Revhead heaven revisited – the possible promise where cars and culture overlap

Here in Canberra the massive convoy called Summernats has just rolled into town for another year. As usual it has incited the locals in a loud mix of love and hate – almost as loud as the car races themselves. Yet, like it or loathe it, cars are at the heart of everyday Australian life. Even if they don’t interest you all that much, or even if you mainly use public transport, you probably also use a car regularly. The Sunday drive, the regional road tour, the daily commute are all as Australian as burnt toast and peeling sunburn. The annual Summernats road extravaganza in Australia’s national capital celebrates this mobile culture. With some imagination, it could be even more – celebrating a central, while challenging, part of contemporary Australian popular culture.

This year the Summernats crowd were even outrageously blamed by a Canberra Times reader for defacing a string of memorials on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin over the new year – in the usual fashion of random comments that no-one cares about, normally only the Greens would get the blame.

Cars are at the heart of everyday Australian life. Even if they don’t interest you all that much, or even if you mainly use public transport, you probably also use a car regularly. The Sunday drive, the regional road tour, the daily commute are all as Australian as burnt toast and peeling sunburn. 

Summernats brings a mixed bag to the national capital – a large increase in atmospheric polution, a huge jump in stylish haircuts and sleek vehicles and, since last year, a parallel festival of popular culture in hipster heaven Braddon, which this year has been expanded to the whole three days of the main event. There has always been a dark side to Summernats, more so the further back you go, but even last year, but organisers seem to have been actively trying to make the event broader and more inclusive.

Revhead heaven – travelling together into the mobile future

Cars are at the heart of everyday Australian life. Even if they don’t interest you all that much, or even if you mainly use public transport, you probably also use a car regularly. The Sunday drive, the regional road tour, the daily commute are all as Australian as burnt toast and peeling sunburn. The annual Summernats road extravaganza in Australia’s national capital celebrates this mobile culture. With some imagination, it could be even more – celebrating a central, while challenging, part of contemporary Australian popular culture.

The annual Summernats four-day extravaganza of cars and loud revving motors has been a fixture on the Canberra calendar for as long as I’ve lived here – getting on for 22 years. Plenty of Canberrans hate Summernats because of the noise and the crowds and the petrol fumes. Whether they’d hate a large music festival as much is hard to tell. Maybe it’s the NIMBY syndrome – not in my back yard?

Interest in cars pops up in unexpected places. This one was on the traditional site of the Summernats event, EPIC (Exhibition Park in Canberra), but this was during the weekly Farmers Markets also held there.

An everyday life worth living – indefinite articles for a clean, clever and creative future

My main blog indefinite article is irreverent writing about contemporary Australian society, popular culture, the creative economy and the digital and online world – life in the trenches and on the beaches of the information age. Over the last ten years I have published 181 articles about creativity and culture on the blog. This is a list of all the articles I have published there, broken down into categories, with a brief summary of each article. They range from the national cultural landscape to popular culture, from artists and arts organisations to cultural institutions, cultural policy and arts funding, the cultural economy and creative industries, First Nations culture, cultural diversity, cities and regions, Australia society, government, Canberra and international issues – the whole range of contemporary Australian creativity and culture. They originate mostly between 2010 and 2020, with the bulk after 2014, though some were written before 2010.

I hope you find them useful. One of the main reasons I write them for this blog is to help provide case studies, evidence and arguments that can be used to press the case for the importance of creativity and culture and the broad benefits they have across Australian life. Both economic relevance and a sense of being embedded with community are complementary aspects of contemporary creativity and culture that make it so strong a force. The economic role of creativity and culture and their community role of building resilience, well-being, social inclusion and livable cities are inextricably linked. What they have in common is that both spring from the reality that culture and creativity are integral to everyday life and the essential activities that make it up. The blog is a place where I can post many of the articles and analysis I come across, that readers of the blog might not otherwise see. They are welcome to share this amongst their own networks.

1. Cultural landscape 24
2. Artists and arts organisations 6
3. Cultural institutions 10
4. Cultural policy 11
5. Arts funding 16
6. Cultural economy and creative industries 26
7. First Nations culture 17
8. Cultural diversity 4
9. Australian society 7
10. Cities and regions 21
11. Government 1
12. International 2
13. Canberra 3
14. Popular culture 27

15. About my blogs 6

 

1. CULTURAL LANDSCAPE (24)

Remaking the world we know – for better or worse 2 Nov 2020
‘Given the Government cannot avoid spending enormous sums of money if it is to be in any way capable and competent, this is an unparalleled opportunity to remake Australia for the future. Usually opportunities such as this only arise in rebuilding a country and an economy after a world war. It is a perfect moment to create the sort of clean, clever and creative economy that will take us forward in the global world for the next hundred years. Unfortunately a failure of imagination and a lack of innovative ambition will probably ensure this doesn’t happen any time soon’, Remaking the world we know – for better or worse.

 

The old normal was abnormal – survival lessons for a new riskier world 14 Sep 2020
‘When I hear the call to get back to normal, I think ‘what was normal about the old normal?’ The sudden shutdown of large sectors of the economy highlighted drastically how precarious was the situation of vast chunks of Australian society, in particular but not exclusively, the creative sector. The business models implemented by the Government to help businesses survive and employees keep their jobs didn’t work at all for those who had already been happily left at – or even deliberately pushed to – the margins of society and the economy. In good times the creative sector is flexible and fast at responding. In bad times it is a disaster, as the failure of the COVID-19 support packages for the sector shows’, The old normal was abnormal – survival lessons for a new riskier world.

See also – indefinite articles in a definite world

I was losing track of the articles I have published to my 'indefinite article' blog over the last few years. For easy access, this is a summary of all 146 articles, broken down into categories. They range from the national cultural landscape to popular culture, from artists and arts organisations to cultural institutions, cultural policy and arts funding, creative industries, First Nations culture, cultural diversity, cities and regions, Australia society, government, Canberra and international issues – the whole range of contemporary Australian arts and culture.

1. Cultural landscape
2. Artists and arts organisations
3. Cultural institutions
4. Cultural policy
5. Arts funding
6. Cultural economy and creative industries
7. First Nations culture
8. Cultural diversity
9. Australian society
10. Cities and regions
11. Government
12. International
13. Canberra
14. Popular culture

15. About my blogs
16. Parallel universe

1. CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
Better than sport? The tricky business of valuing Australia’s arts and culture 
‘Understanding, assessing and communicating the broad value of arts and culture is a major and ongoing task. There has been an immense amount of work already carried out. The challenge is to understand some of the pitfalls of research and the mechanisms and motivations that underpin it. Research and evaluation is invaluable for all organisations but it is particularly important for Government. The experience of researching arts and culture in Government is of much broader relevance, as the arts and culture sector navigates the tricky task of building a comprehensive understanding in each locality of the broader benefits of arts and culture. The latest Arts restructure makes this even more urgent.’, Better than sport? The tricky business of valuing Australia’s arts and culture.

Crossing boundaries – the unlimited landscape of creativity
‘When I was visiting Paris last year, there was one thing I wanted to do before I returned home – visit the renowned French bakery that had trained a Melbourne woman who had abandoned the high stakes of Formula One racing to become a top croissant maker. She had decided that being an engineer in the world of elite car racing was not for her, but rather that her future lay in the malleable universe of pastry. Crossing boundaries of many kinds and traversing the borders of differing countries and cultures, she built a radically different future to the one she first envisaged’, Crossing boundaries – the unlimited landscape of creativity.

Creativity and culture in change: Change in creativity and culture 
‘A vast transformation of contemporary culture not seen since the breakdown of traditional arts and crafts in the industrial revolution is under way due to the impact of the digital and online environment. Artists, culture managers and cultural specialists today are confronted with radically different challenges and opportunities to those they faced in the 20th Century. There are a number of strategic forces which we need to take account of in career planning and in working in or running cultural organisations’, Presentation at ‘Creative and Cultural Futures: Leadership and Change’ – a symposium exploring the critical issues driving change in the creative and cultural sector, University of Canberra, October 2018, Creativity and culture in change: Change in creativity and culture.

Taking part – Arts involvement in a divided Australia
‘The arts and culture sector has long suffered from a shortage of high quality, useable research and statistics. This makes what is available doubly important as we argue the case for the central relevance of arts and culture and the broader social and economic impact of involvement. New research demonstrates the positive scale of involvement, views on importance and trends in participation in Australia’s arts and cultural life, especially hands on involvement. It also shows a worrying decline in engagement and recognition in recent years and points to the need for a more strategic view by government’, Taking part – Arts involvement in a divided Australia.

Second language

When I was single I used to say that what I was looking for in a partner included the ability to speak a second language - one other than the language of love. When I was young I admired the romantic languages, like Spanish, with their fluidity and soft sounds. As I became older I found myself drawn to the structure and logic of German. I like most the ‘z’ words, ‘zucker’, 'zimmer', 'zeitung'.

On a plane flight from Vienna to Australia the sound of languages was brought home to me as the passengers bundled their massive bags into the racks over the seats. The soft sibilants of the Slavic languages contrasted with the harsher gutteral sounds of German. The 'z' words redress that balance.

Essen. Trinken. Tanzen - Eat, drink, dance. To which, in Germany and Austria, you could probably add 'Rauchen', 'smoke.

For many years I have been learning German. To tell the truth I have been learning German since I was at school, where after many years of learning French I added a year of German. This meant I had two languages that I spoke badly. Perhaps I was sacrificing quality for quantity.

Predicting the weather

I grew up in a world where there was a definite set of things you knew - and one of them was not what would happen with the weather.

The other day I was talking to someone who must have grown up in the same period. We were chatting casually about the weather and she made a comment  - quite seriously - that weather forecasts were usually wrong.

Talking about the weather - snap frozen

Unfortunately she was thirty years out of date. What amazes me is that the weather forecasts are usually so right. It is even possible to have a reasonable stab at guessing what the weather will look like at different times of the same day. How can this be possible in such a short time? It’s just constant work improving data collection, improving models – it must be a science.

Happily ever after - the bethrothal of royalty and popular culture

Republicans can gnash their teeth but the reality is that royalty has managed to do the swift manoeuvering required to move it from antique and declining relic to funky pop culture icon. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee confirms this.

At the tail end of royalty we can finally pretend they were harmless and charming all along, not founded on the basis of beheadings and torture chambers, murders and arranged marriages, at the end almost a benign presence – like a pandemic that has run its course.

It’s true that fear of the guillotine certainly played an important role in inducing self reform – that’s not something to forget, survival is a strong instinct. But royalty has gone further than just tidying up a not so pleasant side of itself and reluctantly accepting the people as rulers. It has embraced them, even if a bit uncomfortably at times, and in doing so it has become part of the everyday.

Happily ever after

Last year I saw the Grace Kelly exhibition in Bendigo, which was a good example of how royalty adopted the movies to lift itself out of modern irrelevance and to make itself part of mass culture by becoming popular entertainment.

Wormholes in space

There has been a lot of speculation about the possible existence of ‘wormholes’ in space. Wormholes are kinks in space and time that can connect two distant parts of the galaxy almost instantly.

I’m convinced that they exist and that there is one connecting Waverton on the Lower North Shore in Sydney and Burrawang in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

Rear Burrawang Hotel in mist

Meeting someone

In earlier centuries, it was not unusual for women to marry someone’s sword, portrait or block of land—probably far better than marrying their football club.

Modern dating might at times seems extreme and unusual (if not cruel as well). But is it really?
In earlier centuries, it was not unusual for women to marry someone’s sword or for someone to receive a photograph or a painting to assess the merits of a potential partner. Shiploads travelled from Britain to fill a gap in marriageable young women. Advertising was not uncommon.

The fact that potential partners ever met was a miracle comparable to the first plane flight or refrigeration.

Half empty, half full

Asked whether the cup was half full or half empty, I’d have to ask why it wasn’t completely full.

I am beginning to think that the world is made up of two kinds of people. There are those who spend all their time stopping bad things from happening and there are those who are much more focused on making good things happen.

Half empty, half full, too full.

These strike me as the same people for whom the cup is either half full or half empty, but that might be cruel.
For myself, if asked whether the cup was half full or half empty, I’d have to ask: why wasn’t it completely full?

Too close to the television

When I was growing up, we were constantly warned not to sit too close to the television. Now, as an adult, I spend my whole life sitting too close to a television.

When I was growing up, we were constantly warned not to sit too close to the television screen. Now everyone I know spends their whole life sitting too close to a television screen.

Electronic screens have become our second set of windows looking out on the world around us—and even more so on the world distant from us.

Sitting too close

Most homes now have at least one such screen, many have a great deal more. They might be called televisions or computers, mobile phones or PDAs or perhaps home cinemas, but they are all forms of the old television screen that used to show black and white programs from an Australia most of us can barely remember—that’s if we were there at all.

Senseless - cures for the common cold

When I have a cold and, suddenly, I lose my sense of smell, my sense of taste vanishes as well. With a head cold, it’s like eating in black and white.

With the range of modern, life-threatening viruses around, there are plenty of diseases to be worried about in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. With swine and avian flu, AIDS, hepatitis B, C and D, Ross River fever, yuppie flu, new strains of TB and whatever else, there's an awful lot to worry about.

Taste vanishes in a black and white haze

Despite all these extremely serious diseases, what worries me is something far more simple. What really worries me is the common cold. I want to know why it is common. If it was less common maybe I wouldn't catch one so often. What about ‘the uncommon cold’ – why can’t I catch that, maybe every ten years or so?

The safety of strangers

It’s much, much safer in the company of complete strangers. If they hardly know you, then they are unlikely to want to kill you.

I was reading a front page article in a newspaper recently. It mentioned with a sense of alarm that several people accused of murder were currently free in the community.

Safe in the company of stranger

I read more closely and was intrigued to find that every single one of the people mentioned had been charged with murdering someone they were close to – a friend, a relative or partner. They hadn’t suddenly seized upon some totally unknown stranger and murdered them out of the blue.

It brought home to me a terrible truth that keeps being forgotten—the person most likely to murder you is someone you already know—and the closer to you they are, the more likely it is.

Fat held up by salt — all the essential food groups

I looked at a plate of antipasto and realised it was essentially assorted forms of fat, held up by salt and sugar.

Years ago, I was at a wedding reception in a marvellous Italian function centre in Leichhardt, when I looked down at a plate of antipasto and realised that it was essentially assorted forms of fat, held up by sugar and salt.

Fat held up by racks

Slices of cheese, salami, prosciutto, coppa, and pancetta stared me in the face—all tasting and smelling superb, and representing all of the essential food groups—sugar, salt, fat and chilli.

I used to buy large quantities of these smallgoods — a name I could never understand because it was never clear what was small about them.

The history of the future

If you can’t fill a magazine with the past and the present, expanding your ambit to include the future adds a whole new area of material.

I find it interesting that many people who would claim they don’t read fiction, are avid readers of the popular magazines that appear from nowhere in newsagents, doctors surgeries and your mother’s latest emergency parcel. Popular magazines are the last great home of true fiction - if their stories aren’t true, then they should be.

Stars in the night sky, popular magazines, reading palms - the truth is out there.

They are so desperately short of new compelling material, that they have started to introduce psychics so they can add a whole new area of imagined material.

One-sided conversations

I would have one-sided conversations with strangers—I had a hand-written record of my half of these conversations.

Once, after a particularly virulent cold, I contracted pharyngitis (a bit like laryngitis) and found my voice straining and fading. My voice became fainter and fainter, until it was almost inaudible.

The worst thing about pharyngitis is that your voice fades because of straining of the weakened vocal chords, not directly because of the infection. This means that it doesn’t ‘clear up’ as you recover from the effects of the virus. Because it is physical damage to your vocal chords, the only solution is to rest them, so they can slowly recover.

In other words, you have to stop talking. The more you stop talking, the quicker you recover, the less you manage to stop talking, the longer you are without a functioning voice.

The whole truth

The reality is that fiction can be far more true to life than reality, because it cuts out the irrelevant bits and concentrates the important parts.

How often have you heard someone say that they don’t read fiction? What they don’t realise is that they read fiction every single day—everything is fiction. This is a world in which we are surrounded by the movie, the theme park and the whole virtual experience.

Public figures are fictional creations, everyone in the mass media is a persona, their shape carefully crafted and managed by media minders and spin doctors.

Telling stories - mirror on the world

‘Based on a true story’ is a guarantee of authenticity. Reality television is the most stage-managed and contrived unreality available, because is is a recognition of the fact that to be engaging and interesting, everyday life has to be heightened and concentrated and made into drama and stories.

Beaten by the clock - playing for time

Forget about the curtains fading, the chickens forgetting to lay or the kids going to school in the dark—the real terror of daylight saving is changing all the clocks

Have you ever noticed how every electrical appliance nowadays has its own clock, hidden somewhere within it? I notice this every time the clocks have to be changed at the beginning—or end—of daylight saving time.

Forget about the curtains fading, the chickens forgetting to lay or the kids going to school in the dark—most of us go to work in the dark and stay like that all day. The real terror of daylight saving is changing the clocks.

Facing the terror -changing all the clocks

As soon as it comes time to put the clocks back an hour or forward an hour, I face the huge task of resetting every clock I own. How can there be so many of them?

Greatest hits

It’s been said if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there. If you were unfortunate enough to be there, why should you have to relive it?

I never again want to be told I am hearing the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s, or the 70s, 80s and 90s, or any other long gone time.

It has been said that if you remember the 60s then you weren’t there. I think that if you were unfortunate enough to be there the first time, why should you have to go through it again?

Fender stratocaster takes time out

Through a glass, darkly — a lighter place

Now I’ll never know whether for all of those few years in Melbourne it was really constantly overcast and grey, or whether it was just my glasses.

Many years ago, for a number of years of my life, I used to possess a pair of glasses with photochromatic lenses. Whenever the day was exceptionally bright (or, to tell the truth, even a bit bright), they would respond by becoming darker, turning into a pair of dark sunglasses.

The whole world became a lighter place

I lived in Melbourne for much of the time, a location, which though always my favourite Australian city, can be very grey.

Years later, standing on a peak near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, looking out over the valley, I took off my glasses for a moment. I was shocked to realise how dark they were. I finally understood that reacting to the ultraviolet light, they were never quite reverting to totally clear.