This week’s Marvellous, Electrical explores the intersection of urban ecology and Brisbane burlesque.
Tag: Curious Mysterious Marvellous Electrical
Marvellous, Electrical: Everything’s Coming Up Kransky
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?
On this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, I interview Australia’s greatest contemporary cabaret act.
Marvellous, Electrical: In The Doll Hospital
I was expecting hokey gothic from my trip to Brisbane’s Doll Hospital.
Instead I got stories from the Greek Cypriot migration, and some thoughts on how Australian attitudes have changed.
Read more in this week’s Marvellous, Electrical.
Marvellous, Electrical: The Man in the Machine
…the nonhuman entities with which we share the world – including, but not limited to, our tools – are active in their own right. They have their own powers, interests, and points of view. And if we engineer them, in various ways, they “engineer” us as well, nudging us to adapt to their demands. Automobiles, computers, and kidney dialysis machines were made to serve particular human needs; but in turn, they also induce human habits and behaviours to change. Nonhuman things must therefore be seen as…active agents with their own intentions and goals, and which affect one another, as well as affecting us…
…Things are creative. And again, one of the great potentialities of science fiction is to illuminate the positive, productive powers of things, of materials, and of technological apparatuses.
– Steven Shaviro, Discognition
This week, Marvellous, Electrical heads out to the fields of Queensland’s Darling Downs for a ride in a modern farming machine.
When you find yourself at the wheel of a self-driving harvester, just who’s steering who?
Marvellous, Electrical: Mouth on Legs
There have been great Queenslanders and famous Queenslanders, real ones and imaginary, but only one has been to the end of the universe and back.
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical is about Tegan from Doctor Who.
TEGAN: What’s a Zero Room anyway?[…]
NYSSA: I suppose it’s some sort of neutral environment. An isolated space cut off from the rest of the universe.
TEGAN: He should’ve told me that’s what he wanted. I could’ve shown him Brisbane.
Read Marvellous, Electrical: Mouth on Legs here.
Electrical updates
There’s been some new entries on Marvellous, Electrical in recent weeks.
Here’s a few highlights:
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Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: (Un)comfortable Defiance
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
This week at Marvellous, Electrical: every man has a flaming car, a flaming car over his shoulder.
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Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: All We Leave Are The Memories
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Brisbane’s weird, in the best way. They’ve got portals into the past – actual physical gateways. Years ago, they had state-sponsored magicians who could make buildings disappear overnight. Their job was to erase the city’s history. These things happened right in the middle of town.
It’s all documented. The magic’s fading now, and when I first heard the stories, I assumed it was just people exaggerating. But I work in an archive, the place where records are kept, and it turns out Brisbane’s magic is real.
Check it out over at Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical.
Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical: Dinner at the Circus
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This week’s newsletter features an interview with Dale Woodbridge-Brown, acrobat and ringmaster at Circus Oz.
While Dale gave me an unusual Australian cookery lesson, we talked about sport, storytelling, country childhoods, and indigenous identity.
Check it out over at Curious, Mysterious, Marvellous, Electrical.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 