you're here to be salt seasoning

i come back to reconnect, in the persona of a believer - i have been lost and wandering like the lamb on the edge of the cliff - as i drive past bella vista waters estate everything now seems familiar and comfortable - i connect with the large impressive houses - see their symmetry and order, their power to project the wealth and success that the lord can bring into my life - i see that there are few trees but this is good as their is no covering up of the architectural power that is on full show - the grand houses look down on the hillsong centre announcing its importance, its central place in hillsong life - i park my car and walk up to the centre - past thousands of fellow worshipers who have attended the early morning service this special mother's day - indian, african, chinese, korean, american-african, anglo-european, everybody with smiles and kids in tow - i see sami a young samoan woman that i worked with a three years ago - she is with beautiful child and handsome samoan husband - sami is shocked to see me - delightfully surprised that i had finally found my way to the source - i am honest and tell her that i am writing a story on the hillsong experience - that it is a phenomenon - sami says that she hopes i don't say anything bad - i say no i am just telling a story - we talk briefly about debord's spectacle and she says, yes it is quite a show, and laughs - they are very happy and very warm - the child clenches my finger, connecting - they hug me and shake my hand, connecting - i am early for the service - i collect my mothers day hillsong present at the door - a hillsong capture the moment specially packaged instant camera, so that i can capture the moment of this special day of celebration for the legend mums - her children call her blessed - the word smile written in english, italian, spanish, french, nowegian, german - no chinese, islamic, african, indian, islander - i sit down in the same place as my previous visit but this time there is no girl with lost eyes but a thin Indian man with a look of shellshock - hardened, determined and solitary - there is a clapping, and the choir and musicians advance onto the stage - the singing starts - the giant images flash up on the three twelve by three metre screens - the congregation down on the floor start clapping, singing loudly and jumping up and down in a moshpit of love and surrender - a pop concert rapture of sublime connection - this is a spectacle of lights, sound and images - the slogan welcome home in two metre letters - better one day spent in the house, than a thousand elsewhere - worshipers, warriors, making a difference in our community, building for the future, placing value on womanhood, championing the cause of the local church, to love mercy - the music is loud, an accelerated syncopated drum beat that accelerates into excited revery then slows to beautiful reflection - a sweet smell of teenage spirit - the church is christ's body - what was once the bread, the natural sustenance that sustained life has been replaced by the structure, the building the church, my home - the singing strengthens with everyone raising one, two hands to connect to the lord - sing to the lord, great is our god - and there on the screen the lesson for today, the humble but bold message - YOU'RE HERE TO BE SALT SEASONING - of course, we are just the seasoning on the body of christ - our prayers and faith season the lord - add flavour to the body of christ - just like we add salt seasoning to our roast dinners cooked in our beautiful kitchens in our beautiful houses - bella vista - bella food - there is a loud roar and clapping and brian graces the stage - he talks of miracles and prayers - cancer, hemorrhages - cured - brian tells us that women are good at receiving and giving - they just get on with it - and now we should give - we have freely received and now we should freely give - cheques made out to hillsong are especially generous - generosity that transforms - small cute children of the congregation give big screen testimonials and presents are given out - even a darrel lea mothers day bag - we are shown more ads of future eventful events - this is all about the experience - all about the spectacle - we are coming for the event - the event is the rapture - the experience is the connection of experiencing the sublime feeling of the lord - wrapped up in a total environment where everything makes sense - there is no questioning, only acceptance, love and affirmation - pure concentrated energy directed at the worshipper - there is no dissent, no dialogue , no dialectic, no critical theory - only the answer - a positivist conversation - on the journey of faith - redemption is immediate and complete - the final prayer has come - those of us that have lost our way and need to reconnect are asked to raise our hands high in the air - i raise my hand - i feel the connection with the lord - i feel five thousand people praying for my salvation - i am redeemed - a bible is placed in my hand by david who is so happy that i have chosen the first step on a journey that will completely change my life - i am asked to enrol in a free 3-week course, RECONNECTION - david invites me back to the welcome lounge after the sermon - sharleen feeds me grapes and cakes and orange juice - tom welcomes me and tells me he was once a catholic - he belonged to a religion - but hillsong is not a religion - there are no rules and laws here to interfere - there is just a direct connection with god - david reconnected three yearss ago - two weeks later he closed his eyes and saw jesus standing with all the people david needed to forgive - david's wife just felt god's presence - i sip my gloria jeans coffee, i gulp down my grapes - i promise to return, to take up my new course, everyone smiles and congratulates me on my momentous decision - walking back i have accidently parked in the handicap parking space - thirty three miles from sydney and a thousand miles from care - manly and baulkam hills - i text my friend that i am safe - safe from what - safe from brian, safe from his wife bobby who i have never met, safe from robert, the used car salesman - safe from being being transformed into salt seasoning on the spoils of war - jesus loves me yes he does, why because the bible tells me so - the bible that was once called the bible now rests on my dashboard rebranded - abundant life new testament

jesus loves me yes i know, because the bible told me so

after a week of failed redemption it is only fitting that i go and see hillsong - especially as yesterday it was preceeded by a viewing of bill viola's video installation at st saviour's church in redfern at the base of the housing commission flats as well as a viewing of charlton heston sacrificing himself as a failed member of the apocolypse old generation for the survival of a new utopian generation in the b-grade 70s movie 'the omega man (all the more powerful seeing it with a couple that are seeking renewal in their own relationshi - the trip to hillsong is timely and will become an exercise in fictocritical writing, just to test myself out - hillsong syncs with barthes (advertising signs and mythologies and images and text as well as guy debord's society of the spectacle - we three, two gay woman and a straight white guy who was once julie - we get 'lost' in the backstreets of redfern only to re-emerge in the toll ways of bauhlkam hills - the weather is fittingly apocalyptic with dark clouds and sweeping rain - we see the macmansions, the gated communities of bella vista estate, the slick headquarters of woolworths - whole estates and shopping centres supposedly ownedby hillsong - we see the centre - the smartly dressed in black parking attendants full of smiles and love - we see the families so multicultural - indian african, and asian mainly - we see the high level of organisation - we see signs for different age groups, all ready to be taught hillsong junior - everyone is relaxed and comfortable - in no hurry but definitely centred and focused - we see a whole community heading towards the doors of the centre - like pied piper drawing people in - like a dawning, a coming, an awakeneing, a communion - we see the gloria jeans coffee carts - as we enter we see and feel the spectacle - it is australian idol in a soft, respectful and spiritual mode - the three giant video screens, the close-ups of the main blonde woman singer, the words to the song subtitled, the arena, the eight lead singers, the fifty person chorus, the two lead guitarists, the drummer, the electric piano - the enthusiasm, the one hand raised in the air signifying the joining, the believing, the recognition of the need to commune and connect - most important of all a sign of total belief and surrender - there are cameras, at least six, as you would see at a 'real' event - the atmosphere is warm and welcoming - we three sit up near the back where everything can be viewed - everybody is standing - i stand/sit next to a young woman who is very attractive - i instantly see the vulnerability in her eyes and her stance - i connect to her and know that i too am very vulnerable - her eyes are confused and vacant - i look around and again i see the multicutural - also attendants in black everywhere with mikes and open eyes - the lead white singer continues to pump up the crowd with love for the lord and god - the choir comes to a crescendo and suddenly on stage we have brian houston, the 'leader' - he is full of love - he connects to individuals he knows in the audience - reads out peoples praises (blue) and prayers (red) makes homely jokes and re-connects to people through soccer teams - we are asked to hug and connect with those near us - i shake hands with the girl and awkwardly hug her she does the same back - for the next ten minutes we hear that brian has visited another new congreagation to the south (like talking about another felow tribe) and that he is on his way to another - that he has written a new book and so has his wife bobbie and that we should buy them - we see giant advertsiements on the screen - we see testimonials - we are asked to give generously as that is the most crucial belief - generosity - it is spelt up plainly on the screens - buckets are efficiently passed around to collect cheques, credit card pledges and even money - i give 50 cents in a blue credit card envelope - the girl gives nothing - i talk to the girl and tell her this is my first time - she is genuinely happy - she has arrived from canada and has been going to hillsong for two years - brian has to leave now -he thanks us for our generosity but he has to go on to the next congregation presumably to collect more money - as he is the 'biggest idol' so he must be the biggest money puller - more singing and then we can sit down and here the sermon of robert - more serious, more of a salesman - in a way more he is more transparent in that he is doing a spiel - the spiel today is funnily enough titled 'the shoulders of god' the anecdote starts with a child he sees after a meeting who thrusts out a drawing to him of what he did in hillsong kindie - he congratulates the child, the father but we learn taht it is only because the child was on the fathers shoulders that the child had the strength and belief to do this - as the sermon progresses we discover that many things are carried on shoulders, mainly lambs and babies, that piss and shit over the person that is carrying them - we are like those lambs, we come from the common ground, the average grass, the boring uneventful average grimy life where workmates hate us, people persecute us, where we commit sins, where we wallow around in the mud, where we are unable to pay our rates, our electricity bills, our mortgages - once we are raised on gods shoulders we can hang onto his ears and piss and shit on him as much as we like and we will still be saved - we will be accepted - we will be made happy - but let us not think too much because robert himself was once a thinking scientist (and messed up+ and his wife was a thinking theologian (and messed up) but they joined together and renounced to stop all this heavy complex thinking and become naive, simple, childlike and just accept the lord and jesus - it is simple, as in the song 'jesus loves me yes i know, because the bible told me so' - it is that simple - the giant words on the screen proclaim 'jesus is god' and the photos in the letters show the landscape and the life that we will be rewarded with - the streets of the 'hills' - (pleasantville - the island - the truman show) some people raise their hands at the end seeking salvation - they will receive a free bible and follow up support to attend special workshops - i say goodbye to the girl - she smiles through me and looks vacant towards the stage juggling her mobile phone - she still stands there as i walk out - they are still singing - they are still smiling - they drink coffee and chat - we drive out of the hills and towards 'sin city' reconnecting with what 'we' know and what 'we' believe in.

joe in the andamans and bob in china

despite all the inconsistencies of moral arguement (talking of ethical ecology and our disconnection with nature on one hand and then flying to the andamans belching jet fuel into the ozone layer for the sake of a philosophical whim de wit on the other) i thoroughly enjoy reading stephen's book - it is full of pretensions and elitist french idolatry and indigenous romanticism but it is also littered with brilliant references - it gives clues into what i could make of fictocritical writing -

reference one:

"this is true, the subjunctive mood is the one exploited by the fictionalists, the indicative by the law-makers. but what if, instead of pointing our bony finger at the world, from the outside as it were, judging it, we wrote from the INSIDE of things, from our necessary assembly or convocation of those non-human things that have always helped us to think. we think with pencils in our hands, or with a symphony in the background. With these prostheses we are3 always, were always, more than human." 113-114

reference two:
"history no longer describes the manifest destiny of an oppressed class, for singular history has splintered into so many micropolitical lobbies. advocates for one event or another, one group or another , can revive memories of past struggles, as was done so effectively in michael haneke's film cache (hidden)." 127

the saints - i'm stranded

Dick Hebdige 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style

barthes in one day

Barthes notes

No such thing as natural

That society is constructed

Used the boxing ring as a genuine sport (re: Stephen Cummins)

The

role of the ‘performance’ and the pretence of the spectator (re: theatre of cruelty cf. Wrestling)

What we are doing is using SIGNS that actually have NO CONTENT ie: not genuine, - no SIGNIFIER that the signs can refer back to - there are no GUARANTEEING CENTRE OF ULTIMATE TRUTH

The things SIGNIFIED remains static in cultures but the SIGNS but the linguistic SIGNS that we use differ from culture to culture

The signs (and gestures of wrestling) seem natural but are really only structures and are a sophisticated CODE.(these obviously are the gestural and film form codes that the super 8 relate to – they make the natural look very unnatural by highlighting them and ironising them). Again theatre of cruelty is reacting to these codes (probably in a coded manner (does Bill Moussoulis get the code of the audience)

The films themselves are SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS.

Important that we SUSPEND OUR DISBELIEF

a CATEGORY MISTAKE is confusing the language which we use to talk about events in real life with the poetic use language characteristic of imaginative literature.

Signs can be ICONIC, MOTIVATED and ARBITRARY (How many of the films can fall into these categories)

Taboos can be a means/sign of differentation re: alcohol with Muslims/Christians

All these are cultural signs re; dietary signs, body signs, sexual signs, fashion signs, super 8 film signs (what type of film is who I am) – they need to be mediated though language (including film language) and expressed by it - he sees semiology as part of linguistics – this takes him past Saussure (linguistics part of semiology) and makes barthes a post-structuralist = he sees the relationship between the sign an the thing signified as not arbitary but MOTIVATED

Did not go as far as Derrida (also a post-structuralist) as to say that as there is no such thing as the meaning of text (death of the author) but would say that there is no final authority or meaning attached to signs


Sartre – we are all free but constantly pretend that our actions are predetermined – ‘bad faith’ – pretend to dress spontaneously

Barthes has two biases – Marxism plus a tendency to favour the working class (favourable) over the middle class bourgeoisie (unfavourable)

Is mark’s radical incompetency a SIGN – is it a biased ‘working class sign’ or a real postmodernist liberation – does mark’s work demonstrate BAD FAITH – this radical could be close to bathes tactic of ‘unreadability’ do destroy the bourgeoisie construct of CLARITY – the FOUR STRUCTURALISTS who rejected clarity were LACAN, LEVI-STRAUSS DERRIDA and FOUCAULT

Genres are codes (see super-8 film genres0 – realism, all one can do is to be honest and point out what code you are using (I must do this in MY INTRODUCTION)

Barthes believed that the author (filmmaker) does not, in the last analysis, understand heir own wok, so you have to introduce ways of thinking to understand eg. Marxism, Freudianism, structuralism, it is these things ‘WAYS OF THINKING that the SUPER-8 FILMS are about maybe.

Did the SYDNEY and MELBOURNE groups have a distinct enough difference in manifestos for there to be ‘a struggle for intellectual hegemony’ – probably played out quietly in on the beach, filmnews and ‘theatre of cruelty’ – probably good to mention this debate in INTRODUCTION in relation to documents

MIMESIS is IMITATION


Barthes says that a text (film) dos not have just one meaning but is nothing but THE PLURALITY OF ITS SYSTEMS , its infinite (circular) transcribeability

For Barthes the DEATH OF THE AUTHOR has the immediate and liberating consequence of the BIRTH OF THE READER. I can play this role as someone interpreting these films as they can signs can evoke meaning in my mind.

It is the READERS FREEDOM that gives meaning to the text [better if it can if it allows itself to be filled with imagination] not it’s CONTENT

Japanese HAIKU is an example where form is everything and content is nothing

Barthes did write a book on PHOTOGRAPHY but in the context of its truth, only showing what is there, not quite what the films were about, OR MAYBE this is what the films wee about – this is my backyard – this is who I am = take it or leave it – this is me and my life and my sub-culture and my identity and my SIGNS

WESTERN society has an essentially INSTRUMENTAL viewpoint of language; as a tool to translate experience into rationally comprehensible terms: this DOES NOT have o be so – it is only a social construct that you have to supply the solution/answer re: the social construct of the MEGA-NARRATIVE

LANGUAGE should be PHYSICAL PLEASURE and NOT COMMUNICATION – the GRAIN of film [especially super 8] can cast us away from the SIGNIFIED – from LE PLAISIR DU TEXTE

modernism and australia: documents on art, design and architecture 1917-1967

by Ann Stephen (Editor), Andrew McNamara (Editor), Philip Goad (Editor), 2007

This collection of 200 papers introduces the ideas of modernism and its influence on Australia. The main players of the time period from 1917-1967 convey in their own words the tensions, aspirations and paradoxes behind the reception of modernism. Each document is accompanied by expert commentaries from the editors. The first anthology covering modernist art, design, and architecture in Australia, it chronicles the dogged institutional resistance that greeted modernism, particularly in the fine arts, and yet reveals a surprising acceptance of modernism in the commercial realms.