SENIOR EDITOR Marlow TheMuirCOVERRheaBonnieDESIGNRheaPatrickBonnieArianaHarryNandiniEDITORSHurstDhirGayHaghighiHuangMcKenzieThomasHuangThomasMcLennanviewsinthis publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of PULP was correct at the time of Thisprinting.publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union. Issue 01, 2022
to continue providing opportunities for student culture to flourish within this shifting context. I’m keen to focus on accessibility during my term as VP. In what ways can we broaden our understanding of campus life? What can we do to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our members? Speaking as a (newly graduated) student, it’s important for us to hold ourselves accountable to each other — a practice that I will extend to the USU Board and beyond. See you at Welcome Week!
Battle of the Bands competition — come to Manning Bar to watch student bands perform. It’s going to be an incredibly fun event so make sure to invite all your Somedayfriends.Soon music festival! Even though I’m writing this mid July you will most likely be reading it in August at which point tickets will be on sale for the USU’s first ever musical festival, so make sure to get those tickets.
PRESIDENTPASTIMMEDIATE Prudence Wilkins-Wheat
Finally, I must acknowledge a good friend and mentor — thank you Ben, big shoes to fill.
Our Union has so much breadth and depth because we aim to make campus life better by providing existing and new events, initiatives, and services. This semester we’ll be reviving Battle of the Bands, taking a reimagined PULP to print, and inaugurating the Someday Soon music festival. We’ll continue to be ambitious while accounting for challenges like the third Omicron wave, rising inflation, and extreme wet weather.
Following in the wake of Prue and the outgoing board directors, I’m excited for the year ahead. Please don’t hesitate to reach out: president@usu.edu.au
VICE PRESIDENT Telita Goile Much has been happening in the background of this semester break. Throughout the cold, damp weather and consequent sniffly days, USU staff have been planning an energised and vibrant second-half of the year for our members. At the same time, Cole, David, Isla, and myself were elected into executive positions on the USU Board. As Vice President, I want to work alongside the Board to ensure that we continually centre the needs of our members and represent the values of our broader student community. It’s a hard time to be a student: education cuts, Old Testament-style natural disasters, and increased financial hardship leave us with an inescapable sense of precarity. As such, it’s important for the USU
Curwood
I’m your Honorary Secretary for 2022 and I couldn’t be more excited for what the USU has in store over the following year. Here’s a quick summary of events that you should definitely be keeping an eye out for!
I hope your Semester Two has kicked off to a great start and I’m looking forward to seeing you around campus!
Isla Mowbray Hello PULP readers and fellow USydians!
REPORTSFOREWORD ColePRESIDENTScott-
DavidTREASURERHONOURARYZhu
I’m looking forward to a productive term as the new Executive works to replicate an incredible Semester One. We are perhaps enjoying our best financial health in recent history, yet we must be cautious of the gathering clouds on the horizon. Rising operational costs, driven by inflationary pressures arising from supply chain constraints, as well as lower-than-hoped-for sales, suggest a more challenging outlook than what our numbers prima facie indicate. That’s not to mention concerning global macroeconomic conditions, with rising interest rates and the looming possibility of a recession.
While we cannot commit to any financial course of action — we must cross the bridges as we come to them — I can confidently say for now that these conditions highlight a need for prudent financial management. Though our community can and should expect continued levels of appropriate financial support, it is not the case that we have a king’s ransom’s worth of surplus cash lying around. Cole and I have also met with our auditors, and the Board’s commitment to a thorough review of our investments is being realised.
I’m energised and grateful to be serving as USU President. My role is to support the Board in collectively deciding on USU strategy and planning. We do this by looking at things holistically, representing our ~35,000 members, and guiding the dedicated USU staff. Having a background in STEM clubs, I came to the Board passionate about the Clubs & Societies Program. So far, we’ve increased club funding by creating a discretionary grants pool and have been providing free training to club executives. The comprehensive training was made possible through the first collaboration between the USU, SUPRA, SRC, SUSF, and the University. The USU is committed to supporting our ~260 clubs and societies, and their executives, so they can provide for their members.
The USU introduced the first student publication to Australia in 1921 through The Union Recorder. This was later reborn as BULL magazine, which started as a weekly Bulletin for USU events. After Voluntary Student Unionism was introduced in 2006, the publication became financially untenable. By 2016, after significantly reducing the print-run, the Board passed a motion converting the magazine online and rebranding it ‘PULP.’
The Magazine in front of you, however, does not represent a regression, but rather a manifestation of nearly 100 years of artistic and journalistic history. The intention behind PULP Magazine, with its team of student editors and designers, derived from a singular desire to create space showcasing the many creative talents, cultural insights, and comedic perspectives of young people, every year. Although our peers at Honi Soit have loyally served student journalism on campus, I, among many, have longed for a time capsule to house our thoughts, both silly and sophisticated, our art, our subcultures, our couture, our witty observations, and especially our chaotic, and at times genuinely moving, creative introspection on the state of the world, and our place within it. When re-imagining PULP and its vision, I was not simply looking to create a magazine, but a cultural institution. Magazines such as these have birthed writers like Sylvia Plath, and comedians like Conan O’Brien. My hope is that a hundred years from now students will aspire to attend USyd if only to write for the prestigious PULP magazine. For this reason, I dedicate the creation and architecture of this Magazine to our future editors. In the footsteps of the hundred past you follow, and in the direction of the seven today, you begin. Manning House will now and forever more, be your home. I’m honoured to have played a part in your history.
SECRETARYHONOURARY
Finally, we will have also launched our Club Communities. If you’re a club executive you can join these focus groups to raise relevant club matters with the USU. If you ever want to reach out to discuss anything USU related or have any questions please shoot through an email to i.mowbray@usu.edu.au
Welcome to Issue 01 of PULP! It feels a little ironic writing this in 2022, at the closing parenthesis of PULP’s years-long digital-only streak, and in a world where printed material is allegedly redundant. Nevertheless, here we are! So what is this semi-glossy stack of posturing pop culture takes, rambling thinkpieces, and photos of people in kitchens, bathrooms, and on car bonnets? Great question!
Editors’ Note PULP is published on the sovereign land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, as well as Indigenous members of our creative community. We respect the knowledge and customs that traditional elders and Aboriginal people have passed down from generation to generation. We acknowledge the historical and continued violence and dispossession against First Nations peoples. Australia’s many institutions, including the University itself, are founded on this very same violence and dispossession. As editors, we will always stand in solidarity with First Nations efforts towards decolonisation and that solidarity will be reflected in the substance and practice of this magazine. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
The term ‘pulp’ derives from cheap wood pulp paper used to produce inexpensive paperback magazines, comic books, and novels from the 1890s to 1950s. The contents of these publications differed from traditional novels or the more expensive higher quality magazines called ‘glossies’ or ‘slicks’. The inexpensive printing processes of ‘pulp’ magazines made reading accessible to the masses amid the Great Depression, and the escapist nature of fiction during the horrors of World War 2 appealed to a wide audience. These two factors — wide appeal and accessibility — reduced the zines’ seriousness in the minds of intellectuals of the day. ‘Pulp’ fiction became a form of paraliterature, a type of written work dismissed as ‘not literary’. Yet during the wave of counter-culturalism created in the 1960s, writing ‘pulp’ stories became an act of protest and rebellion, like psychedelic rock or postmodern art. University publications are underpinned by a sense of rebellion: they serve to expose institutional truths and vest power in a group that can be ignored or disparaged in the mainstream media landscape — university students. When the six of us applied to edit this newly uppercase-titled publication, we did so out of a deep and residing love for student media and all it’s given us during our university years. Beyond the constraints of rubrics, marking criteria, and referencing systems we find in our classrooms, student journalism challenges writers to stake their claims on the strength of their ideas and creativity of their Wepresentation.hopethis is what PULP can be. A place to bring your novel and weird, yet important, ideas — creative, non-fiction, visual, and everything in between — and see them platformed with pride. Our culture writing will always strive to go beyond the perfunctory and advertorial. We’ll examine the implications of the ordinary, challenge dominant institutions, and maintain a well-heeled sense of style throughout.
It’s a precarious time to be in journalism, let alone student journalism: our friends at UTS’ Vertigo sadly know this all too well. However, funding cuts and blind prioritisation of ‘the bottom line’ will never diminish the fact that the student voice is always needed. Your voice is needed. We are eternally grateful to 2021 USU President Prudence Wilkins-Wheat and the USU for this opportunity to showcase our students’ best and brightest. To our contributors, thank you for lending us your words, your brushstrokes, your photos. To our readers, we couldn’t thank you enough for your time and faith.
Tales of the USU’s storied publications history often rightly omit its true first publication. The founding rules of the Union called for the “promotion of mental culture” by means of “debates and a magazine.” The Sydney University Review was that magazine for three precious years, from 1881 to 1883. Publishing five editions, with one edition only selling 11 copies after publication, it was agreed that it would be “expedient to wind up the Review,” not but one year after its launch. Never has a publication been so summarily executed in our University’s history. Agreed by all to be a substantive and illuminating publication, like the Recorder, like BULL, like Hermes, and like PULP, it, for whatever reason, needed to go. My hope is that PULP magazine outlives The Sydney University Review and does its level best to promote the mental and artistic culture of the Union. May it have the speed of Hermes, the strength of BULL, the memory of the Recorder, and all the zest of PULP. Hopefully this magazine is the USU’s final iteration — even if for just a moment.
Ed i t or i a l
Marlow Hurst Senior Editor
Cont en t s CULTURE Naive art or modern marvels? Cybernetic Ecologies; Art, Nature and an Interspecies Future The History of PhilatelyCAMPUS LEGO Pompeii’s blocky delight 10 I’m subleasing a room and I haven’t seen my housemates in 12 days Making our own clothes Do surreal times call for surreal fashion? PLACE The animals have come to town Curating the Doctor’s Waiting Room Strathfield Library FILM Fruits of their Labour Gotta be, VeggieTales Mamma Mia and the Feminist Movement MUSIC I went to Dark Mofo and all I got was… Reimagining the riot grrrl The White Void Home is where the Emo is COMEDY The Daily Peel The little pamphleteer that could 12 LITERATURE UnSteady: The Story of the Great Australian Novel that Never Was 13 Yearning for what doesn’t feel like pain 16 22 Ma 23 24 28 FASHION Car Story/Cynthia’s Car 30 32 36 40 meet me in the tearoom 42 46 48 52 54 56 60 62 64 66 68 70 Survival Tips for the Upcoming Vibe Shift 71 I want to drink the Nickelodeon Slime 71 Eagle Boys Pizza Returns 71 Cartoon and crossword 72
A major advantage of museum models is their ability to visually represent a range of subjects and time periods. Models offer valuable spatial context to collections of artefacts and can make otherwise abstract information tangible. They can depict elements of everyday ancient society such as markets, graffiti, and slavery that cannot otherwise be seen within the narrow confines of a museum’s walls.
Engagement with museum-goers takes precedence over absolute historicalStorytellingaccuracy.inphysical form is often a crucial part of educational outreach as a result. As Barker pointed out in a 2015 article in Teaching History, there is nothing new about models in museums — in fact, they were once widespread. Cork and plaster models of ancient sites became hugely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, but fell out of vogue in the 1960s, being seen as unworthy of the austere setting of a museum. In recent times, as public education within museums has become increasingly valued again, models have begun to make a comeback. LEGO Pompeii itself is innovative for its LEGO medium and the connection this provides with younger people in particular.
LEGO Pompeii’s most enduring mystery is the location of notable Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader. Exhibition notes produced by the museum claim Vader can be found somewhere within the model, yet despite extensive searching, the Sith Lord remains elusive. McNaught is known for including Emperor Palpatine in his models as an in-joke, and he could be seen riding inside the popemobile in the LEGO Colosseum. There is indeed a figure near the Temple of Isis which resembles the Emperor, yet according to Richards’ annotations, this is Arbaces, the evil priest from the silent film The Last Days of Pompeii. Curiously, Richards also separately lists this same individual as representing Darth Vader himself, despite them lacking any resemblance beyond an affinity for black robes. Barker says he has “completely forgotten” the explanation for the discrepancy, so it seems it can only be that the museum staff have fallen victim to an old Jedi mind trick. Model storytelling
LEblock y deli ght GO Pompei i,s GarrettSamuelbyWords CAMPUS 1110
Amid ancient relics and marble statues, the 190,000 plastic bricks of LEGO Pompeii are a striking centrepiece of the Chau Chak Wing Museum. The four-square-metre diorama took almost 500 hours of building and has delighted visitors since 2015. Its enduring popularity is testament to the value of keeping history accessible, and above all, fun.
Fun can seem a stranger to the severe museum of the public imagination, but creative ways of preserving and retelling history, such as LEGO Pompeii, keep history alive for younger generations and promote new ways of thinking for older ones. Models, especially when built from a children’s toy, offer a unique means of communicating a fun and entertaining approach to history that is crucial to engaging the public and nurturing wider interest in historical inquiry. Ten years on from the University’s first LEGO model, LEGO Pompeii continues to delight.
Where is Darth Vader?
Pompeii is not the only historical site to have been LEGO-fied at the University’s museums. In 2012, the Nicholson Museum commissioned three models of ancient sites to be built by LEGO Certified Professional Ryan ‘The Brickman’ McNaught in an effort to engage with younger audiences. Each model was to mix ancient and modern elements. Despite faint concerns that a LEGO exhibition might infantilize the collections or overshadow the other exhibits on offer, the idea was an immediate success. Rather than ignoring the rest of the museum, crowds took interest in authentic artefacts as well as the plastic bricks.
2012’s LEGO Colosseum later went on a world tour (but was tragically destroyed in a transit mishap two years ago), while 2013’s LEGO Acropolis enjoys a prestigious retirement in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. LEGO Pompeii, the final and largest model in the series (it was too large to fit through the doors of McNaught’s warehouse and had to be built in two parts), was moved to the new Chau Chak Wing Museum in 2020 along with the rest of the Nicholson Collection. It now occupies pride of place on the second floor as part of the Roman Spectres exhibition, curated by Candace Richards.LEGO Pompeii was specifically made to be a teaching aid targeting older students as well as children by aligning with elements of the Ancient History HSC syllabus. Dr Craig Barker, Head of Public Engagement at the Chau Chak Wing Museum and LEGO Pompeii’s original curator, has even used it for teaching undergraduate archaeology units. The model captures life just before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, its archaeological history over 1,500 years later, and the role the city plays in modern popular culture. Part of the model’s appeal is this mix of settings and characters, and the humorous style of its storytelling. Four-centimetre centurions rub plastic shoulders with Pink Floyd and a 13-year-old Mozart. The Doctor’s TARDIS sits in one courtyard while famed archaeologists uncover ruins and make plaster casts nearby. Sir Charles Nicholson himself can be seen on his visit to the city in 1858, as well as Indiana Jones, various filmmakers, statues and a subterranean cavern ominously filling with magma. Other features include the Temple of Jupiter, Stabian Baths, and a rioting mob within Pompeii’s amphitheatre. It is bolstered by the display of authentic plaster fragments from Pompeii beside it, allowing the model to be not just “a novelty, but part of a broader examination of Rome,” says Barker.
The Sydney that this writer, another woman, had imagined — fecund, dark, complex, and sublime — has and should set the bar for bildungsroman writing set in Australia’s most famous city. Yet I had barely recognised her name. This is no accident — she is not, as far as I know, taught in any Australian curriculum, nor are her works required reading in gender studies or sociology courses despite the efforts of many well-regarded critics to make it so. Christina Stead, novelist, Marxist, and Sydneysider, has been allowed to fade into partial canonical obscurity, in part due to failures to Americanise her unequivocally Australian work.
THE THATPAMPHLETEERLITTLECOULD
Perhaps the obscurity of her work 40 years on is limited to Australian audiences, and young ones at that. In 2005, Stead was entered into Time Magazine’s Greatest 100 Novels of the 20th Century, and praise flowed from American literary giants ranging from Jonathan Franzen to poet laureate Randall Jarrell.
I can’t remember if people were avoiding me or not — my mind was elsewhere. I finally found a purpose, a real reason to be a pamphleteer. I knew that not everyone was going to take a pamphlet, and that even of those who did, even fewer would likely come along to picket. But I also knew that I believed in the power of unions, of strikes, of collective action, and to play some role — no matter how small — in strengthening something that was truly special. I ran out of pamphlets within an Perhapshour.not every pamphleteer completely believes in or understands the significance of what they’re fighting for. But it’s the pamphleteers who bring us together, help build movements from the ground up, fight to earn your help, your hand, your voice, and your vote. So the next time you’re walking down Eastern Avenue, spare a thought for the souls like me and take a pamphlet. It might spoil your serenity, or it might just make your perfect morning even better.
Christina Stead, 1904, National Library of Australia.
LaganGracebyWords
Words by Luke Mesterovic
Stead was born in 1902 in Rockdale, though the family soon relocated to Watson’s Bay. She was the only child of her father David’s first marriage, and gained five halfsiblings from his second (his third marriage was to a woman Christina’s age). Leaving Sydney in 1928, Stead first went to Europe, where she met Marxist political economist William Blake. Marrying in 1952, the two lived together in the US and Europe before Blake’s death in 1968, upon which Stead returned to Australia. She died in Balmain in 1983.
THEUNSTEADY:STORY OF THE GREAT NOVEL...AUSTRALIAN
In June 2021, I read a book about a young woman living in Sydney. Moreton Bay figs blanketed the streets and bougainvillaea danced in harbourside gardens over swimmers below. The mandarin sky at sunset matched the colour of the train station plaques and heat sunk into the brick of crumbling Redfern terraces. You couldn’t misplace it, you couldn’t mistake it: there was no place else in the world that book could have been about — right?
Stead’s relative anonymity amongst readers my age is astonishing in light of this success, particularly given the topicality of her Sydney-based bildungsromans. Her debut novel, Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934), follows the lives of its characters, many of them radicals, around a fictionalised Watson’s Bay. Often delving deep into its characters’ religious, political and social musings, Stead masterfully interlinks the interior lives of her characters with a city that shimmers even for its most impoverished residents. For all its merits, Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934) is likely edged out as Stead’s magnum opus by The Man Who Loved Children (1940), a family saga that follows eldest daughter Louisa’s struggle to resist the familial dysfunction wrought by a narcissistic father, Sam, and vengeful stepmother, Henny. It’s a painfully accurate portrait of Stead’s own childhood and father. The “tree-clouded” family home, Tohoga House, rises above sweltering streets and Sam admonishes his wife as a “vixen possum.” Praised for the detail and complexity in which Stead renders her characters, Randall Jarrell went as far as to compare Stead to Tolstoy in his review of the book. Its glowing praise is out of step It’s mid-morning and you’re walking down Eastern Avenue. There’s a gentle breeze, the trees are in bloom, and the sky above is a brilliant blue. You’re warm, you’re safe, you’re happy. It is, for you, the perfect morning. But then you see me, standing proud beside a folding table, wearing a bright shirt and holding papers in my hand — and suddenly your perfect morning has been ruined. You slow down, you speed up. You veer left, you veer right. Breaking into ballet, you pirouette between passers-by and sauté over students, anything to avoid eye contact. But your efforts are in vain — I’m a professional. The infamous walk and talk has begun and by the end, you’re holding onto my pamphlet. You can scrunch it up into a pocket, a bag, or a bin, but that doesn’t matter. You still took it, and I thank you for that. I am an Eastern Avenue pamphleteer. This is my story. My unpaid internship in pamphleteering began a few weeks into the first semester of my first year. The USU election campaigns had begun, with a number of my friends from high school coalescing around a single candidate. While at first I had no intention of becoming involved, my ever-existing FOMO reared its head and suddenly there I was, standing in the middle of Eastern Avenue, pamphlets in palm. It didn’t take long for my initial high hopes to dissipate. In spite of my garish candidate t-shirt, I went unnoticed by the horde of students who shuffled through to their classrooms. For a time I felt invisible, unseen. Yet, that of course was wishful thinking. I wasn’t invisible — I was avoided. I was Moses, splitting the oncoming wave of students in two. I tried desperately to make eye contact, yet was acknowledged by no one. I’d say hello or start a conversation, only to be completely ignored. It hurt. I had become a repellent. A human Aerogard. If you were walking down Eastern Avenue that morning, I want you to know that I don’t blame you. If I were you, I also would have avoided me. I had thought that getting involved would be rewarding, that giving up my time to campaign would function as some kind of atonement — for what exactly, I’m not sure. But it didn’t. I wasn’t qualified to campaign. Who was I to tell people who to vote for? I didn’t understand the factions. I barely understood the policies. I’d never even had a conversation with the candidate. So how could I possibly believe what I was telling a passerby as I ruined the serenity of their otherwise perfect morning? By the time the campaign reached its close I was despondent, dejected, and demoralised. I would later gain a greater grasp on who and what I had been pamphleting for, and eventually was glad that I did it. Having said that, the campaign had been traumatising enough, and I didn’t think I’d ever go back to being a pamphleteer. That was until the NTEU branch of the University of Sydney decided to take strike action earlier this year. Having seen how overworked and underpaid my tutors were, and having spoken to staff about rampant casualisation and wage theft, I soon found myself standing in the middle of Eastern Avenue with pamphlets in my palm once again. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t initially get flashbacks to those awful mornings almost exactly a year prior, when I had hinged my self-confidence on whether strangers gave me the time of day. But once I began to hand out pamphlets, any fears or doubts that I had evaporated.
12 13CAMPUS PULP
The Sydney Madeleine Watts depicts in The Inland Sea is so accurate, the pages of the book may as well have been a mirror. When I wrote to congratulate Watts on the book (it was in the running for the Miles Franklin Award at the time), she urged me to read the writer that had inspired her own work.
exemplifies the difficulty First Nations authors face in breaking into the domestic — let alone global — book industry, a difficulty compounded by the financial precarity of life as an author. “One year ago, I was as broke as I had ever been,” remarked Bundjalung poet Evelyn Araulen in her acceptance speech for this year’s Stella Prize, Australia’s most prestigious women’s literary award. “Artists in this country are used to living one paycheck away from poverty.” While exact data on the pay gap between white and nonwhite authors is limited, a 2020 New York Times analysis of tweets under the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, which attempted to shed light on the issue, reveals that of 122 authors who reported earning over $100 000 USD for their work, 78 were white, seven were black and two were Hispanic. “It’s the kind of book that, if it is for you, is really for you,” wrote Jonathan Franzen in his 2010 introduction to The Man Who Loved Children. Franzen here, is undoubtedly talking about Stead’s perceptive and unrelentingly honest treatment of her character’s struggles, ranging from family dysfunction to poverty to eating disorders to idealism. These are all excellent reasons to read Stead, but for Australian readers, the brilliance of her work is often obscured by its unwanted Americanisation. Franzen writes: “I’m convinced that there are tens of thousands of people who would bless the day the book was published, if only they could be exposed to it.”
The tragedy of this is not just individual, but endemic. Big Little Lies, the blockbuster American drama series set in California, was based on the 2014 Liane Moriaty novel set in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Of course, both Stead and Moriaty are both Anglo-Saxon white women, whose narratives are deemed more universal and marketable to American audiences once the setting has been changed to somewhere more familiar. The challenge multiplies for First Nations and other non-white writers: it is only this year, for the first time in its history, that the Miles Franklin shortlist has been dominated by people of colour.
“We weren’t being read 10 years ago. Maybe one of us was being read per year,” said Tara June Winch, a Wiradjuri woman and author of the Miles-Franklin-winning The Yield, in a 2019 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. This
LEFT Christina Stead, 1927, National Library of RIGHTAustralia.Christina Stead, 1938, National Library of Australia. with the middling success Stead has enjoyed. It’s likely her reach was hindered because she was a woman, particularly when contrasted with the greater success of Patrick White. This was not helped by Stead’s lifelong rejection of feminism, but it doesn’t explain the dissonance between Stead’s international acclaim and domesticUnlikesuccess.Stead’s childhood home, the inspiration for the novel, Tohoga House is not situated upon the dramatic cliffs of Watson’s Bay, nor buried in a row of Surry Hills terraces. It is quite literally a world removed from the family home that inspired it. Though originally set in Sydney, Stead was forced to change the setting of the book to Washington, D.C. on the urging of her American publisher, Simon and Schuster. One might ask why Stead’s Australian publisher failed to offer at least a limp objection to this: they indeed might’ve, had they existed. The literary and economic power of Northern Hemisphere publishing houses was not overwhelming but absolute. Shockingly, Stead’s novels were not published in Australia until the 1960s, by which time the damage to The Man Who Loved Children was done. It’s not that writing about the Northern Hemisphere was uncharted territory for Stead. She had lived there for much of her adult life. Works like House of All Nations, set in 1930s Paris, and I’m Dying Laughing, following the marriage of two Americans, showcased her talent in writing these places, just not when it’s the product of forced relocation: Stead’s prose in The Man Who Loved Children is scarred in the shape of the Sydney Harbour. She transplants vivid descriptions of Sydney’s topography into the work, like in a passage describing Sam’s dominance over the family home. He could often be seen spying out of the attic windows, up and down the streets, for some toddler from the neighbours’ houses, who might be making for the Garden of Eden, Tohoga House, its clifflike walls and the immense trees, full of birds and birds’ nests, and at the man-high hedges and who might grin in a watery way or even wave its sea-anemone hand when it saw Sam’s sunflower coloured head away up there amongst the birds and the leaves (p. 45). This change in setting, whatever the short-term commercial benefits, has created a bigger problem for a work that struggles to find its deserved place in the canon. The linguistic and geographic idiosyncrasies mean it cannot be regarded as a great American novel, while the shoddy attempt to make it so precludes it from being one about Sydney. Indeed, Stead was deemed ineligible to be rewarded the Britannica-Australia prize in recognition of her literary achievements on the grounds that she had “ceased to be Australian”.
14 15LITERATURE PULP
NEVER...THATWAS
Sian Kelly My photographic practice offers a queer lens to explore Ma , the Japanese concept of negative space, and how the body can interrupt it. In a society where anything ‘negative’ is unwelcomed, the negative space of my photographs welcomes an emptiness full of possibilities for the subject — like the silence between notes in Materialitymusic.acts as an important part in my practice as textural values and movement are added to the images itself through the developing process. If my photographic images explore the concept of ma ( ), the materiality of my images encapsulates the concept of wabi-sabi ( ), which is centred around notions of transience and imperfection. Hence, this body of work is my personal visual haiku ( ) to invite viewers to pause and perceive moments of beauty that are impermanent and imperfect. I hope that my visual haiku dares one to daydream, to pause, and to be taken by the negative space into a realm of their own possibilities and imagination.
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ParekhSimranbyWords t ra t hf i el d L i br a r y andyellow,teal,blue. bookshelves and all. glass walls watching gumtrees who needs bricks when you have books? a built-to-size wooden ray of sunshine has been constructed beside the lego club display (they meet on Mondays) leather cushioned chairs made of triangles, ovals and squares, all rounded, soft at the edges who decided squares were more sensible than circles? stairs the A B C D Es graduate to 919.9s and FIs and LPs peopleup scatter to corners like bubbles in water safely sinking into their laptop screens silence and sniffles and a tutor teaching quietly a baby exclaiming defiantly like the single green wall standing out from the colour scheme is it just reflecting the trees? perhaps a memory of a past architect’s dream tealfor yellow green. and and
I remember crashing my best friend’s living room in the summer of 2016, soaking in the lavender scent of slow-burning candles whilst cuddling her two kittens Milo and Weetbix, doing our homework and then writing songs together. These are moments I’ve locked into the golden archives of my heart. A place I retreat to, seeking refuge during times like these, when the world is against me, or so it certainly feels like. If time is an illusion, then so are memories, like a shuffled scrapbook in order of whatever fancies my delusionary comforts, and how I choose to arrange them is entirely up to me. And to whomever that finds this, you have no choice but to lend faith to my construction of this world. But do you trust me? Nostalgia is a dirty liar, and so am I So.where do these moments escape to? Why isn’t Happiness a butterfly and why can’t I hold her in the grandest of captivities where I can live with her forever? People say time is the greatest healer of all, which is such bullshit. A failure at attempting to comfort the grieving. Time is cruel. Of course I am hopeful that this reality is but a sliver of my nightmares, and when I awaken I will be freed from all anguish. But until I awaken (if I do), I must puncture my thoughts somewhere tangible so as to capture a trace of my being. Perhaps I’m writing to feel at ease, some disillusioned sordid sense of sanity before my mind eventually consumes me. I must’ve been martyred by this thing they call love. But I’m a writer darling, you know I don’t cry. I bleed onto these very sheets of paper that are my sole companions. To me, these words acknowledge that I am broken, which means there also was a time when I wasn’t broken and I knew happiness, and that is what I continue pining for. doesn fe el l It’s just another mourning, A funeral held for a heart that’s Andmarredasoul that’s scarred When she sings of things she wants to say to you Like if you held her without hurting her You’d be the first who ever did But she didn’t dare tell you how she let you swim In that ocean of blissful ignorance that was filled to the fucking brim From years and years of earnest Woketears. up to another morning Wondering if I’d be any cleaner today From your hurt which covers my skin, And these cuts which feel like the piercing sin Of your burning, scathing ignorance And my yearning, grace and innocence.
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You’re sitting on a chair. It could be soft and lumpy, or hard and stiff. Incandescent lights shine above, bathing you in a harsh glow that stretches time to infinitum. Is it day or night outside? Who could say? The garish carpet fills your periphery. The receptionist said it wouldn’t be long. The last time you let your gaze direct itself at the clock, it had been 20 minutes. You let your eyes wander. First at your shoes, then an awkward glance at the person sitting diagonally from you. Their eyes meet yours and your pupils quickly shoot elsewhere. The only place to look is directly in front of you. There, hanging on the wall, is an artwork. We’ve all been in waiting rooms at one time or another. Whether it be to get our teeth checked, a COVID swab, a lip filler, or a spinal adjustment; anyone and everyone has had to sit and wait for their body to be pried, inspected, and examined all over. The waiting room is an uncomplex space. A place to put those who are merely waiting to get from one room to another. It is usually deemed the most insignificant part of any visit to the doctors, dentist, or what have you. For people who run these establishments, all they really had to do was stick a couple chairs down and they’d be done. Instead, they also chose to hang works of art. In doing this, they bridged the much maligned chasm between science and the Arts, and became art curators in their own way. As such, it became our duty to adopt the personas of art critics, to investigate and analyse the reasons behind these choices. What were the curatorial decisions that went behind the art in the doctor’s waiting room? Does one type of waiting room differ from another? These are the questions that have plagued our minds recently, and having been in and out of doctors offices our whole lives, we’ve had a lot of time to ponder these questions — and a lot of time to wait. A psychologist’s office tucked away in the Warringah Mall Medical Centre houses a series of abstract works that line their halls. Splatter paintings loom larger than life over patrons as they sit in their chairs. Perhaps the doctors really liked Jackson Pollock, or maybe it was an
An orthodontist in Balgowlah is very postmodern in its curation. Blank empty walls, save for a series of before and after photos of teenagers’ teeth, and a video work depicting the benefits of Invisalign. The orthodontist is clearly suggesting that they are a business that embraces new technologies in the age of the digital. Rather than the doctors, who use classic modes of art such as paintings to cement their profession as something traditional and reliable, the orthodontists are high-tech, cutting edge, and pushing the boundaries. In the CBD, a pathology lab near Pitt Street is entirely bereft of art. A bold choice that leaves these writers scratching their heads. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a pathologist is “a scientist who studies the causes and effects of diseases,
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Cu r a t i n g wa i t i ng evocation of the complexities of the human mind. A nearby doctor’s office plays host to a series of miscellaneous works by different artists. Printmade flower work of muted greens and yellows are juxtaposed against the vibrant colours of nearby etchings depicting romantic scenes from classic literary works such as Alice in Wonderland and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Old sepia photographs of Sydney stand opposite a Brett Whitley inspired view of the Harbour Bridge, and just round the corner, larger than life dot paintings. What begins as a trip to the doctors, turns into a complex reimagining of the nation and a confrontation of our colonial history, with cultural imperialism trading out Indigenous works for ones by British authors. At a medical centre inside the Sydney International Airport, a lone abstract art piece sits isolated on the stark white wall. The space is small and compact and, suitably, so is the work. This geometric art is two-dimensional in form, flattening out and subverting notions of spatiality, merely depicting a circle and two squares. Its location at the airport symbolises the ways in which aeroplanes figuratively flatten and eradicate space and time, transporting individuals from one nation to another in a matter of hours.
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especially one who examines laboratory samples of body tissue for diagnostic or forensic purposes.” Perhaps their lack of art is a symbolic reflection of the ways in which they extract analysis from things invisible to the human eye. A few streets over is a cardiologist, located 30 floors up in a skyscraper. Attempting to go up the elevator, it became apparent by the construction workers moving in and out that there was no way up. Defeated and trying to think of how the inability to get to the cardiologist related to the article, it suddenly became evidentthat a foyer is also a waiting room, medical-related or not. Inside this ground floor level hangs a large rectangular sculpture, in which its odd shape stood out from the surrounding charcoal marble. Despite having a mirrored surface, it was designed to be crumbled up, so as to reflect nothing at all. This is fitting, as in the corporate world of people in suits moving in and out of these monolithic buildings, they show no reflections and are merely capitalistic vampires. Maybe that’s why there was no access to the cardiologist, because the blood was drained from its vessels long ago. Recognising the curatorial potential of the waiting room, the Sydney Sexual Health Centre (SSHC) accommodatesan artist-run exhibition space in the waiting room of the clinic. Wedged in-between The Domain and Martin Place, this liminal space becomes one of opportunity. Among evenly spaced red and blue chairs with stainless steel framing, artificial grass sprouts from the carpet, hairs grow from white canvases that blend into the walls, beaded cobwebs become curtains against the window, and fuzzy creatures sit themselves across the room.Since its founding under the leadership of Upasana Papadopoulos in 2018, The Waiting Room Project has presented monthly exhibitions featuring local conceptual and experimental artists from diverse backgrounds.Thecurrent show and the second instalment of their 2022 program is Waiting For Black
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Dahlia by Amy Meng, a fibre-based interdisciplinary artist. Her work surveys the connection between kawaii culture and Surrealism through a psychoanalytic perspective.
Here, the artwork has been purposefully curated to change the way waiting room spaces have traditionally been occupied, alleviating some of the anxieties that can manifest when sitting on sterile and uncomfortable clinic chairs. The four caretakers emphasise the importance of retaining the functionality of the space, while simultaneously disrupting its monotony, forming a more “intimate” social, emotional, and mental “connection with the waiting room and its occupants.”
Whether purposefully curated, or by chance, art on waiting room walls provide a space of reflection that cannot be found elsewhere. Unique to the space, there is a sense of anticipation and anxiety. The art in waiting rooms has the capacity to provide solace and escapism for patients, whose eyes often dart around looking for something to stare at. The next time you find yourself in a waiting room, take note of the work around you. More thought may have gone into it than initially expected.
According to their website, “the art reimagines and transports artists, curators and visitors alike to worlds far beyond the hospital.”
“Being both the SSHC and a non-white cube space, it’s more than often occupied by marginalised folks, and we aim to reflect these same communities and idenities through the artists and artworks to curate a space that is inclusive and conversational at its core,” say Sehej Kaur Sehmbhi, Sarvika Mishra, Kaylee Rankin and Melanie Raveendran, the current caretakes of the space. Reflecting on the feedback received through written and verbal surveys, visitors have expressed experiences of “meaningful interactions with the art resonating with the space and leaving with an intangible yet imperative sense of feeling seen, heard, accepted, and valid.”
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early Miocene epoch, approximately 20 million years ago. This reptilian grandparent lives in shallow swamps which fill with water during winter and spring. When the swamps are too hot and dry during summer, the tortoises aestivate — a process like hibernation, but during hot or dry periods — in holes or beneath leaf litter. The tortoises are vulnerable to further habitat degradation due to urban development, pesticides, and climate change. To care for the western swamp tortoise, and urban endangered species like it, city conservation efforts are vital.
Endangered Animals In his book The New Nature, biologist Tim Low explains that some animals and plants have adapted to the extent that they now need human habitation for survival. The green and golden bell frog is listed as endangered under the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995, and one of the largest populations reside in the artificial wetlands of Sydney Olympic Park. Low explains that 28 out of the 30 sites where the frogs are found are artificial; most of these are around Sydney. The frogs seem to prefer human-made habitat: artificial ponds, amidst introduced plant species, or sheltered beneath sheds. Urbanisation is one of the main causes of biodiversity loss, destroying many wildlife populations through habitat degradation, but species like the green and golden bell frog are becoming reliant on urban landscapes.Thewestern swamp tortoise is Australia’s most endangered reptile, largely due to urbanisation. Other than captive breeding, it lives just north of Perth Airport, in the Swan Valley, making it an “urban-restricted threatened species,” found only near Australian cities or towns. It is an amazing creature. The tortoise is a type of Australian chelid which closely resembles fossils from the
Cities and their synanthropes are here to stay. Perhaps this reveals a possibility for peaceful human-animal coexistence. Perhaps not, and we must face a fraught reality of species battling for resources: fighting for sunlight, for water, for nutrients, for endless consumption. Regardless, animals are living in the habitats of our streets, our roofs, our walls. It’s crucial that we learn how best to live alongside them. As I write, rain pours outside my window on Wallumedegal land. I wonder where the wild things around me might be hiding.
We use animals, they use us. City living has a high death toll for urban wildlife, well-documented in daily sightings of roadkill, littered oceans, and possums frozen on powerlines. But some animals take advantage of urbanised landscapes: they don’t just survive the city, but flourish.Although yellow-tailed black cockatoos are declining in number, they frequent Sydney’s Centennial Park to forage for pine cones. In Circular Quay, seagulls beg for tourists’ chips — and they usually get what they want. I’ve seen rainbow lorikeets perched on a lone tree in the middle of a highway, settling in for a night surrounded by raging cars. This is surprisingly a safe haven, with the birds using noisy traffic as a protective barrier against other birds or predators. The lorikeets are left undisturbed in their refuge. City animals repurpose our infrastructure in bizarre ways, as shown in Picfair’s Urban Wildlife Photography Awards and the Urban Animals category of Australian Geographic’s Nature Photographer awards. A Hylaeus bee lays eggs in unused drill equipment. Tasmanian devils live beneath residential houses. Critically endangered woylies cluster around a campsite, eating discarded dinner crumbs.
The Animals are Adapting Synanthropes are species of wild animals or plants which live beside — and benefit from — human habitation. Rats, ants, pigeons, and possums are synanthropes found in cities across the world. New York-based artists Gal Nissim and Jessica Scott-Dutcher have created audio tours of New York parks which document synanthropes, giving tips for people to find urban animals. Syanthropes demonstrate the ability for animals to adapt to new conditions. Cities create new ecosystems, shifting species’ ecological functions as their predators, diseases, and access to food and shelter also change. Some animals adapt by making big changes to their behaviours, like crows who nest in Brisbane buildings instead of trees. Animals’ diets are adapting to city living — for example, researchers have spotted brush turkeys devouring roadkill. Brush turkeys usually eat an omnivorous mixture of grains and grubs, but in Manly, they’ve been eating bandicoot. Until recently, brush turkeys were becoming scarcer due to habitat loss and feral predators. In the past 20 years, they’ve become a common urban sight since they’ve figured out ways to benefit from suburban life.
Low writes that urban species are now inescapably reliant on human habitation: “Their fates are now bound to ours. If Homo sapiens packed up and left Australia some species might not survive into the future. This shows again the danger of assuming that ‘nature does not seek to make a connection with us’; that ‘nature does not care if we live or die’. Animals and plants do what they can to survive. If that means taking over a quarry or a dump, so be it. We should not judge this as ‘unnatural’. If we are surprised, it only shows that our picture of nature is faulty.”
The Urban Wilderness Animal conservation by Australian settler-colonial organisations often constructs the idea of the untamed wilderness, positioning animals as being out there, in an imaginary pure, untouched natural landscape far away from the city. A trip to Sydney’s Taronga Zoo creates an impression of escaping the city to glimpse where animals really live, and where conservation is really happening, in Sumatra or Tanzania or the remote Australian bush. But while visitors imagine the wilderness, non-captive urban animals wander around the zoo. They cleverly use human actions to provide for them. Brush turkeys snack on grapes dropped by children, lorikeets feed in human-planted trees, ibis bathe in artificial water features, and Eastern water dragons sunbathe on the hot concrete footpaths. While zoos traditionally emphasise the wilderness, Taronga is beginning to highlight urban wildlife, with keeper talks educating visitors on backyard birds and encouraging possumboxes. Wildlife is not overseas, nor in the outback, nor on a Blue Mountains weekend bush walk. And it’s certainly not confined to the enclosures of the zoo. Government policies for biodiversity conservation often focus on regenerating the lost wilderness: supposedly undisturbed habitats, protected areas, or large national parks fenced-off from people. Meanwhile, city habitats are in danger of being understood as a “lost cause” by the public. If city-dwellers are only aware of the conservation happening far away from them, they may not realise the importance of the urban ecosystems to which they contribute every day.
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Ziggy + Joseph at @ prvate51 opening, Sheffer Gallery Redfern, ShefferUntitled,@prvate51Warrangopening,GalleryRedfern, Warrang Right: Grace + Diaan in the Marrickville Bowlo Ladies’ room, Warrang PHOTOGRAPHER Stella Sunday FASHION30 31PULP
It’s fashion with substance: a meditation on the subconscious whilst eschewing rationalism to meld dreams and reality into what André Breton coined a “‘super-reality,’ or ‘surreality’” in Manifesto of Surrealism (1924). Surrealism in fashion is often considered “funny business” for its bizarre and avant-garde qualities — positing the body and material world in direct contact with the subconscious mind. Stemming from the 20th-century art movement, surrealist fashion emerged in the 1930s, situated between the two World Wars, as the byproduct of the disillusioned and directionless spirit of creatives in Paris within the post-war world. Artists such as Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and René Magritte sought to make thought-provoking works that surrounded the dismemberment, fragmentation, desecration, and eroticisation of reality. Through the medium of fashion, surrealism perverts and distorts the corporeal form directly, playing with textures and forms to explore existence in the fraught modern age. Nothing is what it seems, as a sense of discomfort and instability pervades. Do surreal times call for surreal fashion? Surrealism offers an offcenteredness that has seen a resurgence on the runway: ranging from an abundance of trompel'œil hysterics owing to Jonathan Anderson at Loewe for his melded dresses1 to seem as if they were swishing in the wind to Matthieu Blazer’s leather ‘denim jeans’2 at Bottega Veneta. However, it is Daniel Roseberry’s pioneering surrealist custodianship at Maison Schiaparelli (French for “House”; reserved for couturiers) that has catapulted surrealism back into relevancy in fashion lexicon. Although this may not have been what we’d envisioned for our Roaring Twenties, this influx in cerebral creativity further situates fashion as the mirror to the zeitgeist. This is exhibited in the cyclical nature of trends that capture the intrinsic wants of wearers — a continuous dialogue between inner and outer self-perception, a donned skin. It is with surrealism that we can understand a similarity between the post-war years and our post-pandemic reality, where constructing a surreality, like Dalí or Magritte, is perhaps escapism from the morbid state of the world.
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The Skeleton Dress (1938)4 — of black silk-crêpe and exaggerated trapunto quilting —epitomises the collaborative relationship between the two artists. Designed together for Schiaparelli’s 1938 collection Le Cirque, cotton wadding wasused to construct a three-dimensional illusion of a skeleton on a skintight tailored dress. Dalí provided sketches of a woman in a sheer dress with an exposed rib cage and hip bones. This distortion of Shoe hat, E. Schiaparelli in collaboration with S. Dali. ©Eric Emo/ Galliera/ RogerViolet, courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection
The Skeleton Dress, E. Schiaparelli in collaboration with S. DonatedDali.by Ruth Ford, 1938, courtesy of Paris Centre de Documentation de Costume Look 6, Loewe FW22, modelled by Kai Newma, photography by Filippo Fior courtesy of Vogue Runway Look 1, Loewe FW22, modelled by Kate McNamara, photography by Filippo Fior courtesy of Vogue Runway Bottega Veneta FW22, photography by Alessandro Lucioni courtesy of i-D
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Julien Levy, a prominent and influential art dealer and gallerist in surrealist works, deemed the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli to be the only successful fashion contributor to the surrealist canon, due in part to her many collaborations with surrealists Jean Cocteau and, famously, Dalí. In her collaborations with Dalí3, the partnership wanted to make “the fantastical real,” by engaging with the materiality and physicality of fashion that created new meanings and explorations into desires and sexuality.
With surrealism and fashion having first met in the period of uncertainty between the two world wars, in 2022, they came together again against a backdrop of conflicts and global crises. Delving into the commerciality of surrealist fashion, like those that would have worn the Skeleton Dress, it appeals to a wearer seeking an alternative. Indeed, perhaps the off-centredness may be a hard-sell for the masses, and some reservations would be made for wearability and functionality, but, with the latest slew of contemporary fashion surrealist contributors, they inject a vivaciousness that goes beyond the head-turning and awe. Extra-long skinny sleeves tugged on Slenderman attenuation and danced with hyperbole at The Row’s Resort 2023 collection5. Helmed by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, they presented to The Row’s clientele an alternative flavour to the elegant minimalism and sophistication that they are known for. The excessive and impractical long-sleeves that fall at the same length as a trench coat, marked with The Row’s eye-watering price points for luxury ready-to-wear, makes for the definitive choice of shirt for the contemporary leisure class. Oh, Thorstein Veblen, how you would’ve loved The Row.
Jonathan Anderson’s collections in the post-pandemic world are, as he remarked, “Neurotic, psychedelic, and completely hysterical.” Anderson echoes how the 20th-century surrealists found their footing in a post-war society, prioritising automatism, the art-making process of surrendering to the unconscious mind, as a method for creation. Case in point, his AW22 ready-towear collection6 balances his queer and playful sensibilities with the subversion of reality. A consistent motif from the collection was balloons, particularly as blownup bras with knots protruding as nipples7; their irrational displacement creating tension in the anticipation that they would pop at the slightest touch. Perhaps the most famous of contemporary designers leaning into a surrealist state of mind is Schiaparelli’s creative director, Daniel Roseberry. He strikes a glorious balance between intimately referencing the surrealist archives of the house’s founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, whilst infusing them with his own sensibilities to recontextualise them to the zeitgeist. Roseberry’s take on Elsa’s Skeleton Dress in his SS20 couture show8 featured the skeletal form constructed of embellishments that were applied against a black silk slip dress and sprawled beyond, down the arms and legs. With a mixture of textures, contemporary silhouette, and a more relaxed fit, this was merely a persuasive introduction to what was to come.
Roseberry’s hallmark contribution to the maison is his anatomical Midas touch; whether in his bijoux or ornamentation, the surrealist sensibility engages with the sensuality of the body. The gold “lung dress”9, worn notably by Bella Hadid on the Cannes 2021 red carpet, was created as a response to COVID-19 and its impact on respiratory systems. Roseberry donned Bella with a gilded and rhinestone encrusted lung chestplate that hung from a chunky chain necklace and over her exposed chest in the gapping décolleté of a black wool-crêpe dress, citing the juxtaposition of his continuous use of the decadent gold against the simple black is a modern foil “at the service of the wearer” that enables wearability. Like the “lung dress,” many of Roseberry’s couture creations for Schiaparelli edge on the balance between reality and surreality, describing the latter as “only meant to be photographed, things you can’t even sit down in… we live in a day where the image is so critical that there is a place for this kind of fashion.”
It is worthwhile to understand the insight fashion has as a response to current social and cultural events, and as we find ourselves amid countless global crises. Surrealism is the perfect remedy to the pervading desire for escapism — both then and now. To subvert the expected reality and turn it on its head through displacement and eroticisation keeps us on our toes, it’s a sign that our primal curiosities of the subconscious aren’t lost on us even in a world of sameness. Whether it’s disproportionate figures or deceptive imagery, an organ painted gold capillary by capillary, or balloons for bras, it’s this “funny business” that surrealism provides a playful way to respond to the chaotic world. In the current state of unending micro-trends and fastfashion, it’s what fashion does at its best; it provides optimism and a future of substance to what we wear.
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Look 8, JW Anderson FW22, photography by Juergen Teller courtesy of Vogue Runway Look 3, modelled by Tara van Eck, The Row Resort 2023 Collection, courtesy of The Row from Vogue Runway Look 16, Loewe FW22, modelled by Jeanne Cadieu, photography by Filippo Fior courtesy of Vogue Runway Look 39, Loewe FW22, modelled by Selena Forrest, photography by Filippo Fior courtesy of Vogue Runway Schiaparelli SS20, modelled by Sompa António, courtesy of Da Banda Model Management Schiaparelli SS20, modelled by Sompa António, courtesy of Da Banda Model Management proportions and body parts were a key proponent of Dalí’s surrealist paintings. The dress would cover the wearer from their toes to their fingertips and culminate into the all-consuming high neckline. The combination of humour, morbid edge, and wearability owing to smart construction, was an exercise in the commerciality of the surrealist object. It left only those most daring and appreciative to don a Schiaparelli creation.
PHOTOGRAPHER Muir McLennan MODEL Karen Leong MAKEUP Bonnie Huang STYLING Hannah Batchelor Muir I’mBonnieMcLennanHuangsubleasingmy friend’s room and I haven’t seen my housemates in 12 days 37PULP
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This photo series explores how living completely separate lives while in a sharehouse is an almost universal experience of entering adulthood. While characterised by fleeting interactions, misaligned schedules, communication by post-it notes on fridges, and a hint of loneliness, there is a sense of playfulness in these collective households. In exploring these intimate spaces, the innermost feelings of their residents are revealed: boredom, despair, vanity, and a little dress up.
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The explosion of crochet and knitwear within digital media and brand collections has enabled a new generation, especially young women, to engage with garment making on a tactile level. This sudden direction of curation has ignited a new conversation surrounding consuming and creating clothing — specifically how we may become more sustainable when confronted with the strenuous reality of garment making. While we indulge in practices of knitting, crocheting, and weaving, the significance of their cultural histories becomes increasingly prevalent, prompting us to reflect on the autonomy and individuality textiles have granted women and people of colour. Sustainability has become a common topic of discussion and people are growingly aware of the disturbing reality that is the fast fashion industry, which in turn may maintain the cultures that brought these practices to life. Within fast fashion discourse there is a concerning lack of a bigger picture. Our social awareness often only revolves around the spheres we occupy — as opposed to a holistic perspective that considers alternate parts of the world. Textile making, especially knitting and weaving, is deeply rooted within culture as practices pioneered by women. From weaving silk in West Bengal to cotton and wool mixes in Gujarat, Kente cloth from South Ghana, and woven bamboo in China, these traditional techniques were created
As internet trends and DIY culture continue to bleed amongst our phone screens, hobbies such as crocheting and knitting have begun to infiltrate the media we consume.
This infatuation with handmade clothing specifically started as pieces from British designers Hope Macaulay (Chunky Knitwear) and JW Anderson (Harry Styles Cardigan) erupted in popularity within apps like TikTok and Instagram.
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The explosion of handmade knitwear — this article’s referral to all practices mentioned — has prompted a new era of awareness surrounding sustainable practice. Yet there is still concern of whether this notion of mass-consumption should also concern materials, and whether there is a possible existence of ‘masscuration’. Can we really make too much? And how can we be conscious of the materials being used? The materials we utilise when we create are just as significant as the items we make. Although acrylic and polyester yarn is the cheapest on the market it is not biodegradable or recyclable, this in turn releases microfibres into the water supply when washed. There are many arguments for and against other yarns — cotton, wool, alpaca, and silk are all alternatives that have also been heavily criticised. Noting these complexities, it is important for us to engage in practices and materials that are the most accessibly sustainable to us. These natural materials and their paired practices, especially weaving, maintain great cultural significance to people from East Asia, South-East Asia, Europe, and the Indigenous people of the Americas. Yet the majority of the people exploited and enslaved by the fashion industry are, ironically, those who developed it. The integration of these items within Western trends and markets makes it simpler for people to overlook the cultures where these styles and practices originate from. As we begin to engage in these practices ourselves, we simultaneously engage in these cultures, allowing us to honour and maintain the history of making with our hands. Garment curation also holds importance to women, a historical gateway to liberation and survival. These practices are notable in the ways they prove the endurance of textile art as a form of expression. Our lack of appreciation for these practices is rooted in a lack of recognition of women’s work, and a perception of this work as invaluable compared to men’s. As we reignite with these practices we are able to acknowledge domestic labour as a critical part of a functioning economy. Knitting, crocheting, and weaving can be recognised as a beautiful art form where each loop, knot, stitch, and thread is embedded with cultural pride, hard work, and love. These rich cultural acts of garment making prove to be more significant than just a newly found trend or hobby; they are a possible gateway to a future much more concerned with sustainability. Yet we must be conscious of better alternatives and consistently aware that our actions are far more direct than they may seem. Engaging with these practices ourselves are not only fulfilling but ultimately enriching, as they allow our own cultures and histories to transcend and for us to be far more aware of the labour involved in garment production. It may not be possible for everyone to be completely ethical in all their purchases, or be expected to craft their own clothes, but we must rework our perception of garment making as cultural labour that should be recognised, validated, and honoured. A more sustainable future will not be paved with a chant of: there is no ethical consumption under-capitalism! It will be paved with direct action.
by women. However, in today’s fashion industry the women who founded these methods are also the group perpetually oppressed by the demand for their craft. As the trend of knitwear ignites people to engage with garment making, the laborious efforts it requires to design and craft clothing becomes far more evident to the individual.Withapractice such as crochet, which cannot be replicated by a machine and must be completely carried out by hand, its surge into peoples’ day to day life has confronted many with its rigorous demands — especially how underappreciated these practices must be in the fast fashion industry when brands such as Zara and H&M sell pieces for such small prices. As we begin to develop a greater understanding of the methods to curate garments and the ways in which we can be more sustainable, there may be a deeper appreciation for these practices we otherwise neglect to consider and hopefully a liberation for the women and young girls exploited by the fashion industry.
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“meet me in the tearoom” is a collection inspired by the clusterfuck of self reflective anxieties, bathroom language, male posture and conceptualisation of the male bathroom space. From mirrors to dick size, the collection looks to unpack the unspoken codes of the space.
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ashascollectingcountries.Stampexistedahobby since at least the first proper stamps were invented. In fact, the hobby actually predated the first real stamps. Apparently, John Bourke of Ireland “assembled a book of the existing embossed revenue stamps at the time,” some four decades before the Penny Black was issued. However, the distinguished title of first ‘official’ stamp collector goes to John Edward Grey, British zoologist, and purchaser of four Penny Black stamps on its first day of sale with the intent to collect them. Philately, the accepted term for the hobby, was invented later by Frenchman Georges Herpin — who was thus the first ‘philatelist’. This odd, slightly gross sounding, term is a combination of the Greek philo, meaning attraction, and ateleia, a word meaning exempt from taxation. And so, philately was born. Since then, thousands upon thousands of people have engaged with the hobby, with notable names including Franklin D. Roosevelt, who claimed that he “owe[d] [his] life to [his] hobbies,” especially stamp collecting.
A second factor may be the sense of achievement gained from possessing a collection of something: the slightly narcissistic pride of opening your stamp book and surveying not only the amount of stamps you have from all manner of different countries, but also the great feeling that comes with spending hours hunched over your desk to get them all in the right order. But that too isn’t quite Whilstit.both these things are appealing parts of the hobby, I don’t believe they are the attributes that make it particularly special or unique. One could collect pretty much anything — playing cards, matchbox cars, balls of fluff — and perhaps get some strange joy from organising and viewing their collection. But stamp collecting in particular possesses a unique kind of beauty. For a start, your stamp collection will be physically beautiful. Having a stamp collection is like your own micro-scale art gallery. Every stamp has a unique drawing, or painting, or slightly off-putting but nevertheless charming early-2000s piece of graphic design. There are the stamps from Papua New Guinea with vibrant, detailed, and crisp paintings of various masks worn by Indigenous peoples — set to lurid orange and blue backgrounds. There are the wonderfully pastel Iranian stamps commemorating the 1972 International Literacy Day. Your stamp collection could occupy you for hours in this way: noticing and admiring the little details, the hours of artistry poured by people from across the world into these delightful postage stamps. But that’s not all. Every stamp is a miniature time travel machine. Any stamp with a postmark on it has been sent, representing a letter from one person to another in an entirely different time and place. These are little pieces of history that are all but forgotten, perhaps fortunately tucked away in the form of old letters in someone’s attic, but more likely entirely lost to time. Why not flick through your collection for a while and use your imagination to fill the lost gaps. Build little stories around these stamps, and transport yourself in space and time — become a voyeur of the intimacy and mania of life throughHowever,time.every stamp also reveals a broader picture. As government-issued denominations, stamps always represent a particular context. They are clues to the big events of history — the threads of turmoil and tumult that categorise the last two centuries. They are excellent jumping-off points to learn about fascinating events in faraway places. Through a Nepalese stamp I learnt that Nepal once had a monarchy before being plunged into a civil war between Maoists and Royalists that lasted until 2006. A key turning point in the conflict was a horrific incident where the Nepalese Crown Prince turned a gun on his own family, killing nine others — including his father the King — before taking his own life. The event destroyed Nepalese faith in the monarchy and was instrumental in the path to a fragile peace and democracy.Somestamps even reveal philately scandals: a unique triangular stamp attributed to the Republik Maluku Selatan led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole detailing German scam artists’ attempt to fake stamps from a short-lived secessionist state in the Maluku province of Indonesia. The scammers attempted to produce and sell a set of unique stamps to collectors around the world. Whilst most ‘respected’ collections won’t trade these fake stamps, I think it’s yet another fascinating little piece of history. So flip through your stamp collection and pay attention — look for details of histories that you know nothing about. Use these details — perhaps as simple as the picture of a Yugoslavian monarch, or the unfortunate words “Afrique Equale Française” — to embark on a journey into the corners of history: the bits you might not have stumbled upon in school, or even university. You will be fascinated, amused, and even disgusted by what you find — but I guarantee you one thing: you will certainly not be bored.
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international stamps on eBay (they’re remarkably cheap) and spent hours reorganising my collection. It was a great way to spend my COVID isolation period. But how can a bunch of pieces of old paper be so enthralling? My first instinct is to identify the joy of categorisation. I was always that child — I spent hours upon hours reorganising my set of dinosaur cards into various orders: first taxonomical, then based on time period. I would sort coloured pencils and pens for fun. But whilst there is a certain mundane joy to be gained from reordering various things, I would like to think it is more than that.
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Stamp collecting is widely considered to be an exceptionally dull pastime, a hobby that is boring to enjoy and even more boring to hear about. Especially from that guy who thinks both it and he are super interesting, and that you really want to hear about his hundred different stamps with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second’s head on them.Tobe honest, since about September last year, I am probably that guy. But before you pigeonhole me, I ask for an opportunity to make my case. Stamp collecting is not boring — it is anything but. It’s a personal art gallery filled with compelling and fascinating graphic design, rivalling any museum in Australia (in miniature form). It’s a much-shunned kind of imaginative time travel, where every stamp is a capsule of forgotten history. It’s a jumping off point for discovering the little bits of history that form the tapestry of time. I may not be able to convince you, but I ask you politely to give stamp collecting a chance. Stamps — those little bits of paper that once upon a time, when letters were all the rage, allowed you to pay for postage — have a rich history. The British ‘Penny Black’, first issued in 1840, is widely considered the first true stamp. It’s a rather lacklustre design, featuring the profile of a young Queen Victoria on a black background, but represented a revolution in the universalisation and centralisation of postage. Within 20werestampsyears,being issued in 90
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Another notable name is my good friend Max, who so kindly donated his old stamp collection to me during the COVID-induced rut of semester two, 2021. At first, I was a little sceptical “isn’t stamp collecting boring?” I thought. But upon realising I had nothing better to do, I decided to give it a go. Within a week, a box of something like 600 stamps had arrived at my Brisbane flat, along with an old stamp next—wasthebook.IopenedboxandIhookedovertheweek or so I became a philatelist. I sorted the myriad stamps from a myriad of countries into messy little piles and categorised them into their countries and time periods. I was awed by the diversity of places represented: there were stamps in this collection from places like Cuba, South Africa, China, The Maldives — even Azerbaijan. I quickly realised that each stamp was a window into a very different time and place. There was a stamp issued by the French postal service in the Ottoman Empire, dating to a very different, pre-WWI world. There were stamps from now-defunct countries like Yugoslavia. There were Australian stamps with the image of the shortreigning King George VI on them. Within another week I had ordered a larger stamp book. The hobby is addictive: I have since ordered three lots of mixed
Huyghe transformed an abandoned ice-skating rink into an everevolving cybernetic ecosystem. The geography of this ecosystem was cultivated by a topographic intervention of the site with the cement floor, partially demolished to reveal the geological undercurrent of human architecture. Imagining a fictitious re-wilding of the site, Huyghe then introduced a pair of chimaera peacock, a colony of bees, and algae into the space. Upon visiting the site, arts writer Hettie Judah observed that within a mere four months, both peacocks had disappeared and the bees had retreated from the site due to the cold, while a number of wild pigeons had taken nest alongside opportunistic weeds spilling in from the outside world. After initially installing the ecosystem of After Alife Ahead, Huyghe did not interfere, effectively handing the ecosystem’s selfdetermination back to the forces of nature. After Alife Ahead also housed a complex cybernetic network of trans-species symbiosis, which profoundly enriched the entire ecosystem. This mutualistic system consisted of a number of aquariums (containing a sea snail, a Glo-Fish), medical incubators containing HeLa cancer cells, a series of motion sensors, and an augmented reality app. The combined data output of these organisms and technologies dictated the opening and closing of automated roof hatches. In turn, these roof hatches determined the entire ecosystem’s exposure to exterior elements: rain, light, wind, and exterior temperatures, affecting every ecological function from algae bloom to species introduction. Huyghe’s integration of this cybernetic feedback system demonstrates the possibility of interspecies co-habitation, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Arthur George Tansley (1871–1955). especially one mediated by emerging technologies. As Huyghe stated in an interview with Artnews, “There’s no master-slave” in this ecosystem, each organism is lent equal importance to the data algorithm manipulating their environment.Theecosystem of After Alife Ahead conceives a future worth considering, one in which the needs and desires of every organism are taken into account by humbled human stewards. A future in which emerging technologies could allow us to form beneficial relationships with non-human organisms. A future wherein we return to the flow of nature, lending it the knowledge and care of humankind while cultivating an abundant cybernetic co-existence for all forms of life. While Pierre Huyghe is concerned with a material application of cybernetic ecosystems, Ian Cheng is fascinated by just the opposite. Cheng’s Emissary Forks at Perfection (2015- 2016) imagines a far-future wherein an AI-being enlists a pack of mutant Shiba dogs to study a resurrected 21st century human in a hope that the timeless companionship between person and dog will reveal the human’s inner world. Cheng’s narrative takes place within a live-simulated, virtual ecosystem. Aesthetically, it appears as if we are watching someone play a video game though there is no human participation, the characters here are operated by a cast of unique artificial intelligences. These intelligent agents, like the organisms of our own world, act upon their needs and desires, vying with one another toward their individual goals.
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Unsettled by this unconscious apparition, Tansley sought the consult of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. During these sessions, Tansley became enwrapped by Freud’s idea that the human brain functioned as a machine – a network of electrical signals and responsive tissue which regulated the mind. Tansley saw a parallel to this in the natural world, a phenomena which he coined the ecosystem. He posited that the natural world, like Freud’s mechanical mind, was made up of regulatory feedback systems working toward ecological stability (the great universal law of equilibrium). While a revelatory concept for ecological science, this early conception of the ecosystem would come to haunt its very subject.Adam Curtis traces the consequences of Tansley’s subconscious anthropocentrism in his BBC documentary series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011). Tansley happened to exclude mankind from his equations, effectively overlooking the impact of humankind in the ecosystem’s ability to self-correct. The implication that nature would simply self-correct after sustaining damage, of human or natural causality, gave scientific licence to industrialists and colonists to ravage the earth’s natural systems throughout much of the 20th century. Fortunately, by the 1970s Tansley’s anthropocentric ecology began to unravel through an unlikely synthesis of hippie environmentalism and computer science. Mediated by a shared interest in mind-expanding LSD, the peace-and-love hippies of the countercultural movement and the systems engineers of the computational revolution would come to commune in a shared vision of a harmonious oneness between man, machine, and nature. This utopian vision came to be known as Cybernetics.Cybernetics is a systems science devised by Norbert Weiner in which the systems of the human world were integrated with Tansley’s systems of the ecosystem, producing an all-encompassing diagram of planetary-scale feedback systems. Cybernetics considers the cause and effect of all natural, human, and artificial relationships, compiling everything from culture to weather, to technology and geology into a comprehensive model of a universal ecosystem. This profoundly nonanthropocentric conception of our planet’s ecosystem has enriched ecological discourse and paved a theoretical road for interspecies cohabitation.Thoughstill only an emerging practice in societal planning and conservation, contemporary artists armed with Weiner’s cybernetic revelations have sought to propagate rich speculative futures of coexistence between human, nonhuman, and post-human organisms. Pierre Hugyghe’s installation, After Alife Ahead (2017) is pure cybernetic theory in practice.
Hosted on the videogame engine Unity, Cheng’s alien ecosystem plays out as a reflection of our own, shrinking the complex One night, in the mid-1920s, British botanist Arthur Tansley dreamt of murdering his wife.
Hauser & Wirth. 2017. Pierre Huyghe, After Alife Ahead, 2017. Cheng, Ian. 2015. Emissary Forks at Perfection (still). 2015-2016.
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cybernetic systems of ‘real life’ into a compact, highly-legible microcosm of interspecies relationships. This allows us to bear witness to chains of cause and effect equivalent in our own ecosystems, while also widening our narrative lens beyond anthropocentrism. Viewing Emissary, you may find yourself empathising with, rooting for or against certain canine agents as if it were an NRL match. This indirect, non-anthropocentric storytelling encourages an empathetic understanding of non-human consciousness. Like Huyghe, Cheng flattens the interspecies hierarchy and beckons us to find value in the animalistic behaviours and desires of theseAppliedAI-Shiba-dogs.toourmaterial existence, this cognitive rewiring has the potential to motivate and facilitate broader interspecies cohabitation. While illuminating our cognitive proximity to animals, Cheng also hints toward our proximity to artificial intelligences. The live and ‘living’ simulation of Emissary Forks at Perfection proposes the idea of a post-biological ecology, wherein forms of ‘life’ with cognitive and autonomous faculties may establish virtual ecosystems within technological infrastructure. With the widespread proliferation of algorithmic ecosystems and recent claims that a number of AI are developing toward low-level consciousness (Google’s chatbotgenerating system, LaMDA), the future of AI and VR are of increasing concern. Emissary Forks at Perfection speculates a dual future, one containing a rich world of post-human cohabitation and the other, embodied solely in virtual realities. Both possibilities beckon us toward a radical reappraisal of anthropocentrism and preconceived notions of ecology. Shane Carruth’s experimental film, Upstream Colour (2013) provides a unique imagining of the traumas and revelations we may face while transitioning to a nonanthropocentric society. Carruth constructs an allegorical interspecies network of psychological symbiosis facilitated by parasitic moth larvae. When consumed, the parasite induces its host into a psychotropic hive-mind shared between the larvae/moths, the primary human hosts, and secondary pig hosts. This shared consciousness robs its hosts of individuality and connects them to a shared cybernetic network of collective identity, memory, biology and sensory faculties. The overarching narrative of this film follows the affected human hosts as they become entangled in this interspecies web of influence and navigate the trauma of adjusting to their new psychological realities. Unlike Cheng and Huyghe’s established non-human ecosystems, Carruth speculates on the process of psychological upheaval necessary for such an interspecies ecosystem to exist. Upstream Colour is a a radically honest prediction of how psycho-ecological shift implies a difficult transition out of anthropocentric thought. The breakdown of interpersonal and interspecies hierarchies becomes both traumatising and profoundly enlightening. The film’s primary meta-textual reference is Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 novel (or manifesto), Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Thoreau’s text is a transcendental call to commune with the wild, to align the spirit of man with that of nature, in both a material and metaphysical sense. “Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?” Thoreau asked. “Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”. Carruth’s honest but hopeful vision of interspecies mutuality encourages the viewer to consider the transitional difficulties of establishing such a relationship while also speculating on the transcendental benefits of a psychological shift toward nonanthropocentrism.Thishandfulof contemporary works regale a powerful counterpoint to Tansley’s anthropocentric ecology. Through these artists’ application of cybernetic philosophy and technologies, we are offered the possibility of a future in which the integration of man, machine, and nature may allow us to establish a mutually beneficial global ecosystem. An ecosystem wherein the hierarchies of species are erased and all life is lent a powerful selfdetermination. An ecosystem wherein we may all share an intelligence with the earth.
Carruth, Shane. 2013. Upstream Color (still). 2017.
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Sonia Delaunay (born Sarah Eliverna Stern, Сара Еліверна Стерн), born to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, is a legendary figure in the French avant-garde scene and the first living female artist to be exhibited in the Louvre. Together with her husband, French painter Robert Delaunay, they created the Orphism art movement (also called Simultaneism), an artistic style noted for the use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her patchwork quilt made for her new-born son2 harnesses these modern stylistic qualities. She comments on the spontaneous creation that; "I had the idea of making…composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Ukrainian peasants.” The quilt layers earthy sharp tones broken up by warm pinks and oranges to create an image of rolling meadows and welcoming pastures. From a jumble of shapes woven together, we see a cultural maternal practice rejoicing in movement and relishing in contrast. Her use of art in fashion, especially in the dazzlingly colourful costumes for the Ballet Russes, further recall her childhood memories of Ukraine. Delaunay refers to the “pure” colour and bright costumes of Ukrainian peasant weddings. She lived a successful artistic career integrating furniture, fabrics, wall hangings and clothing into her art practice which extended until her death in 1979 aged 94.
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Ever since the Russo-Ukrainian war escalated, there has been a push to reclaim Ukrainian culture and heroes from the Russified past. The r*ssification of Eastern Europe has claimed cultures, icons, artists, musicians, and intellectuals as r*ssian. With the current invasion of Ukraine, r*ssia is fervent in destroying Ukrainian language and culture, claiming famous artists, such as Kazimir Malevich, as their own. However, this problem doesn’t stop there, other Ukrainian artists such as Sonia Delauney have been claimed by the West while Maria Prymachenko was voided as primitive due to her folk art motifs. There is a growing need to educate ourselves on this otherwise “mysterious east” and move on from the Chernobyl jokes. r*ssian aggression has spotlighted Ukraine to the whole world, and we need to break through this r*ssian shadow. In response to r*ssia’s invasion, there has been more active celebration of Ukrainian traditions, art, and language, particularly amongst younger people. Personally, I have spent my life inside a void of cultures. Am I too Australian to be Ukrainian or am I too Ukrainian to be Australian? The art world has become a sounding board for my identity, however, until the r*ssian invasion, no one even knew where and what Ukraine was. These artists broke the mould that I myself am trying to redefine. A big artistic inspiration for me has been Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (Казими́р Севери́нович Мале́вич), who is most famous for his pioneering work in the development of Suprematism, a non-objective abstract art aimed to explore concepts and formal elements of composition. He always seemed like some sort of an artistic genius, so far from my own context, until I found out our shared past. Malevich was born in Kyiv in 1879 - his parents; Polish father Seweryn and Ukrainian mother from Poltava, Ludwika. He identified as Ukrainian. Apart from his formal artistic education, he was heavily inspired by traditional Ukrainian culture and village life. Surrounding himself with master folk craftsman, Malevich delighted in the colourful geometric embroideries and sprawling painted walls which unfurled natural figures throughout the home. In his later life, Malevich taught at the Kyiv institute of Art, which at the time gained fame as the “Ukrainian Bauhaus”. Ukrainian expert on Malevich and art critic, Professor Dymytro Horbachev, points out that “the closest analogy to Suprematism [would be a combination of]: geometrical paintings of houses in Podolsk, wax-resist ‘pysanka’ eggs with Ukrainian patterns and magic code elements (fire, earth and water).” Malevich’s art also focused on the impact of Stalinism, subverting the use of peasant figures in Soviet propagandistic imagery on the Holodomor famine of 1932-33, a man-made famine on the Ukrainian people imposed by the Soviet Union. His pencil drawing1 known as “Where there’s a hammer and sickle, there is death and famine”, shows three eerie figures whose faces are replaced by the hammer and sickle, a cross and a coffin. Along with other Ukrainian artists and intellectuals, Malevich was a victim of Stalinism. The Kyiv art academy was ‘cleansed’ of “bourgeois intellectuals” and Malevich himself was arrested and tortured leading to various health issues which he later died of in 1935.
Maria Oksentiyivna Prymachenko (Марія Оксентіївна Примаченко) born 1908 in Kyiv is one of the most culturally rich and famous Ukrainian folk painters, who self-taught art by focusing on traditional craft methods and experiments. In a time where the Soviet Union quashed ‘lesser cultures’, Prymachenko flourished. Pablo Picasso even once said, after visiting a Prymachenko exhibition in Paris, “I bow down before the artistic miracle of this brilliant Ukrainian.” Her paintings are fantastical explosions of colour, almost psychedelic explorations of rural life in Ukraine — whimsical scenes of beasts wrapped up in vivacious movements of tight patterns. They are informed by a deep knowledge of a rich cultural tradition, yet are classified as naive art by the West. Though Prymachenko’s later paintings2 may at first glance read as outright silly, they follow her embroidery works in quietly affirming the singularity of Ukrainian culture and identity. She died in Ukraine in 1997, living long enough to see the fall of the Soviet Union which for so long suffocated Ukrainian culture. However, recently her works have blown up on the global stage due to their presumed destruction by the deliberate r*ssian shelling of the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum. 25 of her paintings were reportedly lost, yet local people were able to save at least 10 of her works from the fire.
A hidden world of Ukrainian culture continues to persist amidst and against the current r*ssian invasion; a whole community of contemporary Ukrainian artists, musicians, and writers who are struggling to keep our traditions alive. Malevich, Delaunay, and Prymachenko all broke the art world with their innovative views on what art can aspire to be through the lens of their Ukrainian upbringing. For this, we continue to be in awe of their work and celebrate their contributions, and for this we reclaim them as our own.
“There is a lot of room for improvement in this space for POC and LGBTQIA+ voices not only in the Sydney indie-rock scene but Australia wide,” she says.
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“The only requirement to be a riot grrrl is to be an intersectional feminist,” says TikTok creator @ riotmoms.
“I had a Black woman come up to me after a show and explain how refreshing it was to see another woman of colour playing a guitar and be loud and proud about it. I would be happy to be a BLAK voice for others like myself to pick up guitar, bass, or drums and start a rock band.”
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Creator @zazieinthemetro makes TikToks on “punk’s lost BIPOC history”, discussing the influential nature of artists like Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex on the riot grrrl sound. Riot ghoul has been adopted by gender-diverse creators who identify with the movement’s critique of misogyny but not with the label grrrl. From the virtual shores of TikTok to the underground spaces of Sydney, riot grrrl has evolved into something new. Courtney discusses the importance of representation and empowerment in this transformation process. “Hopefully the next generation of POC and LGBTQIA+ female identifying musicians can look at us and say, ‘Yeah The Buoys are the band that helped changed what an Australian female band should look like.’”
“It shouldn’t be a surprise that women can shred…the riot grrrl movement said, ‘we’ve always been here and we’re not going anywhere’,” says lead singer and rhythm guitarist Zoe Catterall from Sydney-based punk rock band The Buoys. They are making their mark in Australia’s indie rock scene, empowering female and gender-diverse voices through their music.The gender discrimination in the music industry that riot grrrl aimed to deconstruct continues to pervade the experiences of female and genderdiverse musicians in punk rock today. “We actually had a critique of our set once, where it was said — and we quote — ‘They could actually play their instruments,’” Zoe says. Despite its attempts at inclusivity, the riot grrrl movement largely focused on the experiences of white women and failed to empower intersectional voices. In her 2013 article ‘Why I Was Never a Riot Grrrl’, Laina Dawes discusses how white women created a movement with “little to no concern as to how ethnicity made my experiences as a woman different,” failing to address the systemic discrimination facing women of colour, and racism within the feminist movement. Where riot grrrl muffled the voices of women of colour and LGBTQIA+ people, the Sista Grrrl Riots magnified them. Forming in New York City in the late-90s, Sista Grrrl — Tamar-kali Brown, Simi Stone, Honeychild Coleman and Maya Sokora — played a plethora of soldout shows and provided a safe space to talk about injustices in the music industry whilst simultaneously calling attention to rock’s Black origins and challenging racist notions that punk rock was for white people. Reflecting on Sydney’s female indie-rock scene today, Courtney, the bassist of The Buoys, acknowledges that whilst it is “strong and welcoming”, it is “predominantly driven by white voices.”
It’s a Saturday night at the Petersham Bowling Club. Anticipation lingers in the air as the crowd, clad in leather jackets, indie band t-shirts, and laced Doc Martens, wait for Itchy and the Nits to perform. The venue is dark, cramped and quite literally underground — obscured from the view of the everyday patron. As the band takes the stage, there’s a roar of approval and a sea of women push to the front of the mosh. The band launches into their opener — a fun, garage-punk tune that evokes the opening theme to an early 2000s coming of age indie flick. Heads bop, feet stomp, and before we know it, we’re ensconced in a sweaty ocean of spilt drinks, wet floors, and bustling, bruised bodies. For Jacinta (bass), Eva (drums) and Bethany (guitar), playing music is not about being the best, despite the pressure placed on women to “prove themselves” due to decades of continuing sexism in the punk scene. “When we do shows, there’s usually a male sound guy, and some have been very condescending,” Bethany says. “If the amps aren’t working, they’re like ‘Are you sure your guitar’s on?’”From their DIY sound to ‘Kinderwhore’ aesthetic, Itchy and the Nits embody the energy of the ‘riot grrrl’: a movement that emerged in the early 90s in response to the sentiment among women that punk was becoming a ‘boy’s club’; anyone that was not a white cis man experienced discrimination at punk shows. The movement created a space for women to re-assert their place in music history. Distorted guitars, thrashing drums and a raging voice emulated the triple ‘r’ of grrrl, together with raw and visceral lyrics. The riot grrrl movement was an intellectual one as much as musical: characterised by political meetings, protests, and circulated through zine culture, it was a space for discourse on topics from female sexuality to classism, sexism, racism, and homophobia. Bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile fronted the movement at gigs, calling all girls to the front of the mosh and inviting people on stage to share experiences of sexual assault and harassment.
In a politically unstable world, riot grrrl’s anarchist mindset resonates with a disillusioned Gen Z. Thus, riot grrrl has been gaining popularity on TikTok, amassing over 144 million views. Rather than passively engaging in pseudonostalgia, creators are actively reimagining what riot grrrl is, critically deconstructing the movement and redefining it to embrace diversity. From digital zine-making to supporting neo-riot grrrl bands like VIAL and The Linda Lindas, the spirit of the riot grrrl lives on.
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Nearly three decades later, the originators are staking their claim to house music and the white background video once again. With recent releases such as Lolita Leopard’s ‘Crossover’ (2021) and Doechii’s ‘Persuasive’ (2022), queer Black artists are taking centre stage with a fiery vengeance. These music videos subvert the 90s house aesthetic, however, switching out the mundane apparel for leopard-print corsets and colourful lace front wigs. Instead of blending in, they represent a new conception of ‘realness’ that has emerged with the growing visibility of drag and ballroom in pop culture; queer people of colour must stay true to their roots. What’s more, high-resolution cameras have elevated the aesthetic of these videos: rather than hazy dream sequences, they now resemble high fashion catalogues, a stride towards a reality where queer fashion and art is championed.Thewhitebackground now becomes a space of boundless self-expression, echoing the words of legendary ballroom DJ Vjuan Allure: “We are not looking to mimic our straight counterparts or ‘fit in’ disguised as one of them. We are who we are; through the years, tears, fights, triumphs, and hardships, we remain better, stronger, and even more unapologetic.” House music’s spirit of struggle and resistance carries on, and it won’t stop until the white wall is burnt to the ground.
in ‘Supermodel (You Better Work)’ (1993). Though they were contending with high-budget, arthouse pop productions, these artists made do with what little they had, even if it was just some cheap shiny fabric and a plain white sheet. The starkness created a dreamlike fantasy, where Black queer people could don the clothes of runway models, business executives, and homeowners. Music videos became an escape from a world that forced queer people to stay underground, while embodying the concept of ‘realness’ within the queer ballroom scene where blending-in or ‘passing’ was seen as a valuable skill. Because society was hostile towards non-white, non-straight, or noncisgendered people, queer people had to learn to act and dress ‘normal’ to survive. Accordingly, these videos carefully observed the skill and fashion sense of the dominant white culture while subverting its heterosexual mandate.
Although these house records catapulted Black queer artists to moderate success, the story followed familiar patterns of exploitation, with big labels such as Trax Records failing to compensate their artists. The racism built into the industry meant it was almost always white people who took up power, enabling them to profit off the work of artists that were frequently queer people of colour. Adding insult to injury, white DJs increasingly attempted to replicate the success of Black DJs. It wasn’t long before house became primarily associated with Eurodance tracks by white producers, including eventual millennial favourites like Haddaway’s ‘What Is Love’ (1993) and September’s ‘Cry For You’ (2005). As straight, white audiences flocked to the gay clubs, the contributions of Black DJs to electronic music were slowly erased over time.
One video stuck with me, despite having only seen it once on the show: Frankie Knuckles’ ‘The Whistle Song’ (1991). It featured a predominantly Black cast of dancers in a void-like white room; walls, ceilings, and floors seamlessly blended together through the magic of uniform lighting. They were dressed as regular townsfolk: referees, dog trainers, crossing guards, yet looked so chic as they struck these feminine, angular poses. Years later, I would find out that this dreamy queer-coded suburbia was one of the most iconic gay house music videos of all time. If you traverse the dusty playlists of YouTube, you’ll encounter a trove of similar music videos shot in front of a white background. Though the trope is most commonly associated with garage rock and hip-hop/R&B videos — think: Jet’s ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ (2003) or MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’ (1990) — the white background was a mainstay of house music in the early 90s. Pioneered by Black queer artists in Chicago, these music videos set
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While my parents always finger-wagged at the forewarned ‘strong language’ and ‘adult themes,’ it was the glitzy choreography and very fruity costumes they should’ve been worried about. the standard for camp, showcasing elements of vogue, editorial fashion, and drag/ballroom culture. But to understand why these videos became such important artefacts of queer history, we must go back to the 70s, where house music began. House music got its name from ‘The Warehouse’ nightclub on Chicago’s south side. It opened in 1977 and was almost exclusively frequented by Black and Latino queer people. During that time, gay bars and clubs were one of the only safe havens from the police violence that ravaged the city. There was also a growing anti-Black and anti-queer “Disco Sucks” movement, culminating in the 1979 ‘Disco Demolition Night’ where white rioters burned and destroyed disco records by the box. Facing a shortage of new music but an abundance of old hits, Black DJs were forced to get creative. The “Godfather of House” Frankie Knuckles and other trailblazers found new ways to chop up and remix old records without needing expensive equipment. They combined disco’s hypnotic basslines and string orchestras with synths and drum machines to create an electrifying new sound that took the gay clubs by storm. Underground hits like Larry Heard’s ‘Can You Feel It’ (1988) and Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body’ (1986) flooded the dancefloors as people from all around took notice. The minute record labels caught wind of the genre’s rising popularity, they plucked artists from obscurity and signed deals to release their tracks commercially. For the first time, artists received a budget to promote their songs to mainstream audiences, and so, the white background house music video was born. ‘The Whistle Song’ was just the tip of this iceberg: between 1990 and 1993 the house scene exploded with all sorts of white background videos. CeCe Peniston stunned with her high kicks in ‘Finally’ (1991), Crystal Waters turned corporatewear into haute couture in ‘100% Pure Love’ (1991), and RuPaul graced the covers of fictitious magazines
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Watching late-night music videos on Rage as a kid was a huge part of my gay awakening.
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Despite modest commercial success and critical acclaim following the release of the album, American Football quickly disbanded. The album slowly but surely accumulated a cult following online, leading up to a reunion and two further albums — both also named American Football — released since 2016. But while American Football slept for 17 years, the houses-on-covers phenomenon didn’t. Among their contemporaries in the midwest and beyond, the band was well at home with other releases adorned by melancholic photos of houses big and small.
Friend, roommate, vocalist, and guitarist of resident emo band Virginia’s Basement Santana “Santi” Vigil agrees.
A Google Street View stroll through Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the 207th-largest metropolitan area in the USA, is extraordinarily boring. Clapboard houses — generously spaced out on large plots of land with rolling front lawns and tin mailboxes with little flags on them — create an inoffensive, low-density sprawl that stretches as far as the eye can see. 704 W High Street, three blocks from the main campus of the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign, is smaller than other houses on the street. A single window sits above the porch, perfectly centred beneath the home’s A-frame roof; the kind of house a kindergarten student might draw. The place is unremarkable to many, except for those who love midwest emo music.
A photo of 704 W High Street features on the cover of the eponymous 1999 debut album by midwest emo band American Football. American Football, one of — if not the — canonical text in midwest emo, is one of many reasons why houses are endemic to the subgenre which, as the name suggests, originates from the midwestern United States. The sound was effectively created in the mid-90s, when bands took the confessional lyricism of their emo rock forebears and traded intense, punk influences for a layered, unexpectedly melodic sensibility. The lyrics to almost every track on the album are sparse, trying to put the overthinking anguish of young adulthood into words. “Don’t leave home, again / If empathy takes energy / ‘Cause everyone feels just like you” vocalist and frontman Mike Kinsella whines on ‘Stay Home’. The marriage of twinkly guitar lines and lyrics about feeling sad that summer’s over with a dimly lit, low-angle cover photo that milks all possible edginess out of a boring looking house feels like a match made in heaven. “I think I remember having the film processed and looking at it a bit more than actually taking the photo,” said Chris Strong — photographer of the iconic cover and resident of the house at the time — when interviewed about it on Illinois Public Media’s The 21st Show in July 2020. However, he doesn’t remember what he was trying to achieve with the composition of the photo. Jessie Knoles, resident of the house from 2013–14, also told The 21st Show that visitors came by often, trying to pose and take photos on the same part of the pavement where Strong had stood 15 years earlier. “I’d be sitting on the porch and I’d kind of just sink down hoping to not be in their photos.”
listen to American Football / Sing along to Never Meant” Eddy Brewerton sings on ‘Carbis Bay’ off of Moose Blood’s debut release Moving Home (2013), on which a
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“Many of our days here are spent thinking and planning about shows… And we only want more and more of that,” he wrote on The Rose Club’s website. “I can also feel what it means to the people that are listening to these artists every day and love seeing them live. I know it means a lot to them, and I have no doubt that it makes their connection with the music even more profound,” O’Connor says. “It absolutely lights a fire in my heart to be a part of it.”
American Football is perhaps the best-defined example of the connection between houses and the music itself. One can imagine the overwrought anecdotes that pepper its tracks taking place in childhood bedrooms, in tear-soaked conversations sitting in cars, or over underaged drinking sessions in shady backyards. No doubt this fuelled stories told on couches before house shows, in a 50-strong crowd while waiting for the next song to start, or at the end of long nights into ringing ears.
Home is where t h e emo i s house sits at the end of a street. Meanwhile, a pug looms in the window of a dormer beneath a clear blue sky on Let’s Split Up (2019), a split EP by Ben Quad and Sweet Peach. And the list goes on. “These bands kind of operate in these houses. They play live shows in basements, they don’t play at bars. They play to their friends at home, and it just carries this really emotional meaning,” journalist Sean Neumann told The 21st Show
“Playing in a house has a more intimate feeling with fans directly in your face. While on stage, you feel like you’re towering over them,” he says. A number of acts have toured through O’Connor’s basement in recent weeks, including fellow midwest artists Heart to Gold, Oftener, and Your Arms Are My Cocoon to name a few. Planning and organising these shows has given O’Connor the full experience, from super fan, to performer, to promoter; from the cleanliness and comfort of the space, to blown out speaker cones and having to consider the financial viability of continuing to host shows.
“House shows provide a space and a platform for the artists to connect with their friends and fans in a very intimate setting,” O’Connor says.
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Today, communities still form around these kinds of places and the music that’s played in them, with The Rose Club on Stinson Street in St Paul, Minnesota being one such example.Occupying the basement of the sole house on the street that isn’t white, beige, or grey, The Rose Club is the venue — and residence — owned and operated by Evan “EOC” O’Connor and his roommates. O’Connor bought the duplex in early 2019 and, over the ensuing two years, accumulated more roommates and friends to jam with — fitting out the basement with lights and a stage in the process. In August 2021 they hosted their first show and have been hosting them frequently since April of this year.
“Even artists that have gone on to achieve more commercial success enjoy doing smaller, more intimate shows now and again. I believe that’s because we can agree that a large part of the beauty of music comes from sharing the emotions that come from making, performing, listening, and personally interpreting it.”
Live photos: Teagan Greene, Virginia’s Basement at The Rose Club American Football: Chris Strong Ben Quad, Let’s Split Up: Sweet The Hotelier, Home, Like Noplace Is There: Dreams of Field
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The Age Of Octeen, the 1996 album by fellow Champaign-Urbana emo band Braid, features the roofs of two houses against a darkened sky on the cover, with the bottom two-thirds of the image being cut off by a block of pale yellow. A young girl and two hooded figures wearing jeans and masks stand in front of a withered white house on Brand New’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (2006) in a photograph called ‘Untitled #44’ by photographer Nicholas Prior. The cover of Home, Like Noplace Is Here (2014) by The Hotelier, an acclaimed ‘emo revival’ album, features the title painted across the facade of a large pale blue house, replete with outdoor window shutters and a double garage. A cartoon house at night time consumes the cover of You Know What Sucks? Everything by Emo Side Project and another burns up-close on the cover of old gray’s slow burn (2016).“We’ll
Future, computerised, phone, scan, virtual, innovation, entrepreneur, tech — just scream these words at the audience and you’re suddenly new, you’re cool, your art is ‘digital’. You stare deep into the strobe and can’t help but feel as if you’ve become intertwined in some newage MKUltra project run by a hip millennial startup rather than the CIA. These psychological torture techniques are not used to make you do anything as cool as killing the president, instead filling your head with the idle politics of a late-twenties young creative.
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You walk into a cleared-out building and see some strange machine moving — in, up, outwards — what could this be? You become increasingly aware that this machine is, in fact, having sex with another machine in an alien, grotesque movement that denigrates any sort of actual feeling or idea about sex, art or…anything really. Peek into the next room for a second to see a projected video of the artist giving said machine a handjob. Maybe I just didn’t get it. Like some sort of hall of shame for artistic crimes, next door you find a series of panels explaining why NFTs are good. The accompanying artwork involves scanning QR codes — what everyone understands by now to be the most boring, tacky, uncreative application of digital art.
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A beer costs upwards of 10 dollars; you’re hearing the wrong type of metal make one hell of a racket; these people are freaks and you’re smelling smoke from somewhere, like always. Hobart is a beautiful city — it only happens to be under the cruel thumb of David Walsh.
Outside of Tasmania, Dark Mofo has become increasingly culturally present, as a supposedly countercultural music and arts festival: Scary Splendour, Foreboding Bluesfest, the so-called ‘festival Sydney wouldn’t allow’ thriving off the low bar Vivid sets. Any soul lucky enough to be visiting Hobart without ever hearing of Dark Mofo or its aforementioned puppet master won’t be able to make it out of the airport without enduring its psychic damage: unrelenting marketing — annoyingly self-aware — stalks you in and out of the island.
All ways of reaching the MONA Gallery fundamentally misunderstand public transport — it’s meant to be affordable. Let the yuppies get Ubers, I’m not paying 25 dollars for a short boat trip with some plastic animals, and the quasi-ironic ‘posh pit’ (the Ferry’s VIP area) just comes off a little on theI’mnose.stillclueless as to how Walsh swung so much of Sidney Nolan’s oeuvre. It’s the one and only thing I have to give to MONA — that and the actual structure of the building. Galleries typically try to seem pure, good and too few give the impression that what you’re about to see will be truly bad, truly diabolical. Soon find out that by “bad”, we’re not talking about Murdoch money orgies and nuclear bombs, we’re talking Die Antwoord and white guys with dreads.One exhibit, a supposed optical illusion, warranted a queue crawling around an entire room. Once I made it into the room I was left feeling punked again. The illusion, transparent to anyone with a 5-yearold’s understanding of reflections, either went completely over my head, or the idea of an infinite pool of oil was lost on someone who spends half their work day standing over a vat of it. If only instead there was some big sign that just the viewer could see, reading “Ha! Fucking got you, sucker!” — that could have been clever, funny and maybe even slightly interesting.BrettWhitely, a perfect encapsulation of MONA, champion of making a painting of a woman about his own dick, is prominent throughout the gallery. One presentation of “The Naked Studio” continues the gallery’s central theme of men ogling at women’s bodies in the most pretentious way imaginable. And phones. To navigate the gallery, which lacks any sort of identifying labels next to artworks, you must download the MONA app to see the title and creator of each work. Because that’s what people love to do at galleries in this brave new world, look at their phone, fiddle with WiFi, guide their way through a finicky app. At the risk of sounding a little tyrannical, if I had my way, David Walsh would be sitting at The Hague for this one. Outside, a large tent along the shoreline compels you to write down your deepest fears and place them at the feet of an enormous sculpture of an owl. Walking out of that dark mass sitting on the parliament lawns, I was left still wondering what it was I was meant to write. I wasn’t in Hobart anymore by the time the owl actually incinerated the thousands of pamphlets, and even flying away from the island at 500 kilometres an hour, I remained suspicious it was all just some elaborate data mining scheme. Where Dark Mofo felt tired, pretentiously pretentious and oppressively Melbournian, Hobart itself was fresh, beautiful and almost New Zealand-esque in the warmth of its cold. Every venue had a coat room and every pub had a fire or a damn good heater. The locals did their best to suppress the overwhelming rage I imagine they hold towards blow-ins like ourselves around this time every year.This festival is great at convincing you there could be more bad art than good in the world. MONA and the exhibits pervading Hobart were plagued by Gen-X losers, sex-obsessed perverts, NFTs and art about masturbation that thinks it isn’t. Enjoyed the Fat Car.
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One day, I’m going to find the mid-level Don-Draper-wannabe millennial advertising creative who pitched the idea of ‘using swear words’ and strangle them to death.
We all know correlation doesn’t imply causation, but the affiliation between catholic queers and theatrical vegetables is uncanny and discussion is well overdue. This is to say that nobody ever addresses the everlasting impact of VeggieTales, and I’m here to change this. The things I would do to be a fly on the wall, or rather, a fruit fly on a kitchen tile, during the pitch meeting for VeggieTales are frankly un-beetlievable.Some thirty years ago, Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, cofounders of Christian animation production company Big Idea Entertainment, created VeggieTales; a program where two sentient vegetal characters were to answer fan questions on their video blog through performances of biblical parables. This was originally conceived as the amicable adventures of pastoral candy bars conveying religious life lessons. However, Vischer’s wife is said to have feared it would promote the wrong message — not to mention, unhealthy eating habits — to their impressionable audience. So, the creators shifted the focus from the confectionery aisle to the produce section, retaining the shopping trolley full of Catholic chaos. The protagonists, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber, could have never predicted their fortune, but I sure could. A star was born at the checkout and it was the beginning of something great. Something more than half the ingredients of a Greek salad. Its debut in 1993 was simply ungodly. Some call it Season One, but I prefer to call it the New(-est) Testament. There’s something so magnificently anarchic about vegetables issuing advice through musical scripture sequences. Something much less magnificent, but much more anarchical, would be how much I wish I were them. But God could never grant me that miracle, so the only thing left to do was to watch the production of produce unfold on VHS at my Grandma’s house in Campbelltown. Devon sandwich in one hand and whatever colour Zooper Dooper was left in the other, I knelt in front of that TV for hours and felt myself be reborn. As I grew, so did the vegetables. There was no pesticide powerful enough to contain the VeggieTales multimedia universe. Bob and Larry spawned several feature films, an abundance of God-honouring appropriate merchandise and, not one but, two greatest hits soundtracks. The duo quickly expanded and recruited backup from the root vegetables and berry collective alike. Not a day goes by where Archibald Asparagus and Madame Blueberry fail to cross my mind. I give them up for lent every year. Forever snubbed for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Awards, the actual content of Vischer and Nawrocki’s produce productions blended together scripture and timeless films, a cocktail for Catholics. Titles of note include ‘Minnesota Cuke and the search for Noah’s umbrella,’ ‘Lord of the beans,’ ‘Gideon: Tuba Warrior’ and my personal favourite, ‘Moe and the Big Exit.’ Who spiked the holy wine for director Brian K. Roberts to reimagine the story of Moses into the tale of Moe, a cowboy cucumber, who leads enslaved peas to freedom. It’s so entirely unfathomable that the only way to avoid spiralling is to do slow breathing to the melody of the original soundtrack’s lead single, ‘A Mess Down in Egypt.’: “Chillin’ Kickin’ wearing silk jammies, learning hieroglyphics from his grandad Ramses.”
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Speaking of soundtracks, could we please normalise listening to VeggieTunes? With tracks such as ‘We are The Grapes of Wrath,’ ‘The Dance of the Cucumber’ and ‘The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo,’ surely it’s time to move bedroom pop into the kitchen. An honourable mention to ‘Pizza Angel,’ a sonic prodigy with absolutely unorthodox lyrics: “Tomato sauce and cheese so gooey, Pizza Angel I’m on my knees.” Not only does this imply cannibalism — and a failure to abstain from it — but perhaps most disturbingly, that cucumbers have limbs. Titles aside, more chaos unfolds across the VeggieTales discography and the dichotomy between albums ‘Boyz in the Sink,’ ‘Beauty and the Beet,’ ‘Celery Night Fever’ and ‘VeggieTales: 25 Favourite Sunday School Songs’. It’s a mess, but it’s my kitchen mess, and I’d scrub those tiles to the dulcet tones of tomatoes and turnips for forty days in the desert if they needed.Inthe streaming age, VeggieTales has rebranded, turning tomatoes rotten, both figuratively and literally. It’s disheartening and irreverent of its forebears. I blame realism, others blame Lucifer. Yet the legacy lives on, its flame burning like a paschal candle as children continue to sing ‘Silly Songs with Larry’. I may no longer be a Catholic in Campbelltown, in fact, I’m an atheist in the Inner West. But one thing will always remain — or three really. The unholy trinity: Bob the tomato, Larry the Cucumber and my devout love for VeggieTales. In the name of Bob, Larry, and the VeggieTales ensemble cast: Amen. courtesy of Big Idea Entertainment
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Winner of the 2022 Berlinale Golden Bear award, the film is named after Simón’s peach-growing home municipality of Alcarràs in Catalonia, the cast comprises only local, non-professional actors, imbuing the film with a credibility that would have been lost on a more artificial ensemble. Alcarràs focuses on the Solé family: rural farmers, compelled to surrender to modernisation’s demands.Thethreat of eviction — the film’s conceit — looms over all generations of the family. The elderly patriarch, Rogelio Solé, fails to adduce written evidence of an agreement between him and his wealthy Pinyol counterpart: a pact to reside on and farm their peach lands in return for sheltering the Pinyols during the Spanish Civil War. Sitting under an immense fig tree planted by the elders of the respective clans, Rogelio fails to comprehend how the death of the senior Pinyol should eradicate that promise — as the inheritors of his estate seek to destroy the peach trees and install a solar farm instead. It is an antiquated sentiment in a reliquary of spoken agreements; a benediction of blood and soil which in the absence of a written contract is rendered inane, inert,Whileempty.the plot wanes and occasionally confuses with its extensive ensemble cast, the cinematography arrests and dazzles. Youth is untethered in the film, as Simón depicts a generation whose inheritance slowly bleeds away beneath them, a microcosmic frame of the greater climate crisis. A shot of Rogelio’s grandson, Roger, running through a tunnel of green leaves in a blood-red basketball tank is striking — like a matador running from an unremitting bull, chasing a future which increasingly dissipates. His father, Quimet, has debilitating back pain from years of labour. A frame captures both his wife, Dolors, attending to his pains with remedial massage, and his infant daughter Iris watching on despondently in the mirror’s reflection. The generations combine into a gestalt of foreboding unease. A distinct lack of aerial shots over the landscape renders the camera earthbound. In its lack of sequential narrative and focus on disparate familial sub-plots, the film takes a concurrency redolent of documentary rather than fiction — Simón mobilising her local cast to humanise, rather than fictionalise, the issues which she represents. As the film reaches past two hours in length, the vacillation between the ensemble plots gives us the hope that this is simply a vignette of a family’s summer lives and not the death knell of their livelihoods. The sheer length of the film seems to be a clue that we will be rewarded with a favourable ending: a gift for enduring through a plot of devastating lows and exalted highs. The summer ends as the family feast on the last peaches and figs of the season, the final bounties of their land. Fig trees occupy a varied and florid place in cultural conception: ancient Greek fertility rituals involving fig tree branches, the euphemistic covering of nude figures with fig trees in marble sculpture, the biblical fig tree, cursed to be barren in the land of usurers, the mildly obscene manus obscena, or fig sign; Dutch Golden Age still-life paintings, with decaying figs symbolising the ephemerality of excess and ornament, Sylvia Plath’s tormenting fig tree which spoils with panicked indecision. We watch excavators and bulldozers plough through the peach fields. Simón takes the Solé-Pinyol fig tree to its inevitable conclusion.
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After an illustrious premiere circuit across Europe and North America, Carla Simón’s Alcarràs made its Australian debut at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
It is a prospect not unlike our own in Australia. Deregulation in the early 2000s has produced an effective Coles-Woolworths retail oligopoly today in produce sectors such as dairy, gouging independent farmers out of competitive pricing. This is compounded by the increasing, debilitating exigencies of drought, bushfire and flood losses as electricity costs climb exponentially at the whims of war and the pandemic. Post-federal election — and in an increasingly inflationary and monopolistic economic landscape — this tale of Mediterranean charm and provincial ennui hits a little too close to home. Whether a cautionary tale of laissez-faire supply chains, or a spotlight on potential victims of the transition to green energies, Alcarràs is likewise a film undecided between tradition and progression. As the young Iris recites back to her grandfather in a particularly moving, and bleak, scene: If the sun were a daily worker it wouldn’t rise so early. If the Marquis had to harvest we would have died of hunger. I don’t sing for my voice or the dawn or the new day, I sing for my friend who lost his life for me. The past slips away in what is ultimately a pyrrhic victory. The song is a wartime heirloom, passed from generations down. The meaning seems lost on Iris.
After an illustrious premiere circuit across Europe and North America, Carla Simón’s Alcarràs made its Australian debut at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
The ending is sudden. At first when it ended, I thought I had missed something. How could two hours capitulate so suddenly? And what do we make of such an ending? A warning of the threats green corporatism poses for regional producers? A depiction of how industry monopolisation not only suffocates small farmers, but asphyxiates? Where large producers have driven prices — and profit margins — so low that the young Pinyols and other independent farmers have no choice but to leave agriculture entirely?
Fruits of their Labour
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It is important to address that a lesson on intersectional feminism is significantly lacking in Mamma Mia. Intersectional feminism is often dubbed as the third wave of feminism, which caters for the diverse experiences of trans, people of colour, lesbian, working class, and non-binary people. Judith Butler in particular has spearheaded this movement, ultimately arguing that gender is a performance of social cues which creates the illusion of gender identity. In contrast, Mamma Mia is a film that is predominately straight, white and middle class, with little representation of women that fit outside these social bounds. Despite these feminist shortcomings, the film ultimately does more good than harm when it comes to feminist narratives. Upon watching, viewers can expect to feel empowered by the film’s positive depictions of female sexuality. he e m inif st movement PicturesUniversalofcourtesyStills
M a In an increasingly hostile global environment, where women’s rights are increasingly threatened, Phyllia Lloyd’s Mamma Mia (2008) is a 108 minute slice of feminist paradise. The contagiously zealous motion picture is a film made by women, for women. With producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson and editor Lesley Walker, alongside the female dominated cast featuring names such as Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, and Julie Walters, the film is not only a sparkle of Mediterranean magic, but also a textbook of feminist ideologies, strecthing from the 1800s until the present day.
Tanya additionally personifies feminist sexual liberation, inverting the conventional on-screen pairing of an older-man with a youngerwoman, by flirting with one of 20 year old Sophie’s friends, Pepper. In doing so, the film transforms ABBA’s condescendingly misogynistic tune ‘Does Your Mother Know’, which implies that women should not sleep around, into a chant of female empowerment.
This burden is felt no greater than by single mothers such as Donna, as she struggles to balance her duties with hotel management, her own wellbeing, and raising her daughter Sophie. Consequently, she laments in ‘Money Money Money’, about how life is easier for men who live without these domestic pressures. Whilst single mothers are left to deal with “this shit”, their previous partners are free to explore, start new families, or devote time to their careers, as exemplified by Bill, Sam and Harry respectively. As Donna says, “the winner takes it all,” and that winner is men. No Intersectionality?
Donna’s multiple sexual escapades, resulting in the doubtful paternity of her daughter Sophie, is paradigmatic of this feminist sexual revolution. This link between Donna and second wave feminism is furthered given that her sexual escapades likely occurred during the latter end of the 1970s. Furthermore, contrary to narratives perpetuated by other early 2000s films, Donna is not shamed by this past, and is instead fearlessly empowered by her best friends Rosie and Tanya.
Although these themes are present in all of Mamma Mia’s female characters, Donna in particular epitomises a complex female character. She is an honest, hardworking woman who single-handedly runs a hotel on the fictional island of Kalokairi, and has independently and successfully raised her daughter Sophie. Nonetheless, she additionally harbours real fears and weaknesses, such as that of Sophie growing up, as expressed in the wistful ballad ‘Slipping through my fingers’.
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Sexual Liberation
The film Mamma Mia is a masterclass in the creation of complex female characters. The female personae in Mamma Mia are fiercely independent, vested with significant agency that allows them to play a central and decisive role in the film. This is in stark contrast to other female filmic tropes such as the damsel in distress. Rather, the characters reflect ideologies central to the early feminist movement, which through texts such as A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollenstencroft, contested the idea that women are intrinsically weaker than men, instead positing that their oppression is the result of socialWhilstconditions.thetrope of a strong female character runs the risk of creating characterstrongwomenunidimensionalwithlittledevelopmentor realistic flaws, Mamma Mia skilfully avoids this by creating personae with sophisticated desires. Consequently, the film reflects elements of third wave feminism, which fought against “homogenizing” women, advocating instead for their diverse experiences.
The feel-good quality of Mamma Mia is additionally spurred by its sexual liberation. This harkens back to the sexal liberation movement of the 60s and 70s. During this era, rather than acting as subordinate sexual agents, present solely for the purpose of procreation or male pleasure, women were encouraged to grasp sex and sexuality with their own two hands as part of a physical and psychological revolution against sexual oppression. In particular, writers such as Germaine Greer argued that this sexual oppression existed as a result of the nuclear family, rendering them “eunuchs” (castrated men). Consequently, sexual liberation was viewed as central to a wider female emancipation. Further spurring this newly empowering promiscuity were medical developments such as the contraceptive pill, which granted women newfound agency and bodily autonomy with their sexual relationships.
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Single Mothers However, as much as Mamma Mia constructs an image of a feminist fantasy land, it also draws attention to very real issues faced by 21st century women. Notably, it highlights how modern women continue to bear the brunt of domestic labour and childcare. Although the modern woman may integrate fairly seamlessly into the workforce, at home she is still dealt the majority of household labour, a result of the lingering social narratives of women as homemakers and childcarers. Consequently, women are given a double burden of work, curtailing their economic empowerment, given that each minute spent on housework is a minute lost on career progression.
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You’ve heard of gorpcore, you’ve heard of dystopia-core – now, get ready for survival-core. With impending doom on the horizon, it’s good to look your best while the world feels its worst. DRIZABONE JACKET Straggling for supplies amidst a dusty outback landscape, or shielding yourself from clouds of acid rain? Look no further than an old drizabone jacket. Brown, leathery, sustainable and vintage, this coat will protect you from both the elements and the fashion police.
Eagle Boys is BACK and craves a SLICE of the NFT pie! For only 400ETH, you too can enjoy the satisfying experience of eating pizza without the hassle of tasting and digesting the food, burning your tongue, or cleaning up after yourself. For an additional 200ETH you can savour a STREAMING side of garlic bread and a 750mL bottle of Coke. Use the discount code below for 50% off your transaction fees: Every morning I wake up with an insatiable craving for Nickelodeon slime. Oh, how I yearn to rub that Emerald Cream all over my body. I want to rub the green ooze all over my skin, and let it seep into my pores. I would deepthroat my hands. I would suck from my knuckle all the way to my fingertips. I would make sure every inch of Nickelodeon slime had entered my throat and made its way down my esophagus.
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Dear Peël Editoriäl Team, Ëven thoügh this ïs yoür first issue, I would like to express my ütmost dïsappoïntment. Cleärly, for a gröüp of ärt students, you have no respect for the fündämëntäls of the English language and what makes for proper grammar. Nowhere in sight are there any umlauts! Umlauts are absolutely necessary if you are to separate yourself from the other content sludge that floods the hallowed halls of this Uni. If this wasn’t bad enough, there are no trémas, mācrōns, nor dîacrîtîc. Not a single döt, squigglę or līnē. Nõ tilde, nor çedilla. No ring nor bollė nør sølidus nør virgule. And no àććèntś, be it áćúté, cîrcûmflêx or gràvè in nature. Thïš cãṉŋøṯ śtæṉd, ånḏ I fęār ä cõûršė còrṟëçtįoŋ îs nècéśśàrÿ, lëšt yë fãčę thé wṟæth of thē Êṉglïśh nèrdš ön cãmpûß. Yòüṟś šîŋçęrlÿ, Å čœṉćêṟnėd rēâdęr.
GEMINI Avoid mirrors this month, any attempt at self reflection may result in danger and CANCERapperceptionTHE CRAB KING DEMANDETH SACRIFICES, BRING ME YOUR BODIES LEO The stars predict that you will find abundant riches, just as long as you don’t read the rest of this sentence. Oh no, too bad. Looks like you missed out on the abundant riches :( VIRGO Do not listen to any fucking useless horoscopes that have been stupidly and idioticly redacted this month. LIBRA You will come across a very accurate horoscope prediction this month. Lend credence to all of its insights.
GAS MASKS Let’s face it, face masks are so last lockdown, and this pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon. On top of this, we are noting the impending nuclear war with Russia in our calendars smack bang in Fall Season. The air is becoming harder to breathe, and I, for one, am tired of the way disposable masks smudge my makeup. Why not accessorise your jacket and protect yourself while doing it? Added bonuses are shit-talking customers to their face, and spicing things up in the bedroom with the trunklike hose. That is, if you happen to find love in the apocalypse. STILTS Stilettos are getting higher and higher. Let’s skip all the BS and just walk around on stilts. If the floods have taught us anything, it’s that people need to be able to walk when the waters rise up to our roofs. I say we start using stilts now, that way buildings and infrastructure will have to accommodate our new collective height, and we can tell the clowns in parliament there’s a new circus in town.
The Daily Peel ARIES The following month will prove useful for any creative endeavours you set your mind to. But it will prove useless for any attempt to become motivated to work on these creative endeavours. TAURUS This month proves fruitful for harvest. The organisms growing in the glass of water you left beside your bed will soon show signs of life. Keep it by the window and let it soak in the sun’s rays.
APOTHECARY] HORRIBLE HOROSCOPES LETTER TO EDITORSTHE OH NO! PULP SEEMS TO HAVE FALLEN FOR AN EMAIL
Good news is that Mel Gibson has business tips that can get making millions!
SCAM
you
What is The Peel? Why should you care? For many, the peel is a mere inconvenience, preventing someone from accessing the juicy nectar of a delicious fruit. It is something to be rid of, to discard. In comedy, the banana peel causes mayhem and disruption when slipped on. Peel can also be an action - “to peel” - meaning it can be both used to describe the thing itself, and the thing used to remove it. For us, we do not look down on the peel, no matter how slippery or rotten it is. In fact, we embrace it. At The Peel, we will strive to provide you with the absolute height of mediocrity, and will advocate for doing the bare minimum in any situation. The Peel demands to be discarded, thrown away, tossed aside and stepped on. The Peel will be an inconvenience, a mere barrier between one section of the magazine and the next. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You read further than any of us ever would.
1DOWNThe800m has two 2 Texter’s way of getting something off their chest 3 Enter 4 Hawaiian dances which usually have six steps 5 Naval vessel used in Ancient Greece and Rome, known for having three banks of 41- Down 6 An especially advanced class for STEM students 7 Unhappy 8 Beam, e.g. 9 Carve a sketch, say 10 Important organs 11 Rousseau’s treatise on the value of education, which he described as his most important work 12 Drinks 14 Purveyor of reds and whites 16 Flow restrictor 18 Dispose (of) 21 Argument 22 Male reporters 24 Recording artist, hinted at by 66-Across 25 Political assistant 26 Was a fan? 29 Name of an Emirate, Sultanate, and Kingdom which preceded modern Saudi Arabia 31 Data 32 One type of 1- Across 33 Rule that might be social or peremptory 34 Red rock? 35 Concludes 56 __ Bubba 60 Crack house of old 62 What might come before shoes or socks 63 Bump into 64 Yearly 65 One who lives in the country with constitutional capital Sana’a and disputed capital Aden 66 These come after long days 38 Scarfed 41 Paddle shifters? 43 Kabul currency 45 Current 47 Tale 48 Lahore currency 49 Disbelieving father of Cassandra and husband of Queen Hecuba 51 Cacophony 52 Seeking relief from 54 Unadulterated 57 “Hmm” 58 Model that might miraculously be found in a bottle? 59 The NRL and the ARU, for example 61 Head spy in Australia and the USA: Abbr. 62 Criticise THE GOLDEN COMPASS 71ACROSSLampsDirector, hinted at by 47- Down 13 Nice partners 14 1939-1945, for much of the world 15 Author, hinted at by 1- Across 16 Style of learning characterised by textbooks and focused on the teacher 17 Sound system for a sailor 18 Nominated (for) 19 Outline at a crime scene 20 Eroded material 23 _ Mandarins, a novel by Simone de Beauvoir 24 Vociferous gift? 27 It is to great as its reverse is to bright 28 Tail (someone) 30 Type of flowers 32 Actress who portrayed Katniss Everdeen 36 Famous garden 37 Docks 39 Author, hinted at by this clue’s relationship to 36- Across 40 Recently discovered 42 Really big city in Spain 44 Promise 45 Whistleblower 46 Albanese, Morrison, eg. 47 Thesis in Stage 5 50 Law student’s complaint 53 Paint thinner, colloquially 55 One that might pout CAPTION CONTEST “Gargoyle Gab” by Shania O’Brien | Submit your caption to pulp@usu.edu.auVaughanRileybyCrossword PUZZLES PULP
JUICEORANGEGRANDMA’SYOURNOT FEATURING THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF TYLER DANE MirandaWINCOPriestly’s 3rd assistant @tylertillerdane(uncredited) RILEY OwnerVAUGHANofa shattered Gromit mug @rileyjvaughan STELLAAvidZIKOSmusic and tea lover, residing on Bidjigal and Gadigal land @stel.z15 ESTELLE YOON A STELLASOLOMIYA@estelleyooncurrentlyphotographerKorean-Australianandactor,basedinSydneySYWAKScaredofthestainingpowersofbeetroot@miya.sywakSUNDAYPhotographerandartistcurrentlystudyingonuncededGadigalLand@i_do_not_want_what_i_h4vnt_got HUW BRADSHAW In a weird way, I’m just like Anthony Bourdain @childsouljaboy SAMUELAvidGARRETTcampus explorer and former editor of Honi Soit @_samuelgarrett EMILY AspiringHENDERSONtree-hugger and writer working on Gadigal and Wallumedegal @emilyk_hendoland MUIR MCLENNANScottish-born media student and photographer working on Gadigal and Dharug land @muirmclennan MAE MILNEBigfan of IKEA, living on Wangal land @mae_milne ANJA CLAUSIUSCrocheter, knitter and design student working on Gadigal land @anjas.studio ANTHONY-JAMES KANAAN Arts/Law student with a passion for bread @anthony.j.k LUKE MESTEROVICVicePresident of Greek Society. Please send money, cash preferred @the_mezziah GRACEThirdLAGANyear Economics/Law student @graceheatherlagan DEAUNDREBroodingESPEJOqueerdo from Western Sydney and former editor of Honi Soit @des_pejo AIDAN ELWIG POLLOCK History nerd but not in a gross way @marcell_tiong JAKE STARRArtistand writer residing on Gadigal land. Their work considers the evolutionary implications of emergent technological super-structures @j.starr.io GEN RIPARDAspiring future real housewifeSIMRAN@gen_ripardPAREKHShe’sa10but she’s a chess addict and you’ll never catch her without red lipstick so she’s a 13 @simwalkedaway KAT PORRITT-FRASERAwriter,musician and full-time hopeless romantic working on Wangal land @katfrancismusic BRENDANFashionPLUMMERdesigner on Gadigal land specialising in print and conceptual fashion SHANIA@brendan__plummerdesignO’BRIENThinkingaboutdesperatehousewivesatanygivenmoment@shaniaobrienn
