Columns
Ordinary Joys
Ever since my brother, my sister and I were small, my dad had a vision for us to become surfers. He had a shimmering dream of his three kids gliding down the face of waves out at sea, perfectly executing 360 degree turns with the grace and power of Kelly Slater. He has tried hard […]
5 March 2021
Art Musings: Monumental Questions
content warning: colonialism, racism, civil war Looking beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, the year 2020 may well be known as the year of the monument. In previous years, there had been little international debate surrounding the continued presence of colonial monuments—a representation of a bygone and problematic history. Indeed, in 1927, writer Robert Musil famously proclaimed […]
5 March 2021
Jennifer’s Body: Hell is a Teenage Girl
content warning: sexism, graphic violence and gore. Spoilers for Jennifer’s Body. Horror has always been a tool to explore girlhood and female virtue. But what Jennifer’s Body (2009) does differently—and so well—is show a teenage girl in her ultimate form: brutal, cringey, flawed, and most importantly, still a child. The script narrates the story of […]
5 March 2021
Slogans and Nonsense
“What, announce a policy without a slogan? Are you mad?”- overheard from Scott Morrison’s office, presumably. There’s a problem with slogans in politics: when political slogans age into accepted wisdom and the taint of ideology is forgotten, political partialities can be passed off as facts of nature. Of course, arguments are much easier when your […]
5 March 2021Race Against the Odds
content warning: racism The Not-so-distant Colonial Past and “Post-racism” In recent years, the idea of “post-racism” has become increasingly popular, with people often stating that “racism no longer exists”, particularly in Western countries, including Australia. I have personally experienced this. One experience I had was when I was in a college tutorial telling my peers […]
22 February 2021
The Curtain Calls For You to Think: Friends
The Mean Girls movie taught us that “on Wednesdays we wear pink” and taught me that I related the most to that girl who cried and wanted to bake a cake made of “smiles and rainbows” because I too have a lot of feelings.
9 December 2020
The Curtain Calls for You to Think: Doing it Right
don’t think any of us can say that we aren’t aware of the trend that is the “remake”. We have Rebecca on Netflix, The Boys in the Band from my previous piece, the fan favourite Disney’s Mulan retold, and a new version of the Little Mermaid is in the works. I’m not going to say that the movie industry is running out of ideas, because new ideas, plots and films are constantly being released; personally, I just feel less excited.
9 December 2020
A Third Culture Kid’s Experience: Sensing Your Belonging
The girl I love thinks belonging looks like blank walls re-envisioned. Bedrooms of low-sheen warm white have become her cross-cultural companion, a familiar stalker and a friendly face, the constant same hue amongst the apartments in her growing inventory. Several taped photographs offer small windows to past lives of different values: friendships with those she hasn’t seen in two years, a family portrait from graduation, and a Caravaggio reprint of Bacchus—these images are staples on her plain canvas, family and art, the enduring forces in her resettling. Though the act of taping photographs speaks to the momentary ownership of a space, a personalisation of the generic in temporary life, she doesn’t mind. These white walls speak of the possibility for new photographs, waiting to be taken beyond the door’s threshold.
8 December 2020
Rebecca Clarke, Margaret Bonds & Sally Whitwell
Welcome to Canon in She, a column that celebrates the beautiful music of composers who identify as women. In this edition, we have a violist who wrote for a variety of instruments, a resourceful African American pianist who wrote a Christmas cantata, and an Australian pianist who writes lyrical and quirky music for various instruments.
2 December 2020
A Third Culture Kid’s Experience: An Ode to Overthinking Choices
In my dream, I stand at the triple crossroads. Oily yellow light spills down onto the bitumen, barely illuminating the roads’ beginnings. To the eastern fork, I see the klongs of Bangkok, hear an echo over the long-tail boats: “this way to your past”. To the western way, the Australian countryside stretches infinitely, drowning in heavy rainfall: “this way to your future”. To the northern road, a Janus-voice of twin-speaking conjurers, beckoning me to choose their shadowed path: “our ways are unknown”.
24 November 2020