May 26 – June 1, 2018
News
Comment
Comment
Jini Maxwell
Labour failures in the arts industry
“The maxim holds that arts work shouldn’t feel like work if you love it enough. We don’t have to treat your work as work if we can treat it as your passion. If there is funding, it should go to the art, and paying workers is optional. We would if we could, the organisation says. This divestment of responsibility does more than harm arts workers; it actively reproduces prevalent and exclusionary power structures within the arts. The explicit currency on which arts organisations are run is passion, but the implicit currency is personal privilege. ”
Comment
Paul Bongiorno
Pauline Hanson’s need for attention
“Consistency is not Hanson's strong suit, but on Tuesday she sounded Trumpesque in the way she was contradicting herself. She capped off her Hobart news conference by saying “business needs immediate relief, not seven or eight years down the track”. It seems that, when you are a vehicle for protest, or anger or resentment, you don’t need the credibility of other mere mortals.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
Profile
Ai Weiwei’s lens on humanity
The artist Ai Weiwei refuses to shy away from tragedy or grief, working with an uncomfortable proximity between art and subject. He speaks on the release of his film on the refugee crisis, Human Flow. ‘It’s not just understanding. It requires you to find a language, so that you can give dignity to the subject matter.’ The line is cotton-thin.
Visual Art
David Capra’s ‘Sheer Fantasy’
In the delineated zones of David Capra’s exhibition-cum-installation Sheer Fantasy, the visitor is led to contemplate intersections of time and space.
Portrait
Attachment phase
“My daughter and her partner are equal parts excited and anxious – about the birth, about everything that comes afterwards. I am anxious for them, for all that being a parent entails. I hold my own secret hopes and dreams for this child, my own fears, not only for her as an individual, but for the world into which she is born. I hope that she is born without incident or injury, that she has the strength and resilience to cope with adversity. I hope she lives a life of kindness, empathy and loyalty.”
Food
Salt-baked celeriac with mustard cream and salmon roe
“Keeping vegetables whole and intact for as long as you can yields similar benefits to meat on the bone, but for me cooking in a self-sealing dome of salt – or clay and hay – is the pinnacle. In this recipe I serve the celeriac with mustard cream and salmon roe, but it is really adaptable. It would sit well with sautéed livers, for instance. ”
Books
Life
Technology
Australian law and data protection
With the EU’s new data protection laws taking effect this week, the world’s biggest internet companies are scrambling to update their approach to personal information. Unfortunately, in Australia, privacy protections are still languishing in the dark ages.
The Quiz
Quotes
WAR
“I challenge anybody who’s visited the war memorial in the last two or three years to walk away and think, ‘Well, I can’t wait to have another war.’ ”
The head of the Australian War Memorial defends taking money from weapons manufacturers to support exhibits. It seems only fair, given the efforts they put into casualties.
POLITICS
“She’s playing the Asian card, she’s playing the female card, and I’m sick and tired of it.”
The senator lays into Penny Wong. It’s not quite news that Hanson is sick of people being Asian, but being tired of them being female is kind of new.
ELECTIONS
“It would appear this has been deliberately designed to disadvantage the Labor Party.”
Labor’s deputy leader complains that the byelections resulting from the dual citizenship scandal will be held on July 28, the same weekend as Labor’s national conference. A bigger disadvantage was having multiple candidates contravene the Constitution, to be honest.
RACE
“This is a class issue more than a race issue.”
The New South Wales Opposition leader defends his use of the term “white flight” – a few hours before apologising for it. It’s not so much a class issue, as a votes one, stoked by a gutless opportunist.
GENDER
“What would that allow me to do, if I declared that my gender status was female? … Can I go into the ladies’ loo loo then?”
The Queensland senator debases Senate estimates with a question about gender inclusivity in the public service. He has neither the intelligence nor the decency to be in the parliament.
DEATH
“He was an incredibly generous person. Always very exigent, and he held you to a very high standard – and he held himself to an even higher standard.”
The writer confirms the death of author Philip Roth. He was 85, almost old enough to have found a conventional use for cooked liver.
