Politics, Aesthetics, and Environment

Major events this past week have been across the political and aesthetic dimensions. I have signed up for campaigning in the state seats of Albert Park and neighbouring Prahran, and speaking of neighbours, I was interviewed for the local newspaper as part of a "meet a neighbour" column (the quotes and content aren't exactly 100% accurate, but close enough). Apropos the election, it is fascinating that there is less than two weeks left in this state election, it's been so quiet. This election does have a couple of interesting quirks; the main one which worries me is that the opposition has been taken over by ultra-conservative theocratic types, who really want to recriminalise abortion, voluntary euthanasia, re-allow conversion therapy, etc. The Greens have a problem of a different matter; Labor's introduced the sort of social and environmental policies in government that the Greens have argued from the security of a protest vote. The conservative fear slogan: "Vote Labor, get Greens" is a rather ironic one in this context. The state Labor government has managed to provide progressive civil rights, an employment-based approach to the environment (renewable energy production, mass transit), and the best performing economy in the country.

Apart from political engagements, there have been multiple aesthetic-based engagements this week as well. I neglected to mention a "Big Band" event the week prior at the Ian Potter Centre; really not my style of music, but performed competently enough. Another gathering was a presentation on "Creative Technologies and Intertwined Innovation" at the Victorian College of the Arts, which included Stelarc, discussing some of his most recent activities in body-art and disembodiment. Finally, last night attended an orchestra performance with lei_loo of a selection of works from Joe Hisaishi, the musical genius behind many Studio Ghibli soundtracks, at the National Theatre in St Kilda, a beautiful and just-so-slightly dilapidated building. Like other Fever events, it was a little on the short side but otherwise a very good performance.

An earlier update neglected to mention that I attended (online) the 2022 International Conference on Green and Innovation-driven Development in Cities and Towns hosted in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, PRC. It was a pretty high-level affair, carefully scripted, but the home of where various "garden cities" have been introduced as a reality and with a first-order concern with improving the quality of life in urban environments. The speakers included a few of managerial-political types, but I was impressed by the number of engineers, landscape architects, and environmental scientists that were present. It also increasingly looks like I will be visiting Auckland again in a few weeks to meet up with a number of Pacific Islander representatives where discussion of climate change mitigation will be high on the agenda, which they know the need on a visceral level far greater than most.