For a daily dose of art, street art, interventions, disruptions goto: REBEL:ART. It will relieve your pain.
Today, the the very excellent Sarah Maple, This Artist Blows
Every single archived page is a goldmine, z.B:
Ron English, The Secret History of Kiss, 2008
REBEL:ART it will increase your bank balance.
Tenth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Fishers Lane, Fitzroy
The Zombie State
by Ben Ellis
17–27 September 8pm
Location: Union Theatre, ground floor, Union House, The University of Melbourne
Melways ref: 75A
Tickets: Full $25/Concession $15/Union Members $12
Preview 16 September: All tickets $10
tickets online
Johnny Carr as Segismundo in Life is a Dream by Calderon de la Barca. VCA Company 08, directed by Daniel Schlusser. All photos by Jeff Busby.
Theatrenotes review here.
Season Details here.
Life is a Dream by Calderon de la Barca, directed by Daniel Schlusser. Translation by Beatrix Christian, set designed by Marg Horwell, lighting designed by Kimberly Kwa, special effects make-up by Dominique Mathisen. Performed by George Banders, Brendan Barnett, Johnny Carr, Andrew Dunn, Julia Grace, Sophie Mathisen, Vanessa Moltzen, Sarah Ogden, Josh Price.
I'm not usually a nature-photography fan but these photos blogged by Alan Taylor took my breath away.
...and "Fly Bagels! Fly!".
I Saw a Chapel All of Gold
I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in;
And many, weeping, stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door;
And he forced and forced and forced;
Down the golden hinges tore.
And along the pavement sweet
Set with pearls and rubies bright
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white
Vomiting his poison out
On the bread and on the wine.
So I turned into a sty
And laid me down among the swine.
- William Blake
"Fortunately, not all have swallowed the nihilistic cant of the postmodern. Art can be defined as having certain characteristics and qualities...Art is uplifting and helps us, in the words of another English poet, William Blake, "To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower". While I have not seen the photographs in question...most viewers, I think, would agree that images of naked, under-age girls, silhouetted and standing provocatively are unacceptable." - Dr. Kevin Donnelly (The Sunday Age - 25/5/08)
Donatello's David.
Alison Croggon, who is "very sad and very angry that this is happening in my country." has all the links, particularly to George Hunka and Nicholas Pickard.
All photographs by Brett Boardman
Performance details and tickets here.
ABC TV news segment here.
Will Noonan review at M/C Reviews.
Nicholas Pickard review here.
Jason Blake in the Sydney Morning Herald here.
SALOME - IN COGITO VOLUME III
PRESENTED BY THE RABBLE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH CARRIAGEWORKS
MAY 07 - 17 AT 8PM
CARRIAGEWORKS : WWW.CARRIAGEWORKS.COM.AU
245 WILSON STREET EVELEIGH SYDNEY
CO CREATION :: EMMA VALENTE & MARY HELEN SASSMAN
FEATURING :: PIER CARTHEW : MARY HELEN SASSMAN : SYD BRISBANE : DANA MILTINS : DANIEL SCHLUSSER
DIRECTOR & LIGHTING DESIGNER :: EMMA VALENTE
DESIGNER :: KATE DAVIS
COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER :: MAX LYANDVERT : EVA MUELLER
ASSOCIATED ARTISTS :: JESSICA BECK : ADAM IUSTON : BELLA DI LORENZO : DAISY NOYES : DAN SPIELMAN
Photographs: Mary Helen Sassman (Salome) being baptised by Pier Carthew (John the Baptist), Mary Helen Sassman as Salome with circular saw, Dana Miltins (Judith), Pier Carthew (John) and Daniel Schlusser (Herod) in a perverse-reverse-baptism involving flour
Love
Love mean to learn to look a yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills-
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.
Czeslaw Milosz, The World in New and Collected Poems 1931-2001
Katherine Harris as Nora in A Dollhouse by Henrik Ibsen, a VCA production directed by Daniel Schlusser. Photo by Ponch Hawkes. 2007.
Alison Croggon's review at Theatrenotes
Matthew Clayfield's at Esoteric Rabbit
Martin Ball's review in The Age
Katherine Harris as Nora and Nick Jamieson as Torvald.
Ben Pfeiffer as Dr. Rank. 
Katherine Harris as Nora and Ben Pfeiffer as Dr. Rank.
Michael Wahr as Krogstad and Katherine Harris as Nora.
Edwina Wren as Kristine.
Michael Wahr as Krogstad.
Nick Jamieson as Torvald, Ben Pfeiffer as Dr. Rank and Katherine Harris as Nora.
Full Credits:
A Dollhouse by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Daniel Schlusser. Set design by Jeminah Reidy. Costumes by Tiffany Abbott. Lighting design by Kimberly Kwa. Surround sound by Tessa Eleiff. Composer Johnny Milner. With Katherine Harris, Nick Jamieson, Michael Wahr, Edwina Wren, Ben Pfeiffer and Veronica Bryant/Heloise Jackson. Produced by the Victorian College of the Arts Drama and Production schools.
All photos by Ponch Hawkes. 2007
Ninth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
St. Georges Road South, North Fitzroy
Mayor John So announced this week that the fountains in the Carlton Gardens would flow again. The house I am living in seems to be leaking upwards.
These shots of a lake in Princes Park were taken in March.
Dana Miltins with (and without) antelope in Corvus (designed by director Kate Davis, lighting designed by Emma Valente, photography by Brett Boardman)
Reading Nicholas Pickard's review, I was involuntarily thrown out of my seat. Still quite a distance from the airport, I came to my senses, unfortunately.
Instead, some beautiful photos to tease those of us not in Sydney. Rumour has it that Corvus might make it to Melbourne, which would be just fab.
While we wait, the same gang are bringing their production of Osama the Hero to Melbourne later this month. Although an altogether different beast from Corvus, Osama... was one of the most intelligent "straight" theatre pieces that I saw in '06.
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.
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
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…
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?
Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as an aid and remedy in the service of growing and striving life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferer: firstly he who suffers from a superabundance of life, who desires a Dionysian art and likewise a tragic view of and insight into life – and then he who suffer from poverty of life, who seeks in art and knowledge either rest, peace, a smooth sea, delivery from himself, or intoxication, paroxysm, stupefaction, madness.
-Nietzsche
The Gay Science, 1887
trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 1977
Sixth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Under the Capital City Trail Footbridge, Yarra River, Abbotsford
"Simplify your life as modern Europeans do..."
Corner of Nicholson Street and Brunswick Road, Brunswick
Fifth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Greg Baum writes today about spectator-auditing, Major Events Corporation-style. His shot at the figures for the world swimming championships and the Grand Prix should be read by theatre producers, artistic directors and funding bodies across the land.
I expect attendance figures for theatre in this country will inexplicably rise in the order of 10 to 30%, the next time a federal enquiry happens to ask.
I'm only interested in a level playing field.
Vale Freddie Francis
You imagine you will measure your own mortality by your parents, friend's parents, friends. It didn't occur to you that there would be an age during which your heroes would start dropping like flies.
Jasmine Chan loves the S-Bahn, so she should fit right in here. The Rabble are planning a major production in Sydney soon, keep eyes open.
Back to Back are one of the best theatre companies in the world. Seeing Small Metal Objects recently proved that, again.
So I've added them to the list!
+script: quite coincidentally, Jasmine also has a review of Small Metal Objects.
my favourite capitalist girl done got caged by developers
Last week an Irish make-up artist visiting Melbourne asked me if I was sport-obsessed, like all the other Aussies she had met. I said I wasn't.
Last weekend I saw Zinedine Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait
I want to be him.
It's a beautiful film. Co-director Douglas Gordon also made 24-hour Psycho, that film slowed down so that it lasted 24 hours...simple, effective. This portrait is in real time and it is a hypnotic 90 minutes that closely follows Zidane through a match he is playing for Real Madrid. So closely is he observed that you don't really know how the game is progressing and it takes you a while to realise he is sharing the pitch with the likes of Beckham and Ronaldo. He stalks like a lion, clips the ground like a restless horse and when he does strike, it seems to be in slow motion (which mirrors the experience of watching Wayne Carey live, btw) He doesn't waste time with words, just the odd yell. In the one moment when he smiles, his whole face lights up; it's a "feminine" moment in a portrait of pure masculinity. Masculinity and Flow. The first is intrinsic to the subject, the "sitter", the second is the theme that justifies the form, the use of the close-up video, the manipulation of the sound from personal, interior space to the roar of a full stadium, and Mogwai's music. The 'Flow" that is achieved when you are totally focussed on a series of discrete actions, when time stops behaving and ideas link with each other before you have thought them. When you have forgotten the exterior world and yet are totally in synch with it. When you feel predestination. This film is a celebration of the sportsman as artist, or the masculine in art, or the art of masculinity.
In an interview Gordon suggested that Zidane's headbutt-exit from the World Cup was an orgasmic/destructive urge to sully the perfect moment. I have an ongoing , complex response to Zidane's 'final moment' so the simplicity of this idea is attractive.
And I want to be him.
Anti-AFL-ers should duck the next two pars. I was losing bits of teeth reading the likes of Robert Walls pontificating about North Melbourne and as always, Leapin' Larry at The Age leaps the right way:
SNOOZER OF THE WEEK
Anyone still congratulating themselves at length on recognising the Gold Coast as the Kangaroos' "only option". Yes, after years of successfully white-anting such local supporter base as they had here by shipping their games all over the national landscape, and otherwise publicly eroding confidence in their finances, there was only one path left, so all due congratulations to those pundits on the marvelous feat of recognising it. Hoorah. (The Sunday Age, 4/3/07)
As a former Fitzroy supporter who couldn't bear (ha bloody ha) a Brisbane-based version of his beloved club and so spent 3 seasons in the wilderness before following North (another inner-urban club, a smattering of ex-Fitzroy players) you can imagine how overjoyed I am by the prospect of never seeing a free-to-air game not telecast from the Gold Coast. Gold Coast Kangaroos? Oh, the humiliation.
Ben Ellis points us to the Radio 4 site for some Tynan. Also there at the moment is Mike Brearley, yes, THAT Mike Brearley investigating the Art of Directing. (Can't link directly, click on a weekday and find it in the A-Z listing).It's typically English, uptight but forensic. Early on, Sir Peter Hall describes G.B. Shaw's rehearsal process and it is soundly tut-tutted. Unfairly, I think.
You can't go past Katie Mitchell's "98% of directing is hard work." Her observations of the origins of Stanislavski's Method should also ring some bells for Melbournians, although the implications for a methodology that is founded on fear are not pursued.
All in all, well worth a quick listen, and I look forward to the second installment next week.
I now have an image of Alan Border interviewing Simon Phillips about rehearsal processes, and it won't go away.
I'd like to dedicate today's blog to the The Age report, about Harry Potter performing in the current West End production of Equus, that described the protagonist Alan Strange as "a stable boy obsessed with horses." Makes me feel very sane indeed.
and did I mention this man amongst men?
lane off Fenwick Street, North Carlton
Fourth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
