Journal
Articles
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.
Detachable penis
Three years into my transition during the 2021 lockdowns, my online shopping habit became a full-blown addiction. One of the weirder things that I purchased was a petite crocheted penis and testicles, hand-stitched by a crafty ‘bear’ called Devon. Each package was made-to-order, so I could choose everything from the shaft length to colour and testicle size. I could’ve even added ball hair.
The trick that tells the truth
As subjects of late capitalism, we’ve become inured to the amoral cynicism inherent in relentless corporate marketing; yet both the good faith of our human nature and the susceptibility of our lizard brains ensure that we also remain receptive... In 2020, the disjunction between AGL’s public relations and the truth of the company’s business practices was highlighted and ridiculed in the public realm, ending in a court case of profound significance on Australia’s twisted road to belated action on climate change.
About face
Our image-centred world has elevated what writer Jia Tolentino calls ‘Instagram face’, a racially ambiguous assemblage of ethnic ‘greatest hits’ – wide cat-like eyes, big lips, smallish nose, high cheekbones. Few people will have a face that fits this template... But, whatever, you can pay for it.
The future of art fraud
Over lunch with the international art auctioneer, I told him the art dealer – a mutual acquaintance – said she would ‘support’ my work at auction. She explained that if an artwork didn’t receive enough bids during an auction, she would bid to buy it for a higher amount. Then there would be a public record of my work being sold for the value assigned by her, which she would show people when reselling it privately.
No name for the country
For the past thirty-odd years, Hideo has worked exclusively in Japanese, publishing several novels and collections of criticism and essays. Why Japanese? is a question he is often asked. It harbours a kind of suspicion: why would a native speaker of the English language, the language of power and prestige and capital ... give it all up in favour of a comparatively minor language, a marked and ethnicised tongue?
Will we dance when it’s over?
The stakes in our real world have reached a point so high, so close to apocalypse, that they’ve disappeared entirely. We are gripped by a nihilism and unnerving sense of unreality, and so we don’t receive the messages others are trying to send to us.
Art, AI and figuring the future
There is an eeriness in the anonymous way DALL-E and Midjourney create art... The artist is nowhere and everywhere, like a ghost inside the machine. We see the rendering of images, but nothing that makes the design process more relatable.
The money shot
Pornography challenges our very constructions of what is ‘real’. It complicates questions about how we understand ‘real’ consent, for example. There may not be anyone forcing young people to follow the pornographic script. But with so much influence on young people’s sexual imaginations, pornography is setting the cultural context within which they do sex and gender.
Outside, Mona Lisa
Where bushwalking is concerned, Tasmanian maps are not an authentic picture of the landscape. They’re fine if you want to stick to well-known trails, but if the track has been assigned a T4 rating it won’t be on the map. Sometimes that’s because the route is so rough it would be misleading to mark it as a track, but sometimes it’s that for a range of management and environmental purposes, the PWS just doesn’t want many walkers going there.
Tell me a story
As QAnon members circulated their vernacular and practices across social networks, their acts and ideas became increasingly visible, and individuals began to recognise the behaviour as sanctioned, expressive acts within their community. In other words, adherents of QAnon began to recognise and conform to their very own folklore – one that explained who they were and described how they should act in given situations.
Living in kayfabe
On free-dress days, I wore my sister’s dance tights to school because they made me feel like I was a real wrestler. I would’ve worn my Speedos if my mum let me. Other kids stared at me and asked ‘What are you wearing?’ and I’d tell them that this was my wrestling gear.
