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.
On the right track
When the National Cultural Policy was released, the Albanese government stated their commitment to developing legislation to protect Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. At last there will be a legal framework which can not only protect Indigenous peoples’ rights, but also set the pathway for better sharing of culture and greater respect for Indigenous cultures as the oldest living cultures in the world.
Filling the void
These failures of clean-up, or ‘mining legacies’, are the result of booms and busts – of minerals drifting in and out of favour. Nothing is as precious as a hole in the ground – until that hole in the ground is worth less than nothing. When a boom ends and a resource’s price plummets, a quarry’s metamorphosis from asset to liability can take place in an instant. When abandoned mines are located in out-of-the-way places, populated by those with little political influence, tailings may simply be left to blow in the wind.
Adhi danalpothayapa
For all the clans on Saibai, both migrations were distressing, uprooting families from their homelands where they had lived for thousands of years. Nevertheless, knowledge produced from these migrations has been embedded in stories chronicling the changing climate, and shared throughout the generations. A strong sense of pride is conveyed when recounting these narratives of adaption and resilience. Story is the key because the wisdom is in the story.
Sad stories you are old enough to hear
Those were innocent years, those years before a teenager called Junaid was murdered in a train while looking visibly Muslim. Before we began to hear whispers about whether it was a good idea to travel by train since reservation charts were pasted on the platform and outside each compartment, a list of passenger names alongside seat numbers; how that made it easy to target someone based on their identity.
See through a glass darkly
On the way home that night we pass Oxford Street. It’s lit up and people are dancing in the windows of the clubs. There’s a rainbow flag on one of the buildings. Dad turns to look at this with a grimace: he shakes his head and sucks his teeth. He turns the volume up on the CD player and focuses on the road ahead.
On the forging of identity
The night Sartre spoke in Paris can be seen as a hinge in time, the moment when modernity and its focus on individual identity came to the fore after the destruction of the old order. We are still living on the far side of the door Sartre pointed us through. Of course, modernity had a thousand authors. It was the product of billions of lives lived in close proximity. But Sartre, to me, best articulated a modern creed of what it means to be human.
The dancing ground
After some initial research, and only finding one historical reference to a ceremonial ground within the CBD, I confined the puzzle of Russell’s lacuna to the back of my mind. The single reference I found was in Bill Gammage’s book The Biggest Estate on Earth, where he writes: ‘A dance ground lay in or near dense forest east of Swanston Street and south of Bourke Street.’ Not a great lead because it was two blocks away from where it was depicted on Robert Russell’s survey.
To sing, to say
How poetry works – its oracular way, its indirection – is how land works, he saw. Land as a teacher, as an embodiment not only of its own intergrity but of human aspirations and virtues like hope and beauty; land as an educator of the senses; land as a measure against which to prove and compare one’s own and others’ lives, as a theatre for the divine comedy of all human life; land as an elder, as a god, as a library...
The transhuman era
The story of the transhuman era has much in common with the creation myths of old – and with religious tales of transcendence. It heralds the emergence of a powerful – omniscient, omnipresent – force (AI) possessing intelligence that far exceeds our own. And lends itself to stories that play off destruction against what you could term ‘salvation’, in the form of digital immortality.
The future is hackable
Deepfakes point to a future that is simultaneously euphoric and apocalyptic: philosophers have positioned them as ‘an epistemic threat to democracy’, journalists have called them ‘the place where truth goes to die’, futurists have portrayed them as the digital harbinger of a mass ‘reality apathy’ in which even video will be a lie.
From Russia with love
The 'socialisation of women' narrative arose from journalistic innovations associated with the First World War. In response to an unprecedented demand for up-to-date news, the Australian press had embarked on rapid technological change. Editors installed steam- and rotary-powered printing machines, established distribution fleets of automobiles and trucks, and hooked up their newsrooms to telephone lines.
Rogues’ gallery
In the age of technological optimisation, we are equally as preoccupied with entertainment as we are with devoting leisure time to projects of self-actualisation. The contemporary success of art museums rests on their ability to compound the entertainment value of an amusement park with the promise of an educational experience.
