"after, beautiful one- those gruesomely bloodless crocodile's gums and palate. The musicalization of fiction. Not in the symbolist way, by subordinating sense to sound...but on a larger scale, in the construction."
Aldous Huxley,1928, Point Counter Point, US: Dalkey Archive Press, 2001
I am very drawn to the address of the interlocutor of 1920s English fiction. Gide in the 1890s was a master at this (Fruits of the Earth).
The intimacy and distance, yet unlike now on facebook and other surveilled sites, this was in the imagination of the author.
Were authors then anticipating and prefiguring this connection that is now? The connection with "friends" on facebook that one has never met and never will? Let alone the ever-present eyes of the 'surveillance machinery" the 'secret police' that accompany us everywhere we go online?
Was this what they anticipated?
I think not.
The words are addressed to the writer's inner self, to a muse, a projected addressee who is of the author's own self.
And yet it is this which I can relate to. Not the intimidating public realm of contemporary surveillance society.
RS
Friday, 24 April 2015
PostMistress Press
PostMistress Press: creative inspiration for
author-publishers in literary arts publishing
Dear readers,
Since last I wrote much has happened which has
consumed my attention, and taken me away from this blog, whilst I have
started-up an online literary arts publishing house, which is now officially
named PostMistress Press. FuguEditions, which I have already written about on
this blog is an imprint of the press, which is based in the nineteenth century
weatherboard cottage where I live, which happens to have been the first Post
Office in Adamstown, an inner city suburb of Newcastle, Australia.
When first I saw the house years ago, in 1995, I
was drawn to it, even though it looked rundown and dilapidated. There were no
trees in its overgrown garden, and the house was in need of repairs. The real
estate agents tried to dissuade me, with their 'worst house in the best street'
comments. But I was drawn to the tumbledown cottage. I had no idea then of its
past, its history as the post and telegraphy office, in the historic regional area
in which I live. I was to find out about this, over the coming years, when I
was living in the small cottage with my young family. My ex-husband found the
stories in the local heritage column in the Newcastle Herald, and we recognized
photographs of our house.
Now more years later, I have started up a
publishing house, in a house which from the late 19th century, was
for decades the local hub of communications, of postal mail, the forerunner of
online posting, and telegraphy, which is the predecessor to tweeting.
It seems to be serendipitous that I should have
started to design courses and lecture in Arts Media, and Communications, when I
was living in this cottage years ago. I began teaching and designing my
own courses as Adult Education community classes at the Workers Educational
Alliance (WEA). I wrote and ran adult education community courses in Freelance
Journalism (which was my profession in Dublin, Ireland, and in London) and I
designed and named and for two years taught the course: Find Your Voice-
Creative Writing Workshop (which was my passion, creative writing). From that
basis, I was asked if I would lecture in Business Communications courses at the
WEA, and from that experience it was not long before I got a casual lecturing
position, teaching Business Communications and Fine Arts Communications in
several Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges in the Hunter region. I
moved from the Old Post and Telegraphy Office, when I went to Sydney (my two
young children with me) to pursue my career as an Art writer and at the same
time, I took my PhD.
I founded and ran Arts Features
International, an art writing business, which I started up in 2003, from
my home.
After publishing many essays and long features on prominent international and Australian contemporary artists, it was circumstance (not choice as such) that was to bring me back to Newcastle and the Old Post Office, almost four years ago. I told some of the story of why these events occurred and what happened when I returned, on this blog, which I began when I found myself alone here, with no company other than the small black kitten that I found almost starved to death and dehydrated in the overgrown garden when I was compelled to move back to the cottage. Shadow is now asleep, on my laptop case as I write, he is a companionable and well cared for adult cat, four years old.
After publishing many essays and long features on prominent international and Australian contemporary artists, it was circumstance (not choice as such) that was to bring me back to Newcastle and the Old Post Office, almost four years ago. I told some of the story of why these events occurred and what happened when I returned, on this blog, which I began when I found myself alone here, with no company other than the small black kitten that I found almost starved to death and dehydrated in the overgrown garden when I was compelled to move back to the cottage. Shadow is now asleep, on my laptop case as I write, he is a companionable and well cared for adult cat, four years old.
And I have just started up Postmistress Press, the
first author-publishing house in Australia that will publish e-Books and
printed books, literary fiction and other writings.
PostMistress Press:
This is the first author-publishing house in
Australia to publish e-Book and printed books, of literary fiction and cultural theory books.
It is an author-publisher house and
will start-up by publishing books by Ruth Skilbeck, her literary novels.
Australian Fugue series, and a book from her research, The Writer’s Fugue. She will also publish
collections of her essays published in international academic peer-reviewed
books and journals. She will publish a book of her photographic works, and long
essay of critical theory on single lens digital reflex photography and discussing
her projects as a photographic artist. (Some of these works have appeared on
this blog).
The Antipode Room is the first novel
in the Australian Fugue series, of five novels. It is now published a print book and in Kindle edition.
Ruth is also an experienced editor and book designer.
Ruth is also an experienced editor and book designer.
After she has published her own
books, and if this proves sustainable, Ruth plans to publish literary fiction and other works by Australian and international authors.
About the Author:
Ruth Skilbeck has worked as an
academic, arts writer and broadcaster, and run an international media arts writing business Arts
Features International that she founded in Sydney. London-born, she has lived
and worked in Dublin, London, and Sydney. She has recently started up an
author-publisher publishing house, at The Old Post Office, a 19th century weatherboard
cottage in Newcastle, NSW. She has published extensively as an arts writer,
and her research writing also appears in leading scholarly journals such as Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and book collections by Routledge and Taylor and Francis, and Demeter
Press. Her research is in the field of Arts journalism reflective practice, art
writing in global contexts of social, economic and technological change, mother
art movements (MAM), and cultural history. She writes and publishes fiction,
poetry, photography and essays. The Antipode Room is her first novel, and the
first in her Australian Fugue series, with the second novel in the series to be published soon. R has a first honours degree in Philosophy from Bikbeck, London, and a PhD, as well as professional qualifications in university
teaching; and small business management. She has two children and lives in
Newcastle, Australia.
Note: This was first written in 2013 and has been updated to reflect new publications.
Note: This was first written in 2013 and has been updated to reflect new publications.
Monday, 20 April 2015
Blanchot and the Salvation of Nothingness
Maurice Blanchot:
"The writer plunged into dread is himself painfully aware that art is not a ruinous operation; he is trying to lose himself (and to lose himself as a writer), and yet sees that by writing he increases the credit to humanity, and thus his own, since he is still a man; he gives art new hopes and riches that return to weigh him down; he transforms into forces of consolation the hopeless orders he receives; he saves with nothingness."
From The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays
Discussed in Skilbeck, R, The Writer's Fugue, Newcastle: Postmistress Press
"The writer plunged into dread is himself painfully aware that art is not a ruinous operation; he is trying to lose himself (and to lose himself as a writer), and yet sees that by writing he increases the credit to humanity, and thus his own, since he is still a man; he gives art new hopes and riches that return to weigh him down; he transforms into forces of consolation the hopeless orders he receives; he saves with nothingness."
From The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays
Discussed in Skilbeck, R, The Writer's Fugue, Newcastle: Postmistress Press
Saturday, 18 April 2015
Einstein and the Gift of Fantasy
Albert Einstein:
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me that my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
Monday, 6 April 2015
Soul Sisters in Art: Leonora Carrington
Story by Ruth Skilbeck
“I painted for myself… I never believed
anyone would buy or exhibit my work” Leonora Carrington *
Surrealist artist and novelist
Leonora Carrington born today, 6 April 1917, passed away aged 94 in 2011.
Her father was British, wealthy new money industrialist, her mother was Irish.
She was branded as a rebel at an early age expelled from Catholic schools, and
just out of her teens eloped with the leading Surrealist Max Ernst, a move that
permanently severed contact with her family, and began her independent life as
an artist.
In Paris she was part of the Surrealist
group. When war broke out after Ernst (who was German) was interned by the
Nazis for his art, she fled to Spain where she had a breakdown and was “treated” by convulsive drugs including
Cordiazol an anxiogenic (causes anxiety and seizures) now banned by the US Food
and Drug Administration and Luminal a barbiturate to counter effects of former
(predecessors to electro-convulsive shock treatment, adding further trauma to the
anxious and ill) which had a very damaging effect on her, which she wrote about
in her novella now out of print Down
Below.
Her parents sent her Irish nanny
on a submarine to take her to another psychiatric hospital in South Africa, as she
was waiting in Lisbon for the boat with her nanny, she excused herself to go to the
lavatory in a cafe and escaped out of another door in the cafe, she caught a
taxi to the Mexican Embassy where she knew a diplomat whom she met in Paris
with the surrealists, after a few drinks and telling him her story he suggested
a solution, that she marry him and move to Mexico.
She married the Mexican diplomat,
and escaped by boat to New York with him, as Ernst who had been freed from
internment also escaped by marrying Peggy Guggenheim, but Leonora left her marriage
after a few months; not long afterwards she married a Hungarian
exile artist Imre Weisz, and lived in Mexico City for the rest of her life, working as an artist and
bringing up their two sons in her house surrounded by animals, and with the tree she planted in her garden. She was cut off from all her family, her inheritance
had been disallowed, but she followed her beliefs and inner drive to be an
artist, and produced some of surrealism’s most interesting and valuable
dreamscapes of the inner world. She supported left wing causes and was a co-founder
of the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico in the 70s.
It is only in the last five
years, after her death in 2011 that she has become widely known in Britain and Ireland, through
major retrospectives of her work since her death, in Dublin’s Irish Museum of
Modern Art “Leonora Carrington: The Celtic Surrealist” 2013, and currently at the Tate in
England. She was regarded as a leading artist in Mexico for decades, but
ironically, and as is the case with so many significant women, in the twentieth
century, she remained relatively little known outside Mexico during her
lifetime.
An essay by Joanna Moorehead her
cousin, who spent five years tracing the journeys of her long lost cousin who
at an early age rebelled against her aristocratic family and eloped with Max
Ernst, was recently published in the Independent newspaper.
http://www.amazon.com/Australian-Fugue-The-Antipode-Room/dp/0992277922.
* Chadwick, Whitney, 1986, “Leonora
Carrington: Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness”, Women’s Art Journal,
Spring-Summer, 37-42
Saturday, 4 April 2015
Newcastle Mayor and Three Liberal MPs Stood Down- ICAC Inquiries 2014
Update on: Newcastle Mayor Liberal Jeff McCloy and Ten NSW Liberal MPs Stood Down Due to Corruption - ICAC Inquiries 2014
Newcastle swung back to Labor with increased Greens votes (Labor preferences) in the NSW State elections last weekend after eight months of political turmoil, and by-elections following the resignations in 2014 of three Liberal MPS and the Newcastle Mayor on charges of corruption over political donations and slush funds, in Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiries in the Hunter and Newcastle areas. Overall ten Liberal MPS have resigned over the course of the inquiry into political donations and links to mining and property development. In contrast, during the same term of the NSW Liberal government there were cuts of $1.7 billion to education introduced by the Government, resulting in the axing of fine art courses in the Hunter TAFE.
Background
August 2014: Then Newcastle Mayor and property developer Jeff McCloy stood down following an inquiry into corruption by the ICAC for his history of political donations- it is illegal for property developers to make political donations in NSW. This was the charge that all ten MPs faced and were found guilty of and stood down over.
August 2014: Three Liberal MPs for the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area, Tim Owen (Newcastle), Andrew Cornwell (Charlestown) and Garry Edwards (Swansea) stood down on the same charges of corruption accepting illegal political donations from Jeff McCloy, who argued that he was not a corrupt property developer in this capacity when he donated as he said not all his companies are in property development, which was rejected in his defence by the ICAC.
This is now well documented in the media, but for several years corruption over development coal loader plans for the former steelworks in Newcastle was implicated in the 'dirty tricks' against former Labor Newcastle MP Jodi McKay who lost her Labor seat after an insider Labor driven campaign against her (Labor's) plans for a container terminal project at the former BHP steelworks site at Mayfield - which a widely distributed leaflet falsely claimed would see "1000 trucks a day in the suburban streets'.
An ICAC inquiry in September 2014 found that former Labor powerbroker Joe Tripodi was the anonymous face behind the leafletting and that he had designed and organised its distribution to households across Newcastle. The ICAC inquiry found that Tripodi was interested in employment by Buildev owned by Nathan Trinkler mining magnate which planned to use the Mayfield site for a fourth coal terminal, in conflict with Jodi McKay's Labor plans. The health implications of a fourth coal terminal in Newcastle are dire, and have been researched as such.
This was evidence of dirty tricks in the NSW Labor party, which lost the 2011 election, and which showed that Labor were not immune to the corruption of property development and mining interests.
The Australian Greens party remains the only party in Newcastle that avoids corrupt dealings over the future of the city and its development in transition from a former major steel city.
Newcastle, New South Wales, needs the Greens Party to counter the corrupting influences, and hold the major parties to account and can play a vital and socially necessary role, in enabling artists to have a place in society and supporting arts education in TAFE again. The Greens are the only political party in Newcastle and the Hunter that has not been subject to an ICAC inquiry, and has not had party members involved in corrupt dealings. This and the political opposition to big mining and coal seam gas mining and opposition to ruthless roadway development plans in Sydney, has resulted in a big swing to the Greens in NSW gaining three so far counted, and perhaps four, seats in the Lower House.
Ruth Skilbeck
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-14/eighth-nsw-government-mp-stands-down-over/5671816http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-14/eighth-nsw-government-mp-stands-down-over/5671816
http://ruthskilbeck.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/could-this-really-be-last-grad-show-at.html
http://www.nswlabor.org.au/jodimckay
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2489538/icac-strike-10th-liberal-mp-skittled-at-inquiry/
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2527325/icac-stop-jodis-trucks-wasnt-my-idea-says-joe-tripodi/
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2497761/icac-joe-tripodi-organised-and-designed-stop-jodis-trucks-brochure/
Newcastle swung back to Labor with increased Greens votes (Labor preferences) in the NSW State elections last weekend after eight months of political turmoil, and by-elections following the resignations in 2014 of three Liberal MPS and the Newcastle Mayor on charges of corruption over political donations and slush funds, in Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiries in the Hunter and Newcastle areas. Overall ten Liberal MPS have resigned over the course of the inquiry into political donations and links to mining and property development. In contrast, during the same term of the NSW Liberal government there were cuts of $1.7 billion to education introduced by the Government, resulting in the axing of fine art courses in the Hunter TAFE.
Background
August 2014: Then Newcastle Mayor and property developer Jeff McCloy stood down following an inquiry into corruption by the ICAC for his history of political donations- it is illegal for property developers to make political donations in NSW. This was the charge that all ten MPs faced and were found guilty of and stood down over.
August 2014: Three Liberal MPs for the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area, Tim Owen (Newcastle), Andrew Cornwell (Charlestown) and Garry Edwards (Swansea) stood down on the same charges of corruption accepting illegal political donations from Jeff McCloy, who argued that he was not a corrupt property developer in this capacity when he donated as he said not all his companies are in property development, which was rejected in his defence by the ICAC.
"Mr McCloy said he'd given Mr Edwards [Swansea Liberal MP] about $1,500 in cash during the last state election campaign. That's on top of the bundles of $10,000 he'd given to two other candidates: the former member for Newcastle, Tim Owen, and the former member for Charlestown, Andrew Cornwell." (ABC news transcript 8.14.2014).
This is now well documented in the media, but for several years corruption over development coal loader plans for the former steelworks in Newcastle was implicated in the 'dirty tricks' against former Labor Newcastle MP Jodi McKay who lost her Labor seat after an insider Labor driven campaign against her (Labor's) plans for a container terminal project at the former BHP steelworks site at Mayfield - which a widely distributed leaflet falsely claimed would see "1000 trucks a day in the suburban streets'.
An ICAC inquiry in September 2014 found that former Labor powerbroker Joe Tripodi was the anonymous face behind the leafletting and that he had designed and organised its distribution to households across Newcastle. The ICAC inquiry found that Tripodi was interested in employment by Buildev owned by Nathan Trinkler mining magnate which planned to use the Mayfield site for a fourth coal terminal, in conflict with Jodi McKay's Labor plans. The health implications of a fourth coal terminal in Newcastle are dire, and have been researched as such.
This was evidence of dirty tricks in the NSW Labor party, which lost the 2011 election, and which showed that Labor were not immune to the corruption of property development and mining interests.
The Australian Greens party remains the only party in Newcastle that avoids corrupt dealings over the future of the city and its development in transition from a former major steel city.
Newcastle, New South Wales, needs the Greens Party to counter the corrupting influences, and hold the major parties to account and can play a vital and socially necessary role, in enabling artists to have a place in society and supporting arts education in TAFE again. The Greens are the only political party in Newcastle and the Hunter that has not been subject to an ICAC inquiry, and has not had party members involved in corrupt dealings. This and the political opposition to big mining and coal seam gas mining and opposition to ruthless roadway development plans in Sydney, has resulted in a big swing to the Greens in NSW gaining three so far counted, and perhaps four, seats in the Lower House.
Ruth Skilbeck
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-14/eighth-nsw-government-mp-stands-down-over/5671816http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-14/eighth-nsw-government-mp-stands-down-over/5671816
http://ruthskilbeck.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/could-this-really-be-last-grad-show-at.html
http://www.nswlabor.org.au/jodimckay
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2489538/icac-strike-10th-liberal-mp-skittled-at-inquiry/
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2527325/icac-stop-jodis-trucks-wasnt-my-idea-says-joe-tripodi/
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2497761/icac-joe-tripodi-organised-and-designed-stop-jodis-trucks-brochure/
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Why Newcastle Needs the Greens: Art and Social Change
Great morning running the Greens Party booth in Kotara, Newcastle today. I set up and convened from 8 -12 midday. First time for me, in this kind of political activity and was very enjoyable. Sunny morning, just a few others running the Labor booth- and no sign of the Liberals whatsoever!
I was thrilled to find that pencils have been replaced by pens in the polling booth. Seems like a very sensible idea, and prevents doubt.
It was a pleasure to meet and chat with so many residents, and to hand out Greens how to vote information, and to become more involved this way.
As I was setting up I had the posters and polling booth boards at the Old Post Office for a couple of days prior, and made good use of the front verandah, and the location of the cottage which is just a few steps away from the busy Adamstown shopping area, and on the street, to show these to good advantage. I realised when I was taking the photographs how green the Old Post Office is, and how well it suits the Greens messages, surrounded by trees which I planted years ago, and ferns at the front of the house which I also planted.
What has driven me to become so involved with the Greens Party this year, is finding out in my research for my books on my family hidden history, and the secret I have uncovered, that the Hunter Valley where my family has lived, is now being raped and pillaged and decimated by open cut mining, with the new threat of a massive mine run by Rio Tinto which has gained tentative acceptance by the government despite being blocked twice through legal channels, and the threat of coal seam gas mining which poisons ground water, the earth and the air. This is destroying the lives and businesses of the people who live and work in the Hunter Valley- it is driving out the world famous international horse studs (The Hunter Valley is one of the leading areas in the world for raising thoroughbreds) ; and destroying the wine industry, as well as local tourism and arts business. The people of the village of Bulga have been told that their village can be moved, to make way for the ravaging Rio Tinto mine, as if their lives are worth nothing.
This is the shocking scenario I have discovered in my research and writing, on the once beautiful Hunter area. The Greens are the only party opposing big mining and its unchecked devastation, and opposing coal seam gas mining.
So I have become involved far more directly than I ever have in politics this year, and will continue this now as it is imperative that big mining and coal seam gas mining are stopped before it is too late- the future of our lives and our children's lives, the future of the human race depends on it.
It is important to vote Greens, a rapidly growing party, as voting Greens strengthens the Greens vital voice in the NSW State parliament, and gives more influence over the other parties, which is more important at this critical time in human history, than it has ever been.What is just as important is support for the arts, and artists, and art education which has been cut back in the Hunter and Newcastle, over the term of the NSW Liberal government, which saw the excision of fine arts courses from the Newcastle art school at Hunter TAFE.
Story and image copyright © Ruth Skilbeck