Category: storytelling

Visions from Bundaberg

Mechanical Dolphin

Last weekend I was the guest artist at “Dispatches from Bundy”, a writing workshop in the Queensland town of Bundaberg.

Working with staff from Creative Regions and Queensland University of Technology, our team took a group of local writers and storytellers through a two-day session aimed at engaging with stories from the past, exploring visions of the future, and nurturing regional literature.

One of our activities saw participants creating science fiction stories and postcards from future worlds. We stitched these stories into a timeline of future history stretching a thousand years hence.

Check out the result via YouTube, incorporating images by Peter Miller aka Scribbletronics and music from Disasteradio.

Marvellous, Electrical: Vienna in Canberra

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What values have migrants brought to Australia over the years? How have they changed the nation’s culture? Have they broken laws in an attempt to impose foreign ways of life on the population?

Letter to Gus Petersilka from Canberra government

Gus Petersilka of Canberra did. By putting out tables and chairs on the sidewalks of Australia’s capital, he forced the uptight city government to acknowledge, accept, and ultimately embrace convivial traditions of outdoor dining.

Gus' Cafe, abandoned in Canberra CBD, 2016

Now Gus’ Cafe is gone.

Read its story at Marvellous, Electrical.

Marvellous, Electrical: Play Both

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“I want to see technology used for good, but I’m fascinated by the possibilities for destruction!”

Joel Edmondson, CEO of Queensland’s QMusic network talks digital technology, music beyond entertainment, mysterious orchestras in the middle of the ocean, and the “nefarious, sulphuric beginning of life” in this week’s Marvellous, Electrical.

David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME

Read “Play Both” here.

Marvellous, Electrical: Future Sea Punks

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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.

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Read Marvellous, Electrical: Future Sea Punks here.

Marvellous, Electrical and the Black Prince

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Sidewalk in the Brisbane suburbs

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.

Read more at Marvellous, Electrical: Sweet Science.

Marvellous, Electrical: Forms of Myth

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This week, in Marvellous, Electrical: storytelling, town planning, sculpture, and the smell of first rain on dry stone.

Read ‘Forms of Myth’ here.

Marvellous, Electrical: This Means War

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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?

Kit inspection at Enoggera Barracks, 1915
Enoggera Barracks, Queensland

There’s evil eyes, paperclip pranks, and butter on the windows in Marvellous, Electrical: This Means War.

 

Marvellous, Electrical: Eustress

Mechanical Dolphin

“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.”

Queensland ambulance

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.