Tag: Australia

Keynote speaker for SWITCH 2016

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I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be a keynote speaker at the New South Wales Public Libraries Association’s conference SWITCH 2016, 22-25 November in Ulladulla, NSW.

Here we are on the shore, on the edge of some adventure. Have we been deserted or let loose?

How do we move away from centralised, broadcast-based models of discussion, creation, and debate in favour of democratised, distributed approaches?

When libraries around the world are fighting to thrive and everyone has co-opted the language of innovation and community engagement, what does great public librarianship look like and how do we do it?

See you in November!

Where Do You Find Yourself? Space, Play, and Duty in the Australian Digital Library

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Are there still cultural backwaters in the digital age? Three months in to my year-long residency at the State Library of Queensland, I’ve written about Australian libraries, regional engagement, and digital literature for The Writing Platform.

I’m very interested in the vogue for locative literature, where texts are linked to physical spaces through digital or conventional media. But there are questions still to be asked: not just whether we add a virtual layer of story and literature to physical spaces, but who gets to create the content in that virtual layer.

Forest comic for Fun Palace

If writers are having a creative and critical conversation about the world, and in the locative age we are venturing outside of traditional venues, we still need to ask: who are “we” having those conversations with? And how could a simple online comic maker start expanding that circle of storytelling, literary production, and critical discussion?

You can read the full article, ‘Where Do You Find Yourself? Space, Play, and Duty in the Australian Digital Library’, at The Writing Platform.

Electrical updates

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There’s been some new entries on Marvellous, Electrical in recent weeks.

Here’s a few highlights:

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Libraries: the seven-fingered fist?

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Last week saw the first of my guest columns for Library as Incubator in the US, following my experiences as Creative in Residence at the State Library of Queensland, Australia.

This first piece explores libraries as gateways to other worlds, showcases the work of Queensland’s Signature Team, and explores the challenges of working with a cultural institution that serves a region three times the size of France.

You can read my guest column over at Library as Incubator.

Rock and Roll Writers’ Festival: Playlist

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My playlist is up for Brisbane’s first Rock and Roll Writers Festival.

Growing up at the tail-end of the mixtape generation, compiling songs was a way of connecting with friends and strangers alike, all through high school.

Now Leanne de Souza and her team at the Festival are working with the team at Playlistr to share music selections from Festival contributors and friends.

If you’re not a Spotify user, you can find my mixtape on YouTube, too.

And the one must-listen track is this…sweet video, too.

Marvellous, Electrical: The Nation Coped

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This Friday, 25 March, would have been Bernard King’s 82nd birthday.

One of Australia’s first celebrity chefs and talent show judges, King was known and beloved for his sharp putdowns, his flamboyance, and his all-but-inedible recipes.

He was as iconic in his own way as Dame Edna or Crocodile Dundee, but he died in poverty in 2002. Today he’s all but forgotten. That erasure of one of Australia’s biggest gay celebrities highlights the tensions and troubles which still exist in a country on the verge of a referendum over same-sex marriage.

Find out more about Bernard King’s life – and the time he poached a fish in a soft drink – over at Marvellous, Electrical.

Read Marvellous, Electrical: The Nation Coped here.

We The Humanities: Interview with Simon Groth, if:book

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This week you can find me over at @wethehumanities, a rotating Twitter account where people working in the humanities get to share ideas, experiences, and stories. I’m using my week to talk about the grey areas between fact and fiction, dream and experience, stories and everyday life – as well as people who cross back and forth over the walls of universities and academic institutions.

Today we’re joined by Simon Groth, a Brisbane-based writer and editor who also leads if:book Australia, exploring the future of literature in the digital age.

Simon is currently completing a doctoral thesis at Queensland University of Technology, which “sits somewhere between creative writing and media studies.” 

He explains:

I’m looking at how digital tools can be (and are being) used to change the relationship between writers and readers. In particular, I’ve been fascinated by the technical innovation of experimental writers from around the 1960s. These writers took radical steps such as removing the binding of books in order to give the reader greater control over the narrative.

Part of what I’m investigating is how contemporary digital tools can bring greater nuance and subtlety to this kind of innovation. It also means I have to write a novel-length work without a predetermined order of chapters, which at some point I’ll be turning over to a small group of ‘play testers’. Basically, it’s been a three-year study into how I like to make things difficult for myself.

Read more →

Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: (Un)comfortable Defiance

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1968 Mexico Olympics, Men's 200m winners' podium

This week’s Marvellous, Electrical looks at Brisbane street art and how we remember a quiet gesture of defiance from 1968: 200m runner Peter Norman chose to wear a human rights badge in solidarity with black US athletes in the year of Martin Luther King’s death.

Ostracised by the Australian athletic community after this act, Norman descended into depression, painkiller addiction, and heavy drinking. The Australian government only apologised for his treatment six years after he died.

How can we remember Norman today, acknowledging his heroic act without hiding the grim reality of the years which followed?

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Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Smart State Plates

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This week at Marvellous, Electrical: every man has a flaming car, a flaming car over his shoulder.

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