Honi Soit Week 9, Semester 1, 2020 / First printed 1929
Anarchism and the evolution of rave / p. 12 Reflections on student culture / p. 6
The beauty and history of the piano / p. 9
On the urge to key a luxury car / p. 17
Acknowledgement of Country Honi Soit is published on the stolen land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. For over 230 years, First Nations people in this country have suffered from the destructive effects of invasion. The editors of this paper recognise that, as a team of settlers occupying the lands of the Bidjigal, Darug, Gadigal, Wangal and Wallumedegal people, we are beneficiaries of these reverberations that followed European settlement. As we strive throughout the year to offer a platform to the voices mainstream media ignores, we cannot meet this goal without providing a space for First Nations people to share their experiences and perspectives. A student paper which does not acknowledge historical and ongoing colonisation and the white supremacy embedded within Australian society can never adequately represent the students of the institution in which it operates. We seek to resist colonial violence and the racist power structures that serve to oppress those who are Indigenous to this land. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Contents Who? Weekly / 3 News / 4 Analysis / 6 Perpsective / 8 Profile / 9 Culture / 10 Feature / 12 Opinion / 16 Creative / 18 SRC / 20 Comedy / 23
Editorial Editor Forbes
in
Chief:
Matthew
Editors: Nina Dillon Britton, Matthew Forbes, Zhiquan Gan, Robbie Mason, Angad Roy, Lara Sonnenschein, Ranuka Tandan, Chuyi Wang, Madeline Ward, Lei Yao Contributors: Michael Albinowski, Alvin Chung, Laura de Feyter, Marlow Hurst, Grace Johnson, Tasia Kuznichenko, Blake Lovely, Juliette Marchant, Rhian Mordaunt, Roisin Murphy, Shania O’Brien, Pailey Wang Artists: Nina Dillion Britton, Alex Mcleay, Claire Ollivain, James Sherriff Cover artist: Emma Pham Back cover artist: Ash Duncan
With autonomous editions and mid-sem break, it’s been a relatively quiet three weeks here at the metaphorical office of Honi Soit (and an even quieter six weeks at the regular office). But really, who’s even able to keep track of time at this point? Despite much of the world seemingly on pause, there’s still so much to keep track of, it’s hard to keep track of ourselves. So thankfully we’ll soon all be downloading an app that does that for us! Closer to home, we’re diving headfirst into the empty swimming pool that is the USU Board elections, in which 10 candidates fight for the chance to be a part of the union that’s ended day trade at one of its venues and laid off a bunch of staff members in the last few months. It’s so easy to be snarky isn’t it? I find myself resorting to that attitude far too much at the moment. The constant influx of celebrities gifting us with their infinite wisdom about “sticking together” and “getting through this” surely didn’t help. Perhaps writing my Culture piece this week, which is mostly an excuse to vent my distaste for one particular artist, didn’t help either. It’s good to see then that there’s far less snide attitude to be found in other articles throughout this week’s particularly culture-heavy edition. Grace Johnson provides an intimate history and celebration of the piano (p.14), while Juliette
Marchant explores the unstoppable dominance of TikTok (p.11) something I myself am still trying to wrap my head around without losing the will to live. We’ve also got some analysis of student culture from Roisin Murphy and Laura de Feyter to remind us that that concept is still relevant, no matter how much the opposite seems to be true at the moment (p.6–7). Beyond that, musical theatre-lovers like myself are treated to Blake Lovely’s interview with the composer of a new musical about the ginger fury herself, Pauline Hanson (p. 9), and Tasia Kuznichenko reminds us of the blissful nostalgia of game shows like the untouchable Spicks and Specks (p.16). A special shoutout goes to Robbie Mason’s feature, which outlines an inspiring sense of collectivism through music, as well as giving us a refreshing dose of some genuine counterculture (p.12–13). Many thanks to Emma Pham for the gorgeous cover art - never has a Zoom call seemed so enticing - and to Ash Duncan for the fiery back cover art which depicts a situation I would love to see happen. There’s plenty to be celebrated in this week’s Honi, so hopefully something here sparks whatever joy is able to be sparked inside of you. Yours not-so-cynically, Matthew Forbes
Disclaimer: Honi Soit is published by the Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney, Level 1 Wentworth Building, City Road, University of Sydney NSW 2006. The SRC’s operation costs, space and administrative support are financed by the University of Sydney. Honi Soit is printed under the auspices of the SRC’s directors of student publications: Maia Edge, Peiqing Fan, Nina Mountford, Roisin Murphy, Mikaela Pappou and Maxim Vishney. All expressions are published on the basis that they are not to be regarded as the opinions of the SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information contained within this newspaper, nor does it endorse any of the advertisements and insertions. Please direct all advertising inquiries to publications.manager@src.usyd.edu.au.
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LETTERS
Letters “Uh oh, WoCo” Dear Honi, I’m a fan of the WoCo, but some aspects of WoCo Honi have really bothered me this year. There are around 3 or so articles about/that at least vaguely concern Christianity in the edition. While of course it’s topical within the context of George Pell etc, one of these articles in particular goes so far as to *advocate* for Christianity within a left-wing context. I must seriously ask: with however many pages there are to fill, does such a take warrant an entire page? A whole page about how we can interpret Christianity as ethical in order to fold a few people into left-wing politics? If the only way you can convince someone to enter progressive politics is through a
religious paradigm then there is a flaw within that logic because dwelling on biblical semantics is unlikely to lead to the meaningful, ‘radical’ change the author would like to see. Beyond this pro-Christianity take, there is a notable absence of interrogation or advocacy for the other less hegemonic Abrahamic religions, the two little gems of Judaism and Islam. This is especially odd as there have been shootings in synagogues and mosques within the last 12-18 months, but it is apparently more apt to instead prop up Christianity. Christianity, the religion which is already propped up by the state, inherently within the legal system, and by literally everything everywhere in the West. From this perspective, it doesn’t
really matter what lens you’re looking at Christianity through. It still stands that it already dominates and informs public discourse, and its advocation has no place in a ‘radical’ student newspaper. I will of course acknowledge that there is an article on the Kabala system that is very interesting and timely, and there is an article on Palestine, which is an ever-important issue to be platformed. But this focus on Christianity at the expense of Jewish and Muslim students’ marginalised perspectives is odd. With regard to the Palestine article especially, it just seems like another iteration of the tendency of the current USyd left to equivocate Palestine and Islam as one singular being. It is this same rhetoric that leads
to the equivocation of Judaism and Israel, that among other things allows Israel to be legitimised as a state. But well done WOCO, you have killed two birds with one stone. By having one article about Palestine, you have ticked off the Muslim representation box as well as the pro-Palestine take box. This is no comment on the authors of any particular pieces or the people who put the edition together. I am just saying that there is a lot of scope to do better in this regard! It’s better than putting a suicide bomber on the cover like they did 2 years ago!
COMMUNISM ,MELTDOWNS, LOCK-DOWNS, SHOWDOWNS, CRACKDOWNS, AND BANKRUPTCIES FILL THE WORLD. IN A NORMAL YEAR , APRIL 23 IS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY ! HE WAS THE GREATEST ENGLISH WRITER OF ALL TIME AND THE GREATEST PLAYWRIGHT OF ALL TIME. AS A WRITER, I AM NOT GOOD
ENOUGH TO LICK HIS BOOTS.HE WAS A TRUE CHAMPION ! IN AN ABNORMAL YEAR SUCH AS THE YEAR 2020 ,IT IS THE YEAR OF THE COVID OVID ! HERE ARE JUST 8 EIGHT OF OVID’S THOUSANDS OF QUOTES 1. “Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.” 2. “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” 3. “There are a thousand forms of
evil; there will be a thousand remedies.” 4. “Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.” 5. “Habits change into character.” 6. “Courage conquers all things; it even gives strength to the body.” 7. “Either do not attempt at all or go through with it.” 8. “A burden which is done well becomes light.” your covid ovid, jane wallace
- Anonymous
“2020 is a nutty year!” 2020 IS THE YEAR OF THE INVISIBLE ENEMY TAKING OVER THE WORLD. LIKE “MARS ATTACKS”, COVID 19 CORONA VIRUS ATTACKS THE WORLD AND DOMINATES THE WORLD. COVID 19 IS THE STORY OF THE YEAR 2020 AD. FEARS, ANXIETIES, PHOBIAS, TERRORS, SCARES, SCHIZOPHRENIA, IRRATIONALITY, IRRELEVANCE, ATHEISM , AGNOSTICISM ,
Write, create and produce for Honi Soit Azealia Banks who?
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Weekly
As is said in John:8, let she among us who has not called someone a f*g on the internet cast the first stone. A certain Miss Ruby Lotz, of NLS and USU Board candidate who-dom, has been revealed as the author of some extremely benign homophobia. Rogue Ruby is further alleged to have participated in “problematic behaviour” online, of which we found evidence of only the most minor of transgressions.
These deeply boring allegations are rumoured to be the pawn of a longstanding battle between NLS and Unity, whereby Unity routinely threatens to unearth them in order to one up their bitter foes.
Nudes, declarations of affection and hate mail may be sent to: editors@honisoit.com.
SIR!
We’re All Friends Here
We are tickled pink with the arrival of a new and intriguing Colourful Campus Personality, by the name of Mr Amir Jabbari. Ambitious Amir, a surprise entrant in the USU race and avid enthusiast of this ;) emoji, is the founder and managing director of HiDigitals, a marketing agency with offices in Barangaroo. Amir joins the illustrious ranks of such feted student politician-professionals as Hengjie Sun (Air-Con CEO) and Jacky He (International TV Show Guest).
Is it really a preference deal if its not signed in the Anderson Stuart Courtyard? Formal arrangements won’t come to fruition for a little while, but we can assume that Vigorous Vikki Qin and Jaunty Jiale Wang will be hot property as candidates likely to break quota. Who independent candidates such as Ardent Amir Jabbari and Eccentric Eitan Harris are likely to attract the attentions of the Moderate Liberals and Unity, looking for losers to trigger a favourable preference flow.
Twink Fight!
Clash of the Trotskyists
The more boring of the two USU board elections is fast approaching, with Benny Shen and Nick Fitbit in fierce competition for President. Mr Fitbit has the support of Irene Ma (in exchange for VP) and the two Senate appointed directors. How cool and leftwing of him to seek the votes of the unelected and elderly members of the Board!
SAlt and Soli are fighting again, but with no posters to aggressively sticker over, the feud has been largely conducted through an SRC Council Zoom meeting and a series of stroppy facebook statuses. What are they fighting over? Their differing approaches to unionism, and other such intriguing matters.
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NEWS
Oscar Bai censured by USU Board Lara Sonnenschein reports. In a unanimous vote yesterday afternoon, first year board director Oscar Bai has been censured by the USU Board for failing to meet his attendance obligations. In a unanimous vote yesterday afternoon, first year board director Oscar Bai has been censured by the USU Board for failing to meet his attendance obligations. The Board also voted on suspending Bai’s remuneration, privileges and benefits, which carried with 11 votes for and 1 abstention from Bai himself. As a result, Bai will not receive his May or June stipends and his meal card and director-only discounts are suspended until 20 July. The Special Resolution notes that this has been a repeated occurrence, specifically listening 10 events where the Executive felt that Bai breached his Board duties. Further, Bai has
received multiple written and verbal warnings regarding his behaviour and potential consequences. On 21 August 2019, President Connor Wherrett met with Bai to inform him that he was in breach of his fiduciary duties when it came to trying to influence the decision making process of the New Club Panel as he had undeclared conflicts. In response, Bai messaged afterwards saying “People you think are friends are attacking you on trumped-up charges. Do you know that feeling?” On 1 October 2019 Vice President Lachlan Finch met with Bai saying “he needed to lift his game as a board director”, with Oscar accepting and pledging to do so. On 8 April 2020 the Executive emailed Bai, concerned about his attendance record, where he was given
a warning that his failure to attend meetings could put his directorship on the line. Bai never replied to the email. Bai apologised at yesterday’s meeting and described the motion as a “wake up call”, committing to improve his performance. He also noted that being an international student during the COVID-19 crisis has proven difficult. Bai himself is in China, and was unable to return to Australia as a result of the travel ban imposed by the Morrison government on 1 February this year. However, with USU meetings continuing online, and his breaches dating well before the travel ban was instituted, it raises questions over the validity of his partial excuse. Honorary Treasurer Maya Eswaran was the only director to speak to the resolution yesterday, where she
noted that the motion was focused on supporting Oscar. Speaking to Honi Eswaran said, “It is unacceptable for paid directors elected by the student body to not satisfy the minimum requirements of their role. It’s important that board directors know they will be held accountable, especially when a new set of students will be joining the Board in June. Having passionate and committed directors goes to the heart of our ability to remain an independent student-run organisation, which has the confidence of its staff and members.” This is the first censure against a board director in five years. Honi reached out to Bai for comment however he did not respond in time for publication.
2020 USU Board candidates announced Madeline Ward and Chuyi Wang report. The University of Sydney Union (USU) have officially announced the 12 candidates running for Board on their website. Ada Choi, Eitan Harris, Ben Hines (Liberal), Amir Jabbari, Teresa Li, Ruby Lotz (NLS), Vikki Kailin Qin, Nick Rigby (Moderate Liberals), Belinda Thomas (Unity), Jiale Wang (Panda) and Prudence Wilkins Wheat (Switch) are in the running. Nick Rigby and Ben Hines (Privatise the SRC) will be running as ‘independents’, a tried and true Liberal campaign technique. Rigby, the president of the Sydney Arts Students Society (SASS), will be campaign managed by SRC councillors Nicholas Comino (Colleges for SRC) and Zach Pitkethley (Boost). Hines will
be managed by former Switchroots campaigner and current Law Society Socials Director, Alex De Araujo. He will be supported by members of the Sydney University Liberal Club (SULC) of which he is Vice President (Policy). Hines is a member of the ‘Alex Dore’ faction, which seized control of SULC in 2016. SRC Environment Officer Prudence Wilkins Wheat will not be assisted by a campaign manager as such, but rather a team of people from Grassroots and Switch. SRC Sexual Harassment Officer and SURG Marketing Coordinator Ruby Lotz will be managed by NLS SRC councillor Roisin Murphy, and Belinda Thomas by SRC General Secretary Liam Thomas. Thomas also
managed Tom Manousaridis’ (Unity) unsuccessful campaign last year. Jiale Wang, the 2019 SRC Global Solidarity Officer who campaigned last year for successful candidate Benny Shen, will also be trying his hand at getting on Board. However, Honi understands that Benny will be supporting Vikki Kailin Qin. Surprise entrants include Amir Jabbari, a former President of the Iranian Society, and Eitan Harris, the current Leadership and Development Officer of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS). This is the first time in the USU’s history that elections have been conducted entirely online, with online campaigning beginning on 6 May at 12:01am. The election will
be conducted via a personalised link sent to USU members’ university email addresses at 9am on 18 May, concluding on the 22nd. As only USU members are eligible to vote, candidates will have until 5pm on the 15th of May to encourage students to sign up. USU membership has been free for all students since 2019, but operates on an opt-in basis. An online election presents new challenges for candidates and their factions. In the absence of a physical campaign, classic tactics are now unavailable. There’s no knowing what such a campaign will bring — Zoom lecture bashes? Tik Toks? Only time will tell.
Sydney University Village remove signs calling for rent suspension Matthew Forbes reports. Tensions have escalated between Sydney University Village’s (SUV) management and its residents following the forced removal of protest signs hanging in the windows of units in the accommodation. The signs, which read ‘SYDNEY UNI STUDENTS SAY: NO EVICTIONS - SUSPEND OR REDUCE RENTS’, were taken down by staff yesterday, without wearing any protective equipment Aman Kapoor, an international student at USyd and resident of SUV who recently sent and later shared a letter to Vice Chancellor Michael Spence regarding rent amnesty, was one of several students to display the sign. “Me and my flatmates who also signed the letter for [the] Vice Chancellor were the first to put the posters on our window, but it got removed by SUV management within 12 hours,” Kapoor informed us. “I
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believe it was their tactic to scare everyone, so that other residents do not do the same things in SUV.” Kapoor’s letter called on Spence to help in suspending or reducing rent for those living in university accommodation, and ensure that students who are unable to pay rent on time due to a job loss or wage cut will not face evictions. As of this article’s publication, Kapoor and the other signees have not heard back from the university, the unresponsiveness having prompted them to display the posters from their windows. “Personally, I cannot understand why students can’t take such steps when [the] university is not responding to our requests.” Following the banning of signs hanging from windows, students involved in organising these demonstrations have begun a photo campaign based around these signs.
The campaign has gained support and participation from other student accommodations such as The Regiment and Stucco. Acts of protest such as these stem from a growing sense of anxiety regarding the security and financial stability of residents of campus/ student accommodation, especially international students, many of whom have lost their job due to restrictions and closures that have been enacted in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Queen Mary Building’s (QMB) accomodation is currently shrouded in controversy. According to a resident, the building recently ‘shut down’ and removed all tables and chairs from common spaces such as study rooms. With no access to the taps located in these study rooms, residents have had to line up to use the remaining taps, of which there are only one on each floor. These decisions were apparently
made with no consultation from any student body, and the accomodation’s management have not been responding to emails from residents who are unable to afford rent. “If I could afford to pay rent, I’d still be in QMB,” another resident told us, having been forced to move back to their home in Melbourne after losing their casual work and, subsequently, their ability to pay rent. “I’ve spent the last 2 months of my life building a life for myself here in Sydney… I feel like going home means I’ve failed and that when I return I’ll be back at square one.” Over 400 students have signed a petition calling for the government to lend its support and assistance to international students due to the “period of intense uncertainty and hardship” they currently face.
NEWS
University of Sydney to move to ‘no-disadvantage’ assessment system Chuyi Wang reports. In an email sent to students by Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence this afternoon, the University has announced that it will move to a ‘nodisadvantage’ assessment system for Semester 1, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 health crisis. Measures implemented under this system include adjustments to special consideration requirements and the use of discontinued and other grades for those students who have been adversely affected by the epidemic. In addition to the existing Weighted Average Mark (WAM) system, the
University has also offered to include a COVID-adjusted WAM in current students’ final academic transcript that excludes their Semester 1, 2020 results from the calculation. This decision comes as a result of pressure from the Students’ Representative Union (SRC) and various student groups in recent weeks for an alternative academic arrangement for those negatively impacted by the current situation. “We have been fighting hard for this specific remedy for the past week, and for broader changes to
grading and assessment for the past few months. This announcement is undoubtedly a victory for the SRC, and the entire student body, whose extensive grassroots actions indicated the magnitude of dissatisfaction and urgent need for solutions,” commented SRC President Liam Donohoe. “There is still significant work to be done, however. We need to clarify whether students can waive their original WAM, and establish remedies for students who fail (for instance, omission of fail results from
transcripts and “result incomplete” alternatives). We will also continue to work on improvements to special considerations, Discontinue without failure (DC) deadlines and course refunds.” Although the announcement may ease some pressure on the wider student body, the University has yet to respond to the demands of research students who have been unable to access the necessary resources or undertake the appropriate fieldwork as a result of campus closure and social distancing.
USU election information Zoom session invaded by anonymous trolls Lara Sonnenschein, Madeline Ward and Chuyi Wang report. The University of Sydney Union’s (USU) election information session held via the University’s Zoom account has been trolled this afternoon. In what appears to be a coordinated effort, several individuals joined the call and exposed participants to pornographic material, images of swastikas, confederate flags, and nudity. In addition to sharing material, multiple individuals joined under the same display name and shared their video feeds throughout the meeting, occasionally making threatening gestures. Some obscured their appearance with masks and filters,
and others remained unmasked. A number of other anonymous users also joined under fake names, such as “ray pist”, and spammed the Zoom chat with offensive material. One user under the name of “Leonard Krog” exposed his buttocks using the video chat function. USU Board Director Cady Brown told Honi she believes she was hacked during the meeting. Brown lost control of her cursor function and her Zoom shut down. However, she was later able to rejoin the meeting. Following the trolling, USU staff, including Board Secretary Dane Luo, took measures to remove the
individuals trolling the call. They also disabled the chat, ability to annotate on the screen share function, and muted all participants that weren’t hosts. All Honi Soit editors who attempted to join the meeting were removed from the call. Honi is not aware of any other participants removed in error. The USU intends to raise this incident with the University at today’s meeting hosted by the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Education) Philippa Pattinson on “the shift to online learning and assessment.” This incident is part of a broader trend known as “Zoombombing”
popular on sites such as 4Chan and 8kun (previously 8Chan) in which trolls crash, spam and disrupt meetings with offensive material. The subreddit r/Zoombombing, another forum dedicated to organising these raids, was recently permanently banned by Reddit administrators. In a statement to Honi, the University said “we are deeply concerned by this disturbing report, and do not condone any discriminatory behaviour. We will be investigating as a matter of urgency.”
USU to close down most campus outlets, stand down staff Chuyi Wang reports. From Monday 6 April, the University of Sydney Union (USU) will close down all but three of its outlets on campus and, as a result, stand down a number of staff employed by these outlets. In a statement sent to USU employees this afternoon, CEO Alexis Roitman cited the stoppage of work, lack of population on campus and other related impacts of the COVID-19 crisis as the primary causes.
The USU is intending to release this information to the media tomorrow, as well as conduct an exclusive interview with USU President Connor Wherret in Pulp magazine this afternoon. As of the writing of this article, however, this interview has not yet been published. Roitman further added that the USU is currently looking into the possibility of applying for the recently announced JobKeeper Subsidy for those stood down, though it is unclear
at this point whether or not the USU will be eligible, or which employees will receive the payment. “Closing almost all USU outlets on campus is not a decision the USU has taken lightly. We are proud of our long history of serving students and the University community and we look forward to resuming operations just as soon as we can,” commented USU President Connor Wherrett, in the forthcoming press release. The only three outlets to remain
open from Monday are the Footbridge Station in the Holme Building, Snack Express in the Wentworth Food Court and the USYD Store in JFR, which will operate on a takeaway basis only. However, the USU is encouraging retail tenants in Manning and Wentworth buildings to stay open for the benefit of those still remaining on campus.
Misogynistic men’s Facebook group becomes platform for illegal revenge porn Nina Dillon Britton reports. A Facebook group with almost 7000 members from across Australia has been used to share videos and photos of women without their consent, in addition to other misogynistic posts. Distributing intimate images without consent is a criminal offence in all Australian states and territories, except Tasmania. In Victoria, where the group appears to be based, the offence carries a maximum sentence of two years where the victim is an adult. The group, called “Melb Guy Pals” has drawn criticism from women and
feminist groups, calling for Facebook to close the group. In a set of screenshots obtained by Honi, one member offered to post a video of himself having sex with his ex-partner for “200 likes”, and then did so. The post has since been removed. In another, a member posts and then deletes a similar video after 20 seconds. A separate post contains an image of a man receiving oral sex from a woman. It is not clear from the post if the poster took the photograph.
Other photos posted by a different member, appear to be of women on balconies of neighbouring buildings, taken without their awareness or consent. The group also contains a large number of non-photographic posts. One posts states “Holocaust #2 but instead of targeting jews (sic) we target women.” Another asks “anyone else fucking despise feminists?” A number of posts refer to women as “dishwashers.” Though some posts criticise the misogyny, many others celebrate it.
“Girls really need to think, it’s your fault if your nudes are leaked,” one post states. One member told Honi that since leaks have drawn criticism online, the group has splintered into smaller groups and group chats to avoid deletion by Facebook. As of publication, Facebook has not deleted the group. The USyd Women’s Collective is currently developing an infographic series on intimate image abuse.
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ANALYSIS
Beyond nostalgia: Reflections on student culture Roisin Murphy on the culture of nostalgia on campus, and why we should do more than just mourn what we’ve lost. Inescapable in the triumphant stories we hear of Prime Ministers, actors and great poets of Australia forming the beginnings of their journey on our campus, is the colonialism which underpins it all. From the moment I started first year, my goal was to beat the system of the university in every way I could, to pay them back for stealing my ancestors’ land. I detested the seemingly stupid obsession the people around me had with a culture that didn’t appear to be there anymore. Something about this has been troubling me lately - in wanting to beat the system, like many, I got swept into the nostalgia of it and had became one of the obsessors too. Being a shamefully full circle Sydney Uni student — stupol hack, performing arts wanker, slave to the Honi archives — I should probably live in a dingy share-house in Glebe. Fit with a broken gate and a mouldy cast-iron ceiling that I stare at each night before dreaming of dirty bongs and dodgy SRC preference deals. But I don’t. Because not many people do anymore. I live with my parents in the bedroom across the hall from theirs. And, like most people, when I get home from the Flodge on a Monday (usually just after they close the beer garden well before midnight, early enough to adhere to the Uni’s 90% attendance policy the next day), I have to be careful not to wake my family. It was a few weeks ago when I realised what I was doing. Late one night I glanced at my side table and let out an embarrassed sneer when I
noticed Comrades by Dominic Knight (for the uninitiated - a novel about student politics at USyd) sitting nestled amongst the clutter. My sneer was not just because it is a shocking excuse for a book, but more because I realised that from the moment I stepped foot on Eastern Avenue, for all my denying it, I had been engaging in the fixation so many have on the past culture of our campus. I’d spent my time trying desperately to live out an experience that doesn’t exist anymore. So desperately that I was reading about it in a novel. More upsettingly, I realised that there was something deeper I was missing out on by doing this. *** Growing up, many of us hear stories from our educators that if we go to university, the years spent there will be the best of our lives. 9am lectures: optional, midday beers: compulsory. Unfortunately, decades of neoliberal governments and subtle, but consistent jabs by University management have meant that this reality is nothing but nostalgia. VSU Every student politician’s favourite buzzword. Until 2005, students had to pay a fee directly to their student unions, under what was known as Compulsory Student Unionism (CSU). The unions were rich, their parties were plenty and their theatresports jams full to the
brim with the creative fruit of time not spent on degrees. Their wealth meant they had the money to create a culture of leisure appealing enough for students to turn a blind eye to study; there was something there that seemed more valuable than any lecture hall. In 2005, the Howard government legislated Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU), meaning this money had been stripped away by the nightmare of SSAF. The dream was over. Live music on campus disappeared seemingly overnight, Footbridge was sold and left to become a ghost of what it once was and could have been, and Manning became a victim of countless halfhearted makeovers. More than anything, Howard detested leisure. He hated the thought of any student having copious amounts of time in which to not be productive. He couldn’t stand that they were putting his hard budgeted dole money into buying six packs to entertain themselves. What he missed, however, is that some of the most important takeaways from the intellect we develop at university, are born out of leisure. It seems Howard never pondered these ideas during his university years. Gentrification While gentrification has certainly contributed to the subtle killing of student culture, I hesitate to paint students as the sole victim of it. Sydney Uni and its surrounds are on
Gadigal land, and one of the suburbs it sits on, Redfern, has one of the most strong and vibrant Aboriginal communities in the country. In the wake of students taking up cheap rent around the university (which enabled them to spend so much of their time at, and build a culture on campus), it was the local Aboriginal community and low-income earners that were left in the property dust. However, now that the second wave of gentrification is taking place, with the uni students of the 90s grown-up and ready to buy million dollar terraces, most current students can’t afford to live anywhere close to campus. This has been a major factor in the loss of campus life. No one is going to want to hang around at Manning until midnight on a weekday if there’s no safe route home back to the suburbs. Manning, we miss you (we think) The closure of Manning Bar earlier in the year was devastating for many. The response of the student body, however, seems peculiar. So many of us spoke about how we’d miss it, but so few of us spoke of our own experiences, deferring instead to those of generations past. Manning, in reality, hasn’t been cared for by many since they banned smoking on the balcony in 2012, and there seems to be more middle-aged heavy metal bands playing there than student beers bought. It makes sense then, that when Manning died, we felt a grief that wasn’t ours; it was a grief for what we never got, for what we wanted so desperately. For what those who come after us will never have. For what we will only ever read about in the archives. *** While it’s important to critique the reasons behind a great cultural shift in Australian campus life, it’s equally important not to over-grieve it. Because in doing so, we miss what’s right in front of us. We miss the opportunity to build a culture we’ll be proud to tell stories of. We can’t sit around pretending Sydney Uni’s still great — we need to rally for better funded student unions so that it actually can be. Manning closing doesn’t mean we can’t get drunk anymore. Rooms in shithole share-houses costing $300 a week doesn’t mean we can’t have coming of age crises. All these things are still happening to us. They are just happening differently. And we’re missing the opportunity to experience them by waiting for them to arrive. There is something incredibly endearing about living through a new and unique period in student culture don’t let it slip by you. Art by Nina Dillon Britton.
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Screen spirituality: How are USyd’s biggest religious clubs adapting? Laura de Feyter on campus spirituality during COVID-19. Religious clubs are some of the largest societies at the University of Sydney. Yet with COVID-19 restrictions disrupting most social interactions, they’ve been forced to come together behind screens to practice their faith. Rituals like prayer, sacred ceremonies, and large communal gatherings hold deep significance for religious groups. For many believers, these practices are intricately tied to social and cultural identity. ßSo in a time when the very fibre of our lives is shifting, it is particularly difficult for religious adherents to adjust. How are the biggest faith groups on campus helping members through the pandemic? Evangelical Union (EU) With community or “fellowship” a fundamental part of Christian beliefs, many of the EU’s practices rely largely on interpersonal relationships. “We seek to regularly gather together in order to encourage one another… and worship God together,” President Jacob shared. “This communal aspect has been particularly difficult to replicate in online formats.” For many members, staying part of this community has been an essential part of coping with the crisis. With activities such as Bible studies, oneto-ones, prayer meetings, and public talks continuing on Zoom, the EU has sought to provide avenues for believers to express themselves and receive emotional support. Jacob also spoke of the hope and certainty Christians can hold onto during the pandemic. The society has been reminding members that “we know our sins have been forgiven, and we have a glorious eternal future with
God awaiting us, where there will be no more crying, hurt, sickness, pain or death.” The President encouraged students to seek out answers to their longings during the virus. “We’d love to welcome you into our community, no matter your background or the beliefs you may have - we think Jesus is for everybody!” Australasian University Jewish Society (AUJS) For Jews, communal prayers and holidays have been particularly hard to practice. For example, recently Jewish students celebrated Passover (or Pesach), one of the most important events in the Jewish calendar. As a festival which revolves around spending time with family and sharing meals, this year has proven particularly difficult. “A large part of the Jewish faith is community,” said AUJS Education Officer Timothy. “Keeping those connections strong has been a challenge when you are at times only a voice at the other end of the phone or an image on a screen.” However, Timothy also noted that adherents had been “getting creative” within the restrictions to uphold these important rituals. He felt that religious clubs may have an easier time transitioning online, being identity and community-based rather than activity-based. AUJS has been keeping in touch with members through social media and video conferencing platforms, and creating video messages to encourage solidarity in believers. Timothy similarly felt that our relationships with others are most important to cultivate during the
virus. “If you are ever feeling isolated, make sure you reach out,” he encouraged. ‘We are all in this together.” Sydney University Catholic Society (CathSoc) President Teressa spoke to the emotional difficulty her society felt in cancelling weekly events. Rituals such as praying together, attending mass, and practicing acts of charity have been interrupted by social distancing rules. “Though we have been running our regular events on Zoom, it’s just not the same as being in the presence of other people,” Teressa said. “We really had to trust that this was not the end, but only the beginning of a new mission for the Catholic Society.” This new “mission” has largely taken place over Zoom, where the club has been running prayers, Bible studies, and social events. Executives have released daily Bible quotes and spiritual reflections over social media to provide hope and encouragement for members. The society has also started making food packs for homeless and elderly people. Teressa was optimistic about the role CathSoc has played in supporting members during the virus. “We have faith in knowing that [God] is transforming our lives and the world, to bring light, restoration and hope,” she explained. “Our community is a much-needed source of strength and accountability during these difficult times.” Sydney University Muslim Student Association (SUMSA) Adapting to virus restrictions has
been “a unique process, to say the least,” said Executive member Alifa. SUMSA has provided online spaces for adherents to come together during the crisis through WhatsApp threads, Zoom events, and sharing reflections on Facebook. Alifa still saw the positive side of the pandemic’s effect, as it has forced the club to “think outside of the box” in their engagement with students. He expressed excitement about collaborations with the Muslim community both locally and abroad that could be facilitated in the online space. Significantly, last Friday marked the first day of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith. Typically the month is marked by believers coming together to break their fast and pray at the local mosque. This year, Ramadan celebrations are looking very different. Alifa said while isolation will made it hard to feel like a community during the fast, Islam is unique in allowing worship to extend beyond the mosque and into the home. “For many, the mosque is ‘home away from home.’ But as we stay indoors this Ramadan, our homes have become our ‘mosque away from the mosque.’” *** Practicing beliefs has never been more difficult for religious clubs. But clearly for many members, it has also never been more important. From behind screens, between walls, and across spatial divides, believers are still living out their faith.
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PERSPECTIVE
Getting over it Anonymous shares some insights on healing, hurting and forgetting. THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES SEXUAL ASSAULT AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
A few months ago, minutes into a conversation about MeToo, I remembered that I, too, had been raped. Much is written about the initial trauma of sexual violence, the ongoing pain, but outside academia, little about what healing looks like. Healing from trauma has changed me in ways that I have only recently begun to understand. Beginning to forget the pain that defined my life for years has offered me some insight into what I think healing looks like. My experience of sexual violence, initially, was radicalising. It was central, in ways I didn’t realise at the time, to my emergent feminist politics. It felt constitutive of the person I was: I remember reading and rereading an article in a (now defunct) teen magazine proclaiming I was a “survivor, [not a victim,] because you’re still here.” It provided me with a first-person anger that was uniquely powerful in pushing me towards activism, allowing me to skip over the difficulties of empathising with others or abstracted struggles. And it was consuming. I remember, vaguely, telling a friend a year after my assault that there was not a day that I didn’t think about what had happened to me. It’s difficult to imagine now, but I assume I was telling the truth. But struggling for change is something you need to do for the good of the community, not because it helps heal you. There is a tension between beginning to heal from trauma — to believe that you can be safe, that you are not constantly under attack, and that there is so much in life beyond violence — and activism, which calls on you to constantly recognise the massive scale of sexual violence, that you and all other women are constantly, hypothetically, at risk. A feminist theory that views sexual violence, correctly, as supported by a broader rape culture also means that smaller actions are constantly retraumatising. At one point, no sexist slight was too small to be integrated into that worldview for me. I remember barely anything about spending time with my friends at the parties I went to in my first years at uni. But I remember clearly older men leering at me, or being left with bruises after sex with strangers, or being kissed on the cheek by men rather than having my hand shaken. Activists often celebrate anger and pain moving us to action, but they also eat away at you. I often wonder whether I would have healed at all if I was as deeply involved in feminist activism now as I was in the two years after I was raped. If Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is rooted in over-accessing traumatic memories, as emerging evidence indicates, then the practice
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of activists speaking about their experiences of sexual violence may be empowering, but it is also, for many, re-traumatising. Healing requires, in some sense, selfishness. It takes time and energy to come to term with those memories, and begin to forget. Perhaps survivors leading these battles sacrifice more than we, or they, realise. I remember too, that sexual violence also became the horizon of my empathy. Seeing myself as a survivor bonded me to others who’d experienced similar things. But I remember openly laughing in a conversation at the idea
piece I made about sexual violence for the HSC (a rip off, somehow, of both Emma Sulkowicz’s Mattress Performance piece and Tracey Emin). Trauma, no doubt, teaches many things. But the romanticisation of my own pain, the self-involvement with my own identity as a survivor, closed me off to others’ pain. I remember, too, the constant feeling that no one took sexual violence seriously in the spaces in which I was involved. In the clubs and leftist political groups I was part of, like-minded friends and I engaged in a noble but
There is a tension between beginning to heal from trauma — to believe that you can be safe, that you are not constantly under attack, and that there is so much in life beyond violence — and activism, which calls on you to constantly recognise the massive scale of sexual violence, and that you and all other women are constantly, hypothetically, at risk. of hikikomori, the phenomenon where young Japanese men live as social recluses, because it was some perverse karma for the abuse of women. I had little time for social causes that didn’t involve ending some type of ongoing mass violence. I’m embarrassed admitting this. But it reminds me that one of the effects of trauma is selfishness. When your own pain is at the centre of your own universe, it’s dwarfs everything around it. I found it difficult to empathise with anything in my friends’ lives that were anything less than traumatic. In a diary entry from year 12, I write that
Sisyphean task: totally supporting and accommodating survivors of trauma. I regarded any person who saw our goals as unrealistic or not helpful as at best, deeply ignorant. But gradually I realised that pain is a bottomless pit. No amount of support or gentle handling is ever enough. When I was assaulted, “trigger warnings” were at the centre of the culture war debates. Opponents argued that they allowed survivors to avoid exposure and thereby hindered long-term healing. Proponents argued that they granted greater agency to survivors, allowing them to choose when and how to engage with relevant
Activists will often celebrate anger and pain moving us to action, but they also eat away at you. I often wonder whether I would have healed at all if I was as deeply involved in feminist activism as I was in the two years after I was raped
I’m not sure if I can support a friend experiencing anxiety. “How can I take exam stress seriously when she doesn’t know what it’s like to feel like this? It’s a joke.” There was something noble about dealing with trauma, as if it gave me an insight to some transcendent truth. I remember feeling frustrated that no one appreciated the meaningful insight into trauma I presented in the conceptual art
texts. But the evidence that has since emerged, to the dismay of both sides, is that such warnings have negiglible effects. Much of my life at uni has revolved around spaces seeking to accommodate and support survivors. But at work, in class, with my family and my partner — in short, most of my life — these accommodations did not exist. I still
believe that some support mechanisms are important, and useful, but their effect shouldn’t be overstated. The idea that you are suffering because those around don’t understand and support you enough is an alluring mirage: it explains away your pain by reference to others, giving you a narrative you can call on in any situation. Of course there are things that can make you feel a little better or worse, but most of it won’t make you any feel different at all. It’s its own kind of trauma to realise that there is nothing except time, in the end, that heals you — and even time isn’t always enough. In the couple of years following my assault, my identity as a survivor was at the core of my self understanding. Feminists for decades have objected to the use of the term “victim” to describe people who’ve experienced sexual violence. In her 1988 book, Surviving Sexual Violence, Liz Kelly argues, “it draws attention to the strength women display despite their experiences of victimisation through shifting the emphasis from viewing women as passive victims of sexual violence to seeing them as active survivors.” A victim is someone something happened to; a survivor is someone who overcomes something. But in my third year of uni a friend who’d been sexually assaulted as a child objected to the term. “I don’t think of myself that way,” he said. “Why does something that happened to me more than a decade ago make me a different kind of person?” In ways, I think, he was right. There is a passivity to the term “victim”, but it is also fixed in time. A victim is someone something happened to once; a survivor is someone who is still overcoming something. Identifying as a survivor meant I constantly conceived of myself as doing the hardest thing I’ve ever done, surviving an act of traumatic sexual violence. It was an enormous source of strength. But it also tied me, unavoidably, to that event. But now, at feminist marches and reading MeToo stories, I’ve begun to remove my own pain from the centre of my worldview, empathising with others’ stories on their own terms rather than their similarities to my own. I’m inspired by the survivors who’ve found strength in speaking about their experiences. But the true healing, I think, comes from a place down the road, when you sometimes forget what happened to you at all. Only then does he lose his hold over you. Only then have you really survived.
PROFILE
In conversation with Oliver Cameron, composer of The Colour Orange Blake Lovely chats Pauline Hanson with the composer of a musical about her. Just when you’d thought there was nothing left to do during isolation, along comes the saving grace. An entire musical devoted to the life of the infamous Pauline Hanson: The Colour Orange. I was lucky enough to sit down with the musical’s composer, Oliver John Cameron, to discuss the recent release of the original cast recording. Blakey Lovely: What drew you to creating an original musical about, of all people, Pauline Hanson? Oliver Cameron: It started out as a bit of a joke with my co-writer, Sophia, posting a Facebook status at the end of 2016. I thought it was a funny idea and we met up to chat about it, and the more we researched her life and career, the more it lent itself to the farce of musical theatre. It also provided an interesting challenge of representing this quite infamous person in a way that wasn’t overly condescending or defamatory. BL: Was it a difficult process for you to bring Pauline to life on stage, and what was the creative process like for you from the conception of the idea to the performance. OC: We were definitely struck by a few roadblocks along the way regarding the ethics of portraying Pauline on stage, but the constant checking or our motivations, asking ‘why are we doing this?’ proved to be what made the show work. We would meet quite regularly after we’d committed to the fringe festival slot and share what we had researched in the prior week. There wasn’t one clear process, just the generation of lots and lots of ideas (good and bad) and often over a glass of wine. Then all of a sudden, we were five weeks out from opening and we had to make decisions and tie all of these loose ideas together. The original team of Zara Stanton, Gavin Brown, Liam Ferguson, Kirralee Hillier and Gabi Kelland were instrumental to making the material work and bringing the comedy to life. BL: What is it about Pauline Hanson that compels audiences? Why is it that we love to hate her? OC: She’s such a divisive figure, but that ‘love to hate’ mentality became one of the central interrogations within the show. At the end of the day, Pauline could be any number of ‘ordinary Australians’ who fit the bill for a populist politician. Australians are drawn to genuine people who say what they think, and I think that’s certainly where Pauline started. As time has gone on, her stance on issues has changed so frequently that it’s clearly more about attention and popularity these days. A click is a click, whether it’s good or bad in the eyes of her politics or the media. BL: What was it like performing to sold out crowds during the shows
run at the Sydney Fringe Festival in Alexandria? OC: The last few weeks before we opened were so frantic to get the show ready that by the time an audience was in front of us we kept telling ourselves it was just a dress run! We weren’t quite sure what to expect and whether we had backed ourselves into a ‘tooniche’ corner, but we were so glad to have a warm audience response and laughter from the get-go. The show doesn’t start with Pauline, she actually doesn’t make an appearance until 15 minutes in, and I think that was a good call because it allowed the audience to warm up to the style of comedy and slightly absurd elements. We were asked back for an encore performance which was thrilling and encouraged us
Pauline’s outspoken nature into the musical? OC: We were well aware of our position of privilege in making fun of someone like Pauline Hanson. Sophia and I wanted to avoid speaking on behalf of the groups who have been targeted by Pauline’s rhetoric, nor did we want to redo the damage of her stunts, racism and jingoism. We also didn’t want to laugh off the serious implications of her political ascension. By taking the words of the real-life Pauline and giving them to other characters or underscoring them with contrary music, we found ways to disempower the words by revealing their ludicrousness. A lot of the irony is communicated through the actors’ performance. Having multiple people
to schedule performances at Adelaide Fringe and Sydney Comedy Festival. BL: What kind of a response have you been getting from the show? Is it what you expected or wanted? OC: We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from our audiences, and quite a few people who missed out asking when it will be on again! I think there’s something in there for everyone, with a mixture of political, music theatre and pop culture all wrapped up in an Australiana bow. I’ve also been glad to hear people humming the tunes after seeing the performances – it means a lot! BL: Pauline has been a hugely controversial figure over the past few years, and somehow continues to garner power and control in the parliament despite her outlandish claims. How did you go about weaving
play Pauline throughout her career was another way of curtailing her presence as an empathetic character. A lot of people commented that they had forgotten parts of her story, like the fact she went to prison or was on Dancing with the Stars. I also think that showing these events in one 75-minute show creates a greater impact. It helps reveal the devious side of her political climb, and the forces that helped make it possible. BL: Many other Liberal political figures make an appearance in The Colour Orange. Why do you feel like so many people, especially young people, feel disenfranchised from the current government? How does The Colour Orange touch on this issue? OC: One Nation wouldn’t have been so successful in the 1996 election without John Howard. His lack of
a stance on the minor party as a racist enterprise set about a change for politics where nationalism and xenophobia once again became valid political fronts. This is part of the reason we called the production company ‘Flaming Howard’ as a softened version of ‘Blaming Howard’. The band is featured throughout the show and stays on stage after being introduced one by one as John Howard at the opening, with Aussie green and gold tracksuits to match their bushy stick-on eyebrows. I liked the idea of all the action happening right under John’s nose, and the indecisive multimanned John Howard band leads to some great comic moments. The show is set in the years leading up to 2016 with Pauline’s re-election, but we did draw on anachronistic and more recent references to politics, particularly regarding Tony Abbott’s infamous ‘speechless nodding’ incident. I agree that a lot of young people are disenfranchised by the state of politics around the world, but I also think we all have the potential to make an impact on policy making by remaining engaged, communicating with our MP and voting with purpose. I hope that a show like this works somewhat to encourage engagement with politics, as frustrating as it is. Within a democratic system we all have the capacity to make an impact. That’s probably the one good thing we can learn from Pauline. BL: A longstanding social figure Pauline Pantsdown is notoriously known for impersonating Hanson. Did this inspire your own construction of The Colour Orange? OC: Initially, I only had a vague knowledge of Pauline Pantsdown from when I was a lot younger, and it was only when I began researching that I knew the extent of their activism. We were conscious of not re-treading Simon Hunt’s comic stylings, although there is some element of drag in the exaggerated characterisations within the show that aren’t tied to a particular gender. We invited Simon to the Sydney Comedy Festival show and I got to meet him after which was lovely. He really enjoyed the show and gave it his tick of approval for historical accuracy, which was a big thumbs up for us! The Colour Orange is written by Sophia Roberts and Oliver John Cameron with original music composed by Oliver John Cameron. The Colour Orange is available on iTunes, Spotify and all streaming platforms.
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CULTURE
Only this, cottagecore Shania O’Brien discusses the relationship between cottagecore and capitalism. Writers and artists have always believed that nature offers meaningful insight into the human condition. From Hesiod’s didactic poetry to John Keats’ odes and Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire; nature has been described over and over again, given form in the rising sun, the moving cloud, the rogue wildflower. Percy Bysshe Shelley appealed to the fields, the mountains, the waters to heal his soul in Ode to the West Wind. All of them believed that somewhere, be it overlooking a valley or in the middle of a forest, there was a world that made them happy, that satisfied their wants. A cultural manifestation of a pastoral, cottagecore is becoming an increasingly common preoccupation in the modern world. This budding aesthetic movement paints the picture of an idyllic landscape and prioritises the simple pleasures in one’s life. Cottagecore turns its nose up at sixteen-hour workdays, at the fastpaced anxieties of late-stage capitalism, at toxic masculinity. It rejects the connections we make under these systems, labelling them inauthentic facsimiles of genuine relationships. The aim is not to be disconnected, or isolated, but to find new forms of authentic connections that arise from shifted priorities. The cottage in the woods is not alone, but part of a
healthy community built on a system that prioritises things other than the demands of the market. Cottagecore came to me at a time where I found myself thinking that things had gotten as bad as they could; after which, of course, they only got worse. I was sitting on my floor, my thumb twitching to refresh an Instagram feed that had barely finished loading in the first place. It was then that I saw a little house thatched with wisteria, old books with brown pages peeking out from the windowsill. I began to imagine my life through the prism of that image; a life that wasn’t spent worrying about political problems I had no hope of solving, a life that wasn’t spent in extensive periods of self-delusion because it was better than the alternative. That little picture with lilac flowers had so much power over me in that moment. But yet, I was restricted. I could not afford to uproot my life and live it another way. The movement is escapist, but not in the fantastical way faeriecore is. Modern escapist fantasies take the form of voluntary simplicity; they manifest in tiny homes, tripartite glass windows that let daylight in, screen-free lives where constant stress isn’t the default state. This is a time of perpetually escalating conflict, of an increase in domestic and sexual violence. The need for this es-
capism in the present political climate of the world has struck a match on women’s repressed rage. Cottagecore is a fantasy that largely excludes men from its aesthetics, their existence an afterthought in the face of its reclaimed domesticity. I have seen people compare cottagecore to The Virgin Suicides (1999), to the regency era, to the 1950s; but the movement has never been about going back to a time where women were arguably more oppressed just for the aesthetic and lack of technology. The rise of the tradwife trend—the traditional wife who prefers to adopt a submissive role in the marriage and advocates for a return to regressive gender roles, called the “virulent strain of white nationalism” by New York Times journalist Annie Kelly—could be tied to cottagecore. However, cottagecore offers domestic bliss without the strict gender roles and patriarchal oppression inherent in it. The intrinsic anti-capitalist sentiments of the movement are a necessary alternative to a quasi-fascist return to traditional hierarchies and an unsustainable neoliberalist way of life. It is about bringing that ethereal sense of serenity to the present moment, about our innate desire for a system other than capitalism, about achieving a sense of fulfilment outside of responding to work emails and
Art by Claire Ollivain
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about a life that does not result in an ouroboros of burnout and no land to cultivate but the self. But maybe one’s longing for less can be connected to their need to be closer to nature. I have seen a prevailing interior design trend of bringing the outdoors indoors to create an illusion of more space. Traditional Indian and Spanish architecture calls for houses to have open spaces—aangan and patios interior—in the middle of them. There exists houses with trees and gardens and marble water fountains in the middle of them, houses rendered to depict the natural world. This disenchantment with modernity can be linked to the Arts and Crafts Movement in the United Kingdom, which arose in a critique of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century and called for economic and social reform. It was further associated with arguably trivial crusades like dress reform, ruralism, the garden city movement, and folk-song revival. British artist and socialist William Morris, a founder of the aesthetic movement, advocated for a return to artistic labour and connection with the natural world. But can such a hypocritical pursuit ever be inclusionary? The people who can afford to bring nature into their homes, who pursue pastoralism through an escape into the countryside, are significantly wealthy and therefore privileged. The change is merely aesthetic; there is no alteration to their ways of living or to the nature of capitalism. It will always be unsatisfactory because true cottagecore requires radically restructuring society to form an inherently classless community. Cottagecore leaves a lot of room for magic, for the otherworldly, for fae folk with pointed ears and golden skin. But within that yearning for more exist very real opportunities to embrace the movement: you can wear cotton dresses with puffy sleeves to Broadway, you can bake in your tiny city apartment, you can nurture indoor plants, you can AusPost your friends letters with flowers grown on your windowsill. You can aesthetically participate in cottagecore, but more importantly, you can also incorporate its sentiment into your praxis by engaging in mutual aid, in environmental politics, in feminist activism. It is pointless to dream about wildflowers and serenity when you are doing nothing to bring that world closer. It is hard to picture a better world with smoke from the bushfires still coating our lungs, with the weight of the pandemic on our shoulders, with climate grief casting long shadows in front of us. And though all of that gave birth to the movement, at heart it isn’t about running away and hiding; it is about coming together and imagining what the future can be.
Online dating in the time of corona Alvin Chung on how dating apps like OkZoomer are focuing on more meaningful connections. COVID-19 has wrought unprecedented harm on millennials’ love lives, with quarantine complicating the use of many dating apps. It’s not clear how to use an app designed for short-term hook-ups when you can’t see the person you’ve matched with for the next few months. Since the pandemic began, new quarantine-inspired dating sites such as OkZoomer and Quarantine Together have been launched, seeking to provide alternatives to mainstream apps like Tinder. Emblematic of the times, they focus instead on match-making rather than short term flings — a mode of online dating which, until now, has largely been Boomers’ realm. Unlike maintream dating apps, OkZoomer does not include pictures or physical descriptions. Instead, users answer questions about their style, favourite quarantine activity, and themselves. They also disclose what university they attend and have the option to only match with people from their uni. Then, every weekend, OkZoomer sends a match, rather quaintly, via email. That first email to the week’s match can be daunting for some. For me, the epistolary exchange feels a lot more formal than the casual message. But perhaps that’s the point: the search for connection is a serious affair. Also, the only information users get about their matches is their email and name — without a self-description or hobbies or any other details. Thus, the mystery might make starting a conversation
more difficult. I spoke with OkZoomer co-founder, Yale undergraduate, Ileana Valdez, about the dating platform. “It started off as a meme meant to cheer our friends up but has since then expanded to a growing platform,” Valdez says. “We were inspired by our own sadness about lost dating prospects when school shut down.”
random”, but with the implementation of more open-ended questions and user feedback, it is increasingly better at matching users. For Australian users finding love on the same continent might prove difficult: during the last three weeks, I have matched with two Americans and one Australian. The platform was initially Americanbased, though its users are becoming
“There are a lot of dating apps like Tinder and Bumble that work on college campuses but don’t fulfill the need for meaningful connection. These apps allow people to swipe based off of extremely superficial biases such as height,” Valdez explains. “The goal is to help college students break out of the echo chambers they isolate into on college campuses.” Due to OkZoomer’s origin as a meme, the initial algorithm was “a bit
more geographically-diverse. “We have expanded internationally and now have a fair number of international students,” Valdez says. OkZoomer’s pared-back design is more humane than most commercial apps. Tinder, by comparison, gives you the feeling of flicking through an online store. On mainstream dating platforms, users swipe people away and accept others into their lives based on some pictures and a caption. OkZoomer,
by providing very little information about your match and the lack of swiping functions, may sometimes prompt people to connect with others’ personalities, other than with their appearances. Digital communication has changed rapidly since the pandemic. Since we must rely on social media for most interpersonal interactions due to physical distancing, more humane dating apps need to emerge as well: technology must meet the times’ demands. So, with people becoming more alone, when society communicates primarily through the internet — we long to build meaningful human connections more desperately than ever before. The rise of new quarantine platforms such as OkZoomer, then, is a step towards a more genuine way to connect with others online. During these isolated times — when metres separate bodies, screens confine beloved faces and human touch seems like an ancient ritual — we might wonder if our yearnings would ever be numbed by time’s passing, if our loneliness would one day disappear. But don’t these times also provide us with an opportunity to really get to know someone, if only through a voice from a speaker or a smile from a screen? We might not be able to walk through flickering neon streets or talk over the buzzing restaurant chatters — but our heartbeats will rush on still the same.
TikTok: Hitting the woe in isolation? Juliette Marchant attempts to explain the astronomical popularity of the latest viral video app. It’s hard to deny that our social presence online has become increasingly intermingled with our offline selves. But in a period where we are stuck indoors and physically isolated from others, the online has become more than just an extension of the self; it has become our everything. Further still, with more people looking to waste time than usual, there is no better substitute than social media: the mostly free and easily accessible platforms that brought time-wasting into vogue long before Corona decided to exacerbate the trend. But towering above the general noise of Instagram throwback shots, ‘Twitticisms’ about freedom and Facebook’s inspirational sermons about how we will ‘get through this’ if we start our days with yoga and end with home-made sourdough, is the apparent oligarch of the kingdom of isolation: TikTok. The brainchild of Chinese artificial intelligence company ByteDance, TikTok is an Instagram challenge on steroids, where good content is that which can be shared, replicated and built upon by anyone and their dog (literally). Having been downloaded over 1.5 billion times, with over 800 million active users worldwide, its three-and-ahalf-year existence has seen the platform
grow at an unprecedented rate, bringing with it an obscene level of publicity. Although the majority of users hail from Generation Z, people of all ages, from newborn to nonagenarians, have embraced the app in the lonely hour of social distancing. But what is it about this short-form video platform that has us all hitting the woah in isolation? If YouTube in a main meal, then TikTok is a canape; masterfully crafted to just catch your attention, and make you hover behind the waiter of the rest of the event in search of more. A direct response to the dwindling human attention span, the one-minute limit and fifteen second average length of the videos on the platform has become one of its primary appeals, making it easier for the audience to consume large amounts of radically varied content in a short space of time. For instance, from a one minute scroll through TikTok’s discovery page, I came across a man in an animal print shirt claiming that Carol Baskin killed her husband, a girl doing the ‘Savage’ dance to Mariah Carey’s ‘Obsessed’, a man painting a gap between his teeth with eyeliner to give himself ‘the London look’, and a woman pretending to be various shop assistants in popular Australian retail stores.
As a platform that is largely centred around music, dance and other forms of non-linguistic expression, TikTok is one of the only truly universal social media platforms, as it doesn’t require proficiency in any single language to engage with much of the content. Furthermore, with little focus on the news, much of what is popular on the platform evades becoming dated, and trends continue for months at a time; with some even being regentrified and added to as they start to tire. Even the few that are related to the news have managed to take on a sort of timeless zing; with excerpts from Julia Gillard’s 2012 misogyny speech being superimposed over house music to become a new feminist banger for the isolation age. And our Prime Minister’s friendly reminder that Andrew Probyn in fact, does not run the press conference, sure to become a staple in the Australian clubs following the crisis. But good content is only the duck above the water, as beneath the surface lives one of the most powerful algorithms in the world, manically paddling away as it serves you your favourite food from simply watching you read the menu. This unparalleled software, in partnership with hundreds of millions of willing volunteers providing their faces
and patterns of interests to ByteDance for an average of 58 minutes a day, has led to significant questions concerning data security. American soldiers have even been banned from using the platform by the US Government out of fear of a counter-intelligence threat. But with the platform’s popularity so heavily engrained in the otherworldly receptivity of its artificial intelligence to the specific wants of the viewer, has entertainment and temporary satisfaction become more valuable to us than privacy? Or will we wake up from this period of isolation with the stark realisation that TikTok has come to know us better than we know ourselves? I do not, and probably never will understand why the world is obsessed with what is essentially the estranged, younger cousin of Vine. Yet despite a TikTok scroll possessing the legibility and atmosphere of a chaotic fever dream, I too have found myself in the trance of scrolling. Overcome by the paradoxically freeing and disturbing feeling of being on the internet for absolutely no reason, I welcome the distraction from the unsettling present and rest well with the knowledge that Katherine finally got to ask her question.
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FEATURE
ULTRAVIRUS vs the world? The evolution of rave Robbie Mason untangles the links between punk, rave and anarchism. ULTRAVIRUS is a many-headed Hydra. Thorsten Hertog (aka Thick Owens), cofounder alongside Ella Parkes-Talbot, describes ULTRAVIRUS as “a content aggregator, net label, ongoing party series and fashion brand”. Another way of explaining ULTRAVIRUS is that it is a representation – or an exaggeration – of cybercultures. It feeds off soul-sucking consumerism, the vapid irony of contemporary youth culture, exemplified in meme culture, and the non-linear consumption of music and narratives in an internet era of information overload to present kitsch music aligned to our ravaged attention spans. Think hyperlink wormholes, internet-induced psychosis and cybermedieval avatars. If you’re a little disorientated and a little confused, you’re in the right place. While not grounded in any one location, ULTRAVIRUS skirts the edges of Sydney’s DIY rave scene. “I started the net label last year because I felt like there weren’t labels in Australia representing the sounds I was really interested in – these kind of breakcore, gabber and hard tek sounds that I was hearing in warehouse spaces and that I saw a lot of bedroom producers making and uploading to Soundcloud… I think labels are hugely important in functioning as an incubator for ideas but also as a platform for a scene.” This homage to Sydney’s warehouse and bunker rave scene is a sharp departure from outsider perceptions of the scene and a powerful statement addressed – albeit indirectly – to the global music hierarchy. Thortsen fires off a whole barrel of pot shots when I interview him. The first target is streaming platforms. “The issue with Spotify is that there is an economic imperative to keep people listening as long as possible to boost advertising revenue. That has bred a culture of music that is very playlistable – you know, the hang-out-at-home playlist or the Valentine’s-Day-romance playlist.” New York Times journalist Jon Caramanica has disparagingly labelled this sound, with both pop and EDM variants, “Spotify-core”. Defined by emo lyrics, slow, chill beats, hip-hop influenced production and an early drop and chorus to satiate ever-shortening concentration spans – think Spotifysponsored artists like Drake, Billie Eilish, Charlotte Lawrence and R3hab – this music is specifically made to be innocuous, little more than background music. You don’t need to pay a membership fee to listen to ULTRAVIRUS releases. They are not available on Spotify. Both ULTRAVIRUS releases – a five track EP, fetid in wingdings, and a ten track album, Plunderzone™, released last month – use a name-your-price model on Bandcamp. ULTRAVIRUS also uses a Creative Commons Licence “so people can take the music and remix it and use it in their own art without having to pay royalties to the label or the artist. That’s honouring the early philosophy of net labels and the internet.” “I was really inspired by early 2000s net labels, which came out of this early utopian idea of the internet being a democratic and commercial-free zone.
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Obviously we know that that idea of the internet has failed. But people just downloaded and uploaded music in bulk for free. The artworks were super tacky and it was very DIY.” Second in the firing line is the type of music Thorsten sees over-represented at clubs and some warehouse parties. Like the album artworks – chaotic collages of colour and competing images – the music ULTRAVIRUS platforms is “intentionally offensive and abrasive”. Almost all tracks are fast and jarring. There is breakcore, NeuroTrap, noise, deconstucted club, memecore and more. Tracks like Bouti’s DJ Snake and SPLITROACH/ T E R RO R S L I D E / 2 0 4 9 - 2 N X ’s HAKKEN PHOENIX go anywhere and everywhere, leaving themes, coherence and genre classification strewn by the wayside like a yardsale. So nothing like Spotify-core then. A bunch of Sydney producers provide the mesh for this enclosure of unhinged, avant-garde madness, reflecting the myriad ways in which alternative clubbing spaces encourage and breed innovation. Thrax, crack_lips, DJ BEVERLEY HILL$ and duo SPLITROACH/ TERRORSLIDE/2049-2NX are all hidden gems of the warehouse scene. As a founder of group projects including Okra, Haus of the Rising Sün, Soft Centre and ULTRAVIRUS, which have utilised warehouses and reclaimed spaces, Thorsten’s imprint on the music of Sydney’s underground is significant. Sitting in front of the camera, in front of a future audience – I am interviewing Thorsten as part of a documentary on Sydney’s DIY rave scene – Thorsten appears comfortable. He is ambitious yet grounded, and extremely wellspoken. He cares. You sense that he really means every word he says. This capacity to talk with conviction without speaking loudly has undoubtedly helped people buy into what he envisions. But he has not done it all alone. In the last two years, a new wave of promoters have emerged in Sydney and laid down a bridge between experimental electronic sounds and hard dance, perhaps none more successfully than the team behind Soft Centre. Thorsten, alongside a network of like-minded artists and event organisers, has helped transplant the ethos of warehouse raves into a new, legal home – the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre – for the experimental music and art festival Soft Centre. With support from Liverpool City Council and funding from Create NSW, Soft Centre is a far more legal adventure. Boundary-pushing, Soft Centre puts local artists, sometimes with only a few performances under their belts, on a stage alongside international headliners, often at peak times. With over 1000 attendees, there is a sense that Sydneysiders’ appetite for challenging music is deep. Resident Advisor’s (RA) recent documentary on Sydney’s underground scene, meanwhile, suggested that ambient and house music distinguish the Sydney scene. According to the documentary’s logic, Australia’s beautiful natural landscapes and
beaches encourage music production centred on tranquillity and relaxation. Insightful and optimistic, but limited in scope, the RA documentary Real Scenes: Sydney shows just how easy it is for outsiders to misinterpret alternative clubbing cultures. To a vast crosssection of Sydney ravers, house and ambient do not represent the totality of the DIY rave scene. If Sydney has a distinctive sound, it is diversity, and ULTRAVIRUS is a testament. Thorsten describes the resurgence of hard dance and the burgeoning IDM and glitch scenes, while still niche, as “a retaliation and protest against the huge saturation of nu-disco and house sounds and vanilla-boom-clap club music that dominates Australia.” Sydney’s hard dance revival is also due to “our proximity to Newcastle and the Bloody Fist [Records] scene that
almost anti-intellectual, music, we seem to struggle to take pride in them. This perhaps helps explain why pioneering Australian hardcore artists including Geoff Da Chef (Blown Records) and Hedonist (Bloody Fist Records) still DJ and tour in Europe but fly under the radar at home. Industrial connoisseur Tymon cut his teeth in the Sydney rave scene in the late 90s before migrating to Berlin and releasing music through iconic labels such as Industrial Strength Records. He too rarely rates a mention as a cultural export. ULTRAVIRUS is therefore a continuation of what was already there. As Thorsten says: “There is a perception that the warehouse scene post-lockout was ground zero for Sydney dance music. But what people forget is that there was a huge scene that existed before all that happened.”
A Sydney warehouse warehouse rave, 2018. Photo courtesy of Chris McClymont.
existed there in the 90s, and the huge breakcore scene that exists in the Blue Mountains. These two cities pioneered these hard dance sounds. That has totally filtered back into Sydney.” Sydney and its satellite cities have produced a long line of DJs and producers unafraid to mock the nation’s cultural cringe with their confronting styles of hard dance music. In 1994 in Newcastle (Australia), Mark Newlands founded the label Bloody Fist Records with two fortnightly dole payments. Cornered by smoke stacks, barbed wire, steelworks operations and concrete, the label became a production line of its own for a pinball machine of eclectic hardcore beats. The music was nihilistic and cynical. Records such as Straight Outta Compton were ripped off, rejigged and regurgitated with a blatant disregard for copyright laws (in this case as the thoroughly distasteful EP Straight Outta Newcastle). This DIY, cut and paste mentality shaped the production of Australian breakcore artists such as Passenger of Shit, Melt Unit, Toecutter and Noistruct. Australia has exported numerous house DJs, yes, but will these artists leave a legacy in an oversaturated market? Possibly. But if Australia has truly produced any distinctive sounds in dance music, it is the sheer lunacy of extreme, left-field artists such as Nansenbluten, Passenger of Shit and Anklepants. With their provocative,
It is precisely Thorsten’s style of DJing, which he labels as “irreverent and rude”, which encapsulates, if not Australia’s natural landscapes, the zeitgeist of a young nation forever unsure of itself. Self-mockery, tongue-in-cheek probes at authorities, unapologetic nods to Australia’s cultural cringe, larrikinism and a tinge of political commentary pulsate throughout local techno, hardcore and breakcore. DJs like Thick Owens bounce seemingly carelessly between silliness and serious critique. In September 2018 at the warehouse rave Grip: Interstellar Funk, Thorsten (as Thick Owens) began his set with a breakcore Metallica riff, dressing the discordant sounds in a patchwork shirt of news reports about pill-testing.
Plunderzone™ album artwork, by s1m0nc3ll0.
“I never want to see this event held in Sydney or New South Wales again. We will do everything we can to shut this down”, says NSW Premier Gladys Berijiklian, just before Thorsten throws down a thumping, pitched-down Frenchcore kick by FKY. * * * ULTRAVIRUS is an eclectic entity and it is possible to go back even further in time than Thorsten does when searching for influences. The techno-hardcore spectrum has deeper roots in punk than quite possibly any other musical scene. Hardcore punk was a volatile critique of the stardom of 70s rock’n’roll, defined by dissonant melodies, shouted vocals, disruption, excess, irony, disdain for public and private property and outsider status in a capitalist system. In the face of commodification, political activism and direct action became essential for authenticity and ownership over the +“punk” label. Dance music culture celebrates collectivism and, like punk, disintegrates the passive spectator/ genius performer dichotomy embedded in rock. Long associated with direct action via ‘protestivals’, raves are inclusive, democratic and participatory. By bringing together musicians, performance artists, visual artists and lighting specialists, raves create a multi-sensory overload designed to stimulate in attendees altered forms of consciousness and new, healing ways of being. Recognising a particular contiguity between the harder ends of the punk and techno spectrums, Graham St John, a cultural anthropologist now at the University of Fribourg, has traced the continuation of anarcho-punk politics in Sydney with the emergence of what he labels “techno terra-ists” in the early 90s. As the 80s waned and the 90s took over, there was a sharing of equipment and personnel between the anarchopunk scene, centred around Newtown and Redfern, and early techno artists and collectives such as Non Bossy Posse (NBP) and Vibe Tribe. At the communally-owned Jellyheads venue near Central Station, punk bands, DJs and live electronic acts shared the stage until electronic music stole the limelight altogether and Vibe Tribe was born. Around the same time, Bloody Fist Records emerged, which was a lot less political. But the label shared the same anti-authoritarian, anti-commercial ethos. At warehouse parties and Vibe Tribe doofs, NBP sampled advertisements and radio segments. Tossing commentary on Indigenous land rights, social justice
Album cover for a 2001 DJ mix by Al Corrupt, released by System Corrupt.
and environmental sustainability into a headwind of preprogrammed techno and trance beats, NBP pinpointed the dancefloor as the target of their sonic, political cyclone. According to Kol Dimond, a member of the anarchopop punk band the Fred Nihilists and later NBP, this was live “finger looped mayhem”. Besides the lofi psychedelics emanating from the chill zones at Vibe Tribe parties, the music was “very techno and very acid... generally anywhere between 140 and 160 bpm.” NBP represented the “same politics, same passion for systemic social change, just a different soundtrack.” When 40 riot police turned up at the Vibe Tribe party Free-quency in Sydney Park in April 1995 due to noise complaints, the crowd – anywhere between 500 and 2000, depending on who you ask – repelled the police. With organisers rallying the crowd over the mic, they formed a circle around the speakers and decks, preventing the police, initially anyway, from cutting off the music. This was not a case of intoxicated revellers misbehaving. Kol asserts that it was a coordinated effort in an already highly politicised space – just one of many plans inscribed in the Vibe Tribe manifesto to “deal with skinheads or thugs or coppers.” Nonviolent resistance was the goal but scuffles broke out. According to one account, police “couldn’t deal with the concept of ‘everyone being in charge’”. At 2am, having regrouped, police charged the dancefloor in a wedge formation with batons, shields and dogs and carried off the generator. Two punters were hospitalised, countless injured. The crowd remained in defiant assertion of their civil rights and a mob of bongo drummers turned up to make more ruckus. If there is a vague ideology behind rave organisation, it hovers closer to anarchism than a neo-conservative appreciation of small government. As football hooligans and bomber-jacket wearing skinheads with fascist and misogynistic inklings populated gabber, and techno became less revolutionary, in the early 2000s breakcore – then in a darker form than the cartoonish popmash-breakcore that dominates today – became a haven for decibeladdled ferals with alternative lifestyles and a masochistic passion for fast, abrasive sounds. It became synonymous, albeit briefly, with anarchist politics. Some claim it was a direct response to Neo-Nazism (see the documentary Notes on Breakcore). In Sydney, the collective and record label System Corrupt, containing within its ranks ex-Bloody Fist artists and ex-Vibe Tribe members, threw free raves in abandoned places. Shockingly subversive, event promotion included pornographic collages. Spaces marginal to the functioning of society – wartime bunkers, abandoned buildings, disused warehouses, motorway underpasses and marshland – became stages for niche communities who otherwise struggled to find venue owners willing to take financial risks. Opening in 2008, the Sydney warehouse Dirty Shirlows, for instance, hosted cheaply-ticketed punk and breakcore gigs, regularly blasting experimental noises into the early hours of the morning, until police pressure and fines from Marrickville Council forced its (official) closure in 2012. The utilisation of alternative “venues” – a legal grey space – was unique to both punk and
The Vibe Tribe zine Sporadical. Image courtesy of Dan Conway.
rave culture. Murray Bookchin in his polemical essay Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm argued that Hakim Bey’s concept of a “TAZ” – temporary autonomous zone – and temporary ferality exemplifies the “lifestyle anarchism”, “social indifference”, “egotism” and disinterest in revolution of young, urban professionals. While the “TAZ” has become a byword for the Freetekno movement, Bookchin suggests “a TAZ is a passing event, a momentary orgasm, a fleeting expression of the ‘will to power’ that is, in fact, conspicuously powerless in its capacity to leave any imprint on the individual’s personality, subjectivity, and even self-formation, still less on shaping events and reality.” Unlike Bookchin, I believe that certain raves (“TAZs”) at an abstract level encourage alternative ways of living and provoke critique of dominant systems and constructs. Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, Sydney’s underground rave scene certainly seemed on the precipice of commercialisation. With warehouse tickets costing between $20 and $60, occasionally even more, questions must be asked about the durability of anarcho-punk politics. High ticket prices can translate into a night of drug-fuelled revelry, connection and muddy shoes before the crowd returns to reality, re-energised and ready to ascend the corporate ladder. As public acceptance of dance music grows, increased prices of entry has seen digestible, non-confronting music – tech-house and disco, for example – enter the warehouse. Hardly the soundtrack of protest. The punk and rave scenes tend not to overlap in Sydney in the ways that they did in the early 90s, however, some recent events by Soft Centre, Hex Yellow and KIEU have seen a cross-over of punk bands and hard techno, and punk’s DIY attitude remains as strong as ever within the rave community. The story of punk and metal
musicians transitioning from guitars and drum kits to drum machines, decks and mixers is startlingly common. But rave did not replace punk with the proliferation of acid house parties from the late 80s, as some like to believe. In recent years Sydney labels Burning Rose Records and Deep Seeded Records have championed hard techno alongside punk, darkwave and industrial projects, fostering tracks that mix antiestablishment lyrics and thrashing electric guitars with techno beats. The RA documentary Real Scenes: Sydney sparked furious debate about what represents Sydney’s rave scene. By focusing on house and ambient, the film bypassed 30 years of history. Sydney, and New South Wales more broadly, has long been a hub for extreme music and radical politics. Thorsten claims Sydney is “the capital of hard dance” in Australia. ULTRAVIRUS could be viewed as a jaded postmodernist sigh – utterly obtuse and irrelevant – rather than an anarcho-punk battlecry. Indeed, ULTRAVIRUS probably won’t change the world. But its emergence not just as a one-off event, a TAZ, but as a net label is an attempt, consciously or not, to solidify a punk legacy. The ways in which ULTRAVIRUS nostalgically harkens back to optimistic visions of the internet as a decentralised, democratic space cannot be ignored. The label’s hybrid, “edutainment” events, which incorporate panel discussions and art within raves, suggest that founders Ella Parkes-Talbot and Thorsten Hertog have something more profound in mind than dancing blindly into a capitalist apocalypse. Reflecting the evolution of dance music technologies and rave culture, ULTRAVIRUS looks to the future while drawing on the past for solutions. In the face of mega corporations including Spotify and RA, ULTRAVIRUS is a bold reclamation of identity for Sydney’s underground but one that is true to its roots.
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CULTURE
CULTURE
Ode to the piano Grace Johnson on the beauty and history of her most prized possession. Maybe it’s the social isolation, or that I work in a piano shop, but I’ve been thinking about just how much my life revolves around the piano. My time at home is organised around practice--I’m in my final year of the performance degree at the Conservatorium, so this is somewhat expected. But even when I’m not at the piano it stands there, in the corner of the living room, a large brown figure on three legs, dominating the space. In a domestic setting, the presence of the piano brings to mind the heroines of Jane Austen novels, practising scales or entertaining guests, or the female subjects of Renoir’s paintings receiving lessons. Being able to play the piano was considered a necessary part of a young lady’s education (Austen’s heroines play the piano far more than any other instrument). This scene from ‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1813) summarises the traits of an ‘accomplished’ lady: “‘Oh! certainly,’ cried [Bingley’s] faithful assistant, ‘no one can really be esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing and the modern languages to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.’ “‘All this she must possess,’ added Darcy, ‘and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.’” The rise of the middle class meant that more people had access to music, and having a piano in the home was a sign of economic status. It also meant that there was greater demand for printed music suitable for amateur musicians-music was no longer exclusive to the aristocracy and emperors’ courts. The piano was invented just over three hundred years ago by Bartolomeo Cristofori, a famed instrument maker who moved from Padua to Florence in 1690 to work for the Medici family. It was in Florence in 1700 that he invented the piano although it took another seventeen years before the design had all the components of the modern piano. European musical life was already familiar with stringed keyboard instruments-clavichords and harpsichords, for instance, were played in private chamber settings for enjoyment and, at other times, used in court orchestras, choirs and opera pits. But by 1700, Cristofori had presented the new piano, or “Archicembalo … di nuova inventione, che fa’ il piano, e il forte” (a harpsichord, of 14 14
new invention, that plays soft and loud.) Its defining feature? The hammer action, striking the strings within its body, allowing the player to control the volume via the force of their playing. This allowed for more expression in the control of the dynamics. Over time, the range of the piano also expanded, from Cristofori’s four octaves to the seven octaves we have today. The development of a steel frame also gave the piano more power, which allowed for greater physical force when playing but also for more complex, emotionally forceful compositions. Vladimir Horowitz, considered to be one of the greatest pianists of all time, believed that the strength
famously insisted on composing at the piano, and Beethoven’s virtuoso technique and improvisation skills at the piano were indispensable to his composition process. Furthermore, Beethoven was not interested in writing music merely ‘suitable’ for the piano. Rather, he was moved to write pieces that pushed the boundaries of musical forms and challenged his listeners, and often his works were deemed unplayable (though he responded by declaring that the performer’s technique was inadequate, instead of compromising his ideas). In his piano works from roughly 1800 onward, there is a sense of expansion and innovation in both form and content. At the same time, there were rapid developments
of the piano lied in its adaptability. He said, “For me, the piano is the orchestra. I don’t like the sound of a piano as a piano. I like to imitate the orchestra -- the oboe, the clarinet, the violin and, of course, the singing voice.” Alfred Brendel, also a highly renowned pianist, echoed this sentiment in his 2013 book ‘A Pianist’s A-Z’: The piano “serves a purpose,” he wrote; it’s an “instrument of transformation.” The piano can be a solo instrument, an entire orchestra, or the accompanying background, all within one instrument. In Anna Goldsworthy’s book ‘Piano Lessons,’ based on her own experiences as a developing young pianist, the teacher says in broken English, “Piano absolutely instrument of imagination, and we can create anything on it.” For many composers, the piano was absolutely central to their imagination and ability to conceive large ideas. For instance, Stravinsky
being made in the piano, and this is reflected in his compositional output. In his piano sonatas, there is a sense that they were conceived for a much grander orchestration, both in artistic scope and density of ideas, such as his ‘Waldstein’ sonata (1804) or ‘Hammerklavier’ (1818), which literally means in German ‘hammer-piano.’ Although Beethoven’s inner ear allowed him to hear past technological advancements and musical trends, the modern piano’s extra notes, new sustain pedal, heavier action and wider dynamic range certainly triggered his imagination. In his later years, when his deafness began to impair his compositional process, he sawed off the legs of his piano so that he could feel the vibrations of his compositions, orchestral in scope. Apparently, he would sometimes clench a stick in his teeth and hold it to the keyboard so that he could discern faint sounds through the vibrations of the piano, enabling
him to continue composing. Helen Keller (1880-1968), American author, lecturer and activist, was born deaf and blind. In 1924, she ‘heard’ a live recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall by pressing her hands against the radio receiver. The next day, she wrote a letter of gratitude to the New York Symphony Orchestra: “...What was my amazement to discover that I could feel, not only the vibrations, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music! The intertwined and intermingling vibrations from different instruments enchanted me. I could actually distinguish the cornets, the roll of the drums, deep-toned violas and violins singing in exquisite unison. … I felt the chorus grow more exultant, more ecstatic, upcurving swift and flame-like, until my heart almost stood still. … Of course, this was not “hearing” but I do know that the tones and harmonies conveyed to me moods of great beauty and majesty. ... I have never been so enraptured before by a multitude of tone-vibrations.” Alongside Liszt’s compositions that violently exploit the capabilities of the piano, and the extremes of piano technique, he arranged orchestral compositions for the piano, called his ‘transcriptions.’ Among his transcriptions are the Beethoven symphonies, as well as his versions of other symphonies, opera excerpts, and songs. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Liszt’s transcriptions, once considered gimmicky displays of piano virtuosity. Some pianists of the younger generation are beginning their recitals with transcriptions made for the piano-last year, Behzod Abduraimov opened with Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde,” and ended with Prokofiev’s transcriptions of 10 pieces from his own “Romeo and Juliet” ballet score. The dazzling transcriptions of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” are among pianists’ favourites too. In performing these pieces, the pianist is not just the conductor but the entire orchestra. The sole performer is responsible for evoking the woodwind lines, the warm brass sounds, while maintaining the bowed cellos. The textures, inner voices, and overall structure of the piece emerge from two hands in an act of sheer piano virtuosity, in itself a declaration of its capacity to be one and every instrument.
Art by Claire Ollivain.
YUNGBLUD: Say nothing and say it loud Matthew Forbes is getting sick of the UK singer and his platitudinous ‘revolution’. Punk has been undergoing commodification for decades now — as early as 1978, UK band Crass were declaring that “Punk is Dead” with lyrics such as “CBS promote the Clash, / But it ain’t for revolution, it’s just for cash.” Revolution, rebellion — at this point they start to feel like buzzwords; ideas that have been diluted into products to be sold and resold again and again. And no popular artist at the moment is as representative of this as 22-year-old Dominic Harrison, aka YUNGBLUD. For around two years now, an image of this English musician has been constructed by his fans, publications like Rolling Stone, and himself: the loud-mouthed fiend that speaks for a misunderstood youth through fiery, punk-inspired tunes. With songs like “Machine Gun (Fuck the NRA)” and “I Love You Will You Marry Me”, which takes aim at the corporate exploitation of romantic gestures, he’s made strides to address issues that he and many other young people feel passionate about. Ideas of “defiance” and “rebellion” are tossed around a lot in interviews with, and articles about, YUNGBLUD. He talks about challenging the outdated values and condescension of older generations, and fighting against figures of power who seek to contain and control the youth of today. The trouble lies in the fact that the vague descriptions I’ve just given are hardly generalisations of the type of rhetoric he’s known for.
Instead, they might as well be quotes from one of his interviews. For as well-intentioned as the majority of Harrison’s music is, his lyrics are void of real meaning, to the point where his songs feel like a series of platitudes sung or screamed as obnoxiously as humanly possible. “Guns are bad.” “The government is bad.” “Old people are bad.” Lyrics like “parents ain’t always right” feel like they’ve been ripped straight from a black and white Tumblr blog. He’ll taunt both politicians and older generations by saying in an interview “we’re old enough to vote now” — an
or lack thereof, is also reflective of this. The singer is similar to acts like Twenty One Pilots, Halsey and The Chainsmokers with his “genrebending” take on pop music, which usually boils down to a hodgepodge of musical ideas that have been blended together to create a soulless, overproduced instrumental to be yelled over. The elements of “punk rock” that supposedly run throughout his music usually boil down to loudness and the odd distorted power chord played on a guitar. To be clear, an artist’s music can have punk sensibilities while not
“YUNGBLUD’s music... sounds as clean, calculated and radio-ready as the type of popular music that he slags off.” odd sentiment for someone claiming to be operating within a genre heavily tied to anarchism. Given the aforementioned message of “I Love You Will You Marry Me”, for example, it’s both hilarious and frustrating that his core message was corporatised from the start: a shiny version of rebellion that’s been over-simplified and commodified for decades. But as someone who cites The Clash and Eminem as key influences, it’s hard to blame him for this. He’s just repackaging and reselling the same product that was sold to him. YUNGBLUD’s musical identity,
fitting within the punk genre. DIY methods of making music exist span genres, as do rejections of traditional or previously-held musical principles and rough, unrefined aesthetics. But none of these elements show up in YUNGBLUD’s music, which sounds as clean, calculated and radio-ready as the type of popular music that he slags off. And yet, Harrison still seems desperate to connect himself to this scene and ones adjacent to it, often doing so through superficial means. A scroll through his Instagram will yield photo upon photo of him wearing shirts of bands like The Exploited,
Dead Kennedys and The Cramps, while also sporting high-end brands such as Burberry (who themselves have a history of exploiting elements of working class culture). Posturing or not, these outfits feel like attempts to recreate the styles of working class people from decades gone by by spending as much money as possible. In an interview with Pilerats, YUNGBLUD claimed that his “version of punk isn’t to divide, it’s to unite for one greater cause.” This is a noble idea. Modern bands like IDLES and Algiers have succeeded in enacting similar mission statements through lyrics that address activism and socio-political issues in more specific and blunt detail. But, outside of the emphasis on safety at his gigs, this hardly feels like the case for Harrison, with song after song feeling more like outbursts of pent up angst than calls for collective action. There are definitely aspects of his music and image deserving of praise, and there’s something admirable about the success he’s had in tapping into the angst of his tween audience. But YUNGBLUD doesn’t represent anything close to a revolution, not even rebellion. Dominic Harrison is nothing more than a cog in a machine churning out the same overblown ‘music with a message’ songs over and over. The guy did a song with the Imagine Dragons frontman, for fuck’s sake.
Cloud raves suck, but they don’t have to Chuyi Wang wants electronic musicians to get more creative with their livestreamed performances. The ubiquity of the online live streamed party would have seemed comical only months ago, but if a fix of live music is what you’re after, you really have no other choice but to turn to Instagram, Facebook and Twitch. Yet, despite music performance being pushed into an avenue of delivery it so inherently resists, the innovation in response to a lack of physicality and presence has been slow at best. Even the biggest and most resourceful of organisations have put on some truly tear-jerking yawn fests: look no further than the allreaching Boiler Room, who have been flooding feeds with phone-streamed sets where the DJ has their back turned to the camera. Even with the most pristine sound quality and razor-sharp images, there’s no denying your regular cloud rave feels like watching a lifeless fever dream. The music is there for you to dance to and you certainly could drink, but the prospect of doing either of those things requires a suspension of disbelief that takes more than a little practice to keep up enthusiastically. And with big media conglomerates very much on-board the cloud train, it’s difficult to find any streams that aren’t bombarded with visual or audio advertising at every turn. When a live event, which carries its own annoyances of buffering, dropouts
and quality degradation, also contains more unskippable marketing than your regular Soundcloud playlist, it’s difficult to imagine that we won’t totally burn out on the idea of live streaming altogether in another few weeks. Perhaps the argument could be made here that the online experience could never replicate the viscerality of the club, and that my frustrations are therefore invalid. And to some extent, I would agree. However, shouldn’t a medium that undergoes such a fundamental transformation of environment try to account for the new conditions of its evolution? Can we not do better than a propped up camera and a few smoke machines? Ironically, the people who get up in arms about bad press for their COVID raves are the very same people that will liberally shit-talk the major clubs in favour of their quickly homogenising warehouse parties. With thousands of underwhelming Saturday sets, there are, however, are a couple of hidden gems buried in the knobs and faders. 100% Electronica, a now-legendary vaporwave label founded by George Clanton (fka Esprit), held perhaps the world’s first interactive VR cloud rave two weeks ago. Under the banner ‘Beyond the Virtual Utopia’, Clanton and his crew of vapor-adjacent producers including FM Skyline,
Negative Gemini and Satin Sheets put on two hours of the most acidtrippy audiovisual nonsense one could ever hope for. Placing the audience sometimes in surrealistic video game environments, other times in the very laps of the DJs themselves, the event transported its attendees beyond the living room and into something entirely unfamiliar. Listeners were even treated to an afterparty hosted by Death’s Dynamic Shroud, whilst being able to snuggle up in their VR beds and pet their VR cat. 100% Electronica wasn’t trying to half-assedly emulate a physical party - they were taking advantage of the virtual cards that they had been dealt. Similarly, last weekend also saw the nascent world of video game music festivals reach their full potential. Hosted by the memetastic 100 gecs, whose debut LP last year sent shockwaves through both the mainstream and underground, ‘Square Garden’ was a multi-act concert series streamed entirely through a Minecraft server. Users were able to join, customise their Minecraft avatars’ appearances and outfits, and dance - literally dance using their mouse and keyboard - to blistering sets by some of the most talented producers working today. Not only were you able to listen to blocky AG Cook
pump out some bubblegum bangers, but you were also able to explore the bizarre and wonderful Minecraft world that gecs had set up as the backdrop - full of easter eggs to discover and places to socialise with other pixelated concertgoers. Instead of being one name in a thousand scrolling Twitch messages, attendees were able to visualise and interact with each other at a deeper level than an off-colour alcoholism joke that gets buried by a chatroom within seconds. Indeed, with new Fortnite and Minecraft concerts on the horizon, including the Massive Attack-attended ‘Block by Block West’ this Saturday, it seems that formal creativity might finally return to live music performance. Though the COVID crisis looms over artists like the grim reaper itself, it presents its unique opportunities to innovate in ways that would have previously been seen as mere gimmicks. With more and more people paying for and demonstrating a willingness to pay for digital streaming content and stream subscriptions, a well-produced, fun and interactive cloud rave may just be the next viral success to help creatives get through this difficult time. Watching someone rub a couple of CDJs alone in their basement is just not going to cut it for that much longer.
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OPINION
Forgotten in our generation: The game show Tasia Kuznichenko on why why game shows deserve our attention. Game shows are the awkward, middle child of television. They are wedged precariously between the older, more sophisticated sibling, the news, and the younger, wildly popular sibling, reality TV. As well as being berated by that footy-obsessed Uncle, sports, and overlooked by the theatrical, trendy cousin, TV drama. It’s not surprising that game shows are overlooked by a generation that is overwhelmed with options. Additionally, television viewing among younger generations is no longer scheduled on a TV set. It’s on-demand, and right now – in demand; with Covid-19 boosting Netflix’s shares by 14% and YouTube’s viewership by 15%. But there is something that makes game shows stand out from the rest. They have to work for your attentiveness – and once they’ve got it, it’s hard to look away. This is where the beauty of the game show lies. You cannot just simply watch a game show, you must participate. Even though we are consuming more, how much do we actually take away from what we watch? We exist in an ‘economy of attention’. Bedevilled
by distraction; we struggle to stream Love is Blind without scrolling through Instagram, can’t watch Bon Appetite without Snapchatting our friends at the same time. Deloitte’s Australian consumer survey found that in 2019 91% of respondents multi-tasked while watching TV. Game shows offer a well-needed respite from the persistency of our
the tricksters of television - they teach you an array of skills under the guise of entertainment. Game shows like Hard Quiz and The Chase Australia may continue to trail behind in the 16-39-year-old market to competitors such as Home & Away and The Project. Yet, the composition of a game show represents something so quintessentially Australian, even more
“This is where the beauty of the game show lies. You cannot just simply watch a game show, you must participate.” phones. You really can’t watch Mastermind, a high-intensity, quiz programme where contestants demonstrate how well they know their specialised subjects – from Aztec Mythology to honey bees’ life cycles – without devoting to it your utmost attention. This brings me to the second benefit of game shows – you learn without even realising. How else but watching Hard Quiz would you acquire the important fact that male Siamese Fighting Fish are raised by their fathers? Quiz shows are
Aussie than Home and Away (which has shockingly been running for 31 years) – that of diversity. They bring together a cross-section of society, a smorgasbord of different interests, knowledge and backgrounds. In one episode of Hard Quiz alone, contestant’s topics included Lady Gaga, Yeats, Xanadu and typewriters. Even more importantly, they connect you with other viewers through the thrill of competition, all at the leisure of your own couch. Some of my fondest memories with my Grandmother
include watching Deal or No Deal in her lounge room. From that young age, I became seduced by the flashing lights and admittedly cheesy music of game shows… I also became a lifetime fan of Andrew O’Keefe. From there I began to expand my viewing repertoire with Spicks and Specks. I didn’t really recognise any of the musicians they mentioned - in 2007 we were yet to know for a little while more who Gotye really was -but by god, you can be sure that I loved guessing whether a rough-looking rockabilly was a serial killer or a musician. This familiarity and nostalgia that game shows offer is something a lot of us are searching for right now. We may not be able to hang out with our friends in person, nevertheless, I can guarantee that the comforting Chase Australia family, from ‘the Supernerd’ to ‘the Shark’, are there for you, every weekday at 5.30pm. So, all I can say is consider switching off the costly Netflix and trade it for Letters and Numbers on the costless SBS On Demand. It might just be the answer you’ve been searching for.
It’s time to retire the label “antidepressant” Michael Albinowski on the benefits of reclassifying the term. Antidepressants have always attracted controversy. The classification was first mentioned in the 1950s, during the clinical trials of drugs intended to treat tuberculosis. Prescription rates skyrocketed in the 1990s after the introduction of Prozac, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Their effects and efficacy have been the subject of debate ever since. In the midst of these debates, one trend has continued to lurk on the sidelines: antidepressants are increasingly being prescribed for offlabel use. Apart from depression, SSRIs are used in the treatment of an array of mental and even physical illnesses. Sertraline, for example, has been found to be more effective in treating anxiety in the short term compared to depression. For patients taking them for off-label reasons, the label “antidepressant” can in itself be problematic. A qualitative study on this subject found that some patients attempt to “decouple” the medication from its association with depression, such as by describing it as a “low dose.” This introduces the risk that a person who might benefit from taking antidepressants will refuse to do so in order to avoid the perception that they
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are depressed. Given the uncertainty surrounding the effects of antidepressants, renaming this poorly understood category of drugs should be considered. Doing so would not only provide a more accurate reflection of how they are prescribed, but it could also go some way towards removing the stigma associated with psychotropic drugs. But what would we call them if
more specific names, such as ‘serotonin reuptake inhibitors.’ Some existing classes, like tricyclic antidepressants, are divided into different categories such as ‘dopamine receptor antagonists.’ These subcategories are far more descriptive than the overarching term ‘antidepressant.’ This could assist practitioners in tailoring prescriptions to a patient’s symptoms. More importantly, it could also reduce the
“While reclassifying antidepressants will not end the stigmatisation of mental illness, it presents an opportunity to reduce the negative perceptions patients often encounter, both internally and externally, when opting to take psychotropic medication.” not antidepressants? In 2014, the “neuroscience-based nomenclature” system was proposed. Rather than categorising psychotropic drugs based upon their effect on specific disorders, such as antipsychotics, the system instead labels them based upon the neurotransmitter/s that the drug targets and the mode of action through which this is achieved. The label “antidepressant” is erased in favour of
association between these drugs and specific disorders, which will ultimately prevent confusion and improve compliance with prescription regimens. This system is by no means perfect and caution must be directed towards the major conflicts of interest among its proponents. Nonetheless, it represents a step in a more accurate direction. It could be argued that erasing antidepressants as a category of
drugs further entrenches the stigma it seeks to resolve, suggesting that the word depression is irrevocably tainted. Indeed, reclassification does not resolve the underlying problem at hand. Even though the ways in which mental health is publicly discussed has been improving, stigma can continue to manifest itself on an arguably more sinister and unmoderated level — within the confines of private relationships. It is not difficult to find people who minimise mental illnesses by declaring that they are overdiagnosed, or who proclaim that jogging is the panacea to any psychological discomfort. While reclassifying antidepressants will not end the stigmatisation of mental illness, it presents an opportunity to reduce the negative perceptions patients often encounter, both internally and externally, when opting to take psychotropic medication. If you are not convinced about the potential for reclassification to reduce social stigma, the glaring discrepancy between the term “antidepressant” and the reality of the drug’s broadening application still remains. It might be tough to rectify a misnomer which has endured since the ‘50s, but custom is no excuse for inaction.
On the urge to key a luxury car Pailey Wang has an appetite for destruction. My place is on a corner, which means the side wall of my bedroom and my side fence back up to a couple of parking spots on the adjacent street. I got used to the noise, but the thing that really grinds my gears is when someone pulls up in a parking spot and idles their engine. There is something about that low vibratory rumble that you feel viscerally in your stomach, that wakes you up at 7am and pisses you off at 4 in the afternoon. The other day, I popped my head up over the fence line to see the car that pulled up. It happened to be a Porsche 911, convertible, racing yellow. The sight of it jerked me back to an urge that I have long held, long suppressed. The urge to key the fuck out of a
luxury car. Few people have ever understood this urge when I expressed it to them. It’s not a logical thing as far as I am concerned. Sure, I am against the propagation of the type of capitalist inequality that means some people can spend millions on status symbols whilst millions literally starve. However, I think trying to intellectualise this inhibition gives it too much credit. In reality, the political message would be unclear. Would the owner return to their Mercedes thinking ‘hmm, yes, a valid criticism of the hoarding of wealth’? Unlikely. It would probably be just a minor inconvenience, an annoyance in the life of the car’s owner. Perhaps that is why the concept
is so enticing, if nothing else, the large depiction of a phallus that I might scratch into that fire-truck red Ferrari says a simple, ‘fuck you’. They might never fully grasp my nuanced critique, but perhaps that simple message is enough. There are many exceptions of course. There are few cars that really instil this urge in me. It has to be a really upmarket vehicle, something for the 1% of the 1%. Glisteningly new, immaculately polished. It has to loudly proclaim its exorbitance to the entire street; a bright colour helps. I wouldn’t scratch a vintage sports car, maybe it is a status symbol too, but it hints at an appreciation of an object’s history that I
would prefer didn’t exist in my victim’s tastes. Even the shiniest Tesla Roadster wouldn’t suffice, too much of a social conscience. Not clean enough, new enough; they really have to be riding the crest of the metaphorical wave of capitalist exploitation. In the end though, I never do it. I’m too chicken-shit. What if they catch me? Someone with that much money could surely ruin my life if they see fit. I’ve never even pulled my keys out of my pocket, holding them in a closed fist, the point subtlety sticking out between my knuckles. It’s too risky. But I’ve always had the fantasy.
When forgotten trends re-emerge Angad Roy wants you to keep your footy photos private. When the ‘neknominate’ trend reared its boozy head in early 2014, guys who thought themselves too cool to buy into the life-threatening ‘planking’ fad found their path to internet superstardom. It began with Ross Samson, an Irish rugby player (shock) who said on Christmas Day in 2013, “I nominate all of you whose birthday it’s not. Merry Christmas.” With great speed, videos from all over the world flooded the internet ranging from cat-like lapping of beer out of toilet bowls, hot sauce and absinthe cocktails drunk by guys who look like incels, big boys with big muscles and sick snapbacks downing 1L bottles of spirits in succession to just your generic, pretty nice guy who doesn’t mind some peer pressure and brief social capital skolling a VB, winking at the camera and neknominating one of his other harmless, nice mates. There was a quaint novelty about these videos, and the absurd creativity was at times endearing and other times, evoked the same sadistic satisfaction one might feel watching insipid contestants on the plethora of derivative dating shows like Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle. A few deaths later, the internet subsumed these cyber curios of creativity and buried them alongside other early-death trends like the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, Harlem Shake and
coneing, never (so we thought) to be seen again. Thinking back on said trends and others, can be quite heart-warming. In the moment, you either hate or love them and the extremity of the emotion is strange but uncontrollable. From an objective lens, years later, the actual totality of the trend adopts a hazy constitution, and they possess the same kitsch identity as balloon animals and origami fortune tellers. Very rarely however, do these sorts of trends reemerge because they are transient by nature and achieve their success because of how very insignificant and farcical they are. When they do re-emerge however, they are like ghoulish before and after photos of child-celebritiescum-rehab-heroes: scary and saddening to confront. Amidst the array of bland COVID-19 induced social media trends like Gal Gadot’s “Imagine” video, banana-bread and sourdough bread connoisseurs, and dumb influencers trying to stay relevant with pointless Earth Day content, AB workouts and really shit line drawings they call ‘art,’ one of the worst is the rise of a neo-neknominate trend that ranges from photos of people (mostly men) playing footy (in its various manifestations), and drinking beer. I will caveat this first by saying that the few posts augmented with donations
to mental health organisations like Beyond Blue and other charities can be exempted though these are few and far between. I mainly speak here about the weeks of posts that emerged before these philanthropic ones though I wager that the underlying self-interest is intrinsic to all of them. In 2014, I was 17 and herd mentality at such an age was not something that was necessarily surprising; I would go further and say that it was the norm. Six years later though, I really struggle to understand what value-add photos of the distorted faces of guys playing sport or drinking beer possess. For one, can these posts be anything other than to fan the egos of said footy kings who must really be struggling because they can’t post Instagram stories of their saucer-eyed mates at clubs or uninspired photos of sunset rays kissing the glass of their half-full beer bottles with the hashtag #living? Is their hunger for social capital so insatiate that their only resort is to do this? I know it’s a bit of fun and relatively harmless and writing an article about it is equally as stupid and might render me more unhinged and attentionseeking than the people I write about. Regardless, the pandemic has brought out the worst in a lot of people and
social media trends like these instantiate the desperate and attention-seeking nature of our society. At a time when our ability to engage meaningfully with others is severely hampered, is this really the best way to do so? It’s fine and understandable to miss things that formed major parts of our lives, but are posting photos of scrawny biceps and beer that everyone drinks really helping anyone? No-one really cares whether you play beer-pong via Zoom, play a below-average grade of rugby or AFL, and if you travelled last year to some generic country that is probably loving not having people like you staining its streets. Most of us lock away positive memories and return to them when times are tough. On occasion, we discuss them with other people when a certain experience spurs our nostalgia. Forcing them down our throats because you’re isolated and bored isn’t such an experience. Rather, I think it would be best to keep these photos on your ‘Close Friends’ story, in your group chats, on your Zoom meetings and in your own minds, because no one wants to be reminded of forgotten trends, especially those that were forgotten because they were vapid and stupid in the first place. Art by Nina Dillon Britton.
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CREATIVE
An ode to Monday morning lectures Words by Juliette Marchant Oh, uncomfortable benches, And seats with desks that swing up Accidentally hitting the arm of your next-door comrade. Leaving elbows like one’s enthusiasm bruised. That distant odour of despair, That familiar musk of forgotten showers and last night’s pasta dinner, Of stale coffee breaths and peppermint chewing gum. The gum that falls from the desk, Sticking to your jeans like a clingy friend longing. An acquaintance runs in: just on time, Revealing slides that look the same as last week. And the week before that. And the week before that. Facebook is summoned, Scrolling is more thrilling under Big Brother’s eye learning. Maestro in the back row taps his pen, persistent. Collective nodding ensues, as if to soundless music. Vacant approval. Feigned attention. Just there, barely caring.
The hand strikes 9:55, A familiar flurry explowwdes, Erupting in a cacophony of zips and murmurs. The murmurs follow you out into the real world, The world to which you run until next week, waiting. My back longs for the discomfort of the benches. My elbows crave the bruises of too close company. My coffee breath searches for a companion. My gum-free jeans plead for wear. My Facebook scrolls wish for surveillance. My silent room laments the tapping. My head hunts for something to nod for. My clock waits to have purpose again. Dreaming of the lecture theatre. Bruised. Longing. Learning. Caring. A virtual Narcissus - the screen is my river. I stare and I wait, endlessly, for Monday.
Art by Alex Mcleay
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iPhone notes from Stonewall Words by Rhian Mordaunt
We’re making out at Stonewall. His beer soaked hands glide through my hair as I kiss his neck. My lips burn as they press against his cheap aftershave. He stops. “Want to head bro?” I turn around to see who he’s talking to. Wait... Omg no…... I think he’s talking to me? I don’t think I’ve ever called my own brother ‘bro’? Do I call him ‘bro’? How do you even use ‘bro’ in a sentence? Is ‘bro’ a noun? “Um sure thing...man?” The tiles get filthier the deeper we go into the city. Brightly coloured rays are quickly replaced by the dull dim of streetlights. I’m cold so he hands me his Adidas jacket. I ask him about his hobbies. He says that he likes to play FIFA with his mates. “Yaa- I mean yeah. I love soccer.” Wait, is it gay to call it soccer? “I mean football.” Wait. I’m gay. Should I call it soccer? Fuck. I notice my footsteps transform from a sashay, shantay, panther down the runway into a stiff, lifeless march. I ask if he goes to Stonewall often. I slowly realise that I’m the only one asking questions. Am I really that uninteresting? He says nah, the guys there aren’t ‘really his type’. “What is your type?” He’s got this weird look in his eyes, like he’s about to Ben Shapiro this woke snowflake. “I just like guys who act like guys.” I know I should call him out, but like, I just don’t think he’d appreciate the nuances of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity? And he’s just like really hot. I hate myself.
I look towards him, He doesn’t look back. He tells me that he hasn’t spoken to his parents in six months. He tells me that they won’t ever speak to him. He asks me why it has to be so hard? “I don’t know.” He starts to cry. He tries to cover his eyes with his hands but I stop him. I tell him to relax and that this will all work out. “How do you know?” “I don’t know.” I lean down and kiss him. He looks up at me and smiles. I wipe a tear off of his cheek and whisper “That’s pretty gay bro.”
We get back to my place and I make us a drink. My throat is sore from keeping it at an octave lower than it’s used to. He pushes me onto the couch (ow?) and starts kissing me. I can’t tell if he’s really into it or if his tongue is having a stroke. He says that I’m buzzing. I’m flattered until I realise that he’s talking about my phone. It’s my mum. She asks how I’m going. She asks if I’m safe. She tells me she loves me. I tell her I love her too. We hang up.
Art by James Sherriff
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SRC REPORTS
President Liam Donohoe The Students’ Representative Council has had yet another successful (if unconventional) week under Work From Home conditions, and the eery silence of the Wentworth Offices has even been occasionally disturbed by the chugging of printers, dropping of foodstuff, and delivery of Honi. The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the launch of our “essentials pack” program, an initiative that forms a key component of the SRC’s mutual aid response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the program took time to get up and running—it’s not easy working out how to source and deliver food and essential goods to people—the SRC has been working towards this launch for months. I’m pleased to report that our Offices’ Gosper room is crammed with countless pre-made hampers from the Exodus Foundation and mountains of Pasta and cereal box, more than enough to accommodate the 30+ requests we’ve received. Sincere thanks are owed to countless people, but I want to particularly single out Julia Robins (Secretary to Council), Felix Faber (Vice-President), Priya Gupta (Queer Officer), Klementine Burrell-Sander (Student Housing Officer), Robin Eames, Abbey Shi (General Secretary), Isla Mowbray (General Executive), Paola Ayre (Queer Officer), Liam Thorne, Nina Mountfourd, Simone Morris and Ellie Wilson (Women’s Officer) for their initiative and contributions at various points over the preceding months. Check
Note: These pages belong to the Office Bearers of the SRC. They are not altered, edited or changed in any way by the editors of Honi Soit. out the backpage of Honi for more information on how you can help or get help through our mutual aid program! The SRC has not only been concerned with providing immediate material relief, however — we have also been participating in a number of important struggles for the future of our education and indeed our entire society. The most significant of these campaigns is the emerging No Uni Cuts campaign, which demands full government funding and the abolition of University fees in order to both protect the sector during the COVID-19 pandemic and also initiate the transition away from the failed Neo-Liberal University model. As part of Friday the 24th’s broader National Day of Online Action, the SRC participated in two live streams, the first (which featured Lee Rhiannon) concerned upcoming May 1 activities, while the second (which featured Mehreen Faruqi) concerned the role of student resistance in the COVID-19 crisis, particularly with respect to the tertiary education sector. Both of these activities are intertwined: the No Uni Cuts campaign aims to, among other things, support and amplify the demands of militant rank and file within the NTEU, a demographic which will feature prominently in the May 1 car convoys. Indeed, in my capacity as a member of the USyd NTEU branch I attended their most recent meeting, and voted for militant positions alongside a
resounding majority of rank and file members. These academic and University workers—forgotten by the new economy and the government smoothing its creases—as reluctant personifications of the “No Worker Left Behind” demand, will no doubt be prominent figures throughout Friday’s car convoy. The University sector, like the economy in which it is situated, will be neither worthwhile nor fair until the people it affects most significantly also have the most significant say over it. And the only way those most affected— like students and workers—have any chance of a genuine say is through acts of resistance; acts like car convoys, like symbolic celebrations of working class power, like preparations for militant strike action. The SRC is thrilled to be playing a positive role in the campaigns and initiatives that have the best chance at saving our sector and achieving a better University system, and we commit to total solidarity with academics, professional staff, and workers in all sectors. These big, outward-looking structural fights intersect significantly with the work we have been doing on behalf of USyd students’ academic interests. We intend to make these connections clear at Wednesday’s open meeting of the student body, which seeks to discuss issues students have found with the transition to online learning and assessment. Topics will include, but won’t be limited to, ProctorU, mark adjustment schemes, reductions
in courses, and increases in class sizes. These last two are not only of particular and novel concern, with recent reports suggesting the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences will cut one-third of its courses in semester two, but are also intimately linked with various failures of the Neo-Liberal University, including the under resourcing by government, the myopia of the University managerial class, and the profit rationales which have devalued whole disciplines and academic merit more broadly. We hope to package all of these concerns into a broader campaign around academic support and No Disadvantage, which we seek to run alongside the broader No Uni Cuts and No Student / Worker Left Behind campaigns. Away from activism and mutual aid projects, I’ve also attended a number of the usual University committee meetings, with two Academic Board subcommittee meetings last Tuesday and a Vice-Chancellor Recruitment focus group session on Wednesday. Yet more await me this week, as two further Academic Board subcommittee meetings on Tuesday join an Honours Admission Taskforce meeting on Thursday and an Education Committee meeting on Monday. All in all, it promises to be another busy and exciting week, with Friday’s May 1 convoy and daily deliveries of our “essentials packs” likely to be the highlights.
various types of assistance previously and now we are looking into the types of health goods and food that can be sent to students. Meanwhile, the financial aids for international students have been gradually granted as a result of the previous petition work. We have received lots of gratitude from students who received the grants. For a significant number of students who are in need of feedback in application, the General Secretary has been abiding the constitutional requirement of the council and redirect their enquiries to proper party that can grant valid
advice. During this special period of time, we have also been working on advocacy for international students JobKeeper and JobSeeker scheme. We have conducted surveys in conjunction with Union NSW on various social media platform. We are also in the process of administering the translation of SRC student advice materials. We have looked into markets with the assistance of the council secretary. Given the high pricing advised by the NSW Government official department,
we are seeking alternative resolution to the translation in spirit of effectively allocating student’s every penny. We have also advised the university officials to consider Melbourne University’s WAM model as part of COVID-19 readjustment plan. The University, in response, is considering adopting the model. Further notice will be given in future scheduled meetings.
contacts we have established with the faculty society presidents through the re-establishment of the Interfaculty Committee we were able to distribute this information to the faculty societies to share with students. We also recently had the second meeting of the Interfaculty Committee, in which we were able to catch up on what the faculty societies are doing to engage and support students in the midst of this crisis.
We have also continued our regular meetings with university management, which provide us an opportunity to raise any issues affecting students as a result of the shift to online learning or the pandemic more broadly as they come up. Most recently, we raised issues pertaining to overseas OLEs being cancelled, and the potential for replacement units to be offered. We have also been asking questions to understand how the
university’s new approach to the WAM for this semester will operate. We also recently attended a meeting regarding one of the SRC’s projects for the year – constitutional and regulatory reform. In this meeting we worked on shaping our short term and long term goals for this project, particularly any adjustments to regulations that need to be made given the current restrictions on meeting in-person.
General Secretaries Liam Thomas and Abbey Shi This week the General Secretaries are working on the platform of student advocacy given the continuous COVID-19 situation. We have been receiving students’ feedback on the academic arrangement of different faculties and advocate their opinions at weekly meetings with University officials. In the past week, the SRC mutual aid group project is rolling out smoothly. We have been in contact with some not-for-profit organisations for resources to reallocate to the student council for distribution. We have surveyed the students who are in need of
Vice Presidents Felix Faber and Charlotte Bullock Recently our focus has been mostly on helping to develop and set up the SRC’s new mutual aid programme. These packs will supply essentials, mostly food, but hopefully also some sanitary items, to students. We were particularly able to assist in this project by contacting external organisations, eventually finding an organisation we were able to partner with to provide the SRC with hampers to form the basis of our programme. Given the
International Officers Ziying (Nicole) Huang, Mengfan (Karen) Ji, Mingyu (Moses) Lin, Kigen Mera The impact of COVID-19 has made the collective’s activism very difficult if not impracticable. The International Student Collective is a relatively new collective, without students who are keen to attend regular events, holding weekly events became very difficult. The first international edition of Honi Soit turned out to be quite a success with the help
of all the Honi editors and contributors. We were able to raise many contemporary issues international students are facing and promote cultural sharing in languages other than English. Although events are largely stopped, we are still making sure that international students who come to us for help are directed
to the correct area. The most difficult issue for international students now is likely the rent issue. International students who cannot return to Australia or cannot continue joint renting due to health or other concerns may find themselves in a difficult situation. We are also looking into getting fair fare activism going as soon as the COVID-19 situation eases.
Indigenous Officers Mathilda Langford and Leroy Fernando did not submit a report this week.
Welfare Officers Charlotte Ainsworth, Layla Mkh, Madeleine Clarke, & Yilun Ma did not submit a report this week. 20
To see that the coronavirus infection curve flattening in Australia is certainly a relief. We hope it will continue to get better in the future. However, with uncertainty, we still need to encourage everyone to keep safe and reduce the risks for themselves. We will keep updating the community with any new findings or situation changes.
SRC CASEWORK HELP STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
The SRC Guide to Appealing an Academic Decision Appeals should be started within 15 working days of receiving the result. 1. Informal Appeal. Attend the exam review session or ask your subject coordinator for a break down of your final mark. In your appeal, explain exactly where you should have received more marks, based on the marking rubric. Be as specific as you can, for example, in question 6 where I was to give 3 theories, I gave 2 and should have received 6 out of 10 instead of 2 out of 10.
SRC CASEWORKER APPOINTMENTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE
3. Appeal to the Student Appeals Body (SAB). If you are not happy with the response from your Faculty, you may be able to lodge an SAB appeal. You will need to clearly show procedural unfairness or breach of policy with the Faculty’s decision. This may include faults in the formal appeal outcome, or that the Faculty did not fully consider all of the information provided to them. Be clear about your appeal. Address your marker’s and your faculty’s comments and concerns. Working hard and then unexpectedly failing is not grounds for appeal. An appeal cannot be based on someone else passing when you did not. Have a realistic idea of what outcome you want, e.g., a remark, an extra assessment or a change of weighting towards a particular piece of work.
Did you know you have tight deadlines to APPEAL a GRADE or an ACADEMIC DECISION?
2. Appeal to the Faculty. If you are not happy with the response from your informal appeal, you have 20 working days to lodge a formal appeal. Include ALL supporting documentation / evidence, where you outline how the process used to give you that mark was not correct. Do not focus on academic opinion – only talk about process.
Ask the SRC!
If you would like an SRC Caseworker to read over your appeal before submitting it, email it to help@src.usyd.edu.au.
Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Level 1, Wentworth Building (G01), University of Sydney NSW 2006 PO Box 794 Broadway NSW 2007
p: 02 9660 5222 e: help@src.usyd.edu.au w: srcusyd.net.au
Ask Abe
/usydsrc @src_usyd
SRC caseworker help Q&A
STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL LEGAL SERVICE
Ask Abe about Financial Trouble!
Dear Abe, The café I was working in is not going to reopen, so I have now lost my job. I thought that I would be able to earn some money when the isolation stuff was relaxed, but now I have a huge debt, and don’t know how I can easily earn some money. What options do you think I have? Skint
SRC LEGAL SERVICE APPOINTMENTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE
Have you received a fine or infringement notice that you think is unfair or too harsh? Ask the SRC Legal Service! *The SRC Legal Service assists USyd undergraduate students. SUPRA offers assistance to USyd postgraduate students. SRC Legal Service Level 1, Wentworth Building (G01), University of Sydney NSW 2006 PO Box 794 Broadway NSW 2007
ACN: 146 653 143 p: 02 9660 5222 w: srcusyd.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.
Dear Skint, I am very sorry to hear about your job loss. I hope you are able to find some safe, paid work soon. In the meantime, there are a few things you can do. Centrelink has introduced some changes to payments due to COVID-19. If you are already receiving a payment, you will temporarily be getting an additional $550 per fortnight, from 27th April. If you are not on a payment, consider applying for a student payment if you are full time (18 credit points or more), or a jobseeker payment if you are part time. The SRC has a leaflet (Living On Little Money) that will give you some other ideas on free or cheap food, entertainment, health care, and others (srcusyd.net.au/src-help/ money/guide-to-living-on-little-money). If you are having difficulty paying your rent it is a good idea to deal with this as
soon as possible. You might be able to get a discount, or get an extension on the due date. The University has a financial service for students, where you might be eligible to get a bursary up to a couple of thousand dollars, or at least an interest free loan of up to $1500. They have extended it to include international students as well, but it is unclear if this will be only for this semester. The Government is now allowing people to withdraw up to $10,000 from their superannuation before July and a further $10,000 from their superannuation after July. BEFORE taking this action please consider the consequences very seriously. Superannuation is designed as a long-term benefit for your retirement. One superannuation company stated, “a 20-year-old who accesses the full $20,000 available under the scheme could lose more than $120,000 from their retirement balance (hesta.com.au/stories/in-this-together. html)”. It may turn out to be your best option right now, but just consider all of the other options as well. If you do withdraw this money from your account, it may be worthwhile talking to a financial advisor, or your superannuation company about whether it is advisable to try to make up that withdrawal in the future, when you are more financially stable. At the very least please have a look at moneysmart.gov.au/covid-19. Abe
Contact an SRC Caseworker on 02 9660 5222 or email help@src.usyd.edu.au
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PUZZLES
Quick
ACROSS
1
8 10 12 15 18 21 18 24 26 29 30 29 32
Cryptic
To act without care, like the Europeans in Africa (8,7) 8 Burning (6) See 2 Down Forbidden wall snack (8) Meg Ryan flick named for Greek Island (6) The greatest world leader of the 20th century (6,7) Cross-continental movement led by 2-down (13) Angry drunk (6) Legendary African musician, activist and outlaw (4,4) One’s enthusiasm for imperialism (7) Fast growing plant common in Uganda (6) What 18-across and 2-down sought to create (9,6)
ACROSS 8
9 10 11 12 15 17 18 19 22 25 26 27
How I find cryptic clue answers, annotate half the word and stop trying as trouble starts (8) Ha the answer is le soufflé (6) Vegetarians love to fuck inside (4) Better groove song rhythmically increased pace The Archers film multiple stories from classic literature (10, 5) She ingests nothing to cover many feet (4) Remain by dead racket (5) Half of Russia collapses into its former state! The Person writing these clues is an angry command dog from Ireland (9, 6) A Funky song sounds sexually stimulating (10) Spaced Moore stumbles backwards without ecstasy (4) Steve McQueen’s Great ease alerts Edna Mode’s fashion no-no (6) The Answer to this clue will shock you (8)
Women’s Honi Solutions Cryptic Crossword
Quick Crossword
DOWN
1 Nelson Mandela’s country (3) 2/10 Ghanaian ex-president and nonalignment leader (5,7) 3 Democratically choose (5) 4 The Sahara contains much of these (5) 5/9 Country named by 18-across (7,4) 6 Green spirit (5) 7 Wow! (3) 9 See 5 11 Where Robert Mugabe lived (6) 13 Airplane! (for example) (5) 14 Congolese giraffe resembling a zebra (5) 16 Why you get out of bed in the morning? (5) 17 Temporary stalls and installations (3-3) 18 City built on the ruins of Carthage (5) 19 There are 54 of these in Africa (5) 20 Currency of Nigeria (5) 22 How a centrist might describe mild left policy (7) 23 First name of the Berlin conference convenor, which started the scramble for Africa (4) 25 The language of Eswatini (5) 26 Sides of 29-down? (5) 27 North African country (5) 28 The official language of Cambodia (5) 29 African hair style (slang) (3) 31 Egg cells (3)
DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 13 14 16 17 20 21 23 24
Air bender takes cheap cab to former Portuguese Colony (6) The United Nations exists within a volume of the crying tears of modern day slaves (10) Gering misspelt is a person who is derided because of their colour (6) Andrew Lloyd Webbed has this trait of 19 across without end (4) Slander West’s education as appalling (8) British man puts humour in resume (4) The doomer’s opposite appears with extreme blissful ease radiantly shining around! (8) A section of Cows speak with a lisp (5) Grown Ups’ Banging Errors! (10) Sexually explicit errors alarms those who want a bit on the side Ham with relish bits missing; there is nothing bad about it (8) small bee gene bemuses (8) South African spin god (6) 19 across’ characteristic self importance ends capitalism (6) To validate begin answers for questions twenty, four, one and the second part of twenty-two (4) Blow confiscated from yoga spiritualist (4)
Sudoku
KenKen
Sudoku Missing links: Batman/manchild Stepsister/sisterhood Stone age/age limit Galaxy brain/brainchild Native title/title deed Animal crossing/crossing fingers Metal straw/strawberry Lovebird/birdbrain Laptop/top dog
22
Nutcase/case law Big-note/notebook Cross eye/eye glass Train game: (6*4) * (3-2) (3*6)-(4*2) Target word: Abolition
Puzzles by Some Hack and Ms Eel Kink. Solutions next week.
THE
RODENT REVIEW
Fierce, independent journalists controlled by the rats on our heads!
Disney announces gritty High School Musical reboot
Nina Dillon Britton, 22-year-olds-watching-teen-shows correspondent Struggling to remain relevant to teen audiences, Disney has announced a gritty High School Musical reboot. “We wanted to rework the characters you love, to give them a more modern, realistic edge,” Disney CEO, Bruce Chonk told The Rodent. “Troy will still be the basketball jock, torn between his love of basketball and his love of singing,” Chonk reveals, “but this time, he’ll also be a date rapist.” “Ryan is still the loveable cock hungry twink of the original series,” Chonk says, “but now is in a relationship with Troy’s father.” “Gabriella has a voice of gold, but now also has an OnlyFans page and BPD.” “Sharpay is still the prissy girl we love to hate, but now she’s also a soundcloud rapper with a xanny addiction.” “Chad is a star on the court, but we’ve updated the character by also making him a date rapist. Indeed the whole basketball team is.” “And Taylor is a real change up,” Chonk tells The Rodent, “in this series she wears a cool hat.” Disney is conducting extensive focus groups to identify the hat she’ll wear. Key songs for the original will also be included, though updated to the reflect the show’s new tone. They include We’re All Collectively Responsible for Our Classmate’s Suicide Together; I Want It All (It being prescription opioids) and Get’cha Head In My Asshole. Chonk clarified that the earlier announced reboot High School Musical But With Less Hot, Actually Teenage Actors, hadn’t tested well with audiences.
NSW Heath announces North Shore teen new banana bread picks up livestream baking pandemic DJ hobby in order to Marlow Hurst, Things starting with the ‘bring joy’ to others letter “B” correspondent in quarantine Chuyi Wang, Shitting on white DJs editor
A man by the name of Chester Hawthorn has been identified by NSW Health today as patient zero for a novel form of the compulsive baking virus, labelled by WHO as “B-BREAD 20.” Contact tracing is still ongoing, but preliminary investigations have discovered that the virus was first transferred to Mr.Hawthorn through a cooking blog-to-human transmission late last Sunday. Mr.Hawthorn is then thought to have transmitted it to his 170 instagram followers via a post where he claims to have “discovered a passion for baking.” Health officials have advised everyone between the ages of 20 and 35 to avoid answering phone calls from potentially bored friends who maybe mentioned having a large quantity of ripe bananas in the last 24 hours. Anyone who themselves have a large quantity of ripe bananas are being instructed to self isolate for at least 2 weeks until said bananas have entered phase 3, which Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy outlines as being “black, juicy, and all together unpleasant.”
Jimmy Thomas (19) debuted his livestream DJ act last Saturday night over Instagram Live to a rapturous crowd of twelve of his high school friends. Performing under the moniker ‘Jay Tommo’, the evening of music lasted a total of forty minutes and featured such timeless classics as ‘Rhythm of the Night’ and ‘Barbara Streisand’. Thomas also included a few of his favourite tech house hits for good measure. “I just think with the whole quarantine situation, everyone is just missing those eets Ivy vibes,” Thomas told The Rodent from the comfort of his parents’ property in Mosman, “and what better way to use all this time on my hands than to do something creative, learn a skill, and bring joy to all my mates?” Thomas, who only started learning how to DJ on Friday after asking his dad to buy him some Pioneer CDJs, says he took an immediate inclination to the craft. “I just loaded all my tracks on there and started mixing straight away. It was almost like the music was playing itself.” When asked about his career roadmap as one of Sydney’s up-and-coming DJs, Thomas was not afraid to tell The Rodent about his lofty ambitions. “The next stop is definitely a slot on Room 2 Radio. And after that, who knows? If I keep building my Instagram numbers, I might even move to Berlin one day.”
Inspired by Woroni’s fearless journalism this week, we let our very own Vice Chancellor take over his own column.
Five things I’ll miss about USyd 1. Administration Building (F23) Move over Quadrangle! Sayonara Manning Bar! There’s a new, beloved campus institution: the iconic Administration Building (F23). I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if the architects I briefed would be able to pull off the brief I gave them — “non-descript but vaguely threating”. But you’ve got to give it to them, they really captured the way students see me on campus. When I look out from my Panopticon, I mean, uh, office, I really feel proud to be part of revisioning this campus. 2. The secret tunnel system It’s incredible to be part of an historic campus, with its secret passageways, ancient buildings and relics from a bygone era. Some passageways allow you to get anywhere on campus undetected (including the 2018 Repselect room...), others seem to attract clueless busty virgins, and still others are wide enough for you to unhinge your jaw and use your powerful back molars to bite through soft, first year flesh. Really makes you think! 3. The sleep pods in Fisher In the hundreds of glowing profiles written by uncritical, brain dead, ambitious Fairfax grads over the years, I’ve been constantly asked “What keeps you so young and fuckable?”. Well! A gentleman doesn’t give away his secrets, but all I can say is that it’s definitely not being sucking the dreams through high-tech pods in Fischer library. 4. Putting cockroaches in the UniBros pide Over my time at USyd I’ve been proud to preside over a number of important changes: the neoliberal restructure of the University, the secret murder of Tim Anderson at a CIA blacksite, and getting more healthy protein in the diets of students. I first tried getting this done by encouraging the Economist to entice students to subscribe to their British propaganda outlet using chips made out of crickets. When that didn’t work, I just started sneaking them into the UniBros pides. After my years at the University, I’m proud to announce I’ve met my goal to get a bug in the mouth of every student. Including you! Yes, I can see you! You! 5. The Anderson Stuart labs I understand at my time at USyd, some of the actions I’ve taken have been controversial: the casualisation of staff, redundancies and course cutting have not always been popular. But though the University community hasn’t always seen this, the administration has always looked out for our staff. While casuals have worried about their job security during our period of austerity, we’ve been proud to announce a new way they can remain a part of our students’ learning experiments. The Anderson Stuart labs have been used to begin valuable scientific research, using the bodies of our casual staff (I know what you’re thinking, and no there are no workplace rights for casuals), some animals and some good ol’ needles and thread, we’ve been able to put redundant staff to good use. You’re welcome!
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