CATALYST: 'FUTURE TENSE', Issue 3, Volume 78 by Catalyst Magazine

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FUTURE TENSE Time, like love, is the most incomprehensible element to human existence. We have all this time, in seconds and years and moments and glimpses, that we do simultaneously nothing and everything with it. We romanticise the past and surrender to nostalgia. We project our feelings into the future and war with woe and hope. ‘Future Tense’ is about us, the most futuristic generation, with our Face ID’s and dying climates, and our afflictions between past and present. It’s nostalgia. It’s hope. It’s cyberpunk. It’s retrofuturism.

It’s the question we must ask ourselves, is it better to live in the past, present or future? The answer? Time will tell. Love, The Editors

contents 1 2 3 8

9 11 13 17 21 23 25 27 31 33 35 39 41 43 45

A Letter The Timelessness of Minecraft The Demise of Disco Fashion Forecast: Recycling Trends, Upcycling Clothes and Timeless Wardrobes Spent Liminal Spaces: Dreamscapes of Our Nostalgic Loneliness Photographs, moments of frozen time Why Film Photography is Making a Comeback Star Wars: A Revolutionary Legacy Raphael fiction Nuance? Never Heard of Her: Adventures in Techno-orientalism End of the World story Bloom The Gap With Me in the Past California Dreamers Annie Hamilton The Sunsets are Spectacular Calendar

Contributions. Catalyst Issue 3 2022 Established in 1944 Cover art by: Tessa Remsu Contact catalyst@rmit.edu.au RMIT Media Collective, RMIT City Campus, Building 12, Level 3, Room 97 Printer Printgraphics Pty Ltd 14 Hardner Road, Mount Waverley, Victoria 3149 Australia Photographers: Erina Hoque Shriya Sudarsan Rao Jonah Epstein

Editors: Beatrice Madamba Savannah Selimi Vivian Dobbie-Glazier Designers: Brianna Simonsen Cherry Lin Vivian Dobbie-Glazier News Officers: Mia Gregor Rafael Gerster Entertainment Officers: Sienna Taylor-Gibson Ruby Box Olivia Hough Ruby Edwards Culture Officers: Stella Thomson Nishtha Sharma

Editorial Committee: Jasper Riley Juliette Salom Stella Thomson Mia Gregor Sienna Taylor-Gibson Julianna Rajkowski Jean Wenjing Zhang Claudia Weiskopf Rafael Gerster Daniel Car Ruby Edwards Zoe Perks Alyssa Forato India Curtain Jonah Epstein Creative Writing Officers: Juliette Salom Claudia Weiskopf Julianna Rajkowski Zoe Perks

Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past, present and future. Catalyst and RMIT University Student Union also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where it contacts its business.

• • • •

Coffee shops & eateries Live music & entertainment venues Professional & health services Supplies & groceries A unique and affordable shopping strip, just around the corner from the Brunswick campus.

Melbourne CBD commuters can catch the Upfield train from the city, the No.19 tram or use the Upfield Bike Path.

sydneyroad.com.au @sydneyroadbrunswick

Jamie Miller

Dear Future Jim, (hello) I hope this letter finds you well. (It doesn’t) It’s me (yes you), your past self! (yes me) What is life like in 2022? (bad) Don’t tell me (I won’t), I want the surprise! (foolish) So long as it beats this dreadful 2017. (optimistic) I am 15 (I am 20), and yet I feel very mature (holy shit i’m 20). In honesty, I write under false pretences. (two-zero) For some reason, I am only compelled to write in times of sadness. (I wish I wrote when I was happy) I wish I’d write when I am happy too, but alas. I just watched Justice League in the theatres, (haha) and it is most definitely the worst movie I’ve ever seen. (and will ever see) I wonder if we will be sick of superhero movies in 5 years? (some things never change) Watching it, I did feel nostalgic for my youth. (YOUTH!) I remember being young, watching the Justice League cartoon in 4:3. I remember that summer, we went to Movie World on the Gold Coast. I remember it well, wearing my ill-fitting and off-colour Batman shirt. I remember it all too well. I hope you remember too. (for what are we without memory: I don’t know, for I don’t remember).

Future Tense

Ava Rossi

Minecraft is a game I’ve been playing since my childhood. I’m pretty sure the first time I downloaded it was in 2012 on my Mum’s Samsung Galaxy. I remember it being this neon green world where I could cut down trees, dig up dirt, craft tools and build houses. As an only child who didn’t have much company it was something I could immerse myself in for hours that felt like minutes. When I was lucky in the holidays, I would get to stay up late and play on servers with my cousins. On Friday afternoons in grade 6 we’d often get free time, and everyone would run to grab an iPad and launch the game so we could all jump back into our shared worlds. When I moved to an all-girls high school, I let go of the game for a while because I found myself ashamed that it was “childish”. It wasn’t until my later teen years that I picked the game up again and found a new love for it. Since then, I’ve played on many different realms with different groups of people, especially over the lockdowns of the past two years.

simplistic and boring, there is much potential for the player to build and craft all kinds of things. It has unlimitled potential for imagination and wonder, especially with the addition of new biomes, creatures, blocks and objects over the years. Creators have even made servers anyone can access from all over the world, the most wellknown being Hypixel where you can play a variety of different mini games with friends and strangers. The soundtrack to the game only deepens the experience, with tracks such as Sweden and Wet Hands iconic for the sudden peacefulness they bring, but most notably the nostalgia of hearing them, transporting any player back to their childhood. I think Minecraft has become even more sentimental for me over the past two years when I started playing much more of it with my friends during lockdowns. For us it was a way we could virtually spend time together whenever we wanted to, an escape from the confines of our homes, often late at night into the early hours of the morning. Playing the game at that time of the day felt so special because the rest of the world was silent, and it was only us in this limitless world. In those hours of the night, you forget about all your worries and responsibilities. It’s a chance to feel like your younger self was 10 years ago when you won your first Ender dragon fight.

Many of the conversations I have about Minecraft are in regards to how iconic the game is. While some people don’t spend much of their time playing video games anymore, they will often note how they’ll always come back to Minecraft because of its timeless nature. I think it comes down to a few different things. While the game is completely formed by blocks, giving the impression that it’s

Minecraft T h e

Issue 03

T i m e l e s s n e s s 2

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It’s the 70s. A spiraling disco ball sprinkles iridescent sparkles around the club. Deep intoxication abounds, people spill into each other with sexy dance moves created the night before. A recklessness hypnotises the youth; defiance rages as men’s hair grows longer and women’s skirts get shorter. People are out. Proud. Unique and expressive in silky materials, gold chains and big, bouncy hair. Disco is burning up.

is m e D

Musically an amalgamation of Motown, funk and soul, disco created a ‘night fever’ so magnanimously influential, it would transform the way we dance, party, and listen to music forever. Although Donna Summer doesn’t cloud the dance floor anymore, the influence of disco is still illuminated in today’s music and at your mates themed 21st. More than a costume or nostalgic dance genre, disco originally sprouted as an umbrella term for the growing avantgarde communities of Black, Latino and queer folks who came together to put on their platform boots and boogie – anywhere, at any time. After the 1969 Stonewall Riots and years of sociopolitical unrest, nightclubs like Paradise Garage and Studio 54 became havens for euphoria and queerness – the power of dance both prevailed and healed. But disco didn’t just find a home in gritty nightclubs. I learnt in writing this article that in public parks, nightlifers would hack into streetlamps to plug in speakers and DJ decks, lighting up the night with groovy bangers and lit cigarettes. It was a funky movement reigned by the funky people who sparked it — until it wasn’t. Disco first fell into the mainstream following the success of Saturday Night Fever (1977).

Future Tense

se of

Savannah Selimi

D c is

The film was inspired by an article by British journalist Nik Cohn, which detailed New York City’s disco scene, but was later found to be a fabricated tale (which you can tell, considering the film depicts the scene as dominated by racist and homophobic white characters). The film was soundtracked by names like the Bee Gees and Kool & The Gang and quickly soared the charts, prompting more artists to ditch the punk and folky sounds of the Seventies for disco rhythms. Bands like Earth, Wind & Fire and ABBA began to dominate the radio, pushing the past of popular punk-rock to the side. Disco was the new thing, and it was everywhere, alongside the rise of feminism and civil rights at the centre of pop culture. In order to keep up with the times and make a profit, radio stations ditched the playlists of Led Zeppelin and Bowie and succumbed to the disco wave. It became increasingly ubiquitous and inescapable; in every club, on every radio station, in every rollerskating rink and every retail setting. Naturally as a result, anti-disco sentiment began to grow. The demise of disco was led by DJ and radio presenter Steve Dahl, a white man with too many unsolicited opinions. Firing Dahl’s tirade for the genre and culture, he had allegedly lost his job presenting the morning show for WDAI Chicago, as the station decided to switch from rock to disco. Presenting for a different station, Dahl continuously made fun of disco, cutting songs short with an explosion sound effect; destroying records at anti-disco rallies; and even making membership cards that proclaimed the words ‘kill disco’. This grew antidisco sentiment enormously, and it had yet to become worse.

Issue 03

The night was July 12, 1979 – a baseball match between the White Sox and Detroit Tigers. On his radio show, Dahl had promoted the ‘disco demolition night’, where anyone who brought a disco record to burn would get into the stadium at a discount of 98 cents. 59,000 people had swarmed the crowd that day, led by Dahl in a military uniform swerving a Jeep onto the playing field and chanting ‘disco sucks!’ (a term which back then held homophobic connotations). The protest had blown up, as the crowd threw records into a massive blaze that ruined the field. The baseball match had to be forfeited. Within just weeks, disco had fallen from the charts on which it dominated. Even in the Bee Gee’s 2020 documentary, an entire portion of the film is dedicated to their publicised struggle in picking up after disco’s demise. As swiftly as it had arrived, disco had exited the dance floor. You can’t dissect disco’s demise without acknowledging the anti-Black, anti-Latino and anti-gay overtones. Disco brought an abundance of spaces for people from varying backgrounds and experiences to unite and boogie and was even fronted by an androgynous Black man and the ‘Queen of Disco’, Sylvester. It was a movement solely about music and hedonism at a time of social, economic, and political turmoil, and its resonance to marginalised groups and subcultures fueled the rage of its haters. In 1979, Rolling Stone journalist Dave Marsh wrote that Dahl and his audience of predominantly white men, were most likely to see disco as the successful product of queer, Black and Latino folks, and that therefore, ‘they’re most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist.’

Future Tense

It’s important to realise that disco never actually disappeared. Even if it took a hiatus from the mainstream momentarily, it would then be revived again and again over decades. We hear remnants of the genre from Dua Lipa to Parcels. Crowds still flood the D-floor with dance moves to forget the world for a night. The revival of flare pants and shag hairdos. The glimmery aesthetics used by Silk Sonic and Doja Cat – the list goes on.

Disco never burnt out or took a back seat, it simply learnt to live, exist and inspire in the inferno. 5

Savannah Selimi

Issue 03

Lauren Facci

90s to 00s fashion that occurred 20 years ago. It’s a nice mix of styles, and celebrities and influencers can often be seen switching it up between the two decades.

Alyssa Foraato

Another way that old clothes and styles are making a comeback in a unique, modernised way is through upcycling. Upcycling is the repurposing of old clothes and turning them into something new to reduce wastage and extend clothing life. I’m no seamstress, but I’m proud to say I’ve turned old, unloved tops into miniskirts in efforts to continue wearing them, even if it isn’t their original purpose. If you frequent the Melbourne CBD or even just use apps like Instagram or Pinterest, you’ll see astounding outfits everywhere. From camp to Y2K, monochrome to mashed-up colours, it seems everyone is on top of their fashion game these days. But all the styles we’re seeing feel familiar, don’t they?

Upcycling is a great way to turn those old, grandma-looking dresses found in op shops into a stunning dress or cool two-piece set. Mia Marquez, fashion designer and owner of clothing brand ‘Recovered’, thrift flips and upcycles unwanted clothes and turns them into amazing modern pieces.

That’s because they are.

“Not only do I shop second-hand for clothes I plan to upcycle, but also because I enjoy finding one-of-a-kind items, especially vintage pieces,” Mia said.

According to James Laver’s law of the fashion cycle, it takes approximately 150 years for a fashion trend to do a full cycle and come back into fashion. While I’d love to wear long, poofy dresses with flounces and frills from 1872, I don’t think that will be happening any time soon (although it is a huge coincidence that this year’s Met Gala theme was the Gilded Age). However, there are some similarities to fashion trends that were all the rave in the 1870s, such as corsets, bustiers, square necklines and asymmetry. These have all been heavily modernised and adapted in their resurgence.

Another trend that’s becoming more mainstream is the ‘timeless wardrobe.’ This concept is to fill your wardrobe with simple, good quality basics that will seemingly never go out of style and will last you a lifetime. However, I’m not convinced this’ll stand the test of time. Trends move quicker than ever these days. Although a ‘timeless wardrobe’ may never go out of style in theory, it’s only a matter of time before wild patterns take over and plain basics are completely forgotten about.

A more accurate and obvious pattern fashion experts have noticed is that fashion trends commonly resurface every 20-30 years. This rings true. We saw some trends from the 90s make a comeback in the late 2010s, particularly from 2018 onwards. Think scrunchies, cardigans, wide-leg baggy jeans and platform sneakers. Many of these items are still serving today (minus the scrunchies), but we’re in the middle of a transitional period as 00s fashion takes its rightful place in the fashion trend cycle. The era of Y2K fashion is here: micro skirts, low rise jeans, halter tops and claw clips are visible everywhere you look, and they’re getting more popular by the day. This emulates the transition from

Issue 03

Fashion Forecast: Recycling Trends, Upcycling Clothes and Timeless Wardrobes 8

Spent. I can’t remember the last time I heard a clock tick Time moves now without telling me There are no more courtesy interjections No more rhythm to the spending of the long long day Seconds flick away without fanfare If a tree falls in a forest... Have people stopped wearing watches? Or have I moved out of the company Of the watch-wearers of the world? I have no clock in my house No tap tap tapping of the inhuman hands To mark the time dwelled It can get to be so quiet in here Time passes in silence I hover above the blackened screen of my phone And it startles awake, blazing bright and abashed to have been caught off guard Pixels indeed can blush I find hours have passed I cannot regain them And I didn’t even hear them leave It used to be 11:46 Now it is 1:30 It used to be many hours ago When is it now? Time used to keep me awake Ticking reliably pecked at my brain And burrowed into my ears and dreams The endless and unchanging pace of my nocturne hours Sleepless and slipping, oh so apparent The night stretched on to the sound I put my hands over my ears and tossed and turned in the bottom bunk I was all too aware of the seconds then Now, the space between 12 and 3 in darkness is a breath in and out The mere moments required to engorge my screen-time The only time that is indeed monitored Reported to me In weekly summaries and statistics With a pinging notification that reverberates, like a space-age grandfather clock Booming down the hallway, dong... dong... dong... Time has gone, it says Your currency is wasting The bank is almost empty But your stock is up 7% since last week You had no idea, did you? And I didn’t I only count the hours when they are already passed

Future Tense

Sabrina Phillips Brash

It feels like just yesterday Has it been a year already? I can’t believe it’s only January The chasm between myself and time spent is gaping Does everyone stare into this moon crater? In their bedroom On the train In the office Out to dinner Is it just I, who notices the silken echo of time only after it has slipped away? Who vows not to let another moment go by unnoticed and unheard? A dying man’s final paltry rasp Is he crying out? He scarcely makes a sound But listen... In the dark, I hope The ticking may rouse me from my slumber yet Still Another day is gone And what have I done? Can I count the seconds I have spent? Can I quantify the moments I have lived? How did I live them? I cannot remember For how many more minutes may I feign bliss, and ignore Before time folds back onto me In its silent endlessness When will time declare that I am now that which is spent? The clocks of the world tick on Still I cannot hear them Perhaps it is time I bought a watch

Issue 03

Liminal Spaces: Dreamscapes of Our Nostalgic Loneliness

The overbearing buzzing of fluorescent lights fills your ears. Was this a shopping mall? A classroom? A large hallway of some sort? The only thing you knew for sure was the unshakeable presence of an uneasy feeling that you’d been here before. There was no one with you; this location stood silent and still, lonely yet tranquil. You photographed your surroundings with an old digital camera, perfectly capturing how you felt while you were there. Popularised by the infamous ‘backrooms’ image, the liminal spaces ‘meme’ refers to photos of empty locations that appear ‘off’ in some way, making the viewer feel uneasy, yet oddly nostalgic, as if one were experiencing a peculiarly familiar dream. Other descriptions, according to Know Your Meme, could be: “images with elegiac auras” “places that feel strangely familiar” “places you’ve been to in your dreams” Genres of images such as ‘dreamcore’, ‘after hours’ or ‘weirdcore’ evoke similar feelings in the people that encounter them. When looking at liminal space images, understanding the aesthetic and contextual choices made by the creator is key. Typically, liminal spaces are designed to appear as a nostalgic memory, aimed at the late teens to early 30s age range who, upon viewing such images, could feel that something is ‘off’ or ‘otherworldly’ in a particular way; yet is still familiar to them. Locations like colourful indoor playgrounds, tiled indoor pools, deserted hallways, and empty fields of perfectly manicured grass are common. A key part of these photos is that they never have people in them, the absence of life from the images contributes to this atmosphere. These images are typically taken with then-contemporary consumer digital cameras on the cheaper side, designed to emulate the most common way of photographing the space in the era it is supposed to be from.

Malachy Lewis image by Katie Zhou

Future Tense

It’s worth noting that the phrase liminal space does not originate from this meme, the broader meaning refers to transitionary locations such as hallways, roads, or airports. It has been appropriated by participants in the meme for any location that evokes this transitionary feeling – even if it is not a transitionary location, like pools, houses, and parks. Whilst this has led to some very notable and interesting entries, this appropriation has inadvertently invited some to assign the meme to any empty location, such as a Twitter user who described a photo of a Walmart loading bay as a liminal space, broadening the scope of the term and disregarding its original meaning.

There’s much to analyse about the appeal of liminal spaces, and something to be said about the cognitive dissonance caused by false nostalgic memories; we remember the past as being much better than it truly was, and this subconscious knowledge that the present is better than the past can cause anxiety when we view these images. The Y2K effect is notable here, in both the nostalgic aesthetic of the images, as well as an unknowable sense of mystery of the future of what the 21st century would bring. These images thus feel like old ‘visions of the future’. To me, liminal space images convey this impending sense of uneasy nostalgia. Viewing these images makes me feel uneasy whilst simultaneously making me want to go back. I have nostalgic memories of this era, and would love to experience it again, but I never can, and that’s a good thing. Latching onto the past is a very human feeling, and not something to shy away from, but our enjoyment of liminal space images shows the beauty in experiencing the future through the past. Or perhaps they just look ‘off’. Who knows?

Issue 03

Nishtha Sharma

Photographs,

moments of frozen time...

“up here guys” my dad says, ecstatic with his new camera I stare upwards, unaware of the importance of this moment, but he knows how fast time passes, willing it to slow for more time with his family. “no smiling” the man says in the low lit room,

“these were my parents” my nani explains,

still too young to know what is going on I sit still,

her albums always light her up, explaining every little detail,

he prints them instantly and we stick them on some papers, “that photo is our way to a new future,” my mum explains. “okay girls, settle down” the photographer exclaims, we try to compose ourselves but it seems impossible, our teacher gives us a look that puts us in place, I can only imagine what my broken tooth will look like.

a chance to remiss and pass on the memory, a way to travel back into simpler more joyous times “smile!” she says as she focuses her camera onto me, we are sat in a forgotten blanket on some grass, I give her a smile because I never knew this day would come,

“well done” the principal who doesn’t know any of us says,

more at the fact of her wanting to save this moment in time.

some of the same old company, some new faces,

the camera and I have many adventures nowadays,

“your lives start now” he says as if the last couple of years didn’t matter,

just us against the world, trying to capture life in a rectangle,

as if any of us have any idea what we are doing.

a couple should be enough I tell myself

Future Tense

Charlie Borracci

Kodak 35mm ISO 800 27 ED. 2022 Developed -02-2021

Future Tense

THE 1975 Laneway 2020 Kodak 35mm ISO 800 27

ED. 2022 Developed -02-2021 [Photographs from Cherry Lin]

Issue 03

Why Film Photography is Making a Comeback

In an era when we take 1,051 photos to get that one perfect Insta shot, smartphones and digital photography have never been more convenient. However, photography trends are jumping a few decades back. More and more young people are drawn to the aesthetic of film photography, despite the variety and quality that digital technology provides. Film photography hits that spot that no amount of photos taken, editing or filters can achieve. Whether it’s manual analogue photography or a simple point and shoot, film cameras provide a warming feeling of nostalgia to the holder of the camera. Its quirky colours and the fact that you can’t see the end result of your photography until it has been developed provides photographers and hobbyists with a tangible product. “35mm film is making a comeback because of aesthetic, definitely,” teaching assistant and photographer, Amanda Burelli, said.

“It’s very nostalgic to a lot of people, especially kids born in the nineties…and I think kids who are very artistic enjoy the colours and artistic elements of film.” Future Tense

Alyssa Forato and Sienna Taylor-Gibson

Ironically, the nostalgic analogue art form many people are drawn to has found its place in the online world. No longer existing solely in its physical form, film photography on social media has allowed for the connections of artists to happen on a greater scale and for ephemeral moments of life to be shared among many. The #filmphotography has been tagged in over 34.7 million Instagram posts as of May 2022 and is only growing.

The popularity of film photography has surged in the last few years, with sales of film cameras and rolls of film soaring. While film cameras used to be of interest to photographers and camera buffs only, analogue photography has become of interest to the wider public, especially younger generations such as Gen Z. People take film cameras on their nights out and capture wholesome memories with their friends, posting Instagram albums and making photo walls in their room.

“It’s quite ironic that there’s a whole section of social media, Instagram in particular, that is dedicated to film photography,” RMIT’s Associate Dean of Photography Shane Hulbert said. “The very thing that makes it desirable, the very thing that makes it based in that nostalgia, is not lost but is translated into photography of the present.”

“When I first started it, it wasn’t really a common thing, it was more of an ‘art form’,” Amanda said. The idea of capturing moments in a seemingly more authentic way than digital photography, has brought new life to the community. Celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Cole Sprouse, Frank Ocean and Gigi Hadid have sparked an interest in film photography for many young photographers. As Amanda said: “It’s something that, you know, people like to share on their Instagram story, or have that memory with their friends on film.”

Issue 03

Whether you’re a dedicated photographer or simply just a film enthusiast, the re-popularisation of film photography has appealed to many. The tangible, physical aspect of film, along with the fun colours and aesthetics, has captured the hearts of many. Personally, we hope that film is around to stay, but it’s only a matter of time before we find out whether its resurgence is permanent or just a burst of nostalgia.

Brianna Simonsen

Future Tense

Beatrice Madamba

Future Tense

Zoe Perks

On May 25th, 1977, audiences across the globe were introduced to a little film entitled Star Wars (now known as Star Wars: A New Hope). It was an immediate success, earning three million in its first week despite only opening in forty-two theatres across the U.S. Later the film became the highest-grossing film in America of the seventies, beating out other classics such as Jaws and The Godfather. Almost five decades later, Star Wars has grown into an entire universe- spanning across twelve films, various television series’, novels, video games, and amusement parks and rides. However, the original trilogy did more than delight fans. It changed the entire film industry, from how special effects are used to what truly defines a Hollywood blockbuster.

In hindsight, Lucas’ innovation and creativity paved the way for the current Hollywood blockbuster template. Star Wars was a successful example of an expanded universe that can tell hundreds of new and fascinating stories with the continuous potential for growth. Nowadays, we see movie universes everywhere (most notably Marvel and DC), constantly inviting fans back with compelling stories of characters and lands old and new, complete with fun Easter eggs. This deepened the impact of fan service on the Star Wars saga’s ongoing success. With the addition of a prequel trilogy after the original’s triumph, Lucas was able to engage with fans on and off screen. Unanswered questions were now answered, backstories of beloved villains and heroes were explored, and dramatic battles were included purely for fans to enjoy. This practice has now extended to online engagement through social media. With the combination of an engaged fanbase and a never-ending catalogue of new projects, long-term success is unavoidable.

Before opening in cinemas, Star Wars had a rocky start. Despite director George Lucas’ success in his previous film American Graffiti, no film studio wanted to buy into his space Western idea. Even when 20th Century Fox agreed, many executives were unsure and unsupportive about the concept. Today it seems unthinkable that Star Wars began as an underdog. Part of the film’s success is due to the myriad of techniques that were introduced which changed the entire film industry. Sculptors and miniature models were built specifically for the film, including spaceships and lifesized, working robots. These were integrated with new camera techniques and technology. Lucas was the first filmmaker to use the Vista Vision camera, making special effects clearer and crisper. The Star Wars team also hand-built the first digital motion control photography camera system known as the Dykstraflex. This was at a time when personal computers were still years away. As stated on Lucas’ own special effects company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM): ‘It was innovative. It was creative. It was unlike anything anyone had seen before.’ With a blend of miniature sculptors and new computer technology, Star Wars paved the way in creating stories that were uplifted, not limited or hindered, by special effects.

Issue 03

Today, the hype and love surrounding Star Wars continues to grow. It is now a source of heartfelt nostalgia for many and continues to be a source of connection between generations. With an ever-growing catalogue, including the latest Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney+, and fully immersive adventures available at Disney Parks, it is clear that Star Wars is not going to be forgotten or discarded anytime soon.

Hugo Arnott

Future Tense

Raphael fiction You awaken to the sound of cold metal clanking. Sweat is running down your back, making it uncomfortable for you to sit in your leather chair. There is no escape from the seat. You have been fused to the furnishing your eyes clamped open in a Clockwork Orange manner forcing your retinas to be directed towards a bright LED screen. The light is vivid and blinding, resembling the shine of the angel, Raphael. You feel a shock run down your fingertips. Your manager elicits an electrical spark from his tollbooth in the sky. They wear a cowhide jacket;, an illustrious possession in the modern age. Their base of operations is coated in water colour paints. Childish depictions of cartoons from the past adorn their walls. Suddenly, a barrage of shocks are sent through your fingertips, forcing you to type at an increasing speed on the Apple Extended Keyboard placed in front of you. A keyboard not used by a musician, but one primarily used to store chip crumbs and uncanny fluids that find their home between the cracks of the buttons. Your manager assumes a smile as they speed up the process of your typing. Transfixed on your pus-stained, callus covered fingers, you finally decide to focus on the keys you are pressing.G-A-ND-O-L-F. It appears you have been forcefully entailing in Lord of the Rings fanfiction writing.

Hugo Arnott

Nuance? Never Heard of Her: Adventures in Techno-orientalism Each new generation brings with it a distinctive set of media moments and artefacts. At the turn of the 20th century, it was the memoirs of WWI and the new industrialised society which scarred and mobilised the lost generation. In the 50s, it was the rise of atomic anxiety-fuelled pulp fiction and early Hollywood. My parents’ generation (Gen X) was the generation of the blockbuster, from Jaws to Star Wars, and Indiana Jones to John Hughes’ ferociously influential teenage comedies. Along with the cultural pillars of the 20th century of course came the rise of counterculture. It is here, in 80s sci-fi counterculture that we find the emergence of cyberpunk, a sort of dystopian, edgy genre of fiction which imagines grittier, dirtier, scarier futures. Cyberpunk can be encapsulated in the phrase; ‘hitech, low-life’.

The world of cyberpunk inspired music too, genres such as Outrun and Vaporwave accompanied me throughout my school career. In reflecting on these media artefacts that shaped my childhood, a particular phenomenon can be observed in the vast majority of Western cyberpunk/futuristic media, Techno-Orientalism. Put simply, Techno-Orientalism is the ‘phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo- or hyper-technological terms in literary, cinematic, and new media representations’ (from TechnoOrientalism by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang and Greta A. Niu, 2015) and has become an interesting research topic in the 21st century. First defined in 1995, it is usually brought up in reference to Edward Said’s landmark 1978 book, Orientalism, in which he defined the term as an ‘othering’ of the Orient (Asia) from the Occident (Europe and America, the ‘West’). Thus, we can view Techno-Orientalism as the process of othering Asia and Asians - specifically in Western Media - by representing them as hyper technological and futuristic in contrast to a more stable, traditional European/American culture.

Instant examples that come to mind include the novel Neuromancer, by William Gibson (1984), the Judge Dredd comics of the late 70s, and of course, Blade Runner, the 1982 opus by Ridley Scott. From the age of about 13, I began to be fascinated by the cyberpunk genre. I remember my dad reading Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat series to me, a sort of protocyberpunk, new-age sci-fi book series featuring the adventures of the eponymous Han Solo-like intergalactic criminal. I fell in love with Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell (NOT the 2017 one), Akira and The Matrix.

Future Tense

What does this have to do with my teenage escapist obsession with cyberpunk? I’m so glad you asked. Techno-orientalist tropes find themselves most often in cyberpunk narratives.

Jonah Epstein

For example, the ‘Asian android’ trope, in which a robotic character is played by an Asian actor or has an Asian appearance. Examples include the famous geisha billboard in Blade Runner, and the Asian robot in Ex-Machina. For examinations and dismantling of this trope, one can look to the severely underrated 1995 film, Ghost in the Shell, (based on the manga of the same name) and more recently Koganada’s, After Yang, which both seek to unpack the stereotype of the inhuman, robotic, exploited (usually female) Asian character. This trope stems from the sexualisation and dehumanisation of Asian populations, particularly by the US, from the ‘Chinese Exclusion Act’ of 1882, to the portrayal of East Asian women in Hollywood cinema and most recently in the fetishisation of Japanese anime and Japanese women by Western men.

As Western hegemony began to be questioned in the 20th century, the West deployed its propaganda machine to combat the counter-Western narratives. It cast Africa and Asia as primitive and underdeveloped, a legacy which the world still grapples with today. In the late 20th century as China and Japan became industrial and political powers in the world, it cast them as hyper-futuristic and alien, creating a fearful narrative of an overpowering East. This is what birthed TechnoOrientalism. It is vital to examine the media that you love and understand its history. As someone who grew up so devoted to these products, I found myself with mixed feelings when I both discovered the term and when I decided to write this article. I am also white, and feel slightly complicit in the propagation of this stereotype. I’m not trying to cancel all media which use Asian aesthetics to represent the future, nor am I saying all Techno-Orientalist media is bad. As Chloe Gong observes,

The second stereotype is much broader, and that is the general ‘Asian-Coding’ of cities and environments in the cyberpunk genre. An L.A filled with Chinese-Language signs, motorbikes and Asian extras in Blade Runner, and Akira-inspired holographic billboards and neon signs. Asian aesthetics have essentially become ways to denote that a city is in the future. This stereotype is problematic, as it equates bleak cyberpunk futures and scary futuristic technology with Asia and Asian people. Of course, there are many layers of nuance to consider. For one, Western creatives have been heavily inspired by futuristic media made by Asians themselves, most notably Akira, born out of post-atomic bomb anxiety, and later, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop.

‘Techno-orientalism is not an inherently xenophobic concept because the envisioning of a bleak Asian future can be just that—a future that is Asian...— and also, bleak, for various reasons.’ The trouble comes when it is used to fearmonger, as it so often is. There is much more nuance to this topic than I can fit in 1000 words, so I encourage you to research this topic further.

Apart from direct inspiration, it is pretty clear why Techno-Orientalism was so embraced when it was (the late 1970s to early 1990s). Writer Chloe Gong summed it up perfectly in a tweet, when she said; ‘The cyberpunk genre came in an age of heavy xenophobia against Asia and if we want to bring it back, we have to first grapple with the inherent racism in the tropes of the unfeeling technologised cyborg and the Asianised West as a stand-in for a fallen West’.

Issue 03

So please for the love of god, think twice before you repost that badly edited ‘retrowave’ wallpaper with grammatically incorrect Japanese script on it.

end of the world story

Future Tense

Vivian Dobbie-Glazier

It’s happening now. Wheels in motion. Not long now. You feel it. Everyone feels it. What is it? Nothing can be done to stop it. The decision was made. Eight more rotations then farewell. Was there significance as to why they wanted it this way? No. There was nothing poignant or beautiful behind their reasoning. In reality it was quite simple. All they wanted was a few more good rotations for us. Almost like taking a dog on one final walk to its favourite spot before they get put down. Only eight more left, then came time to plunge into the heart of a star. Boom. Ripping themselves out of a stranglehold that kept them spinning around for millennia, off they would fly at fifty million miles an hour shooting across the black sea. With a little bit of perseverance and willpower, physics doesn’t seem to apply anymore. Spiralling right into the sun. Burnt to nothing. Born by fire. Die by fire. Glorious. Just know this, in that split second, they really did hope everyone had a good time. But fuck. It was getting difficult. Nothing would get any better. The choice was either wither, choke and disintegrate slowly or go out fast. Enough was enough. See you later! It had been real. Now we see. There really isn’t long left after all. I always really wanted to go on a drive with you. Hit the highway and see all the sights. Closer and closer it approaches. Maybe we’d talk about all the profound insights and lessons learnt along the way during this short time together. Maybe then we’d reach down to the core of what existence, life and consciousness was all about. Realistically? We’d probably just talk shit about the people we didn’t like. I think that would be nice. But then the sun would get closer and closer, and the music would get louder and louder. We’ll scream together. We’ll go, “I’m dead!” They’ll go, “You’re dead!” Everyone together now! “We’re all dead!”

Issue 03

[Catalyst 1986, Vol. 42]

Brianna Simonsen

[Photograph from Izzy Savenake]

Bloom. Like forbearance I will tell them stories of lives past knowing They will hear of us and see The fire within that fought the fire without.

Consider them, In how they speak in my head. These young, And unethical existence. Sensation, how they hold my hand In this apocalypse days Imagine all of what I will show them, how to be Place-makers.

Anarcho-babies They will know it all. Like they must I will show them like i did myself Have I

Story and truth, Written on the skin In the cold Dark grey sky hand in hand.

Righteousness of thought Post-family future Dare I dream them Lest their existence bloom onto dry earth.

This green, This rebellion, Reared up community Lentil stews and hummus. The peopling of the soul Theirs to claim brazenly Eat until the brain is at rest And all the hiders sought. Future Tense

Asha-Mae Chapman

Always known This knowledge of the body And the fire warmth within Small child asleep on hip.

Position unknown Body grown Reborn. Will they come before the fire? Becoming the other, So long rejected, Self viewed How it would wish for them. Is the body a murderer if the land no longer bleeds. Dead heat. Issue 03

THE GAP. Why do we put our youth under such pressure to decide their future before they even understand the world? It’s a question that every straightout-of-high-school uni student has asked themselves over the course of their degree. The majority of students have been fed a narrative that they ought to feel inadequate or not good enough if they don’t know their career pathway from birth to death at the age of, at the youngest that I know, 16 years old. That we are somehow mistaken for not being able to find our way in possibly the most interpersonally disconnected period of human history. We are apparently drawn closer by social media, but it drives us apart in toxic and insidious ways and has caused a generation of people to grow up without guidance it feels like. Nevertheless, why do we strain our young people like this? How can society reasonably expect people to know what they are going to do with large scale existential threats like the climate crisis and war? It isn’t like the youth have had any political guidance from our traditional systems in Australia; we’ve had 9 years of uninspiring and ineffectual leadership which has ensured that multiple generations of Australians will never get a look in.

Future Tense

Jake Maraldo

Why plan for a future that won’t exist? I’ll never buy a house. Old people that tell us to quieten down offer us bootstraps, and with a whimper, remind us of their past good fortunes. They bought a house for $50,000 in 1993, so why can’t you go buy a house for $950,000 today?

not strive for more than this, as if a casual job – where you call in sick once or twice leading you to never getting a shift again – is normal? For my entire life I’ve been led to believe that not knowing what you want to do in life is somehow inadequate and wrong. That I’m a failure for not knowing. To those readers who feel the same way, I come with a message. It’s okay to not know. Perhaps it’s better to not know, as the freedom that comes with that opens more doors than you could imagine. It’s a return to that childlike optimism that comes with having the world at your feet, with nothing seeming to hold you back from doing pretty much whatever you want. We only get one chance at this life, and it certainly isn’t worth spending it worrying about the judgements of others regarding how you want to live your life. Sadly, a lot of people never get the chance to live life how they truly want to, and I hope the disenfranchised young people of this country one day have the privileges that I have been able to enjoy, and that their horizons are lifted to align with the grandest of sunrises and that their only limit is the sky above them.

Cumulatively, this generation gap in thought has led to a generation of people lost in the wilderness of life, and people who harbor deeply cynical views with a negative shade on even the brighter parts of life. The youth have had the life sucked out of them, so why do we pressure them to have it all sorted? You cannot sort what you do not have. These things won’t ever change unless we have a radical shift in the politics of this country. We’ve been dwelling in this ‘third-way’ mindset for too long and it’s helped to erode the social fabric of this country, along with the endless meaningless culture wars that only serve to harm the most vulnerable members of our society. Why should kids who do not even understand themselves or their place in society be asked to dictate their life’s pathway? Why should young people surrender to insecure work and

Issue 03

Jai Mudgerikar

With

The In

Past

She looked at me with innocent hope, Excited, wondrous, beautiful hope. She wanted to know of the world in the future, Little me, she asked, what it’s like to be grown. That the life she wanted That she is happy and successful, and The freedom she desired, the Have grown, and lasted, all

And I told her. has come to pass. peaceful at last. wings on her back through the dark.

I told her. That her feet have walked, and run and flown, Her eyes have seen all there is to behold. She has sung and danced to a million songs, She has travelled the world and found home at last. I told her That the world is different, beautiful to pass. People are kind, and gentle, and sweet at heart. She no longer needs to fear the dark, For she is stronger now, and braver, than she was in the past. I told her to not fear, only hope and to dream, I am proof, I said, that the worst will be past I told her to hold on, and hold on fast, For everything we wanted has come to pass. She fell back asleep, with her little hands and feet, Tucked into the blanket that held my childhood dreams, And I looked on, at the one I used to be. So young, so innocent, so lovely, so lost. I had lied. About the future. About her. About us. I had lied about the dreams I knew she dreamt. But I could not destroy it, that hope I’d held, That it will get better, be better, all in the end. It was the hope in her heart, my heart, that kept us warm, Till the day we would stand, as I stand now. With the cruel knowledge that we had failed, But for now, sleep. With hope in your heart.

Future Tense

Charlie Borracci

Diana Vagas

California Dreamers The rise of Laurel Canyon. ‘All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey’ As I’m writing this, we’ve reached the time of year when those words ring true. It’s a stark contrast to the images that come to mind when I think of Laurel Canyon, the birthplace of The Mamas and the Papas, whose song California Dreaming encapsulates an important time music history.

Though you could describe the community as living in a bubble, events like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War still permeated the cultural consciousness, waking them up and alerting them to what was going on in the wider world; to stop seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses when those lenses were in reality, broken.

Laurel Canyon is a neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills region of Los Angeles, California. In the mid-sixties and early seventies, it played host to many musicians and served as the genesis of many groups from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Carole King and The Doors just to name a few. As such, it is seen as a pivotal time and location in LA’s music history; a contribution to folk and rock music, and the rise of the singer-songwriter.

During this period, Laurel Canyon evolved into a little commune. Everywhere had an open-door policy. Everyone was collaborating with each other at backyard parties, late-night jam sessions and the occasional pingpong tournament or two sprinkled throughout. But being so close did have its moments. Bringing the newest protegee to the party invoked jealousy from fellow songwriters or groups. This, mixed with the rising fame of the Canyon’s inhabitants, meant jam sessions ceased in fear that their riffs and chords could be ripped off by other creatives (riffed off, if you will). When a band broke up, another one was soon formed nearby. Maybe at times it was too tight-knit, and a bit of space was needed.

But why here? What drew young musicians to Laurel Canyon, fuelled on optimism and hope, naively seeking to make a start in ‘the biz’? For one, it was relatively affordable (always a perk), but also only a short distance away from music venues like The Troubadour and Whisky A Go Go. I’d argue one of the biggest drawcards was the atmosphere that eventually developed during this period due to the influx of musicians and creatives.

How ironic? Despite this, I’d like to think that even today, the Canyon echoes a critical time in music history. In California Dreaming, there’s a particular line that goes ‘I’d be safe and warm if I was in LA.’ Laurel Canyon invokes imagery of carefree, endless summer days in the dusty hills; a nice reprieve from the cold and harsh Melbourne winter.

The hilly and mountainous area, combined with winding dirt roads lined with bungalows, would have created a calm mood away from the hustle and bustle of downtown LA. It provided a space for lyrics to flow but wasn’t secluded enough that one forgot about the state of the world.

Future Tense

Charlie Borracci

Juliette Salom

Annie Hamilton Looking up into the rear-view mirror, she checks for ghosts, but all she sees is the horizon. Everywhere she looks, she sees a constancy of the promising that something is to come. Violet sunset skies and bats hanging from powerlines. They’re marks of the future, a future that feels kind of like the past.

Future Tense

The cyclical nature of time isn’t exactly the focal point of musician/ designer/artist Annie Hamilton’s new album, but also, when isn’t it? The Sydney local’s album – fittingly titled ‘the future is here but it feels kinda like the past’ – is an array of ethereal vocals intertwined awith cascading instrumentation and torrential waves of evocative poetry. The eleven-song track list is interspersed with thoughts on loneliness, desire, memory, and some hope.

were only just beginning to heal, just as Annie drops a whole album of ethereal heart-wrenching bangers. We’re a little further down the road now – of Annie’s career, of my youth – and the themes are somewhat changing. The waiting is over, abandoned even, and the force with which she wants to move on is driving the album home. “Just want you to know that I don’t care, I’ll let you go when I get there. I’ll let you go,” Annie sings on Providence Portal. She might not know where she is, or where she’s going for that matter. But the idea of moving on, of giving up on waiting, surfaces as a kind of evolution from the girl we hear on Fade.

On the opening track, Providence Portal, Annie tells us that she’s driving to the coast, the speed and the road doing little to make her feel less like she’s in-between the in-between. And whether she means to or not, this image of her driving – taking some creative freedom – draws up as a rusted, paint-peeling late-90s Hyundai Getz, windows down, the purple of the sunset dripping from the skyline. It feels like an apt demonstration of the feeling I imagine she’s trying to describe, both in this song and throughout the rest of the album. It’s the feeling of heading toward something new, of getting there and feeling the same.

I can’t help but feel the parallels projected upon me as I listen to the future is here, driving around northside, backdropped by a purple sky. Patience is no longer exponential, time no longer infinite. It’s easy to read into music and lyrics and see a somewhat distorted version of yourself reflected back to you, but yourself all the same. There’s an underlying tide of hope that moves through the album. It dances back and forth but ultimately moves forward. I think it’s in that tone that I can see the nineteen-year-old lovelorn girl. I can hear her and feel her when I let the future is here play on loop on my drive home.

It should be maybe unsurprising then that listening to Annie’s new album was indeed a venture into personal nostalgia for me. I was freshly nineteen and among the throes of unrequited love when I first stumbled across Annie Hamilton. Her 2018 debut single Fade, a portrait of unfading hope and forever patience set against the rolling hills of desire, was little less than a knife straight to the guts of nineteen-year-old me. With an EP and array of singles that have peppered the artist’s discography in the years since, the black and blues of my internal organs

Issue 03

Annie Hamilton’s music does that rare thing of intertwining nostalgia with originality. She doesn’t ignore the past, doesn’t refuse what’s come before her, but embraces it all to create something wholly new. the future is here but it feels kind of like the past is out now. Jump in your car, drink up a purple sky and put Annie on loop, only if you wish to revel in the nostalgia just right.

Charlie Borracci

The Sunsets are Spectacular

Lydia Schofield

Issue 03

The car shudders as it hurtles down the highway. Our knees press together in the back seat. Sweat sticks our skin to the leather upholstery. Why are we running? So young. Whole lives ahead of us? We’re pioneers in living through catastrophe. Once in a hundred years was every year of our lifetimes. We never lived through your normal, though we dream of it. Of blue skies and clear air. Of aeroplanes flying overhead. Your buses in the sky. What was it like to fly? To be above it all? Burnt red sky above us now, reflected in the small creek we follow towards the coast. The clouds are beautiful likes this. Pregnant with ash. The sunsets are spectacular. We watch them as we camp on the side of the road. One of us jokes we’re in the sunset era. The final glow. None of us laugh. Stagnation is what led to this future, so we keep moving. Our fear has made us restless. Before all this, they told us what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. We’ve learnt it just wears you down, chips away at your armour. We’ve barely any armour left. Little water too. We keep driving. We should have run out of power by now, but the car keeps moving. We don’t ask what keeps it running. We just let it take us. Onwards and onwards. Towards the edge of the continent.

July MON

4. Flag Raising NAIDOC Week

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TUE

5. VE Orientation Brunswick

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WED THUR

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VE Orientation City Campus

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HE Orientation Bundoora

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HE Orientation City Campus

20. Bundoora Pop-up Pub

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26. Clubs Week Brunswick

27. Clubs Week Bundoora

Clubs Week City Campus

[small visuals by Emily Yang]

NOTES:

Charlie Borracci

PUBLISHED ON ABORIGINAL LAND