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Christopher Madden replies to Ben Eltham

Ben Eltham's article from Overland 200, ‘Culture is bigger than the arts’, has spurred considerable discussion. Here, we publish a response from cultural policy researcher and analyst Christopher Madden.

Madden argues:

Eltham also suggests that ‘[a]s online, networked and digital forms of culture continue to grow and proliferate, the Australia Council’s policy ambit becomes correspondingly more minor and less important.’ But, the figures show, creative involvement has grown substantially in both new and old art forms. Craft involvements hardly stagnated, and in many cases grew faster than activities based on newer technologies. Some craft involvements grew by staggering amounts – jewellery making by 204 per cent, and ‘other craft activities’ by 113 per cent! ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 18-10-2010, 1 user comment

Off to the Athenaeum

It was a shocking night for venturing out on Friday – rain, wind, dark (you get that at night), cold, a storm on the way. Bravely, I drove into town. After my last foray to the comedy theatre, I thought better of using public transport.

Meeting dear, generous friends in the foyer of the Athenaeum, I was excited. I’d watched some youtubes of Fear of a Brown Planet and liked them very much. I knew nothing about Allah Made Me Funny, but the title appealed.

... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 18-10-2010, 14 user comments

Thoughts from Ubud

Ubud FestivalIn 2009, my Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Indonesia was 72 hours of guilt. I was up all night working, fielding emails from my boss as she trekked through the fall-out of Padang City following the West Sumatran earthquake in search of solutions. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough: 1 117 dead, 1 214 injured, thousands upon thousands shattered and homeless ahead of the monsoon rains.

I stepped off the plane from Jakarta into clean Bali heat. Sat with my head out the car window all the way up the hills and into Ubud feeling my eyes burn at the lushness of it all. ... read more

Written by Ruby J Murray on 15-10-2010, 8 user comments

Meanland: Publish Your Self

Last night I had the fortune to hear writer Simmone Howell talk about her novels, writing processes and her brief spell as a publisher. Vandal Press, co-founded by Howell during her days in RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course, ran from the late 90s to 2002. Howell described scribbling short stories in one class, working on layout and design in another, before topping it off with a cheap print run.

The reason for this foray into publishing? The founders of Vandal felt that as young writers, the established literary gatekeepers ignored them; the industry was a fortress without a drawbridge.

Howell writes:

People tend to frown on self-publishing but for me it was a good thing. At the very least it meant I was doing something. I had a book I could hold in my hand; I could send it off to snooty literary editors to say, Who am I? I can WRITE! After Vandal I started sending stories off willy-nilly. I wrote my way around the world.

... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 15-10-2010, 1 user comment

Non-fiction review: Into the woods

'Into the woods'Into the woods
Anna Krien
Black Inc.

Anna Krien’s book begins with violence, travels through corruption and pain, and ends with a vague, vain sort of hope. With a structure like that, you might expect that it’s about a catastrophic event, some natural or human-created event that has crushed communities and people, and is now being overcome. And you’d be half right – it’s certainly about a kind of catastrophe in motion.

Krien’s book Into the Woods

Written by Georgia Claire on 14-10-2010, 6 user comments

Post from Tanzania: Reading Abdulrazak Gurnah (and reading the place you’re in)

I’ve always known that reading about an exotic location while you’re actually in that location heightens your experience of any given book. If I hadn’t figured it out on my own, I’m sure the section at the front of each Lonely Planet guide would have tipped me off. Among others, I’ve been lucky enough to read The Quiet American in a cheap hotel in Saigon, The Bus Conductor Hines from my student flat in Glasgow, and the first half of Brother Number One while travelling through Cambodia.

I only read half of Brother Number One because it scared the bejesus out of me – there was something too present about that nation’s history and the knowledge that the Khmer Rouge still had strongholds in the hills of the north. Add that to the way that travelling itself opens up your pores and increases your sensitivity to the world and my imagination went into overdrive. I exchanged my paperback for a copy of Gautama Buddha and finally got some sleep. ... read more

Written by Louise Pine on 14-10-2010, 1 user comment

The literary scene sexist? Well, call me Betty Draper.

Betty DraperBack in May I attended a panel discussion at the Sydney Writers’ Festival entitled, ‘No Country for Young Women’ which sought to answer the question: ‘Can a young women thrive in our newly retro Mad Men world?’ The panel consisted of Kirstin Tranter, Emily Maguire and Karen Hitchcock and was chaired by Susan (Lionheart) Maushart. The answer they reached, rather swiftly was, ‘Of course!’ Followed by, ‘Since when is our world “newly retro”? I mean, I like mid-century modernist furniture as much as the next person, but seriously, what the?’ (Okay, I embellished that a little, but you get the drift.) ... read more

Written by Claire Zorn on 13-10-2010, 24 user comments

Sunday epiphanies

Not that I’m a great fan of epiphanies or anything. I’ve read of other people having them though. James Joyce, for example, made them must-have experiences for writers, who have been tiresomely talking about them ever since. Perhaps I’m more interested in epiphanies as breakdowns. Not, I hasten to add, in a nihilistic Sweeney Todd sense, but maybe there have been moments in your life when you realised – I’m guessing – that True Love didn't exist and you understood that you were going to have to invent something a whole lot better. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 12-10-2010, 14 user comments

Meanland: These people have something to tell you

You know how you can spend hours drowning in YouTube clips of people hugging sea lions, animals behaving in endearing animal-like (occasionally very unsettling human-like) ways and outlandish songs – and then you glance outside and nine hours have gone by?

To cut a long lesson short: killing time is not all YouTube is for. Here are a few clips I watched over the past day that spurred synapses and propelled neurons and made me examine some assumptions I may have been making about digital media. I’ve provided brief bios to contextualise the individuals (because it helps to know they are professionals). ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 12-10-2010, No comments

Wild rivers, intervention and liberal hypocrisy

Wild Rivers signI got an email last week from a friend about some comments Nigel Scullion has been making. The comments were regarding the Wild Rivers legislation, and Tony Abbott’s private member’s bill in particular. As Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Scullion spoke about the lack of informed consent in regards to the way the Wild Rivers legislation was written and implemented. A point that, if true, is a valid criticism and one that means the Wild Rivers legislation needs further work to become law. I’m not going to get into that here though, it’s too big for my limited lack of legal matters to get my head around and I feel that there have already been some good writings about it that can be found online. ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 11-10-2010, 10 user comments

Beginnings – a literary event

Where does a writer begin writing their novel? Is the first sentence they put on the page the first sentence the reader will read? Where do novels come from? And what does first inspiration look like?

In Westgarth Books first emerging writers’ event, Steven Amsterdam, Chris Womersley, Matt Hooper and Maryrose Cuskelly will join Sydney Smith to discuss ‘Beginnings’.

Steven, Chris, Maryrose and Matt will read from their novels and you will be able to ask questions as well as talk about your own experiences in beginning a novel. Authors will also be available for book signings.

So come along and meet some of Australia’s most exciting new authors and network with other emerging writers while enjoying cheese and wine and the charm and character of Westgarth Book. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 11-10-2010, 1 user comment

The best thing on the internet by far

Without a doubt the best discovery I have made on the internet of late is Gogol Bordello.*

Gogol Bordello

Here they are with ‘Immigraniada’:

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 8-10-2010, 9 user comments

Huffing and puffing

The Australian newspaper continues to speak breathlessly of a Chinese Griff nach der Weltmacht. In the latest instalment, ‘China’s irresistible power surge’, Rowan Callick writes:

China has broken out. After countless "dragon rising" conferences and speeches ... the past few weeks have seen something new: the most important shift so far in the 21st century. History in the making. China has made its move.

Over recent months, it's been impossible for readers to avoid such talk. First, in early August, the newspaper reported that a ‘resurgent China is baring its teeth at the once indomitable US Pacific fleet. The certainty of US hegemony over this vast ocean, which Australians have taken for granted since World War II, is being challenged … For a country such as Australia, which would rely heavily on the US Pacific fleet to protect it against a belligerent China, the prophecies of experts such as [historian Niall] Ferguson are disturbing’. Then on 5 August came a much-discussed visit to Sydney by John Mearsheimer, the US international relations theorist. In a speech titled ‘The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia’, Mearsheimer argued that ‘China’s rise … is likely to lead to intense security competition between China and the United States, with considerable potential for war’: ... read more

Written by Nick Siemensma on 8-10-2010, 3 user comments

Non-fiction review – On Radji Beach

On Radji BeachOn Radji Beach
Ian W Shaw
Macmillan

The plight of the Second World War nurses who fled Singapore and wound up in Japanese prison camps is not unknown. A number of nurses have written accounts of their horrendous experiences in the camps, the most well known being White Coolie by Betty Jeffrey. The film Paradise Road and the BBC series Tenko both cover this aspect of WW2. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 7-10-2010, 9 user comments

Post from Tanzania: Why it doesn’t work

We’ve been staying on a farm in the Usumbara Mountains above Lushoto for a few nights. For the past seven years, it’s been run by a Swede and a South African from the German Lutheran church. Over dinner last night, the inevitable question arose: Why doesn’t Tanzania work?

It’s certainly something that this couple has had plenty of time to consider as both have worked on and off in different parts of Africa their whole lives. Tanzania has provided them with constant power cuts and water shortages, impossible barriers to food processing and business, shocking road accidents, a substandard healthcare system – and all under a single government that has ruled with an overwhelming majority for almost fifty years.

The farmer’s theory on why Tanzania doesn’t work is this: the Tanzanian government is not answerable to its people. ... read more

Written by Louise Pine on 5-10-2010, 1 user comment