In Defence of "the Lesser Cousin of History": An Interview with Rohan Wilson

Few branches of postcolonial literature are as contested as the historical fiction of settler societies. This interview with the Australian historical novelist Rohan Wilson, author of The Roving Party (2011) and To Name Those Lost (2014), explores the intersections between truth, accuracy, and existential authenticity in his fictional accounts of nineteenth-century Tasmania. Wilson offers a nuanced yet robust defence of fiction’s role in narrating colonial history. He explains his intentions in writing two linked yet distinctive novels of the frontier—one that focuses on the “Black War” of the 1820s and 1830s, and another that explores how racial violence is refracted by capitalism in subsequent decades.

Gudinski, by Stuart Coupe is a wild and fast ride

Review of Stuart Coupe's biography of Australian music legend Michael Gudinski.

The business of myth-making: Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers and the Disney effect

In just one of the many extraordinary moments during the spectacular Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, thirty Mary Poppinses floated into the stadium on their umbrellas to battle a 40 foot-long inflatable Lord Voldemort. This multi-million pound extravaganza was telecast to a global audience of over one billion people, highlighting in an extremely effective manner the grandeur and eccentricities of the host nation, and featuring uniquely British icons such as Mr Bean, James Bond, The Beatles and Harry Potter, as well as those quintessential icons of Englishness, the Royal Family, double-decker red buses and the National Health Service.

The radical in arts education research

Arts education research, as an interdisciplinary field, has developed in the shadows of a number of research traditions. However amid all the methodological innovation, I believe there is one particular, distinctive and radical research strategy which arts educators have created to research the practice of arts education: namely arts-based research. For many, and Elliot Eisner from Stanford University was among the first, arts education needed a research approach which could deal with the complex dynamics of arts education in the classroom. What was needed was ‘an approach to the conduct of educational research that was rooted in the arts and that used aesthetically crafted forms to reveal aspects of practice that mattered educationally’ (Eisner 2006: 11). While arts education researchers were crafting the principles and practices of arts-based research, fellow artist/researchers in the creative arts were addressing similar needs and fashioning their own exacting research strategies. This chapter aligns arts-based research with the complementary research practices established in creative arts studios and identifies the shared and truly radical nature of these moves. Finally, and in a contemporary turn many will find surprising, I will discuss how the radical aspects of these methodologies are now being held up as core elements of what is being called the fourth paradigm of scientific research, known as eScience. Could it be that the radical dynamics of arts-based research pre-figured the needs of eScience researchers who are currently struggling to manage the ‘deluge of Big Data’ which is disrupting their well-established scientific methods?

Are We The One?

A collaborative, performative and relational experience for two people, woven together by a custom digital phone App. Two walkers, who have never met, simultaneously use a phone App to record a personalised walk around their locality, crafting a series of special moments and surprises for each other. The App then allows participants to continue their two walks, but now directed by what the other person has just created for them. Finally, at the end of the experience they can then choose whether they would like to actually meet in person. Based loosely on the idea of a date, each participant is initially asked to give a little bit of personal information, and then actually speak volumes about themselves through how they choose to care for their 'date's future experience. After walking in parallel universes, but never far away from each other, both daters can ultimately choose to then meet in person -- if what they have experienced tells them that maybe "We Are The One".

Saga land: Richard Fidler and Kári Gíslason in Iceland

This is a four-part radio documentary produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National. Richard Fidler and Kári Gíslason travel to Iceland to tell the stories of the ancient Vikings, and to settle a longstanding family mystery.

Pictures that ask the right questions

An article about the use of photographs as research in the writing of memoir. "I expect many people begin the writing of a memoir by looking through old photos. Pictures, after all, belong in the past, and they hold out the promise of delivering it to us again: everyone is younger, surrounded by yesterday’s world, a moment fixed in time. Even the size of the photo paper and printing tone belong back there, in a printer’s shop that doesn’t exist anymore. And yet, for the purpose of writing a memoir, the most useful pictures also reach beyond the past, and beyond their initial role in verifying your memories, or filling out the details. That is, they are more than an account. Such pictures seem to be asking questions about what happened next, in the moments and years after they were taken..."

The High Places [Review]

Sarah Holland-Batt reviews 'The High Places' by Fiona McFarlane

Fast forward to the end: Stories of the cassette magazine

Although they made up a significant share of the retail music market from the 60s to the 90s, and were often used as promotional and marketing tools, cassettes became re-configured in the 80s as an integral component of cassette magazines. Binding sound, music, talk, text, visual art and design, they were a truly innovative interdisciplinary form. This paper explores the history of these artefacts with particular emphasis on the Brisbane underground music scene of the late 70s and 80s, and discusses their significance in as a bridge between the music scene and art scenes of this period.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity

The performance aspect of a PhD thesis. In 1976, The Saints released “I’m Stranded” and Brisbane was suddenly on the map. People starting talking about Brisbane bands in the same way they had talked about Liverpool bands or would talk about Seattle bands. The history of the Brisbane music scene has been constructed and interpreted by both journalists (at the time and since) and academics (in retrospect). These histories and analyses have come some way to painting a picture of a time and place that is somewhat mythic. As a significant member of this scene, my memory stores a different picture, different shadings: a vibrant social scene with cultural by-products (music, art, film, fashion). By gathering the ephemera of the time and embellishing with a series of interviews with some Brisbane musicians, I will be growing new, untold stories, grounded in shared experience and understanding. The interview footage, and the bounty of ephemera that continues to be unearthed, will be thrown together in the style of the times and presented in public as a live documentary filled with the faces, voices and music on which these times were built. The performances are the Creative Practice component of the PhD, and are the result of a curatorial process which will be examined in the exegetic component of the thesis due for delivery in mid 2016.