Liz and I will be chatting about anti-carceral history, Yarra Bend Park and the long-awaited second season of our podcast at Collingwood Library next week, please come join!
Underfoot: The Facility Monday 7 October 2024 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm Collingwood Library 11 Stanton Street, Abbotsford VIC 3066 Free, book here
Okay I am the worst because I keep forgetting to promote anything until it’s already sold out! But if you managed to snag a ticket, Liz and I are doing another local history talk with the beautiful folks at Williamstown Library.
Williamstown, Underfoot Thursday 18 July 2024 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm Williamstown Library 104 Ferguson Street Williamstown VIC 3016 Book here
Today, Williamstown is best known as a picturesque seaside suburb, but its past was anything but tranquil.
Join local historian Liz Crash and writer Jinghua Qian as they delve into Willy’s hidden histories, uncovering tales of gambling dens, Chinese laundries, lady boxers, waterfront brawls, brothel sponsorship chaos, and Australia’s worst morgue. You can also discover how to unearth these buried stories yourself.
For the Guardian, I wrote about rice porridge in all its incarnations (kanji, congee, por-veh etc). Big thanks to editor Yvonne Lam for her attentiveness on this one. Enjoy!
I’m so excited for this one! A multigenerational line-up of storytellers surrounded by projected images of unapologetic dykes from the archives of Wicked Women (1988–96), an erotic zine published by Lisa Salmon and Jasper Laybutt. I’ll be reading my dirty Lex posts/poems, drinking up the queer gaze. Horny on main, we love it.
Wicked Words is a storytelling event that celebrates dyke and queer and trans sexuality. Gird your loins and prepare yourself to be swept off your feet. The lineup of storytellers includes Maude Davey, Jinghua Qian, Annaki Kisses, Tomoko Yamasaki, Gavril Aleksandrs, Bumpy Favell, and Lisa Salmon with videopoems by ReVerse Butcher.
Wicked Words Saturday 29 June 2024 7 pm to 10 pm Victorian Pride Centre 79-81 Fitzroy Street St Kilda VIC 3182 Tickets here
This sold out very quickly so sorry to tease you if you didn’t get tickets, but Liz and I are doing a talk at Chestnut Tree Bookshop in West Footscray tonight!
It’s on reading, researching and writing Melbourne’s West. Liz is bringing a bag of rocks. I am powerless to stop her. See you soon – and if you missed out, we’re doing another event soon at Williamstown Library, so watch this space (hit subscribe!).
Roll up, roll up! It’s a speculative time travel game at Queen Vic Market!
Back after being thwarted by Covid, Worth While is a live roleplay that Mick and I created through the Testing Grounds’ Public Art Park residency next to QVM. We’re running just one session on Saturday 9 December.
We wanted to make something fun and spiky – something that pokes breathing holes in how we think about cost, value and the market, that also has space for different feelings. Softness and silliness and homesickness. The smell of fish and the squish of a persimmon. So somehow we ended up with time travel.
It’s free, fun and possibly the momentary break from this reality you need right now:
Worth While Saturday 9 December 2023 11 am to 12 pm Testing Grounds, Queen Victoria Market Free | book here
Worth While is a live-action time travel game exploring what value really is.
Take on a new identity as a traveller from the year 2100. Go through a time machine to the market in 2023 where you can hunt for bargains and treasures to take home to the future. Then show and tell your fellow travellers what you found so you can pass through customs.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a speculative time travel roleplaying game at Queen Vic Market!
For the last couple of months I’ve been doing this very cute public art residency with a whole bunch of folks, over at the new Testing Grounds site next to Queen Victoria Market. Basically every Thursday we hear a talk, make lunch together, then chat about art and capitalism and ecology and whatnot while we eat. Then we have a play and test out our ideas on each other. We all arrived with a rough idea of something we wanted to do for Public Art Park, but I think everyone’s work has changed a bit through the process of chopping tomatoes and sipping endless cups of coffee.
I’ve been collaborating with Mick and we wanted to make something fun and spiky – something that pokes breathing holes in how we think about cost, value and the market, that also has space for different feelings. Softness and silliness and homesickness. The smell of fish and the squish of a persimmon. So somehow we ended up with time travel.
Worth While is a live-action time travel game exploring what value really is.
Take on a new identity as a traveller from the year 2100. Go through a time machine to the market in 2023 where you can hunt for bargains and treasures to take home to the future. Then show and tell your fellow travellers what you found so you can pass through customs.
I just realised that I had this post sitting in drafts for more than a year after I posted my first ‘Friends of Underfoot‘ roundup! Well, it’s never too late. If you’re into audio journeys, hyperlocal history, site-specific art and Underfoot, here are some other projects to check out:
Six Walks is a series of audio walking tours that was commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in 2020 as part of the multi-platform project Who’s Afraid of Public Space?
I think Underfoot fans will particularly enjoy Episode 5 with Timmah Ball, ‘Exploding the Maribyrnong‘.
Yalinguth is a mobile app that delivers an augmented audio experience reflecting the oral storytelling tradition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Queer-ways maps the queer cartography of Australia, combining the queer stories and voices of past and present into a permanent, interactive record of being queer in Australia. It’s curated by Luciano and Georgia Keats and supported by the Australian Queer Archive and there’s also a delicious interactive map you can add your own footprint to.
Another beautiful queer history project with a place-making focus, this project was commissioned by Heritage Victoria and it’s full of intriguing surprises.
Speaking of history through objects, here’s one I loved being part of: Powerhouse’s Oscillations six-part series, which takes unassuming objects in the collection as departure points for all sorts of reflections and investigations. Listen at the link above or view the illustrated transcripts on the Powerhouse website.
For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed She and Her Pretty Friend, an appealing and accessible history of queer women’s lives in Australia from roughly 1830 to 1980. There’s a lot I liked about it and a few things that bugged me too. As always, I can send a read link if you can’t access it through the paywall, just leave a comment.
Scrimshaw code-switches easily between the cautious register of the historian and the more colourful lexicon of chronically online queers, reading real events in relation to memes and fandom tropes such as “oh my god, they were roommates” and “be gay, do crime”. The effect is chatty and conspiratorial, like catching up with a friend who can’t wait to tell you about what she just read, and it’s endearing to witness her transparent disappointment when women treat each other badly or don’t get the life we feel they deserve.
My audio piece for Powerhouse Museum’s Oscillations project is finally out! It’s a chewy little story about sino/trans inscrutability, visibility and representation. Massive thanks to sound and story wizard Jon Tjhia, and everyone whose voices and ideas are part of this work: Atong Atem, Oliver Reeson, Kate Bagnall and Tim Sherratt, and my glorious chorus. So proud of this. Listen here.
What does it cost to be visible? Chinese and trans people shift in and out of focus in Australia’s historical records – appearing and disappearing, code-switching, oscillating. Through the lens of turn-of-the-century portrait photography, Jinghua Qian looks at the privilege and burden of representation and the luminous power of inscrutability.
Jinghua Qian 