The International Eye

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Icelanders on a Holiday

Probably the best way to summarise Of Monsters and Men’s music is to say that my 15 year-old sister and my mum really like them. They have two pretty catchy songs, ‘Little Talks’ and ‘Mountain Sound’; both are upbeat, feature trumpets, innocent boy/girl callbacks and joyful shouts of “Hey!”. They are fun, uncomplicated and sweet little songs that slot nicely into the Lumineers and Mumford and Son’s pop-folk revival.

As a band, they are a positively Nordic looking five-piece who have gotten the retro-homely look down to a science, but quite frankly, they probably can lay more claim to that look than some. They are from Iceland after all, and in some ways, that Scandinavian exoticism is their biggest drawcard.

Of Monsters and Men performing at Splendour in the Grass. Photo: Marc Grimwade

During their recent Australian visit for Splendour in the Grass, I had the chance to ask them about Iceland, Australia, and how they just couldn’t wait to see Frank Ocean at the festival (bummer, guys).

In many ways, Australia and Iceland are each other’s evil twins: both are isolated island nations. But while Australia is famous for red earth, scorching heat, kangaroos and Steve Irwin, Iceland is known for volcanos, being fucking cold and Björk.

Reykjavik, they tell me, has a strong music scene despite being home to only about 120 000 people in a country with a total population a little less than Canberra. Rural Iceland, apparently, is “quiet and simple”, but the city is a different matter completely. “There’s usually an abundance of concerts you can choose from every weekend, but in fairness don’t expect the venue to be that good”, they warn. “The best bars and venues in Iceland are all disappearing to make way for hotels. That doesn›t stop the strong Icelandic music scene though.” When asked if they would ever relocate, they assured me that “Iceland will always be home” despite frequently commuting between Iceland and continental Denmark.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t give much heed to the Australian ‘winter’. On this trip, Byron was their favorite, where they “stayed at a beautiful beach house, swam in the ocean and sunbathed”. Unsurprisingly, the 18°C highs and spitting rain that accompanied their time there did not deter them from jumping in the water and soaking up the sun. The weather in Byron was pretty much identical to what it was in Iceland at the same time, in the height of Reykjavik’s summer.

What was the biggest difference for them though? “Us Icelanders are not used to the kind of insects you guys have here”, which actually means something when they say it. Fun fact: Iceland is home to only 1,300 insects varieties, making it one of the least insect diverse territories on the planet beaten only by the Arctic, Greenland and parts of the Himalayas.

It sounds like they had a good trip. I just hope they weren’t too devastated about Frank Ocean.

[the-international-eye]

The Paradox of Dissidence

As chaos erupted across China on June 4 1989, Liao Yiwu turned to the only thing that made sense to him in a country in chaos: poetry. Hundreds of miles away from the unfolding events in Tiananmen Square Mr. Liao composed Massacre, a howling poem of outrage and disgust that he swiftly recorded and distributed to foreign and domestic literary agents. The self-professed womanizer and “well-dressed hypocrite” became a liability to the state over night. Eight months later, Liao was imprisoned. His experiences have been documented in his recently translated memoir, For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet’s Journey Through a Chinese Prison, which was published in 2011. 

What emerges is the story of a man who is above all an artist. Liao maintains even now, after five years in prison, after constant hardship and after the trauma of fleeing his home country to live in Germany, that he is not a political man- he is a poet who simply wishes to observe and recreate the world around him. In a 2011 conversation with Journalist Ian Johnson, Liao insisted as much: “I don’t want to break their laws. I am not interested in them and wish they weren’t interested in me” and in his memoir he is clear- “I never intended to be a hero”. It is his supreme literary ethic, however, that makes his work among the most provocative in China.

Unlike most work of Chinese dissidents, there is nothing neither polemical nor heroic about Liao’s work. His prose and poetry are works of pure observation, his tone is almost journalistic and what exists within them is the true profundity of daily life. His most famous work, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up, published in 2002, was a collection of interviews with the lowest classes of Chinese life. They are strikingly removed from their subjects, exist without judgment and seek only to reveal the simple realities of his subject’s lives and humanity.

Just as Wordsworth gave British peasants inner selves to reflect their democratic humanity, Liao Yiwu gives voices to the people and events that the Chinese Government wish to forget. “China remains a prison of the mind: prosperity without liberty,” he writes, “This is our brave new world.” But as an artist who captures the intricacies of his world, what does a life of exile in Germany mean for his work? He is now away from China and away from his raison d’ecriture, which is perhaps exactly where the Chinese government want him to be.

Liao has made a life for himself in Berlin now, among a community of Chinese expats in similar situations. He has declined to learn any Western Language and seems optimistic that he will return to China one day. This though, is improbable; China is liberalizing, but it is a slow process and given his resolve to resist silence, he is unlikely to be left alone for long. His world has paradoxically become very small. At home in China, he is seen as a sell out for leaving and without a physical presence there to continue circulating his work and working within his artistic community, his work is being forgotten. 

Liao exists now in an artistic limbo - physically free but creatively caged. He has attained the status of ‘dissident’ that the West holds in such high regard, but without the potential for affecting domestic change, and without the potential for continuing to write truly honest accounts of his world, then where does that leave him?

[the-international-eye]

Make Haste While the Moonshines

Like all great DIY projects in this modern age, making your homemade hooch starts with a visit to a place called the internet.  You will need an airlock (available on eBay for $3.50) and some yeast. The best value for money is StillSpirits Triple Distilled Turbo Yeast (available all over the web for about $10 a packet).

Next, get your hands on some juice. Any juice you like, as long as it has a sturdy plastic bottle and screw top. Nothing cardboard. Mango is a personal favorite; the sweeter it is to begin with, the better.

Just as bathtub gin has a tendency to blow up, this home brew has its downsides. To make sure you aren’t breeding the next zombie virus, sterilise your equipment.

Now for the fun part. For each litre of juice you will need 330 grams of white sugar. Pour about 100 millilitres of juice into a bowl and use a whisk to dissolve the sugar into the juice. If it’s not fully dissolved, it could stop fermentation.

Pour your sugar solution back into your juice bottle along with 15 grams per litre of yeast.

Seal your bottle with your newly purchased airlock and leave it to ferment for one to two weeks. You need your concoction to stay between 18˚C and 24˚C, so dark places are best.

When the day comes to drink your moonshine, use a strainer to remove any sediment from the bottom of the bottle. Aaand you’re done.

Congratulations, bootlegger! Enjoy at the speakeasy of your choice over ice, in a cocktail or with soda water.

[the-international-eye]

Big Trouble in little politics

All eyes are on the SRC. According to The Australian, the goings on at the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council (SRC) is the business of national news, keeping close tabs on the outcome of the BDS motion against Israel.

On April 10, the SRC passed a motion to support Academic Jake Lynch in joining the global ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement against Israel,  supporting to liberation of Palestine. The issue is a complicated and emotionally charged one and the meeting followed suit; each side labeled the other ‘racist’, shouting matches reportedly broke out of a deeply personal nature. Not an uncommon or unfair representation of the Israel/Palestine debate.

The council’s decision made it into the April 16th Edition of The Australian under the loaded headline ‘Jewish students slam council over ‘pet’ BDS’. It was national news that the SRC was anti-Israel. Weeks later, on the eve of the next scheduled SRC meeting, The Australianpublished a follow up, “Anti-BDS move at Sydney Uni tipped to fail”, which revealed that despite the proposed “fuzzy pro-peace” motion, it would probably lose out because of “power blocs”.

Why they chose to run these pieces is somewhat of a mystery considering that – upon last checking – the SRC does not affect global affairs and that it is without a doubt not the first student body to cast itself as the foot soldiers of world peace.

Perhaps it was for these very reasons that they did run the story.  The Australian was able to confirm all of the worst things that can be thought about student politics. That they are plagued by petty alliances, mis-information and ‘pet projects’, that it is full of “unrepresentative ideologues”. But if student politicians aren’t allowed to be idealistic, then what can we expect the leaders of tomorrow to look like?

[the-international-eye]

Papers, Please- more than a computer game.

On its surface Papers, Please appears to be a creative variation on the traditional puzzle game. Its interface is familiarly low tech and its premise seems utterly banal, but lurking beneath the surface is a truly unique game with literary potency.

The game centres on the day to day work of an immigration official in the fictitious soviet nation of Arstotzka. The idea is simple enough: the player must examine the paper work of migrant hopefuls and determine if they are eligible to enter the country. Basic game play revolves around catching bureaucratic anomalies and dismissing individuals with invalid paper work. At the end of each day, the player is awarded a commission for each migrant processed (you are penalized for making mistakes). You must pay for rent, heating, food and eventually medicine for the extended family. All of which is almost impossible to cover at once.

As relations between fellow nations in the surrounding eastern bloc deteriorate, you are expected to look at more and more detailed pieces of paper work and to go through increasing levels of inspection, all the while trying to process enough migrants to feed, heat, house and medicate your loved ones.

While video games have started moving more and more towards articulating moral significance (I’m looking at you Bioshock I and Fallout), Papers, Please really is a step forward. While both of those games feature and reward moral behavior, Papers, Please is concerned with exploring the tension between pragmatism and ideals. While other games have begun leaning towards a didactic story to complement and enhance the game’s story, Papers, Please uses the game to compliment its moral quandries. 

The player sits on the precipice between ‘The Man’ and ‘The People’ and in many ways is encouraged to remain loyal to both entities. But in soviet era Arstotzka, that is not possible. The game is heart wrenching and takes an emotional toll- something that isn’t spoiled by its early NES style graphics. Denying person after person entry, especially after they beg, is difficult. It quickly becomes apparent that the only people you can break the rules for are those that can afford to bribe you. 

Designed by an American game designer, it is hard to imagine this game outside of the context of modern American immigration rhetoric- or outside of current asylum seeker discourse in Australia. By placing the player in the shoes of the enforcer and not the victim nor the policy makers, it humanizes the entire narrative of immigration. The game forces you to feel true compassion and responsibility for the failed migrants that you must turn away; they are not “queue jumpers”, “boat people” or generic foreigners. They each present their own stories; each pixilated bundle of documents represents a human being that you are inclined to help but pressed to turn away. It injects humanity and subjectivity into an issue in sore need of both.

[the-international-eye]

SoFar Sydney- gig reveiw

In 2009, London musician Passion Ate Dave looked around him and did not like what he saw. In his view, seeing live music had come to fall into two distinct experiences: you were either in a giant amphitheatre watching tiny dots dance on a far away stage or you were in a tiny pub near the stage, but the people around you could care less. Being a new musician was (and still is) really tough; unless people already know you, they probably aren’t going to pay much attention to you – even if they managed to wander in to a pub during your set. Unknown musicians garner little respect and little attention.

So along with co-founders Rafe Offer and Rocky Start, the trio founded Sofar Sounds (‘SOngs From A Room’). Every month, a willing volunteer offers up their private space for a lineup of local musicians. Guests sign up for the newsletter, hear about the gig and show up with BYO in hand. It’s the music industry’s answer to the pop-up shop. Since its birth in London, the movement has gone global with Sofar Sounds affiliates in over 30 cities around the world, including Sydney since October 2011.

Curious to see what it was all about, this Honi writer went along to check it out.

I pitch up at  seven o’clock with a bottle of wine in one hand  and plastic cups in another, not quite sure what to expect – the address I’ve been given has led me to a warehouse in one of Marickville’s industrial precincts. The venue this month turns out to be a studio-by-day-living-room-by-night; an obvious choice for an organization that prides itself on reinventing private spaces.

Giant cartoon screen-prints, a two-meter geisha fan and a collection of gold-framed landscape paintings decorate the walls, umbrellas hang upside down from the ceiling as creative light fixtures and potted palm trees feature heavily at ground level. Couches, crates and beanbags are scattered around the stage and guests have taken advantage of every available seat, some choosing to relax on the strategically placed Afghan rugs that hide the concrete beneath. Looking closer though, the aluminum insulation and chicken wire stretching across the sloped, 2-story ceiling serve as quick reminders that this is an industrial warehouse, not a new bar in King’s Cross. The venue, a large one for the organization, seems at capacity. Fifty-odd people chat amongst themselves sipping on BYO beer and wine.

First up is London transplant Dominic Youdan, a guitarist with a firm footing in modern folk music. From his first note the audience is spellbound, falling silent the second he takes the stage. This sort of audience attentiveness is what separates a Sofar evening from pub gigs – the intimacy, the appreciation and the openness. It’s rare, and though a dream come true for artists, it can also be a bit daunting. The affable Youdan is visibly impressed by the attention, but if thrown at first he recovers quickly, relaxing into a comfortable set of his emotionally charged melodies proving himself worthy of the crowd’s concentration.

Canberra native Guyy Lilleyman and his 12-string acoustic are up next. With an army of pedals at his feet Lilleyman forges a uniquely Australian brand of blues-infused country. Vast, barren, surreal landscapes haunt his musical interludes and one cannot help but imagine his music as the film score for a Nick Cave movie. Lilleyman’s voice is grounded in the earth just like his guitar and lends itself to the moody ballads of folklore. Lilleyman is charming, yet introspective. In moments of intensity, he allows his thick curly brown hair to veil his face. At other times, he flashes his broad and earnest smile.

Smaal Cats, a Sydney based four-piece, set up next. The stage is only large enough for their drummer, so the rest of the band is forced into the audience; as it turns out that’s exactly where they belong. To say that these guys are fun is an understatement. Seagulls, the band’s opener, is loud, joyful, full of heart, rough around the edges and with a heavy blues guitar – somewhere between The Cold War Kids and The Kooks. Charlie Graden on vocals is a show all on his own though; he quivers to every beat, thrashes around manically and puts pretty much all that he has into the lyrics. It’s not just a strong sense of rhythm and a heavy dose of soul that make Smaal Cats, it’s their boundless energy that brings it home for the crowd. After their planned set, they say goodnight and hastily start to pack up; the drummer Brad Landy deconstructs his cymbal. But before they can get too far the audience demands more and after some reassembly they deliver. Everybody leaps to their feet and needless to say, some manic, senseless dancing ensues. After two more songs, Brad was finally able to put his cymbal away – the night had come to an end.

[the-international-eye]

Surprise, Surprise. In the eyes of the international media, Edward Snowden is a hero but a security threat in the pages of domestic papers.

Obama claims to support a conversation on privacy and the cost of peace, he does not relish being the first and last judge of civil rights- so he has said. But, if he and the government repeatedly condemn whistleblowers like Snowden (who seems at least to have gone to lengths to protect the security of individuals and the agency at large, merely exposing their programs) then how is this conversation to happen? How are the American people supposed to consent? They obviously aren't really meant to. 

In an article on the defensive by Politico, it was revealed that

President Barack Obama’s stance that Congress has been regularly briefed about the programs and approved the laws that allowed their creation. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-no-apologies-92462.html#ixzz2VnpsLfJC 

What this means is unclear, but one thing is notable-  this congress is a broken one that has a radically conservative majority. It is little surprise then that this congress would approve such programs. Maybe this isn't along party lines, maybe this has been going on far longer than Congress has been ill. Then again, who can say? But its hard not to wonder if the two are connected. 

Then of course there is another matter- are congress, the NSA and government working without mandate from the American People? There is an alarming lack of outrage domestically- by and large American papers discuss Snowden as a traitor to his country. People don't really seem to care that much. There are pockets of anger, but by and large your average voter see's PRISM as A-okay. They see widespread and unmitigated internet surveillance as another way to stop terrorists. And maybe it is, but does that make it okay? Should that be okay? Without oversite, who's to say who actually is being monitored? 

That sounds paranoid, of course it does, having an issue with government surveillance is at it's core, paranoid. If you have nothing to hide, then why have an issue with it? Well yes, it's true. I don't think the government really cares what I did on the weekend, I honestly have nothing on the internet to hide. But if you start down this road, it's hard to say when to stop. 

I sympathise with the government's reaction- yes, if terrorists know what the government is capable of, then they also know what they are not capable of. This is the reality of the world that we live in. But, until the civil rights of the individual are reconciled with how to keep the country safe, this will remain an issue.

And that is not to say that the Americans are the only ones facing this conundrum, democracies everywhere are challenged as to how to deal with the catch-22 at hand. Most democracies are not designed to deal with threats that may arise from within, not designed to deal with the threats that may be home-grown but very serious. If your own citizens may be the terrorists then how do you separate their rights from the rights of your other citizens? How do you deal with the enemy when he is one of your own? Does the Geneva convention, or your constitution take prescience? 

There are no easy answers to this problem. Who knows how many attacks like 9/11 have been stopped because of programs like PRISM, maybe its high or maybe its low. But it is alarming either way. And it shouldn't be ignored and forgotten. 

[the-international-eye]

Your Next Dinner Party Conversation:

Your Next Dinner Party Conversation- 

Aristotle believed that men are "Rational Animals". This weekly piece is for those who want more knowledge (for the sake of it, or just to show off)

Subject: Modern Art Movements

  Romanticism 1800- 1850

Most would argue that Modernism took off while the 19th century was in decline, but if you feel like being charmingly contrarian, then you are best to begin here. The Romantics were all about revolution- after all, they were creating art in the shadow of several- the French one, the Industrial one and the enlightenment one. They, much like every other artistic movement to follow, wanted to change the world. They saw politics as inherently unnatural: monarchy and religion were all imposed on man and it was time to release themselves from those shackles and embrace democracy, science and the natural world. Their art was idealistic and somewhat contradictorily, showed the world for what it really was: violent, messy, dirty and cruel. It was all about the individual fighting or being fought and about nature being the most glorious subject ever (coincidently, the subjects of Romantic art are all either of the individual overcoming society or of landscapes). If you are lost for examples, just think of Delecroix’s Liberty Leading the People (i.e. the cover of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album)

Key Players: Francisco Goya, William Turner and William Blake

  Impressionism 1870-1890

After the French Revolution, Europe was in a somber mood that led to a brief and boring art movement known as realism. It was precisely because it was so boring that a group of young French painters decided to try and be revolutionary again. Also, the camera had just been invented and no matter how skilled a painter you were, there was no way you could do better than a photograph. So, they decided to get back to portraying the everyday, but this time with style. They said: “screw you” to the rules of realism and decided that it would be okay if brush strokes were visible and attention to detail was for the dull of heart: they were all about mood and expression, light and movement. They redefined and invented a new palette for lightness and darkness, for tone. Needless to say, most people didn’t like them at first. They painted normal people doing normal things and landscape in normal ways- royalty; mythology and fairytales were to be done away with. In conversation, you will want to heavily dramatize this shift just to subtly reinforce that you have an intimate knowledge of the time.

Key Players: Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Manet, Camille Pissarro

        Fauvism 1900-1910

Moving quickly past the attractive but poorly defined period of Post- Impressionism and Art Nouveau, we reach the “Wild Beasts” (or Fauvism in French, most impressively pronounced ‘Fove-isma). Europe was now not only a stable place to live, but a prosperous and comfortable one. Art before then had been about making a statement, posing deep questions and revolutionizing the way people thought about things. The Fauvists were a comfortable, hedonistic lot and that’s what they brought to their art. It stood for nothing what so ever but pleasure, joy and comfort (An astute scholar would throw in a comparison to Ke$ha). They didn’t like painting things in their rightful colors because who was to say what was right? Grass need not be green if you felt it should be purple. They also favored wild brush strokes and loved to simplify objects- why complicate them when you are having so much fun?

Key players: Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Charles Camoin

Cubism 1910-1920

Fauvism was all about lines and color, but what if art was about nothing but lines? The world at this point was moving pretty fast and machines were everywhere. In response to this, cubists removed all the organic lines from art and it became geometric and violent. They took images, distilled their most important features and reassembled them in an abstracted way, much as they saw the mechanized world doing everyday.  At the same time, the world was a lot smaller and African, Micronesian and Native American art became very du jour. They were struck by how simplistic and naïve their art was so in a moment of hipsterism, they appropriated the styles to complement this newly dystopic art. The subjects of Cubism are infamously ranged from looking like they were put through a blender to unintelligible. When discussing Cubism, be sure to play careful emphasis on how “utterly ground breaking” Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is and how Picasso completely changed everything ever with those masques.

Key players: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Robert Delauney

Dada 1916-1925

The world was at war and nothing was making sense anymore. If there had been any optimism, truth and aspirations left in modern art, it ended with the cubists. Dada art was about questioning the truth in anything, Dadaists wanted to challenge everything and make art absurd, because to them, everything was absurd. They used a lot of found objects or replicated them in strange ways on canvas. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Duchamp’s Fountain, which was nothing more than a urinal.  They also were really concerned with the use of art. In a world that was falling apart and where everything seemed to be a lie, what use was art? Art seemed useless and meaningless to them, so again in a moment of hipster genius they took it all on board and celebrated the fact that art was possibly meaningless by replicating their world in equally meaningless ways. They used a lot of incoherent found text and did a lot of collage.

Key Players: Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Otto Dix, Francis Picabia

[the-international-eye]

Sydney- Enter Dave Eggers

It started with a TED talk- and by author and philanthropist Dave Eggers no less. The talk was a gloriously enthusiastic monologue by Eggers about his San Francisco based 826 Valencia- a writing centre for young people. It was a call to action. 

Two years after the 2008 talk, former SMH journalists Catherine Keenan and Tim Dick heard that call and opened the Sydney Story Factory on Redfern Street. “I watched the TED Talk, showed it to Tim and we both thought, ‘lets do that’ Keenan told me, “We went to San Francisco, attended a course on how to set it up, volunteered for a week and did it”.

Almost a year on from its launch in May of last year, the centre is thriving, and this Honi Soit reporter went to check it out. 

826 was founded by Eggers to offer one-on-one attention to students from marginalized backgrounds, kids that weren’t at grade level and those that were being lost in the system. He wanted to offer these kids the self-worth that comes not only from expressing ones self, but from being taken seriously while doing it.

Sydney Story Factory was founded with the same ideal- to open up to kids that may be left behind and to show them that they have worth, more worth than they know. Egger’s Storefront was a pirate supply store, behind that the centre and behind that, Egger’s own publishing house. Poised on fault line of gentrified and non-gentrified communities, much like Redfern, his aim was to break down barriers between communities; between the cultural elite and those that would probably never have the opportunity to participate in it.

Behind the guise of a Martian Embassy, Sydney Story Factory’s Redfern street address is truly whimsical and a thoughtful homage to Egger’s Pirate Supply Store. The Dr. Souse like interior is hard to walk by; the walls are backlit with a leafy green glow and welcoming wooden curves shape the walls and ceiling into what could be the inside of an alien spacecraft. The gift shop offers a variety of products that a visiting Martian might need, from ‘sunscreen for the invasion’ to ‘bottled gravity’ and T-shirts that say “Take me to your leader”.

Past the conical flasks of “mutant wee-wee” and “android tears”, in the bowels of the space ship, is the tutoring centre. 

Today, it is filled with 15 kids from a vacation care centre in Glebe and five volunteers. The kids, aged 6-12, were there to write a two or three-minute script that they would later perform for their friends, with a little help from the volunteers and former high school English teacher Richard Short, the Storyteller-In-Chief.

I watch as Short breaks down comedic theatre into bite size pieces, walking them through characterization and plot. “Kids find things they didn’t know were inside them” Deputy Storyteller Helen Coolican, another former teacher explained to me, “You are allowing them to develop themselves and you are standing there, applauding them”. 

Another volunteer, Uma, whose background is in theatre, confessed to me, “It’s addictive … It’s totally about them, they don’t need to fight for our attention … We are validating them as human beings- we are telling them that right now they are the most important thing”. And that really is the key to understanding the centre, there is a genuine belief that words, writing and creativity can change lives. Keenan’s can-do attitude and enthusiasm are not alone here.  

“We are reaching out to street kids, indigenous kids and kids of all sorts of marginalized backgrounds… we say “yes” to them.” Uma explained. The centre is here first and foremost to enrich the lives of Sydney’s young people and that starts with the local community. 

The centre has recently gained the trust of organizations like the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) and the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy (NASCA), both of which work closely with the Redfern community.  “We are doing stuff with them all the time… I think we will get more and more local kids” Short explained optimistically.

It’s too early to say if the Sydney Story Factory has changed the community, but in the Mission District, over half of the students who participated in after-school tutoring saw their writing test scores increase. 91 percent of parents reported that their child was getting better grades, and enjoyed reading more.

When I spoke to Short after the workshop, I asked if he would be interested in expanding. “If we set up in say, Fairfeild or Cabramatta, it would be instantly filled, but we would need volunteers... but right now, I can’t be in these two places at once, me and Cath [Keenan] agreed that was too crazy”.

Mostly, he was unsure of the amount of volunteers he would have. “We couldn’t run without volunteers and interns, we have about 800 on the books, but a core of about 150 that do allot of the volunteering… and 3 interns at a time”.

Luckily, students and volunteers for Redfern are never far. Keenan is most proud of the fact that not only have 1000 kids visited the centre since July, but they keep coming back, “it’s fantastic, we have one girl that came to our first workshop and she still comes every week”.

I sat in on Uma’s group at the scriptwriting workshop, she had two year six boys who at first, seemed more interested in what the shop had to offer than Uma. But after some gentle cajoling on Short’s part, the boys sat down and created a script. By the end of the workshop, almost in spite of themselves, they were excited by their own ideas and had fun performing their story for the class - a moral tale about an exorcist that is trapped in a pixilated world. On his way out, one of Uma’s boys told me he couldn’t wait to come back.

[the-international-eye]

Rap Quotes

  After he schooled New Yorkers on etiquette via cheeky but official looking signs posted on the New York Subway, artist Jay Shells is counterfeiting city signs once again. Armed with a camera, nails and a map Shells took to the streets of NYC to honor the places of rap legend in his newest project, Rap Quotes.

  Shells created semi-official red parking signs that quote sight specific rap lyrics and then installed them in the places the lyrics mentioned, making an unofficial walking tour of New York rap folklore. Accompanied by culture mag Animal, Shells hit the streets with his new, and very illegal, signage. They honor the likes of Mos Def, Jay-Z, Kanye, RA, Jeru tha Damaja and CL Smooth and GZA and breach the length New York’s Hip-Hop history.

  When asked what inspired him, Shells told Animal, “I love hip hop and it’s cool to know that you are somewhere that was called out in a song”. Hip-Hop is a genre born from folklore and place is a big part of that, hip-hop is territorial, “Allot of Rappers [have their] block” Shells says. He’s bringing that to life by pairing the real world with the places of legend. Rappers are bigger than life and so are their lyrics, he’s pulling them to earth and making them tangible.

  Legend was key for Shells when he came up with the idea. The artist told New York Daily News that these spots are “really specific locations, a place where you could put a brass plaque in the ground and say, ‘This happened here.’…That’s the reason I did the project. For that feeling for someone that might be walking by, and that person didn’t know that where they’re standing- that particular point- is mentioned in a song”.

  To a passing rap nerd, the signs are an awesome tribute to a culture they love and are apart of, and ode to heroes present and past. To your average passerby, though, he’s telling people that they are on sacred ground, reminding outsiders of the intertwined identities of New York City and Hip-hop culture, the two have shaped each other. Hip-Hop is a prominent character in New York just as New York is a prominent character in Hip Hop. Shells wanted to create elegies for rap history and put these places of rap myth on the map.

  How long the signs will stay, nobody knows.  Shells admitted to Animal,  “I don’t care if people take them, I would take them, I hope people take them… But fuck it, it’s my gift to you, take em”.   

[the-international-eye]

A Route Divided

This year continues to be a bad one for Israeli democracy.

The  Israeli transport ministry announced on monday that they would be implementing new Palestinian only (read, segregated) bus lines to run from the West Bank to Israel. Many Palestinians make this journey daily for work.

Haaretz (Israels leftist media outlet) had this to say: 

The Transportation Ministry claims the lines are meant to ease travel conditions for the Palestinians, but they’re actually another manifestation of a regime based on discrimination and segregation.

This of course comes less than a month after it was revealed that Israel had been secretly dosing Ethiopian Jewish migrants to Isareal with birth control. 

While the segregation is not legally binding, police are enforcing the decision this week, stopping busses to remove Palestinians who are unaware of the new bus routes. 

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is the fact that this is happening in occupied Palestine, not in Israel. In theory, occupied territory is governed for the benefits of the occupants, not of the occupiers. In fact, an Israeli High Court descision in 2004 cemented as much. There were talks then of similar action, however, the move was declared unlawful. Infrastructure could not be built by occupiers in occupied land that was not to the specific benefit of the community. 

Given the resemblance that this scenario has to South Africa in the 1980s and to the united State in the 1940s, it is exceedingly difficult to carve out a humanitarian argument which would favor this change. 

  Details are yet to emerge on how the two bus routes operate in comparison to one another. 

[the-international-eye]

Mail for Mr. Jones

Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr, (A.K.A Indiana Jones) is still receiving mail at his alma mater’s address.

Last December, The University Of Chicago Tumbled that they had received a mysterious brown paper package addressed to none other than the archeologist/ action hero himself. Inside the package was a dusty notebook, letters, postcards and pictures from Jones’ love interest Marion Ravenwood, antique bills and maps all sent by the (supposedly) fictitious University of Chicago professor Abner Ravenwood (A.K.A., Indy’s mentor).

Assuring the public that this was “not a hoax, at least not on our end”, a hunt across the Internet was launched to solve the mystery. At first it was believed to be a desperate student’s attempt to earn one of the very competitive undergrad spots that the university offers, but none came forward.

The University, “truly baffled” probed all “nerdly social” media sites for information, trending on reddit, tumblr and 4chan alike. After a month of attempting to raid the lost ark of the Internet, the University finally announced that it had found the answer to its meta-fictional delivery.

Apparently an E-bay seller based in Guam put together the package of memorabilia and mailed it to a buyer in Italy. Somehow though, in Hawaii the outer packing came off and it was passed on to the fake mailing address that was written on the memorabilia package. The U.S. Postal service had no problem accepting the fake, decades old postage stamps. 

[uchicagoadmissions]

Mischief Managed

For those of you who have wondered as hard as we have how we came to get this Indiana Jones journal: we have our solution. 

As some theorized, this did turn out to be the work of “Ravenbar” (real name: Paul, from Guam) on Ebay. After several days we were able to get in touch with Paul, who confirmed with us on Saturday that this was, indeed, his work, but that he did not know how it had gotten to us. Paul contacted us late yesterday to let us know that he had just received a letter (originally we were baffled as to how he got mail on a Sunday, but then we remembered time zones exist) from the USPS sorting service in Honolulu, HI (from a guy who, coincidentally, is also named Paul) stating that the outer package of something he had mailed had been found without its contents at their facility. 

According to Paul, this package was en route from him in Guam to his intended recipient IN ITALY (registered mail confirmation attached) when it must have fallen out of the package in Hawaii. Our address had originally been put on the manila wrapping of the journal just for cosmetic effect. We believe that the post office wrote on our Zip code on the outside of the package and, believing the Egyptian postage was real, sent it our way. From Guam to Hawaii en route to Italy with a stopover in Chicago: truly an adventure befitting Indiana Jones.

Paul has graciously let us know that he will make the intended recipient a new journal, and that we are welcome to keep this one— thanks, Paul! It will find its home in the Oriental Institute at UChicago because, as many have noted, “It belongs in a museum!”. We will post a link here when its exhibit is finished— we hear they’re working in some neat history about the men who inspired Indiana’s character, so it should be way cool.

Thank you to all who have emailed tips or ideas about this document— we appreciate your sleuthing on our behalf! We will now return to this Tumblr’s regularly scheduled programming: providing cool UChicago facts to prospective students. We look forward to welcoming our first members of the Class of 2017  when they receive admissions decisions from us on Tuesday afternoon. 

[the-international-eye]

From McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Stuart Winchester is the founder of the Apple Pie and Machine Guns Ronald Reagan Free Markets Institute for Freedom, Patriotism and the American Way (APMAG), a far-right think tank dedicated to preserving our nation from the nefarious influences of liberalism in all its odious forms.

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POSITION PAPER #8: PRESERVING THE RIGHT TO WORK.

BY STUART WINCHESTER

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As the relentless dismantling of our democracy continues under the reign of Emperor Obama, it is at times difficult to feel optimistic. The hated Affordable Care Act is set to neuter the greatest healthcare system in the world on Jan. 1 of next year. We are on the cusp of inviting 12 million illegals to our collective dinner table as so-called immigration reform rockets toward our borders like a terrifying real-life Speedy Gonzalez. And our sacred right to own a simple AR-15 with a 30-round clip for self-defense/the overthrow of our fascist government is under imminent threat.

Yet look beyond the rapacious freedom-stealing hordes of the Washington Beltway and you will see, in our states and localities, flowers of freedom blooming in the shadows of totalitarianism. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder took a mighty stand for workers’ rights and pushed a severely overdue right-to-work bill through the Michigan State Legislature.

This important law, already on the books in 23 states besides Michigan, unshackles employees from the tyrannical oversight of labor unions, which are at best legalized mafias and at worst the Osama bin Ladens of the working world, stealing workers’ freedoms by compelling them to pay union dues. No more. With a stroke of the pen, Governor Snyder has liberated the state’s long-oppressed proletariat from this obligation.

Organized labor apologists would have you believe that unions offer a simple compact, that their services are at once necessary and benevolent and always favor the worker. A glance at a notecard handed out by union representatives in Ohio summarizing their latest UAW contract demonstrates that workers forfeit considerably more than they gain in typical labor negotiations:

Those of you who still doubt that unions are nefarious enterprises will perhaps be convinced by this recent photograph of a Teamsters hall set up beside the Gates of Hell:

Unsurprisingly, there is every reason to believe that even the most diabolical being in the history of Earth is fed up with sclerotic and ineffective labor unions, as the front page of Hell’s newspaper of record clearly indicates:

It is comforting to know that Rick Snyder is at least as smart as the devil. With unions sent to the corner for a perpetual timeout, Michigan’s workers will finally be able to bargain for the things they find most important. While the union has long acted as an unnecessary middleman, shoving pay raises, health benefits, pensions, paid vacations and workplace safety rules down their throats, these are not the things that most workers value. A recent survey of union workers that APMAGconsidered conducting would probably have produced the following results:

Research that has yet to be conducted suggests that many of the so-called benefits that unions have long obsessed over are actually detrimental to a worker’s health. Oversized wages are thought to cause a condition known as Line Workers Syndrome, in which a laborer suddenly freezes up for fear that his employer will not meet its bottom line. Shortened workdays and vacations encourage idle time during which employees are not contributing to a company’s productivity. Access to company health benefits steals worker’s free-market choice while the knowledge of easy access to medical care encourages self-inflicted wounds. And pensions oblige companies to perpetually pay retired workers—some of whom have irritatingly long lifespans—causing anxiety among laborers about the financial well-being of the company’s stockholders. This epidemic mental health crisis among unionized workers can perhaps best be understood by studying this photograph of a Minnesota man threatening to leap to his death from a factory roof unless the union allows him to accept a 10-percent pay cut:

While a few union hacks will lament the inevitable loss of their two-hour workday with an hour and 45 minutes of built-in breaks, most workers will rejoice, and the at-last liberated businesses of Detroit will celebrate the opportunity to put a more flexible 1 workforce in place. With the Viking hordes of greedy blue-collar do-nothings tamed, the beleaguered businesses of Detroit will, at long last, perhaps be able to turn a profit. Those who doubt that union workers have been systematically strip mining their employers’ wealth for decades, taking far more than their fair share, need only glance at the photo below of a retired Michigan line worker jumping his Ferrari over a swimming pool filled with burning ivory:

The importance of passing a right-to-work law in Michigan cannot be overstated. The state is the spiritual home of America’s labor union movement, which for decades has made its every priority the smothering of workers’ rights, the dissolution of the middle class, and the total destruction of U.S. industry and the free enterprise system.

Right-to-work laws are not perfect. They do nothing, for example, to solve the problem of women and minorities in the workplace. They are however, as a whole, a positive step toward eliminating the scourge of labor unions from the lives of workers. As the bloated corpse of labor gasps for air in Michigan and dies out over the next several years, other states long battered by labor unions will not doubt follow suit, and the workers of America will be better off for it.

[the-international-eye]

Israel: The Rite of Some

Israel gave birth control to Ethiopian Jews without their consent

"Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent."

  The odd paradox that is Israel has reared it's ugly head once again. Israel is a state founded on the principle of a Jewish state as the pinnacle of Zionism. But, Israel has a problem with what it sees as the "wrong sort of Jews". That is to say, Israel considers itself the homeland for Ashkanazi (European) Jews alone. 

The Ethiopian Jews that are the subject of this newest controversy are not the first 'alien' jews to be subtly rejected from their religious homeland. Mizrahi Jews, that is arabic jews, are routinely subjugated (despite actually living in the homeland there before Israel was a place). Their population suffers discrimination and  routinely occupy lower income jobs and have less education.

This is an ideological tension that Israel must resolve if it insists on continuing it's actions on the world stage. It cannot be both the homeland of a religion and the rite of one race- this paradox is unwieldy. One must only consider the lengths to which it will go to ensure racial security. 

[the-international-eye]

Haha...

[the-international-eye]