Most young people would rather spend their wages on alcohol and parties, except Min Tran. This 22 year old, Vietnamese Australian Filmmaker from Sunshine is about to premier his 50 minute horror film, 'Roses are Dead' - just in time for Valentine's Day.
Funded entirely from wages earned as a projectionist, the film's production quality goes far beyond what one might expect. Produced over 2 years, this slasher flick ticks all the boxes - good-looking victims, gruesome special effects, and heart-pumping action.
The story begins with a cryptic stranger insisting that two girls buy black, dead roses on Valentine's Day, only to be ridiculed and told to go away. It soon becomes clear that this is no laughing matter with deadly consequences as the girls struggle to survive the what should've been, a romantic evening.
"I've done a few short when I was studying film but this one is the first I wanted to be something amazing. It's cost me about $10,000 but it's definitely been worth it."
Min's talent could be the next success story to rock the media since Saw and Wolf Creek, the most profitable Australian horror films ever made.
'Life in Marvelous Times': Cultural Work in the Racial Present - A Race/Knowledge Project Conference
Friday, May 14, 2010
Keynote address by Vijay Prashad, Thursday, May 13, 2010
The University of Washington, Seattle
In the 2009 single "Life in Marvelous Times," Mos Def declares that "we are alive in amazing times." The lyrical images that follow those opening lines, the sleeve artwork, and the fan-made video Mos Def chose to represent the song suggest that the meaning of "marvelous" and "amazing" must be read as multiple; they must be read to mean both "excellent" and "great" but also "to cause wonder," "to astonish," and "to bewilder." According to Mos Def, we must be amazed and marvel at how "basic survival requires super heroics"; we must be amazed and marvel at the "delicate hearts" and "diabolical minds," at the "revelations, hatred, love and war." Taking a cue from Mos Def, The Race/Knowledge Project understands the racial present as one of these marvelous times. This is a moment marked both by seemingly intractable political stalemates and by possibilities for large-scale transformation; by dispossession, displacement and unchecked accumulation and by new mobilities, movements and coalitions which seek to counter those formations; and by the incivility of political discourse and by the widespread acknowledgment of the fraudulent nature of those discourses and their claim to represent "public" good. We marvel at the horror; we marvel at the possibility. We marvel at the crisis, the beauty, the apathy, and the critical potential.
This conference is premised on the understanding that cultural workers like Mos Def help us to comprehend and re-think these "amazing" and "marvelous times." We especially marvel at how literature, music, performance, film, television, visual art, and all cultural production work to theorize,
actively (re)produce, and shape this racial present. Though much cultural knowledge is assumed to be theorized and disseminated through the academy, cultural workers occupy multiple locations that generate insightful and invaluable criticism of these "marvelous times." Cultural work, then, allows
us to ask different questions about political identities, radical coalitions, cultural/social critique, and political emancipation across disciplines, institutional boundaries, and the divisions constructed between
"activist," "academic," and "community" work.
The broad questions driving this conference include:
How does the marvelous erupt in culture and become politically meaningful?
What counts as cultural work?
What are the different ways cultural work addresses race, social justice, gender, sexuality in an era of global capitalism?
What is the relationship between cultural production and social mobilization?
The Race/Knowledge Project situates the concerns of this conference within global histories of decolonial struggle. In doing so, we position our inquiries within the legacies of social struggles that considered culture and cultural politics to be key vehicles of institutional and political contestation. In these terms, we recognize the university as a site of racial dominance and systemic inequality, as well as a terrain of social struggle. As such, we understand that a critical focus on culture asks us to not only challenge the content of academic knowledge production, but also its institutional rituals and forms. Understanding the conference format as one such ritual of knowledge production, we seek submissions that disrupt the line between the study and production of culture, and put into question both the forms and contents with which we know our "marvelous times."
In addition to university faculty and graduate students, we strongly encourage submissions from undergraduate students, artists, performers and other cultural workers, activists, and organizers, both in and outside of the university, as well as from K-12 teachers.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:
cultural workers, cultural work and cultural politics in "marvelous times"
race/racialization in its shifting articulations with gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, nationality and transnationality
racism and anti-racist praxis in the context of "neoliberal multiculturalism" and the ="colorblind present"
Women of Color and materialist feminisms and the work of culture
racial nationalisms and the state
migrations, the violence of borders, and border thinking
links between university sites, local/global activisms and performance
anticapitalist struggles in the racial present
racialized and gendered labor in regimes of "globalized" capital
Queer of Color critique and cultural production
the prison-industrial complex, immiseration, and the "new abolitionism"
neocolonialism and decolonial struggle at "home" and "abroad"
intellectual and activist labor with/against academic work
racial democracy and fascism
state violences and social movements
whiteness, property, and (new) racial histories
Possible session formats may include but are not limited to:
critical dialogues/roundtables between cultural workers, activists, academics, and educators
performances and performance-based workshops
collaborative, multi-format presentations
facilitated workshops or dialogues on topics related to the above
readings followed by discussion
visual presentations, art installations or film screenings
short-format film plus interactive dialogue
paper presentations
workshops on anti-racist/anti-oppression pedagogy (community-based, K-12 and university level)
planned collaborative reading and discussion of particular texts or traditions
Please email proposals (of no more than 250 words) and equipment needs to: rkp9@uw.edu by February 8, 2010.
"Owing to the overwhelming demand from participants, we have decided to extend the deadline for submitting paper abstracts to 31 January 2010"
Migration, indigenization and exchange: Chinese overseas from global perspectives
Recent globalization which began at the end of the last century has had a tremendous impact on Chinese overseas; the conventional notions on Chinese migration, indigenization and exchange between ethnic Chinese and their host or adopted countries as well as between ethnic Chinese and China require re-examination. The major objectives of the 7th International Conference of ISSCO are to re-look from regional as well as global perspectives at these issues, in particular the challenges faced by Chinese overseas in the political, economic, linguistic, cultural, educational and religious areas. These challenges may also be compared with the historical experiences of the Chinese overseas for a better understanding of their present situation, and possibly a prognosis of the future.
Conference Languages : English, Chinese and Malay are the three official languages of the conference
Important Deadlines
Call for papers final deadline 30 January 2010
Registration Payment deadline15 February 2010
Accommodation confirmation 28 February 2010
Winners of the latest round of the Art & Australia Contemporary Art Award are Peter Madden and Susan Jacobs. Shorlisted entrants include Paul Adair, Emily Ferretti, Michaela Gleave, Georgie Hill, Matt Hinkley, Owen Leong, Cyrus Tang and Krystie Wade.
This is an open competition that supports emerging professional artists through the publication of their work on the back cover of Art & Australia. Additionally, one recipient's work will be acquired annually for the Art & Australia collection.
The winners of the award are selected by Art & Australia in consultation with its Advisory Board members Anna Waldmann, Justin Paton and Rex Butler.
Seminar: On Whiteness and its Borders: Current Debates in Australian Cultural Studies
CONVENORS: Anne Brewster, Lars Jensen, Katherine E. Russo
Since their first appearance, Ghassan Hage’s White Nation (1998), and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s essay, “Talkin’ Up to to the White Woman”(1999), have arguably redressed Australian Cultural Studies by demonstrating how whiteness is constituted in forms of epistemic privilege and in the asymmetrical access to visibility and voice. Since then, the debate on Australian history, multiculturalism, immigration, and decolonization, has been shaped by ambivalent desires to deny or abandon the invisible white norm. Following American Whiteness Studies, whiteness has been redefined as a discursive category of privilege and authority, whose power derives from its invisibility and ordinariness, but also as a mobile social category exercised in the inclusion/exclusion of subjects from the imagined sovereignty of the national community. As a consequence, Australian Whiteness Studies have often crossed the paths of Indigenous, Gender, Migrant and Post-colonial Studies, contributing to the defamiliarization of Australian sovereignty based on the implementation of a permanent state of exception as a justification of obsessive biopolitical governmental practices.
We invite contributions that deal with questions of national and ethnic identity in
Australian literatures, cultures and languages and aim to expand or question the whiteness approach in Australian Cultural Studies.
Anne Brewster teaches at the University of New South Wales. Her books include Literary Formations: Postcoloniality, Nationalism, Globalism (1996), Aboriginal Women's Autobiography (1995),Towards a Semiotic of Post-colonial Discourse: University Writing in Singapore and Malaysia 1949-1964 (1988) and Notes on Catherine Lim's Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, with Kirpal Singh (1987). She co-edited, with Angeline O’Neill and Rosemary van den Berg, an anthology of Australian Indigenous Writing, Those Who Remain Will Always Remember (2000). She has widely published on whiteness studies in journals such as JASAL, Australian Humanities Review, Australian Literary Studies and Journal of Postcolonial Writing and in edited collections including Literary Theory and Criticism in English, ed David Carter (in press), Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, eds Roger Dean and Hazel Smith and The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges eds Barbara Baird and Damien Riggs. She is the Regional Chair of the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South Pacific and Southeast Asian Region) for 2009-10.
Lars Jensen is Lecturer at Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark. He has worked on and off in Australian Studies for two decades. He is the co-editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Studies: Continental Europe and its Empires (EUP, 2008). He has published a book on Australian Studies, Unsettling Australia: Readings in Australian Cultural History (Atlantic Publishers, 2005). His most recent publication is 'Locating Asian Australian Studies' in the special Journal of Australian Studies issue, “Asia@Home: New Directions in Asian Australian Studies” ed. by Tseen Khoo and Jacqueline Lo (Dec, 2008).
Dr. Katherine E. Russo holds a PhD at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and is currently post-doctoral fellow in English at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Her research focuses on Australian and New Zealander languages, literatures and cultures, modernity and modernism, Translation, Gender, Post-colonial and Whiteness Studies. Her publications include ContamiNATIONS (2005), a special issue of New Literatures Review, and, as co-author, Middle Passages: English for Cultural and Postcolonial Studies (2007).
WORK-IN-DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE OF THE BANH CHUNG PROJECT
The Banh Chung project explores site, place and space through an installation/performance which explores three interlinked storylines: Tet in Australia, Tet in Ancient Vietnam and Tet in War. Banh Chung is a savoury sticky-rice cake filled with mung bean and marinated pork, wrapped in bamboo leaf, which is eaten to celebrate the Lunar New Year. In this durational performance, AASRN member artist Chi Vũ will count down to the New Year with the creation and unwrapping of the bánh chưng.
The Banh Chung project will be piloted as part of Punctum’s In-Habit residency. A work-in-development presentation will take place at regular intervals on Wednesday 10th February 2010 between 3pm – 8.30pm at the Richmond Library, 415 Church St, Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria. Entry is free, but people are welcome to give a donation. For further information see the flyer attached below and the website: http://www.punctum.com.au/inhabit.html
Submissions now open for Cordite Poetry Review ZOMBIE 2.0
We’re going back to the future for our 32nd issue, revisiting 14: Zombie, one of the four issues originally guest-edited by Terry Jaensch in 2003. Way back then, we were slowly coming to grips with our online format and the NLA’s archive of Zombie catches us right in the middle of that transformation. It’s also the issue of Cordite with the most braaaiins, so who needs excuses. Send us five of your best, brainiest, bloodiest, goriest, ooziest, undead poems before February 15, 2010. The poetry in Zombie 2.0 will be guest-edited by AASRN member Ivy Alvarez, and the issue will appear online in April 2010. We’re also seeking feature articles and rants that address the undead theme from a poetic angle, audio that drips gothic, images of actual zombies (alive or dead) and illustrations from the darkest depths of your troubled psyches.
Announcing a unique initiative commencing at The Potter in 2010, supported by the Ian Potter Foundation.
The Ian Potter Museum of Art is currently recruiting for the inaugural Curator of Academic Programs at the Potter, the first such position offered by a university art museum in Australia. Modelled on successful programs at major American university art museums, this three-year position will establish curriculum links between art and collections, exhibitions and academic programs at the University of Melbourne. This is not an education officer or public programs position; it seeks to integrate encounters with art works, exhibitions, collection research and exhibition development with the tertiary curriculum. We are seeking applicants with a commitment to museum-based research and learning, an understanding of interdisciplinary curricula, and the capacity to act as an advocate recruiting academic staff as partners.
The position description at the University of Melbourne Jobs site:
INDAAR is an international network for researchers interested in comparative and transnational studies of diasporic Asian art.
The network facilitates opportunities for initiating transnational dialogues and generating collaborative research projects.
Art by artists of Asian descent in countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States is a significant cultural production, both in historical and contemporary terms. INDAAR offers a context to internationalise research on diasporic Asian art in these countries and others. AASRN member Owen Leong is the first artist to be featured on the new website.
This network is a special project of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN) and established in association with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project entitled “Being Asian in Australia and the United States”.
INDAAR is also supported by the School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Congratulations to AASRN member Dr Michelle Antoinette and Dr Caroline Turner who have recently been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant for their project:
The Rise of New Cultural Networks in Asia in the Twenty-First Century
Asia is now a key player in world affairs economically, politically and culturally. This project analyses the rise of new cultural networks influencing Asia's dynamic regional cultural economies today. It examines cultural organisations across Asia and their networking strategies, focussing on contemporary art and art museums as key indicators of cultural change. The study includes museums, exhibitions, commercial organisations, information networks, cultural diplomacy, artist and community networks. It will document developments and enhance Australian understanding of Asian cultural industries, building Australian research on Asian cultures.
