Up way too late last night compiling statistics for the MCA’s education programme. They hand out all these questionnaires to school groups who attend workshops, with answers on a scale of one to five. You know the sort of thing, one is agree strongly, five is disagree strongly, and you have to interpret the numbers in between as best you can. This was chronically boring work, but my boss, Justine, was nice enough to send it my way, since I obviously can’t come into the museum for work. My first experience of “telecommuting” was a bit dull. Compiling statistics made me wonder about the process of gathering information – how the technology for recording pretty much determines what results you’re going to get. I wonder what that means for this blog?
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I’m sitting in my living room, gazing blankly at the computer screen, on the third morning of my Petersham artist in residence in my own neighbourhood. It’s just after nine, and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. About fifty metres away, construction work is going on, grinding pulsing abrasive rasping noises which permeate the house. I feel this noise in my body as much as in my ears. It’s unsettling, irritating, and difficult to ignore. “Luckily,” we live three houses away from the building site. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the folks who live next door. Continue reading →

Luciana came around about ten. She’s my nearest neighbor, from the flat next door. She’s from Milan, and we speak “recreational” Italian with each other (usually only when the topic of conversation is not too complicated, or we don’t need an urgent resolution to a practical issue). Otherwise its English all the way. Lately, though, I think she has decided that I need the practice, so there’s been more Italian, even when it gets a bit hard-going. Yesterday, for instance, we were convening to write a list for our landlord about security issues. Luciana was broken into last Tuesday. Our next neighbours across, Rachelle and Rob, were burgled on Thursday. Bec and I were cleaned out in early February. The cops said Petersham is being “done over” in a big way, lately. All this has created an atmosphere of mild paranoia, and we’re demanding that the landlords install better locks and maybe some bars on vulnerable windows. From Luciana, I learned that the word for lock (which needs fixing on her screen door) is “serratura”. Her windows have “serrature” installed, but some of them are a bit wobbly (“molle”) and hardly inspire confidence. We also need gates (“cancelli”) at the front of the whole building – there are none, and so the crooks can easily slip down the side passage and carry out their dastardly schemes, virtually invisible from the street. We made up this list, drank some coffee, and bitched about thieves (how could they be so bold?) and landlords (how could they be so stingy?) Continue reading →

The clock ticked round to midnight and I sat in the kitchen watching it. When all the hands pointed to twelve, I took two photos. Without the flash, the clock looked yellow and blurry. Flash-frozen, on the other hand, it looked like it had been caught in the act. Embarrassed at having been sprung doing something vaguely shameful but essentially harmless.

That’s how I brought in the third of April. The beginning of “Bilateral Petersham,” aka “my Petersham project,” aka “The Petersham Lockdown.” There was no tangible difference between one moment, where I was not “on the job,” and the next, when the “project” had officially begun. No fanfare, no ribbon cutting, no glass of champagne. I went to bed and read a bit and then fell asleep.

For two months (well, a bit less actually) I will not leave the suburb borders of the mighty Petersham. Petersham is a smallish neighborhood in the “inner-west” of Sydney. It runs between Parramatta Road (at the north end) and Addison Road (at the south end), and is surrounded by such glamorous destinations as Leichhardt (north), Lewisham (west), Marrickville (south), and Stanmore (east). And I will remain entirely within it until the end of May, as (self-appointed) artist-in-residence of Petersham.

Why am I doing this? Continue reading →