Changing Landscapes – 10 years of images from Lake Cowal

Changing Landscapes is a photographic exhibition documenting the story of Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold miner, and their operations in the culturally and ecologically significant area of Lake Cowal. Lake Cowal is an ephemeral lake experiencing periods of flooding and drying in 20-year cycles. The Lake is not only a Nationally significant wetland but is known as the Sacred Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation.

Covering a 10 year period the exhibition explores the beauty of Lake Cowal and the stark changes on the landscape through gold mining. Exploring the natural changes through drought and the changes created by human intervention Changing Landscapes aims to inform the community and wider public about the environmental impacts of Barrick’s gold mine at Lake Cowal. The photographs tell a dramatic story of struggle and beauty in the face of the resource boom.

Tortuga Studios
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
6:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: 31 Princess Highway, opp BP garage in Sydney Park, NSW, Australia
Phone: 0415380808

Unite to stop violence against Indians

It’s pretty said that people turn their hatred and arrogance against someone who represents their fears. Fortunately, most people can figure out problems are generally systemic & not based on individuals who simply happen to be part of an ethnic group.

There’s lots of events happening in around Melbourne so we can show our support.  For instance, Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV) in partnership with ABC Music Deli is presenting a FREE concert 24 June at 7pm at the Iwaki Auditorium, featuring Indian musician Dya Singh.

Dya Singh, Indian musician and MAV artist comments:
“I believe that Arts and culture are a window into the soul of a people. Indian arts, especially music and dance are so rich and profound that anyone involved in them, even as a spectator, is spellbound. Greater exposure of such rich heritages in the mainstream would go a long way in spreading greater harmony within the diversity of Australian life. Besides cricket, Indian food and Bollywood, I hope our authorities consider it important to provide more Indian art and culture through concerts and other public events within the mainstream to heal the gaping wounds which have appeared between ‘Indian’ and ‘Australian’ people over recent ugly events of the apparent racist bashings of ‘Indians’ and their retaliations through ugly demonstrations and destruction of public property, not only here, but also in India.”

Dya Singh is an icon of the Australian music scene and has quietly gained a phenomenal ‘standing’ worldwide as a ‘world music’ artist in the last 15 or so years. Dya Singh is one of the many Indian artists that MAV supports and promotes through our mission to foster cultural diversity and respect through the promotion, enhancement and celebration of multicultural arts in Australia. His ‘world music’ and ‘Sikh spiritual’ music group has travelled to USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Kenya, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand and throughout Australia since its formation in 1994. He is now based in Melbourne.

Event:
24 June at 7pm
Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank Boulevard, Melbourne, Australia.

Note: Refugee Week in Australia is being celebrated with a series of amazing performances and unique cultural experiences around Melbourne from 16 June to 26 July 2009.

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon

June 14 – October 4, 2009

“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.” -Albert Einstein

“WoW is the most sophisticated happiness engine that exists now.” -Dr. Jane McGonigal

“Games may provide new ways for museums to have a profound impact on society if they are designed, as alternate-reality games are, to change people’s real-world behavior.” -Dr. Jane McGonigal

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon explores various forms of cultural production based on World of Warcraft in particular and on gaming in general. While surveying Warcraft’s Fifteen-year history, the exhibition looks at artistic practices that have been influenced by game culture. The actual works by the producer of World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment (headquartered in Irvine, California), provide a starting point and reference.

Fourteen international artists were selected to consider this movement with the following themes in mind: elements of desire, the collapse of fantasy, medievalism, creative critiques, and public intervention. Artists in this exhibition take on the visual marker of World of Warcraft to consider, implications of gaming, and their greater impact on our culture. In addition to the works of these artists, fan art and the growing culture of machinima (computer animation that uses the graphic engines from video games) will be explored in this exhibition.

Laguna Art Museum

More information on WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon

Also check out the /hug machinima world at http://thirdfaction.org/blog/

It’s hip to be white

Excert from The Age…

Michael Lallo accompanies Stuff White People Like author Christian Lander on a tour of Melbourne in search of our whitest suburb.

‘MELBOURNE is definitely whiter than Sydney,” says Christian Lander, before taking a sip of organic Fair Trade coffee. “In Sydney, most people seem to spend their days jogging around large bodies of water,” he adds. “Melbourne is more chilled. If I lived in Australia, I’d live here.”

We’re in North Fitzroy, huddled over a small table in a trendy cafe-slash-grocer. It’s the sort of place that sells organic vegetables, bio-dynamic meat and expensive pots of jam. On weekends, it’s overrun by couples with babies on their chests and The Age under their arms. It’s the perfect place to begin our search for Melbourne’s Whitest Spot.

More from The Age.

Makeup booths debut in stations

When a girl’s gotta go, she’s gotta go — to do her makeup, that is. Tokyo Metro has just installed a makeup booth facility at Ikebukuro and JR is going to put one in at Yokohama in June. The stations will be charging just JPY300/ hour for women to touch up their faces in private, as well as try out samples that are provided by sponsors to the stations. The booths come in a cluster, and include a mirror, vanity cabinet, hair dryer, and of course the cosmetic samples.

There Goes the Neighbourhood – Arts and City Politics

An exhibition -featuring local and international artists -about spatial politics- from Redfern with global parallels. Including the Redfern/Waterloo Tour of Beauty, a boxing game shot at Mundine’s gym, opinion polls about public sculptures, a ghost train and more!

Rabble rousing legend, Gary Foley will launch a new book and give the opening speech!

Bring It On!

There’s also a bunch of public programs and more info on the website: http://www.theregoestheneighbourhood.org/

“There Goes the Neighbourhood is an exhibition, residency, discussion and publishing project for May 2009. The central element of this project will be an exploration of the politics of urban space, with a focus on Redfern, Sydney. The project will examine the complex life of cities and how the phenomenon of gentrification is altering the relationship between democracy and demography around the world. While urban change itself is not always a bad thing, gentrification often happens at an accelerated rate, out pricing the lower income and marginalized communities from the neighbourhood and dislocating them from their existing connections to urban space. The project brings togther artists from Australia and around the world whose work addresses these issues”.

Friday, May 22, 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: Performance Space @ CarriageWorks
Street: 245 Wilson Street, REDFERN
City/Town: Sydney, Australia

Indonesian films at EngageMedia

Screening a collection of Indonesian documentaries, as uploaded to the EngageMedia.org website.

Thursday, 14 May 2009, 8pm start
Serial Space, 33 Wellingston St, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia

Bilal : This experimental film tries to question what the meaning is of being both a punk and a Muslim. Bagasworo is a punk who sing Adzan (the song Muslim people sing each time they pray five times a day). This film was shown in the Rotterdam film festival in 2008 and at “Jakarta 32 degress” held by Ruangrupa, Jakarta, 2006. [ 3 minutes 50 seconds ]

Taring Babi: Welcome to Taring Babi, an activist collective in Jakarta, Indonesia. Taring Babi is an independent community, also known as Marjinal, AFRA (Anti Fasis, Anti Rasis), and Tempe Quality. As a community, they are committed to fighting for equality and justice and often joins forces with local bands, media collectives, and workers’ organisations to build events and campaigns that are inclusive and creative. Their home base also serves as a distro where they sell tshirts, badges, pins, and albums they have made, as well as a printing studio. [ 36 minutes ]

Andang And Sarjo: This film documented Andang’s experience when he cut his long hair. He met Sarjo who has long story with his job as hair dresser/cutter. Sarjo told Andang about living in Jakarta and his roots. [ 8 minutes ]

Jogja Berhati Mural: An overview of what had been dropping on and off the walls of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. They call it mural, can also be said as paintings done on vertical walls and can sometimes extend to other forms of expression such as graffiti. The painting doesn’t stand for itself and making murals in Yogyakarta are renowned for its procession to observe and negotiate on practical needs of the locals a.k.a. owners of the walls. [ 23 mins ]

Three Thousand Melbourne

ThreeThousand is a weekly snapshot of Melbourne’s subculture – a Melbourne guide to film, music, design, books, art, goods and links for people who realise that the best things in life are often hard to find.

http://www.threethousand.com.au/

Dorothy Berry retrospective – Tweet for real

Fancy Red Bird

Arts Project Australia surveys 20 years of work by artist Dorothy Berry.

Bird on a Wire – the exhibition runs from to Saturday 6th June, with an artist talk on Saturday 2nd May (2009) from 11-11.30am.

http://www.artsproject.org.au/

24 High Street
Northcote  Victoria  3070
Telephone: 03 9482 4484
Fax: 03 9482 1852
Email: info@artsproject.org.au

Animania Festival

Australia’s largest anime and manga event, is a celebration and exploration of the spectacular world of Japanese pop culture!

The World Cosplay Summit is an annual international level Cosplay competition held in Nagoya, Japan and hosted by TV Aichi. The competition brings together contestants from all over the globe to showcase their prize-winning costumes. Some of the participating countries include Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, China and USA.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Web Site:     www.animania.net.au/2009