There’s a book launch for Silent Dialogue 沉默的对话 tomorrow night in Collingwood if you’d like to join us in a celebration and meet some of the folks involved in the project. The book is an illustrated multilingual publication that accompanies the Silent Dialogue exhibition with images of original artworks and specially commissioned pieces of original writing by leading scholars and writers from across the country. I’ll be reading from my essay in the book, ‘We need new names’, which looks at the politics of changing your name.
Fri 5 Feb 2021 6:15 pm to 7:30 pm Art Echo Gallery, Collingwood free | booking required
Apologies for the super late notice but I’m doing a gig tonight! It’s part of Amplify, a series of live music and literary performances by local artists from the Western suburbs. Tonight is Tariro Mavondo, Gabriela Georges, Ruby-Rose Pivet-Marsh and me.
Mon 1 Feb 2021 doors at 6 pm, performances 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm live in-person at Bluestone Church Arts Space, Footscray, or livestream online tickets from $5 + booking fee | book here | more info here
‘[Evading censorship] felt a lot like a game, actually – a futile yet addictive game that made your heart race as you tried to jump from story to story, ducking and weaving, squeezing as much as you could through an ever-shrinking space.’
For The Saturday Paper’s culture section, I wrote about reliving the anxiety and adrenaline of working as a journalist in China while playing the dystopian newsroom simulation game Not for Broadcast. Read it here.
Are you a South Asian arts writer living in Victoria? Sangam: Performing Arts Festival of South Asia and Diaspora has put together this pretty incredible paid mentorship. You get:
a workshop with me and Sonia Nair on 6 Feb 2021
support to write a response to a work or works at Sangam 2021
assistance securing a publication outcome with Sangam’s publishing partners, Peril Magazine and South Asian Today
$300 participant fee
EOIs close this Fri 15 Jan so apply now! And follow Sangam on Facebook or Instagram for more info about the festival. The full program will be released 17 Jan and the festival takes place 20 Feb to 13 Mar at Abbotsford Convent, the Drum Theatre, Dancehouse Melbourne and Bunjil Place.
Damn, what a year. All I remember is feeling utterly gobsmacked and speechless at every turn, so it’s quite a shock to look back and find that somehow I rustled up all these words. Huge thanks to everyone who commissioned or booked or hired me – or sent me a coffee – going freelance at the start of lockdown was frankly terrifying and for a moment I feared I had done something very stupid. I could not have survived without the support of editors, collaborators, readers and friends. I couldn’t be more grateful. Here’s some of what I’ve been up to…
Multimedia
Underfoot – secret histories of Footscray, June 2020, with Liz Crash.
Print: There’s great stories underfoot, Maribyrnong and Hobson’s Bay Star Weekly, 8 July 2020, p 10, by Benjamin Millar. Also online on 12 August 2020.
*
I also made more than a dozen playlists – hear here – and ate my way through every single meat pie sold at the supermarket. I’m so ready for a new year and new obsessions. Fingers crossed for 2021.
Jinghua Qian, ‘I can’t apply for another grant’, Un magazine 14.2 (print, audio and digital), November 2020. Edited by Elena Gomez.
My friends keep sending me grants and opportunities. I appreciate it, I really do. It’s nice to know that people are thinking of me. But I never want to apply for a grant again. I can’t. My body recoils. It feels like taking my skin off for nothing.
In August, I followed up with an opinion piece in The Guardian about going on the dole and navigating the sadistic and absurd mutual obligations system for welfare recipients: ‘It does nothing to help people find work. It’s just a complicated, expensive way of penalising people for being poor.’ But as awful as Centrelink is, arts funding is somehow even worse. At least the dole is ongoing and not a lottery. Arts funding bodies, on the other hand, want you to craft a 10-page proposal to compete for a minuscule chance at a trickle of money. One template rejection I received this year said that only six per cent of applicants had been successful. Another rejection came to me five months after applications had closed. In both cases, the grants themselves were less than $5,000 — not even three weeks’ worth of the average weekly earnings for a full-time adult worker in Australia.1
The quick-response grants that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic were often no better. My eyes glazed over as I scanned the same buzzwords: resilience, adaptability, relief. Each time I was left confused about whether these grants were intended to provide for my welfare or to fund new projects and activities — whether they were offered as charity or investment. Each time I felt like I was handing in my CV and portfolio at the soup kitchen counter. Each time my shoulders seized, awaiting judgement, anticipating rejection. This is not relief.
For all its faults, JobSeeker is easily the most effective arts funding program in this country. Going on the dole has helped my career and my craft far more than any arts grant ever has. Knowing that the fortnightly payments will at least cover my rent is a huge relief, pulling the plug from my brimming tub of baseline anxiety. It’s also given me more intellectual and creative freedom because I’m less reliant on fitting my vision to the categories and priorities of funding bodies. I don’t have to contort my work so that it speaks to diversity instead of antiracism, inclusion instead of decolonisation, identity instead of ideology, or other bureaucratic definitions that are always just slightly misaligned with my own thinking.
Thanks to JobSeeker, I’ve done some of my best work this year. In fact, I’ve been weirdly prolific, pitching and publishing more than ever. I’m much more comfortable pitching to editors than applying for grants. Media and publishing is still subject to commercial imperatives, of course, and that comes with its own set of problems and limitations, but the grant process feels particularly alienating, disheartening and disruptive. All I ever want from the arts funding bureaucracy is time to write, and JobSeeker gives me that without getting between me and my audience. I think if more people could access the dole, and the rate were higher, it would make an enormous difference to cultural life. I would rather arts organisations fight for that than for more arts funding.
Most independent artists are already working across a range of industries in order to survive, and many rely on welfare, but often arts advocacy tends to emphasise how art is exceptional. I think it’s worth taking note of the peculiarities of making art, but we can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to organise in solidarity with workers in education, media, publishing and other cultural industries, and even beyond. I’m not convinced that it’s useful or even truthful to focus narrowly on how artists are special when our needs are the same as those of all precarious workers — of all people.
The pandemic has generated plenty of chatter about saving the arts, but it’s also burnished the deep ambivalence many of us feel about this sector and how it operates. In the conversations I’ve had with other artists, there’s always an undercurrent of revolutionary rage. We’ve all been talking about how this year offers an opportunity to rethink this sector — what if we set it on fire and started over?
Arts funding is a cancer. Applying for it has become its own job, a job no one enjoys or wants. I’m not sure that anyone is even funding the arts, really — it feels more like art happens by accident as a decorative footnote to the work of endless applications, assessments, acquittals and evaluations. I’m sure some of these elements were once designed as accountability mechanisms, but they have grown monstrously out of control. Like the mutual obligation system for welfare recipients, the arts funding process is disproportionate and counterproductive. There are easier ways to give artists money.
I think a competition-based funding model is inherently destructive. I don’t understand why it’s accepted that in the arts, sport and entertainment industries a tiny elite should profit and everyone else should suffer in poverty for daring to try. Even under capitalism, that’s not how it works in most professions. Funding shouldn’t be a prize or an honour, it should provide a living wage so people can make art without some other source of wealth or income.
We’ve all been talking about this for such a long time and I’m so tired of it. I don’t want to tinker with this system, shifting the priorities and massaging the language. I’m not excited about heralding a new cohort of gatekeepers. I’m not interested in diversity and inclusion. I just want to overthrow capitalism already.
Ultimately, I don’t believe in meritocracy. I don’t believe in excellence. Survival is not a reward. We all deserve to have our basic needs met.
I don’t understand why it’s easier to get paid to administer arts funding than to make art. I don’t understand most of the jobs that exist in this society — they seem to bear no relation to the world that I live in or what it needs. They bear no relation to what I understand as value or a life worth living. Capitalism devalues so much work that’s important and necessary while creating jobs that just tick boxes and move money around. I think that might be the most dystopian thing in this hellscape. We live in a time when no one needs to be hungry, homeless or overworked. It should be possible for all of us to thrive. I want a radical redistribution of time and resources, a reimagining of labour and value. I want to unravel this tangle of art, money and survival so that the next time we talk about this, it’s an entirely different conversation.
Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in Melbourne, on the land of the Kulin Nations. Ey has written on desire, resistance and diaspora for Overland, Meanjin, Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian.
‘Zanetti cleverly plays with the idea that our queer predecessors paved the way for how we live now, but as individuals can be just as bumbling and out of touch as anyone else when it comes to dealing with teenagers. We might idolise OWLs (“older wiser lesbians”) but they’re only flightless, bug-eyed humans after all.’
Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes in Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt). Photograph: Nixco
As an AFAB nonbinary person, many feminist and women’s spaces welcome me – but often that welcome is itself a form of trans erasure, an insistence on seeing us as the genders we were assigned. I wrote about my uncomfortable relationship with feminist literary spaces for Feminist Writers Festival.
‘I’m pretty accustomed to not feeling at home anywhere – this is often a good thing, a productive tension. The can of worms fertilises the soil. But whether it’s Feminist Writers Festival, Facebook writers’ groups, or other feminist literary initiatives like the Stella Prize, I think it’s important to remember that you can’t simply tweak the category of woman to accommodate nonbinary people. Nonbinary disturbs the foundations of binary gender because it’s supposed to. It’s intentionally an interruption, a question as well as an identity.’
Jinghua Qian, ‘Walking away, backwards; or woman-lite in women’s lit’, Feminist Writers Festival, 20 November 2020. Edited by Cher Tan.
When I got asked to write something for Feminist Writers Festival, I started to say no. I typed up a new version of the response I’ve sent so many times that I should probably just save it as a template: Thanks for thinking of me! I really appreciate the invitation, but at present I feel it’s not my place as not-a-woman to take this platform…
But Cher and I chatted a bit more, and I came around to the idea that perhaps this conversation is worth having in public, especially in a feminist literary space.
*
Leaving womanhood reminds me of the apologetic way I exited the church – looking to the altar, sidestepping, genuflecting before turning my back on the cross. I used to be a woman and a Catholic, and it seems that until I commit to a new god or gender, I’ll forever remain a lapsed Catholic and womanish. Woman-lite.
In early 2015, I wrote this poem while on the cusp of leaving:
leaving traces
being a woman costs too much were it a job I’d have quit
but that’s not it, as such it feels more like kin like folks I didn’t choose but begrudgingly belong to
other women make it almost worthwhile
but that’s not it as such, it feels more like a place that follows me as I leave
like I don’t really speak the language anymore but somehow it still shows on my face
All these years of wearing elsewhere in my eyes can I afford another layer of answering why I am here where did I come from what is my real name
I am solid until I’m touched then diaspora one thousand pieces of wandering my face already conveys too much
*
Whenever I’m asked to speak or write or perform for a feminist event, I see myself go out of body again. For a split second, I slip into a parallel life of being a woman and doing woman things. I mean, I don’t know what ‘woman things’ are – maybe I never did – and probably binary gender is a prison even for cis people. Of course I don’t think that feminism is only for women, or that feminist spaces should necessarily be women’s spaces. But I also know that I’m accepted by the sisterhood because I’m seen as woman-lite. Close enough.
I’m not a woman and I’m not a man. Genderfluid, if I’m forced to answer, or nonbinary, though that doesn’t always fit. It’s okay if you don’t know what that means, because sometimes I don’t either. Whenever I’m asked to identify with a gender, I offer a string of finicky metaphors.
I grew up as a girl. I’ve been referring to myself with gender-neutral pronouns – inconsistently – for the last fifteen years, even when I was cis. I stopped understanding myself as a cis woman around five years ago, but the only thing I did to ‘transition’ was to revert to my birth name. I am still interpreted and interpellated as a woman most of the time. I am not trans enough for most trans people. And I hated writing this paragraph: I hate describing myself in this naked and banal way, but I don’t think any of this will make sense otherwise.
There were two other things I did as part of my ‘transition’ (although that feels like far too momentous a word to describe these reversible administrative tasks). One of them was to ask my friends to refer to me with gender-neutral pronouns. The other was to leave all the women’s groups I was in – mostly networks for women of colour. Even when I was cis, I was never white, so I was never all that comfortable in most Australian feminist spaces to begin with.
The following year, I left the continent. By the time I came back to Australia three years later, a lot of these women’s groups had shifted their remit to accepting various configurations of ‘woman and other’: women and nonbinary folk, for instance, or everyone but cis men. Effectively, these groups feel like women 2.0 or women* or women+. Women – which is to say cis women – and people with footnotes. Women plus women-lite. After all, these are feminist spaces converted from (cis-centric) women’s spaces, and they show their bones.
I joined several groups for writers and editors that still have names like ‘Binders Full of Women’, though their descriptions specify that genderqueer and nonbinary people are included too. Most of the genderqueer and nonbinary people in these spaces seem to be people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), like me.
Feminist spaces typically welcome AFAB nonbinary people while freezing out nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB). Often, there are more AFAB non-women in women’s spaces than there are trans women. As a nonbinary person who is not a woman yet easily accepted as one, my presence in feminist and women’s spaces is often framed as part of a positive shift towards greater trans inclusion: oh, trans people, we have those! But I know the hospitality I receive is frequently also a form of trans erasure – an insistence on seeing us as the genders we were assigned. The overrepresentation of AFAB non-women in these spaces can reinforce the exclusion and marginalisation of AMAB people.
Everyone has their own interpretation of this. I’m not necessarily asking AFAB nonbinary people to withdraw from feminist spaces. Neither am I asking all women’s groups to include nonbinary people. It’s okay to have things that are just for women, as well as things for not-men, as well as things for everyone who wants to see the end of patriarchy. I get that we’re all still figuring out how to do feminism beyond binary gender – it’s an ongoing process of collective political imagination alongside individual calibration. But I’m always reassessing myself in relation to gendered spaces: Is this too woman for me? Am I going to be useful here? Personally, I’m also pretty accustomed to not feeling at home anywhere – and this is often a good thing, a productive tension. The can of worms fertilises the soil.
But whether it’s Feminist Writers Festival, Facebook writers’ groups, or other feminist literary initiatives like the Stella Prize, I think it’s important to remember that you can’t simply tweak the category of woman to accommodate nonbinary people. Nonbinary disturbs the foundations of binary gender because it’s supposed to. It’s intentionally an interruption, a question as well as an identity.
Some nonbinary people would prefer to depoliticise and domesticate it – to say that my being nonbinary doesn’t affect you and your gender, and that it’s just another identity in a sea of gender diversity, that it’s not an ideology. That’s not totally true for me. I do think my gender should make a difference in how you think about yours and vice versa. Gender is relational and mine isn’t constituted in a vacuum. I’m not sorry for making this complicated. Ask me to do a feminist thing, and I have to ask: What is the relationship between feminism and women? What is a woman?
Jinghua Qian 
