235 years of nothing to celebrate. No pride in genocide.
Always was always will be.
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Invasion Day
Tag Archives: Victoria
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Invasion Day
232 years of nothing to celebrate. Always was always will be.
Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities in Australia
You all know how bad the fires are in Australia. Please donate to Indigenous communities who are doing it especially hard. It’s Indigenous land that’s burning.
Fire Relief Fund for First Nations Communities
As Fires have struck the East Coast of this sacred land recently it has lead to significant destruction and loss of masses of flora and fauna and saddly the lives of peoples. Very saddly, many First Nations people’s have been affected by these tragic circumstances with losses of homes/ severe damage to property and important parts of the landscape . Many of these community have now been forced to evacuate the region’s of their homes and forced to seek temporary / ongoing living arrangements in other parts of Victoria and NSW .
As a result of this, this is a fundraiser initiated and maintained by myself Neil Morris a Yorta Yorta , First Nations man. I am a community rights and empowerment advocate for my fellow First Nations peoples. In my work in this capacity, I have developed this Fundraiser with direct consultation with and upon the request of Fire affected First Nations Communities across Eastern parts of so called Australia such as Gippsland and the South Coast of NSW . This includes those whom have lost their homes and been forced to evacuate to other regions .
The aim of this fundraiser is to offer a culturally sensitive , specific direct support to some of those communities with critical costs to cover expenses including the following
– temporary relocation costs (hotel expenses , ,fuel , renting ,possible medical needs)
-other basic amenity and emergency relief costs to assist with this very difficult time such clothing , miscellaneous vital personal items.
-refurbishment of damaged property where applicable
-resettling expenses where applicable
-ongoing rental support where necessary
-replacement of vital items i.e damaged medical equipment, clothing , toiletries , other vital personal belongings.
The funds raised will be distributed via the purchase of requested necessary items where appropriate / will be allocated directly to impacted community and/or community service co operatives/orgs to facilitate support to communities where possible in need of additional support upon a needs basis for those with emergency needs.
We acknowledge that these tragedies have occurred on Sacred Indigenous lands where Sovereignty has not been ceded. The ongoing connection of First Nations people’s to land and culture is critical to life on this land. We acknowledge our ancestors and elders past present and future.
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Australia Burning
It’s the satellite images that upset me the most. The vastness of it, the whole east coast of Australia burning, smoke so thick it blankets New Zealand. This is what the end of invasion, colonialism, genocide, and white supremacy looks like.
alpine bushfires
It’s all a bit like Guangzhou in summer really, a dirty jaundiced pall hanging over the city, the slight breeze wafting foul stenches, each end of the street losing focus into a smokey mist and a baking heat pressing the life out. The only thing missing is the heavy blanket of humidity endlessly rotting the city back into the river delta. The difference is in Guangzhou it’s just a mix of tropical haze and unrelenting pollution, while in Melbourne it’s the detritus of bushfires gutting the Alpine National Park.
more on the Small Arts Sector Research Project
A couple of days ago I wrote about the new Small Arts Sector Research Project the Arts Industry Australia (Victoria) are involved in and Deloitte who are conducting the research. I missed the meeting this morning, so I can’t say much about that, but they have announced a survey as a part of the project to conduct research into the size and nature of the state’s arts sector, with a particular focus on small unfunded organisations.
As much as I want to be really supportive of any projects that could benefit the eviscerated state of small arts groups in Melbourne and Victoria, there is a lurking nemesis in me who remains unimpressed and can’t fathom why research is again being conducted. Australia Council has a junkies habit for blowing large wads of money on reports; when I was at VCA the same thing seemed to be occurring, and now this, in which I am trying to think happy thoughts but reading the first question of the survey, I went “meh…”
Is your organisation’s average revenue from all sources more than $3 million annually? If your organisation has been around for less than 1 year, please answer based the projected annual revenue.
Look, I might be a bit slow, but “based the projected annual revenue” I have this niggly suspicion isn’t well-formed English, and possibly missing an “on”, but doilooklikeliknow?. Perhaps it’s just my irrational hatred of apostrophe-death in “your” for “you’re” that is spurring my language fascism, but if you’re getting government funding at least make the sentence legible, especially if the survey is specifically aiming at organisations where English isn’t a first language.
“The results of this study will inform future policy and funding decisions. So the (questionnaire) represents a golden opportunity for small arts organisations to have a say.”
I was about to go through some of the questions wherein providing a meaningful answer is precluded by the suppositions of the survey itself, but realised I was about to get waspish, and really without daily chocolate I do get a bit psychotic. So, please go and fill out the survey now. It is open for the ridiculously short time of one week from today, so unless you have no life like myself and hoover up announcements in a facile pretense of purpose you probably won’t hear about it until some time mid-2000-and-x when the results get published and wtf?!? when did they do this survey? is your considered response.
To save everyone time though I have done my own esteemed and peer-assessed research and can give the results forthwith: The answer to the question of “the issues facing small arts communities” is money. Money money money money. Can I say it any more clearer? We need more money! Unless the results of these surveys cause vast tides of currency to flow into art – not edifices or administration but new art made by artists – … arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic springs to mind. Must … have … money … …
An anecdote: The only time I have ever been in a situation making dance that could not be solved by throwing more money at it was funnily enough in China, where at 6:1 exchange rate, I could throw quite considerable piles of Chairman Mao’s mug at any impediment I might encounter. I have never had that giddy experience in Australia.
Small Arts Sector Research Project
For all the independent artists around in Melbourne this Friday, the Arts Industry Council (Victoria) has announced this meeting. Please RSVP to info@aicv.org.au.
Arts Industry Council (Victoria)
– the independent voice for the arts
NOVEMBER NETWORKING MEETING
Small Arts Sector Research Project
Please distribute through your networks!!
You are invited to an industry networking meeting for a briefing on the Small Arts Sector Research Project.
Briefing by project staff from Deloittes, commissioned by Arts Victoria
10am – 12 noon, Friday, 1st December
Hoopla! Room, Malthouse Theatre,
Sturt Street, SOUTHBANKPLEASE RSVP TO THIS EMAIL
AIC(V) has been pushing for research into the small arts sector for many years and now Arts Victoria has commissioned Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu to conduct research into the small arts sector, focussing on small organisations. Small arts organisations play a critical role in the cultural vitality of Victoria.
Learn more about the project
Does the research include me?
Learn how you can contribute to this research
Time is of the essence, as the research is being conducted now – to be finalised BEFORE THE END OF THE YEARAIC(V) are hoping that this research will provide key information about the size and nature of small arts organisations and other organisations with arts activity across the state.
“This research aims to determine the scale of the entire small arts sector, not just the funded sector, and to better understand the characteristics of small arts organisations across Victoria including the extent of their activity, the people involved, and their contribution to the state.
The results of this study will inform future policy and funding decisions. So the research represents a golden opportunity for small arts organisations to have a say.
The study’s success hinges on the participation of all small arts organisations in Victoria and involves the completion of a basic questionnaire by small arts organisations.
The research aims to cover the full spectrum of Small Arts organisations across all art forms, those who currently receive Government support, those who operate independently and those who may need support in the future. To plan for the future we need to have a clear understanding of the issues facing small arts communities.”
Yours,
Kath Papas,
On behalf of the Board, AIC(V)
liberals arts policy: go fuck yourselves
I can’t quite articulate exactly how much I want to see the Victorian Liberals hurled bodily into a swampy, fetid morass where they are set upon and devoured in a berserk frenzy by a herd of wild, blood-crazed boars. Such a circus I would cheer, and imagine a pre-feeding promenade in which they are lanced with banderillas and generally tormented, though I imagine the sport these spineless cretins might provide would show a profoundly unsatisfying lack of entertainment.
It is this spurious proclamation once again as arts being elitist and not ‘of and for the people’ that is the Liberals platform for the state’s arts funding. It is absolutely despicable and purposefully offensive. The Liberals arts platform, which specifically and intentionally snubs any dialogue with actual artists in the state can be reduced to this: regional eisteddfods good, Melbourne arts bad. This, we are supposed to believe will return Victoria to the forefront of arts excellence.
A couple of days ago, William Gibson, who remains one of the foundations of my, I guess you could say, imagined utopian world view, quoted another author whom I haven’t read. Zadie Smith in an interview on KCRW said this about the role of readers:
But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.
Contrast this, in which the audience is afforded an intelligence, sophistication, and active engagement and appreciation of a work with the Liberal Party policy in which as dumb fodder for sub-literate trolls, a work of art is entertainment to be passively consumed, and in which any qualities from the preceding millenniums, the transcendental capacity of art to shape and elevate our world, are annulled and replaced by a policy to restore accountability to arts spending.
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lerderderg gorge tunnel
A trip to Lerderderg Gorge yesterday for a leisurely afternoon of hiking along the Tunnel trail, a hacked laceration through a low granite saddle topped with a century of dry forest detritus, a small, nicked gash as if some giant hand smashed a too soft blade on the up-fold between two streams, the vertically layered stone fracturing only enough for the separate flows to mingle, in truth neatly and painfully cut by the hands of miners with ill-suited tools and lascivious gold-speckled craving.
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patterson, nar nar & bunyip
Following a ripping friday night of Pastis and champagne, I spent the weekend with Bonnie and Paul south at Cape Patterson and in Nar Nar Goon, eating fish and chips, walking on the beach, driving in the rain, more eating and drinking till late, walking through Bunyip State Forest for an afternoon, avoiding the rolling thunderstorm across a late lunch, and more driving in the heavy night rain.
