Pelican edition 8

pelican. est 1929 Volume 88 Edition 8. Cult

Bryce Newton // Editor Ruth Thomas // Editor

Ben Yaxley // Lifestyle Editor Harry Peter Sanderson // Arts Editor Isabella Corbett // Fashion Editor Maddi Howard // Science Editor Mara Papavassiliou // News Editor Mike Anderson // Politics Editor Pema Monaghan // Literature Editor Ryan Suckling // Film Editor Tess Bury // Music Editor

The University of Western Australia acknowledges that its campus is situated on Noongar land, and that Noongar people remain the spiritual and cultural custodians of their land, and continue to practice their values, language, beliefs, and knowledge. The views expressed within are not the opinions of the UWA Student Guild or Pelican Editorial Staff, but of the individual writers and artists.

Skye Newton // Cover Art // @cow____boy Skye Newton // Inside Cover Art // @cow____boy Lyn Sillitto // Design Emilie Fitzgerald// Advertising // advertising@guild.uwa.edu.au 2

Thanks for reading.

Ruth Thomas and Bryce Newton Pelican Editors 2017

3

Cult

features 3

Letter from the Editors

6

Creative writing residency: Birthday Hannah Cockroft

7

Approaching the Clearing Gabby Loo

8 Goodbye 9

In Situ Rohan Golestani

14

The Cult of OCD Sophie M

22

Pelican Nudes

29 There Are Too Many People at the Public Pool Skye Newton 40 Atlantis in Perth Jorge Luis Fonseca 46 Presidential Address Nevin Jayawardena 47 Buddies Clare Moran

arts

music

fashion

Harry Peter Sanderson

Tess Bury

Isabella Corbett

10

Corrective Retrospective: Kenny Pittock Jade Newton

15

Taking 5 with Amber Fresh Tess Bury

18

16 11

Column Talk: Final Friends Harry Peter Sanderson

What Bands Were You Freakishly Obsessed With?

Jordan Murray, Selina Bell, Jonathan Israel, Nick Morlet, Evangeline Perry, Reuben Wylie, Rae Twiss, Deni Campbell, Kelly Dunn, Tess Bury, Gabby Loo

12

10 Thoughts on Jeffrey Smart Harry Peter Sanderson

13 Pack Up the Moon: Scene VIII Nick Morlet 17

Review: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: September 2017 Nick Morlet

4

How to Host the Perfect Séance Isabella Corbett, Antonia Papasergio

20 Don’t Wear Thrasher If You Don’t Skate Isabella Corbett Photography by Michael Tartaglia

science

lifestyle

Maddi Howard

Ben Yaxley

28 The JAWS Debate Maddi Howard

30 Eggsaltations Clinton Ducas

29 I Want a Blue Chrysanthemum Ruth Thomas

32 Hobbies Reviewed Rainy Colbert

film

literature

politics

Ryan Suckling

Pema Monaghan

Mike Anderson

34 The Death of Film Ryan Suckling

37

35 Scandinavian Film Festival Clinton Ducas, Eamonn Kelly

38 We’re Reading Eamonn Young, William Huang, Jess Cockerill

42 Psephologically: Majoritarian Systems Mike Anderson

36 Cult Films Cindy Shi, Julian Coleman, Dominic Kwaczynski, Hannah Cockroft

39 Review: Boy by Roald Dahl Hannah Cockroft 41

The Earring Pema Monaghan

Fake Grass, I Never Knew You. Bryce Newton

43 The Iranian Question: Does Trump’s Bite Match his Bark?

Brad Griffin 44 Political Parties: Problems with the Status Quo Leah Roberts 45 Macron and the Cult of Personality Samantha Goerling

5

Birthday Hannah Cockroft My socks are wet. The tarp hanging over the tent poles sags with rainwater. The fire in the rented outdoor heaters is starting to escape the metal grating as the wind blows against it. I can smell crushed grass and dirt as it sticks to everyone’s shoes. It’s the smell of school sports carnivals in bad weather. The cake on the trestle table has been demolished – Neapolitan. Only the crap chocolates are left. The mini Mars bars are gone. The music is crackling, unrecognisable through the bowels of the busted speaker. I know three people here. I have arrived too late. I walk to McDonalds.

This year has been filled with 21st birthday parties. 21st birthdays are a strange birthday to celebrate. It seems like an arbitrary year, at least in this country. I wonder where the tradition for making your 21st a big celebration came from, but I can’t be bothered googling it. It’s a strange blend of family, close friends, old friends, work friends, and your friends’ friends. You drink Hahn Superdry out of an old Kmart storage container filled up with ice while children run around.

At the time of writing this, my 21st birthday isn’t for another three weeks.

I worry that I haven’t invited enough people, but I have invited all the people that I know and like and regularly talk to. I only know, and like, and talk to, about fifty people. I don’t know if this is a good amount of people or not. Most of the 21sts that I have been to have had around eighty people. That seems like a daunting number. I have also been working on the playlist since March, and am considering starting it over from scratch. I can see this situation unfolding: PARTYGOER 1: This music isn’t very good.

PARTYGOER 2: I agree, it’s not very good.

PARTYGOER1: I’m not having a good time.

PARTYGOER 2: They only have dad beers left.

PARTYGOER 1: Let’s walk to McDonalds.

All thoughts of hosting a 21st donate a large sum to my anxiety. I will have to spread my attention between fifty people, while making sure that everyone is having fun, while making sure that the punch doesn’t run out, while making sure that there are enough chips, while making sure that none of my friends throw up outside of a toilet, while making sure that my family don’t say anything racist. I’m not the best at attending parties to begin with. I have to cling on to the three people that I know and hope that they don’t need to go to the toilet, leaving me by myself, stranded, surrounded by nice friendly people that I don’t know how to talk to. If I know everyone at the party I do much better, but will definitely drink too much and forget to take my knickers off before I start weeing.

I don’t think I’m old enough to have a 21st yet.

6

Approaching the Clearing Gabby Loo www.gabbyloo.com Ink on Reflex Office Paper 7

Goodbye Winter Stay safe Don’t forget to put the bins out on Tuesday I’ll be waiting for your letters, so don’t forget to write Don’t cry for me Productivity (sleep alludes me again) It’s been fun To the feeling of anticipation I had as a younger woman during the early summer, when the scent of apple blossom would blow through my window on the breeze Please close the door on your way out I won’t miss you For the next three weeks, you have to water the fern once a day, and the chrysanthemums once every two days or the heat will kill them Don’t listen exclusively to The National I truly hope you have a good life These have been the best six days of my life I don’t want you to go Call me if you change your mind By the way I left a bowl of soup under the bed six months ago, good luck with that I regret nothing Maybe one day we’ll meet again, like in that movie I wish you’d tell me why It’s over Ron, I hope you’re happy Elf, we are travelling to the aisles of Orcs How did the year go by so fast?

You know I’d stay if you asked me to I’ll bring back your Gossip Girl DVD next time I see you So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night You should run or you’ll miss your bus Thanks for all the debt For now Are you sure you don’t mind driving me to the airport? My flight leaves at 2am I’m blocking you Cake Good grades You’re like family, of course I am going to miss you Erik, I wish you stayed in my Animal Crossing town Free time You and your half-baked opinions Bad life advice Can you pick up some milk while you’re out?

It was a mistake to begin with Mother, this shall be the last time you hear from me Actually, please don’t go Chairs with bad lumbar support

8

Photography by Rohan Golestani (founder of In Situ) In Situ is a free online and printed publication presenting square format, phone photography. Each issue is photographed by a different citizen and vaguely explores the link between architecture, urban life, the vast suburbia and motor-vehicle culture in Perth and beyond.

Instagram: @insituzine Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insituinsituinsitu/ Online zines: https://issuu.com/photoinsitu

9

Kenny Pittock is an Australian artist, hailing from Victoria. I found his work on Instagram in 2014. I am fairly certain it was an image in the ‘explore’ tab — a life size sculpture of a crinkle-cut and a smooth potato chip, both labeled ‘friend’, resting on a bed of (real) chips. I screen-shot them, the so-called friend chips, and sent the image to all I hold dear. This was heartwarming work. If you scroll further down his Instagram feed, you discover that for the month of October in 2014, Kenny documented everything he ate. It encompassed a brief period where he ate Twisties-based meals, which I highly recommend investigating. I have been following his work ever since. Pittock creates using various mediums, mainly clay sculpture and line drawings. His creations focus on his own everyday experiences and interests.

On Instagram, Kenny presents a toned-down version of performance art; displaying a sculpture of potato gems he has made next to a collection of Catherine the Great’s gem collection, or taking ceramic sculptures of books that he has read and enjoyed to book signings. You can see stoked authors such as Jane Goodall, Moana Hope, and John Safran (who was perhaps the most excited author to be asked to sign a ceramic sculpture of his own book). There are also quick sketches he has drawn of people on the train.

The works, and the way Kenny shares them with the subjects or specific audiences, are friendly, wholesome, and kind. These are works with good intentions, which provide an incredibly refreshing, glass half-full perspective anyone can take a sip of.

On his website, you can find more of his work. This includes details surrounding the creation of an M&M sculpture he painted at an Eminem concert, or the story behind taking tiny sculptures of the Ninja Turtles on his first trip to Italy to document Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo beside their most famous art works. As seen on Instagram, Kenny’s work is not just about the pieces of art themselves, but also the context surrounding how they were made, shared, or documented. He kindly shares these processes with the world smart or lucky enough to explore his website. Kenny’s accomplishments are thankfully not only noticed by bored people with a phone and an Instagram account, like myself. This year he was awarded the People’s Choice Award and the Redlands Emerging Artist Prize for his work in the McGivern Painting Prize. This work consisted of 52 ceramic sculptures he had made of shopping lists discovered during his job as a trolley collector.

I eagerly look forward to future creations brought into this world by Kenny, and I hope he continues to move from strength to strength. Please find more of his work here: http://kennypittock.blogspot.com.au http://www.kennypittock.com @kennypittock on Instagram

Corrective Retrospective: Kenny Pittock Jade Newton

10

Column Talk: Final Friends Harry Peter Sanderson

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

– T W.H Auden, The Shield of Achilles I

II

Increasingly, it seems the truest columns are friends. Hasan, the night our contract essays are due, sits between two columns of books. We are both displaced. These are the best days of our lives, he says. Thinking about it, he is correct. Columns represent an ancient design that remains relevant, connecting us to something classical and important in our past. Memories of friends are the same. They are longstanding, and time suppresses their idle details. Valued fragments of columns flood in, redescribing familiar forms in a different way.

And Gurine, in the basement of the library at 2am, the night before our final exam. She found me head in hands, bent over a desk covered with sprawling notes, mouthing what I could only just discern. Pencil marks over a long, thin column (a norse poem) stretching down the page. She translated the whole thing, slowing to my slow pace, so that I could follow along. Didn’t she have somewhere else to be? Didn’t she need to be preparing for herself? Well, she said, that is what friends are for.

That winter I went home with her for Christmas, to her parent’s house outside of Stockholm in the countryside, with a big sprawling garden, and ornate Scandinavian wooden columns propping up the wide door. A flood of uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, and grandmothers came for lunch. I sat between Gurine’s Grandmother Herta, and her nephew Josef, who was three, and who reminded me of my own nephew. Herta gave Josef a jar of preserve and a thick white jumper to give to me for Christmas. He smiled, his blonde hair flopping over his eyes. They spoke to me, and to each other about me, and Gurine translated, just like she had that night at university. This is one of my favourite memories. A few days later I flew back to Australia, which had its own columns to discover.

Annabel and Andrew, sitting in the hall of the Old Treasury building. Above them, columns made in 1889, Doric, rung round thin arches. A bottle of wine sits between us, a column in itself.

Jonty, standing in the middle of a drizzling street in Fitzroy.

The same lines of rain keep falling out of the grey sky, going up and down around him.

Maddy giving me two jars of juice, rounded, but basically columns, enscripted ‘for this very moment’.

Yngve, standing in front of an Anselm Keifer painting of Brazil, not looking at it, and talking about a Bolaño novel. We walk outside back up the street by the harbour, surrounded by columns of tall, shy young men.

Just after Christmas the following year, Gurine was out on the frozen lake near that same house with Josef, teaching him how to ice skate. The ice cracked, and Josef went under.

She dove through after him. Her brother only saw them from the house ten minutes later. The way the ice works in that temperature, the lake had nearly frozen over again. It was half an hour before they could get them out.

Matt Silver, strolling down a hill towards an afternoon party in his Canada-Goose jacket, telling me about growing up in the suburbs and losing rap competitions to Chinese kids.

Lisa, walking across the lawn after our graduation, quoting Simon Hornblower.

I saw her parents again about a year later. Her mother gripped me tightly, and seemed to indicate that I looked better with my hair cut short. Her father gave me a small square photograph. It was me and Gurine, the morning after Christmas that winter after University. We are sitting at her kitchen table, and we are both laughing. Gurine is pouring a cup of tea, and a long translucent column falls down from the spout to the cup. In the photo, it looks as if her hands are not holding up the teapot but resting on it, so that if she let go it would stand there on its own.

Francois, standing in a cathedral, describing to me once more the historical significance of arched piers. I am lucky enough not to understand it all.

11

10 Thoughts on Jeffrey Smart Harry Peter Sanderson 1. Clive James said the first thing you notice about his paintings is that hardly any of them are about Australia. This is nonsense. Go to the outskirts of an Australian capital city and you’ll find yourself stuck in the same stucco tundra. The oddly weighted spaciousness couldn’t exist anywhere that didn’t have kilometres of desert to fill, and not much to fill it with.

2. David Salle is to Jeffrey Smart what pornography is to making love.

3. If you were to average all of Smart’s paintings into one colour, it would probably be an off-yellow. The next rainy night this year, take your 2010 Hyundai i30 out to the suburb of Success and blaze around the wide streets at 90kph. Squint your eyes and look out of the side window; you’ll see roughly the shade I’m talking about.

4. He isn’t as similar to Edward Hopper as people think. Looking at them together, Hopper seems like a teenager whining that he was ‘born in the wrong generation’ or is ‘stuck in the wrong city’. Smart’s canvases tell Hopper’s not to take themselves so seriously – a quintessentially Australian suggestion. It doesn’t matter that the green fields are gone, he says, misery of place is only as bad as you make it, and there’s curiosity to be found everywhere.

5. Critics say there’s a high-Renaissance influence on Jeffrey Smart, but to say so is lazy; there’s a high-Renaissance influence on cigarette packaging. Critics stress he lived in Italy. Well, so did George Lucas.

6. Shine a light onto Jeffrey Smart’s paintings and there will be no reflection, since he rarely used impasto.

7. Smart makes inorganic paintings for an inorganic world. He works in low-toned backgrounds with explosions of artificial colours because these are the trappings of contemporary industrialism.

8. Smart’s influence is best observed in contemporary artists such as Scott Burton (@scobierobie on Instagram). Burton flirts with the same hard shapes of contemporary fabrication that Smart first addressed. But arguably Burton has a harder time, since he can’t work his canvas with tools. Without the luxury of purposeful arrangement, Burton has to wait for the shadows to come to him. He’s Smart on the street; a Nikeclad flaneur, slinking through the heat with a cracked iPhone.

9.The only painting I don’t like by him is The Bather circa 1955. All the elements that were later great are a bit off to begin with, like early George Harrison songs.

Interestingly, Harrison’s underwhelming debut album Wonderwall Music bears a cover with Smartian elements to it.

10. There’s a photo of Jeffrey Smart in front of two of his works at a 2005 gallery opening in Canberra. He is wearing a camel jacket with a black shirt and bright gold tie. This outfit is atrocious. How can the man with arguably the greatest aesthetic sense of the last 100 years be such a poor dresser? David Hockney and Helen Frankenthaler both dress immaculately, and Smart can’t even manage neutral.

Perhaps he spent all the energy he had on the canvas.

12

Pack Up the Moon: Scene VIII Nick Morlet The scream that closed Sc. 6 returns, but with inhuman attack, and cuts to dead silence 3-4 seconds later. Lights up on MONTY, seated, DOROTHY, with her back facing him, and HERMANN, side of stage in a silk kimono. The two men stare aghast at the floor, their feet, and around the room. While she faces away, it’s clear DOROTHY does the same.

MONTY: (reverse audio of glass shatter plays as he removes his beret) I thought she’d died in a fire bombing over Yokohama ...

DOROTHY: In 1945. In a WW2 air raid. She lives on, while we wait here.

HERMANN: (clutching his midriff in pain) Madame, may I be excused?

DOROTHY: There’s nothing beyond that door Hermann, not that I know of. (She lifts a shaking hand) Besides, he couldn’t love you anymore. (She turns slightly, and places her hand on Monty’s shoulder) How did you do it, in the end?

MONTY: With my service pistol.

DOROTHY: She blamed me for the death of her brother. She said I crushed his body, not my printing press. Years went by, and she did nothing. In the end, it was out of jealousy over you, not vengeance for him. Did she see you do it?

MONTY: She heard the shot. She tried opening the door. She wailed, I heard her battering the door with her small fists, her head on the floorboards. She knows she is forsaken now – (Above the stage, set into the flats that make up the interior of this scene, is a door. Unlit, and in a colour matching that of the flats, it should go unnoticed by the audience. While MONTY speaks, it opens suddenly, letting a dark blue light come through, and several objects are thrown out of it, including a pistol, several folded pieces of paper, a cowbell, a wakizashi, and a lamp, all of which clatter to the floor and spill out across the stage and into the front rows. A long pause follows) HERMANN: (still clutching his side) Madame, I think ... you can appreciate, what I ... please, allow me my leave to search for him ... I just want to be with – (HERMANN falls onto all fours as the contents of his torso fall to the floor, making little noise. The other two do not look) MONTY: I’m awash, Dorothy, in a sea of penitence and mortal agony. Am I forgiven?

DOROTHY: It’s not for me to judge. (She stoops and rests her head in the crook of his neck) Here we must wait, Monty, we must remain until we do not.

(An extended long pause as blossom petals come through the upper door. Somewhere, very far away, Chet Baker plays his trumpet in a low-quality recording. After a time, at the far side of the stage, a door flies open. While the overhead lights dim, a young Japanese man in a resplendent army uniform appears in the doorway, and beckons to them. MONTY and DOROTHY walk in an embrace towards the door, and moving apart before the young man, enter the door, one at a time. Both doors close of their own accord, lights out onstage. After a pause, TOKUKO enters the stage from the same door in a silk kimono, leading the very same cow from sc.1 on a piece of twine) (End Scene)

13

The Cult of OCD Sophie M I didn’t believe the psychiatrist at first when he said that I’ve got obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Well the depression, I knew that already, but OCD? It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t do all the things I thought OCD was all about. I didn’t fit any of the stereotypes, my room is always messy, I forget to lock the house up sometimes, and I couldn’t care less about the order that I keep my stationary in. Despite this, when I found myself a few nights later spending over an hour changing the hangers of all my clothes because I was convinced that they would stretch to the point of disintegration by the next morning, I started to see what he was saying. As I thought more about this, the more I realised there were early signs of it for me as a kid.

My Mother always tells me how as a child I absolutely hated things like pen and paint on my skin. I would run to the bathroom and scrub my hands from stamps and finger paints as soon as I could, because I was scared it would seep into my skin and make me sick. This still hasn’t changed. I never understood how people could write reminders on their palms because even looking at them doing it, all I could see was it oozing into the cracks of their skin making them ill. Friends eventually caught onto this and would often laugh at my panic when they marked my arm with a ballpoint pen. I do understand how this could seem ridiculous. I feel the same about tattoos. I appreciate the artistry of them, but it doesn’t change the fact I feel like people’s tattoos will melt onto me if I shake their hand, and that I’ll have to somehow hack out the part of my body it reached.

To all tattooed people, I promise it’s not you, it’s me.

A lot of my OCD centres around social situations. For instance, I ritualistically replay every single conversation and evaluate if it was a success or not. What defines a success, I do not know. When it’s not a “success”, I become obsessed with apologising and redeeming myself for being such a burden on my peers. This could take form in distancing myself from them on purpose for a certain amount of time in an effort to relieve them of my self-concluded aggravating presence. It can also mean apologising to them over text the day after a party for saying something I thought didn’t come out right, or that may have offended them or embarrassed myself. Something else I used to do, not so often anymore, is if I had a face to face conversation with someone I would repeat it best I could sentence by sentence out-loud to evaluate if what I said was “correct”.

This makes socialising very scary and very exhausting. I used to think everyone thought about conversations like this.

A common but not widely discussed symptom of OCD is violent, perverted and sexually themed images or thoughts that come uninvited, which generally aren’t much fun to say the least. For those who don’t know, intrusive thoughts are involuntary images or ideas that are often repetitive and upsetting. When I started to get these, it was mainly around the children I worked with being assaulted in ways I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Then started images of me violently attacking friends or family. Somehow, I concluded that because I was having these thoughts, that deep down I must want this to happen otherwise I wouldn’t be having these thoughts in the first place? I started to avoid walking near the park next to my house because of the children who would be at the playgrounds. I would repeat phrases out a loud as if to cancel out the bad thoughts and “make sure” they didn’t happen, as if what I said had some sort of magical power.

Having obsessive compulsive disorder is like being in a cult in your own mind. There are rituals, obsessions and nothing you do seems to make sense to anyone else on the outside. My Dad is happy I panic at foreign things on my skin because then he knows I’ll never get a tattoo. That’s a different problem altogether though, so don’t worry about that for now. I hope that I can soon move away from the cult of OCD and its strange practises, ideas and schools of thought. People often join a cult-like group because they feel lost or lonely and they desire a place for things to make sense. These needs are fulfilled but arguably not in the best ways possible. But just like real cults, the process in leaving is often long and hard.

14

Taking 5 with Amber Fresh Music editor Tess Bury caught up with local wanderer Amber Fresh AKA Rabbit Island to discuss music, writing on a typewriter in your car and the shadow biosphere.

Where do you reside?

In Fremantle. Mainly in and around my home. I spend a lot of time at home or by the ocean.

playing shows.

What’s your set up at home like?

I usually have a few keyboards, a loop pedal, and my voice.

But at the moment we’ve got this amazing thing – it’s like a small, beautiful, creamy sounding keyboard, and it has a built-in radio, and also a little drum machine – it’s very old.

We’ve worked out that it can keep the drum machine going whilst the radio’s on, but when the radio comes on it cuts out the keys. So, I just play and put bits of radio in it. It’s the best instrument in our house. There’s also a big, old organ with pedals.

Would you say you’re a homebody?

Yeah, but even if that home extends over many, many kilometres. If I’m going on a hike or camping, every place becomes your home. But my real home is Goode Beach near Albany.

Do you think Albany still influences your music?

I grew up having lots of time alone in nature, and also being free. My parents were nice to me and let me roam. We live next to a national park and the ocean, so my places to roam where there. I appreciated it, even when I was a teenager.

So this has stayed with me. If I’m going to make things, it’s necessary that I have lots of space, both in my brain and around me.

Do you have any releases?

There’s an album called Oh God, Come Quick, and some home recordings called 65% Hits. Last year Nick and I put out a little mixtape called The Race, and then I made a little album of songs for kids when my niece was born. I’ve also recorded another album called Deep In The Big which hasn’t come out yet.

Do you have a studio?

Not really. But when I used to write a lot, my favourite period was when I was doing my PhD (although nearly about to give it all up), a lot of the time I didn’t have anywhere to write it but I always had my typewriter in my car. Sometimes I would just write in my car. I don’t think people need studios, but at the moment I do have a big room for those sorts of things.

Does anyone else in Perth inspire you?

I think Nick and I have a sort of mutual effects on each other’s music and ways of thinking. I’d say there’s also people in music who influence me more in how to be a good human – like Ben Whitt and Mai Saraswati. Whenever people do stuff that’s honest and amazing, it inspires me.

Do you go through creative bursts?

Yeah, but with different things – like the last few weeks I’ve been doing screen printing. Sometimes I make lots of songs and sometimes I don’t, but I don’t really sit down in front of a piano and try to write a song. Some people go to work and do that. Nick (Allbrook) and I were talking about it the other night. Those two ways of making things – effort and diligence and stuff, or just letting things happen. And they both have their place.

If you could have musician around for dinner, who would it be?

Alice Coltrane. She plays jazz harp.

Where is Rabbit Island?

There is a real place where I grew up called Rabbit Island, you can swim out to it.

Are there rabbits on it?

I’ve never seen any there. I do love all plants and animals but I have particular fondness for rabbits – that’s just the name.

Maybe it has a spiritual double in the shadow biosphere.

When did you start making music?

When I got my first laptop. I wanted to send a piece I’d written to this Perth band called The Tigers, and I wanted to send something else along with it so I made a song. After that, when this Californian friend of mine got ProTools we made a few songs together, which were pretty… I could either say shit or amazing, and both would be true. But when I had Garageband to play around on, that was cool because I could put things over the top of one another, and I started putting things on Myspace. Then this band Batrider from New Zealand asked me to play with them – and I was like, I don’t have an amplifier or anything! But they just said you can do it. So, I got ready and played a show, and I just kept

If you think that aliens do exist on Earth, what form have they taken?

Chips. It’s the most logical way to get inside a human.

Does that mean we’re all aliens?

Nah, but we may have been explored more thoroughly than we think.

Check out Amber’s work as Rabbit Island on Bandcamp.

15

What Bands Were You Freakishly Obsessed With?

I developed a smoking habit and difficulty breathing whilst lying on my side because I wanted to be exactly like Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers.

Jordan Murray I was so obsessed with Taylor Swift, I took the day off school to go to her concert. I was so excited and overwhelmed I vomited at the concert, and spent most of the time in the toilet and barely saw her play.

Selina Bell In Year 6, I Limewire-d the Fort Minor album The Rising Tied, learnt most of the lyrics to most of the big songs (‘Remember The Name’, ‘Petrified’, ‘Where’d You Go’, ‘High Road’). Point of it – I got my computer taken away for a month by the school, my parents put a moratorium on me trying to sound like Mike Shinoda, and I gave up on my dreams of being a ‘cool kid’.

Jonathan Israel I loved Tame Impala so much that the first time I saw Kevin Parker in person I ran up the stairs of the Oddfellow, into the street and fell to my knees, at enough speed to destroy my chinos and scar myself.

Nick Morlet I used to watch David Bowie interviews every night and I ended up memorising them. I knew all the song lyrics, knew what year and month the albums came out, and I knew background details on his life. Safe to say I was a little obsessed.

Evangeline Perry I once tried to kick over my head like Robert Pollard from Guided by Voices, but I could only get up to my chin, I ended up destroying my friend’s beer on the down-swing. Also, I thought The Pogues were pronounced The “Pog-Ues” in Year 11 and tired talking to an Irish guy about them at work experience. He didn’t know what I was talking about.

Reuben Wylie I used to write self-insert fanfic where I had sex with all of the members of Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco.

Rae Twiss When I was 14 I was obsessed with My Chemical Romance. After the band broke up the lead singer Gerard Way released his postal address so we could send mail to him and he could personally write back.

I spent days perfecting my letter, which included carefully selected questions about some of the band’s least popular songs, best wishes for his family, and a not-so-subtle disclaimer making sure he knew I was mature for my age and more enlightened than any other ‘twelvie’ fan. I conducted myself very maturely and professionally right up until I stood in front of the post box when I couldn’t hold myself back and put lipstick kisses and love heart stickers all over the envelope. I did not receive a reply.

Deni Campbell When I was 11 I was so obsessed with the Veronicas that I used to wear their fashion line, my friend and I made a heap of music videos to their songs and I got trampled in the mosh pit of their concert.

Kelly Dunn I was so obsessed with Joy Division that I got really upset when The Wombats released ‘Let’s Dance to Joy Division’ because I thought they were my band and no one else’s. I cried.

Tess Bury When I was 7 years old and a religious follower of Australian Idol I wept when Anthony Callea came runner-up to Casey Donovan in Season 2.

Gabby Loo

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Review: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: September 2017 Nick Morlet Anne La Berge, Raw In terms of classical contemporary, this release seems to have it all. Extended guitar, a bass clarinet, and a Xenakis-wannabe on a laptop – check. A high concept involving improvisation and computer software that can’t be haughtily explained in just a pithy paragraph or two, and was ten times more interesting when Zorn did it in the 90’s. An end product that is as interesting in sound, as a large unexpected pollen-sac is in taste. Ever walk under a tree and have that happen to you?

Dalia Raudonikyte With, Solitarius This composer is Lithuanian, and the first track of Solitarius immediately reminds me of Messiaen’s Abîme des oiseaux. For these two reasons, I quite like it. There seems to be a trend with these album names, a crappy trend, like astrology or cutting your hair short.

Daniel Corral, Refractions We’ve got a guy on a music box (those little things you turn and they plink out Christmas carols), we’ve got a prog-metal guitarist that barely registers, we’ve got an ambient string quartet, and we’ve got some minimal album art that has every musician’s name on it. Pretty nice, pretty stoning stuff, can recommend to those in the bath.

Andrew Lee, Randy Gibson: The Four Pillars Appearing from The Equal D under Resonating Apparitions of The Eternal Process in The Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City) These composers really need to sort their shit out, maybe hire some lo-fi Soundcloud kid to name and design their albums because this shit’s getting out of hand. Also, this is just the middle D note on a piano for 16 minutes.

David Kirkland Garner, Dark Holler Alright now, that’s what I’m talking about when I say good album title: DARK HOLLER. It’s direct and evocative without being a single faffy word. I feel like I don’t even need to listen to it, and in fact I won’t; this excellent title is enough. And now I’m done crapping on about naming an album.

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh / Garth Knox, All Soundings Are True I actually really like this one, like Sun Ra’s 1966 album Strange Strings with these dissonant string harmonics flying every which way. Unlike that album, this duo actually knows how to play their instruments, the viola d’amore. (Also, this one wins on album title. Alright, I’m DONE).

Quiver, Small Worlds I first saw these guys back in July at Highgate Continental, at a listening party for this album organised by Perth label Tone List. In terms of free improvisation this is the strongest release on here: I’m a sucker for flute, bells and clarinet-y timbres and seeing them live really helps contextualise what I’m hearing; both of these reasons are entirely subjective and you should accept that because this is a review.

John Luther Adams, Canticles of the Holy Wind This is the only other composer on the list I could recognise, mostly because he’s all over his self-marketing. “One of the most original musical thinkers of the new century”? Pah-lease, Debussy made an orchestra sound like the ocean a hundred years ago, get real.

Fonema Consort, Fifth Tableau What’s that, experimental noise acapella? Wonderful. At the bottom of the list, and my sonic palate is real sick of this ‘exploratory’ stuff – I’m going to go listen to the new Oh Sees album, Orc. Oh Sees, Orc Here’s the new album from San Fran garage rocker John Dwyer and his rotating roster of crazy people formerly known as Thee Oh Sees, and now known as Oh Sees. Orc opens with ‘Static God’, which has this insipid hook that soured my anticipation of this new album.

However, track two lifts the standard by dabbling in be-caped prog rock through a synth lead that recalls Dwyer’s side project Damaged Bug. Later tracks insinuate themselves into sludge metal, jam band & post-rock idioms, Oh Sees having always had a knack for taking sundry rock genres into their stride. The preceding two-parter album is probably a better example of this knack: A Weird Exits came across as a glammed-up take on mainstream 60’s psych, even if An Odd Entrances was a bit boneless.

What goes down real nice like a chill glass of H2O is the return of Brigid Dawson, former keyboardist and vocal collaborator who lends backups to a couple of definite track favourites, ‘Nite Expo’ and ‘Keys to the Castle’. Transcendently good pair, why’d they ever split? In the balance of things, while it’s hard to tell for all their rapid pace Oh Sees give us a ripper album out of each two or three. Maybe they should stick to this garage jam/spaced-out interlude alternating structure because it really works. Give it a listen.

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Don’t Wear Thrasher If You Don’t Skate Isabella Corbett Photography by Michael Tartaglia (@michael_tartaglia) Skateboarding has garnered a cult-like following in the fashion industry, despite protests from skaters themselves. An anonymous photographer summarised his experience consulting for Vogue’s “Skate Week” as such: “I think Vogue is fucking dumb and knows nothing about skating, and their approach was ignorant and stupid.” Given their approach involved calling a kickflip a “flip kick”, this sentiment isn’t too obscure. Others are more empathetic, with Fashionista interviewing an employee from the popular Brooklyn skate shop, KCDC, who explained, “skateboarding is for everyone,” and that it’s “flattering to skateboarding that it’s reaching other areas and other lifestyles, but it sucks if they don’t do it properly or get the right people involved.” Admiration has turned to imitation though, with several notable fashion designers and retailers slapped with lawsuits for copyright infringement. In his F/W 2013 collection, Jeremy Scott blatantly plagiarised artwork by Jim Phillips, whose iconic and gruesome graphics for California brand Santa Cruz rendered him a prolific figure on the West Coast skate and surf scene. Following a lengthy legal battle, Scott apologised to Santa Cruz’s parent company, NHS Inc., and agreed to cease production of infringing items, as well as recall any versions that had already been released. For F/W 2012, Gosha Rubchinskiy riffed Thrasher magazine’s legendary graphics, and F/W 2014 saw him copy Fucking Awesome’s logo (which, bizarrely enough, is eerily similar to that of Hulk Hogan’s ‘Hulkmania’).

The skate aesthetic the fashion world is enamoured by is relatively one-dimensional, though: oversized T-shirts and hoodies in bold colours with iconic graphics emblazoned on them, like Thrasher’s flame arch logo and Palace’s triangular emblem; black Vans Old Skool sneakers; and straight leg, Dickies chinos. Like any other subculture, the style has evolved with changing epochs, and has a rich history. Craig Stecyk is one of skateboarding’s original documentarians, and can be credited with shaping the subculture as we see it today. His photos and words were brutally honest and seeped in filth, as he captured misfits and fuck-ups on the streets of Santa Monica, California in the mid-70s. The influential Z-Boys pulled inspiration from surfing, carving asphalt waves and riding low. They took their unique style to empty swimming pools that had been drained amidst a major drought that parched Southern California, giving rise to ‘Dogtown’ style. They sprayed their boards with skulls, bones, and crosses, and territorially marked walls with the same glyphs. While Stecyk helped develop the timeless West Coast DIY skate-surf aesthetic of the 70s, Larry Clark was one of many artists to define the iconic look of the skateboarding scene in the 90s. His film, Kids, was a wildly aggressive yet bleak depiction of the lawlessness of 20

New York City’s youth skating community. Clad in baggy jeans and blasting hip hop, these grunge renegades pioneered early street-skate companies like Zoo York and Supreme. Kids shocked the general populace, but the Piss Drunx stunned the skate world. Formed in the late 90s and described by founding member Dustin Dollin as a “bunch of misfit broke-ass degenerates,” the gang’s obscene antics and heavy substance abuse drew a cult following. Some members, namely Ali Boulala and Jim Greco, laced themselves with bondage and punk gear, emulating doomed punk rocker Sid Vicious.

Fast track a few years and it seems the fashion industry has gentrified skate fashion. Dior Homme built a skate park as part of its F/W 2016 runway show, and artistic director Kris Van Assche hired Larry Clark to shoot a short film introducing the brand’s S/S 2017 sneaker collection. Louis Vuitton and Supreme released a capsule collection in 2017, and resellers are marking up prices by up to 200 percent; the Box Logo hoodie even reached a resell price of $25,000 USD on eBay. Vetements chopped Thrasher’s logo onto hoodies for F/W 2015, and boutique skate brands like Alltimers, Bianca Chandôn, Bronze 56K, and Nine One Seven are sold in London’s elite Dover Street Market. While profitable, these ventures are diametrically opposed to the foundations skateboarding was built on.

Skateboarding has always attracted the outsiders, as well as kids of diverse ethnic backgrounds, giving them respite to the banalities and hardships of life and a sense of belonging. Gang members took care of each other, and with persistence and ingenuity, taught themselves how to skate, and subscribed to a DIY ethic. They rejected the establishment, authority, and materialism, refusing to succumb to whatever fashion prescribed and instead made their own individual mark on the scene. Skate brands are no different to any other company in that they’re driven by revenue and increasing brand recognition among consumers, so collaborating with luxury brands makes sense; but in instances where these alliances gorge extreme profits and high fashion brands steal from fellow creatives, one can’t help wonder whether these ventures render the foundations skate culture was founded upon obsolete?

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Pelican Nudes

Name: Ben Yaxley How do you contribute to Pelican? Comics and ghostwriting.

Hobbies? Adventures in the mind.

Defining character trait? Lack of dreads.

Best creative venture of your life? Making zines.

Favourite place in Perth? Too many. Maybe the Sacred India Gallery in the Swan Valley.

Favourite kind of bird? Willy wagtails warm my heart. Ducks too. I would like to reincarnate as a duck by my grandma’s lake.

Catchphrase?

Probably something obnoxious.

Name: Hannah Cockroft What do you study? English and Cultural Studies.

How do you contribute to Pelican? I’ve had a creative writing residency with the magazine this year, so I have a short story in each issue.

Hobbies? In my spare time I like sewing and filling up my belly with spaghetti.

Best creative venture of your life? Filling in a whole page of an intricate adult colouring book without leaving any white bits.

Favourite place in Perth? Viet Hoa Plans for 2018? To continue writing and make enough money to keep spaghetti in my tum.

Name: Prema Arasu What do you study? Witchcraft.

How do you contribute to Pelican? This year I wrote an actual serious article about women and Islam.

Hobbies? Farming memes, currently living and travelling in Scotland.

Defining character trait? My name sounds like Pema.

Best creative venture of your life? Deltora Quest fanfiction.

Favourite place in Perth? Moana café in the city or the top of the UWA clock tower.

Favourite kind of bird? Zapdos.

Plans for 2018? Finish reading Infinite Jest.

Catchphrase? To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty.

The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head.

There’s also Rick’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation – his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance.

The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they’re not just funny – they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence, people who dislike Rick and Morty truly ARE idiots – of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential catchphrase “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon’s genius unfolds itself on their television screens.

What fools... how I pity them. And yes by the way, I DO have a Rick and Morty tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only – and even they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

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Name: Eamonn “The Swans Teeth Dude” Kelly What do you study? Books. (English and Cultural Studies and History, the grammatical flub annoys me too).

How do you contribute to Pelican? I wrote that one David Foster Wallace article, got mildly cross about music criticism, and went fishing in a park pond around Canning Vale.

Hobbies? I read, I’m a reader, I also like long walks on the beach and listening to “strange” “music”.

Defining character trait? I got “most likely to start an argument” on the little commemorative card they gave me for year twelve graduation, I suppose that’s accurate.

Best creative venture of your life? I made a chip kebab once, it is a taste sensation that the masses don’t know they want.

Favourite place in Perth? Canning Vale, obviously.

Favourite kind of bird? Gotta go with Donald Duck here.

Plans for 2018? In Search of Lost Time, Don Quixote, Bleak House, Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Knausgaard’s My Struggle (not a Hitler thing) series, in that order.

Catchphrase? “Howdy” and “Alrighty” are verbal ticks of mine.

Pelican Nudes

Name: Ian Tan What do you study? Political Science & History.

How do you contribute to the Pelican? I wrote some articles on politics.

Hobbies? Procrastination.

Defining character trait? “Good, honest guy”.

Best creative venture of your life? My Instagram account.

Favourite place in Perth? Honeybeanz Cafe, Subiaco.

Favourite kind of bird? One that doesn’t poop on me.

Plans for 2018? Anything but Guild Elections.

Catchphrase? Everyday is a great day!

Name: Mike Anderson What do you study? Political Science & International Relations, and Employment Relations.

How do you contribute to Pelican? I’m the Politics Editor, I also wrote a series on Psephology.

Hobbies? Following elections, being a mental health advocate.

Defining character trait? Being political to the point of confusing people.

Favourite place in Perth? Fremantle.

Favourite kind of bird? Peli-Hawk.

Plans for 2018? Maybe actually study?

Name: T-Bizzle.

What do you study? Astrology. Not many people know about this course, but it’s offered at UWA. How do you contribute to Pelican? I take one single copy of each edition and sacrifice it to the magazine overloads in my backyard every week. That’s why Pelican is so charged with positive ju-ju.

Hobbies? Getting on it.

Defining character trait? Always starting pyramid schemes. Please attach 5c and send to KnowYourFortune2Day….. oh, wait!

There I go again.

Best creative venture of your life? Putting peanut butter on a carrot. Yes, you read that right.

Favourite place in Perth? Coles, Woolworths, IGA… I don’t discriminate.

Favourite kind of bird? The twitter logo.

Plans for 2018? Sailing away into the sunset like Seth from the OC. It’s technically the end of season 1 in my life.

Catchphrase? Did you know? There’s a secret passage within the food pyramid.

Name: Leah Roberts What do you study? Pols and Comms.

How do you contribute to the Pelican?

Politics section!

Hobbies? Politics, football (Soccer + AFL), eating, swimming, travelling, discussing politics.

Defining character trait? Fierceness.

Best creative venture of your life? In year 7 my canopic jar, mum and dad still display it.

Favourite place in Perth? Cott beach (nothing feels more like home).

Favourite kind of bird? Wedge tail eagle.

Plans for 2018? A paying job hopefully or further studies ‘cause I love getting more debt.

Catchphrase? “aww bb is ok”.

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Name: Pema Elizabeth Monaghan What do you study? I am writing a PhD in English and Cultural Studies. It’s called A ‘Mysterious and Alluring Sweetness’: Sensory Experiences at the Department Store in Four Novels.

How do you contribute to Pelican? I am the editor of the Literature Section.

Hobbies? Reading, watching television, singing in my band, singing in my choir, eating, walking, walking my dogs and my cat, grumbling, sewing, arguing.

Defining character trait? I can’t answer this question.

Best creative venture of your life? Nothing has been so fraught and rewarding as trying to keep my pot plant alive.

Favourite place in Perth? My boyfriend’s couch, eating pasta he has made for us.

Favourite kind of bird? The mudlark: evolution’s mistake.

Plans for 2018? I hope to have written a chapter of my thesis, I suppose. A simple dream.

Catchphrase? My words to live by are by Marcel Proust, from page thirteen of the David Zwirner Books edition of his short critical work Chardin and Rembrandt: ‘If you can say, looking at a Chardin: this is as intimate and vital as a kitchen, then as you walk through a kitchen you will say: this is intriguing, this is grand, this is as beautiful as a Chardin’.

Pelican Nudes

Name: Julian Coleman What do you study? Data science How do you contribute to Pelican? I write film reviews and I am one-half of Antonate Silvergreen responsible for ‘The Numbers’ for the 2017 Guild Election coverage.

Hobbies? Unsurprisingly, I like film and politics.

Defining character trait? Industrious.

Best creative venture of your life? Instagram photos I have taken for my girlfriend.

Favourite place in Perth? It was the Piccadilly before it closed and will be again when it reopens.

Favourite kind of bird? Flightless ones. They can’t do the thing that they are meant to do but they usually have other cool skills.

Plans for 2018? Hopefully, go on exchange to University College London. If you see articles from me in semester one you’ll know that didn’t work out.

Catchphrase? What you have to understand is...

Name: Skye Newton Studying? Architecture and integrated design.

How I contribute? I’m the intern, though it still hasn’t been established as to whether or not that’s a joke yet, haha.

Hobbies? Me time.

Character trait? Grimy.

Best creative venture? Yet to come hey. Just kidding – my birth.

Favourite place in Perth? My bath tub.

Favourite bird? Any bird that can lure me into feeding them through a false sense of companionship.

Plans for 2018? Establish a bigger network of friends that are specifically characterised by playing animal crossing. Recreate a live action version of the Animal Crossing movie.

Take care of my family. Feature on My Strange Addictions. Learn how to use public pools. Engage more with my rural identity through accent alone. Method acting as Komajiro from Yokai Watch as a hobby, but it’s for the rest of my life.

Catchphrase? Oh my swirls.

Name: Jade Newton What do you study? Faces and expressions.

How do you contribute to Pelican? I contribute to pelican by submitting things; pretty standard.

Hobbies? Making my cat be my friend, investing too much in our relationship, growing things and buying a lot of zines online.

Defining character trait? Very bad with colloquialisms; overuse of ‘okidoke’.

Best creative venture of your life? When I was 7 I painted a crab at the beach on a rock and I won a prize.

Favourite place in Perth? The Mandurah train line at 7:30 when it’s leaving Elizabeth Quay (or as we traditionalists remember it, the Esplanade Station).

Favourite kind of bird? The peregrine falcon. I learnt about them when I was young and studying bird guides and fell in love.

Catchphrase? I honestly probably don’t talk out loud enough for this kind of thing.

Ruth Thomas - Editor Name: Ruth Thomas How do you contribute to Pelican? I spend a lot of time in the Office.

Hobbies? Reading, thinking about people, thinking about my life, and thinking about things that would be improved if they were covered in pink velvet Defining character trait? Extreme Beauty Best creative venture of your life? Skyrim Favourite place in Perth? Anywhere that is raining Favourite kind of bird? Crows, but only the fun kind Plans for 2018? Writing that novel, learning the Nielsen Concerto, and leaving all forms of social media.

Catchphrase? I promise from the very bottom of my heart to love you forever.

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Pelican Nudes

Name: Mara Papavassiliou What do you study? Law. How do you contribute to Pelican? I’m the News Editor.

Hobbies? I feel like I lose all my hobbies (+ sense of self) during uni semester?

But normally they’re reading, journaling, spending time outside, keeping up with the news and not being chronically stressed.

Defining character trait? My mum says tenacity. My housemate says my terrible “retired country music signer” dress sense.

Best creative venture of your life? The time I wrote the entire Manifesto of Futurism on my fridge. (Apparently it’s also written on a plaque near the News Corporation building in Sydney? Terrifying).

Favourite place in Perth? The deserted spots of beach in between City Beach and Floreat.

Favourite kind of bird? Willy wag tail.

Plans for 2018? Presuming I pass my units: graduate uni, go to Tasmania, get an actual job.

Catchphrase? Pass the sriracha.

Name: Ryan Suckling What do you study? English and European Studies (now rescinded from the Arts Faculty to mark this university’s commitment to humanist education).

How do you contribute to Pelican? I’m Film Editor.

Hobbies? I read a good deal – literary novels and romantic poetry mostly. Listen to trashy pop and elitist classical music. Watch independent British film from the 80s (thank god for Thatcher!).

Defining character trait? Agile melancholy.

Best creative venture of your life? I guess interviewing David Stratton was pretty cool.

Favourite place in Perth? Used to be Civic Video before it went bust. Now it’s State Library (lady at reception makes me feel good).

Favourite kind of bird? The clipped kind.

Plans for 2018? Graduate, become restless, and move to somewhere old and fanciful.

Catchphrase? What is my life but preference for the ginger biscuit (credit: Samuel Beckett).

Name: Isabella Corbett What do you study? Fine Art and Marketing.

How do you contribute to Pelican? I’m their Fashion Editor. Anna Wintour, whom? WTF a Diana Vreeland?

Hobbies?

Psychoanalysing reality television contestants; finding the most obscenely theatrical beauty tutorials on Instagram; giving my cats kisses; watching old skateboarding videos; stalking D-list Perthonalities on SoundCloud; and writing about fashion.

Defining character trait? Genuinely forgetting to reply to messages.

Best creative venture of your life? This one!

Favourite place in Perth? Wherever my best friends are.

Favourite kind of bird? It’s a toss-up between the Booby and the Great tit!

Plans for 2018? Being a corporate hack working fulltime until I have the financial security to move interstate to try and catch a gig Writing Professionally™.

Catchphrase? Definitely not a catch phrase but it’s the humble keyboard smash, e.g., “ADFDLGKJNDSFG”.

Bryce Newton - Editor Name: Bryce Newton What do you study? Currently working on an in-depth analysis of rural drama based television shows I find streaming on Stan.

How do you contribute to Pelican? Editing my life away.

Hobbies? Purchasing books written by women, reading them, then the cycle continues. Also, embroidery in my spare time (I have none).

Defining character trait? Unable to directly look at anything during layout, attempted eye contact to strengthen bonds.

Best creative venture of your life? My creative writing thesis, and the embroidery I did two years ago of a salad sandwich which to this day, looks delicious.

Favourite place in Perth? It was my old house which I missed, but I’ve moved on now.

Favourite kind of bird? In an alternate universe, a Bird where there is more space throughout.

Plans for 2018? Sleeping, making something incredible that I will then post on Instagram and move on from. Thinking about getting another mullet.

Catchphrase? Thank you so much.

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Pelican Nudes

Name: Maddi Howard What do you study? Conservation Biology.

How do you contribute to Pelican? Science Editor.

Hobbies? Cooking and baking, reading (pretty much anything), bushwalking and beaching!

Defining character trait? Being a worrypants.

Best creative venture? Painting and stringing together honkey nuts to decorate the Christmas tree.

Favourite place in Perth? On a bushwalk trail in Yanchep National Park, or smack-bang in the middle of a picnic blanket on the Matilda Bay foreshore Favourite kind of bird? Galahs – I love that they insist on waddling everywhere even though they could fly if they chose to.

Plans for 2018? Conservation biology honours in Albany.

Name: Gabby Loo How do you contribute to Pelican? Comics, illustrations, the odd written piece, and slowly persuading more students to j o i n us.

Hobbies? Watching the sunset then night time wandering with my dog, cooking up feasts, scavenging libraries and laughing until I shed happy tears.

Defining character trait? Late but willing.

Best creative venture of your life? Embarking on a Fine Arts Major then meeting my love in a hopeless place.

Favourite place in Perth? 44 Edinboro Street Mt Hawthorn, Scabs Beach, and anywhere my best friends are.

Favourite kind of bird? Raggiana Birdof-paradise (See Planet Earth 2: Jungles episode for more!)

Plans for 2018? Staying calm, less selfloathing, and bringing my community arts project Belonging to more WA CaLD & Indigenous peeps.

Catchphrases? It takes strong people to live. / Everything is everything.

Name: Nick Morlet How do you contribute to Pelican? I contribute my words to the Pelican, I contribute my thoughts, but mostly my words.

Hobbies? include the later albums of Ornette Coleman, long walks, and inspiration.

Catchphrase? “People won’t know what you meant” but in DF Wallace’s voice.

Name: Sophie Minissale What do you study?

Media & Communications and History. First year.

How do you contribute to Pelican? With enthusiasm. And mostly writing.

Hobbies? Listening to music (especially hip hop), photography and starting creative projects but never finishing them.

Defining character trait? My lack of defining character traits.

Best creative venture of your life? I’m currently co-writing a sketch show for the Fringe Festival next near so that’s kinda cool.

Favourite place in Perth? It’s a tie between Diabolik Books and Records and my Baba’s (grandmother’s) house.

Favourite kind of bird? Kingfishers.

Plans for 2018? I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow let alone next year.

Catchphrase? Make good choices.

Name: Harry Peter Sanderson How do you contribute? Arts Editor.

Favourite Bird? Peacock.

Plans for 2018? Stop letting down people I care about.

Catchphrase? Oh.

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There are too many people at the public pool Skye Newton

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The JAWS Debate Maddi Howard

With the annual arrival of summer comes the resurgence of debate around shark attack prevention strategies. So far, this year in Australia, 14 people have reportedly fallen victim to shark attacks of varying degrees, adding fire to the seemingly inconclusive debate about whether or not culling is a worthwhile strategy for dealing with the shark “issue”. The debate is a divisive one, with politicians at state and federal level, local community members, victims’ families, and conservation scientists all weighing in on the point.

The Colin Barnett government implemented a shark cull policy in WA in 2012 through the means of hooked drumlines designed to kills the sharks that got caught. The result was huge public outcry, protests numbering in the several thousands, and submission of expert argument from scientists to the EPA detailing reasons to end the cull. Whilst the number of people who disagreed with culling seemed to outweigh the number supporting it, particularly amongst those who used the ocean regularly, there was unanimous support for alternative strategies to handling the shark threat through deterrence and surveillance technologies.

Such a polarising debate may have had a positive effect on the very animal that was originally targeted for destruction – WA emerged in the years following the cull program as an epicentre for non-destructive technologies and strategies to reduce shark attack occurrences, with UWA researchers at the forefront of the innovation.

FOR culling party: • Culling is a way to restore confidence of beachgoers • It’s an immediate response action to shark attacks – seen to be doing something about the “problem” • WA has the greatest rate of shark attacks in the world • So much of our lives as West Australians is centred around the beach. Not culling could mean forfeiting that lifestyle out of fear AGAINST culling party: • Sharks live naturally in the ocean and are integral to the functioning and food web that makes life in the ocean carry on • There is no conclusive evidence to support culling as a successful and impactful strategy to reduce shark attacks and increase beachgoer protection • Sharks and the ocean they live in are part of WA’s identity – many West Australians accept sharks as a fundamental component of the ocean environment they love • There are other non-destructive strategies to try first, including more behavioural research on sharks, and implementing a shark tag and alert system whereby beach patrols would be made aware when a tagged shark is in the vicinity of the beach.

Some alternatives to culling: • Drumlines – issues with dolphin and turtle bycatch and subsequent drownings • Catch and relocation • Using drones in the place of, or in addition to helicopter patrols • Increase education effort – make people aware of when to swim and when not to swim, learning to share the ocean with the sharks rather than trying to eradicate and own it.

• Aforementioned tagging and alert system • Deterrence technologies integrated into wetsuits and surfboard straps

As the 2017/18 summer looms closer here in WA, it is undoubtable that we are to see shark attack stories splashed once again across our newspapers and news headlines. Whilst it is completely understandable that people are fearful of falling victim to one of the apex predators of the ocean, it is also arguably a somewhat avoidable circumstance. My strategy for swimming at the beach this summer is simple – don’t swim in ‘sharky’ overcast weather, be mindful that I am merely a visitor in the home of these threatened creatures, and last but not least, make sure that when I am swimming, there is always someone out further than me – that way, if a hungry shark does happen to mosey by, it might go for them first!

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I Want a Blue Chrysanthemum Ruth Thomas Since the 80s Genetic Modification (GM) has been used by scientists and bioengineering companies to modify plants.

The simplest and most popular methods of genetic engineering flowers are selective breeding and hybridisation.

In selective breeding, flowers that express a desired characteristic are separated from the crop and encouraged to grow – this continues until a sufficiently extreme version of the characteristic is obtained. For example, if searching for a fuchsia pink rose, this would mean selecting the brightest, pinkest rose in every crop, using its pollen to grow a new crop, selecting the brightest, pinkest roses from that crop, and repeating the process until a fuchsia pink rose was grown. There are obvious limits to what this method can achieve, as a flower’s characteristics can only express as far as the flower’s genes will naturally allow. This may mean that a fuchsia pink rose is unattainable, as that shade of pink is outside of the roses’ genetic code, but often a pink a few shades darker or lighter is possible.

The second method of genetic engineering is hybridisation – this normally involves interbreeding between plants of the same species, or between related species. This is usually done by pollinating one plant with the pollen of another in the hope that a characteristic found in one flower will be bred into another. If breeding a pink rose, this method of modification would involve using the pollen of a white rose to pollinate a red rose, with the hope that the resulting plant would be a mix of the two (pink). It might also mean using the pollen of a fuchsia daisy to pollinate a white rose, with the hope that the resulting plant would look like a rose, but have the colour of the fuchsia flower. The limits of this method are that there is no guarantee that the interbreeding will produce the modification that is sought, the possible modifications are limited to what is available within a species, or its close relatives, and there is a chance that plants produced by this method will be sterile.

Both hybridisation and selective breeding are fairly natural methods of bioengineering, but both have significant limitations to what can be achieved. Another more specific method is the genetic modification of a plant – as the name suggests, this method involves altering the genes (the DNA) of a plant to produce a desired characteristic. This could mean repressing a particular gene, or replacing a gene with one from a different organism. In our example of creating a fuchsia rose a scientist would have to know which of the rose’s gene creates the rose’s colour, and they would have to know which gene in another fuchsia flower creates its pink colour. The difficulty lies in knowing which genes to modify (in plants there are normally 20,000 - 40,000), and this process can be further complicated as a flower’s characteristic is rarely created by a single gene, instead it is normally the effect of a combination of genes. It can also be difficult to predict whether the replacement genes will work when inserted into the DNA strand of a new flower, as their expression can sometimes be overridden by the other genes in the original flower, or it can make unintended changes to the original flower. In our example, this could mean that a fuchsia flower’s colour gene in a white rose’s DNA strand will have no effect on the rose’s colour, or it will only create a moderately pink hue, or it might alter the rose in an unforeseen way by changing the shape of the petals.

Consider then the problem of trying to create a blue Chrysanthemum. Blue flowers are very rare in nature; blue colourations are usually the result of mutations and quirks of acidity levels, rather than actual blue pigments. Only a few plants, including Cornflowers, Bluebells, and Butterfly Peas, produce true blue flowers. This means that making blue versions of flowers that are not naturally blue cannot often be done by hybridisation or selective breeding: genetic modification is the only real option. Scientists have identified the pigments that naturally make some flowers blue, and know that to get a flower to be blue this pigment, or a similar version of it, must be present in the flower. Scientists know that a gene that produces a key enzyme for delphinidin biosynthesis (Flavonoid 3’5’H) in Canterbury Bells is responsible for making that flower blue, but when this gene has been inserted and overexposed in chrysanthemums the colour produced is a purple or violet colour. This would suggest that at least one other gene needs to be replaced in the Chrysanthemum for it to become a true-blue colour. When a group of scientists from the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Japan tried adding a colour producing gene from the Butterfly Pea in July this year, their Chrysanthemums became blue. They called this colouration method a ‘two-step modification of the anthocyanin structure’.

This is the first time that a truly blue flower has been created through genetic modification. As mentioned above, altering a plant’s genome can have unintended consequences on people and the environment. For this reason, selective breeding and hybridisation are often preferred methods of genetic engineering, however as with the Blue Chrysanthemums, given the significant limits on what can be achieved through these methods, genetic modification is often the only method capable of achieving certain results.

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Eggsaltations Clinton Ducas In fifteen minutes, the yolk forms. Three hours later, it is covered in white. Within an hour the shell membranes are created, but it takes another twenty-one hours for the shell itself to harden. That a complete, self-contained, and ready-to-use product can emerge from an animal in just over a day is a wonder of nature. The chicken egg, so common as to pass almost unnoticed through daily life, deserves praise. Not only is it culinarily versatile, it is aesthetically superb.

Egg is used as a facial mask and as a substitute for glue. Of course, it can also be eaten, something we shall consider shortly. Consider first, the shell. As with the dramatic cliché, an egg’s hard yet brittle exterior protects its soft, vulnerable centre. A quick tap on a solid surface edge releases the shell’s cargo in all its liquid wonder. The white, through which the yolk’s anchor (known as the chalaza) passes, forms the suspension chamber needed to save the yolk from damage. It is itself a curious substance, somewhere between a liquid and a solid and full of its own behaviours. Liberate an entire white onto a countertop and it evades capture. Chase it with paper towel and the white runs ahead, caught only by a quick double-back-and-pick-up motion. Meanwhile the yolk, velvety in its raw state, hardens to the unyielding condition of concrete if left to dry.

Of course, eggs are too precious to waste by breaking to play with the contents, so we shall turn to cookery. The most elemental preparation method is boiling – elemental does not, however, mean it can be done with half an effort. Before taking the saucepan in hand, remove the required eggs from the refrigerator in time enough for them to lose their chill. Any egg should begin its transformation to comestible from room temperature. Use a pot large enough to accommodate the eggs but small enough to ensure they won’t roam widely, and fill it with enough water to just cover them. Bring the water to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Add the eggs gently and set a timer. At five minutes, the yolks will be soft and perfect for toast dipping. At six, they will be slightly firmer. At seven, sticky. Eight, set but soft. Nine, hard-boiled. Do not exceed nine minutes, as anything longer turns the outer part of the yolk an unappealing grey colour. It is not detrimental to flavour, but it does mar the pleasing contrast between white and yellow. If consuming straight away, remove the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon, crack the shell with the blunt edge of a knife, peel, and enjoy. If you’re saving for later, remove the egg from the pot and plunge it straight into cold water. This helps the white recede from the shell, which aids peeling.

Poaching is easy. Perhaps the most intimidating preparation, it is mastered only with practice. As always, begin with room-temperature eggs – the freshest you can find. The whites of fresh eggs coagulate the best, whereas older eggs tend to spread out in spidery trails. Find a saucepan large enough to sustain a decent whirlpool and fill it with 10-15cm of water. Bring the water to just below a simmer and keep it there. This part is quite important: the egg must sit serenely as it cooks. Any rising bubbles will jostle and bump it, ruining your careful work in forming its shape. Add a drop or two of white vinegar (this helps keep the white from spidering) and crack an egg into a small ramekin.

Using a whisk or the handle of a wooden spoon, work the water in a circular motion to create a gentle whirlpool, one that runs deeply enough to continue moving for at least fifteen seconds after the stirring stops. Resist a vortex.

With the whisk removed, bring the ramekin as close as possible to the swirling water without touching it. Tip the ramekin on its side so the egg slides out and into the centre of the whirlpool. It will sink under the surface and, fate smiling, gather itself into a nice little bundle. Watch the water to ensure it doesn’t bubble and leave for three minutes. In that time, the white will be set and the yolk runny, so lift the egg gently from the water with a slotted spoon and allow it to drain for a moment before dabbing lightly

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with paper towel to dry if necessary. Serve straight away or place in suspended animation in a bowl of cold water while the poaching persists. If hosting, cold water storage works for batch preparation. Start early, suspend, then entertain your guests. The eggs will be restored to their ideal state by immersion in lukewarm water.

Omelettes are a joy. Set and slightly spongy on the pan side, runny on the upside, they’re a luxury to be savoured. Begin, as ever, with room temperature eggs. Use two per person, three for the hungry.

Crack them into a cup or small bowl and whisk lightly with a fork to break and combine the yolks.

Taking a small, non-stick frying pan, add two to three teaspoons of butter. Place on moderate heat to melt and swirl to coat the surface of the pan. Before the butter foams, pour the eggs over the butter and lower the heat. As the edges begin to set, use a spatula to draw the cooked portions to the liquid centre, but be careful to keep everything evenly mixed. Solid cooked tracts are unattractive. When the centre begins to set and dragging the edges bears the risk of tearing your creation, leave it to cook undisturbed. It will be ready when one edge can be lifted to fold one half over the other, with the centre slightly runny. Tilt the pan away from you to allow the folded omelette to slide elegantly onto the plate. Scatter with chopped fresh herbs (parsley is the default choice, but dill, chervil, or anything delicate will work), season with salt and pepper, and enjoy. The salt must be left until serving or the eggs will toughen. Cheese, mushrooms fried in butter, bacon, or your filling of choice can be added in a line down the centre of the omelette before folding.

Frittatas, are fun to say, and are also the epitome of convenience. Enjoyable hot or cold, indoors or out, they’re suited to all seasons. They’re also very amenable to growth; a basic recipe can be scaled up to feed more people – all you need to remember is ingredient proportions. Start with five very large or six medium-sized eggs for two people. Fry some finely chopped onion in butter or oil in a smallto-medium frypan, add some finely chopped garlic and cook until it’s fragrant. Now comes the best part. Frittatas will embrace almost any filling, and roast pumpkin will see you triumph. Scatter some 2 cm chopped cubes over the pan with some baby spinach and give it all a toss to wilt the greenery.

Sprinkle some parsley, oregano, or rosemary over everything and follow with some cubes of quality feta. Pour over the lightly beaten eggs. At this point, the pan can visit the oven provided it’s up to the stay (180°C until the top is set and golden), or can remain on the cooktop to set the base – then spend some time basking under the grill until the top follows suit. To serve, slide onto a board or plate and cut into portions. More mouths? Bigger pan, more ingredients. Cook on a Sunday and you’ll sort lunches for the week.

Lest this sound frivolous, no screed on eggs can ignore the life of the parent. They’re living animals who deserve a measure of dignity. That we are able to house them in appalling conditions and require the production of an ungodly amount of eggs does not mean we should. A chicken should have a state of avian Eudaimonia. It should flourish. That means we should buy eggs from chickens that can roam and live, Oprah-style, their best lives. Choice Australia lists reputable free-range egg producers on its website. It also has an app that allows you to check the truth of the labels on egg cartons as you shop. Besides, why spoil a thing as lovely as an omelette by using a product of cruelty?

Equipped with the fundamentals of egg cookery, it is now time to hit the burners. As you do, take a moment to appreciate the egg. Notice its compactness. Notice its softness. Enjoy its varieties of culinary use and impress your friends and bed mates with some breakfast dexterity. There is no such thing as ‘just’ a plate of eggs.

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Hobbies Reviewed Rainy Colbert #15 - Dining Out I am in McDonalds at 1am, spaced out and very paranoid. Someone has left four large Cokes on a table, untouched I think. Nobody else is in the store except an old man in pyjamas, asleep next to three empty McCafe mugs. I have ordered two hamburgers from the loose change menu, steamed with no meat, but extra sauce. It is nice I can order through the self-serve computer, for I am tired of hearing that sauce is not a legitimate protein supplement. I get plenty of protein. I am a healthy boy. I look at the four Cokes while I wait.

Who do they belong to? Why were they left behind? If they were not wanted, why were they ordered in the biggest size? I recognise that some people have more dollars than sense, but I still think it is confusing.

I have waited for ten minutes. My order is taking a relatively long time. If the four large Cokes are Diet I will drink them, for I am on a sugar detox. I walk over to see if the buttons on the lids have been pushed in, but they have not. Still, I think four Cokes for nothing is still something, and I look around to see if anyone is watching.

The old man sleeps with his back to me and I do not see any staff members. I slip one of the Cokes into my jacket and walk to the back of the room.

On my first sip I remember why I stopped drinking Coke, I can feel the layers of my teeth eroding away. I hide the Coke on the ground beneath my coat, for if someone happens to come back for their missing drink, I do not want to be a suspect. There are still three perfectly good Cokes on the table, but I have learned my lesson.

All I gained from theft was feeling disappointed in myself for taking something I did not want or need.

I notice how one of the McCafe mugs by the sleeping man looks different to the others. It is shorter and rounder with a grey matte finish. I imagine what I would look like sipping it. I think I would look fairly refined.

My mum is always complaining about how our house mugs are not ‘civil’. Most have been bought at garage sales or stolen from restaurants, lurid and stupid in reason and design. The classiest mug in our house is one we pocketed from the Midland San Churros on Mother’s Day. Mum loved it until she noticed the dark dried froth that lined the inside, a tell-tale it was not acquired legally. I figure though, if I scratch away the McCafe logo, no one will know the mug’s origins. They will think it is from Kmart, and we can use it to offer our best Moccona to special guests.

The hamburgers are taking a long time and something in the kitchen is beeping incessantly loud. But that’s always the case here – I don’t know how people can stand it. Maybe it’s something you get used to, like how the fish at Cicerello’s no longer flinch at the tapping and banging on the aquarium glass.

I sweep the sleeping man’s mug into the pocket of my coat, feeling bad as soon as I do. It feels just like looting a corpse, except the corpse is not dead and the property is his. I‘m impressed an old man could drink three cups of coffee and still go to sleep. I’d like to someday be like him. A bell chimes and I turn around to see a paper bag on the counter. My hamburgers are ready. I take them and sit at the back of the room.

A man in dark lycra walks in as I open the bag, SECURITY is printed on his shirt in fluorescent orange capitals.

Frightened, I pick up my coat from the floor to cover the ceramic bulge in my pocket, but realise the stolen Coke is now uncovered. I pick that up too and place it with the food so it no longer looks suspicious, trying to make it look like something I might have ordered. I place my mouth on the straw and pretend to take a sip.

It is a very clever trick. The guard looks around the room and his eyes glaze over me for a terrifying second.

Then he turns back and walks to the self-serve machine, and after poking around for a minute, he takes a seat in the front corner.

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I am not sure if the security guard was actually ordering something, or if he was playing my game of pretending too. I watch him with nervous suspicion, wanting to leave, but not wanting to make him think that I am running away. I have seen security guards in movies before and I know that whenever someone runs from a watchful guard’s presence, they are always tackled to the ground. The guard’s eyes meet mine and mine dart away, but when I look back at him he is still staring at me. I start to gather my things quickly when the bell chimes again, and we both snap our attention to the counter. Two soft serves stand in a cardboard tray. I am confused. Did this man order two soft serves just for himself? Is one really not enough?

I stay seated, hoping he will only be able to finish one soft serve, leaving the other behind for me to take.

Rather than eat however, he pulls out his phone, and I watch as his ice creams begin to melt. There is something wrong with this security guard, for they are not known for using phones on the job. It is against their coda of mindfulness. It enters my head that this man may be an impostor guard, but some rustling in the background interrupts that thought. I turn my head in the direction of noise and see that the table of three cokes has just been cleared. I catch a shadow scamper into the kitchen.

A young woman walks through the front door at that very moment, talking into a Bluetooth headset. The guard stands up, waving his arms with a beaming face. She gives a quick wave and flashes a grin, before holding up her finger to say, ‘just a moment’ and cupping her hand around the earpiece, so to better hear amid the sirens of kitchen timers. The guard’s face looks more amazed, and with both arms he gestures broadly at the two soft serves in front of him. ‘Look at this’. She kind of gives a sort of ‘yes’ air punch, and turns around completely to concentrate on her call. His smile dulls and he sits back down. She clicks the button to hang up and without looking at him again, clacks straight over in her heels to the front counter where a boy in red has materialised. “Large Coke thanks” she says, handing over a five dollar note and receiving fifty cents in change. The red boy disappears and she heads to the soft serve table, the man giving her a swivelling embrace.

I am incredibly frustrated. I think about walking over to tell her how, if she had arrived thirty seconds earlier, she could have saved four fifty and gotten three large Cokes for free. But then I realise that this is not how life works and that hearing this from a stranger would be pointless and strange. I could tell her that if I had of known, I would have offered her my Coke – I’d only touched it with my mouth twice, and only once did I take a sip. I realise that telling her this would be even worse. The opportunities were missed and there is no going back. To think about how things should have been is sometimes a foolish thing to do.

Fed up of being in McDonalds, I gather my things to leave and notice that I never got around to eating any food. The hamburgers feel cold and I no longer feel hungry, so I take them out of the bag and place them where the cokes used to be. Maybe someone else will get lucky.

I did not look back to see what happened next, but I like to think that the security guard and the woman sat for a while, watching the hamburgers and waiting for my return. After an hour, they decide to unwrap the burgers, finding them steamed, no meat, with extra sauce. The surprise of this is unforgettable, and the anecdote of The Man At McDonalds is passed on for generations, stopping with the extinction of mankind in 2085. I scratch away the branding from the McCafe mug and think of my legacy.

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The Death of Film Ryan Suckling In February this year, British novelist Will Self delivered a speech on “The Death of Film” at the Power of Film and Moving Image festival. In dulcet misery, prowling around the podium like a territorial aggressor, Self argued that just as the novel has experienced an agonising descent into relative cultural insignificance, so has film. It’s bleak but not surprisingly bleak.

We are familiar with craven, crusty writers boldly poised against cultural decay. In fact, Will Self has made a name for himself as Britain’s unapologetic charter of literary decline. He apparently walks a lot. I imagine him trekking across London streets like the lonely writer he unashamedly claims to be – crawling through the corporate masses oblivious to his aching literary soul. I imagine following him into a pub on the corner (The Red Lion?) and beseeching him to give, at least me, the promise of something worth following. He cocks his head back, eyes me suspiciously, and leaves.

Will Self doesn’t watch films anymore. His sensibilities are near allergic to “the tyranny of film” – a cultural development he takes to be a hyper-reality. In his words, it is “the ubiquity of screens” that “threatens film as an artistic medium”. It may be easy to dismiss Self’s thought for the humdrum cultural elitism it appears to be, or take a closer look in search of some substance. Firstly, Self angles his argument in a very technical way. He believes that the capacity for intellectual and artistic engagement with film has changed just as the medium itself has changed, along with its technological milieu.

Roughly speaking, over the course of the last century of filmmaking the average shot length has gradually decreased – according to American psychologist James Cutting the average shot length has decreased from 12 seconds in 1930 to 2.5 seconds today (note: the study only dealt with English-speaking film). Such scientific approaches to cinema remain fairly new compared to Marxist or feminist theories. Cinemetrics it’s called, part of a developing school of thought in cognitive film theory.

What interests me is that Self doesn’t have a favourite novel but he does have a favourite film. It is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. Tarkovsky was known for inordinately long shots, stretching and drawing the viewer’s attention at high demand. He lingered and probed at each shot like a documentarian preparing evidence for a discerning audience. These techniques and cinemetrics have alluded contemporary mainstream cinema. Self makes reference to Oliver Sacks essay ‘In the River of Consciousness’ which he inaccurately calls ‘In the River of Time’. Like anything Sacks wrote, it’s eloquent, informed, and ultimately engaging. In the essay, he asks if consciousness is disjointed like piecemeal perception; each image processed like a cinematic shot giving the illusion of continuous, uninterrupted movement. By no means is this new territory. Comparing visual perception to cinematography is something Henri Bergson dealt with in his early writings. Quoting studies in modern psychology, Sacks estimated that human consciousness can absorb 3-20 successive frames per second – referring to them as “static snapshots” and “discrete epochs”.

Will Self finds that the reliance on short shots, constant cutting, cross cutting, and CGI effects means that “our ability to produce suspension of disbelief is now greater than our actual suspension of disbelief.” What has emerged is an enhanced passivity to watching film, whereby artistic qualities are made obsolete in the face of high technological malleability. Our neurological capacity is maxed out and the point of visual absorption saturated – all in an effort to hold the viewer’s attention better and longer. Self doesn’t watch films anymore because he believes film has consequently become an “unthinking medium”, ultimately “non-productive” and “passive”. He has consigned himself to master of a dead medium and abstainer from a dying one.

I cannot join Will Self in his abstinence. Perhaps “abstinence” is the wrong word – he seems to have lost the very desire the watch films, so really, he abstains from nothing. Yet, I know the feeling of being made numb by a film, almost anaesthetised by its cascade of effects and technical measures. Watching Doctor Strange I felt my eyes swell with image intoxication. Of course, there are many exceptions to the historical rule, but Self is well within the predicates of credibility on mainstream cinema. Perhaps film will also fragment and pocket itself into strange cultural positions just like literature; slipping into an enamoured canon with a entourage of staunch cultural defenders. The process is arguably underway already. I suspect Self’s filmic abstinence will fall through at some point. At the dead of night, I image him making his way through the Criterion Collection, savouring every synaptic second of his cultural hypocrisy.

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Scandinavian Film Festival Little Wing Varpu Miettinen (Linnea Skog) and her mother Siru (Paula Vesala) live uneasy lives. In their small, modestly furnished flat in Helsinki, they have only each other. Twelve-year-old Varpu, yearning for something more than the intermittent comfort her mother provides, employs her considerable resourcefulness and newly-acquired driving skill to find her estranged father.

The feature film debut from documentarian Selma Vilhunen, Little Wing is a work bleak in both cinematic style and plot. Set in the city of Helsinki and venturing through the Finnish countryside to a distant town, the film has a barren feel, and bears the fingerprints of someone familiar with the documentary style. Landscapes of beige, grey, and brown ally with the often-grim story to create a feeling of austerity. Finland is not famed for its warm weather, and in Varpu’s world the sun almost never shines. Compounding this impression is the sparing use of music. Vilhunen isn’t afraid of silence, and uses it skillfully to amplify the solitude in which Varpu lives. In the outdoor scenes, for example, we often hear only the wind and rain above Varpu’s breathing. The script is tightly written, with effective characterization and no unnecessary dialogue. A treat for non-Finnish speakers is the patter and rhythm of the language; names in particular, when matched with the subtitles, are an education in themselves.

The undoubted star of the film is Linnea Skog, whose quiet determination and forbearance make her a sympathetic figure. When bullied by the other girls at riding school (her one indulgence), Varpu fails to become upset or angry, choosing to either ignore the gibes or create elaborate stories to account for her missing father. When one story is investigated by the other girls and discovered to be false, Varpu calmly invents yet another excuse, barely looking up from the picture she is drawing.

Her steady demeanour is contrasted with that of her unreliable mother, whose cleaning job keeps her away from the daughter who has in many ways already outgrown her. In one scene, it emerges that Siru has forgotten Varpu’s birthday. This isn’t the result of overwork, she simply hadn’t been paying enough attention. When the error is revealed, it is the composed daughter who comforts the wailing mother. Another example is Siru’s persistent appearance in Varpu’s room, asking to spend the night in her bed.

While Little Wing deals with dysfunctional relationships and mental illness, it is really a coming-ofage story. Already so grown up, Varpu is nevertheless still a child looking for her origins and at least one reliable parent. The film handles the potentially topic of mental illness with compassion – a welcome event in a world that, despite its improvements, often fails to extend itself beyond recycling meaningless platitudes. Little Wing, a successful feature debut from a director moving outside her usual work, is a worthwhile and satisfying piece of Finnish cinema.

Clinton Ducas A Conspiracy of Faith This is the third film in a series known as “Department Q” – the films are adaptations of books by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. I have neither seen the other two films nor read the books. This is a good film, but I have a lot of issues with it that are hardly spoiler safe. It’s a fairly straightforward murder-mystery thriller about a serial killer who abducts and ransoms the children of religious families, and the efforts of two detectives (one a nihilist, one a religious man) to bring him to justice before he is able to harm these children. It’s like an extended episode of Criminal Minds except there’s a lot more existential philosophy making it play like a Dostoyevsky novel at times. It’s entertaining, it’s exciting, and it’s extremely well shot.

The killer’s motivation for doing this is hokey as fuck. His stated reason is that he is an actual, real Satanist, and that he abducts and abuses these children because he wants these religious people to lose their faith in God. This both reinforces and makes for a mocking parody of the Dostoyevsky comparisons. Still, there’s a lot to admire about this film. The action sequences are well paced, the dialogue is well written, and for the majority of the movie the villain is an absolute menace. Particular praise should go to the three main actors, that is Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Fares Fares, and Pål Sverre Hagen, who deliver really great performances throughout.

Eamonn Kelly

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Cult Films Donnie Darko When director Richard Kelly combined time travel, falling jet engines, first loves, and a giant, grotesque rabbit, he created box-office failure Donnie Darko. With a budget of $4.5 million, the 2001 film scraped in barely $500,000 at the cinemas. Yet with the passionate praise of reviewers, sales from the film’s DVD release skyrocketed, and a 21st century cult icon was born.

16 years later and Darko continues to be studied, analysed, and worshipped by devoted fans who go back hoping for more answers from its labyrinth of a plot. Any film about time travel challenges its audiences to think a bit harder, but add in monstrous, metallic bunny masks and a convoluted ending set to Gary Jules’ infinitely gloomy tune ‘Mad World’, and you have yourself a film that Hollywood producers wouldn’t take a second glance at. Thankfully, Drew Barrymore’s independent production company Flower Films backed the project, allowing the strange film that almost wasn’t, to become a definitive cult classic of the 2000s.

Perhaps Donnie Darko’s most enduring quality is that at its core, it is a coming of age film centred around a 15-year-old adolescent boy. Played by a fresh-faced Jake Gyllenhaal, Darko attempts to navigate puberty, teen-angst, and raging hormones. It’s Holden Caulfield meets David Lynch, wrapped up in a ‘save the world from impending doom’ storyline, and it’s fucking fantastic.

Cindy Shi Commando Commando is everything that is wonderful and terrible about Arnold Schwarzenegger films. It is as subtle as a bulldozer going through the front door of an army surplus store (that happens in the movie) and is an unapologetic good time. Packed with every 80s action cliché, the film is essentially a satire of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. By the way, there is one of those, it’s called The Last Action Hero, and it also stars Arnie, and it too is hilarious. Commando is peak 80s action. Even walking through a mall, the music, with its heavy synths, plays like a nightclub scene. Every conversation and villain ends in a one-liner.

Early in the film Arnie’s character Retired Special Forces Colonel John Matrix says to one of the henchmen who kidnapped his daughter “You’re a funny guy Sully, I like you, that’s why I am going to kill you last.” Several scenes later after a car chase he holds Sully up by one foot over a cliff. He says to him “Hey Sully, remember when I told you I would kill you last? I lied.” Spot Alyssa Milano as Arnie’s daughter ‘Jenny’ and ocker Australian Vernon Wells as a villain and former Special Forces commando from Colonel Matrix’s unit. Why is this American Army unit made up of Australians and Austrians? How does he kick a hole out of the bottom of a commercial plane and jump into a swamp and survive? How does he convince a flight attendant he just met to pick up a rocket launcher and fire it at a police truck? How does he never get hit by bullets when he never takes cover and is huge (it’s Arnie)? These are not questions that need to be answered. Just understand that it is 1985 and it is a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger called Commando.

Julian Coleman Labyrinth Some years ago, in the process of throwing out my old VHS tapes, there was one I just couldn’t get rid of: a faded, grainy copy of the 1986 cult classic Labyrinth. The tape had endured countless rewinds when I was a kid and the pangs of nostalgia made parting ways with it too difficult. The film entranced me from a young age and to this day Jim Henson’s (the creator of The Muppets) anomalous musical fantasy hybrid remains one of my favourite cult films. Starring David Bowie as a villainous, baby stealing Goblin King who sings, can turn into an owl and lives in a giant labyrinth; the world of Labyrinth is weird, wacky and utterly wonderful. It’s a product of extraordinary creativity and, despite some dated use of CGI, the film holds up very well. Henson brings his wild imagination to life with impressive lifelike looking animatronic puppets, who have just as much personality as any of the human characters. It’s also surprisingly dark for what is ostensibly a kid’s film, but that’s because the film doesn’t pretend to present a sanitised version of the world to kids. Not everything is rainbows and lollipops but if Labyrinth proves one thing it’s that sometimes there is beauty to be found in the darkness.

Dominic Kwaczynski Crybaby I first saw this movie when my drama teacher chucked it on the TV at the end of term. If there’s one thing to know about this film before going in, it’s that it is actually not that good. The acting is incredibly hammy, the plot goes all over the place, and things are generally a bit gross. But that’s John Waters’ vibe. Your mum always said that the coolest people are the ones who don’t care if they’re cool. John Waters’ mum probably said this to him too. This movie is good because it doesn’t care that it’s bad.

The plot centres on Crybaby Walker (played by young Johnny Depp), a young ‘drape’ who falls for Alison, a young ‘square’.

Basic ‘girl meets boy from wrong side of the tracks’. They tongue for a while, a party gets crashed, Crybaby goes to jail, Alison drinks a jar of her own tears, Iggy Pop has a bath, and some other wild stuff happens. Willem Dafoe also plays a prison guard for about 10 seconds. The film also has a great 1950s soundtrack, including some original songs. This movie is a good time, and if that’s what you want, check it out.

Hannah Cockroft

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The Earring Pema Monaghan When a woman came home one evening from the café in which she worked, she took off her backpack and laid it on the table. She planned to sort out what she would need for the next day after dinner, though of course she wouldn’t remember to do so until it was too late, and she was rushing out the door wearing only one earring, having lost the other sometime during the night. The woman cooked herself a simple meal, microwaving a sweet potato that she’d stabbed fork holes into, which she afterward covered in pre-shaved parmesan, as well as spinach for health. A vegetarian, the woman knew that parmesan was made using parts of dead animals. She pretended not to know, for her own peace of mind. She streamed Friends whilst sitting on the couch, and laughed out loud to a ‘sweet couch potato’ joke she made in her head. Then she put her dishes in the sink, poured a glass of water with which to take her escitalopram, and brushed her teeth for around thirty seconds (too short a period). It was time for bed.

As the woman ground her teeth in the depths of sleep, Left Earring was dislodged from her hole. Hanging off a hook, she was formed in the shape of a little golden heart decorated with tiny roses. Tonight, Left Earring shuffled along the pillow and slid down a couple of black hair curls over to her sister. She gestured with her body: come along! Right Earring rolled her eyes and said she was busy sleeping, thanks. Left Earring rolled her eyes back to save face, and then resolutely toppled down the pillow, and onto the floor.

The world was big. The ground was itchy, and made of cheap fibrous materials. It took Left Earring a lot of effort to fight her way through the blonde hairy mass she stood upon, and over to the hard brown stuff beyond. Left Earring knew where she wanted to go.

Some days, when she was sitting on the mantelpiece without much to do, she would look over at this beautiful thing across the room. She didn’t know much about them, not even their name. They were long, beautifully patterned, blue, pink, and white. Who were they? Did they look at Left Earring like she looked at them? Once or twice she’d thought she’d caught them moving in her direction. She asked around. Had anyone spoken to them? Hairbrush said she’d been tangled up with them, but they hadn’t spoke, and it had been kind of awkward. Hairbrush thought they’d seemed a bit aloof. Her actual words were ‘stone-cold bitch’, but Left Earring had always thought Hairbrush was a bit of a shithead herself, so she dismissed that opinion.

Once, Left Earring had slid into her hole, and realised that the beautiful thing was hanging just above her in the woman’s hair.

They were tied in, and their blue looked so bright against the black. She tried to make eye contact, but she couldn’t find the beautiful thing’s eyes. Still, that was the day that she first truly felt in love.

From the bed, she’d been able to see the beautiful thing lying, on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf, right next to the thing that produced so much heat. That thing frightened Left Earring. They were bulky and grey; they threw out hot and odd-smelling gasses. Left Earring knew about gasses, having once sat in on a chemistry lecture. She knew they were not to be messed with. Tonight, the frightening thing was on, with red eyes that watched. She decided the brave thing to do would be to speak to them.

I have come from the top of the bed, from the woman’s left ear, she said. She spoke quietly, so as not to wake anyone asleep, but forcefully, for she knew the frightening thing was summing her up. Left Earring did not dare to see if the beautiful thing was also watching. I wish to speak to one near you, would you let me pass?

The frightening thing made a low growl, but their heat seemed to subside enough for a small piece of metal to cross by. Left Earring thanked it, but felt her determination melt into desperation. Left Earring slid in gently next to the beautiful thing, hoping they couldn’t see that she was trembling all over. Excuse me, but are you awake? The beautiful thing flicked their tail and moved their body like a dancing snake. Yes, they said. Yes, who are you?

Not the greeting Left Earring had been hoping for. Still, she tried. She explained her long passion for the beautiful thing. She told her that she’d felt that the beautiful thing might be interested in her too, that she thought she’d seen her look over. She held her love out, and asked for love in return.

The beautiful thing said no, thank you.

As she rolled away (slowly, her whole body hurt, she couldn’t move so elegantly and deftly as before), Left Earring heard a terrible sound. It was laughter. The hot, cruel, frightening thing was laughing at her failure. She was still underneath them, and their heat was growing faster than she could move.

The woman awoke very hot and sweaty. She was running late, as usual. She opened her window to allow fresh air into the room. She grabbed a towel, and went to switch off the heater. She stepped on something hot, and it burnt her toe. The woman stepped back, and kneeled on the floor. A little piece of golden metal lay under the heater. She touched her left ear and felt nothing hanging from it. The piece of gold had melted, but still clearly discernible was the shape of a heart.

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We’re Reading The Violent Bear It Away – Flannery O’Connor This is a dark book with biblical-feeling prose and a lightning pace. Published in 1960 towards the end of O’Connor’s life, the book begins with the death of old man, Tarwater, a self-proclaimed prophet. Before his death, old man Tarwater gives his grandnephew Francis Marion Tarwater a mission to that would allow him to inherit prophet-status. Francis Marion Tarwater must abduct his intellectually disabled nephew, Bishop Rayber, and baptise him. The main obstacle to this is “Rayber”, Bishop’s secular father. Rayber is the antagonist of the story, who is staunchly anti-religious and rational. O’Connor was staunchly Catholic, and so is obviously more empathetic towards the Tarwaters than the reasonable Rayber, who is written about as if he was an earthly manifestation of Satan himself. Regardless of whether you agree with the religiously loaded plot (and I personally do not, this book is exhibit #1 for the Death of the Author), The Violent Bear It Away is masterfully written, with imagery that will stick in your mind like a fish-hook.

Eamonn Kelly Portable Curiosities – Julie Koh This is a fantastic collection of vivid short stories. The style is lucid and clear without being impressionistic or broad. The stories range from short, individual scenes (‘The Procession’) to episodic narratives (‘Two’). I also felt like the quality of the stories varied. However, that’s because all of the stories were essentially satirical, and I’m partial to certain types of satire. I like Kafka, hyperbole, and metaphors. I love stories where people try to escape from complacency: from working the 9 to 5 life or from reckless spending. In that sense, Portable Curiosities really delivered.

Surgeons had to carefully cut the book off my face using a high precision laser. Each story, except for the last, read as a self-contained tale. A lot of them were very self-aware, verging on meta.

However, I would recommend reading this book from beginning to end, because the author tries to mix up the emotional landscape of each piece. Some are hilarious, others are heartbreaking, while others sit in an uncanny area crossing both. Julie Koh skilfully positions each story so that it’s never overwhelming. My favourites were ‘Satirist Rising’, ‘Civility Place’, and ‘Cream Reaper’.

William Huang The Vegetarian – Han Kang I have always gone automatically for classic books – those canonical texts certified by the orange Penguin binding, or the red of Vintage publishing, and most often written by white men – so this year I set out to read more contemporary writers, more women writers, and more writers of colour.

My mission has led me to a great range of rewarding reads, particularly Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, a chilling and surreal story of violence towards women, both overt and insidious.

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, it follows the destruction of protagonist Yeonghye through the eyes of her husband and family members, as they abuse her, attempt to ‘fix’ her in dark ways, and eventually commit her. Bold and unnerving symbolism paired with clear structure in three parts gives readers a rich and arresting experience, and at only 183 pages, I was so absorbed by this novella that I finished it in just a day. Kang’s deft manipulation of point-of-view renders Yeonghye’s internal experience totally intangible, which effectively evokes the confusion and complexity of mental illness for bystanders. Through the confusion, frustration, and persistence of Yeong-hye’s family, readers are reminded that the wrongs committed against women don’t always come from the nebulous ‘media’ or ‘society’, or even evil strangers, but from those closest to them: those who are meant to protect them.

However, Kang steers clear of the didactic social commentary that would be so easy to fall into where such themes are concerned, and instead delivers an honest and brutal picture of their complexity.

Despite puffs decorating the cover that disturbingly describe the book as erotic and sensual, The Vegetarian is a deeply frightening yet bewitching read for anyone who has experienced an eating disorder or mental illness, or has supported a loved one through them.

Jess Cockerill

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Review: Boy by Roald Dahl Hannah Cockroft There are many factors that contribute to whether or not you find a book addictive. Most of the time, it’s a compulsion to find out what happens next. I can remember having this feeling when reading Roald Dahl’s stories as a child. I hadn’t read any of Roald Dahl’s books beyond the age of 12, apart from a few of his short stories for adults, which are also fantastic. I purchased Boy on impulse as a Christmas present to myself, and took it on holiday as something to read before bed. I ended up taking it with me on every trip to the beach, in plenty of car rides, and had it open in my hand during most meals. My Penguin edition is only 176 pages long, so it’s a bite-sized book: perfect for filling in an afternoon or two.

Boy is the autobiographical story of Roald Dahl’s childhood, spanning from his birth in Wales up to his employment with Shell Oil, which sent him to East Africa at the age of twenty. The book is broken up into many tiny chapters, some of them only about five pages long. Many of these chapters are reminiscent of the Roald Dahl stories that I read as a child, and in fact you can see many points of inspiration for his famous books in his childhood stories. In an early chapter, Dahl recollects how one of his schoolmates had been convinced by his father that liquorice bootlaces were made of mashed-up rats, and that if you ate them you would eventually grow sharp pointy teeth and a stubby tail. This story is a clear influence for The Witches, who plan to set up sweet shops around the world to provide children with lollies that will turn them into mice. There are so many fantastical tales like this in Boy that you often forget that you are reading an autobiography, as they seem too ridiculous to be true. Dahl and his schoolmates put a dead mouse in a lolly jar to get revenge on the “nasty old hag” behind the counter of the sweet shop. Dahl puts goat droppings into his sister’s fiancé’s pipe and his family watches on silently as the young man smokes it. Dahl crashes through the glass window of his sister’s new car and is left with his nose hanging by a thread. These stories feel like they could have fit in quite cosily within any one of Dahl’s books for children.

This is until you reach one of the several points where Dahl brings us back to the present. In the first chapter, Dahl speaks of the death of his seven-year-old sister, Astri. His father became so overcome with grief that when he contracted pneumonia a month or so afterwards, he gave up any effort to fight off the disease, and died soon after. Dahl then mentions how his own daughter also died at the age of seven, forty-two years later. Later on, Dahl discusses the hardships of trying to make a career out of writing, saying, “it happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer”. The way in which Dahl intersperses these more serious moments between the whimsy of childhood memory adds so much value to the book. It reminds the reader that, though these stories have been retold from memories witnessed by a child’s eye, an old man has put them to paper. Boy was written only six years before Dahl’s death.

There were certainly moments in Boy where I felt that compulsion to see what turn the story could possibly take next. However, my addiction to this book was more influenced by the sense of nostalgia that came with it. As I said, I hadn’t read any of Dahl’s books since I was a child, but reading Boy felt like meeting up again with an old friend. In my opinion, there are few authors whose voice can be compared to Roald Dahl’s. His stories have such a wonderful sense of warmth and humour.

Although, for some readers, the whimsical essence of his stories may seem unappealing, to me it was what made reading Boy a proper delight. If you grew up with Roald Dahl, or if you just want a book to fill your weekend, I couldn’t recommend Boy enough.

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Atlantis in Perth Jorge Luis Fonseca

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Fake Grass, I Never Knew You. Bryce Newton I have only had one friend with a fake grass lawn. We were friends in Year Nine and drifted apart, then one day she appeared on the school steps with another girl. I have not been to her house since, and I could not say how the lawn has fared. My sister’s fiancée (he is also my friend) had his first job with a fake grass company. When I inquire (why now, why not before) he tells me the job involved a lot of heavy lifting, that the fibres made to grip the ground would scratch his arms as he worked. That he cut the fake lawn from a large sheet cut to size (like a small carpet, I imagine). He tells me that you use a machine to excite the fibres. I don’t inquire further, but I assume it is to coax them into a life of method acting. An outside carpet.

When I play Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer, I put multiple carpets in a room to denote key spaces. Carpets are anchors that let you know where you are and what you should be doing. Sleep, sit, stay.

There are two categories of fake grass. The type manufactured to look real, and the kind you play sport on. The latter is thick and bright. The former is multidirectional, and made to fool your neighbours into thinking the lawn is healthy all year round because of your watering and maintenance habits instead of a hefty one-off payment.

I have never laid down on fake lawn before. In summer, in spring, during any passing moment of all-encompassing warmth, I try to find an expanse of grass. The best places in Perth for this activity are James Oval at UWA, looking over Perth at King’s Park with a bag of cashews, or at a dog park somewhere in Maylands a short walk from Plenty (with a coffee in hand). Some people become itchy when they lay down on lawn, but I never do.

It is like laying down at the beach, except there is not the expected effort of sand, and at times, dogs jumping onto your stomach. There is just you, and the grass, and the moments between when you laid down and when you will leave. In winter on a clear day, my sister laid down on Oak Lawn against my advice, and found her clothes soaked through where they had touched the lawn and her body had pressed into the earth.

I don’t see much fake lawn in Perth, so there is not often the option to lay down on it. If you search fake lawn online, sites will inform you there is a large upfront cost. They weigh this initial cost against the upkeep of real lawn (rolls of sod are cheaper than fake lawn – but this is where the real work begins). Fake lawn is for people looking for a better tomorrow, people who have known stress and aren’t interested in looming deadlines and looking for people to be there when these deadlines arrive.

My partner and I have not talked about fake grass before. This lets me know we have not run out of conversation topics for the future.

My sister’s fiancée, my friend, tells me that fake grass is great. You don’t need to water it, and it looks good all the time. Some people who are allergic to grass could lay down on fake lawn, warmed in the summer sun, and feel warmed as well. On Sunday, I go with my mother and sister to a garden centre far from my home. Across from the garden centre there is a lawn, fake, and cradling leaves.

If you go to Bunnings, you can buy a 1-meter square piece of fake lawn for a reasonable price. Take it home and place it somewhere quiet. Watch it grow.

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Psephologically: Majoritarian Systems Mike Anderson The past two instalments of this series have covered some systems that are less well known here in WA (whilst our Upper House method of voting resembles Hare-Clarke, there are distinct differences). Today however, we are going to discuss some systems we are much more accustomed to; majoritarian systems. Specifically, we’ll be looking at First Past the Post (FPTP), and variations of run-off voting; specifically, the Alternative Vote (AV) and the 2-Round Run-off system.

We’ll start with what is possibly the simplest electoral system: First Past the Post. The name is rather deceiving in my opinion, as it implies a baseline must be reached to win, and this is not the case. FPTP takes whoever has the most votes and awards them victory. This is in contrast to systems (such as AV) that require 50%+1 of the vote to secure victory. FPTP simply requires a party to have one more vote than their opposition. In an election with two candidates this presents no discernible difference between it and run off systems in how the votes are counted. Problems arise when an election has more than two candidates contesting – the most distinct problem being the spoiler effect, otherwise known as vote splitting. Suppose we have an election between 4 candidates: A, B, C, and D. The front runners are A and B, A is only popular among their own supporters, whilst B has support from C and D voters, but they still prefer their own candidate. The ballots are cast and the results are returned thus: A 40%, B 29%, C 21%, and D 10%. A wins the election, despite 60% of the voters not supporting them. It was C and D that ‘stole’ votes from B, effectively not only hurting B but themselves as well, as the candidate they least like was elected. In parliamentary elections, this could result in A’s party winning government despite lacking majority support of the population. Eventually this may lead to C and D abandoning their campaigns to support B, the candidate they prefer more than A, but less than their own.

Results like this are common in FPTP, which is a system still used in roughly 1/3 of all countries, most notably Anglophone nations such as the UK and US. Looking at the UK we see how this system lends itself to parties gaining seats despite low levels of support. In 2015 the seat of Belfast South was won by the SDLP, by a margin of 2.3% of the votes. This sounds reasonable, right? But the SDLP only received 24.5% of votes cast. The people of Belfast South found themselves represented by someone who only had 24.5% of their support. The UK is certainly an exception to the common rule that FPTP will lead to a parliament containing only 2 parties – the make-up of the UK, and historical factors ensure that there will also be representatives from parties outside the two largest. However, it is undeniable that the Government of the UK will either be Conservative or Labour for the foreseeable future.

Moving onto a system we in WA are accustomed to: the Alternative Vote, better known to us as Preferential Voting. This is an example of run-off voting, however instead of requiring a voter to vote multiple times, AV allows a voter to number candidates to indicate their preference. In contrast, a run off system usually requires the two candidates that receive the most votes to go to a second round, the winner of which is elected, as happens in the French Presidential election. There are examples that work by eliminating candidates until someone receives 50%+1, this is known as the exhaustive vote.

Let’s look back at our hypothetical election we discussed under FPTP. In a 2-round run-off A and B would advance to the run-off round, in this we can suppose that C and D supporters would vote for B, giving B a victory over A: 60%-40%. In AV however, we can get the same result but the process is different and requires no extra voting. D has the least votes and is eliminated, their first-round votes are passed to their second preference C, but no one has 50%+1. B is now the least popular candidate and is eliminated, passing their preferences to C, giving C a victory with 60%. This scenario is unlikely to play out, however due to tactical voting still being at play, D voters would likely preference B, with some still preferring C, so the results may still look like this, assuming a uniform split. A 40%, B 34%, C 26%, then C eliminated with B winning on 60%. Elections are never this simple, and it should be stressed that voters decide their own preferences, so it will never be as clear cut as this. But with the concept as presented, AV allows better representation than FPTP, and can allow a less supported, but more preferred candidate to win, unlike in a 2-round run-off.

Majoritarian systems stumble just the way their name implies, they promote single party governments. Both AV and FPTP promote parties receiving a larger share of seats than votes, as evidenced in almost any Australian election. This may be systematic of single member electorates (without a proportional system attached) and gerrymandering, but again that is another topic for another time.

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The Iranian Question: Does Trump’s Bite Match his Bark?

Brad Griffin The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, was agreed to in July 2015, with ‘Implementation Day’ – the day on which all nuclear-related sanctions were lifted on Iran – occurring on the 16th of January 2016. It has been over a year and a half since Implementation Day, and while most observers remain cautiously optimistic about the sustained success of the JCPOA, its detractors remain steadfast in their view that the JCPOA is a legal roadmap toward Iran attaining a nuclear weapon. This article will not discuss the ins and outs of the JCPOA as it stood on Implementation Day, but will instead discuss to what extent the JCPOA has lived up to its primary aim of preventing Iran from building a nuclear arsenal, and its secondary aim of reintegrating Iran into the global economic, and diplomatic community.

There has been one important change since the diplomatic breakthrough that was the JCPOA. The (perhaps naively) optimistic Barack Obama is no longer POTUS, and has been replaced by the paranoid Donald Trump. Whilst campaigning, Trump referred to a long list of Obama initiatives that he sought to roll back. One of these initiatives was the JCPOA, which the Republicans rallied against during the negotiations. They claimed the JCPOA would give Iran a green light to produce and maintain its own nuclear arsenal. These claims are not credible, and anyone asserting such claims has not read the deal. I can assure the reader that Trump has not read the terms of the JCPOA, nor NAFTA, nor anything to do with NATO, or ANZUS, or any important literature to do with the USA’s core foreign policy objectives. If Trump had, he would know better than to make the threats he has.

The Iranian testing of Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM) in September 2017 presents a challenge to the USIranian rapprochement. The successful testing of the Khoramshahr missile has caused old US anxieties about Iran’s intentions to surface once more. Trump’s vitriolic response via Twitter was unbecoming of a world leader, but nothing new from the former reality TV show star. His rhetoric mirrored his recent broadsides against Iran in his speech to the United Nations – the content of which, referring to Iran as a rogue state, was reminiscent of Bush Jr.’s infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ speech in 2002.

What Trump and his advisors have failed to do is separate Iran’s dead nuclear ambitions from their regional insecurity and strategy. Iran’s Khoramshahr IRBM testing was done to prove a point to regional rivals, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, and was necessary posturing in a volatile region. Yes, the IRBM is capable of reaching Israel, but no it is not designed to carry nuclear payloads. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq War Iran has maintained a sizeable missile deterrence – the guarantee that any regional actor that invaded Iran would suffer significant infrastructural damage from a sustained missile barrage. Iran must periodically demonstrate their missile prowess in order to dissuade nations such as Saudi Arabia from acting against Iranian interests. The USA continues to enforce tough sanctions on Iran’s missile program, but these measures can do little to discourage the program.

The fact of the matter is that the Iran of 2017 is not the Iran of 1979. Iran’s Islamic Revolution ended almost 40 years ago, and it is no longer a shaky regime with a terrified populace. Iran will never again be an ally or strategic partner in the same way that it was patronised by the USA pre-1979, but it will never again be a pariah state like it was under the vitriolic and belligerent Presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005 – 2013). If Iran continues to elect moderate Presidents (and its demographic trend suggests that it will for at least a decade or two more) then the Iran-West rapprochement will not be changed – not by Iran in any case.

The recent US failure in thwarting North Korea’s nuclear and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) programs have forced Trump to look elsewhere for a foreign policy victory. Naturally, he lashed out at Iran, a favourite US scapegoat for Presidents Reagan through to Bush Jr. The critical fact is that Iran is not North Korea. Iran can be negotiated with, as Obama proved in 2015. But like North Korea, Iran exists in a region that is hostile to it, leading to a Machiavellian foreign policy with an emphasis on self-reliance in matters of defence. Trump’s threats against North Korea have thus far proved to be empty, and will continue to be so against Iran.

Rolling back the JCPOA would be a grave mistake, and the Trump Administration will not take so drastic an action unless there is tangible evidence of Iranian non-compliance. The US is due to make a statement of Iranian compliance in October (as it is bound to every 90 days as part of the JCPOA) and it will pass without serious incident. The dog might bark but it sure as hell won’t bite.

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Political Parties: Problems with the Status Quo Leah Roberts “I would join politics if it wasn’t for having to join a major political party to actually create change”. This is a common sentiment among many people. They want to get into politics, create change and make a difference, but it is often the case that it’s political parties stopping them.

It is the great downfall of many a budding politician. Politics has a bad rap and with good reason. Watching Annabel Crabb’s The House and hearing her interviews with various politicians, in particular the independent Senator Hinch, it is clear politics is not a fun game to be a part of. Political parties don’t get a good rap either, which is evident when you look at the conflict and infighting that has occurred within the two major political parties in just the past decade.

Taking a closer look at the major political parties, to those who aren’t directly involved in politics they could seem almost ‘cult like’. Members tend to follow strict guidelines and, most importantly, they must follow the “party line”.

Prime Minister Turnbull is an example of this, the Australian public knows he supports marriage equality, action on climate change, setting renewable energy targets, and desires for Australia to become a republic, but because of the Liberal Party’s stance he cannot pursue these beliefs. Even the leader of the Australian Government is subject to the whims of factional warmongering.

I’m certain it’s a hard reality when you must follow the party line and neglect your own personal beliefs, the choice must torment those few idealists left in parliament. Even worse still, is when you know a policy may leave those you represent worse off, but because of the game that is politics one must support it for “the greater good”.

It is true that politicians are independent humans and they can always “cross the floor”, but an act so bold could kill them politically. The choice that presents itself is to boost your standing by following the line and getting what you want later, or to stick to your values and ultimately get nowhere.

Perhaps this is what most people see? If so, this is what sadly discourages them from joining politics. As a nation, it is so important to have a strong diversity of people involved in the decision-making process of our nation, and to fulfil their job as representatives, having them actually represent the desires of their constituents. This is simply not the case right now.

This isn’t to say parties are wholly awful. I know many people who have been involved in political parties that have had a wonderful experience, they have received mentoring, new experiences, and have had networking opportunities. However, it still seems that you need to fit a certain mould to become someone in this sphere – to a member of parliament. It’s the idea of loyalty above all else that many people, especially young people, find discouraging and off putting (whether this is really the case or not).

The fact that there are only two major parties is one of the downfalls of our political system. Independent and minor parties can hold some power in the Senate, but in the House of Representatives the system works to produce two major parties. Perhaps if our political system incorporated the New Zealand model, a MixedMember Proportional System, there would be a greater proportion of minor parties gaining representation. This system allows people to join parties that represent their views, and allows them more freedom in expression. At the end of the day, this is unlikely, especially given the fact that recent electoral reforms, such as Senate group ticket voting, have only served to curb minor party power.

In the world of politics, you need to get things done, and like in any other profession, you must find compromise.

In other fields, you may have to compromise what you believe is the best idea to get the job done, and politics is no different. But to have a more inclusive system, parties across the spectrum need to make a change to become more inclusive and welcoming, which could encourage a more diverse range of people to engage with politics, directly or indirectly. With this we could see great change being enacted.

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Macron and the Cult of Personality Samantha Goerling Just a year after establishing his own political movement, En Marche (On the move), Emmanuel Macron cut through France’s political dynamism and stormed home to the Palais de l’Élysée with an overwhelming Presidential victory in May this year. The fascination with Macron during his rapid ascension has been thrust once again into the limelight following the publication of Une personage de roman by novelist Philippe Besson. The author follows Macron’s campaign, describing him as “someone who invents their own destiny”, noting his audacious ambition. This echoes criticism that Macron has become the centre of a personality cult.

A personality cult is an externalised projection of a public figure, deliberately moulded through symbols, images, and the mass media.

It cultivates an idealised and even heroic image of the individual. In its most extreme forms, personality cults are cultivated through propaganda, creating the “beloved” leader; an ominous example is China’s Mao Tse-tung. In 1966 his personality cult created a larger than life image with claims of his exceptional capabilities, like when the press reported he had swum nine miles in the Yangtze River.

In the same year, the Peking Review began publishing large photos of the leader, stating he was “the great teacher, great leader great supreme commander and helmsman.” Taking a step back, personality cults can still be constructed in much milder doses as a tactical campaign strategy. This can then be used to shape or even manipulate public opinion, based solely in the influence of the public personality.

Emmanuel Macron’s entire political movement (En Marche), was constructed around his persona. Even the initials of the party, E.M, are the initials of his name. Breaking away from France’s traditionally party orientated system that is dominated by the centre-right Republicans and the centre-left Socialists, his audacious new movement called upon citizen to mobilise around his figure, rather than subscribe to a party’s ideology or values.

Nevertheless, just one month after the launch of En Marche (April 2016), and while still acting as a Minister under the Socialist President Francois Hollande, Macron was already able to mobilise enough volunteers to launch “La Grande Marche”, even without a policy platform.

This extensive, Obama-style grassroots consultation was rolled out in areas algorithmically representative of the country as a whole, and consisted of over 300,000 door-knocks and 25,000 interviews. Such an intense mobilisation demonstrated an overwhelming belief in a single figure. It wasn’t until August 2016 that Macron resigned from his position in the Hollande government and announced he would run for President in the upcoming elections.

Many were captivated by his charisma, youthful energy, intelligence, and ambition. He remains a huge fan of symbolism, unapologetically employing it to construct his public persona. This could not have been more evident than in his statements claiming France’s need for a Jupitarian President. When questioned about the signification of this godly reference, he responded that it referred to “a capacity to illuminate, a capacity to know, a capacity to give meaning and direction anchored in the history of the French people. It’s an authority that is recognised because it doesn’t need to be demonstrated.”

Macron emphasised his determination to transcend the political divide between left and right, and act as a centrist politician brokering well considered compromise in policy stating, “I want to unite the French, I’m not reaching out to the Left of the Right, I’m reaching out to the French.” A common criticism is that his stance is inherently populist – one designed to gain support rather than enact real change.

During his campaign, he lacked concrete policy and relied on limited cornerstones, many of which were contradictory. Embracing Europe, but wanting reform, and demanding reform to the French political system from which he emerged. What these reforms will be are yet to be seen. Other policy areas which he outlined included loosening labour laws, laying off large numbers of public servants, cutting corporate and payroll taxes, which he hoped would reduce unemployment levels. Seemingly adopting many of the centre-right’s policies as his own. His Presidency is based on his persona, and much less his policies.

However, we cannot forget the context in which he was elected – in France Presidential voting occurs over two rounds. Having obtained the highest percentages in the first round, Emmanuel Macron progressed to the second round, and faced Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front. He only garnered 24% of the vote in the first round, with four candidates gaining roughly 20% each. The main Socialist candidate, Benoît Hamon, lost ground to the grassroots movement of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and the Republican candidate, François Fillon, was embroiled in a major scandal. This led many to vote in the second round against the anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, Eurosceptic, candidate Le Pen, rather than for Macron. While he obtained an obliterating 66.1% of the vote, for many this vote represented their preference rather than their support.

In a short time, Macron has built a movement with no platform, and mobilised supporters across France based purely on his personality.

His carefully crafted persona has catapulted him to the limelight, and to the Presidency. Many questions are still to be asked about Macron, and about his movement which still lacks a concrete direction beyond supporting its leader. We will have to wait and see where Macron is marching.

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Presidential Address Nevin Jayawardena Dearest Pelican enthusiasts, I regret to inform you that I will no longer be gracing this magazine with my rambles and spruiks of the UWA Student Guild. However, I am very excited to announce that this year’s Vice-President, Megan Lee, has been elected as the 105th Guild President and will certainly entertain you more than I have this year.

It has been an eventful and stressful year for me dealing with new problems each day. This includes complaints about the rising price of coffee each year (inflation), the death of campus culture (even though we have more events, more clubs, and we are recognised #1 in all of Australia for social activities on campus), and some issues that are a little more serious, like the federal cuts to higher education that will make universities less accessible (boo).

It has also been a privilege being able to deliver many positive outcomes for students and being a part of an organisation that has changed lives for the better. I have had an amazing team of both staff and students within the Guild to support me throughout this year. It has been a hugely rewarding experience and I would like to thank all those that have made this experience so damn great. I’d also like to thank you, the Pelican bibliophiles, for bothering to read my Prezitorials.

Live long and prosper.

Nevin Guild President

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