v/ Buxom red cheers to ya'll,

•1. *'-M -•'} ^-.S .'.''1 -^V-) A friend of ours, when finding out the theme of this issue, suggested "why .il,. J'. don't you write about how hard It is to be passionate in Brisbane?". We obviously haven't. Mainly because that issue would be themed apathy, instead of cured diseases passion, and also because it would be boring to write and boring to read. But most importantly because - as the writers and inten/iew subjects of this issue testify, and as we have articulated in our own articles - passion is a choice. a And there are many passions which can authentically be played out In our 'River City'. Our size compared to the other made dead people live capital cities is often an advantage for forming productive connections and creative partnerships, particulariy of the cross-disciplinary variety. Often you may let slip from the rim of a fourth beer that you want to do such and such, or get involved with this or that, and the stranger standing next to you will know controlled nature the best person to get in contact with and give you their phone number. And that person may be dating your brother- in-law and sen/ing you at the local deli. This is a beautiful thing. 1 don't think it would be naiVe of us to say that we really look after each other here. The family is quite small, this often makes it tight, and admittedly sometimes stifling. forgave sins But would we have it any other way?

Next Issue is the women's edition. This is a great chance to get involved with Semper, either by contributing or grappling with the production side of the beast. Come into the office ASAP, or overcame evil powers email us, etc. There will be regular contributors meetings to make it a bit of a group thing. The first will be on June 27. Also, you may or may not know, that the Semper editors' positions are elected positions to Council. They mn on a separate ticket in the annual Union and what is more elections. If you have a vague suspicion that you might want to edit Semper next year, you should come into the office and have a chat to us about it. It's a damn lovely job, very rewarding, and a "•••'•*;.':»•." -•; good way to test out how well your body copes with sudafed and coffee and beer simultaneously. It will destroy your life, came back from the dead. your family, and everything you've ever loved:) But you'll have to be organised very soon to campaign. Finally - In the last few weeks our thoughts have been with last year's editors and their circle, who hav4 lost a treasured friend. We hope you are all coping as best you can with such an : Inexpiicable loss.

Rachel, Marie, Kate, Erin. 38 The Climate Coalition - Lessons in PR and 3 Letters to Ed Pseudo-science - Annette Maguire 5 Semper does Passion, Part One: What is 41 Passion is Implosion - John Smith it and How Do 1 Get Me Some? - rachel o 42 Interview with Sam Kretschman and 6 Interview with Alex Winter, Phd student Glordana Caputo, Triple Zed o 7 Interstice, a Column by Cath Hart 8 Slightly Passionate - Matt Thrower 45 Semper does Passion, Part 3: Scraping 10 Lewd Planet Earth - Mark Gomes Your Heart off the Toilet Bowl- rachel o 12 Who Shits the Alphabet - rachel o 46 Porn or Art; Who Should Decide 14 Inten/iew with Jo Ball, Student Activist 48 Interview with Sister Angelina, The Nun on 16 Moonshots and the Live Fire Milton Road - Kelly Ventress Experience - Marcel Dorney 50 Wolf Asahi's Five Most Passionate 20 1984: Dancing in the Dark - Brett Records Collingwood and Kate Scott 51 Andrew'sTunes 22 Obituary - Gongoozler 54 Indie's Fall - Mark Gomes 24 Inten/iew with Grant Stevens, Datum 55 Gav: The UQ Years - Gavin Gee-CIough 26 Interview with Leon Waud, Immerse 57 Passionfruit Pulp - Danielle Bentley 28 Semper Does Passion, Part Two: Give 58 Review Me a Reason to Love You! - rachel o 66 Union Reports 30 Inten/iew with Michael Gilmore and 70 News This Month - Ben Eltham D Kelvin Johnston, Revolution Rock 33 When Green Days Become Blue Days - Claire Cottone Semper thanks: 34 Ban the Boot Dot Com Mom - Jean Louise Terry, Kelly Ventress, Jason Curtis, all our Poole inten/iewees, Grant Stevens, The Daveylamps, 35 Interview with Anicha Bay, Vipassana Red Son Fox, The Zebras, The Queen's Arms, The Meditation Enthusiast Stone Roses, Chris Coma, Genevieve Cheetam, Marcel, Brett and everybody who wrote for us under duress. We know It was hard.

Cover: Tara Pattenden Back cover: Marcel Lip inside front cover: Selina Bralne

Editors: Rachel O'Reilly, Kate Scott, Mark Gomes and Erin O'Hanlon

Address conBspondence, contributions, advertising and rants to: uqsemper® hotmail.com Semper Magazine, Union Complex, University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4067. (07)3377-2237

Semper is published by the University of Queensland student union letters to the editors

Dear Eds, probably never make it as a "reality" series on TV, but if you must, try SBS documentaries It is with great disappointment that I read the occasionally instead. unfortunate excuse for an article entitled "M1 Afterthoughts" in the "details" edition of your And if you don't care - why not ask yourself WHY publication. Considering that the author admitted you don't care? Does it make you feel later in the article that he didn't even GO to M1 uncomfortable that you may benefit from the (spent the time playing video games instead) it oppression of others? That you could do was ironic, to say the least. something to change your life and that of others, but don't? 1 am also disappointed in the extreme that the author feels compelled to suggest that "it's okay Why are they bringing in 1600 military at the for hundreds of millions of children to work in Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to sweatshops and corporations who own media be held in Brisbane on October 6? Not because outlets and poverty to subsume billions of people we're a little blip on their radar that doesn't know around the globe". As long as YOU are not one of what we're talking about. But because we do. And those billions in poverty, perhaps? Or that those our numbers are growing and the voices are children aren't yours? The practiced apathy of the getting louder and that blip is turning into a jolly pseudo-anti-intellectual-anti-actlvist mentality is great big giant MOUNTAIN and that's a lot harder nothing short of an urban joke that, like a lot of to block out. other things in the world, isn't very funny. It has taken on a kind of "coolness" this "l-Know-AII-The- 1 don't know if the article was Intended to be Facts-Too-and-l-Still-Don't-Care" approach, sort of "humourous" or just plain annoying, but If it was a useful for antagonising activists who give not only response you wanted, you got it. Here it is. I hope know the facts but feel empowered to do you like it. something about it, or for attempting to discredit the Left in general. LIZ

People can shrug their designer shoulders and For more information, or to get involved in the say "Oh well, I know all about that (insert social Stop CHOGM Campaign or other anti-capitalist issue here) and what can I do about it? It's the campaigns, come to The Environment Collective government's problem." Actually, the government 1pm Mondays, Level 5 Student Union Building or is PART of the problem. And they will never be SCAM (*students Campaigning Against part of the solution, so it's no good relying on that Multinationals) 2pm same day, same place or call option. Yes, you can't see poverty from your the UQ Student Union Environment officer on window and your "fluffy bunny" bedroom window 3377 2255. at that, unless you live in certain areas or are looking for it. Poverty is well concealed by the +++++++++++++++++++++++++ media because the powers that be like us to believe that poor people are living that way Liz, because they deserve it. Do you know how many students are living UNDER the poverty line? It appears you have entirely mistaken the Probably you don't, but there are a lot. perspective of the M1 Afterthoughts piece. When Governments and the corporate owned media the author flitters into the perspective half way have a vested interest In discrediting anti-capitalist through, of someone that 'didn't even go to M1', activists and the Left who bring these issues more stayed home watching videos and asked if it out in the open because this will hopefully make might be 'okay for hundreds of millions of children them go away. Or at least give up, or shut up. to work in sweatshops' etc, he was using a Granted, it is a little uncomfortable to face the narrative tool, placing himself in the point of view facts, but real life is not "Big Brother" and will of the person whose actions he doesn't understand - i.e. the apathetic educated, priviledged kid who 'knows it all but still doesn't care' (in your words). We think his article works well at detailing the particular anxieties of the lucky and socially conscious Australian kid, whose friends might not necessarily think he is 'cool' for maintaining 'anti-Corporate / activist' thoughts etc. The article is quite effective in personalising the politics of the collective situation, and in detailing an individual's honest self-analysis of, and depression with, his own hypocrisy, which is momentarily overcome on May 1st, for the purposes of group power and alignment. Indeed, in drawing lines around the boundaries of those hardcore enough for your collective and those on the other side you have mistakenly cast aside someone sharing your sympathies. Because he was there. Hell, he was probably standing next to you in the blockade, his arm linked to yours.

THE EDITORS

^. + + + + + + + 4. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The article is not humourous. It is about as angry an article 1 could write at that time without being vitriolic or transparent. If you look more carefully, you will see that it is an attack on apathy. It is not a personal account. It is an expression of my frustration that more and more people our age are becoming less and less politically active.

I am a management member of ANTaR Queensland, a community organisation committed to improving relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous communities. The great benefit of being in an organisation like ANTaR Queensland is that I have learnt from activists that have come before me as to the history of political activism in this state.

I know that there have been larger, more radical and more committed community groups supporting Indigenous justice in the past. I know that universities were once the birthplace of incredible political campaigns. I also know that the sum total of the influence of these many departed organisations has been negligible.

I don't know how to turn around this trend. I tried to express this frustration in the article Ml Afterthoughts. It pains me to think that it could be interpreted in any other way.

JEN TSEN KWOK Part One: Semper does What is itP And liow do I get me passion Love is a learned passion - like all passions are. To understand pas­ endure the consequences of sion we must realise that our passions have very little to do with one's action. Passions within or human nature. More realistically, our affectations operate within a belonging to a person, are certain kind of society in which blood relations and family roles play proof of life - proof of engage­ an extraordinarily diminished role, and mobility, individuality and ment - proof that they can keep chance encounters hold a remarkably dominant position in the deter­ creating themselves as they mination of who we are. Indeed every passion - love in particular - Is travel along with time. This a primary mode of judging and acting out precisely who we are, and often inspires and reassures us who we want to be. However we still must choose a kind of love, a that we will be able to do the kind of passion from those that are available to us. Passions are cul­ same. That's why, even if you turally specific, extremely complex, conglomerates of films and friends don't understand someone's and books and songs, mad speeding djs, naked celluloid potters, passion/s, the most passionate eccentric neighbours and our older sister with her partner on a blanket people are always refreshing to When we descride someone as a passionate person, often there is not a Thing we locate as being The Thing lor them, but the fact that they concern themselves with Things generally. in the park. As a result, we are sometimes oven/vhelmed by choice, and probably just as often disturbed by the limited kinds of passions be around. Indeed, when we authentically available, and ways to act them out. Some people describe someone as a pas­ choose passions out of the unavailable category. But these are not sionate person, often there is passions, without the associated chance to engage oneself in them. not a Thing we locate as being They are just dreams of future ones. Or perhaps justification for not The Thing for them, but the projecting oneself into the world available, or creating within it. fact that they concern them­ selves with Things, generally. Erich Fromm suggested that the word love is so full of praise and self- One Big Passion, on the other congratulation, that just to use it is already a sign of character - granti­ hand Is easily just as nice a ng one exalted status in the worid of emotions, proving oneself a lov­ thing to imagine in our friends ing person - regardless of whom or what one loves or how. Fromm's and lovers. Before we know of statement can equally be applied to the word passion, generally. they're many dimensions, we Often times, we don't even wish to understand another's passion - we can at least hold their passion only choose to know (with relief) that they have one, or a few. in one of our hands, as proof of Passions for particular things or ways of living and acting, can some­ them. This is not such a bad times be projected as the most beautiful and idiosyncratic form of thing, for they created it (from strength and courage, combined with the emotional infrastructure to many available options) for such a purpose anyway, to contain and make prominent a t- part of themselves for others to grasp quickly. And when we are hesitant In person, our pas­ sions can be taken up in the V, moments when intimacy falls short. Passions for Things can last as long as we want them s. to. But they can be thrown away just as easily, without a sideward glance. Passion for people though - especially when specifically Love - can not.

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I'm talking about one passion among many, but it is way bodies take up words, how language shapes one that I can begin to identify as being the basis my knowledge of bodies, the way I wear a textual of my research, and perhaps underlies many other skin. I think of how words affect me in a tactile things in a more abstract way. encounter, and the ways in which what I see is always shaped by language. And then there are It starts, in a once-upon a time kind of way, with bodies of words, bodies of work, a corpus, a textual stories. In the beginning it was Charlotte's Web, body. Tom's Midnight Garden, and Penelope Sometimes (being a great believer in time travel, I was always Language is never innocent. For me it is not a trying to find ways into the past). Then there was mirror that simply reflects a truth. I think of words Harriet The Spy and Nancy Drew, and I spent my as slightly smudged in the way the newsprint spare time creating masterful disguises and leaves grey marks on my fingers. Language is also following suspicious characters. After or, more a violence, a perpetuation of racism and accurately, alongside the stories came the words, homophobia and misogyny. Words patrol the the sentences, and the ideas behind the sentences. boundaries of the so-called normal and acceptable, I guess mine is a passion for language, it is a love demanding and enforcing compliance. This of words and what they can do. It is also a concern happens in both subtle and elaborate ways - name- with what words cannot do, the silences, the places calling in the playground and on the street, the between. It is a fascination with the idea that we legal system, the rules of etiquette etc. cannot know anything without, outside, beyond, the language we have. So ideas and language for me Words function as a double agent, working for the are inextricably linked. capitalist system of owning and consuming, creating needs and niche markets in order to sell, My particular endeavour has the paradoxical quality sell, sell, and words are also a speaking-out, a of both elucidating, extending and articulating ideas resistance, a refusal. Jeanette Winterson writes of while pulling apart sentences, ideas and words in this double-agent quality of language, "[the] word an endeavour to get behind, to get inside (and can that is both moth and lamp," in which the light I ever get inside or behind the words?). In my work which words circle (fatally) around Is at the same (which is taking place in a western educational time only words. So when people ask me what use system under late capitalism and the Howard a postgraduate degree in English is, I think of government's ongoing higher education cuts) 1 moths and lamps, that for me it is a passion for pursue bodies and their relationship to language. I stories that mean both everything and nothing. think of the way language represents bodies, the interstice a columrrrom

dth ndrt stuff for super-absorbent minds.

1 recall him as having Freddy Krueger fingers, but this may Sex and Death be the condensation that limits the number of monsters in the world. The point is, he was a monster and AIDS was What are we afraid of? For the generation who his weapon. And while we know better now, in our grew up with re-runs and new programs back to hospitals and our lounge rooms, back then I absorbed back I'd suggest that what we're afraid of is him just as readily as 1 tried to synthesise the conflicting close to our homes. Unlike those who grew up messages of the re-run shows and the contemporary during the Cold War, the fear is not of super stuff. This kind of ten year old mental time travel will only powers silently trading icy stares, but of an lead to cultural confusion. internalised threat from each other. The shows we watched on TV simultaneously offered us In the ads, to the best of my recollections, groups of one hand full of the idea of love and family people stood around the Grim Reaper in the cold blue values, and then used the other hand to hold light looking expectantly to him, all facing him, all lined our heads over the toilet bowl of life's up. Supposedly they were meant to look sick, but I difficulties. remember them looking pissed off. Apparently, they all had AIDS. In another ad, one solitary bed was shown, The toybox of this generation's childhood holds again in the same icy hue. The shot widened to reveal a Astroboy, Jem and the Rockers, She-ra; huge dorm full of identical beds - were they unmade? Mistress to the master of the universe, Degrassi They're unmade in my mind, crisp white sheets half off, High, Grange Hill, Press Gang with the lovely crumpled - beds hastily departed. The ad introduced the Lynda Day and the ever splendid Spike. idea of networks, and asked people to think about how many people they were really sleeping with. The themes and even styles, of these shows were contrary to those at the other end of the And then back to the Crayola-coloured dreams of Brady spectrum of our early cultural investments; worid et al, or to Sex and Some Sad Times at Degrassi black and white images or flat crayon-like High et al. Love, sex, and death all in the one black box. colour, odd families of five or even seven, sitting around a laminex table - families who were AIDS pushed fear inside us, between us. The message always smiling at each other by the end of the was that it might be in us, in the fluid that might pass show. Compare at the very least the theme between us, in our beds, our saliva, our blood. The songs; 'these happy days are yours and mine - message was that we might not know if this was even happy days!' is quite different to 'wake up in the the case, making us complicit in the source of the fear; at morning, feeling shy and lonely, gee I've gotta once guilty parties and potentially innocent victims. Our go to school'. confusion of AIDS became a fear of ourselves, a guilt about of our potential threat to others, and back round This game of cultural brandy featured Team the cycle to the threat others may pose to us. The AIDS Retro Rerun with the Fonz getting the girl, the quilt wasn't getting as much publicity as the cold blanket Goodies having a madcap time with giant of paranoia. kittens, the Brady's and Leave it to Beaver. And on the other side was Wheels from Degrassi taking acid and jumping off a bridge. Or Spike This is nothing new, there was surely an 'AIDS Episode' from Press Gang leaving long sad messages on one of the teen issue-based programs. What is new for his father on the answering machine, are the people who were audience to this confluence of because his father died somewhere before the attitudes and values from the past and present. What is opening sequence of that particular episode. new is that these people are now the ones making the And dodging between the teams, getting socked shows, writing the books and so on. And what they're again and again by the wet tennis balls of writing is tinged with a disappointment and a mistrust of idealism and disillusionment was us. If you join love. the red welts together they spell 'confusion'.

The Grim Reaper emerges not from a dark You can see it in things like Shopping and Fucking, or in corner, under the bed or beyond the S-bend, the loveless fuck at the beginning of Henry Fool, or the but from an odd half world between the shows, mostly fuckless love of the Friends cast. Lovemaking? neither in colour nor black and white. We learnt No thanks, It seems we'd prefer some semi-violent action about dating from the Fonz, and about sex from on a Turner Prize winning mattress soaked in bodily Degrassi. The Grim Reaper told us about death, fluids to fairy floss satin sheet shite. 7 and how you could get it from sex. Impressive slightSy pa

Passion, so they say, is an outburst of Boys as that young fella was about climbing Everest? Would lst\\\ strong emotion or anger or sexual listen to Pet Sounds if doing so caused me to lose a.pinky and a love or strong enthusiasm. It also forefinger? No, I'd probably start listening to N-Sync instead. Would 1 describes Christ's sufferings on the still read Catch 22 or On The Road if I lived in a repressive society cross. A passionate person, that punished possession of subversive literature with extreme apparently, lacks self-control. A physical and mental punishment? Living a comparatively cushy passionless person, meanwhile, is existence, I simply have no concept of such an environment. I do cold or devoid of any strong feelings. know that I would die for the woman I'm engaged to, but other than So where do you stand? Wnat do you that, I'm a somewhat lazy white Australian male who feels what could consider the safest way to be in our possibly be described as a certain measure of passion for some society? If you're seeking a life of things. 1 loathe racism, misogyny, homophobia and exploitation, and straight lines, an unremarkable life have attended anti-One Nation rallies, but it would be arrogant in the where you don't feel rage over extreme to say these passions match those of human rights activists Passion is vocally speaking up against violence and risking death. Passionless is flicking over to Whieel Of Fortune whenever the words "East Timor" are mentioned on the news. anything, where you cruise along with that risk overbearing persecution for fighting for their beliefs. a minimum of trauma, then try being passionless and Johnny Howard win So, place me somewhere between Colin Brown, the accountant who's love you for it. I've gotta say, being in a colourless marriage with three ungrateful private school-attending devoid of passion is the safest bet if children, and the Dalai Lama. The Immensely large grey area between you're after neither ups nor downs in Colin and the Dalai is where you'll find me. I call upon the Oxford life, if you just want to stay Dictionary to come up with a definition for "slightiy passionate". somewhere in the middle. And if it makes you happy or even somewhat Matt Thrower content, then I m happy for you too. Because, let's face it, life can be very cruel to passionate people. If you're passionate (and bear in mind this word has an extremely wide definition), you risk ridicule, ostracism or even death. You can hurt others both mentally and physically. You can go insane. And yet, passion seems to me a far more interesting state to be in. I've behaved like a complete tit in the name of passion and yet I wouldn't want to go a single day without feeling this torrent of strong emotions. Passionless is Kenny G. Passion is John Coltrane.Passionless is safety. Passion is danger.

Passion is climbing Mt Everest at the age of 15, when only a year before you nearly got there but lost fingers to frostbite. Passionless is staying at home and watching Cliffhanger instead.Passion is vocally speaking up against violence and risking death. Passionless is flicking over to Wheel Of Fortune whenever the words "East Timor" are mentioned on the news. Passion is spilling bad poetry on the giri or boy you feel unrequited love for. Passion less is opting for a life with someone "who'll do , Personally, I consider myself passionate about a few things: first and foremost, my lady (pardon the rather 70s terminology there), then pop music, movies and books, but am I as passionate about The Beach Internet chat rooms

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Each month. Wired, the publication billing itself as This 'blindness' of the fetish adopted a medical / the "vanguard of the computer industry," prints a psychoanalytic understanding towards the end of shopping section they call 'Fetish.' In it, the' the nineteenth century. First applied by Alfred editorial breaks down the latest in electro- Binet to describe certain kinds of object-related prosthetics in a language eerily libidinal, lovingly , sexual activities, 'fetishists' as a category came to slaving over every gadget's contour, every minute describe men who sought sexual gratification with element of its production and design. Its ' and through objects, not people. But while the description of an 'Odour Enhancing Virtujal Reality ^ category existed and was increasingly diagnosed Chair' ($12000), for instance, positively drips with as the cause of all kinds of moral degeneracy, it sexual innuendo, proposing, "what's really missing really had nd convincing theory to support it until from virtual reality is thq smell." Describing , 1905, when Freud devised his general theory of ^ something called a Truth Phone' ($39t)0). Wired fetishism. ^ . ! writes in a fit of paranoid jealously that the product boasts a built-in Voice-Stress Analyzer, designed For Freud, fetiishism is the ^act of substituting an in order to detect wjhen someone's "pulling the object for a real object of desir^. Thus a shoe,' or ' wobj over your eyes." There's even something for the foot itself, an object of clothing or a particular the impbtisnt and unimaginative: the 'Infrared substance such as leather, fur or plastic,, can eaich Digital Imaging Camera', ($48000). It'll "reveal occupy the place in a person's fantasies normally things you riever knew existepl..." occupied by a wi)ole, liviri^ person. According to, Freud, the fetishist is someone who refuses to In Wired and elsewhere, the word 'fetish' seems give up his / her attachment to the mother by to bring with it a certain, sexual pleasure. Be it in agreeing to the 'fact' of her castration. For the the arena of marketing, politics, psychoanalysis or fetishist, the power the mother once possessed by anthropology, people love to revel its cachet, in virtue of her somehow 'being' the phallus, others the way it's able to imbue just about anything with now possess by virtue of their possession of the an insatiable erotic energy. Maybe it's this that's desired object, the 'fetish'. ensured the term's analytical potency, that's secured its own fetishisation as a weapon of At roughly the same time, 'fetish' adopted a cultural critique. For whatever reason, fetish the precise, non-sexual meaning. Marx borrowed it in term is everywhere today: from technology 1867 to service in his analysis of commodities, magazines to S&M websites, theoretical journals arguing that the most pen/asive and widespread to the pages of Semper It's a word that's shaken kind of fetishism hadn't anything to do with to its original, negative connotations to become objects of sexual desire, but rather with the positively valourised in our era. necessary objects of everyday life. For him, fetishistic thinking is a characteristic of everyday "A fetish is an object," writes psychiatrist Robert life under capitalism that appears perfectly normal Stoller, "masquerading as a story." Deriving from and natural (think Wired), but in actuality is rather the Portuguese 'fetico,' meaning charmed or bizarre and unusual. Like the "heathen" Africans obsessive fascination, the term was first used as of the fifteenth century, modern capitalists a kind of conceptual bridge between two radically construct hierarchies of value for objects, yet different cultures. During the fifteenth century, forget their part in the construction. The glamour Portuguese traders found themselves participating of certain goods still operates as an illusionlstic in "irrational" African rituals that involved paying magic, an obscuring of the fact that most products homage to inanimate objects. In turn, the Africans have zero use-value, deriving worth only via their permitted them to trade "trifles" (objects valued exchange in the capital system. We praise gold within African culture, of little or no value to for its natural properties and prize it most highly of Europeans) for gold. The European view at the the precious metals. We drool over fashion and time was that the African 'fetishists' worshipped money and designer interiors. However, what their own constructions not simply as symbols of makes these things objects of desire is not their supernatural power, but as literal embodiments of use-value, but rather their exchange value. Use- that power. They believed that the Africans were value has become a mere by-product of current so blinded by the sensuous materiality of their economic relations. The powers bestowed upon fetishes that they forgot it was they themselves commodities are social constructions Thev are who'd invested the objects with value. artificial: they are fetishistic. So why is it that only the psychosexual notion of expression: none of these are rational ( the fetish seems to have any continuing currency? needs. All coherent notions of a use val One reason might be that it fits the ideology of for human interchange have expired. M« individualism^ so well, because it's a concept longer provide us with a moralistic sense concentrated on the behaviour of specific fetishism. What he can do, however. Is of individuals, a concept providing an arena in which sense of how commodities appropriate v! to receive fame or at least notoriety for the different meanings for themselves: how th. uniqueness of your kink. Marx's fetish, on the ' collapse all array of meanings into objectf contrary, is a theory concentrated on the properties can only be described figurativi behaviour of a culture in general; a totalising, Whether a Ferrari or a Gucci handbag, a p outdated kind of analysis. Another reason may be Victorian architecture or an Odour Enhanq the clout psychoanalytic theory (with its emphasis Virtual Reality Chair, the significance of» on language and symbols) currently wields over , objects, it ^eems, cannot be reduced to a| other, economics-based frameworks. The way in simple division between function and glap which the sexualized notion of fetishism dominates public discourse is indicative of the Freud's account of the fetish has become degree to which sexuality is generally considered difficult to uphold. People have trouble more determinative of our private identities than communicating their physiological arousa"' economics. Everyday, questions of sexual morality people today. Perhaps this is because a-i« displace those regarding the inequalities of -, > time what 'turns us on' doesn't involve as markets and economic practices. Just watch the relationship. If we're to believe contempcj news. It's fine to over-consume, exploit the media and current divorce rates, the trigJ financially disabled, rape the planet and arousal are very rarely 'whole' anythings" accumulate a vast personal fortune, but if you're a They're more like surfaces; earning powe sexual pen/ert,-you're on the front page. commodity status and sex appeal. Desire priutating, it's substituting subjects for objet Be they masked by the effects of psychosexual vice-versa, As a result, any idea of whole* fetishism, the effects of commodity fetishism are from which Freud's,account of the fetich proc obsen/able everywhere. In fact. Its effects are (think castratiori-anxiety), is impossjble tcyu: pervasive to the point of disappearing. Take a look Its invocation'relies-on universal norms m around and you'll find it's becoming near ' definitions of what it means'to be humane., impossible to extricate fetishisers from the simply don't hold anymore. Without the noti' fetishised. That's entertainment: an international wholeness, the attempt to castigate or eve anthropomorphic effect that sees commodities identify the fetish after the fashion of Freud take on human attributes and consumers difficult. increasingly unable to communicate with each other. Consider the "hot property" value of How then to think the contemporary fetish' That's entertainment: an international anthropomorphic ef" that sees commodities take on human attributes and consu increasingly unable to communicate with each other.

Hollywood stars, the floating of artists on the shape does it take? What can it claim ic^ stock-exchange, the insurance of Jennifer Lopez's when everything is presentable in the caf body, Eminem figurines, pomstar fashion, grunge system? When the fetish is everywhere, c marketing and the renewed interest in everybody implicated in its working, how ( blaxploitation film. These images, played deftly, upheld as a phenomenon? Tom Lehrer on< translate into huge transnational symbols of "When correctly viewed, everything is lew^ power, and in turn yield big bucks. Increasingly, everything can and is fetishised today F? people are relating to each other as things, and is a phenomenon dominating every aspej things are assuming the social relations of people. lives. To break our seduction with it, we lf>^ seize the technological apparatuses for tru' As suggested above, Man('s theory of the fetish telling and make new truths, tell different s relies on drawing a line between what possesses for objects. Whether this is possible, or if.' a distinct value for human life (food, shelter, even wants to do this, are altogether diffe sociality, protection etc) and what possesses only questions. What would we desire in the au monetary value (gold, silver and abstract forms of of niche marketing and Hollywood? When wealth such as credit, capital evaluation, we be without adverts, phone sex. Missy i profitability, etc). This distinction, however. Is Rolling Stone, Tim Tarns, mini-skirts and th( getting near impossible to sustain. Many, if not Phone? most, of contemporary society's requirements cannot be reduced to utility. Art, ritual, conventional and mutually responsive codes of [Sweet Jesus, to feel no lack! conduct do not permit calculation in terms of function. Solidarity, political participation in a liberal democracy, religious affiliation, personal Somewhere confusing, I'd suggest. A young boy informs his aunt that he intends to mite. "And what are you going to write about, dear?" asks the Aunt. "My dear Aunt," says the youth crushingly, "one doesn't write about anything, one just writes."

(a joke in the literary journal, Punch, 1928)

There is not a great amount of passion involved In writing for writings' sake alone. Intellectual satisfaction granted, but not a lot of passion. Why is it that socially realistic writing is as uncool a form of expression as the Riverdance? In this present era, the selection requirements for literary clout are frightfully refined. More of our writers don't want to tell us about our individual and collective lives than ever before. Those texts currently revered - the ones that will be donning the beige and yellow indiscriminate hospitality towards any deviation from realism. Penguin uniform in 2201 - are those Some writer inventing a character who shits the alphabet is just which do their darndest to impose no as radically celebrated as some other writer refraining from meaning on the reader whatsoever. punctuation, (yay) Between the lines is the academic narrator screaming 'ime ryting a book bekos Ime using words bekos ime Okay so we write in an age where for ryting a book bekos ime using words'. All the better if the every page of fiction published there are reader does not know who is speaking: and all the better if you perhaps three pages of literary theory. are self-reflexive to the point of infinite regression. Best of all, And we've decided that, yes, the novel to use others' words (i.e. no words are our own unless they are cannot escape the fact that it is an spelt incorrectly) and works, and genres, inevitably tearing a artefact. And as if writers ever needed massive gap between reference and meaning and laughingly to go further into their own little worid, pointing to it. Thrice. we tell them that there Is no extra- linguistic worid, that there is only what is The clever 'po mo' writer can adopt weak naivete as a refined created through language, thus (they style, legitimising an aversion to a politics of place and falsely assume) only what they create community - "my character is blind, therefore only has the for us. It follows somehow from this that capacity to break down sounds, not to analyse local racial

ime ryting a book bekos ime using werds bekos ime ryting a book bekos ime using werds'.

the more they rebel against what is relations, silly". (Expect a five page description of the sound of expected of them as writers - or more clouds and Thursday in this writer's work.) Such fabricated importantly what is expected of writing simplicity and weak aversion is revered as the height of itself - the higher the accolades. So the cleverness. What shits you most about such attention seeking writer reads the necessary criticism prior forms of writing is the passive but intentional rejection of to the commencement of their project, in meaning itself. Vividness, perception, intensity of evocation order to subvert the form in a certain are dismissed, partly because they imply a fiction writer can number of critically acceptable ways. aim at truth (which, we have been told, she can't), and partly This literary climate fosters an because any concentrated perspective or opinion, especially of

12 How disappointing to be encouraging the careers of writers with nothing to say except 'I'm clever' or 'I'm lonely' or 'I'm smart enough (read well-read enough) to know that I can't impose meaning on you whatsoever'. moral tonality - cause and effect - is seen as ugly ideology question of why more writers don't use this in a post-Marxist theoretical climate. privilege of communication to actually communicate with others, rather than How disappointing to be encouraging the careers of such extracting and dissecting language, for the writers with nothing to say except Tm clever' or 'I'm eventual purpose of situating themselves on lonely' or Tm smart enough (read, well-read enough) to the outside of it, as ringmaster. know that 1 can't impose meaning on you whatsoever'. We are witnesses, through our literary fiction, of an Roland Barthes, the French poet and critic, intensely alienated, anomic version of human life laced said that there is a huge difference between with authorial self-pity which is artistically and critically literature which is merely readable in our validated through its narration. I, like some of the more times (the classics) and that which Is sceptical critics of anti-realist prose, sense here a writable. He was right in some respects. But he was a downright snob for suggesting "boredom with reality and behind that boredom, a that one can not write today (i.e. read or pathologically diminished imagination that is unable to find write anything capable of critical recognition) other people, the world, the life around it, worthy of without reference and homage to the more investigation." recent bodies of criticism which have come to denounce, among other things, realism as (I really like this quote so I'm using the rest of It), a style of writing.

"The wild implausibility of many novelists could well be the The most interesting position of the vmter, to result of a flight from the world and from a life in which my mind, is ultimately one of social they have no interest: reality bores so surreality lures." agitation. I am sure that many writers have (Tailis, In Defence of Realism) been repressed and cajoled both in terms of subject matter and style, in the name of In defence, 1 should say that there are many people socialist aesthetics, I wouldn't be so reading these books, not just because they are told they arrogant as to plea for one style over should but also because they feel the same way But my another. But to regress to a concept of question Is this; WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET THE writing which falsely purports to arise only PASSION TO COMMIT SO MUCH TIME TO WRITING from oneself is, quite frankly, sad, and even SUCH FANCIFUL UNREAL SELF-INVOLVED SHITE? sadder when you choose your critics to be your readers. Williams says that writing is Are writers really the last people on earth to believe that "always in some sense self composition and society is something that is confronted on the level of the social composition, but it cannot always be abstract by an isolated self? 1 don't think the thesis, reduced to its precipitate in personality or whosoever it was, that relegated all words as arbitrary ideology". To separate the result as high signs should have been released to the writing population. art-ifact is to "do dissen/ice to the act of its Writers are reading such things and willing their own substantive creation, and to idealise it, alienation. Granted, words have arbitrary meaning when above or below the social". Passion for we take the clinical perspective of a comparative linguist, writing is a continuous, active struggle but no one - no reader - has ever asked the author to take towards new consciousness, using one's the role of a scientist. Admittedly they extract and own language to forge greater connection to abstract active and lived languages in the writing process. a social world that one is essentially Is it, however, so very naive to suggest that if you place connected to In the first instance. An these arbitrary signatory relationships back\n\o the obvious passion for writing cannot be context of their lived culture (i.e. write a book with people cleaved from our passion for life, because to in it for the purpose of letting people read it), then the employ one's life-passion within one's prose signs will always have meaning???!lll It is still difficult, is to maintain that search for more authentic thankfully, to be called a 'writer' without having a modes of action and reflection, in writing mastering hand on living language. This begs the and in reading, and in the moments between the two. 13 JO BALL

STUDENT ACTIVIST

/ can sort of understand when people don't agree with what I'm saying, but when they don't listen to what I'm saying, it can be really annoying.

I guess 1 was a bit of an idealistic child, and from streets, and that when they go to the streets they a really early age I sort of thought about, I don't know that they are probably going to die, and be know, people used to say things like, "What do shot down like the Dili massacres. I mean the you want to do with your life" and I used to say people in East Timor and Indonesia when they really grandiose things like "I want to change the demonstrate, they demonstrate for democracy world, 1 want to distribute the worid's money" just something we take for granted and they put their things that kids sometimes say I got involved by life on the line for it, because it's so important and doing individual kinds of things as a child - like I'd essential for them. It's kind of in this context, that I organised Clean Up Australia Day at my primary was hearing these amazing speeches and these school - you know I just did weird things like that. stories and someone said, 'We in Australia have And then later on, when 1 came to university I sort gotta do something'. And people started jumping of saw that injustice isn't just about how much the fences of the military base. And to me, I litter is on the ground, or an individual horror story found that a really challenging thing, 'cause you somewhere. There has to be change on a know, out of that context it wasn't just going on a systematic level, and I guess I was inspired by march, it was throwing yourself over a fence and people that were actually making great global saying, 'You know we've actually gotta stop this change and just thought you know, that yeah, and we've gotta do something radical to stop it,' things can change. and I jumped over the fence. And I reckon it was a turning point, 'cause jumping over the fence was 1 guess the biggest turning point that took me like me saying, 'Well, yeah I'm going to do from being the average person that cares about something a bit more radical that just participate things to actually wanting to go out there and try in this thing.' So that was a turning point, yeah. and inspire other people to care was around East Timor in '99, and the campaign blew out of control I don't think I have an idol so to speak, like I think 'cause there was a direct election in East Timor there's times, there's historical rallies and events and Indonesian troops came in, and basically that you go, 'That is an inspiring time and I want didn't respect the decision of the direct election. I to participate In that, and I want to be someone was at the National Environment Conference in who's helping to make that happen.' Like that's Sydney at the time, and the decision had just more what it's about than an individual person. recently been handed down and we decided we Like the student demonstrations of May '68 when were going to have a demonstration outside the students were smashing up cobblestones in the gates of the local military base. We marched streets and forming human barricades and the there, and 1 sort of got more and more revved up. trade unions went on strike. There was a general People gave some really amazing speeches strike in Paris, and I think, wow, I want to be one about how people in East Timor are taking to the time in my life involved in that, and SII was one 14 time when I actually had the privilege to be demoralising. I wouldn't say that pisses me off, involved in it. And other things like Stonewall, I 'cause it's a natural progression that people feel. look at that time and go, well that inspires me to Like people get really hot under the collar about keep going. I mean that was a time when there one thing, and then they sort of feel they've come was major sexual oppression of gays and lesbians as far as they can with that one issue, they've in New York and throughout the world, all the time won a small reform or they feel that they can't win there were raids on these clubs and regardless of anything else, and it dies out. That can be all this repression people decided to fight back demoralising, cause it sort of goes up and down one night, like that, you know they got up and said and you feel like, yeah there's only a minority of 'you can't keep raiding our clubs, why aren't you people who are in it for the long haul, in between raiding the clubs down the road that's a straight the ups and downs, and I guess that can be club? You're raiding our club cause it's a gay demoralising. Like last year we had an Arts club'. And that kind of thing. Well that's a kind of restructure campaign to stop the Arts restructure, turning point. They're the things I look at and go and at one rally we had 200 people on campus wow. 1 don't think about one person, and who was that wanted to stop the restructure, and then two involved in that, I just look at that one time as weeks later you couldn't get 15 people to a Inspiring. demonstration. 1 guess that's sort of the reality of being a student, people go into exams and things, 1 guess what drives me is realising that - that people can't get out and do things. But yeah, it you're just part of something that's been going on can be really upsetting when they are really just for as long as there's been injustice. It's seeing outright... like, I can sort of understand when yourself as part of a huge historical, I guess fight people don't agree with what I'm saying, but when back against injustice. I feel really passionate they don't listen to what I'm saying, it can be about that. I find it inspiring to think that, here I really annoying. Or when they are coming out just am in the 90s, 1 mean the early part of this to attack you, like sometimes you get students, century doing stuff, and that at the very beginning cause you're wearing a certain type of shirt and of the last century women were throwing they assume your sexuality or whatever, and they themselves in front of horses for the right to vote, come up and go to you, ra ra ra or whatever, and at Melbourne Cup, to draw attention to their want to come and vent their shit on you. That's cause. I guess that's something that makes me pretty demoralising, cause you go, I'm not your passionate. I guess something that makes me problem, I'm not the cause of your problem. passionate is to realise that, yeah, things have gotta change and they do change. I really want It's really amazing when I first came to UQ, I sort them to change. There Is so much injustice in this of thought things were dead. Particularly when world - so much Injustice in this worid, and you look at a campus like Griffith, where there's a wherever there has been extreme Injustice people lot more activism. When I first looked at UQ, 1 have fought back and people have fought back thought, wow this is a conservative old university, and won. nobody gives a shit, where are the students, why doesn't anyone care? You sort of get this idea that Probably the most memorable to be part of would it's always been this way and if you look back 10 have to be SII. Being at a demonstration of about years ago, in the 80s, there was a real... students 15,000 people. Being involved in a demonstration were occupying the Vice Chancellors room, at in these times with that amount of people at it, I least once a year. They were having think that's what makes a demonstration amazing demonstrations on campus around nuclear issues, is when you run into other passionate people, that protesting about the fact that the university was are just like you and you kind of feel that you're pumping money into the nuclear industry, and you not alone. And that's what'll make an action can see footage about it. And it's really amazing memorable, when you run Into someone else, and you go, wow! And it sort of shows things go who's working away slogging their arse off in up and down on campus, and what I find at UQ, is another country or another state, and they're that things are up at the moment. 1 feel that doing the exact same thing as you are. I've done people are... although it's hard to bring people into a wide range of actions and although 1 would activity, it's amazing how many people i consider SII up to date the best demonstration, recognised at the M1 demonstrations, 'hey you're when I think about all the demonstrations I've from my campus'. Although people may not come been involved in, each one has its own inspiring along to meetings at campus, they do actually moments, like blockading out In the forest to East come to demonstrations. Timor demonstrations, to Women's Rights Actions, they all have their inspiring moments. Sometimes it can be demoralising when you feel that things just die out straight away that can be 15 There is a space between 'I know you' and 'I don't know you'. These are dangerous parameters. One is a lie and one is the wall that keeps you solitary. It is important, as I grow older, that I understand the role that passion takes in guiding me between these banks, trying to find and give what happiness I can. It's important because even if my life means nothing, which, in real terms, it does, there is something that keeps me alive, even if it's only to feel from time to time as if I'm glad that whatever it is is not simply letting me die. Passion carries with it the excitement not simply of the unknown but of the unknowable. As distinct from reason, which draws the boundaries of the self through the mind's awareness of its capacity to structure its own workings, the passion which leads to action requires an externality which that consciousness can keep trying to know. It never will. To know the outside world as to know yourself is to draw It into that self. Part of the conditions of humanity is to know only an infintesimal amount of the planet you are capable of comprehending. Let's talk about comprehension for a moment. Anyone who wants a good chuckle should have a look at pi*' Norman Mailer's book A Fire On the Moon. It's an account - very well researched and pacily written - of the Apollo 11 mission NASA undertook in 1969 to land Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. The clever thing about what Mailer does, to himself as much as to his target of White Anglo Saxon Protestant America, is anatomise how the mission was carefully constructed, from the smallest detail to the way that It was expressed in English within NASA and presented to the media. The construction was an expression of the rational, a techno-language that was as tightly sealed against passionate displays as the spacecraft was against the vacuum. The humour comes in how he describes the NASA hierarchy - and the journalists present - mistaking seriousness for respect, expertise for intelligence, and resources-in-pocket for a philosophical justification. The real juice, the real story, would have been if something went wrong - and nothing did. There's a hilarious description of the strangely hollow anticlimactic pall after the orgasm of the launch - a situation he describes as akin to strained post­ coital chat.

The points of connection with human passions as we more commonly know them between lovers, say, go further than the link between the rocket and the penis. Particularly poignant is the

16 description of Buzz Aldrin's first actions when reaching the lunar surface. He brought out a communion wafer and a sealed bag of sacred wine and gave an offering to the Christian God he had come in the name of. Mailer, a Jewish leftist, suggests that the NASA mission was to 'know' the moon like the white man 'knew' America, like men in the Bible 'know' women - to repress the power of the unknown to inspire passion by bringing It within the sphere of reason. In a way, Aldrin's gesture was an acknowledgement of the unknown, but more significant yet is the choice he made to celebrate that by means of a ritual that positions the celebrant on the 'right' side of the unknowable.

What 1 mean by the 'right' side is the hierarchy that contains the passionate impulse, which is what organised religions tend to become. The 'sphere of reason' 1 mentioned earlier has been a metaphor for man's use of 'reason' to stifle debate since hundred in the 1540s in the name of the before Western science, when the crystal same God that Dante wrote of. spheres of the mediaeval cosmos on which planets flew, pushed by angels, were But it wasn't the same God, because it never symbolic of the knowledge man gained is. Not from one person to the next, let through the passion of Jesus Christ - that he. alone the next generation. People who can't We do terrible things to each other in the dialogue between the 'way things are' - that is, the way they've been presented to us as fixed - and what we want to say.

man, was the ultimate earthly expression of recognise or accept this are more likely the unknowable grace of God. As in heaven, according to the latest studies (Bosnia, so the Church on Earth, and a corrupt and Rwanda), to start wars in which living babies greedy Papacy that sought to mould the are eviscerated, men and women raped with imaginations of their congregations to better heated metal and camps erected to dispose serve a feudal war economy galvanised by of human beings in an experimental religious wars against the Middle East. environment. But we also do terrible things to each other in the dialogue between the We've all felt the exceptional grace of 'way things are' - that is, the way they've allowing our love to extend to something been presented to us as fixed - and what we external which we can never bring closer to want to say. It's easy to be simplistic, but ourselves, and for which reason we only ever religious wars are often redirections of the really know in an idealised form, created love of the human for the Divine, and as without the direct experiences that perverse and horrifying as that can often be, necessitate flexibility and play within the the urges to love and to kill are as close, if structure. They are Internalised, these static not closer, than the Two Minutes that Orwell structures, unchanging and fixed like the pure granted to Hate. They are both directed light of Dante's God in the Divine Comedy, or outwards, and slingshot straight back around like Beatrice, who takes him to meet that the satellites that give tides to the oceans God. That his childhood sweetheart, dead inside us, satellites that we don't understand, before she was an adult, is the one to show that we fear. him the 'power that moves the Sun and other stars', is not an accident. We don't live in Fear of that which arouses passionate hatred Dante's world any more, but people still read precedes the acts of hatred. The brick that him, are still captivated by the vision of grace goes through the window is the companion or that he conjures, the fixed and unchanging substitute for the shout that erases fear. The bliss that we often Imagine is waiting for us. removal of fear feels great. It's a I honestly believe he was trying to do his best neurochemical event, which often has utterly to make people happier by writing the sickening results. A battle yell will do it - universe into a larger space, like Sophocles, battle yells rarely have anything to do with like Shakespeare, like deSoto's soldiers who the enemy. They're for you - what they let destroyed Native American nations by the people know is that you're about to do 17 something that scares you but you're going to first and secretly and by doing so kills its do it anyway. That's why shouts can scare ability to express, and so stays forever one us, because we understand passion, and we up on the worid. The jealous lover tries to fear it in other people as we do in ourselves. persuade that only they can ever know the secrets of the loved one's heart - the abusive The rational structures of the mind try to fix spouse screams that this is a favour, that things, to have an answer ready when the nobody else would ever want to know. The world comes testing with questions. The supportive lover knows that the passion that concept of fixed quantities is as central to discovers unlocks the passion to invest in the science as it is to religion, but neurochemists world outside the two of you, and that as you It takes art to kick the engine of passion over... because art lets you remember that you don't know what yvou'r e qoing to dco next still get angry, frustrated and scared, still know somebody better and love them more break things and hurt people. As much as deeply you really strengthen them to need their minds can know or communicate, slowly you less. If you've loved them at all, they'll and calmly, within a placid university campus, not be the same person as when you arrived. they're still riding the same storm of That's what an exchange of love has to mean. chemistry and social being, the storm we In Cleansed, one of the bleakest plays of the bring with us into the quietest places. It takes 1990s, or indeed in Western literature, Sarah art to kick the engine of passion over, not Kane places the clearest-eyed expression of because art appeals to some pre-rational romance in the now and coming world - 'passionate' part of the brain - Nuremberg 'I love you now. I'm with you now, I'll do my rallies can do that - but because art lets you best, moment to moment, not to betray you. remember that you don't know what you're Now. That's it. No more. Don't make me lie going to do next, because as well as you to you.' know yourself, it only tends to reinforce the fact that you want to know a lot more than I don't really know you. I can spend the next yourself, about the most complex phenomena twenty years sleeping next to you, capitivated observed in the known universe - human as much as I was the first time my heart beings, alt whom are (to you) even more whacked my ribs at the sound of your breath, unpredictable than you are, you wacky thing. crying for joy at the very thought of your (Doesn't help much with pleasing Mum and smile. But there are parts - vast parts, the Dad, who want io see you Settled, but there's majority of your self - that I will never know. I no reason to duplicate every mistake they shouldn't. 1 can't. If 1 sometimes feel as made.) though I do, that's nice, and we can talk and laugh about it, but it's not true, any more than I'm not talking about forgoing trust because there's a God watching us through the ceiling. human beings are 'unpredictable'. I'm saying The same goes for me. We will keep wanting that romance survives by being willing to to, if we're lucky and we work hard, but we wake up every day with someone new who should know that that silence, that (to the has the same name. If you've been thinking other) darkness within each of us, is what that you don't really know him or her, you're drew one to the other in the first place. The right, and you're lucky. This doesn't have to promise, made by the continuing fact of scare you half to death. If s/he cheats on breath, the flow of blood inside a fragile skin, you, lies to you, you'll be hurt, yes, but it of a living flame in the unknown. It's not doesn't have to upset your view of the whole another campfire at the end of the journey. universe, because it's almost certainly not It's a flame that moves Into the dark with you. about you, except insofar as there's places in Passion is an inadequate word, but the power the other person that you might tell yourself of this particular word is that it describes what do not exist because they might disturb an makes us push past the words that we've ideal. Ideals are bastards of things - they can heard, the things that we've seen, the love spring up very quickly, and thankfully they're that we've known, to keep pace with how at their worst in adolescence. It's one of the these things have grown, and which allow us reasons why you never love that way again - to grow. Upwards, as Sarah Kane puts it, into you can't. You know too much, because you the light. Know how little you really know.

But even when you grow up a bit, you can still know the passion engendered by a hint of uncharted territory in another human being - potential that the world has not yet MARCEL DORNEY glimpsed. The child abuser tries to know that 18 ^

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XXX in the Dark by Brett Collingwood and Kate Scott

In 1984 sixty thousand British miners went on strike in protest of the Thatcher Government's move to rationalise the industry; Third World debt topped $360 billion; anti-discrimination policies entered Australian Government legislation for the first time; tensions built in the Persian Gulf; the economy boomed. Princess Di was expecting her second child and Elton John and Renate Blauel married in Sydney. Nineteen eighty-four also saw the release of more pop singles than any other year of the decade, with charting music shifting into a new realm of confrontation, originality, diversity, flamboyance and eclecticism. This, of course, is a contentious statement, as is any value judgement where personal feeling is used as a measure of worth. Passion for a certain period of music is intrinsically tied to one's experiences, sensations and memories of that particular snippet of time. The music we hear on the radio at the malleable age of five, ten or fifteen will naturally leave a more profound imprint on tiie consciousness than a quick flick through the dial at twenty-six. However, there comes a point where nostalgia recedes and certain facts come to the fore; eighty- four was ace, the quintessential year of the decade. Charting pop music hasn't been near as good since.

Eighty-four was a graceless, almost vulgar excursion, theatrical, camp, gauche. It was self-indulgent but playfully so, without the furrowed-brow pomposity of the prog excesses that characterised the preceding decade. On the surface it was as if punk had never happened, but without punk's unceremonious slaying of the old guard, the new avenues suggested by the more innovative musical strains and ideas of the seventies could not have been explored in the mainstream as fully. The clock had been effectively reset: Duran Duran's aesthetic was pure glam but they could wipe their hands of the sound's grittier elements in favour of clean disco rhythms. Prince borrowed heavily from Sly, James and Funkadelic, but post-Kraftwerk he could condense entire horn sections to a single synth line. Melody reigned. Excess wrestled with economy. The artists of '84 were essentially magpies, plucking artfully (though sometimes recklessly) at the debris of the past three decades, making the fragments over on newly affordable keyboards and drum machines.

Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince were the three genuine pop superstars of the eighties - a kind of holy trinity - and 1984 was undoubtedly the year they were most in tune with the times. Madonna's Lucky Star, Borderline, Holiday and Like a Virgin all occupied the charts, helping shape the wnen-l-grow-up fantasies of millions of girls (and some boys). The release of Michael Jackson's Thriller single in early 1984 was perhaps the defining pop event of the year; not so much the song itself, but the fourteen-minute long video clip that accompanied it. There'd never been anything quite like it - it contained actual dialogue and a

20 storyline, which differentiated it from the standard, hurriedly short back'n'sides) as our favourite cobbled-together clip of an artist miming. The closing, androgene, with the Eurythmics extending freeze-framed image of Michael, in a truly amazing red their line in sophisticated, caustic pop with vinyl suit and evil, glowing green eyes, rates as one of the Sexcrime and Here Comes the Rain. most enduring images of the eighties. Meanwhile, the June release of the When Doves Cry single saw Prince stride Many of the important artists from the purposefully from the margins to take centre stage. The sixties and seventies struggled to keep song was incredibly sparse - no bass, and only minimal pace with the new kids and tiie new toys. guitar and keyboard backing, relying Instead on the David Bowie released his last half-decent carefully crafted synth-drum parts and layered vocal song of the decade In '84 with the rocking harmonies to get its point across In the most elemental, Blue Jean (complete with very long "story" direct way possible. The accompanying Purple Rain movie video, which, in the wake of Thriller, was was a huge success, and along with Footloose helped almost obligatory) before sliding swiftly into pioneer the now-obligatory movie/soundtrack tie-in. It would moribund mediocrity. Stevie Wonder, who be years before the process would be market-researched had pioneered the use of synthesisers in to buggery; in eighty-four there was still a naive, hit-and- the early seventies, sounded like he'd miss charm to the whole thing. used the cheapest Casio number imaginable on the teeth-grindingly twee 1 It was the hits from newer artists that truly gave '84 Its Just Called To Say I Love You, which flavour. Sheila E's bold, sassy The Glamourous Life sounded soulless and flaccid even in this perfectly captured the upwardly mobile, asset-grabbing most synth-happy of years. It was a independent female ("She don't need a man's touch"), number one hit regardless. Paul whilst newcomer Cyndi Lauper gleefully reminded daddy McCartney fared better, probably because that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Lauper proved to be one his more traditional pop songwriting sits of the year's real surprise packages: underneath the comfortably in any decade. It helped that rainbow tresses, slightly unhinged little-giri voice and on his biggest hit of the year, the catchy as extreme mix'n'match fashion sense lurked a singular talent hell Say, Say, Say, he teamed up with that could encompass the moving and heartfelt balladry of man-of-the-moment Michael Jackson. Time After Time just as readily as the heady fizz-pop of Elton John, too, had several big hits in '84, Girls. By year's end she was relating the joys of female though his once outrageous dress sense looked decidedly tame in the wake of Boy 'ITWi'^" George, Marilyn et al. Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones continued to release ?**.- moderately well-performing albums but by t '84 their music was no longer bound to the palpitations and perspirations of youth culture; it had aged with its listeners.

There will be those who'll scoff haughtily that 1984 begat little worth cherishing; that If you scrubbed away the retina-burning veneer of fluoro, mesh and lipgloss there'd be nothing of substance underneath. But they'd be wrong. The music of '84 may at first seem to be a case of style (or lack thereof) over substance, but dig a little deeper, keep an open mind and you'll be rewarded with some of the most diverse, kaleidoscopic, and just plain fun pop music ever recorded. The year's pop incantations were made with such urgency, such enthusiasm for new technology, such masturbation with the driving, sexy She Bop. Meanwhile, hedonistic passion that they were almost the Bronski Beat brought the scourge of homophobia into instantly quaint, even tacky. But fuck it; the the MTV generation's loungeroom with Smalltown Boy, one shimmering newness inscribed on every of the first and last overtly political offerings of its kind to hexagonal drumbeat, every three-keyed occupy the top five. The video featured a painfully young electroplano sequence is what made the Jimmy Sommen/ille facing small-town persecution for his whole thing so exciting, so inextricably tied sexuality, finally escaping, one assumes, to London. to '84's taste and temperament. In this Eigfiteen years on, we are yet to see a supposed gay icon light. The Reflex was as important to the use the film clip medium to such devastating effect. Kylie development of popular music as Be My Minogue gyrating in cut-away hotpants? Not really the Baby. same, is it? Eighty-four was also the year Annie Lennox replaced Bowie (who was now sporting baggy suits and

21 His own forehead was beaded with perspiration OBITUARY when he played, a crown of dew. His passion was enacted each day, from dawn till dusk, twelve I hung the discarded skins of his passion on our hours in duration. No-one attended his passion living room wall. There were two skins from his but himself. In the longest hours of the day, he bass drum and a smaller skin from the snare. 1 was elemental, purified, reduced. A soloist. Sure placed them one above the other, in flying there would be beer and curry and filthy jokes on formation. A friend of his, not mine, who has a the back deck about psych, patients with limbs lingering obsession with the kitsch, likened this stuck up their arse in pursuit of Satan, and killer- arrangement to those china ducks that scale the bee chops before more chewing down and walls of postwar homes, always in mythic threes. rapping with the best of those boys, the dj's and This was the friend who in our previous house the mc's. Amused, he would grin and narrow his together had pioneered the lounge room 'gin rail' eyes and rub his hands together at my saying (now de-railed) and introduced astro-turf to the this: Yeah, really. Those sessions, though, were sunroom because that summer it was all about his breaks, and he loved them, but his passion lifestyle, which of course meant mini-golf. The was more like pain and he did it alone. vintage jazz drumheads were a pomo replica of the ducks, this guy insisted, his head at an angle.' Passion, he told me, was Miles Davis, who was Se^n another way, they referenced the dumb, ^ also kinda blue, so he knew what passion really immense, ever-present planetary disco-balls of meant Kubrick's Space Odyssey, which move.eerily in and out of the viewer's field of vision, at one point Desire was Charlie Parker who could whistle slow blocking the entire screen. The way,.after a few.g like birds and sure could he pull some! & t's, the skinsJIoWed out from the flat plane of " the living room'wall into the soft, squelchy air Avarice was Billie Holiday who wanted it all (and above the beanbags would have prompted was herself all there was to want). Kubrick's chimps to squeal at prickling-feelings of imminence. In the early morning the skins would And for him? Passion was alt about beats. About catch grey globs of pre-pubescent light. This is changing the rhythm of his heart (and mine too in why 1 hung them aslant, in their strange shooting the adjoining room, motherfucker) with those gallery, because that was the way the light fell beats of his. It was joy and grief beaten flat and along the wall. I was partly borrowing from John stretched into one membrane across everything. Christie, a filmmaker who outlined a rhomboid of Drumming until there was silence. And drumming sunlight (sourced to a skylight) onto his kitchen to beat back the monster with every stroke, every wall then painted it daffodil, in his effort to strike. Drumfire, constant artillery, a haphazard domesticate the colour yellow. I wanted the skins modus operandi. A soloist to the last with no-one, to have a similar quality; the luminescence of it would seem, to deploy. Where was the small :rnoons,_aborr.owedJigbt^He, the owner of the party sent out with drums to pariey with the skins, their bequeather, loved the idea. enemy? It too had fled, had disassembled. On my way out the door that night I blew him a Judas- So. Here was someone who appreciated light, kiss goodbye. Have a lovely evening. Bemused whose name was an anagram of moth, whose this time: Yeah, really. eyelids fluttered when he first woke up and when he told tall stories. Someone whose long He kept his eye on that archaic arrow of flying luminescent hands folded together like wings and birds that preceded unfolded with a violent flurry - now the whites of gunshots. tigers' eyes - to shake music out of suburban mornings, dust rising. Only the exquisite, delicately ribbed, Bruneleschi dome of his ^ girlfriend's forehead radiated such light. And he worshipped it. above all other forms of light, THE blinded. But she wasn't his first passion. GONGOOZLER

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1-1 J. GRANT STEVENS

U I I 1 I •: 4 DATUM CONTEMPORARY ARTS AND RESEARCH

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Playing cricket is Idnd of lil(e $ii. mailing art

Art has a funny role today. It's neither here nor Sometimes it's really hard to get exhibitions or there. Sometimes it seems as though I'm just have critical discussions about work, or even stay making it for myself and my friends. I guess doing on top of all the things happening in Brisbane. It for uni is some justification, but it's probably not Datum is trying to make these things easier. enough. I think what allows me to keep making art Is that It is kind of fun. I really like doing it, but I This year Datum has become involved with the don't really know why. It's weird. It would be nice Queensland Artworkers' Alliance sub-committee to think that art makes a difference, changes the "EA" (emerging artists). EA was established for worid ... but it probably doesn't. 1 think it does similar reasons to Datum, and we'd like to think change how we look at the worid though. And that they have responded to some of the work that's enough for me. we've done over the past 18 months. EA is currently producing a newsletter / publication / Playing cricket is kind of like making art. My friend zine, hosting slide nights and looking to establish Dirk compares sport with art a lot. His attitude is a website. Datum has also recently held talks with something like, sport and art are both sets of rules Jeff and Leon from Immerse. Immerse Is a and conventions. You can learn them and then website created to generate links between the play the game. But there's always someone who different art communities within Brisbane. plays the game better than someone else, and this difference comes from how far you can bend Datum hosts approximately 5-6 exhibitions a year. and challenge the rules. I think this is pretty These shows are great chances to get really accurate. I think with art, though, we're always drunk (cheaply) and witness some fantastic work. trying to learn and challenge the rules at the same Datum places an emphasis on experimental and time. They're never fixed like sport. emerging art. These shows are always really interesting and are a great opportunity to meet Datum was established by some QUT visual arts more people from Brisbane's arts community. students at the beginning of 2000. Its basic goal is Datum also holds regular film screenings and to provide a tangible base from which to explore produces a newsletter / publication / zine of its the possibilities beyond general university study. own.

24 Datum has held two major shows this year: "re" at Brisbane has such a small art scene, which the Palace gallery, and "Performance" at Metro makes it a little more accessible - Le it's easier to Arts. In the next six months we have another get around and see all that's happening. This is exhibition at the Palace gallery (curated by a also a problem though, because there isn't much member), and two at Metro Arts (sound and video of an audience out there. That's why everyone based). Datum will also continue its newsletters goes to Sydney or Melbourne. I think Brisbane and film-screenings. We're also currently has the potential to generate some really good attempting to secure a show at the Powerhouse art, it just needs to be supported by the for next year. institutions and the public.

The most exciting thing about working with Datum I think Datum's events are mostly about is that it allows me to meet a whole range of other challenging the conventions of art making. We people - not just from within the uni. I think our have a real focus on experimental art practices goals as an organisation are also naturally and letting the work unfold as it wants according exciting. We are attempting to deal with (for want to a space, other work, curators etc. I think if we of a better term) "cutting-edge" stuff, which always could achieve one thing it would be breaking means that our shows / events are pretty down the accepted notions of what art should and amazing. can be. This Is pretty ambitious, I guess, but it's worth a shot. Personally, just trying to extend our conceptions about art is exciting enough; that's what we're all trying to do in some way. Working within an To join send $5 to Datum: Contemporary Arts and organisation like Datum makes this much easier Research, 85 Terrace St, New Farm, 4005. Or because you have people to bounce Ideas off. come to any of our upcoming events. To find out more info about these events visit Contemporary art practice is impossible to pin www.immerse.com.au. down. I think this is also part of the challenge.

25 Grant Stevens, / Love You f -iJB ' w'n

LEON WAUD

immerse.com.au

There's nothing wrong with the way that contemporary art is communicating: the only trouble is that there aren't enough people listening.

Immerse is an independent arts organisation We'd like to see contemporary art pitched more whose aim is to produce new promotional tactics directly to the public. Through providing the public for contemporary art and artists. Immerse was with comprehensive vis-arts information, we're initiated at the end of 2000 by two former QUT trying to familiarise people with upcoming events, visual arts students (Jeff Tseng + Leon Waud) and to heighten people's awareness of contemporary launched in March 2001. art, to let the broader public know that more goes on in galleries than a bunch of wankers with black Immerse was designed to create an active skivvies and thick rimmedglasse s walking awareness of the contemporary art environment in around. Developments such as the relocation of Brisbane, and to provide access to information the the IMA to a more prominent area will prove to be general public might not othenwise come across. a strong advantage in the development of our By hooking everyone up, the aim is to create a industry in Brisbane. bigger presence for contemporary art. Every time members promote themselves through the site, By the very nature of the Internet all of these they in turn promote all the artists on the site. locations collapse into one. We want to develop Every time one of our supporting organisations locally and promote nationally and internationally. has an event, we advertise it. As well as its Since its conception the site has received over promotional side, Immerse is also trying to 80,000 hits. We promote our site and members increase dialogue in the community through its locally, nationally and internationally: in the future articles and forums. we would like to expand nationally and throughout South East Asia. The current pool of talent in contemporary arts production in Brisbane is of an exceptionally high The easiest way to get in contact with Immerse is standard. The communication part is the thing that through the web site, http://www.immerse,com.au, we are trying to address. We aim to use the site or email: [email protected],au. as a staring point to drag contemporary art into a broader cultural arena. There's nothing wrong with the way that contemporary art is communicating: Our phone # is 3876 9688. Our office Is @ 10 / 43 the only trouble Is that there aren't enough people Lang Parade, Milton. Or if you're out at an event listening. Brisbane's relative isolation from the keep an eye out for a tall skinny fella with a white southern states as well as our laid back attitude spot on his head and an Asian guy. We're friendly gives it a unique cultural outlook. - you can talk to us. 26 r furniture • electrical • bedding smart HEm

PHD rentals appliances galore! interested In advertising in Semper issue five? • fridges washers Copy deadline August 1 • freezers dryers *Resonable rates. • TVA'CR/DVD furniture we sell new St *Half, quarter and eighth ex-ren(al furniture, • computer desks bedding bedding & appliances page ads available in mono and colour. • microwaves stereos * Large distribution run and area. rent from only $30 per month * Discounts available for FREE DELIVERY! UTE& mulitple bookings. CAR HIRE Contact Kate Scott or Mark 1800682435 Gomes on 3377-2237 or www.phdrentals.com.au [email protected]

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*6/(oem(2v ::6a!tcoRDEi.tA 3Tx^oa:];H(B^^eAiae^ Part TWO: Give me a reason Semper does to love your passion Lovers are made, not born. To include requited love as one of the the long run, the person will passions - as a way of projecting ourselves Into the worid, we arrive at come to reveal more of a peculiar new problem of another person being involved. Because themselves than you have a just as we create our own passions from nothing {at least nothing that label for. (No one, 1 dare say, comes from within), then we must also create 'love' or at least 'a would choose boredom, or at relationship' as a kind of new life sphere, with another person working least comfort, as a goal in a with us on the same project, each looking over the other's shoulder, relationship when you're 20 and fighting over materials and dimensions. It's fucking hard. something years old.) But, with someone being so familiar We may meet someone whose passions and idiosyncrasies seem (according to you), you may familiar or similar to ours (these are not the same thing). They may continuously glance over the have read the same kind of books and seen the same kind of movies, newer and more unfamiliar in perhaps share our chai community or Punk politics, or might want to them. You will start telling Just because you might have been making a particular mould for a person next to yourself, since your first spin the bottle party to your last viewing of Praise, does not mean that the best thing for you is to get somebody in to fill that mould.

play the role opposite us in a costume drama or a rock n roll road waiters that your partner movie. They may have just had the same kind of upbringing. They doesn't actually like the food might have just lived next door and had a similar cat. But we are not that they have just ordered in 'made for' this person. This person was not 'made for' us. None of us front of you. You will think you are as important as that, 1 doubt. That's why it's all so novel and know the clothes they prefer to dubious, often ugly and painful. Just because you might have been wear. They will tell you the making a particular mould for a person next to yourself since your first clothes they like you to wear. spln-the bottle party to your last viewing of Praise, does not mean that And you will then tell them to the best thing for you to do is to get someone in to fill that mould. This get fucked right before you tell person has not been informed that you were waiting for someone like them their shirt looks silly when them. Repeat, this person has not been informed that you were they tuck it in. This can get waiting for them. Their mould may not look like you either. It is mere convenience that the person's attributes simplified and quantified, are able to be quickly, safely and conveniently filed away in the order and priority of the character lists that you have been able to maintain both before and after you have met them. And this can be boring - especially in the short term. There is hope though, indeed expectance, that in ugly or it can become the incredible journey of the couple of offering us something that Increasingly The Same As Each Other or alternatively the couple The we want for ourselves, but Same As Each of Us Were Individually Five Years Ago. Even if you don't have. For example, if I manage to let each other keep changing, or at least reveal their less can't imagine why a person obvious selves, the person will rarely get to experience the joy of would make a band by being strange and exotic to you. And it is not very exciting, nor very stringing up dwarfs and hitting romantic, to feel like you are someone's favourite blanket, or most them like a xylophone, I may practical pair of footwear. This one ends with your favourite albums fall in love with their Ingenuity (they were shared copies) being given to a third party, and really long and idiotic gall to do something single nights of getting pissed and taking strange drugs with people that 1 would never think of, or who only clothe the left hand side of their bodies and create art from desire to do (mainly because I kid's blisters and cow horns. Yes, you think, I'm perfectly fine, much don't believe in harming more appreciated and very interesting now fuckhead. dwarfs, but also, and more importantly, because I would Other times, we meet someone whose expectations of a relationship, never want to do such a thing). rather than of us, particulariy, are similar. We are taken less with the If they're zany, and we love appraisal and approval of the other, as we are in making a pretty them, then thank god, we're a courtyard space between us and them. We plant shit in there little zany too by association. In together. Indeed, love is never anything like having an 'object of a different example, I may not desire' as some old dudes would have you think, because the initially believe how seriously person's eyes are always looking back at you and creating you for another person takes their themselves, and out at the world and creating that with you. We Buddhist philosophy, but I may choose this person for the way they thank waiters and give people nevertheless choose to be directions, the way they time their stillness and action with yours attracted to this person (sometimes after democratic deliberation), the way they show equal because I would like them to I can't Imagine why a person would make a band by stringing up dwarfs and hitting them like a xylophone, but I may fail in love with their ingenuity and Idiotic gall do some something that I would never think of, or desire to do.

amounts of care and consideration, as little or as much as both give me a loving license to desire, from the word go, before particulars of character are known. meditate without feeling silly, or When you both have a similarly embossed "love sphere" - whether Its take up tae kwon do, or a smal! brown speck in the third drawer down in each's kitchen, or a something. Strangeness does huge blueprint describing which funnel the love goes in and the not always work for the power products you assume will spew out the back end - it's defined of good over evil though. If I boundaries always makes it easier to delight someone unexpectedly, can't believe how much and show them respect at the same time. Often times, the person will someone does not give a shit have the blueprint already made up from a previous relationship that about anything except making worked really well, except the last person went overseas or died themselves happy (don't ask why). And sometimes its easier to use the made up blue­ masturbating all day, I may be print, rather than your own, but it is recommended that you have a attracted to them for giving me say in the plans. Of course, the thing takes ages to build, and it's all the tenacity to think that I only apparently an illusion anyway, but you still made it eventually, out of need please myself also, so to nuthin honey, and that's nice enough. speak. Of course the latter relationship does not look very Many people like strange desirable to a lot of people, but •••••• things. That fact is never underestimate the obvious. But most strange validating and safe feeling you things that people love are get when you enter into a not seen as strange to relationship, knowing, or at them. On the other hand, if least assuming, you won't be someone is very strange to entirely devastated by it's us, and stays inherently ending. Of course endings are strange, no matter how never happy, but at least with long we know them for, this one you'll have a nice time boredom and disrespect regathering your authentic are very hard feelings to spiritual communal self with hold toward them. And it is herbal tea and nice people, very nice and self- upon its demise. Probably congratulating to give better than getting over someone the benefit of the relationship with Oh Perfect doubt. Of course time may and Loved one by casual sex be against you on this, but with idiots and morons that perhaps not, also. Often, don't like you, mainly because people strange to they don't know you at all. ourselves do us the favour by rachel o 29 KELVIN JOHNSTONE AND MICHAEL GILMORE

« * * •* al

REVOLUTION ROCK

the trouble with any history of the Brisbane music scene is it has been virtually controlled by Southerners

Revolution Rock is an ambitious joint-funded help with marketing. We're facillitators basically project being put together by local music stalwarts We're not control freaks. We just want to make Michael Gilmore and Kelvin Johnston. They aim to sure that the story is really told and everyone co-ordinate a collaborative multimedia knows about it through the exhibit. documentation of Brisbane's popular music history from the late 50s to today. Semper met up with We're interested in getting out to the University of Michael and Kelvin and another mysterious dude Queensland students too - sociology, political called The Brisbane Devotee, who will be science - but anyone who's interested who's got a contributing to the project, to talk about story to tell who wants to be involved, especially community and history, Joh Bjelke Peterson, and in individual projects they think of that might keep making acid at UQ. with what we're doing.

K) I first wanted to write a book on the music K) I was listening to Nick Earls a while ago, and history of Brisbane, first in about '99, then I he said that there's only 41 books in print with thought, well why just stop there? Michael and I Brisbane content. I'd like our project to add to that eventually came up with this idea for a multimedia list. I think if we acknowledge where we've come project, involving the whole community, which will from, we have a greater chance of protecting our hopefully be composed of an exhibition, films and industry, which we almost lost last year with the videos, a live concert, books, a website etcetera. changes to the Evironmental Protection Act of 99. We're negotiating currently with the Queensland (referring to the Save the Music campaign) Powerhouse, and the Queensland Museum and we're scoping out other venues and organisations At the local government level, the City Council still currently to be involved. The idea is to have it as hasn't made the Valley a designated a collective composition, and through licensing entertainment area. It's interesting to note that this arrangements - move it anywhere we want the sector down here (pointing across the road to the exhibition to be shown. Places like New York and Qld Art Gallery and Museum) Is being roped off London are very proud of their heritage in the way as a sector of cultural significance - 'cultural of music and things like that. We have the precinct' they call it. We don't see why it can't be capacity, because of the conscience that's here, down in the Valley where the history Is there to actually do that too. already We're actually reinforcing, through this project, that the Valley is a sacred cultural area M) Some people might already be writing a book and should be protected. So It's is a little bit on this kind of thing, film script, etcetera and might subversive In that we are trying to do that. not be getting funding for it, but If they come through us, we can help get the ball rolling on There's not a lot of previous research available so their project, point them in the right direction as far the way to fill that in is to have a lot of discussions as where there's money available to them, and with people who were there, assemble the stories. 30 It's also a very good project for establishing links, K) So rude! getting artists, promoters, old and new together to talk about their history, what is happening now The B D) Cloudland was where all the people in and what will happen In the future. the 50s and 60s met their husbands and wives. It was a huge dance palais, opened in 41, with a The B D) The trouble with any history of the sprung floor. Brisbane music scene is It has been virtually controlled by Southerners or people who quickly M) In the early 80s people like the Clash, Ian Dury left Brisbane. They came up, like from Melbourne, and The Bloci

When you're in a bad relationship, you leave the how did I get here?' Everything was so cool when person (who is often your best friend) and you we were dating /1 was smoking casually He / she stop going to the places you went to together and / smoking was just fun and there were still heaps you throw out alt the clothes that were his or hers of things 1 loved doing single / straight. But then I that were left in your drawer or on your floor or got really hooked on him / her / it and started elsewhere in your life. seeing him / smoking it every day. And I couldn't do anything without him / her / it and gave up You do it when the highs become flanked by big seeing people I adored and doing things I loved to long lows, when your heart registers fatigue, when be with him / her / bent. you can't look into the bottom of your teacup for fear of glimpsing your tomorrow. In the case of pot, you've 'got here' something like this: And then you go through this shit-house stage where you know you're better off single but you Slowly the list of things you can do stoned miss him or her like hell and you'll probably yearn becomes longer. You add things like drive, or for him / her to call you or bump into you and write, or talk toyour little brother. Then the list of you'll most definitely Illicitly screw him or her a few things you'd rather do stoned than straight more times before he finds someone else or you becomes longer. You add things like go to the art go overseas or one or both of you just move gallery, or hang out with friends, or jam. healthily onto some replacement passion. Then you just start to prefer being stoned to being When you realise you're smoking too much pot, straight, so you stop doing things on the list of you give it up and you stop hanging out with the things you prefer to do straight. Unfortunately this people you used to smoke it with (which is all your list Includes things like spend time with your friends) and you throw out your bong and your family, and read, and work, and play sport. left-over tally-hos and your phone book. By this time, your body's pretty tired, often too You do it when your eyes grow bags, and you tired to do the things you prefer to do stoned. You can't catch a dream, when you can't draw or have to heave yourself out of bed mid-morning, converse or play guitar without It but you've you're paranoid that everyone in the straight worid stopped doing all these things because of it. can tell you're a stoner, and you're starting to spel things fuuny. Your penchant for pot has overtaken And then you enter this purgatory where you your passion for life and you're feeling a bit put of know you're feeling healthier, and you've got control. yourself a new job and a clearer brain, but you're bloody lonely and you feel as boring as batshit, If you get to this point and you decide to make and you can't yet draw or converse or play guitar changes, may the force be with you. Love and without it, and everyone else is either still doing it other forms of intoxication are good in moderation. or never did it (properly) in the first place and Listen to your heart and your body Treat them therefore you don't have anything in common with good. Withdrawal is hard, but concentrate on your anyone anymore, including your best mate. passions and the pain will pass.

In both cases you find yourself saying, 'this sucks. QING LAN

33 BAH THE BOOT DOT COM MOM

If you're going to move in downstairs from outraged citizens to mobilise around. And speed dealers, insure your laptop. Or chain conveniently these 'activists' ^®^"^^-J^„-, it to your skateboard like Jean Poole, so you forget to cover over the SUVC'JUST'OU' can send in news of the latest corporate web /r'swoop' logo in their daring late night scam, and pop a mean kick-flip to backside raid. smith grind at the same time. But maybe It's all backfired for the swoosh team, themselves the usual targets of Unfortunately if you jump to the 'activist' activists who highlight the human rights website for the 'Fans Fight for Fairer abuses and appallina conditions within Football', you'll find the site is down. Which SlAVE-JUShOO'lTs Asian factories is a shame, because it might've been manufacturing their shoes. They've taken the interesting for you to have a look at how ffff.com.au site down, but not before everyone's favourite sweatshoppers SUVE' bantheboot.com arrived and bantheboot.com /UST'DO'IT* have adopted the activist posters started appearing on top of these aesthetic to try and sell more shoes. billboards around Australia. Luckily for billboard alteration connoisseurs, Jean Maybe you've already noticed the billboards Pooligan saved a version of SIRVE'JUST' around though, with a big football boot and DO'lT's ffff.com.au before it went down, so slogans like "Our most offensive boot ever," you can enjoy text such as: "What next, rocket packs?," and "Fair

These SUMNIST-OO'IT b\l\boar6s are pasted over with messages in order to feign outrage at the supposed injustice of boots that are simply too good... conveniently^ these 'activists' seemed to forget to cover over the SMW-ZfiST'-ffff-ir'swoop' logo in their daring late night raid.

Minded Footy Fans say. Not Fair Mr " A few seasons ago, a small group of Footy Technology". Bland and typical ad campaign, fans set aside their club allegiances and sure, but these SUVEJUSTOOIT banded together for a single cause that they billboards are also pasted over with believed was fair and just and righteousan d messages in order to feign outrage at the honest and really very important. We are supposed injustice of boots that are simply that group. We are the FFFF. Which stands too good, complete with messy type font and for, Fans Fight for Fairer Football. ..our the ffff.com.au address added for other cause is a provocative one. Perilous to 34 those Involved. So you will forgive us our anonymity. But just because you can't put a face to us doesn't mean that we aren't real. As this world wide web site proves, we are SERIOUS. We believe In football. We believe in fairness... We are ready to fight those trying to introduce unfairness to our great sport by introducing technologically advanced products such as the SlRVE" JUST'DO-ITAir Zoom Total 90 and SiaVNUST'DO-ITAir Zoom Internationals. "

Just doin' it, of course, were bantheboot.com who as well as links to SISVE-HIST'DO' IT'S human rights abuses, and info about attempts to shut down all Oz SUHfE-JUST' DU'ITstores on May 1, include a hilarious ffff video on their site, 'fist fucking football corporations can only be greedy. Some fun" which explores to side-splittin' effect the people don't like that. rTMark supports the notion that if the AFL were a reflection of sabotage (informative alteration) of Australian society, there would be over 50 corporate products, from dolls and children's gay players. learning tools to electronic action games, by channelling funds from investors to workers Another blow to the SUUE-JUST-BO-IT for specific projects grouped into "mutual image: it seems just about anyone on a funds." mailing list was recently forwarded the text of an email interaction with a person wanting www.biftek.com/awards a personalised pair of SIAVC'WST'DO' The B(if)tek 'Subvert the Dominant Its with the label, "Sweatshop". SIAVE- Paradigm' award, to encourage excellence in JUST-BO'IT refused the request without the use of electronic arts to subvert, stating any good reason, but millions have embarrass, distort mainstream cultural chuckled over the to and fro. products that are morally and aesthetically bankrupt. Electronic arts includes electronic Maybe someone should nominate the ban music, web-sites and applications, video and the hooters for the biftek electronic games. Subversion awards? ( www.biftek.com ) Ah, billboards, just do 'em, eh? SUUE'JUST'DO'lTsweaXshopnet A great site for lovers of fairness in football, *note, company name replaced in this article and er.. human rights. And you'll probably with SUVE'IUST'OO'IT to avoid need to replace the slave bit of the uri with unnecessary advertising :-) what u think it is. [email protected] www.adbusters.org. (article pasted up on the A bit too much of that self-important North www.octapod.org.au billboard ) American holler than thou, but still one of the best anti-advertising and marketing Sidebars: deconstructlon sites around, with plenty of rtmark.com sample anti-ads for you to download, Buy rTMark's point is not that greed is bad Nothing day and more. (everyone knows that) but that large 35 ANICHA NIBBANA UDAYA BAY (formeriy Adrian Gericic)

VIPASSANA i\/IEDITATION ENTHUSIAST

Since I began meditating, I have not hit, hurt, lied to, abused any person, and I have not killed any living creature except for one mosquito and an ant - both accidentally ¥ ,.mb.--ftr(M;fs'^ real p'eTson,;Dutthis man is not actually him

To understand my name change is to continuously within the framework of my own understand me. I was at a party recently and body was asked, can't you just keep your original name and still be you? In the past I would have To explain the name process, first let me say immediately jumped in with what I intellectually how interesting it is to note how biography and knew to be the correct answer - what happens trying to understand people and humans lineariy on the outside can't change the real me inside. is such a new western invention and goes However on this night the real answer became against a lot of the cyclical, syhcrhonistic and most clear, "the act of changing my name is interwoven aspects of life that CAN NOT be me!" My actions are an indicator of my translated heuristically! (I don't know the personality and in this way by changing my meaning of that last word - it just felt right to put name I was making a huge political statement: it in.) Anyway I will try -1 mean fuck look how that I am not afraid of change, losing my identity. long I took to answer the first somewhat and rather my identity is not wrapped up in me. straightforward question but anyway here I go think that is what I think may be most because you know I want to. confrontational to a lot of people who get geed up about my name change - that I seem The various personal development books I was perfectly calm and acceptable in changing an reading in high school were definitely a turning aspect of themselveis that most would seem to point for me - not so much because of their be inseparable. I think the label of a name is so content- although that can not be discounted for well planted into a person's psyche that to even within many of them was information that was suggest change to the name is very scary going to help me later in life to create sizeable because it ultimately states that WE ARE NOT wealth and give me a foothold on credibility and AN IMMUTABLE ENTITY - we are going to die self-esteem, an esteem however rooted in people - get over It! money that would take years of struggling to be free of - but because of the learning that things Anicha means change; Nibbana is Pali for In this worid were not what they seem. One has nirvana, enlightenment, end of suffering; and been told this and that and that you should do Udaya together with my last name Bay - means and know this etc. But on that day I found out... the experiential knowledge of sub-atomic that that's not it man - there's more, and I feel particles arising and passing away rapidly and maybe A LOT of people are not even up to this

36 stage yet and blindly and ignorantly suck down one as well, (and that is all I want to be - plus whatever clap trap is fed to them and perhaps helping others likewise) Nothing can replace the this Is the greatest tragedy of all time - human ingrained sense of respect that permeates kind's unwillingness to even contemplate through this land like the veins in one's own another reality. If people open themselves to body - without which, you and the country would learning - then that's It my friend you have surely start to disintegrate and not function - a saved the worid (collectively) I think learning state which I believe is what is happening to a really is the key and if the government or rather lot of western societies. As a product - Australia each individual citizen would recognise or yay -1 am not buying! ironically learn this then this fuckover of the education system would stop and some real The more we have the more we start to see and positive change could start to happen in that judge each other in terms of things rather than society I have only been overseas (Korea) for feelings and humanity - and that is all fucked up. four days now but it has really opened my eyes A debate on this paradigm of thinking - oh I already and I have one thing to say to us - that need more to be happy/secure etcetera -1 being Australians - WE ARE NOT HAPPY! Take believe is absolutely vital for the continued a look around people we are ali fucked up - existence of humans on this planet as It is this resources for education are being shafted, mindset that is consuming ridiculous amounts of populist pandering has replace (or was there resources and with present population growth ever) political leadership and more importantly trends we need to start accepting that maybe there are masses of mind numbing bricks in the one's economic goals should be economic wall waddling on not seeing that this shit sux. retraction, rather than growth. Surely the notion less is more must be revisited if we are to We like to say in Australia that we help one sun/ive! another and pull together when necessary - that is fucking bullshit. As 1 said I have only been Intrinsic understanding and appreciation must over here only a little while and I am seeing begin in the heart and in the mind. For instance what real friendship and community is all about. take a look at me -1 am fantastically, I think the abundance of material prosperity in wonderfully, seriously, and deleriously happy, Australia has allowed greed to take a foothold blissful, peaceful and pretty much content ( I am and has blinded many people to what is the real still working on that). I am convinced that the thing here on earth - life, love, harmony and only way to change anything is to change happiness. I am presently blown away with the yourself - yes in this realm you my friend have niceness, civility, and humanity of Koreans over the power - as Rage Against the Machine - you here who have a lot less than we have and you got to take it back - but from whom? It is already know what I think that really helps - when you in you so just get it - its yours. haven't got everything you have to look into each others eyes - not into their Armani Since I began meditating, compassion has watches. I wholeheartedly believe on a become real for me and I have not hit, hurt, lied generalised level - that the people In Korea are to, abused any person, and I have not killed any far more decent human beings than in Australia. living creature except for one mosquito and an Respect for others, and just manners are ant - both accidentally - and that means a lot to present here in abundance and you know what - me - because I now know that they are living it is just so god damn nice to be around people breathing creatures too and to hurt them is to who are nice also. It is said that one should hurt me. What we do each and every one of us choose one's friends wisely for they significantly has huge inpact on this planet collectively and influence your character and thus your destiny - thus it is up to each of one of us to care for well I would like to take that one step further ourselves and one another. and say it is more important to choose your super-social-structure from which these friends Myself, 2001 onwards? Perhaps become a come from and from under which rules they monk, or a successful laylife with wonderful and relate - and from this point of view at the beautiful Korean women, these are alternating moment I clearly choose Korea- for its forks of my destiny. Maybe both, time will tell. underlying rules and context allow others to be Be happy. better people I believe - and thus helps me to be 37 mm 'Mlaimi ... •

The climpte coalition - justify controls on greenhouse gases"(Burton, lessons in PR and . 1998). jsseudo-science The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) runs regular seminars for public officials which explain in The bulk of the scientific community has a variety of ways why they should distrust the consistently intoned a choms of warning that global scientific data, and refrain from legislating to warming is not only a very dari< cloud over our address the evident causes of climate crisis. In future, but in fact already a cleariy evident reality particular, it has funded research by a Dr Sally Yet the public {Derception remains that such claims Baliunas which alleges that the sun is in fact to are "pseudo-science"; that the evidence is not yet blame for Earth's rising temperature: its rays clear enough to act on. According to recent become hotter due to periodic sunspots (occurring research, the widespread doubt is largely a coincidentally with recent rises in planetary testament to the success of public relations temperature). fabrications. Namely a targetted "pseudo-science" offensive, in which PR finns working for fossil fuel On their website and elsewhere, GMI continues to corporations pay scientists to discredit and flatly widely publicise research findings, in which a deny the clear and copious scientific evidence of satellite recorded had temperatures in the upper fossil fuel-induced global warming, and vigourously atmosphere and found no increase. Yet the discourage government action to address the scientists themselves, who conducted the research, problem. had long deemed the results invalid, due to faulty measurement by the sattellte. PR-funded front groups promote inaction The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) exists to In 1999, GMI released and publicised a petition influence tfie climate debate, by lobbying signed by working scientists, which stated that cjovernmenlarid public opinion. Its members increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the include Industry bodies such as the American atmosphere will "benefit" the planet. Ait'iojgh Petroleum Institute and the Automobile circulated to "virtually every scientist in every field" Manufacturers'Association. Since its creation by a in the US, the petition was endorsed only by a PR fimn in 1989, the GCC has spent more than $63 small fraction. million to hinder moves toward addressing the What is global warming? However, the climate crisis, Including a $13 million campaign petition had opposing the ratiftcation of Kyoto by the US. Human activities, namely been sent with power generation and an article The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition transport, produce large enclosed (TASSC), an Industry front group run by the APCO quantities of greenhouse supporting the PR firm and the EOP Group, encouraged e-m'aif gases, primarily carbon petion's claims, urging President Clinton to oppose reductions at dioxide, which remain and that was Kyoto, by fi^rbmlsing to enter writers' names in a trap heat in the atmosphere, formatted faisely $1,000 sweepstakes:c|^4vVt:;:,c^j9;>^S'?^-^p^^ causing the Earth's to appear as '* though It had . '^- ;':, --r.#^-^-i^f-l^f^iff^^V;:'-v^'J^S^'^5^^#S # temperature to rise. These I" been pubHshed. Vr'^i' ••'..• TASSGJ^fiilWemlnciude 31^, Arnoco, Chevy'QnJ?;; jfres are already present in in a particular and prestigious temperature academic ^MmmS^^ to sustain science journal. On the eve of the Kyoto Con erenoe, TASSC Mi^^M«house gas omissions, During a 1995 executive director Steven M|lloy announced thi^^ Ts'iii^i'-'^-0' iri added to t'.ose h^anng in St more than 600 physicians and scientists have^rr^^^^^g^mwtijmllvVfomim nrossiv Paul, Minnesota, signed an open letter to worid leaders opposlnglfj^^^^^fMBl^ of some public climate change treaty. Asked by the US online : t''atmos0ftw||ses necessary citmate magazine PR Watch to provide the names and • t••o m^int#ft,stabl*-*-*- '^ - •e- ' "skeptics" were credentials of endorsers, Milloy replied that he had forced to not yet had time to "compile" the "hard copy list." .^^v «....*, ^* disclose for the Milloy is a lobbyist for the EOP Group^whioh also^^'" ' first time theMtent of their corporate funding. helps run the Global Climate Coalitte;!'^'^:'' v;. Of\e Dr Pat'l^fchaels hadreqeived more than In the months following the Kyoto agreement, plans $170,000, from the GeriyilWoal Mining for a multi-million dollar public relations opposition Association, WesternM||iind Cyprus Minerals, campaign; to be funded by the American Petroleum a company tnfamaus%|t||f^e largest single Institute (API), were leaked to the New York Times. funder of the antl-erivlrdhitto^ise Use They entailed an outlay of $5 million "to recruit a 'movement' in the USA. Between 1991-95, Dr cadre of scientists who share the Industry's view of Robert Balling received about $300,000 from climate science", who would reinforce the message Cyprus Minerals, the British Coal Corporation, the that "the risk of global warming Is too uncertain to German Coal Mining Assobiation, arid OPEC. S.

'i-S- -^ , 'V J. I 38

Itir- Fred Singer admitted |n1994 on A very brief survey of the caps and glaciers, accelerating the program Nightlirillhat he evidence ; the spread of insect-borne had received funds from Exxon, diseases, changing the timing Shell, Unocal, ARCO, and on Among climate scientists, the of the seasons, and fueling a several occasions, the Rev» Sun consensus is nearly unanimous wave of violent and chaotic Myung Moon. He has revealed that the world's climate is suffering weather. Broader impacts may that his Institute is partially damage due to this phenomenon. include sea level rises that funded by Exxon. This consensus is echoed by the drown lowlying land, U.S. National Academy of momentous loss of diversity as Some of these scientists Sciences and the IPCC. weather conditions change maintain that their position on faster than species can adapt, climate issues are unaffected by The International Panel on Climate and rapid desertification of the positions of those Change (IPGC), a working group agricultural land. companies funding their of 2,500 climate experts sponsored research. This raises the by the United Nations to study the In 1995, the IPGC cautioned question of whether, should they problem, now expects that the earth has entered a stumble upon some clue temperatures to rise later this period of climatic instability suggesting that global warming century by 1-3.5 degrees Celsius. likely to cause "widespread is a valid and ominous concern, Indeed, the burning of fossil fuels - economic, social and they would shift the direction of coal and oil - by humans during environmental dislocation over iheir,re$earch, and thereby Wkw" the past 100 years, have the next century". In order to ll^^^l^opardise their funding source. increased the concentration of avert catastrophe, the IPCC carbon dioxide (the main called for policy measures to ^^ij^main reasoning offered by greenhouse gas) in the reduce emissions of lif^rStne'-US government for its atmosphere by 25%, according to greenhouse gases by 20% t./^'^' opposition Is that the treaty is a study published in the British below 1990 levels. Meanwhile, ;f - ^ "unfair" to the US, since It scientific journal, Nature, in 1998. most climate scientists agree yt^, exempts developing countries The late Nineties included the that the emissions from burning • '. fii^J- 4rom the initial series of hottest years on record (1997, coal and oil need to be reduced •'' •^Jg'^ernlssions cuts. But it was 1998). Between 1997 and 1998, by about 70%. The Treaty

E?v \ Bush's own father who approved world temperatures rose by 1 negotiated in Kyoto» Japan in ••-: ';^~|?iheir exemption, when he signed degree Fahrenheit, thereby 1997, calls for a mere reduction • 1?^*V;fti' e 1992 Rio Treaty on the warming the oceans, melting ice of 7% bebw 1990 leveL^ ;. ^ -^ - ^Envt'ronment. The rationale was *'that since developed countries produce the niajority of greenhouse gases, and have Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), which greater resources at hand to claimed that greenhouse reductions "would cost every Australian reduce the damage, they aught $9,000 per year". Although repeating this statement with great • frequency, they neglected ever to mention that the research had been to take the initiative. funded by major oil companies, and was Chaired by one of their representatives. Nor did any of the media reporting point this out. It Of Howard government "non- took the Australian Consen/atlon Foundation (ACF) to point out the ,; core" promises (AKA lies) faulty calculations of the findings themselves, prompting thenfi to lodge Before Its^election in 1996, the a complaint with the Ombudsman. Howard government pledged to: "ensure...an effective and credible domestic and Closing the American - and Australian? - mind international response to the The industry-funded mass lobbying of public opinion appears to be global problem of yielding results, at least in the US. In November 1997, the Associated greenhouse...Australia must Press reported that "a global poll surveying environmental attitudes in meet its international 24 countries suggests Americans are the most skeptical of the need for responsibilities In tackling drastic and potentially costly steps to minimize climate change.... greenhouse gas emissions" The Most respondents worldwide endorsed Immediate strong action, but following year, it axed all half the respondents in the United States said no major action should government-sponsored be taken until more facts were known." Even in neighboring Canada; alternative energy development the David Suzuki Foundation cites a study indicating that 88% of programs, then slashed funding residents support strong action on climate change, even if this means to national programs for energy some disruption to lifestyle. In Australia, public attitudes remain efficiency. Then it proceeded to uninformed on the issue, no thanks to thinly-veiled, industry-funded hinder the Kyoto agreement, mis-information. refusing to endorse emission reductions. References BobBurton, in PR Watch, Vol4, Number4, W98(onPRWATCiiw&bsiie)iRp$s^.:- Gelbspan, "Bush's Gamif, March 2000, article on his website titled The Heat Is On. At the time of Kyoto, the government widely publicised Annette Maguire "research" by the Australian 39 passion practise passion on your arm. passion sonia llndstrom on an armytown footpath during the commonwealth games. a million tanks rolled by and the entire australian army cheered. my mouth would never be the same again. having braces can sometimes get in the way of passion. passion with both of us on bicycles, our pedals caught. and metal clanked (check your breath before passion.) there was some passion in the school musical, but i was not the romantic lead. passion in the movies, ignoring the three-act structure in order to get to first base. you left your window open, midnight bicycling. passion for a little while, then morning came and i understood I was not the first through your window. passion goodbye, an airport, a bus station, close the driver's door. maybe forever sometimes I wonder where all the passion has gone. sometimes i am not sad it has gone away.

Chris Comer 'Flash John,' 2001 little manfred digital image, size variable 40 passion is

1 will casually look to my right, and peripherally determine.

It's a chick. implosioAs 1 file onto the bus 1 try to I remember, in front of men. Kind o f remember. Yeahhh. This is remember the bit 1 enjoy. Why am I exciting. No-one knows. She knows. Am I random? She has impatient to slide my card into the instigated. The thought has actually crossed her mind, been slot? Done with more style than consciously embraced. "1 will touch someone's leg," she must could ever be noticed. Why have 1 have thought. Will I turn around and introduce myself? Not likely! become so pushy? It never was a We are just two strangers. In a loaded bus. No-one knows what queue - it was the start line. By is going on. Our lonely paths have crossed and will never again. myself, odd things are imbued with significance. Damn! - no seat. I am As we alight I twist my head left and right after a necessary few quite tall. Taller than her, him, steps. That must be her. I never see her eyes. Oh, my friend, I'd taller... taller, oh shit! My expression completely forgotten she was on the bus. "Hey" I want to tell her. is more blank. My stare more No. I don't think she'd understand. I don't think 1 could explain. vacant. Ah hah, I can't lose -1 can't see. The bus is now moving. My John Smith momentum stifles my balance. I will place my feet such that a minimum of effort from my upper body is required to maintain my balance. I would be a gifted snowboarder. This occupies me for a while.

I notice that someone is touching my leg. Or rather my pants. I notice because it is the second time. At first I fee! a pen/ert. Someone just touched your pants. They are swaying with the motion of the bus. This person is just a lesser potential snowboarder. Your feelings are peculiar to you. Desist.

It continues to happen and I can't ignore it. I find myself concentrating on my facial expression as much as my balance. My usually docile thoughts are disturbed. My stare is surely not vacant! Stay cool. I can feel my temperature rise slightly The hand is so close that it cannot be touching only at the zenith of its swings. An anonymous hand has purposely been placed very close to my leg. This is arousing. Oh dear, f s Oh Jesus! Is it a male or a female? IK "^ i

1 1 " SAM KRETSCHMANN J^^^Bn H Ml" i^pq. ^^Li^ f '^Hn ' *"" , Ju ^M ^^B^ f • iP'v' »v. ^"^ JHr ' ^^^F ^^^^fcifc^ _.,*j ^^^•K TRIPLE ZED PROMOTION ^B m^ cj^MftuMin^*'^ ^ i^^^^^l1 * ^^^^^^B^k COORDINATOR KI^ ^il^BH^ •K*9

Alternative music is really ^^lig-'-'-S-'i^-'.i .^.f^in.1 .> ', '. i important for alternative thinking.

I started at Triple Zed about four and a half and they had the energy. It kept going for a years ago. I got asked to help put on the few years, so that was good, it got me a bit Transmutations benefit show with David of experience in how to run an event. Before Beach, who's now known as Wave Beach. that I was just doing hospitality and that kind He'd been going out going into the of stuff. community in Townsville and places trying to get underground, electronic events My job involves organising advertising, that's happening. He'd heard of me through my official position, so people ring up and nightclubs and stuff that I was running, and they say, we want to get information out on just gave me a call and said "come and the radio, and then I talk to them about what help". So I did. Then 1 got a call a few sort of position they're in, or what sort of months later from Christine, who was then event it is that they're doing. There's many doing my job, and she said "I want to leave, different genres or categories that they can i want to start my own venue, do you want to fall into. For a basic band gig at the local be chained up and take my position?" and it pub we'll do a Triple Zed Promotes deal, was like, "oh my god why did you pick me?" which means that we get a cut from the door I was really flattered that someone thought I and we promote their gig big time. Then had what it took to do it. It took about two there's other people who talk to us about months of just sitting next to Christine every getting things pretty cheaply, so if they're day, just learning what she was doing and community groups we help them and they getting the confidence to even ring big just have to subscribe to the station. Then promoters. You know like, ooh god I've got there's the big deals, the interstate stuff that to talk to the IMC person, or I've got to talk helps bring in a bit more decent money to try to the Livid people. It was kinda scary, but and keep going. you get the hang of it. Triple Zed has had an important role in Before this I was running a club called Ward Brisbane and Queensland, 1 think. When it 10B which was heaps of fun. I had some started it really had a focus on getting news young friends who sort of pushed me into out to people about what the hell was going doing it. They were like, 18 and 1 was 25 or on under the pretty weird government something, so I was the experienced one, system we had. Back then you had one

42 thing: you were always against the National most of my job is in helping to run the place Party and Joh Bjelke Peterson. Now the and making sure information is getting out thing that we were all united against Is there, whether it's about an ad or a rally. gone, there's so many smaller fights. Now I'm passionate about the station, about it's really hard to be seen as having a major keeping it going. Sometimes I wonder why. impact, but we are still there for all sort of Many times I wonder why, 'cause it's really fights. hard work. But it's a lot of fun as well. Being a volunteer organisation, there's continuous Triple Zed's eviction from the UQ Union in training of people. I really enjoy helping '88 was, from a University perspective, a people but it does get a little bit much really important lesson. It really does matter sometimes, especially when you need a little what kind of power is occupying the union, help yourself and people around you just because these are the kinds of things that aren't trained enough to help you. The other can happen. It was pretty crazy. I know it frustrating thing is people not understanding was all just a political thing, it was just a what the station is, understanding the political tactic to get rid of a voice on Importance of It, the fact that it's an campus. I know Triple Zed at the time was independent media source. 1 know a lot of probably a bit., grungy ha ha, that's one people think the station is the music, and way to say it. I know that funding was being that's great, because alternative music Is cut and there was less money. In the really important for alternative thinking. But beginning there was money there to pay then there's information, the other reason to announcers and it was probably a bit of a listen. If people just spent a little bit of time more organised radio station back then. But trying to understand what we're all about, once it comes down to volunteers just then it would be better. putting in the time they have, it gets more disorganised, and people who are IN The first record I really got into? Ministry organisations don't like that. They like to see changed my life , I suppose, that was around everything running perfectly and if you can't before the idea of Ward 10B, which was do that, well you're out. But at the station mainly an industrial club. After that It was we really notice that people support us when probably Black Lung, that moved me into the we're under pressure, so that was one of the electronic world. But when I was young, the times when we actually had lots of people first record I got was Suzi Quatro. subscribing. Another time was just after the riot at Market Day in '96. Heaps of people subscribed. Triple Zed's annual Radlothon is almost upon us. If you haven't yet subscribed, The Market Day in '96 where we got raided this is the time to do it: unemployed $45, was when the Coalition had just come back concession $28, under 18's $15, in. It was like. Wham! Welcome back! Since community groups $35, bands $110 and then we've really worked a lot with police on solo $55. June 30 will see a full day of Market Day, we've probably run the most punk and a full night of beats unfold at perfect event that there is to run in Brisbane the Zen Warehouse to raise some much because we have to go by every letter of the needed dosh for the station. See flyer for law, otherwise we get done, and it costs us details. money. And that's what they want. They want us not to be able to make money from market day. And we're not, lately. We're not having Market Day this year because we don't have money to put it on. Hopefully next year it will be back.

Most people at Triple Zed are volunteers. I'm lucky; I do get paid a little bit of money because 1 make money from advertising, but

43 GIORDANA CAPUTO

TRIPLE ZED ANNOUNCER

/ wake up at 12.30 in the morning for my shift sometimes and go "what am I doing?"

My shift's the graveyard because that's what you Folk music started me off. I've always been into get after finishing your training. It's 2-6 in the that grassroots music, percussion based and morning. To start off it's a bit nervewracking, tiring. acoustic based. Since I've been at Triple Z I've I wake up at 12.30 In the morning for my shift been into more lo-fi stuff, emo and punk, bands sometimes and go "what am I doing?" It's really like Art of Fighting and Guided by voices. Being hard to choose music you think everyone's going here has changed my life in a lot of ways. I've to like, not that you really believe anyone's learned a lot more about the Brisbane music listening. But after a while I've really gotten into it scene. Also, the whole routine of my weeks has and started bringing as many people as I can completely changed. I don't do anything during along with me so I can stay at the console. I had the day but my night times and mornings are full. a couple of people In from different bands and we If I have any space time I can always come into did some spoken word over beat music, I'm going Triple Z. to try and get some live improved sets. I've also had some short story reading, with three people I often feel I'm not doing enough with my saying different parts. Triple Zed has quotas that journalism degree because a lot of my friends are you have to fill, a certain amount of female music, working at newspapers, but then I think, I'm really a certain amount of Australian and local music really happy with what I'm doing. I've come to and a certain amount of new music. You have to realise through working at the news department at work within the parameters, but there's still room Triple Zed that I couldn't work for a commercial for doing whatever you want. radio station. My ethics and morals are so important to me as a journalist. It's so important to I really think Triple Zed went through a period be able to talk to people about what issues are where listenership dropped down, and I think it important, and I don't think I could handle that was the whole Triple J thing, but I've noticed that being dictated to me, except if i just closed my people don't feet Triple J is fullfilling its role mind off and said look, this is just a job, don't anymore and they've come back to us and seen worry about public needs. I don't really think that that Triple Zed is still doing what it's always done, would be fullfilling. which is promoting new music and promoting different stuff, being strange while at the same There are other passions I've had to put on the time being accessible ... backburner to do this, but I only did that because what I'm doing at the moment is so much fun. I No Market Day this year? It could be a sign of think as long as I'm in Brisbane I'll be involved the times because I've noticed that outdoor with Triple Zed. You just don't leave. If I don't get festivals have had their day in a lot of ways. another shift I'll come in and work in the They've gone from being something that people journalism department, I'll work the front desk or used to go to to see new local bands, to being something. It's good to hang out and help out huge, mega events run by corporations and done when there's not much else to do. People by promotion companies. Triple Zed just can't appreciate you here, no matter how much work keep up with that sort of thing. you do. 44 Part Three: Semper does Scraping your heart off the toilet passion bowl

Keep the fire. Keep the fire. (Byrne, Ervin and Lambreth, Your body is holy 1970); "If we truly like Do not believe the truth. someone, it pleases us to see "*• • • ''•'*«•• The truth is tiny compared them happy and it hurts us to to the things you have to do. see them suffer" (Bramel, (Leonard Cohen) 1969) and (my favourite); "people in love tend to make Love is never unconditional. We more eye contact than people never love someone no matter who are not in love" (Argyle what. We love someone for a 1967). I would suggest, you'd If only because of the fact that we continue to create it, iove exists. I did it, you do it, tliey do it. And tliey keep fucking doing It, the bastards. number of reasons. Sometimes just a few nice larger ones. learn much more from good Sometimes a long list of ones. Sometimes for reasons that we fiction, and perhaps even perhaps cannot even articulate. But the list is not neverending. Which much more from your own bad is not to say that new reasons cannot be discovered, but you can poetry. Our apparent need to always count the ways if you have enough people standing in a line, study and learn from the holding their fingers high. Once you realise this, you begin to wonder, experience may help us what are good reasons to love someone, and whether it's so prolong it, or decide whether or blasphemous to ponder that if someone else hypothetically comes not we want to keep creating along and fills the same reasons, and perhaps more of them, whether and making it at all, which we that is necessarily someone to abandon our current loved one for? may not necessarily want, or even need to do. We are Of course a cynic would tell you that love is bullshit, an illusion, a often, at the end of it all, not as capitalist conspiracy. A cynic reduces love to something tangible - disappointed in love as we are usually to either sex or politics. Plato said that love is so ideal that we disappointed in ourselves. We cannot as humans, live up to its ideals. The cynic's perspective is not are pretty hopeless compared very different from Plato's. Whereas Plato decrees "you think you to how we expect ideal people know what true love is, but you don't", the cynic says, "you think to love and be loved. And the there's such a thing as love, but there isn't". Freud said that love is God of our religion called Love nothing but lust 'plus the ordeal of civility', and that romantic love, as a does not Inten/ene often product of sexual inhibition and repression, is quickly becoming a thing enough. This is not a very nice of the past. Others say love is irrational. But just because they choose realisation. Love doesn't save love often desperately and badly does not mean that love Is irrational, many things, and it often isn't it means that people are. enough. Perhaps William Faulkner summed it up best If only because of the fact that we continue to create it, love exists. I when he said: did It, you do it, they do it. And they keep fucking doing it, the bastards. It makes no difference whether we think someone else's Perhaps they were right putting love is real or not, or whether everything ends in the revelation of our love in books own deceptions and masses of shit. It exists there in whatever'form, Perhaps it could not live anywhere before it ends, and you're not supposed to be analysing someone else. (Light in August) else's anyway If you're not in it, of course it's not love to you, silly. You're outside of it. Lovers don't need - or care about - you. But Christ, keep having a chop Nevertheless, we do persist in analysing and quantifying love, nailing it at It lassies and lads. It can be to walls and labelling its parts, scientists included. Scientists though, fun, and it can slice some joy get funding for It and we don't. And perhaps it's not the best way to and pain through the timeline spend research funding. Thurstone (1928) for example found that of your life. And what is more "people in love tend to think more highly of one another". Similariy desirable than that? profound findings have also been uncovered through meticulous 45 studies, such as: "people in love tend to sit closer to one another" by rachel o "Daring and honest"

define what code of morals we should all live by. (row lti't(.<(vi{c h> pmii >f.ir Censorship as a practice has the ability to shape social development, and, having an idea of free will (the right and ability of each person to direct the lecide... their own development) and freedom of expression, this is why it should be closely girl Freedom is fragile monitored and the premises behind it questioned. next and must be « 0^ protected. To The most concerning aspect of this censorship is door sacrifice it, even as the lack of accountability allowed by the a temporary executive. The Schoneil was restrained from measure, is to (.hii^tuu rtii;.iii putting a notice on the poster stating that it had betray it. - been censored by the Union, the executive • R."-!J'.'''V' GERMAINE claiming that this was being done to make a GREER "mockery" of the executive. Sounds a bit like unquestionable dictatorship to me. "'••;•• ..;tr|ii The Schoneil -;•« I'll)*'' Cinema is one of This is a documentary about the life of a porn star, il the oldest and last whose list of awards includes one from the • ...••» J" K:"' r„: ;# remaining arthouse Cannes Film Festival, and presents her as a porn cinemas in equivalent of other (not-objectified?), generally B- Brisbane. It is grade Hollywood actresses / actors. It has been owned by the UQ students through the Union, but well-reviewed for being an objective and non- is rented out under management and is an judgemental portrayal of her emotional and important public resource for independent and rational attitude toward the porn industry and life. I alternative cinema. I should state at the outset haven't seen it yet (It's swotvac) but I feel I should that although 1 haven't been personally involved in for women's Issues reasons, and since I'm writing the dispute going on between the Schoneil and this. Last I heard, Juliana wouldn't be watching it, the executive of the Student Union, 1 work at the but if she had censored the poster on grounds of Schoneil. This allows me to have a lot of respect public decency or something other than for the discretion which the manager of the objectification and sexism (?) I would accept that Schoneil has used in selecting films over the 25 as a judgement-call in her role as President. years she has worked there (although I haven't However, denying Christine Fugate (creator) and spoken to her about The Girl Next Door). The Cafe Sisters Productions the chance to represent Schoneil often doesn't make much profit, but it is the film as they intended, may preclude them the incomparable to the losses it was making before opportunity to effect change in how people view the then executive of the Union twenty-five years women in the porn industry. The film's focus is on ago agreed to allow it to operate independently of the effect of porn on Stacy Baker (Valentine's) life. the Board. However, recent events have brought It's about a woman's relationship with her partner uncertainty to the operation of the Schoneil and (her husband got her into It so he could show off the Pizza Cafe, due to conflict between the to his friends, she made lots of money and left executive of the Union and the Schoneil over the him). It's about a woman's relationship with her content of promotional material for the body (they show the surgery), and a woman's documentary, The Giri Next Door. So, please read relationship with herself: she identifies as both on, and if you want to get to the bottom of this you former Oklahoma housewife and porn goddess. should ask Juliana and the exec. The picture itself is no big deal, It's not really smutty maybe a bit trashy with some bad tan The Film Censorship Board passed it, and the lines. Phillipa Hawker drew a comparison between well-respected, feminist Arts reviewer Phillipa this documentary and one made in the early 80's, Hawker (currently of the Age) recently called it Not a Love Story. The female creator of that "sympathetic and often engaging". Its catchphrase documentary was critical of the industry and is 'from housewife to pomstar', and to it's credit, wanted to 'redeem' her main character. The sex the issues it raises are highly topical (as proven industry is still a controversial topic, but things by the current dispute between the Schoneil and may have changed in the last twenty years. the exec) - issues of morality judgement, There may be an argument that presumptions can censorship, the distinction between the private do more harm to women than good. The fact is and public self, and women's rights. that both oppression and objectification of women occur in our society The president (Juliana Virine) and exec of the student union have censored the poster and Juliana claims as president to have a role to promo material for the film, based on a view that it educate the student body about political and is sexist and objectifies women. social issues. I suggest that this is a chance to let Yet, while it is easy to see that a poster is the people draw their own considered conclusions. As physical projection of marketing to sell a product a woman, I'm not sure where to draw the line (in this case, a movie considering the between oppression and objectification, but I don't objectification of women), it is not so easy to appreciate Juliana dictating where it is for me. But 46 then again, she didn't want you to know about not. If you have a chance, have a look at the that, did she? complete poster and other pornographic images shown on the movie's official website at by Kate Wild http://www.Qndmovie.com that would appear to be advertising something different than the subject of the film itself.

Response from the The Schoneil Cinema is not "rented out under Executive Front management" and does not operate independently of student control. If the Student We would like to respond to the concerns raised Union wanted that situation, it could invite Hoyts by Kate firstly by outlining the action we took and or Birch, Carol and Coyle onto campus. However, our reasons for taking action. The movie "The Giri the Union is fully committed to providing an Next Door" is still screening at the Schoneil independent cinema, free from corporate Theatre and there is still publicity for the movie interference and solely commercial influence. The around the Union and on our website. What we Cinema is therefore subject to the provisions of have done is removed part of the poster, a link to our policy document and governing bodies - just the film's website and the distribution of a flyer, all like the refectories and all departments of the of which contravene the Union's policy on sexism, Union. racism and homophobia. The Union has a policy that prevents us from hiring out venues (ie the As the Union President, Juliana has a role in Schoneil and the Cement Box Theatre) to any deciding what sort of material is displayed and company or persons who use sexist advertising to distributed by the Union. She is held ultimately promote their events or films. Since this policy accountable by Union Council, and Included these was made around ten years ago, it has been actions in her report to last meeting of Council on relevant in a number of issues and to our 6th June. It should be noted that the political knowledge no attempts have been made to composition of Council is broad. The current change it. All students are members of the Union composition of Union Council includes students and any student can propose policy that would be from many different ideological persuasions and voted upon by Union Council (which is elected by backgrounds, who frequently take the students each year). opportunities that are available to ask questions of their elected representatives and hold them For the Union executive and Union employees to accountable in Council meetings and other contravene the Union's policy that has been made forums. If students feel strongly that the Union by students is to completely undermine the role of should put up a notice informing passers-by that students in controlling their student union. We part of the poster has been taken down and why personally are not willing to disregard the Union's we welcome any attempt to raise this with us policy document and are happy to discuss with personally or at Union Council. any student our reasons for doing this. The Union, with its annual turn-over of office­ Kate says that she would accept the censoring of bearers, offers many forums for student input and the poster as a judgement call by the President physical accessibility is certainly not an on the basis of public decency but not on the "unquestionable dictatorship". Kate did not need basis of sexism. Why would it be better for elected to rely solely on her employment at the Schoneil representatives to make moralistic decisions (as evident from the information she has collected without any consultation with the student in her article) to question this issue. We would like population? Decisions of elected representatives to point out that she has made no attempt to should be made in line with the direction of those contact us about any of these issues and has they represent, and the best measure of this Is mixed facts with what must be second-hand the policy document, to which every student may accounts of conversations for which she provides contribute. no sources (eg "Last I heard, Juliana wouldn't be watching it [the movie]"). If you are concerned Briefly the Union's policy on sexism, racism and about any of the issues raised, we encourage you homophobia does not provide for a specific to do as Kate advises, and not as she herself course of action in each and every situation that does, and contact us personally. Feel free to raise may occur Therefore, In this instance, we took a anything at the next Council meeting (ring the picture to objectify this woman's body In order to Union or check the website calendar for more sell a product (the film). This part of the poster details). depicts the central character of this film as a two- dimensional, sexual object, ignoring the other Yours In Union aspects of her character. There is no doubt that this is a part of her character - it is a film about a Juliana Virine (President) and Angela Setteriund pom star, after all - but while the film adequately (Union Secretary) deals with different aspects of her character and Email us at [email protected] issues relating to workers in the sex industry, [email protected] or phone us some of the promotional material for the film does on 3377 2200. 47 SISTER ANJELINA

THE NUN ON MILTON RD,

J won't become an advertising whore...

She stands defiant in a big glass window in glamourous in diamontes for the Academy the front of a house on Milton Road. Plastic Awards, only to appear the next night as a skin, glass eyes and painted-on smirk glowing Gladiator, silver sword held high above her down at the traffic. Her name, as I discovered habit. this week, is Sister Anjelina, and she is the Milton Road Nun. To say she is a mannequin Every Monday morning on the way to work I would be a bit degrading, I think. She has would eagerly await the moment when I would such a gloriously sixties department store glimpse her from gridlocked traffic, wondering chic going for her, and the outfits - what on earth she'll be up to this week. But magnificent. Every Sunday night she appears one question remained - who was she? How in the window in a new outfit, ever so did she come to be a nun with so many carefully placed over her habit, remarkably guises? Where did she come from? Were my managing to hold up all manner of things with friends and I the only ones who'd noticed her pivoting PVC arms. She has forayed into her? So on Monday evening I thought I'd pop many occupations (her chef and 40s nurse- around and have a few words with the with-bedpan outfits are two fine examples), residents of 341 Milton Road, Auchenflower. and hobbies (she once was a decidedly However, after a little deliberation 1 decided French artiste - painting a picture of her view that a lot of the allure of the Nun was her from the window, draped in a smock, proudly mystique. Her anonymity allowed me to run showing her works on an easel, palette at the the same questions through my mind every ready). She has, some weeks, covered even time I passed by, her mystery comprised a lot more imaginative territory - her gun toting, of what made her so special. So, after poncho wearing cowboy made me laugh out spoiling it for myself by chatting to those who loud as I sat on the bus, and, as Mexicana inhabit the house in which she stands, I nun, she shook those maracas like there decided to conduct an interview with the really was no tomorrow. Sometimes she saintly Sister Anjelina herself. She's a quiet appears in theme according to the week's one, not given to running off at the mouth, events; she's voted in the state elections, put nevertheless I was able to ask her a few up a tree at Christmas, and gotten a little things about herself. tipsy on New Years' Eve. She's been

48 When asked where she came from, I was theirs in return. One Easter card contains an delivered not with the answer I expected - excessive amount of "God Bless You's". I she didn't graduate from window modelling at wondered if there had been any objection David Jones, but rather, I was told she came from the Catholic church about her ability to from Hoboken, New Jersey From a young manipulate her dowdy church clothes; but no, age she had run away to the circus (one can Sister Anjelina says that she has received no only speculate as to whether or not this Is comment whatsoever from religious where the soft spot for costumes originates), authorities. She says she'll never dress In and then decided to join a convent (she anything tasteless, and said she feels as if thought she looked a 'bit all right' in a habit she has something of a moral responsibility to and decided she'd give it a go). She found upkeep, what with being so much in public her way into the Milton Road window just eye, and all. One fan letter she received was before Christmas this year. When asked why addressed "Dear Sister or Mother Superior", she dresses up so ritualiy, it becomes clear which we both had a chuckle at, as Sister that Sister Anjelina has quite a sense of Anjelina says she has no particular ambition humour. She is quite aware that "a Nun in a to move up in the ranks, which is lucky, I habit doing anything is funny... People loved suppose, as she lives in front of a window Sister Act, didn't they?.." When asked what and doesn't get out much, if at all. She's her favourite outfit was, she thought perhaps received about ten letters in total, all of which it had to be Gladiator nun. She's quite a fan are carefully blue-tacked to the corner of the of films in fact, and is considering a few more window upon their arrival in the letterbox. ventures into movie related things (another of Sister Anjelina is happy to wear donated her all time faves is Psycho, so we can only outfits ("there's no shame in hand-me-downs," hope for a 'shower stabbing scene' outfit). As she tells me wisely) but claims that she won't for Gladiator Nun, it was the shining silver become an "advertising whore." She's sword that she liked best... and the glory of vehemently opposed to blatant product holding up that Oscar to thousands of placement and says she'll only promote commuters too, no doubt. things she personally enjoys, like the theatre.

I coyly asked her if I could have a sneak We chatted for quite a while. Sister Anjelina preview of next week's outfit, but to my and I, and although the mystery of her disappointment she hadn't thought that far presence is no longer that, I really did realise ahead. She's often not sure of what she'll just how special she is, and left her window wear next week, sometimes having a bit of a that Monday night hoping that she'd never panic on a Sunday evening. She is, she told stop coming up with new costume ideas. To me, totally open to suggestions and will my relief, it seems she'll be around for a consider any requests that end up in her while yet. Sister Anjelina is a pleasant soul - mailbox. Sister Anjelina tends to fancy outfits drop her a letter sometime, suggest an outfit, that tie in to what's going on in the local area, point her out to your friends. And make sure or those that have a second meaning - just you remember to look up when you drive last week she appeared as a construction past. worker, just in time for the demolition of the tennis courts only a block away. BY KELLY VENTRESS Sister Anjelina proudly showed me the fanmail she has received - something she gets fairiy often, which is proof, I suppose, that there are plenty of other commuters out there who love their Monday morning trip to work as much as I do. Most of them are anonymous, her fans seem to acknowledge her mystery, and play along with retaining

49 SISTER ANJELINA

THE NUN ON MILTON RD.

.„/ won't become an advertising whore...

She stands defiant in a big glass window in glamourous In diamontes for the Academy the front of a house on Milton Road. Plastic Awards, only to appear the next night as a skin, glass eyes and painted-on smirk glowing Gladiator, silver sword held high above her down at the traffic. Her name, as I discovered habit. this week. Is Sister Anjelina, and she is the Milton Road Nun. To say she is a mannequin Every Monday morning on the way to work I would be a bit degrading, I think. She has would eagerty await the moment when 1 would such a gloriously sixties department store glimpse her from gridlocked traffic, wondering chic going for her, and the outfits - what on earth she'll be up to this week. But magnificent. Every Sunday night she appears one question remained - who was she? How in the window in a new outfit, ever so did she come to be a nun with so many carefully placed over her habit, remarkably guises? Where did she come from? Were my managing to hold up ail manner of things with friends and 1 the only ones who'd noticed her pivoting PVC arms. She has forayed Into her? So on Monday evening 1 thought I'd pop many occupations (her chef and 40s nurse- around and have a few words with the with-bedpan outfits are two fine examples), residents of 341 Milton Road, Auchenflower. and hobbies (she once was a decidedly However, after a little deliberation I decided French artiste - painting a picture of her view that a lot of the allure of the Nun was her from the window, draped in a smock, proudly mystique. Her anonymity allowed me to run showing her works on an easel, palette at the the same questions through my mind every ready). She has, some weeks, covered even time I passed by, her mystery comprised a lot more imaginative territory - her gun toting, of what made her so special. So, after poncho wearing cowboy made me laugh out spoiling it for myself by chatting to those who loud as 1 sat on the bus, and, as Mexicana inhabit the house In which she stands, I nun, she shook those maracas like there decided to conduct an interview with the really was no tomorrow. Sometimes she saintly Sister Anjelina herself. She's a quiet appears in theme according to the week's one, not given to running off at the mouth, events; she's voted in the state elections, put nevertheless I was able to ask her a few up a tree at Christmas, and gotten a little things about herself. tipsy on New Years' Eve. She's been

48 When asked where she came from, I was theirs in return. One Easter card contains an delivered not with the answer 1 expected - excessive amount of "God Bless You's". I she didn't graduate from window modelling at wondered if there had been any objection David Jones, but rather, I was told she came from the Catholic church about her ability to from Hoboken, New Jersey. From a young manipulate her dowdy church clothes; but no, age she had run away to the circus (one can Sister Anjelina says that she has received no only speculate as to whether or not this is comment whatsoever from religious where the soft spot for costumes originates), authorities. She says she'll never dress in and then decided to join a convent (she anything tasteless, and said she feels as if thought she looked a 'bit all right' in a habit she has somethmg of a moral responsibility to and decided she'd give it a go). She found upkeep, what with being so much in public her way into the Milton Road window just eye, and all. One fan letter she received was before Christmas this year. When asked why addressed "Dear Sister or Mother Superior", she dresses up so ritualiy, it becomes clear which we both had a chuckle at, as Sister that Sister Anjelina has quite a sense of Anjelina says she has no particular ambition humour. She is quite aware that "a Nun in a to move up in the ranks, which is lucky, 1 habit doing anything is funny... People loved suppose, as she lives in front of a window Sister Act, didn't they?.." When asked what and doesn't get out much, if at all. She's her favourite outfit was, she thought perhaps received about ten letters in total, all of which it had to be Gladiator nun. She's quite a fan are carefully blue-tacked to the corner of the of films in fact, and is considering a few more window upon their arrival in the letterbox. ventures into movie related things (another of Sister Anjelina is happy to wear donated her all time faves is Psycho, so we can only outfits ("there's no shame in hand-me-downs," hope for a 'shower stabbing scene' outfit). As she tells me wisely) but claims that she won't for Gladiator Nun, it was the shining silver become an "advertising whore." She's sword that she liked best... and the glory of vehemently opposed to blatant product holding up that Oscar to thousands of placement and says she'll only promote commuters too, no doubt. things she personally enjoys, like the theatre.

I coyly asked her if I could have a sneak We chatted for quite a while. Sister Anjelina preview of next week's outfit, but to my and 1, and although the mystery of her disappointment she hadn't thought that far presence is no longer that, I really did realise ahead. She's often not sure of what she'll just how special she is, and left her window wear next week, sometimes having a bit of a that Monday night hoping that she'd never panic on a Sunday evening. She is, she told stop coming up with new costume ideas. To me, totally open to suggestions and will my relief, it seems she'll be around for a consider any requests that end up in her while yet. Sister Anjelina is a pleasant soul - mailbox. Sister Anjelina tends to fancy outfits drop her a letter sometime, suggest an outfit, that tie in to what's going on in the local area, point her out to your friends. And make sure or those that have a second meaning - just you remember to look up when you drive last week she appeared as a construction past. worker, just in time for the demolition of the tennis courts only a block away. BY KELLY VENTRESS Sister Anjelina proudly showed me the fanmail she has received - something she gets fairly often, which is proof, I suppose, that there are plenty of other commuters out there who love their Monday morning trip to work as much as I do. Most of them are anonymous, her fans seem to acknowledge her mystery, and play along with retaining

49 WOLF ASAHrS 5 MOST PASSIONATE RECORDS

5. DRUNK ON THE POPE'S wouldn't I. Nevertheless, PJ Han/ey hasn't lost BLOOD - The Birthday Party her husband, her best friend and her nephew in a single year (1996), so she still hasn't made a The cover screams '16 Minutes record like this, and 1 really hope she doesn't of Sheer Helll', and barely have to. Gone Again isn't a perfect record - all comes close. Australia's the artists on this list have done better ones, let darkest and bloodiest expat , alone other people - but passion is its own band made good on the ^f)»ify category, and the poet-punk monarch of NY has promise of Prayers On Fire with built a monument with this one. The opener rips this 1982 live set, going head to head with the your heart clean out of your chest - 'Bless his Stooges' awesome Fun House and winning on a eyes/Bless his limbs/Warrior soul/He's gone TKO when Nick Cave bellows 'And I stuck it/Deep again'she howls, and there's something about inside...' on a cover of the Stooges' 'Loose' like people who tell the truth that makes you want to managed to forget that he's supposed to be be like them, even when they're in this much pain, impressing you. And when Cave groans 'If there's and especially when you are. one thing I want from this worid' during 'Zoo Music Giri' while Roland Howard tortures hign-tension cables in the background, your breath catches at 2. THE REVOLUTION WILL the base of the brain. Their trouble is they sound NOT BE TELEVISED - Gil like they mean it, which can rub you the wrong Scott-Heron way if you're sensitive to pretension that day but there's no substitute for that. I chose this one because even though it is, musically speaking, 4. IN ON THE KILL TAKER- more chilled and groovy than Fugazi Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet or James Brown's Star Time, the passion On their previous record. behind it burns the tracks up with more articulate Steady Diet of Nothing, Guy rage than one human being should have to have, Picciutto started by yelping and Gil does it without losing his temper. 'Exeunt-uh -1', or in other words Sonically it's raw and cooking at the same time 'Clear the fucking lane', over like the best 1971 funk always is - dry snares, guitars that were the sonic loping bass, and Gil's piano, which makes you equivalent of boiling mud. That's Fugazi - start think he knows what to do with other people's from scratch every time and earn that fist in the nipples, whether he's making love or trying to air honestly This 1995 record is probably the extract information. best example of how much discipline and tenacity that takes. The twelve songs that make up this 1. TRANSITION - John album are stacked with innovative rock playing, Coltrane but what allows the passion full flight is that Fugazi long ago tossed the verse-chorus-verse This is the sound of a human and learned to track their song structures soul in purgatory, and its precisely to the way your breath moves through redeeming grace is that the your body when you're hearing it - which means artist involved was certainly one they can take it away from you. All this would be of the greatest of last century. all very Phil-Spector-clever except that the pin­ Suffering from liver cancer, point dynamics are carrying an extraordinary trying to find peace in meditation and desperate to commitment to personal and political change, one commit as much music to tape as he could before that you hear Guy and co-vocalist/guitarist Ian he died, Coltrane strikes a light with the finest MacKaye dragging up straight from their guts. piano-bass-drums trio in modern jazz and goes When you hear the guitars and drums roll down searching. The title of this album is probably what like security grilles at the beginning of 'Rend It' pushes it further for me than Ascension or even and they stop dead on the ground and Guy howls the magnificent A Love Supreme - the man's 'Why don't you come to my house...? Why don't awesome saxophone playing is ringing the you drag me right out...?', you don't know if he's changes of his life, and when he takes it into the screaming at an army or a lover and it could be highest register eight minutes Into the first track, either but it's probably both and either way the it's one of those sounds you didn't know the hairs on the back of your neck are not under your human soul could make, but the instant you hear control. it you know it's a human being making it, and you can't do anything else: you have to stand there while his sax screams like the witness to a brutal 3. GONE AGAIN - Patti Smith crime, before it comes back down in a swooping cadence that feels like a chest-crushing hug. We love you, PJ Han/ey, and personally I'd say Rid Of Me is better than Horses, Smith's WOLF ASAHI 1977 debut set, but I was born 50 in 1976 so I would say that, COFFIN FOR HEAD OF STATE- FELA KUTI Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was always passionate about his music and politics, but never more than when his community home was destroyed by hundreds of Nigerian soldiers. During the conflict, members of Fela's Kalakuta Republic were beaten and raped. His mother, a prominent political figure was thrown from a first floor window and later died from her injuries. Fela spent a few months in prison on bogus charges and on his release began recording songs he'd written while in jail. 'Coffin for Head of State' is a passionate, moody jazz classic mourning his mother's death. On a higher note, Fela, a strong believer in traditional African customs mar­ ried 27 women on the anniversary of Kalakuta's destruction. A passionate political activist and banger of booty his death in '93 was considered by those close to him of a man weakened by an AIDS related illness but killed by the governments which harassed and tortured him for reacting against injustice.

ANDREW COLLINS

acconiingto least nnilrewl passionate most songs passionate songs

I Only Have Eyes for You - The Flamingoes Close to You - The Carpenters Love Bites - Def Leppard Victim of Pleasure - Mandy Je Taime - Serge Gainsbourg Jou Ne Sai Pa Pu Quar - Kylie Minogue Don't Steal My Love - Tony Joe White Achey Breaky Heart - Bill Ray Cirus Message to My Girl - Split Enz Right Back Where We Started From - Sinitta Green Eyed Giri - Ted Hawkins Said I Love You (But I Lied) - Michael Bolton We Belong - Pat Benatar As Long As You Love Me - Backstreet Boys Stay - Shakespeare's Sister Boom Boom (Let's Go Back to My Room - Paul Lekakis She's My Baby - Mazzy Star 500 Miles - The Proclaimers Churu Liya - Bally Sagoo Around the Way Giri - LL Cool J San Diego Seranade - Tom Waits I've Neve Been to Bed with an Ugly Woman (But I Sure Do I Do - Stevie wonder Woke Up with You) - Unknown hillbilly More Than A Feeling - Boston Total Control - The Motels Milonga del Engel - Astor Piazzorolla Surfer Giri - Beach Boys 51 Indie was sure he'd developed Clambering out of a resistance to alarm clocks. bed at three meant In two weeks he'd conquered Indie had about two no less than fourteen, hours, taking transit sleeping through the pulsing INDIE'S time into scream of each consideration (train- consecutively, day after day. bus-bus), before he He'd tried everything - radio had to leave for alarms, wristwatch jingles, FflLL university. Half an wake-up calls, programmed hour for bathing, lighting - and slept through shaving and dressing, them all with a comatose ease. ten minutes for a Nothing could touch the Titar]ium cigarette, fifteen for a Man. He was immune to the morning sandwich, five for his favourite and safe from all sounds. tune of the moment, ten to get organised, five to call his girlfriend It was as if time itself had disregarded Indie, had (God how he hated that word) to confirm their forgotten or replaced him with somebody else, or rendevous at eight for drinks, and fifteen to walk if Indie himself had disregarded time. Either way to the train station. Once awake, Indie still the worid spun on. While he slept, men and commanded a degree of his old organisation and women went to work, alternately loved and punctuality, it was the getting up that was the real despised each-other, developed neuroses, problem. thought selectively and applied for bank loans. Televisions flickered an ocean of light, drugs Indie had met Monica in a bar a few weeks before flooded the planet and everything continued, as the onset of his sickness. She was different from sure as clockwork, slowly to die. anyone he'd ever met before, and of all the things he worried about with respect to his sleeping, his To find himself in bed at two p.m. on any given relationship with Monica caused him the most day could not, therefore, surprise Indie in the grief. She was the only person in Indie's life least. Even to discover himself clambering out of who'd secured a speed-dial button on his phone bed at three, as he did on Monday the fourteenth, in less than a day - it was infatuation at first all tossle-haired and laundry-basket-dishevelled, sight. He remembered the night he met Monica was an unremarkable commonplace. On this like one remembers a vivid dream, distant though particular Monday, however, the banalities powertui, haunting and unshakable. With a turn of stopped there. What the day's remains held In her head he was hooked. She was the most stall for Indie he couldn't have imagined, never graceful creature he'd ever set eyes on, a mind predicted. Indie's fall, however fanciful it snaking, amnesic beauty he could not believe. may seem, was a real product of the greatest Within a month they were inseperable, within one imagination there is and ever was - that of truth. and a half they were separated by Indie's Like puppy fat, pencil shavings, staple guns and sickness like a convicted murderer from the coffee mugs, it happened. If it seems unreal to public. you it's because you've a handle on its truth. The fact is, on Monday the fourteenth. Indie fell in By twenty to five. Indie had eaten, showered, truth and outside time. shaved, dressed, packed and smoked a cigarette all according to plan. Lifting the telephone Before the sleeping sickness, Indie had painted reciever to his ear, he pressed a small grey an altogether different picture. Working days as a rectangle of raised rubber captioned "Monica" in waiter in a stingy cafe and attending lectures at black biro. As the familiar, sped-up melody of the state university by night, he was everything Monica's phone number bounced inside his ear, one could have asked of a young man today - Indie thought about Richard Hell, lead singer of studious, punctual, well-presented, sociable and The Voidoids and subject of that night's lecture. kind. He wrote stories and played the drums, He began to sing out loud, "1 belong to the feigned heterosexuality to the relief of his Blank..." immediate family, spoke confidently on a range of "Hello?" controversial topics and generally presented a "Generation! You can take me or..." face of youth and well-being. He was neither introverted nor religious, particularly gifted or "Hello?" Inspired, didn't shoot smack, pop goofballs, sniff "leave me it's true! Yeah I belong to the..." glue or drink unduly Bascically Indie was "Excuse me? Hello?" "Blaa... Oh, hello?" ordinary, he was "nice." No one earmarked him "Yes?" for the fall. Nothing portended Its coming. "Sorry I was just sing..." "I know." On Monday nights Indie attended lectures for his "Erm, is Monica home by any chance?" favourite subject, From the Velvets to the "Monica?" Voidoids, subtitled A Post-Punk History of the "Yes, this Is Indie calling, I'm a friend of her's." Pre-Punk World. Before the sickness he'd have "Think you've got the wrong number mister, ain't worked lunch at the cafe beforehand, taking no Monica lives here." orders and wiping down tables in order to finance "Is that the Lewis' residence?" his studies. When it arrived, however, Indie "Nope." missed three shifts consecutively and lost his job "Have 1 called 38760848?" as a consequence. Since then he'd been living off "Yep." his substantial savings, a little concerned for his "Then I've called the Lewis'." welfare, but more about his general health. "No you haven't buddy, this is the Johnson's. I'm 52 Matt Johnson, so what d'you want?" some important Information," he thought, "mixed "To speak to Monica, please." up this week's location or start-time or "I already told ya there ain't no Monica lives something." Lifting himself off the curbing, Indie here." bent to ground to gather his things. 'There was yesterday." "No there wasn't. I've been here twenty-odd years "Whoo-hoo! Nice ass! Check out that ass! Whoo- bud and'n'all that time there ain't never been a hoo! I want a piece!" Indie spun at breakneck single Monica living here." speed to meet Chris, an old friend, whoop- "Okay 1 must've made a mistake, sorry to bother hollering behind him. Chris was as camp as you Matt." anyone you're likely to meet, dressed exclusively "That's all right, erm..." in blue and wore orange bobby-pins in his hair. "Indie." For as long as he could remember, Indie had "Yeah, Indie, That's okay. Bye then." known and loved Chris. In their time together, "Bye." twenty years or more by Indie's count, they'd shared everything from sherbet sticks to acid Perplexed, Indie set the receiver down. After a trips, pre-schools to needles. Of all the people minute he picked it up again, held it to his ear Indie could have bumped into (bar Monica), Chris and pressed the same, gray, faded-from-overuse was the best. "He'll sort me out," thought Indie, rectangular button. After a few rings, a voice "he'll fuckin' set things straight." answered, "Hello?" It was Matt Johnson again. Indie slammed down the phone. With his hand "Hiya Chris, what's doing?" still on the receiver he read the time as ten to "Hi there gorgeous, nothin' 'till you came along, five. "Fuck," he mumbled under his breath, "five hmm, hmm-hmm." minutes late." Chris smirked the grin of mischievous schoolboy, all hands-twitching on tippy-toes. As he ran to the train station, Indie thought about "Hey Chris, 1 think somehow I've screwed up my how odd what just happened to him really was. timetable or something, normally I have a lecture Never in the month and a half he'd known Monica here at this time, but there's no one around or had this happened, and never in all the times anything and..." he'd visited her had he run into a Matt Johnson. "Named me already have you? Filthy fiend, I like Indie couldn't wait to have it out with Monica later you! Hmm, hmm-hmm." on, for how peculiar it had been, how very "What?" amusing. For an instant he felt well again, "Think I'll call you Edwin, hmm, hmm-hmm." animated by the strange event just passed. Indie "Good one Chris." was running and thinking at speed, two things he "Don't think I've ever met anyone as toward as hadn't done for a fortnight. Making the train with you buddy. You really know what you want, eh? minutes to spare, he thought about how great he Out here in the open and everything? Zowee, felt, how spritely and eager, how much he was you're a live one!" looking toward to seeing Monica. "I'll tell her I "What the fuck are you talking about Chris?" love her tonight," he thought, "I'm the best I've "Hmm, hmm-hmm..." been for weeks." "Would you stop that dumb giggling?" "Hmm, hmm-hmm..." On the train, Indie drew pictures. He thought of "Look, I'm kind of fragile today some weird stuff

On the train, Indie drew pictures. He thought of trips to the seaside he made as a child, afternoons lazing around like a cat, himself circa 1986 and the shape of Monica's belly. trips to the seaside he made as a child, happened earlier, I'm not in the mood for this afternoons lazing around like a cat, himself circa trite." 1986 and the shape of Monica's belly. Peering "Ftesty too and..." through its windows at the world passing by, Indie "Shut up Chris!" pictured his place in the train from above, seeing Chris took a single step backwards and stopped, himself as a satellite would, as a piece of trash dumbfounded. caught in a storm water drain. As everything "You really think my name's Chris don't you?" rushed by like some stranger in the city, Indie "Yes, Chris, I do." thought how he loved its mystery, the beautiful "But it isn't." depths of Monica's eyes and the taste of "What?" cigarettes after coffee. He was sick of his "My name isn't Chris, it's Henry" sickness, the sleep and its tortures. He'd had it "Henry?" with dreaming and wanted his life, a life he "Uh-huh." adored when given half the chance. "This is too much." Arriving early to his lecture, Indie thought it odd there was no one around. Admittedly, he was Standing opposite one-another, each man stared never normally on time, let alone early but the into the other's eyes. Locked in each other's gaze fact that there there wasn't a single soul about as such, each knew the other told a truth - each didn't sit well with his conscience. Taking a seat told a truth, the truth, their own. on a strip of garden-bed curbing. Indie smoked three fags in quick succession. After fifteen Indie reeled. His head felt tight. The earth fell in minutes with no one around, he decided that beneath his feet, and he with it, or so it seemed. Chris' eyes were not his own. "Henry doesn't something was wrong. "Probably slept through 53 know Indie from Adam. He doesn't even know By the time Indie reached the cafe it was one Chris. Is Henry Chris, or is Chris actually Henry?" minute past the hour. If ever there was a time for Indie felt like he was wearing a helmet. Monica to appear, it was now... enter stage left. Something he knew to be real was not. Chris was Like a machine gun mowing down innocent Henry and Indie was shattered. civilians, Indie's eyes washed over everyone in the cafe. Three businessmen, two schoolboys, a All he could think of was to find a phone, to call lonely-looking lady and a mangy old dog. No sanity, to hear its soft voice in his ear. He'd call Monica. No salvation. Monica, love of his life, pillar of strength and fidelity She'd explain what had just happened, Racing up to his old boss, Darren, Indie pleaded.

Indie reeled His head felt tight. The earth fell in beneath his feet, and he with it, or so it seemed. how Chris was Henry, how Henry was Chris and "Have you seen Monica? Have you seen her?" how all of this was fine and dandy. She'd say that Indie found himself grabbing this man by the occasionally her telephone line got crossed with arms, shaking them and screaming, "Have you? Matt Johnson's, a previous tenant of her flat, and Have you?" that he, Indie, shouldn't worry about a thing. Indie "What the fuck? Who in God's name are you?" dialed: 3, 8, 7, 6, 0, 8, 4, 8. "Hello?" Indie's head split. It was happening again. "Hello, I was wondereing if I could speak to Nothing he knew to be true actually was. Nothing Monica please? You see, we'd arranged to meet he knew to be real really was. Nobody knew him tonight at..." and nobody cared. Not Monica, Chris or Darren. "Is that you again?" All had gone crazy and Indie was scared. Indie's head steamed. "Yes." Running back to the bus stop, Indie fell. Once "Still ain't no Monica here pal, ha, ha-ha, ha-ha!" down he felt he would never get up. It was all too "Aarrgghh!" much. Anything was better than this, was easier. As the cool grass massaged his stomach and Indie slammed down the receiver. Everything was face. Indie felt he could happily die, alone, there. wrong again. Without Monica, he felt he would fall For a second he blanked out. Into the blackness, to pieces. Indie glanced at his wristwatch. Green a second of death. digits flashed "7:38." He'd meet Monica at eight, and everything would be fine. Her line was still When he awoke he was outside his door. How he crossed, but it didn't matter. Indie had spoken to had got there he hadn't a clue. Though covered in her only yesterday, and anyway, Monica was sweat and grimy with blood. Indie felt strangely at bound to remember, she always did. ease. A strange music wafted from behind the familiar door, nothing he knew. It sounded like To his surprise, Indie ran to the bus stop. Dylan or Petty or both. It could've been Young, he Something within him was pushing him on, an knew it was bad. Nevertheless it was odd, this uncertainty hot as a strong pulsing sun. This time strange music coming from behind what was his, around, Indie took no pleasure in the world Indie's, front door. Reaching for his keys. Indie passing by behind the bus' long windows. It all found his pocket had ripped, its contents looked so chaotic outside, everything bled into misplaced and his inner thigh showing. "Fuck," he everything else. People's faces washed into mumbled. others', roads merged with buildings and noise consumed all. Indie was scared. Before he was Tentatively, Indie limbered up towards the door. angry, but now he was scared. What if Monica With every step, the music grew stranger. Lifting didn't show? What if she, like Chris, was a fist to knock on the door, he heard voices. They somebody else? What if she was Matt Johnson? were deep and foreign sounding. Perhaps Indian, perhaps Welsli. He knocked once and stepped Three solemn faces turned to face Indie. "Was he back. alnght?" they seemed to plead. "I'm all right, I'm alright!" Indie hissed at them, pulling the stop From behind the door Indie heard a scratching. rope, heanng the "ding!" As the bus slowed down, Last year he'd had a chain-lock, a peephole and indie shifted his weight from his arse to the soles deadbolt installed after the people downstairs of his sneakers. reported a prowler. All of a sudden the door was swept open. Indie felt his t-shirt ruffle from the Once off the bus, he walked at pace towards the gust. "Hello," he heard himself say. cafe where he used to work. It was there he'd "Hello," he replied. arranged to meet Monica, his salvation, in three "You look terrible," he said. minutes' time. Like Indie before the sickness, "You've got terrible music taste," he said. Monica was a punctual, well-presented girl who feigned enthusiam for all array of things. She was Indie stood facing himself. "And then there were "nice," had short brown hair and never wore two," one of them thought. Locked in each other's heels. As her image formed in Indie's mind he gaze, each Indie knew the other told a truth - powered on, walking through traffic without even each told a truth, the truth, their own. One Indie looking, stomping on aluminium cans when reeled. His head felt tight. The earth fell in normally at least before the sickness, he would beneath their feet, and they with it, or so it have picked them up. seemed.

54 GAV: THE UQ YEARS OR, WHAT? THAT WAS IT?

What can I say?

I've been asked, before I leave for Europe, to write one last thing for Semper: probably because my last article - 'Student Life and Other Contradictions' - generated a groundswell of interest (two emails). So what to offer as a follow up to my (heavily edited) magnum opus? Well, nothing of note really I'm just going to offload some baggage:

Shit UQ shits me!!!!

I mean, is it just me? The pretension, alienation, lack of pub (the staff club is run by absolute pricks as well), union fees, crappy subjects, crappier lecturers (with exceptions), lack of music, lack of fun, spirit of seriousness, and all that grass with no soccer going on.

Politics

ALL people in political parties are wankers (of IL. M varying intensity): this is just a fact of life. Those that seek power over others' lives are exactly the people that shouldn't be given it! Now our global corporate monoculture is a rancid smegma sandwich. We know this. How many killing sprees, self-image disorders, Jerry Springers, Hollywood culture don't join it. Regardless of what anyone drivel, boybands and reality TV shows do we says (especially me), in the final analysis need to endure before this truth is proclaimed everyone is responsible for their actions. So if the self-evident!? "So what's the answer Gav - how dominant paradigm makes you retch - don't buy do we change the worid?" Simply by changing the into it. Reject the culture if you don't dig it; and if only thing you know you can change - yourself. you don't want to reject it then stop whingeing Forget politics, parties, parliament, petitions and about it: get a job, get divorced, take prozac, eat pissing about in general. If you don't like the shit and fucking die!!! I'm over it 55 student Unions Speed Cameras

ALL people in student politics are apprentice How long are we going to put up with these wankers. The student union, like all unions, is a pedantic shitheads in blue? Sitting all day In their hierarchical, pseudo-leftist, bureaucratic, money comfy vans jacking off to porno mags while they hungry pain in the fucking neck. For the toke on confiscated weed - my God how can reactionary among you - no, I'm not right wing; anyone respect the police anymore?l If anyone and, for the myopic socialists, no, I'm not left runs into any police officers tell them that they wing. (Anyone who classifies themselves should be fucking ashamed of themselves:

Thank god for the police! What would happen without their petty vigilance?!

according to this redundant dichotomy has the mentality of a football hooligan). We should fuck sucking dollars off people for going 67 in a 60 the union off, fuck the senate off (vice chancellor zone - oh thank god for the police! What would and assorted scum) and replace them with happen without their petty vigilance?! In '68 they democratic student-teacher councils federated at said 'Ihere's a cop inside all of us - we must kill the faculty level. That's as far as I go - the rest is him," but I reckon we should start with the full up to those out here with brains and guts. blown cases first. Okay I'm being a bit over the top but speed cameras and red light cameras Postmodernism cause accidents - I've seen it happen. These things are there just to raise dough for police stag parties. They do not sen^e any useful purpose Postmodernism is generally a load of fucking (apart from raising dough for police stag parties). twaddle. Many of you might not know what Postmodernism is, so here's a pithy summary: A postmodernist talks a lot but says very little. Oh, another thing that pisses me off: self- Whilst postmodern Ism's refutation of objective righteous would-be authors picking off easy truth and reality is a step fonward it leaves us in a targets with predictable, schoolboy sarcasm. relativistic abyss because it doesn't posit anything to replace objective truth with. Superseding All the best to everyone at UQ, even the parking postmodern nihilism should be the project of attendants. And rememben you have to lose contemporary philosophy but, with few exceptions, yourself to find yourself (corny and paradoxical postmodernism still rules in 'unlworid'. It Is little but true). wonder then that neariy all courses - they are all products of the dominant Weltanschauung Cheers, (philosophical woridview) - are a pile of horseshlt. GAV Anyway deal with it and don't take it seriously. I mean what are you doing in lectures anyway? You Gav would like to thank the following people and products: should be off yer fucking head, dancing, kissing, Robert Pirsig; Bill hicks; Albert Camus; Krishnamurti; DT laughing, fondling, loving (well at least rooting). Suzuki; Julian Jaynes; Fritjof Capra; PJ Harvey; Radiohead; Never take authority seriously (especially If you Liverpool football club; My mum and dad; The QUT campus ever have it yourself). Get drunk, take drugs and club; Ric's; SBS; ABC; JJJ; ZZZ; Asian food; Ecstasy; Tooheys enjoy yourself because before you know it you're old; Cannabis; Guinness; Coopers sparkling ale; Monty too old to do it without three days recuperation Python; The Coen Brothers; Vaalla French Vanilla Yoghurt; and a drip. Emanuelle Beart; The Internet; My girlfriend; HoJBproof

56 passionfruit

How passionate can a sales rep GET? After a month of alcoholic oblivion spent mainly in that sex-driven yuppie haunt. The Press Club, I succumbed to the vibe, and started eyeing off men. Almost immediately a rather dashing young doctor offered me a cigarette, and we spent the rest of the i|Sp|^ ^^^^^^^^^^-mmmm^,^^^^ evening chatting drunkenly ^ about nothing. At 4:40am, f he dragged me off to a couch, and started m passionately kissing me. M "Come home with me" he whispered seductively in my ear. J> not "I don't go home with creating strange men", 1 answered, any "Would you like my phone negative number'r" shaped karma!" up with the "Actually I was just after a modern era, and So we're a spiritual one night stand." relocated itself from the organisation TOO! Personals to the I pretended that I felt really Employment section. She flung her hair back and fine about this, and gave strutted across the room, him some clues on now to It was a sign to stop dilly-dallying around in "It's all good, all good" recognise women who were artistic bludgery, and get a real job. 'into that scene'. He I started to feel nauseous. confided In me that he'd Full of that short-lived exuberance one never tried to do this before, experiences when forging into unknown The sales meeting so hopefully my advice was territory, 1 fronted up to the sales office. commenced with the ringing BELIEVE in your product! LOVE your pro duct! Assume the sale! Be passionat e! Be excited! useful. Much to my surprise, I was immediately of bells and the stamping of employed and completely unaware that door feet. Soon, there were The next day, devastated by knocking is one of the most unpopular jobs speed addicts spinning on my bank bafance and around. I nervously entered the training their heads, collecting $100 feeling terribly cynical about room where lots of guys with baggy trousers bonuses. Group roanng everyfning, I decided to and big black circles under their eyes were exercises, whooping, plunder the newspaper for a jigging around to techno. An obnoxious shouting and dancing. Make job In sales. It seemed, in wnite Doard started screaming red ink at me: the sale, make the sale, my fogged up state of mind, BELIEVE in your product! LOVE your MAKE THE SALE! Pumped that the inability for people product! Assume the sale! Be passionate! to the max, dollar signs to feel ANYTHING (beyond Be excited! You're the best! You're the one! pouring out of their eyes, the need for money and the Do it for YOU! Do it for us! the reps were ready to rage. odd shag) was severely on the increase. "Sometimes 1 feel guilty about forcing people Finally I was starting to to sign when they don't really want to. I make sense of the world: overheard a disconsolate sales rep say Passion still exists, it has "WE ARE SEEKING ^^,^^, simply adapted to the times PEOPLE WITH A PASSION far better than I have. FOR SALES" "This is what I tell myself," our gorgeous boss advised, "You're not doing any harm, Danielle Bentley 57 Obviously Passion had so its okay What's it called? Karma! You're reviews

Crimes of Passion

Long Night's Journey into Day

Directed by Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman.

"....a commission is a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation."

Mr Dullar Omar, former South African Minister for Justice.

Long Night's Journey Into Day is an aptly named uniquely different cases, that combine to create a documentary that has as its subject the ongoing greater understanding of human suffering and the proceedings of the South African Truth and strength it takes to forgive. The first case tells of Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Four cases are the white American Allbright Scholar, Amy Biehl, told of those seeking amnesty from the politically who was stabbed to death by four black South motivated crimes they committed during American men. Inspired by Nelson Mandela, she apartheid. In the process, amnesty is granted had come to South Africa to aid in the country's when and if the TRC Is convinced the entire truth first democratic election. But to the four men who has been told and the families of the victims are murdered her, she represented the oppression convinced there is genuine remorse. Each case is and injustices the white people of their country exceptionally different from the next, which makes had enforced upon them. One of the men who the viewer appreciative and respectful of the stabbed her recalls how he felt when he challenges of achieving a reconciliation between discovered who he had murdered, crying to two peoples divided by the remnants of a severe himself, 'What have I done?'. At the TRC trial, racist policy Biehl's parents did not refuse amnesty telling the Commission they understood forgiveness to be Could you forgive someone who callously the only way to honour their daughter's passion murdered your father, your child, your husband, for wanting to help heal a nation crippled by your sister, because they believed at the time they apartheid. It's a warming case that eases you into were upholding a justice that is now understood to the process but cannot by any means prepare you be the most severe form of racism? These are for the ones that follow. questions that you as the viewer must endure as each case is told. Constantly you are forced to In extreme contrast, the Guguletu 7 trial is also reassess your thoughts on pain and suffering, told. This case is Intensely complicated, both in retribution and vengeance. The Rev. Desmond the understanding of the crime and the need for Tutu describes the purpose of the TRC as being forgiveness. Seven young black men from the less about retributive justice and more about town of Guguletu, after being misled by a black restorative justice. undercover agent, had prepared to raid the police headquarters. They were intercepted on their way The film makers, Frances Reid and Deborah shot dead by police on the side of the road; a Hoffman have managed to bring together four school bus of children witness to the carnage. At 56 the TRC, the black undercover agent is forced to apartheid are brought to the forefront. They may explain how he could endure a career in which he be hard to accept, but they attempt to explain the befriended these seven young men, pumping complex motivations of the perpetrators of these them with lies and then turn on them in the name crimes and the anguish of the victims. It provides of justice. This is unquestionably the most a sense of healing. Admittedly the proof of the temperamental case, and one with mixed effectiveness of the TRC lies in the future. But it is emotions. The proceedings are constantly put on a future that even now is seeing a more hold, as the mothers of the seven men are taken reconciled South Africa. away overcome by the findings. But it is their persistence that is inspiring, despite one of the Similariy our own nation is continuing to struggle mothers confessing she understood the with reconciliation. It seems as if the reconciliation importance of forgiveness, but could not find it in process in Australia has become almost stagnate, her capacity to do so. or at least, Is being shrouded by superficialities of language. Corroborree 2000, and the January 1st, Confession might be a noble and Christian ideal 2001 deadline established by which we were to All the time, their victims' families watch, hoping to see remorse, wanting to feel forgiveness. that helps to cleanse the soul, but that can 'achieve' reconciliation, is over. Our Prime Minister depend greatly on the confessions and to whom failed to say sorry, opting for an apparently more they are addressed. There is no denying that the diplomatic 'deep and sincere regret', leaving far TRC process is just as distressing for the too many people feeling ripped off. This year. perpetrators of the crimes. We learn in the Sorry Day celebrations in capital cities barely beginning of the film that amnesty seekers managed a crowd of 200, which is in stark voluntarily submit themselves to the TRC. They contrast to the tens of thousands who marched must recall in a public arena their actions and how last year. Our enthusiasm has become depleted, they justified them through apartheid. All the time, or at the very least Is plagued by any real their victims' families watch, hoping to see direction. If anything, we should take from Long remorse, wanting to feel forgiveness. It's Night's Journey Into Day, a rejuvenating passion aggravating at times to feel sympathy for these for reconciliation. The TRC shows that it is perpetrators, but it is all conducive to the acheivable and worth achieving. Australia's history reconciliation process. may be different to South Africa but the ideals and desire for reconciliation remain the same. Despite the TRC being a gruelling, exhausting and painful process, it appears to work. Truths of By ERIN O'HANLON 59 reviews

fading the borders of meaning

Fader

Krissy Collum, Chris Comer, Mat Fletcher, Chris Handran, Jess Hynd Curated by Sandra Selig

Metro Arts, 109 Edward St, Brisbane 16/3/01-25/05/01

The artists involved in Fader understand that into his work in order to question the location and expression and meaning are not interchangeable. magnitude of meaning. For Fletcher, meaning For them, meaning exists in the proliferation of exists somewhere between the architectural and forces bringing their artworks and their 'viewers' allegorical borders of the gallery and institution, as into the gallery. As such, the gallery presumes a well as in the unbounded sound-wave vibrations problematic posture: it holds the borders in which emanating from its structures. the future meaning of their art is simultaneously independent of and contingent with. The process Fletcher continues this exploration into the of making art, or rather constructing its meaning is boundaries of meaning in his complementary thus deflected away from the unitary individual installation. Here the repetition of four tiny locus of the artist. This ricochet in making may at speakers fixed to the wall just below chest-height first appear daunting, however the artists in Fader contrasts with the random nature of its sounds' embrace it. reception. The (in)audibility of Fletcher's sounds requires the 'viewer' to approach the work more Mat Fletcher explores the problematic borders of intimately In doing so, Fletcher locates the limits the gallery space through his sound-based and randomness of sensory interaction as a installations. In one of two works In the show, source of subsequent meaning. Fletcher has completely imbedded the source of his low-frequency sounds into the gallery wall so Chris Comer also explores sensory experience as that the surface of the speaker pulsates out of the a site of meaning. In her video installation the architecture supporting it. Fletcher consciously viewer is confronted with an excessive display of incorporates the definitions of the gallery space image movement. Comer's intention is to

60 displace the expectation of comprehension, thus personal and political. Hynd's performance and eliminating the promise of her imagery leading to the objects which provide the stage, allegorically her meaning. Comer, like Fletcher, appropriates reference the constraints of hegemonic orders the architecture of the gallery to do so. Her video within the economic rationalism of late-capitalism. projection spans across the curved back wall of In her performance, Hynd and her male counter­ the gallery, morphing her imagery into a new part trade positions, postures and movements in 'form'. Comer's imagery and its manifestation apparently arbitrary relations. Hynd Is dressed (or according to the gallery thus annihilate the space contained) in skin-colour and skin-tight fabric for meaning in an attempt to open it up. while her male tyrant's authority exudes from his black business suit. Hynd's 'props' include two In an interesting contrast, Chris Handran's video single beds positioned at opposite ends of the

Fader opposes itself to the conventions of group-exhibitions by allowmg the works to evolve and expand beyond their initial conceptions. installation also attempts to disperse the site of gallery, a toy-like wooden house mounted on the meaning construction. Handran's monitor wall, and her trademark 'housebox' institution displays the passing of clouds across a blue sky reflected in a mirror. Handran has slowed this uninspiring Imagery down so that an engagement with it slowly turns Through their interaction with these props and into a cliched dream-like unconscious. Opposing each other, Hynd and her 'tyrant' play out and itself to Comer's rapidity It is here that Handran between the normalities of hegemonically attempts to clear a space so that Imaginations structured life. Hynd replaces the constraints of and memories may be supplanted. However, institutionalised orders with these movements, within this release, Handran's monitor contains its positions and postures in an exploration for a new viewers within its boundaries. The viewer is order. Hynd desires equality; sexual, political, simultaneously captivated to explore the zones social, thus attempts to break down the orders beyond the patterns and rhythms of this imagery and structures of social life as well as of the while remaining fixed within its borders. gallery and art-making.

Krissy Collum explores the boundaries of In curating the exhibition, Sandra Selig has perception and experience in her sand Installation. chosen artists who show an enthusiasm for Like Handran, Collum attempts to open up a creativity and collaboration. Fader opposes itself space where meaning can float between memory to the conventions of group-exhibitions by and imagination. Collum's sand mound emerges allowing the works to evolve and expand beyond or regresses from the architecture of the gallery, their initial conceptions. This is indeed the creating a claustrophobic zone resembling potency of Fader, as it morphs beyond an Comer's proliferating imagery. This border expected causal connection between artist / between comfort and displacement, location and artwork and meaning, and alternatively begins to dislocation surfaces as the zone In which Collum's sprawl across the boundaries of experience, meaning may be constructed, or rather where the meaning and making. viewer may immerse themselves in an escape from the inconsistencies of everyday experience. GRANT STEVENS Jess Hynd is also concerned with inconsistencies, however her borders are significantly more [Image by Chris Handran] 61 reviews

gerling - The Zoo, 9th June 2001

It's a shame to realise that you need to be reminded Being young is not about shopping at General Pants. that you're young. That you are the most productive you It's a philosophy that, if you are lucky never leaves your will ever be, the most inspired, the most unattached, side. These guys are so aggressively exploiting their the most energetic. That this is the prime of your life. age, their energy and their lack of responsibility that it That this is now, but you've forgotten. Being a young makes a person like me watch and wonder why I'm not person has gone from being an excuse to being a doing the same, why everyone my age is not doing the brand. You can now proudly tout the phrase "I am a same! Instead, all of my friends are riddled with young person," and government heads will turn and anxieties about work, money study relationships, listen. It's a good time for being listened to. It's a good careers, and being productive. It seems that being time for being young. young has become a time to accumulate all of the head strains of being older as quickly as possible. An The true essence of being young is in the acceleration of self destruction. Goddamn it you are unselfconscious display of fun and play Despite this, young! geriing are living proof, geriing helped me young people are more and more inclined to be remember. By LOUISE TERRY attracted to non-fun-making experiences. Maybe it has to do with a desire to be more mature and complex? Maybe it's an assertion of free will and psychological f\jaQ "fe-, independence? Whatever the case, there are many popular bands producing music about death, mass destruction, hate and self annihilation. The majority of young people out there seem to prefer having no fun at all. Having fun isn't cool. Being young has become a secret.

Enter geriing - a three piece band from Sydney all in their early twenties. Three boys who possess the stage with their robotic convulsions, tuneless screamings and guitar rock-outs. They're a dirty electro-pop hurricane that can't quite decide whether their Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, Sonic Youth, Pavement or one of the many kitsch disco acts out there.

Whether you actually like their music or not isn't the issue here. A live performance this energetic cannot be ignored. You can't help but wonder whether these guys by Sarah Kane have their tongue in their cheek the whole time they're on stage, or whether they're actually a little insane. 12-28 July 2001 Burke (guitars, a bit of drums, keys and samples) has BooWngs: (07) 3010 2600 got the whole "I am a machine on the verge of self .^ Feaiciring' SiBvon&ives Director: Unda Hassan destruction" thing going on, Darren (lead vocalist, DestflOOf; Aiison Ross "^•^j, Maicoi Dorney Uehfing: GaoHSquiros guitars, samples) is a little dynamo and obviously the Sound- Leila Wataun

instigator of all the stage mayhem and Paul (drums and 1 a yeim ami ever WARNING; carlalns expiicii mstsjrtai, iwcwgt. m0,' sw vioiowe vocals) is the quiet beer drinking fellow who says a few lines between songs ("are we havin' fun?"), plays the 6UST£0, by Sarah Kane, opens at La Boite drums like a machine and wears huge earphones and a Theatre on Thursday 12th July. Featuring : golden cape. Steven Grives, Melfnda Butet and Marcel ; Dorney, and dinscted by Unda HasssI, the It gave me pleasure to see a mass of smiling people productton provas to be one df the most jumping up and down to geriing. It made me think that r. maybe-there-are-people-out- there-who-want-to-be- significant and daring ever expariencdd t)y happy-and-maybe-l-will-meet-them-andthey-will-meet- Brisbane audiences. Semper has 10 double me-and-we-wlll-all-meet-each-other-and-start-a-love- passes to 'giveaway: 6 for Tues.. 10th, and 5 i revolution. Then I realised that'd already happened. The for Weds. 11th, startlng.at 8pm. The first ten '' point is there were lots ot trappy young people at pmBT$ tovisi! ouroffjce score; For bookings- geriing ready for fun. And shouldn't it be that way? or further info, on BLASTED, call La Boite on' Some were dancing and some were sitting trying to 3010 2603, WARNING: this f$ an n-ratetl '- look more disinterested than their friends beside them, ' show containing explicit materlat, but we all know who were enjoying themselves. language, nudity^ and violence. 62 \

OK,

By Jen Smith

Chris Comer 'Flash John,' 2001 digital print, size variable

REPORT FROM THE are the nations at the stern of progressive social PRESIDENCY and economic change. The last couple of months have been not as - Helped out with Sorry Day Week, organised the hectic usual, but there's still been a steady stream Sea of Hands and other events. Many thanks to of things to do and problems to resolve. all the students who attended the Sorry Day In Brief, some of the things I've done: events and to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit, Goorie Berrimpa and Chris Vernon - Attended a number of 'Bar Ambience' for organising the biggest week of reconciliation committees to choose furniture and interior design activities the Union has seen in a long time. for the Union Bar. We're now almost finished with the selection and ordering of furniture and we've - Had a number of meetings with Schoneil chosen colours, as well. There will be red, black Cinema staff relating to an advertisement for a and grey and a bit of wood here and there. There movie that contravenes the Union's policy on will be a stage and when the bar is converted to a sexism, racism and homophobia. Please read the live music venue, it will hold 400 people. response that Angela (Union Secretary) and I Everything is on target and so it will definitely be wrote to Kate Wild's criticisms of our dealing with open at the start of Semester 11. this issue. Women's oppression and discrimination still exists and I am proud to be a student representative in a progressive student - Attended a meeting of Senate where the Vice- organisation that condemns usage of images or Chancellor presented his open letter to Senate language that reinforce this oppression. This and spoke at length about the strategic direction issue, of course, is a complex one, and I am of the University. Due to deprivation of Federal happy to discuss the Union's position or my own. I Government funding, the University is being can be contacted at Increasingly forced to generate its own income. A president.union@ma(lbox.uq.edu.au, solution to this, instigated by John Hay at the beginning of his term, was to set up a 'Vice Chancellors Strategic Initiatives Fund' (SIF). The I wish everyone well for the exam and holiday money for this fund is found by scraping the top of period. each Faculty budget and making those scrapings into a lump sum. At any one time between $5 and In Union $10 million dollars is in the fund. This strategy has served to make Faculties and Schools compete Juliana Virine for even scarcer resources and it has brought President. many academics and students to question the allocation of the money in the fund.

An example of the allocation of some of the SIF money is millions of dollars given to the new Institute for Molecular Biosciences (1MB), currently under construction. Criteria for receiving a portion of the SIF is partially based on the potential of the strategic initiative (in this case, the 1MB) to generate income for the University. This is a pretty sad state of affairs for the University of Queensland - a public institution - and the Vice Chancellor is correct in saying that it is a direct result of the billions of dollars cut from higher education in the last 6 years. When I spoke to his open letter at Senate, I stressed how important it is for the University to be proactive to funding cuts, not reactive.

Both major parties will not prioritise higher education in the upcoming Federal election and until Universities and Vice Chancellors take a stand against this ideological movement instead of accepting it as a fait accompllt, this situation will not change. Large institutions like UQ are in an incredibly large bargaining position, being at the forefront of the knowledge economy and they have the potential to have great sway in public debate on higher education. Until this potential is realised, Australian students will have to dream of countries like Sweden where even international students pay no tuition fees. Nations that value an educated population do exist and, indeed, they 66 ACTIVITIES OFFICER'S REPORT

I say "no" to boring, conventional Union Pages reports. Instead, the Activities Archives provide photos from the UQ Union Scavenger Hunt (21st - 25th May) and the Student Stand-Up Kommedy Competition (31st May). If you want to have a look at the list of 61 items that made up this year's Scavenger Hunt List, it should still be available on the Union web-site:

http://www.uqu.uq.edu.au/activities/lnfoyTheUst.htm.

Activities has also been putting on the usual Members of the judging panel experiencing post- fortnightly BBQs, but this year, in conjunction with Scavenger Hunt exhaustion: Activities Organiser Julz, your Faculty Officers, I've been taking them on a Dan from the Activities Committee, Crazy Dave (Union hack), and Dominic, a guy who keeps hanging around tour of campus. When the BBQs have been at the my office and talking about algorithms. Main Refec, Activities has put on the bands Pre- Shrunk, Elephant Gun, Harper and Exodus. Look out for the Union Activities Calendars available in all the Refectories for details of all the Union events for the month, including bands and BBQs and Jazzniks (held on the first Friday of each month). If you want to get involved in the Activities Area, contribute ideas or have any comments, feel free to email me or phone the Union and ask to be put through to Activities.

There'll be even more fun stuff coming up in second semester.

Catherine Laherty The Winning Team M.B.L.A., which stands for Melissa, Activities Officer. Benson. Letitia and Alex OR the Man Boy Love Email: [email protected]. Association, OR the Marlon Brando Look-Alikes. They're +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ dressed as Snorks. Behind them is their giant card castle (Item 49). They scored 4,365 points.

Team "Big Tree" dressed as the kids from South Park The winner of Kommedy Competition, Marshall Davis. (Item 61). They came fifth with 2,650 points. We had seven entrants this year and a great audience turn-out. Much hilarity resulted. 67 UQ FACULTY RESTRUCTURES IN CONTEXT: A REPORT FROM THE EDUCATION AREA

Since 1996 significant steps by University of rejected from compulsory biology subjects as Queensland management have been taken to budget constraints mean that places must be restructure the University. The restructure of reserved for biology students. The BACS an organisation usually involves four Faculty is obviously already massively under- components: a working party's review of the resourced". Despite an Increase in student organisation, community consultation, enrolments it is predicted that University preparation of a report, and its management will propose the retrenchment of implementation. While restructure is not a total of 80-100 job losses this year, 20 necessarily a bad thing, the stnng of library staff having already been retrenched. restructures at UQ have been characterised by rapid transition penods, undemocratic The Vet School of the NRAVS faculty also decision making processes, an agenda to faces a multitude of problems resulting from corporatise courses and often a refusal to the de-fundIng of Its budget. For example, the listen to legitimate dissent, framed in a Vet School has the lowest number of teaching language of economic rationalisation. The staff of any Vetennary School in Australia decisions to restructure the Arts Faculty, The despite teaching the greatest number of Biological and Chemistry Sciences Faculty students. NRAVS faculty student (BACS) and The Natural Resources, representative, Anna Macnaughtan reports Agriculture and Veterinary Science Faculty "We could end up with a worthless degree." (NRAVS) have been driven by financial rather Why? The School is in senous danger of than academic concerns, anci the implications losing its accreditation with the Vetennary of these restructures are not in the interest of Surgeons board because it has ignored quality teaching, learning, and research. recommendations in the last two (1988, 1995) reports from the Vetennary Schools The economic rationalist agenda of University Accreditation Advisory Committee (VSAAC). management has not been manifested in a The University of Queensland promotes itself vacuum. Since 1996 the Liberal federal as a university that delivers world class government has cut almost $1 billion from the quality of education, this is obviously not the higher education sector. In this period over case. 3000 jobs have been lost in Australian Universities. And between 1996 and 1997 the One year on from the restructure of the Arts overall number of full time equivalent staff Faculty, Arts student Li comments on the employed in higher education dropped for the condition of the Arts faculty's teaching and first time this decade by almost 2%, while at learning. "The kind of trouble that we're the same time student numbers increased by having is that the teaching and learning 3.9%. It is little wonder that student unions committee has Its hands tied and cannot among other members of the university answer to the needs of students in regards to community are reporting a crisis in the face to face contact hours, tutonal sizes, fair Australian higher education sector. assessment and a number of other issues. University management has justified the Staff moral is low. Most are on short-term restructures of the Arts, BACS and NRAVS contracts, receive no administrative support, Faculties on the basis that the budget deficit and are often forced to work outside their job of faculty departments or schools have description just to provide the minimum level occurred due to inefficiencies. Two years prior of support to students. Nowhere near enough to the Arts Faculty restructure, $400 000 was feedback is received from tutors because they cut from the faculty's teaching and learning don't have adequate time to do assessments. allocation. This left several departments with Because the funding provided is inadequate a budget deficit. The recommendations of the course tutors have been asked to provide working party of the Arts Faculty Restructure language practice tutorials for free in their Included the creation of four schools that own time. enabled a fixing of the deficits rather than improving teacliing, learning and research. What areas of study are receiving increasing This year, University management has cut levels of funding? - the Institute for Molecular $14 million from faculty budgets. Previously, Bioscience (1MB). 1MB is the amalgamation of surplus budgets of a number of schools and a number of original study area's of the BACs departments fell into deficit overnight, in the faculty and will focus on molecular and BACS Faculty, in order to fix the deficit cellular biology, drug design and development University management proposed the and genomic studies. The research complex retrenchment of ten academic staff and twelve construction isn't cheap: it is costing $105 general staff. Jason Curtis, UQ Union million. The managers of the institution make Education Resource Organiser states that it clear that the centre will be pnoritising "general science students report being working for industry, not teaching, learning 68 and research for the sake of education and increase by between 50 and 80 cents for knowledge. The IMB's web site reads students. Moreover, there has been no "IMBcom will promote a culture of assurance that the current trial of entrepreneurship by providing new career concessional tickets for Postgraduate students will become a permanent structures and rewards to business-onentated arrangement. scientists and entrepreneurs." And "some 40% of the Institute's resources will be devoted to By again attacking students at the hip pocket, alliances with industry." The concept of public the So(o)rely administration have Universities prioritising areas of study demonstrated that they are out of touch with according to their financial profitability is seen students. To register your protest at these as highly problematic (It also raises questions decisions by the City Council, Contact about who the curriculum should and does Councillor Maureen Hayes, Chair, Brisbane benefit - Australian society or business in the City Council Transport Committee on mail form of financial profits). The current cnsis in to:ctnrip@ brisbane.qld.gov.au, [email protected], via fax on higher education has come about through the 34035421 or by post at GPO Box 1434 current ideological climate's agenda to Brisbane QLD 4601. (It helps if you send a corporatise and privatise essential public copy of your correspondence about this issue services such as education. to the UQ Union, at the email address supplied at the end of this report). Students and staff have put forward significant dissent to the restructuring Parking on Campus process. This has been in the form of Those of you who are fortunate enough to petitions, votes of no confidence in University own a car (or make off with your parents'), management, submissions to University will have noticed this year that there are less Boards, rallies and a blockade of the parks available for students holding parking University administration building. However, permits. It has long been a tradition of the the Vice Chancellor, John Hay, maintained in Union that in the annual general elections, an interview regarding the Arts Faculty the Young Liberal election ticket will run on a restructure in October 2000 that "The best platform of "sealing the dustbowl carparks". thing about the restructure of the University of This policy has always been disputed by election teams with an actual desire to run Queensland is that everyone agrees with it". the Union, because we know that it is impossible for us to seal the dustbowls, as Despite the need to retrench 22 BACs staff they aren't even our property. and the incapacity of the Arts Faculty to pay tutors for the work that they are requested to It would seem, however, that the University do, the University could afford the recent pay has tapped into the public outrage at the nse of $10 000 to Vice Chancellor John Hay. state of Uni carparks, and have taken the Perhaps the most depressing thing is that Initiative by placing buildings in places where neither the Labor nor Liberal party have put dustbowl carparks used to exist. The effect that this has had on students is that there are forward suitable policy to address the crisis in no longer enough carparks to service the the higher education sector. We can only live number of students and staff holding current In hope. parking permits. The Union is hoping to do something about EVE KELLY this and other parking issues on all campuses, but unless we have a critical mass of students making complaints, there is no imperative for admin to do anything about it. WELFARE OFFICER'S REPORT Please send any complaints that you may have about parking to me either by email at mail to:[email protected] So(o)rtev Fails Students on Public Transport! [email protected] or by AGAIN! posting your complaints to me at level 4, Union Building, University of Queenland, Last year, the UQ Union, in conjunction with 4067. Also, for campus based parking issues, many other community groups canipaigned email the Uni directly at against the abolition of weekly and monthly [email protected]. bus tickets by the Brisbane City Council. Our campaign succeeded in placing the issue on the agenda, but unfortunately our complaints fell on deaf ears. Semester two will be a busy time for the Welfare Office at the UQ Union, with a In Its 2001 budget, the So(o)rely , Federal Election due and a number of theme administration have made a decision to weeks and campaigns planned. To get increase bus fares by 20 cents a trm for full involved with the Union Welfare Office contact fare tickets, and by 10 cents a tnp for student CHRIS VERNON at 33772200 or concessions. Ten tnp saver tickets will [email protected]. 69 Hews This Month Those golden (voting) oldies: the Grey Power Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa - are in desperate Budget need of foreign aid from their rich southern Late May saw the handing down of Treasurer Peter neighbour. Instead, the Howard Government has Costello's sixth and probably last federal budget. It committed an extra $4.7 billion over four years ... to was an election budget, pure and simple. It came in defence. the wake of a horror start to the political year for the government, which saw Liberal governments Who needs regulation? The tale of Joe Hockey almost completely disappear from the Australian and HiH mainland. Combined with poor economic data, the Business news this month was dominated by the leaking of the Stone memo, and the need to deny fallout from the collapse of the insurer HIH and the Labor a surplus it could make election promises telecommunications company One.Tel. One.Tel's with, the result was a Prime Minister and Treasurer implosion garnered more news coverage, with the desperate for a popular, vote-winning budget. And telegenic spectacles of super-rich One.Tel Directors the one sure way to win votes is, of course, to buy Brad Keeling and Jodee Rich transferring houses them. After extracting six years of political mileage to their wives while Jamie and Lochia lost pots of out of the ALP's $10 billion black hole, Howard and their dads' money. But the real damage to both Costello saw the only way out of certain electoral Australia's economy and everyday Australian defeat and spent, spent, spent. All up, they people stems from the disaster of HiH. HIH committed the federal government to neariy $20 collapsed In late March, but it took months for the billion of new funding initiatives over the next five magnitude of the disaster to become apparent: $4 years. There was money for all sorts of things: billion of debt, and thousands of people with HIH diggers who spent time at the Changi insurance policies effectively helpless should Concentration Camp got $25,000, for example, and disaster strike. Especially tragic were those there was more money for rural roads, country unfortunate enough to be receiving insurance nurses, and the Australian Quarantine and payments for long-term sickness or permanent Inspection Sen/ice. But the big-ticket Items were disability from HIH, but also hard-hit were many straight-out bribes to older people. More than $3 professionals like doctors and lawyers, who used billion was spent on that heartland of Liberal voters: HIH to cover them against law-suits from patients pensioners and self-funded retirees. All pensioners, and clients. Many medical specialists now face for example, received an up-front cheque for $300 rises in insurance premiums for professional last fortnight with their pensions (that'd sure help indemnity of as much as $100,000 a year - a cost with your textbooks, wouldn't it?). Self-funded sure to be passed on to patients. retirees did even better, receiving tax breaks worth $1,2 billion - about the amount Amanda Vanstone Because HIH offered insurance for so many slashed from higher education in 1996. different sorts of things, the flow-on effects of its collapse seem endless: for example, all sorts of Semper thinks this may be the worst Liberal budget gigs and entertainment events, which need public of the Howard-Costello years. Combined with the liability insurance, will be suddenly much more GST, never has an Australian government taken expensive to put on. Nor have the flow-on effects more from the young and poor and given more to been kind for Joe Hockey, Financial Services the old and nch. For example, state schools will Minister responsible for APRA, the federal authority see more than $1.1 billion of federal government that regulates the insurance industry. APRA, as the funding transferred to private schools - all private regulator, is supposed to stop disasters like this schools, even the wealthiest GPS schools. happening. Yet HIH was cleariy in trouble for years University funding (a 1.7% increase) actually before it collapsed, and everyone in the insurance decreased relative to inflation (forecast at 2%). industry knew it. To put it simply, Hockey and APRA Work for the Dole was made even more draconian fiddled while HIH burned. Some observers have for young people, but removed for over-50's. But been so scandalised by Hockey's inability to read perhaps the most appalling figure in the budget the clear warning signs that they have argued that was buried deep at the back of the papers: Hockey wasn't interested in insurance regulation Australia's scandalous level of foreign aid, which at (the Insurance Council of Australia donates strongly just 0.25% of our GDP is the very lowest In the to the Liberal Party). Others think he was simply western worid. Even the notoriously aid-shy US incompetent, a plausible explanation for those gives more to poor countries than Australia; watching his befuddled performance on The 7.30 Sweden gives three times more. And this is a time Report. Meanwhile, the cost of neariy anything that when many of Australia's neighbours - East Timor, requires insurance will go up.

70 Australia's detention centres: the New Fatal Shore One of the most intriguing questions in "A RIOT! One of the contemporary Australian history is how a convict nation could so easily convince itself of the need to liveliest COMEDIES to lock up vast numbers of innocent refugees. But lock them up we do, and in ever-increasing numbers. come along in a decade. This month, yet more riots, hunger strikes, break­ outs and damning reports were added to the long list YOU ARENT GOING TO SEE A documenting the misery of Australia's very own BEHER BIT OF ROMANCE ALL gulag: our refugee detention centres. Let's canvass a few facts. Nearly all illegal immigrants to Australia, YEAR." even women and children, are locked up until their Filmcritjccom claims for refugee status are processed. Whether they arrived on a boat, by plane, or literally swam through shark-infested northern waters (as some "DELIGHTFULLY QUIRKY have), they are taken on first contact with authorities to one of Australia's four detention centres. These AND UNPREDICTABLE... centres are in effect no different from jails or ONE OF THE FRESHEST concentration camps. What's more, they are not even run by the Australian government, but by a COMEDIES IN YEARS." private company called Australian Correctional KfWCBS Radio Management, a fully-owned subsidiary of the American Wackenhut Corporation. Conditions inside these isolated prisons are spartan, and the rules that govern detainees draconian. Claims from refugees THIS MAY WELL BE THE SLEEPER of beatings, handcuffings, sexual assault, and long- HIT OF THE YEAR..." term Imprisonment in isolation are common. Toronto film Fes!tval Reporters are not allowed in to speak to refugees, nor are refugees allowed out. Even worse, after winning the contract to build and run the centres, Australian Correctional Management has been largely unsupervised: there is no equivalent of a prisons ombudsman for federal detention centres. WHEN

After recent riots at both Woomea and Port Headland, Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock responded by ordering water cannon and barbed BRENDAN wire for those centres, while blaming refugee welfare groups like Amnesty for "inciting" the unrest. Let's pause to remember who these people are. They're refugees. For many, if not most, the choice of leaving their country was forced on them by violence, war, or MET brutal government oppression. Take just one example of an Iraqi doctor, who fled his country after refusing orders from the Iraqi government to surgically amputate the hands of deserting Iraqi TRUDYJ soldiers. Locked up for neariy 18 months by our government - it took that long to process his claim - A STORY BY #- he now practices in country Victoria, where there is a critical shortage of trained surgeons. Individual cases, of course, don't make the rule. But the RODDY DOYLE question needs to be asked: how many other "illegal" A FILM BY refugees, locked up at public expense, could be KIERON J. WALSH making a contribution to Australian society instead? Then again, sadly, it seems there are votes in jailing refugees, no matter how just their claims or valuable their potential contribution to our country. Once ANEwO^jbNRElEASE OO^^T again, Australia has forgotten its own history, to the detriment of us all. SEASON COMMENCES JULY 26 CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR CINEMA & SESSION DETAILS Ben Eltham 71 r WE WANT^U. WWW.RE

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