The ABC have revamped their online Arts gateway and have asked me to write and/or film a regular weekly blog over there.

According to the author (me):

The aim here is to seek out, talk to, interview and profile some of the many interesting creative people that are doing their own thing or making interesting things happen in Australia and occasionally in other parts of the world.

We’re looking for the people who fall through the gaps in the arts world, from bedroom record labels and radio stations through to artist-run galleries and self-mounted theatre shows.

If you’ve got any suggestions for people who fit that bill check out my introductory post over there and leave any tips or suggestions in the comments.Will be updated regularly and hopeful get to include a lot of video pieces and interviews as i get a bit more confident with the technology.

marcus.

Based on the fact that i am sweating over my copy this afternoon, i think it is safe to say that I am now officially a newspaper columnist.

The downside is that “newspaper columnist” is a sub-profession of human being somewhere above politician and used car salesman and below journalist. I’m not sure that inflicting my constant rambling stream of ideas and opinions will endear me to anyone. The upside is that it will be an outlet for my constantly bubbling stream of ideas and opinions that will actually pay me.

My regularly weekly column will be in the new revamped arts section of The Age every MONDAY starting from the 27th of April. I’m not privvy to the larger plans for the revamped Age arts section but the discussions i’ve been involved in sound very promising. Obviously, the fact that they chose to involve me is – in my entirely objective opinion – a sign of excellent judgement.

Sadly The Age have rejected most of my good ideas. It looks like i will be doing cultural opinion and commentary as text and not interperative dance pieces, powerpoint presentations or musings about how adorable my kids are. Actually, my preferred approach was simply to resubmit old Andrew Bolt columns and simply change the prejudices (hence the sentence: “it’s also clear that a worrying number of former merchant bankers are coming from a very different culture and are struggling to make their way here and to integrate”) but they nixed that idea too.

So cultural commentary it is.

There’s still no word on exactly how the online side of things will work but i will post links to pieces here as they are published online and/or provide detailed instructions on purchasing newspapers for all you generation Y types that have that are unfamiliar with text in analogue.

Also, in keeping with the role of the columnist, i will also be in dire need of constant tip offs about interesting things, works and ideas that i can pass off as my own original insights. Please do feel free to offer suggestions!

Renew Newcastle and yours truly has been the subject of an interview on the Japanese web site Urban Dynamics Laboratory. Many thanks to Hidaka Hitoshi, Satoru Yamashiro, and Andou Youhei for conducting the interview. Renew Newcastle are hoping to work with them on a joint Australia/Japan architecture lab in early 2010.

I am sure the interview makes the whole project sound very interesting in Japanese however the best i could fo was read it via google translate – which makes me sound kind of funny. If you are fluent in Japanese you can read the original verson here but for those of us who aren’t there’s far funnier google translate version here.

Myself and Kim Bridgland from the Renew Newcastle project were on By Design on Radio National this morning.

In a situation that may soon confront many Australian city centers, Newcastle has over a hundred vacant buildings in its two main streets. “Renew Newcastle” is an initiative to rejuvenate the centre of town, not by throwing millions of dollars at it, but by finding creative short- and medium- term uses for vacant shops and offices. This is allowing community groups and cultural projects to move in to otherwise wasted space.

You can listen to the interview here or download it here.

Oh, and if you want to check out what Renew Newcastle is up to check out the Projects Page at the Renew Newcastle web site. Complete with maps, profiles, and all sorts of crazy shenanigans!

The second episode of Not Quite Art Series Two goes to air on TV on ABC1 across Australia at 10pm local time tonight.

If you’re in Australia, it is possible to download all episodes of the series in full and for free from the ABC web site. However as a lot of people have observed this series is unavailable outside Australia due to copyright restrictions. I thought i should explain.

The primary reason for this is that the series (and tonight’s episode in particular) features a lot of work by artists who are at the margins of what you can legally do under current copyright law.  Actually, pretty much the whole episode tonight deals with remix, mashup, copyright and creative commons – it is actually about what you can and can’t do under current copyright law.

I was actually quite pleasantly surprised when the ABC legal people allowed us to show the work of artists such as Soda Jerk (that’s some of their stuff above) in tonight’s program. However, the trade off was that because they were relying on specific provisions under Australian law that they were not willing to make it available outside Australia – which is a shame because from all reports (and from many disgruntled comments) there was a large audience out there in the rest of the world who were interested in it.

As it stands, the ABC has exclusive rights to make the series available online for 30 days after broadcast. My plan is to make a Creative Commons, ipod sized version of the program available for “official download” sometime shortly thereafter. At the moment, that will be subject to clearing some of those same legal hurdles mentioned above.

In the meantime, if you’re from somewhere other than Australia and you want to get hold of a copy, what to do? Well, personally, if i was in your position (and as an Australian who waits months on ends for a shitty subset of international TV to eventually find it’s way here, I am often in your position) I’d try to find out where there might be a copy of it online somewhere and download it. Yahtzee Croshaw, who was in last week’s episode seems to have overseas fans that are getting hold of copies. Surely someone must have put the damn thing on bittorrent by now?

Obviously, i’m not in any way endorsing this practice. I am certainly not encouraging anyone to leave links in the comments to places it can be slyly downloaded or anything like that. I’m not suggesting people should upload the choice bits to youtube or anything like that.

No Siree. I’m just saying that’s what I would do.

Here’s also a little piece i wrote the relates to the content of tonight’s episode.

Anyhow, I thought i’d open up a thread here for anyone who might want to leave comments or questions about the new series.

The other panelists include deputy Federal opposition leader Julie Bishop, former NSW premier Bob Carr, the Australian Foriegn Affairs editor Greg Sheridan and apparently some woman whose been living in England for years who I’ve vaguely heard of. I hope she can get the hang of the TV panel show format ok…

On Q&A this week the writers dominate. The show features author and academic, Germaine Greer, writer and artistic director, Marcus Westbury and The Australian newspaper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan. Joining them from the domain of politics are Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop and the former Premier of NSW, Bob Carr.

See the show’s page here for more information.

It will be interesting. Q and A is broadcast live and features a heavy amount of viewer and audience input in the questions. If you have any burning questions for the panel you can have your say on the web site or even sign up for the studio audience if you are in Sydney.

Suggestions on how to handle the show and the fellow panelists?

In the meantime for my regular 774 pre Olympics 774 radio series i went and tried my hand at softball with pitcher Justine Smethurst and catcher Natalie Titcume from the Australian women’s softball team. I didn’t do so good.

BUT… I also had a crack at double trap clay target shooting with former Olympic gold medallist and current Beijing Australian team member Russell Mark. I actually did pretty good by hitting 4 out of twenty traps.

It seems my life long generally anti gun outlook has been all that stood between me and an Olympic career. Either that or years of playing computer games has come in handy for something.

I don’t want to name names but Russell had apparently taken a few actual athletes out for a shot over the years and they didn’t shoot so hot. In your face Andrew Gaze and Steve Monegetti!

Straight from the “it seemed a good idea at the time” file…

In the interests of trying to get in the spirit of the forthcoming Olympics, I’ve been spending some of my down time when not filming the new series of Not Quite Art trying my hand at various Olympic sports. With the support of Lindy Burns’ drive program on ABC radio 774 in Melbourne, I’ve been rounding up the nation’s elite athletes, coaches and anyone else with the ability to humiliate me and trying to demonstrate my athletic ability.

It hasn’t worked.

First i went and tried Gymnastics with the Victorian Institute of Sport and you can see and listen to the results here.

Then i had a go at Pole Vault, which i did slightly better at. My brother bet me a beer that i couldn’t vault my own height and i’m pleased to say that i am now one beer in the black and about 4 metres below Olympic qualification level more on that here.

And just when i thought it couldn’t get any worse i discovered that i suck even more at rowing than i thought it was possible to suck.

Future weeks will include my experiences shooting, trying my hand at softball, attempting water polo, judo and wheelchair basketball.

A clue to this is the fact that i spent a small fortune on clothes, actually paid for a haircut (for the first time since the day NQA series one finished filming) on the weekend, and have been getting up to look in the mirror every twenty minutes while i am waiting to get started.

We are shooting in Melbourne over the next few days, Sydney over the weekend and Brisbane early next week. Then we’ll take a break before heading off to the Northern Territory and Singapore in July and probably doing some additional stuff in Sydney and Melbourne around that time.

The new series has a strong emphasis on the way in which communications technology is changing our culture: where we get it from, what inspires us, what we have access to, and where our culture makers find their audiences.

I am also on a desperate hunt for any long lead publicity. Let me make this clear: I AM ALMOST ENTIRELY WITHOUT STANDARDS and will be willing to do pretty much anything.

This includes (but is not in any way limited to):

• Doing that stupid section about the contents of my shopping basket in the weekend magazine bit of the paper (does that still exist?);
• Having my photo taken with zany props or dressed fashionably in the ludicrously expensive clothes I’ve just bought;
• Talk seriously about the issues raised in the series and my cultural obsessions more generally;
• Offer a detailed and thoughtful analysis about Australian culture and cultural policy;
• Gratuitously slag off stuff in a headline grabbing way;
• Do dodgy email interviews with even dodgier blogs;
• Talk about my favourite cafe/ book/ film/ travel destination/ sexual position/ football player/ graphic designer/ album/ Home and Away star/ computer etc (and make them up if necessary) to fill those little columns
• Submit myself for detailed, gruelling probing interviews complete with allowing you to make amateur psychological assessments;
• Be available to journos and camera folks who might want to come along and actually talk to us while filming;
• Talk about This Is Not Art (turning 10 this October!), LOUD, Noise, Next Wave, HSIV, the 2020 summit, challenging Olympic athletes, the Logies or anything else that i might have been involved in down the years.
• Write something for your publication (if i can find the time!)
• Just about anything else that gets you a little closer to meeting your word limit on deadline.

You get the idea. Seriously, i’d love to try and drum up some interest in the new series – so if anyone out there has any thoughts let me know. Happy to talk to newspapers, mags, blogs, radio, tv, zines, street press, student press, morse code publishers, and town criers. Actually that town crier idea is a winner – i might work that up.

The series will go to air in late October. So if you are involved in any kind of publication that is likely to be coming out around that time then drop me a line.