ISSUE TWELVE
STYLO is an online magazine based in Melbourne. Every issue revolves around a different theme. Contributions in any form are always welcome.
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Edited by Andie Phillips. Cover art by Andie Phillips. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.
In this issue: 4
Foreword
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Playlist
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Contributors
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Atherton Gardens
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Exploring Voids of Abbotsford
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Force Majeure
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Faces of Freedom Time
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A Love Letter to a Future Left Behind
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You
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India
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Endangered States of Mind
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Plane Haikus 3
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FOREWORD
Is the future real? Time is an abstract concept that provokes conflicting theories across physics, philosophy, religion, history, and astronomy. The past, present, and future theoretically take place on this continuum, but all that we know truly exists within our lives is the present moment, right here and now. I know this sounds like some metaphysical New Age bullshit, and some interpretations probably are, but the ‘future’ is a buzzword at the moment that is only as relevant as we allow it to be. That’s not a suggestion to bury our heads in the sand, but rather an invitation to pick and choose your battles. Try to find clarity above the white noise of the media and online arguments that add to the climate of negativity and ignorance. Although we have no control over the future, we can empower ourselves in this present moment and take responsibility for our own actions. Everyone keeps talking about ‘technology’ like it’s the rising of the Antichrist, but rather than creating an information vacuum or drowning out voices, we need to educate ourselves, read extensively, and stand up for each other. Disconnecting from the online world can be healthy, but to do so altogether is not only unrealistic but potentially irresponsible. Change is brought about by a collective group that simultaneously speaks out and listens, rather than an individual keyboard warrior. Be kind to yourself and others, check your sources, and stay grounded in the present moment because for all we know the future doesn’t exist. n
ANDIE PHILLIPS — MELBOURNE
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PLAYLIST PLAYLIST PLAYLIST PLAYLIST PLAYLIST PLAYLIST PLAYLIST
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2017 — Four Tet Liquid Deep — Dreamcast & Sasac Oasis — Ashra Event Horizon — Leo James Aqua Como — Beesmunt Soundsystem It's Your Love — The Other People Place 2000 & Universe — Androo Motivation — London Underground Trans Europe Express — Kraftwerk Madly, Sadly, Badly — Thierfeldt
LISTEN WHILE YOU READ — SOUNDCLOUD.COM/STYLO-MAG
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CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTORS
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Karl Halliday Laura Hejleh Andie Phillips Phi Nguyen Madison Pawle Dylan King Anonymous Leo Showell Camilla Eustance
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
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ATHERTON GARDENS
KARL HALLIDAY — MELBOURNE
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Speculating the future is an exercise in political imagination.
It may strike outsiders as a surprise that Fitzroy, a rapidly-gentrifying suburb on the northern fringe of Melbourne’s CBD that boasts of the most upmarket real estate this side of the Yarra, also hosts the largest public housing block in the state. 12
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For surrounding residents however, the looming girth of these four 24-story high-rise towers could not be any more conspicuous with their colossal silhouettes visually dominating the local purview.
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The 900 flats (and some 2000 residents, many of whom are refugees) that make up the Atherton Gardens Housing Commission are a lasting spectre of late 1960s Liberal idealism, and, as recent talks of demolition suggests, another chapter in Melbourne’s history of botched attempts to foresee and accomodate for an ever changing socio-economic climate. Flanked by boutique bars and retail outlets on one side, and welfare outposts on the other, Atherton Gardens testifies to a major historic blind spot in Victoria’s social policy, making obvious the expanding social rupture that divides an acceleratingly bourgeois district and the disadvantaged public-housing communities such gentrification aims to marginalise. n
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@EN_PASSANT
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EXPLORING VOIDS OF ABBOTSFORD
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LAURA HEJLEH — MELBOURNE
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Traditionally cities grew piecemeal, lending enough time for them to adapt and grow as prospects came and went. Melbourne’s instantaneous growth in the 1950s and 60s brought in crowding and insufficient amenities, resulting in modern day planning interventions of zoning leading to homogenised industrial urban landscapes, compromising the selfadaptable nature of a space to nest plural identities.
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Old industrial suburbs such as Abbotsford were left with a constant hunger for land to fulfil any physical requirements, leading to environmental degradation and misuse of land. 25
This transformation in Abbotsford has led to the creation of urban voids; the anti-space between buildings, the ill-defined and leftover, making no contribution to the surroundings or users. Without measurable boundaries, they fail to connect elements in a coherent way, as they sit at the edge between private and public space.
"Most of the things I have done that have "architectural" implications are really about non-architecture - anarchitecture. We were thinking about metaphoric voids, gaps, leftover spaces, places that were not developed, metaphoric in the sense that their interest or value wasn't in their possible use." — Gordon Matta-Clark The investigative endeavour of salvaging the voids will inevitably lead to the unpacking of the unexpected in the existing, revealing potential ‘antimaterial’ for renewal. By this, the project realizes the left-over voids and the underdeveloped material in the industrial context of Abbotsford, not just architecturally, but in social, natural, political, and economic realms. The project attempts to make the most of and break down hidden constructs, demarcation lines, perimeters, marginalised spaces
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and negligible contexts by revealing the place making opportunities created by these limits. I propose a development that opposes the homogenous landscape, whereby a network of variety of open spaces and typologies are present and pedestrian’s paths lead directly from the facing landscape to the centre of the new mixed use, neighbourhood. Considering the pre-existing as an inspired landscape of architectural qualities, they can complement and enrich through negotiations with the new. n
@HELYEH_1
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FORCE MAJEURE
ANDIE PHILLIPS — MELBOURNE
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Forty-six years ago, the first full-colour image of the Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 17 space mission, known as ‘Blue Marble’. The planet in the photograph looks fragile and period, for fear the planet was quickly becoming an vulnerable as it hovers in a black void, protected by only object of political exploitation and “technological a thin layer of atmosphere. The image is believed to be manipulation”, as predicted by German philosopher the most widely distributed photograph in history. Martin Heidegger in 1966: In 1972, the year the photograph was taken, the “Everything is functioning. This is exactly what is so world was in the midst of the Vietnam War and Cold uncanny, that everything is functioning and that the War tensions were high. The global Space Race was functioning drives us more and more to even further gaining momentum and the threat of nuclear warfare functioning, and that technology tears men loose from was escalating. This photograph sparked a new era the earth and uproots them. I do not know whether you of global awareness, perhaps because it showed were frightened when I saw pictures coming from the something profoundly pure about Earth, our only home, moon to the earth. We don’t need any atom bomb. The an ecological marvel suspended in time and space. uprooting of man has already taken place. The only ‘Blue Marble’ became a powerful symbol for the thing we have left is purely technological relationships. environmentalist movement that emerged out of this This is no longer the earth on which man lives.”
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In 1947, years before ‘Blue Marble’, a group of soldiers and scientists working in the desert of New Mexico published what would be the first ever pictures of Earth, a series of grainy black-and-white photographs taken from 160 kilometres away. After experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets, the warheads were replaced by cameras in the nose shell and launched into the abyss. For the first time, mankind had propelled his own artefacts into the unknown, and discovered a new territory that would soon trigger a modern-day colonial mission. Space became a potential zone for militarised power, where there were no borders (yet) and the possibilities were expendable as far as one could reach. Life seemed to imitate art as science fiction themes from pop culture no longer seemed out of the question, and since World War II, people everywhere were aware of man’s capacity for evil and destruction. As the Cold War cloud loomed ominously over the East and West, the world was holding its breath and preparing for the worst. In our ‘post-Cold War’ society, we have seen a re-emergence of international space initiatives, with plans to build a colony on Mars now a reality, and the federal government investing billions into establishing the first Australian space agency. In 2018, we witnessed political tensions between the US and North Korea reach a critical point at the joint Summit, after the potential threat of nuclear missiles seemed imminent again. We understand the horrific impact this weaponry would have on the masses, and the prospect of a nuclear war has been heavily regulated by the United Nations in recent years.
While we may be a step closer to disarmament, the events and consequences of the past can give us retrospective insight into what the future holds. 33
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There is mounting evidence from biological, earth, and atmospheric sciences that nuclear testing during the Cold War had significant environmental effects, not only in state territories but in ecological systems around the world. During this period, the US nuclear project launched test ranges across continental US to Alaska and the Marshall Islands, and the public voiced concerns about the health effects of radioactive fallout and the impact of atomic tests on destabilising the seasons. Early Cold War scientists began analysing the effects of radioactive fallout with increasing precision, mobilising the bomb as a health threat. As anthropologist Joseph Masco (2010) explains: “While previous generations of scientists imagined the experimental laboratory as a model of the world, in the early Cold War the world itself became the laboratory.” This soon brought rise to anti-nuclear protests and environmental movements, with the first ‘Earth Day’ held in 1970, and the ‘Blue Marble’ photograph serving as an important symbol, helping to ignite a new language of environmentalism.
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How do we see the world today? Fast-forward to this century and the planet in ‘Blue Marble’ still possesses the same fragility that touched people over forty years ago. The Earth perceived in the image is vastly different today, although the implications between nuclear warfare and climate change remain omnipresent. While we could draw parallels between the innovations, movements and dialogues of today and the Space Age, some existential threats remain the same, including the global climate crisis. The oceans are losing the biodiversity that maintains ecological resilience to disease, and if current melt rates continue, the polar ice caps could disappear by 2040 (Masco 2010). The Cold War era has taught the whole world lessons that no nation wants to revisit, and although nuclear threat has reorganised politics and discourse, the global discussion on climate change requires a different response and governance. State and science remain intrinsically linked by this problem, and the biosphere has again become a space of militarised logic. The ‘Blue Marble’ is a powerful symbol of environmentalism, but most importantly, it represents a collective responsibility that affects us all. As global citizens we might not have the power to destabilise nuclear deterrence, but we have the ability to prioritise the future of ‘our only home’ as a major world concern. The facts are as clear as the dying coral reefs and natural disasters that unfold around us, and we must learn from the legacy of the Cold War to prevent further disaster in the future. n
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@ANDIEPHIL
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FACES OF FREEDOM TIME
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PHI NGUYEN — MELBOURNE
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@PHI.DF
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A LOVE LETTER TO A FUTURE LEFT BEHIND
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MADISON PAWLE — MELBOURNE
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it was the winter my plants died that I left you. (yellowed leaves dropped, a barely audible orchestra of our end) the plants had begun withering months before I would move them to lighter spaces, sunnier places willing them back to green. I would walk past them, on my way to make coffee, pouring water out of my glass, lazily. thinking; it might be enough to keep them holding on you didn’t water them you didn’t even notice they were dying, until I began to mourn them, cry to you, wanting you to have the answer. Then, one day signs everywhere words; reoccuring “flights to faraway” flashing inviting themselves into my day as I made coffee. I left work went home (knowing you wouldn’t be there) I ran through imaginary streets (my heart informing my legs) I returned home (knowing you wouldn’t be there - yet) I washed myself clean sat on our bed looking around waiting. keys jangle steps up stairs mouth gaping, wide without sound.
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and you didn’t notice, but you were stepping carefully, as though treading on fragile ground. our room was upstairs, and then, it felt like the floor might really fall through, waterlogged with tears cried quietly in the night. “I can’t do this anymore” is what I said, sitting on our bed. This? Us? you asked. what else could it have been? you were still relying on me coming to you, never prepared to meet me in the middle of the air (dead air between us hung like fog thick, hazy, enveloping.) you turned, walked away.
down the stairs, up the street, around the corner and around the next corner and the next, as I called your name. you never turned. This. A whole new world for me. now I climbed the stairs, the ground did feel fragile and I wanted to leave and turn corners until I was far away. I slipped on a jumper with shaking hands and walked out of the door, and into the wind. a wind that blew me down street after street toward an open armed love, willing me to fall into her. a wind that blew us through parks and doorways into a studio whose paint splattered floors were weathered, worn
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@MADISONPAWLE
but steady. here, I left you behind. when I left, I left behind most of my plants. I thought you might like them, I didn’t want to take them away from you. weeks later, (or maybe it was only days) you called me - told me to come by and pick up the remnants of me I had left behind. sitting in the hallway were my plants. I was surprised, I could see, feel, the house was bare without them. “take them” is what you said. so I did. I drove them up the street down the roads around the corners. took them to a house where the floors creak but the walls feel safe, and hold me with the tenderness of a lover here: I dream differently, childlike dreaming my skin full of the possibility of all I couldn’t fall into until I had left you and me behind. the other day, one of the trees caught my eye. I couldn’t believe all the new leaves. they had appeared as if by magic.
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YOU You. You made me feel like I deserved it. You made me feel worthless. You made me cry myself to sleep. The worst part is… you don’t even know. I buried it so deep, Hoping it would never resurface. But then all things similar came to light. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. I thought I would feel better to let it all out. I thought I would feel empowered to say me too. But the wound reopened and it feels worse than before. However, I am not alone. “I didn’t know how many females it affected” “I didn’t think it was this bad” Do you really think that’s it? Don’t be so fucking naïve boy. Every girl has a story. They may be different, They may end in different ways. But every story makes the stomach turn And nothing makes them okay. Don’t believe the stories you hear, About the unknown man in the dark Is the only one that can hurt her, it’s not true, because it was you. For me the part that hurts the most, Is the fact I considered you a friend. I considered you all friends. And there’s nothing I can do. It will happen again, It always does, At least it’s out in the open now And its shined a light on you a light you don’t even see.
ANONYMOUS
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INDIA
DYLAN KING — PERTH
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@DYLJKING
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ENDANGERED STATES OF MIND
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LEO SHOWELL — PERTH
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Photographs have a fascinating relationship with time. They appear as windows into the past - frozen scenes and compositions we wish not to forget. Their physical manifestations too become artefacts of time; seconds balance fragments of light with chemicals, later to be cut, framed, folded or scribbled on. These material performances slowly wear, fade and reframe; building up a patina representing their physical journey through the present. Yet if we look deeper into the intent of photographs, the most intrinsic
relationship with time becomes that with the future. From some of the first Daguerrotypes of Parisian streets, the essential act of photography has been, for the most part, an intent of future; recording a fraction of ones present to be projected forward in time. Be it something as phenomenal as a landscape or something as metaphysical as emotion, photographs can act as vessels carrying what we value far beyond their inherent existence.
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When looked at attentively, photographs convey a lot more than the sum of their contents, often carrying imperceptible meaning. An example of this came in the wake of the Industrial Revolution; as fear grew over the cultural upheaval of the machine age, historical survey societies proliferated through Europe hoping to capture the departing scenes of the pre-mechanised world. Producing a plethora of material, the resultant surveys looked to provide insights not only into the objective phenomena of the 19th Century, but also the subjective ‘state of mind’ of the time. In doing so, the surveys detail not just the environment of 19th-century culture but the pride it manifested in the people, evoking emotions of honesty and morality they wished not to be forgotten. Interpreted through both content and intent, the surveys behave not only as yardsticks from which to measure our cultural progress (or regress), but also provide insight into the state of mind of those past.
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It is a seductive idea that photographs can carry such intangible things; relationships, values, and mentalities from the present forward through history. As we descend deeper into our own Digital Revolution, humanity is again taking a defining cultural shift; one from the physical to the digital, not unlike that of the human to the machine.
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With this shift comes so many progressive and positive outcomes, but it also runs the risk of erasing tentative states of mind. As society grows denser; more populated, connected, traced and augmented, our ability to disconnect and disappear, to become gleefully lost are becoming fewer and further apart. As these faculties dry up, so too do their inherent emotional outcomes - feelings of sparsity and solitude, of exciting insignificance and subsequent mental freedom. In our Digital Age photographs no longer attain the levels of truth or merit they once commanded, but they can still act as time-travelling vessels of cultural value. They can still act as placeholders of endangered states of mind; of solitude, sparsity, disconnect and freedom. They can wander into the future, where they can evoke forgotten feelings and mentalities. The excitement of feeling inscrutably small, enveloped by empty horizons. Feelings of deep ontological awareness of incomprehensibly old landforms. A fondness of nature dwarfing humanity rather than being tamed and encompassed by it. Perhaps these are some of the endangered states of mind in the 21st Century. n
@LEOSHOWELL
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PLANE HAIKUS
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@CAMILLA.EUSTANCE
Brightly coloured beeps A blanketed woman snores Trays of orange juice
Strangers all in socks Smiling dolls in purple ties Red-eyed screens
Gliding into night Staring out from small grey seats The deep dark below
CAMILLA EUSTANCE — MELBOURNE
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JOIN US NEXT TIME FOR ISSUE THIRTEEN:
NOW OPEN TO CONTRIBUTE.
Thanks to this issue’s contributors: —— Karl Halliday —— Laura Hejleh —— Andie Phillips —— Phi Nguyen —— Madison Pawle —— Anonymous —— Dylan King —— Leo Showell —— Camilla Eustance
How to contribute: —— Contributions are welcome anytime between issues. —— The theme doesn’t have to be interpreted literally. —— Text: Word document or equivalent. No PDFs. No strict word limit but ideally anything less than 2000 words. —— Image: High quality JPEGs or TIFFs via Dropbox or ZIP file. —— Email to stylocontributions@gmail.com with the title of your contribution and include your name/city/social media link.