School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemPutting the “art” back into arts policy making: how arts policy has been “captured” by the economists and the marketers(Taylor and Francis Group, 2003-03-01)This paper explores the current discourse about arts policy and funding and its placement within an economic paradigm. The models of “cultural industry” and “creative industry” are explored and how they affect arts funding discourse. Similarly the impact of the introduction of the language of industry and business to the arts sector is considered. If bottom-line arguments are used by funders, governments and critics to argue the merits or otherwise of arts activity, how does this affect arts practice? In recent times arts funding agencies have been restructured to reflect a market-driven agenda rather than an arts-driven agenda. The impact of all these issues is considered in the context of Australian arts' models in particular, but with reference to examples in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The paper concludes with suggestions for a reassertion of core cultural values in future discourse.
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ItemImpact aesthetics: Back to the future in digital cinema? Millennial fantasies(SAGE Publications, 2000-12-01)This article engages recent debates about the future of cinema in the digital age. Firstly, it seeks to broaden the rather narrow terms in which the transition to digital cinema is often understood in film theory. Secondly, it tries to assess claims about the 'demise of narrative' frequently associated with the digital threshold. On one level, it is argued that a dialectical understanding of the relation between terms such as 'narrative' and 'spectacle' is needed to advance current debates. On another level, it is suggested that digital technology should not be wholly defined by the current dominance of 'blockbuster' films. In place of technological determinism, an understanding based on the politics of spectacle and distracted spectatorship is advanced.
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ItemRecovering memory( 1996)To speak of memory as tekhne, to deny that it has an unmediated relation to experience, is to say that the logic of textuality by which memory is structured has technological and institutional conditions of existence. Let me illustrate the enabling conditions of the ‘textual’ logic of memory by reference to the controversy over recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
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ItemA politics of stolen time( 1998)This is a story about acts of telling that are true and acts that are false. It is about being told things and not being heard. It is about the relation between telling stories and existing, or about being made not to exist. Millicent’s story is a part of the Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, entitled Bringing Them Home. Delivered to the Australian Federal Government in 1997, the Report is a record of the history of forcible removal of indigenous children, usually of mixed descent, from their families and communities, and it makes recommendations about current laws, practices and policies, about compensation for the victims of past laws, practices and policies, and about the services that are or should be available for those victims.
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ItemCutting ordinary: an ABC true story( 2003)The 2002 Caroline Chisolm Lecture, Chisolm College, La Trobe University, 8th October 2002. I’m honoured and particularly pleased to return to La Trobe University to speak about ‘Ordinary People’. The last time I was invited to speak at this university I had just begun shooting Ordinary People and I spoke at the time about the film as an imagined object. Tonight I am going to speak about it as a lost object. There’s a repetition in play here which I rather like. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said that repetition was a missed encounter with the real, and that is my subject: a missed encounter. The Australian journalist Peter Manning, who knew the history of cutting ‘Ordinary People’, said to me last year: ‘what is going to be unbearable for you is that when the film is released, it is going to receive a lot of critical acclaim and you’re going to be left standing in the sidelines saying, but –’. Manning’s comments have proved prescient. ‘Ordinary People’ screened on the ABC in March this year to critical acclaim. It has been selected for a number of local and international festivals, including Mumbai, The Real Life on Film Festival, and the inaugural Aus Fest, the Australian Digital and Video Film Festival. Before making Ordinary People I’d never held a camera, never done a film-making course and wasn’t even a surreptitious wannabe film-maker. Now I’ve made a film reaching an audience that my academic work will never see, I’ve been paid quite handsomely for it, and nobody has had a bad word to say about the film. So why would I want to jeopardise this almost mythical success by speaking against my own film? Because that’s what I want to do tonight: raise a series of ‘buts’ about the film you’ve just seen.
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ItemNetwork Time and the New Knowledge Epoch(Sage Publications, 2003)This article analyses the temporal dimensions of knowledge production. Specifically it discusses the mechanics of the process and how these have changed through what are termed ‘knowledge epochs’. It argues that with the widespread dissemination of clock-time through the Industrial Revolution, the production of knowledge was significantly shaped by the temporality of the clock. Through the convergence of neoliberal globalization and ICT revolution a new powerful temporality has emerged through which knowledge production is refracted: network time. The article concludes that the spread of network time into the realm of the everyday has profound implications for the production of critical and reflexive knowledge in contemporary culture and society.
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ItemPaul Verhoeven and his hollow men(La Trobe University, 2001)
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ItemDream cities: the uncanny powers of electric light( 2004)In his famous 1919 essay, Freud (1955: 219-252) defines the uncanny to include experiences in which inanimate objects seem to come to life. In early modernity, this sense of the uncanny accompanied the spread of electric light, itself a manifestation of the near-miraculous powers of electricity. From the moment of its initial recognition as an independent phenomenon, electricity has been a source of profound wonder. Romantics rapidly identified it with a universal life force, dramatised in the archetypal modern creation scene of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and distilled by Goethe into ‘the soul of the world’. A century later, the prospect of widespread electrification literally dazzled the world, inspiring entrepreneurs, artists and revolutionaries alike with visions of an irresistible electrical future. At the same time, electricity has always led a double life. Beneath the Promethean narrative of limitless possibilities lies a more utilitarian tale of practical development. Counterpointing the arcane myth of electricity’s magical properties — force without muscle or steam, light without flame — is the profane physical reality of its often cumbersome technical infrastructure. Supporting the spark of the incandescent lamp which shines brighter than any jewel are unsightly poles and criss-crossing wires, not to mention ferocious patent wars and internecine struggles to form some of industrial capitalism’s most powerful corporations.
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ItemThe frenzy of the visible: spectacle and motion in the era of the digital( 2000-02)During my first viewing of The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999) I found my vision bombarded by imagery and sensations more akin to theme park rides like the Spiderman attraction at Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure in Florida. My visual and aural faculties were plunged into a state of disorientation that constituted a physical assault on my senses. Not only was an array of framing effects and camera movements employed - from high velocity pans, tracks and fast paced edits, to 360° camera somersaults - but there was motion and there was lots of it! Bodies, cameras, sound and visual effects - everything moved and it moved fast, even when 'bullet-time' speed was visualised through slow motion techniques. Here's a film that's dictated above all by the speed of the image: within the filmic space (with its economically ordered narrative and fast paced action); within the production space (with its special effects and high velocity stylistic techniques); and within the audience's space (in the capacity the film has in affecting us on a highly charged sensory level).