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The Influence November 25, 2023

Conductor Benjamin Northey on Thus Spake Zarathustra

Benjamin Northey – now celebrating two decades with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – says Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is an exemplar of musical storytelling.


Festival November 25, 2023

New York’s Performa Biennial

Performa Biennial takes an open view of performance art, showcasing work that might as easily be dance or theatre for a visual art audience.

Music November 25, 2023

Frost Children and the ‘indie sleaze’ revival

Siblings Lulu and Angel Prost, recording as Frost Children, are among the few who make the historically vague revival ‘indie sleaze’ a real thing.

Fiction November 25, 2023

Rabbit

A plush rabbit I got for the children moves by itself. I bought it for my eldest on his fourth birthday. It wasn’t his favourite toy but he didn’t hate it. He cuddled it for a few days and then it was put into a storage bucket under his bed. After …

Television November 25, 2023

The Curse

Nathan Fielder’s new comedy drama, The Curse, takes his work into wilder territory.

Music November 25, 2023

Pop auteur Caroline Polachek

Avant-pop artist Caroline Polachek is bringing her myth-making performance of desire to Australia for the first time.

The Influence November 18, 2023

Tra Mi Dinh on Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation Blue, Red and Yellow

For dancer and choreographer Tra Mi Dinh, Ann Veronica Janssens’ installation Blue, Red and Yellow is a sensory inspiration.

Books November 18, 2023

Mick Cummins
So Close to Home

 The man who wants to pay Aaron, an 18-year-old heroin addict, for sex, is known simply as “The Man”. He is closer to 70 than 60, has black hair, tailored suits and an expensive car. “Everything about him says money, real money and opportunity” …

Books November 18, 2023

Tyson Yunkaporta
Right Story, Wrong Story

If you want to know where to find your contribution to the world, look at your wounds. When you learn how to heal them, teach others.” – Emily Maroutian Stepping into the betrayal and bitterness of his history, Tyson Yunkaporta’s Right …

Podcasts November 18, 2023

Body Electric

The podcast Body Electric seeks to undo many of the physical and mental harms of working with technology.

Theatre November 18, 2023

Vietgone

Queensland Theatre’s production of  Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone considers the long shadow of war on those who suffer through it.

Visual Art November 18, 2023

Miwatj Yolŋu

The Miwatj Yolŋu exhibition at Bundanon is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view this collection of masterworks, which engage with colonial experience and the modern world.

books

Books November 25, 2023

Richard Flanagan
Question 7

Who could be grateful for the bombing of Hiroshima at 8.15am on August 6, 1945: an unprecedented, world-changing act of warfare that saw, as Richard Flanagan puts it, “60,000 Japanese souls ascending to heaven”? Flanagan might be. Without the bomb, …

Books November 25, 2023

Russ Radcliffe (ed.)
Best Australian Political Cartoons 2023

Cartoonists are the court jesters of the news section. While journalists are constrained by fact, cartoonists speak truth. Consider Glen Le Lievre’s frame of the ghosts of robo-debt at the foot of Scott Morrison’s bed, captioned with “I don’t …

Books November 18, 2023

Lucy Treloar
Days of Innocence and Wonder

Lucy Treloar’s third novel begins with two small girls playing together in a fenced kindergarten. They crush flowers into perfume and promise always to love each other. A man appears at the fence and, when he leaves, he takes one of the girls. The “outside-the-fence” …