white cube terror

I'm in a cab on the way out from Melbourne. It was a lightning visit for the Empires, Ruins & Networks conference, with zero time to hang, so I'm sorry for not catching up with any of you Melbs peeps. (Though it was good to bump into you there, Andrew.)

{Now I'm in Virgin's whacky Blue Room at the airport, watching a Destiny's Child concert on a huge plasma screen. It reminds me: fuck Beyonce, Kelly ROCKS. I saw her come into her own at the Sydney show we went to, the day after we were beaten up by the cops at May Day 2002.}

Empires, Ruins & Networks had some really interesting speakers, but felt utterly stifling. Ostensibly an art/academy/activism hybrid, it was totally mired in precious, auratising processes that ended up isolating the speakers and silencing most of us. Everyone was frustrated. And so much institutional artwank, under the delusion that it was dangerous. Feh.

But Tony Birch is my hero, and a breath of fresh air. Not only did he put the boot into the sudden, righteous discovery of a bleeding heart by various Labor Party elements on the issue of asylum seekers, but he was also withering about Socialist Alliance's pathetic tailing of this. He also made some really interesting comments about how the spectre of "activism" is often a privileged mantle, and that a great many indigenous people, denied such "social capital", simply have to desperately get by with behaviour that liberals will interpret as beyond the pale.

I was glad to have hung out with Deborah Kelly, with whom I still disagree much but of whom I'm terribly fond and respectful. And I was thankful to talk about the social density of autonomist practice and the dullness of Luther Blissett's Q with the utterly charming Ilaria Vanni.

An admission: I fell asleep during every session.

More soon.