Lot's Wife Edition 2 2017
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Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong><br />
edition two
IT MEANS THEY CARE?<br />
Relationships, be they partners, friends or family, can be a great<br />
part of life, but sometimes behaviours that we can brush off as<br />
someone 'just showing how much they care' can actaully be<br />
harmful or dangerous. Relationships should be about equality,<br />
respect and open communication. These are some red flags you<br />
should look for before or during any relationship.<br />
MONASH<br />
SAFER COMMUNITY UNIT<br />
T: +61 3 9905 1599<br />
E: safercommunity@monash.edu<br />
monash.edu<br />
Try asking yourself:<br />
• Do they show extreme moodswings, saying that they'll love you<br />
forever then getting angry and saying they hate you?<br />
• Are they expecting you to make big, unreasonable committments to<br />
them very early in the relationship?<br />
• Are they possissive, jealous or manipulative? Do they try to stop you<br />
from seeing your family and friends or spread lies about you to them?<br />
• Are they controlling of your behaviour, such as dictating where<br />
you go, what you can wear or even what you can eat?<br />
Never date someone out of pity and trust your instincts. If these<br />
behaviours sound familiar, the Safer Community Unit can help.<br />
For information, advice and support in a safe environment, please contact the Monash University Safer Community Unit on 9905<br />
1599 or just dial 51599 from a Monash phone.The Safer Community Unit website also lists resources and links to external agencies<br />
http://www.adm.monash.edu.au/safercommunity/<br />
Adapted from Surviving Stalking (2002) by Michele Pathé
contents<br />
02/<br />
editorial<br />
04/<br />
msa calendar<br />
06/<br />
office bearer reports<br />
08/<br />
wot’s news?<br />
jessie lu & joanne fong<br />
11/<br />
doing everything we can<br />
keyur doolabh & julia chetwood<br />
12/<br />
dreaming of ivy league<br />
sophia mcnamara & linda widjaja<br />
14/<br />
how to be a super broke uni<br />
student and survive<br />
chulani jithma kaluarachchi<br />
16/<br />
international volunteering:<br />
selfless or selfish?<br />
devika pandit & julia thouas<br />
17/<br />
in crisis: the greens must strive<br />
for electoral success<br />
jordan mosley & hugh brooks<br />
18/<br />
a love letter to a lost america<br />
ben caddaye & lucy zammit<br />
20/<br />
let’s talk about youth<br />
homelessness<br />
sachetha bamunusinghe & mohan lei<br />
22/<br />
artwork: dinosaurs<br />
keely simpson-bull<br />
24/<br />
what major should you choose?<br />
science & engineering sub-editor team &<br />
lin rahman<br />
25/<br />
what’s the matter with<br />
anti-matter?<br />
isaac reichman & john henry<br />
26/<br />
apathy and urgency<br />
lachlan liesfield & carly paterson<br />
27/<br />
do patterns of social media use<br />
reflect personality traits?<br />
ambrose moore<br />
28/<br />
science news<br />
science & engineering sub-editor team<br />
30/<br />
student theatre: the MUST have<br />
dylan marshall<br />
32/<br />
oscar bait: why the oscars are<br />
overrated<br />
nick jarrett & rachelle lee<br />
34/<br />
the political is personal: an<br />
interview with judith buckrich<br />
evangeline yong<br />
36/<br />
lucian and ‘the true history’<br />
john henry & stephie dim<br />
38/<br />
the beginner’s guide to<br />
melbourne’s art galleries<br />
jessica lehmann<br />
40/<br />
the wacky and wonderful: jude<br />
perl<br />
manon boutin charles & sa pasa<br />
42/<br />
why videogames are a great<br />
medium for storytelling<br />
rachael welling & angharad neal-williams<br />
44/<br />
why reality tv is a blight on<br />
humanity<br />
marlo sullivan & audrey chmielewski<br />
46/<br />
political acts: pioneers of<br />
performance art in<br />
southeast asia<br />
linh thuy nguyen<br />
48/<br />
the human implications of<br />
scorsese’s taxi driver<br />
nick bugeja<br />
50/<br />
cabin 85<br />
lachlan liesfield & john henry<br />
52/<br />
the greenhouse<br />
joanne fong & anna tsuda<br />
54/<br />
crazed anti capitalist<br />
nick bugeja<br />
54/<br />
apprivoiser<br />
manon boutin charles<br />
55/<br />
come back<br />
isaac reichman<br />
56/<br />
wot’s life? with uncle trump<br />
donald trump<br />
57/<br />
poetry: turn/whisky & gin<br />
shona louis & lucy zammit
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
the team<br />
Editors<br />
Emina Besirevic<br />
Nick Bugeja<br />
Sophia McNamara<br />
Rob Staunton<br />
Design<br />
Hana Crowl<br />
Student Affairs<br />
Caitlin McIvor<br />
Dylan Marshall<br />
Sophie Ng<br />
Devika Pandit<br />
Politics & Society<br />
Mollie Ashworth<br />
Ben Caddaye<br />
Jessica Lehmann<br />
Lachlan Liesfield<br />
Arts & Culture<br />
Tim Davies<br />
Nick Jarrett<br />
Clarissa Kwee<br />
Linh Nguyen<br />
Creative & Comedy<br />
Manon Boutin Charles<br />
John Henry<br />
Georgina Lee<br />
Shona Louis<br />
Elizabeth Yu<br />
Campus Reporters<br />
Joanne Fong<br />
Jessie Lu<br />
Science & Engineering<br />
Tracy Chen<br />
Shreeya Luthra<br />
Isaac Reichman<br />
Rachael Welling<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> is entirely run, written, illustrated, edited and designed by students.<br />
If you would like to get involved, we are always looking for new contributors!<br />
Say hi anytime:<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> Office<br />
1st Floor, Campus Centre,<br />
Turn right at the MSA desk<br />
Or email us at msa-lotswife@monash.edu<br />
Advertising enquires:<br />
msa-lotswife@monash.edu<br />
Cover Art by Matilda Parolini<br />
Matilda Parolini is a Masters of Architecture student at Monash University and<br />
an illustrator. She combines several colours, textures and elements of symbolism<br />
in her work. While a keen artist in high school fueled her passion for creativity,<br />
she decided to pursue studies in Architecture. She manages to find herself<br />
turning to digital illustration because of its limitless possibilities, as another<br />
outlet of creativity which is quite different to her current studies.<br />
Instagram: @matildaparolini<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> <strong>Edition</strong> Two<br />
March <strong>2017</strong><br />
Published by Mary Giblin at Printgraphics, Mount Waverley, Victoria.<br />
As you read this magazine you are on Aboriginal land. Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> recognises the<br />
Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nations as the historical and<br />
rightful owners and custodians of the lands which this magazine was produced on.<br />
This land was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.<br />
Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> condemns and will not publish any material that is objectionable<br />
or discriminatory of any nature. The views expressed herein are those of the<br />
attributed writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the<br />
Monash Student Association. All writing and artwork remains the property of the<br />
producers and must not be reproduced without their consent.<br />
© Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> Magazine<br />
Level 1, Campus Centre<br />
Monash University<br />
Clayton, Victoria 3800<br />
Section Art by Julia Chetwood<br />
Julia Chetwood is a 3rd year Communication Design student at Monash<br />
University. She’s really into acrylic paint and mixed media right now, but has a<br />
long list of artistic passions, which include but are not limited to: copic markers,<br />
0.38 fineliners, digital drawings, finger-painting, watercolours and messy collages.<br />
You can find more about her and her #illustrations on instagram;<br />
@juliachetwood or on her very own website; juliachetwood.com
Kia Ora and welcome to the second issue of Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> this year. O-Week was crazy and successful: we<br />
handed out so many copies of <strong>Edition</strong> 1 that we had run out of all of the copies halfway through week 2.<br />
Either we misplaced a whole bunch of boxes or people are actually far keener to read the magazine than<br />
we thought. It has been tough fitting this around class, and our academic work has gotten off to a bit of a<br />
rocky start, but hey, what’s uni without completely overloading yourself and burning out at some point?<br />
#puttingthehotintohotmess. Chances are though, we aren’t alone. Hopefully this magazine helps you to zone<br />
out and escape the impending uni-induced anxiety – even if it is just for a little while. We, along with our<br />
dedicated contributors and graphic designers have poured our heart and soul into it and if you do happen to<br />
find the odd typo or spelling mistake, do the right thing and don’t point it out to us! This is our newborn baby<br />
and she’s just perfect (to us, at least).<br />
Remember we are always looking for new contributors, and so if you think you could write or draw something<br />
that would look pretty sweet in <strong>Edition</strong> 3, drop us a line at msa-lotswife@monash.edu or pop by our office,<br />
located on Level 1 of the Clayton campus centre. At least one of us is in the office most of the time. Feel free<br />
to write us a ‘letter to the editor’, give us a question for our Agony Aunt, or come along to one of our weekly<br />
writers’ meetings whenever you feel like it. The times for writers’ meetings for this semester are Wednesdays at<br />
2pm in odd numbered uni weeks, Mondays at 4pm in even numbered weeks. We can’t make a magazine all on<br />
our own, that’s where our loving community kicks in.<br />
Lot’s of love,<br />
Sophia, Rob, Nick and Emina<br />
2-3
edition<br />
edition<br />
two<br />
two<br />
lot’s<br />
lot’s<br />
wife<br />
wife<br />
MSA Calendar<br />
WHATS HAPPENING AROUND<br />
CLAYTON CAMPUS<br />
MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY<br />
27 28<br />
MSA WELFARE<br />
DEPARTMENT<br />
Mondays at 7.30pm<br />
in Wholefoods<br />
-Free Food!<br />
TACO TUESDAY &<br />
TEQUILA SUNRISE<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
29 30 31<br />
THE MSA<br />
BREAKFAST CLUB<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
8.30-10am<br />
Week five<br />
03 04<br />
MSA WELFARE<br />
DEPARTMENT<br />
Mondays at 7.30pm<br />
in Wholefoods<br />
-Free Food!<br />
TACO TUESDAY &<br />
TEQUILA SUNRISE<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
05<br />
THE MSA<br />
BREAKFAST CLUB<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
8.30-10am<br />
06<br />
07<br />
Week six<br />
10<br />
MSA WELFARE<br />
DEPARTMENT<br />
Mondays at 7.30pm<br />
in Wholefoods<br />
-Free Food!<br />
11<br />
TACO TUESDAY &<br />
TEQUILA SUNRISE<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
12<br />
THE MSA<br />
BREAKFAST CLUB<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
8.30-10am<br />
13 14<br />
Week seven<br />
17 18 19<br />
MSA WELFARE<br />
DEPARTMENT<br />
Mondays at 7.30pm<br />
in Wholefoods<br />
-Free Food!<br />
TACO TUESDAY &<br />
TEQUILA SUNRISE<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
THE MSA<br />
BREAKFAST CLUB<br />
Sir John’s Bar<br />
8.30-10am<br />
20 21<br />
Week eiGht<br />
design by sam allen
student affairs<br />
student affairs 4-5
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
OBR<br />
Office Bearer Reports<br />
PRESIDENT<br />
MATILDA GREY<br />
Happy week 5 everyone! I hope you have well and truly<br />
settled into university life. O-Week saw more students<br />
than ever engage with clubs, societies and the MSA.<br />
Our elected representatives spoke to big crowds of<br />
new students, and our student theatre group MUST<br />
put on brilliant O-Show performances! If students<br />
missed their opportunity to join clubs during O-Week,<br />
they got another chance to do so during our successful<br />
Week 1 Clubs Day. Since then, we have been busy<br />
running Members Week, an event organised to thank<br />
students for joining the MSA. We put on a range of activities<br />
including a petting zoo and puppies, loads of free food events, a photo booth,<br />
face painting, a giant inflatable slide, an outdoor film and much more! We also<br />
promoted and attended the National Day of Action that was held on March<br />
22nd, a protest held in opposition to attacks on education at Monash and all<br />
across the country. The Women’s Department and I have begun to organise the<br />
launch of our sexual assault campaign. This will soon be visible throughout<br />
campus events in an effort to change the culture around sexual assault at<br />
Monash. Remember to check out our Facebook page and website to keep<br />
updated around all of the fantastic things we are doing for you this year!<br />
SECRETARY<br />
JESSICA STONE<br />
Phew! The past few weeks have been hectic at the MSA.<br />
With a fantastic (well at least I hope it was) O-Week out<br />
of the way, Semester 1 kicked off with Zest Fest in Week 1.<br />
Member’s Week quickly followed and the MSA brought<br />
you guys puppies, petting zoos, free food and a movie<br />
night. So what’s next on the agenda? SummerFest is<br />
happening in Week 3, so make sure to come along to<br />
the Full Moon Party!!! It’s also Education (Public Affairs)<br />
Week so come get your activist on!<br />
TREASURER<br />
CAITLIN BROWN<br />
Hello Neighborinos! I hope Semester 1 is treating everyone<br />
well, and that you aren’t already too far behind in your<br />
lectures. It feels like O-week and Members Week have<br />
just flown by! But hopefully you managed to stop by to<br />
join some clubs and the MSA, pat some puppies and<br />
enjoy a free snag. We’ve had some great events, and<br />
it’s been lovely to see everyone’s faces at our events!<br />
We tried out some new events this year for Members<br />
Week, like our Photo Booth and the “Meet your MSA<br />
OB’s” Radio Monash interview – shout out to them for<br />
being super rad, making us all feel super comfortable and<br />
sharing a giggle with us! It’s been great to see the all the support students have<br />
thrown towards the MSA, both through buying memberships and rocking up<br />
to our events. It makes us all the more lucky that we get to give back to such<br />
great students! Get aroused by upcoming events such as the National Days<br />
of Action!!<br />
EDUCATION (PUBLIC AFFAIRS)<br />
COREY ROSEVEAR & JULIET STEEL<br />
Hello wonderful students, it’s only early into the semester<br />
but what a fantastic beginning of the semester we have<br />
had. O-week began with a bang! So many members of<br />
our great clubs and societies wearing stickers saying<br />
‘I’m a part of the movement: Make Education Free<br />
Again’. If you didn’t get one of these feel free to drop<br />
by the MSA and we will be sure to get you one. There<br />
are also a few spare copies of the awesome ‘Student<br />
Made Unit Guide’ hanging around which will give you<br />
the insider’s perspective of what you need to know about<br />
your units this year like whether you need the textbook or<br />
who is the best tutor! We also are still taking applications to our very exciting<br />
Activate Monash Leadership Program which will be ran with help of some<br />
of the most impressive progressive leaders of Australia. If you want to get<br />
involved and earn some volunteer points make sure you register at www.<br />
tinyurl.com/ActivateMonash and help change the world!<br />
EDUCATION (ACADEMIC AFFAIRS)<br />
HARINI KASTHURIARACHCHI & RAPHAEL TELL<br />
Hello everyone! Uni is well underway now and we hope that<br />
you’re coasting along and not drowning in assessments!<br />
Since we last spoke, Ed-Ac has been rather busy<br />
continuing our work with the Academic Progress<br />
Committee process! Now that most of the hearings<br />
have come to an end, we’re compiling the issues we<br />
encountered during the hearings so as to provide the<br />
university administration with clear recommendations<br />
on how to improve the APC process. We hope to make<br />
the process more regimented to ensure that students are all<br />
given a fair go when it comes to determining their academic<br />
future. We’re also extremely excited to announce that we’ve begun forming our<br />
entirely student-run Academic Affairs Committee. Students from all faculties<br />
will alert the committee to changes and restructures happening in their<br />
courses, and recommend solutions to ensure students don’t get unnecessarily<br />
screwed over by their faculties. If this is something that interests you, please<br />
don’t hesitate to contact us!<br />
WELFARE<br />
NICHOLAS VIRGO & PATRICK STEPHENSON<br />
Afternoon all. I hope your first week back at university was<br />
as inspiring and innovative as all the pamphlets said it<br />
would be. It has been a tumultuous two weeks in the<br />
Welfare Department with all the ups and downs of a<br />
scenic railroad. Our primary project during the start of<br />
semester has been our classic ‘Free Food Mondays.’ Our<br />
menu has ranged from Thai green curries to monstrously<br />
cheesy pasta bakes. We’ve had lines extending further<br />
than 150 meters which was quite daunting, yet we<br />
somehow managed to feed everyone. We deemed it a<br />
success. In collaboration with our free food events we have<br />
been focusing our energy towards initiating public campaigns surrounding the<br />
expansion of the Asylum Seeker Scholarship as well as the decriminalisation of<br />
the possession of drugs for personal use. It has become abundantly clear that<br />
the ‘War on Drugs’ is a complete waste of time and that we need to refocus<br />
our energy and resources towards harm minimisation, a strategy which has<br />
been proven to save lives. We look forward to kicking these campaigns off and<br />
hopefully changing a few minds and influencing a few lives.
ACTIVITIES<br />
SEAN GLASS & SARAH HARRIS<br />
Our semester is off to a smashing start! After serving over<br />
six thousand sausages to hungry O-week guests as well as<br />
a few thousand drinks in both rain and sunshine, we’re<br />
excited to continue bringing food as well as excellent<br />
events all throughout the coming semester. Following<br />
the success of our sold out Trivia Night, our next<br />
event will be a whimsical karaoke night as another<br />
excellent way for you to make new friends at uni<br />
and have a great time catching up with friends you’ve<br />
already made so far. Keep an eye out on Wednesdays<br />
from 12 until 2 on the Lemon Scented Lawn where we will<br />
be having our weekly BBQ accompanied by an hour of quality live music and<br />
hopefully sunny daizzzz!<br />
INDIGENOUS<br />
JAYDEN CROZIER & BRYDA NICHOLS<br />
Hey everyone, we’d like to start out by saying thank you to<br />
everybody who came to Wominjeka Monash! Wominjeka<br />
marks the first time our university has used this platform<br />
during O-Week to celebrate Indigenous people and<br />
culture. As the MCs, we had a fantastic time hosting<br />
the event. It was great to work in collaboration with<br />
the university in making the event possible. We are<br />
looking forward to having more events that build<br />
on this initiative to further celebrate Aboriginal and<br />
Torres Strait Islander culture. By the same token, while it<br />
is brilliant to work on these efforts to celebrate Indigenous<br />
culture, we must also look at some of the serious issues facing the Indigenous<br />
community. When the Fair Work Commission handed down their decision<br />
regarding the cuts to penalty rates, Bryda was interviewed in studio by NITV<br />
regarding the impact to Indigenous workers. In particular, she talked about the<br />
impact this will have on students and the accessibility for Indigenous students<br />
to higher education. Overall, this month we took advantage of the many<br />
opportunities to showcase our department and the work we do.<br />
WOMEN’S<br />
SHREEYA LUTHRA & NIKOLA GUZYTE<br />
Hello, again! O-week was an absolute blast, and we’re<br />
thrilled to have met so many wonderful women! Thank<br />
you to everyone who helped make it (and Zest Fest)<br />
so successful. We’re excited about all our upcoming<br />
events this year, and all the ways you can get involved:<br />
like our Facebook page, join our Facebook group<br />
(search MSA Women’s Department for both), send<br />
us an email if you’ve got an idea for a workshop or<br />
discussion group you’d like to see happen, drop in to say<br />
hello to us in our office, or submit writing and/or artwork<br />
for our women’s publication: Dissent! Also, be sure to keep<br />
an eye on the women’s room for an amazing mural designed and painted by<br />
incredible local Melbourne artist Abbey Rich. We’re keen as beans to see the<br />
finished product ourselves! Xoxo, your faithful WOfficers
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
Wot’s News?<br />
Jessie Lu<br />
Monash QS Subject Rankings<br />
THE QS World University Ranking by Subject<br />
have been released, with Monash placing 2nd<br />
in the world behind Harvard in Pharmacy and<br />
Pharmacology. In other notable areas for Monash’s<br />
subjects, Medicine has improved 10 positions to<br />
29, Nursing improved to 12 from 16, Education<br />
remained at 17 from the previous high of 6th in 2014<br />
and Law dropped 4 places to 27th.<br />
Monash has heralded the rankings given in <strong>2017</strong>,<br />
and rightly so – however, in the Oceanic region,<br />
Monash still often ranks behind the University of<br />
Melbourne and the University of Sydney in many<br />
subjects.<br />
Overall, out of the 46 subjected listed, Monash<br />
placed in the top 100 in 40 subjects and top 50<br />
for 23 subjects, improving on 20 subjects in 2016.<br />
Currently, Monash also ranks 65th in the QS World<br />
University rankings and 42nd in the Graduate<br />
Employability rankings.<br />
Monash Vice-Chancellor appointed<br />
Chair of Universities Australia<br />
PROFESSOR Margaret Gardner, President and<br />
Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, has been<br />
appointed as Chair of Universities Australia on<br />
its 10th anniversary. The peak body represents all<br />
39 universities of Australia. The outgoing chair,<br />
Barney Glover has welcomed Gardner as a profound<br />
proponent in driving universities to become major<br />
player in innovation and enterprise. Her focus is on<br />
excellence, diversity and equity in the university<br />
sector as Australian universities have a significant<br />
role to play in research as well as the economy in<br />
the current climate.<br />
The appointment comes following<br />
transformative times for which the roles of<br />
academics and intellectuals have been heavily<br />
challenged and where education has become an<br />
indispensable asset for Australia. In the era of “post<br />
truth” and “alternative facts”, Universities Australia<br />
has warned against the derision of expertise and<br />
highly evidenced research<br />
New Indigenous Strategy<br />
UNIVERSITIES Australia have unveiled their<br />
first ever Indigenous Strategy. This will be a<br />
national agreement to set targets to increase the<br />
growth of Indigenous enrolments by ideally 100%<br />
above the rate of non-Indigenous enrolments but<br />
by the minimum of 50%. After years in the making,<br />
the plan is deliberately ambitious, however only<br />
1.6% of university students are indigenous, despite<br />
making up 2.7% of the working age population.<br />
Thus, the target, seems to be absolutely necessary.<br />
If these targets are met, by 2020, there could be an<br />
extra 6,500 Indigenous students at university.<br />
Monash University has a very low Indigenous<br />
enrolment rate of 0.28%, equating to 199 students<br />
out of 70,000. Retention rates for Indigenous<br />
students, however, are significantly higher than at<br />
most other universities, currently at par with the<br />
non-Indigenous figures. At many points throughout<br />
the past few years they have been even higher than<br />
the overall retention rate with 94.3%for Indigenous<br />
students compared to the 88.8% overall in 2013.<br />
By 2025, Universities Australia are aiming achieve<br />
retention and success rates for Indigenous students<br />
equal to their non-Indigenous counterparts and<br />
equal completion rates by 2028. The extensive plan<br />
has further goals to advance Indigenous research,<br />
provide adequate support to Indigenous university<br />
staff, and build strong relationships with their<br />
communities. They also plan to lead in providing<br />
tertiary education opportunities and pathways for<br />
Indigenous students, and integrate a greater level<br />
of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural<br />
content.<br />
Jason Brailey, the manager of Indigenous<br />
programs at the Monash Yulendj indigenous<br />
engagement unit, he has welcomed the<br />
announcement of the Universities Australia<br />
Indigenous study. Mr Brailey sits on the National<br />
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher<br />
Education Consortium (NATSIHEC) which was<br />
consulted during the process of forming the<br />
strategy. Crediting the fact that the strategy was<br />
developed with great input from the indigenous<br />
higher education community, Brailey believes it<br />
is therefore much more likely to be more effective.<br />
According to Brailey, many of the measures<br />
outlined had already commenced at Monash,<br />
particularly through the Reconciliation Action<br />
Plan which has been seen as a guiding document<br />
for the period of 2016-18.<br />
Brailey didn’t seemed phased by the key targets<br />
of the Indigenous strategy. He explained that<br />
although they may be good to work towards, they<br />
were fairly unrealistic, especially for Monash, where<br />
the growth of the university has been exponential.<br />
He said that to increase indigenous students by the<br />
statistics and numbers set by the strategy would<br />
likely be unachievable given that the support and<br />
admissions standards currently in place already call<br />
for sustainable growth of indigenous enrolments.<br />
Monash had already set a goal of 200 Indigenous<br />
students by 2020, working in raw numbers rather<br />
than statistics. Brailey noted that Monash has also<br />
already seen a 17% increase in Indigenous enrolment<br />
over the past year. This increase may be attributed<br />
to the new Indigenous Entry Scheme, introduced<br />
last year, which allows Indigenous students to gain<br />
admission into specific courses given they meet<br />
certain requirements, including an ATAR of at<br />
least 50. Monash also offers other bridging courses<br />
for these students, prioritising academic support<br />
and preparation so that students are able to cope<br />
with the additional rigors of university once<br />
admitted. Despite the tentatively successful new<br />
program, Brailey expressed reservation towards<br />
some faculties which have their own individual<br />
indigenous units, perhaps questioning the efficacy<br />
of this decentralised structure.<br />
Despite the new goals and strategy, Brailey<br />
mentioned that Indigenous students were<br />
successful in their own right and that the programs<br />
relied on the students’ engagement.<br />
Brailey emphasised that Indigenous programs<br />
at universities can’t be solely judged on statistics,<br />
with completion rates often lower for Indigenous<br />
students as he explained a large portion are<br />
mature age students who may have other heavy<br />
commitments and those who don’t take full time<br />
loads to ensure their success and progression albeit<br />
not within the expected timeframe, persay 3 years<br />
for an Arts degree.<br />
There are many factors at play when examining<br />
enrolment, retention and completion rates for<br />
Indigenous students at a university such as<br />
Monash. Although it is the largest university in<br />
Australia, it has one of the lowest catchment areas<br />
for indigenous students, whilst having arguably<br />
better intervention programs for students that are<br />
underperforming, such as that of the Academic<br />
Progress Committee hearings.<br />
In Australia, there appears to be a two tiered<br />
system in terms of enrolments and retaining<br />
students, which also pertains to Indigenous<br />
students. Universities belonging the the Group<br />
of Eight tend to have better retention rates than<br />
enrolment rates compared to universities outside<br />
of that grouping which potentially have lower<br />
admissions standards and are willing to give<br />
Indigenous students opportunities. However,<br />
the academic support and previous academic<br />
framework to which they are coming into university<br />
with may not be adequate so that they do succeed<br />
in their chosen course.<br />
There has also been a recent overhaul of the<br />
funding given to Indigenous programs with a<br />
funding pool established, the Indigenous Student<br />
Success Programme. This has become a resource<br />
which universities can draw from and allocate<br />
flexible funds towards their social, academic<br />
and financial support for indigenous students,<br />
which has been positively received as different<br />
universities will require different specific resources<br />
to best assist their students.<br />
Opening of Monash Children’s<br />
Hospital and Walk<br />
ON Sunday the 5th of March, members of<br />
Monash University Paediatric Promotion, Interest<br />
& Training Society (MUPPITS) participated in<br />
the <strong>2017</strong> Walk for Monash Children’s Hospital.<br />
The brand new hospital is set to finally open its<br />
doors this April, 4 years after the building process<br />
began. The hospital will have 230 beds and is only<br />
the second tertiary paediatric hospital in Victoria.<br />
This walk and fun run for has so far raised over<br />
$160,000 for the new children’s hospital dedicated<br />
for Monash Children’s.<br />
M-Pass Q & A<br />
MONASH is currently in the process of swapping<br />
students’ old ID to the new M-Pass, indicated by its<br />
disputably unattractive ‘M’ motif, incorrect photo<br />
aspect ratios and some photos printed so dark that<br />
the faces are unrecognisable. Many students still<br />
have yet to receive their M-Pass for a multitude of<br />
reasons despite the fact that Monash Connect has<br />
said that all of the new M-Passes have been printed,<br />
that each batch of cards have been sent out, and<br />
that the aim was for the M-Pass to have fully<br />
replaced the old IDs by April. Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> consulted<br />
with Monash Connect to figure out some FAQ’s<br />
regarding the M-Pass. Here are some answers:<br />
What do I do if I haven’t received the M-Pass?<br />
Ensure you have your correct home address on<br />
WES as the cards are currently being printed off<br />
site at the Card Office (until the 3rd of April when<br />
Monash Connect should receive the machines and<br />
card stock to be able to print them). If the person<br />
at the old address you have on WES is kind enough<br />
to send it back to Monash, the card office will call<br />
you to then get your actual address before sending<br />
it out again. If not, either go in person to Monash
Connect or make a query on the form online to get<br />
your card reprinted and sent out again.<br />
Will everyone have to have both old and new student IDs?<br />
Yes, until security has updated all the card<br />
readers on campus so that the new M-Pass can be<br />
used to access secure buildings as the old card’s<br />
current primary use is to do that but is also being<br />
accepted as ID. New students would have also been<br />
issued the old ID from Monash Connect as they<br />
only had the card printing facilities for the old one.<br />
What is the point of the new M-Pass?<br />
There are advanced security features – we<br />
were told to shine a torch through the old ID and<br />
new M-Pass to compare the two. The increased<br />
functionality of the card was also a driving factor.<br />
Initially it is being used to link to the online library<br />
account to borrow books, print, photocopy and<br />
pay fines but there is a view that the M-Pass may<br />
eventually be more integrated into university life<br />
so that is it will be able to be used to purchase items<br />
on campus if the food and shop vendors jump on<br />
board with this idea as it has the capacity to do so.<br />
If my face is unrecognisable on the M-Pass, do I have to<br />
get a new card?<br />
No, it will still be accepted as ID and will be valid<br />
for exams, however if you would like a new card<br />
with a recognisable photo, visit Monash Connect<br />
or make an enquiry on the specific M-Pass form to<br />
receive a new card without charge. (Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> does<br />
not guarantee that your photo on the replacement<br />
card will be recognisable)<br />
Why has the transition between cards been such a drawn<br />
out process?<br />
The primary reasons given were that it had lots<br />
of moving parts and required great organisation for<br />
it all to occur. Many processes had to be overhauled<br />
for its implementation, such as library systems,<br />
security systems for the advanced technology of<br />
the card to be compatible with, and that only the<br />
card office was printing them and sending them<br />
out.<br />
No more Moodle<br />
A confirmed major change to affect all students<br />
will be that Monash will be moving to the Blackboard<br />
Learning Management System (LMS) sometime<br />
within the next year, likely at the beginning of<br />
2018. The reason for the change away from Moodle<br />
is yet to be determined, however Taran from<br />
Monash Connect said that it may just be due to the<br />
end of the contract that exists between Monash<br />
and Moodle. However, Monash seems to be eager<br />
in updating their user experiences, so far already<br />
with upgraded interfaces for the My.Monash and<br />
eSolutions websites. Universities that currently use<br />
Blackboard include the University of Melbourne,<br />
RMIT and the University of Sydney. We can only<br />
hope that this time, there is a smooth transition<br />
and that the Blackboard LMS will not crash in<br />
SWOTVAC or during peak assignment periods as<br />
Moodle has done in the past.<br />
SSAF Breakdown<br />
WE have had an eventful few weeks recently<br />
on campus, with visiting puppies, the petting zoo<br />
and photobooth in MSA Members Week, and the<br />
inflatable slide and food trucks, twilight cinema<br />
and Full Moon Party at Summerfest.<br />
People may be wondering if their Student<br />
Services and Amenities Fee, the maximum being<br />
$294 for full time students based on campus is<br />
being put to good use.<br />
A history of the SSAF shows that the fee existed<br />
in the form of compulsory student unionism before<br />
2005, by where upon enrolment, all students were<br />
generally required to join their student union<br />
and pay a fee for student services and amenities<br />
distributed mainly towards the union and partly<br />
towards the university. The fee was paid even if<br />
the student decided to opt out of their union. In<br />
2005, the Liberal Howard government legislated<br />
for Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU) which<br />
abolished the compulsory up-front fees with<br />
the primary support base of this motion came<br />
from the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation.<br />
They argued for freedom of association and the<br />
financial burden that it might take on students.<br />
The introduction of VSU, however, was very<br />
contentious.<br />
Barnaby Joyce, a National Party senator at<br />
the time, crossed the floor and voted against the<br />
Coalition’s bill in order to protect the culture<br />
that existed on campus, by in large thanks to the<br />
union fees, wanting to save sporting facilities and<br />
the collegial spirit. This forced Howard to obtain<br />
the support of Family First as all other political<br />
parties at the time, including Labor and the Greens,<br />
were in vast opposition. This opposition included<br />
student unions and universities themselves, which<br />
not only preferred the deliverance of services and<br />
student cultural activities to enhance campus life<br />
and experiences from students themselves, but also<br />
saw student unions as legitimate representative<br />
bodies.<br />
During the time where VSU existed, student<br />
unions struggled to provide social, academic, and<br />
political services without guaranteed revenue<br />
streams. In response to this issue in 2011, the<br />
Labor Gillard government introduced the SSAF, in<br />
order to fund amenities such as sporting facilities,<br />
childcare and counselling and services such as<br />
student advocacy and support and health clinics.<br />
This did not ensure that all students were members<br />
of their student union but gave universities a<br />
pool of funding to which they could distribute<br />
themselves, in order to ensure the deliverance of<br />
essential non-academic services for students and<br />
to enhance university life through funding for<br />
student clubs, health and wellbeing, sport and<br />
recreation, and employment and career advice.<br />
In 2016, Monash collected a total of $9,602,756<br />
from the SSAF, dividing it such that 40% went<br />
towards the management of student associations<br />
and 40% towards health and welfare services<br />
including counselling sessions as well as the<br />
provision of student experience programs and<br />
sporting activities. More than 80% of those<br />
university managed SSAF funds were contributed<br />
to works that improved student facilities such as<br />
the clayton running track and Northern Plaza<br />
improvements, in addition to the 20% of overall<br />
SSAF funding already allocated towards capital<br />
and service improvement projects largely going<br />
towards students’ recreational use.<br />
Of the $9.6 million collected by the university<br />
from SSAF, on top of the $3.8 million from this<br />
pool given to student associations, an additional<br />
$2.6 million was provided by the university itself to<br />
meet minimum guaranteed funding levels, giving<br />
a total of $6,447,083 across 7 student associations.<br />
As set out by The Higher Education Legislation<br />
Amendment (Student Services and Amenities)<br />
Act 2011, they are allowed to provide set services<br />
including student representation at all decisionmaking<br />
levels in the university, government and<br />
wider community. It also includes student advocacy<br />
and student welfare programs, sport, debating,<br />
artistic and social activities, the provision of food,<br />
information sessions including academic forums,<br />
and participation in University events such as<br />
Orientation, Open Day and similar events, studentinterest<br />
clubs and societies, as well as a range of<br />
other services such as legal aid, all directly aimed<br />
to benefit students.<br />
The allocation of the SSAF by each university<br />
has strict guidelines as set out by The Student<br />
Services Amenities, Representation and Advocacy<br />
Guidelines to ensure appropriate spending on<br />
specific areas which cannot be for provision of<br />
academic service, to support political parties or to<br />
aid in an election of a person to a governmental<br />
body. The distribution must involve consultation<br />
between the University and various student<br />
representatives. Following the announcement of<br />
the SSAF, in December 2011 the Monash University<br />
Council approved that the distribution of SSAF<br />
funds collected by the University be allocated for<br />
provision of certain services as set out below. This<br />
has remained unchanged.<br />
To account for this, Monash set up the SSAF<br />
Advisory group in 2012. This includes elected<br />
student representatives to consider submissions of<br />
each Campus Service Council for potential facilities<br />
and service improvements to be funded from the<br />
20% of SSAF that is directly beneficial to students.<br />
The SSAF is an additional $294 on top of our<br />
already expensive university fees, however it seems<br />
that there are strict guidelines on how it is spent<br />
to directly benefit students, striking a balance<br />
between fostering an enjoyable campus culture<br />
but not inextricably linked to joining the student<br />
union.<br />
International Women’s Day<br />
INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day was held on<br />
March 8 in commemoration of the movement for<br />
women’s rights. The MSA Women’s Department<br />
marked the occasion with an outdoor movie to<br />
introduce the Women’s Department to anyone<br />
interested. They also had participants in the IWD<br />
rally and march in Melbourne which called for a<br />
wide range of requests, stemming from gender<br />
inequality. Monash celebrated the occasion<br />
through social media posts highlighting Vice-<br />
Chancellor Prof Margaret Gardner and Monash’s<br />
stance to achieve true gender equity, and Monash’s<br />
vision of celebrating a diverse and inclusive culture.<br />
Melbourne International Comedy<br />
Festival<br />
THE Melbourne International Comedy Festival<br />
is on from the 29th of March to the 23rd of April.<br />
Its comprehensive program is set to feature a<br />
diverse and wide range of comedians, many also<br />
hailing from overseas with Urzila Carlson, Ruby<br />
Wax, Judy Long, Richard Gadd, Tom Ballad, Wil<br />
Anderson, Frank Woodley and Mae Martin just a<br />
few highlights of the line-up. Comedic shows with<br />
a revolving line-up of comedians include the Blind<br />
Dating Show Spectacular where they participate in<br />
a Bachelor-esque style competition and Shaggers<br />
where the primary topic is sex feature alongside an<br />
engaging array of events such as The 28th Annual<br />
Great Debate, The Gala and Good Az Friday from<br />
the team at Triple J. Many shows are free, so if<br />
you’re in need of a laugh in the midst of semester,<br />
MICF might be the place to escape to.<br />
Monash has the largest 3D printer in<br />
the world<br />
MONASH has acquired the world’s largest<br />
3D printer from Concept Laser, a German<br />
manufacturer. The $3.5 million Xline 2000R printer<br />
is one of five in the world, the only one outside<br />
of Europe and the U.S. and only one available<br />
for contract manufacturing in the southern<br />
hemisphere. Amaero Engineering, a Monash spinoff<br />
company, is now managing the 3D printing<br />
initiative’s commercial prospects. Amaero will be<br />
showcasing their advanced 3D metal printing at<br />
the upcoming Avalon airshow.<br />
Construction, Transport and<br />
Parking: Wot’s the Plan for Monash?<br />
LOT’S <strong>Wife</strong> Campus Reporters held an interview<br />
with Paul Barton, Director of Business Support,<br />
from the Buildings and Property Division.<br />
We asked Paul to explain the construction<br />
going on outside, when it will cease, and<br />
how the university can justify the >><br />
student affairs 8-9
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
massive inconvenience that this construction is to<br />
students. Paul’s explanation focused mostly on the<br />
Learning and Teaching Building, which is due to<br />
be completed in Semester 1, 2018. He emphasised<br />
that it is going to benefit the whole university,<br />
not just certain departments. While the Faculty of<br />
Education will belong there, there will be lecture<br />
and tutorial rooms for every faculty in the building.<br />
“It will be transformative”, he says. There will also<br />
be informal spaces for studying and socialising<br />
“to keep with with the changing demands from<br />
students”. The lecture theatres will better respond<br />
to modern learning methods, with a far greater<br />
number of power outlets installed in each lecture<br />
theatre for students to use and charge their devices<br />
during class. Older buildings will be taken down<br />
with classes moved to the new building, including<br />
the Rotunda building.<br />
Paul also mentioned that the area around the<br />
Matheson library will be completely levelled out<br />
in order to make the campus more wheelchair<br />
accessible.<br />
We then asked Paul why the new Halls of<br />
Residence buildings, which were built about a<br />
year ago, included no underground carparking. He<br />
said the biggest reason was the cost – the money<br />
allocated to the halls was only enough to build the<br />
halls, and not extra parking. He also mentioned<br />
that it is because Monash is trying to encourage<br />
students to use public transport or bike to campus,<br />
rather than drive. He mentioned there will be a new<br />
bike arrival station at the southern end of campus,<br />
and Monash is encouraging students to use the<br />
bike-share program, which involves “attractive”<br />
red American-made bikes that are available for<br />
students to use around campus.<br />
When asked if there is a chance Monash would<br />
introduce a train station at Clayton campus, Paul<br />
said it would be very unlikely. He mentioned that<br />
having the 601 bus was an alternative to the train<br />
station, and while the queues are still very long,<br />
they are introducing more frequent buses and<br />
hopefully longer, bigger buses. He said that the<br />
articulated buses would hold 120 people instead of<br />
the 70 people capacity that they currently have, and<br />
that in the short term, PTV would allow students<br />
to enter from both doors of the bus, increase the<br />
frequency of the 601 in peak morning times with<br />
multiple buses following each other to transport<br />
students together and install the faster myki<br />
readers on the 601 specific buses to help alleviate<br />
congestion and reduce boarding times. He also<br />
mentioned that building a new train station at<br />
Clayton campus is a government issue, and while<br />
Monash would be receptive of the idea, the power<br />
is out of their hands.He said that the 601 bus has<br />
been having a 20% increase in use year after year,<br />
something completely “unprecedented” that makes<br />
it a “victim of its own success”.<br />
When asked why there was a fee with carpooling,<br />
Paul explained that Monash was the only university<br />
that didn’t have a fee attached to it, and they<br />
felt compelled to add one. He also said that he’s<br />
confident it won’t slow down the use of carpooling,<br />
despite an initial drop. When asked about why<br />
the blue permit prices continued to increase each<br />
year, he said that it has only ever increased from<br />
a consumer price index (CPI) perspective. He said<br />
that driving to university is simply not sustainable<br />
anymore, and that Monash hopes to see a greater<br />
diversity of transport options, more uptake in<br />
the Car-share program, especially for university<br />
residents and more people biking or taking public<br />
transport to campus instead. At the moment<br />
there aren’t a great number of places that students<br />
can lock their bikes, but there will be more when<br />
the construction is finished, a response to the<br />
increasing cyclists.<br />
Paul mentioned that the new bus-loop now<br />
holds 20 buses instead of 13, and Monash hopes<br />
to see a “turn up and go” system take place. This<br />
means students can simply turn up to the bus loop<br />
and get on the bus, and not feel like they have to<br />
check the timetable first.<br />
Campus Report<br />
Joanne Fong<br />
Wot’s New vs Wot’s the Same<br />
Wot’s New<br />
Optus store<br />
Popped up on the ground floor of Campus Centre<br />
for all your cellular and broadband needs.<br />
Bus Loop<br />
In a stunning turn of events, the renovations<br />
of the bus loop have been finished and are looking<br />
top notch (except for the construction side and the<br />
misspelt Caulfield shuttle bus sign)<br />
My.monash page<br />
Changed to eerily resemble a lesser version of<br />
Windows 10<br />
Learning capture<br />
Accessible via Moodle, surprisingly easier to<br />
access than MULO (for now – pending judgement)<br />
Wot’s Old<br />
Construction is everywhere. As usual.<br />
Renovations still ongoing to the Matheson<br />
library and the detours around construction are<br />
continuing to elongate transit times to class<br />
601 Bus<br />
As forecast, in the first few weeks of uni there<br />
were reports of massive lines for 601 bus which<br />
seem to be still ongoing in the mornings<br />
Parking<br />
The inability to find any parking even remotely<br />
close to classes unless arrival was before 0900hrs,<br />
particularly in the first few weeks<br />
Jaffys<br />
Have continued to be just as confused as ever,<br />
slowly finding their bearings as they settle in<br />
Socialists<br />
When you’re minding your own business walking<br />
through campus centre and someone approaches<br />
you, they’ll try make you sign up for protests when<br />
you all you want is to go to class/pee/be left alone.<br />
Fantastic Food and Where to Find It<br />
After the devastating closure of Campus<br />
essentials, Gym Chicken and Asian Grocery last<br />
year, as well as Joe’s Pizzeria this year (the wait<br />
continues for its reopening at Logan), other new<br />
food places have popped up in attempt to fill the<br />
void these have left behind. These include:<br />
Roll’d<br />
Vietnamese, located just outside Campus Centre<br />
near the Lemon Scented Lawns<br />
Subway<br />
Oldie but goldie, on the bottom floor of Campus<br />
Centre<br />
Secret Garden Eatery<br />
Quaint trendy brunch place with a wide variety<br />
of offerings, located at the bottom of Hargrave<br />
Ma Longs Kitchen<br />
Dumplings, noodle soups, steamed buns, rice<br />
dishes, all can be found in Hargrave at the bottom<br />
level<br />
If you’re up for food but not up for cashing<br />
out every time you want a pick me up, be sure to<br />
remember these times and places to find free food<br />
on campus:<br />
Free Food Mondays 7:30pm<br />
Dinner at Wholefoods<br />
Every Tuesday 12pm-2pm<br />
MSA Departments hold a BBQ on Lemon<br />
Scented Lawns<br />
Every Wednesday from 8:45am<br />
Free MSA Breakfast Club, Airport Lounge –<br />
outside of Sir John’s Bar<br />
Every Wednesday 12pm-2pm<br />
Hump Day BBQ on Hump Lawn<br />
Every Thursday night (Nott night)<br />
MSA Food Van at Halls of Residence<br />
You Know How to Cook Wot?<br />
How to survive up to week 12 without permanent<br />
emotional damage.<br />
Dry ingredients:<br />
· 2 cups humour<br />
· 25 tbsp. salt<br />
· ¾ cup of repressed rage<br />
Wet ingredients:<br />
· 3L vodka<br />
· 1ml chaser (soft drink/juice of your choice)<br />
· 1 blanket<br />
· 3 cups of emotional stability<br />
In a large bowl, add the wet ingredients to the<br />
dry and mix well. Add extra salt liberally as this is<br />
a very salty concoction. Fold in all the ingredients<br />
till texture is runny and thin, like the blood of your<br />
enemies. Place in a pan and into oven at 260 °C and<br />
bake till golden brown. Allow to cool then move to<br />
fridge and refrigerate overnight so that it is as cold<br />
as you are on the inside. Cut into bite sized pieces<br />
and enjoy.
doing everything<br />
we can<br />
article by keyur doolabh<br />
illustration by julia chetwood<br />
Ask any medical student why they decided to go into medicine, and at some point you’ll hear<br />
the phrase ‘I want to help people.’ Human motivation is a complex thing, but I don’t doubt<br />
that it’s true – most of us want to give back to the world. And on face value, medicine is a<br />
pretty good career for it; those same medical students will probably be involved in many lifesaving<br />
efforts that have earned the medical profession a reputation for doing good.<br />
But as well as being philanthropists, doctors are also scientists. So how much good will your<br />
average doctor do over their career?<br />
Research by the career-optimising organisation 80,000 hours shows that although doctors are<br />
directly involved in saving lives day-in and day-out, the marginal utility of the average doctor’s<br />
career is only 20 lives. What does that mean? It means that if you hadn’t chosen to do medicine<br />
at uni, someone else with slightly worse grades would have taken your place – that’s a safe<br />
assumption, given how competitive medicine is to get into. That person with slightly worse<br />
grades would probably have been a slightly worse doctor than you, and when you add that<br />
difference up over a whole career, twenty people would have died that you could have saved.<br />
If you chose to open a lemonade stand instead of studying medicine, twenty people would<br />
eventually die who would have lived.<br />
Now that’s nothing to be sneezed at – after all, we’re talking about twenty graduations, twenty<br />
loving partners, twenty contented retirements. But at the end of the day, that’s a lot less good<br />
than most of us like to think we do; over a forty-year career that’s one life every couple of years.<br />
That might make us think twice about all the sacrifices we make in the name of doing good.<br />
So am I saying that you should consider dropping out of medicine and open up that lemonade<br />
stand you’ve always dreamed of? No, thankfully there’s a way to turbocharge the amount of good<br />
you do with your medical career: rather than doing good directly through your work, do good<br />
through charitable giving. The average doctor’s salary is $105,000 ten years after graduating, and<br />
donating even 10% of that could make a huge difference in people’s lives without significantly<br />
decreasing your quality of life (and that’s a research-backed fact).<br />
In consideration of this, how can we grow our altruistic impact as much as possible? One way<br />
would be to give a higher proportion of your salary. That would be admirable, but thankfully<br />
there are other, less painful options. You don’t have to go into the highest-paid, most competitive<br />
specialties for the sake of maximising your salary, either. Perhaps the most effective way to do the<br />
most good is through some good old-fashioned bargain hunting.<br />
Let’s crunch some numbers: you could go into the most highly paid speciality in Australia,<br />
neurosurgery. You might decide to give away 10% of your $600,000 annual income to Guide<br />
Dogs Australia, which can provide a seeing-eye dog to someone for $40,000. Alternatively, you<br />
could decide that the slog to get into neurosurgery is too much, and pursue your childhood<br />
dream of opening a lemonade stand. You might earn $10,000 a year, and again decide to give<br />
away 10%. But rather than going for Guide Dogs Australia, you do some bargain hunting, and<br />
give to the Fred Hollows Foundation, which can restore sight through a $25 cataract operation.<br />
As the neurosurgeon, you’d help 1.5 people work around their blindness each year, but running a<br />
lemonade stand you’d actually cure 40 people of their blindness each year. These figures, based on<br />
Peter Singer’s famous TED talk ‘The Why and How of Effective altruism,’ are fairly back-of-theenvelope,<br />
but they’re only meant to show that with a bit of bargain hunting, you can multiply the<br />
impact of your giving by orders of magnitude.<br />
Now let’s be honest, bargain hunting is hard. It’s not necessarily that we’re lazy (though that<br />
could be a part of it), but maybe we just don’t know what to look for in a charity. Thankfully there<br />
are some fantastic organisations out there that not only find the absolute most effective charities<br />
in the world, but also provide fully transparent reports on how they come to their decisions.<br />
Givewell.org is one of these organisations, or if you think that we shouldn’t be speciesist and also<br />
consider giving to charities for animals, Animal Charity Evaluators is for you.<br />
The idea of marginal utility should make us rethink how we go about pursuing altruism through<br />
medicine. Doing everything we can doesn’t have to mean going the extra mile for all of our<br />
patients. It can be as simple as a small, regular and well-targeted donation.<br />
Previously featured in The Auricle.<br />
student affairs<br />
10-11
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
dreaming of<br />
ivy league<br />
article by sophia mcnamara<br />
illustration by linda widjaja<br />
Have you ever thought about attending Harvard,<br />
Yale or Columbia, but considered it simply<br />
inaccessible? One student, who gained admission<br />
to a handful of the world’s top-tier universities, may<br />
just change your mind about that. His name is Jamie<br />
Beaton: he’s 21 years old but his game-changing<br />
business plan has made him worth approximately<br />
$40 million. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but no,<br />
it’s not because his father gave him a small loan of a<br />
million dollars.<br />
How it began<br />
All throughout his teen years, Jamie had his heart<br />
firmly set on attending an Ivy League university. He<br />
performed in a league of his own academically, while<br />
taking on all the leadership and extra-curricular<br />
opportunities that he could get his hands on. With<br />
stellar high school results, he applied for about<br />
25 different universities in Australia, the United<br />
Kingdom and the United States. Despite his evident<br />
intelligence, these highly competitive university<br />
applications were not easy for him to comprehend<br />
as a teenager from New Zealand. He was faced with<br />
an incredibly complicated application process, full of<br />
various layers and facets to be considered.<br />
“It was near impossible to navigate alone” he says.<br />
Whilst hedging his hopes on going overseas, he felt<br />
increasingly concerned when many of his peers were<br />
unsuccessful with their first course preference, after<br />
following the ‘conventional’ advice they were given<br />
at school. In early 2013 however, one particular set<br />
of emails dramatically changed the following years<br />
of Jamie’s life. 18 year-old Jamie from New Zealand<br />
was accepted into every university he applied for,<br />
including Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford<br />
and Yale. Choosing his original dream of Harvard,<br />
Jamie was soon on a plane to Boston for their mid-<br />
2013 intake. Although Jamie is only 21, he has now<br />
graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in<br />
Applied Mathematics-Economics, and a Master of<br />
Science in Applied Mathematics, two years ahead of<br />
schedule.<br />
It didn’t happen overnight for him though: Jamie<br />
took a very focused, intensive and strategic approach<br />
to his course work during his schooling. Being told<br />
by teachers across the board that he needed to ‘slow<br />
down’ only inspired him to move faster. Throughout<br />
high school, he took ten A-level exams, which was<br />
more than double what most students in his year sat.<br />
He managed it all through very early preparation,<br />
and by having a lot of inspiring advisors and tutors<br />
helping him master the content quickly. He was<br />
also constantly striving to uncover new realms of<br />
knowledge beyond the classroom, often resorting to<br />
his own self-directed study beyond school hours. “I<br />
believe my ability to self-study was a key factor in my<br />
college applications and my ultimate acceptance into<br />
Harvard”, he explains.<br />
After countless weeks of confusion spent on<br />
mastering applications, and considering every minor<br />
detail, Jamie realised he couldn’t sit still any longer.<br />
He came up with an idea that could really shake<br />
things up for naïve, misled high school students<br />
who were constantly told to aim lower than needed,<br />
especially those in New Zealand and Australia who<br />
saw American universities as nothing but a fantasy.<br />
Jamie identified the need for a service, which could<br />
accelerate the aspirations of high school students<br />
to international universities. He decided to launch<br />
a company that could help other students achieve<br />
their dream: whether it was Ivy League, Medicine at<br />
their local university, or anything in between. He was<br />
sick of seeing talented, well-rounded, driven students<br />
told there was ‘no need’ to apply for a tertiary course<br />
outside their home country.<br />
The business<br />
In 2013, Jamie and his partner Shandre officially<br />
founded education consultancy firm Crimson<br />
Education. “We both put in many awesome, sleepless<br />
days and nights to grow Crimson to where it is today;<br />
operating in 10 cities and with a network of over 2,000<br />
tutors and mentors worldwide” says Jamie. During<br />
the early days of the business, while waiting for the<br />
American university calendar to begin mid-year, he<br />
kept himself very busy. He was working part time at<br />
an investment unit, chairing a government-funded<br />
organisation called YouthFund that made grants<br />
for youth-led initiatives, all the while completing 5<br />
subjects at the University of Auckland in second-year<br />
Maths and Economics. Jamie and Shandre invested<br />
all the money they had at the time, which was only<br />
several hundred dollars, for some initial website<br />
subscriptions and a company registration. Once<br />
Jamie established the Crimson team in New Zealand<br />
and soon after Australia, he divided his focus across<br />
his Harvard studies and in 2016, graduated from a<br />
double degree before gaining admission to further his<br />
study with a Masters of Business Administration at<br />
Stanford. “It has been a crazy, rewarding journey so<br />
far”, he says.<br />
While Ivy League universities have a notorious<br />
reputation for being only accessible to insanely<br />
privileged students, Crimson takes on clients who are<br />
very far from the elite upper-east-side of New York.<br />
They aspire to help students realise their potential<br />
by assessing their candidacy, and then connecting<br />
them with tutors, mentors and consultants who can<br />
set them on a clear path to achieve their academic<br />
and career goals. Jamie says that they “see students<br />
achieve what they never thought was possible, to the<br />
point that the landscape of opportunities they can go<br />
on to achieve in their life is fundamentally reshaped”.<br />
When Crimson gets a student from Camberwell into<br />
the University of Pennsylvania, or from rural New<br />
Zealand to a full scholarship at Duke University, it’s<br />
nothing short of a complete game-changer for the<br />
individual, their family, and their community. Despite<br />
the stereotypes around these prestigious universities,<br />
and the exceptional help Crimson offers them, Jamie<br />
still insists that a lot of the success his clients achieve<br />
is self-driven. “Obviously, circumstances that are<br />
beyond your control can have a large impact on your<br />
life, particularly in self-realisation, motivation and<br />
psychological development” he states. “However, I<br />
truly believe that the ability to self-motivate and<br />
persist through hardships can help you overcome any<br />
number of circumstances and help you succeed.”<br />
Despite what many might think, Crimson<br />
understands that most students can’t afford to pay<br />
the cost of a non-subsidised tertiary degree. But,<br />
many of the universities Crimson’s clients aim for<br />
don’t require students to have a lot of money. In the<br />
case of Harvard, for example, “no American college<br />
is more affordable”. At Harvard, parents earning<br />
less than $65,000 USD annually are expected<br />
to contribute nothing. “Admission is based on<br />
relative performance with consideration of your<br />
environment” says Jamie. The college also specifically<br />
states that “wherever you are from, whatever your<br />
citizenship, applying for financial aid will not<br />
hinder your chances of admission”. Crimson seeks to<br />
overcome these misconceptions about prestigious<br />
universities and bring the focus away from money<br />
and back to nurturing student talent, regardless of<br />
socio-economic background. Crimson also provides<br />
financial aid that any student can apply for. It is<br />
means-tested and merit based, so families can qualify<br />
for subsidies or free tuition. They’ve also launched<br />
free online platforms such as ask.crimsoneducation.<br />
org and hub.crimsoneducation.org, which are a<br />
big part of their focus. They emphasise that it is<br />
merely a widespread misconception that Ivy League<br />
universities are financially inaccessible, as institutions<br />
like Yale and New York University award nearly all of<br />
their students with scholarships. “A reason Harvard<br />
is so competitive is because they have hundreds of<br />
millions available in financial aid, for students who<br />
get in but can’t afford it” Jamie explains.<br />
Jamie’s advice<br />
Crimson is now providing students with the service<br />
Jamie always needed but never received. Accordingly,<br />
he says that the most basic and accurate business<br />
advice is to simply find a problem and solve it.<br />
“You need to find a problem that affects a niche<br />
market, and work out how to meet that demand<br />
by solving the problem” he says. After that, “agility<br />
and responsiveness to change is essential”. He<br />
particularly emphasises that you need to focus on<br />
your differentiated contribution to the world. “Kickstarting<br />
your business will require a lot of time, effort<br />
and sleepless nights, it can be an exhausting journey.”<br />
He says that for a disruptive business to grow and<br />
thrive, you must accept and embrace making ripples<br />
in the industry you are tackling. “If you aren’t creating<br />
ripples, you aren’t innovating hard enough!”
From his own experience, Jamie realised that what you study, how<br />
you study and your intensity of study is incredibly important for<br />
setting you on a rewarding career path. “It can also help you seize<br />
additional personal development and growth opportunities in the<br />
early stages of your life”, he adds. He believes that self-motivation<br />
and hard work simply play the most pivotal role in a students’ ability<br />
to excel at university and maximise their potential. “I understand<br />
that it can be hard to pursue beyond the standard curriculum<br />
as you’re often told you’re taking on too much, or that it’s not<br />
necessary, but choosing to be curious beyond the standard syllabus<br />
can only do you good” he explains. To Jamie, being passionate about<br />
what you’re studying is vital. “Once you realise the area of study that<br />
you are passionate about, it becomes so much easier to excel and<br />
realise your maximum potential.”<br />
If Jamie could say anything to his younger self, it would only be to<br />
have more confidence in his ability, and to trust his own judgment.<br />
“Trusting your ability and your own judgment is vital in growing<br />
as a person and can help you uncover new passions that will fuel<br />
your desire to succeed.” Jamie explains that it’s so easy to become<br />
the victim of the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ that plagues communities<br />
in Australia and New Zealand. “It’s so easy to just coast through<br />
secondary school and university without shaking the status quo<br />
or putting yourself out there by risking failure for the chance of<br />
a big reward” he says. Once he began trusting his own judgment,<br />
his confidence and conviction grew. “The whole process of life and<br />
education is like a marathon: you need to have the right motivation,<br />
the persistence, the endurance and the strategy.”<br />
Through global expansion and careful investment, Crimson is<br />
worth approximately $205 million today. While he has earned an<br />
impressive amount financially, unlike most students, there are<br />
no parties or holidays happening any time soon for Jamie. All his<br />
capital goes straight back into growing his business so Crimson can<br />
continue to unlock the potential of more students each day. Jamie’s<br />
lifestyle can be summarised in three of the words he frequently<br />
gives as advice: work insanely hard. “Taking the path less travelled<br />
is hard work, really hard work – but the end result can make it all<br />
worthwhile”, he summates.<br />
Jamie’s success not only inspires students all around the globe to<br />
aim higher than they’ve ever been told, but it also proves that Ivy<br />
League dreams are for more than just the ‘elite’ members of society.<br />
At the end of the day, Harvard doesn’t need any more student<br />
money. They’re far more interested in your brain, and what change<br />
you can bring to the modern world.<br />
-----<br />
Many thanks to Jamie Beaton and the whole team at Crimson Education for<br />
making this article possible. For more information on Crimson Education,<br />
visit crimsoneducation.org.<br />
Jamie at his graduation<br />
student affairs 12-13
edition two one<br />
lot’s wife<br />
how to be a super broke<br />
uni student and survive<br />
article by chulani jithma kaluarachchi<br />
Food<br />
Even low cost restaurants can get expensive if that’s where you’re<br />
eating most of your meals. The more you eat in, the more you save.<br />
Stocking your room with microwavable foods can provide quick,<br />
inexpensive alternatives. Buy yourself a massive bag of frozen<br />
vegetables. Then get some rice (sometimes it is cheaper than 2<br />
minute noodles). Invest in some soy sauce. Eat the home brand oats<br />
for breakfast each morning. Drink lots of tea. People will ask what<br />
your bikini body diet is and you will just be able to laugh. The ‘Uni<br />
Student’ will be the go-to diet of any runway model soon enough.<br />
And guys… trust me, there will always be free food on campus. There<br />
has not been a week in my university life so far where I haven’t been<br />
able to locate some form of free food. Whether it’s a barbecue for a<br />
club or free food Mondays, there will be free food on campus.<br />
Always remember rent money<br />
Put rent money first in your budget. You may be able to get away<br />
with a few days without going grocery shopping but you won’t be<br />
able to go a few days without paying rent. Your landlord will be less<br />
forgiving then your refrigerator.<br />
Clothing<br />
With some patience, you can buy clothing at thrift stores for no<br />
more than ten cents on the dollar. Buy your clothes when they are<br />
going out of season. Wait until it is the end of the season and get<br />
it at half the price. There are many cheap ways to get clothes. If<br />
nothing works out, there are tonnes of good clothes in the survival<br />
centre (1st floor – Campus centre) that anyone can take home for<br />
free!<br />
Transportation<br />
If you use public transportation, consolidate your trips so you don’t<br />
need to use it so much. Fewer trips will mean fewer fees paid. And<br />
even if you have a car, use the campus shuttle as much as possible.<br />
The more you do, the less gas you’ll need to pay for.<br />
Go to the library<br />
Whether it’s your university library or your town library, go there.<br />
If you can scrimp and not pay for an internet connection for your<br />
apartment/townhouse/shoe box, you will probably save $80. Plus,<br />
libraries aren’t that bad or boring. Free books. Free magazines, good<br />
Wi-Fi, cute people, what’s not to like?<br />
Ditch the credit card<br />
There are two problems with credit cards:<br />
1/ You’re likely to spend more by using them<br />
2/ The bill that comes next month, plus interest!<br />
When we pay with credit cards it doesn’t quite feel like we’re<br />
spending our own money, perhaps because until the bill comes in we<br />
aren’t! In that situation, we’re tempted to give ourselves the benefit<br />
of the doubt when we’re not sure we can afford something, meaning<br />
we’ll buy it now and trust that we’ll be able to afford it later. But<br />
when you’re a university student, later is never better! Pay cash for<br />
what you need, and the credit card balance will begin to drop each<br />
month, freeing up more cash for current expenses.<br />
Find a part time job<br />
Don’t just find a job, but one that will either complement your<br />
course schedule or help you prepare for life after university. If you’re<br />
more ambitious, or have greater need for income, see what kind of<br />
work is available in your field of study. This is also a way of thinking<br />
long term. The earlier you can begin working in your chosen<br />
field, the greater the advantage you’ll have over other students at<br />
the point of graduation. It can be the simplest kind of work, but<br />
sometimes just having the name of a relevant employer on your<br />
resume can be a huge advantage.<br />
Go part time for a semester or snag some financial aid<br />
Sometimes the answer to your money problems is to take a<br />
temporary breather. By cutting your school schedule back to part<br />
time for a semester or two you’ll free up your time to work. In<br />
addition to having more time to earn money, the reduction in your<br />
course load can cut back directly on uni-related costs enabling you<br />
to save even more money. True, it will extend the time you’ll be in<br />
uni overall, but it may also be a pause that refreshes you for the<br />
final push. From a financial standpoint, university is often a matter<br />
of muddling through; of finding ways of doing a lot with very little.<br />
It can seem like an uphill fight, but it may help to realize that the<br />
budgeting skills you’re leaning along the way will be among the<br />
best skills you’ll acquire in university. Get creative and embrace the<br />
effort!<br />
At the end of the day…<br />
You probably won’t be swimming in cash for a while just yet. The<br />
birthday wish lists you send to your parents will consist of better<br />
quality hair products, clean underwear and an order for this week’s<br />
groceries. You will have a life crisis because you can’t afford a<br />
hair dresser to give you a trim so you will consider risking doing<br />
it yourself. Let’s face it, you will bottom out your bank account,<br />
but you will gain mad budgeting skills and a whole lot of “life<br />
experience.”
politics/society<br />
politics/society 14-15
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
international volunteering:<br />
selfless or selfish?<br />
article by devika pandit<br />
illustration by julia thouas<br />
Australians like to work hard and travel harder.<br />
Combining travel and volunteering is the go-to<br />
solution for young Aussies who wish to kick back<br />
responsibly.<br />
However, this seemingly beneficial practice is<br />
plagued with a few problems. The quest to ‘uplift’<br />
downtrodden communities through development<br />
volunteering programs raises many ethical concerns.<br />
I believe this trend disguises several biases, which<br />
expose the contested nature of international<br />
volunteering.<br />
Volunteering is traditionally a philanthropic activity<br />
that many regard as civic duty, accompanied by terms<br />
like ‘altruism’, ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘giving back to the<br />
community’.<br />
However, in the past few decades, there has emerged<br />
a simultaneous trend of development volunteering,<br />
predominantly of an international character. This<br />
is an activity wherein “civic conscious and morally<br />
upright citizens expend their time and resources<br />
in a foreign country with the aim of creating social<br />
change”, explained my friend, after a volunteer<br />
teaching program in Siem Reap, Cambodia.<br />
I was not satisfied with his explanation. Teenagers,<br />
greenhorns at life, embarking on international<br />
programs promising to ‘make a difference’ and be<br />
‘agents of change’ – could it really be that simple and<br />
straightforward?<br />
Upon more probing, Patrick recommended Student<br />
Volunteer Placements International (SVPI), an<br />
Australian volunteering organization offering<br />
placements in Nepal, Myanmar and Cambodia. He’d<br />
enjoyed living in wi-fi serviced dorm accommodation<br />
and teaching English language in local schools. It was<br />
an unforgettable experience, visiting scenic hotspots<br />
and updating his Instagram with generic shots of<br />
locals. Patrick was successful in his application owing<br />
to an important criterion – a passion for ‘having fun,<br />
exploring and experiencing village life’, as mentioned<br />
in the SVPI Handbook.<br />
This account fits in with the definition of<br />
‘voluntourism.’ The combination is geared towards<br />
fulfilment of the donor and donees’ needs – as<br />
ingrained by different media. I think otherwise.<br />
Voluntourism is a convenient guise for economizing<br />
development volunteering. University students,<br />
for example, are subject to heavy application fees<br />
to enroll for programs like the one in Siem Reap.<br />
However, there is much to gain. ‘Cultural exchange’,<br />
an impressive resume and marvellous photos! I<br />
question the ethical nature of this activity.<br />
Firstly, I believe international volunteering programs<br />
do not provide a wholesome local experience<br />
for student volunteers because the latter are far<br />
removed from realities of the host country. Hostel<br />
accommodation, Wi-Fi, bottled water, these<br />
‘necessities’ dictate that students leave behind a<br />
comfortable lifestyle in Australia to engage with<br />
the local community in developing countries in a<br />
comfortable manner.<br />
This process is notoriously described as ‘challenging<br />
and eye-opening’ when in fact all the student has<br />
done, is learn traditional cooking and handicraft work.<br />
I hence view international volunteering as a paradox.<br />
There is no attempt at blending with the locals, which<br />
aggravates the unspoken divide between them and<br />
superiorly placed student ‘visitors’.<br />
Moreover, this draws attention to a critical but<br />
often ignored theme in international volunteering<br />
– cultural imagery. Development-speak employs<br />
a casual tone for phrases like ‘First World donors’<br />
or ‘Third World recipients’ that encourage implicit<br />
cultural imagery – First World (white) citizens as<br />
experts and therefore saviours of helpless Third<br />
World (brown) masses. I think this leads to a heavy<br />
downplaying of local capabilities and overestimation<br />
of volunteers’ skill sets.<br />
I recently came across a friend’s Facebook post<br />
advertising 40K Globe Internship Program, popular<br />
with the Australian university cohort. The pictures<br />
made me wish I’d grabbed the opportunity, but upon<br />
thinking some more, I laughed at my ignorance.<br />
Students from prestigious schools and universities,<br />
with no experience or training whatsoever, traveling<br />
to Indian villages for rural empowerment are often<br />
revered by their hosts as capable of ‘uplifting’ the<br />
impoverished through donations, seminars and street<br />
plays.<br />
This privilege is not granted on the basis of expertise,<br />
a finding generated by Volunteer and Services<br />
Enquiry Southern Africa (VOSESA) about host’s<br />
perspectives of development volunteers in Southern<br />
Africa. Hence, I believe it is unethical to exploit this<br />
privilege by offering to help another without knowing<br />
how to do so. It promotes the idea of university<br />
students as possessing the expertise to embark on<br />
international programs and lauding them as effective<br />
‘agents of change’. Rarely do volunteering programs<br />
insist upon any formal training, which is necessary<br />
when a cross-cultural exchange is expected. Popular<br />
programs like AISEC too, do not include any prior<br />
training in relevant fields.<br />
Hence, it is primarily a matter of power bestowed<br />
upon students from developed nations, perhaps<br />
through the winning combination of a privileged<br />
color in the racial hierarchy, and financial security.<br />
This power is superficial. To assume that a group<br />
of 18-year-old students are well equipped to deliver<br />
lasting change in a Third World country – is<br />
problematic. This not only elevates students to a godlike<br />
position in the host country, but also undermines<br />
local capacity and resources, suggesting progress<br />
as attainable only through international funding/<br />
volunteers, regardless of the latter’s motives, training<br />
or expertise.<br />
I substantiate my views through a relevant example. I<br />
recently encountered an English Teaching Fellowship<br />
Program (ETF) in Colombia, a joint initiative of<br />
the Heart for Change and the Colombian National<br />
Ministry of Education. This program is open to all<br />
students who possess a Bachelor’s degree in any field,<br />
but the only prerequisite for teaching English is to be<br />
‘fluent in English, preferably native speakers’.<br />
This puzzled me for two entirely different reasons.<br />
One, the explicit partiality towards native English<br />
speakers who are automatically elevated to the<br />
level of ‘teaching experts’ owing to origins from<br />
an English speaking country. I strongly believe<br />
that English language or any other for that matter<br />
cannot be taught as a hobby in a casual manner. It<br />
is a responsibility to equip another with a popular<br />
medium of communication. Therefore, I consider<br />
it unethical to trivialize this responsibility by<br />
permitting anybody to be a teacher, that too based on<br />
their colour and race.<br />
Secondly and more importantly, I question the<br />
long-term impact of such programs, as to whether<br />
any successful development has been recorded<br />
through such activities. Having gathered volunteer<br />
program data from several friends, I propose that<br />
such programs attempt to revolutionize a society<br />
and resolve its issues in short spurts and with<br />
minimal effort. Volunteers are often unaware of<br />
these details and many tend to use the opportunity<br />
as ‘voluntourism’ in a self-indulgent manner rather<br />
than intended development volunteering. From this<br />
viewpoint, it seems that programs are ingeniously<br />
designed to benefit First World ‘donors’ while status<br />
quo remains unchanged for Third World ‘recipients’.<br />
The overriding problem continues to flourish –<br />
volunteers sacrifice a privileged lifestyle for a short<br />
while to empower the host nation, more often than<br />
not a developing country. They graciously dissociate<br />
themselves from the prestige and power bestowed<br />
upon them by their ‘developed’ culture. They engage<br />
with the host culture in a manner most lopsided and<br />
imbalanced, and shortly return home, labelling the<br />
experience as one creating social change.<br />
Although this does not conform to what would be<br />
regarded as morally and ethically correct actions, such<br />
considerations are not entertained because ‘as long as<br />
we are gaining, there is nothing to lose’.
in crisis: the greens must<br />
strive for electoral success<br />
article by jordan mosley<br />
illustration by hugh brooks<br />
In December 2016, the Greens unexpectedly tumbled into the media spotlight<br />
as reports surfaced that a radical-leftist splinter group, ‘Left Renewal’, had<br />
materialised in the party’s New South Wales branch. Billing itself as ‘a socialist<br />
tendency comprised of rank-and-file, NSW Greens members’ the faction’s<br />
manifesto openly calls for the end of capitalism. It was labelled as a system of<br />
‘perpetual violence’, and noted that ‘violent apparatuses’ such as the police ‘do not<br />
share an interest with the working class’.<br />
Since its inception, the new faction has caused a great deal of internal havoc in<br />
the NSW Greens, including but not limited to: bringing sourness into internal<br />
preselections, invoking the ire of old party icon Bob Brown, and assaulting police at<br />
one of Sydney’s anti-Australia Day rallies (Left Renewal member Hayden Williams<br />
was charged last January). Lee Rhiannon, Greens senator for NSW, has defended<br />
the presence of Left Renewal, saying that the faction’s aims were consistent with<br />
Greens principles, and presented ‘a legitimate contribution to political debate<br />
in the party’. Current Greens leader Richard Di Natale, on the other hand, has<br />
suggested that the group “find a new political home” and labeled its position on<br />
capitalism a “ridiculous notion.”<br />
Apart from the juicy revelation that yes, like the Libs or Labor, the Greens can<br />
also suffer the plague of ideological and factional turf-war, this internal saga in<br />
many ways signifies a deeper anxiety and confusion over the role and direction<br />
of Australia’s third party. While Left Renewal is not typical or representative<br />
of the Greens nationally, its presence does challenge Senator Di Natale’s bright<br />
proclamation that the Greens are now Australia’s ‘natural home of progressive<br />
mainstream voters’. This was the kind of mantra that attracted me to the party in<br />
early 2014, months after the election of Tony Abbott, before I left two years later<br />
(but that’s another story).<br />
Over the past fifteen years, the Greens have effectively evolved from a single-issue<br />
environmental party into an all-encompassing humanitarian leftism, projecting<br />
its social-activist platform into issues as diverse as climate change, asylum seekers,<br />
LGBT rights, public health care, and social housing. In doing so, the party has gone<br />
from marginal to mainstream, winning the support of middle-class, inner-city<br />
voters who had defected from Labor. The Greens took advantage of the vacuum<br />
left behind by the demise of Australian Democrats, whose vote was quietly and<br />
naturally absorbed. Due to this, the Greens have achieved considerable electoral<br />
victories, currently holding nine seats in the federal Senate, one federal Lower<br />
House seat (Adam Bandt in Melbourne), as well as winning 10 percent of the<br />
national Lower House vote at the last federal election, representing nearly 1.4<br />
million voters. State lower house seats have also been won in Victoria and New<br />
South Wales, with the party currently holding two and three seats respectively in<br />
these States’ Parliaments, mostly clustered in inner city Melbourne and Sydney.<br />
While for many years it has looked as if the Greens were an exponentially<br />
increasing force, capable of infiltrating territories once safely held by Labor and<br />
the Liberals, growth has not been a completely even or successful journey across<br />
the board. This was most visible at the last federal election. The party’s strategy to<br />
win lower house seats and return its senators in Victoria and NSW. In Melbourne,<br />
the Greens did not pick up any new lower house seats, but did come close in the<br />
seat of Batman, where candidate Alex Bhathal achieved a 9.5% swing, narrowly<br />
losing by a 1% margin against Labor’s David Feeney, a massive improvement from<br />
the 10% margin in 2013. Large swings were also recorded in Wills, Melbourne Ports,<br />
and Higgins, with the Greens in some cases jumping ahead of Liberal and Labor<br />
candidates to become the second largest party. By contrast, in NSW, attempts to<br />
seize the seats of Grayndler and Sydney proved dismal, as the Greens’ candidate for<br />
Grayndler, Jim Casey, failed to increase the primary vote above the 22% recorded at<br />
the previous election, leaving high-profile Labor MP Anthony Albanese in relative<br />
safety. Results were similarly discouraging in the Senate, as Senator Lee Rhiannon<br />
took 7.91% of the statewide vote, compared to 10.87% taken by Richard Di Natale in<br />
Victoria. What went wrong?<br />
The answer to NSW failure and Victorian success lies in the differing campaign<br />
approaches, candidate selections and policy promotions that were used in<br />
Melbourne and Sydney. In Melbourne, the party has promoted itself by taking a<br />
moderate and cooperative tone, spruiking the achievements of Melbourne MP<br />
Adam Bandt. On his website and in campaign materials, Bandt has prominently<br />
emphasised his achievements in passing so-called ‘Denticare’ legislation, which<br />
enabled lower and middle-income families to access dental treatment through<br />
Medicare. During this time, Bandt also won concessions from the Labor Party<br />
which established a climate change committee that later imposed a so-called<br />
‘carbon tax’, which was later repealed by the Abbott government. While these<br />
concessions have had varying degrees of success, they do point towards a view of<br />
Green politics that seeks social change through compromise and cooperation with<br />
the two major parties.<br />
Across the border in NSW, the Greens candidate for Grayndler Jim Casey, became<br />
embroiled in a number of ideological gaffes. He claimed that he would prefer<br />
right-wing Tony Abbott as prime minister instead of Labor’s Bill Shorten, as the<br />
former would provoke a more aggressive social justice movement that would<br />
include “an anti-war movement that was disrupting things in the streets… and a<br />
climate change movement that was starting to actually disrupt the production<br />
of coal.” Writing in the Guardian, Casey viewed capitalism as a system that was<br />
likely “to collapse under its own weight”, insisting that the system is built on the<br />
‘“equality and misery of a vast majority of the working people”,a dead giveaway for<br />
Left Renewal sympathies. The point here is not whether Casey is right or wrong.<br />
What is at stake here is the appeal of such sweeping rhetoric to mainstream voters,<br />
which largely alienates many moderate-minded people. A while back, I remember<br />
talking to a multiple-time Greens candidate at a party fundraiser, who showed a<br />
great passion for tackling climate change. “I wouldn’t be in the Greens if I were<br />
in NSW,” he said, in reference to the radical elements present in Sydney. Another<br />
Greens candidate, described ‘Left Renewal’ as “mad.” With such opinions floating<br />
within the Greens, one can only wonder how the party’s far-left could possibly<br />
appeal to the wider voting populace. Election results speak for themselves.<br />
Which brings us to the future of the Greens today. Should they protest and stick to<br />
strict, radical principles, or compromise and go for electoral success? By now, the<br />
answer should be blisteringly obvious. While Mr. Casey and his ilk are entitled to<br />
their views, one must question how blanket statements on the evils of capitalism<br />
and ‘the system’, which call for the tearing down of myriad ‘institutions’, could<br />
possibly be desirable to small business owners, pensioners, or tradespeople; or the<br />
people who scan your groceries; or, for that matter, anybody who falls outside of<br />
Sydney’s hard industrial-left. While Left Renewal may call it ‘protest’, I would call<br />
it ideological purism, an attempt to give the Australian public a revolution no<br />
one even asked for. People open to voting Green are interested in strong public<br />
hospitals, a decent tariff for the solar panels on their roofs, and legal same-sex<br />
marriage, issues I heard raised when I sat at Sunday market stalls. If Left Renewal<br />
wants to pursue any meaningful social change, it should seek the reform of<br />
institutions, the law and society, not its destruction. But to give them some credit,<br />
the faction actually is succeeding in destroying one institution: the NSW Greens,<br />
and by extension, itself.<br />
politics/society 16-17
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
a love letter to a<br />
lost america<br />
article by ben caddaye<br />
illustration by lucy zammit<br />
Dear America, I think it’s time we sat down and had a talk.<br />
I know you’ve been going through a lot lately, what with the slow decline of your<br />
middle class and a veritable maniac as your new democratically elected leader. But<br />
lately I’ve come to realise that we’ve drifted apart and I’m beginning to think that<br />
we’re no longer right for each other.<br />
It’s become clear that you’ve changed. Perhaps I’ve changed the way I look at you.<br />
Once upon a time, I gazed upon your timeworn shores with fondness and found<br />
courage in your moral righteousness. I can still remember the first time I heard the<br />
poetic words of Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty…<br />
‘Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,<br />
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;<br />
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand<br />
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame<br />
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name,<br />
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand<br />
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command<br />
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.<br />
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she<br />
With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,<br />
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,<br />
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.<br />
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,<br />
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’<br />
These words accompanied my ascension in the world. When I was born, I was filled<br />
with an exuberance that can only come courtesy of youth. I looked out into the<br />
world and saw you as my mentor. I looked at your Federation and it inspired mine. I<br />
remember when I was vulnerable, with Japan on my door. It was you who came and<br />
stood steadfast by my side. Since then I’ve followed your lead, and together we’ve<br />
gone into Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. It has cost me deeply,<br />
and the scars of war still play on my memory. But I had always thought that it was<br />
for the betterment of our pursuit of liberty.<br />
You were born out of a struggle for freedom. Your first statement to the world<br />
was bold – a declaration that all are created equal and are endowed with certain<br />
unalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was<br />
these ideals that inspired my actions and the actions of other nations around the<br />
world. In following your lead, it was for the benefit of our shared ideals and in<br />
furtherance of freedom and democracy; or at least that’s what I thought.<br />
Lately you’ve changed the way you speak, the way you act. You’ve shut yourself off<br />
to those who, in a different time would have found refuge in your open embrace.<br />
Your minorities live in fear, ostracised and paraded as criminals for the God they<br />
find comfort in. When you attempted to bar the entry of peoples based on their<br />
country of origin you lost your moral credibility. What scares me even more is that<br />
the social progress you’ve made is diminishing.<br />
You’re failing to respect the bodily autonomy of women, revoking the fundamental<br />
freedom to decide whether or not to have a child. The passage of Act 45 in<br />
Arkansas sickens me to my core.<br />
The hard-fought civil liberties of your people of colour are being violated. Kids<br />
are growing up today in fear of the police that are supposed to protect them from<br />
violence, not perpetrate it. When the poverty rate for people of colour surpasses 1<br />
in 4, you know something is terribly wrong with your system. You’ve closed your<br />
golden door. Your status as leader of the democratic world is in doubt and I fear<br />
that this is only the beginning of your descent inward and away from what used<br />
to define you.<br />
Your actions lately have made me reflect greatly on the things we’ve been through<br />
together. Now that I’m seeing a different you I realise it’s been there all along – I’ve<br />
just made excuses for it.
Your nation was born in a time of abhorrent slavery where the subjugation of other<br />
human beings was lauded for its economic benefit. Even though you came out of<br />
the civil war determined to end the practice, I don’t feel as if you’ve ever fully come<br />
to terms with your past. The injustices of the practice still lives in your society.<br />
You haven’t made steps to come to terms with the genocides of your founding,<br />
and you’re still abusing your Native population. Native Americans, Alaskans and<br />
Hawaiians figure as large percentages of your prison system even though they are a<br />
small part of your population.<br />
I admit I was naive. I only have to look to Iraq where it’s impossible to overlook the<br />
deaths of 150,000+ innocent civilians. I can’t deny we had a hand in those deaths.<br />
Casting my gaze back further I am again horrified in the role I played in the half a<br />
million civilian deaths in Vietnam. That’s been on my conscience for quite some<br />
time and I don’t think I could be a part of where your new America is going. You’re<br />
still bombing innocent people in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Those aren’t the actions of<br />
a nation that believes in ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ I can no longer<br />
hold my head with pride and declare that standing with you is for the betterment<br />
of all when all I see when I gaze back is a trail of devastation and loss.<br />
As you focus inward, stepping back from your role as the leader of the international<br />
order I hope I have the courage to do the opposite. I’ve grown up. I can’t ignore<br />
the fact that I’ve developed a vibrant multicultural soul, welcoming people from<br />
all over the world with the declaration that I am the sunburnt land of the fair go.<br />
Threaded in my fabric is the toil of those wanting a better life, and the solemn<br />
belief that what defines me is not origin, complexion, language or culture. What<br />
defines what I am is the celebration of diversity. It’s part of my narrative, and I can’t<br />
partner with a nation that works to reject it. I’m far from perfect., I’ve got a lot of<br />
work to do on myself. I still have to make things right with my traditional owners,<br />
I still torture kids in juvenile prisons like Don Dale and by God I have to close<br />
the fucking detention camps. But I’m hopeful that perhaps I can regain my moral<br />
standing.<br />
I’ve been in love with the idea of you, rather than what you really are. I think for<br />
me to continue to grow we need to take separate paths. You’ll always hold a special<br />
place in my heart, but I must forge my own way forward.<br />
Love your long-time friend,<br />
Australia.<br />
politics/society 18-19
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
let’s talk about<br />
youth homelessness<br />
article by sachetha bamunusinghe<br />
illustration by mohan lei<br />
Melbourne is a great city that we should consider<br />
ourselves lucky to live in. However, the harsh reality<br />
is that Australia isn’t the lucky country for every<br />
young person. Youth homelessness is a serious issue<br />
that affects approximately 26,238 young people<br />
Australia-wide. Sadly, this topic seems to be largely<br />
forgotten in many ways. It is important to be aware<br />
and generate discussion around the issue.<br />
Youth homelessness is caused by many factors<br />
including family breakdown, violence, unemployment,<br />
mental health issues, alcohol and/or drug issues<br />
and poverty. These causes are present in the 2008<br />
documentary film The Oasis, which focused upon the<br />
lives of homeless youths staying in a housing centre<br />
in Sydney. The documentary explored individual<br />
stories of each youth, who due to a difficult past, were<br />
eventually forced to leave home. The loss of social and<br />
emotional connections with family and friends, along<br />
with housing, food, water and basic services, further<br />
exacerbated their descent into homelessness.<br />
This issue is one that stems globally, with youth<br />
homelessness increasing in developing countries.<br />
Even though the causes of homelessness in<br />
developing nations are mostly similar to developed<br />
nations, developing nations generally have graver<br />
influencing factors such as significant periods of<br />
poverty, low standards of living and rural to urban<br />
migration. Moreover, the attitude towards this issue<br />
varies in different nations depending on political,<br />
social, cultural, religious and economic values. In<br />
some developing countries, gathering data relating to<br />
homelessness is non-existent due to the significance<br />
and broad prevalence of the problem.<br />
As the complexities of youth homelessness differ<br />
in various countries, so do the approaches taken.<br />
However there are two main standpoints to consider.<br />
Firstly, a proactive approach to prevent the causes<br />
of youth homelessness. This includes increasing<br />
affordable education, family services as well as health<br />
and rehab facilities and employment opportunities<br />
to better prevent homelessness from occurring.<br />
In particular, education that focuses on academic<br />
aspects, health, family violence, alcohol and drugs,<br />
is key in substantially preventing individuals from<br />
falling into serious issues.<br />
Secondly, a reactive approach can be taken to assist<br />
those already in the cycle of homelessness. This can<br />
include access to affordable housing or government<br />
housing that not only provides individuals<br />
accommodation and safety, but also an actual<br />
address to reference when looking for employment.<br />
Additionally, a co-ordination of social services that<br />
provide important resources and necessities should<br />
be increased. Non-governmental organizations or<br />
non-profit organizations are particularly important<br />
in supporting areas that may not receive enough<br />
government assistance.<br />
As young people, we have the power to instigate<br />
change. The following are a number of admirable<br />
organisations that rely on support to deliver<br />
invaluable services to the community. There are<br />
numerous non-governmental and non-for-profit<br />
organizations in Melbourne looking for volunteers or<br />
even just a simple donation.<br />
Salvation Army Melbourne Project 614: An organization<br />
which provides support by supplying meals, clothing<br />
and counselling, as well as pathways for training,<br />
volunteering and employment. Many volunteer<br />
opportunities are available including the Marketplace<br />
where you can assist in customer service duties in a<br />
supermarket, Hamodava Café where you can order<br />
and serve food and beverages for disadvantaged<br />
communities, and the AMP 614 Youth Bus which<br />
involves preparing food and socializing with other<br />
young people.<br />
Crêpes for Change: A non-for-profit crêpe van created<br />
and run by young people. The crêpe van is present<br />
at numerous markets, festivals and events, where<br />
money made from each crêpe goes towards initiatives<br />
tackling youth homelessness. Volunteers are required<br />
for van procedures such as making crepes and<br />
running the till. As a van volunteer I can confirm it<br />
is also great fun! There is also the new mobile coffee<br />
cart that can cater for any sort of event. Barista and<br />
crêpe training is provided!<br />
Lighthouse Foundation: An organization providing<br />
homes and services to homeless youths suffering from<br />
long-term neglect and abuse. Each Lighthouse home<br />
provides the safety, counseling and guidance for<br />
young people to assist in creating a future pathway<br />
away from chronic homelessness and disadvantage.<br />
Opportunities include the Community Committees,<br />
which involve providing support mentoring, practical<br />
help and fundraising for a Lighthouse home.<br />
Volunteers are also required for assisting with events<br />
and administration.<br />
Sacred Heart Mission: An organization providing<br />
services and support to disadvantaged communities,<br />
including homeless youths. Volunteers are required<br />
for Op Shops where you can develop customer service<br />
skills and help raise funds for services, such as the<br />
Our Meals Program, which involves serving meals at<br />
their main dining hall. Also, volunteers to help with<br />
reception, administration and event fundraising are<br />
needed by the organization.<br />
These are just a few of the volunteering opportunities<br />
available in Melbourne. Spending a few hours of your<br />
week helping out organizations is a great initiative if<br />
you’re interested in discussing and tackling the issue<br />
of youth homelessness. So get out there and give it a<br />
go. Get involved!
politics/society 20-21
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
illustration by keely simpson-bull
science/engineering<br />
science/engineering 22-23
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
what major should<br />
you choose?<br />
words by science & engineering sub-editor team<br />
illustration by lin rahman<br />
Sitting in class stressing<br />
about your major?<br />
Worried about the most<br />
important choice in your<br />
degree that will literally<br />
definethe rest of your life?<br />
Well your friendly Science<br />
& Engineering Sub-Ed<br />
Team have created a<br />
simple flowchart to help<br />
you decide.
what’s the matter<br />
with antimatter?<br />
article by isaac reichman<br />
illustration by john henry<br />
We see symmetry in nature all the time. At our<br />
scale, almost every species on earth has some form<br />
of external body-plan symmetry; notable exceptions<br />
exist, the flounder fish. But the symmetry of objects<br />
extends into natural processes and even fundamental<br />
physics principles. One such symmetry arises with the<br />
property of matter known as charge; a rather abstract<br />
notion that we can understand as a driving principle<br />
behind circuitry and chemistry. But, questions as<br />
to why the most basic components of nature have<br />
the charges they do and what the significance of<br />
charge is are the questions that are on the minds of<br />
physicists. An experiment conducted by The Alpha<br />
Collaboration published in Nature earlier this year<br />
sought to expound on and explore these questions.<br />
First, however, some background.<br />
In 1928, a young physicist, Paul Dirac, developed an<br />
equation that married Einstein’s Special Relativity<br />
– the theory of the very fast, with Schrodinger’s<br />
quantum wave mechanics – a description of the<br />
fundamental nature of matter. His goal was to<br />
produce an equation that accurately describes the<br />
quantum behavior of matter at high speeds. But<br />
Dirac had outdone himself; not only did the equation<br />
seamlessly blend special relativity with quantum<br />
mechanics, but it made unexpected predictions.<br />
In the same way that the square root of 4 is both<br />
positive 2 and negative 2, when solving his own<br />
equation for the electron, Dirac found that there were<br />
two energies for the resulting particle – one positive<br />
and one negative. Instead of discarding the negative<br />
solution, Dirac supposed that it may represent a<br />
different particle, one with characteristics identical<br />
to the electron in every way with the exception of<br />
one – its charge. Thus the solutions to the equation<br />
are a negatively charged antiproton and a positively<br />
charged positron. The notion of antimatter was born.<br />
Following this, Dirac’s idea was treated as being an<br />
artifact of the mathematics. That is, until antimatter<br />
was discovered four years later in 1932.<br />
Since then, the last 85 years have seen an incredible<br />
amount of knowledge and application as a result of<br />
the discovery of antimatter. One such example is<br />
our current understanding of radioactive decay, in<br />
particular beta-radiation, in which either a proton<br />
or neutron transforms into the other, producing an<br />
antimatter particle. This property of the decay is<br />
actually exploited in a modern medical technology<br />
– positron emission tomography, or P.E.T. scanning<br />
for short.<br />
Whilst we’re at it though, an aside. Beta radiation,<br />
when you hear about it, can seem as if its reasoning<br />
is pulled out of thin air. It turns out that its cause, is<br />
actually due to a fundamental physical force known<br />
as the weak interaction. The weak interaction is one<br />
of the four fundamental mechanisms for change in<br />
the universe, and can cause an interchange of matter<br />
with antimatter as well as altering the constitution of<br />
protons and neutrons. There’s some modern physics<br />
for you.<br />
Oh, and in case you’re curious, when normal matter<br />
and antimatter engage with one another, they<br />
undergo a friendly process known as annihilation<br />
and are converted into pure energy in a quantum<br />
explosion. In fact, on the same trail of logic: if matter<br />
and antimatter create pure energy, can the reverse be<br />
said? Astonishingly, the answer is yes! This is actually<br />
the main method of antimatter production; we pump<br />
enough energy into a vacuum or fire it at an object<br />
and the result is a plethora of matter and antimatter<br />
particles. When this happens with an electron and<br />
positron spontaneously in a vacuum, it is known as<br />
pair production.<br />
We’ve already established that the only difference<br />
between particles and their respective antiparticles is<br />
their charges. We also know that atoms are composed<br />
of positive protons and negative electrons (with<br />
most having neutral neutrons for stability), making<br />
them neutral overall. So it stands to reason if we<br />
just flip the charge of every constituent – protons to<br />
anti-protons etc., then the overall properties shouldn’t<br />
change –because the atoms don’t have total charge<br />
anyway. So here are the real questions: is the logic<br />
right, does anything change?<br />
Now we’re equipped to talk about the experiment.<br />
One of the most well-understood systems in all of<br />
physics is that of the hydrogen atom: composed of a<br />
proton and an electron. But a classic way of probing<br />
hydrogen is to give the electron some energy and see<br />
how it responds. The goal of the experiment was to<br />
determine whether or not anti-hydrogen responds<br />
the same as normal hydrogen. Due to the obvious<br />
issues in handling antimatter, the anti-hydrogen<br />
must be created, contained and experimented on<br />
in very creative ways. First, the basic ingredients<br />
must be made in a particle accelerator. Then, the<br />
anti-hydrogen was cooked up by combining its preprepared<br />
ingredients: an antiproton and positron.<br />
It was then trapped and contained in a magnetic field<br />
so that it wouldn’t interact with anything made of<br />
matter. In order to determine its response to light,<br />
the antihydrogen was stimulated with a laser and its<br />
response recorded.<br />
The results were rewarding and found an identical<br />
response to light from anti-hydrogen as they found<br />
from hydrogen. As far as interactions with matter<br />
and antimatter go, the experiment found light<br />
doesn’t seem to care which is which. This is a big step<br />
experimentally into understanding the fundamental<br />
symmetries of the universe.<br />
But here’s the rub: why is there more matter than<br />
antimatter in the universe, and why are we made of<br />
matter? We look out at the cosmos and see galaxies<br />
and stars only composed of one. We know this is<br />
true because otherwise there would be annihilation<br />
constantly and we could see its effects. Perhaps it’s all<br />
antimatter and we’re the only matter. But that raises<br />
more questions of its own and answers less of ours. In<br />
any case, this is a big problem in modern astrophysics<br />
and cosmology. Had the experiment shown a<br />
different response to light from anti-hydrogen we<br />
might have an inkling; but no cigar. Every day we<br />
understand antimatter and its properties better both<br />
experimentally and theoretically. Its origins and<br />
seeming lack of ubiquity on the other hand? Right<br />
now it’s a matter of speculation.<br />
science/engineering 24-25
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
apathy and<br />
urgency<br />
article by lachlan liesfield<br />
illustration by carly patterson<br />
June 5th, 2013, The first reports of the National<br />
Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance<br />
programs were released to the public. You heard<br />
about it, of that I am certain. You were outraged,<br />
disappointed, yet maybe unsurprised. But at that first<br />
moment of confirmation, you were worried. You used<br />
incognito mode every time you browsed, thinking<br />
it might do something, you cleared your cache and<br />
history, and wondered if something you’d looked<br />
up would leave you with some unwanted attention.<br />
More allegations emerged about the US government<br />
spying on its citizens, though they got less and less<br />
coverage. By the time a month had passed, the effect<br />
of the leaks on you had faded. You’d forgotten. Your<br />
interest had waned. Though for some the effects are<br />
far from over. They are not ‘out of sight, out mind’ like<br />
they might be for us.<br />
Residing in Russia after having been granted<br />
temporary asylum there –which has recently been<br />
extended to the year 2020, Edward Snowden, a<br />
champion of U.S intelligence transparency continues<br />
to promote issues of privacy and anonymity.<br />
Still he constantly involves himself in live video<br />
conference talks in every corner of the world,<br />
including in Melbourne where he spoke last May. In<br />
conversation with Julian Morrow of Chaser fame,<br />
Snowden reiterated to the audience that powers of<br />
Australian Intelligence services are now “much more<br />
unrestrained than they are in the United States,<br />
despite how dire the situation is there”. The respected<br />
outsider acted more or less as a light through the fog,<br />
reminding us of what is happening right in front of<br />
our eyes.<br />
Snowden reaffirmed for his audience that there have<br />
been some successes from his actions three years ago.<br />
In the United States, the requirement for the Foreign<br />
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to approve or<br />
deny surveillance requests was established. The Email<br />
Privacy Act, which would prevent general acquisition<br />
of private emails, was introduced as a bill to the<br />
United States Congress and the specific NSA program<br />
Snowden’s leak exposed has since been shut down.<br />
But there have been failures too. The FISC did not<br />
deny any requests last year; the Email Privacy Act has<br />
stalled in the US Senate. In Australia, public outrage<br />
has not been matched by policy. Under the National<br />
Security Legislation Amendment (2014), increased<br />
penalties for disclosing information about security<br />
operations were introduced –the legislation applies<br />
to both those within and outside of the intelligence<br />
community. This had the effect of making it harder<br />
for whistle-blowers and journalists to bring such<br />
material to light. Where was all the fuss kicked up by<br />
both the media and the public when it was passed?<br />
Why do we look away in the first place? I wonder if<br />
reading it now might change anything.<br />
It is often hard then to feel as if any progress is<br />
being made. But there are small steps. European<br />
responses were more wholehearted, though still<br />
lacking, with a general wave of condemnation from<br />
European governments. Importantly, there was a<br />
German investigation into strategies to prevent the<br />
re-emergence of mass surveillance. But equally they<br />
have dawdled on implementing any actual measures<br />
to do this.<br />
In the final days of his administration, President<br />
Obama commuted the sentences of many prisoners,<br />
including Chelsea Manning who was convicted of<br />
espionage in 2013. During his presidency, however,<br />
the rules for data sharing between the NSA and<br />
other intelligence agencies were loosened. This<br />
meant that all the excessive personal data collected<br />
by surveillance programs will continue to be in the<br />
possession of the Federal Government of the United<br />
States. While Obama’s commutations set some<br />
precedent – though nothing formal, for the treatment<br />
of whistle-blowers, the issues raised by them and the<br />
need to protect whistle-blowers like them seem to<br />
have receded from any real scrutiny.<br />
Australians have largely dismissed the Snowden leaks<br />
as a rather irrelevant, foreign problem. We cannot do<br />
that with the Panama Papers, released in mid-2016.<br />
Major Australian companies such as NAB, ANZ and<br />
BHP Billiton were named in the papers, alongside<br />
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull – although he<br />
himself was not implicated of any wrongdoing. Such<br />
allegations are something we must acknowledge and<br />
confront.<br />
These are merely a few of many leaks that continue<br />
to be reported about and subsequently forgotten.<br />
There were ‘The Drone Papers’, published by The<br />
Intercept. These papers detailed how people end up<br />
on US kill lists – though the leaks themselves have<br />
not been without due criticism. Furthermore, there<br />
were many other leaks published by the International<br />
Consortium of Investigative Journalists, concerning<br />
deaths and displacement in Zambia and the<br />
Democratic Republic of Congo by Australian mining<br />
interests.<br />
All these stories have come and gone, already bowing<br />
out of the spotlight, often with limited public impact.<br />
Do you remember seeing it on television? Do you<br />
remember it as trending news? As a top rated post?<br />
Why do we forget so quickly? These sorts of crises<br />
are now a constant. It seems as if every week,<br />
there’s another story breaking. We are forced to<br />
discard them so quickly just to keep up with what’s<br />
happening next. From leaks, to wars, to elections<br />
and administrations, there is so much news we<br />
don’t have the time to understand its gravity or its<br />
consequences.<br />
Even now, we regularly follow leaks of questionable<br />
ministerial spending by the Federal Government,<br />
with new accusations of wrongdoing emerging<br />
almost daily. How about the explosive reports<br />
coming from the United States regarding Russian<br />
interference in their presidential election?<br />
Is it that we toss aside any information doesn’t<br />
immediately affect us? Surely not, because responses<br />
to the actions of government wrongdoing both here<br />
and the US have been vivid and immediate. We do<br />
watch each other’s backs, though not necessarily<br />
for long enough. It is doubtless that governments<br />
and corporations will continue to act illegally and<br />
uncompromisingly to serve their own interests. But<br />
we cannot allow the existing voter apathy to evolve<br />
into ‘corruption apathy’, in essence the normalisation<br />
of these revelations after we’ve spent our collective<br />
outrage. Every morning it seems we can wake up to<br />
another story that would have been unthinkable a<br />
year ago. With an extended public push, not only<br />
just when these issues arise but instead until we see<br />
a resolution, perhaps then we would be able to unite<br />
together in a fight for greater political transparency,<br />
integrity, and legitimacy.
do patterns of social<br />
media use reflect<br />
personality traits?<br />
article by ambrose moore<br />
The number of worldwide social media users is expected to reach 2.5 billion by<br />
2018. Whether an individual’s personality can be accurately reflected in their use<br />
of social media has been examined and discussed by many researchers over this<br />
period. Prior to research being done on this topic, it was widely assumed that an<br />
individual’s personality and their use of social media were not necessarily distinct<br />
from one another, but due to inconsistencies, an individual’s social media use<br />
cannot reliably predict that individual’s whole personality. Through the analysis<br />
of some research studies into whether an individual’s ‘Big Five’ personality traits<br />
(extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) can be<br />
accurately predicted through examining their use of social media, it is evident that<br />
there are in fact reliable and quantifiable correlations between patterns of social<br />
media use and these Big Five personality traits. The results suggested that, rather<br />
than escaping from or compensating for their offline personality, Online Social<br />
Networking site (OSNs) users appear to extend their offline personalities into the<br />
domains of OSNs.<br />
The article ‘Manifestations of personality in online social networks’ used<br />
two studies; self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile<br />
information, examining how personality is reflected in OSNs. The study revealed<br />
several connections between the Big Five personality traits and both self-reported<br />
Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Extraversion was<br />
not only positively related to self-reported frequency of Facebook usage (Study 1),<br />
but also engagement in the site, with extraverts (vs. introverts) leaving observable<br />
traces of higher levels of OSN activity. However, the validity of the conclusion may<br />
be questioned, as they have only looked at Facebook-related activity, thus reducing<br />
the ability to generalize across all OSNs.<br />
In contrast ‘A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors<br />
of social media usage’ examined how the Big Five personality traits, along with<br />
Sociability and Need-for-Cognition, affect an individual’s informational use of<br />
the two largest OSNs: Facebook and Twitter. Although the methods of each study<br />
differed, the results showed congruence. That is, both studies reported that the<br />
total number of friends a user has correlates significantly highly with extroversion.<br />
However, the results attained by these two studies may not be reliable as they did<br />
not take into account the effect of what may be considered confounding variables,<br />
such as socio-demographics and life satisfaction, gender and age.<br />
The results from a similar study ‘Who interacts on the Web?’ revealed that<br />
while extraversion and openness to experience were positively related to social<br />
media use, emotional stability was a negative predictor. These findings differed<br />
depending on gender and age. While extraverted men and women were both<br />
likely to be more frequent users of social media tools, only the men with greater<br />
degrees of emotional instability were more regular users. The relationship between<br />
extraversion and social media use was particularly important among the young<br />
adult cohort. Conversely, being open to new experiences emerged as an important<br />
personality predictor of social media use for the more mature segment of the<br />
sample.<br />
Another study ‘The relationship between personality traits and social media use’<br />
utilised similar methods, comparing not only how the Big Five personality traits<br />
affect someone’s use of social media, but how income, gender, education and life<br />
satisfaction play a role as well. However, the results show that only two personality<br />
traits (conscientiousness and openness to experience), two demographic attributes<br />
(education and income level) and life satisfaction are significant predictors of<br />
social media use. The relationship with the other factors explored were not<br />
significant.<br />
However, if we consider ‘personality’ as the definition of a person’s ‘full character’, it<br />
encompasses an individual’s age, socio-demographics, gender, level of income and<br />
life satisfaction. This is because the Big Five personality traits within an individual<br />
are influenced by such other factors over their lifetime.<br />
Another study ‘Self-presentation and belonging on Facebook: how personality<br />
influences social media use and motivations’ examined the relationship between<br />
the Big Five and the use of Facebook to fulfill belonging and self-presentational<br />
needs, by allowing participants to complete a survey assessing personality and<br />
Facebook behaviors and motivations. ‘Personality, gender, and age in the language<br />
of social media: the open-vocabulary approach’ looked specifically at how<br />
someone’s personality affects their use of language over social media producing<br />
data that stimulates a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes<br />
people.<br />
In the studies ‘Social network use and personality’ and ‘Predicting personality with<br />
social media’ the self-reporting of subjects was replaced by more objective criteria;<br />
measurements of the user-information uploaded on Facebook. In comparing the<br />
publicly available information of a social media user to their Big Five personality<br />
traits, the article ‘Predicting personality with social media’, claimed to have<br />
shown that a user’s Big Five personality traits could be predicted from the public<br />
information they share on Facebook. This was suggested following the results that<br />
key correlations existed between positive emotion words (e.g. love, nice, sweet) and<br />
agreeableness. More friends correlated with more extroverted people (although,<br />
these extroverts tended to have scant friendship networks). These methods provide<br />
a straightforward way to obtain personality profiles of users without the burden of<br />
tests, and this will make it much easier to create personality-oriented interfaces.<br />
Social media has come to dominate today’s methods of communication resulting<br />
in a radical alteration in consumption patterns, as social media allows consumers<br />
to interact readily with other individuals as well as commercial entities. Producers<br />
may seek to investigate what kinds of people shop online for what kinds of<br />
products in order to advertise their products more effectively. In addition to<br />
this, Human Resource Management is always investigating the personalities of<br />
job applicants to ensure that the right people are employed for the right job. A<br />
significant amount of research has sought to answer the same question: ‘can an<br />
individual’s personality be reflected in their social media use?’<br />
science/engineering 26-27
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
Science News<br />
Science/Engineering Sub-Editor Team<br />
Submerged Landmass Zealandia a<br />
Candidate for Continent<br />
ZEALANDIA, a region that is two-thirds<br />
the size of Australia in the southwest Pacific<br />
Ocean, is a step closer to being recognised as<br />
a continent. It covers a nearly 5 million square<br />
kilometre area that centres on New Zealand<br />
and encompasses New Caledonia, Norfolk<br />
Island, the Lord Howe Island group and<br />
Elizabeth and Middleton reefs.<br />
The area is believed to have once been a<br />
part of Gondwana – a supercontinent which<br />
made up the majority of landmasses in the<br />
Southern Hemisphere. However, 94% of the<br />
landmass sunk below sea level between 60 to<br />
80 million years ago.<br />
A paper published in the journal of the<br />
Geological Society of America -reportedly the<br />
first robust, peer-reviewed scientific paper<br />
to define and describe Zealandia, contends<br />
it is distinct enough to constitute a separate<br />
continent.<br />
Source: Geology Society of America Today<br />
What’s the Buzz? Bees Can Learn<br />
New Tricks<br />
BUMBLEBEES have displayed surprising<br />
cognitive flexibility in a recent study<br />
published in Science. This ability to learn<br />
means that, despite their small brains, certain<br />
species of bees could develop completely novel<br />
behaviours in response to environmental<br />
pressures.<br />
The bees were tested in a task that involved<br />
moving a ball to a goal for a reward after<br />
a demonstration. It was found that bees<br />
completed the task quicker if they first<br />
observed a live or model demonstrator.<br />
Bees were also able to solve the task more<br />
efficiently than in the demonstration. Unlike<br />
the demonstrator, when given a number of<br />
balls to choose from, the bees used the ball<br />
closest to the goal. This occurred even when<br />
the demonstrator’s ball colour differed from<br />
the ball chosen.<br />
Source: Science<br />
WHO Top 12 Bacterial Threats to<br />
Human Health<br />
THE World Health Organisation (WHO)<br />
has published a list of antibiotic-resistant<br />
“priority pathogens” that pose the greatest<br />
threat to human health. This catalogue of 12<br />
families of bacteria aims to address growing<br />
global resistance to antimicrobials by<br />
promoting the research and development of<br />
new antibiotics.<br />
The listed bacteria are resistant to multiple<br />
antibiotics, can develop resistances to new<br />
treatments, and pass along genetic material<br />
for other bacteria to become drug-resistant.<br />
The WHO list divides these bacteria into<br />
three categories, according to the need for<br />
new antibiotics: medium, high and critical<br />
priority.<br />
The criteria for compiling the list were:<br />
the deadliness of infections; long hospital<br />
stays required for treatment; frequency of<br />
antibiotic resistance; infectiousness; ease of<br />
prevention; treatment options remaining;<br />
level of research and development of new<br />
antibiotics.<br />
Source: World Health Organisation<br />
Brain Scans Spot Autism Signs in<br />
High-Risk Babies<br />
MRI brain scans can adequately forecast<br />
autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses in<br />
‘high-risk’ babies whose siblings have autism,<br />
according to a US Infant Brain Imaging Study.<br />
In the study, researchers scanned the brains<br />
of 106 ‘high-risk’ infants at age 6, 12 and 24<br />
months. They found that ASD diagnoses and<br />
behavioural signs of autism in ‘high-risk’<br />
babies could be correlated with faster than<br />
average brain growth 8 out of 10 times.<br />
These findings could potentially be used<br />
as an ASD diagnostic tool as neither genetic<br />
nor behaviour diagnosis methods have been<br />
successful. However, this research cannot<br />
yet be applied to a general non-‘high-risk’<br />
population; a larger study replicating the<br />
results needs to be conducted before findings<br />
are conclusive.<br />
Source: Nature<br />
Facts are a Bit Woolly on the Woolly<br />
Mammoth Resurrection<br />
A Harvard genetics team has spliced 45<br />
mammoth-like edits of DNA into the Asian<br />
elephant genome using the gene-editing<br />
tool Crispr. This has been widely reported<br />
alongside headlines saying woolly mammoths<br />
could be ‘de-extinct’ in two years.<br />
These headlines are based off a quote<br />
from Harvard geneticist Prof George Church<br />
during an American Association for the<br />
Advancement of Science annual meeting.<br />
Church said his team was aiming to produce<br />
a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo, an<br />
elephant embryo with mammoth traits. He<br />
speculated that it could happen in a couple<br />
of years.<br />
The research project at its current stage has<br />
no plans to resurrect a mammoth. The project<br />
has two goals: using mammoth genes to save<br />
the endangered Asian elephant and helping<br />
to fight global warming.<br />
Source: The Guardian, New Scientist, Medium<br />
Earth’s Deepest Ocean Trenches are<br />
Highly Polluted<br />
ACCORDING to a discovery published in<br />
Nature Ecology and Evolution, deep ocean<br />
trenches, six to eleven kilometres below the<br />
surface, are 50 times more polluted with toxic<br />
and industrial chemicals than river systems<br />
in China. The pervasiveness of pollution<br />
suggests better management and monitoring<br />
of these environments are needed.<br />
The study analysed tiny deep-sea<br />
crustaceans and found that even the deep-sea<br />
wilderness is impacted by human degradation.<br />
It also showed a strong correlation between<br />
the level of pollution on the surface and deepsea<br />
waters.<br />
The investigation was conducted by a team<br />
of Scottish researchers on the world’s deepest<br />
marine trenches: the Mariana Trench in the<br />
west Pacific Ocean above Australia, and the<br />
Kermadec Trench near the north-eastern tip<br />
of New Zealand.<br />
Source: ABC<br />
illustration by nicole sizer
arts/culture<br />
arts/culture 28-29
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
student theatre:<br />
the MUST have<br />
article by dylan marshall<br />
In a fractured digital landscape, live theatre seems obsolete. It<br />
does not offer the convenience and on-demand nature of Netflix, it<br />
does not promote a rewatchable or sharable experience and it does<br />
not always provide a particulaly palpable piece of entertainment.<br />
Instead theatre offers something different; a singular moment, an<br />
artistic flair that burns both brightly and swiftly, yet continues to<br />
smoulder within the minds of its respective audience. Theatre can<br />
be a heart wrenching, personal experience, a comic amalgamation of<br />
Shakespeare’s work or a rock musical about mental illness. Theatre<br />
may not be similar to other popular mediums, but that does not<br />
mean it is irrelevant, in fact it could be seen as essential because of<br />
this very reason.<br />
At Monash, the requirement and need for such a medium can not be<br />
underestimated. The Monash University Student Theatre (MUST)<br />
provides an outlet for self expression, whilst also promoting relevant<br />
discourse in regards to issues facing the world today, a fact that the<br />
theatre’s Artistic Director, Yvonne Virsik, believes contributes to the<br />
program’s success.<br />
“[Theatre]'s a form in which we can uniquely investigate what it means<br />
to be human, tell great stories and provoke discussion and awareness of<br />
political issues. At university, it provides a great resource for encouraging<br />
conversation, increasing social awareness and knowledge of other cultures<br />
and lifestyles and for experimentation with new technologies and artistic<br />
forms.”<br />
Such a form of cultural expression involves a lot of student<br />
involvement. Even individuals who choose not to act can still<br />
expand their skill set in other areas of the theatre. The director of<br />
MUST’s forthcoming musical (Next to Normal, which opens in late<br />
May), Stephen Amos, describes this oppurtunity and community<br />
best.<br />
“In first year, student theatre was an amazing way of helping me find my<br />
feet, and do something that I was passionate about, alongside my studies!<br />
Most of all though I think it's the whole community and groups of people you<br />
meet and make connections with that really make it so worthwhile. I think<br />
MUST really has something for everybody too, whether it's seeing a show,<br />
working on one backstage, getting to know a new role in an assistant stage<br />
management position, or being on stage as an actor!”<br />
Besides the roles Amos lists, students can also light stages, direct<br />
performers, plan and build sets, promote shows, photograph theatre<br />
events and even develop sound design. There are so many different<br />
areas for creative minds to truly thrive within MUST and refine<br />
their own abilities, as well as learn new ones. Skills such as these can<br />
not be taught in a lecture hall or in a tutorial, they are talents that<br />
are nurtured and fostered within a practical environment. Justin<br />
Gardam, the director and writer of MUST’s next upcoming piece,<br />
the tentatively titled Late Show (running from the 7th to the 13th of<br />
April), summarised this point, stating:<br />
“Student theatre challenges you. It fosters the sort of mindsets and practical<br />
problem-solving you’ll need to thrive in your industry, whether it be theatre,<br />
commerce, or medicine. It gives you great collaborative skills. It pushes you<br />
out of your comfort zone, and gives you the confidence to take risks, fail, fail<br />
a few more times, and finally succeed.”<br />
Many of MUST’s other directors have reiterared similar thoughts on<br />
how the student theatre was integral to their development as artists,<br />
allowing them to take forward steps in the theatrical landscape<br />
and thereby inject fresh blood into a dying industry. In some ways<br />
MUST provides an art institution that is both ingrained within the<br />
university, but is also part of a far broader branching industry. As<br />
Virsik descibes:<br />
“MUST is a vibrant feeder of the arts sector in Australia. Scratch the surface<br />
of a company and you'll find ex-MUSTers influencing our culture and<br />
heading the surge for exciting, responsive, innovative projects.”<br />
Since the removal of the Bachelor of Performing Arts degree,<br />
Monash has been lacking in hands-on, practical courses for arts<br />
students, however MUST has supplied an avenue for creativity,<br />
whilst also connecting students to possible contacts within the<br />
industry. Such a resource is invaluable to Monash students. The<br />
director and co-writer of MUST’s O-Show <strong>2017</strong> and last year’s Jamie<br />
and the ATAR, Fraser Mitchell, has gone so far as to establish his<br />
own company, T Minus Theatre, by utilising the skills he learnt at the<br />
student theatre.<br />
“MUST provided me with a supportive environment and me the opportunity<br />
to apply my skills. I value that more than anything. My new show, Jamie and<br />
the Asynchronous Temporal Atomic Reverberator, was originally developed<br />
at MUST and we went through a lot of shitty drafts before we found the<br />
show we liked. Those first mistakes were essential to the show's creation and<br />
we wouldn't have been able to make those mistakes without student theatre.”<br />
Mitchell’s musical comedy, aimed at high school students, will be<br />
on at the Metonoia Theatre as part of the Melbourne International<br />
Comedy Festival.<br />
As aforementioned, another inviting element of Monash’s student<br />
theatre is the importance placed on self-expression. For many, one’s<br />
university life represents a transitional period from reliance to<br />
independence and in such a state it can be difficult to unearth one’s<br />
purpose, passions and even identity. It’s easy for these factors to be<br />
shaped by our actions, but the people we surround ourselves with<br />
can also construct them. MUST offers both of these fundamental<br />
building blocks of the self, through the supportive community<br />
and the near unlimited opportunities to flex, often neglected,<br />
creative muscles. The director of the Awakening remount (at<br />
fortfivedownstairs in May), Daniel Lammin, contributed much of his<br />
success in the industry to these factors.<br />
>>
“I started studying theatre at Monash planning on becoming an actor, but<br />
if it hadn’t been for MUST and the encouragement and support of that<br />
community, I wouldn’t have discovered that my love and skill in directing<br />
was even greater. I couldn’t have done it without their support, which is<br />
part of the reason I’ve come back to make work with MUST so often and<br />
to mentor the next generation of theatre makers they’re fostering. I feel I<br />
owe that to them for everything they gave to me. Their importance to me is<br />
part of who I am as a theatre maker, and their importance to the Melbourne<br />
theatre community as a whole is impossible to calculate.”<br />
Lammin went so far as to commend MUST for their guts and<br />
faith in his projects, which hints at the limitless approach adopted<br />
towards self-expression within the community. However, this<br />
attitude is not consistent throughout all areas of the industry, with<br />
companies struggling to pay larger casts outside of the popular,<br />
westernised musicals. This flaw within the wider industry highlights<br />
what could be the most underrated and important parts of student<br />
theatre, the students. These are individuals who bring enthusiasm,<br />
creativity and a unique voice to an industry that is struggling to<br />
keep its foothold within public popularity. It’s this youthful energy,<br />
which results in brilliant, unrefined creations, skyrocketing the next<br />
generation of theatre makers into innovative and original projects.<br />
Helena Dixon has experienced this effect first hand, allowing her to<br />
build confidence and even step up to direct MUST’s stage version<br />
of Frankenstein (running from the 11th to the 20th of May), thereby<br />
helping her to contribute to the culture that she has truly flourished<br />
in.<br />
“MUST provides this fantastic space for a bunch of really weird, wonderful<br />
and talented students to come together and share in a common passion. It's<br />
provided me with a place to learn and grow in ways completely different<br />
to what I've learnt from my degree. Especially as a science kid, it has been<br />
my main creative outlet, which I will always be thankful for. And honestly,<br />
because of the people I've met through student theatre I'm a lot stronger<br />
and more confident in my abilities both inside and outside of the theatrical<br />
sphere.”<br />
The constant difficulties faced when justifying theatre’s relevance<br />
is probably best explicated and directly tied to the texts of<br />
Shakespeare and whether they still have a place within our society.<br />
Niamh Percy, the director of Monash Shakespeare Company’s (MSC)<br />
first semester’s show, The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged,<br />
still thinks there is great value in the bards work.<br />
“To many people Shakespeare is something they have to tolerate at high<br />
school and never deal with again. I think this is such a sad attitude;<br />
Shakespeare can be so exciting and different - as Monash Shakespeare<br />
Company has started to prove! Shakespeare has done so much for our<br />
culture and language, enriching the modern day more than most realise. It's<br />
important to appreciate that I think!”<br />
Her show, running from the 27th of April to May 6th, aims to shift<br />
this attitude by combining all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays into one<br />
90-minute piece of hilarity. The second semester show, directed by<br />
Gina Dickson, takes a different approach by interpreting Taming<br />
of the Shrew, one of the bard’s more controversial comedies, into<br />
an empowering piece for the modern day woman. Both of these<br />
interpretations perfectly encapsulate the importance of student<br />
theatre, as they provide social commentary and entertainment out<br />
of 400-year-old texts.<br />
Without MUST or the MSC theatre would not have it’s same<br />
potency or risk-taking abilities, these performances project the<br />
voices of a generation and breath new life and new interpreatations<br />
into the Australian art sector. Through innovation, creativity,<br />
passion, experiementation, failure and community; student theatre<br />
breaks new ground, questions normality and reignites the flames of<br />
a dying, but undoubtedly necessary cultural medium.<br />
To get involved in the MUST or MSC Season:<br />
- Sign up for the MUST e-bulletin via the web site: msa.monash.edu/must<br />
- Like the MUST and MSC Facebook pages<br />
- Check out the info and audition sign ups in the MUST corridor<br />
- Come see the shows!<br />
- If you are desperate to get involved in a specific crew role, make an<br />
appointment via email with MUST's Artistic Director, Yvonne Virsik:<br />
yvonne.virsik@monash.edu<br />
arts/culture 30-31
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
oscar bait: why the<br />
oscars are overrated<br />
article by nick jarrett<br />
illustration by rachelle lee<br />
Annually, the Academy Awards return to centre stage for film enthusiasts and<br />
fashion diehards across the world. The awards bring all of our favourite celebrities<br />
with them, igniting storms of gossip over seemingly budding relationships,<br />
outrageous fashion designs and the occasional tid-bit of debate over the awards<br />
themselves. Yet despite the glitz and glam that surrounds the ceremony, the Oscars<br />
have consistently failed to select the most deserving nominees and winners of<br />
various categories, favouring popular sentiment over the most dynamic and artistic<br />
films.<br />
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences bears the annual burden of both<br />
nominating and selecting the winner from the pool of films that qualify yearly.<br />
With more than 7,000 members, the voting for the nomination is split into sections<br />
(i.e., actors can only nominate actors and not directors) whereas the voting for the<br />
winner is polled from all members regardless of your occupation. This method,<br />
whilst arguably one of the best for all award shows, is intrinsically flawed.<br />
Take last year’s ‘Academy’s Whitest’ award night, where the show and members<br />
were criticised for not selecting people from different ethnicities. The hashtag<br />
#OscarsSoWhite became a trending Twitter topic and boycotts were staged by<br />
numerous actors and filmmakers. In response, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts &<br />
Sciences culled its previously much larger membership, in an attempt to diversify<br />
nominations. In doing so, they also took the opportunity to change the system of<br />
voting, creating a system to favour a ‘consensus’ best film, rather than a simple<br />
‘most votes’ scheme (only voting for Best Picture has been changed so far).<br />
When the Academy looks to determine the winner of the Best Picture race, they<br />
first check to see if one film has over fifty percent of the number one votes (voting<br />
is from one to six). In the probable likelihood that no film has a majority, they<br />
eliminate the film with the fewest number one votes, even if they were to have<br />
the most cumulative votes overall. They then take the number two votes on those<br />
ballots, and reassign them as number one votes. If one film then has more than<br />
fifty percent of the number one votes, it becomes the winner. If not, the process<br />
continues until one film has over fifty percent of the votes. In this method, the<br />
Academy is potentially forgoing the overall votes in return for what has been<br />
described as an Electoral College-like system (and we know how well that can turn<br />
out). Surely the film with the most accumulated votes should be the winner?<br />
Among other issues plaguing the Oscars, there is also the incredible lack of<br />
consistency with the awards. American Hustle in 2013 was nominated for ten awards,<br />
including all six major categories (Actor, Actress, both Supporting roles, Best<br />
Film and Director). It failed to win even a single award. Yes, maybe that speaks to<br />
individual performances above all else, but how can a film so highly rated in all ten<br />
diverse nominations not win a single award? Whilst, I do not necessarily believe<br />
the film deserved to win Best Picture, or the other categories, the logical flaws are<br />
evident when something is so widely acclaimed and nominated and yet fails to<br />
win over films with fewer nominations.<br />
Take Martin Scorsese’s filmography as another example. Despite his film Taxi<br />
Driver being recognised by the US Library of Congress as ‘culturally, historically<br />
or aesthetically’ significant, it lost the Oscar for Best Picture to Rocky, and failed<br />
to win a single award in its year of contention. How can something so culturally<br />
significant and revered be so overlooked? Scorsese was was not even nominated<br />
for best director. Seemingly, the awards mean little in retrospect, with numerous<br />
award winners being overshadowed by those which failed to win. Similarly,<br />
Scorsese’s Best Picture win came with The Departed in 2006. Whilst, no doubt an<br />
entertaining movie it lacked the artistic qualities of fellow nominated films such as<br />
The Last King of Scotland or Letters to Iwo Jima.<br />
Not only this, but to even be in contention for an Oscar, a film must be globally<br />
marketable. What independent, arthouse film manages to reach the same scope<br />
of audience as one that is backed by a well-known production company and<br />
containing box-office bankable stars? It cannot possibly hope to compete, leaving<br />
the awards cycle full of only those films which contain the same generic formulae:<br />
star power, massive production companies and deep pockets for marketing. Would<br />
a film like The Revenant have been as widely released had Leonardo DiCaprio,<br />
Tom Hardy and Domhnall Gleeson not starred? Probably not. Would it have then<br />
garnered enough attention to win the awards? Definitely not. To win an award, a<br />
film needs this global recognition, which means smaller budget and more artistic<br />
films are often left unrepresented and forgotten in ceremonies like the Academy<br />
Awards.<br />
In light of the recent Oscar ceremony and the low-budget film Moonlight winning<br />
Best Picture, I do acknowledge that there are exceptions to this rule, yet the<br />
dominant narrative still plays out in favour of star-powered films.<br />
Even further, how are we categorising what a ‘Best Picture’ even is? As I have<br />
suggested, the Oscars do not typically select the most artistic films, and don’t<br />
get me started on foreign films, which are largely ignored in the main categories<br />
(with a slight exception for Elle this year). So what is the best film? Should the<br />
‘best’ not be the film that the most people enjoy and flock to see? Star Wars: Rogue<br />
One, or Captain America Civil War, or Finding Dory all topped the box office in 2016.<br />
Yet we ignore the fact that these films have been the most successful by global<br />
attention to focus on slightly more artistic films, and yet only include the bankable,<br />
Hollywood films that fall into the category of semi-arthouse productions. There<br />
is an underlying discrepancy in the way that the award shows – particularly the<br />
Oscars – operate, allowing them to pick various films that in no way meet either<br />
two main categories for success (artistic measure and financial success).<br />
The Oscars are fun, they are bright and they do provide some direction into<br />
popular and entertaining films that contrast with the box-office-powerhouse<br />
superhero genre. Let’s just not hide from what they are: a bright and loud way of<br />
annually showcasing some good films and performances – just not always the<br />
year’s finest.
arts/culture 32-33
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
‘the political is personal’: an<br />
interview with judith buckrich<br />
article by evangeline yong<br />
The second wave of feminism, the civil rights movement, the<br />
election of Gough Whitlam in 1972. These are socio-political<br />
triumphs that seem increasingly distant to us, lost in a labyrinth<br />
of penalty cuts, Donald Trump and political disillusionment. It is<br />
for this reason that Judith Buckrich’s life and memoir, The Political<br />
is Personal resonates so powerfully with our generation.<br />
The Political is Personal is a memoir of a life lived daringly, at the<br />
intersection of turbulent but thrilling periods of history. Judith<br />
Buckrich contextualises her private experience within the<br />
framework of events that forged a resurgent, post-World War<br />
society and shaped her own journey as a writer, historian and<br />
political activist. Vulnerable, wise and witty, Buckrich’s narrative<br />
is a challenge to complacency and cynicism, a reflection of the<br />
author’s own extraordinary personality.<br />
So it is with a sense of trepidation that I walk through the<br />
streets of Prahran, lined with sleek boutiques and snug cafes to<br />
interview the author herself. I worry that she will be impossibly<br />
poised and confident, a formidable presence.<br />
Instead, I find a person whose laugh is great and generous;<br />
someone with warmth, graciousness and humour. Qualities<br />
which reverberate through her relentlessly honest writing. In<br />
simple, eloquent words Buckrich crafts a fascinating image of a<br />
historical era in which baby-boomers believed they could change<br />
the world. “An extraordinarily inspiring time, a good time to<br />
be alive,” she says fondly, lingering on memories of being a law<br />
student at Monash University in the 1960s, at the hub of social<br />
and political change.<br />
The Political is Personal reads with the same striking ease,<br />
openness and buoyancy that the writer displays in person. I ask<br />
her how she gained such authenticity of voice, how she had the<br />
courage to expose her private life. Her answer is immediate,<br />
direct. “I just am like that,” she shrugs. “I could not have done it<br />
any other way.”<br />
It is this fearlessness, this embrace of one’s humanity, that allows<br />
Buckrich to speak and write with such passion and intensity<br />
about her life. Tumultuous and full of lucky ‘chances’, she admits,<br />
one of sheer determination and tackled with an unquenchable<br />
zest.<br />
Her lifelong love of literature, she says, was sparked by “voracious<br />
reading”. “To be able to read and read and read…that was my<br />
world,” she tells me. When I question her about how her interest<br />
in history began, she laughs at the memory of how immeasurably<br />
boring history lessons were – “Gee, they taught it badly!” – and<br />
emphasises how important it is to have “interesting”, “passionate”<br />
people teach it. “That’s the thing,” she muses, “if you’re going to<br />
be involved in history, you have to understand the ideas that are<br />
making a certain time.”<br />
For her, it was the experience of reading Dostoyevsky and other<br />
revolutionary Russian authors that informed her understanding<br />
of these political notions; writers also well-loved and read by her<br />
father, Antal Bukrics, who was a communist.<br />
Both in The Political is Personal and in our interview Buckrich<br />
affectionately recalls her father’s influence, mentioning their<br />
social, political and metaphysical conversations while “looking at<br />
the stars”.<br />
“Growing up with someone who is conscious about what’s<br />
going on in the world…is a pretty important thing,” she ponders,<br />
relating slivers of her father’s intriguing history as a member<br />
of the communist party in the United States and a storyteller<br />
himself, who wrote poems that he destroyed and which she tried<br />
to recover.<br />
It was at Monash University, however, that the political world<br />
really infiltrated Buckrich’s personal life and consciousness. She<br />
describes the atmosphere at Monash in 1969, and what it was<br />
like to be a university student leaning forward, her eyes lighting<br />
up and face animated. “It was,” she says with evocative joy in her<br />
voice, “like someone put wings on your back… Monash was the<br />
absolute centre of student movement, in Australia, not just in<br />
Melbourne.”<br />
Mentally toying with a whole spectrum of memories, Buckrich<br />
grasps at dynamic word-pictures, “vibrant, marvellous, fabulous”,<br />
conveying that vastly complex and novel experience of new<br />
music, theatre, literature, and ways of thinking, speaking and<br />
acting. “The Labor Club newsletter came out every single day,”<br />
she laughs, “and there was actually a serious article in The<br />
Age that said a revolution was going to happen in Melbourne,<br />
starting at Monash!”<br />
In a few moments of happy, soaring nostalgia, she paints an<br />
exuberant picture for me of “long-haired” boys, dishevelled<br />
students arguing at cafes about politics instead of attending<br />
lectures, and of watching the moon landing with her boyfriend,<br />
“madly in love”, while sitting in the lounge of the Student Union.<br />
“I’ve never forgotten what that was like. We were watching the<br />
landing on the moon, and this was a whole new world. It was all<br />
somehow to do with us, and to do with our future.” Her voice,<br />
contemplative, almost dreamy, immerses me in all the emotion<br />
surrounding infinite possibility.<br />
Yet this euphoric stage of her life was far from troublefree.<br />
With characteristic frankness, Buckrich talks about her<br />
frustration with largely male-dominated and male-run political<br />
movements at Monash. “The thing that spurred me on,” she says<br />
emphatically, “was that here we were, supposed to be in this kind<br />
of revolutionary state, and it was all the men who were running<br />
everything!”<br />
>>
She also discusses the difficulty of reconciling her<br />
feminist ideals with the social norms of the time,<br />
especially when charting a different, unprecedented<br />
course in life. “[It was] the struggle to match the<br />
kind of social change that was happening into my<br />
own life,” she explains. “I did not espouse the social<br />
changes of not getting married, I was very free and<br />
had many lovers. But as a first generation of young<br />
women doing that…it was full of danger.”<br />
In spite of these obstacles, Buckrich was and is<br />
irrepressible, fashioning a path for herself completely<br />
unique, entirely her own. In considering the<br />
evolution of her career as an author, she is very much<br />
a believer in the concept of flexibility and flux in<br />
one’s life.<br />
“Who knows how these things happen? Opportunities<br />
came along, and I took them,” she tells me simply.<br />
“It’s a strange thing, life; something stirs in you, and<br />
you follow that.”<br />
It was only in 1991, while she was still working<br />
as a teacher, that one of these “lucky chances”<br />
materialised, in the form of a friend’s casual comment<br />
that she should write a book about St. Kilda Road. In<br />
1996, A History of St. Kilda Road was finally published,<br />
leading to a career during spanning thirty-five years<br />
in which she has published thirteen books.<br />
Judith Buckrich’s book, The Political is Personal: A 20th Century Memoir is published by Lauranton<br />
Books and available from Readings Carlton, Readings St. Kilda, Collected Works (Swanston Street<br />
Melbourne), the Prahran Mechanics Institute and The Avenue Bookstore (Glenhuntly Road, Elsternwick).<br />
Her advice for aspiring authors, therefore, is<br />
unsurprising: to be open to every opportunity to<br />
write. Her own experience is illuminating, as she<br />
gives examples of different social, political and<br />
cultural contexts that have opened windows of<br />
potential and moulded her identity and authorship,<br />
such as moving temporarily to the U.S. in 1971 where<br />
she “really became a feminist” and drew inspiration<br />
from the Women’s Liberation Movement and activists<br />
like Angela Davis.<br />
Thus The Political is Personal is significant, a testament<br />
to the past, present, and future, to the power of<br />
possibility. An idea that started as a tribute to the<br />
legacy of Buckrich’s father and which evolved into<br />
a story about her parents, herself, and the historical<br />
and political events that framed and enriched their<br />
private lives.<br />
In view of the present and the future, I ask Buckrich<br />
for her perspective on our generation and what we<br />
can do to make the political personal in our lives;<br />
to engage with a progressively disengaged political<br />
system. As I list refugee rights among the social<br />
and political challenges of this age, I wonder at the<br />
success of young people back then: their rallies,<br />
political progress, their hopefulness – all of which we<br />
seem to be denied.<br />
Buckrich’s response is refreshingly down-to-earth,<br />
and quietly articulate. “Keep explaining to people<br />
that these things matter,” she says. “We can’t close<br />
ourselves off in a little cocoon.” Ultimately, she<br />
brings the historian’s perspective, a touch of needed<br />
wisdom and balance in the midst of our culture of<br />
media frenzy, and a visionary’s optimism, the greatest<br />
gift to our disenchanted generation.<br />
“I suppose the great gift from my father is that of<br />
hopefulness, that life is a struggle, you can’t give<br />
in, you have to keep on going, not giving way to<br />
cynicism, remaining hopeful for the future. As a<br />
historian, you do see how things have always gone.<br />
There have been periods of such darkness in the<br />
world. More than ever, we have to be hopeful.”<br />
arts/culture 34-35
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
lucian and<br />
‘the true history’<br />
article by john henry<br />
illustration by stephie dim<br />
Compared to the classics of Homer and Plato, the ancient satirists<br />
don’t reach a wide readership in Australia. Trawling through<br />
the average bookshop tends to show the current demand in what<br />
people read nowadays. When it comes to the classical canon, this<br />
is restricted to Homer’s epics, some Plato and Aristotle, the cant<br />
of Seneca, the ramblings of Herodotus, and a smattering of Greek<br />
tragedy. It’s not surprising that satirists like Juvenal and Horace<br />
don’t show up, for the simple reason that their lack of relevance have<br />
damned them to relative obscurity, perhaps combined with their<br />
failure to deliver any laughs. On Book Depository, a cheap copy of<br />
Homer or Plato ranks within the top 3,000 bestsellers overall, but the<br />
satirists, naturally, don’t come close to that mark (Juvenal scrapes<br />
in the top 90,000, Horace … 200,000). Although they wrote satires,<br />
to the modern reader Juvenal comes across as more crude and<br />
vicious than funny, whereas reading Horace is a trying experience<br />
that seems more properly reserved for a classroom of miserable<br />
schoolchildren in the Victorian era. But there is one satirist, much<br />
unread, who writes material that is actually entertaining: Lucian.<br />
Lucian of Samosata was a Syrian-Greek author that wrote in the<br />
2nd century C.E., around the time of the Roman emperor Marcus<br />
Aurelius (the one played by Dumbledore in Gladiator). Unlike<br />
his predecessors in the satiric tradition, he had a taste for the<br />
fantastical, going beyond social criticism into some surreal and<br />
evocative writing. He railed against the superstitions of an age of<br />
cults and mysticism, lambasting lies, frauds and folk remedies, and<br />
some of his works bear striking hints of science-fiction fantasy long<br />
before the likes of Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne. In his most<br />
famous story, The True History, Lucian describes a fantastic voyage<br />
that embarks from the Westernmost port of Spain to the moon,<br />
to inside the belly of a giant whale, to an island of cheese in an<br />
ocean of milk, an island brimming with dead heroes and pederastic<br />
philosophers, a skirmish with pirates in hollowed-out pumpkin ships<br />
with pepitas for artillery… all this surrealist imagery is crammed into<br />
a surprisingly short work.<br />
Admittedly, it’s important to put The True History into historical<br />
context – Lucian was mocking the ridiculous tales that earlier<br />
writers like Herodotus uncritically repeated, and was not intent on<br />
setting out a sprawling Tolkien universe; he was just carrying out<br />
the absurdity of these tales to their very extremes. Nonetheless,<br />
here was a man in the age of the Antonines who was writing about<br />
imperial space wars between the sun and the moon, with a cosmic<br />
battle raging between gigantic vultures and winged ants! This tale<br />
is over 1,800 years old, centuries before the Dark Ages, the Middle<br />
Ages, and the Renaissance; it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that<br />
The True History is, on the face of it, one of literature’s greatest<br />
anachronisms; and for that fact alone it deserves a wider reception.<br />
Combined with his no-nonsense approach to the superstitions of<br />
his age and inventive blend of satire and philosophical dialogue,<br />
Lucian’s works probably read as the most modern to our eyes, of the<br />
surviving texts that remain from antiquity. He is distant from the<br />
days of the Athens of Plato or the Roman Republic, but he did not<br />
absorb the later doctrines of the Stoics or the Neoplatonists, that<br />
otherwise would have made him a more familiar figure to a monk<br />
in the Middle Ages. His playful derision towards folk superstitions<br />
and religions (including a particularly unflattering passage on<br />
Christians) is undoubtedly an influence on the birth of modernity in<br />
the 18th century Enlightenment. He was read and enjoyed by writers<br />
like Gibbon and Voltaire.<br />
Despite the considerable gap between his age and ours, the<br />
imagination and eclecticism in a work like Lucian’s True History can<br />
still greatly appeal to a modern reader. Tellingly, when the classicist<br />
Andrew Wilson translated Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s<br />
Stone into Ancient Greek, it was Lucian’s work, and not that of his<br />
predecessors, which was used as a stylistic model.
arts/culture 36-37
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
the beginner’s guide to<br />
melbourne art galleries<br />
article & photography by jessica lehmann<br />
We live in the best city in the world and it is a pulsating cultural<br />
hub. We have no shortage of cultural activities to immerse ourselves<br />
in. For those new to Melbourne, or those who have been here a long<br />
time but hoping to mesh with the hipster Brunswick crowd, read on<br />
to delve into the art galleries of Melbourne.<br />
1/Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), 404 George St, Fitzroy<br />
Photography is often said to be the most accessible form of fine<br />
art, and so the CCP is a perfect place to start your cultural journey.<br />
Opened in 1986, this not-for-profit organisation consists of five<br />
spaces in which both current and historically relevant photography<br />
is showcased, including works from both new and established<br />
artists in Australia and beyond. A fantastic feature of the CCP are<br />
the photography courses and lectures it offers at the forefront of<br />
contemporary art practice. This makes it a great place for curious<br />
minds, whether new to photography or veterans.<br />
3/ Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude St, Fitzroy and 44 Glasshouse<br />
Road, Collingwood<br />
The place for cutting-edge current art is Gertrude Contemporary.<br />
Located in a converted warehouse and fixated on the presentation<br />
and exhibiting of contemporary art as well as its creation. Twenty<br />
exhibitions are presented annually featuring work by Australian<br />
and international artists. Artist studios are located adjacent to<br />
the gallery, fostering a creative environment with strong focus on<br />
cultivating connections and interactions between audience and<br />
artist. They have also recently expanded to two sites, presenting<br />
major exhibitions in Fitzroy and solo projects by Gertrude Studio<br />
Artists at Gertrude Glasshouse, Collingwood. Gertrude is a place<br />
that can be revisited time and time again, offering new insights into<br />
contemporary art practice.<br />
4/ SEVENTH, 155 Gertrude St, Fitzroy<br />
SEVENTH is an experimental artist-run space aimed at<br />
consistently broadening the horizons of artists, curators, writers<br />
and subsequently, the wider public. It is voluntarily operated by a<br />
board of artists and art professionals who champion accessibility<br />
and affordability. There are four gallery spaces of varying sizes<br />
and a night-screen projector where an artistic piece is displayed<br />
each night and can be viewed from the street. Multi-disciplinary<br />
artistic forms are presented with a mixture of curated, group and<br />
independent shows. Each show has an opening night with an<br />
eclectic, upbeat crowd, which is a great opportunity to mix with<br />
local art aficionados.<br />
2/ National Gallery of Victoria, 180 St Kilda Road/Federation Square<br />
Comprised of the NGV International and The Ian Potter Centre<br />
in Federation Square, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is<br />
Australia’s oldest public art gallery and showcases a wide range of<br />
artworks from around the globe. The NGV is enormous in size and<br />
it is easy to spend a whole day wandering around the permanent<br />
collection levels which include painting, sculpture, indigenous art,<br />
fashion, textiles and multimedia. There are also regularly changing<br />
curated exhibitions. Furthermore, a huge upcoming exhibition<br />
from December <strong>2017</strong>-April 2018 called the ‘Triennial’ was recently<br />
announced, featuring the work of 60 artists and designers from 30<br />
countries, surveying the world’s best art and design, across cultures,<br />
scales, geographies and perspectives. Definitely one not to miss.
5/ Monash Gallery of Art (MGA), 860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill<br />
The MGA is the premier gallery for Australian photography. The<br />
grounds are beautiful and well worth a wander, particularly the<br />
sculpture park. But a pivotal feature of the MGA is its accessibility; a<br />
person who has little knowledge of art could walk in and be greeted<br />
by informative staff, a well-stocked bookshop and exhibitions<br />
often accompanied by detailed explanatory texts. The MGA also<br />
holds regular floor talks and education programs. The William<br />
and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize and the subsequent<br />
exhibition is held annually. The prize is open to any Australian<br />
photographer, whether amateur or professional. All genres of<br />
photography are eligible, provided that the work has been produced<br />
in the last 12 months, with the winner receiving a $25,000 cash<br />
prize. The MGA spotlights the talent of Australian photographers,<br />
both contemporary and historical, and how they express personal,<br />
historical and political ideas.<br />
9/ The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne University, Swanston Street,<br />
University of Melbourne Parkville<br />
Another university-affiliated art gallery, the Ian Potter Museum of<br />
Art, is focused keenly on educating visitors, particularly students,<br />
and has a strong relationship with Melbourne University’s academic<br />
departments. Often exhibitions include alternatives to traditional<br />
art forms. For example, the upcoming exhibition Syria: Ancient<br />
History – Modern Conflict from 28 Mar to 27 Aug is informed by<br />
the fieldwork undertaken by University of Melbourne researchers<br />
with a key focus on objects within the context of unrest. The Potter<br />
is worth a visit for those overwhelmed by abstract concepts often<br />
found in contemporary art spaces and enables visitors to engage<br />
with the work through various rigorous public programs.<br />
6/Flinders Lane Gallery (FLG), 137 Flinders Ln Melbourne CBD<br />
Flinders Lane is a commercial gallery representing mid-career,<br />
emerging and indigenous artists run by Gallery Director Claire<br />
Harris. There is no clear aesthetic or trends in this space. Rather,<br />
artists who have developed technical skills and cultural sensitivity<br />
are represented. There are two gallery spaces; a permanent viewing<br />
area and an extensive stock room that can be viewed online.<br />
Exhibitions throughout the year feature gallery artists in both solo<br />
and group shows. FLG also hosts Exploration, an annual survey of<br />
promising, unsigned artists and recent art school graduates. This is a<br />
place where the artworks have a certain level of profundity and the<br />
artist’s great skill and respect for the creative is evident.<br />
7/Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), 111 Sturt St Southbank<br />
One of the most impressive architecturally designed places in<br />
Melbourne, the striking Wood Marsh designed exterior of ACCA<br />
is reason enough to make the trip to the gallery. Focusing on<br />
contemporary and often challenging art, it offers an interesting<br />
space to explore artistic ideas not considered in many other historic<br />
institutions in a fun and exciting way. They also have a well-stocked<br />
bookshop for everybody’s artistic literary needs. ACCA has brilliant<br />
public programs with talks and tours allowing visitors to easily<br />
traverse an art show that is sometimes difficult to navigate.<br />
8/Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Building F, Monash<br />
University, Caulfield campus, 900 Dandenong Rd<br />
Our very own university art gallery is a convenient stepping stone<br />
into the art scene. Have a free hour between tutes? Pop over to<br />
Caulfield campus and explore MUMA, with different exhibitions<br />
throughout the year, and you can undoubtedly find something that<br />
stimulates your mind. Free ArtForum talks on various art topics<br />
are regularly held by the Monash Art Design and Architecture<br />
department, often with high-profile guests, every Thursday at<br />
1.00pm in the Lecture Theatre (G1.04) on Caulfield Campus. There<br />
are also various public programs including the stimulating ‘Boiler<br />
Room’ lectures. See their website for more details.<br />
10/ C3 Contemporary Art Space, Abbotsford Convent, 1 St Heliers St,<br />
Abbotsford<br />
C3 is located in the basement of the beautiful Abbotsford Convent.<br />
It comprises of six exhibition rooms exhibiting a wide range of art<br />
forms. This hybridised public art and artist-run space encourages<br />
artists to exhibit risk-taking and experimental works making a visit<br />
here truly fascinating. Afterwards, make sure to stroll through the<br />
historic gardens and have a bite to eat, as vegan pay-as-you-choose<br />
restaurant Lentil as Anything always poses a good option.<br />
This list is by no means exhaustive and everyone has very different<br />
and distinct art taste. Some feel enthusiastically passionate about<br />
contemporary art, while others love nothing more than a bathtub<br />
nude by Degas. Just as everyone enjoys different music or certain<br />
clothing styles for no apparent reason, art is an idiosyncratic<br />
experience. The most important point to be taken is to try new<br />
things and experience art as you would do any other leisurely<br />
activity, at your own pace with what feels right. Go forth and be<br />
enlivened!<br />
Photography:<br />
1/ Exterior of Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)<br />
2/ Exterior of SEVENTH Gallery<br />
3/ Exhibition shot of ‘Sister Corita: Summer of Love’, at<br />
The Ian Potter Museum of Art<br />
arts/culture 38-39
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
the wacky and wonderful:<br />
jude perl<br />
article by manon boutin charles<br />
illustration by sa pasa<br />
I first heard about Jude Perl when the singer from<br />
Toehider, my favourite Aussie band, retweeted one<br />
of her jokes on Twitter. I followed her instantly as<br />
it was the funniest Twitter account I had ever seen<br />
(that was before Donald Trump started using it too).<br />
I instantly became a huge fan of her music, which<br />
at the time was just the EP 3am and some sick-ass<br />
covers on Youtube (Virtual Insanity, anyone?). I was<br />
blown away. When she started acting, I was in France,<br />
far away from any show she was doing in Melbourne,<br />
but I followed her closely on social medias and<br />
Youtube. A few years ago, Jude Perl got into music<br />
comedy. I see her as a female version of Tim Minchin,<br />
a very specific but at the same time broad form of art<br />
I had never seen in France, my home country.<br />
My top 3 favourite recent tracks would be “Is it Just<br />
Me?” the cute and absurd “Our Love: a Power Ballad”<br />
and above all, the mildly politically engaged “I’m a<br />
good person” in which you inevitably will recognise<br />
yourself. Or is it just me?<br />
I’m pretty excited about going to my very first<br />
Melbourne Comedy Festival this year (from March<br />
29th to April 23rd). Hundreds of comedians from all<br />
over the world playing in Australia’s cultural capital<br />
city (yep that’s us, sorry Sydney). And I got ten times<br />
more excited to see that Jude was going to be there<br />
again this year. It took me a few minutes to ‘instant<br />
buy’ tickets and I found myself halfway into writing<br />
her a message begging her to accept to talk to Lot’s<br />
<strong>Wife</strong>. Here we are. She said yes.<br />
Hey Jude, how are you today?<br />
I am feeling good and mildly gassy.<br />
That's awesome...I guess. You were Monash student,<br />
that's pretty cool. What did you study and what<br />
kind of memories do you have from Monash<br />
University?<br />
Yes indeed, I studied music at Monash. I have lots of<br />
happy, strange and emotionally erratic memories of<br />
Uni. My best memories from Monash were playing<br />
in the funk ensemble (which is as cool as it sounds)<br />
which was run by Tony Floyd (amazing drummer<br />
and all round magnetic ball of energy). I learnt an<br />
enormous amount about musicianship, song writing<br />
and performing from Tony Floyd.<br />
Cool! Were you a good student? And, most<br />
importantly, did you know about <strong>Lot's</strong> <strong>Wife</strong>?<br />
My grades got steadily worse over the duration of<br />
my course, I'd say on average I was a solid 6 out of 10<br />
student. I did not know about <strong>Lot's</strong> <strong>Wife</strong> and I am<br />
currently filled with regret for that.<br />
It’s not too late to start reading it! You’re a<br />
comedian as well as a singer-songwriter, musician<br />
and the face of a sugar company. When did you<br />
start music and when did you start acting?<br />
I started performing (playing piano and singing) while<br />
I was in high school. I was constantly changing my<br />
mind with what I wanted to do when I was younger,<br />
eventually I focused on music and started doing<br />
gigs and working as a musician. I did some acting in<br />
school and I loved it, but like my previous answer, my<br />
enthusiasm probably exceeded my skill. I was always<br />
obsessed with comedy, and had secretly wanted to do<br />
that since I knew what stand up comedy was. I did it<br />
for the first time in 2014 and it just seemed to make<br />
sense to combine my passion for music and comedy.<br />
From your videos and presence on social media, you<br />
seem to be a nerdy oddball. You always point at the<br />
weirdest stuff in everyday life in an interesting way,<br />
just as if you were an alien watching us from afar.<br />
Would you say you're playing a character or are you<br />
really an eccentric person?<br />
I think I'm mostly being myself. Or maybe not. I don't<br />
know. I'm not really sure who I am. I promise I'm not<br />
an alien. Or maybe I am. I don't know. I need to sit<br />
down.<br />
So in 2012, you've released an EP called 3am and the<br />
single "Girls and Boys" became pretty big. How did<br />
you feel about that reception?<br />
It was really exciting, especially it being my first<br />
single, first EP, first video. I loved getting to do the<br />
interview and live performance on Fox FM.<br />
I feel like “Girls & Boys” was the first song I wrote<br />
that was dipping my toes into being a bit silly with<br />
songwriting, which eventually lead to music comedy.<br />
I'm really grateful and proud for how it turned out.<br />
Recently you've sold your soul and your image<br />
to the Sugar Company, who financed your debut<br />
album Modern Times. How was this experience?<br />
I am contractually obligated to tell you that working<br />
with the Sugar Co has been an overwhelmingly<br />
positive experience and without their help I'd<br />
probably be repeatedly walking into piles of sawdust<br />
for no reason.<br />
OK that’s...very interesting. Can you tell us about<br />
your new show, Roommates: the musical?<br />
Yes. Yes I can. So this is my third solo comedy show,<br />
I'll be performing twelve shows from April 11th -<br />
23rd at the Malthouse Theatre. The show explores<br />
how different parts of ourselves interact using the<br />
metaphor of a share house.<br />
Do you have any inspirations or heroes at the<br />
moment in the Melbourne scene?<br />
As you know, I'm a massive fan of Toehider [note: a<br />
progressive rock band from Melbourne] and I'm super<br />
excited for the new album coming out this year. There<br />
are so many comedians in Melbourne that I love, and<br />
especially leading up to the Comedy Festival next<br />
month, so much to choose from. I especially love<br />
Anne Edmonds, the Chimp Cop crew (Adam Knox,<br />
Timothy Clark, Rosie and Ben Vernel), Kirsty Webeck,<br />
Celia Pacquola, David Quirk, … ahhhh there's too<br />
many to mention!<br />
For our readers who don't know anything about you,<br />
what would you suggest they check out first?<br />
I have a few playlists on my Youtube channel<br />
(youtube.com/judeperl). One of them is called 'Jude<br />
Perl: Selling Out' and the other is 'Jude Perl: Comedy<br />
(live)' If you don't like any of the videos on these<br />
playlists, then your standards are just ruthlessly high<br />
and we can't be friends.<br />
I’ll definitely be checking them all out as soon as<br />
I’m home. For those who can’t wait, can I put you on<br />
the spot and ask you to tell us a lame joke?<br />
>>
Alright. This is the first joke I remember writing as a<br />
teenager:<br />
“There are people out there who will have sex with anything<br />
that moves…<br />
But I say, why limit yourself?”<br />
I'm not proud of it... I'm sorry.... please come to my<br />
show, I promise I've gotten better.<br />
Yeah you have gotten better. We’ve been talking<br />
about your past at Monash and the Melbourne<br />
International Comedy Festival happening now.<br />
What about your future plans? More music? More<br />
comedy? Both? Or maybe something different?<br />
I'm mostly focusing on comedy and music comedy<br />
at the moment, I have been enjoying it immensely.<br />
Without sounding cliché, I feel like I can actually be<br />
myself and say the things I want to say in the comedy<br />
world.<br />
That’s awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing you<br />
doing more and more stuff, and of course handing<br />
you a hard copy of Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> Issue 2 at your April<br />
shows!<br />
Roommates: The Musical is on from 11 April- 23 April at the<br />
Malthouse Theatre.<br />
arts/culture 40-41
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
videogames are a great<br />
storytelling medium<br />
article by rachael welling<br />
illustration by angharad neal-williams<br />
‘Are videogames art?’<br />
This is all you need to say to stir the pot in the gaming community.<br />
Ask them; are videogames on the same level as film, novels, or<br />
television? Some vehemently say yes. ‘Of course they are’. But the<br />
rest?<br />
‘No, they’re just for entertainment.’<br />
‘It doesn’t matter. Videogames are a waste of time.’<br />
‘You don’t play games for the story.’<br />
But I do. As a child I was obsessed with The Sims 2, an infamous sim<br />
game where you take control of the lives of virtual people (or Sims).<br />
It’s a game entirely without plot, but full of story. You can’t play<br />
without first creating your Sims. Do you want a family? A young<br />
couple with children they are struggling to support? Should they<br />
live in the city or the countryside? Who do you marry, or divorce?<br />
What do you name the little baby Sims? The act of playing itself<br />
tells a story.<br />
This is true for all games. Story is the rendering of human<br />
experiences in a way that can be shared – in a way that canvasses a<br />
journey. Maybe we don’t all fight monsters or shoot heavy duty guns<br />
in war-torn countries. But we all face challenges and we all make<br />
choices, which are fundamental aspects of modern gaming. Games<br />
all tell a story, and by being interactive, they let us engage with the<br />
story in ways unavailable to other mediums.<br />
Every game has a story because every game has an objective. Hit<br />
that thing. Score those points. Find something. Kill something. Don’t<br />
get seen. Escape this room. And so, the story goes something like<br />
this: you are given a task. Through skill, smarts or luck you achieve<br />
it. And now you receive a reward. It’s a description that encompasses<br />
a clear majority of not only videogames, but film, literature and<br />
other traditional forms of storytelling. So maybe you don’t play a<br />
game for the story, but by playing you act it out whether you want<br />
to or not. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to say Pong has a story, but<br />
my point stands. Games are almost always quest narratives; and<br />
playing, and winning, makes you the protagonist.<br />
Interactivity is the key here. Even in games where the plot is not<br />
the focus, story finds other ways to come through. Take the most<br />
recent instalment of the Hitman series. It is arguably a simple game<br />
where you play as an assassin dropped into different environments<br />
with the singular goal of offing people. But the ways you murder<br />
people are virtually endless. Do you want to be the super calculated<br />
assassin, staking out your target to discover that they like a bit of<br />
golf, before planting a golf ball rigged with explosives in their kit<br />
bag? Or do you want to go the more guns-blazing route and murder<br />
almost everyone you find on a trail of death to your target?<br />
Even in games when the who and why of the story isn’t the focus<br />
(your target’s identity is never terribly important), the how shines<br />
through. Games tell stories through the way we play them – the<br />
hitman always kills the target, but the character of the assassin<br />
comes through in the player’s approach to the game – and the<br />
interactivity lets us tell the same story in ways unique to each<br />
player.<br />
Close friends all the way down to incidental acquaintances will tell<br />
you that I love Dragon Age, a series of dark fantasy games. Dragon<br />
Age, alongside many role-playing games, sets out to make story one<br />
of the focuses of the game. Because while most games have story<br />
content – such as cut-scenes to progress the plot, readable books to<br />
flesh out the world, and character backstories – Dragon Age makes<br />
telling the story part of the game. The player starts off by creating<br />
a character - I made a scrappy elf who liked to make bad jokes and<br />
was deadly with a bow – and then, at key points in the game, my<br />
character was given choices. Which warring faction to support,<br />
whether or not to exile a group of rogue warriors, which monarch<br />
to endorse and so on. And what I chose affected not only the world<br />
my character lived in, but future plot points in the game. Recent<br />
landmark games like Skyrim, Until Dawn, The Walking Dead, Life is<br />
Strange and The Witcher series all take a similar approach, making<br />
choice and story not just window dressing, but core mechanics of<br />
the game.<br />
Games are essentially the same each time they’re played. In Dragon<br />
Age, the setting, backstory, and motivation for the plot doesn’t<br />
change. But characters can be one of four races and three classes,<br />
with a multitude of backgrounds and combat styles. One friend of<br />
mine chose to make his Dragon Age character a sarcastic dwarf with<br />
a penchant for cleavers, while another made a straight-laced human<br />
with a shiny heroic personality and a shinier golden sword. We all<br />
played essentially the same story (plot twist: your character saves<br />
the world), but with permutations and combinations that made it<br />
ours. So unlike a film or a book which are unchanging, games can<br />
tell stories from multiple perspectives.<br />
And some games push this further. Her Story has the player sort<br />
through four hours of police interviews with one woman by<br />
searching for individual snippets using keywords, with the game<br />
suggesting you start with ‘murder’.<br />
Depending entirely on the words the player choses, the story can<br />
unfold in literally endless ways as you discover more and more<br />
of the woman’s testimony. One might never get the full story, or<br />
they might stumble upon the key plot twist fifteen minutes in.<br />
Gone Home gives the player an empty house to explore at their<br />
leisure, finding notes, books, letters and pictures all telling the story<br />
the player’s little sister and her eventual disappearance – again<br />
unfolding according to the player’s decisions. In the detective<br />
thriller LA Noire, how ‘good’ you do has subtle effects on the story.<br />
Miss some key evidence or ask a suspect the wrong questions? The<br />
story shifts and changes, as accomplices escape and leads go cold.<br />
Videogames unlock the shackles of linear and standardised<br />
>>
storytelling, making worlds feel more organic, and the stories more<br />
realistic. Life isn’t a three-act drama; it’s a world to explore and<br />
discover at the pace we choose. Life is a game.<br />
‘But for fuck’s sake,’ people shriek. ‘Are videogames art?’<br />
Of course they are. They take time to create and are made to say<br />
something, even if all there is to say is ‘Have fun’ or ‘Doesn’t this<br />
look pretty?’ Storytelling is an art. Games tell stories. How can there<br />
even be a debate?<br />
Perhaps the good news is that, outside of my waxing lyrical<br />
about them, videogames are being legitimised as an art form.<br />
The Annual BAFTA Game Awards ceremony is in its twelfth year,<br />
with nomination categories such as Best Story and Best Artistic<br />
Achievement. Game Design is now a Bachelor’s degree; a family<br />
friend teaches the second-year unit at Swinburne on storytelling<br />
in games. I’ve seen reviews that call a game’s cut-scenes ‘cinematic’<br />
and watched as Fifa 17 (a game about goddamn literally just playing<br />
football) was given an 8-hour long story mode with choices and<br />
dialogue options. A game about playing football!<br />
But I am confident that as gaming continues to age, and as gaming<br />
communities grow larger and more diverse, the medium will<br />
continue to change and challenge the way we approach storytelling.<br />
At least then maybe the film industry will stop feeling the need to<br />
make those awful videogame movies (here’s looking at you, Assassin’s<br />
Creed).<br />
arts/culture 42-43
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
why reality tv is a<br />
blight on humanity<br />
article by marlo sullivan<br />
illustration by audrey chmielewski<br />
Reality TV. Love it or hate it, reality TV shows fill our<br />
screens, especially the free-to-air commercial stations.<br />
Our love affair with reality TV has even spawned a<br />
double-reality show. It is now possible to sit in your<br />
living room on a couch and watch on screen a range<br />
of people in their living rooms on their couches<br />
watching TV. I’m looking at you Gogglebox.<br />
Sure reality TV is a great way to watch other people<br />
behaving badly and is good for a laugh, but reality<br />
programs are contrived set-ups and fill a large number<br />
of prime-time TV slots. If only the commercial<br />
stations would put on more of the critically acclaimed<br />
dramas and documentaries that abound on streaming<br />
services like Stan and Netflix, they might see a rise<br />
in viewers who switched to streaming when we<br />
struggled to find anything engaging to watch on<br />
free-to-air TV.<br />
But reality TV is not unique. International versions<br />
of many well-known reality formats, like The Bachelor,<br />
Farmer Wants A <strong>Wife</strong> and the Real Housewives series<br />
are shown across the world. I confess I quite enjoy<br />
watching a couple of these reality shows. Yet it often<br />
feels as if I’m watching an impending car crash. It<br />
can be so hard to look away from the screen as the<br />
‘stars’ yell, cry and verge from one chaotic confession<br />
and exposé to the next. There are hugs, altercations<br />
and displays of extreme emotions before lengthy<br />
discussions on these things that have just happened,<br />
as though we didn’t just watch it all.<br />
On a recent catch-up with friends, I wondered why<br />
we spent a good part of our time together talking<br />
about recent episodes of Married at First Sight. I found<br />
I could barely follow the discussion on whether one<br />
couple would stay together or if another couple was a<br />
sham. Our conversation sounded like we were talking<br />
about mutual friends, but not only were they people<br />
we didn’t know, we were also unlikely to ever meet<br />
them.<br />
The issue is that we talk about these characters like<br />
they are real people, friends even. It is worth noting<br />
that reality show casts generally present a distorted<br />
view of society, featuring mostly photogenic people,<br />
but lacking diversity of culture. Yet, while the people<br />
cast in these shows are real, their depiction on our<br />
screens is manipulated to increase viewership. This<br />
raises the question of ethics. When a show purports<br />
to be depicting authentic issues and situations, can a<br />
show be called reality if it features editing as well as<br />
character and plot storylines?<br />
One fictional drama on our screens poses this and<br />
many other questions with regards to the dating<br />
show format. The show unREAL gives a look behindthe-scenes<br />
on the set of Everlasting, an invented<br />
show eerily similar to The Bachelor. It is here that the<br />
extensive editing and manipulation of contestants<br />
that usually goes unnoticed by audiences is exposed.<br />
While occasionally stories of cast manipulation come<br />
to light in the media, more often our news headlines<br />
are a mix of frivolous reality TV discussions and<br />
serious stories. When a light plane crashed with fatal<br />
results in Melbourne’s north in late February, it was<br />
listed side-by-side in the daily news headlines with<br />
the cheating scandal of My Kitchen Rules. These stories<br />
are not of equal weight, yet the continued interest in<br />
these programs means that each unexpected twist<br />
becomes news, not just on the show, but on social<br />
media and more tabloid and commercial outlets.<br />
Even the reporting of politics has become a strange<br />
type of reality TV, whereby our news of daily politics<br />
comes in soundbites, from outbursts in parliament<br />
to unusual comments in interviews. We often end up<br />
talking about politicians’ behaviour rather than their<br />
policies. Is it likely Donald Trump would have become<br />
the 45th President of the United States had he not<br />
been a star in his own reality show?<br />
There is a saying of disputed origin, often attributed<br />
to Eleanor Roosevelt: ‘Great minds discuss ideas,<br />
average minds discuss events, small minds discuss<br />
people.’<br />
When we talk about people, especially people we<br />
know only through our screens, we contribute to an<br />
ever-increasing stream of gossip and rumors. Ideas,<br />
on the other hand, have been known to evolve into<br />
inventions, businesses and solutions to real-world<br />
problems. Reality TV encourages us to talk about<br />
people.<br />
Imagine what the world could become if we talked<br />
more about ideas.
arts/culture 44-45
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
political acts: pioneers of<br />
performance art in<br />
southeast asia<br />
article by linh thuy nguyen<br />
Exhibition: February 11 - May 21<br />
Gallery One, Arts Centre Melbourne<br />
Free, Open Daily<br />
Curator: Dr Steven Tonkin<br />
Artists:<br />
Dadang Christanto (Indonesia/<br />
Australia)<br />
Le Wen (Singapore)<br />
Liew Teck Leong (Malaysia)<br />
Khvay Samnang (Cambodia)<br />
Moe Satt (Myanmar)<br />
Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia)<br />
Tran Luong (Vietnam)<br />
F’n’F (Face and Fingers), 2008-09<br />
Moe Satt<br />
This exhibition, Political Acts: Pioneers of Performance<br />
Art in South East Asia — presented as part of the<br />
inaugural Asia TOPA: Asia-Pacific Triennial of<br />
Performing Arts — showcases the work of seven<br />
contemporary artists from the South East Asia<br />
region. As the exhibition states: ‘performance art is<br />
a radical alternative practice providing avant-garde<br />
artists with a creative means to critically explore<br />
social, political, economic and environmental issues …<br />
an ideal means for artists to express their social and<br />
political activism.’<br />
Performance art involves the artists placing<br />
themselves at the centre of the work, using their own<br />
corporeal body as stage, canvas, spectacle, megaphone<br />
and manifesto; both the medium and the art work<br />
itself. The body is both subject and object. The<br />
resonance of these works is found in their ambiguity,<br />
in the deliberate and often bewildering nature of<br />
their staging. Didacticism is eschewed in favour of<br />
open interpretation and subtlety, where concrete<br />
meanings are not easily grasped or readily available.<br />
In particular, in order to circumvent persecution and<br />
censorship from often repressive political regimes,<br />
cultural critique is often obliquely referenced —<br />
cloaked in metaphor, so to speak. Performance art<br />
has been a medium that ‘challenges and violates<br />
borders between disciplines and genders, between<br />
private and public, and between everyday life and<br />
art — it follows no rules.’ Broadly, performance art<br />
encompasses a broad range of artistic practices that<br />
involve bodily involvement and live action, predicated<br />
on the manipulation of four elements; time, space,<br />
the performer’s body, and the relationship between<br />
audience and performer. Performance art pieces are<br />
traditionally works intended to be experienced and<br />
witnessed in the moment, and thus demanding<br />
a form of witnessing from the viewer, a level of<br />
complicity and engagement by being present — not<br />
simply as an observer but a participant. However,<br />
increasingly, these performances are extended beyond<br />
their initial staging and given a second life by being<br />
documented through film or photography.<br />
The works in Political Acts are grounded in the<br />
specificity of each artist’s local experience and<br />
cultural context, and the socio-political legacies<br />
of their respective countries. Khvay Samnang,<br />
a Cambodian artist born in 1982, explores the<br />
environmental and social consequences of rapid<br />
urban development in Phnom Penh, while Lee Wren’s<br />
(Singapore) works often interrogate the experience of<br />
existing as an ethnic minority. Dadang Christanto, an<br />
Indonesian artist based in Australia from the late 90s,<br />
has constructed a new installation work specifically<br />
for this exhibition. Titled Slaughter Tunnel (2015-<br />
<strong>2017</strong>), it is a narrow and dark U-shaped passageway<br />
in the centre of the gallery space, constructed out<br />
of recycled cardboard. The inside of the tunnels is<br />
covered from top to bottom with hundreds of small,<br />
crudely drawn portraits of faces, pinned to the walls<br />
with tassels of red wool.<br />
The experience of walking through the tunnel is<br />
unsettling and haunting; the space is oppressive<br />
and claustrophobic. Christanto’s work can be<br />
interpreted as responding to his own personal<br />
history, in which, as a young boy, he lost his father<br />
to the anti-Communist purges of 1965-66 (the<br />
documentary The Act of Killing (2012), directed by<br />
Joshua Oppenheimer, is about the participants of<br />
these killings in the present day). However, Slaughter<br />
Tunnel also resonates beyond this limited biographical<br />
meaning, reflecting on the myriad of anonymous<br />
victims of state-sanctioned terror around the world<br />
today. As Christanto himself states: ‘my work is open<br />
to interpretation, so anybody is able to engage in a<br />
dialogue with that work.’<br />
The works that most intrigued me were by Tran<br />
Luong, a Vietnamese artist from Hanoi (my<br />
own home town). In particular, Tran Luong’s Coc<br />
Cach (2013-2016), a video montage of Communist<br />
propaganda images superimposed with iconic<br />
wartime photographs and images, alongside with<br />
his giant, three video installation Lap Loe left<br />
me reflecting on the weight of history and the<br />
subsumption of the individual by ideology.<br />
By placing all seven artists together in a single<br />
exhibition, these works become a form of collective<br />
documentation, transcending across national borders<br />
to articulate a common mode of social engagement<br />
through a shared medium of embodied critique.<br />
The works are intentionally ambivalent and oblique,<br />
leaving the burden of interpretation up to the viewer.<br />
‘For performance art you don’t really need a proper space. It can<br />
happen anywhere.’<br />
- Moe Satt<br />
‘Talking about politics, society or psychology is meaningless<br />
unless it can be manifest in the physical body.’<br />
- Melati Suryodarmo<br />
‘I am an image maker. I create images with my body.’<br />
- Lee Wren
Splash! #8, 2003<br />
Lee Wren<br />
Coc Cach, 2013-16<br />
Photo still<br />
Tran Luong<br />
Lập Lòe, 2012<br />
Tran Luong<br />
Rubber Man #3, 2014<br />
Khvay Samnang<br />
Body+Dots+Politics(Yellow), 2016<br />
Liew Teck Leong<br />
Sweet Dreams Sweet, 2013<br />
Melati Suryodarmo<br />
Tooth Brushing, <strong>2017</strong><br />
Single channel video, duration 6mins<br />
Dadang Christanto<br />
Steam rice man, 2001<br />
Tran Luong<br />
Lập Lòe, 2012<br />
Tran Luong<br />
Slaughter Tunnel<br />
Dadang Christanto<br />
arts/culture 46-47
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
the human implications of<br />
scorsese’s taxi driver<br />
article by nick bugeja<br />
Last year, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) presented a<br />
fantastic retrospective on the American film director Martin Scorsese. As<br />
an avid fan of cinema and an even greater fan of Scorsese’s films, I voraciously<br />
anticipated seeing his 1976 magnum opus, Taxi Driver, on the silver screen.<br />
Taxi Driver is a film that immediately places the viewer firmly within the venal<br />
streets of ‘70s New York. It throws us into the political and social context of that<br />
era as we come to know the anti-hero of the film, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro),<br />
a Vietnam war veteran. Other than a brief allusion, we never encounter Bickle’s<br />
experience of the war directly. Rather, Scorsese makes us cognisant of the impact<br />
of the war through Travis’s behaviour; his sleeplessness, his Army jacket, his<br />
snap into a rigid fighting stance when confronted. While the presence of the war<br />
surreptitiously lingers in the background of the film, it never really manifests itself<br />
as a central thematic concern. Instead, the war paves the way for Travis’s personal<br />
ills, giving the viewer greater understanding of the erratic psychological processes<br />
embedded within him.<br />
The designation of simplistic labels to those who are broadly considered ‘the other’<br />
is damaging; calling the homeless ‘lazy’, telling women who have experienced<br />
domestic violence ‘to get up and leave’ and condemning those who have criminal<br />
pasts as ‘psychopaths’ are expedient ways for us to avoid deeper analyses of<br />
prevalent social ills. It places blame on the individual, rather than the unequal<br />
structure of society itself.<br />
Perhaps the worst thing that this kind of thinking does is that it perpetuates a<br />
culture of misunderstanding. Without acknowledging the plights of individuals,<br />
we will never begin to reduce suffering and negative discriminations.<br />
Only when we fully comprehend the complexity and multifaceted nature of<br />
human existence will we be able to diagnose and resolve problems in modern<br />
society. For Travis, perhaps with better veteran counselling and engagement<br />
services, and greater reception to his loneliness and bleak outlook on life, Taxi<br />
Driver would not have ended in the misanthropic, macabre way that it did.<br />
It is no secret that Travis is a character who is profoundly troubled. Scorsese always<br />
confronts us with this fact, providing shots of Travis staring contemptuously at<br />
African Americans, wandering about with an armoury of weapons, and of course,<br />
that famous scene when Travis looks into a mirror and asks: “are you talkin’ to me?”<br />
The screening of Taxi Driver at ACMI was powerful, even more so when<br />
experienced on the sizeable screen. It was to my utter disappointment, however,<br />
that some patrons behind me summed up their viewing experience by a simple<br />
denouncement: “he’s a psycho.”<br />
I’ve heard this assessment of the film before, and I have always launched into a<br />
robust defence of the complexity of Travis and Taxi Driver. To merely denounce<br />
Travis as a psychopath is to deny Scorsese his filmmaking dexterity, while also<br />
undermining the genuine human implications of the film.<br />
Indeed, Taxi Driver is a film that perfectly positions us to observe and apprehend<br />
Travis’s psychological processes. We are in his mindset for all but two scenes<br />
during the entirety of the film. Travis’s ever-persistent voiceover gives the viewer<br />
access to his dangerous and unstable view of the decadence of ‘70s America; to<br />
his insatiable desire to get rid of the ‘scum’ and ‘filth’. Travis operates as a kind of<br />
noir-ish figure – always alone, navigating the streets in his grimy yellow taxi. This<br />
feeling of isolation within the urban setting of New York is a pronounced feature<br />
of the film, central to understanding the motivations and actions of such a volatile<br />
character.<br />
In many ways, Travis is a repulsive character. He is racist, hate-filled, creepy<br />
and excessively prone to violence and volatility. However, Scorsese does not<br />
unequivocally condemn Travis, but rather illustrates to the viewer how this<br />
character is the way he is. We can understand Travis as existing within a real-world<br />
framework, and therefore relate his ills – and the ills of ‘70s New York – to our own<br />
society.<br />
If we disregard Travis as a one-dimensional psychopath, we deny his humanness.<br />
To do so is consistent with the lamentable ways in which ‘the other’ is often<br />
fallaciously labelled and compartmentalised in contemporary society.<br />
Indeed, there are quite a number of individuals and groups that are perceived as<br />
‘the other’ in the West; those who are racialised (i.e. not white), those who depart<br />
from heteronormative definitions of sexuality; those with disabilities; those who<br />
are homeless; those who have committed criminal infractions.
creative/comedy<br />
creative/comedy 48-49
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
cabin 85<br />
article by lachlan liesfield<br />
illustration by john henry<br />
Assuming nothing serious had occurred, Emanuel returned to his<br />
room and began the newspaper he had originally planned to read<br />
on the trip down. So to his newspaper. He had no way of contacting<br />
work about the train, and would have to explain his lateness as the<br />
result of a delay, or a particularly overzealous attendant who had put<br />
his bags in the wrong compartment. One of them would see him<br />
suitably forgiven.<br />
Again the train pulled off, but evidently no one had boarded<br />
either. Something must have been wrong with the station then?<br />
Renovation work, or repairs. He recalled one of the stations being<br />
scheduled for something like that earlier that month. They must<br />
have been mid-way through it by now then. Yes, that must have<br />
been it.<br />
Emanuel heard the sound of the train’s horn again. They were<br />
nearing the next stop.<br />
His worn, khaki suit felt stiff as he pulled himself peeled himself<br />
from the seat. The wait between stops was long, and his back felt<br />
as equally as inflexible as it did after a day in his cubicle. Emanuel<br />
pulled the sliding door open to the passageway, again it seemed he<br />
was the only person who wanted to exit. This did not surprise him,<br />
most rode this line directly into the city, and this was just a minor<br />
pause. The passageway was free even of the crew as he made his way<br />
toward the door. Activating the door, a familiar voice spoke.<br />
Emanuel K had missed his stop. Hat over his eyes, en route to his<br />
job at the bank, he had fallen fast asleep the moment the train left<br />
off.<br />
Jolted into consciousness, Emanuel snatched his satchel and dashed<br />
for the door at the next station, fearful of being late to work.<br />
Waiting impatiently for the train to stop, Emanuel tapped his foot<br />
over and over as the carriage pulled into the next station, . Again,<br />
the dragging wait for the light to flash above the door played on his<br />
patience, eager was to alight the train and catch a cab in the hope of<br />
making it to work.<br />
But it seemed this would be denied to him.<br />
A tall attendant, dark hair and surly moustache, as impeccably<br />
groomed as his pressed and cleaned uniform, held his hand before<br />
the door<br />
"I am sorry sir, but you cannot get off at this station" he said<br />
impassively. Emanuel’s mouth fell open with a look of doubt. The<br />
attendant, Monsieur Jean by his nametag, had directly refused<br />
him leaving the train. Had there been some emergency he had not<br />
become aware of? When Emanuel pressed Monsieur Jean, who<br />
looked in no way French, he was told to simply to:<br />
“Wait in your cabin for the time being, sir.”<br />
“I am sorry sir, but you cannot get off at this stop,” spoke Monsieur<br />
Jean, whose sudden appearance and close proximity made Emanuel<br />
pull back his hand back in shock. Monsieur Jean now kept his whole<br />
body between Emanuel and the doorway, politely, but firmly, barring<br />
the way. A look of uncertainty, and even mild concern spread over<br />
Emanuel’s face, but Monsieur Jean was soon to console him with<br />
the words, “wait in your cabin for the time being sir”, repeating the<br />
phrase as before. Emanuel raised his voice to speak, before clenching<br />
his fist around his newspaper and returning to his cabin. He did<br />
not hear Monsieur Jean leave, though when he turned round again<br />
to demand an explanation, once more conjuring his courage in the<br />
hope of receiving an explanation, Monsieur had left the doorway,<br />
presumably returning to his duties aboard the trains other carriages.<br />
The train rocked as it pushed on toward the city. There were scarce<br />
few articles left in the paper for Emanuel to read through now,<br />
limited now to advice columns and the personal ads, both areas<br />
he tended to avoid. The steady rocking of the train threatened to<br />
send him to sleep again, though the desire was staved off by the<br />
ever-increasing anxiety he felt as he moved further and further<br />
away from the bank. It was a commendable position, though with<br />
few prospects for higher employment. The branches location and<br />
overall obscurity ensured the highest Emanuel could see himself<br />
rising was general manager, a man of modest hours and an equally<br />
modest salary.<br />
A third time the train jolted to a stop, a third time Monsieur Jean<br />
barred his way. Taken with frustration, Emanuel attempted to<br />
occupy his time by visiting one of the other passengers with whom<br />
he shared this carriage. Shuffling past his cabin, he knocked on the<br />
door to its left. A sour voice answered back to him.<br />
>>
“Yes?” A woman — many years his senior — bid him inside her<br />
compartment. Clearly not one for travelling lightly, a selection of<br />
fold- out suitcases furnished her with everything she could need<br />
for an extended field journey, including mirror, iron, and washbasin.<br />
She sat meekly on the seat, as if her seemingly perfunctory frame<br />
merely hovered over the cushions rather than displacing them with<br />
any weight.<br />
Her enviable collection of luggage was matched only by the wealth<br />
of jewellery she kept within them, much of it spilling over the sides<br />
as if she’d been unable to decide what to wear that morning and<br />
had haphazardly thrown them back in into drawers as one does<br />
with clothes when rushing for a party. She was a Dowagess, she<br />
explained, her voice harsh voice cracking as she spoke. Emanuel said<br />
little during the interaction, the Dowagess apparently quite content<br />
to spill her opinions at a moment’s whim, the deficiency of the cabin<br />
service, the length of the trip, all to her were equally detestable<br />
as they were topical. The train was deathly silent; and despite the<br />
soundproofing of the cabins, it felt as if they were the only two in<br />
the carriage, if not the whole train.<br />
The Dowagess’ conversation droned on: “never free” she was, “now<br />
she could finally be herself,” she said. Emanuel increasingly desired<br />
the sound of the next train horn, unable to think of a polite reason<br />
to depart. Instead, frustration, a question quite simply burst out of<br />
him: Why could they not get off the train?<br />
Before the Dowagess could answer in her sandpaper voice, the cabin<br />
door slid open.<br />
A whirl of movement found a pair of lithe hands tightly gripping<br />
his arms. Sleeves pulled taut, he was spun back to face the carriage.<br />
Monsieur Jean stood straight-backed before him.<br />
“I am sorry sir, but you cannot visit the private cabins of others,”<br />
Monsieur Jean rattled off. Emanuel K. did not protest, and chided<br />
himself for not predicting this outcome. He was held in place by<br />
two men — the train guards presumably — whose freshly pressed<br />
uniforms held a surprising stiffness as he was pulled up against<br />
them.<br />
“Wait in your cabin for the time being, sir,” he heard Monsieur Jean<br />
calmly say as he was escorted back, the guards promptly opening the<br />
door and tapping him inside in one efficient movement, drawing the<br />
exterior blind as they left.<br />
Sealed inside his cabin, Emanuel considered why he was continually<br />
denied exit. Nothing was mentioned of it in the paper, which, within<br />
the next few minutes, he would have succeeded in reading cover to<br />
cover in order to distract himself from the preposterous situation<br />
he was in.<br />
Emanuel rhythmically tapped his foot against the bottom of<br />
his seat, reading through the statements for his late afternoon<br />
appointment, familiarising himself with the facts so that when he<br />
arrived, if he arrived, he could attempt to make up for lost time.<br />
It did not hold his focus for long. The situation on the train had<br />
become increasingly present in Emanuel’s mind, his thoughts over<br />
and over: what in fact could be going on? Was there even an issue<br />
outside? Was it something happening on board? One possibility<br />
sparked his mind. He had not looked properly into the other<br />
carriages, he was not sure if this was isolated simply to his.<br />
He would find out.<br />
under the weight of an impressive collection of medals, bestowing<br />
upon him an air of authority that singled him out as the train’s<br />
captain. Flanked by the same two guards, and Monsieur Jean behind<br />
him, the Captain and his crew had effectively barred his way. The<br />
captains bearded chin lowered just enough for the words,<br />
“I’m sorry sir, but you cannot change compartments” to flow<br />
familiarly from his mouth and into the ears of a disconcerted<br />
Emanuel K. The man’s honey-coated voice did little to calm him as<br />
the guards walked forward and promptly lead him back to his room,<br />
the Captain repeating that familiar phrase,<br />
“Wait in your cabin for the time being, sir.”<br />
So flustered by these events was Emanuel K. that it did not cross his<br />
mind that trains do not typically have a Captain. Thoughts swirled<br />
in his head. Surely such peculiarities could not be isolated to him<br />
alone.<br />
Was it that the guards had a special interest in him, or was there<br />
simply some issue they refused to announce? Either way it played<br />
on Emanuel’s nerves.<br />
The Dowagess, he would ask her as to his predicament, perhaps her<br />
position would make her privy to information he was not.<br />
Stepping into the hallway, Emanuel’s head darted around. Satisfied<br />
the crew were out of earshot had moved on, Emanuel K. turned<br />
toward the Dowagess’ compartment.<br />
Again, the girth of the train’s captain blocked his path, backed again<br />
by the silent guards and the implacable Monsieur Jean. He was not<br />
even surprised to see them this time. Emanuel heard no sign of the<br />
Dowagess in her compartment, no babbling to herself as last time.<br />
Angered, Emanuel K. listened to the Captain speak.<br />
“I’m sorry sir…” Emanuel K. cut him off, he knew the rest.<br />
“Wait in your cabin for the time being, sir” The Captain continued<br />
in that polite tone he imagined a diplomat would use during<br />
negotiations; exasperation behind a cordial façade.<br />
Padding back into his cabin, Emanuel K. threw himself onto the<br />
seat beside the window, the familiar rattle of the tracks underneath<br />
rumbling through the walls. Emanuel had lost complete track of<br />
time now, his inability to leave the carriage leaving him lost within<br />
the walls. How far along the line was he now? What station would<br />
he be refused next? Emanuel’s arms shook with rage as he reached<br />
out to draw the blind.<br />
His eyes darted up, a startling sight beheld him.<br />
A hand, tight around the string held the blind in check over the<br />
window, plump fingers gripping its coarse length. Turning his face<br />
up, Emanuel K. noted the crew bending down across his window,<br />
bodies tightly packed into the cabin, who, from Emanuel’s lowered<br />
position, now seeming impossibly tall and impossibly wide. Weary<br />
of the coming words, Emanuel K. looked on in complete horror as<br />
the crew announced in unison:<br />
“I’m sorry sir”<br />
Emanuel screamed.<br />
Emanuel K. slid across the chair toward the door. He would ask,<br />
nay, demand an answer from this Monsieur Jean who continued to<br />
impede him. Emanuel burst into the hall, only to find it deserted.<br />
Emanuel K. was awfully ambivalent about this fact. Initially<br />
brimming with purpose, such energy now deserted him. The<br />
emptiness left him on edge. The blinds were drawn to the dining<br />
carriage, leaving Emanuel no way of knowing if Monsieur Jean was<br />
there.<br />
Emanuel K., however, had forgotten to check behind him. The<br />
sudden bump of another body against him sent a shriek from his<br />
lungs as he jumped around to face what had hit touched him.<br />
Before him stood a short, pudgy looking man whose shirt sagged<br />
creative/comedy 50-51
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
the greenhouse<br />
article by joanne fong<br />
illustration by anna tsuda<br />
The white roses are her favourite.<br />
Delicate snow petals, spilling out from the centres, like a ballerina’s<br />
tulle frozen forever mid pirouette.<br />
A violent assault of deep reds, canary yellows, rich blues; each more<br />
colourful than the last surround her in the greenhouse. The roses<br />
are like her children, all scrambling for her attention, for her eyes to<br />
linger for just a second more upon their technicolour cries.<br />
Amid the harlequin chaos the white roses sit patiently, quiet,<br />
solemn. Their subdued silence sings loudest of all.<br />
She still loves every rose in the garden of her greenhouse though.<br />
She feels guilty for having favourites.<br />
At first she would visit every so often; a few minutes at first, which<br />
turned into a few hours, then whole days.<br />
Eventually leaving became too hard. So she just never left.<br />
It’s peaceful here. She feels secure. It’s not like how things were on<br />
the outside. Dark and shadowy and turbulent. Everything was too<br />
overwhelming as though she was being suffocated by the invisible<br />
grasp of her monsters.<br />
Sometimes he comes to visit her. He is the one thing from the<br />
outside that she allows in.<br />
She knows that he wants her to leave, leave the safe haven she has<br />
made for herself in the greenhouse. But she can’t.<br />
When he talks she gets drawn into what he has to say. It makes her<br />
feel wistful, a strange twinge of melancholy fluttering in her chest.<br />
He lulls her with soft coaxing anecdotes; how there was a galah in<br />
the backyard that didn’t run away when he approached it, how the<br />
leaves of the elms on his street were starting to golden, or how he’d<br />
left the stove on to boil water and had come back to a pot burnt<br />
black. He tells her how much he misses her. So, so much.<br />
He reminds her that there is life outside. She would have forgotten<br />
long ago otherwise.<br />
Each time he’s with her, her greenhouse starts to get fuzzy, like the<br />
remnants of a dream before it slips through your fingers like sand.<br />
sitting next to a cosy fireplace with heavy rain outside, homemade<br />
spaghetti nights, fighting over who got to finish the last serving.<br />
Memories with him, experiencing all those things.<br />
Memories with him; shivering, trembling, shallow breaths, burning<br />
holes into her skin with his mouth.<br />
Every day he comes, the roses decay. She keeps finding more of their<br />
shrivelled little corpses scattered along the branches of the bushes,<br />
faded and stained brown.<br />
She desperately puts her nose to the buds, searching for a hint of<br />
fresh perfume but all she can smell is death.<br />
There is a bitter taste in her mouth, metallic like she has gargled<br />
blood.<br />
It’s all his fault. Poisoning her with his stories, taking her away from<br />
her garden with his allure.<br />
When he’s there, the gold rays of sunshine that stream down<br />
through the glass seem to taunt her, knowing that she will never<br />
venture beyond the walls to feel its warmth on her skin.<br />
One day he comes to visit, but she ignores him.<br />
“Go away.” She is pruning the roses carefully with a small pair of<br />
clippers. She doesn’t look at him. Looking at him is too hard.<br />
“Why?” He asks.<br />
She continues to prune the roses as if he weren’t there. Snip. Snip.<br />
Snip.<br />
“What’s wrong?<br />
Snip.<br />
It hurts to breathe. The silence chokes her.<br />
Snip.<br />
Snip.<br />
“You can’t come visit me anymore,” she says finally.<br />
It scares her.<br />
Memories of the outside start to seem more vibrant, more alluring.<br />
Memories of dipping her feet into the cool wet sand of the ocean,<br />
“What? Why not?”<br />
Snip.<br />
Snip.<br />
>>
Pause.<br />
“You’re killing the flowers.”<br />
Sni-<br />
Her hand falters, slipping, dragging against the rose bush’s thorns,<br />
slicing into her flesh like butter. Her fingers are on fire. She is on fire.<br />
Her eyes flash up at him, burning. “You’re ruining everything.”<br />
He sighs. “Why can’t we go back to how it use to be? When you<br />
weren’t like this?” He asks exasperated.<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
“I hate you being here, in this place. I hate you not being at home<br />
with me.”<br />
“I like it here. I feel safe here.”<br />
“You’ll be safe with me.”<br />
“I’m safe in my greenhouse.”<br />
“Ha. Your greenhouse?”<br />
“Yes!”<br />
“Don’t you understand? This isn’t real – none of this is real!”<br />
“Wha – “<br />
She feels dizzy, the rose bushes, the earthy scent of dirt, the<br />
greenhouse walls all start to blur and distort. The vibrant colours<br />
start to fade, dissolve; sickly sweet sugar-coated lies.<br />
“Wha- what do you mean?”<br />
The glass walls start to crack. The sun streams into the darkest<br />
corners of her mind. It’s liberating, it’s horrifying, it’s terrifying. Fuck.<br />
The world is grey. Grey linoleum floors and dull grey walls. A thin<br />
grey mattress covered in a single sheet on a cool metal bedframe.<br />
She blinks. Hard. Once. Twice. Why won’t the grey go away?<br />
“Stop!” Her vision is blurry. Everything hurts. Why won’t it stop?<br />
Stop. Stop. Stop.<br />
She plunges the rose clippers straight into his chest.<br />
Stop.<br />
He chokes, staring at her in wide disbelief. She gazes back blankly<br />
at him.<br />
With one sharp jerk she wrenches the blade out. Then she thrusts it<br />
back in again. Again. Again. Again.<br />
The blood spurts out of him slowly at first, a rusty drink tap being<br />
turned on for the first time in years. And then it gushes out all at<br />
once.<br />
Everything is red. Warm, warm, warm on her fingers and hands and<br />
arms and clothes.<br />
The room is spinning.<br />
The walls, the bed, the floor are all marred with splatters of crimson.<br />
She looks down at her hands, a pair of blunt craft scissors glistening<br />
red clutched tightly in her fist.<br />
She scans the walls around her, garish childlike drawings of roses<br />
scrawled with coloured crayons, cut out clumsily and thumbtacked<br />
on every inch possible.<br />
This isn’t real. It can’t be.<br />
She blinks. Hard. Once. Twice.<br />
And then it all rushes back.<br />
Everything is still again. Everything is better. The greenhouse walls,<br />
the flowers, the colours have all solidified again. Everything is real<br />
again. Familiar. Safe.<br />
The dirt of the garden bed is soaked with blood, still warm. Alive.<br />
Small white rosebuds are starting to dot the branches around her.<br />
She smiles. They are beginning to grow again.<br />
Where are her roses? Where is her garden? Where is her greenhouse?<br />
“You’re crazy.” His voice cuts her like jagged glass. “You’re fucking<br />
crazy! Why can’t you just-“<br />
creative/comedy 52-53
edition two<br />
lot’s wife<br />
Crazed Anti<br />
Capitalist<br />
Nick Bugeja<br />
EXCLUSIVE!!!<br />
LAST Sunday night, it was reported that<br />
26-year old Travis Riddle blew up the central<br />
offices of Channel 15. The past week has been<br />
defined by shock regarding the incident, but<br />
new information about his motivations has<br />
come to light.<br />
In our EXCLUSIVE interview with Riddle,<br />
he states that a “hate of capitalism” drove him<br />
to commit the horrific act. “I guess I did it<br />
because I hate capitalism,” said Riddle. “TV is<br />
a form of capitalism, so yeah.” Riddle is facing<br />
up to one day and four hours of jail time over<br />
the incident (Read our article on ‘Why all<br />
young people are thugs and deserve to go to<br />
jail’ on Page 12).<br />
Apparently an advertisement for the<br />
esteemed reality show, ‘Speed dating for 95-<br />
year olds’ set Riddle off. “I was [on hardcore<br />
drugs] sitting there with the TV on, and I<br />
heard Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2.<br />
I looked up and saw it was featured on some<br />
ad for a reality show. I got angry at capitalism<br />
and went to destroy Channel 15.”<br />
When our Pulitzer-prize winning journalist<br />
Tracy Grimshape told Riddle that an<br />
advertising agency was probably to blame<br />
for the ad, Riddle muttered “oh well…..shit….<br />
at least I’ll be out of jail in a few days. I’ll fix<br />
them up.”<br />
Riddle’s childhood sheds light on his<br />
motivations for committing the hateful<br />
crime. His mother and father were both<br />
aggressive communists, having campaigned<br />
for Mark Latham’s Labor Party in 2004.<br />
One Nation candidate Michael Sillypants<br />
said “like any normal person, I like a little<br />
bit of classical music. Especially Russian<br />
composers like Vladimir Putin and Sergei<br />
Rachmaninoff. I personally thought it was<br />
great when Piano Concerto No.2 was played<br />
on ‘Speed dating for 95-year olds’. It left me<br />
and my wife in tears because it made Mal and<br />
Bette’s break-up so much more emotional.”<br />
Sillypants continued by saying “one day and<br />
four hours is a joke. Not only did Riddle end<br />
a lot of lives, but he offended the Australian<br />
love of Russia and reality TV.” Sillypants has<br />
since declared that he thinks Riddle should<br />
be put to death on the steps of Flinders Street<br />
station. “He is probably not white”, said<br />
Sillypants.<br />
‘Speed dating for 95-year olds’ screens at 6:30pm<br />
on Channel 15.<br />
apprivoiser<br />
article by manon boutin charles<br />
Avant, j'avais la tête pleine de mots. Je les balançais, comme ça, presque sans<br />
réfléchir. Sur le clavier, sur l'écran, ils s'animaient. Je les laissais faire leur vie parce<br />
que de toute façon, sitôt sortis de mon esprit, dès qu'ils passaient par mes doigts, je<br />
ne les reconnaissais plus.<br />
Avant, j'avais la tête pleine de mots. Je ne structurais pas ma pensée. Je ne savais<br />
pas ce que ça voulait dire. Mais je la transformais en mots. Des mots supers rudes.<br />
Des mots effrayants. Des mots très forts. Parfois trop forts. Mais c'est parce que je<br />
pensais très fort. C'était intense. C'était profond. Je ressentais des choses magiques.<br />
Et des choses terribles.<br />
Aujourd'hui, je pense beaucoup. J'ai la tête pleine de sensations. Mais que sont-elles<br />
? Comment fonctionnent-elles ? Je ne sais pas comment les apprivoiser. Je ne sais<br />
pas comment me les approprier. Je fais des rêves que je n'arrive plus à interpréter. Je<br />
rêve de choses dont je n'ai plus envie de parler. Personne n'a envie d'écouter ce dont<br />
je veux parler.<br />
J'ai envie de crier des mots. De chanter des chansons super fort. De m'exprimer.<br />
Mais je ne sais pas comment. Plus le temps passe, moins j'arrive à extérioriser toute<br />
ma créativité. Elle est là, coincée entre deux informations capitales dans mon<br />
esprit. Avant, je lui disais de rester tranquille et de se faire oublier. Maintenant, je<br />
lui ai tellement dit qu'elle a peur. Elle est devenue timide. Elle n'ose plus se montrer<br />
quand je l'appelle. Elle n'a plus envie de jouer avec moi.<br />
J'aimerais regagner sa confiance, lui dire que je l'aime et qu'elle me manque. Mais<br />
elle a trop peur, elle a trop mal encore. Elle est retournée à l'état sauvage, et il faut<br />
que je l'apprivoise.<br />
"Que signifie apprivoiser ?<br />
- C'est une chose trop oubliée, dit le renard, ça signifie « créer des liens »..."<br />
Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
come back<br />
words by isaac reichman<br />
I saw you yesterday<br />
In a vacant mood I passed with mind<br />
Closed my eyes and travelled through time<br />
Just to meet you again<br />
In the same place, yet different<br />
As the same person, yet different<br />
I now know fear<br />
For each time I close my eyes<br />
And visit that place of solitude<br />
I know it may be the last time<br />
I see you —<br />
The last time I recognise your face<br />
Then, to never be able to tell your hair<br />
Apart from their’s in a crowded room<br />
Able to tell your eyes<br />
From countless strangers, all of which<br />
Equally beautiful, all of which<br />
Equally not you.<br />
I am no longer able<br />
Maybe I have never been so<br />
For I do not know you<br />
Not truly<br />
Though as I drift through the pages of my past<br />
Smelling that bergamot which clings to the paper<br />
As it clung, like a perfume,<br />
To your olive skin (or was it fair?)<br />
Acquired from all the tea stained mugs<br />
You knew as the friends<br />
May still know<br />
That would sit besides you in that coffee house<br />
Where I saw you<br />
Where I see you still when I sit in that same chair<br />
I sat in, at some point since<br />
Don’t let me forget the subtleties<br />
Your Auburn hair and shy glances<br />
They bring me back to you<br />
If only for a moment<br />
I can’t... grasp it<br />
Your face is as familiar to mine<br />
As that sight of green fields from some<br />
Innocuous painting<br />
By some innocuous painter<br />
That everyone knows<br />
But no one can name<br />
(As I have known since I was but a boy<br />
Sitting beneath a cherry tree<br />
Picking shapes from the clouds)<br />
Even that strains an effort<br />
The arrow drives us relentlessly forward<br />
I will not know you tomorrow<br />
So, let me dream<br />
We are both sitting in that coffee house<br />
As we once both did<br />
But now I sit alone<br />
As I have done for a lifetime<br />
creative/comedy 54-55
edition two one<br />
lot’s wife<br />
wot’s life?<br />
with uncle trump<br />
Q.<br />
A.<br />
Why have the taco prices at Sir John’s Bar been<br />
raised to $3? I’m not really happy about that!<br />
I eat tacos all the time. I love tacos. Tacos are the<br />
greatest. And I love the Mexicans. Nobody has more<br />
respect for the Mexicans than I do. They are rapists<br />
and murderers, but nobody respects them more than<br />
me. I respect them so much that we need to BUILD<br />
THE WALL. I am so so glad Sir John’s is helping us<br />
build our great, tremendous wall. I have so much<br />
respect for Sir John’s that we are building one in<br />
Trump tower. HUGE news. We might also build a<br />
Trump tower in Clayton. Can you believe it? We are<br />
excited.<br />
I have the hots for a Mexican guy I see at work<br />
everyday. I’m a bit shy so I don’t know how the<br />
flirting game works. How do I let him know I’m up<br />
for it?<br />
Wrong. You don’t like the Mexican guy. These are<br />
FAKE feelings. Date someone else (someone you<br />
can’t take your hands off). But make sure you have<br />
big hands….. I’ve been knocked about my hands,<br />
and you know if you say someone’s hands are small<br />
something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s<br />
no problem, I guarantee you. Ask anyone, they’re<br />
impressed. Can you believe it? Even I’m impressed. It’s<br />
just tremendous. And don’t make the same mistake<br />
as Robert Pattinson with Kristen Stewart. So much<br />
out of her league. Can you believe it? Probably bad<br />
(or SICK) guy. Kristen Stewart is defiantly a disaster<br />
(or PIG). Like Rosie O’Donnell: ratings failure! She has<br />
nothing on Donald.<br />
Hi Uncle, I’m in a terrible situation where my<br />
housemate have a crush on me, what can I do?<br />
Ignore it. Unless their a stunning beauty. If they are,<br />
DRAIN THE SWAMP! Otherwise DELETE THEM<br />
FROM YOUR LIFE NOW! If nothing works,blame it<br />
on the Chinese (Chinese hoax!). Watch out for the<br />
Ginese. Never trust a Ginese.<br />
My linguistics lecturer can’t write “cognition” or<br />
“grammar” properly. Should I just tell the Unit<br />
Coordinator that there’s a problem?<br />
Take them to the department of Immigreatin and<br />
get them deported. We will secure the borders and<br />
make America safe again. I also have the best words.<br />
Nobody has better words than me. I know words, I’m<br />
very highly educated. I have a good brain, probably<br />
the best brain.<br />
Dear Uncle, where would you recommend me to eat<br />
on campus?<br />
Eat a Trump steak. I love steaks. I know them<br />
(STEAKS). They are my favourite food, and the Trump<br />
steaks have just raised the steaks. They are flavourful<br />
pieces of meat (like IVANKA, who I would be dating<br />
(If she wasn’t my daughter)). I know we won’t make<br />
any Trump dim sims. You don’t know what’s in dim<br />
sims (probably DOGS!) Even President Trumble eats<br />
our Trump steaks. He said: ‘Trump steaks are the<br />
greatest!’ Good man, really good man.<br />
Why did Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> have you on their cover in<br />
edition 1?<br />
Every magazine has me on their cover. Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong><br />
is the best magazine. It’s tremendous. Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> is<br />
a great magazine, and I’ll tell you why it’s so great:<br />
because it has Donald Trump on the cover. Believe<br />
me, Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> is so much better than everything else.<br />
The other student magazines are epic failures, just sad<br />
and failures. Only I can make Lot’s <strong>Wife</strong> the best, and<br />
I did people. The rest are just desperate (and SAD).
‘turn’ and<br />
‘whisky & gin’<br />
words by shona louis<br />
illustration by lucy zammit<br />
Turn<br />
Peering down into the glass table<br />
In the depths of the reflection,<br />
The umbrella above me stirred.<br />
The sun was much too bright, just as I like it.<br />
When we sat on the grass at the foot of the library, I beamed at you,<br />
Utterly content,<br />
And your eyes<br />
Gleamed<br />
As I did.<br />
The sun was much too bright and later<br />
You would find patches of red<br />
Across your forehead and neck.<br />
You told me about what you’d done in Afghanistan.<br />
Not concerned<br />
For yourself,<br />
But for me.<br />
And it was as though I had known already,<br />
I trembled all the same,<br />
It shook me—<br />
But I clung to your lips.<br />
I told you about my stint in hospital<br />
Not concerned<br />
For myself,<br />
But for you.<br />
I do not know if you shook as I did.<br />
We nuzzled into one another, seeking<br />
What we could,<br />
Inhaling and exhaling<br />
Together.<br />
But the sun didn’t mind the rampant surging of our minds<br />
As we began to fall into one another.<br />
Whiskey & Gin<br />
We wandered<br />
Past the tortoise and smiled<br />
At his age,<br />
At ours.<br />
Later, with the butterflies<br />
“You disarm me.”<br />
In the Japanese garden,<br />
We travelled<br />
Giddy as we were.<br />
We held each other close in 1964<br />
And rotated in a party.<br />
The following hours<br />
Shrieked, collapsed and beat<br />
In our lungs,<br />
Our cage,<br />
Our city,<br />
Our fever,<br />
For jazz.<br />
In the evening<br />
Our mouths are alcoholic<br />
And you talk about our ‘Adult future’.<br />
What’s in three months?<br />
What’s in a lifetime?<br />
We are both young and old<br />
The spectrum of age<br />
Waxes and wanes<br />
And the moon is high.<br />
The heavy grating tide of the trams<br />
Bore through us,<br />
Carried us through the streets.<br />
The hum of the world sounded<br />
Like a gong<br />
When I closed my eyes, the ground was gone<br />
And in its place,<br />
The sea.<br />
You and I were drifting,<br />
As though just below the surface,<br />
The language of the city was suddenly<br />
Ours.<br />
I am the froth of a wave,<br />
You are the sand between toes,<br />
The night blusters,<br />
The spray clings<br />
To us.<br />
creative/comedy<br />
56-57
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