Poo-bahs of the arts

When Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair this morning noted the remarkable dance performance choreographed by Sydney University's Mikala Dwyer, who encouraged her players to empty their bowels on stage, the reaction at the Billabong was not shock so much as a warm nostalgia and hope for the future.

You see, many years ago, when the Professor was a youngster heavily into anarchic leftism and punk (and meaningless euphemisms as well), a particular hero was an American rocker, GG Allin, who was known only from reports in the underground zines and newspapers available via outlets like Euphoria Records and the Third World Bookshop. Allin certainly sounded just the shot to outrage bourgeois sensibilities, which is what being young and stupid is mostly about, as his party piece involved beating up random audience members and then voiding his bowels on stage.

American authorities were in the habit of arresting Mr Allin, the original scat singer,  who eventually took his own life and thereby missed seeing the fruits of the revolution he inspired. These days, exponents of the brown arts can get themselves on the government teat, where the lactations are very rich indeed. Ms Dwyer's grant -- one of them -- is on the bottom line:

For those whose eyes work not so well as once they did, the entry reports that Dwyer scored her $90,000 for promising to "create series of works that extend investigation into material responses to conceptual frameworks".

Apparently that translates as choking a darkie in a perspex bucket.

The first reaction of most will be outrage, but that would be a mistake. The arts community will trot out all sorts of dills, many in bow ties, to assert that the majority of their countrymen are philistines and cannot appreciate the transgressive beauty of a fresh-laid log. Our nation will become a laughingstock, they will continue, if hip cadres cannot afford to extrude meaningful works. Mind you, the Italian sculptor Adriano Cecioni manage to cover this territory without benefit of grant more than 130 years ago. That's his sculpture at the head of his post.

Well let them say all of that and more, and let them continue to snaffle their grants until a new government sets to work on both the arts and the ABC. In the meantime, and clearly inspired by the likes of GG Allin, we must urge the transgressive elite to take the next step and begin beating the daylights out of their black-clad audiences. Two-fisted luvvie-on-luvvie action, with elbows, man-bags and poo buckets flying everywhere! Black eyes and bleeding scalps all over the shop -- and no doubt worth at least another $100,000 or so in tax dollars. Won't that be fun.

For those interested, poo-art pioneer GG Allin explains his oeuvre below:

UPDATE: The Age, where shit for brains is a pre-condition of employment,  gives Dwyer's exercise in "material responses" a predictably sympathetic gloss.

ACCA director Juliana Engberg said the centre exists to support each exhibiting artist's vision. ''Of course, contemporary art is sometimes very challenging, but ACCA's role is to work with challenging ideas,'' she said.

''When Mikala brought this idea of a performance and film dealing with material transformation and ritual to us, we evaluated it as a key and bold move in her practice, one that links to a long artistic legacy looking at alchemical transformation and magical performance. The work, while challenging taboos, never becomes sensational or gratuitous. It's wonderful, powerful work.''

ACCA did extensive public and occupational health and safety risk assessments.

The transparent seats were covered at all times during the performance and exhibition opening. They were partly emptied, disinfected, sealed and returned to the gallery after the performance and no staff handled them.

The exhibition runs until July 28. accaonline.org.au

The Age digs its grave, not a tunnel

THOSE who reside in less fortunate parts of our great nation, which is to say everyone who does not live in Melbourne, may not be terribly interested in this post, which concerns one of those parish-pump issues whose ability to raise hackles diminishes in direct relation to observers’ distance from the epicentre of fuss. That said, quite a few universal truths are crystallising in the darkening blue over the Napthine government’s plans for an inner city East-West road tunnel, insights directly relevant to all who must live with the consequences of what the project’s opponents like to present as enlightened urban planning. This involves more bicycles and buses, needless to say.

The first insight to be gained from the current flap is the need to revamp the social sciences’ hierarchy of rubbish disciplines. Formerly, it could be assumed that the prime purpose of social work, at the very bottom of the heap, was to calm the career anxieties of those too dim to become teachers. The escalating tunnel spat has now demonstrated that town planners occupy an even lower rung, and a more political one, than both of those tax-gobbling sources of excuses for failure and diminishing returns.

The second – and this does not need to be mentioned, come to think of it – is that the Fairfax press will always allow its writers to filter and distort their reporting in accordance with personal prejudice and preconception. Let us take today’s reporting by Age state political editor Josh Gordon as an example. Notice the ellipses he has inserted in the passage below:

In its November 2011 submission to Infrastructure Australia, the government suggested that the road link would significantly benefit motorists using Hoddle Street, allowing traffic banked up along the Eastern Freeway to flow more freely.

''The east-west link … is aimed at … reducing traffic on Melbourne's inner urban arterial roads, especially at the Hoddle Street exit on the Eastern Freeway,'' the submission said.

Well here, in full, is what the report actually says. The bits in bold represent the few words Gordon chose to use:

The East West Link, in combination with other transport network initiatives, will support the longterm sustainable growth and development of Melbourne, and have state-wide benefits. The project is aimed at:

• providing an alternative to the M1 corridor (Monash Freeway – CityLink Tunnels – West Gate Bridge – West Gate Freeway);
• reducing traffic on Melbourne's inner urban arterial roads, especially at the Hoddle Street exit on the Eastern Freeway;
• linking industry in Melbourne's north, east and west with national and international markets via the Port of Melbourne, and Tullamarine and Avalon Airports; and
• enhancing urban renewal and commercial development opportunities to the north and west of the CBD.

Contrary to the impression the Age’s account seems determined to create, that document does not pitch the East-West tunnel as the solution to Hoddle Street’s woes, which can be very woeful indeed at peak traffic periods, but as a remedy for the bottleneck that develops every morning when five lanes of vehicles from Eastern Freeway pour into the narrow, cyclist-infested streets of North Fitzroy.  The picture below represents any typical morning on Alexandra Parade, into which the Eastern Freeway empties.

 Gordon does note that, even so, a study supervised by Sir Rod Eddington estimated that the East-West tunnel would reduce Hoddle Street congestion by as much as 20 per cent, some 18,0000 vehicles a day, which might strike the unbiased eye as a worthwhile improvement. To Gordon, however, it is “only” 20 per cent and to be mentioned merely in passing.

Some time ago, a professional journalist dropped a line to the Billabong to note that space is an issue on the published page and that telling details sometimes fail to make to the cut for no reason more sinister than a lack of space. Point taken! But surely, as he selectively assembled his case against the sensible proposal to link one freeway, the Eastern, with another, the Westgate, Gordon could have noted the existence of those other arguments for a tunnel, even if he lacked the space to describe them in full. It would have required only a few words, something like "...while other arguments for the tunnel have been advanced...."

Instead, readers were treated to a double helping of ellipses and another example of why, in tabloid form or broadsheet, The Age cannot be trusted to report the truth.

   

First-person plural possessive

COULD it be that there is still someone inside Fairfax with a little wit and a sense of puckish mischief? Here's the headline on Nicholas Reece's opinion piece in today's Age:

And who is Nicholas Reece, you may wonder?

Why, he's "a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby"

That certainly explains the "our".

Coming soon, the AFL's Wog Round

THIS weekend is the AFL's Indigenous Round, which will have to suffice until Andrew Demetriou can get the Gay Round off the ground. If precedent is observed, spectators will then be treated to all-male Rockettes in bottom-less chaps doing high kicks without benefit of a Sherrin, love of musicals being a revered tradition amongst same-sexers. If the goal umpires were to dress as Judy Garland and the umpires in nuns' habits, another proud tradition, that would be just perfection and a treat for all.

And after that, why not a Greek Round?

This would need to feature Demetriou in a multi-pleated, little white kilt and whatever bowyangs are called in Greek. The AFL boss has an Hellenic name, so surely that defines him -- and all anyone will ever need to know about him.

Demetriou would be up for it, of course. Why should he be any different from the black players the AFL is so keen to perform native dances and chant authentically made-up "indigenous" war cries?

There used to be an England

These are the new rules, if we want to live by them:

Goat-bothering mullahs can fill acolytes' skulls with such poison that they go out and lop the heads of strangers and nothing happens to them.

A couple of kids write on the Facebook pages that they're not too keen on all this mayhem and the Muslims behind it and they spend the night in jail.

The last of his tribe

THERE has long been doubt that Rupert Murdoch is an Aborigine. Sure, he looks like one, if we are to go by the members of the Litjus-Mordie tribe, as does everyone else these days. Anyway, all doubts are now settled and we can be sure he is an Aborigine, albeit a naughty one.

How do we know? Because Martin Flanagan in The Age, a paper once prominent in Melbourne, has written a column about him, and Martin only ever writes about Aborigines and their wonderful, magical powers to kick footballs while the Rainbow Serpent does the umpiring and the power of Country pulses upward through their boot stops. Actually, that’s not right. Sometimes he writes about his dog, but it is very easy to get confused about the subject matter because the tone of indulgent condescension is very much of a piece.

Actually, that bit about the dog is also wrong, because if Bowser gets crook, off to the vet! When an Aboriginal player (no need to mention names) was newly arrived at a certain Melbourne club and inspiring Flanagan to cascades of gushing superlatives, the fawning and expressions of admiration for the recruit's tribal initiation scars were non-stop. How authentic! Surely he must know better than any how to snap a goal, that being one of those  Indigenous instincts, akin to possums finding your rose bushes in the dark. That nonsense stopped only when the club doctor took a closer look, diagnosed ringworm and ordered up an immediate course of treatment.

Patronising wankery is the sort of stuff Flanagan serves up week after week, habitually asserting in The Age, where farce and fact are interchangeable, that Aborigines not only inspired the invention of football but play it better because they are masters of time, space and place, whatever that means. They also make better TV shows because, well, being Indigenous means the panelists cut straight to the team line-ups, as Flanagan seems to think only a blackfella can.

Anyway, King Billy Murdoch is in trouble. Apparently owning media outlets that succeed offends Flanagan, who is grateful that the world has other great wits who can stick it to the old bugger. From his column:

But you knew Murdoch was prepared to walk through fire when he responded to the campaign to get rid of page 3 girls by thundering: ''Is anyone complaining about Page 3 pix a reader? Enough of this elitist nonsense!''

Many of the responses were predictably earnest. Then up popped Nad-I-Am: ''Rupes, I need to know the size of your testicles before I can engage with you. Come on, mate. 20p for a shot of your balls.''
Nad-I-Am is Nadia Kamil, an Iraqi-Welsh comic, and, as we say in sport, she had come to play. She bombarded Murdoch with demands that, as a man of conviction, he put his privates on the line:

''come on, a photo of your bollocks. All shaved & nicely lit. With a speech bubble next to them with some facile news. 20p.'' When Murdoch ignored her, she upped her demands - ''I WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOUR BALLS THINK ABOUT POLITICS'' - finally offering to settle for a similar photo of one of his sons.

All of which, in my opinion, is fair and reasonable comment on Murdoch's tweet….

All of which, in any sane person’s opinion, is a fair and reasonable indication that Fairfax, like Bennelong’s people,  will go to its grave without ever quite appreciating the reality that has invaded its cosy, isolated little world of dreamings.

UPDATE: Spoke to soon. A further flick through the Age website reveals that Flanagan has published a second column, as always ooh-ing and awe-ing about the race-based wonderfulness of Indigenous players. Today, he thinks it a fine thing for Adam Goodes, a superb player and thoroughly modern man, to be leaping about as part of some ersatz, concocted-yesterday approximation of Indigenous tradition.

Goodes was the subject of a racial taunt while helping the Swans cream Collingwood last night. That was nasty, but being recruited to make an exhibition of himself for the amusement of the world's Flanagans is the greater insult. He had just better hope all the white architects of the Indigenous Round don't try for even greater authenticity by encouraging sub-incision.

 

Nymphs of the green

It is far too fine a day to waste at the keyboard. Off to the golf course, where Doctor Yowie is waiting, in the hope that Suzann Pettersen is setting fashion trends for young and firm associates.

Mind you, the Professor's poor putting of late really doesn't need any further distractions.

Back later, when backlogged comments will be posted.