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.
Time plays tricks
Ten years ago, the late, great cultural theorist Mark Fisher posited that our ‘montaging of earlier eras’ had reached such fever pitch that we no longer even noticed our submersion in a sea of bygones. And sitting alongside this purported cultural inertia are our increasingly divergent attitudes towards history – the far-right impulse to romanticise the past, the far-left desire to remedy its wrongs – and how they inflect our politics.
All legs good
This edition of Griffith Review illuminates the magic and mystery of animals – those we’re lucky enough to still share the planet with, and those, like dodos and dinosaurs, who are no longer here. It celebrates the complex bonds we have with all kinds of other creatures and reminds us what’s at stake for their – and our – survival…
An idle moment
In 2008, Finnish performance artist Pilvi Takala embarked on an audacious project called The Trainee. For one month, she worked as a marketing intern at the global accounting firm Deloitte. Instead of carrying out the usual responsibilities expected of this role, Takala did…nothing.
Let there be light
Whether they’re personal, cultural or religious, these are the stories that offer us ways of orienting ourselves amid the sheer chaos and confusion of being alive – particularly today, as humanity’s existential and environmental crises continue to mount.
Genuine article
The pieces in this edition mine the social, cultural and emotional ramifications of our shifting relationship with reality: the power of deepfakes, the possibilities of AI-generated art, the changing face of cosmetic surgery, the performance of pornographic pleasure, the dangers of corporate greenwashing, the allure of conspiracy...
Tastemakers
I’m still pleasantly mystified by our obsession with food – our need to talk about it, remember it, photograph it and analyse it, to eat our feelings and compare our lives to buffets and boxes of chocolates.
Between different worlds
Antarctica offers windows into many different worlds...
Beyond the frontier
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read her introduction ‘Beyond the frontier’. A LONG TIME ago, I spent a day on a...
Prismatic perspectives
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read her introduction ‘Prismatic perspectives’. IN 1816, DAVID Brewster, a Scottish mathematician and physicist, invented a...
Escape rooms
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read her introduction ‘Escape Rooms’. THE RAINBOW LORIKEET – a fledgling, brilliant green with texta-colour highlights...
Reframing the thought
experiment
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read her introduction ‘Reframing the thought experiment’. IT WAS ONLY recently that I learnt about...
New vibrations
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read her introduction ‘New vibrations’. IN THE FIRST months of 2020, the vibrations of the Earth...
