This week’s Marvellous, Electrical explores the Brisbane suburb of West End and its annual Kurilpa Derby, street art, social justice, censorship, and the ways communities get inside your head – for good and ill.
Category: storytelling
Marvellous, Electrical and the Black Prince
What does a man have to do to be accepted as a true Australian?
We took a walk through the suburbs to Brisbane’s Toowong Cemetery, exploring the legacy of the 19th century champion boxer – and adopted Aussie – Peter Jackson.
Marvellous, Electrical: Forms of Myth
This week, in Marvellous, Electrical: storytelling, town planning, sculpture, and the smell of first rain on dry stone.
Marvellous, Electrical: This Means War
What’s it like to cook and clean for the soldiers and hospital patients of Brisbane?
How do you cope with split shifts on the city’s south side when you live in a northern suburb?
There’s evil eyes, paperclip pranks, and butter on the windows in Marvellous, Electrical: This Means War.
Marvellous, Electrical: Eustress
“Dance, whatever you say, it’s mostly all about me: its own kind of hedonism. You look in the mirror and judge yourself. You entertain the audience, maybe you inspire one or two kids who’d like to be dancers themselves, but that’s about it. It can be overwhelming to focus on yourself that way.”
“What I do now, I don’t stop people getting sick, I don’t fix every problem, but at least I know I’ve helped.”
A classic Queensland amublance. Image from Queensland State Archives.
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical tells the story of a top-flight contemporary dancer turned Brisbane paramedic.
Read Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Eustress here.
Marvellous, Electrical: The Dough
“And this is how it works when crossing a border doesn’t feel like a crime…”
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical visits the midnight bakeries of Brisbane to tell a story of migration.
New Adventures at the Brisbane Writers Festival
This weekend, join me for two events at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
On Saturday 10th September at 4pm, I’ll be on the Rules of Engagement panel with Kate Pullinger and Caroline Heim, talking about the shifting relationships between institutions, artmakers, scientists, audiences, and participants.
Then, on Sunday 11th September at 11.30am, join Ellen Van Neerven, Maggie Hardy, Tamara Davis, and Maree Kimberley for Science and Belonging, a special presentation by the State Library of Queensland.
Instead of the usual panel discussion, we’ll be running a Beyond Panels session which maximises your chance to talk to our guests.
Our panel of scientists and speculative fiction writers will talk about their work with Festival visitors before leading a discussion exploring the collisions, contrasts, and common ground between speculative fiction and scientific practice.
Find out more about Rules of Engagement and Science and Belonging at the Brisbane Writers Festival website.
Marvellous, Electrical: Consider the Ravens
“Take only what you need…share what you have. The idea is not that radical. We teach sharing to our kids but it gets lost somewhere along the way.”
In this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, Brisbane activist Andy Paine tells of a life spent striving to live without money.
Write Here: The Worst Song I Ever Loved
In Library Journal this month, Henrietta Verma discusses writers’ groups and gives a shout-out to The Worst Song I Ever Loved, a writing project I ran for the Parkes Shire Library in New South Wales.
Library Journal calls me an “Australian librarian”; I’m neither of those things, but will let them off as the project was devised for a creative residency in public libraries Down Under.
The Worst Song I Ever Loved was based on a university task created by Daniel Nester.
You can find out more about the project here at The Signal In Transition.
Marvellous, Electrical: Scratch and Hope, part 1
https://twitter.com/DrMattFinch/status/759213810062336001
The first of a three-part series: VW Beetles, artistry, engineering, and stories of migration at Marvellous, Electrical this week.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 