For Liminal magazine, I spoke to Hyphenated Biennale artist Jenna Lee about art versus craft, what’s behind a book cover, and the history of the pearling industry.
Interview #191: Jenna Lee | Liminal
10 tracks to get you obsessed with Chinese indie music | Double J
I put together a playlist for Double J – hear and read here.
Do you like Chinese music? | Double J Arvos
I was on the radio last week chatting to Tim Shiel about Wuhan punk and Chinese rock music more broadly. Catch up here if you missed it. Big thanks to Tim and Dylan for having me on!
‘All clothes are handmade’: the migrant workers behind Australian fashion | The Guardian
For The Guardian, I wrote about the migrant workers behind the ‘made in Australia’ label and how their winning campaign for equal rights might be instructive for other gig economy workers today.
I talked to Emma Do and Kim Lam, the writer and illustrator of Working From Home, a graphic narrative about Vietnamese outworkers in the garment industry, and Nguyet Nguyen and Beth McPherson, veteran manufacturing workers and organisers in the textile, clothing and footwear union.
Chinese indie’s dilemma | ABC TV
Is indie music in China growing up or selling out? My story for ABC TV on Wuhan’s punk history and what it means for underground scenes to land in the spotlight.
Ft Li Ke (Wild Records/Vox Livehouse), Krish Raghav (comic artist, Chaoyang Trap House), SMZB, Shii, Hualun, Re-TROS, Bohan Phoenix, Wutiaoren, and a flash of the cringe anti-Blackness of Higher Brothers because we have to talk about that.
I can’t apply for another grant | un Magazine
‘Arts funding is a cancer. Applying for it has become its own job, a job no one enjoys or wants.’
For un Magazine 14.2, ANTI/ANTE, I wrote about the perverse relationship between art, money, and survival, and why I want to set it on fire and start over. Read or listen at the link.
A buoyant life | The Saturday Paper
My first profile for The Saturday Paper is on musical theatre icon Nancye Hayes – aka ‘Nancye with an E’ – who will soon celebrate six decades in show business.
Adding people of colour to a racist workplace isn’t the answer | Overland
For Overland, I wrote about how I’m over being the only one in the room, or trying to change things from the inside – and how our media regulations are broken when it’s easier to publish something racist than to call it racist.
On immortality and kindness
‘Sinophobia never went away in Australia. Colonisation never ended. Racists might sometimes shift their focus but it’s the same lens. Maybe now it’s our turn in the crosshairs again. But we’re in all the water, treading furiously while trying to turn off the tap, here, there, and everywhere.’
In April, Emma Thomson from Correspondences asked me to be part of a project reflecting on escalating racism against Asian Australians and the themes of Lisel Mueller’s poem, ‘Immortality’. I said yes and I wrote these reflections in May and June. Now they feel like time capsules as every month of this year introduces another world entirely. You can read or listen to my pieces at the link above or visit the viewing room for the whole project here, which includes work by Kuang Zai, Selina Lo, Eileen Chong, and Ouyang Yu.
It doesn’t work like that
‘Artists are in a constant state of precarity and crisis. For many of us, there’s nothing to return to, nothing to recover. The status quo is already broken. It’s an empty bowl – with a smear of racism, sexism and ableism to boot.’
I wrote about unemployment and the pandemic for the Victorian Council of Social Service’s #MyCorona series.
