Neighbourhood Paper Alex Tighe, Author at Neighbourhood Paper

Something in the Night A letter from Berlin

There’s a slightly unhinged man who regularly wakes us up, or sometimes just scares the shit out of me in passing, bursting into his version of opera as he walks around our neighbourhood. It’s a high, sonorous, fairly wobbly counter-tenor, but he can really belt it out.

Because of the layout of the streets and buildings, you can hear him coming from blocks away. I’d say it’s this acoustic that got him going in the first place. All his phrases have a daft kind of familiarity about them – like some aria you cannot place because it doesn’t really exist. I caught the strains of his voice over in the posh part of town once too… He gets about. And he’s a reassuring presence, particularly in the cold months when you sometimes feel the city is operating on a sort of skeleton crew; this metropolis that can feel totally desolate at midday.

Here in the middle of town we really do have quiet months, as the itinerant boho ankle-socked top-knotters bumble off to find softer climes. Then it’s just us, the slow-moving residents: the bleary-eyed pram-pushers and workers and writers who love the stones and the spidery trees against the cold-bleached sky more than the fleshy stretches of the canal in summer.

This anaemia, this hovering, this lurking under negative temperatures – and then this arrival, as you come to meet another wintry cohort at the quiet bar.

The quiet bar only plays vinyl, only plays albums, the music doesn’t change for 40 minutes, details are left in, the conversation follows suit… and the winter night stays dark, so you aren’t cruelly surprised by a dawn you have to race home against. In the summer, this is the amateur mistake, not being on your guard against the light.

Oh there’s plenty who complain of a lack of structure here, of an infuriating inconsistency. Well, you have to be a grown-up about it, after all. And a child, I suppose, to want to be a grown-up in the first place. Your inspiration isn’t lying in wait around the next corner, you can’t find it in a community that doesn’t know you, a community that doesn’t even exist in this most transient of towns. Berlin was always a good place to hide, caught as it was at the crossroads of eastern and western Europe, and for some that hiding becomes seductive. A permanent answer. Others might label it escapism, living in a bubble, a liberated unreality not in step with rest of the world. (Well you can have your world.) I think of it as survival. It is happiness. But anyone who comes here looking to capitalise on a mythology that’s grown out of very few actual examples should be warned: it’s strictly BYO structure.

Germany ripped the structure up badly last century, and the skeleton crew left behind then were wanting of many good traits. Even now, Berlin having been dealt the multiple blows of fascism, annihilation, cruel division, one often gets the sense of a city only half full – too light – not light on people but light on the weight of its people. The continuity of its people.

Some are remembered, but most are swept away.

Do only outsiders think these things? It seems wildly irrelevant, really. Very un-Berliner. And a far cry from our squalling counter-tenor. He may not be searching for anyone at all. Maybe just an audition. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a squeak or two made it onto my new record – the windows of my studio aren’t that thick. The counter-tenor as counterpoint to Chris Abrahams’ piano, to Joe Talia’s drumming… Oh, but he’s esteemed company.

Ned Collette’s new album Old Chestnut is out on August 24 on It Records.

When You’re Really Out of It Public housing estates suspend applications from previously convicted drug users

On 23 February this year, the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) wrote to the 3,000 plus people on the waiting list for public housing tenancy in the Waterloo, Redfern, Surry Hills, and Glebe estates informing them of a new ‘Local Allocation Strategy’. “Under this strategy,” the letter read, “the allocation of tenancies in these estates will be restricted to clients with no charges and/or convictions for drug supply or manufacture within the last five years.”

The letter went on to explain that the strategy was developed in collaboration with the NSW Police and “is intended to make public housing estates safer by reducing drug-related crimes and incidents of anti-social behaviour.”

It was launched in March and is being trialled for one year.

A FACS spokesperson told Neighbourhood that applicants who fail a criminal record check but are “eligible for social housing will still be housed in the inner city”. The spokesperson did not specify, however, which areas of the inner city these people will be housed.

They stated that “FACS will work closely with the tenant to provide supportive services and connections to community-based supports to ensure the tenant is supported into a successful tenancy”. The spokesperson clarified that the strategy will only apply to people with a conviction of drug supply or manufacture within the last five years. No specifics, however, were given about what supportive services would be provided to affected tenants.

Information in the initial letter that the strategy would apply to people with drug dealing or manufacturing charges – not just convictions – was explained as a “typo”, despite the fact that this information initially appeared on the FACS website as well.

Dr Affie Adagio, a 74 year old resident of the Waterloo public housing estate for the past eight years, and an ex-drug and alcohol counsellor, supports the new strategy.

“I think it’s a good idea that people who have this kind of background in drugs, even if they’ve paid their debt to society, shouldn’t be allowed into public housing here as they’ll just abuse the system,” she says. “You need to have them prove that they’ve stopped that behaviour that got them into trouble.” For her, the strategy’s five-year time period is a good measure of proof that people who do have drug-related criminal backgrounds have “changed their ways”.

Photography by Dean Sewell

But Dr Mindy Sotiri, program director for the last six years of the Community Restorative Centre – the largest community organisation in Sydney helping those who have had recent contact with the criminal justice system reintegrate into society – strongly disagrees. When she first heard of the new policy, she was “shocked”. “I couldn’t quite believe that a policy as significant as this – and as discriminatory as this – would be implemented with no consultation with the community sector or the people who are likely to be affected.”

Dr Sotiri tells Neighbourhood that her “main concern with any kind of housing policy that discriminates on the basis of conviction or charge is that it perpetuates punishments that belong in a judicial system rather than in the community.” She says the strategy sets a “troubling precedent” around the issue of perpetual punishment – which, unlike in the United States where ex-criminals are restricted from accessing numerous public benefits, hasn’t yet been normalised in Australia.

Dr Chris Martin echoes this. Researcher at the City Futures Research Centre at UNSW, he says the strategy is “contrary to the principle that persons who have served a sentence should not be subject to additional punishment.”

Critics of the strategy have another concern: that it will simply export the serious social problem of drug-related crime elsewhere in Sydney, rather than address its structural causes – causes such as poverty, mental illness, trauma, and addiction. “There’s no doubt that there are community safety concerns on the housing estates in question,” Dr Sotiri explains. “The question is around what is the sensible solution to those safety concerns. If drug dealing is an issue in those estates, and there are community safety fears, what are some of the ways we might respond to address this issue structurally?”

Dr Martin believes that, worse than just being punitive and ineffectual, the new strategy may even exacerbate current social problems. “This policy would mean that a significant part of the public housing stock – and a part that also has relevant support services – is not available to persons leaving prison after a sentence for drug offences,” he explains. “That makes housing ex-prisoners that much more difficult, and this is already a problem. Homelessness and insecure housing is known to be associated with returns to prison.”

Some existing residents of the estates in question, like 80-year-old Catherine Skipper who has lived at Waterloo for the past seven years, agree with Dr Martin and Dr Sotiri. “This tough new policy is a disguise for the government’s failure to properly deal with drug addiction and drug-related crime,” Skipper says.

But Skipper feels the new policy is also something much more insidious, related to the ongoing – and government-driven – redevelopment and gentrification of inner-Sydney areas. “Full of raging drug users, drug dealers, drug manufacturers – that’s how the media and the government present places like Redfern and Waterloo. That would make me think that this new strategy is part of a much larger strategy to make it seem like these inner-city public housing estates need tearing down, need demolishing, and need redeveloping.”

“When these areas weren’t trendy, the government wasn’t too concerned about dealing with drug crime,” Skipper says.

Despite the extensive criticism it has received, the state government isn’t wavering. Quite the opposite, in fact. Speaking to Alan Jones on 2GB in March, NSW Social Housing minister, Pru Goward, said of the strategy: “If this works as well as I hope it’s going to work, then I want to look at applying this across the state.”

Death of a Seal If news reports could smile, these ones did so ear-to-ear

It was easy to forget that its purpose was not to amuse or thrill us. A big lump of lard with long whiskers, dark flippers and a neck outstretched to catch the sun. A black nose like something well-stitched on a child’s teddy bear. Our unwitting performing seal. For a couple of weeks, residents of Rushcutters Bay observed him flopping about from a 40-metre exclusion zone roped off by the City of Sydney. We were seen on the news showing our “delight.”

The authorities warned us that seals have sharp teeth and can charge if you get between them and the water. Despite this, at first, it was a happy story. The ABC news website had Shona Lorigan, a volunteer with the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) reporting the adult male fur seal to be in good health. Nothing of concern was noted.

The seal was variously “basking”, “napping” “spotted” and “taking up residence” in and around Rushcutters Bay. If news reports could smile, these ones did so ear-to-ear. In the way of cute animal stories, the creature was given a name on social media: Sealvester. Locals were asked to keep our dogs on their leads as curious children tested the limits of the barrier. Some observers were censorious of others deemed not to be careful enough with their dogs and children, not respectful enough of Sealvester. There was other talk that some were finding the animal’s presence an inconvenience.

Then something went wrong. Sealvester’s health went south. He rapidly lost weight. Barriers had been put up to prevent him from becoming a permanent resident. Some believe he injured himself while trying to push against them. On 5 April, Sealvester was shot with an anaesthetic dart following veterinary advice that his flipper and eye injuries required treatment. He died under anaesthesia in the back of a white van on the way to Taronga Zoo. A necropsy was ordered.

I contacted City of Sydney to ask why the barriers had been put up to block Sealvester’s path. The response was curt:

“Rushcutters Bay Park is frequented by residents and children. Our park’s staff set up some barriers as a precaution to protect the seal and the public. The barriers were put up on the advice of NSW National Parks. All further enquiries relating to the seal should be directed to NSW National Parks or Taronga Wildlife Hospital.”

I contacted NSW National Parks to ask, among other things, if anything could have been done better. Declining to answer that question, they did send their media release for my background.

The seal’s funeral was a solemn affair. In the early, still-balmy Friday night dark, about 30 of us gathered in Rushcutters Bay to remember him. There were candles, a photo from happier times. A woman read an ode. Petals were thrown into the sea. Locals exchanged anecdotes and theories, some flagged conspiracies.

The morning after Sealvester’s death, I visited Rushcutters Bay Park where some residents had not yet caught up with his fate. They were shocked and saddened. A sudden death in the neighbourhood will do that.

Eat Y’self Fitter Why vegans fall for the sausage roll

I have vegan friends. I like them. They are admirable people who live by an admirable principle – it’s not an easy philosophy to follow. Packets must be checked, cake avoided, breakfasts declined, irritating questions deflected and so much bland food eaten. It takes real work and dedication. Perhaps there were times when I thought I’d join them, but I’m not cut out for the vegan life. Don’t have the stamina. I couldn’t face my father either, a beef and lamb farmer. And, perhaps crucially, I just love eating meat.

But this means I have more than a passing interest in veganism. Every time I meet one I’m immediately alert. It’s not deliberate, it just happens. And every time I can hear myself steering the conversation toward the real question: What is the meat that tempts you most? The phrasing here is crucial.

Too vague and it is interpreted as wanting to know what is their favourite meat meal. I am not interested in this. The favourite meat meal is boringly predictable; it’s got nothing to do with flavour and everything to do with the cook. But that first taste of protein after years of cellulose isn’t about love, it’s about desire. To ask someone, particularly a stranger, to discuss their meat lust can be awkward. It has to be approached delicately. I don’t want to offend. But I do want to know.

Here are my results. Vegans rarely crave steak. They don’t dream of roast lamb, or tandoori chicken or even pork crackling. No, what a vegan desires is a sausage roll.

The first few times I was told this, I was surprised too. All that high moral argument and years of willpower wasted for that? But the data doesn’t lie. And I suppose when they’re fresh from the oven on a cold winter’s day they can be quite tasty. But if the pinnacle of vegan self-restraint is being able to resist a sausage roll, I sometimes wonder if it’s less a question of morality and more a question of not getting out enough. Worse, is it just a sign of poor taste?

Then again, maybe it’s lonely living off tofu. Maybe when the going is hard and the doubters are doubting, a taste of the comfort of childhood is exactly what you need. A reminder of the joy of an afternoon on the sand, shivering under a towel. The happy jostle of the school tuckshop. A post footy treat.

There are exceptions to the rule. My only first hand experience of a vegan lapsing wasn’t over a sausage roll. In the interest of science, I would like to declare a small researcher’s bias here. I knew this woman. I was very fond of her. I would also like to make it known that I did not deliberately set out to influence her decision. I never mocked her nor did I try to make her uncomfortable. But I did have a habit of choosing, at restaurants, say, beef cheeks in a red wine jus. Or perhaps, grilled kobe wagyu skirt steak with wood roasted peppers and hand-cut chimichurri. Shameful, shameful behaviour. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when one night she looked up from her menu to order beef carpaccio, with a New York steak to follow. Yes, she was an outlier from the sausage roll norm. But she was an outlier with style.

Sitting squarely on the mean is Geoff. Geoff had been vegan for six years and was doing well. He had worked out a varied, interesting diet and accepted that he would never eat eggs benedict with bacon again. Then one night, with a light hangover, he was asked to hold two sausage rolls while a friend went to fetch a packet of cigarettes. Details are hazy on what happened next in that late ’90’s Laser. What we do know is that Geoff was found in the car with a shocked look on his face, two unopened sachets of sauce and flakes of pastry just starting to settle on the upholstery.

Whatever the lure of the sausage roll is, vegans know the risk. When describing them they keep their adjectives neutral and their eye contact firm. They acknowledge their desire and are careful to manage it. When their passion does spill over, their vehemence is illuminating. Footage of Bob Carr describing them as ‘fat encased in fat’ shows a man battling his craving. For a long time it was thought Carr was giving himself a bit of much needed common man cred by creating a skirmish in the meat pie versus sausage roll war. But the argument doesn’t hold. Bob’s a vegan. And his fear is obvious.

Perhaps the results of my study won’t reach The Lancet. No matter. The next time you are in the city, walking the streets with the sun on your face, a breeze in your hair and a fatty paper bag in your hand, maybe you can take a few moments of contemplation. To see the sausage roll afresh. The pleasing symmetry of its construction. The mince coyly poking out of its flaky sheath. That intoxicating smell. Then as you walk, occasionally dabbing a little sauce, maybe you will reflect on the wonder of human desire.

Secrets of the Sydney Fish Market The world is your oyster

Is being near the Sydney Fish Market the greatest thing about living in Glebe? Ten minutes by car, 15 by light rail or 20 by leisurely stroll along the harbour front. And there you are, at one of the best fish markets in the world…Well, it’s not Tokyo’s Tsukiji, but it’s not bad. Living so close and going so often, I’ve learnt a few of its secrets. Gather round and I’ll share them.

If you’re like me, you’re no expert at slicing, skinning and filleting fish. You don’t have to be. All the traders will do it for you. Select your whole fish, and ask for it to be cut into fillets or steaks. And request it to be done dry – water washes away the flavour. Selecting a whole fish means you get to check its age: look for firm flesh, bright eyes and a pleasant sea smell. If it smells fishy, it is.

A while ago I was standing at Claudio’s looking at the prawns and one of the fishos sidled up to me and murmured, like a drug dealer, “Here, look at these.”

‘These’ being a plastic tub full of giant green prawns. “Every now and then they come down from the Clarence River on ice slurry, not frozen,” the fisho told me. As you walk in, if they’re there, you’ll see them on the left hand side of the centre bay, below the rest of the prawns. Not always, and not cheap, but worth it. Keep an eye out for them.

A Spanish mate taught me to cook them a while back: have two big pots of water, one boiling, the other full of ice and a half-handful of salt for each kilo. Throw them in the boiling water. As soon as they’ve changed colour to pink, drain them, and plunge them in the iced salted water. When they cool, put them in the fridge till you’re ready to eat them.

Who loves oysters? As you walk into the main building that houses the office and the auction floor, on your right you’ll see a stall selling live oysters outside Doyle’s restaurant. That’s oyster central. David Doyle picks the seasonally best Pacifics and Sydney Rocks, and they’re opened to order using a very clever device that does so without washing them. Check all the other oyster openers in the market and they’re washing away the flavour. Generally speaking Sydney Rocks from the north coast are best in summer, south coast in winter. Why don’t you learn how to DIY? You can buy a sturdy oyster knife (I like the French Sabatier) across the way at the kitchen and souvenir shop. And find someone to teach you.

A couple of weeks ago I ran into John Susman coming out of a meeting at the market. Sus is Mr Seafood in Sydney. Remember The Flying Squid Brothers? They were the first of the fishmongers to the star chefs, they introduced us to Coffin Bay Scallops, and persuaded us to eat them roe on. He also introduced us to the superb Hiramasa kingfish from Port Augusta. And way back when, Sus taught me how to open oysters. He told me at the time there are two essential skills for a civilised human: opening a champagne bottle and opening oysters.

We gossed about the state of fish biz. I asked him when he reckons the market will move, they’ve been talking about moving it for at least ten years. It’s been at Blackwattle Bay since 1966. “Won’t happen in my lifetime,” he said. I’d give him a good 25-30 years. You heard it here first.

You can learn how to open oysters at The Sydney Seafood School on Monday June 4, 6.30-8.30. Book at the school website.

Publish and Be Damned The story behind ‘The River Ophelia’, a post-modern novel about domestic violence

Every writer views success differently. Some are happy with good sales, others crave stellar reviews and awards. Still others need respect. I left Australia for London in 1997 sighing in exasperation; respect had been in low supply. While I was a household name, my notoriety had damaged my literary reputation and my academic career. It began a long phase of my life that I see now as something akin to self-imposed exile.

While self-publishing means risking mainstream visibility, it allows me to finally declare that I refuse to let my rollercoaster past shut me down.

With a new novel Bohemia Beach forthcoming from Transit Lounge, it makes sense to get my backlist in order after two decades of book publishing silence. And yet Bohemia Beach, with its allusions to addiction, passion and art, and its post-modern references to works like Wuthering Heights, is more a commentary upon than a continuation of what went before.

There are other encouraging signs. The family violence campaigner Rosie Batty was made ‘Australian of the Year’ in 2015. Nicole Kidman dabbing make-up on her bruises in Big Little Lies is just one mainstream example of a renewed conversation around domestic violence, while the popularity of the Fifty Shades franchise revealed the level of women’s interest in S&M. The #MeToo campaign signals that perceptions about sexual harassment are changing; that women can shift the conversation.

Today, for a few thousand dollars, I can not only control the media release and change the cover to my liking, I can finally set the record straight – The River Ophelia is a postmodern novel about domestic violence. I can also acknowledge the scholarship which has defended it.

Ophelia was a publishing sensation in 1995. With a marketing campaign that was the envy of many an established author. It’s first print run of 10,000 copies disappeared in under a week. With months on the 1995 bestseller lists it sold over 50,000 copies placing it in the top ten highest sellers in Australian publishing history.

The novel was loved in The Weekend Australian Magazine where it spearheaded a literary movement, and hated in The Sydney Morning Herald. Everyone had an opinion about it – even those who hadn’t read it.

I became the first novelist in Australia to sign a two-book deal with a mainstream publisher (Picador) for their literary debut. There were TV interviews and posters on building site hoardings and telegraph poles. I made over $110,000 and was recognised wherever I went. I even had my own groupies.

The book was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award, won best cover design and filmmakers like Geoffrey Wright and Jane Campion wanted the rights. It was on the HSC syllabus and widely taught at universities. But did I feel successful? No.

Nine years, a BA and an MA in Writing, and a lot of hard work, had gone into writing two novels by the age of 29. A contract for my first book, Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure with a small publisher faltered when they encountered funding problems. Five years later, having completed a second novel, Ophelia, I signed a two-book deal with Picador in 1994 for both works. After signing, they insisted on bringing Ophelia out before Marilyn despite my protests. Ophelia was the one they wanted.

'The River Ophelia', book cover 1995

'Marilyn's Almost Terminal Adventure in New York', book cover 1996

'The River Ophelia', book cover 2018

Both novels featured protagonists named after famous women – ‘Marilyn’ as in Monroe, and ‘Justine’ as in de Sade. But reading The River Ophelia first meant readers remained ignorant of my trademark trope and would be more likely to read it autobiographically. Publishing successes like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) had proven the commercial value of a well-marketed debut: first impressions equaled only impressions.

I would always ask myself what might have happened if Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure had been published first? Readers would have known me as the author of an experimental novel who named her protagonists after iconic women. Marilyn, however, would appear as my second book in 1996, and not the kind of book my Ophelia readership expected.

So when I relocated to the UK, I hired a London lawyer to break my contract, getting my copyright back and pulling my books from print; something no writer ever does anywhere, anytime. Period.

Last year I started work on the new edition of Ophelia by looking at fragments… after a week relief flooded through me; I remembered what I’d been trying to do all those years ago. I was able to see the book for the first time for what it actually was: an ambitious second novel. It wasn’t perfect, but the electricity of the writing endured, as did the audacity of my intentions and technique. Taking on not only the literary canon but institutionally entrenched misogyny. The older me couldn’t help shouting, ‘bloody well good on you love!’.

Nevertheless, I hesitated. What about the sex scenes? I knew they had to be there, but could I put them back into print? I’d been mocked and harassed in almost every job since Ophelia came out; an academic colleague described the novel as pornography in front of my examiners; students passed around postmarked copies of Ophelia at the back of lectures; and several journalists expected sex after interviews.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Ellis’s American Psycho. But as authors we share certain experiences: we both became notorious for tackling the taboo of misogynist violence and sex in unconventional ways (Ellis by adopting the point of view of the perpetrator, me for writing from the victim’s perspective). We also had to endure having our experimental novels lumped in with our realist peers in artificially created marketing categories. In hindsight, both novels were trainwrecks of the corporatisation of the publishing industry; part of a disturbing trend where literary novels were exploited for profit.

While excerpts of American Psycho were leaked by Ellis’s publishers to the media prior to publication and he was then asked to cut four scenes, I was asked to pose anonymously nude for Ophelia’s cover with the understanding my identity would later be leaked to the media. We both, for different reasons, said no.

There was little I could do about the naked lady cover, which suggested the novel was erotic when it wasn’t, or the way my feminist intentions were ignored in interviews.

But getting myself and Ophelia onto the front of The Weekend Australian Magazine was open to negotiation. Refusing to give the required autobiographical account behind the book, however, meant that the only way I could keep the magazine cover was by allowing the journalist to create a literary movement from my peers: we were the new faces of Grunge Lit; and I became the so-called “Empress of Grunge”.

Ophelia deserved to create a stir. It broke the rules of what you could say at the time, to say things that desperately needed saying but which no one wanted to hear: women victims of domestic violence were just as incapable of leaving as ever. Being educated or a feminist wasn’t enough. As the informed reader knows, the trauma bonds created by abuse require treatment before victims can finally leave. ‘Justine’ only escapes once she begins therapy.

When The River Ophelia appeared again in these last few weeks, Susan Wyndham, the former literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, wrote: “Two decades later this daring debut novel and its author still have my respect.”

It was actually an email from an academic complaining of the difficulty of getting copies for her writing program that gave me courage to open the door. The contract for Bohemia Beach walked me through. A new book and an old book out in the same year.

Exiled or not, I never gave up.

Justine Ettler, ‘Ophelia’ book launch, 2018

Justine Ettler’s 20th anniversary edition of The River Ophelia is out now. Her latest novel is Bohemia Beach is released by Transit Lounge.

Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of Bill Henson’s photography is losing its way

Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne is not signposted from the street. I catch a lift to the fourth floor where I walk straight in to Bill Henson’s new exhibition, his familiar images hanging on the walls. Like Henson’s previous work at the National Gallery of Victoria, the exhibition is hard to find. I wonder whether this is a conscious decision on the part of the galleries: to protect the artist from scandal or in case of police raid; or to retain the climate of being edgy, the viewer entering a hidden world.

I’m the only person in the gallery, except for a couple walking around with a guide. After a while, they become centre-stage, as I realise they aren’t just looking, they are choosing. One to buy. The guide gives her spiel and as the couple moves, chatting as if deciding what to order on a lunch menu, I get a fierce sense of longing, not for the images themselves, but for this art world that I will never be a part of. I look up the price: $65,000. I imagine the wall for it.

Henson talks a great deal about the reflective space and how he likes to suggest a mood in the gallery by turning the lights down low, creating a dark, lush landscape of stillness and silence. But as I look, the man who is buying does his business wheeling-dealing on the phone in front of me, his loud voice — managing Chinese business relations — filling the centre of the gallery while he paces, his leather shoes squeaking on the floor. The voice of the guide ramps up to do the hard sell to the woman waiting. The guide tells the woman how to feel about the images. Beautiful. Emotional. Vulnerable.

The exhibition is small. Fourteen images, displayed above a black shiny floor, a dark lake that reflects the photographs above so that the viewer, standing back, can see them mirror-imaged. Henson’s preoccupations of the past 30 years, in particular the ‘junkie ballroom’ series from the 1980s, are still here: a juxtaposition of beauty and decay. Young bodies strike classical poses – boys, tender and oiled up, wet and cold, goosebumped and on the cusp – mixed with architectural ruins.

The space between dusk and dark remains. The young men are marbled, statuesque, interior. There is little expression in their faces and their bodies are choreographed to achieve sculptural effects rather than bridging distance with the viewer. Like a Caravaggio or Rembrandt, their bodies and faces are luminous out of the dark space they inhabit. With the rough white framing, though, the exhibition feels uncharacteristically rushed. There is no material available on the images, and the gallery worker informs me that the sheets are just being printed now, that they only received the photographs half an hour ago. The heady, strong smell of ink radiates from the walls.

In the week the exhibition opens, Henson gives a talk at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art on The Wilderness Within: The Body as the Last Frontier. The talk is sponsored by a gin company and as I arrive I’m handed a bespoke cocktail, a mix of gin, rose, pomegranate, rhubarb, with a large sprig of thyme to stir it. I try to drink it as Henson lays out his favourite things.

Working on the “scatter cushion” approach, he starts with A Ghost Story, a film he recently watched three times in a row on a plane to London. Used to Henson’s obscure references to cultural moments I don’t know, my ears prick up at pop culture — “Ben Affleck or the other Affleck in a sheet as a ghost” — and later that night, watching the film, I can understand Henson’s obsession. A ghost of one of the characters (Casey) stands in a house and watches events unfold after his death. The film is still to the point of real-time, the sense of absence marked by the focus on a character who we access only through movement of the body rather than the face; a white sheet and dark pools of holes where the eyes should be, like a child’s vision. This ghost is stuck between two worlds and he longs to inhabit both and never can. In the film, we experience, as Henson puts it, “the interplay between the subconscious and everything else … where the skin ends … a body so expressive and yet so completely anonymous at the same time.”

Henson at a lecturn at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Henson at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Henson’s work returns often to a fixation on beauty, believing that “the universe runs on attraction.” Along with the marbled boys, the buildings too are elegant and in shadow, the tunnel in a bridge a gateway to the unknown, echoing the circular frame of a boy and accentuating the notion of peepshow, of Henson’s desire to make you feel like a voyeur, even though he steps back from it – “the absence carefully modulated … It’s there but perhaps it’s not there.”

He plays with horizons as with other boundaries, the line between sky and water as sublime and serene as a Rothko. The reflected dark floor of the gallery echoes the water under the old bridge and I wish for the images on dark, rather than white, walls. If the walls were black, the photographs would bleed into the floor, extending Henson’s fascination with “where you end and the painting begins”.

At the ACCA talk, Henson often goes down a dark alleyway and seems to get stuck in a cul-de-sac. Speaking of Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber, Henson mentions in passing Kleiber’s alleged sexual assault – the conductor randomly ran from an orchestra rehearsal to a woman in the street and passionately kissed her – and then leads in to the #metoo movement. Henson then explains that geniuses are “in a parallel universe sometimes, they’re not connected to things in the way that they should be” and quotes a comment that one of Kleiber’s musicians made about the great conductor, that “people expect artists to conjure the most incredible things from their imaginations and then to go home and be a nice neighbour and perfect husband.”

As Henson comically uses a German accent here, perhaps to deflect the statement from himself, he looks surprised for a moment that’s he’s told this anecdote at all – and I wonder too why it’s bubbled up to the surface. Like the bespoke cocktail, his talk is a muddled mix of sweet and savoury and sour, elements lovely in their own right, but combined unpalatable and difficult to swallow.

Henson has a mantra that he repeats at every talk he gives, that “meaning comes from feeling, not the other way round”, and this idea is what has always attracted me to writing about his images, that initial bodily response, and where it might lead – the potential for speculative work. But in the latest exhibition, there is no journey, no dark road leading into forest. Henson’s images lack the strength and allure of earlier photographs in the same space. Rather than his stated aim to “forget the boundaries, forget where the parameters are”, his boys, his columns, have become tasteful statues and structures.

As an artist, Henson seems stuck in a groove, in a moment that he can’t get out of. Beyond beautiful objects, his work used to demand more. Approaching a Henson image was about confronting desire and longing, both yours and his and the model’s, filling in those shadows, those things absent from the scene, with your own imagination and feelings: walking that blurry line between the acceptable and forbidden, innocence and knowing.

Henson likes to quote others in the genius mode and settles on Einstein’s idea that “the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious”. But now, with these latest images, there is no mysterious threshold. The works have well and truly stayed on this side of that blurry line. They have attained the status of exquisite objects. As the man says when he gets off the phone, “We’d like to purchase this one.” The man points to the only image that I’ve lingered in front of, a boy draped, hanging between thought and feeling, caught between two worlds.

“The boy. He’s beautiful, isn’t he? Don’t worry, I’m sure we can make room on the wall for it.”

Bill Henson’s current exhibition at Tolarno Galleries, Level 4, 104 Exhibition St, Melbourne, runs until 2 June. Phone: +61 3 9654 6000.

Kirsten Krauth is a writer and editor based in Castlemaine. Her first novel was just_a_girl and her second-in-progress is set around the twilight worlds of Bill Henson and Nick Cave in 1980s Melbourne.

Unsane You will never leave this place

Like Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderbergh is a master at playing the press. After basking in endless valedictions prior to a retirement that never materialised, Soderbergh returned to features with last year’s Logan Lucky, a tangy, unpretentious heist-comedy he distributed himself. The director’s decision to do so was heralded as a game-changing swing, one that could change the business model of film, no less. Never mind the fact that The Passion of the Christ did it way back in 2004, and much more successfully (Logan Lucky bombed) without putting any sales agents, studio chiefs or traditional distributors out of business.

More than a desire to upend conventional practice, Soderbergh seems motivated by wanting to do everything himself, and at speed. The show he directed, produced, shot and edited on his hiatus from films, The Knick, might be the best thing he’s ever done. He’s refined the DIY approach ever since. Unsane, his latest, was shot in 10 days on iPhones, and it probably took Soderbergh (or ‘Mary Ann Bernard’, his editor alias) about that time to cut it together.

Starring Claire Foy (The Crown) as a young woman involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward, Unsane continues the director’s interest in the medical industry, and in rug pulling. One more than the other: as with Soderbergh’s 2013 feature Side Effects, the world of psychiatry is only a pretext for a Hitchcockian potboiler that plays with the audience’s sense of the protagonist’s identity and sanity.

The fish-eye warping of the iPhone makes the camera gaze almost first-personal. We really feel the claustrophobia and sense of disorientation felt by Sawyer (Foy), who is detained for 24 hours after unknowingly signing a document during a routine medical appointment. But our indignation over this scenario is inflected by what we’ve seen previously: fragments of Sawyer’s everyday life strange enough to make us question her stability, as when she brings a man home, kisses him, then violently pulls away and locks herself in the bathroom.

A Skype chat with her mother, on a lunch break from her job at a glorified call-centre, reveals that Sawyer has just moved towns, from Boston to some sterile corner of Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles from friends and family. The reason she moved becomes clear after she accuses one of the orderlies on the ward of being somebody else – the stalker who’s followed her for the last two years.

Foy curled on a bed, with Jay Pharoah as Nate Hoffman sitting next to her

Foy (left), and Jay Pharoah as Nate Hoffman (right). Image credit: Fingerprint Releasing / Bleecker Street

Sawyer is just aggressive and manipulative enough to make you wonder, though Soderbergh smartly doesn’t try to keep us guessing for the entire story, which soon settles into the groove of a horror film not all that dissimilar to Get Out. Matt Damon shows up for a brief cameo as a security specialist, and he looks like he’s having a ball, though the character he’s playing is pretty much irrelevant.

You could argue that Damon’s distractingly throwaway presence betrays the filmmaker’s attitude to the whole thing. Soderbergh’s disdain for prestige pieces may be admirable, but we still want to feel he cares, and there’s no reason for Damon’s appearance beyond the filmmaker showing off his Rolodex. I’ll take Soderbergh’s stylish, slightly insincere genre exercises over the empty portentousness of a Paul Thomas Anderson film any day, but it would be nice if he could find something he cared about more than efficiency of production.

As in Side Effects, Soderbergh supplies all the answers by the end, which makes the film linger less in retrospect than it should. It’s notable mostly as the first Hollywood vehicle for Foy, who is about to be everywhere, with a starring role in Damien Chazelle’s First Man and Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Her performance in Unsane may not make sense watching the film a second time, but neither does anything else, and narrative logic is the least of the film’s ambitions.

Unsane opens with a voiceover that sounds romantic at first blush, and later deranged. The film eventually returns to the forest where it began, like a fairytale, only without a handsome woodcutter on hand to kill the wolf.

One of the qualities that separates Soderbergh from most of his peers is his sense of humour, and Unsane‘s final scene features an amusing bit of trolling. It’s a salve after all the hysteria. It also feels like a directorial credo. The freeze-frame that follows suggests Sawyer will never, really, be out of the woods, but it’s glib rather than haunting. You can tell Soderbergh won’t lose much sleep over her fate. A man as busy as he is can’t afford to.

Books That Change Lives, Apparently Iranian existentialists, chick lit grandmas and spitting in Morse code

Currently doing the rounds of Facebook is one of those quick questionnaires that furnishes respondents with an opportunity to brag about their virtues via an edited inventory of their personal effects. Encouraging lurkers to name the “10 Books That Changed Your Life”, or something similar, it has quickly descended into a competition to see who has the most exotic home library. The lists are filled with increasingly obscure and rarefied titles by authors of undiscovered provenance, not a Stephen King or a daggy old William Shakespeare among the names of scribes who have apparently blown the punters away. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself by name-checking books other readers have actually read – simply copy and paste this list and your friend(s) will be raising non-fat caramel macchiatos in your honour.

The Whisper Ambrosia
Wangchuk Yeshe
Those unfamiliar with the fine writers of Tibet ought really do themselves a favour and indulge the most downtrodden of all literary peoples. Good luck finding this rare bird, however, as the Chinese government has apparently done a fine job of expunging Yeshe’s back catalogue after executing him during the Cultural Revolution. Mine is one of the few copies around.

And So, Silhouette
L. Phaedra Francis
I found this hiding in the second-hand first-editions section at a wonderful bookshop in Sierra Leone that sadly is no more. It was a fortuitous find, as I haven’t seen another copy of it anywhere since. L. Phaedra’s interminable yet pulchritudinous journey into the human soul is not for the philosophically naive, and I’m yet to meet anyone who can adequately explain what happens in the end – in fact, I’m yet to meet anyone else who has read it. Ah, the loneliness of the adventurous reader…

The Fulcrum Protocol
Jack Shaft
Sometimes I feel compelled to escape the capricious emotional Sturm und Drang of literature and indulge in nothing more than a thrilling yarn, and who better than Shaft to sweep one away with 1900-pages of political espionage, unwieldy intrigue and more delicious twists than a big bowl of spiralini lunghi. Tragically, this book is now out of print and generally out of second-hand circulation, so I’m lucky I got mine signed by the author at the Mogadishu Writer’s Festival.

Under A Tuscan Fellow
Gino Fucecchio
As memoirs go, this is something of a curate’s egg. A lowly farm hand in a small San Gimignano village, Fucecchio documents with peculiar tenderness his endless and increasingly weary dalliances with women who’ve come to the region to “find themselves” but invariably wind up finding Gino instead, the author’s irritation mounting throughout the book as he finds himself the recurring bit player in an unstoppable panoply of mildly pornographic bestsellers penned by flabby middle-aged Australian divorcees. He died of gonorrhoea some years ago, but there’s still a noticeable wriggle in front row seats whenever his name is mentioned at a book show. Rare? You betcha.

Liver, Liver, Liver, You Don’t Treat Me No Good No More
Penelope Barker-Brown
The Trinidad-born, Cambridge-educated, staunchly feminist Barker-Brown is a giant among her literary peers, and she’s an excellent name to drop at dinner parties when the conversation turns to belletristic one-upmanship. A queen of the quip and princess of the pun, Barker-Brown – or “Two Dads” as she so signed her books – died of liver cancer in 1949, and this book, her last, was completed while in excruciating pain, yet, somehow, through the anaesthetic miasma, she still managed to channel her inner rhapsodist with perfect lucidity. Those who know of her – and I haven’t met (m)any – consider her the grandmother of what is now known as “chick lit”.

Not As Such
Rafael Alejandro Cortés
One of the finest and least acknowledged from the increasingly popular stable of obscure Chilean writers, Rafael Alejandro Cortés spent most of his adult life languishing in a dungeon at Augusto Pinochet’s pleasure, his hands shackled to a wall, his tongue having been cut out as punishment for “inappropriate” language after curfew. He wrote Not As Such by spitting a type of Morse code into the dirt at his feet, the sound of which was hastily translated by a sympathetic warden, who managed to squirrel the manuscript away before himself having his ears cut off for his trouble. A darkly humourous and exquisitely paced book, Not As Such comes highly recommended, though it’s excruciatingly rare, and I don’t lend my books.

A Tallboy’s Aphony
Adalrik Schweitzer
Schweitzer’s career tour de force takes place entirely inside a single space as observed by a piece of antique bedroom furniture, the comings and goings of generations of German tenants described in consummate detail. A homosexual Jewish communist who suffered from an increasingly uncontrollable strain of Tourette’s Syndrome, Schweitzer didn’t last long on the streets of Nazi Berlin before attracting the attention of the Gestapo, and my copy of A Tallboy’s Aphony is one of the very few to have survived the pyres of 1938. Those doubting the enduring reach of National Socialism should note Schweitzer’s complete invisibility on the internet today.

Autre temps, autres mœurs
Jean-Claude Babineaux
I kissed every page of this book upon my first reading, for it is an easy book to love. Bound in shagreen onager leather, typeset in Gertrude Sans and printed on goose flax marbled paper, it is an appropriately luxurious carriage for a story of such breathtaking depth and verisimilitude. Sometimes, I’ll even place my member inside the pages and press down hard upon the covers, so desperate am I to be at one with this serendipitous masterpiece. Rare as hen’s teeth, but.

أبجد هوز دولور الجلوس امات
Abdul-Bari Shalhoub
Undoubtedly my favourite of all the Iranian existentialists, Shalhoub frankly blows most Western writers off the page. His first novel, ولكن المنزلية, is probably more accessible, and جهد كبير، والحزن is better known, but أبجد هوز دولور الجلوس امات is definitely the most rewarding as a literary experience, combining Shalhoub’s genius for narrative (story), characterisation (people) and that all-important “sense of place” (the scenery). There is an English translation, but I prefer the Arabic – Shalhoub’s passion transcends the language barrier to create what can only be described as a “page turner”. Unfortunately, only one copy (now mine) was printed before the Ayatollah ordered the author slaughtered, the manuscript burned and the typesetting machine obliterated with dynamite, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Untitled
Anonymous
This book was sold to me as the most limited of limited editions. Unfettered by such pedestrian considerations as a cover, a linear story or any visible pages to speak of, it is the ultimate collector’s item for any fan of obscure and unfathomable literature. I paid a hefty sum for it, but am willing to part with my only copy should the ‘right reader’ express any interest…

Playmaking in Pyrmont Bringing history to life in ‘The Sugar House’

From a distance, as I approached Refinery Square in Pyrmont, I could see a large copper cock, sporting a magnificent tail flourish and comb, perched above a weather vane. I think it caught my eye because of the intense gusts of anticipation and expectation that were swirling inside me, wondering how I might weather this turn of my fate.

I had been asked to speak to the Pyrmont History Group about my forthcoming play at Belvoir Theatre The Sugar House, a story centred around the Macreadie family who lived and worked on this historic peninsula in the 20th Century. Having been told that this Pyrmont History Group brought together ‘survivors of urban renewal and newcomers to the high-rise apartments that have replaced the cottages and the industrial buildings of CSR’ I had suggested that we might read part of the work-in-progress play. No rehearsal, no direction. I would hand them the marked up scripts and let them take it from there.

My own grandfather, Roy, had worked as a fitter and turner at the Colonial Sugar Refinery, which dominated this peninsula for so long, and he would have stood, queuing up with so many others at the door of the pay office building which I now entered. It had been converted into a community space, and now a version of my Poppa, in dramatic form, would have life breathed into him by strangers whom I was yet to meet. I was conjuring my long dead grandparents and my untapped past, which was too little talked about when they were alive, into this space of authentic connection with their spirit and legacy. If a time machine rolled through the years, I might be standing right next to my patiently waiting, cap-in-hand, Poppa as we took to the amateur stage.

The organisers had installed a small raised platform for the performance, on which five chairs had been placed. I was introduced to a former judge who was intending to take the role of the petty criminal son in the play, Ollie. A former teacher would read the role of Margo, the troubled daughter. One by one the roles were apportioned out to brave souls who, sight unseen, had agreed to perform them publicly to the 70 or more community members who had gathered for an afternoon’s entertainment.

Black and white image of a gatehouse, with 'Pyrmont Refinery CSR' in bold white letters

CSR main office (left) and gatehouse. Image credit: Jackons Landing Community Association website, jacksonslanding.net.au

Almost all of the roles had been filled but the part of Sid, the grandfather of the Macreadie clan. But then Jennice Kersh, a long time Pyrmont local, now living in Redfern but still indelibly tied to this ground of her childhood, arrived. Jennice had seen a development reading of The Sugar House at Belvoir several years ago and had, afterwards, generously praised it and encouraged me to keep going. Today she had brought with her a former union organizer called Barry whom, she told me, was highly intelligent but had left school early and not found the means to fulfil the potential of his own big, busy brain.

Nervously I asked if Barry would consider reading the role of Sid. He’d just turned up for a free feed of tea and bikkies and now I was roping him into a performance. He flipped through the small sheaf of white pages, finding his highlighted moments. He looked up at me and asked, ‘Is he a drinker?’ and then, before I could answer he found Sid’s line ‘Nothing a cold beer and a little lie down won’t fix’ and smiled at me. ‘You’re on,’ he said.

Suffice to say Barry was one of the highlights of this precious and remarkable afternoon. Quietly but firmly he embodied the role of the gentle patriarch, giving the work an instant grounding in time. It was his voice with its gravelly truth, and his speech patterns, with their rough and tumble humour, that took the words and gave them the spirit of honest, lived experience. That day Barry showed us the difference between heritage features – a superficial conserving of the flavour of the past – and a real life exchange with the real deal – a fascinating mix of guts and grime and glory. It’s the difference between pretending to know what life was like in the old days and having the breath knocked out of you by seeing the past manifest before your eyes in all its dimensions, complexity and contradictions.

The character of Sid had been born of my imagination, my memories, my research and my art but on that day he almost felt eerily closer to my lived experience of my grandfather than even when he was alive.

Afterwards I was lucky enough to receive some tough love correction and adjustments to the script. There was a line in the play where one of the family complained about the neighbours having called the police. “But no matter how bad it got,” said Jennice, “nobody would ever have ‘copper’d’ on you,” she said, transforming the noun into a verb in the most beautiful way.

Many of the residents spoke frankly to me about the deprivations and even poverty of their own backgrounds and I realised that the themes of the play, about identity having only a passing relationship to economic circumstance, were resonating strongly here. But the biggest thrill was watching the highly-educated, socially-successful audience members crowd around the slightly dazed Barry, who received their attentions and praise with a casual shrug and tucked enthusiastically into the now proffered drinks and nibbles.

The artisan-made weathercock that now crows above the square was once placed on the high point of the CSR Sugar Refinery roof. As I left the building that day, I looked up and thanked the CSR Engineers, the Lend Lease corporation and the Jacksons Landing Community Association who had, in preserving it, affirmed that the past is still vividly alive in the present and is a potent way in which we can transfigure the future.

Kris McQuade in Belvoir’s production of ‘The Sugar House’. Photography by Daniel Boud

Alana Valentine’s stage play The Sugar House, directed by Sarah Goodes and starring Kris McQuade, Sheridan Harbridge, Sacha Horler, Josh McConville, Lex Marinos and Nikki Shiels will play at Belvoir Theatre from 5 May to 3 June, 2018. Information and tickets here.

City of Forgetting Rats, cranes, rubble and politicians

Whenever Proust’s grandmother bought him a gift, it had to be something beautiful, and have intellectual value, because beautiful things teach us about pleasures beyond material comforts. Even when gifting something ‘useful’, like a walking stick, she’d find one so old and decrepit it was only good for “telling us about the life of people of other times,” rather than being of any practical use.

Is there any value today in keeping things from other times?

Last year, a Singaporean developer was fined $5,000 for demolishing most of the 1912 Edwardian façade of Hensley Hall in Kings Cross. A pittance of a deterrent on a $21-million-dollar job. Another group is salivating to demolish the iconic Bourbon building dating back to the 1880s.

In Martin Place a large historical photograph printed on the hoarding of a building site shows the houses that were destroyed to extend the thoroughfare. Little black and white figures watch bent-over men use sledgehammers to make part of their world disappear.

Historical photographs of Sydney have been appearing all across the city. Like windows into lost buildings now impossible to visit, they show the pixelated faces of the dead. Flop houses and pockets of grandeur, erased forever. Gazing into the past feels almost a ruse to distract us from what’s happening in the present, where the Sydney skyline is home to more than 50% of Australia’s cranes, which seem to be taking the city apart, brick by brick. It’s impossible not to hear jackhammers, and rat sightings have increased as ancient nests are disturbed.

The City of Sydney website says of the photographs, “People love reflecting on the past and imagining the future.” The ‘present’ is not mentioned in this vision. It’s hidden behind particle board hoardings, in piles of rubble.

In 1926, my grandmother worked as a waitress at Petty’s Hotel on the corner of York and Jameson Streets. The home of Sydney’s first beer-garden, Petty’s was, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, acknowledged in the late 19th century to hold the premier position as the aristocratic hotel and select resort in Sydney. Knocked down in 1976, the site is now blighted by a brown-brick-blemish of serviced apartments, that no one will ever lament the passing of.

My grandfather worked on the boilers at the Hotel Australia. Sir Henry Parkes laid the foundation stones in 1889 and French chanteuse Sarah Bernhardt performed at the opening, but in 1971, all the Italian Carrara marble of ‘Australia’s best known hotel’, was bulldozed to make way for the MLC Centre. They’d promised to refurbish the city landmark, but quickly demolished it, also taking out the 1875 Theatre Royal beside it. The Hotel Australia, The Hordern Building, The Trocadero, the heritage-listed Regent Theatre obliterated in 1988 and left as a huge crater until 2004; how could they have been allowed to destroy so much of our collective history?

Can’t the past be valued for the narrative depth it brings to our lives?

In Miller’s Point there’s little need for historical photographs. Time has been allowed to endure. Now a major tourist attraction, houses look how they might have a hundred years ago. Without the Green Bans of the 1970s, they would have been destroyed. The buildings don’t match the spiff of elite apartments, but they’d be approved by Proust’s gran for evoking other times, and aren’t we richer for being able to feel our story in the streets around us?

The state’s now put the Sirius building up for sale, gleeful at potentially turning 79 public housing units into 250 luxury apartments. They say they need the cash. Is it time significant planning decisions with historical implications were removed from the ephemeral hands of short-term politicians?

Here be Monsters ‘Exclusion Zone’ at the Griffin Theatre’s Batch Festival

Arriving in Munich to trek the Black Forest I found myself with a day in the city to spare. As it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed. Except for the Hunting and Fishing Museum. With little to do I paid the fee and stepped inside to discover a frozen world of deer and mountain goats, eagles and wolves in glass coffins. There is a reason the words museum and mausoleum share such close etymology.

In a small room tucked away upstairs behind a tattered red curtain, I discovered the realm of the wolpertinger. Native to Bavaria, the wolpertinger is a species of small-horned mammal belonging to the same family as the North American jackalope and the Thuringian rasselback. Known for its extravagant taxonomy, antlers are common, as are fangs, feathers, hooves and scales.

So strange is its appearance, you’d almost doubt its existence if it weren’t for the authority of the plaque on the wall reassuring you of the creature’s providence. In fact, the wolpertinger is a fiction, a mythical beast sprung straight from Germanic folklore. And yet here one was, right in front of me. A creature that should not be, but somehow was. And in this moment there were two explanations: the rational and the irrational; a joke dreamed up by taxidermists run riot, or something else, far richer, and stranger. The wolpertinger invited me to play a game. A game of make believe. And right then and there, I accepted its offer.

My latest work on at Griffin Theatre isn’t really a play. Plays are performed on stages, in front of a seated audience. In Exclusion Zone, performers and audience members alike leave the safety of the theatre and its neat divisions far behind. Roles become increasingly blurred, so that it’s difficult to distinguish who is who, what is real and what is not. Until it’s hard to say when fiction begins and reality ends.

Part walking tour, part immersive performance and part game, Exclusion Zone presents an expedition into the heart of Kings Cross, inviting audiences out of their seats and into the streets under the watch of a deeply unreliable narrator. Inspired by the classic Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker, participants join a night-time reconnaissance mission into ‘the zone’ – a shifting fantastic, a bright bubble of chaos recently erupted in the city.

Here, they are tasked with collecting samples, taking readings and looking for evidence of events which have no natural explanation.

As the journey continues, events grow stranger and the expedition leader’s own mind starts to fragment. Participants must choose for themselves how much they can rely on his word – and whether they may be better off striking out on their own.

I’m fascinated by uncertainty in all of its forms and what it might do to a story when we open the door to chaos, just a little.

Exclusion Zone is influenced in part by a long-ago, late-night encounter, precipitating a slippage between worlds – my own first experience of the fantastic.

She stood under a streetlight, waiting for me. I was in Camperdown, walking home from the Bank Hotel. It was late. Coming down Australia Street, I saw her at the bottom of the hill: a woman in a nightdress, like a sentry, in the middle of the road. Even at a distance I could tell there was something wrong. The stillness of her, arms hanging slack by her sides, eyes that seemed to look right through me.

And just like that, the hairs on my neck began to dance, and my heart began to stutter and skip, as an ancient alarm, long forgotten, roared to sudden life. As I grew closer, her features grew clearer: a woman in her sixties, hair hanging down like water-weed, her body swaying slightly, mouth open, eyes blind. That’s when I heard her too. This low, guttural, moan.

I considered diverting down a side street, or even backtracking the way I’d come. I knew this fear was irrational, and there was a logical explanation, and yet with every step closer my body screamed no. Heart bucking in my chest, I approached her, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger, as soon as her head twisted around, or she began to levitate, or to crabwalk towards me.
She was sleepwalking.

The door to her house stood open. I stood with her a few minutes, trying to decide what to do, whether to wake her, and then she grunted and headed back inside. Describing the story now it’s easy to laugh but I won’t soon forget that cold, clammy hand which squeezed my heart at the time.

The Russian theorist, Tzvetan Todorow refers to episodes like this as uncanny: disconcerting, seemingly supernatural events, which ultimately have a rational explanation. They might have irrational explanations too, flirting with plausibility before exploding it.

This is the realm of myths and fairy tales – or what Todorow calls the marvellous. There is another realm as well, between the uncanny and the marvellous. The Fantastic offers no answers, rational or otherwise, lingering in the moment of indecision, of hesitation, in the split-second of doubt.

Exclusion Zone is a night-time journey into this moment, this feeling of uncertainty. It invites you to suspend disbelief for an hour and linger in this liminal state between the question and the answer. It attempts this by seeking to make a world long familiar, strange again, by flirting with the fantastic, forcing audiences to question their perceptions and see the world of Kings Cross anew.

The German poet, Novalis, said: “Chaos in art should shimmer through the veil of order”. Chaos means uncertainty, and uncertainty describes the unreliable, the indefinite and unknown. Art, then, is a journey from the known to the unknown, from the centre of our certainty to the edge of our maps.

I hope to see you there. Come get lost in the Cross. But be warned. Here be monsters.

Exclusion Zone: an Unreliable Walking Tour runs for four nights only from 25 to 29 April. Presented by Griffin Theatre as part of its inaugural Batch Festival. Shows start at 7pm and last an hour. Information and tickets here.

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