Wobble #11

Design // Art // Architecture // CultureWOBBLE

11#

issue #11 FREE canberra magazine released march 2013

ContributorsWriters:Assisatant Editor:Jess OliverSamantha LillieDavid and Margaret NaylorEd Cooper

Art and Design Cover: Martin OllmanPhotography: Alexander Bell Moffatt//brewstersangle.comJonathan McCabe//jonathanmccabe.com/Juliette Dudley//juliettedudley.com/

Spaces

From Me to You,

A month of cows, crime and suits.

Do you know much about biodynamics, and while the cheese tastes as good as it does, do you care? After no one would believe me about the full moon and cauldron I sent Jess to talk to the farmers.

We are honored that Margaret and David (Naylor) have kindly reviewed ‘Amour’ at the movies exclusively for Wobble.

A memorable moment from the summer of 2012… Walking home in the dark of Braddon’s Haig Park (fondly known as Rape Park) at 3am, a friend and I were asked for $2 by a local resident. I’m sorry, I was too pussy to get my wallet out. Would she ever really have pulled out a syringe the way she did my imagination?

This month I’d like to ask you to participate in one community service: Please go to Haig Park and have a BBQ, picnic or play ball. Help create a friendly place.

Jen EdmundsThe Editor

DirectorJennifer Edmunds

[email protected]

cover/contents//By Martin Ollmanscience//Biodynamics

a little bit rapey//Haig ParkSomething Different//Plastimake

Featured//Art not Apartcaravan//Open House 1965

Exhibition//REDEvent//Speakeasy

art//McCabismnew//Sly Fox Coffee

suits//A Gentlemens GuideDavid and Margaret//Amour

new//Palace Electric

w w w . w o b b l e . c c

CONTENTS

Palace Electric CinemaNishi, New Acton

//PalaceCinemas.com.au/Hippo

Garema Pl, City//HippoBar.com.au/

NewActonMarcus Clarke Street, Acton

//NewActon.com.au/ana///NewActon.com.au/LocalFeats/

Sly Fox Coffee200m south of Macarthur AvenueOn the bike path in O’Connor

into computing and the internet and never looked back. Then, a year ago, he submerged himself in the digital photography revolution.

great revelation and stoked a unique understanding of digital tools and software, to say the least. Like riding a bike... a digital bike.

actual photos and, just like printing in the darkroom, the digital process can still take as

Discovering and playing with all of the di�erent disciples of photography has been exciting and rewarding for more than just Martin. Projected across our monuments for Enlighten, on the pages of nearly every regular publication in Canberra and making

His piercing style and breathtaking clarity will be on show at NewActon from March 14 for a month, including Art, Not Apart.

Ollman’s Canberra

Ollman’s Canberra ExhibitionNewActon East

Launch: March 14, 6pm. East and CourtyardOpen daily, for enquiries call 0450 961 401

Close: April 12

Biodynamics:The cosmos aligns, harmony is restored and delicious cheese is birthed into the universe.

You’ve probably seen it somewhere, maybe on a yoghurt label or at the local farmers markets, but what is it, and why is it different from organic? Similar to organic farming, biodynamic practice rejects the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides and other harmful chemicals. That’s where the similarities end and where the astrology begins.

Sue Armstrong and Greg Oliver have been biodynamically farming the property, Greenhill, near Bungendore since 2000. Describing biodynamics as ‘Muck and Magic’, Sue explains:

“Biodynamic farmers fully comply with best practice organic methods and then we have the dynamic activities that are unique to biodynamic farming...that’s where the magic is”

Sue’s joking reply is both useless and accurate “Witchcraft”. Well, not exactly witchcraft but the real answer is not too far off. Biodynamic farming centres around a series of unorthodox preparations (preps).

Take for example a prep called ‘BD 500’. Cow poo is stuffed into cow horns and buried in the ground over winter. During it’s time in the ground the poo absorbs winter’s...err... ‘crystalline forces’ and is transformed into what Sue calls a

“beautiful, moist, humus-like substance”. It get’s weirder. The transformed poo (now BD 500) is mixed in warm water (approx 70 grams to 200 litres- NOT a liquid fertiliser as it’s too diluted) and then stirred for approximately an hour. The stirring changes direction constantly to create the ‘vortex’ and the ‘chaos’- in turn, creating harmony, and by doing so ‘capture the essence of the universe’. Finally, the prep is sprayed onto the earth when it is ‘inhaling’- in the early evening/night when the dew starts to form and the soil is moist.

The idea is that BD 500, when applied correctly, fosters microbial activity, humus development and root growth, improving soil structure. Sue is, by the way, a scientist by training and has a degree to prove it.

Biodynamics was developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner in the 1920’s. Yep, the creator of Steiner education, of which Canberra has its Orana School. The practice was to address the concerns of the local farmers after a loss of vitality in their crops after the introduction of chemical fertilisers.

Biodynamics’ underlying philosophy is both cosmic and practical. Derived from the Greek bios (life) and dynamics (energising or motive force), the practice, as Sue tells me, “takes into account all the overarching influences of the cosmic on the earth- the sun, moon, planets and stars”.

Alex Podolinsky, the man widely credited as being instrumental in transforming Steiner’s ideologies into a practical application for Australian conditions, wrote in 1999, “when plants are sick, look at the soil...that is where in biodynamics the health building takes place, in soil-organism-restructuring” *

Sue agrees: “the important thing about biodynamics is, whether or not you agree with the ‘witchcraft’, it promotes a sustainable and holistic approach to farming, using regenerative farming practices such as crop rotation and soil aeration”. Also, biodynamic produce tastes bloody incredible.

There is an argument that it’s the caring nature of biodynamic farmers and not so much the cosmic preps that increase soil quality. And the proof is in the pudding/the colour of the egg yokes.

Jess Oliver

If you’d like to talk to the farmer, Sue Armstrong is at the EPIC farmers markets every Saturday selling Greenhill’s beef.* Podolinsky, A., (2006), Biodynamic Agriculture Introductory Lectures Vol. 3, www.demeter.org.au

Haig Park is known better to a large number of people in Canberra as ‘Rape Park’. The dark patch of parkland that runs between Froggat Street in Turner

and Limestone Avenue in Ainslie with it’s yellow bus and resident drinkers, has endless rumours of sex, drugs and violence but there’s more to the story...

The Haig

Firstly, there’s the curious double decker bus that sits in the Braddon car park. ‘Mandalay’ was opened by ‘Uncle George’, a Burmese immigrant sometime around 1981 and served late night curry. In the mid-nineties, during a Summernats weekend, George was bashed in the head with a steel bar and went partially blind. His son took over the business but has since moved on. Rumour has it that George has been hoping that another Burmese immigrant would take over the business but in the meantime it’s a home for the homeless and a naughty party spot for delinquents.

Not named for the Dutch city The Hague [Den Haag], Haig Park’s namesake is the controversial WW1 hero Earl Douglas

Haig. In the 1960’s he fell from grace and earned the label

‘Butcher Haig’ for the unprecedented British casualties under his command. Apparently he was the image of incompetence but did some great work with ‘The Poppy Appeal’…

The park was designed in 1921 to protect the brand new city centre from intense dust and wind. The fact that it’s a terrible place to throw a ball or play with a Frisbee is not a mistake, simply a side effect of its primary purpose: Haig was a windbreak. Now, it’s not the 1920’s, the buildings around it protect us from the breeze and the park has a few issues.

As there are no other parks like it in Australia (most parks are designed to be fun to play in) and as it is now old (in

Canberra years) Haig Park is protected by the National Trust. Making changes is going to be tricky.

Any poorly lit and deserted place near a city centre is dangerous. The trees, though pretty, create a great place for hide and seek but a terrible place for most favourite park related past times.

Think about it, if you want somewhere to be naughty, why not find a dark place where no one else likes to hang out and then crack a smile if there’s a great liquor shop conveniently located near by.

Please stop blaming the junkie flats. When a government knocks them down they won’t do it with the residents inside. There are simple guidelines for creating safer public spaces that relate to lighting, facilities, paths, maintenance, proximity to roads.As Kate Painter noted in her 1996 study published in Landscape and Urban Planning*

“Street lighting is a publicly owned and community orientated strategy which benefits all sections of the community. Where it leads to increased street

The Haig...

usage, it enhances natural, informal surveillance and contributes to increased public order and safety.”

Painter also notes that adequate street lighting increases pedestrian uses of public places- meaning people could enjoy some wholesome fun in Haig Park.

Unfortunately, the most obvious issue with lighting in Haig is the dense and regimented rows of trees. Low slung branches obscure natural light and tree trunks are so close to the footpath it creates the feeling (and risk) that someone could jump out at out at any moment.

The Haig Park Master Plan Report was released in mid 2012 and includes healthy recommendations of lighting, tree pruning, furniture and upgrading the paths as well as some more questionable additions like commemorative artwork and new “interpretive and informative signage”. But would it be so bad to lose just a few of the trees and get a bit of sunshine?

This is our park. What are we going to do about it?

Jennifer EdmundsIllustrated by Juliette Dudley

* Painter K., (1996), “The influence of street lighting improvements on crime, fear and pedestrian use, after dark”, Landscape and Urban Planning, 35, 193-201

1-7pm Saturday 16 March Throughout NewActon

Note: if it is likely to rain, the event will be on the following Sunday.newacton.com.au/ana #ArtNotApart

Art, Not Apart

is a multi-arts

festival focused

on the making and

interaction of art.

Last October, in a courtyard

under a tree, artist Sami

Sommavira visually

interpreted the headlining

musicians. Sitting on

stage with the Canberra

Symphony Orchestra

Ensemble and then with

electronic producer

Hypnagog, she made small

paper sculptures inspired

by their sounds. The

progression from improvised

jazz to electronica was

visualised by Sami’s little

pieces glued to glass to form

a greater work.

The papered and painted glass was completed by the music: it made more sense when witnessed in the making. The divisions kept breaking down: the framed work made more sense when framed by the whole stage. Even the boundaries of the stage were blurred by roving performers and links to live arts studios in the laneway. The festival is mostly improvised and seemingly endless in breadth. You couldn’t see it all. Sound sculptures, live painting, clock-making, body-painting and contemporary exhibitions were easily lost in the laneway of creative spaces – spaces given to local artists to use as they willed.

The papered and painted

glass showed the endless

connections we can trace through art. From this perspective, nothing

is apart.

After the dancefloor dissipated, thousands of

people had connected with

works they liked, repelled

or opened towards. We can only hope the divisions kept breaking down after the festival.

A renewed Art, Not Apart

will fill NewActon on March

16. There will be more live

artists, huge installations,

two contemporary exhibitions, street food and

a killer performance-art-

after-party.

PH

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PARKES WAY

MA

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EDINGURGH AVENUE

Beside the lake (access via foot bridge)

Močan& GreenGrout

UrbanFood

Bicicletta

LibraryBar

Facebook.com/newactonprecinctTwitter.com/ArtNotApart

#artnotapart

LADY LAZARUS AND MC THOUGHT FOXUnique poetry and visual show by leading Brisbane artistsDoubting Thomas and Elanor Jackson2.30, Palace Electric, Cinema 1. FREE

SOUND AND FURY SPEAKEASYThe sordid performance-art-after-party4.00 Min Mae: 'Beautiful Lonely Men Dancing Slowly'4.30 Marianne Scholem (Brisbane, banging keys)5:00 Minh Ha (experimental guitar)6:00 Little Dove Theatre Art lets the characters come out6:00 RTFM spins 80s nouveau6:45 Yohan Strauss (DJ) with Dark Misklectic Debris (Melbourne, live visuals)7:15 Introducing our mysterious national superstar emcee7:30 Doubting Thomas (Brisbane, words, visuals, sounds)7:45 Schwa (improvised dance, chalk, drums)8:00 Braiden David (Sydney, words, sounds, body)8:15 Lottie Consalvo's film 'Happiness is an Extreme Emotion' (Sydney/Berlin, film, R)8:30 Monika Tichacek: 'The Shadowers' (film, R)9:15 Alice Cottee and Dollface (beautiful music)10:00 RTFM spins 80s nouveau10:10 Doubting Thomas (Brisbane, words, visuals, sounds)10:30 Midnight Bows (Sydney, sinister cabaret)11:00 Paul Heslin (sound and projections)11:15 Fifi Noir (gothic-fusion belly dancing) 11:30 Anna Voronoff (butoh)11:45 Sub Detonator (Melbourne, live dub)12:30 Gabe Gilmour (DJ) with Dark Misklectic Debris (live visuals)

WALT AND MAZCanberra’s shiftiest bar and gallery

FOODbánh mi, crepes, pate, nepalese, fruit

BUSK ANYWHERE People: vote! Musos: busk-off for a share of $1000 Read the quick guide online

PARKING$5 undercover parking on the day

Alternative parking

KENDALL LANE

CENTRAL STAGE1.00 Yohan and Micheal (electronica & violin)1.15 Raphael Kabo (poetry)1.30 Natalie Magee and band (jazz, folk, swing)2.20 Ordinary Day (cabaret)2.40 Alison and Andrew (dance and sax)2.50 Canberra Symphony Orchestra Ensemble (jazz, rock, classical)3.40 Eleanor Jackson (poetry)4.00 Brass Knuckle Brass Band4.45 Painting with Parkinsons Raffle Announced5.00 Agency Dub Collective (dub/reggae)6.00 Gabe Gilmour (progressive electronica)7.00 Close. Go to the darkside (Nishi Basement)

OPEN STUDIOSLive art, mini-exhibitions and studio work

OLLMAN’S CANBERRA Photography exhibition open all day / artist’s talk 2:30

PUBLIC PASTE UP WALL

CIRCUS!4.30 Poncho paints!

OPEN HOUSE 1965Unreal estate event of the decade

SHORT FILM FESTIVALTop ten of Lights! Canberra! Action!program in BMA and online / films every 30min

LET THEM EAT CAKE & CONVERSATIONBaking: 1:00, 3:00 & 5:00pmConversation: anytime

JUICE N’VIBESFresh juice, drumming and Legokids: meet Andrea, your new best friend

RISE EXIST DEMISE (RED) Group exhibition open all day / curator’s talk 2:00pmPerformance art: 5:00 (not ideal for kids)

PALACE ELECTRIC'S FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL12:00 Sister12.45 Ernest & Celestine2.15 The Big Night2.30 The Field of Enchantment4.15 Camille Rewinds4.30 In a Rush6.30 Haute Cuisine6.45 What's in a Name?8.30 Another Woman's Life 9.15 Granny's Funeral

Across London Circuit

a.baker cafe

march 16 / 1-7pm

Purveyor of vintage delights, April’s Caravan, invites you to the unreal estate event of the decade. Take a trip to the 60’s when local socialites Keith and Pattie

Nesbitt throw open the doors of their groovy love nest to prospective buyers and sticky-beaks alike. A successful tie salesman by day, Keith also moonlights as a consumer goods consultant and always knows best. Pattie is the perfect little wife, whose cutting edge cuisine is the talk of the CWA. Refreshments provided, costumes available – come and play!

Open Home 1965 is part installation, part performance art but mostly an excuse to deck out a flash apartment in 60s fittings, play dress-ups with strangers and serve deliciously kitsch hors d’oeuvres. Ted Nugent and Chanel Cole play sickly loving couple Keith and Pattie Nesbitt, with April (aka Janette Vonthethoff) reincarnated as their real-estate agent. Join them and April’s many friends for six hours of off-the-cuff mayhem. And be prepared to lend a hand in the kitchen.

Open House 1965by April’s Caravan

1-7pm Saturday 16 March

Apartment G10

Did you know the Maori, Inuit and Yupik have hundreds of words for the colour red? The RED exhibition seeks the stem – linguistically

or visually – of the ideas behind this colour. Red is synonymous with oppositional ideas of love and hate, the cloth of the pious and the ritual feather of a pagan. The flush of your cheek implies good health but the swelling of a limb is toxic and deadly.

Pamela Leung’s work “The Third Party” includes licks of red. Pamela moved from China to Australia in the 1970s. She has a Westernised self, a traditional Chinese self and her third role is being an artist. In China the lucky households have red tiles on their roof, a bride’s gown is red as is the chair in which she is carried to the altar.

Red stands out. It is loud, flashy, crude and violent. Sacha Jeffrey explores ‘masculine’ identity and ties the experience to colour. We see rage and the alchemy of pigments as they rupture, repurpose and blemish his work.

Shannon Cranko’s “Songs for the Sleepless” hints that the true beauty of red’s meaning is that it is ephemeral and transitory. Like the colour, her work symbolises a beginning and an ending you cannot reclaim, for example the loss and newfound power of menstruation, birth and death.

Chloe Mandryk has brought together 17 artists for Rise Exist Demise. In theme with creation and renewal, 11 of these artists are showing new works, and the gallery space is also new.

RiseExistDemiseA contemporary exhibition tracing life and death through red Curated by Chloe Mandryk

Rise: Friday March 15, 8pm Exist: daily, 3-6pm, and extended hours during Art, Not Apart Demise: Good Friday

Nishi Gallery – End of Kendall Lane, NewActon artonshow.org

FREE 4pm-1am Saturday 16 March

Nishi basement and surrounds Philip Law St, NewActon

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McCabismMathematics + Nature, the art of McCabe‘I am interested in spontaneous pattern formation in the natural world, and the application of its “algorithms” to generative mathematical computer art…I am attempting to understand by imitation the mathematical processes which produce the world’.

- Jonathon McCabe

Jonanthan McCabeDigital [email protected]

If there ever were scientists of art Jonathan would be at the pinnacle

Canberrans have been exposed to the Alan Turing-inspired world of McCabian art, but recognition for his international accompishments is long overdue. Not every artist has a jigsaw puzzle named after him.

In June 2011, I stepped quite literally, into the colourful, generative art world of Jonathon McCabe.

The incident took place not in a local Canberra gallery, but across the world at the entrance of the Le Meridian Hotel in Munich, Germany. The bold greens and stunning pinks from the “Turing Flow” series were so bright, they grabbed my attention immediately. Pleased to see his work, I walked into the hotel, and in doing so, this is what I have now come to know:

He is a member of the exclusive “LM100 Creativity Programme”, a select group of 100 international artists whose works feature as ‘Arrival Artwork’ in Starwood [Meridian] Hotel foyers across the world. Jonathan joined this exclusive network in 2010.

The same year, his work Mulit-Scale Radically Symmetric Turing Patterns, featured alongside Yoko Ono and Richard Dawkins in the compendium “Form+Code in Design, Art and Architecture”.

In 2010 also, he joined a group of 42 artists for inclusion in the “Written Images” project. The project combined programmed images from selected

artists with an auto-generative printing program, resulting in a digitally printed series of unique art books, derived from continuously changing data.

But the global reach of McCabe does not stop there: Think Digital Grafitti finalist at the the world’s first outdoor projection art festival, Alys Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Think distribution of video work through the Itaú Cultural Institute (Brazil) to Brazilian cultural institutions, libraries and schools.

His work is permanently displayed in Apáczai General, in Pece, Hungary and was broadcast as part of the “Souveniers from Earth” 24-hour arts program in France and Germany.

It takes more than just an amazing afro to become an ISM.

Jonathan McCabe, Photographer: Konrad Lenz

//jonathanmccabe.com///wblut.com/2009/03/09/turing-instability/ Samantha Lillie

Jonanthan McCabeDigital [email protected]

Garema Pl, City Centre

McCabe video art and wild, genre bending covers by:Jonty Hall

Xavier DunnMark Levers

+ Guests

//hippobar.com.au/

Wednesday 20th March 9pm

Proprietor Patrick Dillon with Sly Fox Coffee fan Emma Gibson

A new off-road coffee bar in O’Connor’s peak-hour bicycle traffic, Sly Fox Coffee has a divine little marque in the trees and earns its spot with high quality coffees.

Patrick Dillon pitched his tent on the bike path that leads from Lyneham to the ANU, 200m south of Macarthur avenue. This morning, Pat and his cousin Rollie were serving up keep cups full of Londale St Roasters ‘Moonshine’ blend to passing cyclists.

With seating for ten and a constant stream of morning cyclists, the location is clever but also sociopolitical ‘I want to encourage people to get on a bike’ Pat enthused. Though the furnishings might be minimalist, they do come with the ethical credentials of being entirely recycled and salvaged goods.

“It takes three trips” Emma Gibson explains “once to stare, the second to wave and by the third you have to stop and check it out”. Monday morning’s cheerful and chatty patrons with their handlebar cup holders and home made electric bikes all agreed.

Sly Fox Coffee requires a hawker’s license and predictable forest of paperwork including criminal background checks for Patrick. Applying to the Justice and Community Safety Directorate, Pat came across ‘Greg’ a helpful gentleman: as he handed over his proposed locations, “Greg instantly put a cross through Haig Park, ‘You don’t want to hang around in there’”.

A team of supporters helped the micro-business get across the line without financial debt, Danielle Cope from Canberra Business Point, ‘Greg’ at Justice, and Lonsdale Street Roasters guiding the quality product. Good Luck Pat!

David

Love is not all bike rides around the lake, building a house together, children and the illusory perfect happiness displayed in photo albums. Bikes crash, houses burn and children make bad decisions. Mutual love can help soothe gravel rash and bruised egos, find gratitude because ‘we survived’ and to forgive the brashness of youth.

Amour tells the story of Georges and Anne, a retired, elderly, French couple, following Anne’s stroke. Amour focuses on Georges’ home care for Anne as her health inevitably declines and the enduring acceptance of a partner turned full-time carer. Its cinematography, world class acting – especially Emmanuelle Riva (Anne) and phenomenal direction by Michael Haneke create one of the most awkwardly realistic films ever made. Technically, Amour is brilliant, but that is not why you should see this film. Amour profoundly demonstrates the meaning of ‘til death do us part.’ Amour will teach you things about love that are seldom discussed. Watch this film with somebody you care about, then do something fun, life is too short.

Margaret

Everyone over 50 should see Amour, which is an honest and no-holds-barred depiction of what it’s really like when one partner gets old and decrepit. It presents that situation so accurately that it will be confronting to anyone whose concept of love is founded on romance; the reality is almost scary. Jean-Louis Trintignant (Georges) and Emmanuelle Riva (Anne) are brilliant as the loving couple in their eighties who must confront Anne’s decline when she suffers a series of strokes.

Director Michael Haneke tackles this sensitive subject with finesse. The movie never descends into sentimentality, as would be all too easy to do. Instead it is the mundane reality of every scene that has such a profound effect, as Georges looks after his wife through her deterioration from active partner to helpless dependant. The ending, when it comes, is a shock, despite the predictability engendered by the opening scene.

This is a powerful movie about the expression of love in a context that is not usually considered when asking what love means, and it is not surprising that it has won so many awards, including the prestigious Palme D’Or at Cannes 2012.

Sunday morning at the Palme D’Or at Cannes 2012 winning film.Bored of bad reviews, Wobble asked mother and son Margaret and David Naylor to find what’s out there in the way of ground breaking cinema...

AMOUR

Illustrated by Juliette Dudley

The bottom button of a suit jacket remains unbuttoned, regardless of the number of buttons.

Some point to the early 1900’s British royalty for the change in the buttoning of suits, but more importantly for us, the change is now a rule.

Understandably this is confusing, particularly when you’ve spent your life buttoning shirts; however, suit jackets are designed to be worn with the bottom button undone (Hipster kids - this is also the case for vests).

It’s the day of the interview, you are at home and you take one look in the mirror and realise you’ve forgotten to put on your tie.

At this point do you think “I’ll just use a clip on tie today”? Probably not, so why should the same apply for a bow tie?

You’ve made the effort to dress up, so make the effort to wear the real thing - you are already choosing fashion over function.

A side note, it is now customary when tying your bow tie to make it slightly untidy to differentiate it from the lazy clip on variety.

A gentlemens guide to looking dapperTrouble shooting your wardrobe with Ian Hamilton.

This article is directed at the growing number of ambitious gentlemen who are making an effort. So if you recently joined a graduate program, are one of many charming baristas and bartenders now donning a bow tie and suspenders, or you just want to add some polish to your outfit - here are some tips...

You can’t have it all.

Which brings us to suspenders, they are designed to hold your pants up, and replicate the function of a belt, pick one or the other - please not both!

Jacket buttons

The Bow Tie

Belt or Suspenders?

$10 Adult tickets$9 Movie Club tickets

Happy hour: $10 cocktails $5 Peroni/Brown Brothers wine every FridayLive music / local talent from 5-8pm last Friday of the month

nishiat 2 philip law st

Photography by Alex Moffatt

Wobble #11

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Transcript of Wobble #11