..seeing beasts, brutality and abuse

Beasts, brutality and abuse.

Hello Petals,

It has been an odd week …and on balance, one that reflects so poorly on us Antipodeans that we might wonder about the nature of the malaise affecting us.

It’s been a week of violence: verbal, intellectual and physical.

Senator Cory Bernardi (right wing Liarbril loopy, S. Aussie, Senator) opined in a parliamentary debate on same-sex-marriage that these unions, if sanctioned, could quite possibly lead to bestiality being an accepted form of union!

This happened, by the way, after the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney thought that a study into health factors relating to homosexuality would be a good idea!

You know:  you’re sicker than we are, sort of thing!

After Liarbril front-man, Tony “the Rabbit” Abbott wiped Bernardi’s verbal tripe from his head, he sacked him as his parliamentary secretary.

The following cartoon by Michael Leunig paraphrases it all better than I can.

“Mr Rabbit” again exposed his distinct ineptness by castigating the Prime Minister for being O/S and pontificating that P.M. Gillard should have been in Jakarta talking to the Indonesian President about asylum issues.

Uuhhhmm she was Tony… at the UN with President Yudhoyono; discussing these issues.  Oh dear, and he really, really, really, wants to run the country, too.

Sectarian violence erupted in Sydney when blokes stormed around the streets with signs saying “we’ll behead you if you don’t agree with us”, mimicking more violent and deadly groups in the Middle East and Pakistan but giving local police practise in crowd control and using batons and Capsicum spray.

It seems some other ideological twit in the US produced a very bad film about a character whose history is not to be commented on in any way.

All this was happening at the same time as a British Muslim obsessive was promoting the “World Caliphate” in the same city.

Leigh Sales (ABC 7.30) in interview, scored well off the caliphate salesman who didn’t look too impressed with her. He knows that women only have half the brain that men do and in his scheme of things, she’d never be allowed to ask such questions.

Ms Sales then, later in the week went on to blot her interview style with an obnoxiously rude, schoolgirlish and vituperatively screaming rant at ex-Labor pollie Lindsay Tanner about his new book, which questions Labor’s values and future.

Manners madam, you are the interviewer not the subject!

 Alan “Bondi” Jones (loopy right radio shock jock, NSW) as chief court jester to the Liarbrils, entertained their Sydney Uni cabal with some bon-mots to the effect that Prime Minister Gillard’s improvement in the polls had only come through her tearful demeanour over her father’s death and that her father had died of "shame" because of his daughter's lies to the Australian public.

This tawdry, hate-filled little person is a member and promoter of the Liarbrils.

He is a signal and perfect public example of their values, ethics, modis-operandi and horribly, this country’s possible future.

Update, 3/10:  "Bondi" Jones has apologised, sort of.... blaming everyone else... but in the manner of most bullies, couldn't understand why anyone could be upset with him and feels he is the real victim. "Rabbit" Abbott, too, eventually got around to saying that his mentor's comments were disgraceful and a dozen of Jones' advertisers on his radio station have (for the time being) withdrawn their accounts.

Beasties, St Michels, Gaillac

Then there was Kennett, (failed, ex-premier of the Tardis State) extolling how well he’d done in managing to disable this State twenty years ago.

To my mind, the best he’s done is to be the Dorian Gray of Victorian politics!

And be President of Hawthorn Football Club…

And then came the news of the abduction and rape and murder of young ABC radio staffer less than 500 metres from her home and husband.

Missing for days and then the police are led to her body by the alleged killer because of a shops' interior video surveillance camera in assisting in identifying him talking to her.

Some weeks ago, Mrs Wombat and myself were driving back from an emotionally draining time trying to assist a female relative in a abusive relationship.

We stopped at a local pub for a meal as we didn’t have the energy to go home and cook. On going to the toilet after the meal and on washing my hands I saw a sign in front of me which said: If you see your mate assaulting his girlfriend you can call this…. hotline.

Is violence endemic in this country?

Is violence against women endemic?

Is the increasing verbal violence that has been promulgated at a public/political level over the past thirty years bearing fruit in our society?

Are the calls for “flexibility” in the workforce whilst senior executive receive multi million dollar bonuses and salary’s, fuelling resentment?

Is a political system which gives business profit more credence than the welfare and the future of the people also fuelling resentment?

Are the de-personalised and sometimes, hysterical responses in social media, training us to think everything is a bit of a game?

Does our egocentricity and selfishness make us believe that we are cocooned from the real world?

Are we, as Australians, really “social” and “responsible” beings?

Bye,

Shane

inviting to a dance photography exhibition

G'day all.... the shows up.....

... we hung it all today, distributed the flyers and put them in shop windows.

So now there's a big silence.





That's the poster on the left.

and below, a panorama of the venue,
The Bean Barn 217 Sturt St Ballarat.
Open 7 days

 

The title is borrowed from a film Gene Kelly produced
and starred in, which was at the time and possibly still is,
one of the most innovative dance films made.

At photography’s inception capturing movement
was impossible and even a subjects head for a portrait was
clamped into place to limit any blur through movement.
In all art forms the attributes of  the medium modify
and inform the methods and conceptual paths the artist can take.

Photography’s 150+ year history has culminated in todays
digital cornucopia;  a veritable feast of image making equipment
and modification and manipulation methods which allied to the
quality and longevity of the final print is releasing the production
of new forms of expression in graphic art.

There are a variety of performance modes in dance and each
can be realised in photography through a variety of techniques
which hopefully give true expression to the qualities of the
choreography, the dancer and dances inherent theatricality, a
theatricality that is in part the ability to suspend belief: to make you
believe a woman is a Swan or a spirit and that weightlessness
is normal.
It’s the illusion of human aspiration achieving completeness.

Some of the works are collage type assemblages

And yes, there is a awareness of Joseph Cornell's work but the intent here is more related to performance than surrealism.

Photos, material, twigs. 250mmx200mmx20mm

Here there is a play with the illusion of space .. you can see that the "backdrop" really does curve down to the front and the dancer (Ally, see previous posts) is a cut-out in correct position. The shadows are hers not photoshopped into the image as are the folds in the drop





Two photo images
300mm x 250mm x 30mm

Carlo Blasis illustration reproductions, angled floor and a cut-out (Shriram) which bears a striking resemblence to a most "Romantic" manner.

250mm x 200mm x 20mm















..and, Yes, Robbie can Jump!
Print and cut-out.

250mm x 200mm x 20mm
If you happen to visit this show there's a visitors book for comments.

Cheers Possums,
Shane

to see slash and burn...

G'day Petals,

it's Spring... 

and here are three very recent ballet shots to celebrate it... psst... advertising for a Summer School Intensive at Ballet Theatre Australia in January 2013.

see details on their web site.

Well, there's the nice stuff done..

now on to the Slash and Burn of

Politics

Slash and burn, slash and burn.

It seems the only thing political conservatives do well is destroy.

Presently, Australia’s public education, public health services are being slashed by State governments in Victoria (the Tardis State) NSW and Queensland, intent, they say, on “balancing the books”.

A few commentators have said that this is a dress rehearsal for Tony “rabbit” Abbott and his ideological rabble when they come to power; which is probably true except that the states are allowing him the opportunity to slash much further and deeper into social spending than we will ever have seen before.

And although Abbott’s been “outed” again; this time by David Marr’s Quarterly Essay http://www.themonthly.com.au/david-marr as a brutish and misogynist student activist who seemingly believed in nothing but power for its own sake and though, on one hand, it is nice to know that some things never change, on the other, will it have any meaning in the electorate?

Historians have said that new wars are started by old men for old past causes and hatreds. Mr Rabbit seems to adhere to that point by carrying on like an unreconstructed 1950’s DLP’er (I know 50’s is currently retro fashion but Bob Santamaria still as a hero ? Good grief)!

Which at least takes some attention away from the flip-flopping that the Federal Govt. is doing again, now over the big re-named marine vacuum cleaner from Holland.

At least here in the Tardis State, (where all goes backwards), “Big Bird”, Baillieu (genus:Silvertail Incompetens) has done something positive:

He’s changed the slogan on the state’s vehicle registration plates! 

WOW!!!

That almost rates with his environmental efforts in changing the bulbs in the traffic lights.

Psst,….let’s not talk about the $350,000,000 taken out of Technical and Further Education and the subsequent loss of thousands of jobs and the closure of courses seriously affecting regional economies; that TAFEs are now talking of selling campuses to make ends meet. Or the predictably organised Union bashing (though, the CFMEU are their own worst enemies) or the planning disasters or the teacher/nurse bashing or the reduction of the solar power tariff or the increase in the crime rate or the threat of legal action by the gambling companies for loss of revenue, (another Kennett deal gone pear-shaped? As with public transport, water, electricity and education?) Or the fact that FOI requests are late in four out of five instances and take three times longer to process than is required or that National Parks are being turned into private resorts or just read this

 http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/baillieu-accused-of-paying-fat-cats-while-sacking-workers.html

This, is a competent Government?

Aus’s biggest, wealthiest and loquacious miner, Gina R., (whose business life started out with $25,000,000 float) has commented approvingly of African workers being paid $2.00 a day and sees this as a possible model for Australian wages.

She also finger-waggingly opined to other mine owners that if Australians wanted more money they should stop drinking, smoking, fornicating, going to the footy and eating pies, picking their noses, going out on Saturday night, wearing clothes, eating and should just find a better job and work harder.

Geez Gina, how perceptive and socially relevant you are for the C21st!

Sorting your own family problems out before tackling the countries (as you see it) might be more valuable and productive for you.

How feudal is her attitude, petals?

Cheers, Shane

...to the gutter.

 G'day Petals,

 Once upon a time being in the gutter meant that you were young, on your way home from school, that there had been heavy rain; and that you and your mate were racing twigs or leaves along in the rushing water to see which one would win by being the first down the drain at the corner.

Today it has other meanings

Rue Louis Blanc, 10e, Paris 

It was expected but the reality was a bit more confronting than expected

Rue St Maur 10e, Paris

Rue J. Dodu 10e Paris

Which, being said, is in no way a criticism, just an observation.

graffiti 10e, Paris

derelict building, Paris 11e

 Graffitti has its visual fascination as does the ruin and the arbitary nature of multiple torn posters

Poster site Paris Metro

Paris 10e

 But the street as pissoir is not art; only unhealthy and smelly.

Which leads to .......

Politics

It has also been an interesting fortnight in the Antipodean political gutter.

Starting from the minute Leigh Sales, (ABC 7.30, Report) having done her research on the topic of BHP and the Olympic Dam mine, savaged Tony “the rabbit” Abbott for his pathetic jingoistic “one-liner” answers and exposed not only his tenuous grasp of the truth but also his party’s lack of credible policy.

Flowing from this was Liarbril, Grahame Morris’ (“….one of Australia's most respected political commentators and government relations professionals……” (His words not mine) defence response on public radio, “Leigh can be a bit of a cow at times…” to be followed up by what was allegedly an apology next day, “Oh, perhaps I should have said hard-hitting”.

Sales’ rejoinder was a delight , “I’d rather be a cow than a Dinosaur”!

Why is it that Liabrils and good manners can never intersect?

Then there was Peter “Rottweiler” Reith exposing his humanitarianism on the SBS’s Reality/Doco “Go back to Where You Came From” maliciously supported by Angry “Bogan” Anderson.

They verbally wrapped themselves in the Aussie flag and defecated in it!

Reith’s comment on 774 “…you can run a laundry in a mining site and get $400,000.00 a year….” went unchallenged ‘til a small torrent of mine workers poured in to wash the record clean.

Could you trust a person who claimed that refugee parents were throwing their children into the sea or loaned out his government and taxpayer funded phone for his son’s use… as Reith did? 

Virginia Triroli’s commentary, “Reith re-writes history….” (The Age, Saturday Sept.1^st )  finished up with the paragraph: “If an untruth like this is deliberately left uncorrected, does that make it a lie? I’ll leave that to the ethicist to decide.  Etc”.

As it seems the Liabril’s have few ethics; I reckon if it walks like a Duck and quacks like a Duck …… ergo: Peter Reith is a Duck!

Anne Summers’ extract in the same paper from her 2012 Human Rights and Social Justice Lecture: “Her rights at work: The political persecution of Australia’s first female prime minister”, is worth reading as it coolly lays out the vile, malicious and sexist misogyny Gillard has been constantly subjected to by the tories and their bogan supporters.

Watch the Senate and see how Penny Wong (Labor) is treated by the Liabrils during question time.  Apparently they see no distinction between policy argument, policy effect and the person.

But I must admit to enjoying Senator Brandis’ apoplectic, pursed lip rage when Wong retorted with either a, “His” or “Her Majesty….” as part of a reply.

For the Liabrils, there is no intellectual level that can’t be lowered far enough to satisfy the “aspirational” bogans who Pavlovian-like, respond best to knee-jerk fear stimuli and ½ truths.

Howard deliberately let the “Race” genie out of the bottle and it’s since been fanned along by right-wing radio mouths (like Alan Jones with his infamous provocations to riot at Bondi) ever since. 

Bogan mentality has been empowered by the born-to-rule and consequently a race to the lowest level of the gutter.

Perhaps it was always mythical but Vale, Australian fair play and egalitarianism.

There’s an aphorism that when you’re young you're idealistic and “left” thinking and only become conservative with experience and age … well my local far right scribe has been his rollicking best of late, castigating teachers by penning an article where he starts with what was possibly meant to be a heart-warming identification anecdote of how he was suspended as a middle school student for not apologising to a teacher whom he had called “.. a left wing commie bastard”.

If I had been the Principal, I would have suspended him just for the tautology.

Seems the lad started as a repressed bogan and has just expanded to a repressed far-right one… hardly seems progressive.
And his scribblings suggest that better prose may have produced later by humbly and earlier, studying more.

Cheers Possums,

Shane.