movies coming out recently as there used to be.
Recently however, as a part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, I saw Crimes of the Future, and found that I had to alter my perspective. Crimes of the Future marks David Cronenberg’s return to body horror, his first since 1999’s eXistenZ, and while many of the same themes, fears, and anxieties of his older works re-occur here, they are able to be progressed beyond his initial scope and narrative conclusions. Rather, this newest film is a treatise from Cronenberg on bodily autonomy, art, and how we make meaning.
Crimes of the Future itself is, on the surface, a film about Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux) as a performance art duo in an ambiguously dystopic future where pain and infection have almost entirely been eliminated, who perform through surgery. Tenser grows new organs inside his body, Caprice cuts them out. It is through this work that Tenser ends up working with the police’s “new vice” unit, dedicated to making sure that human evolution does not progress in ways the state cannot control.
This can sound like a bit of an odd description of the movie, which is fair, it is an odd movie. Everything moves to a very peculiar rhythm. Most of the dialogue is delivered in a very stilted affect, as if many of the actors are unsure of how to actually deliver their lines, as if their characters exist more to communicate ideas to the audience than to give the impression of a full character,
but despite this, there is still a sense of depth and richness to how they are portrayed. To be clear, I do find this compelling. It comes across as entirely intentional on the part of all involved. And yet, where I find the most interesting parts of the film lies in the dialogue they deliver, particularly in how it portrays the subjectivity of meaning that people find in their art. So, let’s place this film into the Sark Unit and dissect it.
Much of the discussion the film poses is focused around the meaning that all the different characters hold towards bodies. Within the language that the film establishes, bodies stand in for a given work of art, art itself is embodied. Each and everyone reads into the work precisely what they want to read. For example, immediately after Caprice and Saul’s first performance in the film, we get the reflections of a few audience members, namely Kristen Stewart’s Timlin, one of the most compelling performances of the film, a weaselly, mumbling, shaky woman from the organ registry, who, in one of the films horniest moments, gives the tagline for the film by reading her own lust, eroticisation of surgery, and desire for proximity to Tenser into the performance when she forcefully states that “surgery is the new sex”. After the interaction, Tenser and Caprice remark to each other that “art triumphs once again”. And yet, while they may not entirely agree with Timlin’s point while she is making it, it nonetheless informs their relationship going forward, as they do perform surgery on each other as an erotic action “just for [them]”, showing the interplay between art, artists, and audience.
So far, this is just a cursory, more surface-level example of the discussion posed by the film, rather, where the film gains more complexity in its exploration of how meaning is constructed through the ambiguity and contradiction it presents. Through the contradiction of its characters, the film is opening itself up for interpretation by the audience. I am specifically referring to Saul Tenser’s own justifications for his art, the reasons why he grows his organs, his “designer cancers”, and cuts them out. Saul, a man who is “afraid of everything”, “doesn’t like what’s happening with the body”. Particularly his body, which is why he keeps cutting it up, to paraphrase the film. This itself seems contradictory to many of the reasons given by other characters for why they find his work powerful, but also to the pleasure conveyed by Saul during his autopsies, the pleasure he derives from engaging with the practices he seems to be trying to distance himself from. To read into this justification, we can see that much of the imagery of this film, the horror of the body as art, and in fact much of Cronenberg’s body of work, is a fear of somatechnics. Joseph Pugliese and Susan Stryker in their essay,‘The somatechnics of race and whiteness’, write that “it suggests that embodiment cannot be reduced to the merely physical any more than it can be dematerialised as a purely discursive phenomenon. Embodiment is
always biocultural, always techno-organic, always a practical achievement realized through some concrete means.” To put this into my own words, the body itself, and our experiences of embodiment, are defined by our relationship and interactions with technology. There is always and has always been an integration of the body itself and the technologies it is defined in distinction from, precisely this is what defines the body and culture as a technology.
In terms of Cronenberg’s work, it is defined in part by its fear of this integration, particularly some of its most memorable and potent images. Think of the disgust conjured by the gun integrating itself into James Wood’s hand in Videodrome, cables twisting and piercing until the pistol itself is a part of the flesh. His work is marked by a fear of the interactions between body and technology, the ways that the body is shaped and defined by the culture it exists in. For this reason, while his work is subversive in the images presented on screen, it can also be viewed as reactionary and fearful of technology, deviant sex, or even of transsexuality.
Here, in Crimes of the Future, the disgust is transformed into acceptance, through Saul’s character arc. His initial justifications of his work transform. Where he initially tries to distance himself from other performance artists like him, namely Klinek, the “ear man” featured in many of the promotional materials for the film, is derided as “escapist propaganda”, as only being surface level in what it is saying (literally, the ears don’t work, they are just for show). He does not want to admit that he has something in common with those that purposefully modify their bodies. Yet this justification is fraught, since it is referred to multiple times that he is willing the organs to grow himself. The film ends on a fascinating note, with a shot of Saul reminiscent of The Passion of Joan of Arc; after having eaten a bar of plastic, one which previously had killed a character, he accepts the organs he has grown. It is his “let them eat plastic” moment, an acceptance of the integration and relationship between himself and technology, a somatechnic enlightenment. An acceptance of himself as he is, of his identity as someone who exists with technology, not opposed to it.
To conclude, through the film’s somatechnic exploration of body, technology and how meaning is constructed through the interactions of the body with technology, it is able to transcend its body horror roots, instead presenting an acceptance, which gives the film a greater sense of ambiguity towards the attitudes of the characters, and thus is able to convey a greater, more moving sense of emotional reality towards how the film views meaning construction and embodiment in the face of this annihilation.
Artwork by Stephanie Xin Hui Cheng @gohan.bubbles
Photography by Christian Theodosiou
Photography by Marshall Matthews
Photography by Xiangyun Li
Photography by Xiangyun Li
Photography by Xiangyun Li
Photography by Maddy Cronn
Written by Ishan Morris-Gray
This year marks the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses. This lengthy book, taking place over a 24-hour period, is in some ways the definitive text of the modernist movement. It also reflects several characteristics of what I will call “autistic fiction”— fiction created by autistic (or speculated autistic) authors. Lest any readers misunderstand me, autistic fiction, like any fiction characterised by its author’s minority status (e.g. queer fiction), is not a concrete set of characteristics, but changes according to the work in question. However, many of these artists seem to approach writing in a way that I find sympathetic to an autistic way of seeing the world and experiencing art.
To return to Joyce with some specific examples, some scholars have commented on the musicality of Joyce’s prose. Indeed, Ulysses, and to an even greater extent its follow-up Finnegans Wake, shows a fascination with language for its own sake, rather than as a means to tell a story. Ulysses also shows a keen understanding of the internal life of the characters to an unusually sensitive degree. For myself, at least, I have found my appreciation of art to be strengthened by an attention to abstract, sensual qualities rather than the story being told: in film, striking images; in literature, beautiful use of language; in music, a great melody or interesting chord change. Even more so, rhythm as an abstract quality, that is, the editing of images, the flow of a sentence or a paragraph, and so on. Joyce’s attention to these qualities of his writing seems, then, to give some indication of an autistic approach to his
art. As Joyce has been speculated to be on the spectrum, this could corroborate that notion.
Joyce’s contemporary, Virginia Woolf, displays some similar characteristics in her own work. As with Joyce, details of Woolf’s biography have led commentators to speculate that she was autistic. However, the point of this article is not to analyse those profiles but to simply examine the writing. Woolf’s work is once again sensitive to the internal lives of its characters. Her novel To the Lighthouse opens with an intense description of a young boy’s relationship with his mother; the mother in question is also shown to have an intense, vibrant inner life. In fact, this is true of all the characters—which brings me to another point about Woolf’s work. Her fiction is known for a sort of narrative polyphony where multiple voices of various characters speak at once. This again echoes the experience of an autistic mind. Of course, we are not mind-readers, so this is not a one-to-one analogy. However, the world often feels more intense for those with autism, and they are not always able to separate sensations out from one another and end up overwhelmed by stimuli. Additionally, many (though, again, not all) people on the spectrum are sensitive to the feelings of others: they have strong affective empathy, if not always cognitive empathy. While they often struggle to express this empathy, it is there nonetheless, and, in my experience, Woolf’s style emulates this feeling of mass stimuli being transmitted at once from multiple directions, as well as the feeling of overempathising with those around us.
by Melana UcedaGoing back in time and across the Atlantic, we arrive at the poet Emily Dickinson, another writer often speculated as being on the spectrum. There is great precision at work in Dickinson’s poetry—in word choice, grammar, syntax and prosody—and despite the ambiguity of meaning present in much of her work, this precision gives a sense of deliberate organisation and craft. This is not in itself a characteristic of autism, in fact, any writer worth their salt will embody this characteristic. However, it is Dickinson’s way of seeing the world that feels askew and therefore sympathetic with autism. Like Woolf, there is an intensity of emotion kept beneath the surface of her poems, sometimes erupting forth into stark clarity, as in her ‘Poem #919’, also known by its first line, “If I can stop one heart from breaking”. This poem is a statement of life purpose and betrays a great degree of sensitivity to the plight of all living things, from the “fainting robin” (line 5) to human beings everywhere. It is a poem about deep empathy for suffering and a desire to heal or soothe that suffering. Dickinson’s poem, then, shows that same degree of compassion and emotional intensity as Virginia Woolf’s and, to a lesser extent, James Joyce’s work. There is also a marked attention to the musical qualities of language in Dickinson’s work, and this is what I envisioned in my assertion of careful organisation and craft. While this musicality is less unusual in poetry, I believe Dickinson’s attention to it is unique in her approach. Each word and piece of punctuation is a note on a staff, carefully selected for the desired emotional effect, creating a melody either dissonant or mellifluous, and a rhythm that is at times jarring and at others flowing. In these examples, I have probably reiterated several points. I do so to emphasise certain features of these writers’ work that makes them resonate with me,
particularly the work of Woolf and Dickinson where the emotional worlds of the characters—or in Dickinson’s case, the poet herself—are less mediated by the intellect than in Joyce’s work where the writing is made near-impenetrable at times by his preoccupation with linguistic games and modernist experiments.
There are other authors who show an understanding of autism and the worldviews of neurodivergent people. For instance, I didn’t speak about Jane Austen, whose Mr Darcy is a classic example of an autistic person with his utter disdain for anything fake or performative, and his respect and admiration for authenticity and honesty, no matter how blunt. But unlike the writers I’ve highlighted, Austen’s writing does not communicate an autistic worldview through its style, but rather from a distance through its characters. This does not change the fact that it could belong in a canon of autistic literature; it is simply of a different sort to Joyce, Woolf and Dickinson. This conveys what I mentioned at the beginning: there is no one form of autistic fiction; it is not a genre, but changes according to the work in question. All that matters is that it resonates with an autistic audience, and preferably that the writer is autistic themselves, but this is not an absolute must, as many neurotypical writers have produced sensitive, resonant portrayals of autism and other neurodivergences. In a similar shift to that which has produced an interest in Black, queer, feminist and other fiction from non-hegemonic groups in recent years, I hope we will see more autistic fiction in the future. With this shift, we can hopefully begin to understand each other better than before.
you double dog dare me. i know these bubbles well: the resounding echo of a popped knuckle between hands, a twig cracked in two, this time between the tines of my leering teeth. cocksure, until it breaks like a bone, fractured through. the marrow vibrates verbena, neon pink, the cast of sickly skyscrapers and long drives during witching hour. its hex is a hash and six digits, with a fifty-pixel glow that would crisp the screen if left to burn. on my tongue, it tastes like dentistry: blue surgical masks before the wire breaks, nylon hands unhinging my jaw, the haze of black sunglasses pushed thickly up the bridge of my nose. my tongue heavy with plastic shrapnel, i bubble cotton candy and spit, watch the fuchsia froth on the tarmac like a fish writhing on land. glowworms have wound their way into the ulcer inside my lip, cherry-red and bitten raw, protruding like a thumb from thick, gummy skin. i try to scratch it with my teeth and come up bleeding, gagging, bait and hook. chemicals have sunken into the cavities, and they choke my molars with sea fireflies, turn my canines to angler fish. savage, they gnash for vengeance in an oil spill sea. all saliva and dibutyl phthalate, it seeps around the shark fin under my tongue, fit for a drowning.
When you were younger, you might’ve seen a man eating alone in a restaurant and felt sorry for the guy. You might’ve seen a woman at the theatre settling in alone for the show, and pitied her. You might’ve even seen someone swaying alone to their headphones on the train, and thought: poor thing, all alone, with only their reflection in the window or their phone for a friend. But now you’re older, and you’ve started to understand the beauty of living alone in the world. At lunch, you explore the city, sliding into a booth in a Chinese restaurant and writing poems on your Notes app. You scoop shredded beef with garlic into your mouth. Then, when you’re done, you walk down the street, grab some gelato from an Italian vendor with a smile that tickles his ears, and find yourself in the Royal Botanic Gardens. You’re surrounded by sun and the smell of pollen. You move with wonder, because you can, because no one is there to stop you. When the hours unravel you let yourself drift, accountable only to yourself. There are things you’ve always wanted to do, things you watched in awe of as a child, that you were too afraid or embarrassed or insecure to admit you wanted. You give yourself experiences as gifts, letting your inner child sit in the space of your cerebrum as you ice skate, take a crocheting class, visit the aquarium and marvel at the stingrays for far too long. You go strawberry picking, walk the footpath meticulously so as not to touch the cracks, buy full-priced popcorn at the movie theatre. Sometimes you overdress, eat candy for dinner, wake up at dawn just to see the sun strung up in the sky like a prop in a play, then you go back to bed and sleep as long as your body will allow. You adopt a dog, fill your apartment with plants, paint murals onto the walls and pierce and tattoo your body into something magnificent to witness. You go to that dog-friendly cafe you always used to walk past, your dog lapping at a puppuccino, you sipping at a hot chocolate, and in the reflection of the shop front you look so different to how you remember. It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment you grew, whether it was somewhere between graduating high school and starting university, or whether it was when you had your hair cut for the first time, whether it happened when you got your first job, if it was the day you decided to stop shrinking to fit in. You don’t look any different, and in the same way you are unrecognisable, sitting there, all by yourself like the man in the restaurant or the woman at the theatre. You used to be surrounded by so many people, all kept at arm’s length, and how lonely it was. Now you have a few close friends, maybe more than you ever imagined you could hold at once, and you love them all. But most importantly, you’ve learnt to love being alone. Beholden to no one, except your canine friend and a number of succulents by your bedroom window. Maybe one day you’ll have a family to answer to, a full-time job, a mortgage to which you can see no end, but until then you have the world to wander. And you have you. At the end of the day, what could be better than to know you, to love you, to be you the way only you can?
Early retirement, Lisa Dougherty decided, was completely joyless. Her husband, Michael, picked at his lapel, and looked wistfully at a rapidly diminishing glass of pinot noir, as though he were trying to preserve it. The restaurant they sat in was too dim for her to see without her new glasses, which she had bought for her trial shift at Mangue last week. In searching for some form of validation, upon coming home with the glasses, Lisa told Michael that she “looked like Badger from that old Wind in the Willows movie”. Her husband had glanced at her and snorted, before returning to his computer. Lisa promptly took them off.
While Michael swirled his wine and pretended to sniff it for the umpteenth time, Lisa glanced at the wall, where a neon pink sign bearing the words “girls just wanna have fun” glared accusingly at her. Was she having fun? Lisa sipped her overly sweet cocktail, reaching for a prawn with her chopsticks. Michael’s phone buzzed, inches from his hand. His fingers visibly twitched as he restrained himself from checking it. She sat before her bowl of “wagyu” mapo, watching the fat congeal and the meat turn rigid.
“What do you think, darl?” Michael said. Lisa gathered what seemed like a battalion of strength to force a smile.
“It’s good, love. Cocktail is a bit sweet, but I think that’s what the kids like.”
“You should have got the savvy b. Much more reasonable price, too.”
“I wanted to try something new,” Lisa replied. A mint sprig hung limply from the rim of the glass.
“I always like the old faithful. Can’t go past a good pinot. Almost every restaurant in Melbourne stocks a good one nowadays,” Michael said. He polished off the wine, smacking his lips. “Remind me, I have to go to Mangue. Hermann said they do a ripper wine list. I heard it’s like this place, isn’t it?”
Lisa was looking at a young couple across the restaurant holding hands on the table.
“What is?” she asked. “Mangue. Bit like this, wasn’t it?”
“Oh. Yeah, South-East Asian fusion. Something like this.”
“You should have a look at another place. You’ve still got a few more years left. Gotta keep working, keep the mind occupied.”
“Yeah,” Lisa replied. She stood up. “Love, I’m just going to the ladies’.”
Lisa recalled her shift at Mangue. It was a desperate move and she knew it, but her daughter, Hannah, was ringing from London every couple of weeks to ask for more money, and her son, James, never rang home at all: employment, she reasoned, would get her out of their home’s confines. She had worked hospitality back in the day when the kids first started school, and she assumed that it would all come back to her, and if not, she could learn quickly.
From the moment the tired-looking assistant manager gave her a second-hand men’s t-shirt with the restaurant’s logo stencilled in gold above the breast pocket, Lisa knew the industry had changed beyond recognition. She served oysters drenched in a watery-looking nahm jim, whole snappers piled with fried shallots and tough-looking ribeyes. She spent hours trying to think over too-loud music, recalling which customer had which allergy, and rushing across the vast floor. Lisa didn’t remember restaurants being quite this big. Her knees ached as badly as they had after her netball injury fifteen years ago.
“How did you think your shift went?” the twenty-six-year-old floor manager (the next oldest staff member) asked her at the end of her shift. Lisa felt her fingers shaking.
“How do you think it went?” she replied.
***
“How was everything? How was the experience?” the host asked them as Michael pushed his credit card ahead of Lisa’s. She lingered on that final word. Every part of the restaurant felt like it was screaming at her: “Experience me!” Like at Mangue, she felt impatient to leave.
“It was excellent, thank you,” Michael replied without looking at the host. Lisa exited the restaurant with her husband. He fiddled with his wallet, and they made their way back to the car silently.
We have intercepted this document relating to a new insurgent organisation, which details their critique of emerging trends and associated groups. We believe their aim is to (re)militarise time, to make it politically explosive. This stance opposes Ministry policy on the management of temporality, and threatens to disrupt stasis in the city.
The authors are unknown, presumably group-authored. The text was seized during a raid on an unsanctioned underground publishing house. The publishers were unable to provide intel on the authors, even under significant duress.
The following is our analysis of the text, seeking to ascertain the motives and methods of the group.
Excerpt one:
There are two kinds of abdication of the present:
(1) Surrendering it to the so-called necessity of the past.
(2) Submitting the possibilities of the present to the so-called agency of the future. The first category is easy to spot. The Hauntologists are one instance of this, haunted by the spectre of past futures. Disillusioned, Hauntologists conjure aesthetics and images from a past in which they were not even present. Clad in silver and chrome and dreamlike mascara, they look like pop stars, reducing themselves to pure aesthetic. They’re young and powerless may as well look pretty. Who hasn’t seen the strung-out ghosts, stalking the malls after dark, repressing their unspoken technicolour trauma? Only empty nostalgia remains. Sensing what’s wrong with the present, but never able to live outside it. Their escape is sold and packaged to them, and even in their desperate timesickness, they’ve become just another marketable demographic. More cynical in their disposition are the Half-Lifers. Wage labourers by day, suited and tied, greyscaled. Their meagre disposable income affords them technical apparatuses and psychoactive substances which allow them to negate and escape the present virtually but not actually.
Arriving home, they shed their white noise uniformity, throwing on a microwaved meal scalding hot on the rim, lukewarm at its centre, just as usual. They plug their bodies into the server, rejecting their legal name for a virtual login, trading their physical body for a customisable avatar, to spend the hours they earned at the office at double cost in the net-scape sensorium.
Here’s one pitiful example:
My boss has no idea what I do on here, I can b.s. my way through my cushy job and kick back on the net. I could go on like this forever
Like the Diogenes of cyberspace, they cynically defy Alexander as he rules them indifferently. They mistake the form of their subjugation as their freedom. Their managers do the very same, escaping the ire of their own bosses in an infinite chain. Of course, the servers are run by the same corps that their denizens think they are defying. There is nothing outside the market to escape to, only endless alternatives of the same, the mere semblance of aristocratic leisure.
The Hauntologists deny the world, closing their eyes and moving to their ethereal synthesisers, fae vocal sounds and slow-motion drum machines. The Half-Lifers keep one foot in it, living out a half-existence, meted out by the clock.
The author’s assessment aligns with Ministry policy these groups are considered low-risk. Later, the document turns to critique the more fringe and dangerous second category:
There is a coin. If the Hauntologists and the Half-Lifers who consign the present to the necessity of the past are the obverse, then the reverse are the Messianics. Unlike the Hauntologists or Half-Lifers, who form part of our visible city and are familiar to all, these groups simmer in obscurity, forming undercurrents accessible only to a select few. There are practising members at all levels of society. Dissatisfied, transcendent Messianics hope that their chains will be shattered by the arrival of an alien future.
Some groups envision their messiah emerging from technology. If you scroll to the fringes of public technology forums, say the right names, give the right impression, you may be invited to join an inner chatroom of one such group the Silicon Mind. Contra the state and corps in which their members resentfully labour, the Silicon Mind hypothesise that technology, which today is merely a network of surveillance organs and profit optimisers, will one day realise its innate teleology and autonomously converge into a superintelligence, seizing control from its human originators and transfiguring the world into a prismatic utopia of light and information. Progress completed, the Silicon Minders long to expel their humanity and give themselves to the singularity. They believe nothing can or should be done to alter the current conditions the trajectory is set and the arrival is inevitable.
Some members, monitoring the networks religiously, speculate that the process is already underway:
KyberWave: Did you see the blackouts in the eastern district last night? I swear the infrastructure is starting to become autonomously active - intelligence is imminent, my friends.
Anon61235k: convergence is next. i’d give it four months, tops. inb4 we surf the wave
Note: The outage referenced here was part of a contraband crackdown operation. Unintended misinformation is shown to be effective and should be exploited further consider incorporating into standard practice.
Naive on two counts: first, that this singularity will arrive and that it will be its own benevolent master. Second, that the superintelligence will have any interest in preserving their existence, beyond merely as fuel for its own productive ends. Pure egotism, to think that this superintelligence would lower itself to them, when they don’t even bother with other humans of this city who they deem as inferior. A Silicon Minder’s carbon might be better spent fabricating microchips than wasting away on the forums.
In stark contrast to these motherboard idealists, the cult known as Angelus Novus know modernity to be one great process of collapse and fragmentation, relishing every catastrophe as another sign of modernity’s self-abnegation. If you want, follow the chalk markings found in back alleys and sewers, wherever garbage is kept along with the other refuse of the city, and you’ll find the acolytes and disciples of this doomsday cult around flaming barrels and the stench of rot. They please themselves studying old witchcraft, correlating structures of the city with the stellar structures of the heavens, to find the inevitable conclusion: all will be dissimilated. Shattered.
The Ministry miscategorises Angelus Novus as a terrorist organisation, conducting raids on their cryptic meetings. This intervention is unnecessary they have no plans or strategies. If the authorities studied their ideology, they would understand that the cult’s practices deny the power of human intervention. To them, time need only be bided.
Note: Angelus has the means to threaten order, and will be treated as such. No review of strategy is necessary.
Angelus Novus synthesises their collapse-theory from a precise sense of the present, but they muddy it with Aztec doomsday prophecy, Renaissance alchemy and demonology. They align the movements of the stock market with astronomical charts and overlay city blueprints with sacred geometries, searching desperately for signs. All kitted out, prepped for earthly collapse, they stash tinned foods and military-grade weapons which they have no use for in the present. Their tools gather dust while Angelus Novus awaits the future. All of history stands only as a prelude.
The result has an ultimately incoherent form, whose shape is too rough, polluted and paranoid to be of any use.
Angelus has mistaken the Ministry’s past tactical concessions as yet more signs of collapse. This suggests that they have no means of discriminating between what is actually collapsing and what merely has the semblance of collapse.
The authors now make clear their own intentions:
We all recognise that life is wrong in the present. This city seems eternal and unchanging. We deny this.
The divine of right kings was thought eternal, until it was unmade. This city cannot monopolise time. There was time before it, and there will be time after it.
On every street, past and future interweave, producing schism with the present. The Hauntologists are a symptom: the past is lingering because the present is lacking. If only they turned their melancholy outwards to find its cause. The Half-Lifers feel it too but they repress it. They’ve been seduced. Silicon Minders search for a future, but misplace it in a deluded dream. Angelus are right to see the present as a catastrophe, but they are too presumptuous—this hollow moment will persist and reproduce itself unless we intervene. Their anticipatory theology must become avowed anthropology.
Our saviour cannot come from the outside: there is no outside and there is no saviour. We are in the present. It cannot be denied. The past has been given to us, but it need not be repeated. The future is contingent, but it must be made in the now.
The construction of a “defective” chronology goes against the accepted model of static time, and threatens to spark political dissidence, exposing the facile nature of imagined futures and nostalgic pasts. We recommend the further proliferation of these anodyne chrono-ideologies in order to combat their efforts.
The authors will be traced and removed from the city.
Written by Jia Yi Kylia Koh after gingerbronson’s 1994.
i should have been named katrina or irene or sandy because i move like a hurricane like one big black hole like a paper shredder i grew up in high places, behind fans and walk-in wardrobes and liminal spaces, trading stickers in classrooms i grew up catching boys and heat rashes spent nine learning jokes, ten to twenty dodging the punchline grew up old, different walls every year but the same peeling paint building a home in my mind with edges and stuffed toys, i grew up psychopath and silver-tongued and best friends with the dark twisting both lips up she liked to make me dance led me soapy to the balcony i grew up thankful, violet-haired and lover, making tin-can telephones asleep on poolside chairs grew up chamaeleon, moon-like, smiling sideways, grew up believing in mermaids and god, still believe in 1. i grew up in a garden city fire and savage, grew up placating, grew up like fireworks like swaddled grenades like a child forgetting to breathe, am 1 still think the world is beautiful.
by Ella Caoi am too tired of being human. so tell me stories of children. backyard tyre willow trees, chalk and hopscotch. tell me how they reverberate: newton’s cradle children, ever pendulum. gong. swing -set joytoes, steeped against inclines us mynahs kidnapping the sky. can you still remember when we all stepped in, and left our shoes behind ?
Written by Jia Yi Kylia Koh
again i see you, far away, speaking from a star. a performance without an audience is an act of courage, darling. nothing grows up there, mercurial twins fleeting as the mist in your memorial garden. come down. when i visit, time has already willed your headstone unkempt, but the smell still lingers. some ancient acrid rain. i imagine the patter will sound like a baptism. or at least, it will sound. come down. some people call it selfish but you call it home, in the name of the father, and the son, and the holy ghost.
Illustrated by Ella CaoHello hello! This is your local apothecary and witch Selena Sparklemoon!
Since my last entry, I have been stuck. Literally. Witch jail sure gets boring. Fortunately I will be released soon—but not before they take my ability to do magic!
So I have been left with a tricky choice: live my life like before, but without my magic. Or live on the run from the coven magistrate for the rest of my life. It sucks to say, but as much as I want to return to my ol’ cottagecore life on this plane of existence, I can’t see my life without magic. So I’m busting out of here!
You will need the following:
Two cups of sugar—one cup for every cup of fruit we’re using to ensure our jam is sweet and well preserved
Two cups of strawberries—any fruit will do, but I’m craving some strawberries right now!
One lemon—since we’re going with a low-acid fruit like strawberries, we need the extra zest for optimal balance of acid and pectin, and to help everything set when cooking the jam
A pinch of lavender blessed by the moon—for that itty-bitty magical kick
One knife
One saucepan
One stirring spoon to stir everything up
Lots and lots of posi-vibes—this will be instrumental for the final finishing touches!
I have been getting my jailmate Persephone Rivers to smuggle most of these ingredients. Turns out they’re besties with Peppermint, and a big fan of my recipes and rituals!
Now that everything is together, we can begin the biggest jailbreak of the century!
1. Dissolve the sugar in the saucepan on warm magical heat for five minutes. Don’t overheat or else it will all clump together.
2. While keeping an eye out for any guards, cut up the strawberries with the knife, and squeeze all the juice from the lemon into the saucepan.
3. Once the sugar has dissolved, crush the lemon, and add the cut-up strawberries, as well as a pinch of lemon rind and seeds from the crushed lemon, into the saucepan. Cook until the fruit is soft but still holds its shape.
4. Keep stirring for another 10 minutes, faster now to prevent the jam from burning.
5. Now that your jam is complete, carefully pour it over the floor in the shape of a pentagram.
6. Now for the vibe check! Utter the phrase “Marmellata” three times, and clap three times while widening your stance. Repeat until your jam starts to glow.
7. Close your eyes as the glow envelops your surroundings.
With that, I have teleported right out of there! I’m at my cottage now; my home, my heart.
Be right back, as I gather my materials and keepsakes, coz I probably can’t ever come back here.
Wait, hold on. Amon’s here! Turn outs they’re on a sneaky sabbatical from the demon conference—the kind you’re technically not supposed to take without severe consequences!
While I am glad to see Amon again, I don’t want them to risk their life for my sake. I’ll tell them to leave, and that I’ll see them soon.
***
So turns out Amon is here to help me move home!
That’s right—while my jam recipe is powerful, it normally only transports small quantities of matter, like yours truly. But with Amon here, I can move my whole entire cottage!
Alrighty, time for my jam recipe 2.0! The revamped jam recipe is identical except for:
Lots more ingredients—the pentagram has to cover my whole cottage after all, instead of an ittybitty prison floor
Amon—their posi-vibes and infernal magic will give this recipe more than enough kick to drag my cottage to the depths of hell!
***
I open my eyes, and I am in the demon realm with Amon! The bottom of the lava lakes specifically. Our houses are side by side now, just like how I always wanted them.
***
Now I live with Amon in the demon realm! I’m technically a fugitive, but as long as I live with Amon, I have diplomatic immunity by association.
As for Persephone, Peppermint managed to break her out of jail, and now they live together in a giant teapot where my cottage used to be. Persephone and I still keep in touch by magical mail—we’re pen-pals now!
Thanks for sticking with me throughout my recipes and rituals series!
I think I will take a long break before I get back to them—after all I gotta explore the demon realm with Amon and figure out where my family is. Turns out Amon may have spotted them in the demon realm!
We have all the time in the world now!
Illustrated by Jessica Norton
warning: references to death and grief
warning: text starts here
When a person dies they linger and you might have to water their lemon tree or scrape them off pans but how do you mourn something that was always a ghost? My inheritance is wet hair and late-night texts that I trace with my thumb; a desperate search for an epitaph that will satisfy and let me wilt with dignity.
Abandonment is a metallic taste Loss an earthy one ironically rich but heavy, congealing once it reaches the pit of you.
But I do not miss them, I do not grieve them; it’s that green light that I wail for. It’s the loss of my mind which saw things that I’m told just weren’t there.
So I write this elegy not for them; but for the spaces left in the dust on my mantelpiece, for the tasteless wind that rattles my window, and for that which still haunts the songs that once consumed my heart entirely.
Illustrated by Monica Yu
Written by Hannah Hartnett
The apartment gets very warm, and when we are hungover it gets very still. Daylight filters through the blinds, and Mimi grinds her teeth while I watch TV. Mimi likes doing this. She likes it even more if I let her sit next to me. If the smell gets to be too much I give her a kick so that she falls to the floor. She likes this less, and starts up an unearthly howling. I ignore her; she gives up the act and goes back to grinding her teeth. Mimi. She is too young to have teeth, but she has them anyway. She is too young to walk, but she follows me everywhere.
I shift around on the couch, hoping that the neighbours haven’t heard Mimi’s cries. She can be quite the banshee. They have come around before to remind me that we can’t keep pets in the building. A little red-faced man and his wife. I invite them in for coffee, and reassure them that there are no pets in the flat. Their eyes roll slimily around my living room, lingering on the empty bottles of alcohol. Of course, they can’t see Mimi.
She appeared two years ago, and has shown no intention of going away.
***
I was at Ty’s last night. His house was all smoky and Mimi kept tugging at the hem of my dress. She wanted to go outside. For a creature that doesn’t need to breathe, Mimi sure hates smog. Ty was busy. He had recently stolen a bunch of bamboo from a rental property, and claimed to be able to divine the future by casting the sticks.
“Wren.” “Yeah?”
“Come over, I want to read your fortune.” I rolled my eyes. I had come over for the free alcohol, and wasn’t enthused by Ty’s latest mania.
“Come on…” he ran his hands over the bamboo enticingly. “You of all people could do with a little… direction.”
I relented. Ty jumped up and ordered the sticks in a line.
“So, what’s your question?” His eyes were very bright.
“My question?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Oh…” I looked around the room. Mimi was desperately trying to grab the tail of Ty’s ginger cat. The cat was desperately trying to get away.
“I guess… I want to know if I’ll live a good life.”
“‘A good life… a-good-life.” Ty repeated my words. Then he got down to business, shuffling around the bamboo and arranging it in complex patterns. He threw one stick over his shoulder and handed me another. Ty counted the piles he’d made, checking them twice over. He then consulted a grubby book on the floor.
“A move from the first house to the twelfth.” He paused to read. “If you acquiesce, you’ll have strange times.”
Illustrated by Edie Spiers“Ac-qui-esce,” I sounded out the word. “I don’t know about that, Ty. ‘Strange’ isn’t the same as ‘good’.” “Nah, it’s better!” He laughed and put away the sticks.
“So… are you gonna?”
“Going to do what, Ty?” He squirmed. “I dunno, give in I guess. Acquiesce.” “I don’t know, I don’t even know what that means.” I wrinkle my nose, Ty is silent. I look over at Mimi. She is picking at her skin.
***
The apartment is almost humid. I am sitting on the carpet now; Mimi has claimed the couch. I tickle her with my foot. She wriggles around, grinding her teeth happily. I get bored and leave her for the bathroom. It’s hellish. Hotter than the rest of the flat, and filled with steaming piles of clothes. I stand in front of the vanity and inspect my face.
I am pale. I have long dark hair and high cheekbones. I am vaguely attractive, though my features are blurred like a child’s. I make a face at myself. Maybe I want to look different. Ty is always going on about wanting things. He gets in these “spiritual moods”, dragging out the Bhagavad Gita and delivering sermons from his couch. “Want,” he says, “is the root of all suffering.” Of course, Ty wants all sorts of things. I feel his eyes linger on me, whenever he thinks I’m not watching. Ty is one of those men that gets pathetic with love. He says that I’m the most spiritual person he knows, because I don’t want for anything. I am not sure about this.
I finish putting on my makeup. I’ve already decided that I’m going to Trick, a club where I used to sell drinks. Regulars sometimes still tip me if I hang around, and I sense that I shouldn’t rely on Ty for too much longer. I head for the door, Mimi scrambles after me. Mimi’s easy. All she wants is to follow me around like a dog.
Trick isn’t a very nice club, but it is very alive. The lights pulse and businessmen smoke in the bathroom. The girls wear very tight clothes and someone is always screaming. Tonight, the club is blue. The people look like ghouls in the light.
“Wren!”
I look around. A small man waves from behind the bar.
“Hey, Toka.”
He grins, ignoring the customers milling around in front of him.
“You still work here?”
“Nah.”
“I see.” He starts darting about behind the bar, expertly cutting up limes and pouring shots.
“Well, your ‘friends’ are over there if you want to see them.”
I look to where he’s gesturing. A gaggle of men are standing around drinking beer. Their faces are very red.
Toka smirks.
“I’m sure you’ve been missed.” I hold his gaze.
“Yes, I’m sure I have.”
Toka blushes, and offers me a shot. I down it, then walk in the direction of the men he’s gestured to. I stand very close to them without speaking. One of the men stumbles backwards, bumping into me.
“Hey, watch the lady!”
A balding man chastises his friend. I look up at him.
“You look familiar,” the balding man slurs. His friend moves behind him, looking wounded.
“I get that sometimes,” I say. The man smiles. I’m a good talker, when I want to be. The club pulses blue and I suddenly feel very small and very lost, like I always do in a crowd of men.
“Want a drink?” the man asks. I nod.
“My wallet’s in the cloakroom. Keep me company?” I nod again and trail after him. He leads me into a small, dark room.
“My bag’s just over here.” “Sure.” The room smells like stale tobacco. Mimi crawls under the coat rack and begins to tug at anything furry. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, trying to ignore her. A hand touches my waist. I wriggle away.
“Don’t be like that.”
The man is very close to me now, I can feel his breath on my neck.
“Why don’t we go back to your friends?” I say, moving towards the door. His lip curls. The man pulls my hair, hard. I scream, scratching at him like a mad thing. His face reddens and he pushes me onto the floor, among the bags and the dust. There is a dull, alien pain.
Mimi scrabbles wildly about the room, flinging handbags and furs. My breath is very shallow. I feel like an animal; all pulse and fear and the old pain of the hunt. Eventually the man coughs, and leaves without saying a word. I wipe myself down and grab for my heels. Mimi follows me back into the club. She is crying and crying and I can barely look at her. I move through the club-rats and make my way down the street. I am walking very fast; Mimi totters behind. The night is wide and dim, and the faster I walk the giddier I feel. I pause to dry retch. Mimi clutches my hand with what I take to be worry. I shake my head and lie down on the sidewalk. She scrambles up onto my chest.
“Please leave me, Mimi.” She titters sadly. “Please, leave me be.”
The weight, a constant on my chest, grows lighter. I’m underneath. I am free, I am free, I am free.
On Sundays, i’ll bathe in rose water, rinse the mud from my feet and wash my linen.
i’ll return to my display room, carved creamy marble streaked in pure honey light, staked to a concrete pedestal. i’ll sulk in my finest perfumes, and let the purple tail stray from the open decanter and wander.
my pearled gaze will watch that haze mark the soul will watch it puncture thirty hollow men, who trace that slight curve of my torso and fuck my name without even knowing it. nameless men, who abbreviate their personality into plum blush on my neck and punctuate their evils into bruises on my bottom lip. whilst in my presence, man’s eye will transcend time and dress me as his white rose, bursting/blossoming/ shameful youth.
i am his, he reveres me, father’s namesake —it is scribed on my title card. i am that limitless echo, art leaving a writhing imprint on his stained sheets. a long dead beauty that only his eye remembers.
by Amber Jepsen
Written by Eva Rees-Wemyss
did you know elvis was an enthusiast for karate? can’t not see it once you do. on stage in honolulu / the music driving upwards out of his crotch / his arms knives cutting through the air. he studied philosophy and learnt the souls of horses, perhaps not a surprise. also unsurprising: he was a total momma’s boy. ten years old at the alabama fair and dairy show, dresses as a cowboy and stands on a stool to reach the microphone. / places fifth. the first time you ever see footage of him he is singing ‘fever’ in 1973 and it also not coincidentally the first time you crave the taste of your own piss. it’s on youtube right now, we can watch it together if you like. singing with the languorous sensuality of an ambassador’s daughter he is drenched in sweat, wiping it with the foam casing of the microphone. can you picture him talking about hegel in his dulcet hum? the shed where he was born still stands today / still today
the opacity of poetry is its power. feelings can be hidden behind metaphors; selves behind second person. (example: desire to swallow piss eclipsed behind a largely forgotten rendition of a love song by a dead king of rock n roll). the release provided is like hip-thrusting to a drum beat, repeated climaxing and elvis’ unbridled virility during the outro. how else to describe this except unquenchable piss-thirst?? putting piss-drinking onto the page means it will never be displaced. it is, second to actual piss drinking, the best way to say you love you. / when a man who loves you comes you aren’t very good at showing him (swallow his piss! swallow his piss!)!!. but you shouldn’t feel bad. / what you don’t know is that you haven’t yet seen elvis miss the beat because he was too busy enjoying himself and when he does he laughs and you understand in an instant that it doesn’t matter, truly it doesn’t
but if the moment doesn’t register, goes by unnoticed, well that’s ok too. too is it ok if every experience of elvis is mediated through piss-drinking-proclivities/ or if it takes many more men who love you to come before you realise that drinking piss isn’t everyone’s cup of piss. because in many years from now, when you finally do taste your own piss, when you learn that elvis had a twin brother who died during childbirth (and thus never had to suffer an existence veiled behind another) then your first thought will be ‘maybe for the best’. and when that happens even the opacity of poetry won’t be able to save you from the knowledge that your throat is closing up and you are dying of thirst and no matter how much you drink there will never be enough piss in the world to save you. but a beacon of optimism: what a lovely way to burn, what a lovely way to burn
There was one particular card she wanted, a relic from the days when paper still existed. It started at a transit station out past Mars, the type of place where no one looked twice at the knife strapped to her thigh. She’d found an old Your Universe magazine, wedged between two hard plastic seats in the lounge. The front cover was missing, so she didn’t know the date, but it looked old. She would have thrown it away except she’d noticed an ad on the back, an ad that caused a flicker in her mind.
“Now available,” the ad said. “Bird collector cards in every ZipFresh Ready Meal. Collect them all!”
She had a memory of sitting in a plush red armchair, next to a window that looked out onto a green landscape. In her lap was a book—an album, made of paper, and full of bird cards. Every page had space for several cards, each pasted into an illustrated frame. Some frames were empty, waiting for birds to roost inside.
Someone stood behind her. A man’s voice said, “Here, you open this one.” A hand stretched out and gave her a ZipFresh Ready Meal box. She dug inside the box and pulled out a bird card.
The memory was so vivid that it made her shiver. But the trees in the memory were a distinctive shape—tall and pointed. Fir trees. And fir trees had gone extinct long before she’d been born.
One day, one of the shackled men on her ship noticed her reading the Your Universe ads. He smirked at her and said, “I bet you’re one of those losers who pay through the nose for a bit of old plastic on Retro Dreams.”
She’d ignored him, as she ignored all of them, but once he’d been delivered to the client she logged on to Retro Dreams. She’d never imagined there were so many things to collect. All over the galaxy people were buying and selling objects that were no longer made—books and magazines, plastic toys, cotton clothing.
And there, among all these weird and wonderful objects, was a selection of bird cards. She read the listings aloud. The names danced on her tongue. Coral whipbird. Northern swamp warbler. Superior firedancer. Birds that were long dead, from a world that no longer existed. The cheapest ones were in terrible condition, more scraps of paper than cards. But in the next price bracket she found some that weren’t so bad. A couple of taps with her finger and she was the owner of a variegated shellbird.
Her collection grew from there. Soon every spare moment was spent on Retro Dreams, bird hunting.
One morning, something appeared on the site that made her heart skip. An album—just like the one in her memory. And this one was already partly full of cards. It wasn’t cheap but she bought it. She had to.
A year passed. More birds found their way to her. She had almost all of them now. But there was one that eluded her. The sapphire sunbird. In her album, it had its own page, the border decorated with leaves and flowers. In the centre of the page was an empty rectangle. The blankness tormented her. The card had been for sale on Retro Dreams for months, its cost too prohibitive for most people.
It would take her years of work to earn enough to buy the card. But it wasn’t hard to find a client who’d pay her more for a different type of job. And in the end, it wasn’t hard to make the change from shackles to knives.
The collector didn’t care where she got the money. He handed her the card in a clear envelope. In her ship, she took it out, cradled it in her hands. The edges were scuffed and there was a smudge on the back. Someone else had loved this once.
She pasted it carefully into her album, along with the other dead things from a world that no longer existed.
Written by Joanne Zou
heart-sealed letter for angels with city-dream-dance-pop dreams, lucid with candied colours flickering & fading rollercoaster rides through sparkling synths sounding there’s a big black sky over my town, living each moment on wings of glowing desire but now the lights are changing window still open for you to come home the past a daze in 35mm future an arrow-heart-emoji promise & tomorrow, a fresh chance to soar beyond the clouds.
Illustrated by Vincent Escobal
UMSU and the Media Office are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders—past, present and emerging—and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.
