Invitations and Becomings

Henson's press release (which he released through the gallery holding the now-infamous exhibition of his work) sums up beautifully the point I tried to make in my post the other day. This is the extract reported in the SMH yesterday:

Tonight the AMA is demanding plays or films involving smoking be refused government funding. The story makes a nice complement to the Bill Henson controversy, but that's only because this is the kind of moral incursion into the arts that should be vigorously resisted.

The AMA's argument is simply bankrupt. The AMA argues that, since smoking is a "blight on society", it should not be depicted anywhere on stage and screen, or at least not when that depiction is tax-payer funded.

In preparation for a trip to the MCA later today, I've been reading up on the work of Julie Rrap, whose work is on show in a retrospective exhibition called Body Double. I just want to riff for a moment on a point made in the MCA's Education Kit, i.e. that despite the fact that Rrapp's body appears in almost every one of her photographic works, she does not regard herself as undertaking a project of self-portraiture.

I've just discovered - somewhat belatedly - Gary Sauer-Thompson's ... well... über-blog is perhaps the only way to describe it. There are actually no less than four blogs on the site, Thought-Factory.net, which seem to be added to almost daily.

In any case, I'm inspired by the way he uses his postings in the Philosophical Conversations blog, not as opinion-pieces or arguments, and more as pointers.