Author: Mechanical Dolphin

Marvellous, Electrical: Adventures of a Wandering Cook

Mechanical Dolphin

Angela Hirst of Wandering Cooks tends the garden at her Brisbane food incubator

Brisbane is just shading into winter now, and while it doesn’t get too cold in subtropical Queensland, you still need to make a little effort if you want a place to feel cosy.

On the fringe of the cultural quarter, entrepreneur Angela Hirst is doing just that, as she plays host to the city’s most adventurous chefs and diners at her “food incubator” Wandering Cooks.

In this week’s newsletter, Angela explains the links between philosophy, architecture, permaculture, and her attempt to create a special place for culinary innovators in the heart of Brisbane.

You can read this week’s Marvellous, Electrical here.

Beyond Panels: The Presenterless Future?

Mechanical Dolphin

Our quest to mitigate guest speakers’ privilege, plus include audiences as participants in workshops and panel discussions, continues.

Last week I spoke at USQ – where audience members were invited on stage as part of my live-streamed presentation – and I also delivered a workshop “Are we asking the right questions of our digital future?” at Broadband for the Bush.

For the latter, I wanted to create a way of talking about the future that was open to all and could even be held in venues with limited access to technology.

I put together twelve provocations: 400-word texts, followed by questions which served to prompt discussion. Workshop participants were invited to choose one or two of the twelve provocations, read them, and then discuss them with their tablemates.

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Marvellous, Electrical: Think of the Tender Things That We’ve Been Working On

Mechanical Dolphin

This week’s Marvellous, Electrical covers the opening night of Brisbane’s Cabaret Festival and an uncomfortable flashback to the winsome days of the early 1980s.

There’s also gender-flipped Spice Girls, paleobotanists, and a fumbled double-bass solo that grips like wet rope.

Check out Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical here.

Dimestore Futurism

Mechanical Dolphin

This week I spoke at both the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and the national Broadband for the Bush Forum. The Forum is an annual gathering of people working to improve access to digital communications in remote and regional Australia. You can watch the USQ talk above.

Both events aimed to get people questioning their assumptions and exploring what they exclude or overlook in their visions of the future.

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No Longer at Ease / The Life of Lines – Interview with Beth Povinelli

Mechanical Dolphin

Frontier Imaginaries Poster from QUT/IMA exhibition in Brisbane

Frontier Imaginaries is an exhibition currently being held across two sites in Brisbane: ‘No Longer at Ease‘ in the Institute of Modern Art and ‘The Life of Lines‘ at Queensland University of Technology.

Beth Povinelli is one of the artists featured in ‘The Life of Lines‘  – she is also Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Beth’s research forms a critique of late liberalism – she dubs it an ‘anthropology of the otherwise’ – which I find vital to current debates about Australian identities and our visions of the future, both here and around the world.  At the launch of Frontier Imaginaries, she argued that Australia is on the front lines of a crisis in Western thought, brought about in part by the pressures of climate change and the rise of digital technology.

Originally a philosophy student, Beth’s love of Australian movies led her to visit the country on a grant application in 1984. She eventually found herself working as an anthropologist and advocate for Indigenous communities. As she says, her career has been less about “explaining” Indigenous culture and society to others, more about helping to analyze how late liberal power appears from an Indigenous perspective.

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A Speaky Week

Mechanical Dolphin

On Tuesday, I’ll be over at the University of Southern Queensland, giving talks and workshops to staff and students across faculties. You can follow them online via this livestreaming link – the fun kicks off at 11am Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Then on Thursday I’m joining the Broadband for the Bush Conference on rural and regional access to digital technology and communications, running a presenterless workshop session on planning for the future. I’ll be drawing on science fiction, Afrofuturism, and comics alongside debates around copyright, government policy, and the presentation of financial data.

You can follow via the hashtag #BushBroadband on social media. I feel like non-Aussies are going to think that’s something far more salacious than it actually is…

The Library Ghost

Mechanical Dolphin

During #BlogJune, workers in galleries, libraries, and museums Down Under commit to writing daily blog posts about their work.

One of my favourites is The Library Ghost, written by Kyla Stephan of Gold Coast Libraries in Queensland.

The blog, which has run intermittently for several years now, records the correspondence left at a librarian’s desk by the ghost which haunts her building.

Library Ghost Episode 1

We only ever see the ghost’s side of the conversation, but follow the progress of their relationship over the months and years, as the icy spirit – “I could not, in all honesty, be described as benign” – develops a certain affection for the mortal whom they haunt.

I love that Kyla invites us into a tender and wryly mannered fiction, invoking library magic to share the world of her imagination. Go check out the Library Ghost this #Blogjune.

Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Night of the Ibis

Mechanical Dolphin

This week’s Marvellous, Electrical explores the intersection of urban ecology and Brisbane burlesque.

Read ‘Night of the Ibis’ here.

On health and well-being

Mechanical Dolphin

Professor Martin Paul Eve of Birkbeck College, University of London writes today in the Times Higher Education Supplement about suffering a stroke in his twenties. You can read  ‘Coping with Illness’ here.

I’ve been working with medics and healthcare professionals as part of my 2016 creative residency in Queensland, Australia. I use Martin’s story as part of my workshops. It reminds practitioners that healthcare is about people as well as processes, and highlights how culture and access to information shape our experience of health and wellbeing.

When health organisations seek to deliver targeted community interventions, develop inclusive health systems, or improve their relationships with the populations they serve, there are overlaps with my field of creative work and community engagement.

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Marvellous, Electrical: Everything’s Coming Up Kransky

Mechanical Dolphin

What links country Queensland, Barbarella, Judge Judy, and Agnes Bernelle, the World War 2 broadcaster who convinced a U-Boat captain to surrender with nothing more than her seductive voice?

The Kransky Sisters.

On this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, I interview Australia’s greatest contemporary cabaret act.