Vividly Sydney

Sydney has always shone out, but the Brian Eno exhibition Luminous makes it an artistic reality. As part of the city of Syd's Vivid festival, the sometimes-musician/sometimes-artist is curating an exhibition that will see 77 million images projected over the icon-loaded harbour until June 14th. The light show combines with concerts from Ladytron, Battles and Lee Scratch Perry and other events to put the city centrestage. It makes for quite a spectacle as the Opera House blushes from hibiscus flower to camouflage - the use of khaki making the building anything but invisible.

Usually the building leaves a dirty big carbon bootprint. It sucks in the same amount of electricity as a town of 25,000 and uses enough cabling to run from Sydney to Canberra (Australia's token political capital) and back. To address the balance the Smart Light Walk is a tour around the harbour that aims to turn off more lights than it switches on. By wandering through 25 light installations, you can see alternative energy sources at work and low energy options as well as be part of the switch-off campaign to make Australia's unofficial capital more energy efficient.

The yin to the city's yang is the Gloom Festival, a sly protest at the spending of $7million on Vivid that will leave Sydneysider artists out of the spotlight. Promoting itself as a "Festival of Silence, Darkness and Lack of Resources", the anti-event was to include several people lying dead in the Opera House foyer with "artist" painted on their foreheads and showing up at the Museum of Contemporary Art dressed as a pachyderm to address the "elephant in the room" of funding cuts. Was? Yep, because today Gloom changed its tune when they were contacted by the Opera House asking them to get permits for their protests and only play dead in places that wouldn't inconvenience patrons. The website has since cancelled all its events. Perhaps the Opera House is twice shy after the last time the icon made a reluctant political statement.

















Images courtesy of Mondayne via his Flickr, and Camouflage - Sydney Opera House photo by avlxyz. And thanks to Amber Carvan for the Gloom tip-off.

Literally Melbourne

This weekend saw the opening of the Emerging Writers' Festival, a uniquely Melbourne event that was created to showcase "the best writers you haven't heard of yet". Friday's opening night First Word was a packed program that included hilarious sketches by List Operators, launching of the 48-Hour Play Generator, a Call to Arms from comic book writer Shane McCarthy and a hypothetical about the city's Centre for Books Writing and Ideas. And all this just on the opening night.

The ever-witty Michael Nolan hosted the hypothetical which looked at what the centre for Books Writing and Ideas could be as it prepares to open at the State Library of Voctoria later this year. There were a few digs at Readings becoming the official bookstore of the State Library of Victoria (the store's owner is a board member of the Centre) and some pointed remarks about it creating an ivory tower (from memory Nolan's delightful phrase was "Stalinism with good coffee"). Poet PiO was concerned about the lack of representation of poetry in the centre though this was confusing given that the Australian Poetry Centre is one of the centre's future tenants. He went on to ask The Age's literary editor, Jason Steger, why his book hadn't been reviewed in the paper.

The hypothetical format skips between debate and comedy so it wasn't the best way to discuss how the centre would work. This may have been the point made by Michael Williams, head of programming at the new centre, when he said that he hoped that interested people would be banging down his door to make sure the centre was representative. But, in keeping with the format, he also alluded to sorting out rivalries in the centre using cage fighting. Obviously the better forum to discus out why your book wasn't reviewed.

Melbourne is also showing off its City of Lit chops with the Independent Type exhibition running at the State Library. It's a impressive ramble through Victoria's publishing history ranging from kooky EW Cole to Lonely Planet patron saints, Tony and Maureen Wheeler.

Wordsworth is my homeboy

What are the first things you think of when you hear "Lake District"? Probably Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, picnics in the country and maybe squirrels. It's an area known for "pleasant weekenders" and homemade fudge, so most visitors don't come away with memories of gangster rap.

A piece of viral marketing genius featuring MC Nuts (a guy dressed in a squirrel suit) performing a retooled version of Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud seems to hit the wrong note to publicise this mild district. It was released in 2007 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the poem, but would the fusty poet enjoy this attempt to "engage the YouTube generation"? Judge for yourself:



Personally I hope we can see more of this comin' straight outta the Lakes. The red squirrels have long been involved in a turf war with the more dominant greys and yet not a single beatboxed-backed word has been heard about this gang fight. And it's a real trans-Atlantic smackdown with the greys invading from North America and driving out the reds. It's really bigger than hip hop's traditional East Coast vs West Coast rivalry with it's own martyrs and heroes. What about Potter's Tale of Squirrel Nutkin where the hero loses his tail in what amounts to a intra-gang power struggle with an owl? Surely this deserves to be represented as much as Tupac and Notorious BIG? If nothing else it could bring a new subjects to hip hop as not enough rhymes are based on discovering a particularly nice stretch of daffodils. Eminem better stop and smell the roses.

More than Rhubarb: Craig Silvey profile

Two years into writing his second novel, West Australian writer Craig Silvey thought he’d blown it. Instead of quickly following up his first book, Rhubarb, with a new offering, he found himself caught up in his own notes and losing sight of his characters. “I kept expanding it and it turned into this amorphous blob and I just got lost inside it. It just got a bit big on me,” Silvey says down the phoneline from Fremantle. “I was kind of beginning to lose faith in it. I had this cold sweat and woke up with an idea of Jasper Jones.”

The success of Rhubarb put the pressure on Silvey. It was named the One Book of the Perth Festival and scored him the Sydney Morning Herald Young Novelist award. There were even comparisons with another WA literary titan Tim Winton, which Silvey humbly dismisses as “very flattering for me and equally unflattering for him”. It all left Silvey cornered with an out of control manuscript and some big expectations. His solution was to “critically pan myself but then bring myself life with Jasper.”

The story came tapping at his window late at night just like the part-Aboriginal title character of his new book, Jasper Jones, comes to visit the geeky narrator, Charlie. “I just had this opening kernel of an idea and it wouldn’t let me go and I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. Once I started Jasper I felt so incredibly guilty about shelving the second book that I was working crazy hours. In 2007 I rarely left my room.”

The idea that seized him was of a small town murder that Jasper knows will be pinned on him because of his troublemaking reputation. Late at night Jasper sneaks up to Charlie’s window looking for help and we’re drawn into a story of small town outsiders. The tension between wanting to belong and being different is clearest in Charlie’s best mate Jeffrey Lu, a Vietnamese-born boy who is trying to break into the town cricket side despite the racist jibes of local yobbos and even the coach.

For Silvey characters not only dictate where the story goes but become part of his life. “You start to think of them as people you know, as old friends. The strangest sensation is when they start invading your dreams and start really appearing to you as real people. It could be the start of some sort of psychosis,” Silvey laughs.

But all Silvey’s characters share the need to escape his fictional town of Corrigan. When asked about whether Corrigan is based on his own home town of Dwellingup Silvey hesitates before calling it a "rural blend" of towns he’s visited. “Country towns are just so cloying and pressing that you really crave something else. Particularly for kids who don’t fit into the machinery of a country town. Those on the outside can have a horrible experience.”

While the book is set in the 1960s in the paranoid wake of Perth’s Nedlands murders, it feels very contemporary. Racism and outsider still strike a chord with Australians in country towns as much as big cities. “It could be a country town now,” Silvey agrees. In Jasper Jones the word ‘sorry’ is carved into eucalypts and rusty car doors as Charlie reflects it “means you feel the pulse of other people’s pain… and saying it means you take a share of it.”. It’s a reminder after lat year’s historic Parliamentary apology to Aboriginal people that there’s still a share to be taken.

Not that the book is heavy with issues and murder. Characters trade hypotheticals on how pirates could find half-fish mermaids attractive and whether it would be better to have a hat made of spiders or penises for fingers. Silvey delivers warm characters rather than sermons. This love of characters saw Silvey collaborate on The World According to Warren, a children’s book based on the guidedog from Rhubarb, because “I sort of felt like in Rhubarb he was treated unfairly so he got the opportunity to set the record straight.”

Whether it’s the Jeffrey Lu, Eleanor the blind heroine of Rhubarb or her guidedog, Silvey is comfortable in other people’s skins and occasionally their fur. “I try not to panic and deal with things as sensitively as possible and try to flesh these people out as characters first, which is what they are. They’re human beings – well they’re not real human beings, but you know.” With a five year wait between books, Silvey has already started hearing his real or imaginary voices guiding him to another book. “I’m working on the third one, but it’s just finding the time in between banging on about myself,” Silvey laughs.

A version of this article originally appeared in The Big Issue, No. 328.

An Open Letter to Vladimir Putin

Dear Vlad,

I didn't know whether to address you as Prime Minister, President or Your Oil and Gas Baroniness, but out of respect I stopped short of dude. I know you're a busy guy what with the judo dvd and stashing that alleged fortune (will those journalists never stop their investigating?), so I thought I'd send you a quick heads-up on tourism in Mother Russia.

Firstly, what's up with that visa? You have to get someone to invite you into the country (who you pay a fee to), then you have to go to the embassy (who unsurprisingly take a fee) and then when you get to Russia you have to register the visa at every hotel (who also take a... wait for it... fee!). If I didn't know any better I'd swear you were trying to talk people out of visiting the Land of the Bear. And then there's all those uniformed characters (basically anyone who can match their pants to their shirt will try to be an authority in Russia) checking papers to see if they can fine tourists if they don't have all the papers registered and triple stamped. It's hardly welcoming with open arms.

Okay so let's say your visa checks out, then there's those 'tourist prices'. Nobody minds pay a few more kopecks for a few attractions but when you get into most museums there won't be any English (or French or Japanese, or... oh no wait there might be some German) signs so most tourists will feel like they've blown their cash to be confused. And how about that 'photography pass'? It can't be to protect the art works or historical artefacts, because otherwise there would be no photography at all. Plus museums seem to be staffed exclusively by cranky ex-Soviets with merit badges in yelling at photographers regardless of passes.

The weird thing is we still had fun in Russia and felt it could have a thriving tourism industry. Now I know you're going to tell me to take it to Medvedev, that he's running the show now and you're just the Prime Minister. But he's pretty busy looking out for Gazprom (the company he used to chair) and talking to the kids through his videoblogging. Tourism in Russia needs a take-charge, throw-people-on-the-ground, former KGB agent kinda guy to whip it into shape. Whaddya say, dude?

Warmest regards

Hackpacker

PS. Alternatively you could run a competition like Queensland's Best Job in the World. I mean people are still telling me to enter and the winner was annouced a week ago. You could set yours in Siberia and even if it didn't bring any publicity, it could put a lot of journalists on ice.

[Image courtesy of www.kremlin.ru.]

Great Head for Radio

In the spruiking of the Big Trip, I've done a couple of fun radio spots. I was interviewed on the Peter Greenberg show, which was a phone hook-up with the host in Barbados. It zipped by in seconds and had me thinking I should only do destinations where I can tan. Another phone hook-up was with Travel in 10 with a great an excellent Canadian host. And I even got a guernsey on Life Matters with the smooth baritone of Richard Aedy. But none of these was as much fun as getting in the studio with RRR Breakfasters for a chat.

This month Breakfaster, Sam Pang, is off to Russia to cover Eurovision so the good folks at the Rs asked me back to give him some travel tips on Moscow. After much giggling, vodka tasting and scary mentions of Vladimir Putin's KGB career, there might even have been some advice for Sam (this file is 5meg and advice is in the last ten minutes - you've been warned). Mostly though it was just a yukfest with Sam saying I was just "doing a top five" of gags rather than giving him any information he could use. As I was leaving, calls started coming in from what I assumed were complaints from the Russian Australian Association and death threats from Putin's people. Still the beauty of radio is that nobody can see you so it will be a while before the hitmen track me down.

Also this week my article on Australian seasonal menus also appeared. Chefs and cooks alike agreed that Australia doesn't fit the mould for strict seasons and at the moment it's the economic climate influencing their menus more than the mercury.

Brack is back

John Brack made me move to Melbourne. His iconic painting, Collins St 5pm, takes you into his view of the city as he waited for his friend to knock-off work. But more than his bystander sketching you get a soap opera of faces - from the pinching at the eyes of the Henry Lawson lookalike to the plummy cheeks of the woman pushing behind him. And they're all grimly heading in the same direction.

The National Gallery of Victoria is currently running a retrospective of Brack's work that sweeps through his career. There's the brief period in 1956 where he headed out to Flemington to paint 'the sport of kings' but came back only with gargoyle jockeys and undertaker punters. He took on Barry Humphries cross dressing as Dame Edna Everidge and captures the strangeness of both.

On the walls is a quote from Brack himself about his charicaturing of people that makes them look sometimes like horror-movie ghouls and sometimes comic book heroines:

What I paint is what interests me most, that is, people; the Human Condition...
A large part of the motive is... the desire to understand and, if possible, to illuminate.

Later Brack seems to have become disenchated with people painting objects - most notably quills and pencils that march and fight in a disappointingly human way. Then he uses postcards to summarise human civilisations in a more abstract style. It's the artist continuing to challenge himself as his career moves on.

But for many gallery visitors, it's all about Collins Street, 5pm. There's a rather cheeky piece of hanging here as the piece directly opposite it is The Bar (below). It's set slightly after 5pm as the notorious six o'clock swill means that men are throwing down pots before the pub's early closing times that blighted 1950s Australia. So there's the rush from work and the mania of the pub. Between them, stands this determinedly smiling woman who seems to get the joke of the painting she's in and the one she's facing.
(Images courtesy of NGV site, but these low-res shots really don't do them justice - you need to see them to really feel their punch).