Overland 254 is the first in a set of four special editions dedicated to commemorating 70 years of Overland. This issue also launches a new design and format by Common Room Editions, inspired by Overland’s trove of radical literature spanning from 1954 to today. Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange consider the asymmetrical responses to two events: the wearing of keffiyehs by three cast members during the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, and, on the same day in the US, the shooting of three Palestinian men wearing keffiyehs. Jeff Sparrow uncovers the Sydney Herald’s legacy of Terra Nullius, and Daniel Lopez writes on Marx, Meredith and the festival as an inversion of modern life.
Chris Rodley is a writer for new media and a PhD candidate in Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney. His research is examining the impact of big data on poetics, with a focus on how the ability to find and remix digital information in real time is transforming relationships between texts, writers and readers. He is co-author of a book chapter in The Future of Writing (2014), with Andrew Burrell, and has also written for Guardian Australia and BuzzFeed.
