Academic Wooze

Changed my hours at uni today to part time so that I can work on my health. It will give me another semester to get it done, and alleviate some of the pressure of having to work when I am really ill. It needed to be done, really. Taking care of Zoo is important.

Will still be working on it as full-time as I am able though, but I now have the 'luxury' of knowing that when the pain gets too foul I can lie down/head to acupuncture/get a massage/drug myself up etc and deal with it properly. Just knowing I can do that has taken a load off already...

Zoo Thousand and Ten

So, its the end of the noughties and into the... umm.. tweens? Much has been posted about making the next decade better that the last, but for me, the last was pretty grand on the whole (not in chronological order):

* Met the Monster. Several times, before we finally got ourselves sorted into the MonsterUnit.
* Came out. Repeatedly. As queer, kinky, etc etc.
* Reconfigured my gender. Bye bye 'girl/woman', hello 'monster'. Works for me.
* Got my arse to Uni, got my BA (Hons) and am currently a proto-Dr. Still have days of feeling like a pretendy academic, and paranoia from the fact that I was a high-school drop out. Silly, I know.
* Started performing. Still scary. Still do it. Still not sure why, but I need to.
* Embraced my creative side again. Participated in tons of photo shoots, films, wrote for magazines etc.
* Began to read fiction again.
* Learned to dance in public without a) freaking out that I was unco or b) need to be really drunk to avoid a).
* Got a lot of ink and metal. Shaved my head a lot. Didn't shave anything else much.
* Travelled a lot, mostly on my own. Lived in Sweden, visited NZ a few times, wandered around Europe and San Fran and NYC. Lived in Perth for a bit too, which is kind of like another country.
* Lived in zillions of sharehouses. Mostly with amazing, if mad, people.
* Had many relationships of various durations and configurations. Most of them lovely at some point, lots of them quite hideous in parts. Learned a lot from all of it-- I hope.
* Was quite a trashy tart when not having relationships. Or sometimes whilst having them.
* Became part of a fabulous community of performers, artists, writers, perverts, bears, divas and other gorgeous, generous, and joyous eccentrics.
* Stopped taking many chemicals, or thinking that I had to.
* Learned to appreciate my body in entirely different ways.
* Saw stupid amounts of fantastic art around the world, and lots of great theatre.

And ever so much more. Looking forward to the next decade of consolidating and building on all of this. Bottoms up!

Paging Dr Zoo

Guess its time I post a PhD update for those of you not on Facecrack:

Full draft by the end of the month.
Intention to Submit handed in very early in the new year.
Spend three months proofing etc.
Submit around the end of March.

Then:
Wait for it to come back as passed with emendations! Or (preferably) no emendations, but definitely PASSED.
Fix up any emendations, and graduate sometime later in the year.

And:
Play more with Monster.
Chill.
Get me some part-time/casual work around Uni. Data entry and coding as I have been doing, copy centre, maybe some research assistant gigs. Something I don't have to take home with me, preferably no more than 3 or 4 days a week, and with reasonable monetary reward.
Hang out in lots of art galleries.
Generally be more hands-on. Learn to drive. Learn to sew. Make stuff with glass. Etc.
Save some $$$ to travel and get a decent camera and stuff.
Volunteer. Not sure where. Maybe something with youth? Or adult literacy.
Get to some outdoor festivals/doofs etc. Wander about the countryside for a bit with the Monster, seeing where we end up.
Write some journal articles.
Write more creative stuff.
Do some photo shoots.
Sleep a lot.
Party a lot.
Feel kind of chuffed with myself.

Much to do, but getting there. Somehow I think it will all work out just fine.

Food For Thought

The more I write, the more I eat. I get incredibly hungry when working on the PhD, with different cravings on different days. Sweet, savoury, slimy, sticky... my body/brain demands cheese, toast with jam, chocolate soy milk, baklava, tea, sultanas, almonds, cereal (at any time of day or night), rice cakes, fruit, fizzy drinks, fried rice, pancakes, juice, eggs-- sometimes many of these within a few hours. Its bizarre.

(Its either the writing or some sort of wormy condition. Daresay it ain't itchy where the sun don't shine, but maybe should get the Monster out with the torch just in case?)

The Art of Self-Defence

The city is a dangerous place.

Went away with the Monster and some mates for the weekend, a getaway gift that was too good to refuse. Gorgeous big farmhouse, alpacas, vegie patches, wombats, rabbits, a huge bath, comfy lounges, grand beds, fireplace and PEACE AND QUIET. It was a perfect place to write, to read, to just BE and think and... I didn't want to leave, just get broadband set up and my books and papers sent there and stay for the next six months.

Back to the ghetto now. And I am panicked already-- its too noisy, too crazy, too many people wanting something from me, too much stimulation, too many people clogging up the footpaths, too many trains going past my window. I feel totally drained by this place and this community sometimes, and despite my very conscious efforts before I left here not to surround myself with mad (in a bad, messy, manipulative, destructive,not-playing-well-with-others way) folks, it seems that yet again I am collecting broken things and wondering why I am stressed every time my phone makes a text beep at me, why I jump every time the land line rings or Monster tells me she has spoken to one of our friends. Its almost always something very dramatic, and predominately negative, or so it seems, and I am frigging exhausted by it, by them, by the social worker energy I feel I am expected to maintain all of the time.

Yes, I am more than aware that I am in many ways a broken thing too. I freak and I panic and get into quite mad cycles of thinking and rant and rave. Pot, kettle, black.

All the same, this is not a healthy place for me to be in. Compassionate burnout, an attack of selfishness, whatever you call, I can't do much more of this at the moment.

So will be pulling back on more social things than I had intended-- going to far less events, having many less coffee dates with the energy vampires, staying off chat from time to time, going offline entirely for days, hibernating, doing what I need to do (writing, creating, sleeping, reading, cuddling).

Damn, I hope it works.

Going Underground

'By dreaming and idleness and then by intense self-discipline does the artist live...'

--Winterson, Art Objects

And so to my thesis, my current and largest art project.

I have dreamed it, I have played with, I have slept on it, I have imagined it, I have read about it and talked about it and pondered it and now... The time has come to WRITE it. Properly. No holds barred.

Intense Self Discipline now. The winter has come and almost gone again, and the writing is starting to take shape. Maybe 40-50 000 words or so (out of 85-100 000) written up, more in draft form. Time to strap myself into the hard work of edit, rewrite, edit, rewrite, add, subtract, repeat. To this end, a note to my crew:

Please do not ask me to do any more shows until I have submitted the beast. If I get the urge to strut my stuff I'll contact you. At the moment I need to reserve most if not all of my creative juices for writing.

Please don't be offended if I don't make it out to a lot of events, or don't stay hugely long when I do. I still need the odd spot of trashiness and debauchery, but I also need plenty of shuteye and large chunks of time when I don't leave the house at all (except maybe for a wake-up walk or to fetch beer).

Visitors are often welcome though, so if you are in the hood and fancy a cuppa in our backyard then feel free to text. Just don't be offended if I say no, or postpone, or start getting twitchy when you're there and boot you out after an hour.

Creative fits are not predictable at all for me. My whims are erratic, and I my hours rather eccentric, and so I don't quite know what I will do next really. I will endeavour to behave responsibly, and not comitting to very much is the best way to avoid disappointing folk.

Still, deadline is February or thereabouts. Six months of Intense Self Discipline, lower levels of social activity, more chocolate, less beer and increased levels of incoherence adn delirium and it should be done.

Love you all! Wish me luck.

Academia Again

Something I have long suspected:

'Academics, who are sometimes critics, and often reviewers, are notorious fence-sitters, afraid of ridicule, afraid of risk, the risk and ridicule that the true writer faces every time she publishes. Unlike writers, academics draw a salary and this will be taken away from them if they back a wild horse. They do not back wild horses; they record the virtues of nags long past their prime.'

-- Winterson, Art Objects (191)

Art, And Lies

The other week Necortitties and I gave a lecture on queer art at the National Art School (for a predominately non-queer audience). It was a JOY to research and write up and discuss, and made me realise that maybe, just maybe, I can enjoy teaching somehow. And made me wonder (again) if perhaps I have been barking up the wrong tree, looking in the wrong places, in respects to my own academic work-- its the ART stuff that really grabs me, that makes me wet, that hardens me nipples and gets me wanting to read theory and to create beautiful objects. Writing as an artform, practice-led research, the materiality of words, art and alchemy, art and life, the texture of text...

But I digress. What I wanted to discuss here was some of the comments we got after the paper. We had given examples of some of our own performance pieces, mostly blood work, and naturally people were curious and so question time largely focussed on our process, the meaning of the pieces, the effect that making this work had on us and such. We answered as honestly as we could, and people seemed quite blown away at our frankness. I was surprised that they were surprised.

And this got me thinking about how being openly and brazenly queer contributed to my own answers. About how commonplace it has become for me to be fielding questions about how I live my life, my relationships, my kinks and such, about how the support of my community has given my the space and the strength in which to act upon and articulate my desires. About how I wasn't ashamed of anything I get up to, or who I get up to it with, and about how damned lucky I am to be where I am in the world. Blessed.

writer's block

post-super-meeting ramble:

what is my thesis? what it is about? what is my argument? what am i doing? what should i present when i talk about milk and art at a 'mother' conference next month? ARRRRGH!

she is asking question, making very helpful suggestions, new ways of attack and organisation and inquiry, new methods and means and then she is asking me what i think and all i can think is...

i don't want to directly dissect the discourses being played out, i don't want to write a chronological encycolopedia of the topic/subject/object at hand, i don't want contemplate what an image might mean in a certain context and set of socio-political-econonomic circumstances, i don't want to categorise and logic my passions out of existence, i don't want to argue as much as i want to discuss and play with and dance with and seduce and be seduced by... its not the cold hard 'logic' and 'facts' of the Matter that make me wet, (it never has, and what are the facts anyway)... its the affect, the visceral response, its the twitch and nausea and phantam letdown pains and the tears and the involuntary clenching and the smell and so much stuff that can't be put on a page in tables and figures and ordering of desire and substance and all organisation is pretty much arbitrary anyway and there are so many other connections that never get played out because time and notions of reality and history always take precedence and i just want to write the whole thing in fictocrit because it is the only way that even seems to come even close to capturing any of the essence andthe taste and the spirit and the memory of my subject and maybe i could just do the whole thing in interpretive dance?

inspired to write again at least...

International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology

Found this on a list...

The International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology is an
independent, peer reviewed, open access journal that welcomes
contributions from practitioners, researchers and policy makers
concerned with gender issues in and of science and technology. The
phrase gender, science and technology intends to encompass a wide
definition of these disciplines both in terms of methodological enquiry
as well as subjects of research.

Our aim is to help foster and provide a focus for constructive debate
and interchange of ideas between key players and experts in this field.
We are interested in sharing knowledge and new understandings in
relation to policy development, analysis of challenges and responses in
education and employment, critical insights from companies,
professional societies and other organisations about the impact of
gender equality strategies, as well as perspectives from science and
technology studies - and other related issues. We welcome contributions
from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary perspectives and
drawing on a wide range of theoretical frameworks.

We are currently inviting submissions in the form of
· Full empirical research and theoretical papers
· Practitioner case studies and reports
· Opinions and perspectives from policy-makers and industry
For further information, including details of the submission process:
http://genderandset.open.ac.uk
Any enquiries please contact Dr Jenni Carr - IJGST Project Officer
(j.g.carr@open.ac.uk)
The first issue will be published online in July 2009 (latest
submission for this issue is April 30th)
Further issues will appear every 4 months. We look forward to hearing
from you!

This journal is being produced by the Open University UK in partnership
with the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET

---------------------------------
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an
exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland
(SC 038302).

Quality Control

Oh Supervisor today raised the question of whether I want to make it a passable dissertation, or a truly fantastic one. Is it bad that I think I would be happy with the former? Would I? Not sure that I have any great insights to add to the debate really, and unless I amp up the more creative elements of it I'm not sure it will even approach fantastic at all. And how much time and energy do I want to/can I devote to making it amazing? Is it better to keep pushing away for an extra six months to make it super? Or am I better off just leaving it at adequate, quirky and able to pass and getting on with other projects? Given the probability that it won't be read by anyone but markers, folks, and friends, is it worth the effort?

I had just about resigned myself, in a good way, to academic middle-ground. I'm not bad as such, but realise that I am not the next Deleuze. I don't care much for an academic career per se, so its not an issue there. Part of me would still like to be lurking somewhere, with a university library card and access to interesting folk and opportunities, but its not where I see me most of the time. And now my supervisor asks this, out of the blue.


Yesterday I would have settled to just get the thing done, but the fact that she has explicitly posed the question made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could make it something magical.

Academic Business

Just had a short chat to my supervisor-- and she thinks my writing is fabulous. Structure is another point entirely, as always, but at least she is happy with the matter,if not the form. Seems to be a recurring theme in my various practices...

Question for the geeks though: how does one find the THESIS? I mean, I have written a LOT of words, and done a lot of research, but not sure where to find the POINT. I didn't start with a question as such-- maybe I should work out what the question is and I will find the crux of the matter?

Oh, and I just received a book on milk in art/photography from MIT (Milk and Melancholy). Not about boob-juice as such, but reckon it might have some interesting ideas and theories anyway. And its an aesthetically pleasing object. Books are a source of torment, but also sublime joy!

A Room Of My Own

The renovations are pretty much finished. I don't have to be cleaning anything, or paint anything, or dealing with real estate agents. My only household chore for the day is wait around for the air conditioning guy-- and maybe do some grocery shopping. I am not as sick as I have been for the last week. The Monster is out, meaning I don't have to be engaged in conversation or helping her with anything.

And so I decide that maybe NOW I can get some work done.

The cats run across my keyboard whilst I type. I can't get away from the cats, 'cos I need the internet to do catalogue searches and there in no wireless so I can't use it in another room. And yes, the cats have to be able to walk through here. The printer is producing blurry smudged text where my next crisp clean journal articles should be-- barely legible. The internet crunches and wheezes along, taking ridiculous amounts of time to download articles or even move between pages. I sit and fume and plot and dream of having a suitable working space.

All I want is a safe, clean, quiet study, with a big desk and bookshelves, a comfortable chair, a window, working wireless broadband and a functional printer. I WRITE A PHD. This is not some sort of hobby that I can just faff about with when not playing housewife or kitten-stepmother. IT'S ACTUALLY MY JOB. And I deserve to have a chance to do it well, without having to fight for every hour of uninterrupted work time or be forever traipsing the four corners of the city looking for printing facilities or a quiet library space that might have wireless I can access or staying up into the middle of the night in order to grab a few hours of uninterrupted EndNoting.

When I get back to Sydney I intend to get it. And I don't really care how. I'm in the last year of this project and don't have the time to play around any more.

(And yes, I do sort of feel like the uptight office freak sitting at my desk jealously defending my stack of rubber bands and staples, but so be it.)

Camouflage

In his work on mimicry, Callois makes it clear that an insect's ability to camouflage itself does not have a survival value-- it does not protect the creature from attack or death, and in fact may leave it open to even more hideous and unimaginable forms of death. He cites the case of a caterpillar cut in half by pruning shears, or the insect devoured by a member of its own species who mistakes it for a leaf...

Callois introduced a wanton dimension to his explanation of such features of animal existence. Camouflage, the capacity to imitate one's habitat or surroundings, far from performing an adaptive function, witnesses the captivation of a creature by its representations of and as space, its displacement from the center, from a "consciousness" of its place (in its body, located in space) to the perspective of another. The mimicking insect lives its camouflaged existence as not quite itself, as another.

-- Elizabeth Grosz, Animal Sex: Libido as Desire and Death

Leaky Academic

The fact that I spend all day contemplating bodily fluids in one form or another does not lessen the power they have to weaken my knees and cause my breathing to quicken. Indeed, its possible it makes it STRONGER.

Today I wallow in milk, corporeal gifting, the transfer of tissues between bodies. I've taken my shirt off in the heat, and I can smell myself curdling.

Somatechnics Conference 2009 *CANCELLED*

FYI, from the organisers:

Dear everyone,

It is with great regret that we write to inform you that unforseen circumstances have rendered necessary the cancellation of the proposed 5th Biennial Somatechnics Conference scheduled to take place in Sydney, April 16th-18th 2008. Our institution is currently immersed in the lead-up to a major restructure which commenced officially on January 1st. Unfortunately, the situation is such that there are significant uncertainties about future funding, as well as other structural issues which impact on our ability to proceed with our plans with confidence. We are extremely disappointed by this unforseen turn of events and would like to offer our profound apologies for any inconvenience this decision may cause. We are hoping that the current situation will resolve itself over the course of the coming year and that we may be able to consider rescheduling this event for 2010. We will of course, keep you updated, and thank you in advance for your understanding.

With apologies
Nikki Sullivan, Samantha Murray and Jessica Cadwallader

Nerd Is The Word

Don't quote me, but its possible, just ever-so-HUGELY, that I have worked out where to locate my theory and methodology in the thesis. Pretty much where most people would suggest, but as I tend to work in a non-linear, circular, rambling, fluid, contradictory way, it has taken me a while to make sense of it in terms of my own project.

And I may even have a few ideas on WHAT my theory and methodology is! Wooohoo!

Just don't ask me for my THESIS yet.

Dance Your PhD!

Call to Scientists: 'Dance Your Ph.D.'

Stir-crazy doctoral students who want diversions from their dissertations have a new option: “Dance Your Ph.D.” The American Association for the Advancement of Science is sponsoring the project, a contest inspired by a wildly successful one last year at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna. “The human body is an excellent medium for communicating science — perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting,” says the contest’s Web site. This year’s “Dance Your Ph.D.” is open to anyone with or in pursuit of a Ph.D. in science or related fields, according to the AAAS. All contestants must upload to YouTube a video of a dance performance depicting their research. So far, there’s some stellar lindy hop and elegant ballet.

In one video, a woman in fringed bell-bottoms hula-hoops with fire to Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round.” It’s a fresh take on “Hydrodynamic Trail Detection in Marine Organisms,” Christin Murphy’s dissertation at the University of South Florida. Lara Park, of Tufts University, was delighted to choreograph her research on “the role of folate in epigenetic regulation of colon carcinogenesis.” Once she heard about the contest, Ms. Park, a lifelong dancer and nutritional biochemist, says she “didn’t stop thinking about it.”

In her number, dancers representing DNA unwind their bodies to be transcribed. But alas, a diet deficient in folate — a vitamin found in leafy greens — inhibits that process, as dancers hold tight back bends over those in the role of DNA. In the end, the chaotic crowd congeals into a large tumor. Ms. Park, who made the video in two hours, says dance can “improve how people understand some of these concepts.” The idea is similar to the choreographer Liz Lerman’s “nonfiction dancing” and the explanation of research at the Large Hadron Collider, set to a rap beat, that was posted last summer on YouTube. Just a few days remain to “Dance Your Ph.D.” On Monday a panel of judges will name four winners. Each will have the chance to work with professional dancers to present an original work at the AAAS’s annual meeting, in February. —Sara Lipka

Somatechnics Conference 2009 *Call For Papers*

Usually a very interesting conference, for a number of reasons. Me certainly not presenting at this one due to PhD/life commitments, but I'll be attending for sure.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Fifth International Somatechnics Conference: The Technologisation of Bodies and Selves

Call for papers: Abstracts are invited for an international conference to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 16th-18th 2009. Abstracts should be 300-500 words and should be forwarded to A/Prof Nikki Sullivan and Ms Jess Cadwallader at the addresses listed below. Proposals for panels and for performance pieces are welcome.

“Somatechnics” is a recently coined term used to highlight the inextricability of soma and techné, of the body (as a culturally intelligible construct) and the techniques (dispositifs and ‘hard technologies’) in and through which bodies are formed and transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic of the ‘and’, indicating that technés are not something we add to or apply to the body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices.

Possible topics:
• Somatechnologies of the self (‘non-mainstream’ body modification, body sculpting, performance, fashion, drug use, ‘self-mutilation’, religious practice, etc)
• medical somatechnologies (cosmetic, reproductive, imaging, corrective, sex (re)assignment, implantation, enhancement, bio-techs, public health initiatives, etc)
• somatechnics of law
• somatechnologies of gender, sexuality, race, class, etc
• somatechnologies of normalcy and pathology
• somatechnics of war
• somatechnologies of the post-human (cyborgs, nanotechnology, virtuality, etc)
• soma-ethics

Deadline for abstracts: November 30th 2008. Keynote Speakers include:
Claudia Castaneda (Brandeis University). Nichola Rumsey (University of the West of England).Jennifer Terry (University of California, Irvine).

Email: nikki.sullivan@scmp.mq.edu.au or somatechnicsadmin@gmail.com
Phone: 61 (0)2 9850 8760. Or have a looksy at the Somatechnics Research Centre Website: http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au.

Morrissey Symposium!

The Department of Sociology and The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick are convening a second one-day symposium on Morrissey.

Title: The Songs That Saved Your Life (Again): A Symposium on Morrissey.

When: May 1st 2009.

Where: University of Limerick, IRELAND.

Theme: This is an open-call for papers. We invite scholars working across a range of disciplines (such as, cultural studies, gender studies, musicology, media studies, popular music studies and sociology) to propose papers concerning Morrissey's work as a solo-artiste. Possible paper themes might include: Morrissey and masculinities; Morrissey's use of sexual and other forms of ambiguity; Fandom and Morrissey - and the phenomenon of Latino fans in particular; Morrissey and (identity) politics; and Morrissey and song-writing.

Publication Plans: It is intended to publish an edited and refereed book based on a selection of the symposium's papers.

Deadline: Abstracts of 250 words should be emailed to eoin.devereux@ul.ie
The closing date for abstracts is January 9th 2009.