Gillian Polack's Blog, page 284
November 18, 2010
gillpolack @ 2010-11-19T07:20:00
Thank you Sydney for nice dentists in Chinatown who fit me in with no wait when things get funky. Also thank you Nathan Burrage for waiting patiently for me elsewhere, not knowing I had lost a whacking great filling on the bus. I still want to know how one can lose whacking great fillings on a bus.
In other news: Freecon! (I'll be there tomorrow.)
In other news: Freecon! (I'll be there tomorrow.)
November 17, 2010
gillpolack @ 2010-11-18T10:41:00
Today I have deep thoughts on the relationship between narrative tropes and social change (also on lack of social change - on reinforcing unquestioned positions). These thoughts must remain in my brain, alas, because writing them out isn't on my list of things that must be done and all these things must be done before midday. If you're coming to the Sydney Freecon and urgently need to hear these thoughts, I can be bribed with hot drinks.
gillpolack @ 2010-11-18T00:11:00
I didn't write all those useful posts without getting up to mischief earlier. It would be unGillianish of me, after all.
My early mischief mainly consisted in working with my students so that all of us tell extraordinary tales of our extraordinary lives (and we all do have extraordinary lives - which was a relief) in such a way that the listeners are convinced we're telling tall stories.
We also looked at the difference between the stories told about Richard I and the lesser reality that is the human being.
It's all in the telling...
My early mischief mainly consisted in working with my students so that all of us tell extraordinary tales of our extraordinary lives (and we all do have extraordinary lives - which was a relief) in such a way that the listeners are convinced we're telling tall stories.
We also looked at the difference between the stories told about Richard I and the lesser reality that is the human being.
It's all in the telling...
gillpolack @ 2010-11-18T00:07:00
Tonight I'm full of information about Romanian science fiction. Why Romanian? Because Christian Tamas from the Romanian Science Fiction and Fantasy Society let me know that the second Romanian SF anthology is being launched and the annual Romanian SF awards are being awarded on Friday and has introduced me to the world of Romanian SF&F. Since I'll be in Fisher Library all day Friday, I'm posting today.
You can find out more on the RSFFS website. If you have a moment on Friday, click on the website, find out about the awards, explore a different branch of speculative fiction.
You can find out more on the RSFFS website. If you have a moment on Friday, click on the website, find out about the awards, explore a different branch of speculative fiction.
gillpolack @ 2010-11-17T14:11:00
While I'm doing reminders, don't forget to check the nominations lists for the Aurealis Awards and make sure your favoureite work is there!
Also, there's a fundraising auction taking place right now, to support the Aurealis Awards. There are some totally awesome book packages up for grabs.
You can find out about all this by going here: http://www.aurealisawards.com/
PS Sorry about typos. I forgot my reading glasses.
Also, there's a fundraising auction taking place right now, to support the Aurealis Awards. There are some totally awesome book packages up for grabs.
You can find out about all this by going here: http://www.aurealisawards.com/
PS Sorry about typos. I forgot my reading glasses.
gillpolack @ 2010-11-17T14:08:00
I'll blog properly later (since I have something that needs blogging) but in the interim, I'm going to direct your attention to a letter that people keep directing my attention to. Australians, if you think this applies only to the US and the UK, then take a look at what happening at our universities. Look, for instance, at the University of Melbourne's new structure and ask about the status of minority languages at the University of Sydney. First, though, read this letter: http://genomebiology.com/2010/11/10/138
November 16, 2010
gillpolack @ 2010-11-17T00:17:00
I'm at that stage in the week where I'm almost convinced I might have too much paper. You know, that moment when paper spawning has happened and paper reduction has not? I'm up late anyway, doing this and that so I'll have a clear run to get big stuff done tomorrow and have everything ready for Sydney so that when I get back I can get stuck into reviewing and research.
Also housework. Because I can see things I couldn't see before and this means cleaning must be done. There's a lot more housework when the fuzz on surfaces turns out to be dust and not due to the eye problems.
Tonight I was going to get much sleep, but it's proven impossible. If I can't get much sleep, at least I shall deal with much paper. That way I shall wake up to a less worrying world.
Also housework. Because I can see things I couldn't see before and this means cleaning must be done. There's a lot more housework when the fuzz on surfaces turns out to be dust and not due to the eye problems.
Tonight I was going to get much sleep, but it's proven impossible. If I can't get much sleep, at least I shall deal with much paper. That way I shall wake up to a less worrying world.
November 15, 2010
gillpolack @ 2010-11-16T00:59:00
I just spent a half day and a whole evening doing fairly drudging work and wondering why I couldn't stop. Five hours ago I had what I went in for, but I still I kept analysing the bibliographies I did earlier in the year and considering what I needed to work with next. Line by line by line, for hours. Those bibliographies are the background research for the novel (I have a whole other set for the dissertation - I do like my bibliographies), so the bit of my brain that was bored to tears was applying it to the novel and saying "You're not even ready for this until next year. Go do something useful."
A few minutes ago I put my booklists aside and scribbled away. I hadn't finished the drudgework, but my brain had told me "You got what you came for." Today wasn't about the novel at all, not once I had my list of call numbers for Fisher Library on Friday. It seems I was working out the relationship between the research I would normally do for a novel and the research I need to do for this novel. Which is what the whole PhD is about, in a way. In other words, I was working on my dissertation and part of my brain knew it, but it was really impolite and didn't let most of me know. It just let me overwork. Which was very cruel of it.
What I was thinking about tonight was the manner in which the plot arcs and characters' needs feed into the historical research and work with it. This creates research that's rather different to the process of normal historical inquiry. It's also not quite the same as researching a novel. For every other novel I have (and most writers would) switch off the inquiry before that feedback happens because, honestly, there's enough material for a standard novel without it and it adds a significant amount to the workload without adding to the novel. Or does it? Well, it certainly adds to the workload. I do have a suspicion, however, that I'm writing a much more interesting novel now than I would have been able to do if I followed the usual route with the usual expectations.
What I did tonight was state the obvious, just as I've stated the obvious in this blogpost. What my next two years or so will do is tease this idea out and make sense of it and explain it and show the whys and the hows. Sometimes I get to the point I reached tonight (in other research projects) and the obvious statement I make is that my approach isn't going to work or that I need to rethink from scratch. It's rather a relief to find that something interesting is going on and that I can explain it and that my research trajectory is going along with my novel trajectory and that I'm not wasting everyone's time and money. In other words, that the obvious statement I'm making is that I'm on the right path.
This all may change when I see my supervisor on Friday, of course...
A few minutes ago I put my booklists aside and scribbled away. I hadn't finished the drudgework, but my brain had told me "You got what you came for." Today wasn't about the novel at all, not once I had my list of call numbers for Fisher Library on Friday. It seems I was working out the relationship between the research I would normally do for a novel and the research I need to do for this novel. Which is what the whole PhD is about, in a way. In other words, I was working on my dissertation and part of my brain knew it, but it was really impolite and didn't let most of me know. It just let me overwork. Which was very cruel of it.
What I was thinking about tonight was the manner in which the plot arcs and characters' needs feed into the historical research and work with it. This creates research that's rather different to the process of normal historical inquiry. It's also not quite the same as researching a novel. For every other novel I have (and most writers would) switch off the inquiry before that feedback happens because, honestly, there's enough material for a standard novel without it and it adds a significant amount to the workload without adding to the novel. Or does it? Well, it certainly adds to the workload. I do have a suspicion, however, that I'm writing a much more interesting novel now than I would have been able to do if I followed the usual route with the usual expectations.
What I did tonight was state the obvious, just as I've stated the obvious in this blogpost. What my next two years or so will do is tease this idea out and make sense of it and explain it and show the whys and the hows. Sometimes I get to the point I reached tonight (in other research projects) and the obvious statement I make is that my approach isn't going to work or that I need to rethink from scratch. It's rather a relief to find that something interesting is going on and that I can explain it and that my research trajectory is going along with my novel trajectory and that I'm not wasting everyone's time and money. In other words, that the obvious statement I'm making is that I'm on the right path.
This all may change when I see my supervisor on Friday, of course...
Phantoms of Suburbia - Halinka Orszulok
Tonight's guest is of special interst to Sydneysiders. Halinka Orszulok is an artist based not too far from Sydney. Phantoms of Suburbia is at the Flinders Street Gallery (Surry Hills, not the city of Melbourne) from 18 November to 11 December.
This is her artist's statement. I was going to illustrate her statement with some of her images, but when I looked at her website, I just couldn't make up my mind. I love the way she sees suburbia. I think of the way I use Australian places in my writing and I look at Halinka's art and we're looking out at the same world. Nothing's quite as safe or friendly as it first appears and everything is shrouded by gum trees. Her layers of memory and her contradictions and hidden forces and her artist's view are my historian's and writer's view - we both layer our landscapes and we both live in them.
Phantoms of Suburbia
Places can embody our feelings and reflect back a sense of ourselves in a most peculiar and powerful way. My work focuses on suburbia and the built environment and explores the contradictory layers of meaning that can be found reflected there - home and dislocation, safety and danger, belonging and being the outsider, culture and wildness; the known, visible, everyday, and the unknown, hidden forces that pulse beneath the surface. I photograph and then paint scenes containing a tension between these contradictory meanings, using the play of light and dark at night to create a sense of mystery and unease.
The Phantoms of the title refers to the traces of many people and their histories that one imagines left behind in any suburban environment. It also references the effects of one's own memory and experience on this environment, one which by its very nature can be seen as a symbol for all things to do with the home. When taking the photographs which form the basis for my paintings it is always with an eye for a scene that is visually suggestive of many possible stories, and the idea that they may in fact have an almost physical presence.
My interest in the psychological effects of the environment can be aligned with a sensation Freud described as the uncanny. A disturbing subversion of the idea of home in which a brooding sense of unease is experienced. If homeliness can typically be described as a sense of safety, comfort, belonging and the mundane, then the uncanny is its opposite - a sense of danger, dislocation, anxiety and potentially a feeling that some unknown presence has invaded the security of the everyday.
Another phantom presence in any suburban environment is that of a nature long lost to the human landscape - roads, homes, power lines, footpaths, carports, letter boxes, balanced only by the token plantings of the garden. One has a greater sense of the potential for wildness and danger at night, as though somehow 'nature' gains some small advantage over 'culture' at this time, that it creeps back to stake out a foothold in our conveniently constructed world. We attempt to hold darkness at bay with an abundance of lighting, but sometimes this only succeeds in making shadows deeper and more impenetrable. This play of light and dark can also resonate with our tendency to feel more at home with the visible, the known and the rational, and to fear the depths of the subconscious.
For this show, I have focused on Melrose Park, the suburb I grew up in. It is in fact the second time that I have visited the area to source photographs to work from, simply because I felt I hadn't exhausted it as a subject. It acts, after all, as a store for my own layers of memory, a personal topography of my childhood. It is directly across the Parramatta River from Homebush, skirted by the river, a golf course, Victoria Rd and the Wharf Rd factories. A tiny suburb of post-war brick bungalows where one can sense a nostalgia for the idea of home that suburbia once ideologically embodied. There is also the presence of other forces - the river with its pungent smell of mangroves, its sense of remnant wildness and another peoples' history far predating the red brick, and the factories which hum with industry even at night. Considering the concerns within my work it became apparent that my own childhood home would be an interesting place to explore. I am aware of the fact that anyone viewing this work will not have in their mind the particulars of my experience, they will come to it with their own. What I have found, however, is that our experiences, although arising from different circumstance, significantly overlap. Who, for instance, wasn't scared of the dark at some point in their lives? It is my hope that, as I found this area a rich hunting ground for imagery, it would translate into interesting works.
It is my intention with this work to create a suggestive environment, yet one that allows for a fluidity of meaning. The sensation of the uncanny exists where a familiar environment takes on an unfamiliar life, its usual meaning becoming obscured. Freud points out , however, that it is the individual's subconscious that creates this meaning. According to him it is the 'return of the repressed' that gives rise to a sensation of the uncanny; that it is a resistance to the other, opposite meanings that can invade the idea of home which fuel the uncanny experience. The environment only acts as a mirror to the subconscious with all its unacknowledged fears and desires.
I am interested in the way that this idea of dual meaning is played out at night when the familiar surroundings of home are made mysterious by darkness. Darkness makes the known visible world unknowable and it is human nature to fill in the void of darkness with all sorts of fearful imaginings. On the other hand the sense of mystery this evokes can work to make the banal strangely arresting and beautiful, as though the known limits of our everyday existence become expanded to include things more magical and exotic. The night seems to have a secret life of its own.
This is her artist's statement. I was going to illustrate her statement with some of her images, but when I looked at her website, I just couldn't make up my mind. I love the way she sees suburbia. I think of the way I use Australian places in my writing and I look at Halinka's art and we're looking out at the same world. Nothing's quite as safe or friendly as it first appears and everything is shrouded by gum trees. Her layers of memory and her contradictions and hidden forces and her artist's view are my historian's and writer's view - we both layer our landscapes and we both live in them.
Phantoms of Suburbia
Places can embody our feelings and reflect back a sense of ourselves in a most peculiar and powerful way. My work focuses on suburbia and the built environment and explores the contradictory layers of meaning that can be found reflected there - home and dislocation, safety and danger, belonging and being the outsider, culture and wildness; the known, visible, everyday, and the unknown, hidden forces that pulse beneath the surface. I photograph and then paint scenes containing a tension between these contradictory meanings, using the play of light and dark at night to create a sense of mystery and unease.
The Phantoms of the title refers to the traces of many people and their histories that one imagines left behind in any suburban environment. It also references the effects of one's own memory and experience on this environment, one which by its very nature can be seen as a symbol for all things to do with the home. When taking the photographs which form the basis for my paintings it is always with an eye for a scene that is visually suggestive of many possible stories, and the idea that they may in fact have an almost physical presence.
My interest in the psychological effects of the environment can be aligned with a sensation Freud described as the uncanny. A disturbing subversion of the idea of home in which a brooding sense of unease is experienced. If homeliness can typically be described as a sense of safety, comfort, belonging and the mundane, then the uncanny is its opposite - a sense of danger, dislocation, anxiety and potentially a feeling that some unknown presence has invaded the security of the everyday.
Another phantom presence in any suburban environment is that of a nature long lost to the human landscape - roads, homes, power lines, footpaths, carports, letter boxes, balanced only by the token plantings of the garden. One has a greater sense of the potential for wildness and danger at night, as though somehow 'nature' gains some small advantage over 'culture' at this time, that it creeps back to stake out a foothold in our conveniently constructed world. We attempt to hold darkness at bay with an abundance of lighting, but sometimes this only succeeds in making shadows deeper and more impenetrable. This play of light and dark can also resonate with our tendency to feel more at home with the visible, the known and the rational, and to fear the depths of the subconscious.
For this show, I have focused on Melrose Park, the suburb I grew up in. It is in fact the second time that I have visited the area to source photographs to work from, simply because I felt I hadn't exhausted it as a subject. It acts, after all, as a store for my own layers of memory, a personal topography of my childhood. It is directly across the Parramatta River from Homebush, skirted by the river, a golf course, Victoria Rd and the Wharf Rd factories. A tiny suburb of post-war brick bungalows where one can sense a nostalgia for the idea of home that suburbia once ideologically embodied. There is also the presence of other forces - the river with its pungent smell of mangroves, its sense of remnant wildness and another peoples' history far predating the red brick, and the factories which hum with industry even at night. Considering the concerns within my work it became apparent that my own childhood home would be an interesting place to explore. I am aware of the fact that anyone viewing this work will not have in their mind the particulars of my experience, they will come to it with their own. What I have found, however, is that our experiences, although arising from different circumstance, significantly overlap. Who, for instance, wasn't scared of the dark at some point in their lives? It is my hope that, as I found this area a rich hunting ground for imagery, it would translate into interesting works.
It is my intention with this work to create a suggestive environment, yet one that allows for a fluidity of meaning. The sensation of the uncanny exists where a familiar environment takes on an unfamiliar life, its usual meaning becoming obscured. Freud points out , however, that it is the individual's subconscious that creates this meaning. According to him it is the 'return of the repressed' that gives rise to a sensation of the uncanny; that it is a resistance to the other, opposite meanings that can invade the idea of home which fuel the uncanny experience. The environment only acts as a mirror to the subconscious with all its unacknowledged fears and desires.
I am interested in the way that this idea of dual meaning is played out at night when the familiar surroundings of home are made mysterious by darkness. Darkness makes the known visible world unknowable and it is human nature to fill in the void of darkness with all sorts of fearful imaginings. On the other hand the sense of mystery this evokes can work to make the banal strangely arresting and beautiful, as though the known limits of our everyday existence become expanded to include things more magical and exotic. The night seems to have a secret life of its own.
gillpolack @ 2010-11-15T21:37:00
I have a surprise guest on my blog tonight. I just have to make my way through enough of my bibliography, then you'll meet her. I think Mr Baxter might already be acquainted...
