Glass Issue 9: Grit and Glitter - 2020

Why Glass?

If you’ve heard the phrase “those who live in glass houses should not throw stones”, you have probably wondered why these people don’t get home insurance insurance. The editors of Glass have wondered this too. The name for Glass magazine was born from our inability to keep out of Stalkerspace disputes where we don’t belong. Studies show that 98% of student politicians are unable to keep out of meme debates – this angers 100% of meme group admins.

COVER IMAGE

FATIMAH ZAHRA BUKSH

Acknowledgement of Country

GLASS Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the Turrbal and Yugara peoples as the First Nations owners of the lands where QUT now stands. We pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging, and their lores, customs and creation spirits. We recognise that these lands have always been places of teaching, research, learning and storytelling. Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people play within the Meanjin community.

Cultural Warning

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following magazine may contain references to deceased persons.

Disclaimer

Glass Media informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this issue of Glass belong solely to the author, and not necessarily express the views of Glass Media or the QUT Guild.

Editor’s Letter

ANAHITA EBRAHIMI JASMIN GRAVES EM READMAN ASHLEIGH NORTH Dear Glassies,

This edition we turn our eyes to the grit of the world around us. We’re reminded of the way glass shatters; of beer bottles left on the side of the road, of empty glasses and shattered windows.

We think about how glass can glitter. We think about how glass can break. And how fragile beauty is.

This edition holds a special place in our hearts. It’s a marker; we’re halfway through our term, we’ve published half of our print editions for the year and we’ve hit 63,000 unique views on the Glass website. It also comes at a time when many of us are watching the world change around us. Some of us are seeing for the first time the grime of institutionalised racism, police brutality and seemingly bleak political landscapes. Others have been watching for years, waiting for or instigating change.

This edition shows us the world through the lens of our contributors; our lives through the looking glass. We’ve combined the bad with the good. The grit with the glitter.

As always with love, The Glass Team

Grit Glitter

Diamonds are the strongest object on our planet. Burst open the champagne and take to the streets with your protest sign. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty for what you believe in. Read between the lines. Remember, all that glitters is not gold. What is different from what it first appears to be, and what can we do about it? Pull back the glamourous facade and show us what lies underneath.

THE GLASS EDITORS

President’s Letter

2020 has required far too much grit and delivered not nearly enough glitter. It’s been a confusing mix of electrifying highs and devastating lows. I feel as if I’ve spent most of my time desperately treading water and only just managing to keep my head above the surface. Then, about a month ago, my personal life imploded spectacularly and honestly, I just let go.

who are also struggling to cope at the moment.

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA BRUMM

I let go of my ambitions, my passions, my goals and my enjoyment. In the week that followed, I gave myself permission to fail, as if I’d been looking for a reason all along. I wallowed in my grief and became a menace to any wellintended cashier or barista in my area who dared to ask how my day was going. I knew I was at a cross road but instead of choosing a direction all I wanted to do was lie down and disintegrate into the dust.

At the end of that week, I finally made a decision. Instead of internalising my sorrow, folding in on myself and accepting defeat, I decided I was going to give myself another 14 days. Just two more weeks to feel as intensely and viscerally sad as I needed to. Then that was it.

The Monday after the 14 days I sat down and examined every aspect of my life. I identified what my priorities and long term goals were for my work, university and my social life and I started every day with those in mind. Don’t get me wrong, I still had days where I struggled to get up in the morning. I realised very quickly that grief is neither a linear nor neat process. But I kept trying, every single day.

Since then, there have been some huge wins not just for me personally but also for the Guild. From receiving an extra $558k in SSAF funding to pursue new projects and initiatives to the opening of the Queer and Women’s Collective rooms, to getting ready to launch a wide-scale mental health campaign to help other students

As well as immersing myself in work, I’ve also prioritised carving out a section of the week for downtime, I’ve started playing netball and stopped making time with friends and family a second priority. I’ve taken decisive steps to improve both my physical and mental health and although I’m still struggling to catch up in some areas (it’s week 7 and I’m yet to even open the blackboard site let alone watch a lecture) I’m getting better.

What I’ve realised is that grit is essential and luckily you can cultivate it. I’m not an innately resilient person, I’m privileged enough that I haven’t faced many serious adversities in my life. So last month when everything started falling apart I didn’t have the experience or coping strategies to deal with my grief properly. I needed help, and grit for me was admitting and pursuing that. It was having the passion and perseverance to force my life back on track no matter how many times it got derailed. It was setting my alarm 2 hours earlier than I needed to get up every morning because I knew it would take me that long to convince myself to get out of bed. It was developing selfawareness of my challenges and putting in place strategies to deal with them and when those strategies didn’t work, trying new ones. Relentless positivity is a curse, you don’t have to be ok all the time and the pressure to present that way will slowly kill you. Masking pain isn’t dealing with it.

Grit your teeth and show up authentically to your grief and pain. Happiness, wonder, excitement and joy can all sit side by side with grief. Feel it all. Then, when you’re ready, get up

MY MATE RO BY NINA BUSTEED

DUST AND BONE

BY SAVANNAH BARNES

Beauty in the depths and grain of burrows

Slices to idyllic surface

Revealed lush reality

Abounding from volcanic soul Skin simmering Blistering Peeling

Exposing foundational bone

Blanketing building blocks found brittle

Billowing towers buried cold

Mines couldn’t hold fallen grace

Too occupied by dusted beginnings

For the embrace of mourning persona

SNOOKERED

BY RILEY BAXTER

When the droids that destroy men Are all rust-eaten

And the dogs of wrath have barked their last,

When the pearly gates that read Love will set you free Swing shut for good and we lay down in sorrow, I will pick up my cue.

I will remember the words of my good doctor

When she said, Drink until distractions seem a waste of time.

You will laugh and say something like, You cannot convince a dying tree That she deserves love just like every other,

And I will sink the white ball in the pocket behind your eye.

JOHN

& TORONTO BY BENJI GORTON

As truth is to faith so will is to power She counts failures not by days

But as seconds on hours I lay on cold dirt and tally black sheep

As great as I feel I have fallen too deep

My dream letters are torn up by dawn

I speak through the shreds And lay on the lawn

It stings just like death

When she whispers sweet nothings She is wasting her breath

I’m searching for a cure to pain

Hollowed thoughts and neon veins

Flick the baggie twice, I’m so easy

Hold a snow globe to my chest I put my mind on ice

Sparrows dressed in coats of wool and denim

Scatter as I collapse on moonlit streets

Black cats prowl and tear parts clean from me

I wake up mute on wet concrete

Should I find my way back home

You will not recognise me

Beneath the bridge I find a puddle

I’m down and I’m out I’m broken and bent

Who sings her song at noon About a little needle

Who ran off with a spoon

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JULIENNE PANCHO

Where is Why

I spent a year just chasing my tail, befriending fleas, and barking into midnight until she bit back. When I left home, I had a three try lead at half-time. I was the arrogance of youth. People asked me where I was going, where I would stay. I told them I was going ‘where I lead me.’ Some were convinced. That was vitality’s trick. Well life scored three on me, right under the post. Life kicked a field goal in the 80th minute.

I was too young to know that I was no good at being alone. I would lay awake and wonder how many people there were like me. The ne’er do wells with above average grades that packed up for the city with little more than a foggy notion of ‘making something for themselves.’ Whatever something was and however it was made. Anyhow, the answer always amounted to somewhere in the tens of millions. Tens of millions of young writers with better words. Tens of millions of young men with stronger arms and heads and hearts. Tens of millions of young people that did not need one more friend, or lover, or co-worker. Tens of millions.

The tens of millions monologue always led to a psychological self-evaluation. It was rarely the rumination or regrets that hurt me. I had mostly come to terms with the friends and lovers I had left in the lurch. They were their own set in the tens of millions archive. No, I could deal with those thoughts in the daylight,

WRITTEN BY RILEY BAXTER

and in those days that I could not make it out of bed I often would. The question that always bit me was the short, sweet, vicious ‘Why?’

I had not moved to Brisbane with any intention of making money. Wealth seemed to be its own queer punishment for a life of hard work, hassle, and hatred. I knew that money could not fix what I have. I doubted that it could help prevent me from becoming the man I was to be.

My old man hated work. He spoke about it like he was the only person that had ever had to do it. He would get home, slam himself into a beer and talk about work as though he were Christ with a 9 to 5 cross, set to make good the sins of all mankind. Father why hast thou forsaken me?

Mum was strong in her own way, though rarely with words. She did not finish high school and would sometimes break down about how little of a life she had made for herself. She was smart too in her own way, though never with words. A sometimes stutterer with a nervous disposition, herself the child of a hardworking, hard drinking, lumberjack and sawmill operator – I once took mushrooms with a girl named Rabbit and, for three euphoric hours, convinced myself that I too could find myself a life as a lumberjack, until the soft comedown, where I quietly remembered my environmentalist politic – who had seemingly convinced her that beer bottle pillows and a

clock that read ‘It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere’ was as good as it gets.

So maybe I came here with a soul that told itself it needed love. Appreciation. Maybe I put my pen to the paper to be told that I am a good boy. People have found stranger reasons to do things. So that is where my head is at, or was, when this thief in the night bitch named Corona came to town. Three years in the city and not a lot to show for it. Not a lot to pack up and leave with, or without.

I am back home now, indefinitely, living with my old man. We watch Sky News and boo at the screen. A pair of geriatric pseudo fascists in nice suits rattling the rocks in their heads as they bounce up and down about just how far this country has gotten ‘off-track’, about the biases of the ABC and lately, more than ever, about the dangers of rampant socialism in Australian universities - as though Stalin were doing star jumps beneath the benevolent glow of Kelvin Grove’s Globe, situated ominously at the centre of a $94,000,000 education precinct. I suppose they figure that after everything is privatised Jesus will come back, heal their marriages, fix their hairlines, and save the bees. And I do not know if I buy all that. But at least these folks have a Why. I pray you find yours. I beg you return the favour.

ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE ROVERS OF MARS BY JACK ROYLANCE

The Magician

‘Mum, there was a magician at the mall today!’

‘A what now, Emily?’

‘A magician!’

‘A magician.’ Emily’s mother mimicked the words, but her tone was flattened with disbelief.

‘Yes!’ Emily still could not contain her excitement, ‘A magician!’

Her mother paused. ‘How much did it cost?’

Emily knit her eyebrows in confusion, until the explanation slapped her in the face.

‘It wasn’t a toy,’ Emily grumbled, ‘It was a person! A real-life magician!’

At this point, her mother had turned away, back into busying herself with the dishes.

‘Ok sweetie,’ Emily’s mother dismissed. Emily grew hot at her mother’s attitude towards her news. She didn’t believe her. She thought she was just being a silly little girl.

‘He had a wand!’ Emily blurted out, to prove her case, ‘And he even wore a funny hat!’

‘What makes you think he was a magician?’

And her mother thought she was being silly. ‘Because he was doing magic, mum!’

‘There’s no such thing as magic, sweetie.’

WRITTEN BY THOMIS BRIDE

But there was. In the middle of the mall that day, at the heart of a crossroad between the different stores, there was a magician. At first, all Emily saw was that a crowd of shoppers had massed around something that wasn’t a store; she was too small to see what it was. And that was all it took to ensnare her curiosity.

She pushed her way into the throng, weaving through the forest of gangly adult legs, until she saw him. Most magicians wore a tall top hat, usually concealing a pretty bird. This magician’s hat was quite different; it was red and flat, and sagged to the side like a sack of potatoes partly hanging off a benchtop. There was no sleek black tuxedo; this magician simply wore jeans, a flannel shirt and a lustreless navy waistcoat. Emily thought it was a strange outfit, even for someone as strange as a magician. But this was no ordinary magician. There were no rings, dunk tanks, birds or scantilyclad assistants. The magician simply used a canvas on an easel. The wand the magician used looked like an ordinary paintbrush when Emily first saw it. But the magician used the wand to do things that Emily didn’t think were possible.

Initially at the fringe of the crowd, Emily was facing the magician directly and couldn’t see what was on the canvas. She sped around the loop of bystanders as fast as her little legs could

take her. But the moment the canvas came into view, her speed evaporated. Her strides gradually became shuffles, and eventually she grinded to a halt. She stood there, gawping. Had her jaw not been attached to her head, it would have been scuttling across the floor by now.

Sometimes they would paint at school. Mostly with their fingers, but sometimes with brushes. A quarter circle line of yellow in the corner was enough for the sun. Curly blue lines for ocean waves. A red square with a triangle on top made a house. She had seen one kid mix some of the colours into grey to paint jet planes. But she had never seen someone use paints and colours like the magician did.

The image upon the canvas was an emerald horse. Not of the shade, but of the stone. A rearing stallion that shone as if carved from the scintillating mineral itself. It glittered before Emily’s eyes, yet the image was completely static. It was not real, but somehow it was the most real thing she had ever seen.

She had learned about horses at school. Their coats were of many shades; mainly a variety of calm browns and greys, sometimes even stark blacks and whites. She knew these coats were of smooth hair and not shining gemstones, and yet the horse upon the canvas was of pure emerald.

Emily had seen emeralds before, when her mother would take her shopping into jewellery

stores. The more you stared at them, the more shining triangles and squares you could see within them, collapsing infinitely into an impossible depth inside the stone. The shapes would flicker of their own accord just by walking around it, without moving or touching the stone. The horse upon the canvas glittered the same way. And the magician was making it glitter with his wand disguised as a paintbrush.

Emily was smart enough to know that some magicians weren’t actually magic. Some were frauds; tricksters swathed in snazzy suits. They used sleight of hand, devices and other theatricality to try and fool those they entertained. But the magician in the mall had nothing to hide. Emily watched him like a hawk, but he simply swished and flicked away. Besides a canvas, an easel and a wand, there was nothing to see.

Except pure magic.

‘Yes there is, Mum,’ Emily responded with a grin. Out of her pocket, she drew the very wand the magician had used, which he gifted her after finishing his magic.

And some day, I’ll be a magician too.

STRESS LEAVE

BY TAMARA HOLMES

The pumpkin vine grew from the compost in our backyard. It snaked beneath black plastic, extended itself over half dead grass, before readying itself to decompose. Withered every exhale. Inflated every breath. We watched from a distance, afraid to interfere in case our shadows stained skin. Dad didn’t stay away. He went up every day for twelve weeks, dragged the green hose behind him as he walked the length of the yard and stood —for an hour sometimes— and emptied tank water on fuzzed vine each hybrid compacted globe speckled green and yellow.

2003

BY TAMARA HOLMES

You took me fishing as a kid, jealous when my ten-dollar rod would catch a stingray. You’d say, let me, and I’d sit back, hunched in my puffed yellow life-jacket—buckle pulled to tighten. Threaded worm, head curled I used to play with them in the garden, soiled hands palm up as they moved blindly in a motion sick stupor. I hated the feel of fish scales, bumped flesh slimed, gill gaping open as it suffocated on air. You would throw it in a bucket, tail flapped against plastic like the water against our floating tin. Forehead pinked, I’d lay at the bow showered in salt.

ILLUSTRATION BY BRITTANY FENTON

IRIS GARDENS BY KOMOUSUS

REFLECTIONS ON A SWISS CHEESE PLANT

BY JANDI FLYNN

The stomach swallows the tongue

Swallows the lips and the love and the soil

The stomach swallows the heart

Swallows the tar and the ash and the soul

I do not want a kiss

I do not want orange juice after brushing my teeth

I do not want anybody, anything, anymore, anyway

I do not want up; I do not want down

The stomach has poor self esteem

The stomach is rot and mould and grease

The stomach has no sense of time

Maybe where I am heading is the place where nothing is (I always hated people that said black was not a colour that instead it was a shade)

Maybe where I am heading is the place where nothing is

I hope to see you there

Then and Now: The Decline of the University Sector

WRITTEN BY SARAH BALMER

The ‘golden age’ for Australian universitygoers seems to have passed. University diplomas sit in cardboard boxes in the shed, or sadly neglected on the walls of tiny offices. Employers register lower satisfaction with graduates, and increasingly it seems graduates have far fewer reasons to be satisfied with their uni experiences.

I see myself as one of the privileged few Australians with not one, but two tertiaryeducated parents. My mum and dad both came from regional families (read: whoop-whoop).

Mum was one of only 3% of her classmates who matriculated; let alone graduated. She moved to Canberra to attend ANU and study a Bachelor of Arts. But that was in 1975. Between the Vietnam War, the Iranian Revolution, and the peak of disco, nobody called my mum a lazy, perpetual student, a social justice warrior, or any number of things those who study Arts are called now.

Back then, uni life was more than study. It was an experience. My mum lived on campus, found part-time work at a bar, and had government aid to get her through without having to trade off between getting a 7 or affording the week’s groceries. Not only that, but her Arts degree

got her places. Even though she went through the relatable unease of not knowing what the future held for her, she was able to sit the public service exam and was rewarded with a full-time and well-paid job in a government department. After three years of uni, my mum didn’t graduate with $43,500 in debt; which is what she would have to pay now under Dan Tehan’s (who ironically graduated with a BA himself) scheme. It was free. The government paid for her to go to uni so that she could find gainful employment.

In 2020, Arts degrees are at best the butt of every half-hearted Stalkerspace joke. At worst, they’ve become a political tool used to argue for defunding universities. While universities are at their death knells, begging for money from far-right think tanks (see: UQ’s Ramsay Centre) and the volatile exchange student market, the fun fact Scomo won’t tell you is that two thirds of all chief executives of ASX-listed companies have humanities degrees, alongside ten of Australia’s thirty Prime Ministers. They’ve had their go, but they won’t let us get ours.

Even if the modern student manages to survive living off Centrelink below the poverty line and finish with a stellar GPA, there simply isn’t the

same job guarantee waiting for us that my mum had. Some 54% of Humanities students report that the skills they learned at university didn’t prepare them for their job or even to find a job, leaving them with a massive debt to repay and nothing to show for it.

It blows my mind that the education we pay for – and will begin paying more for very soon–is subpar to the education that my parents got for free. Long gone are the days where my Mum sat in class and watched in awe as that week’s guest lecturer walked in; not an underpaid and overworked Masters student, but Gough Whitlam. Fresh off being deposed as Australia’s 21st Prime Minister. As QUT watched its big concert go down the drain last year, I was reminded of my dad as the president of Deakin University’s Student Association, booking none other than Midnight Oil for a uni event. University used to be more fun. It was intellectually stimulating, and you felt like you were going somewhere. It also used to be free. Why is it that more than forty years after my parents began their university lives, mine is demonstrably worse? Why is it that university life for so many current students pales in comparison to what it once was?

Gone are the days where being a uni student was treated like a full-time job. We take a 45 minute train in, go to a single class, and go all the way back home because we can’t afford to move out into share-houses. We skip through the textbooks we had to buy at a premium because the university couldn’t afford more than three digital copies for a cohort of 600. We watch online recordings of glorified slideshows that haven’t been updated in four years.

Employers scoff at resumes where ‘all they have’ is a Bachelors with a high GPA, forgetting that they were employed with exactly that. Both my parents got their jobs as soon as they graduated. Now though? 20% of graduates report being under-employed, doubling since 2008. Employment is more difficult, and you’re in even more debt. Opportunities galore!

Now, that isn’t to say that I don’t have some amazing lecturers who work incredibly hard and are venerable experts in their fields. But much of the content I get, even pre-pandemic, is entirely online and recycled from the previous year. Many of my electives consist of only one two-hour lecture per week, called a ‘workshop’ to skirt around the fact that there are no tutorials or other opportunities for

engagement. Just several hundred students sitting in a room or catching up on content online– and why not? There’s little discernible incentive to be present on campus when course content is stale, class numbers are inflated, and engagement is low. Is this really what tertiary education is intended to be? Is this really what expert academics signed up for?

Education is so precious, so valuable, that it is devastating to see it reduced to its current state. Our university system has been commodified and corporatised. Everyone involved gets a shit deal. Students graduate 40k in debt, without having learned as much as they should. Lecturers and tutors fail to engage with students in subjects they are more than likely passionate about, as they aren’t paid any more for prep time due to the casualisation of academic staff. Our workforce gets graduates who are underprepared, over-burdened with debt, and directionless.

I don’t know what the solution to this major systemic failure is. What I do know is that students should ignore politicians like Scott Morrison, who call young people lazy after having already benefited from a free university education under completely different

economic conditions. He expects us, like Atlas, to carry the entire weight (in the form of fiscal debt) of the world on our entitled shoulders… while he fucks off to watch the footy during a national crisis. Maybe it’s less like pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity, and more like a boot stomping on your face.

What the Morrison Government should not be contemplating is whether it should incentivise certain courses, whether certain degrees are obsolete, or whether STEM is more valuable than the humanities. Rather, the question

I want answered is if we’re getting anything close to value for money now. Or value for time. Or intellectual value.

I believe the answer is a resounding no.

I think the statement “all that glitters is not gold” couldn’t be truer than when applied to our generation and to the university sector in which we exist. My law degree, which when complete will probably have cost more than a house deposit, had better fucking glitter.

We’ve been sold a lie. A really, really expensive lie.

WET CIGARETTE

BY JAK KIRWIN

the edification of doubt is a spent Marlboro bobbling like an oily dead fish in a public toilet

one thousand miles from light and sound

I see plumes of ash rise from the lungs of idle men waiting for the Earth to fix itself, like world leaders were rugby coaches and a change in staff, training, and morale, was all we needed to correct our course

I stare into this ceramic bowl, that has perhaps never seen a plunger, as though it were a crystal ball I ponder could the world be saved, if only it were bleached

I read the names scrawled on the wall visions of cemetery plots there is a knocking on an OCCUPIED door and with a flush and the buckling of a belt my doubts subside we could all be saved.

CANCER CULTURE

BY MADISON BLISSET DE WEGER

i hate the way i am branded as inspirational based upon the scars laced within my skin like my spine had a choice to carry the weight of its story i felt forced to pretend like everything was okay delegating company for only the good days why was beauty so deeply ingrained that the shine of my skull and the tube up my nose was never allowed on show

even after the bristles grew long i never knew what to say when strangers asked about my scars i cannot bear those pitied eyes the ones suspicious of high walls and manic mishaps the eyes that breed my seclusion

i am no longer willing to apologise for failing to notice false claims of love and applause why would you linger in a place you did not want to stay why would you compete as if to prove you were humane

i envy your naïve faces those who do not tremor at the sight of a lone bump a bed-ridden week triggering déjà vu of a time locked away in my head somewhere

Maybe You Should Expect To Be Sexually Harassed”

TRIGGER WARNING SEXUAL ASSAULT

I’ve chosen to wear to work and suddenly my knees feel exposed. She says more about late evenings and male expectations. She says more about how if she were me, she would quit this industry now. She says all this and no one says anything. None of the men in the room speak.

She leaves and a couple minutes later I make a quiet exit to the bathroom where I sit on the closed toilet lid for several minutes doing my best not to cry. I try to speed up my emotional processing speed – process the guilt I have because I haven’t been sexually harassed, process the fear that eventually it’ll happen to me anyway, process the anger at her for making me feel like my body is a dartboard for the male gaze.

How can one man do so much damage? Why has no one called his behaviour out previously?

According to a 2018 ACTU survey on Sexual Harassment in the Australian Workplace, only 26.7% of people who were victims of sexual harassment pursued a formal complaint against the harasser. Of those who made a formal complaint, ‘43% said their claim was ignored or not taken seriously.’

WRITTEN BY RUSTY FREE

I don’t typically write opinion pieces but I felt moved to write something on what has come to light in the music industry recently.

In March of this year, when coronavirus was only a foreign thought, I was working with a company in Brisbane to produce an event. During this period there was a team meeting. This was a big deal for us as the team from Sydney and Melbourne was called into Brisbane for a serious chat about what hadn’t been happening for weeks.

My boss was a very intense woman with a lot of hard-earned experience in the tech industry.

On the way to the boardroom where we were having the meeting (in a shared office space), she apologised to me in advance because she

‘wasn’t going to be very nice today.’ As a new team member with a very minimal role at this stage, I don’t have a lot to contribute to the meeting and don’t expect to be involved in a lot of the conversation.

I sit very quietly in this meeting, quick to agree with requests.

I sit very quietly behind the table while she stands on the other side of the room.

I sit very quietly behind the table while she points her finger at me and yells: ‘And Rusty you should expect to be sexually harassed.’ And I sit very quietly behind the table and underneath the wood my hands are shaking. My hands start pulling at the edges of my skirt – the first skirt

I sit on the closed toilet seat and I think about how nice this bathroom is, about how my shoes are falling apart, about how short my skirt is, and I think about how angry I am at a system that methodically dehumanises and devalues the contribution of women.

Months later I see a post pop up on my Instagram feed from Brisbane musician Jaguar Jonze.

‘I’ve come across many predators who still abuse their place of power or profile and manipulate the trust people, especially young female musicians, have given to them. In the last few days, I’ve been hearing so many stories about a particular male photographer who works in the industry.’

Over the next few days I watch, with a mix of awe and horror, as Jaguar Jonze offers support for victims of sexual harassment in the industry. She does so anonymously, so that she does not expose them to further suffering through defamation lawsuits or worse. The number of women coming forward goes up and up and up and up.

Over a period of four days, 105 people came forward with stories about the same photographer sexually harassing them, pressuring them to do nude shoots, making sexually suggestive or derogatory comments, sharing explicit images without their consent, along with more disturbing comments and actions. If you want to know more (and I suggest you prepare yourself and ensure you’re in a safe space - particularly mentally), check out Jaguar Jonze’s Instagram. Her recent posts and highlights have more detailed information on this photographer’s transgressions.

This man did write a 3,000-word apology and I will draw your attention to one particular phrase that made me physically sick:

‘A history of oppression is what led to these women never in the moment letting me know how they felt, never telling me to shut up or that they didn’t wanna do that look.’

I can say honestly, from the bottom of my heart: what utter fucking bullshit. There is nothing that pisses me off more than someone shirking accountability for their actions onto something that is ‘out of their control’. Take accountability of your position in the system and if you’re a man: start calling this behaviour out for what it is.

The truth is that I’m still expecting to be sexually harassed.

BUTTERFLY SLEEVES

BY SARAH BARFOOT

the seams of my identity have been picked at and ripped at panicked stitches sewn over top of destruction left behind cotton bird’s nests beneath the surface of my skin with each ‘harmless’ speculation comes the dissection of my lineage my existence is not permission to run your mouth like a blade slicing me into a percentage maternal or paternal I once played your games but now, I have unravelled into the depths of otherness my body is laid flat and still a delicate paper pattern strikingly white against the walnut tabletop scissors snip along the middle, following closely along a clumsy line drawn in sharpie, and snickers, and overheard whispers a butterfly’s ornate cocoon the fibres spun into silk and dyed the colours crimson red and royal blue a little bit of golden sun, but only to the left— the right is reserved for the stars white and bright, an eternal guide one that has left me lost

I place the silk upon the pattern of my being each pin a gentle nick holding me together

I take the cotton thread of culture and share it with an empty bobbin with right sides together and patient deliberation

I create for myself new seams rich with familial tales and my mother’s mother tongue butterfly silk for a butterfly sleeve

I backstitch over it again and again this thread cannot be pulled, or stripped it will never give because this time it is one hundred percent me

QUEER (ADJ.) TRISTAN NIEMI

The Iclandic Rome Poem

Queer (adj.)

The Icelandic Rune Poem

Queer glittering souls and open hearts and cause for celebration. Queer let’s have a kiki and throw shade and project our unhealed traumas.

Queer beautiful Black Trans-women and the forefront of revolution and collective amnesia. Queer free from gender and dating in a different prison and no femmes or trans only.

Queer shouted slur and reclaimed identity and home for all.

Queer shining exterior and rotting interior and ‘it’s just a preference’.

Queer sex in the dark and liaisons in alleyways and a married man crying for help.

TRIGGER WARNING DISCUSSIONS OF VIOLENCE Bread & Circuses

WRITTEN BY LAUREN MARSHALL

I once again find myself in a den of fallen angels. There is beer and there is noise and there is a seventy-inch television mounted to the wall broadcasting the UFC 251, live from Abu Dhabi’s Fight Island. I’m here at Eagle Street’s Pig and Whistle with my Brazilian friend Line and her Russian partner Andrei – coincidentally enough, these are the nationalities of the fighters who we are here to see, the Russian Petr Yan and the Brazilian ‘King of Rio’ José Aldo – and I smell blood.

Having found ourselves drinks and seats, we began to discuss the absurdity of Abu Dhabi granting the blood sport that is the Ultimate Fighting Championship sanctuary on its own private island. In a petro-citystate where women are unable to marry without the express permission of a male guardian, or to wear clothes that reveal their legs to any degree that would be considered immodest – against the backdrop of 80 lashes – it was dumbfounding to witness the steady pulverisation of Brazil’s own Jéssica Andrade by the formidable 5’5 ‘Thug’ Rose Namajunas, each clad in a UFC sports bra and trunks. Equally ridiculous was the prospect of sweat drenched, ripped to the bone, hyper masculine male fighters grappling one another against chicken wire in a nation where homosexuals

are routinely flogged and stoned. Andrei raised this point whilst recounting the difficulties the UFC had in entering New York, the last of the United States to lift bans on the mixed martial arts competition, when a New York Assembly member declared that the UFC was little more than ‘gay porn with a different ending’.

After a somewhat controversial split-decision declared Namajunas the victor of the bout, the pub began to fill with patrons eager for the main event and the highly anticipated title fight that proceeded it. One such patron took up residency within earshot– though graciously he didn’t sit on me and actually jokingly cautioned his female companion that she must maintain a reasonable social distance from Line, Andrei and I. This was the first reference to the pandemic that had come up since we got to the pub, which was more or less haphazard in its own enforcement of those regulations drawn up under the auspices of a new normal, besides the implied and self-evident fact that the UFC could no longer continue in the Continental United States or indeed on any of its oceanic properties.

The only other comments I heard from the gentleman for the rest of the afternoon were, firstly before the fight started, ‘no no– the WWE you are thinking of, that is the fake one.

That is the one where people jump up on the ropes and run around in circles and hit each other with chairs. This one is the real one. The UFC is real.’

His voice was kind and after hearing his friend reply in a Spanish accent that was as slow and deliberate as Line’s PortugueseEnglish, I felt with him a strange camaraderie. His other comment was ‘well fuck, there’s my money spilling out of his head,’ after it became unbearably obvious that his bet would not be paying.

As the cutmen smeared Aldo’s face with petroleum jelly – to prevent cuts and tearing around the eyes, Andrei informed me – I began to consider the old theory that all you had to give a population to keep them docile was bread and circuses. Around me were all manner of people, with all manner of accents, reveling in the modern transmogrification of the bread and the circus, the beer and the sporting match. I also considered how significant it was that two of the world’s leading nations in terms of COVID deaths – Brazil and Russia – were about to beat the shit out of one another, and that this conflict between two citizens of two of the largest countries on Earth, by both area and population, were to destroy each other in a gruesome display of their own superb health.

Here is what I remember of the fight itself: the synchronised oohs and the aahs of myself and my fellow spectators as significant strikes were landed, the utter grace with which the combatants touched gloves between each of the five, five-minute rounds, and the utter demolition of Aldo, who was taken down in the 5th and repeatedly punched in the back of the head for what seemed like hours but may have in fact been a minute. It was slow motion brain damage. I recalled the Simpson’s ‘stop, stop he’s already dead’ scene and Orwell’s declaration

that the future of mankind would be a boot stomping on a human face forever, each at the same time. By the time the referee called the fight over and Yan had risen to celebrate, Aldo’s team required a fishing rod to pull him out of a river of blood that seemed to stretch on endlessly, like his own proud Amazon.

The circus was over. Two Brazilian casualties would be added to those of the day, teetering ever closer to 100,000 deaths. Line had tears in her eyes, not necessarily for Aldo or Andrade but for her beloved nation, for her mother and her father in the northern state of Maranhão, for the rosary around her neck and it’s Christ. For her Christ, for my Christ, for our Christ, for the Christ that left us two thousand years ago like a useless father to return to his useless father in heaven, and for us to sit now in an overcrowded pub drinking Japanese beer, waiting for the pale horse of Pestilence to ride on over the hill and never, ever, ever return to us. And it was then that I heard the gentleman say, ‘well fuck, there’s my money spilling out of his head.’

“Around me were all manner of people, with all manner of accents, reveling in the modern transmogrification of the bread and the circus, the beer and the sporting match.”

KNIGHT ERRANT

BY JARRAH L. BARTON

I have strayed far… Further than I thought Was possible.

It is always something More, something male? No.

I was once a knight, Though, no Grandmaster Shone beacons across The fog. I grew Dishonest. Even cruel. The way became lost In translation.

No, mine anger pales In comparison to petty Men and their lusts–And yet…

When I turned my sword To mine own skin It blistered reflecting My haggard face. I had come so far Only to see Someone else. You asked me once When does the righteous Anger become just Anger?

Doubt, dear knight, Is the one thing You can be certain Of, surrounded By reflections of flowers And women once loved; How do I know What is truth Or simply distortion From the fauld?

ODE TO STEFANOVIC

BY ARTHUR PARSONS

One time I was watching news breakfast television And there was a story about a kid who was never absent From kindergarten to his final high school exams Not one day

And they showed the kid and he was bright and radiant and immaculate Like pasteurised milk

Then they showed another story About an elderly couple

Who had been in love for 78 years They had faces like porridge With brown sugar smiles They were so very happy

Then I realised the news breakfast people had tricked me It made me sad Because they had shown me the same story In two different ways

Then they introduced the next story About a baby billy goat Who was best friends with a baby grizzly bear And they even had a video And sure enough Here is a billy goat frolicking around this bear And the bear looked like he was smiling

Then I was reassured Ready for another day

At school, at work, at love Another day Of dancing around the bear

Up and Down Praha

WRITTEN BY NOLA HOANG

My old friend was my Praha tour guide. First night I came we had a small stroll around the centre. I came at a good time, where everything was opening but not many tourists were rushing in. We went to Charles Bridge. There were only a few couples walking by. Twelve hours later I would walk on it again and start having to ask people to let me through. Praha is old and beautiful. Buildings were preserved at the sacrifice of freedom. Their cobblestone streets, which met the outcry of my feet, luggage, and pretty much everything that can move on them, were also kept for the UNESCO certification.

We sat by the Vltava, drank and talked about how we have been the last few months, or the last few years. I tasted the third cigarette of my life. I swore its filter made the beer turn into fruit juice on my tongue. Then it was decided it was time to chill.

Among the beautiful towers and streets and flower-filled alleys, Praha also offers the multiple grass stores, absinthe bars and ephemera-seeking tourists. They blended into the morning’s bustling lines of people and reappeared in the evening when families with kids walked by, tired from keeping themselves attached during the day.

On our first full day, we went to see the Old Town Quarter. Then, my friend started his

TRIGGER

WARNING DISCUSSIONS

OFASSAULTSEXUAL

work day– unsurprisingly at a weed store. I went my way strolling down the street, taking pictures and checking out local stores. I found a chocolate shop where the shopkeeper offered me chocolate tasting. We tried multiple kinds. She gave me one piece and put another in her mouth. What an interesting job to have. I left with a slight guilt of having eaten so much without purchasing.

That night was the opening movie of Karlovy Vary Film Fest. Now that it was available in 96 kinos across Czech, I was determined to go and see. So my friend brought me to Kino Svetozor. They offered movie tickets, souvenirs and wine cups. The movie, Babyteeth, was Australian. The main character was dying, trying to add more substance into her already overdrugged family. It was emotional. It was also relatable. My friend unintentionally got on a roller coaster. He was speechless. The audience clapped in sad sounds. To this day, I still replay scenes inside my head. No matter how loving your family is, they are all struggling with something; money, long-lost dreams, their children, or sometimes Zoloft. We went back to my room. My friend decided to crash for another night, wasted from the weed, alcohol and the movie.

The next day would be called viewpoints day. My friend brought me to a spot to look down

at the city. I went to the Klementinum tower to look down at the city. I went to Vysehrad and looked down at the city. Then again, my friend brought me to a hill far from the main streets to look down at the city. There, he pulled out his grinder and paper and rolled me another of his specialty.

After a day spent up high, we went to the bar down under. The Vzorkovna has a lot to offer. A room with swings, a room with Foosball, a room with a screen playing rock music and a guy headbanging, a room with a multipledead-keys piano, a room with bands playing live music. We started our first round in the live music room. I tried to roll one for the both of us. Then we moved to the Foosball one and played with some frequents. Then the swings room. Then we took a little break, climbing up the stairs where we bumped into a huge old dog. We pet him for a long while, until we went back for our last shots. There, we met a Russian guy. This guy is called Boulatz. He was really into my friend. He had a girlfriend though who was staying with him. He was also with a Columbian guy called Elliot. At one point, there was his Columbian friend, Nic or Nick. They said they only met yesterday. Boulatz offered us a round of shots – unsurprisingly vodka. We talked a bit in the piano room. I was pressing on the dead keys, trying to play the only Minuet I

remembered. Another round came later. I started talking to Nic/Nick. At one point, I said I wouldn’t sleep with him. He asked why I didn’t just kiss him. I said no again. And another no. I stood up and asked my friend where the bathroom was. I managed to get in and started throwing up. First time in my life, I threw up alcohol.

It was not alcohol. My mind got dizzy. People started walking in and out and asking if I was okay. My friend said I was drugged. I registered it in. He kept trying to hold my hand until I told him to stop touching me. The bartender came by to say they were closing. I said I was drugged. He said shit happens. I said I was raped before. To which he said life happens.

I chuckled. The moment I felt awake enough, I rushed out with my friend. I just knew the way somehow. We reached the door in minutes, climbed up the stairs in seconds. I went to the couch, telling my friend if he had fucked me at that moment, I wouldn’t have been able to move. I would just let it happen.

I woke up to my friend sleeping next to me.

“My friend said I was drugged. I registered it in. He kept trying to hold my hand until I told him to stop touching me. The bartender came by to say they were closing. I said I was drugged. He said shit happens.”

Review

His Motorbike, Her Island

Nobuhiko Obayashi is one of my favourite filmmakers. While his 1977 cult horror film House is well known, the rest of his filmography hasn’t had nearly the same kind of following. His Motorbike, Her Island is a lesser known romantic-drama from the director that I hope to draw more attention towards. It’s centred around Koh (Riki Takeuchi), a motorcycle enthusiast who, after a series of chance encounters, falls in love with a girl named Miyoko (Kiwako Harada). His Motorbike, Her Island balances the free-wheeling spirit of driving with the wind rushing past your hair, with the romantic in-the-moment embraces of love that you cherish in a relationship. It’s tender yet brash. Immediate yet self-reflective. It’s something to remember.

One of my favourite aspects of an Obayashi film is how he utilises the cinematic medium as a storytelling tool. The aforementioned House is hyper-energetic and varied in its presentation to make the film itself feel like a haunted house ride. Similarly, with His Motorbike, Her Island

WRITTEN BY LUKA KATIC

Obayashi makes the film itself an integral part of how the relationship between Koh and Miyoko is told on screen. Early in the film Koh proclaims that ‘some guys have vividly coloured dreams, but mine were always in monochrome’. The film follows this analogy, shifting from full-colour to black-and-white at a moment’s notice over the course of the story. While it’s never clear if there’s a single consistent and immediate reason for this technique, it complements the film in such a wonderful and warm way. It flows with the emotions of a scene, placing the audience into the warmth of the relationship casually and immediately. The editing is similar, using jump cuts in a scene to add an immediacy and energy to character interactions.

The film is bathed in a sense of nostalgia, reminiscing on a single, gorgeous summer of love. It borrows iconography from 1950’s American greaser culture, all the way down to the films focus on motorbikes and those sweet leather jackets. This goes hand-in-hand with

the way Obayashi blends colour with blackand-white imagery, echoing old Hollywood classics like Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Placing the film in a 1980’s setting amidst of all this ‘50’s iconography almost gives it a dated quality, as though the film is reflecting on itself the same way Koh narrates the memories of his summer romance.

With Obayashi’s passing away earlier this year, his filmography seems to have had a recent resurgence in popularity – at least in the social circles of this pretentious film student. Although many are still not widely available on streaming services or DVD, I hope my recommendation of His Motorbike, Her Island has inspired you to check out Obayashi’s films. While it’s not as crazy or experimental as films like House, His Motorbike, Her Island is the perfect movie to wrap yourself up in a blanket to and explore what this great filmmaker has to offer.

STILLS FROM HIS MOTORBIKE, HER ISLAND (1986)

The Grimy and Shiny of this World

WRITTEN BY IRIS STALLS

I had been working two jobs and an internship, all while studying full-time at university. I remember my excitement and eagerness entering the semester. Finally, I was going to be a big shot, a somebody. I would be the brightest glimmering diamond amongst stones. I would be praised as the image of success. Now looking back, there’s irony in observing who I was in the past. I seemed like a completely different human being, one who had no idea who the hell she was to become in six months.

I’d always thought I was ‘Type A’, so to speak, but never did I think for a minute it was something of the mentally ill. My constant obsessive thoughts, rational and irrational, never bothered me. I lugged my coping mechanisms to these thought anxieties around in a large emotional suitcase. How I coped then is something I find truly amazing. I always strived for perfection, believing success meant reaching excellence. With this mindset, I did achieve my goals. I was excessively determined. Some would call it stubbornness, but determined is more idealistic to me.

I was nineteen when I realised I had been living with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety my entire life. Years of obsessing over my grades eager to find the right answers, reciting speeches at least three times a day to ensure superbness, my sentence repetition for validation and security had become illogical. I just didn’t realise my mindset had an attached medical condition. It took until the end of the semester to appreciate this, so you can imagine how difficult university was.

When life didn’t go as planned, I crumbled, scrambling to find security. This would only be behind closed doors of course, because seeing a ‘successful person’ fail would be horrendous for the image I tried to portray. I wanted to be a ‘diamond in the rough’, the individual who worked tirelessly to achieve large ambitions.

I never expected the grime which formed the diamond itself to be so dirty. I never realised the price of that diamond would be my mental wellbeing. As my jobs grew increasingly busy throughout the semester and uni piled on the assignments, my OCD became infatuated

with fears of the slightest mistakes. At my internship I would mentally beat myself for not contributing to office conversations, believing I was too quiet and lazy. I would wander home and replay the conversations in my head for hours, lingering on every possible combination and permutation to rectify illusions of apparent ‘issues’. Irrational thought processes I had lugged around in my head for years began to unveil themselves daily. I was fearful of judgement and of ‘thinking differently’. For days, I couldn’t leave my bed without contemplating for hours the solutions to problems which weren’t even there in the first place. I scrambled for answers to my illogical thoughts from family members, hoping their responses returned in the same wording, tone and pitch. The fear of failure seemed to haunt my existence, which was why I had strived for perfection so exhaustingly for the past twenty years.

When I received the diagnosis, it was clear the first port of call was therapy; I’d be given outlets and strategies to remove the ‘dirt’ circulating my mind. This seemed easy. An OCD clinic was the most logical solution, right? Well, apparently not according to relatives of mine, who turned to me and said ‘make sure you park a block away from the clinic, we know people around that area’. Anger grew thicker, rooted in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to yell and punch the closest wall. But what would that do? What would that achieve? I was supposed to hide the insufferable grime and present a glittery, shiny diamond to the world, simply because ‘people may talk’.

I had a revelation at this point. Many of us enjoy avoiding grime because we are taught it’s embarrassing and awkward. We’re unsure of what emotional mechanisms to use in dealing with it.

This need to run towards perfectionism, the need to conform, all stemmed from my fear of judgement. OCD feeds on fear like a bloodthirsty shark; it relishes it. Society’s mentalities in dealing with taboo and discomfort don’t help. It’s why my head repeats the same phrases it has been for years. My whole life I’ve been taught that I’d be shunned or punished for faults, or for presenting any slither of an independent viewpoint. Like many people, taught to just brush away the grime instead of seeing it form the diamond. That’s where the addiction to perfection begins, that’s where we are conditioned to only present this shimmery life to society.

In moments of clarity, everything makes sense to me. I’ve made a decision. I will try my best to live my life without irrational fear. Grime can only be seen as weakness if one sees their own ‘griminess’ that way. We forget that dirt, dust and grime craft a gleaming diamond, and the process of pressuring those ingredients must be seen to appreciate its true beauty form. I will live my individuality to its fullest and trust that I can take on any challenge I face. I am a somebody. I’m growing still; the diamondmaking process is a life-long endeavour. And that’s ok. I have been a glittering diamond gleaming in the light this whole time. I just had to know it.

ALLEGORY OF CAPITALISM

BY GEORGIA SANDERS

The genius of the beast Is the way her scales shine And reflect back on you

The dream of some divine

The beast has bled and suffered true There’s scars across her breast But she hides beauty in her pain And wisdom in her nest

Her wings broke as she split the sky Leaving man to crawl still blind But now and then she returns to him Through her offspring in his mind She dictates his path She draws her heroes from a hat And when the last days pass She swears to slither back

Copper coils through her neck The beast presents her wear to me Her serpent tongue beckons the weakest minds Who are consumed with glee

With many horns and many eyes She sees in all degrees Looking through the forest now Her tail flattens trees

The foolish men will heed her call The wisest may only run But no doubt she will catch them all And cage them in her lung

TWENNY TWENNIES

BY GEORGIA SANDERS

war, famine & revolution i’m a ballerina with lovely broken legs misplaced hate and chalk-faced lust rape the stateless mind justice, overslept while the kids were smoking clovers anarchists finally free from their closets from their chains, from their haircuts, tattoos, black beanies, and little red books

Then the darkness will return And her kind shall rule the Earth

Her head stretches from the West For in her self-defeating feast She snaps her back around the globe Her belly grumbles in the East

Born in pre-cosmogonic dawn

From an egg beneath the sea She spilt up her acrylic guts To set the man form free

She will dance like water falls As the sky softly burns She will shed her shrivelled skin With the glory of rebirth; Will breathe her sickly kin As they spread their joyous dearth

life is no longer the worlds reserve currency plagues of the senile, like gulls, pinching youth and art and beauty hot off the sand flowers wilt, despite affection while mama was drinking 24-hour news

irradiated truth scalps worth pennies on the dollar busts of tyrants outside town halls Nostradamus Press today’s headlines; twins born without eyes drunk monkey falls from tree (twice) eagle chokes on burger bear scratches dragon’s back god is born, a beautiful baby girl, in an empty church hope is elsewhere we may never find it a dog barks on mars with no one left to smell his shit

Always Was Always Will Be

My mother asked why Indigenous Australians refrain from celebrating Australia Day. But she already knew the answer. She remembers the earthshaking sound of bombs dropped from overhead planes becoming louder and louder. At barely two years old, my mother still believed that my grandmother knew and could do everything, and clung to her knees for protection. (We won’t die, will we?) My grandmother counted prayers on her tasbeeh, the Islamic version of rosary beads. She had no disillusions about her morality. (Even if we die, we will meet again in the afterlife.)

The violence was calculated. They first murdered the academics, doctors, and educators to eradicate any chance of the nation recovering or progressing. Their next step was comparatively indiscriminate with a single objective: they slaughtered anyone with Bengali on their tongue. Even with fighters, protesters and other military personnel as the

WRITTEN BY RAMISA RAYA

combative force, the death toll is estimated in the millions.

The Bangladeshi Liberation War is burnt into the backs of eyelids of an entire generation who were alive in the 1970s. But we were the victors; we reclaimed our language, our nation, and our collective identity as Bangladeshis.

Imagine the reversal of history where the Bangladeshi Liberation War ends with Pakistan’s victory. And imagine their day of victory in this alternative history celebrated; for Bangladeshis to be called to celebrate a day marking the systematic genocide of our people, erasure of our mother tongue, and the violent conquer of our land.

The entire nation rejoices annually on this day. The blazing barbecue steaks drown with ice soda on the outskirts of Brisbane. Pavlovas, Vegemite and lamingtons. Flags of red, blue and white wave vigorously.

Could you bring yourself to celebrate?

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FATIMAH ZAHRA BUKSH

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

WRITTEN BY JASMIN GRAVES

The scramble for existence rarely leaves space for the inspection of the arbitrary. Oscar Wilde’s anti-Aristotelianism proclamation that ‘life imitates art far more than art imitates life’, meant as a critique on realism, can be applied to many arbitrary values of ‘art’ in life today.

To project this premise onto a modern day understanding of being and prestige, we can discuss how arbitrary perceptions can hinder the functioning of our social world.

Amongst others, one of the victories of the 21st century Wilde could not have foreseen has been the emergence of online social platforms. The irony of making arbitrary prestige accessible to the masses whilst commodifying that prestige has not been lost on me.

To criticize the arbitrary value of prestige, I want to make the analogy of ‘online social platforms’ as artwork. During my mid-teens, it was a popular pastime to recreate the images or aesthetics of our favorite celebrities on social platforms. We would curate a background, re-tell a joke or edit in post-production any blemish or inconsistency to get the perfect, effortless candid. Our images, whilst poor replicas of real life, were artistic pursuits.

The constructed image portrayed by oneself on social platforms can at once be an exaggeration of who one is and also a reinvention of the self. Following this, the placement of people on

pedestals due to their image as portrayed on a platform can be arbitrary. Vulnerability is necessary to the human condition. It has also been the first thing to disappear in pursuit of an aesthetics-based goal in in the age of the internet.

It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that those creators we held to high esteem, may only be prestigious because we believe them to be.

A concern over this is, the more unattainable or inauthentic an image becomes, the greater the steps necessary to replicate its aesthetic appeal. Life imitates art and life will wither in the pursuit of art.

Thankfully, I no longer pursue the replication of images of internet-celebrities. Partly due to prominent figures speaking out in support of authenticity, a visitation of the realism Wilde rebelled against. However, on a macro-level we’re all still keeping up with the Joneses, purchasing items we have no need for and pursuing career paths we do not yearn for to chase an image of success.

So much of what is perceived to be true of the populous is exact thing created by the populous in exploration of truth.

To question our hegemonic ideals is a violent act, to deviate from them is art.

ILLUSTRATION BY HEYAIDAN

Pure Until Proven Filthy

WRITTEN BY EM READMAN

I remember first being introduced to the concept of purity. I was in primary school and my class was sitting down for show and tell. We were in a circle, cradling family photos and seashells and fairy barbies that had interchangeable wings. When our teacher turned to the circle, she told me to close my legs and sit like a lady. I asked her why and she said that was the way things were and not to talk back. For the rest of that class, I wondered what was wrong with my legs, unaware of purity, unaware of shame.

The social purity movement was active from the 1860’s to the 1910’s, highly influenced by the concepts of Christian morality, but their echo rings on over a century later. This movement, aiming to restrict prostitution and contraception and other sexual activities, was consumed by the politics of sexual ethics and the regulation of bodily autonomy. As the decades sprawled on, the ideas that correlate virginity and purity calcified, as did the notion that bodily autonomy does not belong to the woman who inhabits the body. Some of the most stringent issues that grew out of the social purity movement have been combated with the infamous waves of feminism, asking for votes, and abortions, and to not be murdered. But purity persists. It does not wither away when

we cast our ballots. It does not wait at the door when we step into a doctor’s office. It cannot be swatted with a protest sign. It pervades, along with shame.

I did not see myself as a sexual being in that classroom. I did not see myself as capable of purity or impurity. I was a child, with pictures of a recent beach holiday to show my class. I wanted to tell them that I saw a stingray.

In highschool my legs were closed, but the potato sack dresses were the problem. Some mornings, our principal would line us up holding a ruler and measure the distance between our dress hem and our knees. We’d be told to rehem them if they were too short. One girl, a star netball player, wore the longest dress available - unhemmed - and it was still inappropriate. When our principal said that girls are distracting the boys and teachers, I asked if that meant she thought grown men were really being distracted by underage girls. She said I didn’t understand her, and not to talk back. We were beautiful young women and were to act appropriately. We should be ashamed of ourselves for sewing our skirts higher in 30 degree heat.

My body became an inherently sexual place back when I was a child. It became sexual

before I could even comprehend what being sexual meant. I was taught to love myself, to respect myself, and that meant that I was expected to subscribe to this idea of purity, to submit myself to the shame of being seen as a woman.

There should be a joy of exploring sexuality, in discovering preferences. There should be an unadulterated joy when discovering your body and its sexual agency. There should be love and pleasure and choice and consent. Not shame, not the idea of virginity as a prize, not being told you were asking for it.

It takes years to unlearn shame. As years past, and I became an adult woman, I felt a need to justify my actions. In any situation, I wanted to outline all the reasons I was still purethird date, nice person, consent - I wanted someone to tell me I had done everything right. Unwillingly, I clung to social purity as something someone, some other person, could decide. When other people decide your sexual value, shame will always persist. An external jurisdiction cannot fill an internal need. With time, I stopped asking for permission to be a person with sexual agency. I stopped referring to pure values as my standard of ethical behaviour. I shed the layers and layers and

layers of shame I had picked up in classrooms and schoolyards and churches and bedrooms. You cannot be judged by a system you are not a part of.

Concepts of purity need to be dismantled in all facets of women’s lives, because radical selfacceptance is difficult. It requires work, and constant self-affirmation against systematic shame. In doctor’s offices and police stations, schools and universities, in legislation and parliamentary floors and the streets we protest on; shame needs to be examined and criticised and pulled apart at the seams. Women’s bodies need to stop being policed, and men in powerful positions need to listen to women. Shame stops women from expressing their agency and walking home at night. Purity still pervades conversations about anatomy and sexual health. Our current approach to purity still leads us to thinking that other women are sluts or whores or prudes because they make different decisions to our own. When purity is unravelled, so is the need to make decisions on who is pure and who is filthy, because the concept ceases to exist. When we lift the weight of purity, our bodies become homes, not courtrooms.

“An external jurisdiction cannot fill an internal need.”

The Sound Of Silence

WRITTEN BY ANAHITA EBRAHIMI

This is the last time I’ll come here. It doesn’t take me long to find the box, my box, and I notice it’s been taped up. The brown tracks wrap around a few times over as if they’re asking you whether it’s worth your while to make the journey to the kitchen for a blade. It’s not. I run my fingers over my name. Louise has scrawled it there as if she couldn’t bear to look at the letters forming under her pen; it’s almost indecipherable, like a mistake, a blemish on the carboard.

When Louise would take her glass of wine and sit in the garage amongst the rubbish and the old stuff she wasn’t there for the ‘good times’. I would watch, sit next to her on the cold concrete. She didn’t see me there. I caught her once looking at a family photo – yet another ruined by my scowl and crossed arms. I watched as she covered me with half her hand, sure I caught a flicker of a smile.

Sometimes she would go through my old assignments, mainly English essays with wild ideas, just to remind herself that I was different – an anomaly not made for a mother’s love. She wanted to trace back to where it all went to wrong. I come here and I stand where she stood, I sit where she sat and I press on my eyelids with my fingertips the way she used to when I spoke too much. There is something about the way she looks at my pictures and reads my old letters - it’s not blissful reminiscing, there is no geniality to the way her eyebrows pinch in the middle and her glasses slip with the sweat

droplets on her slender nose. I want to be angry but I can’t. Part of the job is to let them find peace. No more strings attached.

There was a conversation at the dinner table, way back when I was in year 10. I was angry because my parents didn’t let me go to an all-boys school’s dance. There were other things too, like how my mum hadn’t spoken to me for five days because I lost her favourite pilling comb.

My mouth still full, I started. ‘When I die, I’m going to visit everyone in this house and spook them.’

My brother retorted, ‘ghosts don’t exist’.

‘They do. You can’t always see them, but they can mess with you’. Taught to me by YouTube and the Paranormal Activity franchise.

‘I don’t think I’d notice’, he replied.

Louise grinned and poured herself another glass of lemonade.

I put more food in my mouth and started to chew, ‘Mrs Hamilton said to us that outliving your child is one of the most traumatic things an adult can go through’. Louise closed her eyes and pursed her lips. ‘Also, there’s no word in the dictionary for a parent who loses a child. Like if Dad died Mum would be a widow, but if I died, nothing would change.’

A Dream is a Wish

There were so many people Tarra could barely see the factory. She stood on her toes amidst the press of bodies, trying to peer past the press of onlookers. Some of them were in their bedclothes, holding each other and scanning the debris; pressing their clothes to their faces as the thick dust settled in around them. They were weeping. A woman nearby wailed openly. Her keening cry was like nothing Tarra had heard before, like something animal. She threw herself against the cement as though she couldn’t hold herself up anymore, grasping at her sharee. Tarra felt her mami’s hand tighten around hers, felt her skin slick with worry. But her mami didn’t weep. She stared resolutely ahead, seeing nothing.

Tarra wanted to slip away like some of the crowd had done, clawing at the rubble, shifting through discarded fabric, toys and polyester American flags. She wanted to look for her sister amongst the people they were carrying out. All she could do was kick her feet and scan the ground around her. Where was Allo? Was this really the dream factory her sister had told her about?

Allo said the factory was special, like the movies they saw together before Allo was old enough to work there. She made shiny gifts there for little princesses around the world. Delicate dresses in purple and glittering pink,

WRITTEN BY ASHLEIGH NORTH

ballet shoes and Special Fairy Things. It was important work, Allo said. It must have been, Tarra had thought, because every night when Allo came home she’d collapse into the kitchen chair as if making it to bed was one step too many on her tired feet.

Tarra wasn’t sure they were at the right place; Mami must have been mistaken. This didn’t look like a place dreams were made. It was all thick concrete, surrounded by identical grey buildings with many floors. But Mami said it was here, that the roof had come down and Allo was inside, and her face was so grim Tarra had to believe her. Tarra imagined the grey walls crumbling, spewing out clothing, machinery and people into the smoggy daylight.

Once Allo had brought home a tiara from the factory, like the ones princesses wore in the movies. Tarra had never imagined herself as a princess, and when Allo slid the piece gently through her hair, she’d eyed herself in the mirror skeptically. She pulled at her brown locks and tapped her feet disapprovingly.

‘It doesn’t look like Tinkerbell,’ she accused. But her fingers lingered on the sparkling plastic and the corners of her mouth pulled up into a smile. Allo had grinned and kissed her forehead. She sang her that song: ‘a dream is a wish your heart makes…’

‘Look closer,’ she’d said gently. ‘Don’t you see the magic in your eyes?’

‘No,’ Tarra whispered now. All she saw was Allo’s eyes last night, heavy with the workday. She glared at the rubble at her feet. ‘Give her back,’ she whispered. ‘Give her back!’

What good were wishes, Tarra thought, when it was Allo that manufactured them from the cramped factory floor, sending them away with a kiss to other little children in faraway countries. What good was it, thousands marching through the streets, when all it took was the big factories to pack themselves away, move to distant shores and leave them all to pick up the rubble.

Tarra thought of heroes she knew from movies, of their daring rescues and Herculean feats. Why would they leave? Why did no one save Allo, after all the work she did keeping their colourful capes and sharpening their princely weapons? The people on the streets called for change, for better wages; but Allo couldn’t see anyone there to listen.

They didn’t know, she’d hear later. Someone forgot to tell them. So she’d curl up, clasping the tiara in her clammy hands. She’d close her eyes and try to reach them, try to tell them to come back and help her find Allo again.

When they’d come, she would tell them about the workers who earned too little to feed themselves when they left the factories, and the ones like Allo who had gone, or whose broken bodies left them on the streets once they’d outlived their use. Then they’d know, Tarra thought. Then things would get better. They could make the buildings stronger, so they wouldn’t topple down.

And when Allo came back, she could sing again in the living room. Tarra could tell Allo her eyes were magic too, not just her working hands. She’d give her older sister her own tiara, and they would be princesses together.

In 2013, The Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,134 factory workers and injuring 2,500 more. Disney merchandise, alongside items from other fast fashion brands, was found amongst the rubble. Changes have been hard fought for in Bangladesh. There is still a long way to go, and as the tragedy at Rana Plaza fades from global consciousness, workers’ rights around the world continue to be at threat. Now, many workers are at risk of starvation and destitution due to factory closures during COVID-19. Please consider researching and supporting movements such as labourbehindthelabel.org.

“What good was it, thousands marching through the streets, when all it took was the big factories to pack themselves away, move to distant shores and leave them all to pick up the rubble.”

Anthem

WRITTEN BY AMY SARGEANT PERFORMANCE, 4 HOURS 35MIN

Anthem (2020) is a long form sound performance which appropriates the Australian National Anthem to produce motifs evocative of the devolving chaos and rising authoritarianism of Australia’s politics. The work is produced in response to the Institute of Modern Art’s provocations ‘Industrial Actions’ and ‘Unprecedented Times’, asserting the importance of critical reflection and political resistance in the current moment.

In the time of COVID-19, the obstinate failure of our leaders to communicate clearly has triggered confusion, complacency and violence toward frontline workers. With a reactionary zeal, our leaders have blamed these outcomes on the public. Michael Bradley writes that “the roots of that reflex lie much deeper; they can be seen in every step…taken down the path of authoritarianism since September 11, 2001. In this moment of deep crisis, it is flourishing” (2020)¹. In response, Anthem (2020) deploys the Situationist method of détournement, by which components of culture are recycled to produce new arrangements as a weapon of class struggle. Détournement is applied in this work through the appropriation of sonic and visual motifs from Australia’s political spectacle, to subvert nationalist motifs and challenge the dysfunctional spectacle.

¹Bradley, M. (2020). Welcome to a brave new world, where citizens have to prove their innocence.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RHETT HAMMERTON FOR IMA

Muddied Waters

You stare at the candle. Picture it. A lone white candle glued to the middle of a saucer. The room is cool, winter is not here, not yet; the wind creeps in from the windows and tickles the flame. A single flame sits atop the white tower, flicking side-to-side to evade the wind’s relentless fingers. Its heat melts the wax until white tears dribble down the sides.

You place your head on the table and the candle startles. It whips to and fro in a frenzy of orange before settling into a soft sway. You turn your head into your arm and you smell your sweat faintly. You need a shower. Your arms are tired from carrying the pot of hot water to the bathroom and back. Boil, carry, empty, boil. You are tired of bucket baths. Tired of carrying the pot. Tired of lifting the metal jug over your head and pouring steaming water over your body. You dislike the coldness, the dryness of your body when you sit in the tub. Your back aches from bending over the bucket, from carrying water for everyone.

It is your duty. You are the oldest child, the firstborn, the firstborn daughter. So your mother says. You say it over and over in your head, it is my duty, my duty, my duty. What good are daughters who cannot perform their duty?

The worker’s daughter is dutiful. How quickly

WRITTEN BY AALIA HUSSEIN

she appeared when her father called for her. You watched her as she waited patiently for her turn to receive the neighbour’s water. You watched as her eyes sparkled as she saw the water. How long had it been since you all had seen running water? Three days? Four? She looked up then and for a moment you saw yourself in those eyes. Beautiful eyes. You looked away.

The neighbour is nearing forty and rich and his eyes always follow you. There is a door that connects the neighbour’s house to yours, next to the worker’s hut. The hosepipe snakes through the door and drips its water from the neighbour’s borehole tap. Precious water hiccups out, taking its time to fill the buckets gathered by the door. This is the task of the worker’s daughter, to wait all day until each bucket is filled before carrying it to the house.

You told her once. To call you Raabia. You called her Munashe after all. She hesitated, her mouth pulled down into a frown, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes looked worried. Lovely eyes. ‘But Meeseez Raabia, I can’t. It’s not good.’

‘Why not? I’m the madam, aren’t I? So listen to me,’ you said. She smiled at that, teeth on display and eyes crinkling. You liked her best when she smiled, she was the most beautiful when she smiled; her eyes especially.

‘Raabia,’ she had said, ducking her head and laughing, her shoulders shook and she had covered her mouth. Your name had never sounded more beautiful.

You were six when Munashe first came to the house. The old worker had died of AIDS and there was a need for a new one. Munashe was eight to your six when she arrived. Her eyes resembled an insect’s, too big for her little frame. You were the same height. She was skinny but muscled even at that age, from working in the fields at her kumusha you would learn. She had no mother or brothers. She attended the school down the road, the public one where all the other workers’ children in the neighbourhood went. You went to a private school.

You played together in the sandbox behind the garage. You made sandcastles and would make a little moat around the castle. You planned adventures of going to the sea, of sailing on a yacht, of swimming with dolphins and finding treasure. You both had never seen the sea.

Your mother indulged in the playing. You were only children. When school was over for the day and homework was completed, you both snuck away to the sandbox behind the garage. She would hide from her Baba, avoiding her cleaning and cooking duties; and you would hide from Ma, who screeched at you to study harder.

One day she was telling you a funny story from school. ‘Meester Shure farted in class. It was so funny,’ she couldn’t stop giggling about it. Her eyes were lit up and, in the low afternoon light, looked like onyx stones. You reached your hands out and touched her cheeks.

‘Raabia!’

Your mother stood at one corner of the garage wall, hands on her hips. She looked like a storm

waiting to unleash its wrath.

‘Come inside and study. Now.’ She gripped you by the arms and wrenched you from the ground. Her hold was a tourniquet.

The worker’s girl had to be forgotten. That was all your mother said. ‘It’s time to grow up, ma. That girl…she is nothing.’

You were fifteen, she seventeen. You sit in the sandbox one last time and let her play with your hair. She liked to marvel at the length of your hair and wished her hair was as long as yours. ‘We can’t meet anymore Munashe.’

‘But why Raabia?’

Onyx eyes glittered. Pretty eyes.

‘Missus Raabia. You call me Missus Raabia now.’

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Editors

Em Readman

Anahita Ebrahimi

Ashleigh North

Jasmin Graves Designer

Aidan Ryan

Contributors

Olivia Brumm

Amy Sargeant

Nina Busteed

Fatimah

Zahra Buksh

Savannah Barnes Riley Baxter

Benji Gorton

Julienne Pancho

Georgia Sanders

Jack Roylance

Thomis Bride

Tamara Holmes

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Komousus

Jandi Flynn

Sarah Balmer

Jak Kirwin

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De Weger

Rusty Free

Sarah Barfoot

Tristan Niemi

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Arthur Parsons

Nola Hoang

Luka Katic

Iris Stalls

Ramisa Raya

Aalia Hussein

Rhett Hammerton