Journal articles on the topic 'Henry Art Gallery'

Francis Henry Dumville Smythe (1873–1966), a humble clergyman from England, spent a lifetime amassing his private collection of British watercolours. During the 1950s, he decided to gift the bulk of them to two art institutions in New Zealand – Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the National Art Gallery in Wellington. They were welcomed with open arms and celebrated as “the finest collection of water colour pictures in the Southern Hemisphere.” However, they soon fell out of favour as shifting aesthetic tastes and calls for a new national identity dominated the art scene in New Zealand during the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper will examine Smythe’s collecting habits and tastes in art, as well as the formation, gifting and reception of the collection in Wellington and Dunedin. It is based on two chapters from the author’s PhD thesis “A Matter of Taste: The Fate of the Archdeacon Smythe Collection of British Watercolours in New Zealand” (2021).

Tamara Moats was curator of education at the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery for nineteen years where she organized programs for all ages, developed the museum’s teaching methods, and wrote extensive curricula. She now teaches art history at the Bush School Upper School and the Cornish College of the Arts, and visual thinking at the University of Washington Medical School. Moats holds a BA degree in art history from the University of Puget Sound and an MA in Asian Studies from the Claremont Graduate School.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the political and intellectual circumstances which led to the efflorescence of cultural institutions between the foundation of the National Gallery in 1824 and the National Portrait Gallery in 1856: the transformation of institutions of public culture from haphazard and rather amateurish institutions to ones which were well organised, with a strong sense of social mission, and professionally managed. This transformation was in part owing to a group of exceptionally talented individuals, including Charles Eastlake, Henry Cole and George Scharf, accepting appointment in institutions to foster the public understanding of art. But it was not simply a matter of individual agency, but also of coordinated action by parliament, led by a group of MPs, including the Philosophical Radicals. It was much influenced by the example of Germany, filtered through extensive translation of German art historical writings and visits by writers and politicians to Berlin and Munich. It was also closely related to the philosophy of the utilitarians, who had a strong belief in the political and social benefits of the study of art. Only the Royal Academy refused the embrace of state control.

“I have Just come from the Gallery—my third visit,” announced a correspondent to the Boston Daily Advertiser on the second day of the Washington Allston retrospective at Harding's Gallery (Figures 1 and 2), “where I stood in the very midst… of the glowing colors and glorious subjects [of] the artist who stands alone in this his age, in this his art.” He was part of a chorus of dazzled spectators who crowded the exhibition, “filled with enthusiastic admiration” in “surveying forty-five pictures, many of which only the golden time of art could equal.” For the young Henry T. Tuckerman, who would recall it vividly in his influential Book of the Artists, the show “proved an epoch in the history of Art in the United States.” It was also the signal event of the artist's old age: a benefit exhibition that recalled the fifty-nine-year-old Allston from “a life of great seclusion” in suburban Cambridgeport, was extended from six to eleven weeks by popular demand, and fascinated some of the most critical minds in Boston.

As part of the 2014 GENERATION project celebrating the past twenty-five years of contemporary art in Scotland, Douglas Gordon’s exhibition, “Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now,” took centerstage at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. Gordon contributed to the dialogue with a unique installation showcasing his twenty-two years of artistic endeavors through 101 different-sized old television sets elevated on old plastic beer crates, simultaneously screening 82 video and film works. The screens flickered and lit the dark main gallery as the visual works played on loop—some with sound, some without, some in slow motion. The exhibition included such works as 24 Hour Psycho (1993), Between Darkness and Light (After William Blake) (1997), Play Dead; Real Time (2003), Henry Rebel (2011), Silence, Exile, Deceit: An Industrial Pantomime (2013) and emphasized how Gordon’s collection has grown since its first exhibition from 1999 in Poland and will continue to do so, as he updates the videos and films.

In the course of researching the life and work of a 19th century British artist, Henry Courtney Selous, several London museums and libraries were visited during 1993. The Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery yielded some information, but at the Guildhall Library the author’s attention was drawn to a diary held at the National Art Library which on perusal seemed undoubtedly to have been compiled by Selous. The Library has subsequently revised the diary’s catalogue entry to incorporate this attribution.

This study explores the changing interpretations of Henry Tonks' pastel drawings of disfigured soldiers from the aftermath of World War I. As the context evolved from a clinical environment to art historical, concerns developed not only regarding the reconstruction of the male body, but also the restoration of manhood after the First World War. The pre-War construction of masculinity, which turned man to machine, must also be evaluated in order to understand how Tonks’ images might reinstate the wounded men’s identities. The study examines the collective identity of British men during the First World War, focusing on those who were injured in battle. It compares Tonks’ pastels with other sources, in order to understand the changing and fragile definition of masculinity from the aftermath of war, and the reconstruction of manhood and identity of disfigured soldiers.

Geoff Hancock (Department of Natural History, Glasgow Museums and Galleries, Kelvingrove, Glasgow; formerly of Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Le Mans Crescent, Bolton BLl ISA), writes: 'To have a good run of the published organs of the Geological Society of London is an asset for any museum hut to have some of the earliest volumes which once belonged to WUliam Henry Fitton FRS (1780-1861) and possibly annotated by him adds considerable interest. Part of the set in Bolton Museum hears Fitton's bookplate (Fig.2) showing arms and crest in volumes one to five of the Journal. These are bound in exactly the same way as the twelve volumes of the Transactions (quarter hound in leather with...

In the early 1980s a group of cuneiform tablets formerly in the collection of Sir Henry Wellcome housed at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum arrived at the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. The majority of these tablets were Ur III administrative texts that were published in Birmingham Cuneiform Tablets I–II. Other tablets in the collection included Old Akkadian, Old Babylonian and Late Babylonian documents, a Shulgi plaque, clay cones, inscribed bricks, a small group of astronomical texts, and a few unidentified miscellaneous tablets and fragments. One of these unidentified fragments turned out to be a hitherto unknown exemplar of Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi Tablet I, and is the occasion of the current study.

William Sanders' major contribution to geology was as a pioneer in large-scale geological mapping, surveying the area in and around Bristol. Together with the significant contribution he made to the Bristol Institution, Sanders' 'Map of the Bristol coal fields and country adjacent geologically surveyed by William Sanders. F.R.S. F.G.S.' first published in 1862 is a remarkable achievement and legacy that further developed the understanding of the complex geology of the Bristol area. The map was made on a scale of four inches to a mile and was started with the encouragement of Henry Thomas De la Beche and John Phillips. It was constructed from Sanders' own geological surveys together with a topographical map constructed from collating many parish maps on different scales. In total his map covers 720 square miles and was paid for entirely from Sanders' own pocket (Tawney 1876). This huge task took him many years to complete, starting around 1835, finally being published in 1862 in sheet form and in 1864 as a folio atlas. Bristol Museum & Art Gallery (BRSMG) cares for several copies of his folio atlas, individual map sheets and geological material that Sanders donated. No single amateur has ever produced such a work on his own resources (Tawney 1876: p. 505).

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 64 (2016), issue 4.
 The article focuses on miniatures of an enthroned emperor. These are: the miniature showing Otto II from the Registrum Gregorii (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 14), two miniatures from the so-called Gospels of Otto III (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 4453)—one showing Otto III and the other one showing the allegories of the provinces of the empire, two miniatures (Otto II and the provinces) contained in the Gospels bound in the code also containing works by Flavius Josephus (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Class. 79) and the miniature with the figure of Otto III found in the Liuthar Gospels, also called the Aachener Evangeliars (Aachen, Domshatz). The pictures were studied by Percy Ernst Schramm, Piotr Skubiszewski, Henry Mayr-Harting, Wolfgang Christian Schneider, Ludger Körntgen, Hagen Keller and Eric Palazzo. Exaltation of the emperor has its precedents in the Carolingian art. Placing the royal space in the upper gallery of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen and the miniature showing the exalted Charles the Bald in the Count Vivian Bible witness to the Carolingian approach to the person of the ruler. The sources of the consecration of an exalted ruler over bishops and princes in miniatures should be looked for in the theological-political views of the epoch. Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims, Smaragdus, Alcuin and Thietmar of Merseburg define the ruler as one chosen and anointed by God for ruling the people. However, the exaltation of the ruler should be looked for in the liturgy of the consecration of the king that is documented in the Pontifical Romano-Germanique. The most important act of this liturgy is the anointing, unction, practiced during the consecration prayer. The image of the enthroned emperor mirrors the moment of the liturgy in which the consecrated one, after being anointed and handed the regalia, ascends the throne in the apse, led there by the metropolitans and princes. The anointing is derived from the Old Testament consecration of kings, prophets and judges. However, the consecration of a king is different from the consecration of a bishop, presbyter or deacon, so defining the anointed king as a sacerdos is unjustified. The image of the bishop consecrated and exalted on the pattern of a ruler also appears in the Ottonian art—in the Psalterium Egberti and the Codex Egberti. The analysed and interpreted pictures are put in the context of the set of Christological miniatures found in liturgical books where the mentioned miniatures appear. It follows from the above statements that the figure of the ruler as one who listens to God’s Word, and the figure of the ruler who is not a type of Christ, but should be shaped on the pattern of Christ, are the basic features of the contents of all the four miniatures.

The article is devoted to the evacuation of Crimean museum collections in October, 1941. The fate of the lost pre-war collection of the Simferopol Art Gallery, which did not have time to leave the Crimea and was destroyed by fire in Kerch port, is well known. At the same time, a temporary exhibition made up of the works of the Simferopol Gallery was evacuated from Feodosiya Art Gallery along with the masterpieces of the great marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky. Prominent museum figures Nikolay S.Barsamov and Jan P.Birzgal managed to send the exhibits to Novorossiysk, then to Krasnodar. Contrary to the plans of the Committee for the Arts to take these exhibits to Stalingrad, both Crimean galleries were sent to Yerevan. At the end of 1941, Birzgal compiled a list of 50 salvaged exhibits of the Simferopol Art Gallery. Soviet art of the 1920s–1930s is represented by the works of Igor E.Grabar, Mitrofan B.Grekov, Vladimir A.Eyfert, Peter P.Konchalovsky. The Russian landscape is represented by Vasiliy V.Baksheev, Pavel A.Radimov, Vasiliy V.Rozhdestvensky. From creative trips to Central Asia, Altai and Pamir, new works are brought by Peter I.Kotov and Peter N.Staronosov, Nikolay G.Kotov, Peter D.Pokarzhevsky, Sergei I.Pichugin. The work of Barsamov, the author of the portrait of the artist Bogaevsky (1940), is connected with Crimea. Among the rescued works are the works of Konstantin F.Bogaevsky himself, several of his industrial landscapes, and sketches for the panel Crimea (1921); Bakhchisarai landscapes by Alexander V.Kuprin, Sudak view by Alexander F.Gaush. In the postwar period, the museum workers established the affiliation of works by Ilya E.Repin, Joseph I.Oleshkevich, and Henri-Francois Riesener to the pre-war collection.

Holly Hendry is a sculptor based in London. Graduating from the Slade School of Art, University College London in 2013, Hendry was the inaugural Woon Fellow at Northumbria University, a significant prize for young and emerging artists. Hendry held a twelve-month residency at Baltic 39 in Newcastleupon-Tyne, culminating in her first solo-show at Gallery North, Hollow Bodies. Her work is concerned with the spatial, material and structural qualities of architecture and how space is experienced in historical and contemporary contexts. Currently in the first year of a two-year sculpture MA programme at the Royal College of Art, London, Hendry sat down with reviews and insight editor Ed Wainwright to discuss the intersections of art and architecture, the architecture of hollowness and the cut, and how her sculpture interrogates architecture for its silent symbolism.

The Sculpture Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest has been enriched in recent years with twenty-one marble portrait reliefs carved by Giovanni Bonazza (1654–1736) and his workshop. Fifteen reliefs were transferred within the institution and six were purchased from a private collection, but the identical creator and size, the uniform plaster framing and the themes of seventeen pieces – portraits of Italian rulers in the period of great migrations and the early Middle Ages – made it perfectly clear that they are pieces of a relief series scattered at an unknown date. The four “character heads” without caption, which deviate in theme from the series, are typical items of Venetian baroque sculpture.The search for the provenance of the reliefs led the author to the collector and art patron Miklós Jankovich (1773–1846), who possessed sixty-two marble reliefs (or sixty-four in later sources) which represented – to quote the collection inventories ‘Hunnish, Goth, Longobard kings and their successors who reigned in Italy after the Roman emperors’ from Alaric to emperor Saint Henry. Jankovich probably bought the series from the heirs of István Marczibányi after his death in 1810. In 1836 it passed into the National Museum as part of the first Jankovich collection. The inventorying of the paintings and sculptures in the Jankovich collection was interrupted by the great flood of Pest in spring 1838, and that must be the cause why the relief series was not included in the stock of the museum and its provenance got gradually forgotten. In 1924 the reliefs kept in the repository of the Collection of Antiquities as “insignificant items for the museum” not belonging to its collecting profile began to be sorted out. Thirty items were auctioned off in the Ernst Museum, twenty pieces were exchanged with László Mautner, an antiquities dealer in Budapest for an array of archaeological and historical objects. In the National Museum eleven portraits of kings and four character heads remained, delivered as “remnant” of the Historical Collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1943, from where they were transferred to the Hungarian National Gallery in 1957. The relief series from Giovanni Bonazza’s workshop once in the Jankovich collection must have been the only complete series of kings (though only known from second-hand information) which was carved after the book of engravings by the historian Emanuele Tesauro of Turin, Del regno d’Italia sotto I barbari, published in Turin in 1664. Its dispersion is an irretrievable loss.

The Sculpture Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest has been enriched in recent years with twenty-one marble portrait reliefs carved by Giovanni Bonazza (1654–1736) and his workshop. Fifteen reliefs were transferred within the institution and six were purchased from a private collection, but the identical creator and size, the uniform plaster framing and the themes of seventeen pieces – portraits of Italian rulers in the period of great migrations and the early Middle Ages – made it perfectly clear that they are pieces of a relief series scattered at an unknown date. The four “character heads” without caption, which deviate in theme from the series, are typical items of Venetian baroque sculpture.The search for the provenance of the reliefs led the author to the collector and art patron Miklós Jankovich (1773–1846), who possessed sixty-two marble reliefs (or sixty-four in later sources) which represented – to quote the collection inventories ‘Hunnish, Goth, Longobard kings and their successors who reigned in Italy after the Roman emperors’ from Alaric to emperor Saint Henry. Jankovich probably bought the series from the heirs of István Marczibányi after his death in 1810. In 1836 it passed into the National Museum as part of the first Jankovich collection. The inventorying of the paintings and sculptures in the Jankovich collection was interrupted by the great flood of Pest in spring 1838, and that must be the cause why the relief series was not included in the stock of the museum and its provenance got gradually forgotten. In 1924 the reliefs kept in the repository of the Collection of Antiquities as “insignificant items for the museum” not belonging to its collecting profile began to be sorted out. Thirty items were auctioned off in the Ernst Museum, twenty pieces were exchanged with László Mautner, an antiquities dealer in Budapest for an array of archaeological and historical objects. In the National Museum eleven portraits of kings and four character heads remained, delivered as “remnant” of the Historical Collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1943, from where they were transferred to the Hungarian National Gallery in 1957. The relief series from Giovanni Bonazza’s workshop once in the Jankovich collection must have been the only complete series of kings (though only known from second-hand information) which was carved after the book of engravings by the historian Emanuele Tesauro of Turin, Del regno d’Italia sotto I barbari, published in Turin in 1664. Its dispersion is an irretrievable loss.

Around 1604, Henri IV commissioned a cycle of mural maps depicting royal residences in Fontainebleau's newly constructed Galerie des Cerfs. The gallery was part of Henri IV's response to the dynastic disruption and civil war that had precipitated his ascendance and was designed to signal his authority over France as a unified realm. This article examines the Galerie des Cerfs in the context of contemporary cartography and architecture as an expression of continuity at a moment when the royal family's retreat to the Paris region threatened the political efficacy of the architectural network that had previously sustained the monarchy.

Play in Melbourne City outlines a series of playful incursions in Melbourne, Australia’s central city that hopes to act as a reminder of the potential power and influence that individual citizens have in disrupting, creating and recovering public space. This is a practice-based exploration that uses Melbourne city as its site. Through a series of playful guerrilla theatre style incursions, the artist creates and embodies fictional characters that spontaneously appear throughout the city. Notions of the carnivalesque are harnessed through the use of masks, costumes and puppetry. Each character investigates and responds to a specific issue of spatial politics within the city, with the works importantly sitting outside of the scheduled template of gallery exhibitions and festivals. For the conceptual framework, the artist draws on Henri Lefebvre’s ideas of the production of space and Chantal Mouffe’s ‘agonistic’ model of public space.

The aim of the research is to identify the compositional methods of using art glass in the interiors of public buildings in order to increase their aesthetic expressiveness. In the article the information on the history of art glass development is given. According to the results of the historical analysis, it is concluded that new directions of glass application arose with the development of new technologies of glass production and processing - this process continues to this day. An overview of the state of study of the problem, in particular the research of Kazakova L.V., F.Petryakova, Som-Serdyukova O.M., Daineko V.V., and identified the main areas in which research is conducted. The physical properties of glass and its types by technological features are considered. A historical overview of the development of gutnitsy on the territory of Ukraine. The two main trends in studio glassmaking to date have been identified and a conclusion has been drawn about the evolution of art glass from the subject form to the art object. The current state of art glass formation is characterized by associativity, metaphoricalness, and increased decorativeness. The classification of art glass according to the function of application in public interior is carried out. The basic compositional methods of placing art glass in the space of public interior are revealed. Three degrees of integration of art glass with elements of architecture are formulated: the decor on architectural elements, as a part of architectural elements, is directly an architectural and constructive element. Examples of objects that demonstrate the integration of art glass with architectural elements are given. Henri Matisse's stained glass windows in the Dominican Sisters' Chapel in Mans, France, are described as an example of the use of the "rhythm" compositional technique and Dale Chihuly's glass garden gallery in Seattle with a glass installation that dominates the pavilion. It is concluded that the choice of compositional methods of including art glass in the interior space depends on many factors - the functional purpose of the room, the specifics of space, its size, etc. and should take into account aspects of its psychological impact on man, principles of structural and compositional organization and features life processes.

In the last decade of the 18th century, the Danish state experienced a period of prosperity, which was characterized by a German-Danish cultural transfer in all intellectual fields. The first clouds were cast by the rise of an artistic self-confidence. Asmus Jacob Carstens from Schleswig and Ernst Meyer from Altona, who felt disadvantaged in the awarding of medals and protested vehemently, were expelled from the art academy in Copenhagen in 1781 and 1821. Nevertheless, the Copenhagen Art Academy had a strong attraction for numerous artists from northern Germany. In this respect, Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge and Georg Friedrich Kersting are primarily worthy of mention. The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was a strong link between the Germans and Scandinavians living in Rome throughout his life. The first cracks in the good bilateral relationship came with the strengthening of the national liberal movements. In 1842, the influential teacher at the Copenhagen Art Academy, N.L. Høyen, drew up a program aimed at repressing influences from abroad, especially from Germany. Not all artists heeded Høyens call for a return to national themes of history, folk life, and nature, so that two groups confronted each other in Denmark: the nationalists and the Europeans. With the German-Danish War of 1848/51 there was a rift, and with the war of 1864 the final break. Only after twenty years did the academies of Copenhagen and Berlin resume contact. From 1883 onwards, there were reciprocal visits, which led to Danish artists once again taking part in representative exhibitions in Berlin or Munich. Conversely, however, German artists were denied participation in exhibitions in Copenhagen, an exception being the International Art Exhibition on the inauguration of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen in 1897. A spirit freed from all academic constraints also emanated from the artist colonies in Europe. In particular, the works of the Skagen painters were enthusiastically celebrated at exhibitions in Munich and Berlin, which led to some German painters traveling to the Danish artists' colony, where they were received without prejudice. However, at no time was there a balance in the official acceptance and appreciation of the art of the respective neighbouring country. While painters such as Michael Ancher and Peder Severin Krøyer sold works to renowned collectors and museums in Germany, no Danish Museum acquired the work of a German artist during the period under study. The Berlin painter Walter Leistikow, who was married to a Danish woman, worked hard to stimulate a German-Danish art transfer and succeeded in getting the leading Danish gallery owner Valdemar Kleis to offer German painters the opportunity to exhibit in Copenhagen for the first time in 1894, most of whom belonged to the group Die XI, a precursor of the Berlin Secession. The appreciation of the Skagen painters was replaced at the turn of the century by admiration works by F.J. Willumsen and Vilhelm Hammershøj. Hammershøj filled a room of his own at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1900 with 14 works, and the Schulte Gallery in Berli While German admiration for Danish art peaked between 1890 and 1900, people in Denmark continued to look past the German art scene. This was also experienced by the artists' group Die Brücke, which sought foreign members soon after its founding. When Kleis presented works by the Brücke artists in Copenhagen in 1908, they too received only negative reviews. In March 1910, the time seemed ripe for a change of mood. The Berlin gallery owner Herwarth Walden strove to make his Sturm-Galerie a rallying point for the European modernist art movements. In July 1912, he rented the exhibition building of the secessionist group Den Frie in Copenhagen and held an exhibition of Italian Futurists there. When Walden was celebrated by the Danish press as a cosmopolitan who had brought modernism to Copenhagen, he showed works by the French Henri le Fauconier and Raoul Dufy, as well as the painters Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriele Münter, but the tenor of the press was again dominated by anti-German resentment. After the outbreak of World War I, Walden allowed himself to be abused by the German propaganda department of the German Secret and Intelligence Service, which strove to correct the image of Germans abroad as cultural barbarians. Walden showed works by Kandinsky, Klee, Kokoschka, Marc, and again Gabriele Münter at the Copenhagen artists’ cabaret Edderkoppen in the fall of 1917. He also planned an exhibition of Danish avant-garde in his Sturm Gallery in Berlin, but the artists had become suspicious in the face of German propaganda, which was celebrating a last military success. The exhibition was canceled. This did not prevent Walden from organizing an exhibition at Kleis’ art shop in Copenhagen shortly before the end of the war, under the guise of internationalism. This was Walden's largest and most ambitious project in Scandinavia. Of the 133 works exhibited, almost half came from Germany. The attempt to convince the Danes of the excellence of German art failed miserably, because the basic conviction was still: Everything that comes from Germany is bad. The opening took place on November 28 and ended on December 16, 1918, by which time the war was already over.

The article briefly covers the pages of the history of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris, France), which was established in 1793, inheriting the material base and collections of one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world—the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants. Contribution to the development of the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants was made by its leaders and employees: Guy de La Brosse, Guy Crescent Fagon, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Pierre Chirac, the family of French botanists de Jussieu, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. After its foundation, the museum was managed, among others, by Louis Jean-Marie D’Aubenton, Bernard Germain Étienne de Laville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, George-Léopold-Chrétien-Frédéric-Dagobert Cuvier, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Adolphe Théodore Brongniart, André Marie Constant Duméril, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Alphonse Milne-Edwards, Jean Octave Edmond Perrier, Achille Joseph Urbain, Maurice Alfred Fontaine, and Jean Dorst. The heyday of the scientific activity of the Museum was during the long years of leadership of Michel Eugène Chevrel. Table medals of France and the USA, researched and described by the authors of the article, were created to honour these famous scientists. Attention is also drawn to modern tourist medals (tokens) dedicated to the Museum’s facilities: the Garden of the Plants, the Great Evolution Gallery, the Palaeontological Museum (Galleries of Comparative Anatomy and Palaeontology), the Botanical Garden Zoo, and the Vincennes Zoo. The results of the analysis of the medals made it possible to display in a new plane the most vivid pages of the history of the Museum, the function of which is teaching, research, and dissemination of natural science knowledge, its modernity, biographies of outstanding personalities who worked in it. Most of the medals were first introduced into scientific biological circulation. The obtained information once again confirmed the possibility of using objects that are studied by special historical disciplines (in this case, the section of numismatics, medal art) for the study of the history of science.

Having studied history of art on clandestine Warsaw University courses run in 1943–1944, Irena Jakimowicz (1922–1999) graduated in 1951. In 1945–1991, she worked at the National Museum in Warsaw, initially in the Educational Department, from 1953 in the Polish Graphic Arts Department, out of which in 1958 she selected works executed after 1914, turning them into the Department of Graphic Arts and Contemporary Drawings which she headed as curator. Until early 1982, the Department formed part of the Gallery of Contemporary Art, yet it subsequently gained autonomy as the Cabinet of Graphic Arts and Contemporary Drawings curated by Irena Jakimowicz. Jakimowicz mounted some dozens exhibitions, mainly monographic ones of Polish contemporary artists, e.g. Bronisław Wojciech Linke (1963), Zygmunt Waliszewski (1964), Feliks Topolski (1965), Wacław Wąsowicz (1969), Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1971), Konstanty Brandel (1977), Henryk Gotlib (1980), Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1989/1990). All the exhibitions were accompanied by reasoned catalgoues. Furthermore, Jakimowicz authored several cross-sectional, such as ‘Within the Circle of the Rembrandt Tradition’ (1956), ‘From Young Poland to Today’ (1959), ‘Polish Contemporary Graphic Arts 1900–1960’ (1960), ‘The Formists’ (1985), ‘Five Centuries of Polish Prints’ (1997). In 1970, she defended her doctoral dissertation dedicated to the collector Tomasz Zieliński. Moreover, she authored many papers, reviews, and books, e.g. Witkacy – Chwistek – Strzemiński (1976), Witkacy Malarz [Witkacy the Painter] (1985), Jerzy Mierzejewski (1996). She was a wonderful Boss: demanding, but strict with herself, too. Attentive to her employees’ development, she could appreciate and use their abilities to their own benefit and to the benefit of their institution. Those who had the privilege and pleasure of cooperating with her, recall her with admiration saying what a likeable person she was.

Book reviews Dulce Freire and Pedro Lains (Eds.). An Agrarian History of Portugal, 1000-2000: Economic Development on the European Frontier. Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2017, 347 pp. Benedita Câmara Annie Antoine (Ed.). Agricultural Specialisation and Rural Patterns of Development. Turnhout, Brepols, 2016, 303 pp. Piet van Cruyningen Guido Alfani and Cormac Ó Gráda (Eds.). Famine in European History. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017, 325 pp. Xavier Cussó Segura Marc Badia-Miró, Vicente Pinilla and Henry Willebald (Eds.). Natural Resources and Economic Growth: Learning from History. Abingdon/New York, Routledge, 2015, 374 pp. Sara Torregrosa Hetland Niccolò Mignemi. Coopératives et mondes agricoles: France et Italie (1880-1950). Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017, 337 pp. Miguel Cabo Domingo Gallego, Luis Germán y Vicente Pinilla (Eds.). Estudios sobre el desarrollo económico español. Dedicados al profesor Eloy Fernández Clemente. Zaragoza, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2016, 408 pp. Santiago M. López-García Ricard Garcia Orallo. La terra a subhasta. Crisi, endeutament i despossessió al món rural català de finals del segle xix. Barcelona, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2015, 644 pp. Samuel Garrido Lluís Serrano Jiménez. Tancar la terra: Pràctiques de propietat i dinàmiques socials (Catalunya, 1850-1910). Girona, Documenta Universitaria/Associació d’Història Rural de les Comarques Gironines, 2016, 324 pp. Antonio Miguel Linares Luján Jordi Planas Maresma. Francesc Torras Sayol (1868-1936): Un propietari conservador al capdavant de l’acció cooperativa. Barcelona/Valls, Fundació Roca i Galès/Cossetània Edicions, 2016, 102 pp. Josep M. Pons-Altés Josep Joan Mateu González. Enginyers i regants: El Canal d’Aragó i Catalunya (1896-1940). Lleida, Universitat de Lleida/Patronat Josep Lladonosa, 2017, 256 pp. Carles Sanchis Ibor Gladys Karina Sánchez Juárez. Los pequeños cafeticultores de Chiapas: Organización y resistencia frente al mercado. Tuxtla Gutiérrez, CESMECA-UNICACH, 2015, 225 pp. Albert Folch David Sowell. Medicine on the Periphery: Public Health in Yucatán, Mexico, 1870-1960. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2015, 205 pp. Mikel Astrain Pablo Alonso González. El Antipatrimonio: Fetichismo y dominación en Maragatería. Madrid, Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2017, 326 pp. Guadalupe Jiménez Esquinas Marcel Mazoyer y Laurence Roudart. Historia de las agriculturas del mundo: Del Neolítico a la crisis contemporánea . Oviedo, KRK, 2016, 1.073 pp. Cristóbal Gómez Benito

James’s essays on art and exhibitions written between the 1870s and the end of the century illustrate his attention to the composition of the art exhibition within the space of the gallery or museum. James’s perception of art exhibit design and effect inform his representation of Mrs Gareth’s art collection and its setting in The Spoils of Poynton (1897). As James looked to art and the art exhibit for models to represent ‘the workings of the novel’, The Spoils of Poynton suggests the impossibility of artistic ‘completeness’ within the realistic aesthetic.

James’s essays on art and exhibitions written between the 1870s and the end of the century illustrate his attention to the composition of the art exhibition within the space of the gallery or museum. James’s perception of art exhibit design and effect inform his representation of Mrs Gareth’s art collection and its setting in The Spoils of Poynton (1897). As James looked to art and the art exhibit for models to represent ‘the workings of the novel’, The Spoils of Poynton suggests the impossibility of artistic ‘completeness’ within the realistic aesthetic.

There is no doubt that Dick Synge was a very exceptional person. According to his family, this first showed itself in the memory of an event, which occurred when he was only fifteen months old, when he was allowed to play with the gravel outside the church during the christening of his sister. The Synge family consisted of two branches, one of which, the Irish Synges, contained the famous playwright, J.M. Synge. They trace their ancestry back to a Thomas Millington also called Singe of Bridgenorth (born ca . 1500). The English Synges were also certainly present in Bridgenorth in the early 16th century. The Irish and the English Synges are known to have been in touch with one another in the 18th century. The English Synges remained as fairly prominent citizens of Bridgenorth until the late 19th century. Both branches of the family used the name Millington as a Christian name. For unknown reasons the spelling of his surname, Sing or Synge, varied. Family legend has it that the origin of the name Millington, which was used by both branches of the family as a Christian name, was that they had lived at Millington Hall in the parish of Rostherne (Cheshire). Because a member of the family sang so beautifully before King Henry VIII he was told to take the name of Singe. One of Dick Synge’s great uncles, born in 1863 and always known as ‘Uncle Millington’, became Warden of St Edwards School, Oxford. Among Synge’s recent ancestors was his grandmother who was a Thornely. All the Thornelys were mildly academic and quietly eccentric or unconventional in one way or another, so that Synge is thought to have inherited much from them, even including his height. Two generations further back was William Roscoe, M.R, who helped to abolish slavery and whose art collection still forms the nucleus of the Walker Art Gallery; he also founded the Liverpool Botanic Gardens. Synge came from a distinguished family which included his grandfather, A.M. Sing, who was President of the Liverpool Athenaeum and a Governor of the Liverpool Collegiate School.

At the start of the twentieth century, many young Australian artists travelled abroad to expand their art education and to gain exposure to the modern art movements of Europe. Most of these artists were active members of artist associations such as the Victorian Artists Society or the New South Wales Society of Artists. Male artists from Victoria were generally also members of the Melbourne Savage Club, a club with a strong association with the arts.This paper investigates the dual function of the club, as a space where the artists felt “at home” in the familiar environment that the club offered whilst they were abroad and, at the same time, a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London would have a significant impact on male Australian artists, as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world, which enhanced their experience whilst abroad.Artists were seldom members of Australia’s early gentlemen’s clubs, however, in the late nineteenth century Melbourne, artists formed less formal social groupings with exotic names such as the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, the Buonarotti Club, and the Ishmael Club (Mead). Melbourne artists congregated in these clubs until the Melbourne Savage Club, modelled on the London Savage Club (1857)—a club whose membership was restricted to practitioners in the performing and visual arts—opened its doors in 1894.The Melbourne Savage Club had its origins in the Metropolitan Music Club, established in the late 1880s by a group of professional and amateur musicians and music lovers. The club initially admitted musicians and people from the dramatic professions free-of-charge, however, author Randolph Bedford (1868–1941) and artist Alf Vincent (1874–1915) were not content to be treated on a different basis to the musicians and actors, and two months after Vincent joined the club, at a Special General Meeting, the club resolved to vary Rule 6, “to admit landscape or portrait painters and sculptors without entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club). At another Special General Meeting, a year later, the rule was altered to admit “recognised members of the musical, dramatic and artistic professions and sculptors without payment of entrance fee” (Melbourne Savage Club).This resulted in an immediate influx of prominent Victorian male artists (Williams) and the Melbourne Savage Club became their place of choice to gather and enjoy the fellowship the club offered and to share ideas in a convivial atmosphere. When the opportunity arose for them to travel to London in the early twentieth century, they met in London’s famous art clubs. Membership of the Melbourne Savage Club not only conferred rights to visit reciprocal clubs whilst in London, but also facilitated introductions to potential patrons. The London clubs were the venue of choice for visiting artists to meet their fellow artist expatriates and to share experiences and, importantly, to meet with their British counterparts, exhibit their works, and establish valuable contacts.The London Savage Club attracted many Australian expatriates. Not only is it the grandfather of London’s bohemian clubs but also it was the model for arts clubs the world over. Founded in 1857, the qualification for admission was (and still is) to be, “a working man in literature or art, and a good fellow” (Halliday vii). If a candidate met these requirements, he would be cordially received “come whence he may.” This was embodied in the club’s first rules which required applicants for membership to be from a restricted range of pursuits relating to the arts thought to be commensurate with its bohemian ideals, namely art, literature, drama, or music.The second London arts club that attracted expatriate Australian artists was the New English Arts Club, founded in 1886 by young English artists returning from studying art in Paris. Members of The New English Arts Club were influenced by the Impressionist style as opposed to the academic art shown at the Royal Academy. As a meeting place for Australia’s expatriate artists, the New English Arts Club had a particular influence, as it exposed them to significant early Modern artist members such as John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Walter Sickert (1860–1942), William Orpen (1878–1931) and Augustus John (1878–1961) (Corbett and Perry; Thornton; Melbourne Savage Club).The third, and arguably the most popular with the expatriate Australian artists’ club, was the Chelsea Arts Club, a bohemian club formed in 1891 by local working artists looking for a place to go to “meet, talk, eat and drink” (Cross).Apart from the American-born founding member, James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), amongst the biggest Chelsea names at the time of the influx of travelling young Australian artists were modernists Sir William Orpen, Augustus John, and John Sargent. The opportunity to mix with these leading British contemporary artists was irresistible to these antipodean artists (55).When Melbourne artist, Miles Evergood (1871–1939) arrived in London from America in 1910, he had been an active exhibiting member of the Salmagundi Club, a New York artists’ club. Almost immediately he joined the New English Arts Club and the Chelsea Arts Club. Hammer tells of him associating with “writer Israel Zangwill, sculptor Jacob Epstein, and anti-academic artists including Walter Sickert, Augustus John, John Lavery, John Singer Sargent and C.R.W. Nevison, who challenged art values in Britain at the beginning of the century” (Hammer 41).Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) used the Chelsea Arts Club as his postal address, as did many expatriate artists. The Melbourne Savage Club archives contain letters and greetings, with news from abroad, written from artist members back to their “Brother Savages” (Various).In late 1902, Streeton wrote to fellow artist and Savage Club member Tom Roberts (1856–1931) from London:I belong to the Chelsea Arts Club now, & meet the artists – MacKennel says it’s about the most artistic club (speaking in the real sense) in England. … They all seem to be here – McKennal, Longstaff, Mahony, Fullwood, Norman, Minns, Fox, Plataganet Tudor St. George Tucker, Quinn, Coates, Bunny, Alston, K, Sonny Pole, other minor lights and your old friend and admirer Smike – within 100 yards of here – there must be 30 different studios. (Streeton 94)Whilst some of the artists whom Streeton mentioned were studying at either the Royal Academy or the Slade School, it was the clubs like the Chelsea Arts Club where they were most likely to encounter fellow Australian artists. Tom Roberts was obviously attentive to Streeton’s enthusiastic account and, when he returned to London the following year to work on his commission for The Big Picture of the 1901 opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament, he soon joined. Roberts, through his expansive personality, became particularly active in London’s Australian expatriate artistic community and later became Vice-President of the Chelsea Arts Club. Along with Streeton and Roberts, other visiting Melbourne Savage Club artists joined the Chelsea Arts Club. They included, John Longstaff (1861–1941), James Quinn (1869–1951), George Coates (1869–1930), and Will Dyson (1880–1938), along with Sydney artists Henry Fullwood (1863–1930), George Lambert (1873–1930), and Will Ashton (1881–1963) (Croll 95). Smith describes the exodus to London and Paris: “It was the Chelsea Arts Club that the Heidelberg School established its last and least distinguished camp” (Smith, Smith and Heathcote 152).Streeton, who retained his Chelsea Arts Club membership when he returned for a while to Australia, wrote to Roberts in 1907, “I miss Chelsea & the Club-boys” (Streeton 107). In relation to Frederick McCubbin’s pending visit he wrote: “Prof McCubbin left here a week ago by German ‘Prinz Heinrich.’ … You’ll introduce him at the Chelsea Club and I hope they make him an Hon. Member, etc” (Streeton et al. 85). McCubbin wrote, after an evening at the Chelsea Arts Club, following a visit to the Royal Academy: “Tonight, I am dining with Australian artists in Soho, and shall be there to greet my old friends. How glad I am! Longstaff will be there, and Frank Stuart, Roberts, Fullwood, Pontin, Coates, Quinn, and Tucker’s brother, and many others from all around” (MacDonald, McCubbin and McCubbin 75). Impressed by the work of Turner he wrote to his wife Annie, following avisit to the Tate Gallery:I went yesterday with Fullwood and G. Coates and Tom Roberts for a ramble … to the Tate Gallery – a beautiful freestone building facing the river through a portico into the gallery where the lately found turners are exhibited – these are not like the greater number of pictures in the National Gallery – they represent his different periods, but are mostly in his latest style, when he had realised the quality of light (McCubbin).Clearly Turner’s paintings had a profound impression on him. In the same letter he wrote:they are mostly unfinished but they are divine – such dreams of colour – a dozen of them are like pearls … mist and cloud and sea and land, drenched in light … They glow with tender brilliancy that radiates from these canvases – how he loved the dazzling brilliancy of morning or evening – these gems with their opal colour – you feel how he gloried in these tender visions of light and air. He worked from darkness into light.The Chelsea Arts Club also served as a venue for artists to entertain and host distinguished visitors from home. These guests included; Melbourne Savage Club artist member Alf Vincent (Joske 112), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Trustee and popular patron of the arts, Professor Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), Professor Frederick S. Delmer (1864–1931) and conductor George Marshall-Hall (1862–1915) (Mulvaney and Calaby 329; Streeton 111).Artist Miles Evergood arrived in London in 1910, and visited the Chelsea Arts Club. He mentions expatriate Australian artists gathering at the Club, including Will Dyson, Fred Leist (1873–1945), David Davies (1864–1939), Will Ashton (1881–1963), and Henry Fullwood (Hammer 41).Most of the Melbourne Savage Club artist members were active in the London Savage Club. On one occasion, in November 1908, Roberts, with fellow artist MacKennal in the Chair, attended the Australian Artists’ Dinner held there. This event attracted twenty-five expatriate Australian artists, all residing in London at the time (McQueen 532).These London arts clubs had a significant influence on the expatriate Australian artists for they became the “glue” that held them together whilst abroad. Although some artists travelled abroad specifically to take up places at the Royal Academy School or the Slade School, only a minority of artists arriving in London from Australia and other British colonies were offered positions at these prestigious schools. Many artists travelled to “try their luck.” The arts clubs of London, whilst similarly discerning in their membership criteria, generally offered a visiting “brother-of-the-brush” a warm welcome as a professional courtesy. They featured the familiar rollicking all-male “Smoke Nights” a feature of the Melbourne Savage Club. With a greater “artist” membership than the clubs in Australia, expatriate artists were not only able to catch up with their friends from Australia, but also they could associate with England’s finest and most progressive artists in a familiar congenial environment. The clubs were a “home away from home” and described by Underhill as, “an artistic Earl’s Court” (Underhill 99). Most importantly, the clubs were a centre for discourse, arguably even more so than were the teaching academies. Britain’s leading modernist artists were members of the Chelsea Arts Club and the New English Arts Club and mixed freely with the visiting Australian artists.Many Australian artists, such as Miles Evergood and George Bell (1878–1966), held anti-academic views similar to English club members and embraced the new artistic trends, which they would bring back to Australia. Streeton had no illusions about the relative worth of the famed institutions and the exhibitions held by clubs such as the New English. Writing to Roberts before he joins him in London, he describes the Royal Academy as having, “an inartistic atmosphere” and claims he “hasn’t the least desire to go again” (Streeton 77). His preference lay with a concurrent “International Exhibition”, which featured works by Rodin, Whistler, Condor, Degas, and others who were setting the pace rather than merely continuing the academic traditions.Architect Hardy Wilson (1881–1955) served as secretary of The Chelsea Arts Club. When he returned to Australia he brought back with him a number of British works by Streeton and Lambert for an exhibition at the Guild Hall Melbourne (Underhill 92). Artists and Bohemians, a history of the Chelsea Arts Club, makes special reference of its world-wide contacts and singles out many of its prominent Australian members for specific mention including; Sir John William (Will) Ashton OBE, later Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Will Dyson, whose illustrious career as an Australian war artist was described in some detail. Dyson’s popularity led to his later appointment as Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club where he initiated an ambitious rebuilding program, improving staff accommodation, refurbishing the members’ areas, and adding five bedrooms for visiting members (Bross 87-90).Whilst the influence of travel abroad on Australian artists has been noted, the importance of the London Clubs has not been fully explored. These clubs offered artists a space where they felt “at home” and a familiar environment whilst they were abroad. The clubs functioned as a meeting space where they could engage in a stimulating artistic environment and gain introductions to leading figures in the art world. For those artists who chose England, London’s arts clubs played a large role, for it was in these establishments that they discussed, exhibited, shared, and met with their English counterparts. The club environment in London had a significant impact on male Australian artists as it offered a space where they were integrated into the English art world which enhanced their experience whilst abroad and influenced the direction of their art.ReferencesCorbett, David Peters, and Lara Perry, eds. English Art, 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.Croll, Robert Henderson. Tom Roberts: Father of Australian Landscape Painting. Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1935.Cross, Tom. Artists and Bohemians: 100 Years with the Chelsea Arts Club. 1992. 1st ed. London: Quiller Press, 1992.Gray, Anne, and National Gallery of Australia. McCubbin: Last Impressions 1907–17. 1st ed. Parkes, A.C.T.: National Gallery of Australia, 2009.Halliday, Andrew, ed. The Savage Papers. 1867. 1st ed. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1867.Hammer, Gael. Miles Evergood: No End of Passion. Willoughby, NSW: Phillip Mathews, 2013.Joske, Prue. Debonair Jack: A Biography of Sir John Longstaff. 1st ed. Melbourne: Claremont Publishing, 1994.MacDonald, James S., Frederick McCubbin, and Alexander McCubbin. The Art of F. McCubbin. Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing, 1916.McCaughy, Patrick. Strange Country: Why Australian Painting Matters. Ed. Paige Amor. The Miegunyah Press, 2014.McCubbin, Frederick. Papers, Ca. 1900–Ca. 1915. Melbourne.McQueen, Humphrey. Tom Roberts. Sydney: Macmillan, 1996.Mead, Stephen. "Bohemia in Melbourne: An Investigation of the Writer Marcus Clarke and Four Artistic Clubs during the Late 1860s – 1901.” PhD thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 2009.Melbourne Savage Club. Secretary. Minute Book: Melbourne Savage Club. Club Minutes (General Committee). Melbourne: Savage Archives.Mulvaney, Derek John, and J.H. Calaby. So Much That Is New: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929, a Biography. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1985.Smith, Bernard, Terry Smith, and Christopher Heathcote. Australian Painting, 1788–2000. 4th ed. South Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 2001.Streeton, Arthur, et al. Smike to Bulldog: Letters from Sir Arthur Streeton to Tom Roberts. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1946.Streeton, Arthur, ed. Letters from Smike: The Letters of Arthur Streeton, 1890–1943. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989.Thornton, Alfred, and New English Art Club. Fifty Years of the New English Art Club, 1886–1935. London: New English Art Club, Curwen Press 1935.Underhill, Nancy D.H. Making Australian Art 1916–49: Sydney Ure Smith Patron and Publisher. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991.Various. Melbourne Savage Club Correspondence Book: 1902–1916. Melbourne: Melbourne Savage Club.Williams, Graeme Henry. "A Socio-Cultural Reading: The Melbourne Savage Club through Its Collections." Masters of Arts thesis. Melbourne: Deakin University, 2013.

In March 2020, co-authors burrough and Starnaman with Technical Director Dale MacDonald had just finished collaborating on a work of computational art, A Kitchen of One’s Own, for The Photographers’ Gallery in London. In this essay we discuss the genealogy of our Zoom performance, Epic Handwashing for Synchronous Participation, which was an extension of two earlier projects—one that was derailed due to COVID-19, and the other that resulted from our pivot towards reflecting on the pandemic experience. Our performance was a response to, and offered a collaborative moment of reflection on, the uncertain moment in time of living in a global pandemic and understanding our experience through participatory art. A Kitchen of One’s Own was commissioned for “Data/Set/Match”—a year-long program dedicated to analysing, interpreting, and visualising image datasets (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald). The image dataset we interpreted is Epic Kitchens’ 2018 collection. Epic Kitchens is a dataset of videos collected by a group of researchers whose participants create non-scripted recordings of daily activities in kitchens. It is the largest known dataset produced using first-person vision. Researchers assign each recorded action with a verb like “wash”, “peel”, “toast”, or “rub” to describe and categorise the event. Our project juxtaposed the videos from Epic Kitchens with quotes from a dataset created by Starnaman with research assistant Alyssa Yates. This work was scheduled for installation on the approximately nine by nine-foot media wall, viewable to the public inside the gallery and to passersby on the street in London’s SoHo neighborhood. However, the work was not sent until May because of the COVID-19 lockdowns in London and Dallas. Thus, feeling trapped and frustrated in our respective homes, totally separated by quarantine, but close in distance, we responded to our historical moment with art. Figure 1: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman with technical direction by Dale MacDonald, A Kitchen of One’s Own, single frame on the media wall seen from Ramilles Street. The Photographers’ Gallery, London, October 2020. A Kitchen of One’s Own explored personal and domestic kitchen spaces as mundane, politically-charged, and inspirational (fig. 1). The familiar, comforting space of the home kitchen became charged with domestic tropes of the pandemic: hand washing, sanitising, and cooking. We explained, A Kitchen of One’s Own is a speculative remix that confronts Epic Kitchens, a dataset of first-person cooking videos, with quotes from articles and social media posts on sexual harassment in professional and domestic kitchens, podcasts about the kitchen as a political space, and reflective texts by women authors about food and cooking. (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Kitchen”) Taking inspiration from our Kitchen project, we pivoted for audiences online with a browser-based project, Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. This project (fig. 2) showcases 68 videos found in Epic Kitchens’ 2018 dataset that had been tagged by researchers with the keywords “wash” or “hand”, which burrough and MacDonald optimised for the web browser and republished in a showcase on Vimeo (burrough, Starnaman, and MacDonald, “Epic”). Starnaman and burrough developed a new dataset of complementary quotes for this iteration including selections from literature written during or about pandemics such as the bubonic plague and the global influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Figure 2: Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives. Browser-based project for The Photographers’ Gallery and Unthinking Photography. March 2020 (https://unthinking.photography/projects/epichandwashing/). We developed Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation (fig. 3) as a Zoom performance of our browser-based project for a virtual engagement session at the Electronic Literature Organization’s (ELO) conference in the summer of 2020 (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic”). In this article, we illustrate these projects as a series of interrelated investigations, and centre on the Zoom performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. We then reflect on the way these works engage a range of public audiences and participants. Figure 3: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. Virtual engagement session and participatory performance hosted on Zoom for the ELO conference. This still frame shows a final group performance of hand washing at 21:56 (the complete session was 27:32). July 2020. Blurring Boundaries: Audiences, Participants, Maintenance, and Labour Our past projects demonstrate our commitment to participatory creative practices in which the boundary between audience members, performers, and participants is blurred in the generation of the work of art. Our earliest collaboration, The Laboring Self, was an installation of cardboard cut to the shape of virtual workers’ hands. We collected tracings of hands from workers on Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk work platform and laser-cut them from recycled Amazon boxes. In the gallery we invited participants to inscribe or embroider the hands with statements about work before adding them to The Laboring Self installation. Audience members shared their stories, sentiments, anxieties, and hopes about the labour they perform in their everyday lives on hands that crowded a wall space during the span of the exhibition (fig. 4). This work was inspired by Mierle Laderman Ukeles's 1970s feminist performances in maintenance art, which elevated care-taking and everyday “maintenance” activities to the platform of fine art. In Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, Ukeles confronts the boundary between her everyday performance as a mother, woman, and artist. In particular, with regard to maintenance, Ukeles proposes to “simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art” (qtd. in Burnham). So too, we exhibited the hands of hidden workers to bring visibility to the invisible and asked audience members to become participants by putting on view their own reflections on the various forms of labour they embody. Figure 4: xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman, The Laboring Self, installation view approximately 8 by 10 feet. The Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. October 2017-January 2018. For our more recent Zoom-based performance, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation, we again focus on the hands of our audience members-turned participatory performers. As Ukeles used her hands to wash the steps of an urban museum, turning often invisible labour visible through performance, we sought to make the private act of hand washing—an act of personal protection and civic duty—a public performance in the digital town square. The individual hand, which has been central to our work in the past, synecdochally represents the worker, or in this case the person-turned-public-health-citizen. In a world of ubiquitous Zoom calls, the focus is almost always on our faces, our bodies cut off around the shoulders or mid-torso. Hands are but a fleeting on-screen guest. Yet, for this performance, our hands were at the centre of the screen, standing in for our physical effort and existential fear. Directions for Participants Before our performance, we shared this set of directions with participants: Prepare to wash your hands on Zoom in real time by setting up a camera to live stream or recruit a person to film you near your sink. Log into the Zoom link provided. Wash your hands on camera for 20 seconds while we read along with your performance. Notes from the Live Event On 18 July 2020, about 24 people participated in our event as solo participants, as couples, and as families on one Zoom call. The invitation to this project included the instruction to be camera-ready for hand washing at any household sink, so our participatory public entered the call from their kitchens and bathrooms. Before our formal introduction, a couple of tech-savvy kids drew on the Zoom screen (fig. 5), initiating a spirit of playfulness that the adults on the call stepped right into. While we had anticipated this event would elicit a sense of communal action, we were not prepared for just how community- and play-starved we all were. Figure 5: Opening Title Slide, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation. ELO Virtual Engagement Session. 18 July 2020. We set the stage for the performance by introducing Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives, our spring 2020 browser-based project, and gave participants a moment to click through it and to read the texts we had culled for our database of “pandemic quotes” (burrough and Starnaman, “Epic Hand Washing Text Dataset”). Then we explained that our facilitator and Zoom host, John Murray, would be calling on the participants one at a time to wash their hands, while we took turns reading quotes from our archive. The first participant quietly washed their hands, and the pairing of our first quote created a serious tone: “so, at the bidding of the queen, they washed their hands, and all took their places…” (Boccaccio 26). However, the rhythm of the call and response, and the joy of witnessing each other in our various households across the globe, lightened the experience. We, along with participants, reveled in the intimate hygienic dance of hand washing at kitchen sinks and bathroom vanities; one after another we shifted our presence to another person’s living quarters and joined them at the sink. This was a truly mixed, global group. Scholars and artists for whom ELO is a disciplinary home rubbed virtual shoulders with our friends and their own friends who would not have attended ELO otherwise. This event replicated the same kind of shared experience across time and space that the archive of pandemic and hand washing texts elicited. These texts bring humanity together through the calamity of plague and disease, allowing for a sense of larger community, and that is exactly what we saw on the screen: human experience mediated by the screen in conversation with writers across time and connected by the word. Moreover, this event took place in July 2020, a time of “early pandemic”, a time when the complete unknown of the epidemic had given way to the acceptance of quarantining, but before the exhaustion and cynicism of The Long Confinement and Zoom fatigue had fully set in. Thus, we saw an enthusiasm to connect and play with the medium in a way that might have been impossible eight months later. Synchronous Participation as a Performance While the complete performance is archived on the ELO website, we have excerpted a clip from the performance for analysis (burrough and Starnaman, “Excerpt”). It is a 2:15 clip from the middle of the performance, during which we took turns reading quotes from our database while participants washed their hands on camera, one at a time. We showcase this selection of the performance to highlight the repetition embedded in the script. Our directions for participants and our moderator, John Murray, became repetitive mantras throughout the performance, while the reading of the quotes gave participants space to wash their hands. We read four quotes for each participant, which we measured to leave approximately thirty seconds of time for hand washing. We wanted participants to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds, following the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines, and we predicted that there would be moments when we would begin reading but participants would not yet be washing their hands. Since their performances were out of our control, we decided to read for slightly more than twenty seconds for each participant. From 0 to 22 seconds, Sabrina and our moderator, John Murray, enact the transitional directions between participants. At the start of the clip, Sabrina thanks the participants who have just finished washing their hands—our friends’ twin children, Cora and Henry, who fill the screen in Zoom’s Spotlight mode until eight seconds. The twins are at a double-vanity, washing their hands in coordinated outfits, and moving towards separate towels at the left and right sides of the screen at six seconds. At eight seconds Sabrina is spotlighted. She directs our moderator with the same “set-up phrase” that we repeat throughout the performance: “please mute everyone but us and the next selected hand washer, and don’t forget to change the spotlight to them. When you’re ready, announce who will begin washing their hands.” From 12 to 22 seconds participants are visible in Gallery View while John announces that Tina Escaga will wash their hands next (fig. 6). From 0:22 to 1:07 Tina appears in Spotlight mode. The screen is filled with Tina in the bathroom washing their hands with a white bar of soap. The next set of four quotes are read by xtine, as we watch Tina perform hand washing: "Can we not contrive that he somehow wash himself a little, that he stink not so shrewdly?” (Boccaccio 149). “We are now close to a well, which is never without the pulley and a large bucket; ’tis but a step thither, and we will wash him out of hand” (Boccaccio 149). “Among the drawbacks of illness as matter for literature there is the poverty of the language” (Woolf 33). “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache” (Woolf 34). Figure 6: Tina washes their hands at the sink with a white bar of soap. From 1:01 to 1:29 xtine thanks Tina, repeats the set-up phrase to John, and John announces that Renee Carmichael is the next performer. The spotlight shifts from Tina to xtine to Gallery View to Renee. From 1:29 to 2:00 Renee appears at their kitchen sink and washes their hands in Spotlight mode as Sabrina can be heard reading the following four quotes: “We’ve not seen anything of the sort before...” (Camus 6). “The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits” (Camus 1). “It becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature” (Woolf 32). “They determined to attach him to the rope, and lower him into the well, there to wash himself...” (Boccaccio 149). From 2:00 to 2:15 Sabrina thanks Renee, repeats the set-up phrase, and John announces “OK, next up, Leo”. From 2:00 to 2:07 we see Sabrina in Spotlight mode, at 2:07 to 2:15 participants are visible in Gallery View, and though this clip ends at 2:15, in the full-length documentation of the performance, Leo is next seen in the Spotlight. In this short clip, it is evident that the repetition of the performance directions sets the stage for our audience / guests / performers, who voluntarily came to this ELO virtual engagement without prior rehearsal. Cora and Henry, Tina, and Renee are prepared with the camera near their sinks and wash their hands for the complete duration of our reading. Tina and Renee (and all of our adult participants) are seen in the video wearing headphones or earbuds for their performance. Our directions did not advise this, but we were encouraged to see that the participants thought ahead about their technical engagement. We also did not advise participants to turn off the water while they were scrubbing their hands. If we were to restage the event, we would include this for water sustainability purposes. It should not be so surprising to us, but we are still amazed at how thoroughly all of our participants washed their hands. Clearly, our performers had watched the directions provided by the CDC for washing viral matter from our bodies. Conclusion Our original project A Kitchen of One’s Own had viewers peering into the recorded kitchen scenes of anonymous participants in person at The Photographers’ Gallery or through the gallery window on Ramillies Street in SoHo, London. Viewers watched the private actions of strangers in their kitchens while being presented with various texts. Some offered descriptions of sexual harassment in often famous professional kitchens and others, the meditations of women about the significance of creation in their home kitchen. This developed an exploration of the significance of women’s experience in place. While fewer people were able to visit the gallery installation, A Kitchen of One’s Own, in London due to the pandemic, many people viewed Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narrative online. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation put the audience in the domestic space while sharing the historic, traumatic experience of a pandemic, dislocated across time. It invited an entirely online audience to experience a live performance of hand washing at the sinks of strangers and friends, fully mediated through screens on both sides. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation did exactly what we named it to do—engage people in a live, synchronous elevation of a mundane human action in a personal, yet ubiquitous space to a work of art, while experiencing the asynchronous voices of people who had already lived through global pandemics. This iteration offered us the embodied experience we had originally envisioned for A Kitchen of One’s Own. As a result of the pandemic, people in technologically connected communities are intimately familiar with the online interactive public that was once the realm of digitally savvy producers and users. This reality thus broadens the audience for our online projects. Our previous browser-based art and archive project An Archive of Unnamed Women was largely visited at workshops and conference presentations that we hosted. In previous projects like The Laboring Self, which was installed at the DMA and in the lobby of the California State University, San Marcos library, we transformed library patrons into a participatory-art public. In a moment of transformation, Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation reinvented the pedestrian action of hand washing, like turning an ordinary visit to the library into an encounter with art. Similarly, it reinvented the ubiquitous act of hand washing into a live-for-Zoom performance. We are intrigued by transformation, and this shows in the way we accompany a project though many different forms before moving on to something completely different; our work is iterative by nature. A Kitchen of One’s Own germinated from our project An Archive of Unnamed Women, which pairs images of unnamed women from the New York Public Library with textual selections from fiction by women about women (“Archive of Unnamed Women”). That project engaged the archive and sought to reclaim these women from the obscurity of history. A Kitchen of One's Own took us into the kitchen, exploring what it means for women to labour and create in kitchens, both in ease and amid the duress of sexism and sexual harassment, through videos paired with text. With the pandemic arising in the U.S. and Europe in Spring 2020, we were swept up into the shared confusion, and like so many, we sought to make sense of a moment so catastrophic. We turned to writers of the past who had endured plagues and epidemics to help us gain clarity, creating a video and text synthesis that again allows for speculative meaning-making through fortuitous pairings. Presently, we are evolving this project from pandemic to enlightenment, with an iteration that takes up as inspiration the Instructions for the Zen Cook by thirteenth century Zen Master Eihei Dōgen Zenji. Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation is an iterative work arising from the tensions of a time in transformative upheaval. It was one way we sought to make sense and bring people together in a playful experience that was beyond easy understanding. References Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Filippo and Bernardo Giunti: 1370-71. Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf Edition. <http://flc.ahnu.edu.cn/__local/7/E7/75/6AB8DEBA692DD0CF6790CA70701_26DE4EC2_17EED4.pdf?e=.pdf>. Burnham, Jack. “Problems of Criticism IX: Art and Technology.” ArtForum (Jan. 1971). <http://www.artforum.com/print/197101/problems-of-criticism-ix-art-and-technology-38921>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman. “Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation.” Electronic Literature Organization Virtual Engagement Session. July 2020. <http://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2020/live/events/12>. ———. “Excerpt of ELO Virtual Engagement, ‘Epic Hand Washing for Synchronous Participation’ (2:15).” Vimeo, 19 May 2021. <http://vimeo.com/xtineburrough/elo-zoom>. ———. The Laboring Self. Dallas Museum of Art Center for Creative Connections. Oct. 2017 to Jan. 2018. <http://dma.org/visit-center-creative-connections-community-projects/laboring-self>. ———. Epic Hand Washing in a Time of Lost Narratives: Text Dataset. Mar. 2020. <http://drive.google.com/file/d/1hSV-9l_ETTOruBpI-NCOChjuPtprlZue/view>. ———. An Archive of Unnamed Women. Browser-based project. Oct. 2019. <http://visiblewomen.net/unnamed-women/index.html>. burrough, xtine, and Sabrina Starnaman, with Technical Direction from Dale MacDonald. “A Kitchen of One’s Own.” The Photographers’ Gallery, 1-28 Oct. 2020. <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/akitchenofonesown>. ———. “Epic Hand Washing.” Vimeo. <https://vimeo.com/showcase/4611141>. Camus, Albert. The Plague. Gallimard, 1947. <http://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-plague.pdf>. Woolf, Virginia. “On Being Ill.” The Criterion, 1926. <http://thenewcriterion1926.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/woolf-on-being-ill.pdf>.


 
 
 On the back cover of The Art Forger’s Handbook, Eric Hebborn proclaims
 
 No drawing can lie of itself, it is only the opinion of the expert which can deceive. (Hebborn)
 
 
 Well certainly, but like many forgers Hebborn was dedicated to ensuring the experts have ample material with which to work. 
 
 The debate about authenticity rolls into the debate about originality rolls into the debate about excellence, slipping between the verifiable and the subjective, shadowed by the expert assessing, categorising, and delivering verdicts. Yet the proclamation ‘This is authentic’ is not straightforward. It is impossible to prove that the statement ‘This is a painting by Sir Arthur Streeton’ is true. It is always possible (though not probable) that the work in question is an excellent copy, manufactured with materials identical to those employed by Streeton, with brushstrokes reflecting Streeton’s manipulation of paint, applied in the kind of sequence Streeton used and with a provenance crafted to simulate perfectly an acceptable provenance for a work by Streeton. Much easier to prove that a work is not by a particular artist; one very obvious anomaly will suffice (Sloggett 298).
 
 But an anomaly requires a context, the body of material against which to assess the new find. John Drew’s manipulation of the art market was successful not because of the quality of the pictures he paid John Myatt to produce (after all they were painted with household emulsion paint often extended with K-Y Jelly). His success lay in his ability to alter the identities of these works by penetrating the archives of the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum and manufacturing an archival history that virtually copied the history of works by his target artists, Nicholson, Giocometti, Chagall, Epstein, Dubeffet, and de Stals. While the paintings mimicked works by these artists, without a provenance (an identity and identity trail) they were nothing more than approximate copies, many which were initially rejected by the dealers and auction houses (Landesman 38). Identity requires history and context: for something to be deemed ‘real’, both need to be verifiable. The plight of stateless refugees lies in their inability to verify their history (who am I?) and their context (I exist here because…). 
 
 Drew’s ability to deliver a history is only one way in which works can slip identities (or in the case of Drew’s works – can be pushed). Drew’s intention and his ability to profit by the deception denoted fraud. But authentication is more often sought to support not fraud but optimism. 
 
 ‘Can you please look at this painting which hung in my grandfather’s lounge room for over 50 years? It was given to him by the artist. I remember it as a small boy, and my father also remembers it when he was a child. But I can’t sell it because someone said it didn’t look right. Can you tell if it is by the artist?’
 
 
 Such a problem needs to be approached on two fronts. Firstly, how strong is the evidence that this work is by the artist and secondly, what is the hypothesis of best fit for this work?
 
 The classic authentication process examines a picture and, against a framework of knowns (usually based on securely provenanced works) looks for points of identification between the proffered work and provenanced works. From these points of identification a theory of best fit is developed. For example, a painting with the inscription ‘Arthur Streeton/1896’ is analysed for its pigment content in order to test the proposition that this is a work by Arthur Streeton from 1896. Pigment analysis indicates that titanium white (a pigment not available commercially until 1920) is found in the clouds. So the proposition must be modified: either this is a work by Streeton that has been heavily reworked after 1920, or this is not a work by Streeton, or this is a work by Streeton but the date is wrong. The authentication process will define and redefine each proposition until there is one that best fits the evidence at hand. Fluorescing the date to establish whether it is a recent addition would be part of this process. Examining other whites in the painting to check if the clouds had been added later would be another. Checking the veracity of the provenance would also be critical. We may decide that this is not an 1896 work by Streeton based on the evidence of the pigment. But what if an art historian discovers a small pigment manufacturer in Box Hill whose records show they produced titanium dioxide as a pigment in 1890? The new evidence may affect the conclusion. But more likely we would want to verify such evidence before we altered our conclusion. 
 
 Between the extremes of Drew’s manufactured identities and the optimism of a third generation is the strengthened work, combining identity shift and hope. Dali pulled a reverse strengthening when he signed 20,000 blank sheets of paper for lithographs that had not yet been executed (Hebborn 79), but more usually it is the inscription not the image that is missing. Of course a signature is good, but signature works may not have, and do not need signatures. A signature may be a picture of a certain place (Heidelberg) at a certain time of day (moonrise); optimism will soon join the dots, producing a David Davies Moonrise. Often an inscription helps; a nondescript clean-shaven Victorian gentleman can become a bearded founding father, an anonymous nag the first winner of the Melbourne Cup. And if the buyer is not convinced, then a signature may win the day. Unlike Drew’s fabricated histories these changes in identity are confined to transformations of the object itself and then, by association, to its context. 
 
 Art fraud is an endearing topic, partly because it challenges the subjective nature of expertise. When van Meegeren manufactured his most successful ‘Vermeer’ The Supper at Emmaus (1937) he explored the theories of experts, and then set about producing a work that copied not an existing Vermeer, but the critic’s theory of what an as-yet-undiscovered Vermeer would look like. Hannema, van Schendel and finally Bredius subscribed to the theory that Vermeer’s trip to Italy resulted in Caravaggio’s influence on the artist (Dutton 25). Van Meegeren obligingly produced such a work. So does it matter? Is an identical work as good a work? Is a sublime copyist of great artists a great artist? (Not that van Meegeren was either.)
 
 Authentication is a process of assessing claims about identity. It involves reputation, ownership, relationships and truth. When an artist executes a copy it is homage to the skill of the master. When Miss Malvina Manton produced a scene of dead poultry in 1874, she was copying the most popular painting in the fledgling collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Schendel’s The Poultry Vendor (Inglis 63), and joined a league of copyists including Henry Gritten and Nicholas Chevalier who sought permission to copy the Gallery’s paintings. When John O’Loughlin copied works by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and passed them off as original the impact on the artist was less benign (Gotting). Sid Nolan refused to identify problematic paintings attributed to his oeuvre claiming that to acknowledge such paintings would cast doubt on his entire oeuvre. Bob Dickerson assiduously tracks down and ‘outs’ problematic paintings from his oeuvre, claiming that not to do so would leave the thin edge of the wedge firmly embedded for future opportunists. Both are concerned with their identity.
 
 Creation is a fraught business, simply because the act of creation is the act of giving an identity. Whether we create a child, a musical score, a painting or a t-shirt brand, the newly created entity is located within a lineage and context that means more than the single individual creation. This is why identity theft is such a major crime. If someone steals an identity they also steal the collateral developed around that identity, the ability to deal in credit, to drive a car, to travel overseas, to purchase a house. Identity is a valuable commodity; for an artist it is their tool of trade.
 
 There is no doubt that the public celebrates the fake. Perhaps it is a celebration of the power of the object over the critic or the theoretician. But it is an extraordinarily costly celebration. Despite the earlier assertion that it is possible to make the perfect copy, very few even approximate the vibrancy and intelligence of an original. Most, if accepted, would seriously dilute the strength of the artist’s oeuvre. Forging Aboriginal art is even more disgraceful. In a society where cultural transmission has traditionally been based on complex relationships of dance, song, painting and objects to customary rights, laws and obligations, art fraud impacts on the very fabric of society. 
 
 There will always be works that slip identities, and many are not pulled back. False works do damage; they dull our perceptions, dilute our ability to understand an artist’s contribution to society, and are usually no more than blunt instruments used for financial gain.
 
 References
 
 Australian Institute of Criminology. “Art Crime: Protecting Art, Protecting Artists and Protecting Consumers.” 2-3 Decembeer 1999. 1 May 2005 http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/artcrime/>. Catterall, L. The Great Dali Art Fraud and Other Deceptions. Fort Lee, New Jersey: Barricade, 1992. Dutton, Denis, ed. The Forger’s Art Forgery and the Philosophy of Art. California: U of California P, 1983 Gotting, Peter. “Shame of Aboriginal Art Fakes.” 16 July 2000. 31 May 2005 http://www.museum-security.org/00/112.html#3>. Hebborn, Eric. The Art Forger’s Handbook. London: Cassell, 1997. Inglis, Alison. “What Did the Picture’s Surface Convey? Copies and Copying in the National Gallery of Victoria during the Colonial Period.” The Articulate Surface: Dialogues on Paintings between Conservators, Curators and Art Historians. Ed. Sue-Anne Wallace, with Jacqueline Macnaughtan and Jodi Parvey. Canberra: The Humanities Research Centre, the Australian National University and the National Gallery of Australia, 1996. 55-69. Landesman, Peter. “A 20th-Century Master Scam.” The New York Times Magazine (18 July 1999): 31-63. Sloggett, Robyn. “The Truth of the Matter: Issues and Procedures in the Authentication of Artwork.” Arts, Antiquity and Law 5.3 (September 2000): 295-303. Tallman, Susan. “Report from London Faking It.” Art in America (November 1990): 75-81. 
 
 
 
 
 Citation reference for this article
 
 MLA Style
 Sloggett, Robyn. "Slipping and Sliding: Blind Optimism, Greed and the Effect of Fakes on Our Cultural Understanding." M/C Journal 8.3 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/09-sloggett.php>. APA Style
 Sloggett, R. (Jul. 2005) "Slipping and Sliding: Blind Optimism, Greed and the Effect of Fakes on Our Cultural Understanding," M/C Journal, 8(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/09-sloggett.php>. 

Magic and art are products of human connection with the universe, offering answers to questions of meaning and working in interstices between fiction and reality. Magic can and does permeate all forms of media and is depicted as both entertaining and dangerous, as shaping world views, and as practised by a vast array of individuals and groups across cultures. Creative practices in cinema, radio, and installation art suggest that deceptive illusions created through magic techniques can be an effective means of creating compelling and engaging media experiences. It is not surprising, then, that in contemporary art forms involving mixed media and mixed (or augmented) reality the study of magic can offer valuable insights into how technologies mediate audience experiences and how artists can manipulate audience perceptions. Despite art often being described as ‘magical’ (Jones; Charlesworth), there is limited scholarly research applying the philosophical and socio-cultural construct of magic to contemporary art, leaving much to explore with regard to the intersections between magic and art. Scholars and artists have instead preferred to draw from more established bodies of theory in theatre and performance studies (Laurel), cinema (Marsh), and narrative (Murray). This article hones in on that intersection by applying the understudied principles and techniques of magicians to the interpretation and analysis of artworks by Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Making ‘magic’ here is not about the supernatural but refers to the refined practice of ‘doing tricks’, developed over thousands of years across many cultures. The aim of this article therefore is to introduce the reader to two interactive artworks through the lens of magic. Through these examples, we demonstrate the direct correlations between the principles of illusion in magic and media-based illusions in art, inviting the recognition of common ground between the equally niche spheres of magicians and contemporary artists. Cardiff and Miller are a well-known contemporary artist duo whose work exemplifies trends in audio-based performance work (Collins) and site specificity (Ross). However, their work is not generally analysed through the lens of magic. Here, we focus on it as ‘mixed reality’ art, specifically ‘augmented reality’ (in contrast to augmented virtuality), a concept that was defined by Milgram and Kishino as any case in which an otherwise real environment is ‘augmented’ by means of virtual (computer graphic) objects. Since the introduction of these terms—‘mixed reality’ and ‘augmented reality’—technologies have made many leaps across innumerable modes of media. Yet their distinction remains useful to categorise artworks and describe any mixed reality approaches that work towards “the existence of a combined pair of a real and virtual space”. In augmented reality, while “the visual as the dominant mode of perception and integration of real and virtual space” (Strauss, Fleischmann et al.), sound can be used for sensory immersion, and to play tricks on the minds of audiences. These distinctions are often critical in discussions of art, especially when “illusion plays a crucial role as it makes permeable the perceptual limit between the represented objects and the material spaces we inhabit” (Avram). Mixed reality artworks often make unique combinations of audio-visual elements, and sometimes activate other senses such as tactile and olfactory. In these works, artists use illusion to connect the embodied experience of the audience members to the electronically mediated experience of their design, which brings us back to magic. Introduction to Conjuring and Deception It is worthwhile to briefly visit the key principles of magic that most clearly tie together conjuring and mixed reality artworks: framing context, consistency, continuity, conviction, justification, surprise, and disguise. These principles are routinely used in combination by magicians to deceive audiences and are commonly referred to under the umbrella term of ‘misdirection’, defined as “that which directs the audience towards the effect and away from the method” (Lamont and Wiseman 3). Conjuring consists of “creating illusions of the impossible” (Nelms), which are comprised of a method (how the trick is achieved) and an effect (what the audience perceives). The principles that form the foundation of conjuring are centred on the creation of illusions in a theatrical context, either on stage or via close-up magic. Think of the famous genius pair of stage magicians Penn & Teller and their blockbuster magic competition television series Fool Us. Now research has revealed how these techniques can also be examined in a broader context than entertainment and across many scholarly disciplines. This research has occurred within the fields of cognitive science (Macknik et al.; Macknik & Martinez-Conde; Macknik, Martinez-Conde, et al.), psychology (Polidoro; Tatler and Kuhn) and interaction design (de Jongh Hepworth; Marchak; Tognazzini). These investigations demonstrate the significance and value of techniques drawn from conjuring across various fields. Indeed, as Macknik states, “there are specific cases in which the magician’s intuitive knowledge is superior to that of the neuroscientist” (Macknik, Mac King, et al.). A successful magic trick requires the audience to experience the effect while unaware of the method (Lamont and Wiseman). Examining the creation of illusions in terms of method and effect is not only applicable to conjuring but also resonates with other forms of media that rely on suspension of disbelief. For example, in the context of cinema, the audience should be engaged with the content on the screen rather than the presentation apparatus. In virtual environments, the aim of the developer is also generally to ensure that the user experiences the effect (immersion in the virtual world) while suppressing awareness of the medium (method). In conjuring, many approaches to deception rely on indirect reinforcement in which a situation is implied rather than stated. When magician and theorist Dariel Fitzkee describes conjuring, he suggests that implication is effective because it “seems to the spectator to be a voluntary decision on his part, uninfluenced by the magician. It is also stronger because such conclusions, reached in this manner, do not seem to be of particular importance to the performer” (97). Both these elements significantly increase conviction, reduce suspicion and are very relevant to the technique of ‘suspending disbelief’ often applied to cinema. Through suggestion, the filmmakers ensured that viewers who themselves had previously constructed a false frame would readily interpret the film document as authentic, so long as the experience did not drastically deviate from expectations. This form of deception is evident in two works by Cardiff and Miller that rely primarily on sound in careful combination with visual and spatial elements to create ambiguous elements that can make the audience question what is real and virtual. The Paradise Institute (Cardiff and Miller) and Walks (Cardiff 1991–2006) utilise the process of binaural recording whereby two microphones are placed inside the ears of a dummy head to convey realistic spatial sound simulations via headphone playback. Next, we look at these artworks as a mode of conjuring taking up methods and desired effects of the art of magic. The Paradise Institute The Paradise Institute was originally produced for the 2001 Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The work draws on the language and experience of cinema, creating a film-like experience using the illusory principles of magic. To experience the work, viewers approach a simple plywood pavilion, mount a set of stairs, and enter. We first experienced The Paradise Institute at PS1 Gallery, New York in 2001. The first illusion in a series is that this tiny dimly lit interior, complete with red carpet and two rows of velvet-covered seats, is an actual theatre. Once seated, we peer over the balcony onto a miniature replica of a grand old movie theatre created with techniques of hyper-perspective (accentuated depth and extreme angles as in a theatre set). Then we put on the headphones provided, and the projection begins. Beyond the perceptual illusion of the theatre space itself, the primary illusionary device is sound design that combines audio from the fragmented narrative depicted on screen with simulated sounds from the theatre audience. This technique is analogous to offscreen sound in cinema (Davies). Several stories run simultaneously. There is the ‘visual film’ and its accompanying soundtrack; layered over this is the ‘aural action’ of a supposed audience. The film is a mix of genres: part noir, part thriller, part sci-fi, and part experimental. What is more particular about the installation is the personal binaural surround sound that every individual in the audience experiences through the headphones. The sense of isolation each person might feel is disrupted by intrusions seemingly coming from inside the theatre. A mobile phone belonging to a member of the audience rings. A close ‘female friend’ whispers intimately in your ear: “Did you check the stove before we left?” Fiction and reality become intermingled as absorption in the film is suspended, and other realities flow in. Not knowing what to believe, you hear a collage of sounds from the soundtrack of the film you are watching, as well as from people sitting beside you. Was that really a cell phone? At one point the characters you have watched on the screen are talking behind you. (Christov-Bakargiev and Cardiff 151) The multi-layered acoustic space combines chattering and rustling from the virtual audience members seated around you, characters from the film that are sporadically transported to the objective position of the audience, all co-existing with the soundtrack of the film itself. This complex layering of sound, combined with the live ambience, creates a mixed reality environment in which the various virtual elements constantly intrude upon the audience’s perception of reality. The artists conjure an audience and theatre which are not in fact there, but the illusion is so seamless, that your perception combines reality and mediated experience. One of the principles of effective illusions within magic is the capacity to reduce suspicion during the presentation. The work effectively achieves this through a variety of methods. The most compelling aspects of the deception are the intimate conversations and incidental sounds created by the virtual audience members, particularly those seated behind you (as the source cannot be immediately verified). You cannot see, feel, smell, or touch other audience members, but you can hear them. The content is perceived as familiar (therefore suspicion regarding its veracity is reduced), and even within the hyper-real context of the microcinema, irresistibly compelling. The mechanics of the work effectively support the illusion. The installation provides a controlled acoustic space, and volume levels can be precisely adjusted. The layered sound design further assists in masking deficiencies in the technical process in much the same manner as the use of atmospheres and music in a film soundtrack. These characteristics assist in establishing a palpable simulation of acoustic reality. In The Paradise Institute, rather than place the audience in a passive position in relation to their work, Cardiff and Miller use spatial sound as a means of active engagement: “I want people to be inside the filmic experience… I want the pieces to be disconcerting in several ways so that the audience can’t just forget about their bodies for the duration of their involvement, like we do in film” (Beil and Mari 78). Walks Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller designed 24 audio and video walks between 1996 and 2019. Like magicians executing conjuring tricks, the artists use the affordances of electronic media to reveal an alternate reality. The walks, like conjuring tricks, manipulate your perceptions of reality through illusion. The walks are between five minutes and one hour long. As the artists write on their Website, the audio playback is layered with various background sounds all recorded in binaural audio which gives the feeling that those recorded sounds are present in the actual environment. In a video walk, viewers are provided with a video screen which they use to follow a film recorded in the past along the same route they are traversing in the present. Also using binaural microphones and edited to create a sense of continuous motion, the fictional world of the film blends seamlessly with the reality of the architecture and body in motion. The perceptive confusion is deepened by the dream-like narrative elements that occur in the pre-recorded film. Audience members are given a listening device and headphones at the beginning of the walk, similar to the experience of using an audio guide in a museum. At a predefined location, the audience member presses play and is guided by Cardiff’s voice narrating events that occur along a route through the physical environment. Instructions are integrated within a narrative soundscape that shapes the audiences’ perceptions of their immediate environment. The importance of this hybrid reality is highlighted by Cardiff’s own description of the work: “the sound of my footsteps, traffic, birds, and miscellaneous sound effects that have been pre-recorded on the same site as they are being heard … . The virtual recorded soundscape has to mimic the real physical one in order to create a new world as a seamless combination of the two” (Cardiff and Miller). All the walks are recorded as a spatially encoded binaural soundscape, created using microphones fitted to both ears of a mannequin. The intent is that the recording perfectly replicates the sensation of listening with two human ears. Listening back through headphones, the recording feels as ‘live’ as possible. During playback, the audience experiences the illusion of being in the same room as Cardiff’s voice and other sounds in the recording. They perceive a realistic multi-layered sonic environment comprised of the actual acoustic space they inhabit (via aural transparency of the headphones), artefacts from the same environment at a prior time, and narration provided by Cardiff’s voice, all interwoven with creative sound design. Unlike The Paradise Institute, audience members can adjust the playback level, and hence, the mix between the real and virtual elements. In other words, they may be able to hear the sound of their own footsteps or breathing in combination with the designed soundscape. Due to the intimate nature of the binaural recordings (and the timbre of Cardiff’s voice), the audience has the impression that Cardiff is present, an invisible co-traveller on the journey. The walks are successful magic tricks not only because of the perceptual realism of the sonic environments they represent but also because they are narrative-driven, propelling the audience through unknown spaces and stories. The audience, on the one hand, exists in a fictional world, while on the other hand they are placed in a paradoxical position of being at times uncertain if the sound they heard was present in physical reality or was a simulation. Discussion: Reframing Fiction as Fact in an Act of Magic These works indicate how the mechanics of the illusion (in this instance, spatial sound and visual trickery) combined with plausible virtual elements can effectively reframe an experience from a fictional simulation to fact. Even if the experience is clearly framed as fiction, the appropriate use of mechanics can present stimuli that are so compellingly real that they disrupt, even if momentarily, the way the audience interprets a mediated experience, whether it is constructed as a set (in the case of The Paradise Institute) or a streetscape (in the Walks). The conjuring trick at work here, as with The Paradise Institute, is multisensory reinforcement, “the way in which a spectator’s belief about specific matters central to the effect are reinforced” (Lamont and Wiseman 69). The audience’s suspicion may be reduced if each modality works in unison to advance the illusion. For instance, the visual representation of a virtual character is reinforced by corresponding sound, and their actions are further indicated via mechanical devices in physical space. Scholars argue that the more sensory inputs in the mediated experience, the higher the degree of perceptual realism, so long as “the information from various sources is globally consistent” (Christou and Parker 53). This is because “senses do not just provide information but also serve to confirm the ‘perceptions’ of other senses” (England 168). Multisensory integration occurs innately within the individual, and, as Macknik suggests, it “is an ongoing and dynamic property of your brain that occurs outside conscious awareness” (Macknik, Martinez-Conde, et al. 104). The multimodal nature of mixed reality experiences like Cardiff and Miller’s walks provide an example of magic applied in art. Audience members’ eyes and ears are activated, convincing their brains that fiction is reality. To be clear, the artworks discussed here are technically elegant but not overly complex or dependent on technology. This is consistent with magic acts whereby sometimes a deck of cards and a small table are the only props. In conjuring, for the most part, magicians rely on “little technology more complex than a rubber band, a square of black fabric or length of thread” (Steinmeyer 7). Identifying how the adaptability of magic can also be applied to media arts is integral to understanding its power. Effects of illusion can be achieved with relatively simple methods, such as binaural recording or hyper-perspective (not to undermine the skill in such acts of magic). As with a magician’s sleight-of-hand techniques (think of a playing card being perfectly hidden up a sleeve), an accomplished media artist also needs to use techniques of illusion flawlessly. In other words, rather than being device-centric, the principles of misdirection can be applied to suit a specific purpose but must be done skilfully. This is the very reason that Cardiff and Miller’s conjuring strategies are highly adaptive and highly successful. Conclusion: When Art Is Magic, We Are All Deceived What do these examples of magic in mixed reality artworks indicate? The works discussed draw from vast lineages of creative practice, including radio, cinema, installation, and locative media. They demonstrate that applying principles of magic to the design of artworks can create convincing mediated deceptions. They also demonstrate direct correlations between the principles of illusion in magic and media-based illusions in art. Even when an event is framed as fiction, the mechanics of the illusion could make the audience believe in an alternate reality, the very foundation of magic. Just as in conjuring, Cardiff and Miller’s tricks transform an experience into an illusion via elements of showmanship such as drama and atmosphere. In art, however, unlike a conventional magic trick, there is no climactic flurry in which the alternate reality is revealed, such as pulling a rabbit out of a seemingly empty hat. Instead, if the works succeed, the illusion is sustained and virtual characters and spaces are no longer perceived as a simulation, thus bridging reality and virtuality. Janet Cardiff is walking with you, or you are sitting in a cinema. References Avram, Horea. “The Convergence Effect: Real and Virtual Encounters in Augmented Reality Art.” M/C Journal 16.6 (2013). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.735>. Beil, Ralf, and Bartomeu Marí. The Killing Machine and Other Stories 1995-2007: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. Hatje Cantz, Darmstadt, 2007. Cardiff, Janet, and George Bures Miller. 2023. <https://cardiffmiller.com/>. ———. “The Affective Experience of Space.” The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art. 2016. 214. Cardiff, Janet, George Bures Miller, and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Janet Cardiff: A Survey of Works Including Collaborations with George Bures Miller. New York: PS1, 2001. Charlesworth, J.J. “The Return of Magic in Art.” Art Review 30 May 2022. <https://artreview.com/the-return-of-magic-in-art>. Collins, Rebecca Louise. “Sound, Space and Bodies: Building Relations in the Work of Invisible Flock and Atelier Bildraum.” M/C Journal 20.2 (2017). <https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1222>. Davies, Alexander. Magic, Mixed Realities & Misdirection. PhD Dissertation. Sydney: UNSW, 2013. Davies, Alex, and Jeffrey Koh. “Häusliches Glück: A Case Study on Deception in a Mixed Reality Environment.” Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies. Eds. Ryohei Nakatsu, Matthias Rauterberg, and Paolo Ciancarini. Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2017. <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_18-1>. De Jongh Hepworth, Sam. “Magical Experiences in Interaction Design.” Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces. 2007. Fitzkee, Dariel. Magic by Misdirection. London: Ravenio, 1975. Hyman, Ray. “The Psychology of Deception.” Annual Review of Psychology 40.1 (1989): 133-154. Ishii, Hiroshi, and Brygg Ullmer. “Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms.” Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1997. Jacobson, Marjory. “Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.” Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (2006): 56-61. Jones, Jonathon. “The Top 10 Magical Artworks” The Guardian 5 June 2014. <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/05/top-10-magical-artworks>. Lamont, Peter, and Richard Wiseman. Magic in Theory: An Introduction to the Theoretical and Psychological Elements of Conjuring. U of Hertfordshire P, 2005. Laurel, Brenda. Computers as Theatre. Addison-Wesley, 2013. Macknik, Stephen L., et al. “Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic: Turning Tricks into Research.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9.11 (2008): 871-879. Macknik, Stephen L., and Susana Martinez-Conde. “A Perspective on 3-D Visual Illusions.” Scientific American Mind 19.5 (2008): 20-23. ———. “Real Magic: Future Studies of Magic Should Be Grounded in Neuroscience.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10.3 (2009): 241-241. Macknik, Stephen, Susana Martinez-Conde, and Sandra Blakeslee. Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions. New York: Henry Holt, 2010. Marchak, Frank M. “The Magic of Visual Interaction Design.” ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 32.2 (2000): 13-14. Marsh, Tim. “Presence as Experience: Film Informing Ways of Staying There.” Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 12.5 (2003): 11. ———. “Presence as Experience: Framework to Assess Virtual Corpsing.” Presence 2001: 4th International Workshop on Presence. Philadelphia, 2001. ———. “Staying There: An Activity-Based Approach to Narrative Design and Evaluation as an Antidote to Virtual Corpsing.” Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User Presence in Synthetic Environments. Amsterdam: Ios, 2003. 85-96. Milgram, Paul, and Fumio Kishino. “A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays.” IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems 77.12 (1994): 1321-1329. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Updated ed. Boston: MIT P, 2017. Polidoro, Massimo. “The Magic in the Brain: How Conjuring Works to Deceive Our Minds.” Tall Tales about the Mind & Brain: Separating Fact from Fiction. Ed. Sergio Della Sala. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 36-44. Ross, Christine. “Movement That Matters Historically: Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s 2012 Alter Bahnhof Video Walk.” Discourse 35.2 (2013): 212-227. Strauss, Wolfgang, et al. Linking between Real and Virtual Spaces. GMD Report 75, GMD – Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbH, Sienna. CID, 1999. Tatler, Benjamin W., and Gustav Kuhn. “Don’t Look Now: The Magic of Misdirection.” Eye Movements. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007. 697-714. Tognazzini, Bruce. “Principles, Techniques, and Ethics of Stage Magic and Their Application to Human Interface Design.” Proceedings of the INTERACT'93 and CHI'93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1993. 355-62.

Drift: An IntroductionEntering into Drift is akin to entering—or becoming ensnared by—a hum. Projected across one wall, the work uses abstract visual forms to draw visitors into its meditational folds. Quadraphonic sound circulates in smooth, heavy pulses, like the steady rumble of a train running over deep-set tracks. A succession of vibrating lines occupy the screen, much like the horizontal static of a poorly-tuned television. Gradually, the ambient timbre darkens, the hum becomes more persistent and atmospheric undulations more frequent, until room and body expand with intensity. Throbbing vibrations connect ground to feet, roll along skin, finding their way into deep interiors until organs and sinew become subsumed by Drift’s thick, heart-gripping drone. The installation’s tight, affective grasp only becomes apparent upon the sudden release of this tension; the room lightens and hum eases as the screen whitens with faint patterns, like a window opening from a darkened room. Drift, by German artist Ulf Langheinrich, appeared in White Noise, an exhibition dedicated to abstract moving image art at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne (ACMI). At the time of this exhibition in 2005, I was undertaking a seven month study of ACMI’s Screen Gallery, also documenting the preceding exhibition, World without End. My research used the Gallery as a site to examine the shifting relationship between visitor experience, digital art and museums, as the space compelled unusual modalities of visitor interaction. Most notable were states of complete stillness. I aimed to investigate how art and technology might mediate visitor agency through such experiences; not only to understand how museum visitation is transforming in new and significant ways, but to also extrapolate a substantial account of an individual’s agency within this era of what Beck, Giddens and Lash have termed ‘reflexive modernisation’. However, existing studies of museum visitation are rarely informed by the subjective modalities of visitor encounter, but rather, detail how experiences are shaped by institutional practices (Bourdieu; Luhmann; Silverman; Falk; Falk and Dierking) or governmental agendas (Bennett; Hooper-Greenhill). A notable exception is Megan Hick’s phenomenological study of Sydney’s Powerhouse museum. Following this example, I developed a phenomenology of museum visitation that could privilege the visitor’s enunciation of experience, whilst also exploring how expressions of agency may be highly subjective, multifarious and nuanced. I used qualitative ethnographic techniques to gather phenomenological material. Firstly, I attended the Gallery on a fortnightly basis to conduct longitudinal participant observations. However, as observation offered no means to interpret quiet faces and still bodies I also undertook visitor interviews. I approached visitors immediately after their visitation, and attempted to capture a wide cross-sample of responses by recruiting on the basis of age, gender and reason for visitation. I undertook ten 45 minute interviews, enquiring into the factors influencing impressions of the Gallery, prior familiarity with museums, and opinions about media art and technology. This ethnographic material was central to my study, as the voices of visitors guided its thematic direction and ensuing analysis. As the first in-depth, qualitative analysis of visitation to the Screen Gallery, my study therefore makes an empirical contribution to existing visitor research by offering an original means of exploring issues of museum visitation and agency, and movement and stillness.For example, visitors often received Drift with complete stillness, lulled into a focused state of attention by the shiftings of light and sound. As interviewee Colleen reveals, this concentration arose because Drift resonated intimately, akin to a meditative encounter:There wasn’t any other emotion or feeling behind it other than feeling relieved and comfortable, and relaxed. It was almost meditative … I was actually trying not to think about anything! … I didn’t want it to be influenced by the morning’s happenings … I just thought ‘this is relaxing’.Colleen has described how stillness and movement are therefore modalities within a broad vocabulary of interaction. While theorists have long noted how the transition from painting to film marked a shift from still to more ‘active’ forms of contemplation (Benjamin), an unanticipated finding of my study reasserted stillness as a dominant modality of active reception. In this article I therefore ask how agency finds expression within states of stillness.I propose that stillness mediates a distinctive form of agency as it is laden with what Brian Massumi calls ‘potential movement.’ I explore this concept with reference to visitors’ experiences of History of a Day, a work in World Without End. I then draw upon Henri Lefebvre’s description of ‘eurrhythmic’ congruence to describe how stillness is characterised by a focused state of attention, reflecting a highly subjective form of agency. I conclude by describing how this spatial awareness enables individuals to realise their own creativity, and inspire new praxes for daily living.1. Stillness: A State of Potential MovementBy dedicating its exhibition space to time-based art, ACMI’s Screen Gallery has cultivated a new temporal paradigm for visitor participation. It mediates both stillness and movement. Visitors described how the task of negotiating multiple time-based screens in a singular space loosened the temporal boundaries of engagement. Visitors were frequently compelled to pause and wait, as there was an absence of ‘entry’ or ‘exit’ points for viewing a piece. This raises questions as to how slower, or ‘still’, forms of participation in the Gallery may elicit agency. If considering stillness as a state that exists as an inverse of movement, rather than a state lacking in movement, it becomes possible to locate agency within the process of maintaining stillness, and as a result, engender what Brian Massumi describes as ‘potential movement’.In his account of architect Lars Spuybroek’s wetGRID design, Massumi describes how Spuybroek compares the experience of viewing images with the spatial experience of moving through buildings. Spuybroek drew from the premise that while movement can be understood as “the actual content of architecture” (322), it is more difficult to draw correlations between the properties of movement and perception of still images. He developed the idea of potential movement to breach a commonality between the two, as paraphrased by Massumi: “potentials for movement are extracted from actual movement, then fed back into it via architecture. We normally think of abstraction as a distancing from the actual, but here potentials are being ‘abstracted into it’” (323). Spuybroek therefore inscribed the idea of ‘tendency’ in his work, an ‘affordance’ that manifests as “a possibility of convergence that unconsciously exerts a pull, drawing the body forward into a movement the body already feels itself performing before it actually stirs” (Gibson in Massumi 324). This idea suggests that the act of sitting and viewing an image, can be reconceived as a state laden with potential movement. As Massumi describes, “sitting still is the performance of a tendency towards movement … It is the pre-performance, in potential, of the movement and its function … It is in intensity” (324).Sitting can therefore be regarded an 'active' state, where 'tendency'—indeed intensity—charges stillness with a potential for movement, actualisation and change. Conventions that invite still forms of participation in an interactive museum are an opportunity to express one’s agency, as one cannot feel the full momentum of tendency if not having at first remained still. At one level, the process of waiting for a work to begin or end generates a potential for movement, as visitors must decide when they will move towards another work. However, the potential for agency is also articulated within a less performative, ‘internal’ shift that arises within stillness, when visitors eschew reflexive forms of interaction to maintain a focused state of attention.2. Focusing Attention in StillnessVisitors’ interaction with Simon Carrol and Martin Friedel's History of a Day (2004) demonstrated how such a focused attention arises. This work comprises five screens arranged in a pentagonal shape. Visitors engage with this work whilst moving or still, seating themselves on an ottoman set within the pentagon or viewing the work while walking around its outside perimeter. The work came to mediate a number of different types of still and playful encounters, as described by Sean:I was aware that there was other stuff going on around the gallery … could see that out the corner of your eye because there’s spaces in-between screens, but at the same time I wasn’t hurried … And Luke who was with me, he sat down and watched one particular screen, whereas I sort of moved around. When I got to the edge I could see two or three screens at once, so I was just trying to work out what the story was. On one hand, the ‘gaps’ between these screens could fragment visitors’ attention and mediate reflexive forms of perception. Sean described how he “moved around”, as he was drawn to these ‘gaps’ as he exchanged peripheries and centres of focus. However, the close arrangement of the five screens also created a veiled, intimate space that confined visitors’ attention within the spatial parameters of the work. Unlike Sean, Luke remained seated. His experience was conditioned by stillness. He sat observing a single screen and maintained a focused state of attention. By focusing their attention in this way, visitors become more receptive towards the affective experience of viewing art. For example, History of a Day flutters with time-lapse images, a soothing rhythm of night turning to day and to night again. On one hand, each screen has been allocated its own narrative, a temporal illustration of a day’s passing within natural and human-made landscapes. A fairground, for example, was shot at night and showed crowds arriving, swarming, alighting rides and departing. However, it is possible to yield to the projection’s visual and aural rhythm, and in doing so abstract the figurative signifier of each scene. Narrative logic recedes as the senses become flooded, and in turn slows the pace of reflexive perception. Without the imposition of a linear narrative the work’s images begin to unfold with a new slowness. The main ride comes to resemble the slowly beating wings of a moth in lamplight, arms lifting, rotating and dropping in the fairground floodlights. People, rides and the dark sky blend into a meditation on colour, rhythm and sound, a palette comprising the many moments that emerge and pass at a night carnival.This form of perception elicits an agency of complex, affective awareness. Sound artist Brian Eno’s account of the role of silence in ambient music provides a close analogy as to how experiences of stillness in the Screen Gallery become dynamic with enhanced affective awareness. He describes how silences—a ‘stillness’ in sound—actually draw attention to the aural experience that preceded it, as the “‘rests’ are invariably filled in by ‘echoes’ of previously heard fragments” (in Tamm 134). In other words, the experience of listening is heightened by silences, for they create a space of reflection that resonates with the impressions of sound passed. The Gallery is an ambient chamber that echoes with affective forms of experiential encounter rather than echoes of sound. The echoes of visitors’ encounters are also intensified by stillness. Stillness focuses attention, so visitors garner an affective awareness of their spatial environment. This awareness constitutes a distinctive form of agency within the museum, for it enables visitors to locate what Henri Lefebvre describes as a ‘rhythmic’ congruence between their subjective experience and conditions of external environment.3. Awareness of Rhythmic CongruenceIn his theory of rhythmnanalysis, Henri Lefebvre (16) describes how an awareness of ‘rhythmic’ congruity and incongruity can be used to inform a politics in daily life. He argues that practices of self-observation and spatial awareness can reveal how our internal and environmental rhythms are a part of a rhythmic landscape, and can be used as a political means for change. Lefebvre (20) delineates between ‘eurhythmia’ and ‘arrhythmia’ as the forms of rhythmic logic that describe states of congruity:What is certain is that harmony sometimes (often) exists: eurhythmia. The eu-rhythmic body, composed of diverse rhythms – each organ, each function, having its own – keeps them in a metastable equilibrium, which is always understood and often recovered, with the exception of disturbances (arrhythmia) that sooner of later becomes illness (the pathological state). But the surroundings of bodies, be they in nature or a social setting, are also bundles, bouquets, garlands of rhythms, to which it is necessary to listen in order to grasp the natural or produced ensembles. While Lefebvre uses these definitions to develop a Marxist critique of modernity, they also show how within the flexible temporal boundaries of stillness, visitors can express a form of agency by using their heightened affective awareness to locate eurhythmic and arrhythmic experiences. By becoming aware of the way we are conditioned by rhythms, we can begin to imprint new rhythms upon the patterns that govern cultural and social practices. Within the Screen Gallery, this rhythmic observation manifests as an attentiveness towards the temporal relationship between internal sensation and external environment.Congruence between internal and external rhythms was often described by visitors as a feeling of relaxation, even meditation. For example, Sean drew comparisons between still encounters with time-based art and his impression of quiet environments: “It’s like having background music while you’re falling asleep, or you turn the radio on so you haven’t caught the start of a song but you catch the end of it”. These associations imply a close environmental relationship between sound and body, where the rich aesthetic presence of art overrides the expectation of narrative continuity. Perhaps most telling is Sean’s analogy of falling asleep to background music, as it suggests that time-based art can maintain an ambient presence while not intruding upon natural bodily ‘rhythms’. It seems that a harmony between body and art environment allows a pull towards a state of relaxation akin to the drift of sleep, which, notably, is a point where both internal and external rhythms synchronise. Falling asleep is a crossing of thresholds into a space dominated by the activities of the unconscious. Occupying the Gallery and surrendering to a state of relaxation can therefore also be understood as crossing a threshold into a deeper, more internal realm of interaction with art.Affective awareness therefore enables visitors to cultivate a greater sensitivity towards their sensory responses. This is a highly-subjective agency, as it arises when visitors develop a keen awareness of the eurrhythmic alignment between the rhythm of external space, and their own, internal rhythm. Stillness therefore draws attention to the complexity of our own subjective experience, and the different ways we are conditioned by our environments. Yet most importantly, these experiences also generated self-reflection and a desire to creatively transform their circumstances. Matthew described how his encounter with art aroused creative inspiration: “I go there to experience something new. I would love to be able to do something like that… Maybe it’s something for me, where I wish I was doing something else in terms of my occupation.” Paul noted how expressive potential could be expanded by considering oneself an artist: “you can do it yourself as well, and I suppose that’s what draws people in to the whole thing”. Katrina suggested that aesthetic forms of interaction can challenge the conventional ways of thinking about and responding to our environment: “if it gets somebody to do something different, or, gets someone to do something in a different way maybe, expand their minds in that way, maybe that’s a use for it as well … give them something to think about, and they can see it again in a different light”. These comments show how stillness can enable a realisation of one’s own subjective, creative potential by countering the reflexive speed of the everyday.ConclusionMy study of ACMI’s Screen Gallery has shown how agency finds expression in stillness. The temporal elasticity created by artwork and institution allows visitors to appropriate time and space in a way that slows the pace of movement and focuses attention, in turn enhancing a visitor’s awareness of their presence and spatial environment. Stillness therefore heightens visitors’ awareness of sensation, sentience, the body’s occupation of time and space. This form of encounter elicits a feeling of congruence and awakens the spirit. This transformation was the mainstay of the political project set by Lefebvre, a statement on mobilising individuals to affect change by becoming more attentive towards incongruities between self and environment. In the Gallery it became possible, through immersion in an aesthetic, ambient space, for visitors to cultivate an intuition towards their own rhythms and those of surrounding environments. An important claim is to be staked on creating spaces for stillness in daily life, as opportunities for stillness are becoming increasingly scarce within the dynamics of spatial and temporal compression that characterise this era of globalisation and informationalisation. As Heidi describes, these moments given to daydreaming and reflection can become powerful conduits for realising one’s own potential:[It] gives you a new lease on life. And all the dreams you have – it’s possible … Sometimes you think ‘it’s all a bit out of reach, it’s too difficult,’ whereas you go and see something like that, and … it makes everything clear. And makes everything possible.ReferencesBeck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1994.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Great Britain: Fontana/Collins, 1977. 219-253.Bennett, Tony. “Museums and 'the People'.” The Museum Time-Machine: Putting Cultures on Display. London: Routledge, 1988. 63-85.———. “Putting Policy into Cultural Studies.” Cultural Studies. London: Routledge. 1992, 23-37.———. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge, 1995.———. “Consuming Culture, Measuring Access and Audience Development”. Culture and Policy 8.1 (1997): 89-113.———. “Culture and Policy” Culture:a Reformer's Science, St. Leonard's, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998. 189-213.———. “Culture and Governmentality.” In J.Z. Bratich, J. Packer & C. McCarthy, eds. Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality. Albany: State U of New York P, 2003. 47-64.Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Economy of Practices.” Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1984. 97-256.———. The Love of Art, Stanford: Stanford U P, 1991.Falk, John. “Museum Recollections.” Visitor Studies - 1988: Theory, Research and Practice. Jacksonville: Center for Social Design, 1988. 60-65.Falk, John, and Lynn Dierking. The Museum Experience. Washington, D.C.: Whalebooks, 1992.Hicks, Megan. "'A Whole New World': The Young Person's Experience of Visiting the Sydney Technological Museum." Museum and Society 3.2 (2005): 66-80. Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean. Museum and Gallery Education. London: Leicester U P, 1991.Lefebvre, Henri. “The Critique of the Thing.” Rhythmnanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum, 2004. 5-18.———. “The Rhythmanalyst: A Previsionary Project.” Rhythmanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life. London: Continuum, 2004. 19-26.Luhmann, Niklas. Art as a Social System, Trans. Eva Knodt. Stanford: U of Stanford P, 2000.Massumi, Brian. “Building Experience: The Architecture of Perception.” NOX: Machining Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. 322-331.Silverman, Lois. “Visitor Meaning Making in Museums for a New Age.” Curator 38 (1995): 161-170.Tamm, Eric. “The Ambient Sound.” Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1989. 131-150.

IntroductionSydney’s Garden Palace was a magnificent building with a grandeur that dominated the skyline, stretching from the site of the current State Library of New South Wales to the building that now houses the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The Palace captivated society from its opening in 1879. This article outlines the building of one of Sydney’s early structural icons and how, despite being destroyed by fire after three short years in 1882, it had an enormous impact on the burgeoning colonial community of New South Wales, thus building a physical structure, pride and a suite of memories.Design and ConstructionIn February 1878, the Colonial Secretary’s Office announced that “it is intended to hold under the supervision of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales an international Exhibition in Sydney in August 1879” (Official Record ix). By December the same year it had become clear that the Agricultural Society lacked the resources to complete the project and control passed to the state government. Colonial Architect James Barnet was directed to prepare “plans for a building suitable for an international exhibition, proposed to be built in the Inner Domain” (Official Record xx). Within three days he had submitted a set of drawings for approval. From this point on there was a great sense of urgency to complete the building in less than 10 months for the exhibition opening the following September.The successful contractor was John Young, a highly experienced building contractor who had worked on the Crystal Palace for the 1851 London International Exhibition and locally on the General Post Office and Exhibition Building at Prince Alfred Park (Kent 6). Young was confident, procuring electric lights from London so that work could be carried out 24 hours a day, to ensure that the building was delivered on time. The structure was built, as detailed in the Colonial Record (1881), using over 1 million metres of timber, 2.5 million bricks and 220 tonnes of galvanised corrugated iron. Remarkably the building was designed as a temporary structure to house the Exhibition. At the end of the Exhibition the building was not dismantled as originally planned and was instead repurposed for government office space and served to house, among other things, records and objects of historical significance. Ultimately the provisional building materials used for the Garden Palace were more suited to a temporary structure, in contrast with those used for the more permanent structures built at the same time which are still standing today.The building was an architectural and engineering wonder set in a cathedral-like cruciform design, showcasing a stained-glass skylight in the largest dome in the southern hemisphere (64 metres high and 30 metres in diameter). The total floor space of the exhibition building was three and half hectares, and the area occupied by the Garden Palace and related buildings—including the Fine Arts Gallery, Agricultural Hall, Machinery Hall and 10 restaurants and places of refreshment—was an astounding 14 hectares (Official Record xxxvi). To put the scale of the Garden Palace into contemporary perspective it was approximately twice the size of the Queen Victoria Building that stands on Sydney’s George Street today.Several innovative features set the building apart from other Sydney structures of the day. The rainwater downpipes were enclosed in hollow columns of pine along the aisles, ventilation was provided through the floors and louvered windows (Official Record xxi) while a Whittier’s Steam Elevator enabled visitors to ascend the north tower and take in the harbour views (“Among the Machinery” 70-71). The building dominated the Sydney skyline, serving as a visual anchor point that welcomed visitors arriving in the city by boat:one of the first objects that met our view as, after 12 o’clock, we proceeded up Port Jackson, was the shell of the Exhibition Building which is so rapidly rising on the Domain, and which next September, is to dazzle the eyes of the world with its splendours. (“A ‘Bohemian’s’ Holiday Notes” 2)The DomeThe dome of the Garden Palace was directly above the intersection of the nave and transept and rested on a drum, approximately 30 metres in diameter. The drum featured 36 oval windows which flooded the space below with light. The dome was made of wood covered with corrugated galvanised iron featuring 12 large lattice ribs and 24 smaller ribs bound together with purlins of wood strengthened with iron. At the top of the dome was a lantern and stained glass skylight designed by Messrs. Lyon and Cottier. It was light blue, powdered with golden stars with wooden ribs in red, buff and gold (Notes 6). The painting and decorating of the dome commenced just one month before the exhibition was due to open. The dome was the sixth largest dome in the world at the time. During construction, contractor Mr Young allowed visitors be lifted in a cage to view the building’s progress.During the construction of the Lantern which surmounts the Dome of the Exhibition, visitors have been permitted, through the courtesy of Mr. Young, to ascend in the cage conveying materials for work. This cage is lifted by a single cable, which was constructed specially of picked Manilla hemp, for hoisting into position the heavy timbers used in the construction. The sensation whilst ascending is a most novel one, and must resemble that experienced in ballooning. To see the building sinking slowly beneath you as you successively reach the levels of the galleries, and the roofs of the transept and aisles is an experience never to be forgotten, and it seems a pity that no provision can be made for visitors, on paying a small fee, going up to the dome. (“View from the Lantern of the Dome Exhibition” 8)The ExhibitionInternational Exhibitions presented the opportunity for countries to express their national identities and demonstrate their economic and technological achievements. They allowed countries to showcase the very best examples of contemporary art, handicrafts and the latest technologies particularly in manufacturing (Pont and Proudfoot 231).The Sydney International Exhibition was the ninth International Exhibition and the colony’s first, and was responsible for bringing the world to Sydney at a time when the colony was prosperous and full of potential. The Exhibition—opening on 17 September 1879 and closing on 20 April 1880—had an enormous impact on the community, it boosted the economy and was the catalyst for improving the city’s infrastructure. It was a great source of civic pride.Image 1: The International Exhibition Sydney, 1879-1880, supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News Jan. 1880. Image credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (call no.: DL X8/3)This bird’s eye view of the Garden Palace shows how impressive the main structure was and how much of the Gardens and Domain were occupied by ancillary buildings for the Exhibition. Based on an original drawing by John Thomas Richardson, chief engraver at the Illustrated Sydney News, this lithograph features a key identifying buildings including the Art Gallery, Machinery Hall, and Agricultural Hall. Pens and sheds for livestock can also be seen. The parade ground was used throughout the Exhibition for displays of animals. The first notable display was the International Show of Sheep featuring Australian, French and English sheep; not surprisingly the shearing demonstrations proved to be particularly popular with the community.Approximately 34 countries and their colonies participated in the Exhibition, displaying the very best examples of technology, industry and art laid out in densely packed courts (Barnet n.p.). There were approximately 14,000 exhibits (Official Record c) which included displays of Bohemian glass, tapestries, fine porcelain, fabrics, pyramids of gold, metals, minerals, wood carvings, watches, ethnographic specimens, and heavy machinery. Image 2: “Meet Me under the Dome.” Illustrated Sydney News 1 Nov. 1879: 4. Official records cite that between 19,853 and 24,000 visitors attended the Exhibition on the opening day of 17 September 1879, and over 1.1 million people visited during its seven months of operation. Sizeable numbers considering the population of the colony, at the time, was just over 700,000 (New South Wales Census).The Exhibition helped to create a sense of place and community and was a popular destination for visitors. On crowded days the base of the dome became a favourite meeting place for visitors, so much so that “meet me under the dome” became a common expression in Sydney during the Exhibition (Official Record lxxxiii).Attendance was steady and continuous throughout the course of the Exhibition and, despite exceeding the predicted cost by almost four times, the Exhibition was deemed a resounding success. The Executive Commissioner Mr P.A. Jennings remarked at the closing ceremony:this great undertaking […] marks perhaps the most important epoch that has occurred in our history. In holding this exhibition we have entered into a new arena and a race of progress among the nations of the earth, and have placed ourselves in kindly competition with the most ancient States of the old and new world. (Official Record ciii)Initially the cost of admission was set at 5 shillings and later dropped to 1 shilling. Season tickets for the Exhibition were also available for £3 3s which entitled the holder to unlimited entry during all hours of general admission. Throughout the Exhibition, season ticket holders accounted for 76,278 admissions. The Exhibition boosted the economy and encouraged authorities to improve the city’s services and facilities which helped to build a sense of community as well as pride in the achievement of such a fantastic structure. A steam-powered tramway was installed to transport exhibition-goers around the city, after the Exhibition, the tramway network was expanded and by 1905–1906 the trams were converted to electric traction (Freestone 32).After the exhibition closed, the imposing Garden Palace building was used as office space and storage for various government departments.An Icon DestroyedIn the early hours of 22 September 1882 tragedy struck when the Palace was engulfed by fire (“Destruction of the Garden Palace” 7). The building – and all its contents – destroyed.Image 3: Burning of the Garden Palace from Eaglesfield, Darlinghurst, sketched at 5.55am, Sep 22/82. Image credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (call no.: SSV/137) Many accounts and illustrations of the Garden Palace fire can be found in contemporary newspapers and artworks. A rudimentary drawing by an unknown artist held by the State Library of New South Wales appears to have been created as the Palace was burning. The precise time and location is recorded on the painting, suggesting it was painted from Eaglesfield, a school on Darlinghurst Road. It purveys a sense of immediacy giving some insight into the chaos and heat of the tragedy. A French artist living in Sydney, Lucien Henry, was among those who attempted to capture the fire. His assistant, G.H. Aurousseau, described the event in the Technical Gazette in 1912:Mister Henry went out onto the balcony and watched until the Great Dome toppled in; it was then early morning; he went back to his studio procured a canvas, sat down and painted the whole scene in a most realistic manner, showing the fig trees in the Domain, the flames rising through the towers, the dome falling in and the reflected light of the flames all around. (Technical Gazette 33-35)The painting Henry produced is not the watercolour held by the State Library of New South Wales, however it is interesting to see how people were moved to document the destruction of such an iconic building in the city’s history.What Was Destroyed?The NSW Legislative Assembly debate of 26 September 1882, together with newspapers of the day, documented what was lost in the fire. The Garden Palace housed the foundation collection of the Technological and Sanitary Museum (the precursor to the Powerhouse Museum, now the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), due to open on 1 December 1882. This collection included significant ethnological specimens such as Australian Indigenous artefacts, many of which were acquired from the Sydney International Exhibition. The Art Society of New South Wales had hung 300 paintings in preparation for their annual art exhibition due to open on 2 October of that year, all of these paintings consumed by fire.The Records of the Crown Lands Occupation Office were lost along with the 1881 Census (though the summary survived). Numerous railway surveys were lost, as were: £7,000 worth of statues, between 20,000 and 30,000 plants and the holdings of the Linnean Society offices and museum housed on the ground floor. The Eastern Suburbs Brass Band performed the day before at the opening of the Eastern Suburbs Horticultural Society Flower show; all the instruments were stored in the Garden Palace and were destroyed. Several Government Departments also lost significant records, including the: Fisheries Office; Mining Department; Harbour and Rivers Department; and, as mentioned, the Census Department.The fire was so ferocious that the windows in the terraces along Macquarie Street cracked with the heat and sheets of corrugated iron were blown as far away as Elizabeth Bay. How Did The Fire Start?No one knows how the fire started on that fateful September morning, and despite an official enquiry no explanation was ever delivered. One theory blamed the wealthy residents of Macquarie Street, disgruntled at losing their harbour views. Another was that it was burnt to destroy records stored in the basement of the building that contained embarrassing details about the convict heritage of many distinguished families. Margaret Lyon, daughter of the Garden Palace decorator John Lyon, wrote in her diary:a gentleman who says a boy told him when he was putting out the domain lights, that he saw a man jump out of the window and immediately after observed smoke, they are advertising for the boy […]. Everyone seems to agree on his point that it has been done on purpose – Today a safe has been found with diamonds, sapphires and emeralds, there were also some papers in it but they were considerably charred. The statue of her majesty or at least what remains of it, for it is completely ruined – the census papers were also ruined, they were ready almost to be sent to the printers, the work of 30 men for 14 months. Valuable government documents, railway and other plans all gone. (MLMSS 1381/Box 1/Item 2) There are many eyewitness accounts of the fire that day. From nightwatchman Mr Frederick Kirchen and his replacement Mr John McKnight, to an emotional description by 14-year-old student Ethel Pockley. Although there were conflicting accounts as to where the fire may have started, it seems likely that the fire started in the basement with flames rising around the statue of Queen Victoria, situated directly under the dome. The coroner did not make a conclusive finding on the cause of the fire but was scathing of the lack of diligence by the authorities in housing such important items in a building that was not well-secured a was a potential fire hazard.Building a ReputationA number of safes were known to have been in the building storing valuables and records. One such safe, a fireproof safe manufactured by Milner and Son of Liverpool, was in the southern corner of the building near the southern tower. The contents of this safe were unscathed in contrast with the contents of other safes, the contents of which were destroyed. The Milner safe was a little discoloured and blistered on the outside but otherwise intact. “The contents included three ledgers, or journals, a few memoranda and a plan of the exhibition”—the glue was slightly melted—the plan was a little discoloured and a few loose papers were a little charred but overall the contents were “sound and unhurt”—what better advertising could one ask for! (“The Garden Palace Fire” 5).barrangal dyara (skin and bones): Rebuilding CommunityThe positive developments for Sydney and the colony that stemmed from the building and its exhibition, such as public transport and community spirit, grew and took new forms. Yet, in the years since 1882 the memory of the Garden Palace and its disaster faded from the consciousness of the Sydney community. The great loss felt by Indigenous communities went unresolved.Image 4: barrangal dyara (skin and bones). Image credit: Sarah Morley.In September 2016 artist Jonathan Jones presented barrangal dyara (skin and bones), a large scale sculptural installation on the site of the Garden Palace Building in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden. The installation was Jones’s response to the immense loss felt throughout Australia with the destruction of countless Aboriginal objects in the fire. The installation featured thousands of bleached white shields made of gypsum that were laid out to show the footprint of the Garden Palace and represent the rubble left after the fire.Based on four typical designs from Aboriginal nations of the south-east, these shields not only raise the chalky bones of the building, but speak to the thousands of shields that would have had cultural presence in this landscape over generations. (Pike 33)ConclusionSydney’s Garden Palace was a stunning addition to the skyline of colonial Sydney. A massive undertaking, the Palace opened, to great acclaim, in 1879 and its effect on the community of Sydney and indeed the colony of New South Wales was sizeable. There were brief discussions, just after the fire, about rebuilding this great structure in a more permanent fashion for the centenary Exhibition in 1888 (“[From Our Own Correspondents] New South Wales” 5). Ultimately, it was decided that this achievement of the colony of New South Wales would be recorded in history, gifting a legacy of national pride and positivity on the one hand, but on the other an example of the destructive colonial impact on Indigenous communities. For many Sydney-siders today this history is as obscured as the original foundations of the physical building. What we build—iconic structures, civic pride, a sense of community—require maintenance and remembering. References“Among the Machinery.” The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 10 Jan. 1880: 70-71.Aurousseau, G.H. “Lucien Henry: First Lecturer in Art at the Sydney Technical College.” Technical Gazette 2.III (1912): 33-35.Barnet, James. International Exhibition, Sydney, 1880: References to the Plans Showing the Space and Position Occupied by the Various Exhibits in the Garden Palace. Sydney: Colonial Architect’s Office, 1880.“A ‘Bohemian’s’ Holiday Notes.” The Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter General Advocate 23 Apr. 1879: 2.Census Department. New South Wales Census. 1881. 3 Mar. 2017 <http://hccda.ada.edu.au/pages/NSW-1881-census-02_vi>. “Destruction of the Garden Palace.” Sydney Morning Herald 23 Sep. 1882: 7.Freestone, Robert. “Space Society and Urban Reform.” Colonial City, Global City, Sydney’s International Exhibition 1879. Eds. Peter Proudfoot, Roslyn Maguire, and Robert Freestone. Darlinghurst, NSW: Crossing P, 2000. 15-33.“[From Our Own Correspondents] New South Wales.” The Age (Melbourne, Vic.) 30 Sep. 1882: 5.“The Garden Palace Fire.” Sydney Morning Herald 25 Sep. 1882: 5.Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier 1 Nov. 1879: 4.“International Exhibition.” Australian Town and Country Journal 15 Feb. 1879: 11.Kent, H.C. “Reminiscences of Building Methods in the Seventies under John Young. Lecture.” Architecture: An Australian Magazine of Architecture and the Arts Nov. (1924): 5-13.Lyon, Margaret. Unpublished Manuscript Diary. MLMSS 1381/Box 1/Item 2.New South Wales, Legislative Assembly. Debates 22 Sep. 1882: 542-56.Notes on the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879. Melbourne: Government Printer, 1881.Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition 1879. Sydney: Government Printer, 1881.Pike, Emma. “barrangal dyara (skin and bones).” Jonathan Jones: barrangal dyara (skin and bones). Eds. Ross Gibson, Jonathan Jones, and Genevieve O’Callaghan. Balmain: Kaldor Public Arts Project, 2016.Pont, Graham, and Peter Proudfoot. “The Technological Movement and the Garden Palace.” Colonial City, Global City, Sydney’s International Exhibition 1879. Eds. Peter Proudfoot, Roslyn Maguire, and Robert Freestone. Darlinghurst, NSW: Crossing Press, 2000. 239-249.“View from the Lantern of the Dome of the Exhibition.” Illustrated Sydney News and New South Wales Agriculturalist and Grazier 9 Aug. 1879: 8.

Special Care Notice This paper discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the process of colonisation. Content within this paper may be distressing to some readers. Introduction The decimation of the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was systematic and swift. First Contact was an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters for the Indigenous inhabitants. There were, according to some early records, a few examples of peaceful interactions (Morris 84). Yet, the inevitable competition over resources, and the intensity with which colonists pursued their “claims” for food, land, and water, quickly transformed amicable relationships into hostile rivalries. Jennifer Gall has written that, as “European settlement expanded in the late 1820s, violent exchanges between settlers and Aboriginal people were frequent, brutal and unchecked” (58). Indeed, the near-annihilation of the original custodians of the land was, if viewed through the lens of time, a process that could be described as one that was especially efficient. As John Morris notes: in 1803, when the first settlers arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, the Aborigines had already inhabited the island for some 25,000 years and the population has been estimated at 4,000. Seventy-three years later, Truganinni, [often cited as] the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent, was dead. (84) Against a backdrop of extreme violence, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), there were some, admittedly dubious, efforts to contain the bloodshed. One such effort, in the late 1820s, was the production, and subsequent distribution, of a set of Proclamation Boards. Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53). Image 1: Governor Davey's [sic - actually Governor Arthur's] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic - actually c. 1828-30]. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Call Number: SAFE / R 247). The Board is an interesting re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of images on the bark of trees. Such trees, often referred to as scarred trees, are rare in modern-day Tasmania as “the expansion of settlements, and the impact of bush fires and other environmental factors” resulted in many of these trees being destroyed (Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania online). Similarly, only a few of the Boards, inspired by these trees, survive today. The Proclamation Board was, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of a different Governor: Lieutenant Governor Davey (after whom Port Davey, on the south-west coast of Tasmania is named). This re-imagining of the Board’s creator was so effective that the Board, today, is popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines. This paper outlines several other re-imaginings of this Board. In addition, this paper offers another, new, re-imagining of the Board, positing that this is an early “pamphlet” on crime, justice and punishment which actually presents as a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. In doing so this work connects the Proclamation Board to the larger genre of crime fiction. One Proclamation Board: Two Governors Labelled Van Diemen’s Land and settled as a colony of New South Wales in 1803, this island state would secede from the administration of mainland Australia in 1825. Another change would follow in 1856 when Van Diemen’s Land was, in another process of re-imagining, officially re-named Tasmania. This change in nomenclature was an initiative to, symbolically at least, separate the contemporary state from a criminal and violent past (Newman online). Tasmania’s violent history was, perhaps, inevitable. The island was claimed by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, in the name of His Majesty, not for the purpose of building a community, but to “prevent the French from gaining a footing on the east side of that island” and also to procure “timber and other natural products, as well as to raise grain and to promote the seal industry” (Clark 36). Another rationale for this land claim was to “divide the convicts” (Clark 36) which re-fashioned the island into a gaol. It was this penal element of the British colonisation of Australia that saw the worst of the British Empire forced upon the Aboriginal peoples. As historian Clive Turnbull explains: the brutish state of England was reproduced in the English colonies, and that in many ways its brutishness was increased, for now there came to Australia not the humanitarians or the indifferent, but the men who had vested interests in the systems of restraint; among those who suffered restraint were not only a vast number who were merely unfortunate and poverty-stricken—the victims of a ‘depression’—but brutalised persons, child-slaughterers and even potential cannibals. (Turnbull 25) As noted above the Black War of Tasmania saw unprecedented aggression against the rightful occupants of the land. Yet, the Aboriginal peoples were “promised the white man’s justice, the people [were] exhorted to live in amity with them, the wrongs which they suffer [were] deplored” (Turnbull 23). The administrators purported an egalitarian society, one of integration and peace but Van Diemen’s Land was colonised as a prison and as a place of profit. So, “like many apologists whose material benefit is bound up with the systems which they defend” (Turnbull 23), assertions of care for the health and welfare of the Aboriginal peoples were made but were not supported by sufficient policies, or sufficient will, and the Black War continued. Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823) was the second person to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land; a term of office that began in 1813 and concluded in 1817. The fourth Lieutenant Governor of the island was Colonel Sir George Arthur (1784-1854); his term of office, significantly longer than Davey’s, being from 1824 to 1836. The two men were very different but are connected through this intriguing artefact, the Proclamation Board. One of the efforts made to assert the principle of equality under the law in Van Diemen’s Land was an outcome of work undertaken by Surveyor General George Frankland (1800-1838). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 and suggested the Proclamation Board (Morris 84), sometimes referred to as a Picture Board or the Tasmanian Hieroglyphics, as a tool to support Arthur’s various Proclamations. The Proclamation, signed on 15 April 1828 and promulgated in the The Hobart Town Courier on 19 April 1828 (Arthur 1), was one of several notices attempting to reduce the increasing levels of violence between Indigenous peoples and colonists. The date on Frankland’s correspondence clearly situates the Proclamation Board within Arthur’s tenure as Lieutenant Governor. The Board was, however, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of Davey. The Clerk of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Hugh M. Hull, asserted that the Board was the work of Davey and not Arthur. Hull’s rationale for this, despite archival evidence connecting the Board to Frankland and, by extension, to Arthur, is predominantly anecdotal. In a letter to the editor of The Hobart Mercury, published 26 November 1874, Hull wrote: this curiosity was shown by me to the late Mrs Bateman, neé Pitt, a lady who arrived here in 1804, and with whom I went to school in 1822. She at once recognised it as one of a number prepared in 1816, under Governor Davey’s orders; and said she had seen one hanging on a gum tree at Cottage Green—now Battery Point. (3) Hull went on to assert that “if any old gentleman will look at the picture and remember the style of military and civil dress of 1810-15, he will find that Mrs Bateman was right” (3). Interestingly, Hull relies upon the recollections of a deceased school friend and the dress codes depicted by the artist to date the Proclamation Board as a product of 1816, in lieu of documentary evidence dating the Board as a product of 1828-1830. Curiously, the citation of dress can serve to undermine Hull’s argument. An early 1840s watercolour by Thomas Bock, of Mathinna, an Aboriginal child of Flinders Island adopted by Lieutenant Governor John Franklin (Felton online), features the young girl wearing a brightly coloured, high-waisted dress. This dress is very similar to the dresses worn by the children on the Proclamation Board (the difference being that Mathinna wears a red dress with a contrasting waistband, the children on the Board wear plain yellow dresses) (Bock). Acknowledging the simplicity of children's clothing during the colonial era, it could still be argued that it would have been unlikely the Governor of the day would have placed a child, enjoying at that time a life of privilege, in a situation where she sat for a portrait wearing an old-fashioned garment. So effective was Hull’s re-imagining of the Board’s creator that the Board was, for many years, popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with even the date modified, to 1816, to fit Davey’s term of office. Further, it is worth noting that catalogue records acknowledge the error of attribution and list both Davey and Arthur as men connected to the creation of the Proclamation Board. A Surviving Board: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales One of the surviving Proclamation Boards is held by the Mitchell Library. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73). The work was mass produced (by the standards of mass production of the day) by pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75-76). The images, once outlined, were painted in oil. Of approximately 100 Boards made, several survive today. There are seven known Boards within public collections (Gall 58): five in Australia (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston); and two overseas (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Cambridge). The catalogue record, for the Board held by the Mitchell Library, offers the following details:Paintings: 1 oil painting on Huon pine board, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and hole at top centre for suspension ; 35.7 x 22.6 x 1 cm. 4 scenes are depicted:Aborigines and white settlers in European dress mingling harmoniouslyAboriginal men and women, and an Aboriginal child approach Governor Arthur to shake hands while peaceful soldiers look onA hostile Aboriginal man spears a male white settler and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks onA hostile white settler shoots an Aboriginal man and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks on. (SAFE / R 247) The Mitchell Library Board was purchased from J.W. Beattie in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86), which is approximately $2,200 today. Importantly, the title of the record notes both the popular attribution of the Board and the man who actually instigated the Board’s production: “Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30].” The date of the Board is still a cause of some speculation. The earlier date, 1828, marks the declaration of martial law (Turnbull 94) and 1830 marks the Black Line (Edmonds 215); the attempt to form a human line of white men to force many Tasmanian Aboriginals, four of the nine nations, onto the Tasman Peninsula (Ryan 3). Frankland’s suggestion for the Board was put forward on 4 February 1829, with Arthur’s official Conciliator to the Aborigines, G.A. Robinson, recording his first sighting of a Board on 24 December 1829 (Morris 84-85). Thus, the conception of the Board may have been in 1828 but the Proclamation project was not fully realised until 1830. Indeed, a news item on the Proclamation Board did appear in the popular press, but not until 5 March 1830: We are informed that the Government have given directions for the painting of a large number of pictures to be placed in the bush for the contemplation of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. […] However […] the causes of their hostility must be more deeply probed, or their taste as connoisseurs in paintings more clearly established, ere we can look for any beneficial result from this measure. (Colonial Times 2) The remark made in relation to becoming a connoisseur of painting, though intended to be derogatory, makes some sense. There was an assumption that the Indigenous peoples could easily translate a European-styled execution by hanging, as a visual metaphor for all forms of punishment. It has long been understood that Indigenous “social organisation and religious and ceremonial life were often as complex as those of the white invaders” (McCulloch 261). However, the Proclamation Board was, in every sense, Eurocentric and made no attempt to acknowledge the complexities of Aboriginal culture. It was, quite simply, never going to be an effective tool of communication, nor achieve its socio-legal aims. The Board Re-imagined: Popular Media The re-imagining of the Proclamation Board as a construct of Governor Davey, instead of Governor Arthur, is just one of many re-imaginings of this curious object. There are, of course, the various imaginings of the purpose of the Board. On the surface these images are a tool for reconciliation but as “the story of these paintings unfolds […] it becomes clear that the proclamations were in effect envoys sent back to Britain to exhibit the ingenious attempts being applied to civilise Australia” (Carroll 76). In this way the Board was re-imagined by the Administration that funded the exercise, even before the project was completed, from a mechanism to assist in the bringing about of peace into an object that would impress colonial superiors. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has recently written about the Boards in the context of their “transnational circulation” and how “objects become subjects and speak of their past through the ventriloquism of contemporary art history” (75). Carroll argues the Board is an item that couples “military strategy with a fine arts propaganda campaign” (Carroll 78). Critically the Boards never achieved their advertised purpose for, as Carroll explains, there were “elaborate rituals Aboriginal Australians had for the dead” and, therefore, “the display of a dead, hanging body is unthinkable. […] being exposed to the sight of a hanged man must have been experienced as an unimaginable act of disrespect” (92). The Proclamation Board would, in sharp contrast to feelings of unimaginable disrespect, inspire feelings of pride across the colonial population. An example of this pride being revealed in the selection of the Board as an object worthy of reproduction, as a lithograph, for an Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1866 (Morris 84). The lithograph, which identifies the Board as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines and dated 1816, was listed as item 572, of 738 items submitted by Tasmania, for the event (The Commissioners 69-85). This type of reproduction, or re-imagining, of the Board would not be an isolated event. Penelope Edmonds has described the Board as producing a “visual vernacular” through a range of derivatives including lantern slides, lithographs, and postcards. These types of tourist ephemera are in addition to efforts to produce unique re-workings of the Board as seen in Violet Mace’s Proclamation glazed earthernware, which includes a jug (1928) and a pottery cup (1934) (Edmonds online). The Board Re-imagined: A True Crime Tale The Proclamation Board offers numerous narratives. There is the story that the Board was designed and deployed to communicate. There is the story behind the Board. There is also the story of the credit for the initiative which was transferred from Governor Arthur to Governor Davey and subsequently returned to Arthur. There are, too, the provenance stories of individual Boards. There is another story the Proclamation Board offers. The story of true crime in colonial Australia. The Board, as noted, presents through a four-strip pictogram an idea that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Advocating for a society of equals was a duplicitous practice, for while Aborigines were hanged for allegedly murdering settlers, “there is no record of whites being charged, let alone punished, for murdering Aborigines” (Morris 84). It would not be until 1838 that white men would be punished for the murder of Aboriginal people (on the mainland) in the wake of the Myall Creek Massacre, in northern New South Wales. There were other examples of attempts to bring about a greater equity under the rule of law but, as Amanda Nettelbeck explains, there was wide-spread resistance to the investigation and charging of colonists for crimes against the Indigenous population with cases regularly not going to trial, or, if making a courtroom, resulting in an acquittal (355-59). That such cases rested on “legally inadmissible Aboriginal testimony” (Reece in Nettelbeck 358) propped up a justice system that was, inherently, unjust in the nineteenth century. It is important to note that commentators at the time did allude to the crime narrative of the Board: when in the most civilized country in the world it has been found ineffective as example to hang murderers in chains, it is not to be expected a savage race will be influenced by the milder exhibition of effigy and caricature. (Colonial Times 2) It is argued here that the Board was much more than an offering of effigy and caricature. The Proclamation Board presents, in striking detail, the formula for the modern true crime tale: a peace disturbed by the act of murder; and the ensuing search for, and delivery of, justice. Reinforcing this point, are the ideas of justice seen within crime fiction, a genre that focuses on the restoration of order out of chaos (James 174), are made visible here as aspirational. The true crime tale does not, consistently, offer the reassurances found within crime fiction. In the real world, particularly one as violent as colonial Australia, we are forced to acknowledge that, below the surface of the official rhetoric on justice and crime, the guilty often go free and the innocent are sometimes hanged. Another point of note is that, if the latter date offered here, of 1830, is taken as the official date of the production of these Boards, then the significance of the Proclamation Board as a true crime tale is even more pronounced through a connection to crime fiction (both genres sharing a common literary heritage). The year 1830 marks the release of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servinton written by convicted forger Henry Savery, a crime novel (produced in three volumes) published by Henry Melville of Hobart Town. Thus, this paper suggests, 1830 can be posited as a year that witnessed the production of two significant cultural artefacts, the Proclamation Board and the nation’s first full-length literary work, as also being the year that established the, now indomitable, traditions of true crime and crime fiction in Australia. Conclusion During the late 1820s in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) a set of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards were produced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur. The official purpose of these items was to communicate, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony, that all—black and white—were equal under the law. Murderers, be they Aboriginal or colonist, would be punished. The Board is a re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of drawings on the bark of trees. The Board was, in the 1860s, in time for an Intercolonial Exhibition, re-imagined as the output of Lieutenant Governor Davey. This re-imagining of the Board was so effective that surviving artefacts, today, are popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with the date modified, to 1816, to fit the new narrative. The Proclamation Board was also reimagined, by its creators and consumers, in a variety of ways: as peace offering; military propaganda; exhibition object; tourism ephemera; and contemporary art. This paper has also, briefly, offered another re-imagining of the Board, positing that this early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment actually presents a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. The Proclamation Board tells many stories but, at the core of this curious object, is a crime story: the story of mass murder. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The author acknowledges, too, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose lands this paper was researched and written. The author extends thanks to Richard Neville, Margot Riley, Kirsten Thorpe, and Justine Wilson of the State Library of New South Wales for sharing their knowledge and offering their support. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and for making valuable suggestions. ReferencesAboriginal Heritage Tasmania. “Scarred Trees.” Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, 2012. 12 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/archaeological-site-types/scarred-trees›.Arthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur’s] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30]. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, c. 1828-30.Bock, Thomas. Mathinna. Watercolour and Gouache on Paper. 23 x 19 cm (oval), c. 1840.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clark, Manning. History of Australia. Abridged by Michael Cathcart. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 [1993]. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland P, 2014.Colonial Times. “Hobart Town.” Colonial Times 5 Mar. 1830: 2.The Commissioners. Intercolonial Exhibition Official Catalogue. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blundell & Ford, 1866.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14. Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.———. “The Proclamation Cup: Tasmanian Potter Violet Mace and Colonial Quotations.” reCollections 5.2 (2010). 20 May 2015 ‹http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_2/papers/the_proclamation_cup_›.Felton, Heather. “Mathinna.” Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm›.Gall, Jennifer. Library of Dreams: Treasures from the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011.Hull, Hugh M. “Tasmanian Hieroglyphics.” The Hobart Mercury 26 Nov. 1874: 3.James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.Mace, Violet. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Jug. Glazed Earthernware. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1928.———. Violet Mace’s Proclamation Cup. Glazed Earthernware. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 1934.McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. “Sir George Gipps and Eastern Australia’s Policy toward the Aborigine, 1838-46.” The Journal of Modern History 33.3 (1961): 261–69.Morris, John. “Notes on a Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Nettelbeck, Amanda. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Newman, Terry. “Tasmania, the Name.” Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006. 16 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tasmania%20name.htm›.Reece, Robert H.W., in Amanda Nettelbeck. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Ryan, Lyndall. “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?” Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013): 3–18.Savery, Henry. Quintus Servinton: A Tale Founded upon Events of Real Occurrence. Hobart Town: Henry Melville, 1830.Turnbull, Clive. Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1974 [1948].


 
 
 Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924. 
 
 
 
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Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. 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Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. 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International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924.

“...children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents...” — Stephen Kline, The Making of Children’s Culture We live in a world saturated by design and through design artefacts, one can glean unique insights into a culture's values and norms. In fact, some academics, such as British media and film theorist Ben Highmore, see the two areas so inextricably intertwined as to suggest a wholesale “re-branding of the cultural sciences as design studies” (14). Too often, however, everyday objects are marginalised or overlooked as objects of scholarly attention. The field of material culture studies seeks to change that by focussing on the quotidian object and its ability to reveal much about the time, place, and culture in which it was designed and used. This article takes on one such object, a mid-century children's toy tea set, whose humble journey from 1968 Sears catalogue to 2014 thrift shop—and subsequently this author’s basement—reveals complex rhetorical messages communicated both visually and verbally. As material culture studies theorist Jules Prown notes, the field’s foundation is laid upon the understanding “that objects made ... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (1-2). In this case, the objects’ material and aesthetic characteristics can be shown to reflect some of the pervasive stereotypes and gender roles of the mid-century and trace some of the prevailing tastes of the American middle class of that era, or perhaps more accurately the type of design that came to represent good taste and a modern aesthetic for that audience. A wealth of research exists on the function of toys and play in learning about the world and even the role of toy selection in early sex-typing, socialisation, and personal identity of children (Teglasi). This particular research area isn’t the focus of this article; however, one aspect that is directly relevant and will be addressed is the notion of adult role-playing among children and the role of toys in communicating certain adult practices or values to the child—what sociologist David Oswell calls “the dedifferentiation of childhood and adulthood” (200). Neither is the focus of this article the practice nor indeed the ethicality of marketing to children. Relevant to this particular example I suggest, is as a product utilising messaging aimed not at children but at adults, appealing to certain parents’ interest in nurturing within their child a perceived era and class-appropriate sense of taste. This was fuelled in large part by the curatorial pursuits of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coupled with an interest and investment in raising their children in a design-forward household and a desire for toys that reflected that priority; in essence, parents wishing to raise modern children. Following Prown’s model of material culture analysis, the tea set is examined in three stages, through description, deduction and speculation with each stage building on the previous one. Figure 1: Porcelain Toy Tea Set. Description The tea set consists of twenty-six pieces that allows service for six. Six cups, saucers, and plates; a tall carafe with spout, handle and lid; a smaller vessel with a spout and handle; a small round bowl with a lid; a larger oval bowl with a lid, and a coordinated oval platter. The cups are just under two inches tall and two inches in diameter. The largest piece, the platter is roughly six inches by four inches. The pieces are made of a ceramic material white in colour and glossy in texture and are very lightweight. The rim or edge of each piece is decorated with a motif of three straight lines in two different shades of blue and in different thicknesses, interspersed with a set of three black wiggly lines. Figure 2: Porcelain Toy Tea Set Box. The set is packaged for retail purposes and the original box appears to be fully intact. The packaging of an object carries artefactual evidence just as important as what it contains that falls into the category of a “‘para-artefact’ … paraphernalia that accompanies the product (labels, packaging, instructions etc.), all of which contribute to a product’s discourse” (Folkmann and Jensen 83). The graphics on the box are colourful, featuring similar shades of teal blue as found on the objects, with the addition of orange and a silver sticker featuring the logo of the American retailer Sears. The cover features an illustration of the objects on an orange tabletop. The most prominent text that confirms that the toy is a “Porcelain Toy Tea Set” is in an organic, almost psychedelic style that mimics both popular graphics of this era—especially album art and concert posters—as well as the organic curves of steam that emanate from the illustrated teapot’s spout. Additional messages appear on the box, in particular “Contemporary DESIGN” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. Along the edges of the box lid, a detail of the decorative motif is reproduced somewhat abstracted from what actually appears on the ceramic objects. Figure 3: Sears’s Christmas Wishbook Catalogue, page 574 (1968). Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) is well-known for its over one-hundred-year history of producing printed merchandise catalogues. The catalogue is another important para-artefact to consider in analysing the objects. The tea set first appeared in the 1968 Sears Christmas Wishbook. There is no date or copyright on the box, so only its inclusion in the catalogue allows the set to be accurately dated. It also allows us to understand how the set was originally marketed. Deduction In the deduction phase, we focus on the sensory aesthetic and functional interactive qualities of the various components of the set. In terms of its function, it is critical that we situate the objects in their original use context, play. The light weight of the objects and thinness of the ceramic material lends the objects a delicate, if not fragile, feeling which indicates that this set is not for rough use. Toy historian Lorraine May Punchard differentiates between toy tea sets “meant to be used by little girls, having parties for their friends and practising the social graces of the times” and smaller sets or doll dishes “made for little girls to have parties with their dolls, or for their dolls to have parties among themselves” (7). Similar sets sold by Sears feature images of girls using the sets with both human playmates and dolls. The quantity allowing service for six invites multiple users to join the party. The packaging makes clear that these toy tea sets were intended for imaginary play only, rendering them non-functional through an all-capitals caution declaiming “IMPORTANT: Do not use near heat”. The walls and handles of the cups are so thin one can imagine that they would quickly become dangerous if filled with a hot liquid. Nevertheless, the lid of the oval bowl has a tan stain or watermark which suggests actual use. The box is broken up by pink cardboard partitions dividing it into segments sized for each item in the set. Interestingly even the small squares of unfinished corrugated cardboard used as cushioning between each stacked plate have survived. The evidence of careful re-packing indicates that great care was taken in keeping the objects safe. It may suggest that even though the set was used, the children or perhaps the parents, considered the set as something to care for and conserve for the future. Flaws in the glaze and applique of the design motif can be found on several pieces in the set and offer some insight as to the technique used in producing these items. Errors such as the design being perfectly evenly spaced but crooked in its alignment to the rim, or pieces of the design becoming detached or accidentally folded over and overlapping itself could only be the result of a print transfer technique popularised with decorative china of the Victorian era, a technique which lends itself to mass production and lower cost when compared to hand decoration. Speculation In the speculation stage, we can consider the external evidence and begin a more rigorous investigation of the messaging, iconography, and possible meanings of the material artefact. Aspects of the set allow a number of useful observations about the role of such an object in its own time and context. Sociologists observe the role of toys as embodiments of particular types of parental messages and values (Cross 292) and note how particularly in the twentieth century “children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents” (Kline 96). Throughout history children’s toys often reflected a miniaturised version of the adult world allowing children to role-play as imagined adult-selves. Kristina Ranalli explored parallels between the practice of drinking tea and the play-acting of the child’s tea party, particularly in the nineteenth century, as a gendered ritual of gentility; a method of socialisation and education, and an opportunity for exploratory and even transgressive play by “spontaneously creating mini-societies with rules of their own” (20). Such toys and objects were available through the Sears mail-order catalogue from the very beginning at the end of the nineteenth century (McGuire). Propelled by the post-war boom of suburban development and homeownership—that generation’s manifestation of the American Dream—concern with home décor and design was elevated among the American mainstream to a degree never before seen. There was a hunger for new, streamlined, efficient, modernist living. In his essay titled “Domesticating Modernity”, historian Jeffrey L. Meikle notes that many early modernist designers found that perhaps the most potent way to “‘domesticate’ modernism and make it more familiar was to miniaturise it; for example, to shrink the skyscraper and put it into the home as furniture or tableware” (143). Dr Timothy Blade, curator of the 1985 exhibition of girls’ toys at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Gallery—now the Goldstein Museum of Design—described in his introduction “a miniaturised world with little props which duplicate, however rudely, the larger world of adults” (5). Noting the power of such toys to reflect adult values of their time, Blade continues: “the microcosm of the child’s world, remarkably furnished by the miniaturised props of their parents’ world, holds many direct and implied messages about the society which brought it into being” (9). In large part, the mid-century Sears catalogues capture the spirit of an era when, as collector Thomas Holland observes, “little girls were still primarily being offered only the options of glamour, beauty and parenthood as the stuff of their fantasies” (175). Holland notes that “the Wishbooks of the fifties [and, I would add, the sixties] assumed most girls would follow in their mother’s footsteps to become full-time housewives and mommies” (1). Blade grouped toys into three categories: cooking, cleaning, and sewing. A tea set could arguably be considered part of the cooking category, but closer examination of the language used in marketing this object—“little hostesses”, et cetera—suggests an emphasis not on cooking but on serving or entertaining. This particular category was not prevalent in the era examined by Blade, but the cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century, particularly the rapid popularisation of a suburban lifestyle, may have led to the use of entertaining as an additional distinct category of role play in the process of learning to become a “proper” homemaker. Sears and other retailers offered a wide variety of styles of toy tea sets during this era. Blade and numerous other sources observe that children’s toy furniture and appliances tended to reflect the style and aesthetic qualities of their contemporary parallels in the adult world, the better to associate the child’s objects to its adult equivalent. The toy tea set’s packaging trumpets messages intended to appeal to modernist values and identity including “Contemporary Design” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. The use of this coded marketing language, aimed particularly at parents, can be traced back several decades. In 1928 a group of American industrial and textile designers established the American Designers' Gallery in New York, in part to encourage American designers to innovate and adopt new styles such as those seen in the L’ Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, the exposition that sparked international interest in the Art Deco or Art Moderne aesthetic. One of the gallery founders, Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-American industrial and textile designer who had studied in Austria and was influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, publicised her new style of nursery furnishings as “designed for the very modern American child” (Brown 80). Sears itself was no stranger to the appeal of such language. The term “contemporary design” was ubiquitous in catalogue copy of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, used to describe everything from draperies (1959) and bedspreads (1961) to spice racks (1964) and the Lady Kenmore portable dishwasher (1961). An emphasis on the role of design in one’s life and surroundings can be traced back to efforts by MoMA. The museum’s interest in modern design hearkens back almost to the institution’s inception, particularly in relation to industrial design and the aestheticisation of everyday objects (Marshall). Through exhibitions and in partnership with mass-market magazines, department stores and manufacturer showrooms, MoMA curators evangelised the importance of “good design” a term that can be found in use as early as 1942. What Is Good Design? followed the pattern of prior exhibitions such as What Is Modern Painting? and situated modern design at the centre of exhibitions that toured the United States in the first half of the nineteen-fifties. To MoMA and its partners, “good design” signified the narrow identification of proper taste in furniture, home decor and accessories; effectively, the establishment of a design canon. The viewpoints enshrined in these exhibitions and partnerships were highly influential on the nation’s perception of taste for decades to come, as the trickle-down effect reached a much broader segment of consumers than those that directly experienced the museum or its exhibitions (Lawrence.) This was evident not only at high-end shops such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Even mass-market retailers sought out well-known figures of modernist design to contribute to their offerings. Sears, for example, commissioned noted modernist designer and ceramicist Russel Wright to produce a variety of serving ware and decor items exclusively for the company. Notably for this study, he was also commissioned to create a toy tea set for children. The 1957 Wishbook touts the set as “especially created to delight modern little misses”. Within its Good Design series, MoMA exhibitions celebrated numerous prominent Nordic designers who were exploring simplified forms and new material technologies. In the 1968 Wishbook, the retailer describes the Porcelain Toy Tea Set as “Danish-inspired china for young moderns”. The reference to Danish design is certainly compatible with the modernist appeal; after the explosion in popularity of Danish furniture design, the term “Danish Modern” was commonly used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties as shorthand for pan-Scandinavian or Nordic design, or more broadly for any modern furniture design regardless of origin that exhibited similar characteristics. In subsequent decades the notion of a monolithic Scandinavian-Nordic design aesthetic or movement has been debunked as primarily an economically motivated marketing ploy (Olivarez et al.; Fallan). In the United States, the term “Danish Modern” became so commonly misused that the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts called upon the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to legally restrict the use of the labels “Danish” and “Danish Modern” to companies genuinely originating in Denmark. Coincidentally the FTC ruled on this in 1968, noting “that ‘Danish Modern’ carries certain meanings, and... that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a foreign culture” (Hansen 451). In the case of the Porcelain Toy Tea Set examined here, Sears was not claiming that the design was “Danish” but rather “Danish-inspired”. One must wonder, was this another coded marketing ploy to communicate a sense of “Good Design” to potential customers? An examination of the formal qualities of the set’s components, particularly the simplified geometric forms and the handle style of the cups, confirms that it is unlike a traditional—say, Victorian-style—tea set. Punchard observes that during this era some American tea sets were actually being modelled on coffee services rather than traditional tea services (148). A visual comparison of other sets sold by Sears in the same year reveals a variety of cup and pot shapes—with some similar to the set in question—while others exhibit more traditional teapot and cup shapes. Coffee culture was historically prominent in Nordic cultures so there is at least a passing reference to that aspect of Nordic—if not specifically Danish—influence in the design. But what of the decorative motif? Simple curved lines were certainly prominent in Danish furniture and architecture of this era, and occasionally found in combination with straight lines, but no connection back to any specific Danish motif could be found even after consultation with experts in the field from the Museum of Danish America and the Vesterheim National Norwegian-American Museum (personal correspondence). However, knowing that the average American consumer of this era—even the design-savvy among them—consumed Scandinavian design without distinguishing between the various nations, a possible explanation could be contained in the promotion of Finnish textiles at the time. In the decade prior to the manufacture of the tea set a major design tendency began to emerge in the United States, triggered by the geometric design motifs of the Finnish textile and apparel company Marimekko. Marimekko products were introduced to the American market in 1959 via the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based retailer Design Research (DR) and quickly exploded in popularity particularly after would-be First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in national media wearing Marimekko dresses during the 1960 presidential campaign and on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. (Thompson and Lange). The company’s styling soon came to epitomise a new youth aesthetic of the early nineteen sixties in the United States, a softer and more casual predecessor to the London “mod” influence. During this time multiple patterns were released that brought a sense of whimsy and a more human touch to classic mechanical patterns and stripes. The patterns Piccolo (1953), Helmipitsi (1959), and Varvunraita (1959), all designed by Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi offered varying motifs of parallel straight lines. Maija Isola's Silkkikuikka (1961) pattern—said to be inspired by the plumage of the Great Crested Grebe—combined parallel serpentine lines with straight and angled lines, available in a variety of colours. These and other geometrically inspired patterns quickly inundated apparel and decor markets. DR built a vastly expanded Cambridge flagship store and opened new locations in New York in 1961 and 1964, and in San Francisco in 1965 fuelled in no small part by the fact that they remained the exclusive outlet for Marimekko in the United States. It is clear that Marimekko’s approach to pattern influenced designers and manufacturers across industries. Design historian Lesley Jackson demonstrates that Marimekko designs influenced or were emulated by numerous other companies across Scandinavia and beyond (72-78). The company’s influence grew to such an extent that some described it as a “conquest of the international market” (Hedqvist and Tarschys 150). Subsequent design-forward retailers such as IKEA and Crate and Barrel continue to look to Marimekko even today for modern design inspiration. In 2016 the mass-market retailer Target formed a design partnership with Marimekko to offer an expansive limited-edition line in their stores, numbering over two hundred items. So, despite the “Danish” misnomer, it is quite conceivable that designers working for or commissioned by Sears in 1968 may have taken their aesthetic cues from Marimekko’s booming work, demonstrating a clear understanding of the contemporary high design aesthetic of the time and coding the marketing rhetoric accordingly even if incorrectly. Conclusion The Sears catalogue plays a unique role in capturing cross-sections of American culture not only as a sales tool but also in Holland’s words as “a beautifully illustrated diary of America, it’s [sic] people and the way we thought about things” (1). Applying a rhetorical and material culture analysis to the catalogue and the objects within it provides a unique glimpse into the roles these objects played in mediating relationships, transmitting values and embodying social practices, tastes and beliefs of mid-century American consumers. Adult consumers familiar with the characteristics of the culture of “Good Design” potentially could have made a connection between the simplified geometric forms of the components of the toy tea set and say the work of modernist tableware designers such as Kaj Franck, or between the set’s graphic pattern and the modernist motifs of Marimekko and its imitators. But for a much broader segment of the population with a less direct understanding of modernist aesthetics, those connections may not have been immediately apparent. The rhetorical messaging behind the objects’ packaging and marketing used class and taste signifiers such as modern, contemporary and “Danish” to reinforce this connection to effect an emotional and aspirational appeal. These messages were coded to position the set as an effective transmitter of modernist values and to target parents with the ambition to create “appropriately modern” environments for their children. References Ancestry.com. “Historic Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1896–1993.” <http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1670>. Baker Furniture Inc. “Design Legacy: Our Story.” n.d. <http://www.bakerfurniture.com/design-story/ legacy-of-quality/design-legacy/>. Blade, Timothy Trent. “Introduction.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances: June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Brown, Ashley. “Ilonka Karasz: Rediscovering a Modernist Pioneer.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 8.1 (2000-1): 69–91. Cross, Gary. “Gendered Futures/Gendered Fantasies: Toys as Representatives of Changing Childhood.” American Journal of Semiotics 12.1 (1995): 289–310. Dolansky, Fanny. “Playing with Gender: Girls, Dolls, and Adult Ideals in the Roman World.” Classical Antiquity 31.2 (2012): 256–92. Fallan, Kjetil. Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories. Berg, 2012. Folkmann, Mads Nygaard, and Hans-Christian Jensen. “Subjectivity in Self-Historicization: Design and Mediation of a ‘New Danish Modern’ Living Room Set.” Design and Culture 7.1 (2015): 65–84. Hansen, Per H. “Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern Furniture Design, 1930–1970.” The Business History Review 80.3 (2006): 449–83. Hedqvist, Hedvig, and Rebecka Tarschys. “Thoughts on the International Reception of Marimekko.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 149–71. Highmore, Ben. The Design Culture Reader. Routledge, 2008. Holland, Thomas W. Girls’ Toys of the Fifties and Sixties: Memorable Catalog Pages from the Legendary Sears Christmas Wishbooks, 1950-1969. Windmill, 1997. Hucal, Sarah. "Scandi Crush Saga: How Scandinavian Design Took over the World." Curbed, 23 Mar. 2016. <http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/23/11286010/scandinavian-design-arne-jacobsen-alvar-aalto-muuto-artek>. Jackson, Lesley. “Textile Patterns in an International Context: Precursors, Contemporaries, and Successors.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 44–83. Kline, Stephen. “The Making of Children’s Culture.” The Children’s Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: NYU P, 1998. 95–109. Lawrence, Sidney. “Declaration of Function: Documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Crusade, 1933-1950.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 65–77. Marshall, Jennifer Jane. Machine Art 1934. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. McGuire, Sheila. “Playing House: Sex-Roles and the Child’s World.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances : June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Meikel, Jeffrey L. “Domesticating Modernity: Ambivalence and Appropriation, 1920–1940.” Designing Modernity; the Arts of Reform and Persuasion. Ed. Wendy Kaplan. Thames & Hudson, 1995. 143–68. O’Brien, Marion, and Aletha C. Huston. “Development of Sex-Typed Play Behavior in Toddlers.” Developmental Psychology, 21.5 (1985): 866–71. Olivarez, Jennifer Komar, Jukka Savolainen, and Juulia Kauste. Finland: Designed Environments. Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Nordic Heritage Museum, 2014. Oswell, David. The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge UP, 2013. Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1–19. Punchard, Lorraine May. Child’s Play: Play Dishes, Kitchen Items, Furniture, Accessories. Punchard, 1982. Ranalli, Kristina. An Act Apart: Tea-Drinking, Play and Ritual. Master's thesis. U Delaware, 2013. Sears Corporate Archives. “What Is a Sears Modern Home?” n.d. <http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm>. "Target Announces New Design Partnership with Marimekko: It’s Finnish, Target Style." Target, 2 Mar. 2016. <http://corporate.target.com/article/2016/03/marimekko-for-target>. Teglasi, Hedwig. “Children’s Choices of and Value Judgments about Sex-Typed Toys and Occupations.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 18.2 (1981): 184–95. Thompson, Jane, and Alexandra Lange. Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes. Chronicle, 2010.

The phenomenological experience of art is one of embodied awareness. Now more than ever, as contemporary art becomes more interactive and immersive, our perceptions of embodiment are useful tools to gauge the efficacy of visual art as a stimulus for knowledge, new experience and expression. Art has a mimetic and interactive relationship with the world. As Schopenhauer said, “The world is my representation” (3). So which takes effect first: the lungful of excited breath or the synapses, is it the miasmic smell of dust on whirring video projectors or the emotion? When we see great art (in this instance, new media work), do we shudder, then see and understand it? Or do we see, tremble and, only then, know? “Art unleashes and intensifies...Art is of the animal” (Grosz, Chaos 62-3). Are our bodies reacting in response to the physical information at hand in the world? “Why do you like Amy?” I asked my six year old son, who was in love at the time. “I like her face,” he said. Was this a crude description of infantile love or an intuitive understanding of how all kinds of passion begin with the surface of the face? Peter Sloterdijk writes about the immersion and mimicry, the life and death mutualism of faces, of gazing on another’s face. He says, “Both of these, self-knowledge as well as self-completion, are operations in a sphere of illusory bipolarity that, like an ellipse, only formally possess two focal points” (205). It seems to me that this desire for the love, beauty and knowledge of another is mutual; a reciprocal narrative thrust, the same existential motivation. Elizabeth Grosz writes about the first emotions of the newborn child and the immediate expressiveness of the face, with those of the parents. She refers to Alphonso Lingis to develop this connection between emotion and bodily expression as: “the pleasure and pains the body comes to articulate: human infants laugh and weep before they can speak.” (Grosz, Chaos 51) To be acknowledged, to see a reflection of one’s own face in that of another’s face as an expression of love, is a craving common to all humans.Art, like new love, has the ability to set our hearts aflutter, lips aquiver, our palms turned upwards in awe, our eyes widened in surprise. “The reverie of love defies all attempts to record it” (Stendhal 63). We are physically drawn to great works, to their immediacy, to their sudden emerging determination and tangibility (Menke). Our perceptions are entangled, our attitudes are affected, our imaginations are piqued and our knowledge and memory are probed.So what happens next? Once our hearts are pounding and our legs are wobbling, then what? As our unconscious experience becomes conscious (as the result of our brain letting our body know and then identifying and analysing the data), we start to draw associations and allow the mind and the body to engage with the world. The significance of what we see, an art object worthy of love for instance, is interpreted or distinguished by our memory and our personal accumulation of information over our lives. When we are away from the object, we perceive the art work to be dispassionate, inanimate and impassive. Yet standing before the object, our perception shifts and we consider the art work to be alive and dynamic. I believe the ability to ‘fall’ for an art work reflects the viewer’s heart-breaking longing to ensnare the beauty (or ugliness) that has so captured his or her soul. Like the doppelganger who doesn’t recognise its own double, its own shadow, the viewer falls in love (Poe 1365). This perverse perception of love (perverse because we usually associate love as existing between humans) is real. Philosopher Paul Crowther writes about the phenomenology of visual art. Where I am talking about a romantic longing, a love of the love itself, the face falling for the face, the body falling for the body, bodily, Crowther breaks down the physical patterns of perceiving art. Though he does not deny the corporeal reality of the experience, he talks of the body operations discriminating at the level of perception, drawing on memories and future expectations and desire (Crowther, Phenomenology 62). Crowther says, “Through the painting, the virtual and the physical, the world and the body, are shown to inhabit one another simultaneously and inseparably” (Phenomenology 75). I am not sure that these experiences occur simultaneously or even in tandem. While we perceive the experience as full and complex and potentially revelatory, one element more likely informs the next and so on, but in a nanosecond of time. The bodily senses warn the heart which warns the mind. The mind activates the memories and experiences before alerting us to the world and the context and finally, the aesthetic judgement.Crowther’s perception of transcendence operates when reality is suspended in the mode of possibility. This informs my view that love of art functions as an impossibility of desire’s end, gratification must be pushed back every time. What of Crowther’s corporeal imagination? This is curious: how can we imagine with our bodies (as opposed to our mind and spirit)? This idea is virtual, in time and space outside those we are used to. This is an imagination that engages instantly, in a self-conscious way. Crowther refers to the virtually immobilised subject matter and the stationary observer and calls it a “suspension of tense” (Phenomenology 69). However I am interested in the movement of the spectator around the art work or in synchronicity with the artwork too. This continues the face to face, body to body, encounter of art.Crowther also writes of phenomenological depth as a condition of embodiment which is of significance to judgement; phenomenological depth is “shown through ways in which the creation of visual artworks embodies complex relations between the human subject and its objects of perception, knowledge, and action” (Phenomenology 9). Although Crowther is leaning on the making of the artwork more heavily than the viewers’ perception of it in this account, it relates well to the Australian artists and twins Silvana and Gabriella Mangano, whose action performances, presented in three-screened, large-scale video were represented in the 2012 Sydney Biennale. The Mangano twins collaborate on video performance works which focus on their embodied interpretations of the act of drawing. In the Mangano sisters’ 2001 Drawing 1, the twins stand beside a wall of paper, facing each other. While maintaining eye contact, they draw the same image on the wall, without seeing what mark they are making or what mark the other is making. This intuitive, physical, corporeal manifestation of their close connection becomes articulated on paper. Its uncanny nature, the shared creativity and the performative act of collaborative drawing is riveting. The spectator is both excluded and incorporated in this work. Such intimacy between siblings is exclusive and yet the participation of the spectator is necessary, as witnesses to this inexplicable ability to know where the other’s drawing will move next. The sisters are face to face but the spectator and the artwork also function in a face to face encounter; the rhythmic fluidity of movement on the video screen surface is the face of the artwork.When experiencing the Mangano works, we become aware of our own subjective physical experiences. Also, we are aware of the artists’ consciousness of their heightened physical relations with each other, while making the work. I am writing in an era of digital video and performance art, where sound, movement, space and shifts of temporality must be added to more traditional formalist criteria such as form, surface, line and colour. As such, our criteria for judgement of this new surge of highly technical (though often intuitively derived) work and the immersive, sometimes interactive, experiences of the audience have to change at the same pace. One of the best methods of aesthetic critique to use is the concept of embodiment, the perceptual forces at work when we are conscious of the experience of art. As I sit at my desk, I am vaguely aware of my fingers rattling across the keyboard and of my legs crossed beneath me. I am conscious of their function, as an occupied space within which my consciousness resides. “I know where each of my limbs is through a body image in which all are included. But the notion of body image is ambiguous,” (102) says Merleau-Ponty, and this is a “Continual translation into visual language of the kinaesthetic and articular impressions of the moment” (102). Mark Johnson reiterates this dilemma: “We are aware of what we see, but not of our seeing.” (5) This doesn’t only relate to the movement of the Mangano twins’ muscles, postures and joint positions in their videos. It also relates to the spectator’s posture and straining, our recoiling and absorption. If I lurch forward (Lingis 174) to see the video image of the twins as they walk across a plain in El Bruc, Spain, using Thonet wooden chairs as stilts in their 2009 work The Surround, and if my eyes widen, if my hands unclench and open, and if I touch my cheek in wonder, then, is this embodied reaction a legitimate normative response? Is this perception of the work, as a beautiful and desirable experience, an admissible form of judgement? If I feel moved, if my heart races, my skin prickles, does that mean the effect is as important as other technical, conceptual or formalist categories of success? Does this feeling refer to the possibility of new intelligence? An active body in a bodily space (Merleau-Ponty 104) as opposed to external space can be perceived because of darkness needed for the ‘theatre’ of the performance. Darkness is often the cue for audiences that there is performative information at work. In the Manganos’ videos in Spain (they completed several videos during a residency in El Bruc Spain), the darkness was the isolated and alienating landscape of a remote plain. In their 2010 work Neon, which was inspired by Atsuko Tanaka’s 1957 Electric Dress, the movement and flourish of coloured neon paper was filmed against a darkened background, which is the kind of theatre space Merleau-Ponty describes: the performative cue. In Neon the checkered and brightly coloured paper appeared waxy as the sisters moved it around their half-hidden bodies, as though blown by an imaginary wind. This is an example of how the black or darkened setting works as a stimulant for understanding the importance of the body at work within the dramatic space. This also escalates the performative nature of the experience, which in turn informs the spectator’s active reaction. Merleau-Ponty says, “the laying down of the first co-ordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object, the situation of the body in the face of its tasks. Bodily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop its parts instead of spreading them out” (115) The viewer, however, is not disembodied, despite the occasional sensation of hallucination in the face of an artwork. The body is present, it is in, near, around and sometimes below the stimulus. Many art experiences are immersive, such as Mexican, Rafael Lorenzo Hemmer, and Dane, Olafur Eliasson, whose installations explore time, light and sound and require audience participation. The participant’s interaction causes an effect upon the artwork. We are more conscious of ourselves in these museum environments: we move slowly, we revolve and pause, with hands on hip, head cocked to the side. We smile, frown, sense, squint, laugh, listen and touch. Traditional art (such as painting) may not invite such extremes of sensory multiplicity, such extremes of mimicking movement and intimate immersion. “The fact that the self exists in such an horizon of past and possible experiences means that it can never know itself sufficiently as just this immediately given physical body. It inhabits that body in the sense of being able, as it were, to wander introspectively through memory and imagination to places, times and situations other than those of its present embodiment” (Crowther, Phenomenology 178). Crowther’s point is important in application to the discussion of embodiment as a normative criteria of aesthetic judgement. It is not just our embodied experience that we bring to the magistrate’s court room, for judgement, but our memory and knowledge and the context or environment of both our experience and the experience that is enacted in relation to the art work. So an argument for embodiment as a criteria for normative judgements would not function alone, but as an adjunct, an add-on, an addition to the list of already applied criteria. This approach of open honesty and sincerity to art is similar to the hopefulness of new love. This is not the sexualised perception, the tensions of eroticism, which Alphonso Lingis speaks of in his Beauty and Lust essay. I am not talking about how “the pattern of holes and orifices we sense in the other pulls at the layout of lips, fingers, breasts, thighs and genitals” nor “the violent emotions that sense the obscenity in anguish” (175-76), I am instead referring to a G-rated sense of attachment, a more romantic attitude of compassion, desire, empathy and affection. Those movements made by the Mangano twins in their videos, in slow motion, sometimes in reverse, in black and white, the actions and postures that flow and dance, peak and drop, swirl and fall: the play of beauty within space, remind me of other languorous mimetic accents taken from nature. I recall the rhythms of poetry I have read, the repetitions of rituals and patterns of behaviour in nature I have witnessed. This knowledge, experience, memory and awareness all contribute to the map of love which is directing me to different points in the performance. These contributors to my embodied experience are creating a new whole and also a new format for judgement. Elizabeth Grosz talks about body maps when she says, “the body is thus also a site of resistance...for it is capable of being self-marked, self-represented in alternative ways” (Inscriptions and Body Maps 64). I’m interested less in the marking and more in the idea of the power of bodily participation. This is power in terms of the personal and the social as transformative qualities. “Art reminds us of states of animal vigour,” Nietsche says (Grosz, Chaos 63). Elizabeth Grosz continues this idea by saying that sensations are composites (75) and that art is connected to sexual energies and impulses, to a common impulse for more (63). However I think there is a mistake in attributing sexuality, as prescribed by Lingis and Grosz, despite my awe and admiration for them both, to the impulses of art. They might seem or appear to be erotic or sexual urges but are they not something a little more fleeting, more abstract, more insouciant? These are the desires at close hand but it is what those desires really represent that count. Philosopher John Armstrong refers to a Vuillard painting in the Courtauld Institute: “This beautiful image reminds us that sexuality isn’t just about sex; it conveys a sense of trust and comfort which are connected to tender touch” (Armstrong 135). In other words, if we assume there is a transference of Freudian sexual intensity or libido to the art work, perhaps it is not the act of sex we crave but a more elaborate desire, a desire for old-fashioned love, respect and honour.Sue Best refers to the word communion to describe the rapturous transport of being close to the artwork but always kept at a certain distance (512). This relates to the condition of love, of desiring an object but never attaining it. This is arrested pleasure, otherwise known as torture. But the word communion also gives rise, for me, to an idea of religious communion, of drinking the wine and bread as metaphor for Christ’s blood and body. This concept of embodied virtue or pious love, of becoming one with the Lord has repetitions or parallels with the experience of art. The urge to consume, intermingle or become physically entangled with the object of our desire is more than a philosophical urge but a spiritual urge. It seems to me that embodiment is not just the physical realities and percepts of experience but that they stand, mnemonically and mimetically, for more abstract urges and desires, hopes and ambitions, outside the realm of the gallery space, the video space or the bodily space. Crowther says, “Art answers this psychological/ontological need. ...through the complex and ubiquitous ways in which it engages the imagination” (Defining Art 238). While our embodied or perceptual experiences might seem slight or of less importance at first, they gather weight when added to knowledge and desire. Bergson said, “But there is, in this necessary poverty of our conscious perception, something that is positive, that foretells spirit: it is in the etymological sense of the word, discernment” (31). This art love is an aspiration for more, for hopes and expectation that the art work I fall for will enlighten me, will enrich my experience. This art work reminds me of all the qualities and principles I crave, but know in my heart are just beyond my fingertips. Perhaps we can consider the acknowledgement of art love as, not only a means of discernment but also as a legitimate purpose, that is, to be bodily, emotionally and intellectually changed and to gain further knowledge.ReferencesArmstrong, John. Conditions of Love. London: Penguin, 2002.Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. New York: Dover Philosophical Classics, 2004.Best, Sue. “Rethinking Visual Pleasure: Aesthetics and Affect.” Theory and Psychology 17 (2007): 4.Crowther, Paul. The Phenomenology of Visual Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.---. Defining Art: Creating the Canon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.Menke, Christoph, Daniel Birnbaum, Isabell Graw and Daniel Loick. The Power of Judgement: A Debate on Aesthetic Critique. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.---. “Inscriptions and Body-Maps: Representations and the Corporeal.” Feminine/Masculine and Representation. Eds. Terry Threadgold and Anne Granny-France. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990. 62-74. Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.Lingis, Alphonso. “Beauty and Lust.” Journal of Phenomenological Pyschology 27 (1996): 174-192.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge Classics, 2002.Poe, Edgar Allen. “William Wilson: A Tale.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: Nortin, 1985.Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. New York: Dover, 1969.Sloterdijk, Peter. Bubbles, Spheres 1. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011.Stendhal. Love. London: Penguin, 2004.

IntroductionThe 2009 American film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine, was released at a time when the hipster had become a ubiquitous concept, entering into the common vernacular of numerous cultures throughout the world, and gaining significant press, social media and academic attention (see Žižek; Arsel and Thompson; Greif et al.; Stahl; Ouellette; Reeve; Schiermer; Maly and Varis). Trash Humpers emerged soon after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis triggered Occupy movements in numerous cities, aided by social media platforms, reported on by blogs such as Gawker, and stylized by multi-national youth-subculture brands such as Vice, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and a plethora of localised variants.Korine’s film, which is made to resemble found VHS footage of old-aged vandals, epitomises the ironic, retro stylizations and “counterculture-meets-kitsch” aesthetics so familiar to hipster culture. As a creative stereotype from 1940s and ‘50s jazz and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the twenty-first century as a negative embodiment of alternative culture in the age of the Internet. As well as plumbing the recent past for things not yet incorporated into contemporary marketing mechanisms, the hipster also signifies the blurring of irony and authenticity. Such “outsiderness as insiderness” postures can be regarded as a continuation of the marginality-from-the-centre logic of cool capitalism that emerged after World War Two. Particularly between 2007 and 2015, the post-postmodern concept of the hipster was a resonant cultural trope in Western and non-Western cultures alike, coinciding with the normalisation of the new digital terrain and the establishment of mobile social media as an integral aspect of many people’s daily lives. While Korine’s 79-minute feature could be thought of as following in the schlocky footsteps of the likes of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2006), it is decidedly more arthouse, and more attuned to the influence of contemporary alternative media brands and independent film history alike – as if the love child of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Vice Video, the latter having been labelled as “devil-may-care hipsterism” (Carr). Upon release, Trash Humpers was described by Gene McHugh as “a mildly hip take on Jackass”; by Mike D’Angelo as “an empty hipster pose”; and by Aaron Hillis as either “the work of an insincere hipster or an eccentric provocateur”. Lacking any semblance of a conventional plot, Trash Humpers essentially revolves around four elderly-looking protagonists – three men and a woman – who document themselves with a low-quality video camera as they go about behaving badly in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, where Korine still lives. They cackle eerily to themselves as they try to stave off boredom, masturbating frantically on rubbish bins, defecating and drinking alcohol in public, fellating foliage, smashing televisions, playing ten-pin bowling, lighting firecrackers and telling gay “hate” jokes to camera with no punchlines. In one purposefully undramatic scene half-way through the film, the humpers are shown in the aftermath of an attack on a man wearing a French maid’s outfit; he lies dead in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor with a hammer at his feet. The humpers are consummate “bad” performers in every sense of the term, and they are joined by a range of other, apparently lower-class, misfits with whom they stage tap dance routines and repetitively sing nursery-rhyme-styled raps such as: “make it, make it, don’t break it; make it, make it, don’t fake it; make it, make it, don’t take it”, which acts as a surrogate theme song for the film. Korine sometimes depicts his main characters on crutches or in a wheelchair, and a baby doll is never too far away from the action, as a silent and Surrealist witness to their weird, sinister and sometimes very funny exploits. The film cuts from scene to scene as if edited on a video recorder, utilising in-house VHS titling sequences, audio glitches and video static to create the sense that one is engaging voyeuristically with a found video document rather than a scripted movie. Mainstream AlternativesAs a viewer of Trash Humpers, one has to try hard to suspend disbelief if one is to see the humpers as genuine geriatric peeping Toms rather than as hipsters in old-man masks trying to be rebellious. However, as Korine’s earlier films such as Gummo (1997) attest, he clearly delights in blurring the line between failure and transcendence, or, in this case, between pretentious art-school bravado and authentic redneck ennui. As noted in a review by Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for the New York Times: “Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph”. Korine has made a career out of generating this wavering uncertainty in his work, polarising audiences with a mix of critical, cinema-verité styles and cynical exploitations. His work has consistently revelled in ethical ambiguities, creating environments where teenagers take Ritalin for kicks, kill cats, wage war with their families and engage in acts of sexual deviancy – all of which are depicted with a photographer’s eye for the uncanny.The elusive and contradictory aspects of Korine’s work – at once ugly and beautiful, abstract and commercial, pessimistic and nostalgic – are evident not just in films such as Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) but also in his screenplay for Kids (1995), his performance-like appearances on The Tonight Show with David Letterman (1993-2015) and in publications such as A Crackup at the Race Riots (1998) and Pass the Bitch Chicken (2001). As well as these outputs, Korine is also a painter who is represented by Gagosian Gallery – one of the world’s leading art galleries – and he has directed numerous music videos, documentaries and commercials throughout his career. More than just update of the traditional figure of the auteur, Korine, instead, resembles a contemporary media artist whose avant-garde and grotesque treatments of Americana permeate almost everything he does. Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids when he was just 19, and subsequently built his reputation on the paradoxical mainstreaming of alternative culture in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the establishment of music and film genres such “alternative” and “independent”; the popularity of the slacker ethos attributed to Generation X; the increased visibility of alternative press zines; the birth of grunge in fashion and music; and the coining of “cool hunting” – a bottom-up market research phenomenon that aimed to discover new trends in urban subcultures for the purpose of mass marketing. Key to “alternative culture”, and its related categories such as “indie” and “arthouse”, is the idea of evoking artistic authenticity while covertly maintaining a parasitic relationship with the mainstream. As Holly Kruse notes in her account of the indie music scenes of the 1990s, which gained tremendous popularity in the wake of grunge bands such as Nirvana: without dominant, mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structures and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an economic and ideological struggle in which its ‘outsider’ status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices. (Kruse 149)Alternative culture follows a similar, highly contentious, logic, appearing as a nebulous, authentic and artistic “other” whose exponents risk being entirely defined by the mainstream markets they profess to oppose. Kids was directed by the artist cum indie-director Larry Clark, who discovered Korine riding his skateboard with a group of friends in New York’s Washington Square in the early 1990s, before commissioning him to write a script. The then subcultural community of skating – which gained prominence in the 1990s amidst the increased visibility of “alternative sports” – provides an important backdrop to the film, which documents a group of disaffected New York teenagers at a time of the Aids crisis in America. Korine has been active in promoting the DIY ethos, creativity and anti-authoritarian branding of skate culture since this time – an industry that, in its attempts to maintain a non-mainstream profile while also being highly branded, has become emblematic of the category of “alternative culture”. Korine has undertaken commercial projects with an array skate-wear brands, but he is particularly associated with Supreme, a so-called “guerrilla fashion” label originating in 1994 that credits Clark and other 1990s indie darlings, and Korine cohorts, Chloë Sevigny and Terry Richardson, as former models and collaborators (Williams). The company is well known for its designer skateboard decks, its collaborations with prominent contemporary visual artists, its hip-hop branding and “inscrutable” web videos. It is also well known for its limited runs of new clothing lines, which help to stoke demand through one-offs – blending street-wear accessibility with the restricted-market and anti-authoritarian sensibility of avant-garde art.Of course, “alternative culture” poses a notorious conundrum for analysis, involving highly subjective demarcations of “mainstream” from “subversive” culture, not to mention “genuine subversion” from mere “corporate alternatives”. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the roots of alternative culture lie in the Western tradition of the avant-garde and the “aesthetic gaze” that developed in the nineteenth century (Field 36). In analysing the modernist notion of advanced cultural practice – where art is presented as an alternative to bourgeois academic taste and to the common realm of cultural commodities – Bourdieu proposed a distinction between two types of “fields”, or logics of cultural production. Alternative culture follows what Bourdieu called “the field of restricted production”, which adheres to “art for art’s sake” ideals, where audiences are targeted as if like-minded peers (Field 50). In contrast, the “field of large-scale production” reflects the commercial imperatives of mainstream culture, in which goods are produced for the general public at large. The latter field of large-scale production tends to service pre-established markets, operating in response to public demand. Furthermore, whereas success in the field of restricted production is often indirect, and latent – involving artists who create niche markets without making any concessions to those markets – success in the field of large-scale production is typically more immediate and quantifiable (Field 39). Here we can see that central to the branding of “alternative culture” is the perceived refusal to conform to popular taste and the logic of capitalism more generally is. As Supreme founder James Jebbia stated about his brand in a rare interview: “The less known the better” (Williams). On this, Bourdieu states that, in the field of restricted production, the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies are inversed to create a “loser wins” scenario (Field 39). Profit and cultural esteem become detrimental attributes in this context, potentially tainting the integrity and marginalisation on which alternative products depend. As one ironic hipster t-shirt puts it: “Nothing is any good if other people like it” (Diesel Sweeties).Trash HipstersIn abandoning linear narrative for rough assemblages of vignettes – or “moments” – recorded with an unsteady handheld camera, Trash Humpers positions itself in ironic opposition to mainstream filmmaking, refusing the narrative arcs and unwritten rules of Hollywood film, save for its opening and closing credits. Given Korine’s much publicized appreciation of cinema pioneers, we can understand Trash Humpers as paying homage to independent and DIY film history, including Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton (1973), Andy Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and Trash (1970), and John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), all of which jubilantly embraced the “bad” aesthetic of home movies. Posed as fantasized substitutions for mainstream movie-making, such works were also underwritten by the legitimacy of camp as a form of counter-culture critique, blurring parody and documentary to give voice to an array of non-mainstream and counter-cultural identities. The employment of camp in postmodern culture became known not merely as an aesthetic subversion of cultural mores but also as “a gesture of self-legitimation” (Derrida 290), its “failed seriousness” regarded as a critical response to the specific historical problem of being a “culturally over-saturated” subject (Sontag 288).The significant difference between Korine’s film and those of his 1970s-era forbears is precisely the attention he pays to the formal aspects of his medium, revelling in analogue editing glitches to the point of fetishism, in some cases lasting as long as the scenes themselves. Consciously working out-of-step with the media of his day, Trash Humpers in imbued with nostalgia from its very beginning. Whereas Smith, Eggleston, Warhol, Morrissey and Waters blurred fantasy and documentary in ways that raised the social and political identities of their subjects, Korine seems much more interested in “trash” as an aesthetic trope. In following this interest, he rightfully pays homage to the tropes of queer cinema, however, he conveniently leaves behind their underlying commentaries about (hetero-) normative culture. A sequence where the trash humpers visit a whorehouse and amuse themselves by smoking cigars and slapping the ample bottoms of prostitutes in G-strings confirms the heterosexual tenor of the film, which is reiterated throughout by numerous deadpan gay jokes and slurs.Trash Humpers can be understood precisely in terms of Korine’s desire to maintain the aesthetic imperatives of alternative culture, where formal experimentation and the subverting of mainstream genres can provide a certain amount of freedom from explicated meaning, and, in particular, from socio-political commentary. Bourdieu rightly points out how the pleasures of the aesthetic gaze often manifest themselves curiously as form of “deferred pleasure” (353) or “pleasure without enjoyment” (495), which corresponds to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the disinterested nature of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic dispositions posed in the negative – as in the avant-garde artists who mined primitive and ugly cultural stereotypes – typically use as reference points “facile” or “vulgar” (393) working-class tropes that refer negatively to sensuous pleasure as their major criterion of judgment. For Bourdieu, the pleasures provided by the aesthetic gaze in such instances are not sensual pleasures so much as the pleasures of social distinction – signifying the author’s distance from taste as a form of gratification. Here, it is easy to see how the orgiastic central characters in Trash Humpers might be employed by Korine for a similar end-result. As noted by Jeremiah Kipp in a review of the film: “You don't ‘like’ a movie like Trash Humpers, but I’m very happy such films exist”. Propelled by aesthetic, rather than by social, questions of value, those that “get” the obscure works of alternative culture have a tendency to legitimize them on the basis of the high-degree of formal analysis skills they require. For Bourdieu, this obscures the fact that one’s aesthetic “‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education” – a privileged mode of looking, estranged from those unfamiliar with the internal logic of decoding presupposed by the very notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” (2).The rhetorical priority of alternative culture is, in Bourdieu’s terms, the “autonomous” perfection of the form rather than the “heteronomous” attempt to monopolise on it (Field 40). However, such distinctions are, in actuality, more nuanced than Bourdieu sometimes assumed. This is especially true in the context of global digital culture, which makes explicit how the same cultural signs can have vastly different meanings and motivations across different social contexts. This has arguably resulted in the destabilisation of prescriptive analyses of cultural taste, and has contributed to recent “post-critical” advances, in which academics such as Bruno Latour and Rita Felski advocate for cultural analyses and practices that promote relationality and attachment rather than suspicious (critical) dispositions towards marginal and popular subjects alike. Latour’s call for a move away from the “sledge hammer” of critique applies as much to cultural practice as it does to written analysis. Rather than maintaining hierarchical oppositions between authentic versus inauthentic taste, Latour understands culture – and the material world more generally – as having agency alongside, and with, that of the social world.Hipsters with No AlternativeIf, as Karl Spracklen suggests, alternativism is thought of “as a political project of resistance to capitalism, with communicative oppositionality as its defining feature” (254), it is clear that there has been a progressive waning in relevance of the category of “alternative culture” in the age of the Internet, which coincides with the triumph of so-called “neoliberal individualism” (258). To this end, Korine has lost some of his artistic credibility over the course of the 2000s. If viewed negatively, icons of 1990s alternative culture such as Korine can be seen as merely exploiting Dada-like techniques of mimetic exacerbation and symbolic détournement for the purpose of alternative, “arty” branding rather than pertaining to a counter-hegemonic cultural movement (Foster 31). It is within this context of heightened scepticism surrounding alternative culture that the hipster stereotype emerged in cultures throughout the world, as if a contested symbol of the aesthetic gaze in an era of neoliberal identity politics. Whatever the psychological motivations underpinning one’s use of the term, to call someone a hipster is typically to point out that their distinctive alternative or “arty” status appears overstated; their creative decisions considered as if a type of bathos. For detractors of alternative cultural producers such as Korine, he is trying too hard to be different, using the stylised codes of “alternative” to conceal what is essentially his cultural and political immaturity. The hipster – who is rarely ever self-identified – re-emerged in the 2000s to operate as a scapegoat for inauthentic markers of alternative culture, associated with men and women who appear to embrace Realpolitik, sincerity and authentic expressions of identity while remaining tethered to irony, autonomous aesthetics and self-design. Perhaps the real irony of the hipster is the pervasiveness of irony in contemporary culture. R. J Magill Jnr. has argued that “a certain cultural bitterness legitimated through trenchant disbelief” (xi) has come to define the dominant mode of political engagement in many societies since the early 2000s, in response to mass digital information, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and the climate of suspicion produced by information about terrorism threats. He analyses the prominence of political irony in American TV shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, South Park, The Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report but he also notes its pervasiveness as a twenty-first-century worldview – a distancing that “paradoxically and secretly preserves the ideals of sincerity, honesty and authenticity by momentarily belying its own appearance” (x). Crucially, then, the utterance “hipster” has come to signify instances when irony and aesthetic distance are perceived to have been taken too far, generating the most disdain from those for whom irony, aesthetic discernment and cultural connoisseurship still provide much-needed moments of disconnection from capitalist cultures drowning in commercial hyperbole and grave news hype. Korine himself has acknowledged that Spring Breakers (2013) – his follow-up feature film to Trash Humpers – was created in response to the notion that “alternative culture”, once a legitimate challenge to mainstream taste, had lost its oppositional power with the decentralization of digital culture. He states that he made Spring Breakers at a moment “when there’s no such thing as high or low, it’s all been exploded. There is no underground or above-ground, there’s nothing that’s alternative. We’re at a point of post-everything, so it’s all about finding the spirit inside, and the logic, and making your own connections” (Hawker). In this context, we can understand Trash Humpers as the last of the Korine films to be branded with the authenticity of alternative culture. In Spring Breakers Korine moved from the gritty low-fi sensibility of his previous films and adopted a more digital, light-filled and pastel-coloured palette. Focussing more conventionally on plot than ever before, Spring Breakers follows four college girls who hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. Critic Michael Chaiken noted that the film marks a shift in Korine’s career, from the alternative stylings of the pre-Internet generation to “the cultural heirs [of] the doomed protagonists of Kids: nineties babies, who grew up with the Internet, whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sweeping technological changes that have taken place in the interval between the Clinton and Obama eras” (33).By the end of the 2000s, an entire generation came of age having not experienced a time when the obscure films, music or art of the past took more effort to track down. Having been a key participant in the branding of alternative culture, Korine is in a good position to recall a different, pre-YouTube time – when cultural discernment was still caught up in the authenticity of artistic identity, and when one’s cultural tastes could still operate with a certain amount of freedom from sociological scrutiny. Such ideas seem a long way away from today’s cultural environments, which have been shaped not only by digital media’s promotion of cultural interconnection and mass information, but also by social media’s emphasis on mobilization and ethical awareness. ConclusionI should reiterate here that is not Korine’s lack of seriousness, or irony, alone that marks Trash Humpers as a response to the scepticism surrounding alternative culture symbolised by the figure of the hipster. It is, rather, that Korine’s mock-documentary about juvenile geriatrics works too hard to obscure its implicit social commentary, appearing driven to condemn contemporary capitalism’s exploitations of youthfulness only to divert such “uncool” critical commentaries through unsubtle formal distractions, visual poetics and “bad boy” avant-garde signifiers of authenticity. Before being bludgeoned to death, the unnamed man in the French maid’s outfit recites a poem on a bridge amidst a barrage of fire crackers let off by a nearby humper in a wheelchair. Although easily overlooked, it could, in fact, be a pivotal scene in the film. Spoken with mock high-art pretentions, the final lines of the poem are: So what? Why, I ask, why? Why castigate these creatures whose angelic features are bumping and grinding on trash? Are they not spawned by our greed? Are they not our true seed? Are they not what we’ve bought for our cash? We’ve created this lot, of the ooze and the rot, deliberately and unabashed. Whose orgiastic elation and one mission in creation is to savagely fornicate TRASH!Here, the character’s warning of capitalist overabundance is drowned out by the (aesthetic) shocks of the fire crackers, just as the stereotypical hipster’s ethical ideals are drowned out by their aesthetic excess. The scene also functions as a metaphor for the humpers themselves, whose elderly masks – embodiments of nostalgia – temporarily suspend their real socio-political identities for the sake of role-play. It is in this sense that Trash Humpers is too enamoured with its own artifices – including its anonymous “boys club” mentality – to suggest anything other than the aesthetic distance that has come to mark the failings of the “alternative culture” category. In such instances, alternative taste appears as a rhetorical posture, with Korine asking us to gawk knowingly at the hedonistic and destructive pleasures pursued by the humpers while factoring in, and accepting, our likely disapproval.ReferencesArsel, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 791-806.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by Randal Johnson. London: Polity Press, 1993.Carr, David. “Its Edge Intact, Vice Is Chasing Hard News.” New York Times 24 Aug. 2014. 12 Nov. 2016 <https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/business/media/its-edge-intact-vice-is-chasing-hard-news-.html>.Catsoulis, Jeannette. “Geriatric Delinquents, Rampaging through Suburbia.” New York Times 6 May 2010. 1` Nov. 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/movies/07trash.html>.Chaiken, Michael. “The Dream Life.” Film Comment (Mar./Apr. 2013): 30-33.D’Angelo, Mike. “Trash Humpers.” Not Coming 18 Sep. 2009. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/trashhumpers>.Derrida, Jacques. Positions. London: Athlone, 1981.Diesel Sweeties. 1 Nov. 2016 <https://store.dieselsweeties.com/products/nothing-is-any-good-if-other-people-like-it-shirt>.Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Greif, Mark. What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010.Hawker, Philippa. “Telling Tales Out of School.” Sydney Morning Herald 4 May 2013. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/telling-tales-out-of-school-20130503-2ixc3.html>.Hillis, Aaron. “Harmony Korine on Trash Humpers.” IFC 6 May 2009. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.ifc.com/2010/05/harmony-korine-2>.Jay Magill Jr., R. Chic Ironic Bitterness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.Kipp, Jeremiah. “Clean Off the Dirt, Scrape Off the Blood: An Interview with Trash Humpers Director Harmony Korine.” Slant Magazine 18 Mar. 2011. 1 Nov. 2016 <http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/clean-off-the-dirt-scrape-off-the-blood-an-interview-with-trash-humpers-director-harmony-korine>.Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248.Maly, Ico, and Varis, Piia. “The 21st-Century Hipster: On Micro-Populations in Times of Superdiversity.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 19.6 (2016): 637–653.McHugh, Gene. “Monday May 10th 2010.” Post Internet. New York: Lulu Press, 2010.Ouellette, Marc. “‘I Know It When I See It’: Style, Simulation and the ‘Short-Circuit Sign’.” Semiotic Review 3 (2013): 1–15.Reeve, Michael. “The Hipster as the Postmodern Dandy: Towards an Extensive Study.” 2013. 12 Nov. 2016. <http://www.academia.edu/3589528/The_hipster_as_the_postmodern_dandy_towards_an_extensive_study>.Schiermer, Bjørn. “Late-Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture.” Acta Sociologica 57.2 (2014): 167–181.Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Against Interpretation. New York: Octagon, 1964/1982. 275-92. Stahl, Geoff. “Mile-End Hipsters and the Unmasking of Montreal’s Proletaroid Intelligentsia; Or How a Bohemia Becomes BOHO.” Adam Art Gallery, Apr. 2010. 12 May 2015 <http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/adamartgallery_vuwsalecture_geoffstahl.pdf>.Williams, Alex. “Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme.” New York Times 21 Nov. 2012. 1 Nov. 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/fashion/guerrilla-fashion-the-story-of-supreme.html>.Žižek, Slavoj. “L’Etat d’Hipster.” Rhinocerotique. Trans. Henry Brulard. Sep. 2009. 3-10.

Landing in the Midwest after a lifetime in Los Angeles, I was shocked to learn how “famous” that great city really is. It used to seem perfectly reasonable that the freeways on CHiPs looked just like the ones I rode to school. When I was five, I remember being secretly bummed that my mom never took us to the disco-classical mural from Xanadu, which I was convinced had to be hidden somewhere in Venice Beach. In high school, it never seemed strange that the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills 90210 was the same as the Rose City Diner. From the L.A. River to the Griffith Park Observatory, from the Hollywood Sign to Venice Beach, the places I had been in, through, and around were inscribed with meanings in ways that I could never fully grasp. Even marginalized localities like Inglewood, Compton, and East L.A., which especially during the 1980s and early 1990s were being ravaged by urban warfare, got to be the stars of movies, songs, and many music videos. And on April 29, 1992, the corner of Florence and Normandie “blew up” into a full blown riot, sparked by the acquittal of the four white officers who beat black motorist, Rodney King. I could watch the city burn on T.V. or from the hill behind my house. All my life, I lived with a foot in each L.A., the one that’s outside my living room and the one that’s inside my living room, oblivious to the fact that I lived in a famous city. It was only after I moved away from L.A. that I realized my homesickness could often be softened by a click of the remote. I could look for a familiar stretch of road, a bit of the skyline, or a clean but otherwise familiar segment of sidewalk, and it didn’t even matter who, what, where, or why was taking place in the story on screen. It was as though fragments of my life had been archived for me in media space. Some memories were real and some just recollections of other representations – like seeing the observatory in Bowfinger and wondering if I was remembering Rebel Without a Cause or a second grade field trip. But when I arrived here, the question that greeted me most often at parties was, “Why are you in Bowling Green!?!” And the second was, “Did you meet any famous people?” And so I tell them about how I went to driver’s education class with Mayim Byalik, the star of Blossom. Or that I met Annette Funicello one New Year’s Eve at my Uncle Phil’s house. Aside from the occasional queer chuckle about my brush with Blossom, this record is unimpressive. People are hoping for something a little bit more like, “I spent the night in jail with Poison,” “I was an extra on Baywatch,” or “I was at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix passed away.” In spite of my lackluster record of interactions with the rich and the famous, I would still get introduced as being “from California.” I had become the recipient of a second-rate, secondhand fame, noted for being from a place where, if I were more ambitious, I could have really rubbed shoulders with famous people. To young people, many of whom were itching to travel to a place like LA or New York, I was a special kind of failure. But if you aren’t famous, if you are a loser like me, life in L.A. isn’t about the a-list at all. It is about living in a city that captures the imagination, even as you walk down the street. So earning notoriety in a city that speaks in spectacle is an exercise in creativity. It seems like everybody, even the most down-to-earth people, are invested in developing a character, an image, a persona that can bubble up and be noticed in spite of the overwhelming glow of Hollywood. Even at my suburban high school, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, I knew upper-middleclass boys who got nose jobs and manicures. I knew girls who would go trolling for rich men to buy them pretty things that their parents couldn’t afford. There were kids whose parents helped them cheat their way into college. There were wannabe junkies who drove their moms’ minivans into the ghetto to score. I saw people panic, pout, and scream over cars and allowances and shoes. I know that consumer culture is growing stronger just about everywhere, but back home it happened a lot sooner and a lot stronger. Because of our proximity to Hollywood, the crest of the cultural tidal wave looks much higher and its force is much stronger. And I guess I was just too fat to be in California, so I left. However, every once in a while, somebody does manage to make a scene in L.A. A little loser, or whatever you want to call one of the peasants who tend to the vast fiefdoms of L.A.’s elites, rises from banality to achieve celebrity, even if it is a minor celebrity, in the City of Angels. One such figure is the notorious Daniel Ramos, who in 1991 became a central figure in the city’s struggle over its own image. Daniel Ramos was not a star, a politician, or a leader of industry – but before he even appeared in the news, he had trafficked illegally in making a name for himself. A teenager from the projects, Ramos was more widely known as “Chaka,” a graffiti writer credited with over 10,000 tags from San Diego to San Francisco. I had seen Chaka’s tags just about everywhere, and had determined that he might be superhuman. His name, taken after a hairy little missing link from the popular fantasy show, The Land of the Lost, made me smirk as it conjured up images of a sub-humanoid with broken dialect creeping out from the darkness with cans of paint, marking the walls with his sign, calling out to the rest of us half-humans stranded in the land of the lost. Meanwhile, L.A.’s rich and famous whizzed by, casting resentful glances at Chaka’s do-it-yourself media blitz. I knew that Chaka was “bad,” but my imagination loved him. And when he allegedly left his mark in the courthouse elevator on the day of his release from a five-month stretch in prison (Costello), I couldn’t help but feel glad to know that Chaka was still alive, that legends don’t die (his name even made it, through the hand of Dave Grohl, into Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit Video” in 1991). For me, and I imagine for many others, it was the beginning of a political awakening. I wondered what was so bad about graffiti, even though I had been taught all my life that it was wrong. More than ten years later, as I sit by the railroad tracks in my small, Midwestern town, eagerly waiting for messages from California painted on the sides of boxcars, I find myself asking a related question – what is good about advertising? I’m not the first to make the welcomed association between graffiti and advertising. In an interview with the vastly capable scholar, Joe Austin, New York graffiti legend IZ THE WIZ explained it thusly: OK, now you’re on a poorer economic level and what do you have? Years ago, and even today, a boxer makes a name for himself in the boxing ring. So when this art form starts developing, why would it be any different? It’s all in the name. When you’re poor, that’s all you got. (40) Austin elaborates on this insight, explaining: The proliferation of posters, advertisements, and signs bearing the images and names of products and proprietors in twentieth-century cities is one obvious place to begin. These are the directly visible extensions of individual/corporate identities into the new shared urban public spaces of the streets, a quantitatively and qualitatively new site in human history where hundreds of thousands of often spectacularly displayed names abound, each catching the eyes of potential consumers and imprinting itself on their memories. (39) So, on one level, the story of Chaka is the story of a poor man who went toe to toe with big media, in a town run by big media, and held his own. It is the story of someone who has managed to say in no insignificant way, “I am here.” Or has Ramos himself yelled as he was being shackled by police, “I am the famous ‘Chaka’” (Walker A4). In spite of everything else, Ramos had a name that was widely recognized, respected by some, reviled by others. Nancy Macdonald, in her important study the culture of writing, shifts the focus away from the more solidly class-based argument employed by Austin in his study of the origins of New York graffiti art to one which lends itself more readily to understanding the culture of writing in the 1990s, after hip hop had become more accessible to middleclass enthusiasts. Macdonald explains, “Writers use the respect and recognition of their peers to validate their masculine identities” (124). While I am reluctant to downplay the class struggle that certainly seems to have implicitly informed Chaka’s quest for recognition, his outlaw appeal lends itself such an interpretation. In a city like Los Angeles, where middle class agency and upward mobility for the service class are not simply functions of wealth, but also of scrupulously maintained images, feelings of powerlessness associated with the lack of a compelling image are to be expected. It is the engine that drives the exuberant extravagance of consumer culture, lifestyle choices, and ultimately biopolitics. In a society where culture and capital are the dual poles which determine one’s social standing, the pursuit of notoriety is not simply a measure of masculinity – hijacking images is a way to assert one’s agency in spite of the diminished value of unskilled labor and the collective fear of underclass masculinities. In her book Wallbangin’: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A., Susan A. Philips provides discussion of Chaka’s contribution to L.A. graffiti. Notably, Chaka was seen by those in the graffiti community as an everyman, who was responsible for two significant cultural achievements: he “open[ed] up the style of the New York-based tags and creat[ed] the phenomenon of the individual tagger” (Phillips 320). He also, as Phillips notes, “wrote tags that you could read…in blockish gang-type lettering” (320). Unlike his New York graffiti-writing peers, which are best known for their beautiful “wildstyle,” Chaka did not typically traffic in multicolor murals and displays of painterly virtuosity. His chief accomplishment was his cunning pervasiveness and daring criminality. As such, his body of work should be seen as incompatible with High Art attempts to bring collectible graffiti into gallery spaces through the 1980s and ‘90s. Chaka’s medium, in a sense, has less to do with paint, than it has to do with the city and its rules. For the majority of the public, Chaka was seen as an individual face for the graffiti pandemic that was strategically linked in the public mind with specter of gang violence. However, to those familiar with the writing scene in L.A., Chaka is more than a lone individual: THE OG’Z OF THE LEGION OF DOOM WERE THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR BRINGING THE EARLY LOS ANGELES GRAFFITI SCENE TO IT’S KNEES! AND GAVE US MOST OF THE LEGENDS WE KNOW TODAY! I REMEMBER I TIME WHEN EVERY LOS ANGELES INTERSTATE HEAVEN ROCKED BY EITHER LEST-CAB-STANS-SUB OR THE CHAKA!!! (god i miss those days!) remember the CAB undercover story on the news where he did those loks on dope throwies on the 110 pasadena? I think it was chuck henry channel 7 ??? does anyone still have that on vhs? i had it on vhs along with the CHAKA PUBLIC SERVICE ANOUNCEMENT (that was great!). (Poncho1DEcrew) Instead of being an individual tagger, Chaka is recognized as a member of a crew (LOD), who managed to get up in legendary ways. In reclaiming freeway overpasses (the “Heavens”), walls, trains, road signs, and just about everything else for his crew, vicariously for the many other people who respect his name, and also for himself, Chaka is more than simply selfish, as is often suggested by his detractors. In the heavens is the right place to begin. High up in the sky, over the freeways, for all to see, the writing in the heavens is visible, mysterious, and ultimately risky. The problem of climbing along the girders underneath the bridges, escaping detection, but leaving something bold points to what distinguishes writing from an ad-campaign. Sure, some of what the tagger does is about simply being a recognized image all over the place. But the other part is about finding the place, working within environmental constraints, battling against time, stretching one’s limits, and doing it with style. While the image may be everywhere, the act of writing itself is a singularity, shrouded by secrecy, and defined by the moment of its doing. The aftereffect is a puzzle. And in the case of Chaka, the question is, “How the hell did this guy get up over 10,000 times?” While I can’t see how he did it and I don’t know where, exactly, he got all that paint, I do know one thing: Chaka went everywhere. He mapped the city out as a series of landmarks, he put his name to the space, and he claimed Los Angeles for people other than the ones who claim to own the rights to beam their generalized and monolithic messages into our living rooms. Instead of archiving the city in the banalities of mass media, he has created an archive of an alternative L.A., filled with singularities, and famous in the way that only one’s hometown can be. Instead of being a celebrity, renowned by virtue of a moderately unique character, his ability to generate money, and an elite image, Chaka represents an alternative fame. As a modern day “everyman” and folk hero, he brings a message that the city belongs to all people. Far from the naïve and mean-spirited equations between graffiti writing and canine scent-marking as a primitive drive to mark territorial boundaries with undesirable substances (writers:paint::dogs:piss), Chaka’s all-city message is not so much a practice of creating exclusionary spaces as it is an assertion of one’s identity in a particular space. A postmodern pilgrim, Chaka has marked his progress through the city leaving a perceptible record of his everyday experience, and opening up that possibility for others. This is not to say that it is necessary for all people to paint in order to break loose from the semiotic order of the city, it is only to say that is hopeful to realize that this order is not fixed and that is not even necessarily our own. Reflecting back on my own experience as one who has grown up very much in love in the produced spaces of the scripted and archived fame of Los Angeles, the realization that such an overwhelming place is open even to my own inscriptions is an important one. This realization, which has been many years in the making, was set into place by the curious fame of Chaka. For a writer and scholar disturbed by the “death of the author,” it comes as a relief to see writing resurrected in the anti-authoritarian practice of a teenage boy from the projects. References Austin, Joe. Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City. New York: Columbia UP, 2001. Costello, D. “Writing Was on the Wall.” Courier-Mail 9 May 1991. Macdonald, Nancy. The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Phillips, Susan A. Wallbangin’: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Poncho1DEcrew. 50mm Los Angeles Forum. 18 June 2004. 11 July 2004 http://www.50mmlosangeles.com/>. Walker, Jill. “Letter from the Streets; Handwriting on the Wall: 10,000 Chakas.” Washington Post 4 May 1991: A4. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Heckman, Davin. "Being in the Shadow of Hollywood: Celebrity, Banality, and the Infamous Chaka." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/12-heckman.php>. APA Style Heckman, D. (Nov. 2004) "Being in the Shadow of Hollywood: Celebrity, Banality, and the Infamous Chaka," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/12-heckman.php>.

IntroductionClowns can be seen as enacting catastrophe with a small “c.” They are experts in “failing better” who perhaps live on the cusp of turning catastrophe into a metaphorical whirlwind while ameliorating the devastation that lies therein. They also have the propensity to succumb to the devastation, masking their own sense of the void with the gestures of play. In this paper, knowledge about clowns emerges from my experience, working with circus clowns in Circus Knie (Switzerland) and Circo Tihany (South America), observing performances and films about clowns, and reading, primarily in European fiction, of clowns in multiple guises. The exposure to a diverse range of texts, visual media and performance, has led me to the possibility that clowning is not only a conceptual discipline but also a state of being that is yet to be fully recognised.Diminutive CatastropheI have an idea (probably a long held obsession) of the clown as a diminutive figure of catastrophe, of catastrophe with a very small “c.” In the context of this incisive academic dialogue on relationships between catastrophe and creativity where writers are challenged with the horrendous tragedies that nature and humans unleash on the planet, this inept character appears to be utterly insignificant and, moreover, unworthy of any claim to creativity. A clown does not solve problems in the grand scheme of society: if anything he/she simply highlights problems, arguably in a fatalistic manner where innovation may be an alien concept. Invariably, as Eric Weitz observes, when clowns depart from their moment on the stage, laughter evaporates and the world settles back into the relentless shades of oppression and injustice. In response to the natural forces of destruction—earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, and volcanic eruptions—as much as to the forces of rage in war and ethnic cleansing that humans inflict on one another, a clown makes but a tiny gesture. Curiously, though, those fingers brushing dust off a threadbare jacket may speak volumes.Paradox is the crux of this exploration. Clowns, the best of them, project the fragility of human value on a screen beyond measure and across many layers and scales of metaphorical understanding (Big Apple Circus; Stradda). Why do odd tramps and ordinary inept people seem to pivot against the immense flows of loss and outrage which tend to pervade our understanding of the global condition today? Can Samuel Beckett’s call to arms of "failing better” in the vein of Charles Chaplin, Oleg Popov, or James Thiérrée offer a creative avenue to pursue (Bala; Coover; Salisbury)? Do they reflect other ways of knowing in the face of big “C” Catastrophes? Creation and CatastropheTo wrestle with these questions, I wish to begin by proposing a big picture view of earth-life wherein, across inconceivable aeons, huge physical catastrophes have wrought unimaginable damage on the ecological “completeness” of the time. I am not a palaeontologist or an evolutionary scientist but I suspect that, if human life is taken out of the equation, the planet since time immemorial has been battered by “disaster” which changed but ultimately did not destroy the earth. Evolution is replete with narratives of species wiped out by ice-ages, volcanoes, earthquakes, and meteors and yet the organism of this planet has survived and even regenerated. In metaphorical territory, the Sanskrit philosophers have a wise take on this process. Indian concepts are always multiple, crowded with possibilities, but I find there is something intriguing in the premise (even if it is impossible to tie down) of Shiva’s dance:Shiva Nataraja destroys creation by his Tandava Dance, or the Dance of Eternity. As he dances, everything disintegrates, apparently into nothingness. Then, out of the thin vapours, matter and life are recreated again. Shiva also dances in the hearts of his devotees as the Great Soul. As he dances, one’s egotism is consumed and one is rendered pure in soul and without any spiritual blemish. (Ghosh 109–10)For a dancer, the central location of dance in life’s creation forces is a powerful idea but I am also interested in how this metaphysical perspective aligns with current scientific views. How could these ancient thinkers predict evolutionary processes? Somehow, in the mix of experiential observation and speculation, they foresaw the complexity of time and, moreover, appreciated the necessary interdependence of creation and destruction (creativity and catastrophe). In comparison to western thought which privileges progression—and here evolution is a prime example—Hindu conceptualisation appears to prefer fatalism or a cyclical system of understanding that negates the potential of change to make things better. However, delving more closely into scientific narratives on evolution, the progression of life forms to the human species has involved the decimation of an uncountable number of other living possibilities. Contrariwise, Shiva’s Dance of Eternity is premised on endless diachronic change crossed vertically by reincarnation, through which progression and regression are equally expressed. I offer this simplistic view of both accounts of creation merely to point out that the interdependency of destruction and creation is deeply embodied in human knowledge.To introduce the clown figure into this idea, I have to turn to the minutiae of destruction and creation; to examples in the everyday nature of regeneration through catastrophe. I have memories of touring in the Northern Territory of Australia amidst strident green shoots bursting out of a fire-tortured landscape or, earlier in Paris, of the snow-crusted earth being torn asunder by spring’s awakening. We all have countless memories of such small-scale transformations of pain and destruction into startling glimpses of beauty. It is at this scale of creative wrestling that I see the clown playing his/her role.In the tension between fatalism and, from a human point of view, projections of the right to progression, a clown occupying the stage vacated by Shiva might stamp out a slight rhythm of his/her own with little or no meaning in the action. The brush on the sleeve might be hard to detect in an evolutionary or Hindu time scale but zoom down to the here and now of performance exchange and the scene may be quite different?Turning the Lens onto the Small-ScaleSmall-scale, clowns tend to be tiny bundles or, sometimes, gangly unbundles of ineptitude, careering through the simplest tasks with preposterous incompetence or, alternatively, imbibing complexity with the virtuosic delicacy—take Charles Chaplin’s shoe-lace spaghetti twirling and nibbling on nail-bones as an example. Clowns disrupt normalcy in small eddies of activity which often wreak paths of destruction within the tightly ordered rage of social formations. The momentum is chaotic and, not dissimilar to storms, clownish enactment bears down not so much to threaten human life but to disrupt what we humans desire and formulate as the natural order of decorum and success. Instead of the terror driven to consciousness by cyclones and hurricanes, the clown’s chaos is superficially benign. When Chaplin’s generous but unrealistic gesture to save the tightrope-act is thwarted by an escaped monkey, or when Thiérrée conducts a spirited debate with the wall of his abode in the midst of an identity crisis (Raoul), life is not threatened. Such incongruous and chaotic trajectories generate laughter and, sometimes, sadness. Moreover, as Weitz observes, “the clown-like imagination, unfettered by earthly logic, urges us to entertain unlikely avenues of thought and action” (87). While it may seem insensitive, I suggest that similar responses of laughter, sadness and unlikely avenues of thought and action emerge in the aftermath of cataclysmic events.Fear, unquestionably, saturates big states of catastrophe. Slide down the scale and intriguing parallels between fear and laughter emerge, one being a clown’s encapsulation of vulnerability and his/her stoic determination to continue, to persevere no matter what. There are many ways to express this continuity: Beckett’s characters are forever waiting, fearful that nothing will arrive, yet occupy themselves with variations of cruelty and amusement through the interminable passage of time. A reverse action occurs in Grock’s insistence that he can play his tiny violin, in spite of his ever-collapsing chair. It never occurs to him to find another chair or play standing up: that, in an incongruous way, would admit defeat because this chair and his playing constitute Grock’s compulsion to succeed. Fear of failure generates multiple innovations in his relationship with the chair and in his playing skills. Storm-like, the pursuit of a singular idea in both instances triggers chaotic consequences. Physical destruction may be slight in such ephemeral storms but the act, the being in the world, does leave its mark on those who witness its passage.I would like to offer a mark left in me by a slight gesture on the part of a clown. I choose this one among many because the singular idea played out in Circus Knie (Switzerland) back in the early 1970s does not conform to the usual parameters. This Knie season featured Dimitri, an Italian-Swiss clown, as the principal attraction. Following clown conventions, Dimitri appeared across the production as active glue between the various circus acts, his persona operating as an odd-jobs man to fix and clean. For instance, he intervened in the elephant act as a cleaner, scrubbing and polishing the elephant’s skin with little effect and tuned, with much difficulty, a tiny fiddle for the grand orchestration to come. But Dimitri was also given moments of his own and this is the one that has lodged in my memory.Dimitri enters the brightly lit and empty circus ring with a broom in hand. The audience at this point have accepted the signal that Dimitri’s interludes prepare the ring for the next attraction—to sweep, as it were, the sawdust back to neutrality. He surveys the circle for a moment and then takes a position on the periphery to begin what appears to be a regular clean-up. The initial brushes over the sawdust, however, produce an unexpected result—the light rather than the sawdust responds to his broom stokes. Bafflement swiftly passes as an idea takes hold: the diminutive figure trots off to the other side of the ring and, after a deep breath and a quick glance to see if anyone is looking (we all are), nudges the next edge of light. Triumphantly, the pattern is pursued with increasing nimbleness, until the figure with the broom stands before a pin-spot of light at the ring’s centre. He hesitates, checks again about unwanted surveillance, and then, in a single strike (poof), sweeps light and the world into darkness.This particular clown gesture contradicts usual commentaries of ineptitude and failure associated with clown figures but the incongruity of sweeping light and the narrative of the little man who scores a win lie thoroughly in the characteristic grounds of clownish behaviour. Moreover, the enactment of this simple idea illustrates for me today, as much as it did on its initial viewing, how powerful a slight clown gesture can be. This catastrophe with a very small “c:” the little man with nothing but a broom and an idea destroyed, like the great god Shiva, the world of light.Jesse McKnight’s discussion of the peculiar attraction of two little men of the 20th century, James Joyce’s Bloom and Charles Chaplin, could also apply to Dimitri:They are at sixes and sevens here on earth but in tune with the stars, buffoons of time, and heroes of eternity. In the petty cogs of the causal, they appear foolish; in the grand swirl of the universe, they are wise, outmaneuvering their assailants and winning the race or the girl against all odds or merely retaining their skins and their dignity by nightfall. (496) Clowning as a State of Mind/ConsciousnessAnother perspective on a clown’s relationship to ideas of catastrophe which I would like to examine is embedded in the discussion above but, at the same time, deviates by way of a harsh tangent from the beatitude and almost sacred qualities attributed by McKnight’s and my own visions of the rhythmic gestures of these diminutive figures. Beckett’s advice in Worstward Ho (1983) is a fruitful starting place wherein the directive is “to keep on trying even if the hope of success is dashed again and again by failure: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better’” (Le Feuvre 13). True to the masterful wordsmith, these apparently simple words are not transparent; rather, they deflect a range of contradictory interpretations. Yes, failure can facilitate open, flexible and alternative thought which guards against fanatical and ultra-orthodox certitude: “Failure […] is free to honour other ways of knowing, other construals of power” (Werry & O’Gorman 107). On the other hand, failure can mask a horrifying realisation of the utter meaninglessness of human existence. It is as if catastrophe is etched lightly in external clown behaviour and scarred pitilessly deep in the psyches that drive the comic behaviour. Pupils of the pre-eminent clown teacher Jacques Lecoq suggest that theatrical clowning pivots on “finding that basic state of vulnerability and allowing the audience to exist in that state with you” (Butler 64). Butler argues that this “state of clowning” is “a state of anti-intellectualism, a kind of pure emotion” (ibid). From my perspective, there is also an emotional stratum in which the state or condition involves an adult anxiety desiring to protect the child’s view of the world with a fierceness equal to that of a mother hen protecting her brood. A clown knows the catastrophe of him/herself but refuses to let that knowledge (of failure) become an end. An obstinate resilience, even a frank acknowledgement of hopelessness, makes a clown not so much pure emotion or childlike but a kind of knowledgeable avenger of states of loss. Here I need to admit that I attribute the clowning state or consciousness to an intricate lineage inclusive of the named clowns, Grock, Chaplin, Popov, Dimitri, and Thiérrée, which extends to a whole host of others who never entered a circus or performance ring: Mikhail Dostoyevsky’s Mushkin (the holy Russian fool), Henry Miller’s Auguste, Salman Rushdie’s Saleem, Jacques Tati, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Eric Satie’s sonic whimsy, and Pina Bausch’s choreography. In the following observation, the overlay of catastrophe and play is a crucial indication of this intricate lineage:Heiner Müller compared Pina Bausch's universe to the world of fairy tales. “History invades it like trouble, like summer flies [...] The territory is an unknown planet, an emerging island product of an ignored (forgotten or future) catastrophe [...] The whole is nothing but children's play”. (Biro 68)Bausch clearly recognises and is interested in the catastrophic moments or psychological wiring of life and her works are not exempt from comic (clownish) modulations in the play of violence and despair that often takes centre stage. In fact, Bausch probably plays on ambivalence between despair and play more explicitly than most artists. From one angle, this ambivalence is generational, as her adult performers bear the weight of oppression within the structures (and remembering of) childhood games. An artistic masterstroke in this regard is the tripling reproduction over many years of her work exploring gender negotiations at a social dance gathering: Kontakhof. Initially, the work was performed by Bausch’s regular company of mature, if diverse, dancers (Bausch 1977), then by an elderly ensemble, some of whom had appeared in the original production (Kontakhof), and, finally, by a group of adolescents in 2010. The latter version became the subject of a documentary film, Dancing Dreams (2010), which revealed the fidelity of the re-enactment, subtly transformed by the brashness and uncertainty of the teenage protagonists playing predetermined roles and moves. Viewing the three productions side-by-side reveals socialised relations of power and desire, resonant of Michel Foucault’s seminal observations (1997), and the catastrophe of gender relations subtly caught in generational change. The debility of each age group becomes apparent. None are able to engage in communication and free-play (dream) without negotiating an unyielding sexual terrain and, more often than not, the misinterpretation of one human to another within social conventions. Bausch’s affinity to the juxtaposition of childhood aspiration and adult despair places her in clown territory.Becoming “Inhuman” or SacrificialA variation on this condition of a relentless pursuit of failure is raised by Joshua Delpech-Ramey in an argument for the “inhuman” rights of clowns. His premise matches a “grotesque attachment to the world of things” to a clown’s existence that is “victimized by an excessive drive to exist in spite of all limitation. The clown is, in some sense, condemned to immortality” (133). In Delpech-Ramey’s terms:Chaplin is human not because his are the anxieties and frustrations of a man unable to realize his destiny, but because Chaplin—nearly starving, nearly homeless, a ghost in the machine—cannot not resist “the temptation to exist,” the giddiness of making something out of nothing, pancakes out of sawdust. In some sense the clown can survive every accident because s/he is an undead immortal, demiurge of a world without history. (ibid.)The play on a clown’s “undead” propensity, on his/her capacity to survive at all costs, provides a counterpoint to a tragic lens which has not been able, in human rights terms, to transcend "man’s inhumanity to man.” It might also be argued that this capacity to survive resists nature’s blindness to the plight of humankind (and visa versa). While I admire the skilful argument to place clowns as centrepieces in the formulation of alternative and possibly more potent human rights legislations, I’m not absolutely convinced that the clown condition, as I see it, provides a less mysterious and tragic state from which justice can be administered. Lear and his fool almost become interchangeable at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy: both grapple with but cannot resolve the problem of justice.There is a little book written by Henry Miller, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder (1948), which bears upon this aspect of a clown’s condition. In a postscript, Miller, more notorious for his sexually explicit fiction, states his belief in the unique status of clowns:Joy is like a river: it flows ceaselessly. It seems to me this is the message which the clown is trying to convey to us, that we should participate through ceaseless flow and movement, that we should not stop to reflect, compare, analyse, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music. This is the gift of surrender, and the clown makes it symbolically. It is for us to make it real. (47)Miller’s fictional Auguste’s “special privilege [was] to re-enact the errors, the foibles, the stupidities, all the misunderstandings which plague human kind. To be ineptitude itself” (29). With overtones of a Christian resurrection, Auguste surrenders himself and, thereby, flows on through death, his eyes “wide open, gazing with a candour unbelievable at the thin sliver of a moon which had just become visible in the heavens” (40). It may be difficult to reconcile ineptitude with a Christ figure but those clowns who have made some sort of mark on human imagination tend to wander across territories designated as sacred and profane with a certain insouciance and privilege. They are individuals who become question marks: puzzles not meant to be solved. Maybe similar glimpses of the ineffable occur in tiny, miniscule shifts of consciousness, like the mark given to me by Dimitri and Chaplin and...—the unending list of clowns and clown conditions that have gifted their diminutive catastrophes to the problem of creativity, of rebirth after and in the face of destruction.With McKnight, I dedicate the last word to Chaplin, who speaks with final authority on the subject: “Be brave enough to face the veil and lift it, and see and know the void it hides, and stand before that void and know that within yourself is your world” (505).Thus poised, the diminutive clown figure may not carry the ferment of Shiva’s message of destruction and rebirth, he/she may not bear the strength to creatively reconstruct or re-birth normality after catastrophic devastation. But a clown, and all the humanity given to the collisions of laughter and tears, may provide an inept response to the powerlessness which, as humans, we face in catastrophe and death. Does this mean that creativity is inimical with catastrophe or that existing with catastrophe implies creativity? As noted at the beginning, these ruminations concern small “c” catastrophes. They are known otherwise as clowns.ReferencesBala, Michael. “The Clown.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 4.1 (2010): 50–71.Bausch, Pina. Kontakthof. Wuppertal Dance Theatre, 1977.Big Apple Circus. Circopedia. 27 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.circopedia.org/index.php/Main_Page›.Biro, Yvette. “Heartbreaking Fragments, Magnificent Whole: Pina Bausch’s New Minimyths.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 20.2 (1998): 68–72.Butler, Lauren. “Everything Seemed New: Clown as Embodied Critical Pedagogy.” Theatre Topics 22.1 (2012): 63–72.Coover, Robert. “Tears of a Clown.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 42.1 (2000): 81–83.Dancing Dreams. Dirs. Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann. First Run Features, 2010.Delpech-Ramey, Joshua. “Sublime Comedy: On the Inhuman Rights of Clowns.” SubStance 39.2 (2010): 131–41.Foucault, Michel. “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as Practice of Freedom.” Michel Foucault: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: The New Press, 1997. 281–302. Ghosh, Oroon. The Dance of Shiva and Other Tales from India. New York: New American Library, 1965.Kontakthof with Ladies and Gentlemen over ’65. Dir. Pina Bausch. Paris: L’Arche Editeur, 2007.Le Feuvre, Lisa. “Introduction.” Failure: Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Lisa Le Feuvre. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010. 12–21.McKnight, Jesse H. “Chaplin and Joyce: A Mutual Understanding of Gesture.” James Joyce Quarterly 45.3–4 (2008): 493–506.Miller, Henry. The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. New York: New Directions Books, 1974.Raoul. Dir. James Thiérrée. Regal Theatre, Perth, 2012.Salisbury, Laura. “Beside Oneself Beckett, Comic Tremor and Solicitude.” Parallax 11.4 (2005): 81–92.Stradda. Stradda: Le Magazine de la Creation hors les Murs. 27 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.horslesmurs.fr/-Decouvrez-le-magazine-.html›.Weitz, Eric. “Failure as Success: On Clowns and Laughing Bodies.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 17.1 (2012): 79–87.Werry, Margaret, and Róisín O'Gorman. “The Anatomy of Failure: An Inventory.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 17.1 (2012): 105–10.

This paper argues that artist Dope Saint Jude is transforming South African hip-hop by queering a genre that has predominantly been male and heteronormative. Specifically, I analyse the opening skit of her music video “Keep in Touch” in order to unpack the ways which she revives Gayle, a gay language that adopted double-coded forms of speech during the apartheid era—a context in which homosexuals were criminalised. The use of Gayle and spaces close to the city centre of Cape Town (such as Salt River and Woodstock) speaks to the city as it was before it was transformed by the decline of industries due to the country’s adoption of neoliberal economics and, more recently, by the gentrification of these spaces. Dope Saint Jude therefore reclaims these city spaces through her use of gay modes of speech that have a long history in Cape Town and by positioning her work as hip-hop, which has been popular in the city for well over two decades. Her inclusion of transgender MC and DJ Angel Ho pushes the boundaries of hegemonic and binary conceptions of gender identity even further. In essence, Dope Saint Jude is transforming local hip-hop in a context that is shaped significantly by US cultural imperialism. The artist is also transforming our perspective of spaces that have been altered by neoliberal economics.Setting the SceneDope Saint Jude (DSJ) is a queer MC from Elsies River, a working class township located on Cape Town's Cape Flats in South Africa. Elsies River was defined as a “coloured” neighbourhood under the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which segregated South Africans racially. With the aid of the Population Registration Act, citizens were classified, not merely along the lines of white, Asian, or black—black subjects were also divided into further categories. The apartheid state also distinguished between black and “coloured” subjects. Michael MacDonald contends that segregation “ordained blacks to be inferior to whites; apartheid cast them to be indelibly different” (11). Apartheid declared “African claims in South Africa to be inferior to white claims” and effectively claimed that black subjects “belonged elsewhere, in societies of their own, because their race was different” (ibid). The term “coloured” defined people as “mixed race” to separate communities that might otherwise have identified as black in the broad and inclusive sense (Erasmus 16). Racial categorisation was used to create a racial hierarchy with white subjects at the top of that hierarchy and those classified as black receiving the least resources and benefits. This frustrated attempts to establish broad alliances of black struggles against apartheid. It is in this sense that race is socially and politically constructed and continues to have currency, despite the fact that biologically essentialist understandings of race have been discredited (Yudell 13–14). Thanks to apartheid town planning and resource allocation, many townships on the Cape Flats were poverty-stricken and plagued by gang violence (Salo 363). This continues to be the case because post-apartheid South Africa's embrace of neoliberal economics failed to address racialised class inequalities significantly (Haupt, Static 6–8). This is the '90s context in which socially conscious hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City or Black Noise, came together. They drew inspiration from Black Consciousness philosophy via their exposure to US hip-hop crews such as Public Enemy in order to challenge apartheid policies, including their racial interpellation as “coloured” as distinct from the more inclusive category, black (Haupt, “Black Thing” 178). Prophets of da City—whose co-founding member, Shaheen Ariefdien, also lived in Elsies River—was the first South African hip-hop outfit to record an album. Whilst much of their work was performed in English, they quickly transformed the genre by rapping in non-standard varieties of Afrikaans and by including MCs who rap in African languages (ibid). They therefore succeeded in addressing key issues related to race, language, and class disparities in relation to South Africa's transition to democracy (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire). However, as is the case with mainstream US hip-hop, specifically gangsta rap (Clay 149), South African hip-hop has been largely dominated by heterosexual men. This includes the more commercial hip-hop scene, which is largely perceived to be located in Johannesburg, where male MCs like AKA and Cassper Nyovest became celebrities. However, certain female MCs have claimed the genre, notably EJ von Lyrik and Burni Aman who are formerly of Godessa, the first female hip-hop crew to record and perform locally and internationally (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166; Haupt, “Can a Woman in Hip-Hop”). DSJ therefore presents the exception to a largely heteronormative and male-dominated South African music industry and hip-hop scene as she transforms it with her queer politics. While queer hip-hop is not new in the US (Pabón and Smalls), this is new territory for South Africa. Writing about the US MC Jean Grae in the context of a “male-dominated music industry and genre,” Shanté Paradigm Smalls contends,Heteronormativity blocks the materiality of the experiences of Black people. Yet, many Black people strive for a heteronormative effect if not “reality”. In hip hop, there is a particular emphasis on maintaining the rigidity of categories, even if those categories fail [sic]. (87) DSJ challenges these rigid categories. Keep in TouchDSJ's most visible entry onto the media landscape to date has been her appearance in an H&M recycling campaign with British Sri Lankan artist MIA (H&M), some fashion shoots, her new EP—Reimagine (Dope Saint Jude)—and recent Finnish, US and French tours as well as her YouTube channel, which features her music videos. As the characters’ theatrical costumes suggest, “Keep in Touch” is possibly the most camp and playful music video she has produced. It commences somewhat comically with Dope Saint Jude walking down Salt River main road to a public telephone, where she and a young woman in pig tails exchange dirty looks. Salt River is located at the foot of Devil's Peak not far from Cape Town's CBD. Many factories were located there, but the area is also surrounded by low-income housing, which was designated a “coloured” area under apartheid. After apartheid, neighbourhoods such as Salt River, Woodstock, and the Bo-Kaap became increasingly gentrified and, instead of becoming more inclusive, many parts of Cape Town continued to be influenced by policies that enable racialised inequalities. Dope Saint Jude calls Angel Ho: DSJ: Awêh, Angie! Yoh, you must check this kak sturvy girl here by the pay phone. [Turns to the girl, who walks away as she bursts a chewing gum bubble.] Ja, you better keep in touch. Anyway, listen here, what are you wys?Angel Ho: Ah, just at the salon getting my hair did. What's good? DSJ: Wanna catch on kak today?Angel Ho: Yes, honey. But, first, let me Gayle you this. By the jol by the art gallery, this Wendy, nuh. This Wendy tapped me on the shoulder and wys me, “This is a place of decorum.”DSJ: What did she wys?Angel Ho: De-corum. She basically told me this is not your house. DSJ: I know you told that girl to keep in touch!Angel Ho: Yes, Mama! I'm Paula, I told that bitch, “Keep in touch!” [Points index finger in the air.](Saint Jude, Dope, “Keep in Touch”)Angel Ho's name is a play on the male name Angelo and refers to the trope of the ho (whore) in gangsta rap lyrics and in music videos that present objectified women as secondary to male, heterosexual narratives (Sharpley-Whiting 23; Collins 27). The queering of Angelo, along with Angel Ho’s non-binary styling in terms of hair, make-up, and attire, appropriates a heterosexist, sexualised stereotype of women in order to create room for a gender identity that operates beyond heteronormative male-female binaries. Angel Ho’s location in a hair salon also speaks to stereotypical associations of salons with women and gay subjects. In a discussion of gender stereotypes about hair salons, Kristen Barber argues that beauty work has traditionally been “associated with women and with gay men” and that “the body beautiful has been tightly linked to the concept of femininity” (455–56). During the telephonic exchange, Angel Ho and Dope Saint Jude code-switch between standard and non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans, as the opening appellation, “Awêh,” suggests. In this context, the term is a friendly greeting, which intimates solidarity. “Sturvy” means pretentious, whilst “kak” means shit, but here it is used to qualify “sturvy” and means that the girl at the pay phone is very pretentious or “full of airs.” To be “wys” means to be wise, but it can also mean that you are showing someone something or educating them. The meanings of these terms shift, depending on the context. The language practices in this skit are in line with the work of earlier hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap, to validate black, multilingual forms of speech and expression that challenge the linguistic imperialism of standard English and Afrikaans in South Africa, which has eleven official languages (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire; Williams). Henry Louis Gates’s research on African American speech varieties and literary practices emerging from the repressive context of slavery is essential to understanding hip-hop’s language politics. Hip-hop artists' multilingual wordplay creates parallel discursive universes that operate both on the syntagmatic axis of meaning-making and the paradigmatic axis (Gates 49; Haupt, “Stealing Empire” 76–77). Historically, these discursive universes were those of the slave masters and the slaves, respectively. While white hegemonic meanings are produced on the syntagmatic axis (which is ordered and linear), black modes of speech as seen in hip-hop word play operate on the paradigmatic axis, which is connotative and non-linear (ibid). Distinguishing between Signifyin(g) / Signification (upper case, meaning black expression) and signification (lower case, meaning white dominant expression), he argues that “the signifier ‘Signification’ has remained identical in spelling to its white counterpart to demonstrate [. . .] that a simultaneous, but negated, parallel discursive (ontological, political) universe exists within the larger white discursive universe” (Gates 49). The meanings of terms and expressions can change, depending on the context and manner in which they are used. It is therefore the shared experiences of speech communities (such as slavery or racist/sexist oppression) that determine the negotiated meanings of certain forms of expression. Gayle as a Parallel Discursive UniverseDSJ and Angel Ho's performance of Gayle takes these linguistic practices further. Viewers are offered points of entry into Gayle via the music video’s subtitles. We learn that Wendy is code for a white person and that to keep in touch means exactly the opposite. Saint Jude explains that Gayle is a very fun queer language that was used to kind of mask what people were saying [. . .] It hides meanings and it makes use of women's names [. . . .] But the thing about Gayle is it's constantly changing [. . .] So everywhere you go, you kind of have to pick it up according to the context that you're in. (Ovens, Saint Jude and Haupt)According to Kathryn Luyt, “Gayle originated as Moffietaal [gay language] in the coloured gay drag culture of the Western Cape as a form of slang amongst Afrikaans-speakers which over time, grew into a stylect used by gay English and Afrikaans-speakers across South Africa” (Luyt 8; Cage 4). Given that the apartheid state criminalised homosexuals, Gayle was coded to evade detection and to seek out other members of this speech community (Luyt 8). Luyt qualifies the term “language” by arguing, “The term ‘language’ here, is used not as a constructed language with its own grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, but in the same way as linguists would discuss women’s language, as a way of speaking, a kind of sociolect” (Luyt 8; Cage 1). However, the double-coded nature of Gayle allows one to think of it as creating a parallel discursive universe as Gates describes it (49). Whereas African American and Cape Flats discursive practices function parallel to white, hegemonic discourses, gay modes of speech run parallel to heteronormative communication. Exclusion and MicroaggressionsThe skit brings both discursive practices into play by creating room for one to consider that DSJ queers a male-dominated genre that is shaped by US cultural imperialism (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166) as a way of speaking back to intersectional forms of marginalisation (Crenshaw 1244), which are created by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 116). This is significant in South Africa where “curative rape” of lesbians and other forms of homophobic violence are prominent (cf. Gqola; Hames; Msibi). Angel Ho's anecdote conveys a sense of the extent to which black individuals are subject to scrutiny. Ho's interpretation of the claim that the gallery “is a place of decorum” is correct: it is not Ho's house. Black queer subjects are not meant to feel at home or feel a sense of ownership. This functions as a racial microaggression: “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solorzano, Ceja, and Yosso 60). This speaks to DSJ's use of Salt River, Woodstock, and Bo-Kaap for the music video, which features black queer bodies in performance—all of these spaces are being gentrified, effectively pushing working class people of colour out of the city (cf. Didier, Morange, and Peyroux; Lemanski). Gustav Visser explains that gentrification has come to mean a unit-by-unit acquisition of housing which replaces low-income residents with high-income residents, and which occurs independent of the structural condition, architecture, tenure or original cost level of the housing (although it is usually renovated for or by the new occupiers). (81–82) In South Africa this inequity plays out along racial lines because its neoliberal economic policies created a small black elite without improving the lives of the black working class. Instead, the “new African bourgeoisie, because it shares racial identities with the bulk of the poor and class interests with white economic elites, is in position to mediate the reinforcing cleavages between rich whites and poor blacks without having to make more radical changes” (MacDonald 158). In a news article about a working class Salt River family of colour’s battle against an eviction, Christine Hogg explains, “Gentrification often means the poor are displaced as the rich move in or buildings are upgraded by new businesses. In Woodstock and Salt River both are happening at a pace.” Angel Ho’s anecdote, as told from a Woodstock hair salon, conveys a sense of what Woodstock’s transformation from a coloured, working class Group Area to an upmarket, trendy, and arty space would mean for people of colour, including black, queer subjects. One could argue that this reading of the video is undermined by DSJ’s work with global brand H&M. Was she was snared by neoliberal economics? Perhaps, but one response is that the seeds of any subculture’s commercial co-option lie in the fact it speaks through commodities (for example clothing, make-up, CDs, vinyl, or iTunes / mp3 downloads (Hebdige 95; Haupt, Stealing Empire 144–45). Subcultures have a window period in which to challenge hegemonic ideologies before they are delegitimated or commercially co-opted. Hardt and Negri contend that the means that extend the reach of corporate globalisation could be used to challenge it from within it (44–46; Haupt, Stealing Empire 26). DSJ utilises her H&M work, social media, the hip-hop genre, and international networks to exploit that window period to help mainstream black queer identity politics.ConclusionDSJ speaks back to processes of exclusion from the city, which was transformed by apartheid and, more recently, gentrification, by claiming it as a creative and playful space for queer subjects of colour. She uses Gayle to lay claim to the city as it has a long history in Cape Town. In fact, she says that she is not reviving Gayle, but is simply “putting it on a bigger platform” (Ovens, Saint Jude, and Haupt). The use of subtitles in the video suggests that she wants to mainstream queer identity politics. Saint Jude also transforms hip-hop heteronormativity by queering the genre and by locating her work within the history of Cape hip-hop’s multilingual wordplay. ReferencesBarber, Kristin. “The Well-Coiffed Man: Class, Race, and Heterosexual Masculinity in the Hair Salon.” Gender and Society 22.4 (2008): 455–76.Cage, Ken. “An Investigation into the Form and Function of Language Used by Gay Men in South Africa.” Rand Afrikaans University: MA thesis, 1999.Clay, Andreana. “‘I Used to Be Scared of the Dick’: Queer Women of Color and Hip-Hop Masculinity.” Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology. Ed. Gwendolyn D. Pough, Elain Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist. California: Sojourns, 2007.Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”. Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–299.Didier, Sophie, Marianne Morange, and Elisabeth Peyroux. “The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale: Fifteen Years of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg.” Antipode 45.1 (2012): 121–39.Erasmus, Zimitri. “Introduction.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Gqola, Pumla Dineo. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015.Hames, Mary. “Violence against Black Lesbians: Minding Our Language.” Agenda 25.4 (2011): 87–91.Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. London: Harvard UP, 2000.Haupt, Adam. “Can a Woman in Hip Hop Speak on Her Own Terms?” Africa Is a Country. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-double-consciousness-of-burni-aman-can-a-woman-in-hip-hop-speak-on-her-own-terms/>.Haupt, Adam. Static: Race & Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media & Film. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012. Haupt, Adam. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008. Haupt, Adam. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1979.Hogg, Christine. “In Salt River Gentrification Often Means Eviction: Family Set to Lose Their Home of 11 Years.” Ground Up. 15 June 2016. <http://www.groundup.org.za/article/salt-river-gentrification-often-means-eviction/>.hooks, bell. Outlaw: Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994.Lemanski, Charlotte. “Hybrid Gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across Southern and Northern Cities.” Urban Studies 51.14 (2014): 2943–60.Luyt, Kathryn. “Gay Language in Cape Town: A Study of Gayle – Attitudes, History and Usage.” University of Cape Town: MA thesis, 2014.MacDonald, Michael. Why Race Matters in South Africa. University of Kwazulu-Natal Press: Scottsville, 2006.Msibi, Thabo. “Not Crossing the Line: Masculinities and Homophobic Violence in South Africa”. Agenda. 23.80 (2009): 50–54.Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls. “Critical Intimacies: Hip Hop as Queer Feminist Pedagogy.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2014): 1–7.Salo, Elaine. “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa: Adolescent Women and Gangsters in Manenberg Township on the Cape Flats.” Journal of European Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 345–65.Solórzano, Daniel, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso. “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69.1/2 (2000): 60–73.Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York UP, 2007.Smalls, Shanté Paradigm. “‘The Rain Comes Down’: Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity.” American Behavioral Scientist 55.1 (2011): 86–95.Visser, Gustav. “Gentrification: Prospects for Urban South African Society?” Acta Academica Supplementum 1 (2003): 79–104.Williams, Quentin E. “Youth Multilingualism in South Africa’s Hip-Hop Culture: a Metapragmatic Analysis.” Sociolinguistic Studies 10.1 (2016): 109–33.Yudell, Michael. “A Short History of the Race Concept.” Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Ed. Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.InterviewsOvens, Neil, Dope Saint Jude, and Adam Haupt. One FM Radio interview. Cape Town. 21 Apr. 2016.VideosSaint Jude, Dope. “Keep in Touch.” YouTube. 23 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ux9R839lE>. H&M. “H&M World Recycle Week Featuring M.I.A.” YouTube. 11 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7MskKkn2Jg>. MusicSaint Jude, Dope. Reimagine. 15 June 2016. <https://dopesaintjude.bandcamp.com/album/reimagine>.

IntroductionI have been studying the creation of Metro style train travel in Sydney for over a decade. My focus has been on the impact that media has had on the process (see Richardson, “Curatorial”; “Upheaval”; “Making”). Through extensive expert, public, and media research, I have investigated the coalitions and alliances that have formed (and disintegrated) between political, bureaucratic, news media, and public actors and the influences at work within these actor-networks. As part of this project, I visited an underground Métro turning fifty in Montreal, Canada. After many years studying the development of a train that wasn’t yet tangible, I wanted to ask a functional train the simple ethnomethodological/Latourian style question, “what do you do for a city and its people?” (de Vries). Therefore, in addition to research conducted in Montreal, I spent ten days wandering through many of the entrances, tunnels, staircases, escalators, mezzanines, platforms, doorways, and carriages of which the Métro system consists. The purpose was to observe the train in situ in order to broaden potential conceptualisations of what a train does for a city such as Montreal, with a view of improving the ideas and messages that would be used to “sell” future rapid rail projects in other cities such as Sydney. This article outlines a selection of the pathways wandered, not only to illustrate the power of social research based on physical wandering, but also the potential power the metaphorical and conceptual wandering an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) assemblage affords social research for media communications.Context, Purpose, and ApproachANT is a hybrid theory/method for studying an arena of the social, such as the significance of a train to a city like Montreal. This type of study is undertaken by following the actors (Latour, Reassembling 12). In ANT, actors do something, as the term suggests. These actions have affects and effects. These might be contrived and deliberate influences or completely circumstantial and accidental impacts. Actors can be people as we are most commonly used to understanding them, and they can also be texts, technological devices, software programs, natural phenomena, or random occurrences. Most significantly though, actors are their “relations” (Harman 17). This means that they are only present if they are relating to others. These relations and the resulting influences and impacts are called networks. A network in the ANT sense is not as simple as the lines that connect train stations on a rail map. Without actions, relations, influences, and impacts, there are no actors. Hence the hyphen in actor-network; the actor and the network are symbiotic. The network, rendered visible through actor associations, consists of the tenuous connections that “shuttle back and forth” between actors even in spite of the fact their areas of knowledge and reality may be completely separate (Latour Modern 3). ANT, therefore, may be considered an empirical practice of tracing the actors and the network of influences and impacts that they both help to shape and are themselves shaped by. To do this, central ANT theorist Bruno Latour employs a simple research question: “what do you do?” This is because in the process of doing, somebody or something is observed to be affecting other people or things and an actor-network becomes identifiable. Latour later learned that his approach shared many parallels with ethnomethodology. This was a discovery that more concretely set the trajectory of his work away from a social science that sought explanations “about why something happens, to ontological ones, that is, questions about what is going on” (de Vries). So, in order to make sense of people’s actions and relations, the focus of research became asking the deceptively simple question while refraining as much as possible “from offering descriptions and explanations of actions in terms of schemes taught in social theory classes” (14).In answering this central ANT question, studies typically wander in a metaphorical sense through an array or assemblage (Law) of research methods such as formal and informal interviews, ethnographic style observation, as well as the content analysis of primary and secondary texts (see Latour, Aramis). These were the methods adopted for my Montreal research—in addition to fifteen in-depth expert and public interviews conducted in October 2017, ten days were spent physically wandering and observing the train in action. I hoped that in understanding what the train does for the city and its people, the actor-network within which the train is situated would be revealed. Of course, “what do you do?” is a very broad question. It requires context. In following the influence of news media in the circuitous development of rapid rail transit in Sydney, I have been struck by the limited tropes through which the potential for rapid rail is discussed. These tropes focus on technological, functional, and/or operational aspects (see Budd; Faruqi; Hasham), costs, funding and return on investment (see Martin and O’Sullivan; Saulwick), and the potential to alleviate peak hour congestion (see Clennell; West). As an expert respondent in my Sydney research, a leading Australian architect and planner, states, “How boring and unexciting […] I mean in Singapore it is the most exciting […] the trains are fantastic […] that wasn’t sold to the [Sydney] public.” So, the purpose of the Montreal research is to expand conceptualisations of the potential for rapid rail infrastructure to influence a city and improve communications used to sell projects in the future, as well as to test the role of both physical and metaphorical ANT style wanderings in doing so. Montreal was chosen for three reasons. First, the Métro had recently turned fifty, which made the comparison between the fledgling and mature systems topical. Second, the Métro was preceded by decades of media discussion (Gilbert and Poitras), which parallels the development of rapid transit in Sydney. Finally, a different architect designed each station and most stations feature art installations (Magder). Therefore, the Métro appeared to have transcended the aforementioned functional and numerically focused tropes used to justify the Sydney system. Could such a train be considered a long-term success?Wandering and PathwaysIn ten days I rode the Montreal Métro from end to end. I stopped at all the stations. I wandered around. I treated wandering not just as a physical research activity, but also as an illustrative metaphor for an assemblage of research practices. This assemblage culminates in testimony, anecdotes, stories, and descriptions through which an actor-network may be glimpsed. Of course, it is incomplete—what I have outlined below represents only a few pathways. However, to think that an actor-network can ever be traversed in its entirety is to miss the point. Completion is a fallacy. Wandering doesn’t end at a finish line. There are always pathways left untrodden. I have attempted not to overanalyse. I have left contradictions unresolved. I have avoided the temptation to link paths through tenuous byways. Some might consider that I have meandered, but an actor-network is never linear. I can only hope that my wanderings, as curtailed as they may be, prove nuanced, colourful, and rich—if not compelling. ANT encourages us to rethink social research (Latour, Reassembling). Central to this is acknowledging (and becoming comfortable with) our own role as researcher in the illumination of the actor-network itself.Here are some of the Montreal pathways wandered:First Impressions I arrive at Montreal airport late afternoon. The apartment I have rented is conveniently located between two Métro stations—Mont Royal and Sherbrooke. I use my phone and seek directions by public transport. To my surprise, the only option is the bus. Too tired to work out connections, I decide instead to follow the signs to the taxi rank. Here, I queue. We are underway twenty minutes later. Travelling around peak traffic, we move from one traffic jam to the next. The trip is slow. Finally ensconced in the apartment, I reflect on how different the trip into Montreal had been, from what I had envisaged. The Métro I had travelled to visit was conspicuous in its total absence.FloatingIt is a feeling of floating that first strikes me when riding the Métro. It runs on rubber tyres. The explanation for the choice of this technology differs. There are reports that it was the brainchild of strong-willed mayor, Jean Drapeau, who believed the new technology would showcase Montreal as a modern world-scale metropolis (Gilbert and Poitras). However, John Martins-Manteiga provides a less romantic account, stating that the decision was made because tyres were cheaper (47). I assume the rubber tyres create the floating sensation. Add to this the famous warmth of the system (Magder; Hazan, Hot) and it has a thoroughly calming, even lulling, effect.Originally, I am planning to spend two whole days riding the Métro in its entirety. I make handwritten notes. On the first day, at mid-morning, nausea develops. I am suffering motion sickness. This is a surprise. I have always been fine to read and write on trains, unlike in a car or bus. It causes a moment of realisation. I am effectively riding a bus. This is an unexpected side-effect. My research program changes—I ride for a maximum of two hours at a time and my note taking becomes more circumspect. The train as actor is influencing the research program and the data being recorded in unexpected ways. ArtThe stained-glass collage at Berri-Uquam, by Pierre Gaboriau and Pierre Osterrath, is grand in scale, intricately detailed and beautiful. It sits above the tunnel from which the trains enter and leave the platform. It somehow seems wholly connected to the train as a result—it frames and announces arrivals and departures. Other striking pieces include the colourful, tiled circles from the mezzanine above the platform at station Peel and the beautiful stained-glass panels on the escalator at station Charlevoix. As a public respondent visiting from Chicago contends, “I just got a sense of exploration—that I wanted to have a look around”.Urban FormAn urban planner asserts that the Métro is responsible for the identity and diversity of urban culture that Montreal is famous for. As everyone cannot live right above a Métro station, there are streets around stations where people walk to the train. As there is less need for cars, these streets are made friendlier for walkers, precipitating a cycle. Furthermore, pedestrian-friendly streets promote local village style commerce such as shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants. So, there is not only more access on foot, but also more incentive to access. The walking that the Métro induces improves the dynamism and social aspects of neighbourhoods, a by-product of which is a distinct urban form and culture for different pockets of the city. The actor-network broadens. In following the actors, I now have to wander beyond the physical limits of the system itself. The streets I walk around station Mont Royal are shopping and restaurant strips, rich with foot traffic at all times of day; it is a vibrant and enticing place to wander.Find DiningThe popular MTL blog published a map of the best restaurants the Métro provides access to (Hazan, Restaurant).ArchitectureStation De La Savane resembles a retro medieval dungeon. It evokes thoughts of the television series Game of Thrones. Art and architecture work in perfect harmony. The sculpture in the foyer by Maurice Lemieux resembles a deconstructed metal mace hanging on a brutalist concrete wall. It towers above a grand staircase and abuts a fence that might ring a medieval keep. Up close I realise it is polished, precisely cut cylindrical steel. A modern fence referencing another time and place. Descending to the platform, craggy concrete walls are pitted with holes. I get the sense of peering through these into the hidden chambers of a crypt. Overlaying all of this is a strikingly modern series of regular and irregular, bold vertical striations cut deeply into the concrete. They run from floor to ceiling to add to a cathedral-like sense of scale. It’s warming to think that such a whimsical train station exists anywhere in the world. Time WarpA public respondent describes the Métro:It’s a little bit like a time machine. It’s a piece of the past and piece of history […] still alive now. I think that it brings art or form or beauty into everyday life. […] You’re going from one place to the next, but because of the history and the story of it you could stop and breathe and take it in a little bit more.Hold ups and HostagesA frustrated General Manager of a transport advocacy group states in an interview:Two minutes of stopping in the Métro is like Armageddon in Montreal—you see it on every media, on every smartphone [...] We are so captive in the Métro [there is a] loss of control.Further, a transport modelling expert asserts:You’re a hostage when you’re in transportation. If the Métro goes out, then you really are stuck. Unfortunately, it does go out often enough. If you lose faith in a mode of transportation, it’s going to be very hard to get you back.CommutingIt took me a good week before I started to notice how tired some of the Métro stations had grown. I felt my enthusiasm dip when I saw the estimated arrival time lengthen on the electronic noticeboard. Anger rose as a young man pushed past me from behind to get out of a train before I had a chance to exit. These tendrils of the actor-network were not evident to me in the first few days. Most interview respondents state that after a period of time passengers take less notice of the interesting and artistic aspects of the Métro. They become commuters. Timeliness and consistency become the most important aspects of the system.FinaleI deliberately visit station Champ-de-Mars last. Photos convince me that I am going to end my Métro exploration with an experience to savour. The station entry and gallery is iconic. Martins-Manteiga writes, “The stained-glass artwork by Marcelle Ferron is almost a religious experience; it floods in and splashes down below” (306). My timing is off though. On this day, the soaring stained-glass windows are mostly hidden behind protective wadding. The station is undergoing restoration. Travelling for the last time back towards station Mont Royal, my mood lightens. Although I had been anticipating this station for some time, in many respects this is a revealing conclusion to my Métro wanderings.What Do You Do?When asked what the train does, many respondents took a while to answer or began with common tropes around moving people. As a transport project manager asserts, “in the world of public transport, the perfect trip is the one you don’t notice”. A journalist gives the most considered and interesting answer. He contends:I think it would say, “I hold the city together culturally, economically, physically, logistically—that’s what I do […] I’m the connective tissue of this city”. […] How else do you describe infrastructure that connects poor neighbourhoods to rich neighbourhoods, downtown to outlying areas, that supports all sorts of businesses both inside it and immediately adjacent to it and has created these axes around the city that pull in almost everybody [...] And of course, everyone takes it for granted […] We get pissed off when it’s late.ConclusionNo matter how real a transportation system may be, it can always be made a little less real. Today, for example, the Paris metro is on strike for the third week in a row. Millions of Parisians are learning to get along without it, by taking their cars or walking […] You see? These enormous hundred-year-old technological monsters are no more real than the four-year-old Aramis is unreal: They all need allies, friends […] There’s no inertia, no irreversibility; there’s no autonomy to keep them alive. (Latour, Aramis 86)Through ANT-based physical and metaphorical wanderings, we find many pathways that illuminate what a train does. We learn from various actors in the actor-network through which the train exists. We seek out its “allies” and “friends”. We wander, piecing together as much of the network as we can. The Métro does lots of things. It has many influences and it influences many. It is undeniably an actor in an actor-network. Transport planners would like it to appear seamless—commuters entering and leaving without really noticing the in-between. And sometimes it appears this way. However, when the commuter is delayed, this appearance is shattered. If a signal fails or an engine falters, the Métro, through a process mediated by word of mouth and/or social and mainstream media, is suddenly rendered tired and obsolete. Or is it historic and quaint? Is the train a technical problem for the city of Montreal or is it characterful and integral to the city’s identity? It is all these things and many more. The actor-network is illusive and elusive. Pathways are extensive. The train floats. The train is late. The train makes us walk. The train has seeded many unique villages, much loved. The train is broken. The train is healthy for its age. The train is all that is right with Montreal. The train is all that is wrong with Montreal. The artwork and architecture mean nothing. The artwork and architecture mean everything. Is the train overly limited by the tyres that keep it underground? Of course, it is. Of course, it isn’t. Does 50 years of history matter? Of course, it does. Of course, it doesn’t. It thrives. It’s tired. It connects. It divides. It’s functional. It’s dirty. It’s beautiful. It’s something to be proud of. It’s embarrassing. A train offers many complex and fascinating pathways. It is never simply an object; it lives and breathes in the network because we live and breathe around it. It stops being effective. It starts becoming affective. Sydney must learn from this. My wanderings demonstrate that the Métro cannot be extricated from what Montreal has become over the last half century. In May 2019, Sydney finally opened its first Metro rail link. And yet, this link and other ongoing metro projects continue to be discussed through statistics and practicalities (Sydney Metro). This offers no affective sense of the pathways that are, and will one day be, created. By selecting and appropriating relevant pathways from cities such as Montreal, and through our own wanderings and imaginings, we can make projections of what a train will do for a city like Sydney. We can project a rich and vibrant actor-network through the media in more emotive and powerful ways. Or, can we not at least supplement the economic, functional, or technocratic accounts with other wanderings? Of course, we can’t. Of course, we can. ReferencesBudd, Henry. “Single-Deck Trains in North West Rail Link.” The Daily Telegraph 20 Jun. 2012. 17 Jan. 2018 <https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/single-deck-trains-in-north-west-rail-link/news-story/f5255d11af892ebb3938676c5c8b40da>.Clennell, Andrew. “All Talk as City Chokes to Death.” The Daily Telegraph 7 Nov. 2011. 2 Jan 2012 <http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/all-talk-as-city-chokes-to-death/story-e6frezz0-1226187007530>.De Vries, Gerard. Bruno Latour. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2016.Faruqi, Mehreen. “Is the New Sydney Metro Privatization of the Rail Network by Stealth?” Sydney Morning Herald 7 July 2015. 19 Jan. 2018 <http://www.smh.com.au/comment/is-the-new-sydney-metro-privatisation-of-the-rail-network-by-stealth-20150707-gi6rdg.html>.Game of Thrones. HBO, 2011–2019.Gilbert, Dale, and Claire Poitras. “‘Subways Are Not Outdated’: Debating the Montreal Métro 1940–60.” The Journal of Transport History 36.2 (2015): 209–227. Harman, Graham. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: re.press, 2009.Hasham, Nicole. “Driverless Trains Plan as Berejiklian Does a U-Turn.” Sydney Morning Herald 6 Jun. 2013. 16 Jan. 2018 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/driverless-trains-plan-as-berejiklian-does-a-u-turn-20130606-2ns4h.html>.Hazan, Jeremy. “Montreal’s First-Ever Official Metro Restaurant Map.” MTL Blog 17 May 2010. 11 Oct. 2017 <https://www.mtlblog.com/things-to-do-in-mtl/montreals-first-ever-official-metro-restaurant-map/1>.———. “This Is Why Montreal’s STM Metro Has Been So Hot Lately.” MTL Blog 22 Sep. 2017. 11 Oct. 2017 <https://www.mtlblog.com/whats-happening/this-is-why-montreals-stm-metro-has-been-so-hot-lately>. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.———. Aramis: Or the Love of Technology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. ———. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Law, John. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge, 2004.Magder, Jason. “The Metro at 50: Building the Network.” Montreal Gazette 13 Oct. 2016. 18 Oct. 2017 <http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-metro-at-50-building-the-network>.Martin, Peter, and Matt O’Sullivan. “Cabinet Leak: Sydney to Parramatta in 15 Minutes Possible, But Not Preferred.” Sydney Morning Herald 14 Aug. 2017. 7 Dec. 2017 <https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cabinet-leak-sydney-to-parramatta-in-15-minutes-possible-but-not-preferred-20170813-gxv226.html>.Martins-Manteiga, John. Métro: Design in Motion. Dominion Modern: Canada 2011.Richardson, Nicholas. “Political Upheaval in Australia: Media, Foucault and Shocking Policy.” ANZCA Conference Proceedings 2015. Eds. D. Paterno, M. Bourk, and D. Matheson.———. “A Curatorial Turn in Policy Development? Managing the Changing Nature of Policymaking Subject to Mediatisation” M/C Journal 18.4 (2015). 7 Aug. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/998>.———. “‘Making it Happen’: Deciphering Government Branding in Light of the Sydney Building Boom.” M/C Journal 20.2 (2017). 7 Aug. 2019 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1221>.Saulwick, Jacob. “Plenty of Sums in Rail Plans But Not Everything Adds Up.” Sydney Morning Herald 7 Nov. 2011. 17 Apr. 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/plenty-of-sums-in-rail-plans-but-not-everything-adds-up-20111106-1n1wn.html>.Sydney Metro. 16 July 2019. <https://www.sydneymetro.info/>.West, Andrew. “Second Harbour Crossing – or Chaos.” Sydney Morning Herald 31 May 2010. 17 Jan. 2018 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/second-harbour-crossing--or-chaos-20100530-wnik.html>.

IntroductionThis short article examines contemporary artistic use of walkie-talkies across two projects: Saturday (2002) by Sabrina Raaf and Walk That Sound (2014) by Lukatoyboy. Drawing on Dominic Pettman’s notion of sonic intimacy, I argue that both artists incorporate walkie-talkies as part of their explorations of mediated wandering, and in ways that seek to capture sonic ambiances and intimacies. One thing that is striking about both these works is that they rethink what’s possible with walkie-talkies; both artists use them not just as low-tech, portable devices for one-to-one communication over distance, but also—and more strikingly—as (covert) recording equipment for capturing, while wandering, snippets of intimate conversation between passers-by and the “voice” of the surrounding environment. Both artworks strive to make the familiar strange. They prompt us to question our preconceived perceptions of, and affective engagements with, the people and places around us, to listen more attentively to the voices of others (and the “Other”), and to aurally inhabit in new ways the spaces and places we find ourselves in and routinely pass through.The walkie-talkie is an established, simple communication device, consisting of a two-way radio transceiver with a speaker and microphone (in some cases, the speaker is also used as the microphone) and an antenna (Wikipedia). Walkie-talkies are half-duplex communication devices, meaning that they use a single radio channel: only one radio on the channel can transmit at a time, but many can listen; when a user wishes to talk, they must turn off the receiver and turn on the transmitter by pressing a push-to-talk button (Wikipedia). In some models, static—known as squelch—is produced each time the push-to-talk button is depressed. The push-to-talk button is a feature of both projects: in Saturday, it transforms the walkie-talkie into a cheap, portable recorder-transmitter. In Walk That Sound, rapid fire exchanges of conversation using the push-to-talk button feature strongly.Interestingly, walkie-talkies were developed during World War Two. While they continue to be used within certain industrial settings, they are perhaps best known as a “quaint” household toy and “fun tool” (Smith). Early print ads for walkie-talkie toys marketed them as a form of both spyware for kids (with the Gabriel Toy Co. releasing a 007-themed walkie-talkie set) and as a teletechnology for communication over distance—“how thrilling to ‘speak through space!’”, states one ad (Statuv “New!”). What is noteworthy about these early ads is that they actively promote experimental use of walkie-talkies. For instance, a 1953 ad for Vibro-Matic “Space Commander” walkie-talkies casts them as media transmission devices, suggesting that, with them, one can send and receive “voice – songs – music” (Statuv “New!”). In addition, a 1962 ad for the Knight-Kit walkie-talkie imagines “you’ll find new uses for this exciting walkie-talkie every day” (Statuv “Details”). Resurgent interest in walkie-talkies has seen them also promoted more recently as intimate tools “for communication without asking permission to communicate” (“Nextel”); this is to say that they have been marketed as devices for synchronous or immediate communication that overcome the limits of asynchronous communication, such as texting, where there might be substantial delays between the sending of a message and receipt of a response. Within this context, it is not surprising that Snapchat and Instagram have also since added “walkie-talkie” features to their messaging services. The Nextel byline, emphasising “without asking permission”, also speaks to the possibilities of using walkie-talkies as rudimentary forms of spyware.Within art practice that explores mediated forms of wandering—that is, walking while using media and various “remote transmission technologies” (Duclos 233)—walkie-talkies hold appeal for a number of reasons, including their particular aesthetic qualities, such as the crackling or static sound (squelch) that one encounters when using them; their portability; their affordability; and, the fact that, while they can be operated on multiple channels, they tend to be regarded primarily as devices that permit two-way, one-to-one (and therefore intimate, if not secure) remote communication. As we will see below, however, contemporary artists, such as the aforementioned earlier advertisers, have also been very attentive to the device’s experimental possibilities. Perhaps the best known (if possibly apocryphal) example of artistic use of walkie-talkies is by the Situationist International as part of their explorations in urban wandering (a revolutionary strategy called dérive). In the Situationist text from 1960, Die Welt als Labyrinth (Anon.), there is a detailed account of how walkie-talkies were to form part of a planned dérive, which was organised by the Dutch section of the Situationist International, through the city of Amsterdam, but which never went ahead:Two groups, each containing three situationists, would dérive for three days, on foot or eventually by boat (sleeping in hotels along the way) without leaving the center of Amsterdam. By means of the walkie-talkies with which they would be equipped, these groups would remain in contact, with each other, if possible, and in any case with the radio-truck of the cartographic team, from where the director of the dérive—in this case Constant [Nieuwenhuys]—moving around so as to maintain contact, would define their routes and sometimes give instructions (it was also the director of the dérive’s responsibility to prepare experiments at certain locations and secretly arranged events.) (Anon.) This proposed dérive formed part of Situationist experiments in unitary urbanism, a process that consisted of “making different parts of the city communicate with one another.” Their ambition was to create new situations informed by, among other things, encounters and atmospheres that were registered through dérive in order to reconnect parts of the city that were separated spatially (Lefebvre quoted in Lefebvre and Ross 73). In an interview with Kristin Ross, Henri Lefebvre insists that the Situationists “did have their experiments; I didn’t participate. They used all kinds of means of communication—I don’t know when exactly they were using walkie-talkies. But I know they were used in Amsterdam and in Strasbourg” (Lefebvre quoted in Lefebvre and Ross 73). However, as Rebecca Duclos points out, such use “is, in fact, not well documented”, and “none of the more well-known reports on situationist activity […] specifically mentions the use of walkie-talkies within their descriptive narratives” (Duclos 233). In the early 2000s, walkie-talkies also figured prominently, alongside other media devices, in at least two location-based gaming projects by renowned British art collective Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now? (2001) and You Get Me (2008). In the first of these projects, participants in the game (“online players”) competed against members of Blast Theory (“runners”), tracking them through city streets via a GPS-enabled handheld computer that runners carried with them. The goal for online players was to move an avatar they created through a virtual map of the city as multiple runners “pursued their avatar’s geographical coordinates in real-time” (Leorke). As Dale Leorke explains, “Players could see the locations of the runners and other players and exchange text messages with other players” (Leorke 27), and runners could “read players’ messages and communicate directly with each other through a walkie-talkie” (28). An audio stream from these walkie-talkie conversations allowed players to eavesdrop on their pursuers (Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now?).You Get Me was similarly structured, with online players and “runners” (eight teenagers who worked with Blast Theory on the game). Remotely situated online players began the game by listening to the “personal geography” of the runners over a walkie-talkie stream (Blast Theory, You Get Me). They then selected one runner, and tracked them down by navigating their own avatar, without being caught, through a virtual version of Mile End Park in London, in pursuit of their chosen runner who was moving about the actual Mile End Park. Once their chosen runner was contacted, the player had to respond to a question that the runner posed to them. If the runner was satisfied with the player’s answer, conversation switched to “the privacy of a mobile phone” in order to converse further; if not, the player was thrown back into the game (Blast Theory, You Get Me). A key aim of Blast Theory’s work, as I have argued elsewhere (Wilken), is the fostering of interactions and fleeting intimacies between relative and complete strangers. The walkie-talkie is a key tool in both the aforementioned Blast Theory projects for facilitating these interactions and intimacies.Beyond these well-known examples, walkie-talkies have been employed in productive and exploratory ways by other artists. The focus in this article is on two specific projects: the first by US-based sound artist Sabrina Raaf, called Saturday (2002) and the second by Serbian sound designer Lukatoyboy (Luka Ivanović), titled Walk That Sound (2014). Sonic IntimaciesThe concept that gives shape and direction to the analysis of the art projects by Raaf and Lukatoyboy and their use of walkie-talkies is that of sonic intimacy. This is a concept of emerging critical interest across media and sound studies and geography (see, for example, James; Pettman; Gallagher and Prior). Sonic intimacy, as Dominic Pettman explains, is composed of two simultaneous yet opposing orientations. On the one hand, sonic intimacy involves a “turning inward, away from the wider world, to more private and personal experiences and relationships” (79). While, on the other hand, it also involves a turning outward, to seek and heed “the voice of the world” (79)—or what Pettman refers to as the “vox mundi” (66). Pettman conceives of the “vox mundi” as an “ecological voice”, whereby “all manner of creatures, agents, entities, objects, and phenomena” (79) have the opportunity to speak to us, if only we were prepared to listen to our surroundings in new and different ways. In a later passage, he also refers to the “vox mundi” as a “carrier or potentially enlightening alterity” (83). Voices, Pettman writes, “transgress the neat divisions we make between ‘us’ and ‘them’, at all scales and junctures” (6). Thus, Pettman’s suggestion is that “by listening to the ‘voices’ that lie dormant in the surrounding world […] we may in turn foster a more sustainable relationship with [the] local matrix of specific existences” (85), be they human or otherwise.This formulation of sonic intimacy provides a productive conceptual frame for thinking through Raaf’s and Lukatoyboy’s use of walkie-talkies. The contention in this article is that these two projects are striking for the way that they both use walkie-talkies to explore, simultaneously, this double articulation or dual orientation of sonic intimacy—a turning inwards to capture more private and personal experiences and conversations, and a turning outwards to capture the vox mundi. Employing Pettman’s notion of sonic intimacy as a conceptual frame, I trace below the different ways that these two projects incorporate walkie-talkies in order to develop mediated forms of wandering that seek to capture place-based sonic ambiances and sonic intimacies.Sabrina Raaf, Saturday (2002)US sound artist Sabrina Raaf’s Saturday (2002) is a sound-based art installation based on recordings of “stolen conversations” that Raaf gathered over many Saturdays in Humboldt Park, Chicago. Raaf’s work harks back to the early marketing of walkie-talkie toys as spyware. In Raaf’s hands, this device is used not for engaging in intimate one-to-one conversation, but for listening in on, and capturing, the intimate conversations of others. In other words, she uses this device, as the Nextel slogan goes, for “communication without permission to communicate” (“Nextel”). Raaf’s inspiration for the piece was twofold. First, she has noted that “with the overuse of radio frequency bands for wireless communications, there comes the increased occurrence of crossed lines where a private conversation becomes accidentally shared” (Raaf). Reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Conversation (1974), in which surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) records the conversation of a couple as they walk through crowded Union Square in San Francisco, Raaf used a combination of walkie-talkies, CB radios, and “various other forms of consumer spy […] technology in order to actively harvest such communication leaks” (Raaf). The second source of inspiration was noticing the “sheer quantity of non-phone, low tech, radio transmissions that were constantly being sent around [the] neighbourhood”, transmissions that were easily intercepted. These conversations were eclectic in composition and character:The transmissions included communications between gang members on street corners nearby and group conversations between friends talking about changes in the neighbourhood and their families. There were raw, intimate conversations and often even late night sex talk between potential lovers. (Raaf)What struck Raaf about these conversations, these transmissions, was that there was “a furtive quality” to most of them, and “a particular daringness to their tone”.During her Saturday wanderings, Raaf complemented her recordings of stolen snippets of conversation with recordings of the “voice” of the surrounding neighbourhood—“the women singing out their windows to their radios, the young men in their low rider cars circling the block, the children, the ice cream carts, etc. These are the sounds that are mixed into the piece” (Raaf).Audience engagement with Saturday involves a kind of austere intimacy of its own that seems befitting of a surveillance-inspired sonic portrait of urban and private life. The piece is accessed via an interactive glove. This glove is white in colour and about the size of a large gardening glove, with a Velcro strap that fastens across the hand, like a cycling glove. The glove, which only has coverings for thumb and first two fingers (it is missing the ring and little fingers) is wired into and rests on top of a roughly A4-sized white rectangular box. This box, which is mounted onto the wall of an all-white gallery space at the short end, serves as a small shelf. The displayed glove is illuminated by a discrete, bent-arm desk lamp, that protrudes from the shelf near the gallery wall. Above the shelf are a series of wall-mounted colour images that relate to the project. In order to hear the soundtrack of Saturday, gallery visitors approach the shelf, put on the glove, and “magically just press their fingertips to their forehead [to] hear the sound without the use of their ears” (Raaf). The glove, Raaf explains, “is outfitted with leading edge audio electronic devices called ‘bone transducers’ […]. These transducers transmit sound in a very unusual fashion. They translate sound into vibration patterns which resonate through bone” (Raaf).Employing this technique, Raaf explains, “permits a new way of listening”:The user places their fingers to their forehead—in a gesture akin to Rodin’s The Thinker or of a clairvoyant—in order to tap into the lives of strangers. Pressing different combinations of fingers to the temple yield plural viewpoints and group conversations. These sounds are literally mixed in the bones of the listener. (Raaf) The result is a (literally and figuratively) touching sonic portrait of Humboldt Park, its residents, and the “voice” of its surrounding neighbourhoods. Through the unique technosomatic (Richardson) apparatus—combinations of gestures that convey the soundscape directly through the bones and body—those engaging with Saturday get to hear voices in/of/around Humboldt Park. It is a portrait that combines sonic intimacy in the two forms described earlier in this article. In its inward-focused form, the gallery visitor-listener is positioned as a voyeur of sorts, listening into stolen snippets of private and personal relationships, experiences, and interactions. And, in its outward-focused form, the gallery visitor-listener encounters a soundscape in which an array of agents, entities, and objects are also given a voice. Additional work performed by this piece, it seems to me, is to be found in the intermingling of these two form of sonic intimacy—the personal and the environmental—and the way that they prompt reflection on mediation, place, urban life, others, and intimacy. That is to say that, beyond its particular sonic portrait of Humboldt Park, Saturday works in “clearing some conceptual space” in the mind of the departing gallery visitor such that they might “listen for, if not precisely to, the collective, polyphonic ‘voice of the world’” (Pettman 6) as they go about their day-to-day lives.Lukatoyboy, Walk That Sound (2014)The second project, Walk That Sound, by Serbian sound artist Lukatoyboy was completed for the 2014 CTM festival. CTM is an annual festival event that is staged in Berlin and dedicated to “adventurous music and art” (CTM Festival, “About”). A key project within the festival is CTM Radio Lab. The Lab supports works, commissioned by CTM Festival and Deutschlandradio Kultur – Hörspiel/Klangkunst (among other partnering organisations), that seek to pair and explore the “specific artistic possibilities of radio with the potentials of live performance or installation” (CTM Festival, “Projects”). Lukatoyboy’s Walk That Sound was one of two commissioned pieces for the 2014 CTM Radio Lab. The project used the “commonplace yet often forgotten walkie-talkie” (CTM Festival, “Projects”) to create a moving urban sound portrait in the area around the Kottbusser Tor U-Bahn station in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Walk That Sound recruited participants—“mobile scouts”—to rove around the Kottbusser Tor area (CTM Festival, “Projects”). Armed with walkie-talkies, and playing with “the array of available and free frequencies, and the almost unlimited amount of users that can interact over these different channels”, the project captured the dispatches via walkie-talkie of each participant (CTM Festival, “Projects”). The resultant recording of Walk That Sound—which was aired on Deutschlandradio (see Lukatoyboy), part of a long tradition of transmitting experimental music and sound art on German radio (Cory)—forms an eclectic soundscape.The work juxtaposes snippets of dialogue shared between the mobile scouts, overheard mobile phone conversations, and moments of relative quietude, where the subdued soundtrack is formed by the ambient sounds—the “voice”—of the Kottbusser Tor area. This voice includes distant traffic, the distinctive auditory ticking of pedestrian lights, and moments of tumult and agitation, such as the sounds of construction work, car horns, emergency services vehicle sirens, a bottle bouncing on the pavement, and various other repetitive yet difficult to identify industrial sounds. This voice trails off towards the end of the recording into extended walkie-talkie produced static or squelch. The topics covered within the “crackling dialogues” (CTM Festival, “Projects”) of the mobile scouts ranged widely. There were banal observations (“I just stepped on a used tissue”; “people are crossing the street”; “there are 150 trains”)—wonderings that bear strong similarities with French writer Georges Perec’s well-known experimental descriptions of everyday Parisian life in the 1970s (Perec “An Attempt”). There were also intimate, confiding, flirtatious remarks (“Do you want to come to Turkey with me?”), as well as a number of playfully paranoid observations and quips (“I like to lie”; “I can see you”; “do you feel like you are being recorded?”; “I’m being followed”) that seem to speak to the fraught history of Berlin in particular as well as the complicated character of urban life in general—as Pettman asks, “what does ‘together’ signify in a socioeconomic system so efficient in producing alienation and isolation?” (92).In sum, Walk That Sound is a strangely moving exploration of sonic intimacy, one that shifts between many different registers and points of focus—much like urban wandering itself. As a work, it is variously funny, smart, paranoid, intimate, expansive, difficult to decipher, and, at times, even difficult to listen to. Pettman argues that, “thanks in large part to the industrialization of the human ear […], we have lost the capacity to hear the vox mundi, which is […] the sum total of cacophonous, heterogeneous, incommensurate, and unsynthesizable sounds of the postnatural world” (8). Walk That Sound functions almost like a response to this dilemma. One comes away from listening to it with a heightened awareness of, appreciation for, and aural connection to the rich messiness of the polyphonic contemporary urban vox mundi. ConclusionThe argument of this article is that Sabrina Raaf’s Saturday and Lukatoyboy’s Walk That Sound are two projects that both incorporate walkie-talkies in order to develop mediated forms of wandering that seek to capture place-based sonic ambiances and sonic intimacies. Drawing on Pettman’s notion of “sonic intimacy”, examination of these projects has opened consideration around voice, analogue technology, and what Nick Couldry refers to as “an obligation to listen” (Couldry 580). In order to be heard, Pettman remarks, and “in order to be considered a voice at all”, and therefore as “something worth heeding”, the vox mundi “must arrive intimately, or else it is experienced as noise or static” (Pettman 83). In both the projects discussed here—Saturday and Walk That Sound—the walkie-talkie provides this means of “intimate arrival”. As half-duplex communication devices, walkie-talkies have always fulfilled a double function: communicating and listening. This dual functionality is exploited in new ways by Raaf and Lukatoyboy. In their projects, both artists turn the microphone outwards, such that the walkie-talkie becomes not just a device for communicating while in the field, but also—and more strikingly—it becomes a field recording device. The result of which is that this simple, “playful” communication device is utilised in these two projects in two ways: on the one hand, as a “carrier of potentially enlightening alterity” (Pettman 83), a means of encouraging “potential encounters” (89) with strangers who have been thrown together and who cross paths, and, on the other hand, as a means of fostering “an environmental awareness” (89) of the world around us. In developing these prompts, Raaf and Lukatoyboy build potential bridges between Pettman’s work on sonic intimacy, their own work, and the work of other experimental artists. For instance, in relation to potential encounters, there are clear points of connection with Blast Theory, a group who, as noted earlier, have utilised walkie-talkies and sound-based and other media technologies to explore issues around urban encounters with strangers that promote reflection on ideas and experiences of otherness and difference (see Wilken)—issues that are also implicit in the two works examined. In relation to environmental awareness, their work—as well as Pettman’s calls for greater sonic intimacy—brings renewed urgency to Georges Perec’s encouragement to “question the habitual” and to account for, and listen carefully to, “the common, the ordinary, the infraordinary, the background noise” (Perec “Approaches” 210).Walkie-talkies, for Raaf and Lukatoyboy, when reimagined as field recording devices as much as remote transmission technologies, thus “allow new forms of listening, which in turn afford new forms of being together” (Pettman 92), new forms of being in the world, and new forms of sonic intimacy. Both these artworks engage with, and explore, what’s at stake in a politics and ethics of listening. Pettman prompts us, as urban dweller-wanderers, to think about how we might “attend to the act of listening itself, rather than to a specific sound” (Pettman 1). His questioning, as this article has explored, is answered by the works from Raaf and Lukatoyboy in effective style and technique, setting up opportunities for aural attentiveness and experiential learning. However, it is up to us whether we are prepared to listen carefully and to open ourselves to such intimate sonic contact with others and with the environments in which we live.ReferencesAnon. “Die Welt als Labyrinth.” Internationale Situationiste 4 (Jan. 1960). International Situationist Online, 19 June 2019 <https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/diewelt.html>Blast Theory. “Can You See Me Now?” Blast Theory, 19 June 2019 <https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/can-you-see-me-now/>.———. “You Get Me.” Blast Theory, 19 June 2019 <https://wwww.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/you-get-me/>.Cory, Mark E. “Soundplay: The Polyphonous Tradition of German Radio Art.” Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-garde. Eds. Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1992. 331–371.Couldry, Nick. “Rethinking the Politics of Voice.” Continuum 23.4 (2009): 579–582.CTM Festival. “About.” CTM Festival, 2019. 19 June 2019 <https://www.ctm-festival.de/about/ctm-festival/>.———. “Projects – CTM Radio Lab.” CTM Festival, 2019. 19 June 2019 <https://www.ctm-festival.de/projects/ctm-radio-lab/>.Duclos, Rebecca. “Reconnaissance/Méconnaissance: The Work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.” Articulate Objects: Voice, Sculpture and Performance. Eds. Aura Satz and Jon Wood. Bern: Peter Lang, 2009. 221–246. Gallagher, Michael, and Jonathan Prior. “Sonic Geographies: Exploring Phonographic Methods.” Progress in Human Geography 38.2 (2014): 267–284.James, Malcom. Sonic Intimacy: The Study of Sound. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.Lefebvre, Henri, and Kristin Ross. “Lefebvre on the Situationists: An Interview.” October 79 (Winter 1997): 69–83. Leorke, Dale. Location-Based Gaming: Play in Public Space. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.Lukatoyboy. “Walk That Sound – Deutschlandradiokultur Klangkunst Broadcast 14.02.2014.” SoundCloud. 19 June 2019 <https://soundcloud.com/lukatoyboy/walk-that-sound-deutschlandradiokultur-broadcast-14022014>.“Nextel: Couple. Walkie Talkies Are Good for Something More.” AdAge. 6 June 2012. 18 July 2019 <https://adage.com/creativity/work/couple/27993>.Perec, Georges. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Trans. Marc Lowenthal. Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 2010.———. “Approaches to What?” Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. Rev. ed. Ed. and trans. John Sturrock. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1999. 209–211.Pettman, Dominic. Sonic Intimacy: Voice, Species, Technics (Or, How to Listen to the World). Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2017.Raaf, Sabrina. “Saturday.” Sabrina Raaf :: New Media Artist, 2002. 19 June 2019 <http://raaf.org/projects.php?pcat=2&proj=10>.Richardson, Ingrid. “Mobile Technosoma: Some Phenomenological Reflections on Itinerant Media Devices.” The Fibreculture Journal 6 (2005). <http://six.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-032-mobile-technosoma-some-phenomenological-reflections-on-itinerant-media-devices/>. Smith, Ernie. “Roger That: A Short History of the Walkie Talkie.” Vice, 23 Sep. 2017. 19 June 2019 <https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb7vk4/roger-that-a-short-history-of-the-walkie-talkie>. Statuv. “Details about Allied Radio Knight-Kit C-100 Walkie Talkie CB Radio Vtg Print Ad.” Statuv, 4 Jan. 2016. 18 July 2019 <https://statuv.com/media/74802043788985511>.———. “New! 1953 ‘Space Commander’ Vibro-Matic Walkie-Talkies.” Statuv, 4 Jan. 2016. 18 July 2019 <https://statuv.com/media/74802043788985539>.Wikipedia. “Walkie-Talkie”. Wikipedia, 3 July 2019. 18 July 2019 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkie-talkie>.Wilken, Rowan. “Proximity and Alienation: Narratives of City, Self, and Other in the Locative Games of Blast Theory.” The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies. Ed. Jason Farman. New York: Routledge, 2014. 175–191.

"The eye altering, alters all." - Blake In his essay "How Culture Conditions the Colours We See," Umberto Eco claims that chromatic perception is determined by language. Regarding language as the primary modeling system, Eco argues for linguistic predominance over visual experience: ". . . the puzzle we are faced with is neither a psychological one nor an aesthetic one: it is a cultural one, and as such is filtered through a linguistic system" (159). Eco goes on to explain that he is 'very confused' about chromatic effect, and his arguments do a fine job of illustrating that confusion. To Eco's claim that color perception is determined by language, one can readily point out that both babies and animals, sans language, experience--and respond to--color perception. How then can color be only a cultural matter? Eco attempts to make a connection between the "negative concept" of a geopolitical unit (e.g., Holland or Italy defined by what is not Holland or Italy) and a chromatic system in which "units are defined not in themselves but in terms of opposition and position in relation to other units" (171). Culture, however, is not the only determinant in the opposition that defines certain colors: It is a physiological phenomenon that the eye, after staring at one color (for example, red) for a long time, will see that color's complement, its opposite (green), on a white background. Language is a frustrating tool when discussing color: languages throughout the world have only a limited number of words for the myriad color-sensations experienced by the average eye. Though language training and tradition have an undoubtedly profound effect on our color sense, our words for color constitute only one part of the color expression and not always the most important one. In his Remarks on Colour (1950-51), Wittgenstein observed: 'When we're asked 'What do the words 'red', 'blue', 'black', 'white' mean?' we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours,--but our ability to explain the meanings of these words goes no further!' (I-68). We can never say with complete certainly that what this writer meant by this color (we are already in trouble) is understood by this reader (the woods are now officially burning). A brief foray into the world of color perception discloses that, first and foremost, a physiological process, not a cultural one, takes place when a person sees colors. In his lively Art & Physics (1991), Leonard Shlain observes that "Color is the subjective perception in our brains of an objective feature of light's specific wavelengths. Each aspect is inseparable from the other" (170). In his 1898 play To Damascus I, August Strindberg indicated specifically in a stage direction that the Mourners and Pallbearers were to be dressed in brown, while allowing the characters to defy what the audience saw and claim that they were wearing black. In what may well be the first instance of such dramatic toying with an audience's perception, Strindberg forces us to ask where colors exist: In the subject's eye or in the perceived object? In no other feature of the world does such an interplay exist between subject and object. Shlain notes that color "is both a subjective opinion and an objective feature of the world and is both an energy and an entity" (171). In the science of imaging (the transfer of one color digital image from one technology to another) recent research has suggested that human vision may be the best model for this process. Human vision is spatial: it views colors also as sensations involving relationships within an entire image. This phenomenon is part of the process of seeing and unique to the way humans see. In some ways color terms illustrate Roland Barthes's arguments (in S/Z) that connotation actually precedes denotation in language--possibly even produces what we normally consider a word's denotation. Barthes refers to denotation as 'the last of connotations' (9). Look up 'red' in the American Heritage Dictionary and the first definition you find is a comparison to 'blood.' Blood carries with it (or the reader brings to it) a number of connotations that have long inspired a tradition of associating red with life, sex, energy, etc. Perhaps the closest objective denotation for red is the mention of 'the long wavelength end of the spectrum,' which basically tells us nothing about experiencing the color red. Instead, the connotations of red, many of them based on previous perceptual experience, constitute our first encounter with the word 'red.' I would not be so inclined to apply Barthes's connotational hierarchy when one sees red in, say, a painting--an experience in which some of the subjectivity one brings to a color is more limited by the actual physical appearance of the hue chosen by the artist. Also, though Barthes talks about linguistic associations, colors are more inclined to inspire emotional associations which sometimes cannot be expressed in language. As Gaston Bachelard wrote in Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement: 'The word blue designates, but it does not render' (162). Still, the 'pluralism' Barthes argues for in reading seems particularly present in the reader's encounter with color terms and their constant play of objectivity/subjectivity. In painting color was first released from the confines of form by the Post-Impressionists Cézanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh, who allowed the color of the paint, the very marks on the canvas, to carry the power of expression. Following their lead, the French Fauve painters, under the auspices of Matisse, took the power of color another step further. Perhaps the greatest colorist of the twentieth century, Matisse understood that colors possess a harmony all their own--that colors call out for their complements; he used this knowledge to paint some of the most harmonious canvases in the history of art. 'I use the simplest colors,' Matisse wrote in 'The Path of Color' (1947). 'I don't transform them myself, it is the relationships that take care of that' (178). When he painted the Red Studio, for example, the real walls were actually a blue-gray; he later said that he 'felt red' in the room--and so he painted red (what he felt), leaving the observer to see red (what she feels). Other than its descriptive function, what does language have to do with any of this? It is a matter of perception and emotion. At a 1998 Seattle art gallery exhibit of predominantly monochromatic sculptures featuring icy white glass objects, I asked the artist why he had employed so little color in his work (there were two small pieces in colored glass and they were not as successful). He replied that "color has a tendency to get away from you," and so he had avoided it as much as possible. The fact that color has a power all its own, that the effects of chromaticism depend partially on how colors function beyond the associations applied to them, has long been acknowledged by more expressionistic artists. Writing to Emile Bernard in 1888, van Gogh proclaimed: 'I couldn't care less what the colors are in reality.' The pieces of the color puzzle which Umberto Eco wishes to dismiss, the psychological and the aesthetic, actually serve as the thrust of most pictorial and literary uses of color spaces. Toward the end of his essay, Eco bows to Klee, Mondrian, and Kandinsky (including even the poetry of Virgil) and their "artistic activity," which he views as working "against social codes and collective categorization" (175). Perhaps these artists and writers retrieved color from the deadening and sometimes restrictive effects of culture. Committed to the notion that the main function of color is expression, Matisse liberated color to abolish the sense of distance between the observer and the painting. His innovations are still baffling theorists: In Reconfiguring Modernism: Exploring the Relationship between Modern Art and Modern Literature, Daniel R. Schwarz bemoans the difficulty in viewing Matisse's decorative productions in 'hermeneutical patterns' (149). Like Eco, Schwarz wants to replace perception and emotion with language and narrativity. Language may determine how we express the experience of color, but Eco places the cart before the horse if he actually believes that language 'determines' chromatic experience. Eco is not alone: the Cambridge linguist John Lyons, observing that color is 'not grammaticalised across the languages of the world as fully or centrally as shape, size, space, time' (223), concludes that colors are the product of language under the influence of culture. One is reminded of Goethe's remark that "the ox becomes furious if a red cloth is shown to him; but the philosopher, who speaks of color only in a general way, begins to rave" (xli). References Bachelard, Gaston. Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement. Dallas: The Dallas Institute Publications, 1988. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Eco, Umberto. 'How Culture Conditions the Colours We See.' On Signs. Ed. M. Blonsky. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. 157-75. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. The Theory of Colors. Trans. Charles Lock Eastlake. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1970. Lyons, John. 'Colour in Language.' Colour: Art & Science. Ed. Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 194-224. Matisse, Henri. Matisse on Art. Ed. Jack Flam. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California, 1995. Riley, Charles A., II. Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music and Psychology. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995. Schwarz, Daniel R. Reconfiguring Modernism: Explorations in the Relationship between Modern Art and Modern Literature. New York: St. Martin's, 1997. Shlain, Leonard. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light. New York: Morrow, 1991. Strindberg, August. To Damascus in Selected Plays. Volume 2: The Post-Inferno Period. Trans. Evert Sprinchorn. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. 381-480. Van Gogh, Vincent. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Trans. Arnold Pomerans. London: Penguin, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mussari, Mark. "Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.3 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php>. Chicago Style Mussari, Mark, "Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 3 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Mussari, Mark. (2002) Umberto Eco Would Have Made a Bad Fauve. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(3). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0207/eco.php> ([your date of access]).

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circumstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circumstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. 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