PULP: ISSUE 10 2023

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Foreword USU President — Nazanin Sharifi

August has been a big month of increasing USU’s capacity to support our members and further enliven campus life.

As expected, the University has seen a significant growth in student numbers on campus made particularly apparent in the fantastic turnouts at our Sem 2 Welcome Fest activities. USU membership has grown to over 46,000 members, our highest number on record, and we are excited to provide the necessary support, programs and initiatives that cater to our diverse member base.

Earlier in August, the USU opened the new Ethnocultural Space at Manning House after months of consultation and gathering feedback from our members. The space is now on Level 1 of Manning and is open to the relevant members.

The USU will continue to work towards providing autonomous spaces that are suitable and fit for purpose and look forward to the new Disability Community Space being refurbished and opened soon.

Finally, I am particularly excited about our Inaugural Festival of Creativity happening in September (details on the USU Website) and look forward to supporting all our wonderful student performers both as part of the Festival and also as broader vision for the USU. I look forward to seeing you all around campus and please do not hesitate to say hi or reach out at president@usu.edu.au

Senior Editor Kate Saap

Editors

Huw Bradshaw Simon Harris Justine Hu Sonal Kamble Lizzy Kwok Lameah Nayeem

Design

Simon Harris Justine Hu The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of PULP was correct at the time of printing.

This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union.

Issue 10, 2023

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PULP is published on the sovereign land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, as well as Indigenous members of our creative community. We respect the knowledge and customs that traditional Elders and Aboriginal people have passed down from generation to generation. We acknowledge the historical and continued violence and dispossession against First Nations peoples. Australia’s many institutions, including the University itself, are founded on this very same violence and dispossession. As editors, we will always stand in solidarity with First Nations efforts towards decolonisation and that solidarity will be reflected in the substance and practice of this magazine.

Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Editorial

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Editor’s note

It’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of print media. Around the world, local newspapers and bookshops are being forced shut. Jobs in publishing are threatened by a certain bald-headed billionaire more concerned with colonising outer space than paying his staff. Stories of Australian media companies slashing editorial and journalist roles flood my newsfeed.

But here we are, celebrating the tenth issue of PULP magazine. What was previously an online publication un(fortunately) dwindling in readership, has evolved into the beautiful, wide publication you now hold in your hands.

The early Pulp magazines of the twentieth century were notoriously associated with sensational, “low-brow culture”, but Pulp introduced the magazine to the masses. At a time when bookstores were found only in larger cities and Penguin paperbacks were not yet considered the mainstream, Pulp magazines were distributed on newsstands, tobacco stores, drug stores — not to mention at bus and train stations. Writers and artists consistently pushed the boundaries of acceptability in publishing — no doubt attracting undue enemies and legal trouble.

Whilst this Eora-based publication has yet to publish any raunchy crime fiction, nor have we considered using Shakespeare’s head as the new colophon, we hope that you too will join us in this centuries-long tradition of stylistic and literary experimentation. For the rest of our term, we have eclectic dreams of matte and gloss and petite-themed issues. We have visions of multimedia art, of long-form articles, of closer collaborations between photographers and writers. Like the Pulp magazines of yesterday, we are excited to publish more striking visuals and prose; this time, representing the imaginations of Sydney’s creative community and beyond.

ISSUE 10 takes us on numerous journeys through space and time. We introduce the monthly photo review, capturing your surreal experiences in Sydney and abroad. We are transported back in time to the indie sleaze era of the early 2000s, to the everyday scenes of an Indian temple, and to a sex shop on Oxford Street. As you read about the work of Vito Acconci, know we are so grateful for the private time you choose to spend with our magazine.

Finally, thank you to the previous editorial team for setting the groundwork for PULP. 10 is a huge milestone largely attributed to your dedication and passion for the publication. And to all those who’ve expressed such warm support for our ninth issue, to new friends, contributors, and strangers — thank you.

P L U P Y ii

Senior Editor’s Recipe Kate Saap has a recipe for u

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Contents Photo review 1 Public Space in Private time 8 Three steps to ennui in Sydney 12 Do not disturb my circles 16 A moment of silence 18 Halmeoni 20 Layers 26 Visiting an Indian Temple 28 What’s the Craic? 34 American Apparel 40 I am a ghost watching my own body 42 She did not understand the fun of shooting birds 46 Love Unscripted: The Culture Industry’s Romantic Reel Dance 50 A night in the most popular sex shop on Oxford Street 54 The warrior women of Dahomey 58 Whose coffee culture? 60 A parable in the Hills 64 64gb 66

pulp issue 9 launch 18-8-23

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Pulp Photo Review

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have been taking some photos recently. I know you all have been, too. If we could all open our cloud photo albums at once we might all be able to experience the whole world all in its endless detail and unity. To me, the world is constantly screaming for reproduction. To be captured, to be seen again, to be shared amongst us. I feel compelled to reproduce and collect the ways that things so often come into perfect alignment inside the frame of the camera app.

Robert Smithson wrote in 1971, “... cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight.”1 In many ways, maybe we have become more like the camera; walking around with the phone perpendicular to our face, hungry for more images for our endless collections.

With the camera app open it merely becomes another layer in the composition we create before our eyes. Maybe we have created Smithson’s “Infinite camera” » which he posits as being somewhere between the still and movie camera.

If the phone is an infinite camera it has come to have its own character. It is the balance between clarity (the still image) and compression (the endless image) that creates this look.

It is a perfect camera for taking many pictures, the perfect camera for reproduction. Mobile phones possess ultrawide lenses that push away the background and bring the focus of the image directly into the centre of the frame. We are selectors, following the whims of a device that would “shoot” the whole world if it could.

In my thinking about photography, an idea I am trying to understand is this way in which our collective unconsciousness seems to converge onto a discernable feature of photography.

Not on the locus of subject, or a style, or a “look” but rather the process that defines the images that are produced. If analog photography is characterised by an inherent instability owing to its complicated and fragile chemical process, what is so unique about phone photography is its seamlessness, its automatism and the way picture taking has honed in on everyday marvellousness.

These images demand to be read for their graphic power. I ask that you sit with each one for a moment longer than it would’ve taken for it to be photographed in the first place. love, S. Notes.

1. Robert Smithson. Art through the Camera’s Eye, 1971

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Thank you to:

Aidan, Arnav, Bip, Gaby, Hamish, Long, Mahir, Minah, Rhea, Soleil, Stella, Steph, and Tyler

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Public Space in a Private Time Lizzie Moshirian reflects on Vito Acconci’s essay on display at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York

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first came across Vito Acconci’s work at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, an independent space dedicated to exploring the intersection of art, architecture, politics, and society. Notably within its exhibition, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the space, was a poster created by JeanMichel Basquiat, who once frequented the area, as well as photographs capturing Shirin Neshat, the renowned Iranian artist, who once co-directed the space with her then-partner Kyong Park, the founder of Storefront.

What drew my attention to Acconci, however, was a small, maroon book whose pages bore his 1990 essay, ‘Public Space in a Private Time,’ to which the exhibition was titled in commemoration of.

“It used to be, you could walk down the streets of a city and always know what time it was.

There was a clock in every store; all you had to do was look through the store window as you passed by.”

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Words Lizzie Moshirian

Opening with the above passage, Acconci proceeds to comment on the individualisation of time as “time aimed straight not for the heart but for the arm.”

He emphasises that the electronic age eliminated the need for interpersonal relationships, since all the information required for daily life was already provided — and in the privacy of one’s home — contrary to what was previously gained through public interactions.

“Public time was dead; there wasn’t time anymore for public space; public space was the next to go.”

As I discussed these concepts with Andrea, who works at Storefront, I contemplated how these discourses had transcended and reproduced themselves in contemporary contexts: what was once concrete space had become abstract in the wake of the information age that transgressed the man-made borders imposed by nations.

Meanwhile, existing social, economic and political structures retained their power, utilising electronic operations to reinforce existing global hegemonic structures. This is evident in the disparity of manufactured goods that see items formerly produced by wealthier nations now produced by poorer ones for unconscionably lower costs, a process that transgresses time and space, blurring national borders. These nations still remain enslaved to existing hierarchies that obstruct any form of upward economic mobility, a process strategically reserved for wealthy nations, and now exacerbated by these technological accelerations.

“There’s no space without time—a place has no life until time has gone by… There’s no time without space—the past or the future can’t be prelived or relived without a place to live it in.”

As Acconci recognised, space and time act as mutually reinforcing dynamics in that

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they are both essential for marking existence within physical realms. However, with the rise of media advancements, perhaps exceeding the bounds of the physical realm, time has increased its speed, thereby perpetuating the slowness of space. Acconci extends this notion to argue that space was in effect turned into time by digital speed traversing concrete spaces, and from this, some degree of individual agency was lost at the hand of higher forces that now control these newly abstracted spaces.

With this being said, individual agency also complements public spaces by allowing for personal introspection and contemplation to augment them. From public time shifting to a more private phenomenon, time for public space has arguably diminished; however, in Acconci’s world, this facilitated the entanglement of public and private space.

The hybridity of these two spheres, which were traditionally dichotomised, became engaged as such in the wake of the newly emerging “virtual space,” a means for rendering public space private.

“The end is public, but the means of public art might be private. The end is people, but the means might be individual persons. The end is space, but the means might be fragments and bits.”

In understanding this hybridity in relation to time and space, private relationships with public spaces can then be conceived within public art, which inserts itself into existing environments to co-exist with, disrupt or redefine known spaces.

Referencing individualism, which is often critiqued for eroding community life and normalising isolation, Acconci forges an alternative notion to this prospect — that in connecting with our individual selves, we are able to connect with spaces around us more deeply. Here, Acconci emphasises the dire importance of engaging with public art by inserting personal memories and imagination, thereby fostering private time within a public space.

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To Acconci, pop music is the ‘new public art,’ an entity that does not require space but rather alludes to time itself. A once collective experience, music, too, has become increasingly individualised, though it still holds the potency to be experienced within

any space or time; inducing what is the core of human emotion, memory, and inspiration.

Amidst the changing tides of what we know to be public and private, music renders these notions obsolete through its spatial transcendence.

“Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.”

— Jean-Michel Basquiat

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Three steps to ennui in Sydney (and three reasons not to follow them)

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6:00, train stopped at St Peters, a guards’ mumble, an indefinite delay. The doors are open, and the few passengers look out as if wondering if we should walk. It’ll only take an hour, according to Google Maps. The wind snorts. It shakes the azure from its icy journey on the doorway. The conversation between me and my friend suddenly becomes animated; eye contact is much easier when we’re shaking our heads in disgust.

I share an anecdote of when a British tourist exclaimed how cold it was, and cringe that it makes me feel proud. The night seems to recede from view; like true Sydneysiders we silently wonder if we should have stayed home and torrented instead.

5:00, dinner in a suburban pub, oversized schnitzel washed down with undersized beer. Undersized because the obligatory pub pool plays like a procedure, surgeons holding their breaths with every half-centimeter movement. We talk about what’s on and confess neither of us coughed up for Vivid. We talk about where to go, movies, bars, gigs, and decide on looking around Town Hall, which means we’ll probably do the same thing as right now at city prices. There’s an awkward pause as we realise we’ve got a whole night ahead of us. We don’t dislike each other; but we can feel the cold disappointment of having nothing, nowhere better to go. A story notification, a flash of green and blue, and we walk to the station, holding our jackets close.

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Words Nicholas Osiowy

4:00, on my bed, the window is open and the clouds reach through to drift over my blue walls. Lost in Translation, finished, lies beside me, and my eyes feel sticky from endlessly scrolling on my warm phone. A word appears suddenly; ennui. When did boredom, frustration, FOMO, become something like that? But it fits well. Ennui doesn’t come quietly in Sydney; the feverish buzzing of five million people and five million phones is enough to send anyone mad. Perhaps there’s something in that; ennui comes from the Latin inodiare – “to make loathsome,” to annoy. I look across at my bookshelves, and out the window, wondering why I can’t find the energy to do anything.

5:30, in a street, the sunset bursting over the clouds’ outlines, painting them pink.

Not pink like a Barbie, or like a Portuguese postcard; but that deep, old pink of this old continent, like petals caught in the moment they begin to wilt. We both turn and watch the silvery undertow murmur and hiss through the sky’s ocean. And there’s a memory of Coogee, of water heaving with weed, and the sky stuffed with clouds, caught in a breaker and thrown unceremoniously on the beach. The world surges with hissing grey. I catch my breath, we laugh, we dive back in. The train doors open.

4:30, staring across the street, beige bricks covered by pale green roofs and a dangle of gum leaves lowing and tossing in the wind. Further on, a band of celadon marks the start of the National Park. I catch myself thinking of it as a prison fence, and, disgusted, look out again. I look and listen to the magpies playing their throat-strings, the mynahs yapping, the cockatoos screeching as they demolish another bin. Spellbound, I look and let my thoughts wander, and I remember childhood walks up steep, sandy hills, hands gripping scribbly bark, smiles squeezed like pearls out of tired, shaking knees.

This gumtree bower my prison; I laugh, and reach for a new book.

6:30, the lights play in the black waves on the harbour, cutting its wood into shapes for the ink of night to enter into. I think back to the fallen spirits, the listless wandering of the cold wind, the ennui. Was it today? There’s a beauty in remembering your own dark moments; like the lights on the lapping waves, they’re a microcosm of life.

Today Milan Kundera died; and forty years ago, a different student entered his world of middle-aged fever-dreams. And suddenly, as we walk and watch a boat chug ominously beneath the Bridge, under the weight of some party with stain-begging shirts illuminated against the night, I smile, and the ideas come flooding back.

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s D e l o c r n i c ot d y m i

Do les

not di s t u r b

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ur ot dist b my ci r c on

y c i r m c l b e r s D ts u

s Zara Hussa d r o in W

Step closer into the funhouse mirror,

brown-eyed terror.

Bulging green veins on hands thrice your size; They hold a (misery) cord, Winding, weaving, twisting.

It is the witching hour.

Step closer.

There sits your mother– lost and found like echoes in Time.

Look closer, doe-eyed monsters, Pulsing lives fly high on sugar kites.

I stole one, ate it up.

Screams swallowed by the starless sky.

Nothing comes from nothing, And so Prometheus toiled: I must change your life.

With fire, foreknowledge, and fennelBlood and clay spun into Man. And so, these hands weave and twist

Spun-sugar lives, Fire glinting off teeth, eyes, mirrors Till I spit out this congealed sweet mess, And call it Life.

Reader, I made you up.

Are you alright, are you?

A Moment of Silence

19 17 July 2021 This is my dad.

He noticed that the timber encasing our garden bed had become speckled with pale green mold, and the weeds from the grass have taken a foothold in the soil and begun crawling up the fence.

We started the garden bed when I was about 6 and it used to have strawberries. My dad bought four discounted sapplings from Bunnings - one plant for each of his children. But after those died and we all became busy, he decided to just cover the whole thing up with pebbles.

When lockdown came, he took to gardening in an effort not to squander precious time. It was a way to keep his mind and hands busy. This garden bed was going to get a makeover – the wooden sleepers would be replaced with brand new ones and inside we would grow wintermelon to steam for dinner in December.

As he’s shovelling out the dirt, you can count the years that have gone by on the sun spots on his face. They’re mostly on the right. Soldered in and bumpy after years spent working behind the steering wheel, driving in circles and loops around Sydney, picking up and dropping off passengers from Monday to Sunday.

Then, for a moment, he sits down.

And for the first time in years, he decides to stop digging.

No more waking up at dawn and eating microwaved buns with one hand, the other on the wheel.

No more lining up at the taxi rink at the airport or in front of posh hotels.

No more waiting and waiting and waiting for the next fare.

No more disgruntled passengers.

No more business calls in the back seat.

No more stickered-up suitcases from tourists travelling from a country he can’t pronounce.

No more sudden clicks of the pager mid-lunch.

No more late afternoon calls to pick up the kids from the train station.

No more empty seats at the dinner table, and missed calls,

and cold food,

and the jangle of keys at midnight after sending drunk men in white collared shirts home to Rushcutters Bay. No more cracked bowls and broken spoons.

In this moment, he sits still.

In silence.

By himself.

For himself.

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Words Susanna Pang

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‘Halmeoni (할머니)’ is a series of 35mm photographs of Estelle Yoon's grandmother and their younger sister. The work encompasses both familial love and struggles, where expressing love can be difficult especially in a lot of Korean families.

Estelle explores their own cultural identity, diasporic experiences and the discovery of intergenerational love.

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Photos Estelle Yoon

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Layers

2021. 11 Three-screen video installtion 6’48’’ (black and white, sound), looping In my hometown in Southern China, where Buddhism is widely practiced, photography is prohibited in many temples due to the belief that capturing images of deities absorbs their energy and power. This custom led me to contemplate the sense of insecurity and apprehension people had towards the camera when it was first invented, as if their lives were being taken away. I was further inspired by Honoré de Balzac’s notion that humans are made up of multiple spectral layers, and that every time they are photographed, one of those layers disappears. I attempt to question the boundary between mythos and reality, and how people’s misunderstanding of modern technology has evolved over time into theological legend.

My three-screen video installation is an endless loop shot, inspired by Rodney Graham's Vexation Island and Elle Pau's Operation Theatre. It shows me reprinting my photos until they turn black, while my body fades away for each print, symbolizing the loss of ‘layers’.

The photos were then burnt in a joss paper burner, a religious symbol bridging the spiritual and physical worlds in China. As the photos burn, my body regains clarity, the return of my ‘layers’ completing the loop. The video is supposed to loop infinitely, but can be stopped at any time as well, hinting at the uncertainty of death.

View full artist statement and full video at: https://ivy-chen.format.com/layers

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Photos Ivy Chen

Visiting an Indian Temple Photos Ashray Kumar

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35 Simon pins down James Robinson to discuss: Whats the Craic?

Who is James Robinson, what do you do and what do you aspire to do?

I am an image-maker primarily! I take photos and I also love to style! I aspire to be better than yesterday and worse than tomorrow.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m reading this email. No seriously! I’m reading a book called ‘What Artists Wear’ by Charlie Porter, I’d highly recommend!

What is Craic Magazine, and how did it start?

Craic is my attempt to publish my own work, through championing Northern Irish culture. It started as a response to increasing tensions during the pandemic and through Brexit in the U.K. which caused divisions amongst religious groups.

What is your earliest memory with photography?

My first memory of photography actually came was when a car crashed outside the front of my house and flipped upside down. My dad took the best photo of it and I still remember it to this day as the first photograph I ever seen. Luckily no one was hurt!

What are the elements of Irish Culture that you are most interested in documenting through your work?

I am interested particularly in documenting people and places. Northern Ireland is so rich visually and there’s so much to explore. I love history and mythology as well as slang, there’s almost endless options to explore. In the first issue of Craic I did a photoshoot at The Giants Causeway, a volcanic rock formation that most people symbolise with a giant called Finn McCool. The styling references this through the use of a 6 pack chest piece and a hammer as visual cues and hints to the locations past.

It seems to me that in the UK there is a big photography/magazine scene, what about the culture there has lent itself to this unique scene of image making?

Importantly I think most people want to do something, there’s such a lack of support from the government in the arts and that leads to people saying ‘fuck this’ going and doing their own thing. At least that’s my perception. That’s why I think there’s so many independent zines/magazines and more and more self publishers. It’s also so much more accessible to print a zine now than it used to.

Photos James Robinson 34

What are some things you would like to shout out?

I love to shout out my Mum, my Dad and my family! My friends. Everyone who has supported Craic on this journey so far!

Cheers x James @craic_magazine

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TALENT: Grace Alexander PHOTOGRAPHER: Janine Wongsuwan STYLING: Janine Wongsuwan

MAKEUP: Marilyn O’Neill EDITOR: Janine Wongsuwan

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ASSIST: Marilyn O’Neill

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I am a ghost watching my own body

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nyone who has lived here for more than a day knows that once you cross west of the Red Rooster line, Sydney stops being a metropolis of the global imagination and becomes as vividly mundane as any other city. Sydney no longer exists as an air-conditioned nightmare of tourist wonders and shopping malls, instead becoming a place of complete silence.

Just you and the silence of the train carriage. Just you and the silence of every other pedestrian on the street. Just you and the rest of the observable universe.

One of the first times I noticed this silence was when I first encountered Vito Acconci’s 1969 performance artwork, Following Piece. Searching it up will only show you an unspectacular bunch of photos and notes, but the actual performance is the most intriguing part of the artwork. The whole artwork documents Acconci as he follows passerbys on the street, pursuing them until that person either enters a building or until Acconci loses sight of them. The artwork itself is a violation of some of the most sacred contracts of art: the separation of art and audience, of artist and art. It obscures the borders

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Words Joseph John Brizuela

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dividing public and private space, questioning where the public commons end and where the boundaries of private (and personal) property begins. It transforms the pedestrian into an object of hostile spectatorship.

This distance between the self and the other which Acconci tries so desperately to cross, is the silence. The silence is the unwritten law that demands us to remain silent in the presence of strangers, and that refusal to do so is not only ‘disturbing the peace,’ but also a cause for shame, embarrassment, and loss of face. It is silence that fills the uneasy and unspoken company of people in rooms, lifts, trains, theatres, and classrooms. We live in regimes of silence, where we must hesitate before speaking, where we must consider and gauge the invisible, unspoken boundaries that define the self and the other even in the closest of proximities, even when skin touches skin in the clinical glow of offices or in the darkness of unnamed corridors.

Where there is silence in the self, one must wordlessly follow the noise of the other.

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4 decades prior. Viewers follow the protagonist, CJ, as he follows NPCs (non-player characters) around the city of San Andreas. He follows them almost brainlessly, as you and CJ bear witness to random outbursts of violence, provocations, and verbal abuse with utter indifference. The precariousness of Acconci’s performance is absent here, as we watch people shout, fight, and die from the safety of the screen. We fear Acconci’s performance because even in an age where mass surveillance is a norm, his form of spectatorship still feels criminal. Acconci demands us to confront our own complicity when we try to understand him and his artwork. It forces us to recognise the people we follow are real.

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But none of that exists in Taylor’s videos. The people CJ follow are pixelated and polygonical, designed by people you will never meet, voiced by actors whose names you don’t know of. They are no longer flesh but simply pixels on a screen. You are granted complete freedom with interactions: you can talk, approach, maim, and gift with whoever you please. We are player, viewer, voyeur, flaneur, spectator, and character all at once. You are free to follow others with impunity. To me, this is the most realistic and relatable part of the artwork.

Vito Acconci, Following Piece 1969

Imagine walking along a random, peaceful street, only to look behind you and find that 195 people are chasing you down, their bodies descending upon you as you stumble in your escape, feeling their eyes following you. Now imagine that you are me, in the comfort of my bedroom, looking at the 195 follower count I have on Instagram.

I don’t know most of these people. I only hang out with less than 10 close friends. We go to KFC on Thursdays and drive around the streets of Northern Parramatta at night. But these 195 people follow me. They view my stories like people passing an aquarium, and I am but a fish, small and brainless in the prison of their screen. But I am really no more different than everyone else. A few days ago, my friend pointed out that I follow 1,676 accounts. One thousand! I check YouTube and it’s 971. TikTok, 611. Twitter, 161. Maybe this is just sonder, and I am simply Acconci and CJ, trying hopelessly to reconcile the distance between self and stranger. Maybe I have internalised the noise that is the internet and have forgotten that the regime of silence touches even our most private digital worlds.

Maybe I am just another kid with their face glued to the glass, mindlessly watching the little fish breathe their little bubbles.

In The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the word ‘sonder’ refers to “the realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Although it is a word I found while doomscrolling through Tumblr one night, it is a feeling I have known my entire life. It is the acute realisation that we are creatures of narrative not only aching to be heard, but also aching for others to follow us in our life. It is a feeling that de-centres you, as the weightlessness of being the main character is all lost, and your life is buried by the stories of every other person around you. I think that beyond its investment into the art world, Following Piece (1969) is a work about sonder, of one person’s futile attempt to penetrate into the life of others.

But I am neither the fish nor the child. I am the very aquarium itself.

As I spent another night scrolling through TikTok, then Instagram Reels, then YouTube Shorts, it finally dawned on me that I am not actually watching other people. Every video consumed, every reel scrolled, every comment left, every short I have shared has fed this monster we call the algorithm with enough information to construct my digital profile and footprint. Everything I have ever seen and will ever see will only be refractions of myself. The screen has been made according to my image. It feels like I have lost my whole body somewhere in the infinitude of the internet and have been reduced to a pair of eyes, my gaze wandering deeper and deeper into the screen.

I have become just another spectator of myself.

If you search Following Piece on YouTube, you might be surprised to find out that it is also the title of another work of art. It doesn’t look like it, but these two videos of GTA: San Andreas gameplay by Aaron Taylor truly inherit the spirit of Vito Acconci’s performance nearly

As I imagine Acconci stalking the streets of New York and watch CJ terrorise San Andreas, I accept that I am no longer the pedestrian, the audience, the voyeur, the spectator, the self or the other; I am only a ghost watching my own body.

Aaron Taylor, Following Piece 2008

She did not understand the fun of shooting birds Words Angus McGregor

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ince the first cave paintings, humanity has used animal imagery to understand the world around them. Critic John Berger posited that “it is not unreasonable to suppose that the first metaphor was animal.” While not provable, the plausibility of that theory underscores the deep relationship literature has on other creatures.

What’s surprising then is how literary and philosophical circles have consistently dismissed the study of animals on their own terms and have instead insisted on a metaphysical distinction that always has humans in a dominant position. Drawing on religious frameworks like the Christian Great Chain of Being, many attempted to locate human existence within a spectrum bookended by animal kind and divinity. Man served God and animals served man. Some even feared acknowledging that humans and animals shared a foundation. Martin Heidegger warned this risked humans “collapsing back into [their] animal substrate.”

By the turn of the 20th century, modernist writers like Virginia Woolf were beginning to find this conception incompatible with the world they witnessed. The outbreak and continued aftershocks of the Great War, alongside

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a growing naturalist and evolutionary conception of human nature taught Woolf that humans were fragile and much more like animals than previously thought.

In her novels and private correspondence, the gap was narrowed. What was human became animal and what was animal became human.

Woolf was one of the first in the English canon to not use animals as mere symbols or representations of human life but made sense of them on their own terms, accounting for their own material and experiential reality.

Woolf was a lifelong pacifist and anti-war activist. Attending a Labour Party conference in Brighton discussing British intervention after the outbreak of war in 1914, her friend Hermione Lee wrote “she watched in horror as the arguments for pacifism and non-resistance were overridden.” Even more outspoken by the 1930s, she opposed economic punishments being laid on Italy for their invasion of Abyssinia, recording a meeting with Aldous Huxley in her diary, “We walked round Ktn [sic] Gardens yesterday discussing politics. Aldous refuses

to sign the latest manifesto because it stretched his arms out, but approves sanctions. He’s a pacifist. So am I.” Mrs. Ramsay having died rather She became surrounded by constant death suddenly the night before, his and human suffering. By 1914, she had arms, though stretched out, already lost her mother Julia, her father Leslie, her brother Thonby, and now she had remained empty.] to witness bodies piling up by the thousands For Woolf, this overwhelming fragility and families all around her experiencing the same pain. Humanity became expendable and became a frame through which she would then see in the animal world. What was almost futile. increasingly happening to young men in the trenches was happening to creatures all In To the Lighthouse, Woolf begins to put around her. deaths in brackets, glossing over them as if she was reading from the lists local officials In her essay ‘The Death of the Moth,’ Woolf churned through: painstakingly details a moth falling from a windowsill: [A shell exploded. Twenty or

thirty young men were blown up It was useless to try to do in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, anything. One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made was instantaneous.] by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, [Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along had it chosen, have submerged a passage one dark morning,

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an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew had any chance against death.

When humans were reduced to the state of moths, Woolf was compelled to consider their suffering as deserving of empathy and attention. How small or seemingly insignificant a creature was no longer became enough to dismiss it when death felt so universal, its experience so fundamental to all living creatures.

While writing her novels, Woolf began to realise that even the most mundane actions were dependent on the abhorrent treatment of animals. Describing Macalister’s son preparing a fishing line in Lighthouse, Woolf writes: “Macalister’s boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side to bait the hook with. The mutilated body (it was still alive) was thrown back into the sea.”

Woolf was one of the first to describe what Shakespeare realised centuries earlier in King Lear, “Like flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods; They kill us for their sport.” Perhaps we should step to the side when we notice a group of ants.

Animals, to Woolf, didn’t just deserve empathy because they could suffer and die. She also increasingly viewed the relationships and affections they developed as akin or even purer than the feelings between people. Fascinatingly, in her marriage and novels animals often stand in for the love that human society doesn’t allow.

In Mrs Dalloway, Richard Dalloway’s fragile masculinity and workaholic lifestyle means he is often unable to openly express his feelings for his wife Clarissa. Woolf describes him as “a man who cared only for dogs.” When boxed in by a society that wants Richard to bury his emotions, he finds an escape and solace with a creature who is not bound by the same rules. In a letter to Woolf, her husband Leonard expressed that well when he wrote:

If you really understand an animal so that

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he gets to trust you completely and, within his limits, understands you, there grows up between you affection of a purity and simplicity which seems to me peculiarly satisfactory.

Virginia and Leonard even compared themselves to animals as a way to avoid the direct sentimentality they both often rejected. In one exchange overflowing with innuendo Woolf wrote to her husband, “the Mandrill’ [species of monkey] wishes me to inform you delicately that her flanks and rump are now in finest plumage and invites you to an exhibition.”

She would even sign letters “Yr. Mandrill” among other species. Nothing says you think animals and humans are on the same plane more than inviting them into your most intimate conversations.

When shooting birds in Lighthouse Jasper is asked by his mother, “Don’t you think they mind…having their wings broken?” He responds in a way almost every boy at the time would have:

Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not seriously, for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; that they did not feel; and being his mother, she lived away in another division of the world.

With Jasper, Woolf identifies the cognitive dissonance in all of us. Deep down, we know animals feel, and even Jasper will name the birds he is about to kill. However, because we are so dependent on a world where a clear line exists separating human and animal, any admission to the contrary is deeply uncomfortable.

If anything, Woolf’s work demonstrates that rethinking the gap between human and animal is not just morally necessary but can also be emotionally liberating.

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Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in Friends With Benefits (2011)

Love Unscripted: The Culture Industry’s Romantic Reel Dance

Words Mia Retallack

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mma and Adam first met 15 years ago at Summer Camp, but never spoke again.

Fast forward to a year ago, they have a chance encounter at a local farmers market, deciding to exchange numbers and catch up, but never speak again. Today, Emma (Natalie Portman) is a successful doctor, and as she consistently reminds audiences: “I work 80 hours a week, I need somebody in my bed at 2 a.m. who I don’t have to eat breakfast with.” Adam (Ashton Kutcher), on the other hand, is a production assistant for a teen-musical show somewhere between Glee and High School Musical. When Adam learns his father is sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, he drunkenly calls every girl on his phone before waking up naked on Emma’s couch the following morning. From there, he and Emma agree to enter in a ‘No-Strings-Attached’ relationship. Add some nascent romantic feelings by the end of the first act, some skeletons in the closet driving them apart by the end of the second, and their inevitable reconnection by the end of the third, it’s a universal love story for the ages.

And Sony Pictures seemed to agree. When Paramount released No Strings Attached in 2011 starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman, Sony already had its swift response. Starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, Friends With Benefits (2011), centres Jamie (Kunis), a New York head-hunter, who recruits Dylan Francis Harper Jr (Timberlake) for a position with GQ Magazine. I don’t think I need to spell this out to you. Boy meets girl, boy and girl become friends, they develop feelings, girl is emotionally complicated modern woman. Boy get girl back. There’s a flash mob at the end, and they finally reconcile their long-suppressed feelings.

The details are really not important. These movies are fundamentally the same. The 1990’s and 2000’s were the golden age of the rom-com. From Nora Ephron classics such as 1989’s When Harry Met Sally or youthful, playful classics such as 10 Things I Hate About You

(1999) or How To Lose a Guy In 10 days (2003) (note the list formula here), time and time again, the rom-com was both a critically and commercially viable genre of choice for studios. By the 2010’s, where did we go wrong? The creation of the same movie is a laughable fluke. But perhaps it was almost inevitable.

We once found the contrived, fantastical plots of the rom-coms charming. Sure, the premise of 2004’s 50 First Dates is absurd: Adam Sandler, a womanising veterinarian must win over Drew Barrymore who has a form of amnesia where she loses memory of the previous day every time she falls asleep.

But at the same time, it feels self-referential to the alternate reality rom-coms exist in;

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Why can’t I fall in love with a woman with amnesia on a tropical island? The blind optimism of these plots made these movies so appealing. With the charismatic leads, and the right chemistry, anything was possible.

But what happens when studios try to move the rom-com into the realm of reality?

Take the list of acceptable rom-com careers: pastry chef, journalist, actress, publicist, artcurator. Of course, despite characters often being some hot shot, highly successful up and comer, we never actually see them work.

In part this is a symptom of the out-of-touch optimism belonging to the rom-com. It’s important to know that they’re on the grind, but god forbid it gets in the way of plot any more than to frame a meet-cute or provide a one-dimensional comic relief friend. The contrived unreality of the rom-com is what fed into an exhausting predictability and growing cynicism of audiences.

And the audiences weren’t alone. In the midto-late 2000’s, studios found them neither critically nor commercially viable. This can otherwise be

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known as the ‘Avatar-watershed’. With the advent of IMAX, 3D cinema, and CGI and SFX technology becoming increasingly commercially viable, many commentators noticed a turn in the industry. As author Scott Meslow puts it, unlike big box-office grossers like Avatar, “[rom-coms] were never going to make $1 billion worldwide, and critically, they were never going to get the awards applause that studios are hungry for… So there was a sense that they weren’t serving the purpose the studios needed them to.”

Romantic comedies were ‘formulaic’, and their predictable storylines were no longer as appealing. With lower budgets, and a turn to represent ‘real’ people with ‘real’ lives, our doppelganger rom-coms were born. So sure, these films were just a pragmatic reinvention of the rom com for the era of casual sex, however, it more precisely reflects the current zeitgeist of our culture industry.

In their 1947 essay The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer hypothesise that mass culture has homogenised art into a system ideal for the ideological indoctrination

Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached (2011)

of a passive consumer towards the mode of production. The culture industry encompasses all forms of mass media, created with an industrial logic that prioritises mass profit in a monolithic, homogenous cultural voice.

To put it simply, it’s not just business, but an exponentially proliferative system of power.

Adorno and Horkheimer remind us: “The truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimise the trash they intentionally produce”. The absorption of an industrial lexicon is simply a means to delude us into the social necessity of their content. Business is business and these romcoms are simply one slice of the pie-chart of studio projected revenue.

function; its perpetuation of antiquated gender relations, the American dream, with its token gay best-friends and sassy but wise black women to give the delusional lead a reality check. Rom-coms play a fine line between fantasy and mimesis. It's human and relatable enough that you believe that perhaps one day, you too will find true love – after all, who wouldn’t, right? But its luxuriousant closets, the big New York apartments, and, the dream executive job, all upholds a warped ideal of the protestant work ethic and neoliberalism.

As a cultural commodity, the rom-com is created solely to satiate predetermined consumer needs. Films are made with particular demographic insights in mind.

But it’s not just business. It’s a parasitic relationship that begs its consumer’s fixation. Without women, the rom-com would be obsolete. Yet, as feminism has emerged The assimilation of culture by industry at the forefront of mainstream cultural amplifies its authoritative apparatus. Mass discourses, how do studios ensure the culture becomes enmeshed with every same engagement? In No Strings Attached, other sector of industrial life, taking on “the Portman is a Mr Darcy for the contemporary deceptive form of a disinterested, impartial age, aloofly rejecting the doting Kutcher, authority, which fits fascism like a glove.”

I’m not the first to identify that on at least one as an emotionally complicated 21st century career woman. In Friends With Benefits, the level, the genre has some level of didactic

archetypal gay best friend is replaced by Woody Harrelson, who offers his sage advice to Timberlake. Mila Kunis cries “I miss sex! I mean sometimes you just need it”: a beacon for the sexually liberated 21st century woman. In case you haven’t gathered, these aren’t the archaic rom-coms where the camera pans to the twin towers in every stock New York landscape shot. It’s cool, modern and edgy.

Business is business, what else are you supposed to do? Adorno and Horkheimer observe: “That life could continue without the whole culture industry is too certain; the satiation and apathy it generates among consumers are too great”. We are not only happy to consume these films; we do so with an almost bathetic awareness of their homogeneity. The stars certainly didn’t just happen to align to give us these films. It was an inevitability of the mechanism of a well oiled, and calibrated industry designed to send us into a media fervour. If anything, No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits was the culture industry’s ultimate Freudian slip. But we were too engrossed to care.

A Night in the Most Popular Sex Shop on Oxford Street

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Echo Huang visits a sex shop...

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or many people, the idea of walking into an adult shop can be intimidating or embarrassing, though it doesn’t have to be: buying a sex toy can be a fun and empowering experience.

I walk into Adult World, the most popular sex shop on Oxford Street and the historic hub of Australia’s gay rights movement, to shadow the employees for a night as they help customers with their sexy problems.

Cliche name aside, Adult World defies conventional expectations of a typical sex shop. Step inside and be greeted by a space as expansive and well-lit as a bustling grocery store. A plethora of playful products await exploration: a fluffy pair of handcuffs, an 11-inch-long tentacle dildo, or an appleflavoured lube always within reach.

“People come in every week, buying the same key ingredients they need for their very active sex lives. It’s just like grocery shopping for bread and milk,” shares Jenya, the store manager whose face is adorned with a proud smile. Her badge gleams with the proclamation, I save sex lives, ask me how.

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Unlike many other adult shops that have migrated online since COVID-19, Adult World remains resolute in its dedication to providing exclusive in-person experiences that prioritise human connection. In fact, Adult World kept its doors open as an essential service business throughout lockdowns because a lubricant called Pjur it sells is considered a medical device. “Thank

Lube for keeping a roof over my head,” Jenya laughs.

Within a few minutes of my arrival, a guy in a suit walks in and begins to comfortably browse the assortment of dildos. He is instantly recognised; one of the staff playfully greets him, saying, “Oh, going up a size this week, huh?”

Marvelling at the unique space provided

by Adult World, a place where discussions around sexuality could unfold fearlessly and free from the weight of societal taboos, I found myself pondering the motivations of those who choose to work in a sex shop. Are they simply advocates for sexual liberation?

In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault challenges the notion of historical sex repression under Christian morality. He explores the practice of confession within the Catholic Church which fostered an “institutional incitement” of discourse around sex that verbalised every aspect of sexuality. Today, despite ongoing censorship and regulations, we live in a time where open conversations about sex are actively encouraged through social media, and people yearn to speak freely about this once-silenced topic.

Hence, the image of those working in sex shops is transforming remarkably. No

longer confined to the stereotype of impatient older men behind the counter, they embrace a new identity as “sexperts.”

Seamlessly transitioning between roles, they become the customer’s close friend, confidant, relationship counsellor, and knowledgeable sex educator. Within this modern confessional of Adult World, the notion of sinfulness dissipates, replaced by a celebration of the genuine connection in

unsatisfied with anything we had, then it got mind and body. The staff adeptly transform to the point that he awkwardly asks, Do you customers’ needs into tangible solutions, fostering an environment where physical and happen to know anybody who has a horse? emotional desires intertwine.

Amidst the looming challenge of online competition, the team at Adult World Hugo, a sales assistant at Adult World with remains hopeful: they believe that the allure a Fine Arts degree, enlightens a customer about the fascinating origins of vibrators — of seeking guidance and experiencing products in a captivating and safe invented in the 19th century as a treatment environment will be a significant draw for for Female Hysteria. “The use of good old customers. vibrators for sexual stimulation really helps alleviate anxiety attacks that affected women After all, a day in a sex shop is of that time — though later we all figured no longer about the first step that it is just the filthy fantasy of Freud. ” of a hurried and awkward These conversations come naturally between transaction, but an the sales team at Adult World, as they bond invitation to embrace openwith their returning customers.

mindedness, playfulness, and creativity.

The people you will encounter within this space, as wonderfully diverse as they are, share a common experience of navigating feelings such as confusion, curiosity and vulnerability. “We just try to hold up a space for people,” Jenya says. “To help people navigate confidently in this world, and help people feel comfortable in their bodies with sexual or creative expression.”

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“One time I had a guy come in looking for a specific thing, like a horse-sized dildo, people hear about this all the time here,” Hugo recalled a memorable encounter.

“He is

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Words and Photos Echo Huang

T

he Amazons, who have been immortalised in many epic poems and legends — The Argonauts and The Iliad to name some of the most well-known — are a group of famous women warriors celebrated for their strength, courage and independence. They have been and continue to be depicted in countless artworks, literary texts and media adaptations, so that their legacy is permanent.

While these women existed only in Greek mythology, there is another group of warriors that lived in the Kingdom of Dahomey, in the south of modern-day Benin, made entirely of women. These warriors are the only known army in modern history to be exclusively composed of women, and they protected the citizens of their kingdom for at least two centuries. So skilled and ruthless they were, European missionaries nicknamed them the Dahomey Amazons; though they called themselves Mino, meaning ‘our mothers.’ The female army formed a separate community from the male army, although their origins are shrouded in uncertainty.

Today they do not receive even a scrap of the fame and eminence of the Amazonians they were named after.

While there were references made in European accounts to warrior women in Dahomey as early as 1720, it is fiercely debated whether the group was formed under King Houegbadja (1645-85) or Queen Hangbe (1716-18). The reign of King Ghezo

(1818-58) formalised the female military and developed some of the brutal training methods that survived historical accounts.

Candidates for the soldiers included people with aggressive character traits, or young girls whose parents found them too difficult to manage and sent them to the army. The women were legally married to the king, who would have hundreds of wives (ahosi or agojie). Nonetheless, their legal status was merely a formality, as their primary role was to guard the king and defend the kingdom from any external threat, such as the Yoruba clan in the east. Some alternative theories have been made about their original role, including that the warriors came from gbeto groups whose role was to hunt elephants, who were commended by the king and who supposedly said that “a nice manhunt would suit [them] even better.” Another theory outlines that the frequent battles with neighbouring clans necessitated enhancing the military capabilities of the kingdom.

However, it is more likely that their role was less glamorous and emerged from positions as bodyguards.

a belt made of acacia thorns, which they wore as a symbol of their skill and strength. They also wore long, curved razor-sharp blades that they could use to kill their enemies.

Despite its various progressive leanings, the Dahomey kingdom was deeply involved in the slave trade, and often prisoners taken in raids of neighbouring clans would be sold into slavery. This was likely a major source of revenue, as Dahomey exported enslaved people well throughout the mid-19th century to exploit the significant demand.

The warriors also dealt with the prisoners violently and mercilessly, often taking the heads of foreign citizens as trophies. With this, the legacy of the warriors becomes a complex and sombre one, for their progressive society clearly did not extend beyond the borders of their territory.

After a war between Dahomey and France in 1890, the two fought again in 1892, in a battle so bloody that out of thousands, only a few dozen Dahomey warriors survived.

While the first war had been fought mainly in hand-to-hand combat, the second war involved the use of artillery by the French At its peak, the Mino had 6,000 warriors. which inflicted significant casualties onto the An Italian missionary, Francesco Borghero, Dahomey army, and obliterated their military reported in 1861 that he had seen the women force. The Dahomey warriors were physically train by scaling a wall of acacia branches superior as a result of their ruthless military with large thorns that cut their skin, to prove training, but the use of modern military that they were impervious to pain. At the weaponry rendered the battle grossly unequal end of the training session, those who had even in the face of their grim discipline and performed best were presented with a prize of refusal to surrender.

The Warrior Women of Dahomey Words 58

Imogen Sabey

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Today, the wound of colonialism has struck the warriors on two fronts. In addition to nearly wiping out the entire group and destroying their way of life, it has also swallowed their legacy and culture into obscurity. This army, an icon of African female history, is less well-known than a mythological group of people who were celebrated for what the Dahomey warriors actually achieved.

In 1894, Dahomey became a French protectorate and the army was disbanded. The warriors had sown such fear into the French that they forbade them from carrying arms or serving in the military. Although they struggled to adjust to a peaceful lifestyle, the warriors secretly continued their legacy, with some training various women or descendants in an effort to continue their legacy. Today their way of life has been completely wiped out, but at least we can hope that it will not be forgotten.

Whose coffee culture?

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Photos Justine Hu & Huw Bradshaw

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ou drink coffee and feel sad. You drink coffee and feel happy. You lie to your GP about how much coffee you drink. You drink coffee in Surry Hills, Seven Hills, and Summer Hill, at Burwood, Warriewood, and Chatswood, Newtown, Bankstown, and Blacktown. You drink it when it’s cheap and also when it’s iced long black? That’ll be seven (seven?!) fifty, thanks.

Sydney supposedly boasts some of the world’s best cafes, admired by metropolitan cities such as New York or Los Angeles. Despite their best attempts at curating a blasé European rudeness, Sydney cafes often border on a fine-dining experience with their culinary excellence, sophisticated interior design, and specialtygrade coffee: not to mention the price tag.

Whose coffee culture?

But there’s an almost irreconcilable discord between the Sydney coffee culture projected by mainstream food publications and the realities of most Sydneysiders. When perusing through the ‘best cafes in Sydney’, you’d inevitably fall under the impression that Sydney coffee culture is undergirded by specialty coffee, and concentrated in the Eastern Suburbs, CBD, and the Inner West. In the ‘Sydney Cafes’ listicle published by Concrete Playground, 296 of the 394 cafes listed are located in these areas, amongst the most gentrified and expensive properties in Sydney by far.

Whose coffee culture?

Words Huw Bradshaw & Lizzy Kwok

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Taken at Paramount Coffee Project

Specialty coffee is an excellent punchline to the question: What does a fitness influencer, a recent divorcee, and Deloitte devotee have in common? Little has changed since the birth of Italian, French, and Viennese coffee houses. You’ll still bump shoulders with psychopathic authoritarians (retail managers), drug-addled intellectuals (philosophy students), and armchair revolutionaries (mature-age philosophy students). Though instead of Trotsky at Café Central, you might get your latte mixed up with Jane Caro or a lesserknown member of King Gizzard. Cafes such as Paramount Coffee Project, Reuben Hills and Single O exemplify how Sydney coffee culture is great, but never in the way it thinks it is.

So if not coffee, what is it about Sydney coffee culture that is so highly appraised?

Taken at LAB Bakery Cafe

Taken at Manon Brassierie

Fifa, who has worked in two cafes over the past five years, says the specialty cafe where he’s now employed is very different to the small, brunch-focused cafe where he used to work. “We do have some regulars… most of them are busy, miserable city people. In Alexandria … customers would talk to me as a friend and they genuinely cared for my well-being.”

Strathfield is another suburb brimming with an underappreciated range of community-focused Korean cafes. Only a short walk from Strathfield Square, LAB is reminiscent of a classic Asian-style bakery-cafe. Pastel cakes adorned with delicate piping and childhood favourites like sesame mochi red bean buns are on full display.

Sitting at crowded tables, high schoolers lament over their maths homework. Ajummas gossip away, while the sounds of soft jazz linger in the air. It feels like you’ve touched down in Busan, if only momentarily.

At Ferah, a 200-year-old dress hangs above the register. A familyowned Turkish cafe and restaurant, the antique storefront sits oddly among the op-shops and tobacconists adorning King Street. Yasin, the daughter of Ferah owners, talks at length of her great-greatgrandmother, who the dress once belonged to; a daily reminder of the ‘community-based’ nature of the coffeehouse.

“We care more about our customers than the coffee… our relationship with the other cafes in Newtown is also very family-like.

Whenever there’s trouble, we always make an effort to check up with each other and make sure everybody is okay.”

Taken at Ferah Cafe & Restaurant The quintessential ‘acclaimed’ cafes have dizzying, overcomplicated menus boasting hundreds of international roasts, all somehow ‘ethically’ sourced. They’re run by an exhausted staff largely too young to know what the words ‘wage theft’ mean, or too afraid to question anything for fear of their Working Holiday Visa being revoked. Enamoured by the industrial chic warehouse movement, specialty cafes feel welcoming to a vastly ranging clientele of fun-socked bankers and young entrepreneurs. They adopt menus purporting an ‘innovative, progressive take’ on café classics; faux language that justifies overcharging for the haphazard addition of fusion ingredients such as ginseng, wagyu, or miso.

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In projecting this homogenous narrative classifying Sydney’s coffee culture as ‘world-class’ and representative of the ‘forefront’ of coffee knowledge, we are foisting upon Sydney another narrative that doesn’t belong to the city.

Taken at Welcome to Paradise Cafe

Taken at Ferah Cafe & Restaurant

Yasin greets the couple who have come in after us. She asks about their daughter, how she’s doing in Melbourne. She’s about to get married, they say. They don’t even open the menu; two Turkish breakfasts please, but Yasin already knew that.

The government’s tourism department and SMH articles place Sydney’s ‘coffee culture’ on a pedestal, though they wouldn’t recognise it if it jumped off this page and poured them a ¾ warm almond latte. The phrase ‘coffee culture’ beckons to be interrogated.

The elitist world of speciality coffee harbours undeniable allure, but it simply isn’t Sydney’s. Almost akin to a viral disease, exposed brick and faux rustic lighting has oozed through inner city suburbs, but Sydney’s coffee culture cannot be reduced to its Surry Hills uniform.

Perhaps it’s time to pay tribute to the smaller, often migrant-led cafes which support the community in much quieter ways.

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A PARABLE IN THE HILLS, PULP 10:23 orwest Business Park is a strange location for a spiritual centre. The streets are wide, wide open in fact – traffic seems to move a bit slower in that part of the world, though not for lack of flashy cars. Suburbia has always had a grey tinge to it: the roads stretch wide across the landscape, connecting driveways to freeways to motorways.

The Hills Christian Life Centre is not out of place in the Business Park: it’s a large building with a car park like a compound. The congregation empties out at the metro station, a lucky coincidence as the most dedicated of worshippers might find themselves at the centre multiple times a week. After driving past the first volunteer at the entrance to the car park – a young woman whose only job seemed to be waving and smiling – we found a cosy parking spot between a white BMW and a black Mercedes. The BMW had, predictably, parked over the line, so after a quick check for any scratches we headed towards the next set of greeters.

A parable in the Hills Words Katarina Butler

It was completely unlike any church I’d ever seen before. Instead of the typical white walls and stained glass windows, it resembled a concert hall with black walls and dim overhead lighting. In all honesty, the place reminded me of a casino: a place where people, unaware of the time passing, try to give their lives meaning.

We processed in, late, and were directed to seats by a number of ushers. Once settled, we were able to keep an eye on the actions of the 10-strong choir thanks to enormous screens that framed the stage.

One of Hillsong’s most successful ventures is its music. Both Hillsong Worship and Hillsong UNITED have over 5 million monthly listeners each on Spotify, topping Christian music charts internationally and even winning a Grammy. The church is, without a doubt, Australia’s most lucrative and globally successful music acts ever, yet has had a significantly muted impact on Australian culture as a whole.

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in tongues. Today, speaking in tongues is seen as a sign that the Holy Spirit has baptised a believer, and there is plenty of unsettling footage of individuals speaking in tongues at worship centres. When you’re worshipping a figure you won’t ever meet, at least in this life, devoting all your actions towards him and expecting eternal love in return, it can be empowering to believe that this love may descend upon you in the form of the Holy Spirit.

The modern-day religion has its roots in rejecting traditional Christian practice. Charismatic practices took over such as enthusiastic singing, testimonies, and sermons by laymen, rejecting the highly regimented forms of Christian leadership and practice that came before. Attending a service on a gloomy Sunday, I was surprised to learn that the majority of the service consisted of a man retelling a biblical story and applying the principles to modern life.

He rarely quoted the actual text, in direct contrast to other churches where a passage is read in its entirety, then analysed by the priest.

There was no communion, where congregants share in the body and blood of Christ, all of the typical prayers were skipped, and within 20 minutes they were asking for donations and passionately proclaiming that we should give whatever we are capable of giving to the church.

At the heart of Hillsong lies a desire for power. It’s not love, the founding tenant of Christianity, and it’s not hatred, despite the extremely fundamentalist and conservative beliefs. At Hillsong, as at many other Christian denominations, it’s believed that Priests have received a call from God to be His mouthpiece; this sets them apart from other members of the congregation. As a result, it is expected that others make sacrifices for them. In the SBS documentary, The Kingdom (2023), volunteers reported carrying out basic household chores such as babysitting and lawn mowing for senior church leadership. These volunteers report extreme distress at living for the church and gaining nothing in return - instead, they are told that they must be grateful for the opportunity to serve. Visiting pastors are paid exorbitant amounts of money for their sermons, and the church became mired in money troubles as it was accused of money laundering and tax evasion by a whistleblower earlier this year.

Hillsong has often been hailed as Australia’s greatest marketing success: what began in school halls in the 70s is now an international religion with a music publishing division, numerous properties across The prosperity gospel is one of Hillsong’s most controversial beliefs.

Australia and scandals fit for any organised religion.

Despite the many Bible verses that reject materialism such as “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil”, from Timothy 6:10, it In 2021, the founder’s son, Brian Houston, was convicted of failing claims that God wants his believers to be rich. More than that, it to disclose the sexual misconduct of his father, and subsequently claims that riches are a reward for those who have dutifully followed resigned from church leadership. Other Pentecostal churches have the word of God. What naturally follows from this is the belief that stepped in to fill the void left by Hillsong, many of which are aimed those who are poor have not been blessed with riches, and nothing at young people. can be done to save them bar conversion.

Pentecostalism is most commonly referred to as an experiential religion: it takes its name from the Biblical recount of the Jewish feast of Pentecost. It explains that during the festival, the Holy Spirit descended upon believers and gave them the ability to speak

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These two beliefs, when paired, are extremely dangerous.

They proclaim that those in power are blessed, and explain that congregants should donate as much as they can to share the blessings, but only with those in charge. It’s an insidious power dynamic that sees an extremely hierarchical religion get away with a lot.

A PARABLE IN THE HILLS, PULP 10:23

64gb “1076/1189 Photos” “64gb” and “Your message could not be sent or received, Try Again?”

67 I love my Digi-cam It makes me feel like the Digi-man Take piccies of my friends, they love it, call them my Digi-fans Take piccies of my girlfriend, she loves it, I’m her Digi-mans I take it everywhere, wherever I Digi-can It fits in my pocket. Boom. Digi-pants.

Digicam, O’ Digicam I can see everything with my Digi-cam take some piccies, when you have it, you’ve got the world in your Digi-hands I try to see you, however I Digi-can I like to stick to my Digi-plans Even when I’m late looking through my Digi-scans I’m tired when I make it over, I Digi-ran Digicam O’ Digicam My Digi-cam feels different without you When it turns on, it starts on .5 zoom Do you wonder if my Digi-cam likes you like I do?

Tell me true, do you wonder if it remembers you?

I think if I sat on this SD Card, and it snapped… a part of me could be snapped too.

Digicam O’ Digicam You’re still around, if only in Digi-R.A.M It’s been a while since I took a piccie of you, a Digi-span I could only hear your voice if I paid my phone-y plan

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I still have your face in my Digi-cam I couldn’t leave you on my Digi-stand

Photos and Words Hugo Hay

SIMON HARRIS @wikipedia_voyeur

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JUSTINE HU @justiinehu SONAL KAMBLE @cbbgo3

HUW BRADSHAW @childsouljaboy

The editors LIZZY KWOK @lizzy__430 LAMEAH NAYEEM @30nay.la

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KATE SAAP @m1ss_kate

HUGO ANTHONY HAY is running out of battery... @hugosux

KATARINA BUTLER not a theatre kid. @ka.tarina

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NICHOLAS OSIOWY Canned memories taste terrible @nick_osowhy

ASHRAY KUMAR enjoys looking at unusual shades of blue @_ashrayyy LIZZIE MOSHIRIAN "fake vegetarian millennial wannabe" @lizziemosh

SUSANNA PANG making my way downtown... @soouzanah

JANINE WONGSUWAN zzzz @d151n739r473

Our contributors

ESTELLE YOON @estelleyoon GRACE ALEXANDER I can see space on my radio @lilyphyte

IMOGEN SABEY yearning for a spice rack @emojin__

IVY CHEN Cry for the punctum @ivy_o__o

ECHO HUANG Absorbs cookies @echoooooooooooooooooooooooo

MIA RETALLACK @miaratallack

ANGUS MCGREGOR Axolotl enjoyer

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ZARA HUSSAIN hoarder of unneccessary knowledge @just_another_zara

(not pictured) JAMES ROBINSON @jamesyrobbo

JOSEPH JOHN BRIZUELA certified mojo dojo casa house real estate mogul @joe.lello3

2023 JUL

03 Australian Discussion Group

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Markets

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04 Twice Loved Markets

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12 Eat Up! Packing Day

AWARDS (CA) 06 CREATIVE (06-19 OCT)

NOV

dm @ pulp.usu on ig

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26 Welcome to Sydney Party

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13 DIY Bathbomb Workshop

29 Day Trips

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Markets

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14 R U OK? DAY

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Revues 24 Law (24-26 AUG)

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31

AUG

Verge Exhibition Launch

GAYMES Pride Event

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Public Program: Sculptsound

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02 Party At Manning MANNING CANTINA OPENING

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03 Public Program: Sculptsound

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06 Creative Awards: Submissions Close

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CM

MY

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CMY

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Wear it Purple Party

Australian Discussion Group

01 Party at Manning

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02 03

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05 CA: Word Event How To Life

14 CA: Artist Talks Event

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20 BATTLE OF THE BANDS

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21 Med Revues (21-23 SEP)

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Australian Discussion Group

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Markets

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19 Creative Awards Night

13 EXAM PERIOD

25 MID-SEMESTER BREAK

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25 Goat Yoga

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OF THE BANDS 05 BATTLE HEATS (05-06 SEP)

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15 Australian Discussion Group

07 How To Life

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(25-29 SEP)

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(13-25 NOV)

23 Verge Exhibition Launch

FIND OUT MORE AT

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(06-10 NOV)

07

08

usu.edu.au/events

06 STUDENT VACATION

CA: Music Event

FESTIVAL OF CREATIVITY (18-22 SEP)

FINALS

Australian Discussion Group

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09

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@usu.usyd

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25 Campus Race

WELCOME FEST (31 JUL - 1 AUG)

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Revues 16 Science (16-19 AUG)

24

send us your photos for issue 11 photo review

WHAT’S ON IN SEMESTER 2

WEEKLY USU EVENTS

TUESDAY:

WEDNESDAY:

THURSDAY:

FRIDAY:

TUESDAY TUNES AT HERMANN’S

MANNING MUSIC AT MANNING

COMEDY

COURTYARD SESSIONS

BINGO

CLUBS TRIVIA NIGHT

DAY TRIPS

AT MANNING

AT HERMANN’S

AT MANNING

DJ SOC MIXER AT HERMANN’S

AT HOLME BUILDING

AT COURTYARD

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YOU <3 PULP