Sally Rugg - How Powerful We Are

I already suspected Sally Rugg was a pretty great human being and reading How Powerful We Are, her account of the campaign for same sex marriage, has reinforced that plenty. It's hugely clear, readable and interesting, with just the right balance between campaign, social movement and personal, political and social/human context. 

Particularly interesting for me were the sections about the Yes campaign's strategy and its consequences - the decision that the goal was maximising the total proportion of yes votes (rather than, for example, aiming for every electorate to return a vote greater than 50% or progressing a positive narrative around LGBTIQ rights) and therefore on getting out the vote and mobilising '1s' and '2s' rather than seeking to win the votes, or change the minds, of '3s' let alone '4s'. Admirably, Rugg is very clear on the costs of this decision and the harm caused - to causes and to people - in pursuing that objective in such a focused way.

I also liked the bits on the more tactical dimensions of activism and advocacy - the importance of a clear theory of change, the competing frames used by the two opposing campaigns (children vs modern families) and the importance and difficulty of avoiding fighting the issue on your opponent's terms (however tempting to rebut misinformation, such as about Safe Schools, rates of abuse/harm to children of queer parents, transgender identity and sexuality and so much more - "facts bounce off frames"), the relentless positivity and non-threatening messaging and delivery through predominantly white, middle to upper class and heterosexual or passing speakers (another choice whose consequences in terms of exclusion of intersectional and even more marginalised experiences she is explicit about), her description of the spectrum of collaboration with the media,[*] a two by two with level of central control on one axis and level of disruptiveness on the other, the creation of a 'hero's journey' narrative in which the hero is members of the social movement being generated and not the campaigners who are mobilising and coordinating.

It's also important and compelling - though not always easy reading - in how it highlights the harm caused by the whole national 'discussion' about the worth and belonging of LGBTIQ people, including in youth and adult suicide and self-harm, as well as the internal conflict, bullying and exclusion that is surely endemic to every set of progressive movements but especially acute when the stakes were as high and public as they were over the period that Rugg's book covers.

Anyway all in all a really terrific book for a whole range of reasons. Intensely practical as well as principled, not to mention passionate and quite inspiring.

[*] Breaking the law / whistleblowing, exclusives, strong media releases, deliberately disrupting the media in a way they'll like, Streisand effect, media hoaxes, fake news.

Buddy & Julie Miller - Breakdown on 20th Ave South

Predictably good but low-key. The melody of "Everything is Your Fault" reminds me of Pollyanna's "Brittle Then Broken".

"Killing the Planet is Against My Religion - Tejopala Rawls" (Federation Wharf)

Climate activism, Buddhism, etc. Comedy, part of Fringe.

(w/ R, Angela + her mum)

Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

Titanic Rising is enormous. Maybe it's apt, given the title and also the music itself, that the album's immensity took a while to impress itself on me - it took quite a few listens for me to get it, despite expecting to like it after 2017's Front Row Seat to Earth. The lushness was a barrier, but in the way of these things, once the flip had occurred, it became part of the attraction.

The first four songs - "A Lot's Gonna Change", "Andromeda", "Everyday" and "Something to Believe" - are all relatively conventional pop songs, at least by Mering's woodsy standards, but after the mid-album instrumental title track, the tenor shifts subtly deeper, with "Movies", "Mirror Forever" and "Wild Time" all seeming somehow more waterily below-the-surface than the opening run; then there's the gentle "Picture Me Better" and another instrumental, "Nearer to Thee", to end.

These songs sound like soundtracks to a movie; listening to them reminds me why that's a quality I've so often sought in music.

N K Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

Deeper and wider, and similarly good. (The Fifth Season)

NGV Australia

Jenny Watson - "The Inner Stable" (1986), its dreaminess and emotional content much clearer when actually in its presence

Callum Morton - "Gas and Fuel" (2002), complete with repeated calls of "help me, please"

Peter Purves Smith - "The Pond" (1940), the surrealism subtle but effective

(w/ R & L)

Downton Abbey

Never watched the tv series, found myself watching the movie. Provokingly gentle, and I found the sheer privilege, conservatism, deference to authority and low stakes hard to ignore.

(w/ Erandathie)

Rachel Cusk - Kudos

These novels of Cusk's are so mysterious and bewitching in their effect that I have little idea whether my more muted response to Kudos - the last in the trilogy following Outline and Transit - is due to the properties of the book itself or where I've been at while reading it.

The similarities to its predecessors are far more pronounced than any differences, and in Kudos too there are repetitions, some - like dogs and musical instruments - carrying over from Transit, and others - like precocious children and people distressed by and sensitive to lies - new as far as I can tell. Also new is the spectre of Brexit, and a greater explicitness in the prominence of story and metaphor, the female experience (although, flipping back through Outline to verify that impression, nearly the first page I opened to had someone recounting a dream where she and her friends all began menstruating profusely at the opera to the horror and disgust of the passing men ...), and the disappointments of marriage and the disappointments between parents and children.

I've read some reviews arguing that Faye is more visible - more tangible - in Kudos than in the two earlier books, but I didn't particularly find that. For me, Transit was the peak of this puzzling and quite great sequence; Kudos is the first to feel a tiny bit over-determined in its language, imagery and faint through-lines. Still, for large sections I was enthralled, and all in all found plenty to grapple with - at times in that way of grappling with the text's own elusiveness, and in other places directly with the ideas that it poses in overt terms.

Derry Girls seasons 1 and 2

Very charming and full of heart, also very funny and very 90s in its soundtrack.

The Australian Dream

Its story and message are compelling - focused on Adam Goodes and concertina-ing out to contextualise his story and experience in Australia's historical and present day racism. The presentation was less so (not bad, but not as compelling) - the weaving through of the talking heads was generally effective, especially because many of them were not just after the fact commentators but actors in their own right (eg Michael O'Loughlin, Eddie McGuire, Andrew Bolt), but the reenactments sapped some of the interest for me and the overall narrative didn't quite punch through. Still it was worth watching.

(w/ R)

"Fall of the Prince: Louise Milligan" (MWF)

Louise Milligan in conversation with Martin McKenzie-Murray about her investigation of George Pell and book about same. She was very impressive and the session worthwhile.

(w/ R)

Golden Shield (Anchuli Felicia King, MTC)

Engaging, interesting and multi-faceted. For me, the strongest element was the play's treatment of its theme of translation - staged through the figure of the narrator-translator himself (a constant observer and interpolater, making literal the idea that translation is a character in its own right), the acts of translation (interpreting) involved between Chinese and American actors and institutions, the multi-vocal and multi-perspectival presentation of many of the scenes, and the links made between intercultural and interpersonal translation, communication, and speech.

Also interesting but less satisfyingly developed, including in their interconnections, were the personal stories (both those of the central sisters Julie and Eva, and the dissident and his wife, were more sketched than fully fleshed out and a bit told rather than showed) and the social and political implications of China's state surveillance system as played out through the 'great firewall of China' and the Communist Party's centralised/decentralised apparatus to monitor and crack down on dissenting voices, and as writ large theatrically via the large screen projections of the action on stage.

Some aspects of the writing weren't as tight as they could have been - the little sister's 'breakthrough' that sets up the case seemed elementary, the erroneous implication that a 400% increase in speed is the same as being four times faster, the leading questions during examination in chief (the last being most forgivable). But overall Golden Shield was very good - high quality and intriguingly layered, and making good use of the theatrical form alongside its prestige-televisual elements.

(w R)

Two Brunswick galleries

"Morganna Magee: Teenage Wildlife" (Counihan Gallery)

Documentary-style photos of three teenage girls - all related to each other - who have become teen mothers in country Australia (Victoria I think). Good, and made better by the accompanying text contextualising them.

"Daisy and her mother" (2016)

"Cinta Vidal: Urban" and "Chris Leib: Primate Directive" (Beinart Gallery)

I liked the city ones with their sidelong perspectives, especially the Asian ones (eg Hong Kong), maybe because they tended to be a bit busier. The primate ones weren't my style - too garishly pop/kitsch.

(w/ R)

Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

Swimming Home reminded me of both The White Hotel and The Magus, though it's much leaner than either; what it has in common with them is how much it seems to be about what's below the surface, driven by the unconscious. From its opening scene - which turns out later to be pivotal (as one might expect - but not in the way one might assume) as well as slipperily elided - it feels unstable, troubling, on the verge of sinister, in the way that desires and drives in the psychoanalytic sense can be when glimpsed. Hot Milk is the more sophisticated and deeper book, but this one (from 2011) has its way too. Kitty Finch, Joe Jacobs, his daughter Nina et al.

N K Jemisin - The Fifth Season

Excellent. An interesting and well-realised world whose underlying elements are similar enough to ours that its metaphors and literalised themes - especially relating to structural oppression, power and responsibility, social change, and humanity's relationship to the natural environment - punch hard. The three female protagonists whose stories weave through before gradually and satisfyingly linking - 'Essun' (or 'you'), Damaya and Syenite - all have enough depth to convince and their stories are each equally compelling, while each contributing to layering and unfurling the Stillness's culture, history and geology (a future-world version of ours?). I liked the casual social progressiveness of parts of its society too - one character is incidentally transgender, and polyamory features without being remarkable, not to mention its general pleasing non-whiteness.

QAG / GOMA

From visits on consecutive days.

QAG

William Delafield Cook's "A Haystack" (1982), its near-photo realism combining with the unusually close perspective to defamiliarise the subject. In another layer, it turns out the artist has also been inspired by encounters with ancient Greek temples.

Billy Benn Perrurle - "Artyetyerre - Harts Range" (2008).

GOMA

I liked the Ben Quilty exhibition. There's a gestural forcefulness even to his earlier paintings which deepens into something really interesting over time, through the Afghanistan war, the 'last supper' ones, and examinations of the violence and ghosts of Australia's settler history. By the end I was sold on the multi-panel Rorschach paintings too, with the technique adding more than just interest and an element of the spectacular to generate some real resonance.

"Rorschach after von Guerard" (2008)

"Farewell virginity" (2015) and "Joe Burger" (2006)

I wasn't in the mood for crowds so only had a quick look through the Margaret Olley exhibition, but saw enough to get a feel for why she's so popular - very appealing.

Sometimes art has something that enables it to transcend elements that ought to consign it to banality. An example: Anne Wallace's "Passing the River at Woogaroo Reach" (2015).

Daniel Crooks' "Phantom Ride" (2015). I've liked Crooks' spliced videos each time I've encountered them. This one has two channels, one facing forwards and the other backwards, as you ride along a succession of tram and train tracks through metro and regional Australia.