For my sins I live in Brisbane

I’ve moved around a bit in my life, I’ve come and gone from our sprawling town many a time. I’ve sought greener pastures, wilder ones, colder ones, more dramatic backgrounds for my ever-changing moods. I’ve spent time in the punk squats of Hamburg, the nightclubs of Glasgow, the grindcore shows of Kuala Lumpur, the most glorious fringe arts festivals of a dozen countries. My friends and colleagues make art across all the continents, spanning myriad genres. I’m no stranger to the whims of the international art scenes, and yet, here I am, flying the flag for the cultural backwaters of the deep north. And I have no regrets.

Lady Rodentia leads limbo at the DOOMSday disko cabaret. Image credit: Fiarrah

The Kurilpa peninsula sits on the intersection of the lands of the Turrbal and Jagera people, and on this site these people have gathered since time immemorial. To pause on travels, to meet friends old and new, to dance and exchange knowledge, to feast with loved ones, to declare their sovereignty, to honour the ancestors, to pledge the future. The river Maiwar wraps its sinuous winding self around these lands with a sullen grace, its ebbs and flows echoing the tidal rhythm, its banks morphing with the power of inevitable flood waters. This is an ancient land, and art has been made here long before colonialists made violent incursion.

This violence remains at the core of our soul, whether we know it or not. A politics of oppression has nurtured our psyche. We have a history in this town, of making vibrant art under pressure. I was a typical small-town middle-class girl, hopelessly unaware of my own privilege as I made my first tentative steps into the big bad world. Like many others who were fed the Standard Australian Education, in my early twenties I was chock full of assumptions, stereotypes and racist tropes, an uncomfortable burden for an emotionally unstable wannabe circus artist with a kind heart. It was my years as a presenter at 4ZZZ that I credit with pulling the thread that brought down the whole rotten edifice.

Commonwealth Games protests in Brisbane in 1982. Source: deadlystory.com

It was in the history of Zed that I first learned about the fascist behaviours of Joh Bjielke Peterson, the Queensland premier who dictated his whims onto the growth of our state with his conservative political fist. Here I learned about the 4ZZZ journalists who broke the story of Cedar Bay, one of the turning points in the long fight to remove him from power and lance the boil of political corruption. I learned about the Market Day riots, where police officers unleashed unwarranted violence upon concert goers in the midst of a wild electrical storm. I learned about the 1982 Commonwealth Games Protests in Musgrave Park, where 10,000 people pitched tents to protest the racist laws that continued to wreak havoc on the lives of First Nations people.  (Following these protests land rights legislation began to be triggered around Australia.) I learned about men who would demolish cultural icons for cash, and drive bulldozers through dancehalls in the middle of the night.

I started digging deeper, and I uncovered a wealth of wild history that blew my whitebread worldview right out the window. I learned that my sleepy backwater town had a fierce heart, a strong power stance when backed into a corner, and a long memory.

There is a certain kind of art that only gets made when times are tough. There is more street art made about dictators than generous monarchs. Artists don’t mock politicians who genuinely invoke quality reform. When you are an oppressed person, the need to carve your space on a stage is a battle for life over death. It’s way harder to punch up when you are right at the bottom, but twice as important. And so, in our sticky river city, we have a unique history and a flair for wild arts. You have no fucks to give when you have nothing to lose.

There was a time when I used to watch the slow migration of Brisbane artists, and I watched them get swallowed up by the Sydney and Melbourne scenes, and then perhaps out to New York, London, Berlin. I used to think they were consumed by those scenes, but what I didn’t realise is actually, we took our aesthetic and influence and we added a new flavour to all of their tunes. You can hear Brisbane twangs in the subcultures of a handful of cities. And sooner or later, they come trickling back.

The Nothing Ever Happens project was originally born out of a brazen push for free tickets for this poverty-line artist, but more than that, it was also a way of shining a light on the myriad brilliant, funny, stoopid, neo-nostalgic, outright amazing artists getting buzzed up all over the city. It was a way of sharing our clever friends with the curious masses, making sure no good theatre seat was left empty. It is, maybe, possibly, a plea to those that muster funding streams, to recognise the strong mycelium binding together the arts ecosystem under the precarious shadows of the major companies and venues.

We don’t necessarily put our most interesting feathers on display. The best bars might not be the one right smack bang in the middle of the mall. We’ve learned it’s safer to keep the best parties under wraps. We know you can’t trust the people up top to know what kind of dances we want to go to. The most beautiful peacocks prefer the grungiest divebars to display their brazen dance moves. The weirdest, best art gets made by people who have no one telling them it is impossible.

Many a time a stranger to our sundrenched plains has cried, but ‘nothing ever happens in Brisbane!’ And I say woe unto you, for you are not getting invited to the right parties.

Brisbane is a slow burn love affair. It’s a friend who annoys you regularly but is loyal to the end. It’s a third date that is better than the first two. It’s the ‘special’ stock that’s kept back for the best customers. It’s a meditation in making the most of the upswing, and catching a firm hold of the zeitgeist. Rain, hail, shine, there is more going on in this town than I can possibly get to. So sign on up and let us show you the sequined underbelly of this sleepy river town.