The Underground
Issue 30:2 | June 2010
Guest editor: Lucas Ihlein
The term “underground” has a set of historical uses across various spheres of culture and maintains a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream, trading street-level and institutional in a continual cycle of unearthing. Practices covered in this edition include copy culture, web-based and email art, comix, animation, zine and fan culture, marginal and experimental art, guerilla gardening and other forms of activism, living underground and archiving the underground.
In this issue
Thirteen paragraphs on the underground
Artist/ writer, curator/designer at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation Teri Hoskin's thirteen paragraphs sum up facts, apprehensions and suspicions about the underground.
Hiding in plain sight: regionalism and the underground
Margie Borschke was in Canada in the mid 1980s when she discovered the Underground.
1. Muffled sounds 2. The ear trumpet of the artworld has been struck by lightning
Emeritus Flinders University Professor and philosopher Donald Brook writes about his 'new theory' and why it has never been taken up. He wonders: 'Could it be that he is wrong?'
Stop the press: the allure of ink
Caren Florance is Ampersand Duck, a blog and nom de press for activities including letterpress printing. Florance has breathed the ink and describes the history of moveable type focusing on the recent past and the present and how something magical happens to text when it is printed.
When zines meet archives: above - and below - ground collections
Marmalade-maker and Phd candidate at the University of Technology in Sydney Jessie Lymn's writing focuses on her research into unconventional archival spaces that hold collections of zines, those idiosyncratic sites of memory.
Conquest for country: Rockhole or mine
Anthropologist Eve Vincent has done fieldwork in mining towns in South Australia. She writes about Ali Russell's documentary Keeper about mining on Kokatha land near Ceduna.
Dig it! The hole in Australian contemporary art
Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney Glenn Barkley surveys the hole in contemporary Australian art starting at the 1973 Mildura Sculpturescape.
How to make trouble and influence people: Pranks, hoaxes, graffiti and political mischef-making from across Australia
Iain McIntyre's book How To Make Trouble And Influence People describes the secret ludic history of creative troublemaking in Australia over two centuries. It began as a series of zines and is now published by Breakdown Press to impress new readers and inspire new acts of defiance.
Seed bomb
Farmer, artist, writer Kirsten Bradley who works from Milkwood Permaculture Farm near Mudgee in the high country of NSW spills the beans on how to make a seedball or seedbomb to revegetate or vegetate urban spaces around you. Like guerilla gardening, it's quick, it's quiet and it creeps up on you.
Underground networks in the age of web 2.0
Media Theorist, nethead, activist and founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures Geert Lovink reports on the erotica of touching between 'weak links' and the importance of experimenting with new forms of organisation both on and offline.
Steampunk: gunpowder and cups of tea
Between 13 October 2009 and 21 February 2010, the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford held the world's first museum exhibition of Steampunk art. Writer, artist, emerging, networked and distributed culture geek Melinda Rackham was there.
Underground film in Australia
Writer and curator of the moving image Danni Zuvela examines underground film in Australia to draw out its spirit it from the pre-Seventies to now - 'profane, collective, improvised, transgressive, convivial, illegitimate'.
Renew Adelaide pilot: 2 wheels good
Zine publisher and educator Dr Ianto Ware is the Project Manager of Renew Adelaide, an urban renewal clone of Marcus Westbury's Renew Newcastle, in which the 'definition of creativity has to be broad enough to encompass the wide fields of socially innovative activity that simply doesn't fit elsewhere.'
Remembering Judith Hoffberg 1934-2009
Expert on Len Lye, editor of Umbrella Magazine Judith Hoffberg died on January 16, 2009. Tributes to her life and work continue with a memorial exhibition planned for late 2010. Judith Hoffberg wrote of her last visit to Adelaide in 2002 as one of ‘’Paradise regained’...
Remembering Judith Hoffberg BA, MA, MLS, 1934-2009
Before and After Science: 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
Curators: Charlotte Day and Sarah Tutton Art Gallery of South Australia 27 February – 2 May 2010
Adelaide International 2010: Apart, We are Together
Raeda Saadeh, Praneet Soi Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia Rosella Biscotti Australian Experimental Art Foundation Nina Fisher & Maroan el Sani, Donghee Koo, Li Mu, Tara Donovan, Imma Issa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul Anne & Gordon Samstag Art Museum Lucy and Jorge Orta JamFactory Gallery Julian Hooper Flinders University Art Museum Curator: Victoria Lynn 26 February – 14 March 2010
Local Studies: Fiona MacDonald
Curator: Jo Holder Artspace Mackay 18 December 2009 – 31 January 2010
Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987-2007; Aehee Park: Caring for Aehee
Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987 – 2007 Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale Curator: Karra Rees 30 January - 28 February 2010 Aehee Park: Caring for Aehee Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale 6 February - 14 March 2010
The City of Fremantle Festival of Photography: FotoFreo 2010
The City of Fremantle Festival of Photography: FotoFreo 2010 Silence – The West Australian Wheatbelt : Brad Rimmer Fremantle Prison 20 March – 16 May 2010 The Clubs: David Dare Parker The Fremantle Club 20 March – 18 April 2010 FotoFreo 2010 Fringe Festival Paradise Lost: Rebecca Dagnall Studio Red Dust, Mount Hawthorn 20 March – 10 April 2010
Cubism and Australian Art
Curators: Leslie Harding, Sue Cramer Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne 24 November 2009 – 8 April 2010
Sylvie Blocher: What is Missing?
Penrith Regional Gallery and The Lewers Bequest 13 February 2010 - 4 April 2010 Museum of Contemporary Art 17 February 2010 - 25 April 2010
Feminism Never Happened
Del Kathryn Barton, Pat Brassington, Kirsty Bruce, Jacqueline Fraser, Anastasia Klose, Fiona Lowry, Fiona Pardington, Yvonne Todd, Jemima Wyman Curator: Robert Leonard IMA (Institute of Modern Art), Brisbane 30 January - 20 March 2010
Ruth Waller: A 30 Year Survey
Curator: Deborah Clark Canberra Museum and Gallery 6 February - 6 June 2010
Everything's Alright: Hossein Ghaemi, Andrew Liversidge, Yasmin Smith
Curator: Amanda Rowell Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney March 4 - 27 2010
