"Luminous World" / "Weird Melancholy: The Australian Gothic" / "Nature/Revelation" (Potter Museum)

Three different exhibitions, all with at least some nice pieces to recommend them, although the last (on the top floor) was definitely the highlight.

"Luminous World" comprises contemporary works from the Wesfarmers collection, themed around light. One room is mostly black and white and plays more on the theme of shadow (including a couple of Bill Hensons - breathtaking as always - the one below untitled 2009-10), while the other is more obviously 'luminous' and colour-lit.

"Weird Melancholy" stages the Australian bush as haunted house and presents its pieces through Gothic lenses - the uncanny, the repressed (Aboriginal Australians), the haunted land. The reading isn't too forced, but not that many of the works (mostly paintings) especially caught at me; one exception, which I liked a lot, was Boyd's "Spring Landscape" (1959).

And "Nature/Revelation", concerned with enlivening a sense of the profundity of nature, frequently via the sublime, in the context of concerns about anthropogenic climate change. Several striking works here.

Berndnaut Smilde's interior photographs of clouds that he generated himself ("Nimbus II", 2012):

The full wall, life size charcoal-drawn sperm whale of Jonathan Delafield Cook (it even casts a shadow) - 2013:

And several luminously beautiful Ansel Adams photos (eg "Mt McKinley and Wonder Lake", 1947):

(w/ Derrick)

Clouds of Sils Maria

Clouds of Sils Maria seems to carry a lot on its surface, such that in some respects - notably the suggested but never directly determined reflection of the relationship between Sigrid and Helena in that between Binoche's Maria and Kristen Stewart's Valentine, and indeed between Maria and Chloe Grace Moretz's Jo-Ann, the rather obvious metaphor of the Maloja Snake (the cloud formation, in addition to the synecdoche (?) that is Maloja Snake the play) and the somewhat obvious (dangerously close to trite) dialogue about art and movies themselves - it seems decidedly simple, even artlessly so.

Yet, in contrast to that impression, the film as whole registers as profoundly poetic and enigmatic, not least in the satisfyingly elusively real feeling to its rendition of its characters and their relationships and interactions and the spaces between them, legible in what they say (or don't), and how, and also in their physicality (and that latter rarely, if indeed ever, in a way that's explicit or obvious). Curiously, in those respects the film that it most reminded me of was Closer, with which it doesn't otherwise have a great deal in common (at least not on the surface).

And then there's the direction more generally, unexpected cuts and transitions and all, along with the generally undistracting but always intelligent and occasionally outright beautiful cinematography, especially in and amidst the Alps where much of the action - such as it is - takes place.

So really, it's on that deeper, more allusive level that Clouds really does operate, in a way that's integrated with the - increasingly interesting, the more its implications sink in, even without the meta-textual dimension of Assayas' own casting, which itself is, I think, integral - layers of plot, character and theme. For all that it appears to lay out on the surface what its concerns are, there's something altogether more slippery and difficult to pin down going on in its interstices (which, of course, are fundamental to what it, itself, is) - to which there's clue, climax and anti-climax in the ending of the second part and the unresolved epilogue.

Speaking of casting, as an aside, Juliette Binoche is a personal icon essentially entirely because of Three Colours: Blue in ways that have to do with every aspect of her self as an actor including her beauty (still luminous many years on) and Moretz has been a welcome streak of energy through everything that I've seen her in throughout her shortish career, but for mine Kristen Stewart (who I've always said was a really rather good actor) is the stand out, producing an unaffected, naturalistic performance that brings Valentine to life while - ipso facto but this is all too rarely the case in film - also holds within it a sense of unnamed depths and mystery.

(w/ Jade)

Musical slices

Last weekend, North Carlton in the morning, listening to Plant/Krauss on Raising Sand; walked into store and took headphones off to discover Led Zeppelin all around, something from Houses of the Holy or Physical Graffiti I think, but either way a good three decades plus earlier.

Today, Southbank. Cold air and sunshine and green apple ice cream; and, somehow aptly, Belle and Sebastian.

And then, just a few minutes ago, walking home with some groceries after a run around Princes Park, "Dirty Dream Number Two" came on and even after all these listens it brought a smile to my face (...dream two you couldn't see her face, but you saw everything else...).

Inherent Vice (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Jonny Greenwood bits and pieces, other bits and pieces (including Can and Neil Young), all up not particularly much of a listening experience out of film context I don't think ... the one with Joanna Newsom narrating Pynchon prose over musical murmurings good though. 

Dan Gardner - Future Babble: Why Pundits Are Hedgehogs and Foxes Know Best

The argument in a nutshell (the diagnosis is convincing; the overall prescription of a healthy scepticism of highly confident predictions by hedgehogs likewise; the specific sketching of how this might be applied in the context of climate change somewhat less so in being somewhat unsophisticated in treatment of real world implications and opportunity cost):

The world is complicated and not linear.

The illusion of control.

Tendency to see patterns and causation where there is none; difficulty with randomness.

Optimism bias - feeling good about own judgements.

CONFIRMATION BIAS.

Status quo bias: tomorrow will be like today, only more so (tendency to project current trends). Affected by anchoring effect from today's trends. Even more so by availability heuristic: the most recent is always freshest in our mind.

Dislike of uncertainty.

Power of authority; certainty convinces.

We remember the hits and not the misses. Experts' and media organisations' incentives reinforce this.

Cognitive dissonance - actively seek to avoid. Seek a story that avoids confronting a failed prediction.

Hindsight bias: knowing the outcome makes us judge it more likely than before we knew that outcome.

Foxes are better at predictions than hedgehogs.

Letters of Note compiled by Shaun Usher

Has inspired me (maybe) to start writing letters myself again; highlights both the text and the materiality of letters - the latter by reproducing the original, handwritten or typed or even inscribed into clay wherever possible. My favourite perhaps the one from the NASA person responding to a nun's question about how the expenditure on space exploration can be justified in a world of famine and want. Littered with little insights into what it is to be human and how we relate to each other on both an individual and a historical scale, as well as into a wide range of social, historical and cultural happenings large and small. (Started life on the web.)

Lydia Loveless - Indestructible Machine

Her previous and first lp, and also excellent (Somewhere Else has turned to be really outstanding - I haven't been able to shake it). There's a punkier edge to this one as well as some clearer rockabilly elements on songs like "Bad Way To Go", "Jesus Was A Wino" and "Do Right", but the voice and the tendency to jag electric guitar down the middle of a melody is the same, as is the overall songwriting style, and it's clearly recognisable as the work of the same artist. Favourites: "Steve Earle", "Learn to Say No".

"Timeshare" (Malthouse)

The first part (the first day) plays mostly as enjoyable almost-farce, the tone off-kilter but then that's what one expects from Lally Katz and it's entertaining and hints at something deeper, but the second, coming after the reveal about the identity of the narrator, the appearance of the sea turtle (another in Katz's line of magic-symbolic animals) and seemingly climactic events of the first night takes on an increased poignancy as well as throwing the musical numbers and kitsch lightness of the previous day into a new light as Sandy's condition is revealed.

Typically for this most intriguing of playwrights (along with Declan Greene, the clear standout of the current Australian crop for mine), the true nature of the slipping through time, slipping out of the world, isn't clearly resolved but instead - more satisfyingly - is allowed to coexist (perhaps aptly) in something like a perpetual oscillation between a literal and a more fantastic explanation, where both could be 'true' at once.

Anyhow, also, good set, sympathetic direction, strong performances from all four of the actors. Very good.

(w/ Laura F, Erandathie and Meribah)

Emily St John Mandel - Station Eleven

I do love a good post apocalypse, and this is very good - a thoughtful, well-written novel of art, loss, humanity, connections and (somehow unobtrusively despite it being central to the narrative, not to mention the presence/absence of a significant character named Miranda) the enduring power of Shakespeare's work that takes place both after and - in flashback - before the catastrophic flu that delineates its events, and works as effectively as thrilling, kept me up late to finish reading it tale of survival as elegant literary exploration of its themes.

Also, I see, winner of this year's tournament of books.

"New15" (ACCA)

Shakey Graves - And The War Came

Sort of a folkish bluesy mix with some country thrown in there, including nicely crunching electric guitars. Pretty good, though a bit uneven.

John Wolseley - "Heartlands and Headwater" (NGV Australia)

When I was younger - much younger - I liked watercolours. Indeed, they were the first method of painting or making art that I remember being specifically aware of. It's tempting to think that it was the blurry dreaminess that drew me, although it's probably just as likely that that's me projecting aesthetic tastes that only became dominant much later in life onto a younger self who was blissfully far more straightforward. Who can say?

Anyhow, that early affection didn't particularly last into adolescence or subsequently, but I was reminded of it by John Wolseley's exhibition, which tackles his broad subject of Australian landcapes and particularly wetlands using watercolours amidst a range of many other things (below - "A Daly River Creek, NT", far from the most diverse, but also taking in pastel, pencil, charcoal, ink and woodcut).

It's a very nice show, unfolding in layers of painting, drawing, collage and assemblage including - entirely aptly - organic material from nature as well as the effects of engagement with nature (eg via frottage).