Shorty

This is Shorty Jangala Robertson. Jangala is his skin name, telling us which family group he belongs to. This belonging is more important than money, possessions or anything else for that matter. It is at the core of a complex mutual obligation system here in Yuendumu. Hang around Warkurlangu Aboriginal Arts centre long enough and one of the old women might give you a skin name. It will be used to greet you.


Every day Shorty comes to work. He waits at the gate for the centre to open. He waited on Christmas day. He waited on the day of the riots. He likes to work. He sits outside on the veranda by a fire and paints Water Dreaming. He is a legend. He generates income for the whole community. His paintings have been collected by the AGNSW and the National Gallery.
Shorty’s dreaming country is Mt Theo. He sings the sacred chant that protects and nourishes the kids who stay at Mt Theo whilst they detox from petrol sniffing. The program there is world renowned because it works. Dedicated local elders and white fellers set it up ten years ago and it has saved generations of teenagers’ lives. Mt Theo works because they construct and maintain strong relationships with the kids, elders, teachers, parents, youth workers, health professionals and government bodies bridging the gulf between black and white.

You can stay at Warkurlangu as a volunteer. You have the privilege of making Shorty a cup of tea and help him to collect wood for his fire. He will allow you to mix his paints and help to protect the canvas from rain drops, fire sparks and the occasional dog. He is one of the Old People who receive a hot lunch of chops and potatoes each day from the Old Peoples Centre. He is one of the last of the ‘First Contact’ blackfellers who knew life in the desert before white people came and brought plentiful food, destroyed their waterholes and killed his kin in the Conniston massacre. In this massacre he lost his mum. She walked hundreds of kilometres to find him and bring him home.

http://www.warlu.com/

Embrace This

(Not) Living in Public

Ondi Timoner's documentary 'We Live in Public' is a cautionary tale that documents the crazy projects of dot com bubble millionaire Josh Harris. In the film we get to see the surveillance of one pre-911 art scene in New York: the hedonistic, pointless performances by those who wished to validate their lives by living them on camera. The film highlights some of the tacky aspects of humanity that are played out both on line as well as off line.

Unfortunately the mogul's 'art' projects lack design integrity. His social experiments are intrinsically cruel and paint a very bleak picture. They are devoid of any kind of conscience not to mention basic netiquette. They are to discerning audiences what junk food is to those of us who eat organic. We don't buy it.

It is my hope that we can educate the myspace generation to cherish their privacy and value the communities that support healthy limits.

So All May Eat

It is the intent of SAME Cafe to build a healthy community by providing a basic need of food in a respectful and dignified manner to anyone who walks through the door.
SAME Cafe is unique in the lack of a set menu as well as set prices. Daily selections are made using fresh, organic ingredients, and funded by the donations of patrons. Instead of a cash register, a donation box is available for one to pay what they felt their meal was worth, or to leave a little more and help out someone less fortunate. If a diner does not have sufficient money to leave, they are encouraged to exchange an hour of service. Our philosophy is that everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy food while being treated with dignity.

Playing for Change

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

So, How Did Matt Get People to Dance with Him?

Warlukurlangu Artists

Rosie Nangala Flemming
Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming) - Mikanji
2230/08
61 x 61 cm, 2008
$1035.00

Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Association of Yuendumu

www.warlu.com/warlukurlangu.wmv

Bridging the Gap

The Lucifer Effect

Informative conformity often occurs in situations in which there is high uncertainty and ambiguity. In an unfamiliar situation, we are likely to shape our behavior to match that of others. The actions of others inform us of the customs and accepted practices in a situation. Others inform us of what is right to do, how to behave in new situations.

We experience pressures to conform everyday, for good or for worse. A staple of a functioning society is that people follow social norms such as obeying traffic laws, respecting others’ property, and diffusing aggression in non-violent ways. However, conformity can have deleterious effects if one conforms automatically without questioning of the validity of social norms. In Nazi Germany, many ordinary people did not dissent to the ongoing atrocities because few other people resisted. Similarly, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the subjects who were randomly assigned as guards gradually adopted the behavior of cruel and demanding prison guards because that became the behavioral norm in an alien situation.

To resist the powers of group conformity: know what you stand for; determine how really important it is that these other people like you, especially when they are strangers; recognize that there are other groups who would be delighted to have you as a member; take a future perspective to imagine what you will think of your current conforming action at some time in the future.

Written by Philip Zimbardo and Cindy X. Wang 'Why We Conform: The Power of Groups'

Lucifer Goes To Church

Girl Effect

Sydney City Farm

Glover, the first community garden in Sydney is expanding to become a City Farm modelled on similar projects in NYC, London and the Collingwood Childrens' Farm in Melbourne. Situated at Callan Park, the rolling green parklands that have an amazing history housing convicts, psychiatric patients and art students has managed to remain un-privatised. The meeting this weekend is partly about ensuring the space is retained as a community site.

The vision for the City Garden is very clear and exciting. Read more about it here.

Thou Shalt Not Annoy

EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for "causing annoyance" to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.
The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.
Police and volunteers from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service will be able to direct people to cease engaging in conduct that "causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event".

source: SMH Article see also No To Pope Coalition Broken Rites

Linguistics expert Nick Riemer, from the University of Sydney, said the word annoy had its origins in the french word for annoyance - ennui. The Oxford Dictionary defines 'annoy' as causing "slight anger or mental distress'', but Dr Riemer said the word was extremely ambiguous. "One person's annoyance may be another person's freedom of expression,'' he said. Dr Riemer said the wording of the new laws would be a nightmare for those tasked with enforcing the legislation. "One guess is that [the lawmakers] did it very quickly and on the run. Or it may be that they wanted to pass the laws to placate someone but make them totally meaningless when challenged,'' he said.

image: Bryony Stacey No To Pope Rally

Learning To Love You More

Assignment #63

Make an encouraging banner.

Alice Hendy Bristol, UK

The GetUp Mob

Road Safety community advertisements in Victoria are renowned for their emotive realism and powerful message. For more info see TAC Pictures of You.

Song of Life

There is a tribe in East Africa in which the art of true intimacy is fostered even before birth. In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of conception, as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother's mind.

Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree. There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive. Once she has heard it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them.

After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old women and midwives of the village, so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song. After the birth, all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself.

It is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. The song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

Kornfield, Jack (1996), A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (Bantam, New York).

Sorry

Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd 13th February 2008 to the Stolen Generation.

Part 1. A little History

Part 2. Personal Interviews

Part 3. Footage from Australian supporters

Part 4. Apology Speech by Kevin Rudd

The Stolen Generation is a term used to describe the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who were removed from their families by Australian government agencies and church missions, under various state acts of parliament, denying the rights of parents and making all Aboriginal children wards of the state, between approximately 1869 and 1969. The policy typically involved the removal of children into internment camps, orphanages and other institutions.

from rageunderground

The Heart Garden

On a recent trip to Melbourne I visited the Heide Museum of Modern Art to see the current portrait exhibition and sculpture gardens. The museum is situated in the heritage listed grounds of the former home of heiress Sunday Reed.

Sunday created an amazing life at Heide in the where she and her husband John cultivated a vibrant community of modernist artists including Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Arthur Boyd and Sidney Nolan. The kitchen garden remains true to her original design and the grounds merge French formalism with Eucalypts. I sat for hours under a massive Oak tree reading 'The Heart Garden' the biography of Sunday Reed written by Janine Burke.

Sunday is inspirational for many reasons. She freed herself from the decorative role of upper class women in the 1930's to really engage her brilliance and passion by surrounding herself with people who fascinated her, greatly influencing Australia's Modernist art movement.

Those who made and those who saw. Portraits of the Heide circle exhibition catalogue
© Heide Museum of Modern Art

Hand of God

The terrible crimes commited by members of the clergy from many religions on children have been documented in the past few years as more and more people are able to tell their experiences. The film 'Hand of God' delves into explaining the system that enables such criminal behaviour in the Catholic church. Here is an exerpt from an interview with the director, Joe Cultera.

Joe Cultrera: 'I can get my God elsewhere'

McCarthy: What was the catalyst for making the film Hand of God and your desire to create this documentary?

Joe Cultrera: The initial catalyst was watching other media treatments of the clergy abuse crisis and feeling they were all missing the point of origin. They never bothered to look at how we were sucked into the Catholic system from the get-go, how we were watched over by the eyes of those saints and bleeding hearts that lined the walls of our homes and that followed us wherever we went. We were taught fear, shame and embarrassment. It was those elements of our blind faith upbringing that allowed abuse to happen and go undetected, unspoken about for decades. My brother made me realize that the Catholic Church taught us all these things - in part - as a way of protecting itself. I wanted to make a film from the inside that dug under the fingernails of the situation and walked the viewer step by step through it. A film that was not afraid to criticize the very core of the situation, but that would do so in a very quiet, undramatic way - by simply showing what one survivor and his family went through. The film is pure experience, not gussied up with dramatic music and re-creations.

McCarthy: What was the most difficult part of the filming?

Joe Cultrera: Sitting down and asking questions of my brother, parents and sister that I did not really want to ask was very difficult and scary. Like most families, we do not sit around and have these sorts of deep discussions. They are not comfortable. But if there is anything I have learned from this process it is not to be afraid to talk or to confront your fears. The film created a dialogue and an understanding within our family that was not previously there. We are stronger because of it.

Junk Lovette

'Junk Lovette' is an exhibition of art and design objects made using recycled materials at M.A.D (Make a Difference) Gallery in Newtown run by the guys from Reverse Garbage in Marrickville.

Reverse Garbage has been operating since 1975 and is a great resource for teachers, set designers and artists. They stock industrial excess such as plastics, stationary, fabrics, old computers and wood. Odd stuff can be found like a bin full of wooden doorknobs, swathes of leather and rolls of paper as well as display mannequins and shelving.

Reverse Garbage aims to decrease human impact on the environment while developing imagination and creativity.