World Naked Bike Ride – Australia

At least 7 Australian towns and cities will participate in the next southern hemisphere leg of the World Naked Bike Ride in March 2010. More cities may be added to the list if volunteers are found to organise the ride in new towns and cities. The official southern hemisphere ride date is Saturday 13 March 2010.

The dates and locations are:

Saturday 13 March 2010: Sydney and Adelaide
Sunday 14 March 2010: Newcastle
Sunday 21 March 2010: Canberra and Melbourne

WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDE MELBOURNE 2010
The Union Club Hotel, 3:00pm – 8:00pm

Corner of Gore and Webb Streets FITZROY, Melbourne

http://wiki.worldnakedbikeride.org/wiki/Australia

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CitySwitch urban interventions – Exhibit

Event: CitySwitch urban interventions
What: Exhibit
Start Time: Tuesday, February 23 at 5:00pm
End Time: Saturday, February 27 at 8:00pm
Where: Hunter St Mall & Renew HQ 3 Morgan St Newcastle AUSTRALIA

CitySwitch is an international exchange between Japan and Australia, where urban designers, architects and artists workshop ideas over 5 intense days, to collaborate on the creative activation of urban spaces.

23-27 Feb 2010

CitySwitch Lab invites you to downtown Newcastle to collaborate with a team of architects, artists, and designers from across NSW and Japan for the 2nd international workshop on urban revitalisation.

… “We are working on the ground to create four catalytic interventions within downtown Newcastle”

… “Artists, architects, creators, and thinkers of the city are all invited to take part in the workshop”

You can join in on the workshop (each day), come to free lectures (Tues/Weds/Thurs 8pm), or come and view the completed exhibitions/installations/projects (Saturday 27th, from 2pm).

The workshop includes the collaborative design and production of four different urban intervention projects, a series of international lectures, and a range of social events. The workshop culminates in a public show to exhibit, critique and celebrate the works on Saturday the 27th of February.

**International guest creators include: Satoru Yamashiro (Tokyo, Japan), Toshinori Esumi (Izumo, Japan), Jin Hidaka (Japan) and Jun Inokuma (Tokyo, Japan). **

Full details http://cityswitchlab.org/newcastle/index.php

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#Melbourne Laneway Commissions for 2010

CALL FOR PUBLIC ART SUBMISSIONS

The City of Melbourne continues its successful annual Laneway Commissions. They are seeking innovative proposals from artists or group of artists which respond to Melbourne’s distinct urban setting.

Deadline: 22 January, 2010

Artists must obtain a project brief.

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French stencil artist Blek the Rat in #Melbourne.

French stencil artist Blek the Rat is in town and an exhibition of his work  has opened  at Metro Gallery on High St, Armadale. On display are a dozen of his iconic life size stencils like the famous “The Man who walks through Walls” and many smaller works and prints. Xavier Prou started stenciling after a visit to New York where he was inspired by early forms of graffiti.

Back in Paris he sprayed stencils of rats as an art student in the early 1980s which set off the stencil art in France. Many of the early French artists like Jef Aerosol, Miss Tic and others soon got in trouble with the police under president Jacques Chirac’s hardline approach. The French scene subsequently died, just to have its renaissance almost 20 years later as part of the world-wide stencil art movement. (Melbourne’s stencil artists deserve some credit in being instrumental in getting the movement started.)

Prices for a large work average around $24,000 and in case you can’t afford one you can still buy one of his rats on a tiny cheap canvas for $7500. Blek’s stencil work is simple, rather primitive and badly executed. The materials used of minor quality. But so be it.
Blek the Rat has been hugely influential and is a true pioneer. If you want to find out more about him visit his Blek website and read Amelia Swan’s enlightening article on Artshub.

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Earthsharing Australia

Earthsharing Australia is a Georgist organisation that provides free education services on economics. The bounty of the land is best shared amongst the people rather than hoarded by the privileged. Their teachings demonstrate the urgent need for the capture of resource rents for public benefit. With the capturing of this natural wealth, we can reduce wealth gap pressures and curtail the motivation to exploit our resources. This is the big picture reform we need to create the sustainable, walkable communities necessary to survive climate change.

Editor’s note: This is really a pretty busy crew with lots of events and campaigns going on under the guise of it’s Georgist roots. Worth spending some time to read the underlying philosophy of Henry George. Affiliated with Melbourne based outfit Prosper Australia you may think they’re a bunch of neo-marxists; but this would be a decidedly wrong interpretation. Marx saw the Single Tax Georgist platform as a step backwards from the transition to communism.

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Earthsharing Film Competition

Entries are now open for Earthsharing Australia’s 2009 film competition entitled “I Want to Live Here: The war on creativity.” Artists and film makers are asked to respond to issues of gentrification and the difficulty creative communities have when rent increases cause them to move onto cheaper suburbs.

Entries close 4 November

For more information visit http://iwanttolivehere.org.au/

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Random Acts of Elevator Music visit Sydney

Random Acts of Elevator Music at Don’t Look Gallery

Making their first business trip from Melbourne, Random Acts of Elevator Music perform at the experimental new media art space Don’t Look Gallery, 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, on Friday the 9th of October at 7.30pm.  The show incorporates the acclaimed Random Acts of Elevator Powerpoint display, featuring highlights from office life and rare elevator footage, along with their trademark soothing tones, melodies and oscillations.  Joining them for a rare solo live set is Sydney sound artist Shannon O’Neill.

Random Acts of Elevator Music is the latest project from City Frequencies, a collaboration between Matt Adair and Nick Wilson, who work together on sound projects within the metropolitan environment.

The original City Frequencies installation was a live surround-sound audiovisual performance held at the Melbourne Town Hall for the 2000 Next Wave Festival, utilising the sounds and sights of the Melbourne CBD as source material.  In 2004 City Frequencies recorded the conversations of Fitzroy café-goers at Kent Street Cafe, using the tapes to create the Café Voyeur installation.

Shannon O’Neill is a Sydney sound and multi-media artist.  As well as making sound and music under his own name and as Time Being, he has been a member of the groups Wake Up and Listen, The Splinter Orchestra, Plenum, Projek Lansac and Undermind.  Shannon has been a director of the Electrofringe festival, the Disorientation series and the Sydney Liquid Architecture festival and is the founder and director of Alias Frequencies, an organisation that promotes and publishes music and media art.  He has written extensively on sound and media art.

WHAT: Random Acts of Elevator Music + Shannon O’Neill
WHEN: Friday October 9, 7.30pm
WHERE: Don’t Look Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd
Dulwich Hill, Sydney, NSW (426/428 bus)
COST: $10

For further information visit: www.akm.net.au/cityfreqs
www.twitter.com/cityfreqs

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The Melbourne Bicycle Film Festival x

To promote Melbourne as a city for cyclists, The Melbourne Bicycle Film Festival are looking for films up to 1 minute long that promote road harmony between all users. The films must contain a recognisable City of Melbourne location, feature cyclists wearing helmets, using a bell and contain one of eight scenarios that represent barriers to road harmony.

First prize is $1000 and a $250 voucher from Open Channel and the use of the clip by the City of Melbourne as part of their safe cycling campaign. Short listed entries will be screened before Bicycle Film Festival sessions at the Palace Kino Cinemas 26 – 28 November.

Visit www.ambiguoushorse.com for more information.

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The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, urban Melbourne metro life via a Dada vehicle

WORLD PREMIERE
Melbourne International Arts Festival, Arts House and Store Room Theatre present The Dictionary of Imaginary Places
Created and Directed by Anna Tregloan
Thu 15 – Sun 18 October

“Anna Tregloan’s mesmeric performance installation gave us a compelling taste of what an experimental agenda can achieve.” The Age

Have you ever overheard a conversation on the train and been transfixed? Did you let your mind wander? Did you fill in the gaps? Perhaps you invented the entire life story of the characters on which you eavesdropped? Under the acclaimed direction of Anna Tregloan, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places captures the complexity of urban life in a Dada inspired work where transcribed conversations, rants and whisperings uttered by everyday commuters on Melbourne’s metropolitan rail network are reinvented into a unique and seductive piece of theatre.

Unpredictable, roughly hewn and surprisingly tender, this work will showcase the topsy-turvy daily grind as four consummate performers take up the challenge of clowning their way through the abyss between what we assume about someone, what they believe of themselves and what might just be possible.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places expresses not only the imagination of theatre, but also the imagination that dwells in every individual making for a precious night of theatre and a train ride in a truly unique world.

Director: Anna Treglaon. Producer: Todd MacDonald, Sound Design: David Franzke. Lighting designer: Niklas
Pajanti. Performers: Chris Brown, Rita Kalnejais, Heather Bolton and James Wardlaw.

Event information
Venue: Arts House, Meat Market 5 Blackwood St, North Melbourne
When: Thu 15 – Sun 18 October
Time: Thu and Fri 8pm, Sat 8pm and 4pm, Sun 2pm and 6pm
Duration: 65 minutes no interval
Tickets: Full $35 / Groups (8+) $31.50 / Concession $27.00
Bookings: www.artshouse.com.au (03) 9639 0096
or www.melbournefestival.com.au 1300 136 166

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Fake New York Post makes New Yorkers wakeup to Climate Change

This week nearly a million New Yorkers were stunned by the appearance of a “special edition” New York Post blaring headlines that their city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The most alarming thing about it: the news came from an official City report.

Distributed by over 2000 volunteers throughout New York City, the paper has been created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change.

Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts.

“This could be, and should be, a real New York Post,” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. “Climate change is the biggest threat civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of every paper, every day until we solve the problem.”

The fake Post’s cover story (“We’re Screwed”) reports the frightening conclusions of a blue-ribbon panel of scientists commissioned by the mayor’s office to determine the potential effects of climate change on the City. That report was released in February of this year, but received very little press at the time. Other lead articles describe the Pentagon’s alarmed response to global warming (“Clear & Present Disaster”), the U.S. government’s sadly minuscule response to the crisis (“Congress Cops Out on Climate”), China’s alternative energy program (“ChinaÕs Green Leap Forward Overtakes U.S.”), and how if the US doesn’t quickly pass a strong climate bill, the crucial Copenhagen climate talks this December could be a “Flopenhagen.”

The paper includes original investigative reporting as well. One article (“Carbon counter counts New Yorkers as fools”) reveals that Deutsche Bank – which erected a seven-story “carbon counter” in central Manhattan – not only invests heavily in coal-mining companies worldwide, but has recently entered the business of coal trading itself.

The paper has the world’s gloomiest weather page, covering the next 70 years rather than just 7 days. The “Around the World” section describes the disproportionate effects of climate change on poorer parts of the world, including extreme droughts, floods, famines, water shortages, mass migrations and conflicts. Developing countries will bear the brunt of climate change effects even though they have done very little to cause the problem.

To participate in civil disobedience visit http://BeyondTalk.net and pledge to risk arrest in a planned global action November 30, just before the conference in Copenhagen.

Links:

Fake New York Post: http://www.nypost-se.com/
Video News Release: http://www.nypost-se.com/video
City report on climate change: http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2009/NPCC_CRI.pdf
Wake-up call: http://www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup

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