Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
The white experiment
FOREWORDBy Penny HuestonCORY TAYLOR, WHO passed away in July, was a joy to work with. Over the years I...
Ferocious animals
MY DAD WOKE me early to go down town and buy streamers. It was 1989 and our team was...
Icarus: Bot
@goddess: You tweeted the words sink and lower. You sound depressed@iceBorg: Goddess, I’m falling, tweeting free, from a public...
Unfurling
EVA HAD LOVED the first slap of cold water on her face when she dived into the pool, then...
The great unmapping project of 2016
In the time before the map – IBunjil & Birrung meet the seaIN THE TIME before the bay, before the...
Season of hope
MR F WAS short and squat, well dressed, with the sort of small, dry hands you might expect of...
What happens next
IT WAS EVENING when Mia and her mother reached their building. Overhead, the perpetual pale overcast of the sulphur-seeded...
Caius Atlas
THE BABY-NAME BOOK is the size of a pack of cards, left on top of a bin outside the...
I n t e r e s t i n g
NOT MANY PEOPLE like me. I have no friends. And I would like to know why. People begin friendly...
Cargoes
The first time we were here it was just the two of us, Lindsey and me. We stayed at the Chelsea and I got my hair cut there by a hairdresser who had done Dee Dee Ramone’s that morning. Nothing unusual in that. She’d cut his hair for years, she told me. I never discovered if it was true or not. I wanted it to be true. Dee Dee’s hair was no fixed thing though.... Johnny’s was the iconic Ramones hair, so that’s the cut I got. No one at home had that. And Johnny threw his hair forward when he stabbed at his guitar, as if hair could be another weapon.
Afraid of waking it
HE SET THE camera up by the wall in the space he used as his studio. It was one...
Will Martin
MY OAR STABS the side of the Reliance. We push off and pull away from the ship. Venus is out, but the sky still has some light. Mr Bass and I boat the oars and hoist sail. The Lieutenant takes the helm. Tom Thumb’s sail snaps at the breeze and air-filled we bounce across the water.‘To dare is to do!’ Mr Bass shouts our motto.‘To dare is to do!’ The Lieutenant and I reply as if we are one.Seawater sprays across the gunwale. It is Thursday, the twenty-fourth of March, the year 1796. This is the day that we embark on our second Tom Thumb sail.
