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Art versus history, and vice versa


imageThis weekend I’ve been at home, in Hobart, and at something new(ish), which is MONA. The annual MONA Foma festival (MoFo) is entirely located at the site of the gallery this year, which means some of the transformative power of its former location in the middle of Hobart city is lost. Overall, mMoFo is low-key, quiet, attenuated because it now sprawls over the whole site and because the lineup this year is a tad obtuse. What I’ve seen has been good but you do get considerably bigger bang for your buck at mainland festivals like our very own Blue Mountains Music Festival. The MoFo App is dreadful (no cross-referencing) and I’ll be writing to suggest they copy the Sydney Film Festival’s app, which is a delight, as well as their ticketing system. I enjoyed the SA Theatre Co’s Beckett mightily though – if enjoy is the right word.

Still, I’m home and with my dearest friends. Had a great stay down south that culminated in finding the author of a Great War diary my dear girlfriend Sue, collector extraordinaire, had scavenged from the South Hobart tip. Via Facebook she was alerted to a picture of the author and what a cheeky cove he was. It’s never long enough here.

And while at MONA, a chance to think about art versus archaeology, and art versus history. Gilbert and George, cheeky critics of social mores, old, new and future. imageA giant installation of books formed by lead leaves and glass bindings – which makes me think I’d much rather read the archaeology and built heritage of, say, the Pasminco Zinc Refinery than a constructed piece. Then a piece on Hiroshima that recollected archive boxes and got me, but of course you couldn’t touch it and what use are archives you can’t touch? When boxes evoke things lost, as they did in the show today, I can get it, but tell a historian to keep their hands off it and you’ll get a very erudite tantrum. Then again, perhaps my son is right to say, if you let everyone touch archives they will be destroyed. Oh yes, but I am not anyone.

This is also the week David Bowie died. An archivist (of himself), a songster, a historian (of himself), a storyteller magician, a Black Star. Vale and RIP.

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The end of 2015

I’m really looking forward to the New Year. This last one, 2015, was hard, although it had its riches. Too many changes, brutish and unexpected, although not all of them were bad. Friends filled up and warmed what might have been a cold space, my house and Katoomba became my home again, and my son and I grew even closer. Most of the time I felt as precariously balanced as the stones at the top of this pylon, but I made it. And I did some cool things – I saw whales, watched Sylvie Guillem dance her last performance in Sydney and Lucinda Williams rock out at the Enmore, danced with my kid at the 40th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and went to a disco, bought funky furniture and enjoyed being social again. Although the bad bits were very bad, it wasn’t all like that. Onward.

Lockley Pylon, September 2015
Lockley Pylon, September 2015

We will remember

It is Remembrance Day so I shall be thinking about the men and women who have, for complicated and varied reasons, served this country in overseas conflicts over the last 116 years. I will also be thinking of the wars that continue around this world, for reasons only the powerful know, and the people displaced by them, including those who have tried to stagger to our shores. I will remember.

And it’s a day to reflect on the titanic struggles of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser. Gough was a WWII RAAF veteran who brought our conscripts home from Vietnam. Fraser was a child of wartime who threw our country’s borders open to refugees from that conflict. I’ll remember that too.

Video from the NAA Forced Adoptions forum in March

Screen Shot 2015-08-20 at 7.29.24 pm
In March I was honoured to be part of the opening of the National Archives of Australia’s exhibition about forced adoptions, ‘Without Consent’. I sat on an expert panel on forced adoptions and apologies, along with Sue Boyce, Cate O’Neill, Mick Dodson, Trevor Jordon and Nahum Mushin. It was a superb day, and we touched on many issues around adoptions both past and present, stolen generations, restorative justice, restitution, archival practice and, of course, apologies. The panel was filmed and is now available for view. (I start participating about 48 minutes in.)

https://vimeo.com/screencraftmedia/review/123049132/38798feba6

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Vale Alan Seymour

What incredible timing. Just a month short of the centenary of the Anzac landing, playwright Alan Seymour, who gave us ‘The One Day of the Year’, has died.

Of all the plays I studied in high school, that one, which I read aged 14, was the most memorable. My grandfather, a World War II naval serviceman, never missed an Anzac Day service, but I remember having to attend them, as a Girl Guide, and wondering what they were all about. When I was 14, Anzac Day services were venues for protests, attended by peace activists, Women Against Rape in War and the tragic figures of Vietnam vets, excluded from marching by the RSL on the basis they had been conscripts, not volunteers. I could understand the anger and bitterness in Seymour’s play, but I knew how much it all meant to my grandfather, so felt the pain such protests caused, even as I sympathised with the protestors. It was a confusing time, of wondering what on earth we were commemorating on that particular day.

These days, Anzac Day is, as it has always been, a time of sombre reflection. The protests seem to have fallen away, as new generations rise to march alongside, or in place of, increasingly ageing relatives. Anzac Day marches are multicultural too, and include all forms of service. They really have changed from the all-white, all-male, Australian and British services of Seymour’s time, and things are tipping a little too close to celebration for me. Seymour’s play, which I believe is touring again this year, is a good reminder of how much Anzac Days have changed, and that we still need to question the story of Anzac, and the meaning and cost of military service.

To Mark Scott, on news of swingeing ABC cuts

[inspired by this Guardian Australia report about forecast cuts to news and current affairs on ABC TV and radio]

Dear Mark,

I am a 45 year old historian, who pretty much lives online, owing to a series of paid jobs as a digital content producer and an obsession with news and current affairs, as well as twitter. When I am not online I am listening to ABC Radio, or watching ABC TV live, by podcast and iView. I am exactly the demographic you need to keep (and I’m raising three kids to be ABC fanatics as well).

As a historian, I particularly value the work of the Hindsight unit, and have myself contributed research and my voice for two stories this year – one aired in March and the other this weekend. I volunteered my time for these programs because I believe in them, and I have been impressed by the depth of research of the producers. Hindsight is so respected by historians that it regularly earns awards from peers, as it did this year in the multi-media category at the NSW Premiers’ History Award.

Programs like Hindsight, Stateline and Lateline provide quality research that endures beyond the news cycle – I regularly listen to five year old ABC programs in my work. They add value to the ABC’s digital presence, and make it worth wading through the stream of news grabs. Having lived and worked in Tasmania and regional New South Wales, I also understand the value of local content. I mourn the cuts already made, and cannot imagine what it will be like for those communities if they don’t hear from Stateline or Bush Telegraph, which tell stories of the places they live.

There has to be space for reflection and research in ABC content. Digital doesn’t have to mean dumb – if anything, the flexibility of digital broadcasting is an argument for providing rich content and diverse voices across a range of platforms. But you have to keep making that content, using trusted names that hold your older demographic, but keep us younger ones engaged.

Dr Naomi Parry
Sent from my iPad

Hot off the press

Silent System, available from Australian Scholarly Press
Silent System, available from Australian Scholarly Publishing

Thursday was a milestone for me, as it was my last official day with the Find & Connect web resource. I was distracted from this sad moment by the Canberra launch of Silent System: Forgotten Australians and the institutionalisation of women and children, edited by Paul Ashton and Jacqueline Z Wilson and published just days ago by Australian Scholarly Publishing. I’m proud to say it contains an article by me, called ‘Tracing the Past: the Find & Connect web resource’, which sits amongst work by Shurlee Swain and Nell Musgrove, Lily Hibberd, Wilson and Ashton, Dolly McKinnon, Tracy Ireland, Denis Byrne, Maria Tumarkin and many other luminaries.  The book explores women’s incarceration, sites of conscience, and memory.

As I’ve noted previously on this blog, Silent System came about after a conference last September, that engaged with the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct and the women and children who lived at the site, under government supervision, from 1820 until the last decade of the 20th century. The site has, in stages, contained the Parramatta Female Factory, the Male Orphan School, the Roman Catholic Orphan School and, under various names, the Girls Industrial School. It contains ancient buildings and a lot of hard-lived history, and has been the focus of a ten-year campaign by Bonney Djuric, founder of Parragirls, for public recognition of the critical heritage values of the site and its value as a Site of Conscience.

As it turned out, on the day of the launch the NSW Premier announced that the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct [North Parramatta Heritage Precinct] will be sensitively redeveloped as a cultural heritage precinct. This is a huge achievement for Bonney, and for a number of key groups in the area.

One of the best things about working on the Find & Connect web resource was engaging with committed stakeholders and advocates like Bonney. I’m very much hoping to maintain my involvement, into the future.