The Indifference Engine

The final installment of the series... SINGULAR PLEASURES 6 The 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition It is curious just how persistently an outdated ethos can linger. In the latter part of the 19th century, the Romantic conception of Nature as a state of mythical innocence, where we might draw spiritual nourishment from the evidence of God's handiwork, was supplanted by an imperialistic ethos. The untamed wilderness was something to be conquered and exploited, and it is this increasingly archaic vision that informs the 1997 Caravan and Camping Exposition. Barbarously contracted to "Campex 97", it carries echoes of the Great Exhibitions of the Victorian era, further entrenching its implicit industrial expansionist sensibility. How are we to view a construction like the Mallard "Rolling Thunder" 6-berth air-conditioned Mobile Townhouse with internal bathroomette, satellite dish and self-erecting annexe? What subtext does it reveal? The answers must...

I stumbled on a printout of this the other day, and I'm just throwing it out there for the hell of it. GUIDANCE Normally, he would have welcomed any interruption to the daily routine, but instead there was dull, hot resentment. It was what he felt whenever a stranger gave him that fake, “I’m-your-friend-and-I-really-have-your-best-interests-at-heart” smile. He hated the way things were engineered, the implication that what was about to happen was somehow special and could affect the rest of his life. Terry had been in before him, and had whispered what to expect. “He told me I should think about optometry or watchmaking. Why?” When his name was called, he was ready. He opened the door to the storeroom that had been pressed into service for the occasion, and couldn’t help thinking “if this is so important, why is it happening next to the spare chalk?” It was as just as he pictured it. The fake smile, the insincere handshake... There was a name, which he igno...

The penultimate piece in the series first run in The Age, 1997 Five Eyes : The Emmet Tugby Centre for Photography Given the potential of photographic artifice to re-negotiate our perceptions of visual "truth", it is surprising that the old adage "the camera does not lie" has been so persistent. This dictum is only valid in as much as a photographic image exists as an observable phenomenon: the veracity of its content as a record of any aspect of reality is infinitely flexible. This was not lost on pioneering photographer Emmet Tugby, who managed to call the very existence of his subjects into question in his penetrating studies of Edwardian social life. 50 years after his death however, it is debatable that the exhibition now showing at the institution that bears his name does his legacy justice. Even in the most generous assessment, Five Eyes is woefully inconsistent. The photographers represented here exhibit work that ranges from the banal to the ind...

Another column from the series first published in The Age in the dying years of the 20th century The Bodyspace International Dance Festival April In Berlin : The Beryl Beavis Dance Company "Dance" is a multivalent categorisation, incorporating (as it must) a heterogeneous plethora of expressive modes. This multiplicity encompasses everything from classical ballet to folk-dance, and informs various hybrid idioms such as butoh and physical theatre. This diversity has not been lost on the curators of the Bodyspace International Dance Festival, the very title of which embodies the commonality underpinning the 27 items on the programme. The link between the sublime stylization of a 17th century gavotte and the horror of jazz ballet is the dialogue between body and space. In deconstructing this rich series of colloquies, it is necessary to take cultural specificity into account. While bodily movement is in itself a lingua franca, the Bodyspace programme presents...

Number three of the series. This time, it's opera's turn. OPERA CON GUTSO La Bella Decapitata by Gaetano Involtini Die Schraubenschlüssels by Hans-Dieter Zwiebel The Perforation of St. Phyllida by Orlando Botts In viewing opera, the informed observer runs the risk of being pinned by the horns of a bifurcated peril. Firstly, both the very spectacle of opera and its association with privilege suggest that participation, even as a passive voyeur, is a tacit assent to outmoded social structures. Such an analysis stems from a Marxist perspective of course, but one need not be a Marxist to perceive a display of conspicuous consumption in a first-night opera crowd. Secondly, opera requires us to suspend our disbelief to such a degree that we will happily accept the ludicrous premise of an overweight, middle-aged woman portraying a 14-year-old Druid princess. To trifurcate an already sufficiently pointy ideological dilemma, consider also that opera regularly receives ...

The second in the old series of Age columns, in which theatre gets the treatment.... The Aesphyxiad by Orchitus of Mytilene The Rascally Beekeeper by Wilmott Spandrell For the new director, a production of a period text gives ample opportunity to make bold new theatrical statements or to come spectacularly unstuck. Sadly, Julien Grebe ( The Aesphyxiad ) has done the latter, to an extent that suggests he may have run his promising career aground on the rocks of a production that should not have been floated in the first place. Completely overshadowed by the great Greek dramatists of the 5th century BC, Orchitus of Mytilene was not popular in his day, and on the basis of this performance, there is no reason why he should be now. The text is actually Grebe's own translation of a 19th century Dutch reconstruction of the surviving fragments - and a poor one at that. It would have been a great act of charity to endow Mr. Grebe with a decent bilingual dictionary. Th...