Everyday Spaces of Greenwashing
Enzo Lara-Hamilton
04.09.22“Space is produced, but by whom? Spaces of our everyday existence are constructed with goals of their owners in mind. If the goal is profit, changing materials, signage or the organisation of a space will be produced to acheive it. Spaces are not apolitical. Just as a wall enables segregation, or absence of a public toilet enables street defecation, a space of greenwashing enables the continued destruction of the biosphere. Knowing how spaces help greenwashing will allow eco-minded people to properly interrogate claims of sustainability and how they are being influenced.”
Building Utopia on the Climate Frontlines
Andy Paine
22.08.22“Utopias of all kinds are reminders that the brick-and-mortar world we live in is not all that exists. Visions of the future that inspire us to act are just as real as the “real world”. The community at Binbee planted a seed in its many participants that will perhaps grow into their own inspiring visions of change.”
Wilding as a Decolonial Future for (Dis)topia Australis
Yin Paradies
15.08.22“Wilding is a radical shift away from the tameness of civilisation and bumbling obliviousness, towards listening with our eyes and watching with our ears, embracing our promiscuous animal essence, leaping headfirst into the carnal palpable flow of life, living within natural lore, being stilled, silenced and seized, cracking open to feel everything, bathing in the dusty intricate messiness succulence of corporeal reality, walking through the inside of the world, and understanding that we do not move through Country, rather Country flows through us.”
Resisting ‘Green’ Extractivism
Alice Seedling
08.08.22 “Our use of technology reflects our society, placing profit and growth above all else. Our current economic system needs to keep increasing output, and companies need to compete for profit or be driven out of the market. This is the same of ‘renewable’ energy producers, leading to many destructive practices. Even so-called ‘renewable’ energy cannot escape capitalist capture.”
The Smoke Comes
Ruby Thorburn
17.07.22“Everywhere I look,
the eucalypts,
the beachfront,
the gap beneath the laundry door,
everywhere I look,
the smoke comes.”
Oligarchs, Ecocide, and Reclaiming True Politics
Morgan Heenan
26.06.22“Electoral politics on this continent is about the furthest thing there is from genuine democracy, short of just shooting peaceful protestors on the street. This is not the news many people want to hear. But it is a crucial wake up call, for all of us to become active political actors, to reclaim our ability to have a say in our future, and to destroy the ability of elites to act without the consent of the people they harm.”
Knowing Is Not Enough: On the Performance of Allyship
Adrian Fernandez
13.06.22“The acknowledgement of justice, humanity and freedom for POC’s won’t be found in signs, statements of solidarity or book clubs. It won’t be found in ‘unlearning’ oppression, it will be found in your willingness to pick up a hammer and smash it to fucking pieces, to destroy the systems that stand in our way, whether at your job, your social network, your neighbourhood, your family, or your home.”
The Park Hotel: The Unvisible Spatialities of Border Carceralism
Mark Romei
06.06.22“It is first important to recognize that the Park Hotel is an embodiment and continuation of the ongoing colonial project of Australia, a project which was always constructed upon spaces of extraterritorial incarceration. Mandatory detention is spatially, politically and ideologically linked to various historical forms of administrative detention, government processes which render entire categories of peoples as detainable, based not on action, but upon their social, racial or religious categorization.”
War Remembrance or White Nationalism? The ANZAC Legend and its Meaning to Australian Identity Today
Claire Waddell-Wood
23.05.22"The ANZAC legend is inseparable from its foundations as a national identity based on whiteness, masculinity and colonialism. When Bean, Howard, Abbott and Tudge make comments on Australia’s national identity being guided by a romanticised war narrative, they erase the many identities on this continent that don’t align with the mythologised ANZAC figure."
A Snag of the Democracy Sausage: Political Participation and Dissent for Non-Citizens
Srishti Chatterjee
16.05.22"Elections are often romanticised as ‘hope.’ As an immigrant, I feel very little hope in outcomes for me, and that is not to say I don’t believe in elections. It means that I place hope in my protection from precarity in the strengths and weaknesses of my communities. When the nation-state makes my body an issue of border security—my disabled, trans body that is the centre of political culture wars—I’m nourished and cared for by my communities."