Palestinians are quite capable of photographing themselves, employing resources to represent and narrate not only their circumstances, but how they creatively engage their relationships to their circumstances. Neither numbers nor abject subjects of violence, they continue to disturb and challenge the Israeli onslaught by resisting their reduction to bare life.

When I turn, the angle of my sitting gives a perfect view into the kitchen. I see a man, maybe the manager, slap that girl from the counter. She must have moved when I was not looking. Her earphones are thrown from her ears and freeze in their departure from her as I glance. When I look away, I consider that they may still be in the air.

In Australia’s arts sector, two recent reviews have appeared to uphold integrity while quietly protecting the institutions themselves. They tell a revealing story about how federal cultural organisations are handling controversy, and why the public should care.

The National Redress Scheme is a once-in-history opportunity to face up to the harm that happens to children in all kinds of places, to grapple with what that means for Australian society and Australian children, now and in the future. We owe it to survivors, to ourselves and to our kids. But we’ll miss the chance if it continues to be a filthy little secret that survivors have to keep.

What has been demonstrated in Gaza is that certain populations — in this case, Palestinians — possess no rights and have no value in the eyes of the powerful. That lesson has obvious implications in an era in which global heating will disproportionately affect the oppressed, the poor and the marginalised.  

Long Covid/Chronic fatigue solidarity: we demand recognition. De-invisibilise our condition.

No art can be reduced to one reading that justifies calling it necessary — as if it was a pack of rations to take on a forced march — and it’s a fool’s errand to shove a TV show at teenagers in the hope they behave better.

As Jewish university staff and students we are appalled by the attempt to use racial vilification laws and the Australian Human Rights Commission complaints process to silence Dr Nick Riemer and Professor John Keane, who have exercised their right to free speech to criticise the actions of the Israeli Government, to oppose the ultra-nationalist Zionism that informs them, to express solidarity with Palestinians and Lebanese people, and to call for an end to Israel’s current campaign of extreme violence.

It’s often suggested, from different quarters, that Western classical music is losing a certain cultural salience, that it no longer connects to society at large in the ways it has in its prior history. But there is an associated question, concerning whether or not there are more meaningful ways of framing the music we make, and present to the public, in particular social and political contexts.

Does Vivian Blaxell’s Worthy of the Event take things beyond the ambient Yes? The answer, reader, is of course, Yes. It would be an insult to call this extraordinary essay a work of autofiction or philosophy. Instead, the Event is an event unto itself.

To the State Library of Queensland and the Queensland Education and Arts Minister, We write as a community of First Nations authors, publishers, literary scholars, arts workers and Storytellers. We speak from our Sovereignty, which is rooted in Country and in the storytelling traditions we continue from our time-immemorial custodianship of our lands and waters.  […]

Glucose Goddess’ approach is enticing because it appears to put power in the individual’s hands, so long as they are happy to have a shot of vinegar before a meal. However, rather than being individually empowering, it leads us away from good food and good health as something that we must pursue together, and is currently unequally accessible.

Released in 2024 and screened for the first time at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Twilight Time charts Des Ball’s life and work. Yet it is also about one of the biggest elephants in Australia’s room: its close ties with the United States of America.