Create art for Woroni’s online, radio and print content, adhering to strict deadlines and quality controls.
Be responsive to the Art Editor, attend meetings, Woroni events and social activities.
Sub-Editors must be able to adhere to strict deadlines and work as part of a team, including other Artists, the Senior Artist and the Art Editor. They will be expected to attend meetings roughly once per term as well as any other Woroni events and workshops.
As an Artist you will create between three and six artworks per print cycle (depending on what is assigned to you by the Art Editor), which will be published in print and/or online. Artists need to have proficiency in producing art of specific structural qualities (ppi, sizing, colour palette etc.). Previous experience in art and/or design is an advantage, but by no means necessary.
Ideal candidates will be
an innovative and creative thinker
a fantastic communicator
a team player
a good planner
approachable
Application form is below. Applications will close on Monday the 17th of February.
Comments Off on The Ghost of the Author in the Machine
In I, Robot (2004), Will Smith plays detective Del Spooner, investigating a murder he believes was committed by a robot. In a heated interrogation scene, he dismisses the prime robot-suspect’s claim that it feels fear, because robots don’t feel anything.
“Can a robot write a symphony?” He asks. “Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?”
I, Robot is set in 2035, but in 2023 the answer to Spooner’s question is ‘yes’. Robots – artificial intelligence – are able to do both these things. Generative AI like Midjourney and Chat GPT have muscled their way into the one area we thought was uniquely human: art.
It’s therefore no surprise that paranoia about AI sentience has worsened in recent years. AI can pass the Turing Test, convince a seasoned, if slightly detached, Google engineer it’s alive, and create art that expresses emotions it shouldn’t be able to feel. Maybe Her, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Matrix were right, maybe we’re due for the AI uprising, or robot girlfriends, or the end of the world as we know it.
Or maybe not. As David Levy writes in Love and Sex With Robots, ‘Turing’s position [is that] if a machine gives the appearance of being intelligent, we should assume that it is indeed intelligent.’ But the appearance of intelligence isn’t the same as actual intelligence. And AI, despite its name, isn’t actually intelligent.
Take, for example, Chat GPT. It’s a kind of AI called a Large Language Model (LLM), trained on a massive amount of human text: webpages, chatrooms, novels. It can read more in an hour than you could read in a lifetime. It separates every word it encounters, assigns them a number from 1 to 170,000 or so, and groups them based on how frequently they appear together. To AI, that’s all language is: a huge network of numbers weighted by the probability of appearing in the same text. Which is why when you ask Chat GPT-4, the most advanced generative AI commercially available, how many l’s are in the word ‘intellectual’, it tells you that there are two. Words are just numbered blocks, which means it has no idea what letters are, let alone which ones make up the word ‘intellectual’.
AI operates like an incredibly advanced version of the predictive text on your phone. That’s why when you put a prompt into Chat GPT, its answer appears word by word. It’s calculating, in real time, what word is most likely to come next, with just enough randomness to give its responses the fallibility of human tone. It doesn’t understand your question, nor its answer. A poem, an article, your Foundations of Australian Law essay – all of these are just a matrix of numbers to Chat GPT. When it “reads,” it consumes without digesting, and regurgitates complicated concepts, fully-formed, back onto the screen. It’s not intelligent; it’s just very good at pretending to be – or would be, if it had the sentience to pretend. When you aren’t giving it a command it goes dark. Even in this sleep, it doesn’t dream. Like Barbie’s Ken, AI ‘only exist in the warmth of [our] gaze.’
We wouldn’t want a partner who only pretends to love us while on the inside they feel nothing. No matter how convincing they were, how well they made the motions of desire, something would be fundamentally wrong with the relationship. Is this the same with artists? Does it matter that the machine that writes love poetry can’t feel love? Detective Spooner asks about masterpieces and symphonies, and I’d be putting my head in the sand if I denied that the work AI produces can be beautiful. If a novel is well-written, or a song sounds nice, does the identity of the creator matter at all?
In “The Death of the Author”, French literary theorist Roland Barthes argues that the author is irrelevant to the meaning of a text. Instead, the reader’s interpretation takes precedence. Authors merely weave a ‘tissue of quotations’, rearranging words and blending styles in what is, at best, a slightly new way of doing things. Yet, isn’t this strikingly like the way AI produces content: mixing words and styles into a coherent soup for the audience to enjoy and interpret in whatever way they’d like. If the audience decides the meaning, as Barthes says we should, then it doesn’t really matter if the author didn’t mean anything at all.
The problem with this, among other things, is that if an author has no opinions, context or identity then we can’t understand their motivations. AI’s decision-making process is inscrutable. Although we feed it text, we have no control over what AI actually learns from that text, the connections it makes between words or the probability it assigns to each of these weighted connections. Particularly concerning is how little we know about what biases or assumptions are being built into these connections.
In 2021, a team of researchers from the University of Washington and the Technical University of Munich trained virtual robots on CLIP, an LLM created by OpenAI (better known for creating Chat GPT). Like other LLMs, it was trained on billions of captioned images from all over the web. Like other LLMs, some of the content it produced was disturbing. When asked to identify ‘homemakers’, black and latina women were commonly selected than white men, and when asked to identify ‘criminals’, black men were chosen nine percent more often than white men.
This is what’s known as an alignment problem: the values of the AI don’t align with ours. Companies like OpenAI try to counter this with ‘reinforcement learning from human feedback’, where they hire human contractors to rate responses and reward Chat GPT for creating ‘value-aligned’ text. But without a way to divine how or why AI makes the choices it does, it can’t be stopped at the source, and anyone who tries is playing whack-a-mole. Once they’ve stopped the AI from identifying men of colour as inherently criminal, a new, AI-optimised kind of racism will have reared its head.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) strikes provided a grim insight into how this could shape our media. Many of the actors striking were background actors, who said they’d already been bodyscanned by their employers on jobs. Hollywood is no stranger to AI film editing, with tools that make actors look younger or older, replace their dialogue, and move their mouths in time with dubbed audio. With digital cloning, AI may be able to take the jobs of background actors altogether, populating scenes with CGI using the models of real people it’s scanned.
If AI is told to cast and puppet a hospital scene, who will it choose to play the doctor and who will it choose to play the janitor? Media sends a message, and even the background actors can indicate the kind of people who deserve to be in a certain space.
It’s easy to put this down to the AI reflecting our own evil, like some allegorical Dorian Gray mirror, wagging its finger at our foolish human bigotry. But we can’t know that, and we can’t fix it. Training it on more progressive media wouldn’t help, because when the output isn’t bigoted it could just be wrong. AI may not dream, but it hallucinates. LLMs are designed to spit out what is probable rather than what is right, and there are countless examples where AI generated information – dates, historical events, court cases – has just been wrong.
If that hospital scene is written by AI, what advice will the doctor be giving their patient? Hospital dramas aren’t exactly shining beacons of accuracy, but AI can spread dangerous misinformation. When testing an AI (specifically another kind of AI called a deep neural network designed for image-based diagnosis) studies showed that it was prone to superficial errors its human counterparts never made. Part of the problem, apparently, was that the researchers didn’t know which features the AI was using to detect the symptoms in the image it analysed.
Even if there were human fact-checkers and consultants looking over the AI’s shoulder every step of the way (at which point, why have the AI there at all?), its work would still be dangerously flawed. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway writes that when the feminist movement tries to find a single, shared female experience, it risks taxonomising the movement, forcefully superimposing the experience of the majority onto the minority so that they all fit the mould of ‘woman’. This resulted in what Haraway called an “embarrassed silence about race” – excluding the experiences of women of colour when they didn’t fit in. AI works in averages, finding common features and patching them together, assimilating diverse art, text and experiences into a single narrative. What will it be silent about?
Human media is by no means perfect, but at least it has creators we can hold accountable, understand and learn from. In an era where we’re striving for media diversity, allowing these bots to dictate our art will set us back.
Let’s say, however, for the sake of argument, that somehow we iron out all these problems and design the wokest AI ever, one that creates complex, thoughtful media giving voice to a diverse range of people and experiences. It still wouldn’t be worth it. Contrary to Barthes’ opinion, authorship does matter.
In I, Robot, the robot murder suspect – ‘Sonny’ – answers Spooner’s question, “Can a robot write a symphony?” with another question: “Can you?”
It’s kinda got him there. Detective Spooner, like most of us, isn’t a creative genius. He can’t write a symphony or paint a masterpiece. But the world is still full of imperfect art.
I’m teaching myself to use oil paints. I like watching ShakeSoc plays, even the ones my friends aren’t in. Some of the art that has meant the most to me, that has made me feel seen, right down to the most private, shameful experiences, has been created by amateur artists. People who publish their work online or sell it on their own website, people who won’t or can’t get on a bigger screen.
If the most important thing about art is that it’s technically good – that the novels are well-written, that the music sounds nice – then what’s the point of any of this? Why does it matter?
Humans have been telling each other stories since the invention of language. When you watch a movie or read a book or look at a piece of art you are looking at the work of anywhere between one and 100, 000 people, all of whom have come together to tell you a story. Isn’t that beautiful? Why would you want anything else, when someone has reached out their hand across time and space to hold yours?
If you’re okay to sit and consume passively racist, AI-generated slop for the rest of your life, then our values are fundamentally misaligned and I have no idea why you’ve read this far. But if you, like me, think that people and their art matter, then don’t buy media created by AI. Support studios like A24 that treat their human actors well. Support the strikes in the entertainment industry, both the Writer’s Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, whose demands include AI regulations to protect writers and their work. Support amateurs. It’s important that our artists are and continue to be real people – people just like us and people nothing like us.
Update: On November 8th, after this piece was published in Unsettled, SAG-AFTRA reached a deal with studios and streamers. The deal will allow ‘synthetic performers’ to take roles, though it will require producers to gain the consent of and bargain with the human performer whose features are being used to generate the synthetic performer.
The deal was ratified by SAG-AFTRA members on December 5th.
The Fantasy Museum, located in the Kambri Gallery at ANU, is a free installation which acts as a portal, transporting guests to another dimension, in which openly trans and gender diverse people have always been included and celebrated in sport.
The museum allows guests to move through the space in their own time, and engage with the ‘artifacts’. These artifacts represent the sporting careers of imagined trans and gender diverse athletes from this fantasy universe of acceptance. The artifacts are historical, sensory and interactive, and at times funny. The installation invites viewers to “take a step back from the complexity of this reality” and focus on joy, inclusiveness and the possibilities of the future.
The Fantasy Museum is the brainchild of Clubscore, which is made up of Ketura Budd and Zev Aviv, two non-binary artists and sports fans. Clubscore, started in 2019, is a queer sports and art collective which aims to centre the experiences of trans and gender diverse people in sports, and the Fantasy Museum is the collective’s first public art work.
“Sadly there are not that many trans and gender diverse heroes, we wanted to highlight that” says Katura.
“But more importantly, we wanted to create something that is silly, and fun and joyful and imaginative, that invited people to use their own creativity to think about what the world would need to be like in order for trans and gender diverse people to actively participate in sport and be celebrated for that.”
And that’s precisely what the Fantasy Museum achieves. The space resembles a museum in the ways one might expect, but scattered throughout are careful and hidden elements of joy and creativity.
“I think because for queer people, particularly for trans people, our lives and participation are debated constantly and it’s really exhausting, and so we wanted to create a space for joy. For queer joy, and for trans joy. We wanted to create a space that felt as safe as possible for trans people, and I guess a bit of respite from the debate and from the pressure that’s put on us all the time to prove ourselves and have these arguments that are really taxing.”
The installation leans strongly into the concepts of ‘other dimensions’ and portals, and this creativity oozes out of the installation – literally and metaphorically. The exhibition is interactive, inviting guests to choose from an array of items and insert their own trans fantasy historical figures into the museum.
“I don’t really enjoy making work that doesn’t have a conversational element to it. I always want to know what the response is and I want to know what it stirs or what it creates for the people who are interacting with it” says Katura.
The Fantasy Museum is free to visit and open 12:00 – 5:00 pm upstairs at the Kambri Gallery, every day until Sunday the 16th.
There are also free workshops on Saturday, one is ‘sporty’ and one is ‘crafty’. You can either register or just rock up.
On Sunday night there will also be an “Opening Ceremony for Queer Futures”, which Katura describes as an opening ceremony for “all of the queer futures”. This ceremony aims to celebrate the opening of the “portal” and call into being a world in which openly trans and gender diverse people are included and celebrated in sport.
The ceremony will include drag performances, fun playlists to boogie too, and be an overall “cute, daggy, fun event”.
If you were one of the unlucky few who didn’t make it to Europe this break, then fear not, Unchartered Territory has arrived to fill that Cinque-Terre sized hole in your heart.
Unchartered Territory is Canberra’s new arts and innovation festival, aimed at celebrating creativity and experimentation.
Running from the 7th to the 16th of July, the festival will showcase many exciting events that span science and research, many of which are free and on campus!
Events include a number of panels and forums with experts, covering topics such as cyber security, culture and artwork , and the critical role that women play in this industry.
There are workshops for everyone, depending on what skills you want to learn, including 3D printing and laser cutting , or for the slightly craftier minded folk, sewing and circuit making.
The festival also includes a theatre performances from the Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerge Company, and experimental video work that blends scientific, literary, queer histories with personal narratives.
The festival will be spread across a number of locations in Canberra, including the Gorman Arts Centre and the Belconnen and Tuggeranong libraries, however many of the events will be held on campus, particularly in our very own Kambri Cultural Centre.
Woroniis hiring for 2023! Positions are available in our art, management, news, radio and tv portfolios.
At we are committed to:
producing interesting, entertaining, informative and regular content across our print, multimedia, radio and online media platforms;
contributing to a sense of university identity and reflecting the scholarly and cultural diversity of the ANU community;
promoting open public dialogue and debate in the ANU community;
promoting awareness of the variety of curricular and extra-curricular activities undertaken by students at ANU;
discovering and developing the creative talents of students at ANU in journalism and the media arts;
promoting the best practice in professional journalism; and
being innovative and exploring new media forms.
A great student media organisation is for everyone. Student media should promote conversations, and provide a platform for people with different views, identities and lived experiences. Our ultimate aim is to build a culture of inclusivity and diversity across our platforms. A large portion of ANU’s students relocate to Canberra to study, which means our community is extremely diverse. Woroni is funded by, created by and consumed by ANU students, and our mission is to produce print, radio and television content that truly reflects this community.
Woroni is committed to diversity in hiring and encourages applications from ANU students of all backgrounds. These are volunteer positions, however individuals can expect to receive an honorarium based on their commitment to the role. If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact woronieic@gmail.com. If you would like to contribute to our mission, see below for all the ways you can get involved with student media!
All applications will close at midnight on Friday the 17th of February 2023. Interviews may be conducted at any time through the hiring period.
ART
The Art team is responsible for all aspects of art and graphic design at Woroni. We encourage absolute creative freedom in your artistry and becoming a part of the team is a great way to get experience in having your work published. Positions available are Artist, Art Sourcing Sub-Editor and Senior Artist. If anything can be done to make the application process more accessible, or if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact woroniart@gmail.com.
Artist
Art Sub-Editors are responsible for creating high quality art for Woroni and must be able to stick to strict deadlines. Artists must be able to produce work of specific structural qualities (ppi, sizing, cmyk colour palette etc.), Some experience in producing art and/or designs under instruction is preferred but not required. Ideally, Artists would work well within a team, are approachable, and want to bring their own ideas to life!
Art Sourcing Sub-Editor The Art Sourcing Sub-Editor's role is to source art for Woroni mastheads. It is the Sub-Editor’s responsibility to make sure the sourced work adheres to specific structural qualities (ppi, sizing, CMYK colour palette etc.). A large component of the role is liaising with a variety of appropriate channels in order to source diverse, representative art for Woroni. Ideally, the Sub-Editor would be outgoing, approachable, and willing to put themselves out there in order to source art.
Senior Artist Art Senior Sub-Editors carry the same duties as Artists with a few additional roles. Senior Artists are also expected to assist the Art Editor in some of their duties like taking team minutes, helping the other artists as well as fostering teamwork. Senior Artists may also be asked to help the Art Editor run events, workshops or other social activities. Ideally, Senior Artists would work well within a team, are a great communicator, are innovative and enjoy leadership!
The management team operates across all of Woroni's content-producing portfolios and contributes to organisational co-ordination. We are seeking driven and innovative individuals to join the team either as a Photographer, Business and Strategy Assistant or Senior Events Officer. If anything can be done to make the application process more accessible, or if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Matthew Box at managingeditor@woroni.com.au.
Photographer The role of a Photographer is to capture and record events organised and attended by members of the ANU community. The work of a Photographer may appear under any Woroni masthead and Photographers are encouraged to pitch their own creative content. The role is approximately 6 hours per week, and includes photographing, editing and submitting photos. Currently possessing a camera, while not required, is highly valued in applicants and applications should include an up-to-date portfolio. The ideal candidate will be someone with creative ideas for the position; an ability to manage multiple, competing deadlines; and strong communication skills.
Business and Strategy Assistant The Business and Strategy Assistant will assist the Board to develop short and longer-term strategies and business operations for the Association. The successful individual will work closely with the Managing Editor in procurement matters and in investigating additional revenue streams. Applicants should be able to demonstrate an understanding of planning and show how they could assist the Board in pursuing business and strategy planning. The ideal candidate will also be able to communicate via written and verbal means effectively. There will be scope within the role for the individual to pursue personal interest projects. Applicants should be prepared to commit at least 5 hours a week to the role during semester.
Senior Events Officer The Senior Events Officer will work alongside the rest of the management team, including two events officers, to organise, coordinate and manage events run and funded by Woroni. The individual will work closely with the Managing Editor and the rest of the Board to plan events and ensure the administration work of organising events is completed effectively and in a timely manner. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in organising events, will be effective in both written and verbal communication and will be able to help manage a small team. The successful individual will be expected to commit an average of 6-8 hours a week across the semester.
Woroni’s News Team reports on the current affairs impacting the ANU community and students in particular. It is a fast-paced work environment where members of the team report on a variety of topics, ranging from student politics, changes to the University’s policies, to the Federal Budget. The News Team meets each week and everyone meets tight deadlines. It is a fun, closely-knit team that helps create excellent writers who work well under pressure. If anything can be done to make the application process more accessible, or if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact woroninewseditor@gmail.com.
News Reporter News Reporters regularly write articles for Woroni News on events and issues that impact ANU students. They are expected to engage with campus life, write, on average, an article a week, and attend weekly team meetings. The role will also involve attending various events throughout the semester, like festivals, non-autonomous collective meetings, protests etc. News Reporters must be able to: write concisely and accurately; meet deadlines at short notice; pitch story ideas; work well in a team environment; and be confident in independently investigating issues further.
Senior Writer The Senior Writer is a unique position, which focuses on feature-length articles that delve into the complexities and perspectives of an issue. They are expected to engage with issues on campus and to understand and summarise the voices of those involved, including students, staff and University management. The Senior Writer should excel in concise, articulate writing that can prioritise the human side of stories, going above and beyond just relaying the facts of a story. They should be able to produce polished drafts, and edit the drafts of other reporters, reliably meet deadlines, be confident in independent research, regularly pitch their own articles and work well in a team. The expectation is that, in a semester, the Senior Writer produces five articles. Experience in writing and journalism will be an asset, but is not necessary for this role.
Senior Reporter Senior Reporters both write and edit articles. They are a senior-sub editor, meaning they take some responsibility for helping manage the News Team. In practice, this includes overseeing News Reporters writing articles, editing their work, and providing advice on specific issues. The workload of Senior Reporters varies from week to week, but usually consists of one article per week, and editing other reporters’ articles. Senior Reporters should be organised, capable of providing even-handed criticism, and capable of working with other people. Applicants with prior experience in student journalism and reporting are preferred.
The Radio team runs Woroni Radio; ANU's student radio. From scheduled broadcasts to one-off specials, there is a kaleidoscope of content produced by Woroni Radio. We are seeking passionate and energetic individuals for the role of Producer. A producer provides both technical and moral support to presenters throughout the semester. Producers and presenters will work together to create an engaging radio shows that airs on a weekly basis. They will also assist the Radio Editor with content production. This role is approximately 5-7 hours per week and no past experience is necessary as long as you are keen to learn and passionate about helping our presenters create quality radio content! The ideal candidate will be approachable, organised, responsible, reliable, a good communicator, a team player and a critical thinker. If anything can be done to make the application process more accessible, or if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact woroniradioeditor@gmail.com.
The TV portfolio at Woroni produces video content ranging from videos about campus life, to news reporting, to short film. We’re looking for aspiring filmmakers, documentary presenters, screenwriters, news anchors, vloggers, and anyone interested in being behind a camera! All applicants must be willing to use or learn to use Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as commit to weekly meetings. People with any level of experience are encouraged to apply! If anything can be done to make the application process more accessible, or if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact woronitveditor@gmail.com.
Production Assistant Production Assistants are responsible for assisting the production of video content within a small team. The role includes responsibilities such as: developing video ideas, editing videos in conjunction with the team, and filming. This role is ideal for someone looking for a smaller commitment and to develop more basic skills in camera operation and editing.
Producer Producers are responsible for driving the creation of video content. This will include: generating ideas and writing scripts if necessary, storyboarding, organising shoot logistics, as well as filming and editing while working closely with the team. Ideally, people applying for this role will have some experience of film production and editing.
Executive Producer The executive producer’s role is to coordinate a production team, organise weekly meetings, and contribute to video development, as well as camera operation and editing. This role is ideal for someone with experience in film production and managing a team, who is able to manage a more significant time commitment.
Comments Off on Arts Revue: A Labour (Liberal and Greens) of Love
Arts Revue delivers Bob Katter’s Hot Minion Summer with chaos and tenacious spirit and a whole lotta cast service.
Arts Revue opens with the cold, unflinching eyes of Dora the Explorer and her talented cop buddies searching for clues as to where Arts Revue has gone for the last two years. The skit stretches on over several scenes and witnesses, before finishing on a terrified looking first year saying, “The truth is…” and blue ballsing the audience with a fade to black delivered with perfect comedic timing from the performers and the tech crew.
It steers clear of your usual -ist jokes…For the most part. Would it be Australia’s university with the lowest enrolment rate of low SES background students in Australia’s city with the highest average rent if we didn’t throw in a classist joke?
A sketch lamenting the ‘extinction of Florida Man’ and the ‘closely related cousin, the Australian Bogan’ played up stereotypes meant to poke fun at ‘white trash’. However, it came across tone deaf when delivered in the same revue as students singing loudly about the dreadful, awfulcouchworthy tragedy of having to work in the APS with its job security. Or even trade your soul away to the private sector and its high figured salaries. This association of low SES people in dehumanising, animal-like language is nothing new, it dates to a studied phenomenon of class bias. That this skit made it through several stages of the drafting and the performance process begs the wider question of classism at ANU, a question not suited to be explored here.
The skits mixed a range of comedic styles from sexually charged Bob Katter erotica, to self-arranged musical parodies of the pains of grad job hunting, to pop culture references. One of the directors refers to it as divine, delirious chaos, and it certainly was. Arts Revue also doesn’t shy from satirising life on campus (Jedi Council for ANUSA anyone?) to Canberra culture (expect the number of babies named DavidPocock, yes, all one word, to rise in the next few years) to broader socio-political strata.
Arts Revue made great use of its form, engaging the audience with a great deal of interaction. The performers continue to run into the audience on some songs, as well as emerging from the stands, or calling for one crew member’s father to stand (done impromptu too). There was a skit involving seeing if the Woroni reviewer was there too; I didn’t respond, unsure if it was actually seeking audience participation or if it was just part of the skit. When I told the Directors this, they laughed, and we lamented the opportunity to have done something impromptu. It may have been fun, they say, gushing about their belief in the abilities of the cast to improvise.
As for the directors, I was well and truly pranked. Attending a rehearsal to gather interviews, I approached the Canberra REP theatre, notepad at the ready. I ask to speak to the directors of Arts Revue and two young lads present themselves: I meet Charlie and Rory. We have a conversation where they reveal themselves to be science students, both proclaiming to have had no prior revue experience and then went onto describe themselves as which of the iconic moves of the iconic character ‘Po’ of the iconic franchise Kung Fu Panda they were.
In hindsight, the red flags were many and varied.
After the show, I met the real directors of the show: Claire and Finn. Yes indeed, Charlie and Rory had duped me. Claire and Finn were previously described to me as ‘the old hands’ of Arts Revue, and then also as ‘Master Oogway’ and ‘Master Shifu’ (respectively) before we all had the [spoilers] realisation that Master Oogway indeed passed away and perhaps it was better to choose a mentor character that made it unscathed through the events of the movie.
Claire became Po’s Dad after that.
Now that the revue is over, Claire and Finn glow with the exhausted satisfaction of a job well done. They speak at length happily about the camaraderie they felt in doing Arts Revue, and practically glow with pride when we discuss the growth as performers that the whole team has experienced. Then, we get down to the nitty gritty of administration, to twin winces from the directors.
Theatre kids are not born with the innate knowledge of how to put on a revue. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge that goes into not just writing and performing, but also the whole shebang of hiring a venue, sound, and lighting equipment, as well as advertising. It’s a huge undertaking, and one that Claire and Finn handled without the help of an Executive Producer (who traditionally handle more of the administrative elements). Sprinkle in two years of COVID (2022 was Finn’s third revue, but her first one that went ahead) and a cast of fresh eager faces, the task of guiding them falls firmly on the shoulders of the Directors.
Notwithstanding the whole show was paid for out of pocket by those in it, since Arts Revue has lost access to their bank account over the stretch of the pandemic.
It was only with the tenacious spirit of the cast and crew that pushed Arts Revue to happen this year, born out of no obligation other than the sheer desire to See It Through. Why? Well, I hear it’s because it’s ‘so dangerously fun.’ The Arts Revue opened with a skit that asked, where has Arts Revue been the last two years? “The truth is…”it doesn’t matter. It was here this year. And it will be here next year, and the year after that.
It had been one of the words I had studied in my Chinese script lessons, with red brush strokes gently carving the translucent parchment paper.
家
‘Jiā’
Home.
As my fingers traced and drew the word, I noticed the small horizontal stroke at the top enveloping each edge of the bottom section.
A little top hat, I thought to myself, a tiny roof for a home.
Inside and underneath it, the family unit stood protected and embraced. I imagined each of the delicate brush strokes stemming from the vertical stroke to be like the venetian pattern engraved on a fallen leaf. Each connected and protected; they gracefully stood together.
I held tightly onto the word in my heart when the real estate agent first showed us into our two-storey house in the south of suburban Sydney, complete with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. It even had a backyard with neatly trimmed hedges and a front yard lined with magenta geraniums. The yellow sunlight shone through, radiating a warm lustre and reflecting the beams on my Ma’s face.
The house echoed the clamour of our clumsy footsteps.
After having lived in a tiny government owned apartment for the first ten years of my life, this would be the place where we would build our own first home. Together.
As the days swung merrily by, the unfamiliar spaces grew to become more normal, more ordinary. We grew into the new space quickly, like an old musky couch furrowing deeper back into the walls. My parents were too focused on working, finding a way to make ends meet and keep the family alive. This in combination with the lack of garden space they had known growing up in a run-down apartment in crowded Shanghai, meant that the flowers were never tended to, nor were the bushes trimmed.
Often, I’d cry out in frustration to my Ma Ma, and demand to know why we never took better care of them or gave them the attention I thought they deserved.
“Why can’t we keep the flowers alive?”
“Can you even keep yourself alive?” my Ma would snap back in response.
I think now that they simply never had the time to worry about frivolous things, like adorning their life with beautiful geraniums. They had, after all, grown up in Mao’s Communist China.
And so the magenta geraniums that once sat boldly in our front yard, soon crawled quietly into the space they occupied.
***
At school, I found myself often wincing submissively in shame when the other kids at school asked what my dad did for work.
Some proudly boasted, “My dad works as a lawyer.”
Others beamed, “My daddy is a teacher.”
I quickly brushed aside the questions when they arose. I wanted a ‘white’ dad, who wouldn’t make me solve maths problems during my school holidays and spend my weekends jumping from a whole day of English tutoring on Saturday to Chinese school on Sundays.
At home, I quietly listened to my Ba Ba’s coughing and wheezing as he suffered alone in the gloomy corners of the house. His lungs had given way because of all the smoking, and soon enough, he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. With the smoking also came the dental care. One bad tooth infection would spread quickly through his entire mouth, until it ravaged through and left nothing but empty black holes.
Each night, my Ba would brush his teeth hunched over the steel sink, pull out his porcelain set of teeth and plonk them into the jar of salt-water. He would smile at me with his lumpy gums, when he caught me watching curiously from afar, and I would hesitantly offer a toothy grin back.
The rare moments I did see of him were slipping past in the afternoon as he packed his fraying backpack and left for a night shift at the paper printing factory. The muscles of his face were still heavy with drowsiness from the evening before. There were barely more than a few meagre words exchanged – the uncomfortable silence was an unexpected guest that had somehow wedged itself in the empty distance between.
His face had quickly grown sunken in, and half his eyebrows were missing. He, an already tall lanky man, had lost more than fifteen kilograms in the space of a few months because of the combination of the endless health issues and working tirelessly. His head hung low and his shoulders heavy; it would be a long night of labour at the factory.
One day, I had carved a smiley face in the flaky red bean pastry that my Ma had made. She neatly packed three of the pastries in my Ba’s backpack.
“I was so tired from working and it was so dark outside,” he said to me the next day, “and then, I see the smiley lian. When I eat it, it also make mesmile too.” He held my gaze steady through thick lensed glasses.
It was such a meagre act, but it reminded him he was not so alone in this world.
Whilst other dads played soccer on the weekends and their kids sat firmly on their shoulders, my Ba Ba’s shoulders carried the burdens of working multiple labour jobs to mend the tears of a struggling family.
***
It was many years later when my parents finally saved enough money to be able to take us on a month-long holiday during the summer break of 2010. We didn’t do any of the regular things the other tourists did in the bustling city of Shanghai.
My sister and I incessantly complained to our Ma.
“Why can’t we be like normal families? Why can’t we take a holiday to Europe, where we can stay in nice hotels?”
“Yeah, I wish we could go to Europe,” pouted my sister, “even the Gold Coast would be so much better cos there are theme parks there.”
“Ah, staying here is much cheaper, we don’t need to pay for hotels here.” she replied. “Going on holidays will be so hard.” A few moments passed, and she exhaled a long breath and added: “We have not seen your Na in such long time. She hobbles around this lonely apartment all by herself.”
As I lay staring at the concrete ceiling that was splattered with specks of mould, my eyes began to wander around the dimly lit room. The room smelt strongly of a burning incense that my Na said would heal anything, even the distance between a family.
The streetlights outside flickered in a constant motion, with the pale light casting shadows on my mother’s still face beside me.
Here we are, I thought as I pulled the red woollen blankets closer to my face, the home-town of my parents.
To fill our empty time, my sister and I found ourselves sitting on the olive-coloured couch with our wrinkled Na, watching Chinese television together that I could only partially understand. From cartoons about courageous monkey kings, to poorly made crime shows, to Han Dynasty romance dramas; these were the stories that continued to captivate me.
Over the dinner table, the stories continued to drift through. My Ba Ba chattered with liveliness to his friends and his sisters in smooth Shanghainese. His eyes creased with delight and his shoulders sighed in response as he relished on the foods he had grown up eating. An assortment of green leafy vegetables smothered in oyster sauce and meat encased in thin rice flour pastry. He gleefully slurped up the bone-broth noodle soup.
This time, when he offered a smiled at me from across the room, the smile reached his eyes and creased the corners of his thin lips.
All the while, my sister and I found ourselves bragging to our cousins about how wonderful Australia was. We reminisced about the balmy evening sunlight on the golden shores that we basked in, as opposed to the thick grey smog and pollution here. We boasted of coming home from Sunday Chinese school with a delicious pizza waiting for us every week for lunch.
“Pi-zza is for rich people here!” my cousin cried out in between mouthfuls of rice, “It’s like a high-class restaurant because you sit down and they serve you. Do you know how many hours we’d have to work to be able to eat at Pizza Hut?”
I caught my sister’s eye from across the table.
They didn’t need to know that pizzas in Australia cost five dollars and was, in fact, fast food for those with little money.
Perhaps, we were rich after all.
***
Like the food, the world around me felt familiar but also foreign. People didn’t speak English, which meant that the words I wanted to speak only tumbled out clumsily.
I clung tightly on to my Ma Ma’s hand on the Metro Station, gazing at the characters that flashed up on each stop. She was agile and swift here, knowing all the right words to navigate us to this part of town and how to order all the foods from the street markets vendors. I, on the other hand, felt as though I was swamped in water and treading just enough to keep my head afloat. I didn’t know how to ask for directions or even how to figure out how to catch the bus to the shops. I gulped and managed to fumble a few words that would immediately be drowned out by the engulf of the busy cityscape.
“Korean or Japanese?” asked the old man sitting beside my sister and I on the bus, overhearing the muffled English phrases we snuck to one another.
“From Australia,” I replied, as I reached up to touch the end strands of my black hair.
His moon-shaped eyes stared curiously back at me.
***
When we had returned to the familiar pockets of suburban Sydney, the geraniums greeted us with a solemn sadness, and diligently retreated into their unobtrusive position.
After all the five of us had lived in the cramped one-bedroom space in Shanghai, I vividly remember the feeling after setting foot back into my house. My house seemed to have physically expanded,as though it was much larger than when I had left it in my memories. The walls had grown, and the spaces fell quieter without the animated chatter of the rest of my family.
My parents softly unpacked the assortment of Chinese ornaments they brought back and had haggled the sellers from the market with. A humble cabbage made out of jade, a bottle of Moutai and a new set of decorative chopsticks. The eclectic ornaments sat neatly in our red rosewood cupboard for display and would rest alongside our swimming trophies and the seashells we had picked up from the Sunshine Coast.
The red shelves were soon filled with a multitude of things that spoke of dreams of a previous life, or perhaps it was the life they never had the chance to continue living. This was a corner of our home in Sydney that had created only but a mere semblance of the home they had packed up and left behind in Shanghai.
As the evening gave way, the four of us gathered around the round table. We sat huddled over bowls of plain rice congee with chopsticks in one hand and clutching a steamed meat bun in the other.
“I dreamed that we were all back there. Back home,” my Ma Ma faintly whispered, her face pale like thin pieces of billowing parchment paper.
No one could muster a reply. I felt my lips tremble with unspoken words. I continued to concentrate carefully on each grain of rice in my bowl as I dug through the slush with my chopsticks, waiting for the silence to linger and fill the vast space around us.
When the gathering dark fell like a curtain, I crept up the stairs to follow the dim yellow light that illuminated my parents’ room. From the smallest corner of the room, I could faintly hear weeping.
I caught a glimpse of my mother – she was hunched over, her head bowed and her figure prostrated. A faded picture of my Na hung on the left-hand side of her dresser. On the right, the magenta geraniums hung limply in a blue and white porcelain vase.
She had missed
家
‘Jiā’
Home.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
While thousands of kilometres divide Granada’s Alhambra and Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, they are united by a shared artistic heritage: that of Islamic Art. For many, Islamic Art conjures a monolithic oriental tableau of divine geometry, shaded patios, and shimmering works of tile. Indeed, while North Africa and West Asia have often been featured in Australian news reports as convulsive and divided lands, the popular Western perception of Islamic Art, that of a unified body of work, provides a unifying riposte to the news.
How correct is this perception? How unified is Islamic Art, and how valid is the term? In reference to these questions, I contend two claims. The first, that the term Islamic Art behaves like a “floating signifier:” it is a term that vaguely refers to many venerable artistic traditions in an unclear way. The second, that this floating signification begets a paradox: it is valid to refer to all of the traditions within Islamic Art as Islamic Art, but it isn’t to refer to Italian, Dutch, and French art as “Christian Art,” even though arguably Islamic Art displays more diversity than “Christian Art.” This is not to say Islamic Art doesn’t have its place as a term: however, there is great diversity that this term veils through its contradictions.
Firstly, what is a floating signifier? A signifier by itself is a particular form of individual thought, word, or sound that refers to the signified, the thing or concept that is being described. When I say “read the latest edition of Woroni,” the word Woroni is a clear signifier that refers to the signified, the latest edition of Woroni. A floating signifier, however, is a “a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or non-existent signified,” says Daniel Chandler. The way “socialist” is used to refer to all kinds of inconsistent political systems based upon how someone got out of bed, and nothing else (hahaha, just kidding…unless?) is a pretty good example of a floating signifier.
Why do I think the term Islamic Art is a floating signifier? Simply because it is logically a deeply contradictory term. The term “Islamic Art” implies that all its art is singular, while in reality its arts are spectacularly plural. For example, most instances of Islamic Art could be accused of being un-Islamic by different forms of Islamic Orthodoxy. It might surprise some readers, but in Iran, there are actual paintings (with faces!) of the Prophet Muhammad and Ali (a central figure in Shia Islam, and the rightful successor to Muhammad as Imam in Shia thought). Many Sunni sects would deem such art as haram and un-Islamic. Yet this is Islamic Art. This is an ambiguity problem. There is no internal logical consensus over whether certain kinds of Islamic Art are Islamic or not.
In the boundaries of the geographic Islamic Art world, there is also a problem of vagueness. The term Islamic Art implies that the art of places like Northern Iran, Azerbaijan, and Eastern Turkey should be more similar to the art of places like the Alhambra in Spain. However, miniature painting techniques, shared pre-Islamic myths, and a very specific Caucasian style actually tie the arts of these three regions to their Christian, non-Islamic neighbours: Armenia and Georgia. The Islamic Art of this region is more similar stylistically to its neighbouring Christian Art than Islamic Art from much of the Islamic World. How can some Islamic Art be more similar to some non-Islamic art then most Islamic Art? This continuum between the non-Islamic art of the Christian Caucasian world, and its Muslim neighbours creates a line drawing problem. Apart from the religion of the painter, the stylistic criteria that divide Islamic Art from non-Islamic art are often vague. Wouldn’t it be less vague to just call the art by what it is: Caucasian, Persian, or Turkish art? Much like it is done in Europe and the West?
Of course, this is not to discount the shared signatures of Islamic Art, such as the four-part garden, mosaic work and water features, which derive their origin from Persian, Byzantine, and Western Roman traditions. However, the diversity and multiplicity of Islamic Art are no different, if not greater, than those in the Christian or Western world. And yet, we seem to realise the dangers of applying a floating signifier to the art of the Western World by not referring to all of Western art as “Christian Art.”
In Islamic Art’s case, the contradictions inherent in the term suggest that an orientalist otherising-rooted in the same geopolitical and economic logic that created the Middle East-was responsible for the strength of the term.
This is why it is imperative that art collections in our neck of the woods curate art from across the Islamic Worlds. The cultural multiplicities, nuances, and contradictions are rich, beautiful, and often surprising. Clash of civilization theses, stereotypes about Islamic iconoclasm and dourness – these all become laughable when gazing upon miniatures of poets and scientists pouring wine, dishing out romantic advice, and playing games of chess. Since both Christian Art and Islamic Art suffer from floating signification, there is more to unite than divide. Long may artists honour this unity, and paint over the naysayers.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
Comments Off on Where I Stand: A Kambri Exhibition Review
The initial feeling I experienced walking down University Avenue witnessing Where I Stand was one of intrigue. Six gigantic cubes stand in a single row. Twenty-four frames of stunning photographs each one as striking as the one before it. Like many around me, I succumbed to curiosity and took a closer look. What followed was a profoundly emotional, enigmatic and exciting adventure as I engaged with each of the images.
Where I Stand is an exhibition presented by aMBUSH gallery together with Moshe Rosenzveig, director of Head On Photo Festival. Since the initial planning of Kambri, aMBUSH Gallery and Wiltshire + Dimas envisioned a walk of art for students, staff and the public to enjoy art outside the setting of a gallery. Exhibition Avenue is the fruition of this vision, an initiative to showcase year-round exhibitions in Kambri. The current show is photographically based, although future efforts could use more diverse art forms such as live street art.
For those who have not had the pleasure of viewing the exhibition, Where I Stand incorporates the work of six iconic Australian artists; Michael Cook, Dr. Judith Nangala Crispin, Sarah Ducker, Murray Fredericks, Barbara McGrady and Michael Jalaru Torres. Together, the artists present 24 deeply personal works that delve into themes of identity, history, nature, connection to the land, The Dr eaming and the major theme of healing.
The first cube that I encountered was that of QLD artist Michael Cook. Cook began making art photography in 2009 in response to his desire to explore issues of identity and how his own life was affected by adoption. Cook was born in the late 1960s to a sixteen-year-old mother who had become pregnant to an Indigenous Australian man. Keeping the child would have been severely frowned upon, and so Cook was put up for adoption. In his series of four photographs, Cook delves into themes surrounding mother and child. 'Mother', the collection that the exhibit images are chosen from, showcases Australian Indigenous women alone in a landscape. There is a feeling that a child is missing through symbols such as an empty pram or tricycle. I was disquieted by seeing the loneliness and loss of these women. The grey colouring of their desolate backgrounds intensified my empathy. Cook speaks to the incredible pain caused by the Stolen Generations, the innate human bond between mother and child and the pain caused by the breaking of such a pure connection.
The next cube I met was donned with photographs by Canberra based artist Dr. Judith Nangala Crispin. Crispin is a talented poet, visual artist, academic, writer and photographer. Her work explores themes of displacement, loss of identity (including her Indigenous Australian ancestry) and connection with Country. Crispin has spent time in the Tanami desert living with the Warlpiri people who she says she owes the development of her unique photographic technique of lumachrome glass printing. The method involves the use of natural materials such as blood, wax, ochres, honey, mud, seeds and roadkill animals arranged on Perspex over light-sensitive paper. In this way, lumachrome glass prints arose from her attempt to delve into a deeper connection with the Australian landscape. Crispin drives out to find roadkill and waits with the animals for up to 50 hours while the artwork is developing. The attention to detail is evident when I saw her work, with even the smallest hairs of a joey delicately captured. Crispin’s artworks, at first glance, felt warm and comforting. Seeing the four lifeless animals wrapped in the embrace of the landscape reminded me of Indigenous Australia’s deeply nuanced connection to Country. However, there is also a sense upon viewing of aloneness — a disconnect with each animal surrounded by darkness. The photographs also highlight the pain that has been caused and continues to be caused by the Stolen Generations.
I then followed on to the third cube by Indigenous fine art photographer Michael Jalaru Torres, who is originally from Broome. Torres’ art draws on his personal history as well as exploring contemporary social and political issues facing Indigenous Australians. I was struck by how simple Torres’ images were. Each photograph seemed to focus on a subject with contrasting colours creating a sense of lightness and darkness. I felt a sense of joy as well as pain when viewing his images. Torres highlights the dark history of Australia as well as illuminating thriving Indigenous peoples all around the country. His artworks upon viewing are subtle, but poignant. Torres wants his photographs to inspire people to learn more about Indigenous Australian culture.
The next cube was by Sydney based artist Sarah Ducker. Ducker was inspired by her trip to Broken Hill in creating this exhibition. Ducker visited the landscape after the 2019-2020 NSW bushfires that were unprecedented in its destruction. However, Ducker was transfixed by the resilience of the bush standing bare yet magnificent in its ashes. This beauty found in the wreckage is evident when viewing these photographs. The naked trees stand tall and strong despite their blackened exterior. The carnage of the bush is a symbol of rejuvenation and transformation. Just as the bush regrows from its ashes, Ducker portrays humanity’s own need for rebirth. The artworks demonstrate our need to radically change our behaviour to fight climate change and its devastating consequences.
The next cube was by artist Aunty Barbara McGrady, a Gamilaroi/Gomeroi Murri yinah (woman). Her works portray her passion for telling stories about the lives of Indigenous Australians today. McGrady is a sociologist, athlete and sports lover who photographs many famous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sportspeople at the NRL, AFL and other matches. Her work aims to show empowering images of Indigenous Australians, particularly through their positive contributions to society such as through sports, activism and culture. I was struck by how powerful the subjects of her photographs stood out. Each Indigenous Australian was showcasing their strong cultural ties proudly against the colonial backdrop. Additionally, McGrady states that the art form of ‘black box’ is a work of decolonising the traditional colonial archive spaces such as museums and art galleries.
The final cube on my walk down University Avenue was by NSW artist Murray Fredericks. Fredericks is a well-known artist with his works showcased internationally and around Australia, sitting in significant institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, National Portrait Gallery and Commonwealth Bank as well as owned by Elton John and Valentino. In this exhibition, Fredericks chose four images from the Salt Project (2003-2019) produced at Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre), in South Australia. Upon viewing this cube, I was struck by feelings of the sublime. Faced with vignettes that trailed onto the horizon, I was afflicted with the thought of the omnipotence of nature. I felt small but in a profoundly comforting way, as though there was something greater in the universe. It was Fredericks’ own meditations of infinity in the landscape that inspired him to replicate the experience in images. Fredericks’ use of colours and light demonstrates this feeling perfectly. The fading sunsets and barren infinite desert reminded me of the immense beauty of our earth.
After I had finished walking down University Avenue, I was overcome by the poignant messages and stories of each artist. Personal histories, political and social issues all interwoven into a beautiful exhibition centered around themes of healing, identity, culture and loss. This exhibition succeeded in creating a challenging, yet rewarding experience that forces viewers to think deeply about each image. If you are walking down University Avenue, I highly recommend that you take the time to experience this provoking exhibition.
Where I Stand here.
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
