#class i took

[website-com]

for our final assignment for indigenous lifeworld we were asked to write a reflective essay on how the course has reframed our thinking, as while we learnt history it was more about understanding better the context in which palawa life continues and context of the land in a way that a welcome to country pays lip service to doing. 

i started mine about my neighbour, a known palawa scholar and lecturer in the uni, and how he collects old, silly ‘aboriginal themed’ souvenirs. i thought that was so fun of him, especially since his main area of focus is in art and exhibition, having worked closely with the museum that used to display the dead bodies of palawa people to create their indigenous section, by far their best static exhibition. my mum thought it was fun as well, and bough him a boomerang plate that she found in an op shop because she thought it was quite cute. being my mum she immediately began thinking about it, while we were neighbours we weren’t that close, if anything we had a poorer relationship because of the chickens we can’t keep under control to save our life. 

She didn’t give him the plate. It’s downstairs, where he and his wife used to store things when this was their house. 

I actually wrote my essay about re-using the plate for something new. I was inspired by an early unit about the re-framing of Wybalenna. Wybalenna was on a small island off of the main and the place that was promised to the groups still fighting a vicious war with the english settlers if they made peace. They were promised flour and tea and ‘a nice white fella to keep you safe’ and to someday return to their land. Land that they died facing. 

I wanted to see if i could make something that better reflected the history of this place. it was boomerang shaped, a tool that was never used down here, and I wrote about how i could use its shape to paint the stars that walked down from the milky way to carve out the land during creation. How i could turn it into a mutton bird, break it up into tools. I ended every other section talking myself out of it, explaining how ive broken that sort of pottery before and it does not make a sharp stone knife.

I ended the essay by concluding that I didnt have the right to change it. Or rather it shouldnt be changed. I dont know who made it, it might not be in an artstyle used down here but thats not to say it was made by a white person. It wasn’t the plates fault it was sold somewhere that never saw a boomerang in use until kfc sold them with meals. From the start of the essay I was unsure if I should even be someone creating art that reflected a culture my ancestors were far more likely to have aided in wiping out. I talked myself out of it and said it was better left a contextual reminder. this sort of thing was made, it holds a history of the time. 

I think about that a lot. theres often a call for destruction of monuments to a history no one should be proud of. people often call for ones that reflect indigenous history to be erected in their stead and to forget about the colonisers. which is honestly quite a colonial way to remember something. when i heard the story of coming into being, not dreaming, as its called on the mainland, when pumpermehowlle and pineterrinner, the two stars, walked down and carved out the land. the woman recounting the story said that it was told by her great great (etc) grandfather, Mannalargenna, a revered leader born around 1775 and died on Wybalenna after cutting off his hair (which was typically worn caked in ochure) a few months after landing, wanting nothing other than to return. when Mannalargenna was asked how he knew it was true he said that his father had told him, and his fathers father had done so before then, potentially thousands of generations had told this story, keeping it alive in minds and mouths, never once writing it down. 

people never used to be immortalised in metal, its a mainland tradition but when someone dies all photos of them are put away or destroyed, their name is not spoken and if someone shares a name or a similar one with them they change it for a year or so after the death to let people go. theres often a warning on television programs featuring aboriginal people that it may contain images or voices of people who have passed. I met a man in the national portrait gallery in canberra who was deeply upset that the gallery contained no visible warnings and he saw someone who he knew he shouldn't have. while its not ridiculous to ask the gallery to remove any portraits of aboriginal people it will be a while before the wishes of people are valued above the ambiguous good of art, but if you go to the galleries website today i left a little mark on his behalf in the form of the dropdown message (prior to there was a little paragraph at the bottom, but you had to go out of your way to find it). if anyone lives near canberra i’d love to know if they implemented warnings in the physical location as that was the primary reason for my email, and i wish i could tell that man that he had an impact on the world no matter how small.

all of that to say that i dont think giving people the excuse to forget history is the right thing to do. the australian government doesnt need any more excuses. truganini, a woman asked to help round up her people to place them on wybalenna as maybe the last hope of survival, who died old and far away from her home, and was incorrectly called the last tasmanian aboriginal person (my neighbour is not only a scholar of research, but a palawa man himself) asked to have her body buried in the deepest part of the river so that no one could dig her up and put her on display, which people were very known to do. her skeleton remained in the tasmanian museum from the year of her death, 1876 until 1947. finally returned to the community for cremation in 1976. the last known piece of her was returned in 2002, a piece of her skin, left forgotten in a museums archive. 

(a part of an exhibition my neighbour put together)

I am not the person to start or mediate the conversations, but i think the ones that have been happening amongst my fellow non-aboriginal people about destruction of monuments and creation of new ones are not the sort of conversations we should be having. I still wonder how Mannalargenna and his father, and his father before that would feel about the stories they kept alive through mouth and mind would feel about my writing them on a page. left dead until i read them again.

(my professor told me to print out the essay i wrote and give it to my neighbour, but knowing me, it’ll end up in the bottom of the house right next to the plate. im my mothers kid after all)

[great-and-small]

Turdus aficionados of Costa Rica please know I love your national bird but this is objectively hilarious

[shimmershy]

Happy 9th anniversary, Undertale.

You will be important forever and ever and ever.

[vraska-theunseen]

DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER UOU WANT WHEN YOURW MAKING ART ISNT THAT WILD

[inkskinned]

having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!

there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.

[harbek]

Get ready for a Game Changer!

I̴̫͈͖͠'̸̘̺͛ͅv̸̲̰̦͛e̵̬̪͊ ̸̧̬̤͂b̸̼̰͊͒͜e̵͇͎͐ẽ̶̟ṉ̷̯̪͗͂͒ ̵̭̑̓h̸̬̾̄ḛ̴̛̹̪̿r̸̮̊e̴̖͆̒ ̵̣̬̲̽͝t̴̳̫̔̇ḣ̴͓e̸̥͕̎ ̴̡̧͉̔̒̏w̶̲͑̀͐ĥ̶̖o̴̙̻͂ļ̷̍e̵̫͇̅ ̸͍̓͂̕t̷̗̗̼̂̅i̴̟̞̍̒̈́m̵̲̠̃ͅë̶̡̳͇́͒͐!̵̹̦͌͠

Drawn in Photoshop, animated in Spine Pro. The final art piece I made for my bachelor thesis on GIF as a medium for art.

I've been researching digital art in the context of modern folk art, outside institutional or commercial art. I analysed almost 500 art GIFs across Tumblr, Artstation and GIPHY.

There's almost no academic research on art GIFs, so it was important to me to examine and document it. I also examined the optimisation of GIFs and how it relates to web sustainability.

And because the bachelor program was focused on art practice, I then created my own art GIFs, and it seemed only right that I should do it through fanart of something I've been really into lately. Thanks @samreich and the rest of Dropout for giving me some unhinged content as inspiration. Watch 'Game Changer' everyone, it's great.

[percydoodless]

punch your lights out, hit the pavement

[rubbish78]

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan Howlett shirtless moments

[purpleenjoyer]

If you saw the previous post no you didn't I had to correct some things

The second part of my previous Inquisition post.

[hood-ex]

All the Americans on RedNote/Xiaohongshu that are interacting with Chinese people for the first time and are realizing that our governments hate each other but that we can build community/friendship with Chinese people reminds me of a conversation I had with a student of mine.

For context, I taught kids from China how to speak English for 4 years. I had one student named Rain (his English name) from Guangzhou. He was about 9 years old, and I'd been teaching him since the very beginning of his English journey when he only knew very basic vocabulary like vegetables. He got to the point in his language learning where he could use simple words and sentences to talk about more complex subjects.

There was one class we had that I still think about to this day.

"What classes did you have at school today?" I asked. "Math? English? PE?"

"Math yes. English class yes. And... history," he said.

"Oh history? Nice," I said.

"Teacher, I don't like USA a little bit," he said.

"You don't like it? Why?" I asked.

"Because..." he tried to explain before realizing that he didn't have the words he needed to express himself. He switched to miming and drawing the USA fighting with/being mean to China.

"So you don't like the USA because the USA fights China? Hurts China?" I asked for clarification.

"Yes, yes, I don't like it a little bit," he nodded.

"Do you like USA people? I like people from China," I said.

"You like China people?" he asked.

"Yes, I love Chinese people," I said. "I don't like when the USA and China fight, but I love Chinese people."

"Me too!" he said. "Kind of don't like USA, but I like USA people."

In that moment, I was amazed that even with a language barrier, and even with our age difference, we could come to the same conclusion that we didn't like what our countries did to each other, but that didn't mean that he had to hate American people or that I had to hate Chinese people.

"USA people and Chinese people are kind of different," I said, referring to our cultural differences. "We are the same too."

"Yes, kind of the same," he agreed.

That's what many Americans on RedNote/Xiaohongshu are starting to understand better.

[milkbreadtoast]

hyeonje-ssi... 🫣💛💛💛✨✨

[goblingirlmode]

Least transgender dorohedoro character

[uncanny-tranny]

Diversity win! All the male mannequins in the nursing class I was in had vaginas (literally all)!

Diversity loss! Everyone was Weird about it

[littletroggo]

it's a full moon! :D (astrophotography is hard...)

[akiacia]

maggie lore post

[inkskinned]

i hate to say it because i'm neurodivergent and a chronic-pain-haver but like... sometimes stuff is going to be hard and that's okay.

it's okay if you don't understand something the first few times it's explained to you. it's okay if you have to google every word in a sentence. it's okay if you need to spend a few hours learning the context behind a complicated situation. it's okay if you need to read something, think about it, and then come back to re-read it.

i get it. giving up is easier, and we are all broken down and also broke as hell. nobody has the time, nobody has the fucking energy. that is how they win, though. that is why you feel this way. it is so much easier, and that is why you must resist the impetus to shut down. fight through the desire you've been taught to "tl;dr".

embrace when a book is confusing for you. accept not all media will be transparent and glittery and in the genre you love. question why you need everything to be lily-white and soft. i get it. i also sometimes choose the escapism, the fantasy-romance. there's no shame in that. but every day i still try to make myself think about something, to actually process and challenge myself. it is hard, often, because of my neurodivergence. but i fight that urge, because i think it's fucking important.

especially right now. the more they convince you not to think, the easier it will be to feed you misinformation. the more we accept a message without criticism, the more power they will have over that message. the more you choose convenience, the more they will make propaganda convenient to you.