THE world has been watching Melbourne this week as the city hosts the 20th International AIDS Conference. Despite initial reports from the event focusing understandably on the delegates killed by the missile attack on their flight over eastern Ukraine, the conference agenda hit the airwaves visibly on this week’s episode of QandA. As a result […]
Opera, give it to me straight: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on @Tamar_Iveri
Amid the ongoing flurry about Georgian opera singer Tamar Iveri and the comments she made in the social media about a protest march in Georgia on International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) in May, 2013, there is an assumption the soprano is just one homophobic voice in an accepting international opera industry, an aberration who must be […]
France, a country driven by différence: @burgewords #CreatingWaves
It’s safe to assume our Treasurer Joe Hockey would not have enjoyed a trip to France with Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier this month. There’s just too many wind turbines across the French landscape. Hockey would have been offended every few kilometres. I should know, I spent hours admiring the French commitment to clean wind-generated […]
Ballerinas and blue pole dancing: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #Budget2014
I have never paid much attention to the fallout of budget week, simply because the Arts are always sufficiently financially knocked-around long before the Treasurer makes our economic disenfranchisement official. If a body like The Arts Council or Screen Australia were to be closed, that would register. Hearing they’ve had cuts only blends into […]
Try stopping the bleeding hearts: @burgewords #CreatingWaves
There’s no use beating around the bush: The Abbott Government has stopped the boats. I am arts columnist for No Fibs, and I probably should be writing about the Arts. However, like many artists in Australia at the moment, I am experiencing plenty of distractions of the political kind. I find it difficult to focus […]
Visiting concentration camps in Utopia: @burgewords interviews @GGeorgiadisRN on ‘that’ comment the DIBP didn’t like
The Australian twittersphere freaked out when refugee advocate @VanessaPowell25 was threatened with legal action by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) earlier this month. Unless she removed a post on her Facebook, which documented one moment at a protest outside the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, the DIBP would “consider […]
Creating communities with a common voice: @burgewords interviews @TheArtsParty
Motorists, shooters and fishers have all got one, so have sex enthusiasts and christians. Why not creatives? Micro political parties have leapt into the Australian voters’ consciousness like never before, and right at the launch of this column, one of our readers tipped us off about the imminent formation of a new party named […]