These architectural features on Cumberland Street in The Rocks, Sydney, look quite lovely I suppose — until you stop, look and think. Then you’ll realise they’re completely pointless. They’re an architectural wank. Wankitecture.

The things with the red canopies look like they’re some sort of, well, canopies to protect people from sun and rain. But they’re positioned such that they offer no protection whatsoever to the benches and picnic tables. No, the benches and picnic tables sit fully exposed to the elements. The only things the things with the red canopies protect are bleak patches of pavement.

But even if the things with the red canopies were positioned to offer such protection, look again! They’re just slats! They don’t actually offer any protection whatsoever!

I’m curious. Any highly-public architecture like this goes through so many layers of approvals, the plans are seen by so many sets of eyes — and yet no-one seems to have asked, “What the fuck are these things actually for?”

Is it simply a case of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Actually, I do see that the things with the red canopies are positioned just to the north of the seating. At least the ones shown in the photo. Perhaps they’re positioned so that they do provide shade. During lunchtime. In summer.

But still, why not provide protection all day, all year round?

And why not provide protection from the rain?

If you know of any other examples of such wankitecture, do let me know. And if you’re the architect responsible for this one, “Please explain.”

Last year ’Pong wrapped up his Masters of Digital Media at UNSW’s College of Fine Art by making the short film Memory of You | Reflection of Me, winning the prize for the schools “best video” that year. I’ve previously shown you a photo. Now you can finally watch it online.

It’s a powerful nine minutes about depression and maternal strength, and was certainly a worthy winner. It had stayed hidden until now because ’Pong had been entering it into film festivals, many of which have this arsehatted notion that you can’t enter if your film previously been posted online. But time marches on…

’Pong is now seeking support for his next film, Exist.

Exist explores our part of psychological mechanism that alerts us of treats and dangers — anxiety. It is the second instalment of DASS (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales) trilogy, which is a common test to assess mental illness in modern society.

You can watch the teaser video, then head over to FundBreak to hand over your money.

Australia’s smartest meth dealer found in Leichhardt. ABC chairman Maurice Newman branches out into staff supervision. And Sydney property developers whine because, well, they just didn’t automatically get everything their own way.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, no more than 20 minutes late, is episode 5 of The 9pm Edict. Finally.

You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

For more information on what I discussed today, try the NSW police media releases about Sunday’s explosion and Monday’s arrest, the Urban Taskforce media release and the ABC’s story on same, this Sydney Morning Herald story on various NSW Labor connections, Kristina Keneally’s Wikipedia entry, my post on Maurice Newman’s speech and the PM report on same, and Marcus Westbury’s column for The Age.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

Kristina Keneally confuses mindless populism with leadership. The nimby-burghers of Glebe confuse concerns about the urban environment with selfishness. And the Vivid Festival… another white middle class baby boomer nostalgia wankfest.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is episode 4 of The 9pm Edict. Finally.

You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Update 6 March 2010: I really should link to the material I discuss. That's the Harold Park redevelopment plan and the local residents' objections, the Vivid Festival, Laurie Anderson's Language is a Virus, Dom Knight's The Premier, the portrait and the paedophile and NSW Premier Kristina Keneally's video A New Direction.]

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

“That ‘This is Not Art’ thing this weekend, it’s like a fucking freak show walking past,” says the old guy in the yellow-tiled front bar of The Clarendon Hotel.

It’s just gone noon on Saturday. Apart from ’Pong and I having a burger and beer, he’s the only customer. His worldview of what Newcastle‘s Hunter Street should be like is challenged by the stream of paste-white black-clad comic fans, straggly-bearded eco-hippies, random hipsters and nose-ringed alternagothpunkteendykes strolling past the boarded-up shopfronts.

Noticing a skinny guy wearing yellow overalls and a torn red-striped t-shirt, our frowning drinker puts down his VB. “Hey, is there a circus in town? Because I can see a clown”, he calls out to the barman.

The barman smiles politely, but says nothing.

“Hey, is there a circus in town?”, he mutters, and takes another sip. He looks out at the soulless office buildings that replaced the landscape of his memory, in silence.

Yet these weird out-of-towners, with their experimental robotics, knitting and YouTube mashups, have brought more life to this industrial city’s ailing heart than any grandiose “development” plan.

As night falls they, like us, wonder why there’s virtually nowhere to eat. One Balinese restaurant, full up. One café, the Bogie Hole — named after a nearby ocean rock bath and not what you just thought — stays open to a decadent 8pm. On a Saturday. Then the streets empty. Suburban pubs close and disgorge drunken hordes, who then flood to CBD beer barns to drink even more, fight, vomit and stagger home.

Next morning, we see how Newcastle reckons it’ll save itself. Ah, Honeysuckle! “The Hunter’s premier waterfront playground.”

It’s exactly like every other premier waterfront playground everywhere else. Boxy big-windowed apartment blocks, distinguishable from each other solely by the colour of the concrete panels, or perhaps the angle of the posts supporting motorised canvas awnings.

At ground level, such unique features as umbrellas bearing the names of Italian beers, a Hog’s Breath Café, a Subway store, a bar called “isobar” in lower case.

Honeysuckle is an historical precinct, we’re told by a standard premier waterfront playground historical interpretation sign, black type on burnished steel. In one small area, an old railway track peers out, sitting flush with the colour-matched concrete paving. History as decoration.

Two floors up, a blond boy maybe eight years old has breakfast with his younger blonde sister, sitting on blond-wood designer chairs at a blond-wood designer table while their platinum-blond mother flips through the catalogs. Perhaps there’s just one more thing she needs to buy to complete her perfect premier waterfront lifestyle.

Later she, or her clone, in khaki cargo pants and a Quicksilver hoodie drinks white wine at a premier waterfront playground café with half a dozen identical premier waterfront playground friends.

Outside, tugboats shepherd the 75,000-ton Panama-flagged bulk carrier Energy Trade and another fifty thousand tons of coal out of the world’s busiest coal-shipping port, bound for Yokkaichi, Japan. Another, the Cypriot Pedhoulas Merchant, leaves less than two hours later for Tachibana. The empty 150,000-ton Hanjin Madras is brought in to take their place.

Marcus Westbury, who founded This Is Not Art a decade ago to showcase independent, emerging and experimental art, tells me there’s no residential real estate slump here. Expensive residential properties like Honeysuckle are being built and occupied, but they’re clustered around an empty commercial core.

“There’s one big problem with how Newcastle’s been thinking about how it’s going to fix itself: that some big mega thing will arrive fully formed and make that end of town interesting,” he says.

The Fix Our City consortium, for instance, supports a plan to rip out the railway to Newcastle station that separates the old CBD from the waterfront and replace it with a massive new development. The developers wave some push-poll claiming “93% of the public agreeing with the need for change.”

Naturally, they want NSW government support.

As an outsider, I can’t help but think deliberately destroying a working, historic transport link is nothing but a land grab.

Meanwhile, Westbury has been showing us Renew Newcastle. Frustrated with seeing buildings lay empty for years, he founded this project to organise artists, cultural projects and community groups to use and maintain these buildings under license until they’re commercially viable or redeveloped. So far it’s supported three dozen projects ranging from craft and fashion galleries to an animation studio and a tea house.

“The barrier to entry is capital,” says Westbury, noting that urban development processes are geared to big projects. “If you make it possible for people who don’t have money to be able to do things, then a whole new range of things become possible.”

On Sunday afternoon, eighty people packed Renew Newcastle’s HQ, the deconsecrated St Mark’s Catholic Chapel, to learn Westbury’s methods. Expect to see similar projects in a run-down urban environment near you.

[This article was originally written for Crikey -- which explains the "mainstream media style" in parts -- but it was bumped when a far more newsworthy Letter from The Phillippines arrived, chronicling the country's terrible natural disasters. This is an edited and expanded version.]

John Birmingham has followed up his highly-successful Axis of Time trilogy of military thrillers with another “ripper yarn” novel, Without Warning: America is Gone. It’s a good read, but not as good as it could be.

Like Axis of Time, which posited a 21st-century naval task force suddenly finding itself at the Battle of Midway and the final volume of which I reviewed earlier, Without Warning is alternative history. One the eve of the 2003 Iraq War, an unexplained energy field obliterates all human life across most of the United States. As the world realises the last remaining superpower is gone, the novel tracks the political and military conflicts which emerge through the eyes of characters ranging from a US general at Guantanamo Bay to a female assassin working undercover in France.

My perceptions of Without Warning are coloured by Katie Harris’ comment that my recent Gonzo Twitter effort was like Hemingway. I still haven’t read any Hemingway, but I’ve been thinking about writing styles. In a previous review I described William Gibson’s noir prose as “a richly textured cabernet merlot” in comparison with the “slab of VB” simplicity of Adrian d’Hagé’s action thriller. Birmingham’s writing is another slab of VB. It’s a fast, easy read without too many difficult words or complex metaphors to slow you down.

Of course there’s plenty of military and other boy’s toys brand names and train-spotter facts.

Lee… opened the throttles on the big boat’s massive Caterpillar engines, unleashing a stampede from the 1492 horsepower contained in each one…

Three identified shooters there. All white males, dressed casually, armed with FAMAS G2 assault rifles…

She opened the oversized hold-all and pulled out the artillery. The pistol-grip Benelli shotgun came first: customised 12-gauge, extended mag with a side-saddle shell carrier. Next was the deal closer, a specially cut-down Heckler & Koch UMP .45, with an extended box mag housing thirty rounds of .40-calibre Smith & Wesson goodness. She slung the HK over her shoulder. It was a large, excessive arsenal for just one young lady to haul around…

Yeah, I know. Chicks with guns are hawt, and there’s plenty to keep the lads moist. Who’ll be cast for the movie, I wonder?

Occasionally I was forced to look up some piece of military jargon or other to grasp the sense of a scene. Irritating to me, but Birmingham’s fans would reckon that just brands me a n00b.

I agree with the estimable Duncan Riley’s review too (interestingly the first Google hit for the book after the Amazon listing):

The French stream, except nearly right at the end of the novel, was perhaps the worst character development ever delivered by Birmingham…

The ending wasn’t great, and set the story up for a sequel which Birmingham is already talking about writing. It’s a BIG book for a Birmingham novel, and an awful lot to cover, and the need to flip ahead into the future is understandable, but it didn’t conclude strongly.

Still, it is what it is. A thrill for the fans. They won’t be disappointed.

Don’t get annoyed by the about-the-author blurb though.

John Birmingham refuses to build a website, but he has three blogs…

Um, and what is a blog if not a website? Fuckwits.

Australian photographer Bill Henson is no stranger to controversy. His images, like the one here, are of nude or semi-nude adolescents, and “protecting the innocent children from the evil pedophiles” is a powerful rallying-call. Newspaper columnists and talkback radio hosts alike revel in its ability to stir the emotions — attention-seeking pricks that they are.

In an incident earlier this year, some of Henson’s photographs were seized by the police — but returned once the Office of Film and Literature Classification found that none of them were “child pornography”. Indeed, it called their nudity “mild and justified” and gave them a PG rating.

Got that? PG. Suitable for viewing by children under the age of 16, with parental guidance.

But apparently the considered judgement of the official body charged with this kind of analysis — the people who deal with and (sometimes) ban material which is pornographic — isn’t good enough.

When it was later found that Henson toured a school seeking models — in company with its principal who was following all the right procedures — Crikey correspondent Peter Faris QC called for an investigation.

Bill Henson makes a lot of money photographing naked or semi-naked pre-pubescent children. This is called Art by the Left glitterati. Most decent Australians would call it Pornography. It is a matter of debate as to which side of the line we place Henson.

We now discover that Sue Knight, the (then) principal of St Kilda Park Primary School, invited Henson to look around the school and select young models about 15 months ago. It is reported that a new book (by David Marr and excerpted in The Age over the weekend) states that Henson walked around the playground at lunchtime, accompanied by the principal.

This is not good enough. Nowhere near it.

I ask this: By whose authority did Henson trawl for subjects/victims?

And he goes on.

Faris, being a lawyer, didn’t quite call Henson a child pornographer. But he larded his rant with lawyerly rhetoric and went as close as he could go without getting slapped with a libel suit.

My response for Crikey was published in the email version and was on the website — but I can’t find it just now so here it is again with added linkage:

Peter Faris’ rant about Bill Henson is the usual grab-bag of logical fallacies (like the appeal to an assumed majority of “Most decent Australians”) and cheap rhetorical tricks (like the name-calling of “Left glitterati”). But unlike Crikey‘s Canberra correspondent, who clearly points out the key difference between the two rounds of Henson-bashing, Faris makes an obvious error which demonstrates that he simply hasn’t thought this through.

He starts by pointing out that Henson makes pictures of “naked or semi-naked pre-pubescent children”, but then says the Victorian Crimes Act defines child pornography as including a photograph of a minor “depicted in an indecent sexual manner or context”. Bzzzt! Since when does “semi-naked” equal “sexual”?

I don’t know who all these sickos are who can’t see a little uncovered skin, adult or pre-pubescent, without feeling their lust rise, but why is Faris agreeing with their perverted worldview?

And if he continues to overlook the obvious difference between “semi-naked” and “sexual”, can I assume his next spray will be to call for the arrest of all surf club members for the mass child pornography of a Nippers Carnival, everyone involved in building a church with cherubs, kitschmaker Anne Geddes, and the producers of that toilet paper advert showing a baby’s bottom?

And yes, Anne Geddes’ work is evil. Little children who are far, far too young to give consent are drained of their individual humanity and, dressed as fruits and flowers, used as props in sentimental clichés. These are human beings, people, not dolls and mantle ornaments!

Meanwhile, I hope that when the NSW Sentencing Council report is finally published, so we can all see it unfiltered by tabloid journalism, it will show a rational series of amendments to law based on evidence — not pitchfork-wielding talkback outrage.

You can follow our adventures on Twitter by searching for all tweets containing the hashtag #rtcowra. Wish us luck! More soon.

I can’t be “objective” about Marcus Westbury and his truly awesome TV series Not Quite Art. Marcus, I am totally envious and I want to have your babies!

OK, failing that (for various biological and logistical reasons) I’ll simply demand that everyone — and I do mean everyone — watch Not Quite Art when series two is squeezed like a threatening pimple from ABC1′s transmitters across Australia tonight at 10pm. Or ABC2 at 7pm Sunday. Or streamed from ABC iView. Or downloaded illegally from the torrents.

Quite frankly, if you reckon you’re interested in “art” and “culture” and how it’s evolving, then you must consider Marcus’ worldview. If you fail to watch this program, you’re missing out on a delightful, witty and above all intelligent journey.

Now I suppose I’ll have to explain why this series is so important…

First, though, I’d better explain why I can’t be “objective” — in quotes because I think this whole “objective” thing about writing reviews and journalism is a crock of shit. We all have our biases and pre-conceived ideas — whether we like them or not, whether we even realise it or not — so we might as well try to put them on the table.

My bias?

I want Marcus’ job!

But I’m not cool enough any more.

Sulk.

Back in 1993 I discovered the writing of Neal Stephenson through the pages of Wired magazine. While researching his massive article Mother Earth Mother Board the “hacker tourist”, as he was styled, travelled three continents following the route of the global fibre optic network, writing entertainingly about its history and its impact.

I was jealous. Stephenson had the freedom to spend several months and 42,000 words on something he loved and was paid for it. I wanted to do that! Travel, and write and talk about stuff I’m interested in.

Then last year I read Marcus Westbury’s opinion piece Mozart cover bands rake in the moolah, about how “an overwhelming amount of arts funding in Australia goes to organisations that either exclusively or primarily play covers”.

Think symphony orchestras, opera companies and state theatre companies that produce comparatively little in the way of original, innovative or even Australian work. Like classic hits radio, they are busting out the chart-toppers of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries…

[G]rab yourself a copy of the Australia Council’s annual report. The nation’s cover bands, mostly the state-based symphony orchestras, collectively receive just under $50 million each year from the council.

Whether that figure seems average or outrageous would depend on the context that you choose to put it in. The context that I put it in is the $4.8 million pool that every single musician in Australia who isn’t in a symphony orchestra competes for every year. That’s more than a 10-fold disparity between the orchestras and everyone else combined.

Wow! This certainly resonated with my thoughts. And then:

Culture isn’t something that happened in Europe centuries ago that needs preservation. It’s actually all that messy, beautiful, inspiring and wonderful stuff that is happening around us right now. Arts funding should reward innovation not preservation and vibrancy over bureaucracy

Yes! Precisely!

I watched Not Quite Art series 1 — which of all the programs the ABC put into that 10pm Tuesday arts timeslot pulled the biggest audience — and I loved this man’s worldview. He trotted around Australia showing us the cool stuff!

So I was well pleased when I pressed “play” on the preview DVD the lovely people at ABC TV sent me and heard these words at the start of Not Quite Art series 2 episode 1, “Culture Shock”:

This is a series about culture. Not just this kind of culture [gesturing to the theatre around him] but the living cultures all around us — the ones that are evolving and changing so rapidly that if you nod off for a little while, well, you just might miss it.

Marcus and his nerdy brown pullover led me on a journey through living cultures including Newcastle-bred DJ Mark Newlands, who referred to “the cave-man era before the Internet” and reminded us that “Technology marches on. Either get with it or get fucked”; video game critic Ben “Yahtze” Croshaw whose program pulls 4 million viewers; animator Paul Robertson, who reaches his global audience from his bedroom; a wonderful woman called Jodi Rose who records the sounds that bridges make; and to a remote part of the Northern Territory (pictured above, where Marcus removes his pullover!) and… well I won’t tell you all the tales.

But then he said something which had me spluttering my coffee and and gasping for breath.

What interests me isn’t the technology, but how it’s changing us.

Damn you, Westbury! I said that! On my About Stilgherrian page! Well, in a few more words…

I’m not that interested in technology itself. I’m more interested in the social questions.

What does it all mean for your life? Your family? Your business? Your community? For the law and politics? How will it change the very core of what it means to be human?

This little cunt Marcus Westbury is not only thinking my thoughts, he’s getting paid to put them on TV!

So I take it all back! Do not watch this program. It’s a program I’d want to make, if I were still hip and cool and knew people at the bloody ABC. Do not watch Not Quite Art.

Q: What do these two people have in common? A: They’re the same person!

The wonderful musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch is about to embark on an Australian tour. Melbourne metal performer Ezekiel Ox is performing the title role and, as this sequence of photos shows, the transformation was amazing.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch plays for just three Sydney shows 16 through 18 September 2008 at The Metro Theatre before touring nationally. Book online or phone +61 2 9550 3666.

I’ve always liked the witty, organic forms of Fiona Hall‘s sculpture. A massive collection of her work, Fiona Hall: Force Field, currently fills two floors of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s an almost overwhelming but immensely satisfying journey through her mind.

The photograph shows details from “Tender”, a collection of birds’ nests made from shredded US dollar bills. They’re incredibly realistic — especially in the exhibition environment where they’re collected into museum-style glass cases with each species’ nest labelled with its scientific name on the front of the case, the banknotes’ serial numbers listed on the back.

Other works include the finely-detailed sculptures of Paradisus Terrestris made from sardine cans, Scar Tissue, Understorey, Cell Culture and Leaf Litter. There’s also a smattering her photographs, and something about bees.

Cell Culture and many other works such as Dead in the Water are constructed from myriad tiny glass beads threaded on fine wire, shaped with loving attention to detail into precise organic forms. Photographs do not do them justice — you must see them in three dimensions, walk around them, revel in their reality. A video shot on a tropical field trip with botanists in search of blooming water lilies reveals Hall’s passion for getting it right.

Hall’s work explores the boundaries between the natural and the man-made with subtlety and humour. Works like Leaf Litter show how the global plantscape has been shaped by human economic “needs”. I’m still bubbling with the thoughts it triggered the morning after.

Fiona Hall: Force Field is at Sydney’s MCA until 1 June 2008. Free entry. Give yourself at least an hour for just this exhibition, let alone what else the venue offers.

[Photograph: Details from "Tender" 2003-2005; Image from Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery via UTS Gallery.]

When I went to Thailand last year, Thai Airways International was generally excellent — except for their choice of in-flight movies. Sorry, but even after a couple glasses of wine and several brandies High School Musical is a piece of shit.

I’d originally guessed that it was only screened because it somehow matched the Thai sense of sentimentality. But no. I soon discovered it was such a success — it even won an Emmy! — that Disney made a sequel with the imaginative title High School Musical 2.

I was really, really hoping that was going to be the end of the story. But no (again). Touring Australia in April and May is… High School Musical: The Ice Tour.

Sadly, this show doesn’t involve the dentally-perfect racially-balanced lead characters in some meth-fuelled rampage but… yes… ice skates. Somebody get me a bucket.

This happy little chap was found on a lamppost near ’Pong’s favourite tunnel under the railway in Newtown, Sydney. There are others in the vicinity, and I may seek them out for your enjoyment.