Vivid Sydney

Vivid Sydney is an annual music/art/technology extravaganza held over 18 days from the end of May through mid-June. Sydney has the greatest market share of creative industries in Australia and over the last ten years or so the city has positioned itself as a regional and global leader in the creative economy.[1]

Vivid Sydney is the city's attempt at showcasing its creative capital. There are really too many events to describe, many of which, frankly, sound pretty wearisome. Billed as 'a platform for the creative industries to collaborate, foster business connections and showcase new ideas,' in a lot of ways it's just an expo writ large. However, at night it transfigures and illuminates the city.

In the daylight I'd seen the unlit pink LED pillars that are sprinkled along the Sydney harbor docks, the purple flags displayed on every downtown street. As a visitor-traveler, everyone tells you that you have to see the lights at night. I had the feeling it would be part Stone Mountain Laser Show, part Ted Talk-combining the dullness of the former with the insufferable tech boosterism of the latter. Last night I cycled down to circular quay to finally see what all the fuss is about. 

new low...

Sitting through Sliver (1993) with Coletta

Vegetative profusion, economic slide

Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent but after a particularly severe ten year drought, Sydney is experiencing a rebirth of sorts. The city's characteristic dry shrub has taken on a lush hue. In our backyard, the oranges are falling out of their tree. The narrow streets of inner west are choked with green. And walking through sydney's royal botanical gardens is like touring a crazed horticulturalist's we dream, the rains having transformed the grounds into some kind of eco-porn menagerie.

At the same time as this ecological blossoming, massive job cuts across nearly every sector of the economy (except mining) and the deepening recession have created a deep sense of unease among Australians. I see it every day in Sydney. Most of the people I've met are un- or underemployed. Sydney has become oppressively expensive (the 6th most expensive city in the world apparently) and the current economic slide has only exacerbated anxieties. Australia has always been a land of extremes but this current juxtapostion between Sydney's green flourishing and economic downturn draws attention to the weird and dangerous disconnect between economies and ecologies.     

The number of times I've seen a seemingly ordinary, well-adjusted person walking barefoot down the street leads me to believe that this is normative behavior in Australia. So far I haven't asked.

domestic affairs

Coletta is a lonely, unemployed spinster  adoptive homestay mom my landlady, who likes to remind the two temporary boarders living in her house that she's not running a boarding house. She says things like, "That boy is silly as a cut snake" or "My mum could talk the legs off a wooden chair" or "It's cuz of the gays." She has Bob, a portly forgotten-looking golden retriever. Somewhere along the way Bob transcended that genetic compulsion that gives the breed its name. Mostly he sleeps behind the portable radiator. They both watch a lot ot TV. Last night I could hear her from the next room laughing maniacally into the television set. This morning I learned that Coletta 'discovered' Naked Gun 2 1/2. 

 

 

 

 

School's out for winter

I did some work from the UNSW library last weekend and the experience made me thankful now more than ever that I'm not in real school. The library was packed and there was a palpable sense of dread and despondency. In the cubby behind me every two to three minutes-like clockwork-I would hear this heavy, forlorn sigh followed by an angry but determined "fuck"

This exists. And we're going.