Robert Nelson | University of Melbourne (original) (raw)

Papers by Robert Nelson

Porphyra, 2023

This article argues that the ancient Greeks never sighed or at least they failed to notice if the... more This article argues that the ancient Greeks never sighed or at least they failed to notice if they ever did. A sigh is defined as an audibly pressurized but unvoiced breath, and it is first encountered among Greek writers in Byzantium. The article proposes that classical and Hellenistic culture provided no reason to sigh, but the Christian call to compunction created a need for a piously rueful expression among the devout of Byzantium. The sigh in the east is thus born amid throes of remorse and contrition, while its development in the west would be substantially amorous.

Enquiry: A Journal for Architectural Research, 2017

Summary Though an architectural archetype for many centuries, courtyards have never been well def... more Summary Though an architectural archetype for many centuries, courtyards have never been well defined in the history of language. Combining phenomenological and philological research methods, this article proposes a timeline in which courtyards grew with great architectonic presence as a vivacious stage for human interaction, but without a corresponding lexical stability to reflect their function and presence. The article reveals that the ambiguities of contemporary usage of the word 'courtyard' are not unprecedented; because in all epochs and across key European languages, the term is weak and ill-defined. Courtyards have a unique charm which the article characterizes as social presence and which is explored through historical narratives. The article argues that the relevant history of language and narrative about courtyards not only helps reveal their enchanting spatiality but also helps us imagine an architectonic destiny for courtyards against the many factors that discourage their contemporary proliferation.

JMM: The Journal of Music and Meaning, 2017

Recent literature encourages an exploration of musical meaning through metaphor, as the affective... more Recent literature encourages an exploration of musical meaning through metaphor, as the affective character of music is allusive, evocative and seldom literal. But while in theory metaphor can explain aspects of musical meaning, in practice the definitions of metaphor are as vague and various as the abstract sounds that they would elucidate. Scholars have not

Dr Tosaki drawing on the beach in Okinawa, Japan, photo Miyako Tamasudare Brainwave the inventive... more Dr Tosaki drawing on the beach in Okinawa, Japan, photo Miyako Tamasudare Brainwave the inventive rhythm of Eiichi Tosaki's bimanual drawing Among the many valuable resources that Dr Eiichi Tosaki has created for us to understand his Bimanual Coordination Drawing project are certain photographs of the artist drawing in the sand at the beach. These documents of the physical action of using two hands simultaneously to make a drawing are unselfconsciously performative, where the rhythms of the drawing that we can imagine running through the entire body of the artist are contrasted with the rhythms of nature. The site must have been chosen for the convenience of wet sand-which regularly provides a kind of clean slate, on the condition that the drawing will be effaced with the next tide-but this beach-as-canvas also resonates in my mind with its compelling background of the recurring waves that fold themselves onto the shore with their repeated roar. The remarkable element in both the waves that the tide drives to shore and the drawing that Eiichi performs is that they are both regular and random and neither at the same time. Eiichi describes his drawing method in terms of a regulatory impulse. 'My art is ruleoriented'; but he immediately qualifies this rigidity by explaining that the rules are for the sake of improvisation, where 'a modular, combinatorial vocabulary for improvisational drawing' 1 affords the necessary leaps of imagination and impulse that are not governed by the rules. His interest in Wittgenstein is telling, because the 1 Eiichi Tosaki, Series: Unfolding BCD, Part I, §1; cf. 'I think my work contributes an accessible system of rule-making for art, in the form of a practice which can be used by anyone. I follow the rules (or grammar) that I have established through my own practice of art making. "Following a rule" draws from late Wittgensteinian philosophy which, within a rule, allows a plethora of manifestations of action.' ibid. §7 4 genial Viennese philosopher observes that all games are controlled by rules but these rules, as essential as they may at first appear, do not define the game. You cannot get an idea of the game of chess, for example, simply by reading the rules that govern chess. The only way to understand chess is to play it or watch other people playing it. Chess is neither comprehended nor exhausted by its rules. You will not even understand what 'King' means unless you see the game in action and already understand something about the game of chess or analogous games. 2 And similarly, while Eiichi labours to create a chess-like structure of rules, the moves that he makes are always instigated by an improvisatory or generative impulse. 'My BCD work testifies to the unity of art production, theory and grammar within practice. I'm seeking for a condition of art in terms of truth (or authenticity), keeping in mind that "the truth" is not singular but multiple, plural and generative. 3 'My final goal', he says, 'will be the generation of "nature" itself by myself, which is unintentional and non-teleological.' 4 Nature, by chance, is all around Eiichi when he draws at the beach. The waves that

Untitled. Art Gallery of Ballarat Association, 2021

The essay argues that the uncanny collapsing of time and movement in photography has ancient root... more The essay argues that the uncanny collapsing of time and movement in photography has ancient roots related to the dream and the wink. Beginning with the explosive promiscuity of photographic images on the internet, the essay explores philological cues in our necessary vocabulary of instants and moments to propose that digital images within social media are constructed as a wink. The phenomenology of this winking enables us to distinguish the special nature of art photography which does not wink but rather argues, speculates and dreams.

Robert Owen: a book of encounters, 2020

Pictures at the end of visuality I cannot remember the last keystroke that I made on a typewriter... more Pictures at the end of visuality I cannot remember the last keystroke that I made on a typewriter. I have to reconstruct the wistful attempts that I made to rehabilitate the naïve technology against the patent superiority of the computer; and that way I can conjecture a date for my last true keystroke. But in effect, the swansong is forgotten and my memory is deaf to the last clack.

Feminist perspectives on art: contemporary outtakes, 2018

Synopsis Visuality and feminism intersect tangibly over fat. By virtue of their gender, women fac... more Synopsis Visuality and feminism intersect tangibly over fat. By virtue of their gender, women face discrimination over bodyweight and are tyrannized by diet regimes. Beginning with an artistic critique of female fat-shaming, this chapter investigates the historical roots of widespread aesthetic prejudice against larger women. Most male bodies from art history could be imported into a contemporary fashion magazine, whereas the female bodies from the museum would mostly be rejected. Could art history, with its often voluptuous bodies in artists like Rubens and Gentileschi, be an antidote to the fat-intolerance of today? This essay argues that contemporary representations of fat have something to learn from these historical images, in particular the way they portray fat more with humour than with reproof, and for the intersection between the voluptuous nature of the medium (such as paint) and subject. A feminist perspective of fat in art history needs developing. This chapter, using philological methods, analyses the still under-theorised overlap of the aesthetic and the moral over fat.

Agenda Contemporary Art Magazine, 1993

This is a recovered file not elsewhere available of 'Semiotic history of the fold (Deleuzions of ... more This is a recovered file not elsewhere available of 'Semiotic history of the fold (Deleuzions of grandeur)', Agenda Contemporary Art Magazine, Issue 33, September 1993, Supplement Dossier on Gilles Deleuze, pp. 27-30. Alas the footnotes are missing. s e m i o t i c h i s t o r y o f t h e f o l d (DELEUZIONS OF GRANDEUR) Have you noticed the welter of folds in contemporary art? They luxuriate everywhere, whether as Mark Webb's lugubrious phthalo labia, Janenne Eaton's exquisite mappings of abstract rhythms or Lyndell Brown's and Charles Green's resonant quotation of famous passages of folds from the old masters. Why this reinvention of the Baroque? It is tempting to suggest a connection between the recent enthusiasm for folds and the popularity of a remarkable text by Gilles Deleuze, The Fold [Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque] of 1988. Interest in the Deleuzian text and the representation of folds in contemporary art may not amount to a direct influence but there could be a common cause: there is an attraction at this moment in our history-typically postmodern-as we take a metaphor and an image from a remote history and ply them over themselves, now crossing over chronologies, now crumpling narratives, now doubling a forceful order over the evasive layering of texts, now spelling out a compulsive allegory for the contemporary confusion of signs.

In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wra... more In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wrappers on a white background. There is no clue to the purpose or location of the wrappers, which seem strangely abstract, strangely because they are suspended in white space without any trace of contact with the world. As you scour their perimeters, you notice that the crumpled laminated papers cast no shadows. Under the title of Vestiges, the items are themselves somehow without vestiges, stripped of the purchase that they might otherwise have on their glassy surface, photographically denied an imprint and a marker of their objecthood. You imagine the flimsy response to gravity of the fragile crushed sheets, forced into three dimensions by an incidental act of violence and now, upon being cast down, coming to rest uncomfortably, barely touching their supports. The support is what? An inscrutable whiteness, possibly a screen with light from behind that would blanch out any shadows. There is still plenty of light on the wrappers, which retain the cheerful colour of their original purpose; but the same light that expresses the brightness of the paper no longer registers the contact and presence of the object that it normally underscores with shadows.

For sixteen minutes Stelarc dangles from a wire fitted with multiple sharkhooks that pierce his s... more For sixteen minutes Stelarc dangles from a wire fitted with multiple sharkhooks that pierce his skin. The spectacle is beautiful rather than lurid, awesomely confronting when you first witness the event and iconic in hindsight. Many photographs of Stelarc's suspensions from 1978 to 2009 attest to the majesty of the act. 1 With a moody sense of atmosphere and filmic location, some images show Stelarc hovering over a spectacular void, hoisted aloft by a crane, or strung out over the street between city buildings or on a rustic gantry by the sea.

Books by Robert Nelson

museum of innocence, 2024

Commemorating the photographic artist Polixeni Papapetrou (1960–2018)

museum of innocence, 2023

An unseemly squabble arose between Byzantium and Rome in the eleventh century over the kind of br... more An unseemly squabble arose between Byzantium and Rome in the eleventh century over the kind of bread that should be used in the sacrament. The azyme controversy, as it is known, was so acrimonious and silly that scholars still struggle to explain something so trivial erupting to the point of schism. This book reverses the normal line of inquiry: instead of asking what we can say about a futile argument over bread, it asks what useful things does the polemic tell us about bread itself? The Byzantine dispute is one of many telling examples where bread attracts conceited and headstrong narratives, commencing with the false belief that certain cultures were too primitive to have developed techniques for baking bread—like the ancient traditions of First-Nations Australia—and ending with zealous dieticians today who want to abolish wheat in the pantry.

Dwelling especially on the symbolic prestige of bread in the Christian epoch, this book identifies visceral historical patterns, where the more bread means to people and their institutions, the more it becomes subject to anxieties over symbolic proprietorship. There are many jealous regulatory impulses around the spiritual flourishing of bread; but none of them makes sense without appreciating the underlying viscerality attached to our affection for one kind of bread or another, or a given ritual for eating it. In order to analyse the several reactions to bread and its myths, the book proposes a history of viscerality, which invokes several contemporary themes related to dietary anxieties and a fear of bread. The book narrates how bread—at various times and for different tragic reasons—can lose its innocence.

Moral sustainability and cycling: An ecology of ambition for a hyperactive planet, 2010

This book argues that green resolutions, like commuting by bicycle, are sadly unsustainable for t... more This book argues that green resolutions, like commuting by bicycle, are sadly unsustainable for the contemporary competitive individual. Coining the term 'moral sustainability', the text identifies a renewable resolve which so far has eluded all frameworks of reform. The book analyses how we formulate ambitions, how we get to work, set up images for ourselves and use our bodies. Developing for the first time a phenomenology of the electric bike, this book answers the unsolved puzzle: how environmentalism and fitness can become sustainable for the individual locked into pressured aspirations.

Craft Victoria, Melbourne, 2014

Contentment has evaded civilizations for thousands of years. But now the quest is ecologically ur... more Contentment has evaded civilizations for thousands of years. But now the quest is ecologically urgent because, in lacking contentment, we consume energy and goods unsustainably. Proposing the first history of contentment, this book identifies satisfaction not with pos- sessions but the contemplation of them in poetic terms. Furniture makes for contentment in two ways: first, it physically creates a context in which we are happy to converse with minimal energy consumption; and second, each piece of furniture can become an object of contempla- tion and affection, in a rich poetic matrix of associations, histories and metaphors.Examining the functions of everyday objects, this book establishes the ecological value of furniture in its delivery of contentment and explores how sustainability can be poetically nur- tured by ruminating on design.

Planning Institute of Australia, 2011

Even when spacious and visually charming, Australian urban environments have a hostile side. Coi... more Even when spacious and visually charming, Australian urban environments have a hostile side. Coining the term antisocial space, this book uncovers the hidden unfriendliness behind our most cherished aesthetics. Leafy and low, our generous spaces are designed for keeping people apart from one another rather than for coming together. The antisocial dimension is shared by much contemporary architecture, which shuns the life of the street. And it is not just space that is antisocial. Australian lifestyles and aspirations also discourage the feeling of living in a society. This book reveals how antisocial space is related to waste and how it produces an intolerance of people, resulting in cities with among the worst ecological footprint in the world.

writing-pad, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2009

This book presents an analysis of artistic ambition, exploring the judicious egocentricity that a... more This book presents an analysis of artistic ambition, exploring the judicious egocentricity that accounts for major literary, musical or artistic works. The archaic concept of jealousy is invoked to describe the fraught ambition that propels artistic work; and from this candid recognition of artistic desires, a methodology is hatched for reconciling the anxiously selfish zeal of artistic motivation with the poetic loftiness of artistic aspiration and its rehearsals in academia. The text confronts the new sanitized conditions brought about by the global assimilation of the practicing arts into universities. What happens psychologically to the artist or composer or writer who is absorbed into academic research? The text provides a conceptual survival guide for artists of all kinds who seek the academic dignity of artistic inspiration.

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011

an aesthetic analysis of representational technique

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the tongue, 2019

In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wra... more In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wrappers on a white background. There is no clue to the purpose or location of the wrappers, which seem strangely abstract, strangely because they are suspended in white space without any trace of contact with the world. As you scour their perimeters, you notice that the crumpled laminated papers cast no shadows. Under the title of Vestiges, the items are themselves somehow without vestiges, stripped of the purchase that they might otherwise have on their glassy surface, photographically denied an imprint and a marker of their objecthood. You imagine the flimsy response to gravity of the fragile crushed sheets, forced into three dimensions by an incidental act of violence and now, upon being cast down, coming to rest uncomfortably, barely touching their supports. The support is what? An inscrutable whiteness, possibly a screen with light from behind that would blanch out any shadows. There is still plenty of light on the wrappers, which retain the cheerful colour of their original purpose; but the same light that expresses the brightness of the paper no longer registers the contact and presence of the object that it normally underscores with shadows.

Social Cohesion in Australia, 2007

Globalization and social cohesion have been related, and for obvious reasons. The patriotic jealo... more Globalization and social cohesion have been related, and for obvious reasons. The patriotic jealousy that stimulates chauvinism and cultural division is apparently overcome by globalization. With globalization comes the sharing of social aspirations; they are driven by international energies, in which people's fortunes are no longer determined by parochial privileges-vigilantly guarded by protectionism-but transnational corporate structures and ambitions which bring together people of diverse background.

Porphyra, 2023

This article argues that the ancient Greeks never sighed or at least they failed to notice if the... more This article argues that the ancient Greeks never sighed or at least they failed to notice if they ever did. A sigh is defined as an audibly pressurized but unvoiced breath, and it is first encountered among Greek writers in Byzantium. The article proposes that classical and Hellenistic culture provided no reason to sigh, but the Christian call to compunction created a need for a piously rueful expression among the devout of Byzantium. The sigh in the east is thus born amid throes of remorse and contrition, while its development in the west would be substantially amorous.

Enquiry: A Journal for Architectural Research, 2017

Summary Though an architectural archetype for many centuries, courtyards have never been well def... more Summary Though an architectural archetype for many centuries, courtyards have never been well defined in the history of language. Combining phenomenological and philological research methods, this article proposes a timeline in which courtyards grew with great architectonic presence as a vivacious stage for human interaction, but without a corresponding lexical stability to reflect their function and presence. The article reveals that the ambiguities of contemporary usage of the word 'courtyard' are not unprecedented; because in all epochs and across key European languages, the term is weak and ill-defined. Courtyards have a unique charm which the article characterizes as social presence and which is explored through historical narratives. The article argues that the relevant history of language and narrative about courtyards not only helps reveal their enchanting spatiality but also helps us imagine an architectonic destiny for courtyards against the many factors that discourage their contemporary proliferation.

JMM: The Journal of Music and Meaning, 2017

Recent literature encourages an exploration of musical meaning through metaphor, as the affective... more Recent literature encourages an exploration of musical meaning through metaphor, as the affective character of music is allusive, evocative and seldom literal. But while in theory metaphor can explain aspects of musical meaning, in practice the definitions of metaphor are as vague and various as the abstract sounds that they would elucidate. Scholars have not

Dr Tosaki drawing on the beach in Okinawa, Japan, photo Miyako Tamasudare Brainwave the inventive... more Dr Tosaki drawing on the beach in Okinawa, Japan, photo Miyako Tamasudare Brainwave the inventive rhythm of Eiichi Tosaki's bimanual drawing Among the many valuable resources that Dr Eiichi Tosaki has created for us to understand his Bimanual Coordination Drawing project are certain photographs of the artist drawing in the sand at the beach. These documents of the physical action of using two hands simultaneously to make a drawing are unselfconsciously performative, where the rhythms of the drawing that we can imagine running through the entire body of the artist are contrasted with the rhythms of nature. The site must have been chosen for the convenience of wet sand-which regularly provides a kind of clean slate, on the condition that the drawing will be effaced with the next tide-but this beach-as-canvas also resonates in my mind with its compelling background of the recurring waves that fold themselves onto the shore with their repeated roar. The remarkable element in both the waves that the tide drives to shore and the drawing that Eiichi performs is that they are both regular and random and neither at the same time. Eiichi describes his drawing method in terms of a regulatory impulse. 'My art is ruleoriented'; but he immediately qualifies this rigidity by explaining that the rules are for the sake of improvisation, where 'a modular, combinatorial vocabulary for improvisational drawing' 1 affords the necessary leaps of imagination and impulse that are not governed by the rules. His interest in Wittgenstein is telling, because the 1 Eiichi Tosaki, Series: Unfolding BCD, Part I, §1; cf. 'I think my work contributes an accessible system of rule-making for art, in the form of a practice which can be used by anyone. I follow the rules (or grammar) that I have established through my own practice of art making. "Following a rule" draws from late Wittgensteinian philosophy which, within a rule, allows a plethora of manifestations of action.' ibid. §7 4 genial Viennese philosopher observes that all games are controlled by rules but these rules, as essential as they may at first appear, do not define the game. You cannot get an idea of the game of chess, for example, simply by reading the rules that govern chess. The only way to understand chess is to play it or watch other people playing it. Chess is neither comprehended nor exhausted by its rules. You will not even understand what 'King' means unless you see the game in action and already understand something about the game of chess or analogous games. 2 And similarly, while Eiichi labours to create a chess-like structure of rules, the moves that he makes are always instigated by an improvisatory or generative impulse. 'My BCD work testifies to the unity of art production, theory and grammar within practice. I'm seeking for a condition of art in terms of truth (or authenticity), keeping in mind that "the truth" is not singular but multiple, plural and generative. 3 'My final goal', he says, 'will be the generation of "nature" itself by myself, which is unintentional and non-teleological.' 4 Nature, by chance, is all around Eiichi when he draws at the beach. The waves that

Untitled. Art Gallery of Ballarat Association, 2021

The essay argues that the uncanny collapsing of time and movement in photography has ancient root... more The essay argues that the uncanny collapsing of time and movement in photography has ancient roots related to the dream and the wink. Beginning with the explosive promiscuity of photographic images on the internet, the essay explores philological cues in our necessary vocabulary of instants and moments to propose that digital images within social media are constructed as a wink. The phenomenology of this winking enables us to distinguish the special nature of art photography which does not wink but rather argues, speculates and dreams.

Robert Owen: a book of encounters, 2020

Pictures at the end of visuality I cannot remember the last keystroke that I made on a typewriter... more Pictures at the end of visuality I cannot remember the last keystroke that I made on a typewriter. I have to reconstruct the wistful attempts that I made to rehabilitate the naïve technology against the patent superiority of the computer; and that way I can conjecture a date for my last true keystroke. But in effect, the swansong is forgotten and my memory is deaf to the last clack.

Feminist perspectives on art: contemporary outtakes, 2018

Synopsis Visuality and feminism intersect tangibly over fat. By virtue of their gender, women fac... more Synopsis Visuality and feminism intersect tangibly over fat. By virtue of their gender, women face discrimination over bodyweight and are tyrannized by diet regimes. Beginning with an artistic critique of female fat-shaming, this chapter investigates the historical roots of widespread aesthetic prejudice against larger women. Most male bodies from art history could be imported into a contemporary fashion magazine, whereas the female bodies from the museum would mostly be rejected. Could art history, with its often voluptuous bodies in artists like Rubens and Gentileschi, be an antidote to the fat-intolerance of today? This essay argues that contemporary representations of fat have something to learn from these historical images, in particular the way they portray fat more with humour than with reproof, and for the intersection between the voluptuous nature of the medium (such as paint) and subject. A feminist perspective of fat in art history needs developing. This chapter, using philological methods, analyses the still under-theorised overlap of the aesthetic and the moral over fat.

Agenda Contemporary Art Magazine, 1993

This is a recovered file not elsewhere available of 'Semiotic history of the fold (Deleuzions of ... more This is a recovered file not elsewhere available of 'Semiotic history of the fold (Deleuzions of grandeur)', Agenda Contemporary Art Magazine, Issue 33, September 1993, Supplement Dossier on Gilles Deleuze, pp. 27-30. Alas the footnotes are missing. s e m i o t i c h i s t o r y o f t h e f o l d (DELEUZIONS OF GRANDEUR) Have you noticed the welter of folds in contemporary art? They luxuriate everywhere, whether as Mark Webb's lugubrious phthalo labia, Janenne Eaton's exquisite mappings of abstract rhythms or Lyndell Brown's and Charles Green's resonant quotation of famous passages of folds from the old masters. Why this reinvention of the Baroque? It is tempting to suggest a connection between the recent enthusiasm for folds and the popularity of a remarkable text by Gilles Deleuze, The Fold [Le pli: Leibniz et le baroque] of 1988. Interest in the Deleuzian text and the representation of folds in contemporary art may not amount to a direct influence but there could be a common cause: there is an attraction at this moment in our history-typically postmodern-as we take a metaphor and an image from a remote history and ply them over themselves, now crossing over chronologies, now crumpling narratives, now doubling a forceful order over the evasive layering of texts, now spelling out a compulsive allegory for the contemporary confusion of signs.

In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wra... more In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wrappers on a white background. There is no clue to the purpose or location of the wrappers, which seem strangely abstract, strangely because they are suspended in white space without any trace of contact with the world. As you scour their perimeters, you notice that the crumpled laminated papers cast no shadows. Under the title of Vestiges, the items are themselves somehow without vestiges, stripped of the purchase that they might otherwise have on their glassy surface, photographically denied an imprint and a marker of their objecthood. You imagine the flimsy response to gravity of the fragile crushed sheets, forced into three dimensions by an incidental act of violence and now, upon being cast down, coming to rest uncomfortably, barely touching their supports. The support is what? An inscrutable whiteness, possibly a screen with light from behind that would blanch out any shadows. There is still plenty of light on the wrappers, which retain the cheerful colour of their original purpose; but the same light that expresses the brightness of the paper no longer registers the contact and presence of the object that it normally underscores with shadows.

For sixteen minutes Stelarc dangles from a wire fitted with multiple sharkhooks that pierce his s... more For sixteen minutes Stelarc dangles from a wire fitted with multiple sharkhooks that pierce his skin. The spectacle is beautiful rather than lurid, awesomely confronting when you first witness the event and iconic in hindsight. Many photographs of Stelarc's suspensions from 1978 to 2009 attest to the majesty of the act. 1 With a moody sense of atmosphere and filmic location, some images show Stelarc hovering over a spectacular void, hoisted aloft by a crane, or strung out over the street between city buildings or on a rustic gantry by the sea.

museum of innocence, 2024

Commemorating the photographic artist Polixeni Papapetrou (1960–2018)

museum of innocence, 2023

An unseemly squabble arose between Byzantium and Rome in the eleventh century over the kind of br... more An unseemly squabble arose between Byzantium and Rome in the eleventh century over the kind of bread that should be used in the sacrament. The azyme controversy, as it is known, was so acrimonious and silly that scholars still struggle to explain something so trivial erupting to the point of schism. This book reverses the normal line of inquiry: instead of asking what we can say about a futile argument over bread, it asks what useful things does the polemic tell us about bread itself? The Byzantine dispute is one of many telling examples where bread attracts conceited and headstrong narratives, commencing with the false belief that certain cultures were too primitive to have developed techniques for baking bread—like the ancient traditions of First-Nations Australia—and ending with zealous dieticians today who want to abolish wheat in the pantry.

Dwelling especially on the symbolic prestige of bread in the Christian epoch, this book identifies visceral historical patterns, where the more bread means to people and their institutions, the more it becomes subject to anxieties over symbolic proprietorship. There are many jealous regulatory impulses around the spiritual flourishing of bread; but none of them makes sense without appreciating the underlying viscerality attached to our affection for one kind of bread or another, or a given ritual for eating it. In order to analyse the several reactions to bread and its myths, the book proposes a history of viscerality, which invokes several contemporary themes related to dietary anxieties and a fear of bread. The book narrates how bread—at various times and for different tragic reasons—can lose its innocence.

Moral sustainability and cycling: An ecology of ambition for a hyperactive planet, 2010

This book argues that green resolutions, like commuting by bicycle, are sadly unsustainable for t... more This book argues that green resolutions, like commuting by bicycle, are sadly unsustainable for the contemporary competitive individual. Coining the term 'moral sustainability', the text identifies a renewable resolve which so far has eluded all frameworks of reform. The book analyses how we formulate ambitions, how we get to work, set up images for ourselves and use our bodies. Developing for the first time a phenomenology of the electric bike, this book answers the unsolved puzzle: how environmentalism and fitness can become sustainable for the individual locked into pressured aspirations.

Craft Victoria, Melbourne, 2014

Contentment has evaded civilizations for thousands of years. But now the quest is ecologically ur... more Contentment has evaded civilizations for thousands of years. But now the quest is ecologically urgent because, in lacking contentment, we consume energy and goods unsustainably. Proposing the first history of contentment, this book identifies satisfaction not with pos- sessions but the contemplation of them in poetic terms. Furniture makes for contentment in two ways: first, it physically creates a context in which we are happy to converse with minimal energy consumption; and second, each piece of furniture can become an object of contempla- tion and affection, in a rich poetic matrix of associations, histories and metaphors.Examining the functions of everyday objects, this book establishes the ecological value of furniture in its delivery of contentment and explores how sustainability can be poetically nur- tured by ruminating on design.

Planning Institute of Australia, 2011

Even when spacious and visually charming, Australian urban environments have a hostile side. Coi... more Even when spacious and visually charming, Australian urban environments have a hostile side. Coining the term antisocial space, this book uncovers the hidden unfriendliness behind our most cherished aesthetics. Leafy and low, our generous spaces are designed for keeping people apart from one another rather than for coming together. The antisocial dimension is shared by much contemporary architecture, which shuns the life of the street. And it is not just space that is antisocial. Australian lifestyles and aspirations also discourage the feeling of living in a society. This book reveals how antisocial space is related to waste and how it produces an intolerance of people, resulting in cities with among the worst ecological footprint in the world.

writing-pad, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2009

This book presents an analysis of artistic ambition, exploring the judicious egocentricity that a... more This book presents an analysis of artistic ambition, exploring the judicious egocentricity that accounts for major literary, musical or artistic works. The archaic concept of jealousy is invoked to describe the fraught ambition that propels artistic work; and from this candid recognition of artistic desires, a methodology is hatched for reconciling the anxiously selfish zeal of artistic motivation with the poetic loftiness of artistic aspiration and its rehearsals in academia. The text confronts the new sanitized conditions brought about by the global assimilation of the practicing arts into universities. What happens psychologically to the artist or composer or writer who is absorbed into academic research? The text provides a conceptual survival guide for artists of all kinds who seek the academic dignity of artistic inspiration.

Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011

an aesthetic analysis of representational technique

Eugenia Raskopoulos: Vestiges of the tongue, 2019

In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wra... more In a slick and crisp body of work called Vestiges , Eugenia Raskopoulos photographs discarded wrappers on a white background. There is no clue to the purpose or location of the wrappers, which seem strangely abstract, strangely because they are suspended in white space without any trace of contact with the world. As you scour their perimeters, you notice that the crumpled laminated papers cast no shadows. Under the title of Vestiges, the items are themselves somehow without vestiges, stripped of the purchase that they might otherwise have on their glassy surface, photographically denied an imprint and a marker of their objecthood. You imagine the flimsy response to gravity of the fragile crushed sheets, forced into three dimensions by an incidental act of violence and now, upon being cast down, coming to rest uncomfortably, barely touching their supports. The support is what? An inscrutable whiteness, possibly a screen with light from behind that would blanch out any shadows. There is still plenty of light on the wrappers, which retain the cheerful colour of their original purpose; but the same light that expresses the brightness of the paper no longer registers the contact and presence of the object that it normally underscores with shadows.

Social Cohesion in Australia, 2007

Globalization and social cohesion have been related, and for obvious reasons. The patriotic jealo... more Globalization and social cohesion have been related, and for obvious reasons. The patriotic jealousy that stimulates chauvinism and cultural division is apparently overcome by globalization. With globalization comes the sharing of social aspirations; they are driven by international energies, in which people's fortunes are no longer determined by parochial privileges-vigilantly guarded by protectionism-but transnational corporate structures and ambitions which bring together people of diverse background.

Chora Seven: intervals in the philosophy of architecture, 2016

There is much contention over the design and regulation of streets: what kind of buildings and bu... more There is much contention over the design and regulation of streets: what kind of buildings and businesses are allowed along them, how many vehicles and what type, how much their spaces afford cultural capital and create friendly pedestrian precincts, and what rights a citizen has to the space and even the sunlight. 1 There are also fervent environmental debates about the regulation of urban density, as sprawling automotive cities consume great amounts of fossil fuel. These debates consider what kinds of amenity or conservation should rise to priority, and therefore what kinds of streets a community will accept. 2 [Fig. 1] Whereas a building is largely the outcome of what its owner wants it to be, a street-especially one that is old and has been inherited after countless changes-is the result of dialectical compromise, often by people without an investment in it except as a highway. A street is regulated and conditioned largely by transitory stakeholders who use it to get somewhere else. Before the advent of mass transport, the pace and character of a street were decided by the people who built on it and lived there. Since then, many aspects of streets have been subordinated to the convenience of distant citizens, as the street has become owned

draft toward AABS Biennial Conference, 2024

Against Anthony Kaldellis and others who believe that the name 'Byzantium' is an artificial and p... more Against Anthony Kaldellis and others who believe that the name 'Byzantium' is an artificial and pejorative anachronism, this paper argues that there is neither a convincing substitute for 'Byzantium' nor a need for one. Specifically, (i) the name Romanía, though attested in contemporary documents, is semantically and historically weak; (ii) the claims of pernicious connotations in the name 'Byzantium' are overstated; and (iii) the reason that 'Roman' was preferred from the time of the first Christians is that 'Greek' was aggressively stigmatized and suppressed. The paper concludes that 'Byzantium' is ideologically sounder than the terms that would replace it. Demonstrating that the alternative names are historically forced, the paper proposes that we are better off with a resonant term-of-art than a pretence of authenticity that inadvertently continues a legacy of anti-Hellenism.

The Australian anti-war memorial, 2024

These sonnets ask what we admire about soldiers and hate about the wars that they fight. Contemp... more These sonnets ask what we admire about soldiers and hate about the wars that they fight. Contemplating the tragedy of the first world war and now the war in Gaza, the collection explores how calls for peace themselves become weaponized and thereby also contribute to war.

draft, 2023

This is a draft of two poems from a larger unedited collection Eclogues to Polixeni

登崎榮一の二手描画法における文字と比喩によるリズム