And because a sick person is always deserted - to say anything else would be a gross lie.

2006 © Bostan Alexander
The healthy have never had patience with the sick, nor, of course, have the sick ever had patience with the healthy. This fact must not be forgotten. For naturally the sick make far greater demands than the healthy, who, being healthy, have no need to make such demands. The sick do not [...]

Brief: Xavier Le Roy @ Dancehouse

Before I forget; the best dance piece I’ve seen all year, bar Sasha Waltz (still undecided), has been Xavier Le Roy’s performance Product of Circumstance, a one-night showing at Dancehouse last week. There is a write-up in The Age, but to call it a review would be absurd.
It is a description of sorts, and [...]

Bookmark: Marianne Van Kerkhoven

The image of the Berlin Wall comes from Dream of Harlequin, where is appears uncredited.
If we define idealism as “acting on the basis of an unshakeable belief
in the possibility of a better life”, then we were the bearers of a
fervent idealism and great optimism. In its philosophical meaning,
idealism is a theory that holds first of [...]

Review: Africa

“There are four big problems that emerge from aid. One is the obvious one: the corruption, the fact that you’re giving somebody something for free, no strings attached. The second problem is aid dependency, which is the whole notion that you create a society heavily burdened and laden with bureaucracy, which is very inefficient and [...]

Exhortation: Melbourne Cinémathèque NOW

I’ve just braved acute asthmatic bronchitis (not my words) to get myself down to ACMI and back, and see the first part of Melbourne CTEQ’s 3-week Chris Marker mini-fest live. It has nothing to do with theatre whatsoever. In fact, his films are so essentially films, so deeply untheatrical, that I can recommend them on [...]

Spark launches! + high-brow literary notes

Spark Online finally launches as the super-awesome thing it is, both boobs and brains, and all four among cyan, magenta, yellow and black!
I wholeheartedly suggest you give it a look: I’ve spent the better part of the last two months sweeping the back rooms, fixing the plumbing, ripping up the carpets, and insert-your-own-strange-metaphor-for coding [...]

Notes on Agamben

Primo Levi’s shame of survival, which is separate from guilt:

collective guilt acts as a separating point, a screen, between the crime and the individual guilt

tragedy and guilt and the collective: Girard on the tragic hero as a scapegoat: “What is tragic is, on the contrary, for an apparently innocent subject to assume unconditionally objective guilt.”

this [...]

Notes from a long day

Grace Coddington & Steven Meisel for Vogue US, The September Issue

Chris used to refer to a certain, well, accomplishment as “a good woman’s arse”, and I always liked the imprint that left on my mind. I think of my mum’s arse as a good woman’s, and there is something deeply, pleasantly true about the way [...]

Adventures in Pornography

I gave a presentation on pornography today, and it made me realise, really and fully, that tertiary education probably comes five years too early to most people, and how very few artists and critics we have that are not too young for the job.

Links news

Being bed-ridden with swine flu is not a bad thing in every aspect, dear reader. I’ve finally managed - after good six months of procrastination - to put together a decent-looking Links page: both on Guerrilla Semiotics and Spark. They list, with reasonable clarity, every important address in Theatre Town.
In a perfect world, the list [...]