Black Harmony Gathering 2010, Sun 21st March, Fairfield Amphitheatre #Melbourne #mysuburb

Multicultural Arts Victoria Presents…
Black Harmony Gathering 2010
1pm – 5pm Sunday 21 March
The Fairfield Amphitheatre
Heidelberg Rd, Fairfield (Melway 30 J12), Melbourne

Held in the heart of Aboriginal land under the gum trees, on the banks of the tranquil Yarra River, at the Fairfield Amphitheatre Multicultural Arts Victoria presents the Black Harmony Gathering; a unique event with the message say no to racism! With Indigenous and multicultural communities coming together in a spirit of reconciliation for Cultural Diversity week. This year the Black Harmony Gathering will launch the first Black Harmonies CD.

Black Harmony Gathering is a showcase for premium professional and talented emerging Indigenous, African and refugee
artists It is strongly supported by Indigenous and non-indigenous artists and communities alike. The Black Harmonies CD will cross the cultural boundaries to create a cultural revolution in the Australian music scene and features artists Kutcha Edwards, Peter Rotumah, Casey Atkinson, Tjimba Possum-Burns, Selwyn Burns, Ajak Kwai, Aminata Doumbia, Michelle Belesy, Joe Geia and Diafrix.

The Black Harmony Gathering will also feature a Cultural Stage led by Indigenous artists Koori Youth Will Shake Spears, Skye Taikato and Friends, Meriki Hood, Johnny Mac and more. With friends from our multicultural music and dance scene, the African Royal Drummers, Narasirato Pan Pipers from the Solomon Islands, Shiamak Bollywood dance group and the soul pumping vibes of African band Blak Roots. MC’s Shiralee Hood and Neda.

The day will be opened with youth forum Skillz at 12pm, a traditional Welcome to Country by Aunty Joy Murphy and a smoking ceremony by Robbie Thorpe, followed by the Black Harmonies CD launch and Cultural Stage. There is a Koori BBQ of Kangaroo and Emu sausages, cultural food stalls, children’s activities, workshops and a market place of Indigenous and African wares plus more performers. People from all cultures come together for the Black Harmony Gathering a positive community celebration that is very special and important for the community well being.

Black Harmony Gathering is proudly supported by City of Yarra, Victoria Rocks, Koori Justice Unit, APRA, Victorian Multicultural
Commission, Besen Family and Triple R.

www.multiculturalarts.com.au

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The Nauru Elegies #Melbourne #DJSpooky

A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture

The Nauru Elegies is a multimedia portrait of the island of Nauru. The work explores the island in a state of economic collapse and environmental devastation. It has been realised through the collaboration of composer Paul D. Miller, best known as DJ Spooky, and architect Annie K. Kwon.

The music component of the Nauru Elegies reflects colonial and postcolonial issues facing the digital economy of the 21st century translated into a string quartet, composed by Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky, while the architectural component conceptualized by Annie K. Kwon spatializes and formalizes otherwise invisible economic flows and irreversible ecological devastation.

Venue: Blindside Gallery, Nicholas Building,
Level 7, 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Dates: 19 February – 6 March. Times: 10-5 daily

http://www.experimenta.org/

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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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Miss Cellania looks at 8 Truly Strange Christmas Customs

The holiday called Christmas is an amalgam of many winter holidays from around the world. The name is designated as a celebration of the birth of Jesus, although the date is not recorded in the Bible, and people at that time did not place particular important on birth dates. Scientists say the actual date was June 17th, 2BC because of the appearance of the star that beckoned the Magi. December 25th was set as the date for Christmas in the 4th century by Pope Julius I as an attempt to Christianize midwinter pagan holidays such as Solstice and Saturnalia. Customs such as bringing evergreens inside, eating fat-laden foods, and hanging lights are universal responses to the cold, dark winter season. Some of the stranger Christmas traditions are remnants of those older pagan holidays, and some have been changed over the centuries until their origins are hard to discern. Others were just made up to boost business!

1. Krampus

St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, or Santa Claus is the weirdest Christmas tradition ever, but he is so well known and so well documented that his origins are beyond the scope of this particular post. As a tool to encourage good behavior in children, Santa serves as the carrot, and Krampus is the stick. Krampus is the evil demon anti-Santa, or maybe his evil twin. Krampus Night is celebrated on December 5th, the eve of St. Nicholas Day in Austria and other parts of Europe. People dress as Krampus and roam the streets looking for someone to beat with a stick. Since it is also a night for drinking, the beatings probably don’t hurt much. (Image by Flickr user salendron.)

More from Miss Cellania

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Technomad, Global Raving Countercultures by Graham St John

Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures by Graham St John (Equinox, 2009)

Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures is the most wide-ranging and detailed of all the books on rave. More than the study of a musical movement or genre, Technomad offers an alternate history of cultural politics since the 1960s, from hippies and Acid Tests through the sound systems and ‘vibe-tribes’ of the 1990s and beyond. Like Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces, Technomad makes unexpected but entirely convincing connections between people, movements and events. Like Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, St John’s book introduces us to unknown heroes, committed geniuses and genuine revolutionaries. Beautifully written, with a genuinely international perspective on electronic dance music culture, Technomad is one of the best books on music I’ve read in some time.”
Professor Will Straw, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

Book description:
A cultural history of global electronic dance music countercultures, Technomad explores the pleasurable and activist trajectories of post-rave culture. The book documents an emerging network of techno-tribes, exploring their pleasure principles and cultural politics. Attending to sound system culture, electro-humanitarianism, secret sonic societies, teknivals and other gatherings, intentional parties, revitalisation movements and counter-colonial interventions, Technomad investigates how the dance party has been harnessed for transgressive and progressive ends – for manifold freedoms. Seeking freedom from moral prohibitions and standards, pleasure in rebellion, refuge from sexual and gender prejudice, exile from oppression, rupturing aesthetic boundaries, re-enchanting the world, reclaiming space, fighting for “the right to party,” and responding to a host of critical concerns, electronic dance music cultures are multivalent sites of resistance.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic, netographic and documentary research, Technomad details the post-rave trajectory through various local sites and global scenes, with each chapter attending to unique developments in the techno counterculture: e.g. Spiral Tribe, teknivals, psytrance, Burning Man, Reclaim the Streets, Earthdream. The book offers an original, nuanced theory of resistance to assist understanding of these developments. This cultural history of hitherto uncharted territory will be of interest to students of cultural, performance, music, media, and new social movement studies, along with enthusiasts of dance culture and popular politics.

Contents

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13th Japanese Film Festival, Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne

13th Japanese Film Festival will be delivering another fantastic  line-up, bringing about a rhapsody of film festivity to three Australian cities.

Canberra 18, 19, 21, 22 November 2009
Sydney 24 November-1 December
Melbourne 3-8 December

For more information go to http://13th.japanesefilmfestival.net/news.html

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The 2009 Entheogenesis Australis Mini Symposium at the University of Melbourne on Sat 14th Nov

The symposium will feature an array of interesting speakers including the notorious Bear (Owsley) Stanley: considered by many as one of the underground legends of the sixties counterculture, Bear Stanley was the best acid chemist of his generation, turning on heads from the Haight Ashbury, to the Beatles and beyond. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in the 1960s, when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple. Nowadays Stanley denies his heroic status, and spends time in Far North Queensland working on sculptures, and writing essays on various subjects. He is renowned for his contribution to sound engineering, particularly working with live gig iconoclasts, the Grateful Dead, and perfecting the idea of on-stage monitors and high quality PAs. A tireless archivist, he kept a ‘diary’ of his front-of-house mixes, including hundreds of Grateful Dead performances, and has seen the release of a number of albums from his “sonic journal” tapes of PA mixes. [www.thebear.org]

Rak Razam authour of a great new book Aya who is presenting ’Planetary Icaro: Using examples from ayahuasca culture, Razam outlines the boom in plant-based entheogenic sacraments that connect to the Divine’.
More info at http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7724544

Melbourne based Polyester will also be running a bookstore of drug related literature and DVD’s and will be offering a 10% discount for all attendees.

Location: The Basement Theatre – the Spot building – The University of Melbourne.
Building number 110 on the corner of Berkeley & Pelham Street. See a map at page two of the below link;
http://www.entheo.net/Parkville.pdf

Date: Saturday 14 November
Time: 10:30am – 6pm
MC: Martin Williams
Tickets: Available at the door, so pleases be on time.
Cost $75
Concession $50

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Why are people so unkind? Call for Submissions from Peril magazine.

Issue 8 of ‘Peril’ Call for Submissions

Issue 8 of Peril will be themed, “Why are people so unkind?”  Thanks to the Australia Council, contributors will be paid for submissions.  Deadline for material is 30 Sept 2009.

For details visit www.peril.com.au

Peril is an Asian Australian online magazine of arts and culture. It is published twice per year. Founded in 2006, it is published by Peril Magazine Inc. The Peril board includes Alice Pung, Owen Leong, Anna Mandoki, Olivia Khoo and Hoa Pham.

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Solid States Liquid Objects. Discourses of Mediation. A 1day symposium.

A one-day international symposium exploring diverse ideas of ‘mediation’ from virtual to physical agents. The symposium will bring together artists, scientists and media theorists providing insight into how information is deployed, mediated and embodied within various disciplines and fields of enquiry.

Wednesday 19 August 2009, 10 am – 4.15pm

Keynote speakers

• Stelarc – Artist (Brunel University, UK: University of Western Sydney, Aus)
• Dr Joanna Zylinska – Media Theorist/Artist (Goldsmiths, UK)
• Professor Gary Hall – Cultural and Media Theorist (Coventry University, UK)

Other confirmed speakers

• Kit Wise – Artist/Art Writer (Monash University)
• Dr Matthew Sellars – Quantum Physicist (Australian National University)
• Assoc. Professor Darren Tofts – Cultural Theorist (Swinburne University)
• Dr Melissa Miles – Art Theorist (Monash University)
• Nina Sellars – Artist (Monash University)

Venue:
Lecture Theatre G1.04, Art and Design Building, Monash University, 900 Dandenong Rd Caulfield East, Melbourne, VIC

www.ninasellars.com/symposium

Editor’s pick:
Beyond Technological Smartness: the Rise of the p-Zombie – Darren Tofts

What happens when mediated agents obtain agency and operate beyond our control? From the myth of Prometheus to the “mind children” of Hans Moravec, the idea of artificial agents has both beleaguered and fascinated the human imagination. This paper will explore a micro-history of this fascination and its potential realization in the contemporary philosophical concept of the p-zombie, the “philosophical zombie” of cognitive science, developed as an acid test for distinguishing between a human and its artificial replicant. The paper will ground this idea of agency beyond human control in terms of the most recent series of generative computer animations by the media artist Murray McKeich. The title of this series is called, appropriately, p-zombie.
Other abstracts.

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Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto the legacy of Gundam

The legacy of ‘Gundam,’ a 30-year-old science-fiction automaton
by Euan McKirdy for The Wall Street Journal

Like something out of a science-fiction movie, the robot stands 18 meters tall and towers above the tree line. But to the thousands of visitors who have come by Odaiba’s Shiokaze Park just outside Tokyo, it is a familiar sight. It’s Gundam.

Excerpt:
The statue, a “life-size” replica of the television anime (Japanese slang for animated series) character created in 1979, was erected this month and will stand in the park through August. It was built by Bandai, the parent company of Sunrise, the animation studio that created the original series, “Mobile Suit Gundam,” to celebrate the iconic cartoon’s 30th anniversary and acknowledge the $528 million franchise of spin-offs, toys and books it has spawned in that time. Some fans even say the fictional robot has played a part in Japan’s rise in the world of robotics engineering and technology.

Set 100 years in the future on extraterrestrial mining colonies (colonies established on other planets or moons for the purpose of extracting minerals) as well as on Earth, “Mobile Suit Gundam” imagines a radical future, where robots are commonplace. A renegade faction, the principality of Zeon (an extraterrestrial colony), has declared war on Earth Federation (a global government of the future) in a bid to become independent. The weapon of choice (created by Zeon but quickly replicated by Earth) is a “mobile suit,” a robot driven by a human pilot who sits inside. The RX-78 Gundam — named for the fictional alloy, Gundanium, from which it is made — is used by a young pilot in defense of Earth. more…

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