Here is my review of Chris Hill and James Deutsher's show at Joint Hassles.
26/10/2007
19/10/2007
Hallucinatory Materialism
Well, since I can't go to my own book launch, I hope everyone will attend in my absence and get boozy on my behalf under that woozy CCP ceiling... Not only that, but you will get to hear the always engaging Emmett talking about the book.
Was that sentence structure completely mangled? Blame it on Norway...
Was that sentence structure completely mangled? Blame it on Norway...
14/10/2007
12/10/2007
French archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old work of art in northern Syria which is the oldest known wall painting, even though it looks like a work by a modernist.
The two square-metre painting, in red, black and white, was found at the Neolithic settlement of Djade al-Mughara on the Euphrates, northeast of the city of Aleppo.
(From The Telegraph)
09/10/2007
08/10/2007
07/10/2007
One thing I like about jetlag is its ability to kickstart the sort of ascetic existence I have been leading since I got here. Not a drop of alcohol have I consumed since leaving Melbourne, with the unfortunate exception of accepting cognac with my coffee on Thai Airlines - ugh, Thai and cognac a contradiction in terms.
So, now it's all wake up at seven, eat a humble breakfast, work all day, hit a wall by about 6pm. The only problem is the subsequent evening attraction to the ever-soporific television, and so I find myself in semi-conscious state watching RnB clips interspersed with simpatico Norwegian advertisements. It's been years since I sat and watched popular filmclips (late night Rage is too random to count as popular), and in the interim I find that the cutetsy narratives of the eighties and playful video fx of the nineties have been usurped by straight-up softcore porn club-dancing, one after another, all the same. Remember how outrageous this was when Madonna did it in 1988? Well, it was outrageous to me as an eight-year-old, swallowing up all that Catholic controversy.
Now of course it's de rigeur. Are these women supposed to be 'empowered'? If it's a female artist, then you get the titillation of a 'personality' staring doe-eyed into the camera and doing her best to contort her belly, hips and arse to appear as though she is fucking some invisible entity. So perhaps the suggestion is that it's empowering to be more of a fuck-er than a fuck-ee. A grotesque splinter-branch of the Greer-esque seventies brand of 'you've had all the power too long, now it's our turn' type of feminism, perhaps.
Or, if it's a male artist, you get either some ugly fat bastard or a smarmy, wan-looking creep with a few anonymous female bodies daubed around him for effect. The women tend to look dewy and a bit removed, either in their personality or the attitude with which they convey their sexuality, or both. It's like some long-winded return to the archaic notion of the woman as embodiment of the cold and damp humours, though admittedly the men don't seem very hot. Though they are almost always drier than the women. Justin Timberlake is particularly irksome, his pseudo-moralistic wannabe-an-actor clip for 'goes around comes around' a case in point (If you act like a slapper, you will die horribly in a car crash, and then what's more your body will be posthumously groped by a wan creep a'la 'Bad Timing'.)
And, the insidious spread of fundamentalist christianity being something of a theme this week, I note that none of the values conveyed in this world depart far from the fundamentalist christian idea of the woman as perpetually perky-titted servant to her husband's aims, professional, social, ornamental and procreational all. 'In Bobbie's CD set She Loves and Values her Sexuality she proclaims, "You might be happy with your weight but is your husband happy with your weight? … How are you going to do anything that might surprise your man when you need a hydraulic crane just to turn over in bed?" Boob jobs and face lifts get the thumbs up, as do good sex and a husband who says sorry with an impromptu spending spree at the jewellers. It's a feel-good message, and when it doesn't feel good, money makes it better.' (from The High Cost of Faith by Jennifer Sexton).
Blargh. Give me Godardian sexuality any day.
So, now it's all wake up at seven, eat a humble breakfast, work all day, hit a wall by about 6pm. The only problem is the subsequent evening attraction to the ever-soporific television, and so I find myself in semi-conscious state watching RnB clips interspersed with simpatico Norwegian advertisements. It's been years since I sat and watched popular filmclips (late night Rage is too random to count as popular), and in the interim I find that the cutetsy narratives of the eighties and playful video fx of the nineties have been usurped by straight-up softcore porn club-dancing, one after another, all the same. Remember how outrageous this was when Madonna did it in 1988? Well, it was outrageous to me as an eight-year-old, swallowing up all that Catholic controversy.
Now of course it's de rigeur. Are these women supposed to be 'empowered'? If it's a female artist, then you get the titillation of a 'personality' staring doe-eyed into the camera and doing her best to contort her belly, hips and arse to appear as though she is fucking some invisible entity. So perhaps the suggestion is that it's empowering to be more of a fuck-er than a fuck-ee. A grotesque splinter-branch of the Greer-esque seventies brand of 'you've had all the power too long, now it's our turn' type of feminism, perhaps.
Or, if it's a male artist, you get either some ugly fat bastard or a smarmy, wan-looking creep with a few anonymous female bodies daubed around him for effect. The women tend to look dewy and a bit removed, either in their personality or the attitude with which they convey their sexuality, or both. It's like some long-winded return to the archaic notion of the woman as embodiment of the cold and damp humours, though admittedly the men don't seem very hot. Though they are almost always drier than the women. Justin Timberlake is particularly irksome, his pseudo-moralistic wannabe-an-actor clip for 'goes around comes around' a case in point (If you act like a slapper, you will die horribly in a car crash, and then what's more your body will be posthumously groped by a wan creep a'la 'Bad Timing'.)
And, the insidious spread of fundamentalist christianity being something of a theme this week, I note that none of the values conveyed in this world depart far from the fundamentalist christian idea of the woman as perpetually perky-titted servant to her husband's aims, professional, social, ornamental and procreational all. 'In Bobbie's CD set She Loves and Values her Sexuality she proclaims, "You might be happy with your weight but is your husband happy with your weight? … How are you going to do anything that might surprise your man when you need a hydraulic crane just to turn over in bed?" Boob jobs and face lifts get the thumbs up, as do good sex and a husband who says sorry with an impromptu spending spree at the jewellers. It's a feel-good message, and when it doesn't feel good, money makes it better.' (from The High Cost of Faith by Jennifer Sexton).
Blargh. Give me Godardian sexuality any day.
06/10/2007
05/10/2007
04/10/2007
The Till on the Hill cont'd...
Infinite Thought on 'linguistic frictionless spinning in the void', as it oozes its way from the corporate to the educational realm, and slops about in the political. Ideas also very much applicable to Christian Fundamentalism, Prosperity Theology in particular. Cha-ching.
03/10/2007
Scandinaviah
Ah, how pleasant it is to be back in Scandinavia. Chilly sunshine, nicely uphosltered furniture in public places, etc.
Read this on the plane:
The perfect length to kill a flight from Melbourne to Bangkok. Lots of comments-box debate about this one. A good article about it here.
It is a fascinating book. Though suffused with a sarcasm and a subjectivity, it is honest in both, and brave, considering the people she is crossing. They kind of look anti-christian to me. Maybe it's all the cash.
I have always found Assembly of God people quite extreme and cloistered, but this book paints a sickening picture. Several sickening pictures, actually.
It is well worth reading.
Two years away, and there are so many things I’d forgotten I love about Norway. The calmness and gratitude I feel when in a landscape strewn with overwhelmingly huge chunks of rock. The turf roofs. The subcultre of teenage girls with skateboards. The word for chicken (kylling), the word for beef (biff). The gentleness and calmness of people. The affirmative inward gasp. The obsession with Donald Duck, which I am sure is nothing like the American Donald Duck. The glorious golden Autumn...
Read this on the plane:
The perfect length to kill a flight from Melbourne to Bangkok. Lots of comments-box debate about this one. A good article about it here.
It is a fascinating book. Though suffused with a sarcasm and a subjectivity, it is honest in both, and brave, considering the people she is crossing. They kind of look anti-christian to me. Maybe it's all the cash.
I have always found Assembly of God people quite extreme and cloistered, but this book paints a sickening picture. Several sickening pictures, actually.
It is well worth reading.
Two years away, and there are so many things I’d forgotten I love about Norway. The calmness and gratitude I feel when in a landscape strewn with overwhelmingly huge chunks of rock. The turf roofs. The subcultre of teenage girls with skateboards. The word for chicken (kylling), the word for beef (biff). The gentleness and calmness of people. The affirmative inward gasp. The obsession with Donald Duck, which I am sure is nothing like the American Donald Duck. The glorious golden Autumn...
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