young and local
I socialise around the area and it’s good having a heap of places around, but I think it would be good to have more of a ‘youth’ arts feel. It would make it more appealing. I think having more live performance and more visuals created by youth. Being a Film and TV student I like beautiful visuals. If you had a “Norwood Film Festival” it would get a lot of attention especially from university students like myself. I also know a lot of musicians would like to have local festivals to perform in.
Cameron Edson University Student, Member of Youth FM
You better make it count, because you’re voting every day
Think back to a time before computers took over the work place. It is like an alien world, for some of us it is a fading memory, for those entering the work force it is a world that never existed. It is getting hard to wrap our minds around now, but back before computers skyscraper were the computers and employees were the transistors. Imagine the rows of employees crunching numbers for banks or accounting firms. They were acting as computers do now; fixated on a small piece of detail, making sure it was correct. This type of world led to a rather perverse concept of what the best use of human intellect was. We had to train the human mind to have a huge capacity for detail retention and this went hand in hand with a need for focused specialisation. If this seems a bit like a rewriting of history then you never had a problem with remembering phone numbers. I did and only a few years ago to have such a problem was deemed a severe intellectual short fall. Once we had daily use of computers we needed these skills less, even less with the internet and even less with portable computing such as smart phones. It turns out that these feats of specialist knowledge and memory where not the pinnacles of human achievement, but a limitation we had to endure.
soft voices in quiet corners: other cities #2
I have lived in Adelaide all my life, spent most of my holidays on the south and eastern coasts; love the dry hot summer and fresh winter chills (not so much, the droughts)… my first trip to Far North Queensland some five or six years ago was a moist, dripping green culture shock. The visit was a quick one: Sasha Grbich had invited me to run a two-day workshop with her for the Tanks Art Centre as part of ANAT’s Portable World’s education program. I remember the plane trip was frustrating – cloud cover the whole way – no view, no physical sense of the place I was approaching… remember the song playing as it tipped into descent (I think it’s from Sarah Blasko’s Planet New Year) ‘Waking with the birds, they’re falling from the sky’ causing some subtle anxiety that fell away as the clouds broke and the plane sank into colour: turquoise blue/green sea deep green blanketed mountain fringe; remember the heart-dropping/breath-held moments as the plane banked the bay: the beautiful liquid shock of it.
Art on the Street
I believe that the debate about street art is unnecessarily combative. It’s just paint on a wall- it doesn’t hurt anyone. Funnily enough I think that the people who clean the walls and the artists who paint them have the same intention, to contribute to and beautify public space. The two sides just have different aesthetic values. Generally we are becoming more accustomed to street art and its not as scary as it was a while ago, and that’s a good thing. Some artists have an elitist approach, they want street art to remain intimidating and edgy. I think that’s important too but there’s plenty of room for both approaches. When I started making street art it was ridden with angst. I soon realised that doesn’t draw anybody in. Angst only attracts more angst. The best thing about this art form is that it makes you observe the public space differently. Through a dialogue between the audience and the artists you begin to realise that public space belongs to all of us. It’s ours to play with and, above all, have fun!
Peter Drew Street Artist
Art in Payneham
As I walk from the city through Kent Town and down Payneham road towards my rented working space, I pass by many houses and commercial buildings from long ago. Some are much loved and cared for. Others are neglected. But they are all precious. They are probably not so appreciated by the many commuters in cars, trucks and vans that whoosh by, in the race for time + money. One old building intrigues me. The faded grey sign indicates it had something to do with plumbing – probably before the petrochemical industry provided plastic wares. But it is derelict. The open doorway reveals a chaotic interior and there is a gaping hole on an exterior wall that acts like a floodlight on the tangled mess. I am told that it is heritage listed, that the owner wanted to bulldoze the thing and that a bomb had caused the gaping hole. I think “poor Adelaide”.
My move to Yellow Door Studios was prompted by a lack of affordable rental space in the city precinct, where older buildings here are making way for boring but functional apartments. I am very happy with my move. The Kent Town and St Peters area is blessed with many older buildings that give a unique atmosphere of past existence in the inner suburbs. The challenge is for government to promote this, and for architects, designers, developers and retailers to use their creativity to incorporate this rich history into their practices. The older commercial buildings on Payneham Road can come to life again in a unique way.
Adrian Caon Artist
City Lights and Digital Campfires
The spread of digital signage throughout urban spaces has been prolific and led almost unanimously by commercial interest; I see amazing potential for social, philosophical, art and design industries to embrace this canvas to invigorate, enliven, and change for the better the places we live in. Modern day light and lighting in the form of digital pixels has become a powerful tool for communication, as well as an aesthetic and physical meeting point for citizens, providing a place for a new form of ‘civic communication’ and exchange.
Digital light today replaces the firelight, which was the symbolic centre for family and community gatherings in ancient history. At that time it symbolised warmth, shelter, security. Today sitting around a tribal fire replaced by the LED or LCD pixel TV’s and digital screens. These screens and images have a mysterious and powerful presence, almost as if they represent echoes, traces of forgotten dreams reappearing in our modern city landscapes.
Jimmy Mcgilchrist, Media Artist, Creative Director, rezon8
Should We Let Our Children Play In The Road?
Some might find this statement provocative, worrying or just mad; but when I was growing up in the late sixties that’s exactly what my parents used to encourage me to do. As a child, most days were spent after school playing in the street, learning to ride my bike, kicking the football, playing chasey or just hanging-out sitting on the curbside chatting to friends and other members of the community.
Somewhere between then and now the role of the road within our cities has changed significantly. I can’t tell you when, but the increased need for safety and security and the risks associated with the interaction of vehicles and pedestrians has become so absolute that there is a perception that absolute separation is now required for all our roads.
While the risks and dangers associated with roads remain very real, should these risks warrant the sterilisation of large tracks of land within in our cities, towns and suburbs?
