https://mona.net.au/blog/2017/04/rising-tide
By David Walsh, on Herman Nitsch's upcoming work at 2017 Dark MOFO.

"moral spasticity" and the ethics of violent art.

By Rebecca Solnit.
​
"Most of my life, I would have doubted myself and backed down. Having public standing as a writer of history helped me stand my ground, but few women get that boost, and billions of women must be out there on this six-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever. ... 

The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women–of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

After all, Women Strike for Peace was founded by women who were tired of making the coffee and doing the typing and not having any voice or decision-making role in the antinuclear movement of the 1950s. Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being. Things have certainly gotten better, but this war won’t end in my lifetime. I’m still fighting it, for myself certainly, but also for all those younger women who have something to say, in the hope that they will get to say it."
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https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/ 

http://www.artsjournal.com/jumper/2016/02/irvine-asks-is-there-an-issue-in-the-arts-field-more-urgent-than-engagement-my-answer-yes/

In her book Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf writes:

"If people are highly successful in their professions they lose their senses. Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes. They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion—the relations between one thing and another. Humanity goes."

"I want to sing the polyphony of revolution".

This blog is an honest, immediate and beautifully written response to theatre criticism, particularly in the Edinburgh Fringe context, in all its fragmented passion. I particularly like Andy Field's poem about theatre, excerpt below:

"Could theatre be a place in which ideas
Are made out of bodies
Breathing together
Moving around each other
Nonsensical scenarios
Nightmares
Fantasies
In which we think not by listening
But by doing
Together"

http://statesofdeliquescence.blogspot.co.uk/

What can’t you say? Stephen Fry, Slavoj Žižek, Elif Shafak and more say the unsayable

Writers, activists and public figures from around the world respond to NS guest editors Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s request to reveal the thoughts they leave unspoken.

You may think the cuts to the arts isn't that important but let me tell you why it is....

by Jodee Mundy
"these are contemporary rituals being made here."

Naming the Damage by Alison Croggon
Published in Overland, 12 May 2015
 'Why and how art is political....'

"... Naming is a kind of magic: it is an act that both binds and liberates. The first act of colonisation is to name. The first act of freedom is to name the oppression. This is why power keeps the magic of naming for its own use. But we must be able to name our own experiences.

We are all damaged. We live amid violence that we don’t and can’t acknowledge, amid suffering we don’t and can’t acknowledge. We can’t face this violence, and we can’t face ourselves within this violence. And so the damage doubles and doubles, inside us and outside us.

It’s not that art can solve anything, but it does permit us to name. It permits a direct connection between ourselves and others and the world, a ritual enactment of cognition and recognition, of united intellection & feeling.

The knowledge art can give is almost the exact opposite of reportage, which gives us intellection stripped of feeling."

Full article here.

By Leticia Caceres.
"One of the key struggles of the globalised twenty-first century is against the disempowerment of the individual imagination.   I believe that the challenge for the political theatre director is to stimulate and disturb the imagination of audiences in order to re-awaken critical thought. In so doing, audiences can picture what has been untold or become unimaginable, and thus, be prompted to action." Download full thesis.

By Jana Perković
"The overarching rhetorical principle in Australian English is the substitution of niceness for truth. The Australian bad play is always nice, but uncommitted to truth. The audience will not attack it later, but be nice about it, even to the point where they will themselves be unsure whether they liked it or not. And what will be lost, in this exchange, will be the possibility of real communication of something – be it emotion, desire or idea – from one to the other. It is often suggested that this inexpressiveness it a good thing, a valuable thing, because it is specific to Australia – but for every person that believes it, another five will profess not to read Australian novels, not to watch Australian films, not to believe in Australian playwrights."  Full article.

1) I can most likely rent or purchase housing in an area I can afford and would want to live in. 2) I can be pretty sure that my neighbours will be neutral or pleasant to me. 3) I can go shopping most of the time, assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 4) I can watch the television or read the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 5) When I am told about national history or heritage or about “civilisation” I am shown that people of my race made it what it is. 6) I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. 7) Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my race not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. 8) I can protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them. 9) I can swear, or dress in shabby clothes without having people attribute these choices to bad morals or primitiveness of my race. 10) I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 11) I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 12) I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of non-white people, who constitute the world’s numerical majority, without having any penalty for such oblivion. 13) I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge” s/he will be of my race. 14) If I get questioned by the police I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race. 15) I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s books featuring people of my race. 16) I can feel accepted at meetings of organisations that I belong to rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared. 17) I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers suspect that I got it because of my race. 18) I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me. 19) If my day, week, or year is going badly, I don’t need to wonder if each negative episode or situation is due to racism. 

Adapted from Mcintosh, (1990). "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Independent School: 31-36.