Grant Stevens : Are You Upset with Me?

Grant Stevens is ambivalent. The young Brisbane artist made his name with a series of computer-generated animated-text videos that explore clichés but seem undecided as to whether they are trivial and vacuous, profound and authentic or somehow both at once. Stevens plunders mass-media sources (the familiar image repertoire dished up by Hollywood, television, pop music and the Internet) as readymade content. He explores this everyday language, sometimes for its ambiguity, but more often for its almost uncanny lucidity. Resembling meditation and relaxation guides, his recent videos beg the question: what made us so anxious? This book examines Stevens' artistic output over the first ten years of his practice. It includes essays by Mark Pennings and Chris Kraus.

Good Practice Report : Curriculum Renewal

This good practice report, commissioned by the ALTC, provides a summative evaluation of useful outcomes and good practices from ALTC projects and fellowships on curriculum renewal. The report contains: -a summative evaluation of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from completed ALTC projects and fellowships -a literature review of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from national and international research -the proposed outcomes and resources for teaching and learning which will be produced by current incomplete ALTC projects and fellowships -identifies areas in which further work or development are appropriate.

Seeing a hard country : Lawrence’s Australian landscape

In 1944 Australian author Eleanor Dark wrote that Australia is a hard country for an outsider to see, citing, in evidence, the writing of the “strange, foreign-looking little man with the beard” -- the self-described by D. H. Lawrence. According to Dark, Lawrence was bewildered by Australia because what his eyes saw was not what they were accustomed to seeing. Kangaroo, she wrote, suggests one long, tormented effort to see. Lawrence appears, for Dark, to be half-blind, struggling, and irritated almost beyond belief with his visit to New South Wales. Eleanor Dark wrote this critique in 1944, long after Lawrence’s 1922 visit, but for her, as for other Australian writers, Kangaroo continued to register as an important book, even if the content rankled. Katharine Susannah Prichard and Christina Stead, both advocates in general of Lawrence, likewise rejected the tenor of Kangaroo, although Lawrence would not have been worried about the response. In 1929 he referred to his irritation with Australia in letters to P.R. “Inky” Stephensen, the Australian nationalist and publisher, and he does not seem to have changed his opinions since writing Kangaroo. Yet the novel continued to be significant for Australian writers, even if as a provocation. My discussion traces the responses of the women authors to Kangaroo, and refers to Lawrence’s letters to Stephensen, as a way of emphasizing this significance, seen especially in relation to ideas about ‘seeing’ and the Australian landscape.

A positive unsettlement: the story of Sakshi Anmatyerre

This article tells the story of the mass marketing on stationery of the work of an artist, Sakshi Anmatyerre, whose claims to an lndigenous heritage and to the authority to paint particular designs, totems and motifs were vigorously contested, leading to the withdrawal of the stationery from sale. The efforts made by the publisher, Steve Parish, to atone for the offence caused to the Anmatyerre people are detailed. The article illustrates some of the issues involved in the commodification and commercial exchange of lndigenous artistic or cultural work - or rather, work which relies upon lndigenous connections for its aesthetic and financial value. The story told in this article is enlightening for what it reveals about the state of unsettlement that characterises debate over the 'appropriate' commercial use of lndigenous intellectual and cultural property, for the ways in which it is possible to achieve restitution when an offence agalnst lndigenous law is alleged, and for the effects the process of seeking restitution has had on the business practices of one company.

From ethnocentrism to transculturalism : a film studies pedagogical journey

This study reviews the exploratory implementation of an ‘internationalising the curriculum’ policy in relation to a cultural studies unit within a Creative Industries Faculty at an Australian university. Charting certain pedagogical practices in the delivery of transnational film studies, this case study involves a critical, contextual examination of student feedback as well as current theories about transcultural curricula in general and film studies curricula in particular. The study shows that tertiary students can be provided with an extraordinarily rich range of differing, sometimes conflicting, but always engaging transcultural insights and understandings. It is further argued that transnational competencies may be developed and enabled through the innovative realisation of a type of ‘border crossing’ pedagogical model, largely by foregrounding transcultural ‘affective’ issues around social justice.

Children physical activity correlates and parent physical activity do not have a strong association with physical activity amongst adolescents

Background: Physical activity is a key modifiable behavior impacting a number of important health outcomes. The path to developing chronic diseases commonly commences with lifestyle patterns developed during childhood and adolescence. This study examined whether parent physical activity and other factors correlated with physical activity amongst children are associated with self-reported physical activity in adolescents. Methods: A total of 115 adolescents (aged 12-14) and their parents completed questionnaire assessments. Self-reported physical activity was measured amongst adolescents and their parents using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (IPAQ-A), and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) respectively. Adolescents also completed the Children’s Physical Activity Correlates (CPAC), which measured factors that have previously demonstrated association with physical activity amongst children. To examine whether parent physical activity or items from the CPAC were associated with self-reported adolescent physical activity, backward step-wise regression was undertaken. One item was removed at each step in descending order of significance (until two tailed item alpha=0.05 was achieved). Results: A total of 93 (80.9%) adolescents and their parents had complete data sets and were included in the analysis. Independent variables were removed in the order: perceptions of parental role modeling; importance of exercise; perceptions of parental encouragement; peer acceptance; fun of physical exertion; perceived competence; parent physical activity; self-esteem; liking of exercise; and parental influence. The only variable remaining in the model was ‘liking of games and sport’ (p=0.003, adjusted r-squared=0.085). Discussion: These findings indicate that factors associated with self-reported physical activity in adolescents are not necessarily the same as younger children (aged 8-11). While ‘liking of games and sport’ was included in the final model, the r-squared value did not indicate a strong association. Interestingly, parent self-reported physical activity was not included in the final model. It is likely that adolescent physical activity may be influenced by a variety of direct and indirect forms of socialization. These findings do support the view that intrinsically motivated themes such as the liking of games and sport take precedence over outside influences, like those presented by parents, in determining youth physical activity behaviors. These findings do not suggest that parents have no influence on adolescent physical activity patterns, but rather, the influence is likely to be more complex than physical activity behavior modeling perceived by the adolescent. Further research in this field is warranted in order to better understand potential contributors to successful physical activity promotion interventions amongst young adolescents.