Frame Lines edition 8 * Contrasting Landscapes by Frame Lines

FRAME LINES ‘Well I may not be you, and you not me’

edition

EDITION #8 Contrasting Landscapes A note from the editors...

Sarah Nolan and Jeremy Thomas In many ways this issue of Frame Lines, Contrasting Landscapes, epitomises exactly what Frame Lines is all about. It’s about celebrating the differences in us all, whether you might live in an urban or rural area, a rich country or a poor one. It’s about recognising the diversity of the world in which we live. We’ve attempted to capture, as best we could, art and culture across a wide range of subjects and mediums, and although some of the ideas we had didn’t come to fruition, many other creative pieces and eye-opening art have stepped forward to fill the gap. And more than anything, this edition has become about telling a story, about you or about others, and the differing environments in which these stories take place. Our deadlines for this issue have been tight, and we have received a record number of submissions. Creatively, this edition our staff have gone out in search of stories to fully explore this idea of Contrasting Landscapes. In the last few months, we have welcomed new staff, whose faces and articles you will see on a regular basis. These are Simon, our resident writer, actor and film guy, and Teri our creative sub-editor and newsletter wiz. Both of them have contributed in a big way to this edition, and we cannot thank them enough! And if you feel you have the passion and are interested in collaborating with Frame Lines as a creative entity or as a business, pitch us your idea on how together we could push the boundaries even further. Visually, this edition is one of the most striking thus far, as you are sure to discover as you flick through the pages. Photographs from all over the world, high-tech design and material that might change the way you view art are all on for show here, in a package that we here at Frame Lines are immensely proud of. We hope you enjoy this, another foray into the contrasting world that is Frame Lines, and from the bottom of our hearts we’d like to thank you for supporting us along the way. Jeremy Thomas – Editor Sarah Nolan – Creative / Managing Director

* Contributors bios and links to web sites can be found at the Frame Lines web site - www.framelines.org The articles appearing within this publication represent the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publishers or editorial team. The reproduction of any editorial or images without prior permission is strictly prohibited. All Photography, music and all works appearing in this magazine are protected by ©copyright Reproduction without expressed permission from the artist is strictly prohibited. All images are copyright of the artist.

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Contents Artists and Writers Alberto Vasquez Sanchez // Poet Amanda Joy // Poet Anthony Kane Evans // Writer Ash Keating // Installation Artist Ashley Capes // Poet Bronwen Hyde // Photographer Cherina Hadley // Photographer Dan Pretzer // Poet Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones // Poet

Contrasting Landscapes Frame Lines takes you beyond the spaces in which you live and think. Join us in edition eight as we trek across cultural and architectural landscapes, from wide-angle to close up, from the big smoke to the great outdoors, from well-trodden paths into places not many dare venture.

Gerald E. Monaghan Jr. // Poet Guerrilla Lighting // Black Lighting Operations James Toupin // Writer Jared Ward // Writer Jeremy Beasley // Photographer John Riley // Poet

Cover

Kaamil Ahmed // Writer

Maria Kjartansdottir // Image: Good Natured

Kim Clark // Poet

Contributors

Kevin Kaiser // Writer Laura Kooris // Poet Lo誰c Vizzini // Photographer

Sarah Nolan // Managing and Creative Director

Marco Simola // Photographer

Jeremy Thomas // Editor

Maria Kjartansdottir // Photographer

Teri Borlase // Sub Editor

Melissa Murillo // Illustrator

Simon Ofer Chen // Resident Writer

Nimrod Wiess // Audio-Visual Installation

Nick Kind // What We See

Rachel M. Rasmussen // Poet

Ella Mudie // Ash Keating Article

Roy McConnell // Author Sadrina Zhang // Poet Sejma Prodanovic // Artist Shome Dasgupta // Poet Susan Culver // Poet Tameika Brumby // Photographer

Maria Kjartansdottir Photographer // Iceland

Despite being the world’s largest island, Greenland is tucked away in the northwest corner of the Atlantic and remains a mystery to most of us. You’re an Icelander who has journeyed there three times. What were the differences in landscape and culture you encountered when you first arrived? The first time I went, it was 2003. A friend of mine was a stewardess and she had an extra ticket to invite her partner. She didn’t have a partner, so she just invited me! That trip was only a day trip and I was shooting film on my dad’s old Nikon camera. Maria Kjartansdottir 4 //Frame Lines edition #8

Sleigh dogs 5

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Kulusuk

So when I came there, I loved it. I absolutely adored it; it was so surreal for me, even though I come from Iceland where everything is really contrasty. We have the glaciers and geysers and very green grass in the summer, but going to Greenland for me was like ‘Iceland in extreme’. I shot about six films during this day trip, and when I got home to have a look at them, I saw there was nothing on the films, so I cried for a week! It’s so expensive to go there; it’s not something you do whenever you want to. It’s about, I don’t know, three or four hundred pounds, even though it’s a short trip from Iceland. And they only fly once or twice a week, when they take canned food or frozen food or some vegetables over there. Do the Danish fly through Iceland to drop off the supplies? Yes, similar as it was with Iceland about sixty years ago. We were under the Danish crown. Greenland is still under the Danish crown; they haven’t got liberty like us. My second language is Danish, and the Greenlanders’ second language is Danish as well. Though we didn’t speak very good Danish, we managed. After my first trip in 2003, I got obsessed with going back and recapture the lost images. When I finished my BA degree in 2005 I went straight to Glasgow to get my Masters from Glasgow School of Arts. At the school I started a project about teenagers in northern Europe, and found it as a great opportunity to include Greenlanders and to go back to Kulusuk. Then in 2006, I got a sponsorship to go to Greenland and finish my project. When I came there, I was quite shocked. It was this place of only old adults and very young kids. There were no teenage kids in the town, and I was like, ‘Where are all the teenagers?’ I learned it’s only a town of two hundred people. There’s only one nurse and two teachers and one post officer. Even the only priest that’s in town, he’s also the only policeman. I met him the first day, and he introduced himself as a very important man in the village, and asked me to take a photo of him. But then my last day there, when I was leaving, I had to go to the supermarket; and there he was, lying on the floor dead-drunk. Rest 7

Icebergs tryst

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Survivals

Right in front of everyone? What did all the people think about that? It didn’t really bother them, they’re used to it. Well, it might not always be him, but it might be some other people. So I found out that all the teenagers from thirteen to twenty go to Ammassalik, which is another town. It’s about an hour with a boat to get there in the summer, but in the winter of course you can’t travel. They go there for a boarding school and stay there during the winter time. But they had all just gone when I arrived. I even went to a Saturday night disco, and it was just old men and very young kids. Really weird. Everyone dancing to this Greenlandic discopop music. It was so surreal; some of the people took their guns. They have weapons because they are hunters – you can buy a weapon in the supermarket. I could buy, you know, a rifle if I wanted to in the supermarket. Next to the shampoo or something. What and dancing with their guns? That’s pretty scary. Yes, and there was one woman who was about thirty-five or forty, and she was dancing with another man - obviously not her own man because suddenly this guy just rushed into the floor and grabs her hair and drags her out on the hair! That’s pretty wild. Were you able to visit the teenagers at the boarding school? I was pretty lucky because the mayor of Kulusuk was very kind with me. I told him about my situation, so he offered to give me a ride on his boat to Ammassalik and wait while I photographed some teenagers. He took me for a boat trip for one hour - the mayor himself - and waited for me at the harbour for two hours and then he took me back. Ammassalik is much bigger, but I still saw this remoteness. The people drink a lot there as well you don’t need to walk for long to see someone who’s way too drunk sitting outside their house with a bottle of beer. I’ve found during my travels that many native populations around the world are experiencing severe alcohol and substance abuse. I thought it was quite sad. I thought I would see them in Eskimo costumes or hunting; the ideal vision I had of Eskimos. I saw a little bit of it - I saw a hunter on his canoe, huskies, seals and some beautiful landscapes. The western world is sending alcohol and things and there’s no-one to take away their garbage, so in the winter they just throw the garbage out of the window and then it snows over it and everything is clean and white. But when it melts in the summer it just flows like a river - many, many years of garbage that flows toward the sea. I’m pretty sure it’s not very good for the sea life. And this is through the middle of the town? It’s weird because everything melts and it takes years and years, and just flows... Like a glacier of rubbish. But I think it’s really sad, how their life has become. The western world should be more aware. But the teenagers, they get a summer job, emptying the toilets – they don’t have toilets because the soil is too frozen. And there’s only one shower for the whole village. It’s just like a green hose, like the way they clean the seals. And one washing machine for the whole village. I was told there’s a lot of teenage suicides in these remote villages.

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Who were the children in the photo Guardian? It was taken in 2006 when I was walking back towards the airport. Just there, out of nowhere in this desert kind of environment, I met these two brothers. I chatted to them, and the older one told me, ‘Yeah I’m his guardian, and he is my younger brother and I take care of him.’ I thought that was so sweet how he described the responsibility. He was only twelve; he couldn’t be thirteen because otherwise he would be in the other village at school. And he was so adult and responsible compared to his age. But when I went there in 2007, I searched for him, because I always go back to give the people the photographs. I couldn’t find him, but I found his grandmother and she burst into tears. She told me, ‘you can’t meet him; he is in another village because he’s dying and he’s probably not coming back.’ So why were they walking from the airport? Because there’s only one car, nobody has computers and very few people have cell phones and stuff like that. So they were just running errands, they were messengers, running over the mountains for someone at the airport. What about the children in the photo Witchcraft? When the airplane comes, people see you when you’re on the way into the village, because you walk from the mountain and down into the village. Even though you’re alone, all these kids, they run towards you and it’s like, ‘Aaah candy, candy,’ you know, they just want candy or some toy. They’re used to tourists from the day trips giving them stuff if they come into town. Why did you return to Greenland a third time? The second time I was there in September and there was very little snow. I wanted the contrast in my series, which wasn’t any longer about teenagers but about the remoteness and loneliness, so I went back the next year in April, when everything was covered in snow. I decided to go again in 2007 and this Greenlandic guy picked me up from the airport. He runs this candy shop in Kulusuk and I had to give him some candy and some stuff from Iceland so he could sell it in his store. He picked me up in his four-wheel drive and took me to his house, the Red Guesthouse, and when I came there, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s not in the village!’ It was in the mountains and a ten minute walk in the snow to the village. There was no phone connection, and it was just my house, an empty house and a guy called Ari lived in another house right near. To begin with, I had forgot my sleeping bag, so I had to ask him to lend me a sleeping bag, and he took me to his house. Underneath the house he had built a storage room, and there was like a dead seal, deal seal, dead shark, dead fox, sleeping bag, dead seal you know, hahaha! So he lent me a sleeping bag which smelled.... you cannot imagine a worse smell, it was terrible. But anyhow, I slept in it, so I wasn’t cold, that’s for sure. When I came back to the house, I saw the door was all scratched with holes, and the wind could come through. And I was like, ‘What was that?’ and he said, ‘Oh, it’s because Ari, if he drinks he can be a bit weird and there’s just one nurse in the village and she can’t do anything. They don’t accept him in Nuuk [Greenland’s capital], so he’s kind of stuck in the system, and we don’t know what to do with him. So we put him here, away from the village.’ Next to the guesthouse! And there’s no lock indoors, just a little hanger you close the door with. If you go out, you can lock it with a proper lock. But if you’re in there, you can’t lock the house! I was like, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘Well, Ari came over one night when he was drinking and he attacked this

Eskimos

Witchcraft

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Laundry

The Red Guesthouse

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Jerry Can

Spanish girl and tried to rape her. He was with a knife, and that’s the reason for the scratches. But they were seven together in the house so they attacked him, and threw him out.’ And I was like, ‘What happened?’ ‘It’s ok, the next day he was very sad and he came over and apologised.’ But I was like, ‘I’m here alone with no phone connection, there’s no street lamp!’ He said, ‘If he comes over, just jump out of the window and run to town.’ So I stayed there for four nights and never, not once, turned on the lights in the house, even though it was very, very dark. I was so afraid he would come over. I could see through my window into his house, I could see him. I knew if he was there. You can only be taking photos for two hours at a time; it’s just so cold that you have to go inside and warm up. Instead of going in sometimes, I walked over the mountain for forty-five minutes, up to the hotel and then I walked back. I just tried to be as little in the house as I could, I was so afraid. It was ok until my third night. I woke up at three o’clock in the night - I think it was the Easter Day morning - with all this bang-bangbanging. I was like, ‘I’m going to die, he’s here!’ I heard he was under my house, and he was banging something into the wooden stilts. I just got ready in the window, ready to jump out and run to town. And it was complete darkness, I was so scared, I didn’t know if I wanted to run into the darkness or if I wanted to stay in the house! But he didn’t come in; I would have heard him come up the steps. Then I saw him dragging something, which I’m pretty sure was his rifle, which he had been banging into the stilts under my house. So it’s just like a proper horror movie. I sat in the window, behind the curtains, watching him all night, watching if he would wake up. I didn’t dare to sleep.

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Teenagers room

What a frightening experience.

You’ve got some photos here of the empty house nearby.

It was terrible, I have never been so afraid in my life.

It was so spooky. I saw from outside there was some broken windows. I thought, ‘Well, it seems to be an empty house, I’m going to go and take a look.’ But when I came in the entrance, there was a coat and a hat still hanging on their place. On the left hand side in a little room, there was a sewing machine and fabric. Everything was still there, like someone had just been sewing. A beer bottle was still standing upright on the table in the kitchen and there was suitcases, like someone had been packing. Of course no-one was living there, everything was covered in snow. But it was like a snowstorm had just come and entered the house. It was so weird.

I experienced the Easter Sunday with [the people from the village], and everyone walked on the top of one of the mountains there. Everyone they take their sleds and a lot of food - they have loads of frozen raw seal’s liver for example - and they just give the kids the liver and a knife, and they eat it like a snack, like crisps. I loved to see that, to see the kids with these knives and raw liver and these real, wild people eating. Because it’s frozen, they can cut it, but then it melts in the mouth so the blood goes everywhere and their hands were covered in blood. Hahaha, so funny! Oh and I tasted loads of stuff; they were eating Polar Bear and something they called ‘flying chicken’, and all sorts of wild animals. They left all the food on the top of the hill and they walked halfway down the other side of the hill where they had a graveyard. And they sung, they sung and sung for twenty minutes. Everyone who had lost someone during the last twelve months, they gathered round the graves and just cried. I saw how many kids and teenagers were there; I could hardly photograph because I was always crying with them.

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Like a frozen moment in time. Completely. I didn’t feel very well being there. I was so afraid, this third time of being in Greenland; that’s the reason I haven’t gone back. But I’m curious about Ari; now I want to go back, I want to do a project about him and the hopeless situation he’s in. But I’m not going alone this time.

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In His Blood Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones // Australia

It was the smell of Thailand that entranced Maddy. It was a thick smell; filled with incense and decay. At first she lived in the frenzied heart of Bangkok near the markets that sold cheap label reproductions of Chanel and Hugo Boss. She was a diligent worker and soon offered a job maintaining one of the war memorials in the jungle. She declined though, as haunted as she was by the pain and misery that had been poured into constructions of the era, into the bridge and the roads and the railways. Twice, driven by insomnia, she’d drifted from her hut into the night, wrapping her mosquito net over her shoulders. Around her the jungle had stirred with life and in the distance she’d heard the footsteps of no one, cries in the wind and felt her heart turn to ice. Yet the loneliness was not unpleasant. It was a calm loneliness; with the star scattered sky, the silence and the sense of being blissfully alone in a world of death and strangers. It was different from the frantic loneliness of Bangkok. From the blur of colour, the roaring smell of a million strangers. Maddy found sanctuary with a family who lived in three floating houses tied together and made a living by docking at various villages and selling their wares to tourists. A year after she’d first moved in with the family, they were tying up to the dock of a small village that people often made pilgrimages to because of the huge war cemetery on the hill behind it. The man caught her eye. He walked lopsidedly, one T-shirt sleeve hung loose and limp. ‘One arm,’ one of the little boys she lived with said, testing out his English. ‘That’s right, he’s got one arm,’ she said. Then she glanced up and watched the man’s wandering progress towards the cemetery on the hill. Despite the austere setting of the hillside graveyard, the place was a merry one for the river people. There was music and dancing, oil lanterns were lit and citronella candles burnt discretely under tables. The one armed man joined them from the direction of the hotel. Although tourists were rarely tolerated after hours when wares had been packed up 18 //Frame Lines edition #8

for the night, he was friendly and polite and knew a little Thai, so the river people shared their soft drink and their rice dishes, all the while watching him closely. ‘What happened to arm?’ one of the younger girls wanted to know. ‘My Uncle… Father’s brother. Chopped off.’ He made the motion. Confused but pacified the people nodded and broke back off into conversation. His eyes met Maddy’s across the din and he continued. ‘My father died here during the war, he snuck in underage. I was brought up by my uncle but he got dementia… he was ashamed I hadn’t joined the army and in his own deluded way thought he could soak up some glory by chopping my arm off and pretending it was a war injury.’ His voice quaked and Maddy moved across the dock to sit with him. When he mentioned that he was having trouble at the hotel, Maddy offered him a place on Lin’s boat without a second thought. Guy was a good companion on the river boats. He had endless patience and was a hard worker. He was fascinated by the jungle animals. He made friends with the semi-wild elephants that roamed along the River Kwai and hatched an alligator from an egg under the watchful eye of the oldest man in one of the villages. He’d wander. Sometimes he’d disappear for hours. ‘Why do you wander so much?’ Maddy would ask. ‘Maybe it’s my blood calling me,’ he’d say simply, closing his eyes. Twenty-seven and homesick. ‘I’m going back to Sydney,’ she told Guy one winter’s morning. ‘Sydney?’ he said slowly, as though he’d forgotten that rivers and jungles didn’t cover the world. ‘I’m tired, Guy. I’m… I’m ready to set up camp, I guess. Make a piece of the world my own.’ ‘You’d trade a few measly square metres of apartment for this?’ he asked, sweeping his hand towards the distant mountains, wreathed by mist. ‘I’ve had this for long enough. I’m tired.’ He stared at her.

‘Then I guess Guy’s going to Sydney,’ he said brightly, squeezing her hands with his one. They mortgaged a small house not in Sydney but closer to Canberra. Guy took to wearing pale blue shirts and got a job tutoring children to read. Maddy worked in the library. She yearned for the jungles of Thailand but knew its time had passed. Then Guy became ill with Leukemia. He grew weaker and weaker. Thirty-nine years old and bound inside. He began to talk more about their time in the jungle, ask for books and movies and pictures that he watched and read and stared at obsessively. ‘So I dream of it,’ he told her, his voice a whisper. Too weak to get out of bed, his one arm purpled with bruising from all the injections it had to sustain on its own. She began to plant trees that she recognised from the jungle in their little garden. Began to make plans to put in a long pond from one side to the other. Began to put a thatch roof on their little garden shed. She had a sound system installed and brought CDs of chirping insects and the indistinct growls of the unknown, so like the night noises of the jungle that when she listened to it in secret, locked in her study, she shuddered and retired quickly to bed where she curled into Guy’s frail body. Six months and the garden was a haven. She kept it a secret from Guy, he was in the front room and the back she kept carefully hidden. The refurbishment of the garden was taking up so much time that she had to hire a carer for Guy. ‘What are you doing? How much work could a librarian possibly have?’ he snapped bad temperedly when she occasioned his room to fluff his pillows and kiss him gently on his cracked lips before slipping in to bed beside him.

It was the off season, the wet season, so Maddy was able to secure flights and various other travel to the little riverside village within twelve hours. She started approaching people. Some were familiar but most weren’t. She just waved the photo under their noses and if they shook their heads she moved on. One man claimed to have seen Guy. He pointed upstream and lent Maddy a motorboat. For hours she kept a keen look out along the shoreline, certain he lacked the strength necessary to drag the boat into the trees. He’d pulled it just shallow enough to keep it on the shore. ‘Guy!’ She yelled, putting the boat into the shore. He’d shed his blue shirt, his wallet, medication and a bottle of water. It’s in my blood, I guess… She felt tears fall thick and fast down her cheeks. She walked into the jungle, but it was an overgrown area and she could see no sign as to which way he’d gone. She set up a small fire and sat vigil although she knew he would not show. She sobbed when she saw the light of morn touch the peaks of the distant mountains, so beautifully familiar that it ached the freshly broken pieces of her heart. She sat and cried for her one armed man and eventually fell into a deep sleep in which she walked not in the jungles of Thailand that had so captured her heart, but in the little garden she’d made for her one armed man, her Guy, the garden she’d made but he’d not seen. ‘You made your own plans,’ she whispered to the jungle, burying his wallet and shirt on the shoreline

‘Hmm…?’ She murmured. ‘I just wanted to talk…’ ‘It’s two am – can it wait til later? I’m so tired I’m aching all over.’ He sighed, reached over with his good arm to stroke the hair from her forehead. ‘Alright,’ he murmured. The next night she stood in her Thai Jungle in the outskirts of Canberra, listening to the hum of the jungle, breathing in the citronella candles. It was finished. She went inside to darkness and silence. ‘Guy?’ The window was open, the curtains moving in idle rhythm against the gentle night. She checked all the rooms, the front garden. She called everyone she knew, everyone Guy knew. She even called Guy’s estranged brother. ‘Yeah, he called me a couple of days ago.’ ‘What? What did he say?’ ‘Not a lot. Wanted the name of the village again. The one where Dad’s buried. He was a little disoriented when he called. A little vague, you know?’ She nearly hung up. Surely not… surely not… ‘He…’ ‘I guess he’s made his own plans, Maddy.’

Ash Keating Installation Artist // Australia Article by Ella Mudie

‘While studying I needed to fund my practice and worked in waste management sifting through company waste and surveying landfills. My ideas about using found objects in art were elevated through this eye opening experience.’ The idea that art and politics should inhabit separate spheres long held sway in the art world until a new league of socially aware artists - from Alfredo Jaar with his anti-war commentary to 1980s feminist art collectives like the Guerrilla Girls - began to blur the boundaries. Locally, 28-year old Melbourne artist Ash Keating continues the challenge and, with a background in street art and activism, isn’t shy about creating artworks that spark debate. Now seamlessly melding ecological concerns with his fine art practice – from protesting a gold mine in Chile to releasing paper birds made from discarded newspapers into the Melbourne sky – Keating tells Frame Lines how he came to develop his unique brand of environmentally aware artmaking.

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2020? (part one) waste interception, Hampton Park Landfill, Wednesday 14th May 2008 21

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Parched: limewash to stonepaint on ply, Mockridge Fountain Melbourne, January to April 2007 - current

2020? (part one) waste audit and segregation, Arts House Meat Market, Friday 23rd May 2008

A concern with waste management runs in the family – from your grandfather’s rubbish removal service to your mother’s waste management business. When did you realise you could explore ideas about this through visual art? Had you always planned on being an artist? Art certainly takes precedence however consider this – most things I drew pre-teenage years were from the natural environment. As a teenager I learnt to fly light aircraft with my grandmother in northeast Victoria which inspired me to paint large oils on canvas of the amazing aerial views of the landscape I witnessed. It was during these years I chose to follow my strong passion for art over a possible career in flying. While studying at Monash in 2002 I needed to fund my practice and worked in waste management sifting through company waste and surveying landfills. My ideas about the use of found objects within art were elevated through this eye opening experience. What came out of your recent residency in Seoul, Korea and your collaboration there with 10 young local artists? Searching the city of Seoul for interesting waste material, I eventually

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stumbled upon a small industry area in Jugyo-dong where any consumer brand you can imagine has their fabric, sticker or plastic labels manufactured. The businesses there fill waste bags daily with the off-cuts and misprints of the production, placing them on the public pavement for collection. These bags were collected and the fabric material used and manipulated to create a series of performances and an installation that aimed to deal with the ripe issue of excessive globalisation, something very apparent in the consumer habits of young people in Seoul. I conducted a documented live performance Escape from Tag Mountain at Gallery Van and also directed an ambitious collaborative art project titled Label Land with Gallery Loop (http://label-land.blogspot.com) Your intercepting of waste materials has also attracted some controversy. I’m thinking of the fallout from your dumpster diving the remnants of a Barbara Kruger exhibition at the ACCA and the ensuing stoush with the show’s curator back in 2006. Do you now consider any type of waste off-limits? When does rubbish shift from being private property to belonging to the public domain?

2020? (part one) waste audit and segregation, Arts House Meat Market, Friday 23rd May 2008

Well apparently it’s illegal to skip dive anywhere and taking hard rubbish is a crime. So despite ACCA’s bulk bin not being locked up, and a hoard of VCA students diving into it well before I chose to, it wasn’t really my property to take. Having said that, the incident you’re referring to is part of a complex work and series of actions titled Work in Progress, which because of the controversy many people believe to be an important historical work. Following on from Work in Progress, I made several artworks legitimately and lawfully dealing with waste. Two of these projects were the auditing of 24 hours of waste from the Victorian College of the Arts and the interception of various samples of recyclables found in the general waste stream of Toyota’s manufacturing plant. The diversion of landfill waste was the focus of your recent 2020? installation for the 2008 Melbourne Next Wave Festival. This saw you select and organise the transport of two 23m bulk bin loads of commercial and industrial waste to the Arts House Meat Market. These materials were taken up by over 20 artists who created their own sculptures and installations. What were the challenges of realising this project and how did the artists respond to the materials?

The initial challenge was to go outside the regular avenues of arts funding to gain financial support for the project and I set out and gained support from companies and organisations in the environmental industry. Another challenge was the long hours involved, including co-ordinating volunteers and documentation surrounding the 3am waste deliveries as well as waking up at 6am on the morning following the opening to disassemble the mass installation and categorise the materials. Basically each artist or collaborative were allocated two to three days to make use of the opportunity, so the first groups to come in had an open choice of materials and space which narrowed through the week. The artists responded in varying ways and because of the scale of the space most created quite large and ambitious works in a relatively short period of time. You’ve also made public art – the mural project you installed at the now inactive Mockridge Fountain in Melbourne which showed a water source progressively drying up, Parched, is a good example. How does your approach differ when working on a specific site rather than in the gallery?

Label Land (Euljiro 4 intervention 1), Seoul, South Korea, Thursday 7th August 2008

Well in regards to that piece or the preceding work Pascua Lama Information Wall created on the outside hoardings of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, it’s important to consider the audience. They are bold large-scale works that demand attention in the same way billboard advertising operates. This stems from a knowledge of graphic design, much like Kruger’s awareness of advertising, yet the main source of this type of artmaking comes from many years painting abstracts on large walls in the streets. You’ve had some interesting opportunities to travel for your work. How have attitudes to environmental protection and activism in art making differed across the various regions you have visited and worked in? I’ve been fortunate to have visited Santiago, Chile with The South Project Inc and recently completed an Asia Link Visual Arts residency in Seoul, Korea. Both Santiago and Seoul have a strong history of political actions and activism, so the local communities understand how to digest social and political artwork, despite the majority of artists being market-oriented. The project I made in Santiago focused on a mining company Barrack Gold and their construction of a cyanide leech gold mine between three glaciers in the Huasco Valley. The work was split into two parts, the sculptural installation presented inside the museum and the information-based protest wall on the hoardings on the outside of the museum, which encouraged engagement from many local people.

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In Australian cities it often seems we are quite blind to the quantity of rubbish we create on a daily basis. In 2005 you did a show called Press Release that represented a mass of discarded mX newspapers in the gallery space. What kind of response did you get to this installation? Press Release began as a simple project yet developed into a climactic performance which has been conducted site specifically in eight different locations nationally and internationally. The hand cutting of 6500 images of an Australasian Gannet out of the same amount of mX tabloids was documented in time lapse video and more often than not the response to these works is statements about having an obsessive compulsive disorder. However the climax of the work to release the paper birds into the air is an act people enjoy seeing, be it more often than not on video. Press Release was recently re-shown in The Ecologies Project at Monash University of Modern Art and is an ongoing project close to its concluding performance in New Zealand. What’s coming up next? I’ve moved into a studio at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and will be showing work in Studio 12 in August and the end of year group exhibition in the main gallery. I am holding my first solo exhibition in Sydney with Breenspace opening in late June and back in Melbourne in August I will present the Label Land project created in Seoul, South Korea at Utopian Slumps.

Ash Keating, Label Land installation, Xii Gallery, Haepjong, Seoul, South Korea, August 2008

A Caller Alberto Vasquez Sanchez // El Salvado

A dry, harsh-lit Sunday. Delicate white sheets on the windows kept most of the summer heat out but still allowed the brightness of the sun to filter in. Anthony ate lunch, fried chicken and a salad, in silence and watched the sheets sway in and out of the room with the soft breeze. After washing the dishes and placing them on the dish rack, according to size in ascending order, he retired to the couch nearby and read the day’s newspaper. He read at least one article on every page out of habit. There was much of the same doom and gloom that had become typical over time but he thought it was best to keep up-to-date. His father had been a journalist and had taught Anthony to keep informed; the reporter’s words should not go unread. Anthony had wanted to be a journalist, to follow his father’s footsteps, but he didn’t have his father’s way with words, couldn’t seem to ask the right questions or be at the right place. So, in the end, he chose practicality and followed his mother’s footsteps. He became a baker and inherited his mother’s bakery. He read for almost two hours before his eyes became tired. He made a mental note of the last page he read and promised to finish the rest of the paper later that night. He had a glass of warm milk and took a nap. He didn’t dream, he rarely dreamt during the day. He wasn’t even sure if he had even fallen asleep or if he had just lost track of time staring into the black-red. It was five in the afternoon when he got up but he didn’t feel rested. He watched some television before making dinner. He would have to go to bed by nine if he wanted be well rested and wake up at four in order to make tomorrow’s bread. * It was a slow day. Only seven people had come in to buy from Anthony. 28 //Frame Lines edition #8

It was almost three in the afternoon; he had made two calls already and was resisting the urge to make another. Instead he washed the bread moulds and cleaned the tables. He ate one of the custard tarts and had a glass of milk. He wiped his mouth and heard the ding of the door opening. A mother and son entered. The mother had bags under her eyes, which she tried to hide with make-up, and a slight slump that made her look forever depressed. She showed signs of another child on the way, or signs of stress eating, or both. The boy was seven or eight years old. He wore a blue and grey uniform with a familiar insignia but Anthony couldn’t make up his mind as to what school that suggested. ‘Good afternoon,’ Anthony said. ‘Hi. I’ll have six dinner rolls and a bag of sliced bread, thanks.’ Her voice cut through the air like a knife cuts through stale bread. Anthony smiled and carefully placed the dinner rolls in the paper bag, making sure not to squeeze them too tightly with the tongs. ‘Mum, I want one of those,’ the boy said. Anthony grabbed a bag of sliced bread and turned around. He looked at the mother as she considered her son’s request. Reluctance came upon her face at first then a look that indicated it was best to forgo the song and dance. ‘A custard tart as well,’ she sighed. Anthony ripped a small paper bag from the stack on the counter and placed a custard tart inside. He then offered it to the boy and smiled.

‘On the house,’ he said. ‘Thank you,’ the boy said indifferently and immediately began to eat the tart. ‘Thank you,’ the mother said more appreciative. ‘How much for the bread?’ ‘Six fifty.’ She looked through her wallet and took out a five dollar bill, a one dollar coin and a fifty cents coin. ‘Here.’ ‘Thank you. Have a nice day.’ ‘Thanks, you too.’ The pair walked out, the boy had already eaten half of the tart. Anthony heard car doors shut and then an engine start. He stared out the windows for a moment and waited for another customer to enter but after a few minutes of anticipation he went to the back to sit down. The phone hung on the wall opposite him. The moulds had been washed, the floor had been swept, the tables were clean. The desire was too great and Anthony dialled the number he had committed to memory long ago. He waited. The phone rang a couple of times before his call was answered. ‘Hello,’ a recording of a woman’s voice said, ‘Welcome to Stanley Food Services Information Centre. Office hours are from nine a.m. to five p.m. Monday to Friday. Please choose from the following options.’ Anthony listened intently to the voice and mouthed the words along with her as if it was a song he would not get tired of hearing. He loved the voice. It was soothing and beckoning; he could almost picture the elegance of the woman. He pictured her soft skin, her alluring gaze and her gentle smile. He found comfort in her.

didn’t matter. He mouthed along with the woman. ‘If you’d like to hear these options again press zero.’ He waited a second before pressing zero. * There had been very little to do in terms of cleaning up. Anthony put the equipment away and removed the unsold bread; he would try to see it at a cheaper price tomorrow. He locked up, went to his car and drove home with the radio on. Arriving home just before five fifteen, he changed into looser clothing then went ahead to read the day’s newspaper. He read most of the articles with an in-the-moment attention that made forget the contents of the previous article; it did not bother him. He read for almost two hours before watching a little bit of television. He ate dinner, spaghetti bolognese, with the sound of the television in the background and of the fork making contact with the china. The ringing of a phone startled him, his heart rate increased in anticipation of who would be calling. He stood up and walked towards his phone but as he neared it he realised the sound did not come from his phone, it came from his neighbour’s house. He went back to his dinner, his heart slowed down. His hand itched slightly. By eight forty he was brushing his teeth. He had to be in bed by nine if he wanted to wake up at four the next morning without feeling tired. He wished he could use his phone once more before going to bed but knew no one he wanted to hear would answer his call.

The ding sounded once again. Anthony hung up quickly and went to the front counter. It was a man he’d seen many times before. The man wasn’t very tall but his slim physique seemingly elevated him by an inch or so. ‘Can I have some sliced bread and a packet of choc chip cookies, thanks.’ Anthony could have mouthed the words along with the man. He considered asking the man if he wanted anything else but it would be pointless. Each new week offered no change in the man’s order. ‘Here you go,’ Anthony handed the bag to the man. Before Anthony could tell the man the price, the man placed the exact change, six dollars, on the counter, took the bag and was on his way out the door. ‘Have a nice day,’ Anthony said. The man acknowledged the words with a smile. The door shut and Anthony was alone. * The day ended at four thirty. Anthony reversed the sign from OPEN to CLOSED yet he left the door open in case anyone made a last minute attempt to buy something. The slow paced day made him anxious. He walked by the phone several times before giving in. He dialled the number. The phone rang a couple of times before a voice answered. ‘Hello. Welcome to Stanley Food Services Information Centre...’ Anthony knew he would never know who the voice belonged to, would never see any other human face than the one he had given her but it

Tameika Brumby Photographer // Australia

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Coober Pedy, S.A. early morning.

Melbourne photographer Tameika Brumby moved to the harsh South Australian desert to work as a photo journalist and capture landscape images of our rural areas. In 2006 Tameika Brumby moved from Melbourne to the small mining town of Roxby Downs, deep into the heart of the Australian outback. Roxby consists of four thousand people surviving off BHP Billitonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Uranium mine. To drive from Roxby there are two choices to visit the next major centre: a six hour drive further into the desert to mining town Coober Pedy or head south from Roxby six and a half hours to the city of Adelaide. Tameika spent the first year in the desert town working for editor Les Rochester (former journalist and cameraman for ABCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Four Corners) at the Monitor newspaper. Initially, Brumby covered local sports such as cricket and football and by the end of her time with the Monitor she was covering major events, features, celebrities and daily life. After two years with the local paper Brumby was picked up by the Adelaide Advertiser as a contributing photographer to cover stories relating to the mines in South Australia. Some of her stories included working with Arid Recovery documenting the local wildlife. Personal projects demanded travelling further into the South Australian desert under some of the harshest conditions Australia has to offer. The temperature in Lake Eyre can exceed 50 degrees Celsius with unbearably hot, salt infused winds. Presently Tameika is working in Melbourne, however she plans to return to the red centre to rekindle her affinity with this mysterious land.

The old bus outside the William Creek Pub, South Australian Desert

Abandoned car just off Oodnadatta Track, South Australian Desert

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Lake Eyre, S.A.

Oodnadatta Track (to William Creek), S.A

The Painted Desert

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Sunset, Coober Pedy 9.00pm

Sunset, Coober Pedy Lookout 8.50pm

London’s Grey or Dhaka’s Colour Kaamil Ahmed // UK A month ago, I would never have thought that London could ever seem lifeless. It was the city where I could just sit alongside the Thames and watch as everyone from businessmen to screevers [pavement artists] rushed about in a city which had this never-ending buzz; a kind of subconscious soundtrack to the daily hustle and bustle. But after my return to Bangladesh, my home country, after 12 years and seeing Dhaka, London really has become boring. Since my return, the sky has been nothing but grey, the bus is full of men and women in dull suits; their blank faces screaming of monotony. Dhaka, on the other hand, is saturated with life. Colour jumps out from every corner of the city; the taxis are blue, baby taxis are green, rickshaws consist of every conceivable colour and even the dust on the ground brings a yellow tint to the city. At all times everyone seems to be going everywhere and your mind begs the question, ‘where can they all be going?’ At prayer time, the city comes to a sort of half-calm, as the calls to prayer of various mosques bellow across the city and intermingle; after all Dhaka is known as the ‘city of mosques.’ But Dhaka has its dark side. In London you rarely see anyone begging; in Dhaka it is an inevitable experience. I know many people – Bengali and non-Bengali – who have visited Dhaka and cried at the poverty they saw. For all the life and colour of the city, this overshadows everything. There are one million street children in Dhaka (though some estimates say it is in fact four million). Some are orphans, some work to bring home money for their parents and all live in the risk of being kidnapped and used in the operations of sinister gangs. Imagine it, an eighth of London’s population living on the streets.

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Pirates John Riley // USA

When I got out I did not buy a new suit of clothes or step into a bar nor bargain for an hour with a whore. I walked from McGee Street over to Olive and wondered if there was a moment here; if Bus 16 still went out of its way to loop around the traffic knot caused by the new shopping plaza. Another bus once dropped you there if you had need for double knit slacks or a fake leather coat with snaps that concealed a steel zipper. I called my mum and told her I’d be around. She hoped a moment would come soon when, like a rumour going ‘round town, the story at the end would be a balloon blown up too big in the beginning. She wanted to hold my face in her hands. To tell me she’d some day understand why her life had been born in a snarl. I remembered as a boy growing tired of reading stories of pirates and rolling down the leeward side of Olive Street Hill. As I turned the corner onto the street tiny houses walked up as I walked down. I’d climb back up and try the starboard side and dream that treasures were coins that clinked in your hands; joy was buying the next round.

Bronwen Hyde Photographer // Australia

Bronwen Hyde is a fine art and portrait photographer living and working in Melbourne. She specialises in self-portraiture, portraiture, graveyards, dolls and exploring the minutiae of everyday life. Her debut solo show Alternate Worlds was held in August 2007 and she is currently developing work for a future solo exhibition. Bronwen is available for commissions and more of her work can be viewed at www.bronwenhyde.com.

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Charlotte Sometimes 39

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Paradise Uniting Church

Truth Lies Beyond

Bronwen Hyde Lost in Oz

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Motel

Drowned in Endless Night

Huddle

The Cold War James Toupin // USA

Snow lay claim to the countryside With the even, implacable power Of an ideal autocrat. Ensconced for warmth in steel and chrome, We rode in quiet across the plain, Metropolis receding behind us, Its massive streets and monuments Drifting out of mind with distance. I returned to scenes of suburbs, To watch the crowd outside a church, Or see the grand Tsarina’s palace, A shell on a bluff above the river – Remnants of earlier attempts To rule as thoroughly as winter. ‘Les flammes illuminaient la route.’ My Russian comrade stared out the window, Keeping the distance we earned at Babel, And I imagined he must see Europe retreating across the steppes, Long wavering lines of soldiery, Shelter and conquest burning behind them, Melting into the winter fields, And there Bezhukhov in the ranks, History’s stumbling fellow traveller Trying to keep in mind earth truths. He lifted down his briefcase, drawing Out papers for his journey’s work. My nod condoned his cigarette. For hours there seemed nothing but snow. The sky refracted sharp ice glare, The land absorbed grey overcast. Finally, when I thought that I Would see no human settlement In that sheer landscape, a village showed On a small rise – a huddle of huts, Ramshackle, wooden, poor as I Imagined a commune under the Tsars. The splendid train, of course, sped by. Levin had said it was the mission Of settling vast and empty spaces That created the Russian soul. I cannot remember another town. My people also settled regions Of great, unmastered distances. A great-grandmother, homestead widow, Cooked for road crews that laid down rails Through wheatfield plains; in times of rest She must have dwelt on scenes she knew In childhood, seeing the valley she left, Its clarities of sky and sea, The cataracts down steep rock walls,

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The intimate grand drama of Creation specific to northern fjords – But altering the past to make Of that thin strip of soil a homeland Sufficient unto generations. A great-grandfather, cosmopolite, Adept at seven languages, Traded, through farther reaches of New Mexico, with its Indians, Spaniards, and fair-skinned immigrants, Safest where no one was quite sure. Yearly he would restate the prayer To see Jerusalem next year. Their descendants live in suburbs That glaze across the once tilled fields, Makeshift millions wanting motion So steady few will remember wanting Much but what they see nearby. And time is a flatland without landmarks. The long horizon travelled with us, The wilderness frontier of sight, Until expanding into dusk. Shifting luggage, making space, We made cramped quarters a habitat And let night carry us over the pales Of nations long since lost to notice. I must have dreamt the whitehaired man Off the train at Astapovo, Imitation of a sage, Needing to ask how muzhiks die. He pointed the way to Finland Station And men who wanted to make themselves The engines on power’s iron rails. Finally, blessed terminus, A capital of middle Europe... We shook hands, holding firm to caution, Putting an end to forced acquaintance. I walked behind him down the platform. An eager younger man, dapper, Rushed up to greet him, taking his grip; They walked outside, backs straight, strides brisk, Implicit armies in step behind them. I sat to wait the next train west, My bags a rampart in that resounding Palace of greetings and farewells. I must have looked too fixed to move, Trying to think a destination.

What’s Mine is Yours, What’s Yours is Mine Jared Ward // USA

When we were eighteen, Caddy threw a party at his house. It was sandwiched between multiple nights of similar activity, but this one stood out. Only one keg, but tons of liquor and weed kept the place going for hours.

Almost everyone was outside by then, which was fine, because I hardly needed the whole world to watch as I swallowed a tongue on the couch. The room was spinning, and I was so shit-hammered I barely noticed when Caddy pushed her off me and told us to get a room.

Six beers in, everyone was my friend. Timmie Druber grabbed me, put his arm around my neck, and held a glass to my face.

I stared at him, confused. ‘But, there’s only yours…’ He nodded, waiting for gears to grind, lights to switch. Finally, ‘Ohhh… thanks, man.’

‘Drink and be forgiven.’ I sniffed it and nearly puked on the fumes. ‘What the hell is it?’ I asked, knowing damn well Timmie only drank straight Jim on special occasions, and since it was Wednesday in August… And something about that when-I-get-older-I-want-to-be-a-paedophile grin made me laugh in mid-sway, grab the glass and drink. Hard. ‘Muth-er-Fuck-er,’ I said, gasping bourbon fumes as I struggled to keep dinner down. Timmie’s sweaty face morphed into view and I closed my eyes. ‘Oh-ohoh, here now, here’s a chaser, come on Milo, drink this.’ Eyes shut I snatched the offering and took a giant swallow to quench the fire. Instantly, twin turbines roared through my head, and a double-shot of Jim hit my belly like a cement mixer. ‘Sorry, wrong glass. Here’s the one, it’ll really hit the spot.’ My fingers curled once more around an unseen glass. The great thing about Jim Beam isn’t the Mike Tyson body blow it delivers, but the sneaky aftertaste that creeps into the back of your throat, tickling your tonsils, and forming a thick pool of acid that only gets stronger and thicker when you try to swallow. So there I was, retching out in the alley, when I heard a voice. ‘Milo? Is that you?’ I wiped the Kentucky drool from my lips. ‘Uh… yeah.’ ‘What are you doing?’ Since the answer wasn’t obvious, I took a chance. ‘Just looking for my keys.’ Pulled them out of my pocket and held them like a trophy in the yellow streetlight. ‘Here they are.’

He laughed and pulled me close. ‘There’s a box of jimmies in the nightstand, now get in there and make it loud enough for me to wood up,’ and with that flair of testosterone, I disappeared into his room. I like to think that there are some legitimate factors affecting performance. For example, when a guy is so cashed out he’s been puking in the alley, that could be a potential hazard. Experience, or lack thereof, might also come into play. Not to say it wasn’t memorable. And if that weren’t enough… Lying in bed with the blankets down around our ankles during the uncomfortable, what-exactly-would-you-call-that? post-intercourse moment, I heard a voice from the hall. ‘Scott?’ It was Caddy’s dad, the only one who called him by his name. ‘Scott?’ Closer. I froze, like he wouldn’t come in if he couldn’t hear me. Seconds later there was a knock outside. I got the blankets just south of the enormous rack on my ‘date,’ when the door swung open, the lights flipped on, the lights flipped off, the door swung shut, and an entirely new awkward silence settled over the room. ‘Milo?’ she whispered in the dark. ‘Yeah?’ ‘I’m ready to go now.’ Fucking Caddy, three days later we were drinking a beer in my basement, reliving the whole incident, when he turns to me and smiles. ‘Oh, by the way…’ ‘What?’ ‘She spent the next two nights with me.’

She tugged at the hem of her shirt and did a little toe-raise, shoulder-turn, puppy dog-stare thing. ‘You’re not leaving are you?’ she asked.

Cherina Hadley Photographer // Australia

Cherina Hadley is a contemporary art photographer from Perth, Western Australia. Her work explores ideas of identity, alienation and society with a focus on documentary and street photography. Holding a degree in photomedia, Cherina’s work has been acquired for international private collections and she has exhibited in various galleries nationally. In 2006, she was awarded the ‘Highly Commended’ prize in the Iris Awards for Contemporary Portraiture. She was recently invited to exhibit a series of work in the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography in South Asia. In the evening of November 15th 2007, category four, Cyclone Sidr ripped through thousands of villages in southern Bangladesh leaving over 3000 people dead and millions more displaced and dispossessed. Bangladesh is one of the most susceptible countries in the world to natural disasters. It has a history of being ravaged by floods, cyclones, drought and mudslides. Its vulnerability is heightened by the fact that it is also one of the world’s largest deltas, with most of the country being less than 10 metres above sea level and over fifty percent of its population living in poverty. The trail of devastation left behind Cyclone Sidr is not a new occurrence. Southern Bangladesh is subject to floods and cyclones every year, but Sidr is the most devastating cyclone to hit since 1991. The devastation of Cyclone Sidr reveals nature in its most ferocious glory. While Western society campaign against the causes of global warming because of the implications for the future, the impact is already being felt by the poor in the developing world. Climatologists predict possible increases in sea temperatures and the subsequent rise in sea level could see up to a third of Bangladesh submerged. Rising sea temperatures will also increase the probability of cyclones forming and coastal villages, like those destroyed by Sidr, will be the first to be affected. This photo essay explores the effects of climate change on third world communities in a cultural and environmental landscape largely untrodden by the West, in a context that is so pertinent today.

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Next to the graves of nine cyclone victims, a water-damaged Koran is left to dry on pieces of wood that were once the foundations of the home of Banasa Bagum and her family.

The children in the villages of the Bagerhat district are rarely without a smile on their face. They play freely and if it werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for the physical signs of destruction of the landscape, it would be easy to forget that only two months ago a cyclone ripped through these very villages taking out everything in its path.

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What appears to be an old, abandoned structure is in fact a newly built, and fully utilised fishermenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jetty standing in the wake of the cyclone that devastated the entire area of Khali.

At sunrise in North Kodomtola the morning chores go on as usual: a woman carries urns to gather water from the Baleswar River for her family to use for washing and cooking.

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A woman and her baby cross one of the many makeshift bridges in South Kodomtola built to provide access across the muddy swamps of water that separate homes. This one is a relatively sturdy cement pillar, others are mere tree branches tied together.

Travelling through South West Bangladesh in January 2008, two months after Cylcone Sidr, the village of South Khali is a typical sight: in every direction the ground is covered with uprooted trees; makeshift bridges and jetties have been constructed from fallen trees; temporary shelters are built from a combination of canvas, clothing sewn together, palm fronds, pieces of wood and tin.

The Baleswar River is a life-source for the people living in the remote villages of South Kali and Kodomtola â&#x20AC;&#x201C; they rely on the water from the river for washing, cooking, fishing, bathing. This same river produced tidal surges of up to 20 feet that contributed to so much destruction during the cyclone.

It is estimated that forty per cent of the lives lost to Sidr were children. Banasa Bagum stands next to the graves of nine of her family members who lost their lives to the cyclone. They are buried in the yard next to the small house that she and her extended family share. All were women and children and she explains that it was only those strong enough to hold on to trees through all of the night that survived.

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Ibrahim helps his younger sister Fatima with her writing. They have a blackboard and some tiny pieces of chalk that they share at the outdoor school they attend in South Kodomtola every day from 9 until 12.

Shahin Khan, 12 years, holding a drawing that he did at school of his memory of mosque and his house before Sidr hit. His family survived Sidr by taking refuge in the villageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cylclone centre, but his house was destroyed the storm.

One Story Above the Boy in an Old Car John Riley // USA

Near dusk today a car backfired beneath my office, where the traffic creeps east to west into a stoplight queue, waking me from my working slumber. Its engine shuddered and loped; with each out-of-sync crankshaft turn new smoke swelled from below the rust-red car. Behind my locked window I watched a boy around four, maybe five, kneel on the carâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s backseat, press his nose against his window glass. Entranced by the blue smoke, his eyes tilted up, rolled down, as though he alone had the power to pull into existence the ragged clouds beyond his grasp. The smoke dispersed out of his sight, above his head. Lost in his new power to drag vapour into being and fling it toward the sky, he could not see that the orange sky spread across the city roofs was slowly being squeezed into greyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;below the engine will whine, sputter to life. The queue will break up, the old car will catch the light.

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Tresspassers John Oliver Hodges // USA

Our first week in Lemon Creek, on a hill in a wilderness leafy and wet, we lived in a canvas tent with a woodstove in it, a little table, a lamp and small bed.

Whipped back onto the bed and woke my wife and said, ‘There’s a bear out there.’ ‘A bear?’ she said, and our hearts stilled. Fear, it was in us, and the big black bear

We had arrived—Alaska!—what a gulp of the purest air, the blurp of ravens black and liquid, and porkies awobble, eagles, skunk cabbage coppices tropical in hue.

Pawed upward through the cabbage, his bristles upon the canvas that held away the land of fog. We were civilised intruders, but he was at home, and we were forlorn,

From our tent, the shape of Thunder Mountain was a dream long forgotten, a massive handshake welcoming us home, so glad you are here, welcome to

Asunder, awkward aliens despite the regards of Thunder Mountain who dropped great rocks off its face, boulders teardrops for the souls lost bleeding in crevasse, in snow.

The land of great fog, of whales and seals and RAIN, it tapped the tent and the rocks and grass and dripped off thorns and berries, and we began to feel cramped, we

When alas we found an apartment in the city, our landlord said we were damn lucky, for a good friend of his was ‘eaten down to the boots’ by a bear; and the newspaper

Trespassers in the fog. Mice crawled over us while we slept, crept up our chests to sniff our breath, and woke us through soft whiskers brushed against our faces.

That day told the story of a man of no small experience in the world. This man had bridged the gap, had taken his wife with him in a raft down a river. During the night, while they

On the table, the man who lived here before us, who brooked the winter, drew twenty-three mice, each mouse crossed out. These were the lives he’d stomped on, smashed into

Slept in their tent, a bear broke through the membrane and swallowed their hearts, this no receipt for the vulgar, the arrogance of the human vanquisher equipped

Oblivion. When we moved in, two dead mice lay in the pit of the waste basket, their bodies dried hulls; and one morning I heard footfalls beyond the canvas. I thought it

With shotgun and rice from China, drops for the purification of stained rivers and batteries for lights that will, in every darkness, uncover what lurks. What payment accords is a mystery

Was a friend, so slipped off the bed, and unzipped the zipper to see a big black bear down there. Seeing my head peek out, he stood on hind legs, and looked

I believe, a mystery whose logic knows no cause for the events of the world. In the wild, vulgarity and grace are one. The rain doesn’t care. Thunder Mountain sheds his tears for nobody.

At me curiously. Was he hungry? What a delightful morsel of cookie my head was, a perfect bite-sized thing to crunch. So, down the zipper zipped, and I

Melissa Murillo Illustrator // Berlin

Melissa Murillo is an illustrator based in Berlin. Obsessed with details, ephemera, memories, dreams and nature, she grew up on a visual diet of the strange trips in her books from amazons. Her drawings make it quite obvious that Murillo is an absolute stickler for details and that lack of colour doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take anything away from her images. Murilloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art follows the rhythm of globalisation, bridging borders and cultures closer, having lived in South America, France and now, Germany. Within this diversity are the strong influences of art nouveau and pre-Columbian indigenous art. Her work can be viewed at her website at http://www.myspace.com/meyoko

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Mind Walker Roy McConnell // Canada

Chapter Three A spear slammed into the tree beside Tara, just missing her, but she kept running after the soldier. The biting frost stung her lips and nose as her heavy breathing created a constant mist in front of her. The soldier’s head was topped with a metal helmet, chain mail draped from the back of his head to the base of his neck, and metal plating covered his chest and parts of his legs. Blood dripped from his right calf, where an arrow had grazed him, leaving a spotted trail of red in the snow. Tara could hear the thundering hooves of horses pursuing them. Her hands were freezing, her wool overcoat and pants were soaked, and her undergarments clung to sweat-lathed skin. As always, a strange female voice was telling her to keep going, to not stop. The voice had a thick accent—German, she thought. She couldn’t explain why, but it sounded ancient. Possibly, she’d heard it before. The soldier, even at a distance, appeared extremely tall and muscular, almost giant-like. His pace slowed slightly, but he continued running— body leaning forward, arms rapidly gouging the air, legs visibly straining to propel himself onward. His form reminded Tara of the racing thoroughbreds that her parents had taken her to see on her sixteenth birthday. Their muscular thighs rippled with every thrust as their hooves exploded against the dirt track. The soldier stopped, just as the searing pain in her lungs threatened meltdown. Like a marionette with its strings cut, she slumped sideways to the ground, leaning against a large oak tree, positioning herself to keep an eye on the soldier. Tara lay panting like a spent hound, breathing so loudly she was terrified he could hear. She saw the soldier lean forward, hands on his knees, mouth wide open, greedily gulping every breath, and eyes darting anxiously surveying his surroundings. He did not seem as strong and fearless as Tara had first thought. Turning to the left, the soldier stared at something and then spun around in a fluid motion. It was obviously something significant. Tara shifted to get a better view of what he was looking at. It looked like an opening below a stone cliff, possibly a cave. The soldier rose to full stature and was about to move when a spear grazed his side below the chest plate, ripping away flesh, and piercing the ground behind him. He staggered backwards. Holding his side to slow the bleeding, he hobbled towards the cave. An arrow pierced the air where his head had been. Pushing herself up, Tara grabbed a low hanging branch of a nearby oak tree to steady her fatigued body. She was barely on her feet when the troop of soldiers raced by, almost knocking her down. She was surprised they hadn’t seen the soldier’s blood trail leading to the cave. Dragging her tired, unwilling body along, using the trees for cover, Tara crept closer to the cave. As she approached, she saw that the mouth was twice the height of an average man. An imposing hornbeam tree cast its shadow over the entrance, blocking sunlight from the threshold, making it appear impenetrable.

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The sight of the cave flooded her mind with images—pictures of men and women from different time periods. She recognised some of the faces as ancestors. Seeing her own image caused a surge of energy to course through her with such intensity that she clutched the trunk of tree to keep from falling. She twisted around to see the cave. The soldier was crouched just inside the entrance, holding his side, his hand covered with blood. Tara watched with heightened anticipation as he slowly stood and vanished into the abyss. With her last bit of strength, she suddenly screamed, “Don’t go in there!” There was no response. He was gone. A suffocating fear overtook her as she let out another scream, forcing her from a deep sleep. Now awake, eyes wide and riveted to the ceiling, her body drenched with perspiration, hands numb from gripping the bed sheets that replaced the weathered bark of the tree, Tara was unable to think clearly. “Tara, breathe!” She commanded. At first, her breathing came out in jagged bursts but smoothed as she concentrated on calming herself. With less apprehension, she recalled the scenes of her nightmare, playing them over and over again. Like a horror movie after watching it a few times, it gradually lost hold. Collecting her thoughts, she realised that the dream was the same one she’d had many times before. So why was she terrified? It wasn’t the voice, though the first time she’d heard the voice it had frightened her, making her think that someone was directing her dream. However, she was used to it now, and Tara knew her fear was caused by something else. Recalling the images, that flashed through her mind at the sight of the cave, created a feeling of dread. She couldn’t envision any of the faces now, but she knew she had recognised most of them. Many of the figures had been dressed in clothing from different time periods. Why did those images, or even the thought of them, scare her so much? She couldn’t explain it, but thinking of them was burdensome, especially when she recalled seeing herself in the succession of faces. The ember glow of the numbers on her clock radio showed three o’clock. Tara couldn’t believe it. It seemed as if she’d been asleep much longer. She turned on the bedside lamp to orient herself and began to think about her plans to leave the estate. She’d leave late in the morning, and never return. Would she be able to survive in the world alone? What would she do? Where would she go? Turning down her father’s offer of support might have been too hasty, but she knew she couldn’t accept his help—she had to make it on her own and prove herself capable. Her only regret was the thought of never seeing her mother again. Tara switched off the bedside lamp and watched the night sky through her large bedroom window, hoping it would calm her. She needed to chill out. The full moon’s glow and the abundance of brilliant stars displaced the galaxy’s darkness. At first, the stars seemed random, as if a giant had

dropped a huge crystal vase on a black onyx floor, dispersing crystalline fragments across its vastness. But Tara knew they weren’t randomly placed. She could make out the large and small dippers, along with constellations. If the stars were not randomly arranged, then how had they been formed and placed? She knew that everything from the smallest insect to the largest mammal had a purpose, so this orderly display must be the work of something more—a superior being that she couldn’t comprehend. The thought of something larger than her, something with a greater, more profound purpose, always helped her put things in perspective. After all, it was just a bad dream, she mused. Tara thought of her privileged life as she settled back under the covers. Her days were filled with learning and recreation. Her University tutor came in the morning, her harp instructor came after lunch and the rest of the day was spent: reading, swimming, playing tennis, horse back riding, or going shopping—it was the only life she knew. She wondered how she would cope with life outside the estate. She heard a scuffing noise. Her body tensed. She propped herself up on her elbows and peered into the darkness, straining to hear more. When she reached to turn on the bedside lamp, she spotted a shadow moving quickly toward her. A large

hand slammed into her chest, pushing her down and knocking the wind out of her. Another hand covered her face. She could smell something sweet. She tried to scream for help. But no sound came out—only choked gasps. Tara’s left arm instinctively swung towards her attacker, but she missed, slamming her hand into the bedside lamp and shattering the glass shade. She felt something running down her arm and assumed it was blood. Ignoring it, she continued to swing at her attacker, missing each time. An oddly pleasant-smelling cloth descended over her face as the attacker’s firm grip pushed her head deeply into the pillow. The smell overcame her, ending her last attempts to fight back.

About the Author Roy McConnell

Roy’s words on self-publishing:

Roy has been writing since his pre-teen years, and attended courses and workshops on all aspects of creative writing. He has written editorials for newspapers and his short stories have been published in many print and on-line magazines, including Frame Lines. Mind Walker was mostly written while attending workshops with a published author for over a year.

“Mind Walker is a product of five years of repetitive writing, editing, and rewriting. The book has been critiqued by a professional editor, professional authors and many target readers. The story has been moulded and chiselled into a ready-for-market suspense/thriller. After a couple of years trying to get an agent, I decided to release my book as an e-book.

When Roy is not at his day job as a computer systems analyst or working on a new novel, he is either playing competitive pool, golfing, going for long walks with his wife, or relaxing with a good book or movie. He strives to maintain a fine balance within the physical, spiritual and intellectualaspects of his life.

In e-book format, Mind Walker experienced modest sales. Most important were the unsolicited reviews I received. Overall, readers enjoyed Mind Walker’s easy-to-read, fast-paced style, explosive action, well developed characters and gripping story line.

Roy lives in a small urban town north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada with Rosemary, his lovely wife and first-pass editor.

About the forthcoming novel Mind Walker: For more than four hundred years, Ostermann males have unleashed their secret power on the world, destroying lives and amassing great fortune. Five centuries prior, the first woman to inherit the power foretold that another female would be born with the power and stand against the madness of the Ostermann reign. Now, in the 20th century, if the Ostermanns are to maintain their economic grip on the world, Wolf Ostermann must indoctrinate his reluctant daughter, Tara, into the family legacy. Tara, with the help of ex-CIA operative Chris Landry, battle for their lives as they ultimately realise the tenacious reach of her father’s powerful mind and the evil it unleashes on all of humanity.

With such positive feedback, I decided not to wait any longer for the traditional publishing world to recognise what I had to offer and bring my novel to the public in the form of self-publishing. I was already contemplating self-publishing for a year or so and had done my research. I could do all of the work myself - very costly and time consuming while working fulltime: having the book printed and bound, obtaining the ISBN, doing all of the marketing, and knocking on the doors of book stores nd distributors. My other option was a Print on Demand (POD) publisher who, for a relatively low cost, handles all of the details, allowing me to concentrate on the most important aspect of publishing--marketing and sales. I decided on the POD. For me, publishing my work is about having my creative thoughts and ideas in print for others to enjoy, and raising my profile as a writer and novelist in the hopes of someday quitting my day job and writing full time. Recently, the on-line publisher completed a manuscript review and flagged my novel for their coveted Editor’s Choice Award.

Mind Walker is a suspense thriller bursting with raw emotion. It’s nonstop action grips the reader in a journey across the landscapes of British Columbia, the Caribbean Islands, and New York City. Mind Walker will be released in the latter half of 2009.

Loïc Vizzini Photographer // France

Seven years ago, Loïc Vizzini began work on a book of his travels along the Silk Road. The Silk Road is the fabled set of routes which the silk traders of old used to travel between Europe and Asia. The routes traverse some of the highest and most desolate terrain in the Asian continent, including the Tibetan Plateau, the Pamir Mountains, the Khyber Pass, and passing through countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq en route. A cultural intersection, the Central Asian region is famous for its ornate mosques, ancient Silk Road boom-towns and millennia of conquest and occupation. It is Loïc’s series on Pakistan, taken in 2006 that caught my eye, captured emotively in black and white. Its people and environment accentuate the differences in tradition and spirituality from the parts of the Western world to which we are accustomed.

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‘My aim was to travel across the country through cities which were on the Silk Road. I’ve had lots of beautiful memories and sharing with the populations,’ Loïc tells me, ‘I arrived in Pakistan during the Ramadan. I felt right away the atmosphere of the country and I found [it] very interesting to evolve in sync with Pakistani people the time my report lasted.’ I asked Loïc what his expectations of Pakistan were, and what he learned as he experienced the country and met its people. ‘Media gives a very bad and dirty image of Pakistan and it’s a shame. Obviously there are very polemic issues such as women’s conditions or extremism problems but [isn’t] the better way to move forward?’

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‘I have learned that material wealth is not always a strength and that human wealth is way more important. In developing countries like Pakistan I’ve been greeted with lots of regards and respect.’ When asked if he would return to Pakistan once it became safe again, he replied, ‘Of course, I’ll go back with pleasure! The Karakorum Highway’s mountains are the most beautiful in the world to me’. For those interested in seeing more of Loïc’s photography, look no further than his website, http://www.loicvizzini.com/accueil.html. Speakers of French amongst us can subscribe to his blog or receive his newsletter on email.

We Should All Have a Place in Which to Throw Our Flowers Anthony Kane Evans // UK

I met her at Nymphenburg; the tram ride out had only taken about twenty minutes. It was really too hot to be walking around a palace, still, it was better than being outside in the scorching sun. I was standing in the Stone Hall, craning my neck, trying to get a look at one of the ceilings decorated by the two Zimmermans when I first bumped into her. I didn’t see much: a cascade of red hair clashing with a green scarf which seemed to be an odd mix of wool and rabbit fur. ‘Bitte!’ she said. ‘Sorry!’ I said. Later, in the room where Ludwig II of Bavaria was reputed to have been born, I bumped into her again. This time I tripped over the crib - I was on the wrong side of the rope - and crashed into her. ‘You again!’ she said. ‘Sorry!’ She smiled and we both laughed a bit. A guard came and shouted something at us in German; I guess he thought we were together. ‘It’s alright, we’re related,’ I said, pointing back at the crib, ‘Ludwig and I!’ We exited out into the gardens. She asked if I had seen the orangery. I hadn’t, so we headed over there. ‘It was only built to balance the stables on the other side,’ she said, ‘Do you like symmetry?’ ‘Only in fiction,’ I said. ‘Then you don’t like the palace?’ ‘Well, this is fiction on a grand scale, isn’t it?’ She laughed. ‘So, what is a Dutch girl doing in Munich?’ I asked. ‘Oh, I’m not from the Netherlands, I’m Deutsch – German.’ ‘Oh, that explains it then. Live in Munich, do you?’ ‘No, here in Nymphenburg.’ ‘The palace?’ ‘No, if you follow the water, you’ll come to some houses. In the old days, there were trees there. Now they’re houses. I live there.’ I looked up at the oranges. ‘I guess you can’t pluck them?’ ‘It’s better not to. As you can see, the security guards don’t have a sense of humour.’ ‘If you live just around the corner, don’t you get bored coming here?’ ‘I usually come in the winter. After a snowfall. There’s nobody here. Everything is black and white, even the sky is white. The water is metal, silvery. The only other colour is brown. The tree trunks, leaves. It is as though all the colour has been drained out of life. It has been reduced and aestheticised – is that a word? I suddenly feel as though I can be alive. That I’m not overwhelmed. There are just the ducks and I.’ ‘I’m a great one for ducks myself,’ I said. I put my jacket down. She her coat. We sat. She had a bottle of water in a little rucksack, so we drank that.

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‘Are you just a tourist?’ she asked. ‘Tourist?’ ‘Sightseer?’ ‘I like to think of myself as a traveller,’ I said, ‘But you are right. I’m just another damned tourist.’ ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a tourist. I often go on week-end trips to London, Paris, Lisbon.’ ‘I got the impression that you don’t like crowds?’ ‘I don’t. I travel out of season. It is the only time to visit museums and art galleries, don’t you find?’ ‘I guess so.’ ‘Are you staying in Munich long?’ she asked, kicking off her sandals. ‘The fact of the matter is that I want to get out of England permanently, so I thought, you know, why not go and check out a few places. Stamp my feet in them. See what they feel like. You know what I mean?’ ‘Yes, I would like to live somewhere else. At least I think I would.’ She stood up and began walking in the grass, then amongst the flower beds. ‘When you’re in those cities, don’t you try them out on your body?’ I asked. ‘They are too big. Lisbon, perhaps, or near Lisbon. A little way out. Further along the coast.’ I pulled my boots off, then my socks and joined her. Our feet were soft in flowers. I looked hard at her. She didn’t flinch but returned my stare. ‘Lisbon is like Paris,’ I said, ‘The people live out of doors. Could you do that? Coming from here, I mean, where everything is … so internalised?’ She shuddered despite the heat. ‘I would like to live on the outside,’ she said. ‘What do you do here?’ ‘I’m a Recruitment Consultant,’ she said, ‘And you?’ ‘I have a small I.T set-up.’ A guard appeared and raised his voice. I caught ‘Verboten!’ and had to laugh. It’s the sort of thing you hear in bad WWII movies or sit-coms; you couldn’t quite take it seriously. I held up my hands – as though at gun-point - and moved out of the flower bed. He waited until we had our footwear on again and had exited the orangery. We walked by Grecian-style columns and the like. Then found ourselves strolling down the water towards where she lived. ‘I’ve a little money saved up,’ she said, ‘And I could rent out the house.’ ‘I’ve a little money saved up,’ I said, ‘And I too could rent out my house.’ ‘I’ve only been to Lisbon for a weekend,’ she said. ‘How was it?’ ‘I liked it, only it smelled badly of fish.’ ‘That’ll be the baccalau, they salt and then dry the fish.’ ‘You know it then?’ ‘No, I’ve never been.’ ‘Do you think we could settle there? Do you think we would like it?’ ‘I think it is more a question of if it will like us. And as we are so different, you and I, then I think we might just have a chance.’

Basin Amanda Joy // Australia

It was fallen in not cavernous or hollow Nothing had eroded It was there It remained just below where it had been There low slung prolapsed Deeper than an indentation A tragedy surrounding it The history of the thing stretching back sinuous to the level surface Still traceable it had not merely dropped It was fallen

A collapse without rubble or trapped men though undeniably a point of impact

Barefeet Ashley Capes // Australia

through towns of peeling weatherboard and lakes of fuzz like a million detuned TVs, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m watching for dust on the horizon thumb in my jeans as she hums hallelujah, bare feet on the windshield up ahead a husk of clouds canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t manage silver of the dirtiest spoon not even the scuff of feathers caught in yellow grass beside the road piano notes chipping at the speakers as Rachmaninoff hits those heavy Cs and we exhale fog up the glass, cover up secrets that wiggle like caterpillars

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Ochiba Ashley Capes // Australia

the rushes in her garden are blue ice and the muscles in her hands are shogunâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blades the wind drowned in a coffee cup at the beginning of the day sun stretching, grey leaves spinning.

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#8 // Contrast and Reflection. Winter is a season I know very well. Coming from England, I’m very used to the rain – it’s just something you take for granted. So after living in Melbourne and watching the city’s continual progression into drought, I find myself developing a very different relationship with the wet weather. Rain has become something I look forward to, and something which has a fascinating playfulness in the way it transforms the city. All of a sudden surfaces which are so familiar are enlivened with a new personality, the water adding a sheen or creating a puddle and capturing reflections which were never evident before. Contrasting landscapes are set before you by nature in a momentary reflection. While traces of the rain remain you can enjoy this poignant juxtaposition of different scenes and moments in your environment. You can walk along your familiar street and look down at the ground to see what’s above. The crisp winter light, constantly varied by the deepening and waning of the clouds creates ever changing scenes. A new perspective of your environment is revealed. But you have to be quick or you will miss out. One morning of sun and these new landscapes brought together by the rain are set back in place. The water vanishes and the familiar streetscape of the city reveals itself again. This collection of pictures represents the Contrasting Landscapes I have discovered for this edition of Frame Lines magazine.

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Carving the Air Shome Dasgupta // USA

You know how when we were younger, we would look at the clouds and see different things like dinosaurs or turtles or cars and all? I could never see any of those things. I never saw it. I tried hard too. I’d concentrate and concentrate but could never see what everyone else would see. Not too long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was sitting on a roof of someone’s house, someone I didn’t know, but the roof looked like a nice place to sit. I climbed up an oak to see if I liked it, and I liked it, liked it so much that I sat there every Sunday like I was going to church. I was sitting there staring at the clouds trying hard to see something concrete, but as the clouds separated, I saw the moon. It wasn’t anything special or anything, it looked quite dull and somewhat broken, but as I chained smoked I saw a blinking star directly above the moon. As I stared and stared at it, I didn’t see a dinosaur or a car or anything, but I saw someone dancing on this shiny little thing in the sky. I saw a white dress wavering, flowing, swerving, and long black hair, so black, it made the night look bright, and her lips, lips, that made me want to kiss her chin because no one should ever receive such a gift as to touch those lips, and I couldn’t see the rest of her face or anything, but damn, was she a great dancer. She jumped from star to star, planet to planet, an acrobat of the universe, she moved her body up and down, left and right, like she didn’t need oxygen, but oxygen needed her. I think she even turned her head in my direction and waved, but that could have just been my imagination. She gradually drifted away as she danced from one sparkling diamond to another, and an infinity later, all I saw was the cracked moon again. I’ve gone back every Sunday since, looking for this astrological performer, but I haven’t seen her yet. Sometimes I dance on the roof myself, trying to remember her body from such a distance, and I’m lucky the owners of the house have yet to notice cement feet, but I’ve become a better dancer, flowing a bit better, more in harmony with the air as I try to carve it with my body. And I have a new plan now. Next Sunday, I will really try to look for her, not like look for her while sitting on the roof and staring hard into space, but I saved up enough cash and bought some athletic shoes, and I’m going to try to jump from the roof to the moon, and then from the moon to star to star to star to planet to planet, until I find this lunar dancing spectacle, so I can ask this lady for a dance. Who knows, maybe I’ll meet her on Saturn or Jupiter or maybe she’ll be right next door, on Mars. Just once dance in the sky, and I’ll come back down and never dream again.

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The Depths of Road Stephanie Deneé Duarte // USA

The darkened sky hangs above as we drive The cold wind chills the passenger seat window Rain drops drum and patter on the glass Small droplets jiggle and roll like amoebas With the vibrations from Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ My stomach does similar things Eight hours, six hours, five hours, Three hours left to see home Or the place that was once home The sky continues to darken The temperature continues to drop My stomach continues to churn Like whipping cream, salted, becoming butter. Downtown buildings hide amidst the darkened fog But I can still see them Standing in an enigmatic manner With an inviting promise and welcome. An impatient smile erupts from my lips The moment my foot touches asphalt.

Marco Simola Photographer // Italy-Per첫.

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El Silencio Beach

An Italian, born in Florence and lives in Lima, Perù. Marco spent the last two years capturing images of the city of Milan, especially of its Metro. “Actually I'm searching hidden places in the Latin American cities, together with another project, called "Cose a Caso" ("Casual Things") using the new technologies offered by the digital photography to manipulate my pictures.” These photos show hidden corners of the cities and the simplicity of the common objects. My works were exposed in many galleries in Italy and in some virtual galleries in Internet. You can find more of Marco’s photographic work at http://marcosimola.jimdo.com/

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Acho Bullfighting Arena

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Wong Supermarket

Miraflores view

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Surquillo Market view.

Via Expresa road from Aramburu bridge

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Horrillos Bay view

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Plaza de Armas (main square)

Bridge over Rimac River

Ballast Laura Kooris

At the edge of an element where it’s said I belong, I shudder, itch to travel beneath the radar and witness another worldview: dive with the sharks below waves I’ve ridden so high, or walk with the yellow-eyed shadows roaming my paths. Let me know what roaches ogle from a jungle fringe of leaves, feel horseflies bite pickled skin as I shuffle in another’s broken shoes. To survive as a fish out of water, might explain the awe I feel in the ruthless and the delicate all around us: a ballast that turns confetti drifts of lavender-winged butterflies sipping the mix of sweet and bitter mud into a bright flutter in the umber.

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Focus Inert Kim Clark // Canada

What do you see through that tiny window in the door? Is it an eye or a corner flap of greying sky behind umbrellaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finer points? A drift of smoke from a wafting joint or a comic taped and fading into uniform unwhite? A web thick enough to confuse even a light trickster, a relatively bright juxtaposition, a blight in transit? A thoughtful cataract dulling down? Step up, involve, broaden the scope, tear up the latest contract, open-mind the perspective for a change. You fool. The door is unlocked and ajar. Swing out.

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Scraping Light â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A Spotlight on Nimrod Audio-Visual Installation // Australia Article by Simon O. Chen // Photography by Eli Yarom

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d Wiess As I enter the docklands at the edge of Melbourne’s CBD, a strange greenish light projects through a pyramided structure. I approach with caution along with Eli who has his weapon at the ready. I look around at the people walking through it, the relaxing chimes of underwater music echoes throughout the quay, resonating ever so slightly off the surrounding high-rise apartment buildings. It’s a cold night. Actually, it’s freezing and I wish I had put on that extra jacket before I left the house. I meet Nimrod Wiess, co-creator and designer of the Lightscraper. He sits at the control booth with a computer and two projectors, wrapped in a thick bubble coat and a beanie, a pair of wool gloves protecting his tools from the near-freezing conditions. I first encountered this unique artwork at the 2009 Rainbow Serpent Festival near Beaufort in Central Victoria. I waded out into the fields, away from the four stages and their party strobes. The stars were out in their millions. A large structure loomed up out of the fields, a cubed pyramid with a small video camera situated just a few metres from it connected to a projector. On the almost invisible screens a ballet of images and colours swam, and people floated through, looking around in complete awe. Some lay on the cold grass and looked up as the Milky Way and the images fused together. A tranquil calmness wafted down around us, embracing and petting us, like aliens that had arrived, telling us that everything is going to be alright. Eli snaps away feverishly as the images change and something new is created – born-again art. Nimrod (‘En’) is the co-founder of Eness, a company that was born in 1997. He met the other founder, Steven (‘Ess’) in the third grade. ‘We’ve been working on creating interactive experiences. We were exploring ways for people to interact with spaces in a different way and this was the result - for people to find new experiences.’

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Today, they are best known for their interactive digital installations; creations with the visual aesthetic of traditional sculpture but with the added dimension of 3D computer rendering. They have successfully exhibited throughout Asia, Europe and the United States including installations at Techfest in Mumbai in 2007, Wired NextFest in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. There digital rocking horse titled Virsual has won many awards and is now part of the permanent collection of the Melbourne Museum in Australia. Walking into the Lightscraper I can only wonder how one goes about imagining such a creative peace and to interact it with human effects. ‘It’s actually a musical instrument’ explains Nimrod. ‘Depending on our position in space; we’re triggering off different sounds so it’s a way for people to interact.’ A woman in her mid-twenties breaks out into a spontaneous run around her group of friends inside the sanctuary of the Lightscraper. It looks like a very simple object to construct. A couple of cement anchors are strategically placed around to hold up the tubes that make up the pyramid. Nimrod explains that there’s a lot more to it.

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‘Three very intense days - day and night with about eight or so people. It’s very difficult to construct and that’s one of the things we’re working on improving along the way.’ ‘Two guys that helped put it up at Rainbow were getting into music as well and I’ve given them the opportunity to create the music for the space. A visitor’s position is tracked via an infrared camera mounted at the peak of the structure, and transposed into musical notes. Sometimes we keep it quiet and subtle so it’s not bangbang in your face. It flows with the music but doesn’t really respond directly.’ I stare up at the images swimming freely above me, changing from parallel lines to a kaleidoscope splash of colours and light and

all I could think of was how someone could get so inspired to create something so vivid. And the music! Almost like whales singing. ‘We find that geometric shapes work better for the structure. We worked with a little model and pretended we’re little tiny people to see how it feels. A lot of it’s also done on site. The software we developed allows us to tweak all the settings. The animations are happening in real time. We’re not controlling what they’re doing down to their positions. They’re actually, randomly – through the sound – changing their locations and their behaviour in a sense.’ A wave of green engulfs us. I stand, looking up, zoning out almost. Trying so hard to fight the urge to just let myself go.

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‘Because you experience something different and new, you’re quite open to other people in the space and you start to become a lot friendlier than you would outside of the space. It’s kind of like a catalyst for people to get together and acknowledge one another – one another’s existence. Every time I’m here, I end up speaking to people I wouldn’t know if I just walked by. Even though we set out originally to work with creating new forms of interaction and new technologies, we found that more so, it’s how we interact with each other in spaces like this and that’s been a real focus for us in the last two years.’ Immediately I picture a psychiatrist’s couch; the patient sits in a room with these same images and music being played out. The effect is so calming that I can’t help but wonder whether this could be a new break-through for people with social difficulties or a violent nature.

‘I guess, in any scenario, you can examine human behaviour [and] this is a good one because you have people that either completely embrace it or just say, “Oh what the hell is that? Is that art or something?” and go the other way. Then there are people who are completely oblivious, even though there are people standing in awe, gobsmacked, looking at it like a stunned kangaroo. It’s interesting to observe and try to figure out why people behave the way they do.’ When I look at a piece of art, I always wonder whether the creator acknowledges that what people are oohing and aahing about is something that was brought to life by dedication, by insisting, by believing. Did Michelangelo, after he finished the statue of David, ever ask himself, ‘Did I really just create that?’

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‘Personally, what I really like about this work is its sculptural form, the aesthetic of the piece. I think that a good sculpture is one that, regardless of where you’re standing, remains interesting and different. I’m keen to one day make this into a permanent installation somewhere.’ I watch as a family of bike riders pedals through the structure, slowing down to slalom between the fixated people staring up at the images. They pedal around, the little kids laugh as the graphics embrace everybody inside and out of the pyramid. I can’t help but smile. Even in the freezing conditions, watching the people walk by, stop and stare, interact - they seem to forget the harsh weather and are oblivious to their surroundings; drowning in a sea of tranquillity and graphic art with smiles and ear-to-ear grins. I notice the screen for the first time, delicate, almost like rice paper. ‘It’s a tent-like mesh flyscreen - it’s strong but it still can be ripped. We’re looking at developing a new screen, a heavy duty one, but you still have to project onto it and let the projection go through the layers so it’s got to be quite specific.’ We head back to the control booth and sit at the computer. The crowds walk cautiously through. Some simply walk on by; others play in front of the projectors. Little kids dance and play with the lights gently bouncing back at them, trying to catch them. I overhear someone nearby, ‘I feel like I want there to be trance music.’ I smile, recalling the same structure at Rainbow Serpent. ‘It’s like you’re an interactive DJ,’ I tell Nimrod. ‘I actually enjoy entertaining a broad audience, with trance [parties], they’re already open to anything. It’s like preaching to the converted.’ With a creation like this under their belts, I was curious to what future creative works Eness are working on. ‘We’re working [with NAB] on creating a parallel wilderness – a virtual environment that co-exists in the physical space inside of the building. It’s a massive atrium - a really large area, six stories high and we’re projecting this commercial world inside the space. It basically grows and evolves based on people’s behaviour and movement inside of the building. It’s there as a permanent installation for [their] academy learning centre. We’ve been working on it for the last eight months. The job at the NAB is interesting because it’s about getting people to think, to unwind and get into a different state of mind.’ I continue to sit there in complete awe of the Lightscraper. I watch Nimrod play with the computer, adjusting here and there. He looks on like a loving father, his eyes lit up with the cascade of images being projected; the music interacting with the voices of the people as one. I feel as though I’m floating, suspended in mid-air. How a few shapes, colours and music brought together can simply detach you from the realities of life. To see the vast awards and recognitions that Eness has deservedly received, log onto their website: www.electronicmiracles.com. Here you can view more info on the installations and check out their upcoming exhibits and events.

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Overdone and Still Dan Pretzer // USA

His bicycle wasn’t where he left it. His heart began to race, a small tinge of panic worked its way up his spine. He felt around for his wallet. It was still there but the bike wasn’t. Someone walked by. He asked him what year it was. “Uh, 1987.” “Thank you.” He felt a sigh of relief. His bike wasn’t missing. It was never there in the first place. He lost his bike in 1980, seven years ago. Nothing happened, he was just reliving an old memory. That happened whenever he ate apples, only with apples. He smiled and waited for the effect of the fruit to go away.

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Before Midnight Kim Clark // Canada

You live a lone, you don’t mind cold food or stealing out for eavesdropped lines. the girl I had all accidents and confusion 30 gauge, rust-proofing red tide, fire under the ocean You live out loud. little bits of bangs * a one-armed bandit pool-shooter * the way you have to bank the shot with more than a murmur of Doors in the background * the hyper-colour blood smear on the fight-mat in the ring on the 40 inch corner screen News Flash: that Buffalo Bill can move his arms and legs may even walk again You live a love for a minute like it’s your first feeling good enough to name a street after Van’s “Wonderful Remark” a goodnight kiss and disappearing smile home You live a line in someone else’s mind. * a rock dropped in conversation Are you the woman who fell off the building here? As though there could only be one but the answer is a negative to his confessional looking alive for common ground.

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Jeremy Beasley Photographer // Australia

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Half way between the two major towns in the Rocky Mountains lies this beautifully secluded lake named Honeymoon Lake. This particular day was a cold one at 6째c (this is in their summer by the way) and we were camped next to a European traveller. As we were huddled around the fire, trying to keep warm and eat dinner we noticed a man walk down to the edge of the lake, strip down to his birthday suit and dive in. Not only was it six degrees outside, the water was freezing cold! The sun doesn't go down until very late in the summer in this part of Canada, so this last shot was actually as the sun had just set around 11pm and the exposure was just over two minutes long to capture the clouds moving so fast overhead. After I took the photo, I looked down into the water and noticed two leeches right at the edge - which gave me even more reason not to go swimming in there. Honeymoon Lake 115

Tell me things about your upbringing that might have influenced you to devote yourself as a career photographer. I was born in a small country town on the Murray River, and would spend a lot of time in the country. My father and I would do a lot of camping and fishing along the river and as a result I got to see some beautiful things that aren't often seen. Some crazy things like koalas drinking from the river, falling out of trees and even emus and kangaroos swimming across the river! Inevitably you start to notice the small details; the things that most people would walk past and find something interesting in it - this has directly influenced how I photograph my landscapes. 116 //Frame Lines edition #8

What other career paths might have you taken if not photography? From the age of about twelve I wanted to be an engineer. I did all the subjects at school; high level maths, physics, chemistry, etc; and even completed an Advanced Diploma of Engineering. I was sitting in a maths lecture at university, thinking about how the light was hitting the lecturerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face and what sort of lens I would need to photograph him. It was then that I realised my heart and soul was not in engineering any more - it was in photography. It was a very difficult decision to make to leave half way through. The idea of leaving a steady income and a secure job to chase the dream - but it has been the best decision I've made and I haven't looked back.

Patrica Lake layers

Lakes as flat as glass and mountains higher than you can imagine; the Rocky Mountains are just so surreal. When I first saw them I thought I was in a magical place, I had to stop staring long enough to actually photograph the majestic scenery. The contrast between Australia's flat barren landscape and these huge mountains is something that has to be experienced firsthand. This shot was made from nine digital images stitched together, and I still remember taking the photos and just saying â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wow...â&#x20AC;&#x2122; No photo can ever do the experience justice.

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Moraine Lake was a weird experience; it was raining one minute, sunny the next, cloudy and rainy and so the crazy weather continued. Thankfully it subsided long enough for me to capture this one frame that ended up being my favourite of over 1500 that I took during my time in Canada. This photo required a wide angle lens on the Canon 5D, as well as a polarising filter. Moraine Lake

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Who has inspired you to photograph? I am constantly finding new inspiration, from other photographers including Joe McNally, Annie Leibowitz, Chase Jarvis and more but also in other forms of art, including painting and drawing. An Australian artist that stands out in particular is the late Albert Tucker and work like his Death of an Aviator (1942). There is a photograph by Annie Leibowitz where John Lennon is naked and wrapped around Yoko. The reason this image is so powerful is because it was taken just a few hours before he was shot. How do you see yourself growing as a photographer? I'm finding that my photography is starting to develop its own voice or style and I want to continue to develop this to ensure the growth

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of my photography. As soon as you think you stop learning, you're taking steps backwards. I'm not sure where the world will be in ten to twenty years regarding still images, it seems photographs are evolving to integrate moving images (video) - I'm happy to evolve with whatever changes may come. How many cameras have you had over your career? I've had around seven cameras now, I think. I only use three regularly and there is another one left in the cupboard somewhere. My newest camera is my favourite; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just such a pleasure to use. The quality of the images coming out at 21 mega pixels is just superb and brings out even the finest detail like small blades of grass.

Tocumwal Bridge

Tocumwal is a very small town on the Murray River and I spent the first few years of my life there. This is the old railway bridge which crosses the river. My father used to tell me stories of how you could see to the bottom when he was growing up, the water was that clear. These days you can't see more than 30cm most of the time. This was shot off Velvia 100F film on the Linhof 617cm camera. From memory the exposure was 1/15 sec at f/22.

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I love to shoot landscapes with one single point of interest. The simplicity really appeals to me, and this silhouette of a tree on the Murray River in S.A. was no exception. I actually went to this location to photograph one of the largest bends on the Murray, aptly named ‘Big Bend’. The light didn't do what I wanted and standing off the edge of a 50ft high cliff with 60km/h wind gusts didn't help the matter. So I turned around and headed back to the car when I saw this tree. As far as you could look in any direction there wasn't a thing, but this one tree. It screamed ‘photograph me’, so I used a Linhof 617cm panoramic film camera to record the image. Although the original plan failed for this outing, I learned an important lesson. No matter how beautiful the scene - turn around!

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Tree Silhouette Big Bend

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What are the main differences you see between the Canadian and Australian landscapes? The Canadian Rocky Mountains are a crazy place to visit. The weather is unpredictable and changes so fast - one day we went from sunny clear skies to rain and thunder storms, back to clear and sunny within an hour or two - something I've never seen in Australia. The colour of the water in the glacier-fed lakes is unbelievable. It is this amazing blue-green colour and so clear you can see to the bottom. The water is that colour because of various minerals in the glaciers above the lakes which provide their water. The majority of these lakes freeze over completely in winter with temperatures of -30Â°c and colder. Imagine that in Australia!

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Also, I know this may sound a little silly, but the colour of the sky in Australia seems to be much bluer than in Canada. The blue here is somewhat darker and more vibrant. Do you plan to photograph a certain piece of landscape because you have seen photos or are you more spontaneous? I plan to photograph everything. I may not see it in a photo; it may be from driving past and thinking, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;that looks pretty coolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Planning is the key with most landscape photography because you need to ensure the correct light, sky and composition of the photo.

Walwa Murray River panoramic

I grew up on the Murray River and have spent a lot of time swimming and fishing in it, so this landscape means a great deal to me personally. It was a rather tricky scene to photograph, but the light was just perfect so I had to try. I shot it digitally, using a Canon 5D and 2 stop graduated filter to make the sky darker and shot 3 frames horizontally. I then combined the images on the computer to create the panorama

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Having said that, some of my favourite photographs have resulted from planning one shot, arriving at the location realising itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not working and finding something else there or even just turning around. If I had one piece of advice for any photographer or visual artist no matter how beautiful the scene is that you are looking at, turn around! Sometimes the most beautiful images come from something as simple as that.

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Where is the next location that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re headed to? Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to Tasmania and after that to New Zealand, just to the South Island. My friends there have told me to stick to the south as it has more photo opportunities than the North Island.

Twelve Apostles panorama

Talk about a hard moment to photograph! I visited the Twelve Apostles for the first time this year and I was literally blown away. With wind gusts of 80km/h or more this was a really tricky photo. I wanted to capture this on the film camera, but it is too large and awkward to set up in that sort of wind, so it ended up being digital. I was really disappointed that I couldn't shoot this on film, but I figured it was better to capture the image then to have none at all. The final photo is made from nine separate photos and required two people holding the tripod and a fast shutter speed to prevent any shaking.

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After five days photographing the Rockies, I was disappointed with my photos because I didn't have one that really showed the size and majesty of these mountains. On my last night in Jasper I saw this man in a canoe on the other side of a lake, I switched to a long telephoto lens and photographed the man in the canoe and the mountain. As soon as I saw the photo I knew it was the one. It showed the sheer size of these mountains unlike the other photos I had captured. Canoe

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A Night at the Salt Grass Gerald E. Monaghan Jr. // USA

I glanced across the steakhouse. I was really in the heart of Texas We were modern rustlers of grub. It was my time to start on the menu’s trail. This poet’s eye locked horns with my past. I also had the ex-waiter bartender eye. Viewed hicks dining with the city slicks. All corralled at the SaltGrass San Antonio. I spotted the couple. At first nothing extraordinary, I imagined, Back home they would have the early bird repast. Last sips of coffee and morsels of dessert finished. Then the guest check holder placed on table. The gentleman unfurled the holder for review. Then he clutched his travel booklet. Then steered to the tip calculator page. The gentleman took his money from the billfold. Slipped real currency into the holder. Back home never uses a holder or tip tray. His café in town the cash put squarely on the table. My eye from the past would reflect a sneering whence, It is not I can intuit all the TIP combinations. Now a poet explore a new nuance, We all are customers dining at the SaltGrass.

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Gold Leaf Kevin Kaiser // USA

For Zuly A solitary golden leaf shudders, snaps from a limb, rises on a gust, falls like a wave, swirls in on its path in a golden spiral, rises for a moment, spins in tight cycles dropping down, down, down. It hits the pavement, skitters rustling across an empty street, beneath the oranged glow of streetlights, beneath the dull mercury and chrome clouds heavy with rain or with snow, without promise of either. It scrapes to a halt as it meets the curb. Here it settles in to crumble in the weather. To decompose. This leaf without a tree. * The doctors think she has cancer. Think. They are reluctant to call it cancer. It could be anything. They only mention cancer. But it could be anything. Abetzi understands in the way only a ten year old can. She understands through the tone of the doctors, the reaction of her parents and her brother. Abetzi does not play the stoic Indian. But as an Omaha, she accepts. She accepts what is happening, cannot measure the future; who can measure the future? This moment is all that exists. When they start the treatments at the on-rez hospital in Winnebago, Abetzi’s long black hair falls out, not strand by strand but clump by clump. Her brother shaves her head, shaves his own. He plays the stoic one. At least this is what the expression on his face is meant to convey. But his heart feels as if it’s being ripped from his body, still beating. If he could spare this heart, he would. It might be treatable. The cancer or whatever it may be. She could beat it.

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When Abetzi is allowed to return home, her parents contact the Medicine Man. The Medicine Man still practices in an earth lodge. The lodge was built in a moment when the world was still perceived in the moment. A moment with great history but a moment nonetheless. They never called it a moment. But they understood in the way only a people who build giving thanks to the earth can understand. Although it was the men who erected the cottonwood poles, it was the women who shaped and moulded the damp earth with bare hands, hands as brown as earth. It is still a woman who owns this lodge, owns it without owning it. Only the Great Spirit can own. The medicine he gives is neither pill nor injection, neither radiation nor pain endured. His medicine is the energy of the Great Spirit. He is a receiver of this energy, and as a receiver he must pass it on to others. The Medicine Man wears a buffalo robe to help channel this great energy. He passes it into the body of this being named Abetzi. He chants his song, a song he has received from the same source as his energy. He inhales the tobacco of the Great Spirit. Smoke whisps through his lungs, circulating. He exhales it like a final breath. A puff of smoke, rising like a spirit from a body. Abetzi’s body quivers without movement. She could heal. * A solitary golden leaf without a tree is still a leaf. Even upon the oil-stained asphalt, it is still a leaf. Even though it is dead, it is not dead. Only in transition. * On one of Abetzi’s weekly trips to the hospital, the doctors ask her to stay. They want to run more tests. Treat something that seems to be spreading. Her face puffs up, as if holding in a gust of wind. They send her home, still uncertain of what it is that resides within her body.

At the off-rez school, her brother gets into a fight with a white boy over a joke about literally worshipping bull shit. Buffalo bull shit. Her brother is suspended for a day. Their parents are already on his case about his grades. Last year he made the honour roll. This year he’ll be lucky if he receives one passing grade. Her father is up to three packs a day. It’s not the cigarettes themselves but the isolation outdoors he is addicted to. Her mother doesn’t eat from morning till dusk, binging in the heart of night, long after her daughter is dreaming. Abetzi awakens early to watch back to back to back episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants, singing along with the theme song whenever it plays: “If nautical nonsense be something you wish…” The affected voice of the singer–meant to evoke the caricature of a pirate–is interrupted by a chorus of children crying the name of their golden hero: “SpongeBob Squarepants!” The clownish pirate continues: “Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish!”

It occurs to her that perhaps this moment is a moment she should not understand. She does not understand. She knows. The energy stored inside her dissipates. This is the moment the living wait for all their lives. If only they knew: this is the only moment that exists. * The brown leaf is speckled with asymmetrical holes. Sunlight streams through the holes, burns into the grains of the asphalt. A foot shuffles the leaf along into the crack of a storm drain, though no storm could be predicted. The foot is her father’s. Her mother’s. Her brother’s. Not a stranger’s, but someone of her own blood. How long until the leaf is nothing but holes? Will it still be a leaf? Without tree, without form. Or will it simply be the dust of the earth? Of the universe? What is eternal. What is golden. What is lost.

Again, the children cry the name. And again. And again, in a chant, as if by chanting this name he will manifest before their eyes. Before her eyes. Dim, glassy. Hazily, he appears. Upon the television screen. A simulacrum of something that does not exist. At least not tangibly. After cartoons she goes outside to study. There’s something in these books she wants to understand. But the something isn’t in them. The something she is searching for is in the space around the words, in all those words left out. * A golden leaf will brown, wither. It is no longer aging, no longer dying, simply curling in on itself as it dehydrates, drying like the jerkied meat of bison. The old ways, they dry up too. * The first and last seizure sends her to the floor, convulsing. Eyes rolled back into her skull, as if seeking the mystery of her interior, she vibrates upon the earth, upon the loose dust of the dry soil. Clouds rise from the places where her legs thrash against the earth, swirl in the rise of a thermal, carried up into the sky like long-forgotten memories to be deposited elsewhere, perhaps in some distant land where the drought has not sucked the colour from the landscape, leaving only this gold, a gold burnishing to dull brown. Her brother runs over, kicking aside the history textbook she dropped from her now clammy hand. Raising her head to the cradle of his lap, he jams his fingers into her mouth, uncertain if this is the right thing to do. So much remains uncertain. The shaking continues for what seems centuries, her body a timorous shell, a tremor upon the earth. The quaking ceases for a moment, shivers in aftershocks like unwanted memories. Her eyes return from the interior of her skull, filter the auras of life about her into diffusion, refraction. She tries to smile, recognizing the contours of her brother above her, hovering ghostly, shouting something muted to her ears. The sound of the universe is silent; she hears its hum. The sounds of the universe shriek; the universe is silent. The hum tremolos to a roar, and her brother’s voice grates like agitated electrons in the hot wind of the autumnal air. She tries to nod as his form runs inside the trailer. She cannot count the moments between his dash to the house, his out-ofbreath return, but he does return, tucking a flannel shirt beneath her head, grabbing her legs as if they were one, elevating them to the height of his shoulders, pressing her feet against his chest. Through her Converse, she can feel his heartbeat. Sound and light spiral in waves down the street, each conjuring the other: the sound is the light, the light is the sound.

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Sejma Prodanovic Artist // Serbia

Residing in Belgrade, Serbia, Sejma Prodanovic is a collage artist and trained painter with an economical/ecological consciousness which is expressed in the work she produces. Using recycled or free materials, she collects and constructs starting from an idea that is incomplete or abstract and uses image cut-ups to explore the potential of alternative personal histories and invent different relations between them. A universe can spring up and spaces can take shape! With an exhibition coming up in Belgrade in July, Nature and Culture, Sejma, will have the chance to exhibit her work at Graficki Kolektiv. http://sejma.jimdo.com

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Lumber of Discontent Laura Kooris

We broke a cardinal rule and went to bed angry. The leftover rumble of the day’s storms kept me awake, underscored a refusal to accept your decision to go, my choices left. A cymbal crash of light italicised the rift between us. The pummel of rain and wind, its tonal symphony, spurred restive lovemaking. Echoes, flashes, bounced— a white flag above our drift back into sleep. Fragments of the night’s splintered sky turned the flats I walk into sump. The early light glittered in puddles. Five hundred miles north of the sea, flocks of gulls settled on the slivers like bored conventioneers. Preening birds ogled their crowd; others stand dazed as if jet-lagged. Some browsed the mud and grasses for a buffet of freshwater grub. Did they, like us, covet a shift in scenery, dissatisfied with life’s fishing, or salt and sand? Perhaps a collective whim to go native, or try an inland thrill, lured them from their moorings to chase the clouds’ lumber of discontent. Soon the prism-air cleared as sunlight mopped the shallows, returned a solid ground. Illusions gone, the birds shot off like a blowing veil, reformed to return.

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Vice Versa Rachel M. Rasmussen // USA

It appears I am being vicious in the most literal sense. Lax body, skin and sun and white plastic lawn chair are welded together as I make love to the filtered end of a lit cigarette. Exultant in my act of sitting, smoking on a back porch tucked away, shaded from oppressive noon sun by the sweeping arm of a Japanese Maple, my toes free to wiggle among weathered wood and rusted porch nails. My better half sends into the world the incensed stream of a smoke signal, while I the evil twin suck sallow clouds of nicotine. Whomever happens if they happen to find me here slack jawed and wondrous at how the un-ashed tip appears like a cashed cone of herb, my better half wants them to save me from this unladylike joy; my savage, distasteful, unbecoming desire. But until Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m uncovered or decide to make my way back into the world with hands washed clean, and fresh, virgin clothes

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Guerrilla Lighting Black Lighting Operations // Australia Article by Jeremy Thomas

The name Guerrilla Lighting conjures up images of a splinter cell of luminescent warriors, conducting covert operations in the dead of night to unsuspecting urban populations. With loaded weaponry, they drive to an undisclosed location in a black van, cause mayhem to local bats, insects and migrating bird populations, and then retreat to their jungle bivouac once more. Guerrilla Lighting was founded in 2003 by work colleagues and mates Joseph Norster, Matt Hicks and Dave Anderson. Soon Kire Bogoevski joined the group and in 2006 with Joseph moving to Sydney Donn Salisbury and Hamish Little joined up. These six lighting engineers and designers felt a need to get creative with the spaces they saw around them. With day jobs in the lighting industry, these five night-lighting guerreros saw inspiration and artistic outlet by illuminating public spaces at night, temporarily changing their arboreal and architectural landscapes. Upon arriving at the meeting place, I expected to be blindfolded, thrown in to the back of the van and driven around before being taken to the hideout. After all, I assumed, the first rule of Guerrilla Lighting is.... well, you could probably guess the rest. In fact their headquarters turned out to be an incredibly light and spacious studio apartment and office just off Smith St. There I met Joe and Matt, working on high-tech computers on each side of the office. I already knew Dave, who is an old friend of mine with whom I’d shared a house in Fitzroy with holes in the floor and a poor old cat who’d more or less lost control of her bodily functions. ‘Guerrilla lighting is basically design for designs sake,’ they tell me, ‘we specialise in impromptu temporary lighting installations for no other reason than to light things up.’ Dave went on. ‘We’ve got a heap of light fittings, a generator and an old van. We turn up at a spot, set up our gear, light stuff up – not always with permission – take some photos for posterity and then leave, leaving nothing but footprints. The average session is not very long, because we quite often don’t have permission, so we don’t want to bring too much attention to ourselves.’ I asked Dave about where they normally see themselves setting up a lighting project. ‘We do things like illuminate shot towers, old factories, landscapes. Probably my most exciting one was in Milan, in Lake Como, where we managed to find an old abandoned building by the side of the road and lit that one up. We did have one guy – don’t know if he was a security guard or what – come over and ask us what we were doing. My host, the guy who had shown us the spot, an Italian mate of mine, walked over to him. He said something in Italian, shook his hand with a 20 Euro note and then he went and left us alone.’ I wondered whether Joe had flown from Australia for the Milan job. ‘No, I was in Sydney at the time’. He explained to me that everyone has been setting up their own Guerrilla Lighting projects wherever they have been living at the time. ‘After coming back from an extended trip to the US and Europe, I was happy to stay out of Melbourne’, Joe said, ‘so I moved up to Sydney for three years’. Meanwhile, Dave had moved to London for two and a half years, and it was during a trip to Italy last year that the Milan project occurred. ‘We’re mainly concentrated in Australia, although there are other lighting groups that have

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started since we have, independently from us, and we don’t really have that much to do with each other, but it is great to see that the idea is spreading.’ ‘A few weeks ago, there was a light festival called Vivid Sydney: Smartlight. Joe wrote to Natalie Copson, the Brand Manager at Energizer Australia and explained what we do and asked if they could spare some torches. He was a bit cheeky and asked for three hundred Dolphin torches. We were quite surprised when they wrote back and said, “Oh look, we can’t manage three hundred, but we can give you one hundred with batteries.”’ ‘I really only wanted fifty,’ Joe explains, ‘I guess it’s great marketing for them – we made sure to tell everyone they were Dolphin torches’. ‘We took them down to where the light festival was, and started shining lights around. People sort of gathered round to what we were doing; kids came in, and we had 100 torches floating around the festival, making patterns and shining them on buildings and things like that.’ ‘We also took part in the Light in Winter Festival at Federation Square Sydney Brick Works

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Church Lighting, Melbourne

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GLO Federation Square, 22nd June

[in Melbourne] and hope to continue working with lighting Festivals in the future.’ ‘We’ve had a really good reaction, wherever we’ve gone,’ Dave tells me, ‘and in these short years, we’ve made quite a splash world-wide. Now pretty much everybody who’s associated with the lighting industry in Australia has heard of us.’ ‘It’s nice to have a creative outlet where you can design without any restraint. We don’t have an agenda, we’re not trying to make money; all we’re trying to do is have some fun.’ And more often than not, the most innovative and creative stuff comes from those very same principles. To surprise the floodlit guerreros of Guerrilla Lighting doing what they do best, you’ll probably need up-to-the-minute intelligence. If you’re not in the know, or would rather spend your winter nights at home in front of the heater, just sneak off to their website in your own time at www.guerrillalighting.com. GLO Federation Square, 22nd June

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Big Day Out Sydney

Sydney Brick Works

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Zombie Salesman Rachel M. Rasmussen // USA

The front yards of our country are graves: four cornered, Sunday mowed. We invited lawn gnomes and flamingos, to hide the small white crosses. Day after day our country rushes past graves with mugs of coffee, newspapers we won’t read, dead-set on cubicles. But we’re buried in coffins already. Night after night our country ignores the suffocated moaning of corpses. The echo of our grandparents (of our grandparents), the Americans that died before electricity. The crazy ones, who shoved lima beans and tonics down the throat of our nation to make it strong; and tonight, one of them is standing on atrophied legs outside a dormered window. Another creeps across lawns to reproach the TV dinners. They see our country deny all the work they put in. We’ve weakened their beloved nation, through gluttony and greed. A hunger to correct us guides them to front porches, next to swings. Zombie solicitors in suits pinstriped with worms, press a flaccid finger to the bell.

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When the Last Star Fell Sadrina Zhang // USA

When the last star fell, hope escaped your fingers You turned your back on the city; long after, the city had turned its back on you. How much sorrow can a heart swallow, before the body drifts away from civilisation? On the dusty country road you came, knowing a paradise waited: The benign desert; the mellow plain â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Mother Nature forever opened her embrace. Back in the fortress of metropolis, you had no claim of its being: Ever so magnificent, and ever so forbidden. So it all came to pass: the heartbreak, the exile, the last breath. When the last star fell, you turned your back on the city. Out in the wild, a final resting place was ready for taking â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a place no mortal eyes could perceive, a place where you were home, spoiled with truth, and with humility.

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World Traveller Susan Culver // USA

He sent her letters from Venice, the pages smelling of twilight in a crowded cafe. He told her, then, of the way the candle birthed its own glow and that the glow itself was a marvellous thing: how it breathed along the wall and on the tips of all the silver. That it kissed the heads of the unaware, its lips once settling on a smooth, bald brow and, again, within the silk secret of some raven river which had sharp eyes to match. He sent her letters from Vienna, and he told her how the paper seemed so dull in comparison to his window scene. That, when the storm finally broke, the sky jewelled the streets below. Such a breathless coronation of blue, he wrote. He sent her letters from Vatican City, having written from the gardens, from the feet of those stone and lesser gods and he wrote that he remained at odds with the man heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d become. And when he closed his eyes, he could still see America: that slow smile, those dancerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thighs. Even here, he could feel her rising half the world away and how she seemed to take the bed-warmth with her. He sent her letters from Valencia, splashed by the cool of the Turia fountain so that the ink blotched sweet across the page. And he told her that spring was catching on here, like logic. Like chai. And that all he really wanted to say was that he was making his way home.

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FRAME LINES

Our vision? Frame Lines is a free magazine and non-profit organization showcasing the best creative work - artistic, photographic, musical, literary - from around the world. This also extends to provoking the living entity of free press itself, and being mindful of the environmental impact we would make by being a printed magazine, we invite readers to make the choice if they would prefer to print the free online version or to purchase a high gloss collector’s edition of the magazine. We partner with organizations that not only share our core values, ethics and aims, but who are dedicated to celebrating diversity and desire to work with us to generate positive change in which we conduct our business transactions.

Our readership profile Published quarterly, Frame Lines magazine serves a forward-thinking audience of graphic designers at advertising agencies, design firms and corporate design departments. Frame Lines’ content, both inspiring and informative, targets the savvy opinion-makers and feeds the palette of passion and talent for the design community. Through the dynamic World Wide Web, Frame Lines has managed to reach an international and educated audience who are fast becoming the spokespersons of their generations creatively, and who are constantly working to redefine and improve the art and cultural landscape. Frame Lines is distributed throughout Australia and internationally. We are committed to representing all Australian and international artists and writers.Frame Lines reaches over 2500 readers per edition, and is proud to have a growing subscriber base of over 1000 subscribers since its inception.

Submit now Submissions are NOW OPEN for Edition 9 Hit the Decks

In this edition, we step lively at street level, immersing ourselves in streetwise culture, deck design, vehicle art, urban sport and the musical arts of turntableism and hip hop. We meet with outreach groups and find out what life is like for the people that call the streets their home. We will discuss many of the problems facing life on the street, and speak to those that have used art to help them get their lives back on track. Que pasa por la calle? (What’s happening on the street?) Put your ear to the ground and you’re sure to find out. www.framelines.org

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Frame Lines is a non-profit organization and creative community dedicated to showcasing and supporting creative work from around the world, it is totally independent venture run with the creative dedication and passion of Sarah, Jeremy and Lisa, along with our crew and regular Frame Lines contributors! Our energy comes from our passion to nurture the development, production, and promotion of our contemporary artists and writers. Our task is to engage broadly and investigate profoundly what it is to be alive, to be human, to be and to be a citizen of the world. Our artists and writers allow us to channel this by letting their art shine the pages of Frame Lines. We are dedicated to enlivening the senses, stimulating the mind, and provoking discussion about diversity in the world in which we live ....

152 //Frame Lines edition #8