Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room- Publication Approaches.

Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room- Publication Approaches.

5.20 a.m.  

Twelve hours beauty sleep and up before the lark again, but waking just before the start of day rather than the end of it signifies that the end of the time of book production has arrived, and we are reversing back our working-hours or rather projecting forward, into the future to catch up and re-join the more usual pattern of working and living, as the book ends its production process.  This week it will be finished and becoming a reality as a book first for the supporters of the Pozible project who will all be sent the first editions of the special collector PDF eBook this week, a limited edition of only 25 copies, and then as a print book and eBook available on Amazon, Kobo and in bookshops, as well as other online outlets and through the publisher Postmistress Press. Details of how to obtain Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room as print book and eBook will be posted here soon.

The cover image Blue Fugue is by Ruth Skilbeck, and cover design by Maxim Skilbeck-Porter.

These Writing Nights

 On Reversing One’s Hours 

The only, minor, disturbance I have so far encountered with writing all night and sleeping in the day, is missing a relaxing evening drink. One does not feel like a glass of wine on awakening at 7 or 8 in the evening and the thought is equally unpalatable at 10 o clock the next morning. So instead I am drinking a lot of coffee, and water. But soon my first novel, Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room will be published and up on the fabled platforms of Amazon, Kobo and so on, a transformation into virtual reality which seems at the moment somewhat akin to its ascending to the mythical Olympus. I look forward to inhabiting daylight hours again and celebrating in the ‘real’ evening with a glass or two of nectar from the local vineyards of the Hunter Valley. Until then, the mind is clear and this night is full of gods and constellations.

Ruth Skilbeck

In Praise of Reversing One's Hours

'Early to rise’ and ‘up with the lark’, which may once have seemed impossible indicators of moral virtue, is so easy to achieve when one simply does not sleep at night and chooses instead to slumber in daylight hours and write through the night. At around 6.30 a.m. one greets the dawn like an old familiar friend, not an overwhelming foe, as if one is in control of one’s destiny, instead of always scrambling behind, late and only half awake, like the woman applying her make-up on the train, or the man I once saw walking across the main road at Spit Junction in Mosman, at 8.30 a.m. shaving with a pocket shaver. The best thing about it though is that not many people do it, so it retains that exclusive secret edge of slightly illicit and novel things, the hidden beach, the secluded garden, a surprise, separate to the rest of the world. So that when I go to bed at 10 a.m. or 12 a.m., I fall asleep secure in the knowledge that the world will go on without me very well, and when I awake at 7 p.m. or so, I have the whole night ahead of me to write and I will not get tired or need to sleep.

Ruth Skilbeck 

Forgetting and Remembering: a History of Western/European Psychiatry in the Context of Empire

By Ruth Skilbeck

It's historically interesting that all of the revered early, or late 19th century, 'fugue' pedagogues were male (many of their patients were female, though some were male, notably the first "fugueur" Albert Dadas). Learning to forget or remembering as catharsis- the "Western/European" history of memory and forgetting is long and dual, and unresolved, how does this play out in Australia and other former colonies, of empire, where we live with forgetting and struggle with remembering the past. When Pierre Janet was writing colonialism and modernity were at their height in Europe and the UK, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century:
“According to Janet, the physician’s task was a paradoxical one in that the patient had to be coaxed into a curative relationship of depend-ence—even of “somnambulistic passion” —with the therapist, while at the same time being led toward emancipation from that dependence. Later, while emphasizing the social aspect of the therapeutic relationship, Janet (1919) wrote that an “adoptive” attitude of the patient toward the therapist was a desirable goal.
Janet was an eclectic therapist who borrowed from the old “magnetic” techniques and continued, if needed, to use hypnotic suggestion long after it had lost the respect of many of his colleagues; he had no fear of playing the pedagogue, the spiritual guide, or even the exorcist. Indeed he adopted practices associated with Catholicism, as for instance in the case of Achille (1898b), a patient who presented all the classical features of demonic possession. After failing to hypnotize Achille, Janet reports, he had the idea of acting like a “modern exorcist” and addressing himself to the Devil. He discovered by this means that Achille had had an extramarital affair, and, suffering the effects of remorse, had been harboring a “dream,” which was subconscious, in which he felt he was damned and possessed by the Devil. Janet conducted the treatment in such a way that Achille forgot both his transgression and his remorse. In this case history, Janet noted, “Knowing how to forget is sometimes as much a quality as knowing how to learn, because forgetting is prerequisite to moving forward, to progress, to life itself.… One of the most valuable contributions that pathological psychology could make would be to discover a reliable way to precipitate the forgetting of specific psychological phenomena” (Janet, 1898b, p. 404). Janet’s chief therapeutic concern here was apparently not a cathartic retrieval of memories, as promoted at the same period by Freud and Breuer, but rather a process of learning how to forget.” (from Encyclopedia.comhttp://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Pierre_Janet.aspx)

Such thinking has crucially informed culture and counter-cultural responses or working through these inherited traumas in the “west” since then, for example in:
The Doors: Soul Kitchen- ‘Learn to Forget”, an early example of forgetting through escapism, and expressionism, which is not so much a forgetting as a remembering in disguise:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/doors/soulkitchen.html
In literature, as an example in a different way, Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Should we forget or remember, or both, do we need to remember to be able to forget past trauma, or should we forget, to remember how to live.

THE DOORS LYRICS - Soul Kitchen

www.azlyrics.com

Lyrics to "Soul Kitchen" song by THE DOORS: Well, the clock says it's time to close now I guess I'd better go now I'd really like to stay here...

Three Grandfathers- Quiet Heroes of the Western Front

Reposting an article from April last year.

by Ruth Skilbeck

Grandfather was an officer and a gentleman. He returned from World War 1, a young hero, who had been awarded the Military Cross, and many other medals, for his bravery at Ypres, Passchendaele, leading his battalion, the 38^th Battalion, for weeks on end after the Commander had been killed and he, as the Adjutant took over. After the War, he was, in acknowledgment of his extraordinary service, offered a parliamentary position, as Clerk of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. He was offered a position in Canberra, in the Federal parliament, so my mother told us, but Grandmother did not want to leave Sydney. He took up the position in the NSW parliament and every day for all of his working life he travelled to and from the city to their house overlooking a gully (valley) on Sydney’s leafy north shore.

     Grandfather was a trim dapper man,  five foot eleven, he had a square, calm, pale face, with intelligent eyes, and a quiet good humoured manner of speaking, he dressed immaculately in three piece suits, bespoke leather shoes that were always well polished, and he never went into the city without his hat, a trilby, and in the inclement season his cream coloured raincoat, and of course always his mahogany-coloured leather briefcase.

     With his highly capable modest ways and scrupulous attention to detail, his selfless devotion to duty, he was a highly respected public servant, who was highly thought of by all, as the booklet that was printed to commemorate his life, when he passed away, twenty years after his retirement shows. Over 15 members of parliament stood up and give speeches in his memory, which are recorded in the book that was given to my mother, and that I keep along with other documents of the family history.

But there was another man, who fought bravely in the war. There was another family. Of the man, who fought bravely and lost an eye, in the same battalion. He was the Sergeant in the same Battalion where Grandfather was the Adjutant. Uncle Jack and Grandfather were good friends. All the Anzacs who went through such hell as the trench warfare on the western front were mates for life, but as Sergeant and Adjutant they had a bond of holding the line together through the hells of Ypres and Passchendaele, that went much deeper than words could ever say.

Chateau Wood Ypres, 1917 Photo: Frank Hurley

 Grandfather and Uncle Jack fought here

     This was a family of three girls and a mother. Three girls, and the eldest was just a couple of years younger than my mother. Three sisters; the middle one, looked quite like my mother, with her black wavy hair, green eyes and high cheekbones. This family lived only a few streets away from Grandmother and Grandfather and my mother when she was growing up. They all went to the same private girl’s school, in spacious grounds not far from the Pacific Highway.

Every Christmas we went to Uncle Jack’s, mother told us, as we were growing up in England. And we had to spend a few hours at their house every Christmas day.  Her voice tended to falter and come to a halt there. What did you do we asked prompting her to continue, helping her to go on.

     Oh we all just sat around the living room. We gave each other presents, she said. There was Aunty K. and the three girls…

Pa, my father’s father also fought in WW1. He was a boy of 16 in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, when the war broke out and he lied about his age, said he was 18 so he could go and fight for his country. After the war was over, instead of returning to England, he went back to Australia with his ANZAC mates, who he met in the trenches. At least that was never hidden; we knew his story, although his willingness to go off and fight at age 16 was a source of wonder and awe that was somewhat beyond our comprehension as children.  We knew about it, nothing was hidden.

     It was on the colonial Australian family side of my mother's family that the long silence fell.

Those quiet heroes, kept very quiet, and that was probably no doubt to do with the trauma they had suffered in those terrible years.

     There was much that they did not want to talk about or remember, and that included the truth of my mother’s origin, and her own mother who had been eradicated from the records and official history. Yes, there was much else that got swept up into the waves and walls of silence that fell and formed the uneasy muffled backdrop of our colonial families’ lives.

Nobody talked about those things then, and that we, grandchildren, were not allowed to know. It would be many years until I would ever know about the real significance and identity of the mystery man my mother talked about as “Uncle Jack”, and that other family.

Uncle Jack and Grandfather were good friends. All the Anzacs who went through such hell as the trench warfare on the western front were mates for life, but as Sergeant and Adjutant of the 38^th Battalion they had a bond of holding the line together.

Ruth Skilbeck.     

From notes for a novel in progress to be published by Postmistress Press.

The Daily Fugue: Three Grandfathers- Quiet Heroes of the Western Fr...: By Ruth Skilbeck      

COMING SOON: AUSTRALIAN FUGUE: THE ANTIPODE ROOM by Ruth Skilbeck

Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room
by Ruth Skilbeck

Ruth Skilbeck's first novel is a fugue mystery. A crime story of lost and confused identity and desire of four very different characters whose voices interweave as action unfolds from the London highlife to  Coober Pedy in Australia's Simpson Desert area. The story is situated in the recent contemporary era of the turn of the 21st century and explores themes of the psychogenic fugue.

What is Ruby haunted by? What is the significance of the images and music of the young woman playing violin. Who she cannot forget or remember? In the eyes of London society, Countess Ruby Love has it all: a contemporary art gallery, house in Primrose Hill's Chalcot Square, a philosopher husband who adores her. What Ruby doesn't have is a Past. When she 'came around' on a London underground tube train she had forgotten who she was, her life, and had to slowly reinvent a new Self. when Ruby and Hugo journey to Australia to find new art for her gallery a surprise meeting with her forgotten love at the opening of an exhibition at a Sydney gallery brings the past back. The future that unfolds is more than Ruby could have imagined as the Unfinished Fugue of Margarita's violin comes uncannily back to life, leading to the chilling climax of the story.

The narrative style is polyphonic told through the voices of four disconnected lovers Ruby, Hugo, Raymond and Margarita, literary texts and medical excerpts on fugue, weaving a non realist fugal style.

Ruth Skilbeck believes fiction is able to reach a deeper truth and this novel is about the search for truth in times of dissociation.

Published by POSTMISTRESS PRESS 

The novel will be on sale soon, and information will be posted here.

An 'Ethical' Future for the Biennale of Sydney? 'Boycott' Artists to Draft New Corporate Social Responsibility Policy

Art, Sponsorship, and Ethics- the Case of the 19th Biennale of Sydney

By Ruth Skilbeck

The key point that has emerged from the boycott of the Biennale of Sydney by international and Australian artists who are themselves in the Biennale, is ethics, or more precisely ethical sponsorship.  This has now been acknowledged in the latest changes emerging as a result of the boycott, and its positive after effects, the latest development is that the Biennale artist's Working Group - has been invited by the Biennale Board to draw up a charter of corporate social responsibility for future biennales in Sydney.

What had become increasingly clear the more research was conducted by academics and critics (documented on this site) into the sponsorship of the Biennale, and the moral compromises expected by former corporate sponsors of the artists, is that artists and academics and critics, oppose immoral and inhumane funding sources (in this case detention camps in breach of international conventions) and will take action -in this case boycotting-  to maintain the integrity of art, by recognising that the artist and art comes first, not the sponsor. 

Far from the pessimistic outcomes predicted by a very persistent six week opposition on facebook by some local artists who wished to maintain the status quo, and not rock the funding boat (or something), what has eventuated is a real positive change for the better, that can only benefit all concerned, who have art and its future as their highest goal.

As a result of the prominent international artists' boycott, nine artists withdrew, contingent on the Biennale Board keeping the controversial funding links with Transfield, which was recently awarded a 1.2 billion dollar contract to increase its services to the refugee and asylum seeker mandatory camps (internment without trial) on Manus Island and Nauru which are in breach of international refugee conventions. Less than two weeks ago, the boycott ended when the Biennale Board severed these ties and the chairman of the Biennale, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, who is also a director and owner of Transfield, resigned. This happened after international organisations and governments funding the international boycotting artists, supported their ethical position, and began to make moves to take out their funding.

This has been little reported as such in the mainstream media in Australia, but maybe from now on there will be more open reporting, on the issues involved. The boycott has opened up a very important and much needed discussion on art and ethics in Australia, in the international context of the art world. 

After Ties Were Cut by the Biennale Board with Detention Camps Funds

Most of the artists who had withdrawn, then allowed their works to be shown in the Biennale. I too as an art critic and writer, who was boycotting, then accepted my media preview invitation (as I have written about on this site) and went to the media preview yesterday, and heard the talks from the Biennale representatives, Marah Braye CEO- who acknowledged that "some of the world's best art comes from protest"- and Juliana Engberg Artistic Director (Curator)- who confided that she had even encouraged some of the artists to withdraw on the moral grounds, and also acknowledged what a [noble] sacrifice the boycotting artists made, as they potentially were sacrificing a career, and what a hard decision it was for some. 

Ethical Art and Artworks

I spent most time on Cockatoo Island yesterday, at the media preview, with the artists and artworks that had been in the boycott, and had withdrawn and then returned, following the severing of the Biennale Board ties with the asylum seekers mandatory detention camps funding. There were two art works, in particular, that I spent a lot of time discussing, and also participating in, as one of them, Bosbolobosboco #6 (Departure-Transit-Arrival) 2014, had a long audio component, the recorded voices of refugees recalling in words images of their journeys. 
Also Ahmet Ogut's installation, Stones to Throw, Version Two, 2014, on aspects of the effects on village children in war. Children as young as twelve being tried and prosecuted as adults under counterterrorism laws, for throwing stones at the armed military forces.

These art works are by three of the artists I have already mentioned and written of, on this site: artist-duo Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson, and Ahmet Ogut. Neither of which works are in the exhibition guide, I assume because it was printed before they had returned to the Biennale.

I was also very interested to see other works which I will write about as well. Works by the further artists who had withdrawn on ethical grounds and then returned (Agnieska Polska, Sara van der Heide, Nicoline van Harskamp, Nathan Gray), and those two who did not return (Gabrielle de Vietri, and Charlie Sofo). I will also be writing about some works of artists who did not withdraw. Yet my primary concern, as stated throughout my reports on this site, is to write about this self nominated group who put the higher good, compassion for others, first, and who thereby represent a new movement in art which is emerging around the world, and now here in Sydney. In supporting this group of artists, some of whom do not now have their return to the biennale acknowledged in the exhibition guide, and their works are not clearly indicated, I found them by chance as I was walking alone, I will write about their works first.

I will write on these works, in articles, and in a piece on The Daily Fugue soon.

Meanwhile, today's news from the Biennale Artists Working Group (in the previous post on this site) gives a glimpse at a possible ethical and bright future for the Biennale, imagined from this excerpt from latest news from the Biennale Artists Working Group announced today (and reproduced in the previous post on the Daily Fugue):

Future of the BiennaleThe Biennale has invited the artists' Working Group to be involved in the drafting of its Corporate Social Responsibility Policy. At this juncture we would like to accept this invitation and look forward to working with the Biennale to develop new, ethical sponsorship arrangements. We see this as a positive opportunity for the Biennale to find sponsorship from corporations whose values align with those of the Biennale and its stakeholders.
Additional to our involvement in the CSR Policy, we suggest that the Board seek to diversify its membership to include independent curators, artists, critics and academics. This may assist in bridging the gap between corporate interests and those of artists and the wider arts community. ( Biennale artist's Working Group, 19.3.2014).

Blue sky is opening ahead, it seems.

Ruth Skilbeck 19.3.2014