Sunday, May 27, 2007

40 Years Later




On this day 40 years ago, over 90% of voting Australians voted "Yes" to a Federal referendum that made two changes to the constitution. The second of these changes was to include aboriginal Australians in the national census and to remove a clause that had excluded them from Federal legislation.

Of these two amendments, the inclusion in the census rectified an intrinsic racism within the constitution (prior to this, aborigines came under the "Flora and Fauna Act"). The second was more ambitious in that social, economic and political inequality could be more effectively addressed if the power to pass laws affecting aboriginal Australians was held by the Federal government.

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Friday, May 25, 2007

Melbourne Street Art 7


may your hope not be hidden.
even if it is very small

Seventh in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Ewing Street, Brunswick



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Monday, May 21, 2007

 une passante



A dark room at the National Gallery. Squinting to read the information. A child has a tantrum but it is an erudite tantrum, she’s not happy in this room with Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons, she wants go back to the Virgin Mary. I share a laugh at this with a woman standing a few pictures down. When the father scoops the child up with a smile and bustles out, this stranger and I are suddenly the only two people in the room. I return to looking at the picture in front of me, she, in her own rhythm moves one closer to my left. “These are brilliant,” she says, “I hope they have reproductions.”

Then she joins me. I move to the next one. She moves too. “I feel like I am stalking you,” she says. “Stalk away,” I reply, cheerfully. We look at the picture together. “I’m studying prisons,” she offers, “I just got back from the States, Louisiana, Death Row.” “Wow, heavy.” “I’m doing my PhD on Penology,” she says, in what is now a rush of information, “I have to explain to people that Penology is not the study of penises.”

Moments before I had been showing off to my father, referencing Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, musing on the relationship between prisoner and gaoler and how that might echo the bond between performer and spectator.

All I manage now is a stuttered, “Penal. Penology. Panopticon…” I am still smiling. Underneath my beanie I am lightly sweating. She doesn’t pick up on my obtuse word-association. My father returns and she wanders to the next room. When we move there, she has already gone. Nor is she in the bookshop where I have the faint hope that I will see her again, looking for reproductions.



Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons(Carceri d’invenzioni) are at the NGV International (what they call the St. Kilda Road building) until September 30. It’s free, and there’s some pretty cool Leggo on the way in too…

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Friday, May 4, 2007

Friday Fun



You've got 11 days to disagree (and alter) this assessment of me. Now, I would have hoped for something a bit more, well, handsome than a raccoon, but that would contradict the "modest" bit wouldn't it? Thanks Alison, this is fun!

The Alethiometer is also a pretty good representation of a wonderful idea but nevertheless, I am in the process of begging friends to read the trilogy before Kidman and Co. embalm our fantasies forever.

Also giving me joy, Credible Witness is providing the perfect warm-up to the Eurovision Song Contest by posting some old goodies. You know you love it and don't pretend it's in some groovy/ironic way either, you just love it. Apart from one unforgivable lapse of taste (Finland.'06. Genius.) Lauren is the one to get us there. This entry particularly, is very, very special.

Don't get me wrong, Lysandra is a lovely name and I really don't mind the part-soulful, part- "I just pee-ed on your pillow and I'm not going to apologise"-look of the thing but a raccoon? Really?


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