Massey University
College of Creative Arts
Wellington, New Zealand
June 29 –July 1, 2015
www.popcaanz.com
The Popular Culture Association Australia New Zealand
PopCAANZ
The Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) is devoted to the scholarly understanding of everyday
cultures. It is concerned with the study of the social practices and the cultural meanings that are produced and are circulated through
the processes and practices of everyday life. As a product of consumption, an intellectual object of inquiry, and as an integral
component of the dynamic forces that shape societies.
We invite all academics, professionals, cultural practitioners and those with a scholarly interest in popular culture, especially those
working in the Asia-Pacific region to join us.
Our associated journal, The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, is published by Intellect, UK.
PopCAANZ EXECUTIVE
The PopCAANZ Executive Committee for 2014-15:
President: Vicki Karaminas: [email protected]
Vice President: Paul Mountfort: [email protected]
Secretary/Membership: Denise N. Rall: [email protected]
AREA CHAIRS
Animation: Deborah Szapiro: [email protected]
Biography and Life Writing: Rachel Franks: [email protected]
Business: Gjoko Muratovski: [email protected]
Comics, Manga and Anime: Paul Mountfort: [email protected]
Creative Writing: Karen Simpson Nikakis: [email protected]
Design: Gjoko Muratovski: [email protected]
Disability: Kimberley McMahon-Coleman: [email protected]
Entertainment: Tanya Nitins: [email protected]
Fan Studies: Katherine Larsen: [email protected]
Fashion: Vicki Karaminas: [email protected]
Fiction: Rachel Franks: [email protected]
Film: Bruce Isaacs: [email protected]
Food Studies: Jill Adams [email protected]
Gender and Queer: Anita Brady: [email protected]
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Girlhood Studies: Juliette Peers: [email protected]
Gothic and Horror: Lorna Piatti-Farnell: [email protected]
History: Hsu-Ming Teo: [email protected]
Law: Jason Bainbridge: [email protected]
Pedagogy: Ruth Walker: [email protected]
Performance: Suzanne Osmond: [email protected]
Radio and Audio Media: Martin Hadlow: [email protected]
Religion: Holly Randell-Moon: [email protected]
Science: Steven Gil: [email protected]
Sound, Voices and the Everyday: Norie Neumark: [email protected]
Sports: [email protected]
Television: Rosser Johnson: [email protected]
Textiles: Denise N. Rall: [email protected]
Toys and Games: Jason Bainbridge: [email protected]
Visual Arts: Adam Geczy: [email protected]
If you have a proposal for a new panel area for PopCAANZ or associated queries please contact:
Paul Montfort [email protected]
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Monday June 29 10.00 – 12.00
Film 1:
1. Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough - University of Sydney
Digressions During Sex Talk: Advertising and Cinematic Form in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac
2. Wyatt Moss-Wellington - University of Sydney
What is the Suburban Ensemble Dramedy?
3. Russell Manning – Monash University
Wes Anderston does not exist
TV 1:
1.
2.
1.
Jo Coglan – Southern Cross University
A discourse analysis of American Decay in ‘New Television’
Patrick Fuery- Chapman University
Between Daryl and Rick: (Lacanian) Anxiety, Missing Objects, and The Walking Dead
Tim Groves
Victoria University of Wellington
‘It Feels Good because God Has Power’: The Serial Killer Mastermind and His Disciples
Religion 1:
1.
2.
3.
Bruno Marshall Shirley
Victoria University of Wellington
The Presence of Religion in Popular Music: An Analysis of “Glory”
Holly Randell-Moon
University of Otago
Is Prince William a god or celebrity? Whiteness, sovereignty and the British monarchy
Ann Hardy/Carolyn Michelle/ Charles H. Davis (Ryerson) University of Waikato
Still a Spiritual Journey? Changing Audience Reactions to The Hobbit film trilogy
Visual Arts 1:
1.
2.
Catherine Bagnall, Marcus Moore
Massey University
Toward the Butterfly Machines
Stefan Popescu University of Sydney
Transgression, Performance Art and Family Values in the Video Art of Huck Botko
12.00 – 1.00 Lunch
Monday 1.00 – 3.00 pm
FILM 2
1.
2.
3.
Helen Goritsas
Academy of Information Technology, Sydney
Dialogical Meeting: An Encounter Theory of Cinema ‘Would we know the day any better if there were no night?’ Andre Bazin
Tim Groves/Sarah Dillon
Victoria University of Wellington
Serial Killers, Style and Post-Classical Narration
Daniel Binns
RMIT University
Spectres of the Frame: A Treatise on the Digital Image
TV 2
1.
2.
3.
Melissa Gould
Auckland University of Technology
Christian Cultural Markers and Television Commercials: An investigation into the appropriation of Christian Cultural Markers
in Non-Christian Advertisements on New Zealand Screens
Steven Gil
University of Queensland
Mad Science from Beyond the Stars: New Perspectives and Images of Science through the Figure of the Alien Scientist
Nick Holm
Massey University
Brezhnev as Background: The Americans and Marxism in the 21st century
Gothic/Horror 1
1.
2.
Sarah Baker
Auckland University of Technology
True Detective: The migration of the King in Yellow to the Gothic television series
Carmel Cedro, Lorna Piatti Farnell
Auckland University of Technology
You can be special’: Technology, Trans-humanism, and Gothic Evolutions in Popular Television
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3.
Timothy Jones
Victoria University of Wellington
Every Day is Halloween: Goth and the Gothic
Design 1
1.
2.
3.
David Sinfield
Auckland University of Technology
Typographical ghosts: A contemplation in real time, on mystery and recovery
Nigel Jamieson
Auckland University of Technology
A Survey of Augmented Reality in Australia and New Zealand
Sky Marsen
University of Southern California
Experiencing the Digital: Representations of Human-Computer interaction in Marketing Texts
3:00 – 3:30 Afternoon Tea
Monday 3.30 – 5.30
FILM 3
1.
2.
3.
Josh Wheatley
University of Sydney
Of Toys and Trash: The Crisis of Waste in Pixar's Toy Story Films
Damian McDonald Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
Firearms as a Motif in Popular Culture
Olivia Hopkins
University of Sydney
‘How Do I Know What’s Real?’: Southern Religion and Alternate Worldviews in The Reaping (2007)
FAN STUDIES 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
Mark Stewart
University of Auckland
Appropriate’ Fandom – the Television Industry’s Efforts to Model Fan Behaviours
Bryce Galloway
Massey University
One Girly-Man's NZ Zine History
Angela Warren
University of Tasmania
Chuck, Blair And The Porter: Negotiating The Rules Of Play After The Gossip Girl And Sleep No More Crossover
Bertha Chin
Swinburne University of Technology
“Orlando Jones needs to GTFO of our fandom”: Supernatural conventions and gate-keeping
TV 3
1.
2.
3.
Rosser Johnson Auckland University of Technology
Revisiting Scannell’s for-anyone-as-someone structure: the commodified listener / viewer as “someone special?”
Kimberley McMahon-Coleman
University of Wollongong
Why Doc Martin hates being called Doc Martin: Autism Spectrum Disorder on TV
Rebecca Trelease Auckland University of Technology
The Bachelor and the ‘management of liveness’
5.30 – 8.00 pm Opening Reception
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Tuesday June 30 9.00 – 11.00
Film 4
1.
2.
3.
Mhairi McIntyre
Deakin University
The Goddess Unveiled: Female Power in Contemporary Cinema
Renee Middlemost University of Wollongong
Unexpected Allies?: S/exploitation, the Bechdel Test and the Films of Andy Sidaris
Duncan Anderson Victoria University of Wellington
Video Nasties in New Zealand in the 1980s
Music 1
1.
2.
3.
Bepan Bhana
Independent Scholar
Zigging While The Others Zag
Simon Order et al. Murdoch University, Perth
Remix: Lighting the Creative Fire
Martin Patrick
Massey University
Wild Gift: X’s Punk Poeticism
Gothic/Horror 2
1.
2.
3.
4.
Margaret McAllister, Donna Lee Brien Central Queensland University
Looking back to see ahead: Reassessing The Snake Pit for its gothic codes and significance
Lorna Piatti-Farnell Auckland University of Technology
'I Warned You About the Mirrors': Ghostly Reflections and Cultural Hauntings in The Skeleton Key
Amy Taylor
La Trobe University
The Sonic Gothic: The Ominous Soundscape of Matthew Saville’s Noise (2007).
Naomi von Senff University of New England
Cannibalising Christmas – Injecting elements of horror in Joe Hill’s Christmas tale “Nos4a2” (Nosferatu).
Book Publishing Seminar
James Campbell (International Marketing Manager - Intellect)
Morning tea 11.00 – 11.30
Tuesday 11.30 – 1.30
Comics 1
1.
2.
3.
Kevin Chiat
University of Western Australia
The First Truth of Batman: The Dark Knight as an Example of Gothic Subjectivity and Relational Thinking
Ashlee Nelson
Victoria University of Wellington
Future Gonzo and Transmetropolitan: Spider Jerusalem as an Embodiment of Hunter S. Thompson
Paul Mountfort
Auckland University of Technology
Tintin as Spectacle
Fashion 1
1.
2.
3.
Wing-sun Liu (Li, Lam, Yuan, Lam)
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Heritage, Fashion and Design
Diana Marks
Independent Scholar
Communicating with molas: activism in dress
Lee Jensen
Massey University
Skank
The popularity of animal notes in contemporary perfume
Popular Romance 1
1.
2.
3.
Lauren O’Mahony Murdoch University, Perth
In Search of Feminist Romance in Australian Chick Lit
Vassiliki Veros
University of Technology Sydney
Romance Fiction Need Not Apply: investigating book club selections by cultural institutions
Jodi McAlister
Macquarie University
This Modern Love: representations of romantic love in historical romance
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Tuesday 11.30 – 1.30
Visual Arts 2
1.
2.
3.
4.
Sean Lowry
The University of Newcastle
Are we Still a Band? Negotiating the Antipodean Extremities of Intermedial Expansion and Medium specificity in Art, Music
and Popular Culture
Mimi Kelly
University of Sydney
Still Fraught, Still Relevant: Performing through Popular Culture
Simone Hine
University of Melbourne
Stillness/Motion/Performance
Georgia Banks
Victoria College of the Arts
The Wound is All: Reperformance and the Fetish
Lunch 1.30 – 2.30
Tuesday 2.30 – 4.30
Fashion 2
1.
2.
3.
Laini Burton
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University
Fashioning the flesh: Fashioning the flesh: Speculating on 3D printed organs
Sophia Errey
Independent Scholar
Working the Work and Talking the Talk: Project Runway
Vishna Collins
University of New South Wales Art & Design
Art and Fashion
Fashion 3
1.
2.
3.
Vicki Karaminas, Justine Taylor
Massey University, Wellington
Sailor Style. Representations of the Mariner in Contemporary Fashion
Denise N. Rall, Emerald King
Southern Cross University/Victoria University of Wellington
Looking at Schoolboys and their Uniforms before the end of the Japanese Empire
Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal
Massey University
Lolita in Cyberspace:
Performing Identity via Online Lolita Fashion Subculture Communities
Queer/Gender 1
1.
2.
3.
4.
Melanie FerDon Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design
To Queer or Not To Queer
Rosemary Brewer Auckland University of Technology
“Try and hold the love of your husband and get your way at the same time”: changing representations of love and agency in
the agony aunt columns of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, 1950 and 1980
,Julie Cupples, Natasha Vine University of Edinburgh
Intersectional geopolitics, transgender advocacy and the new media environment
Michael Potts
University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Homosexuality as Degeneracy in Twenty-First Century Literature
Curating 1
1.
2.
3.
Peterson, Bilie Lythberg
Whitecliff College of Arts and Design, U of Auckland
Taking it to the Street: Pacific Auto-curation in Public Spaces
Emma Jean Kelly Independent Scholar
Queering the Archive, Double Curatorship: representing 30 years of HIV/AIDS in Aotearoa New Zealand in the work of
Gareth Watkins and Paula Booker
Kath Foster
Independent Scholar
AN EXPLOSION OF SEEING: The Impact of Pop Culture on the Murals of John Foster
4.30 – 5.00 Afternoon Tea
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Wednesday July 1 9.00 – 11.00
Film 5
1.
2.
3.
Kim Wilkins
University of Sydney
(Re)constructing Berlin: Framing the City in Tom Twyker’s Berlin Films
Paul Sunderland University of Sydney
Immersion and Historical Space in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon
Bruce Isaacs
University of Sydney
A Transcultural Genre Aesthetic: Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966) and il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence, 1968)
Fiction 1
1.
2.
3.
Jillene Bydder
University of Waikato
Better than Biggles: Michael Annesley’s Lawrie Fenton Novels
Rachel Franks
State Library of NSW / University of Newcastle, Australia Fiction 1
‘A World of Fancy Fiction and Fact’: The Frank C. Johnson Archive at the State Library of NSW
Lauren O’Mahony Murdoch University, Melbourne
“More Than Sex, Shopping and Shoes” 1: Cosmopolitan Indigeneity and Cultural Politics in Anita Heiss’s Koori Chick Lit
Fashion 4
1.
2.
3.
Anne Pierson-Smith
City University, Hong Kong
Where there’s a Will?: an analysis of the use of fashion brand narratives to win hearts and minds in the high street
Tania Splawa-Neyman
RMIT University
The diary of a mender: Making and mending to make sense of ‘abundant consumables’
Denise N. Rall
Southern Cross University
Can we ‘repair’ repair - how, when and where?
11.00 – 11.30 Morning Tea
Wednesday July 1 11.30 – 1.30
Food 1
1.
2.
3.
Donna Lee Brien Central Queensland University
Recovering forgotten Australian food writers: Wivine de Stoop
Alison Vincent
Central Queensland University
Richard Beckett and Sam Orr write about food
Julie McIntyre
University of Newcastle
Chardy and Savvy: Cultural highs and gendered hangovers from the world white wine boom
Queer/Gender 2
1.
2.
3.
Rosanna Hunt
University of Tasmania
The 'indie' femininities of Frankie magazine
Phoebe Hart
Queensland University of Technology
Intersex Onscreen
Erin Harrington
University of Canterbury
Living deaths, wicked witches and ‘hagsploitation’: horror and / of the aging female body
DESIGN 2
1.
2.
3.
Francesca Zampollo
Auckland University of Technology
Food Design, Meanings, Stories, Memories, Emotions
Lynne Ciochetto Massey University, Wellington
Toilet Signs as Folk Art: A Cross-Cultural Visual Essay
Gjoko Muratovski Auckland University of Technology
Design Management Education: Educating Design Managers for Strategic Roles
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Design 3
1.
2.
3.
Gray Hodgkinson Massey University
‘Displaced’- Animated Movie
Donald Preston
Massey University
Island Love: How Our Islands’ Shape Shapes Our Identity
Corey Walden
Auckland University of Technology
Diary of a Murderhobo: The Mapping of Participant Divertissement within Dungeons & Dragons
Getting Published in the Australasian Journal Popular Culture
1.30 – 2.30 Lunch
Wednesday July 1 2.30 – 4.30
Queer/Gender 3
1.
2.
3.
4.
Baden Offord
Curtin University, Western Australia
Kissing as an Everyday Human Right: Queer Interventions in Popular Culture
Logan Austin
Auckland University of Technology
New Zealand’s Gay Leather Culture: Influenced by, and Influencing, Pop Culture
Anita Brady
Victoria University of Wellington
Taking Time Between G-String Changes to Educate Ourselves: Sinéad O’Connor, Miley Cyrus and Celebrity Feminism
Athena Bellas
University of Melbourne
‘You Have No Idea What It’s Like to be a Girl in this World’: Reign, Power, and the Teen Queen
Food 2/Writing
1.
2.
3.
Geoff Stahl
Victoria University of Wellington
Making a Mockery of Meat: Translating Texture and Failings of the ‘Flesh’”
Helen Mitchell
Massey University
Written on the Body: Tattoo Narratives
Laura Goodin
Australian Institute of Music, Sydney and Melbourne
Genre Conventions: The Beginning of the End?"
Performance 1/Radio & Audio Media
1.
2.
3.
Simon Dwyer
Central Queensland University
The role of the ‘standard rig’ in the illumination of a production of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men (1954)
Peter Hoar
Auckland University of Technology
Asking the People What They Want: High-Brow vs. Low-Brow and the 1932 New Zealand Radio Survey
Matt Mollgaard
Auckland University of Technology
Pop, Power and Politics: Local Music Radio as a Public/Private Partnership
5.00 – 6.00 PopCAANZ AGM
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Abstracts
Duncan Anderson
Victoria University of Wellington
Film 4
Video Nasties in New Zealand in the 1980s
While the United Kingdom experienced a moral panic over so-called ‘video nasties’ in the 1980s, films such as Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on
Your Grave (1978) and Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (1979) faced a rather different fate in New Zealand. Primarily through material
held in Archives New Zealand, this paper will examine film and video censorship in New Zealand in the 1980s, and discuss the way in
which the relative lack of moral panic surrounding ‘video nasties’ contrasts with what occurred in the UK. Using an institutionalist
political economy approach, this paper will emphasise what Des Freedman calls the ‘deeply political’ nature of media policy
development and implementation, and look for both macro and micro level explanations for the nature of New Zealand censorship
practice and discourse during a period in which home video gained prominence and popularity.
Duncan Anderson completed a Masters degree in History at the University of Waikato in 2002, and is currently working on a Film
Studies PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, examining the history of New Zealand film and video censorship from 1976 to 1993.
[email protected]
Logan Austin
Auckland University of Technology
Queer/Gender 3
New Zealand’s Gay Leather Culture: Influenced by, and Influencing, Pop Culture
This paper explores New Zealand’s gay leather culture and how this has been affected by popular culture over time. It asks the
question “who is influencing who?”
It explores aspects of the culture using images gathered by, and photographed by, the researcher. These will be used to inform this
paper that historically travels from military uniforms of the 1950’s to Afro Styles haircuts of the 1970’s, through to Punk, Rock, and
modern day fashion chic. All of which, feeds back into New Zealand’s gay leather culture. This paper taps into the my wider research
project SkiNZ: Which looks at the everyday lives of gay New Zealand Leathermen, in and out of scene.
Logan Austin has worked full time in the school of Art and Design, AUT University, for the past fifteen years. He is currently a senior
lecturer, and teaches mostly in the area of communication design where he is involved in digital illustration, moving image, and
publishing design for print and mobile devices. In 2014, he presented his paper “Narratives of Identity, within New Zealand’s Gay
Leather Culture” at the Ninth International Conference on “The Arts in Society” - Rome, Italy. This paper has been accepted for
publication into their journal - released later this year.
[email protected]
Catherine Bagnall, Marcus Moore
Massey University
Visual Arts 1
Toward the Butterfly Machines
Taking embroidery silk and turning it at 750rpm we seek to shape and figure things of the everyday to ‘become other’ attendant on
contemporary intersections of the human / post-human condition and its relevancies to the everyday. Our contention is ‘pop’ provides
for transformation’s in-between-ness that enables the surrendering of a priori human centered knowledge--that which arguably both
governs and limits our (inter)actions and being in the world. Within this framework we address material ontology and ‘becoming’ nonhuman creature—so stitching tiny lines of silken embroidery threads into clothing is to stitching oneself into/as a butterfly. Speculation
to the sensuality of materials enables inanimate materials to change and perform. There is involvement of intense concentration and
pleasure in this process. One looses oneself in the accomplishment and to the shimmering pinks, silvers, greens and pale blues in
butterfly-ing. Of course one cannot become a butterfly but certain clothing and the sewing itself onto dress, and into machine, enables
a “becoming” more “butterfly”. Set silk spinning: stitching and flying and glittering as wings hum and whirr. Fluttering transcendence
activating sublime myriad—the realization and rupturing of being butterfly occurs simultaneously as an aesthetic of transformation /
transformational aesthetics.
Catherine Bagnall is an artist whose work focuses on performance practices and its intersection with dress. Using the distinctively
cultural form of clothing to explore the human/non-human animal divide Catherine’s work puts into practice ‘becoming other” as
atransformational strategy to shift our relationship to our environment and our fellow nonhuman creatures. Her work questions the role
of the imagination in inventing new possible worlds in this moment of complexity and uncertainty that the world is currently in. Testing
the bounds of self through performative acts of ‘dressing up’, the work offers new modes of experience more sensory and baroque
than we usually give value to. Catherine lectures at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts.
[email protected]
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Sarah Baker
Auckland University of Technology
Gothic/Horror 1
True Detective: The migration of the King in Yellow to the Gothic television series
True Detective the 2014 HBO series is a program full of gothic tropes. The series opens with two detectives Rust Cohle and Martin
Hirt investigating the ritualised ,murder of a young woman, Dora Lange in 1995 Louisiana and also their older selves being
interviewed by police investigating what appears to be a similar killing in 2012. There are twin narratives; the mystery murder case
and the second narrative, the fall out of the case on the two detectives. These are the main plots throughout the series. There is a
sense of horror and the macabre in the series created through the murders and events that unfold and the Gothic template is also
enhanced by the location of the program in the American South where the landscape and people become a central character also.
Though this series initially looked like a police procedural, the placement in the series of the madness-inducing play The King in
Yellow marked a change in direction for the program. In the second episode Rust Cohle finds the journal of a young former prostitute
who was ritualistically murdered and the diary of one victim quotes large chunks of The King in Yellow. This paper will consider the
migration of the King in Yellow’s impact on the narrative of True Detective as the two detectives Cohle and Hart edge closer to the
abyss of ‘cosmic fear’.
Dr Sarah Baker completed a PhD on the Changing Face of Current Affairs programmes in New Zealand : 1984-2004. The thesis
examined the impact of deregulation on current affairs television programmes in New Zealand. At AUT she teaches on popular culture
and media communication papers. Her main research interests lie in the influence of popular trends on broadcasting and media
diffusion; in addition, she pursues textual analyses of Popular Culture forms, with a focus on film and sexuality. Forthcoming
publications for 2014 include two journal articles focused on sexual representation in Gothic film and television. Sarah is also the
Secretary of the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA).
[email protected]
Georgia Banks
Victoria College of the Arts
The Wound is All: Reperformance and the Fetish
Since Marina Abramovic’s 2005 performance ‘Seven Easy Pieces’ – in which she reperformed six seminal performance works from
the sixties, and also an original piece – the dialogue regarding reenactment in performance art has become an increasingly popular
topic. Rather than concentrating on the logistics of reperformance itself, this paper explores what may propel the urge to rearticulate
successful performance works, positing that this fascination with rearticulation regarding performance art could be described as a
fetish, in which the work operates as a fetish object for the new performer. This paper also draws parallels between reperformance,
the fetish, and tribal practices in which body modification operates as a rite of passage.
Georgia Banks is an MFA candidate at Victoria College of the Arts, working primarily with video; also extending into photographic and
live performance practice. Georgia undertook her Undergraduate degree with Honours at Sydney College of the Arts, and has
exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Her work is predominantly concerned
with the collision between violence and eros, specifically within regard to female sexuality. Her most recent project explores the
concept of tensility within performance and reperformance.
[email protected]
Athena Bellas
University of Melbourne
Queer/Gender 3
‘You Have No Idea What It’s Like to be a Girl in this World’: Reign, Power, and the Teen Queen
This paper examines the representation of girls in positions of power and authority in contemporary teen television series Reign
(McCarthy and Sengupta 2013– ). The series, which imaginatively chronicles Mary Queen of Scots’ rise to power in France in the
1550s, has been dismissed by many critics as historically inaccurate and, therefore, inauthentic or in ‘bad’ taste. However, I argue that
this historical anachronism carves out an important fantasy space in which new narratives about alternative, empowered and powerful
girlhoods can emerge. Within this deliberately fanciful narrative, heroines and spectators alike are encouraged to think otherwise
about girlhood, and its potential to include expressions of authority and political action. I conduct a visual analysis of Reign’s
representation of Queen Mary, including its formal construction of mise-en-scène, framing and editing, to explore how the series
features an alternative visual language of feminine adolescence that articulates the girl as a powerful subject. I locate points of
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opposition to the status quo that create fissures in dominant patriarchal discourses of girlhood that subordinate girls to the position of
object.
Athena Bellas is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne in the School of Culture and Communication. Her dissertation
explores female-authored revisions of the fairy tale in contemporary teen films and television series, and how these revisions create
representations of alternative, empowered girlhoods within narrative. Her research areas of interest include feminist screen theory,
teen media, the fairy tale, and girlhood studies. She blogs at teenscreenfeminism.wordpress.com.
[email protected]
Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal
Massey University
Fashion 3
Lolita in Cyberspace:
Performing Identity via Online Lolita Fashion Subculture Communities
“Identity is a performance of fantasy and desire – a pursuit of being and becoming the image of this desire” (Butler, 1999, p. 5). This
notion of performance is often elevated via the media of cyberspace, as one’s identity becomes segregated from the corporeal
self.This paper investigates the concept of constructing, or manufacturing, a “Lolita” identity in the virtual world. It explores how
Gothloli (members of the fashion-based Lolita movement) formulate online images of their desired selves in order to perform, and
thereby establish, an “authentic” presence within the subculture and an acceptance by leaders, and peer participants, of worldwide
Lolita communities.
The existence of digital technologies, particularly social networking sites and blogs, has created a globalising effect for many
subcultural movements, which may have remained insular and underground, otherwise. It has also encouraged a sense of belonging:
Whilst members may be geographically separated, they are also united in virtual space. The affinity gained through online forms of
interchange is notably pertinent for Gothloli who live outside Japan, the movement’s place of origin, especially if real-life interactions
are made impossible by lack of local congregation. However, a downside of internet visibility, and a major consequence of the ability
to hide behind an “avatar”, is the prevalence of cyberbullying, due to the immense pressure to “fit in”, and thus competition and
jealousy. This paper focuses on these paradoxes; the positive and negative influences of the Lolita subculture in cyberspace.
Work cited: Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Kathryn A. Hardy Bernal is an art and design historian and theorist, published researcher and writer. Currently a PhD candidate at
Massey University, Wellington, she has previously held senior academic positions in Contextual and Theoretical Studies in New
Zealand and Australia. Her work is multi- disciplinary and spans the fields of Subcultural Theory, Fashion Theory, Art and Design
History and Theory, Gothic Studies, Gender Studies, and Anthropology. Specialisations include Mediaevalism, Neo- Gothicism, PreRaphaelitism, Aestheticism, Japonisme and Mourning. She is most recognised, however, for her focus on the Japanese Lolita
movement, and cross-cultural engagements between the Gothic and contemporary Japanese fashion-based subcultures.
Bepan Bhana
Independent Scholar
Music 1
Zigging While The Others Zag
This paper investigates the early-to-mid 1970s period of David Bowie’s career, colloquially referred to as his Ziggy Stardust phase.
Initiated by an exploration into how Bowie constructed and launched his Ziggy Stardust persona, this engenders an analysis of how
Ziggy Stardust would go on to induce a tectonic shift in popular culture, as well as set in motion a pre-eminent level of commodification
within it. This becomes further elucidated through an evaluation of Bowie’s metamorphosis through a series of fictional alter egos,
denoting his interest in plurality of identity construction. These enquiries facilitate further examination into how some of the most
emblematic and prominent art images of the past half-century were produced, which have undergone a process of canonisation and
mythologisation over the past forty years, leaving a legacy of influence across a range of cultural movements, as well as stimulation
and appropriation for a variety of contemporary practitioners.
Bepen Bhana is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer and academic who is a doctoral graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts at
The University of Auckland. His research practice encompasses a number of art and design subjects that are connected through
critical investigations of Popular Culture. This involves exploring the significance and impact of consumption, branding, commercial
consumer culture, celebrity culture, the relationships between subcultures and mainstream cultures influencing identity, and the
increasingly fluid parameters between high and low cultures operating as instruments of power. Dr. Bhana lives and works in
Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand.
[email protected]
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Daniel Binns
RMIT University
Film 2
Spectres of the Frame: A Treatise on the Digital Image
Film theory has largely held that ‘the frame’ is an absolute. Deleuze’s ‘privileged instant’ is one that is predicated on its own
recurrence twenty-four times every second. Siegfried Kracauer, while mostly concerned with the tension between film form and
realism, also cannot escape film’s supposed tethering to the ‘frame’. Kracauer began his theories, like many of his contemporaries,
with an observation of and rumination on the nature of photography. Of course, until around the turn of the twenty-first century,
photography and cinema were irrevocably linked by their medium. Kracauer, like Deleuze, conceives of cinema as an extension of
photography: a natural evolution. The now-widespread use of digital technology in the production, distribution, and exhibition of film is
problematising this long-held comprehension. This paper re-evaluates the building block of film in the era of digital cinema by reexamining Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Refn’s Drive (2011). The frame is manipulated in these films, and its unassailability is
challenged. How are we to read films where, as Marche suggests, the text is both unlimited and insubstantial? In active viewing, one
must think alongside the film, or become one with what Frampton calls the ‘filmind’. However, it is not necessary to rewrite the
language of cinema, as some have considered. What might be needed, however — and what this research aims to provide — is some
reconception of how that language is used.
Dr Daniel Binns is a writer, film producer, and researcher with a strong interest in all areas of film and media studies. He is a Lecturer
in Media at Melbourne’s RMIT University. Dan’s research focus is on war cinema, Hollywood cinema from 1960 onwards, and
storytelling across digital and real-world platforms. He is the author of Looking Down the Barrel: Observations of the Hollywood War
Film from World War I to Iraq, scheduled for publication in early 2016. Current and ongoing research explores connections between
cinema and theatre, superheroines in comic books, films, and ancient Greek theatre, and the changing nature of ‘the frame’ in film
theory.
[email protected]
Anita Brady
Victoria University of Wellington
Queer/Gender 3
Taking Time Between G-String Changes to Educate Ourselves: Sinéad O’Connor, Miley Cyrus and
Celebrity Feminism
This paper examines the feminist response to a 2013 online “feud” between singers Miley Cyrus and Sinéad O’Connor. Their
exchanges sparked widespread media debate among feminists over the sexual politics of feminism, debates that took place in a wider
media context characterised by an apparent increase in female celebrities explicitly identifying themselves as feminist. Critics of
“celebrity feminism” argue that the sexualised star systems of its proponents are at odds with the aims of the feminist movement.
Using the O’Connor/Cyrus feud and drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory, this paper questions the positioning of celebrity
feminism as exterior to an imagined “feminist movement.” It argues that such a binary potentially reaffirms the structures of power that
feminism seeks to oppose, and ignores the possibilities that celebrity culture holds for rethinking the “field” of feminism.
Anita Brady is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests include queer theory,
celebrity studies and the production of gender and sexuality in the media. Dr Brady has recently published articles in Sexualities,
Celebrity Studies and Media Fields, and co-authored Understanding Judith Butler (Brady and Schirato, London: Sage, 2011). She is
currently working on a book that examines same-sex kissing in the media.
[email protected]
Rosemary Brewer
Auckland University of Technology
Queer/Gender 1
“Try and hold the love of your husband and get your way at the same time”: changing
representations of love and agency in the agony aunt columns of the New Zealand Woman’s
Weekly, 1950 and 1980.
At the heart of many domestic conflicts is a gendered power struggle and many women - and a few men - have sought advice about
how to resolve them from women’s magazines. Since its inception in 1932, the top-selling New Zealand Woman’s Weekly has been
advising on readers’ problems in its agony aunt columns. At the basis of most letters is a concern about the correspondent’s inability
to get their partner to change, in particular to live up to their ideals about what a good romantic relationship should be like. In the light
of a significant rise in the New Zealand rates of divorce between 1950 and 1980, this paper examines how power differentials within
marriage were already being contested at the beginning of the period, and by the end women in both de jure and, eventually, de facto
marriages were being encouraged by the agony aunt to seek counselling or separate when their relationships did not live up to their
expectations of not only romance and intimacy, but also personal agency.
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Rosemary Brewer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication Studies at AUT University in Auckland. She is a ‘late starter’
in research with interests in feminism and interpersonal communication, and the interrogation of historical texts. She teaches
interpersonal communication, persuasion, and academic writing.
[email protected]
Donna Lee Brien
Central Queensland University
Food 1
Recovering forgotten Australian food writers: Wivine de Stoop
While today many Australian food writers are popular and feted celebrities, Australia has a long tradition of such authors who made a
significant contribution to our culinary culture, but who are now largely forgotten. This paper outlines and discusses the career of one
such influential, but largely overlooked, Australian food writer, Wivine de Stoop. A well-known advocate of Continental and
especially French cookery in Melbourne, de Stoop ran influential cookery classes from 1960 and wrote a popular cookery book
(Pleasures of the Table 1981, 1984). As a wife, mother, cookery teacher and respected author, de Stoop’s career trajectory not only
reveals much about food writing, but also challenges prevailing myths of the careers open to Australian woman during this period.
Active in Australia when post-war European migrants are acknowledged to have brought their foodways to Australia, de Stoop’s work
and its reception also casts light on how our now everyday Australian food habits were popularised through the popular media of
cookery books and hands-on-training in suburban kitchens offered by this migrants, as well as via the more popularly accepted ways
of restaurant and café menus. This discussion, thus, reveals how such reclamation work in the area of Food Studies can not only
produce important outcomes; but can also make significant contributions to other areas of enquiry. Works cited:
de Stoop, Wivine with Penny Smith 1981 The Pleasure of the Table, South Melbourne: Macmillian.
de Stoop, Wivine with Penny Smith 1984 The Pleasure of the Table, South Melbourne: Sun Books.
Donna Lee Brien is Professor of Creative Industries and Chair of the Creative and Performing Arts Research Group at Central
Queensland University. Co-founding convenor (with Dr Adele Wessell) of the Australasian Food Studies Network, Donna is currently
the Special Issues Editor of TEXT: the Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Australasian
Journal of Popular Culture, a Foundation Editorial Board member of Locale: the Australasian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food
Studies, and Past President of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs. She has been writing about food writers and their
influence since 2006.
[email protected]
Laini Burton
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University
Fashion 2
Fashioning the flesh: Speculating on 3D printed organs
3D Printing is currently at the forefront of medical advances in the areas of bone replacement and prostheses. The technology has
progressed toward soft-tissue prosthetics in maxillofacial rehabilitation, making it possible for patients to receive for example, a new
nose, ear, eye or lips. Beyond the necessity for soft-tissue prostheses, this paper will speculate on their potential uptake for the
purposes of aesthetic augmentation. That is, I will consider the material and metaphorical implications of this technology as a
replacement for conventional cosmetic surgeries, where patients no longer commit to one ‘look’ or ‘style’, but can embody a range of
features in a fashioning of the flesh. In doing so, I contend that we may move ever closer to a posthuman realisation, while
simultaneously revealing the very human qualities of vulnerability and a desire to belong.
Dr Laini Burton is Lecturer at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University where she completed her Doctorate in 2005. Her
research interests centre on body politics, bio-art and design, fashion theory, film and new media installation, performance and
body/spatial relations. Burton spans practice and theory, where she both exhibits and publishes.
[email protected]
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Jillene Bydder
University of Waikato
Fiction 1
Better than Biggles: Michael Annesley’s Lawrie Fenton Novels
Captain F.A.M. Webster, the athlete, athletics coach and author who lived from 1886 to 1949, wrote a series of 15 spy thrillers under
the pseudonym of Michael Annesley. His hero, Lawrie Fenton, is a lively and laid-back secret agent for the fictional Intelligence
Branch of the (British) Foreign Office. The books were published between 1935 and 1950, and the series is important because of its
European settings, analyses of contemporary politics, insights into contemporary points of view, and snapshots of times and places.
Fenton was a new and exciting hero for his times, and still seems contemporary. The paper establishes Webster’s unrecognized but
exciting influence on the development of the spy thriller. It has been prepared in consultation with Webster’s grandson Michael and is
illustrated with photographs from the Webster family collection.
Jillene is a subject librarian at the University of Waikato in Hamilton. She has published several papers on spy thrillers with Russian
characters: see http://scholar.google.co.nz/citations?user=CQd0BDgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao She is particularly interested in the
political backgrounds to the thrillers.
[email protected]
Carmel Cedro, Lorna Piatti Farnell
Auckland University of Technology
Gothic/Horror 1
‘You can be special’: Technology, Trans-humanism, and Gothic Evolutions in Popular Television
This paper explores the critical, conceptual, and cultural implications of the relationship between technology, human experience, and
the Gothic in contemporary popular television. It investigates how popular science fiction narratives re-elaborate and challenge the
very concept of ‘evolution’ by presenting controversial and highly critiqued ideas of ‘becoming special’ via practices such as genetic
manipulation.
Considering examples from television series Orphan Black, this paper surveys the repercussions of terms such as ‘unique’ and
‘different’ in relation to genetic enhancement, and what this tells us about the socio-economic and socio-cultural preoccupations that
exist in ‘real life’ outside of the entertainment medium, but are nonetheless reflected onto constructed popular narratives.
The analysis merges science fiction discourses with Gothic scholarship of terror – and its legacies into horror – to discuss the
contemporary ‘fear’ of mutation and uncontrolled genetic changes and super-humanity; culturally-informed notions of monstrosity will
be particularly discussed. These will be evaluated as a reflection of the contemporary Western anxiety about uncontrolled
technological advances, which push the limits of the human being and even challenge our understanding of ‘humanity’ in the 21st
century.
Carmel Cedro (presenter) is a cultural historian and lecturer in Communication Studies. She is currently undertaking a PhD at
Auckland University of Technology, in New Zealand. Her dissertation explores the relationship between representations of femininity
and different depictions of cake in contemporary Australian cookbooks. Her research interests focus on twentieth and twenty-first
century social history, food studies, gender and Gothic intersections in contemporary popular forms.
[email protected]
Kevin Chiat
University of Western Australia
Comics 1
The First Truth of Batman: The Dark Knight as an Example of Gothic Subjectivity and Relational
Thinking
This paper explores a tension at the heart of the character of Batman, the tension between Batman as a solitary lone vigilante and
Batman as a crimefighter with important relationships with others. I characterise these two incarnations as Gothic Batman and
Relational Batman. The Gothic Batman conforms to Gothic aesthetics of subjectivity and masculinity. In contrast, Relational Batman is
best understood through his relationships to others. This understanding of Batman reflects the turn in the social sciences towards
affect and relational thinking. Batman’s relationship with his sidekick Robin demonstrates the centrality of relationships in Batman’s
life. Furthermore, Batman’s mission to protect Gotham City can be conceptualised as a relationally focused mission of care, rather
than a personal mission of vengeance. Evidence from recent Batman texts suggests the Relational Batman is currently ascendant.
The prominence of Relational Batman suggests that the turn towards a focus on relationality in the social sciences is being reflected in
popular culture.
Kevin Chiat is a PHD student at the University of Western Australia, studying the importance of relationality in superhero narratives.
He has previously been published in Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion (2012).
[email protected]
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Bertha Chin
Swinburne University of Technology
Fan Studies 1
“Orlando Jones needs to GTFO of our fandom”: Supernatural conventions and gate-keeping
On 21st March 2015, Rogue Events, the event company that organises Supernatural conventions in the UK announced the inclusion
of Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow) to the lineup, joining main and recurring cast to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the show. Known
for his active engagement with various fandoms on social media, the announcement immediately drew criticism from Supernatural
fans. Fans argue that Jones was not directly involved in the show (even though this isn’t a new practice by Rogue Events); that his
high-profile shipping of Destiel makes him a divisive and inappropriate guest; his own declaration of fandom does not make him a fan.
Along with questions on the notions of the ‘authentic’ fan, the backlash also hints at the gate-keeping that fans perform. This paper
intends to explore these issues, focusing on this might reveal the complicated nature of fandom and anti-fandom, further suggesting
that fandom isn’t always beautiful.
Bertha Chin is a PhD graduate from Cardiff University. Her thesis explored the notion of community boundaries and the construction
of fan celebrities in cult and scifi television fandom. Her research interests include fan labour, social media, crowdfunding, anti-fandom
and transcultural fandom. Her works appear in Social Semiotics, Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television, Participations,
Transformative Works and Cultures, and M/C Journal. She recently co-edited a special issue on crowdfunding for New Media &
Society, and is also co-editor for a forthcoming anthology on crowdfunding from Peter Lang Publishers. She is a board member of the
Fan Studies Network.
[email protected]
Lynne Ciochetto
Massey University, Wellington
Design 2
Toilet Signs as Folk Art: A Cross-Cultural Visual Essay
The public toilet is a key site of gender segregation and taboo and until very recently the sexes have been segregated fiercely. Areas
of gender highlight cultural values, customs, rituals and prohibitions. The desire for segregation has generated an almost universal
visual tradition of toilet signage using male and female images. The wealth of responses to this one key opposition, fundamental to
society and culture, makes an interesting study of cross-cultural representational differences, where a key role is played by site and
location. The most interesting examples of cultural expression are those signs that reflect the locality, but are rarely in areas of mass
transit, where the default forms are abstract representations from international signage systems.
Lynne Ciochetto is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, College of Creative Arts, Massey University, New Zealand. Her
research interests reflect her interdisciplinary background: sociology, anthropology, development studies and graphic design and
encompasses the areas of visual communication, advertising, globalization and sustainability. Early publications on visual imagery
include Advertising and the globalization of consumerism. (2006). Adbusters, August; “Advertising and the globalisation of aspiration”,
(2006) Eye Magazine; Contemporary Advertising in China. (2005). Media Asia, (32)1; (2004); Advertising in India. (2004). Media Asia,
(31)3; Toilet signage as effective communication. (2003). Visible Language, (37)2; Gender differentiation in public toilet signage.
(2002). Eye Magazine, (46)12. Her book Advertising and globalization in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China
was published by Routledge London in December 2011. Latest research directions: the exploration of the environmental impact of the
growth in consumption in emerging economies stimulated by advertising and the media; the cross-cultural study of patterns of new
technology use with the mobile phone and how digital technologies can be used to promote sustainability.
[email protected]
Jo Coghlan
Southern Cross University
TV 1
A discourse analysis of American Decay in ‘New Television’
Brett Martin’s text Difficult Men – Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Man Men and
Breaking Bad (2013) charts a revolution occurring in American television as a result of a number of technological innovations,
changing patterns of consumption and the hybridisation of online and cable economies. Central to Martin’s critique is the role of the
showrunner – a new brand of television makers freed from the formats and conventions of traditional forms of episodic television. As
the title suggests these are ‘difficult men’ charting a craft of ‘new television'. Many of their characters are ‘bad men’ – think Walter
White (Breaking Bad) or Dexter Morgan (Dexter). One commonality is the violent middle-class suburban man.
On the surface Martin’s ‘new television’ thesis provides rich analysis about the production, consumption and representations of gender
and violence in American culture. Yet, ‘new television’ is offering something much deeper: a critique of decaying American society.
The Wire, for example, exposes indifference to race and poverty. Breaking Bad is predicated on a failed health system. Dexter, Oz,
and Blacklist each represent in their own ways the failings of the justice system. Boss, House of Cards and Political Animals are all
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critiques on the Machiavellian paralysis of the American political system. Six Feet Under exemplifies the dysfunction of the American
middle class family.
As part of a larger project in reading ‘new television’ from the disciplines of gender studies and political economy, this paper argues
that HBO, Showtime, Netflix and the other cohorts of ‘new television’ are discursively ‘speaking truth to power’ about decaying
American society: a society in which neoliberalism destroys families, despises the poor, demands the strong overcome the weak; in
which democracy is in the sole hand of untouchable oligarchs; and there is no place for justice. The discourse of American decay is
not just narrating a failing social, cultural, political and economic system, it is one that is foreshadow7ing the violent realities of what
happens when a society loses its compassion.
Dr Jo Coghlan is a Lecturer in Australian and International Politics in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross
University, Gold Coast campus, Queensland. Jo graduated from Wollongong University having completed her doctoral thesis on
Western media discourses of Indonesian politics in the post-Suharto period. Moving from media discourse analysis, Jo’s research is
currently focused on representations of politics and social policy in television.
[email protected]
Vishna Collins
University of New South Wales Art & Design
Fashion 2
Art and Fashion
Straddling the boundaries between art and fashion, a group of young rebel Australian fashion designers burst onto the scene in the
1980s with a blur and blaze of spectacular colours, reflecting the spirit and vibrancy of Australia. Their dazzling brightly coloured oneof-a-kind art clothes captured Australia’s exuberance, its vitality and its pioneering spirit; a larrikin kind of quality that is so often
inherent in the Australian character.The notion of fashion as art can be attributed to this group of visionaries who explored the broader
aesthetics and expressive qualities associated with the visual arts and created a new language of clothes. Rather than following
fashion trends, they consciously rejected mainstream norms, and created distinctive Australian art clothes and raised craft to the
status of the fine arts. The paper examines the creative work of key Australian designers Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson, Katie Pye and
Jenny Bannister who created a unique vision of Australian dress that become part of Australia’s fashion history.
Vishna Collins is a Sydney based curator, arts writer and designer specialising in Art Knits. She is a Master of Philosophy candidate at
UNSW Art and Design. Her research focuses on the historical inquiry into the history and the phenomenon of Wearable Art. She holds
a Bachelor of Education in Visual Arts from College of Fine Arts (COFA) University of New South Wales, and a Master of Museum
Studies from Macquarie University. Her research interests include Wearable Art, fashion curation and sartorial display, aesthetic
dress, the convergence of art and fashion, the tea gown, women’s textile history and feminist aesthetics.
[email protected]
Julie Cupples, Natasha Vine
University of Edinburgh
Queer/Gender 1
Intersectional geopolitics, transgender advocacy and the new media environment
While there has been a dramatic increase in the number of queer characters on mainstream television in recent years, most
depictions have tended to exclude those with intersecting minority identities, such as trans people of colour, who continue to suffer
violent forms of marginalization in their everyday lives. Some very recent media texts have however begun to speak to multifaceted
constructions of gender and sexual identities that are revolutionary, realistic, and most importantly, immensely humanizing. Our paper
explores some of thesetexts, along with the participatory, convergent and user-driven mediaactivity that surrounds them. They include
the Sophia Burset character in “Orange is the New Black” and recent televised exchanges between trans activists and television
hosts. While serious limitations remain, it is apparent that existing political geographies can be destabilized in radical ways as
mediated spaces start to overlap with the spaces of queer lived experience.
Julie Cupples is a Reader in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh. She is the co-author of Media/
Communications/Geographies (forthcoming with Routledge), the co-editor of Mediated Geographies/Geographies of Media
(forthcoming with Springer) and a principal investigator on a Marsden funded research project exploring the dynamics of media
convergence and its implications for democratization, decolonization and cultural citizenship. Her published and ongoing research is
focused on the geographies of media convergence particular indigenous and media production in Aotearoa New Zealand and Central
America and on the cultural politics and geopolitical dimensions of contemporary entertainment television.
[email protected]
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Charles H. Davis
Ryerson University
Religion 1
Still a Spiritual Journey? Changing Audience Reactions to The Hobbit film trilogy
The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2015) have been a significant international cultural
phenomenon in the early years of the twenty-first century. This paper takes data generated from a large-sample longitudinal online Qmethod study (see Davis & Michelle, 2011) into audience receptions of The Hobbit trilogy, undertaken four times over a period of 3
years and analyses it within a framework of religious and spiritual reference. Most participants provided qualitative responses as well
as detailed demographic data and it is these qualitative statements, where respondents are particularly eager to explain what the
books and/or films mean to them that provide the bulk of the evidential material for this paper. This paper unpacks what might be
categorized as varieties of spiritual responses and tracks changes in the strength of these spiritual responses over the period of the
films’ cinema distribution.
Work cited: Davis, Charles H. and Carolyn Michelle, 2011, ‘Q Methodology in Audience Research: Bridging the Qualitative/Quantitative ‘Divide’?’
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 2, 2, pp.559-593.
Anne Hardy is the presenter.
Sarah Dillon
Master of Arts candidate, Victoria University of Wellington
Film 2
Serial Killers, Style and Post-Classical Narration
Serial killer films such as Manhunter (1986), Se7en (1995), The Cell (2000), Natural Born Killers (1994), and Suspect Zero (2004)
employ visual style in a conspicuous manner. This stylishness is particularly evident in the various imaginative acts associated with
the intuitive work of the profiler figure, such as flashbacks, dreams, and hallucinations. We will argue that the overtly ‘materialized
textuality’ of these sequences can be interpreted as examples of post-classical cinematic narration (Thanouli, 193). Consequently, this
stylishness seems to provide us with privileged access to characters’ mental states that moves beyond a structure of sympathy
(Murray Smith) or even empathy (Carl Plantinga) towards what Film Studies has come to dread: ‘identification’.
Sarah Dillon recently completed Honours in Film at Victoria University of Wellington. Her MA thesis will examine haptic visuality in
contemporary Hollywood cinema.
[email protected]
Simon Dwyer
Central Queensland University
Performance 1/ Radio & Audio Media
The role of the ‘standard rig’ in the illumination of a production of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry
Men (1954)
Lighting is one of the most ephemeral elements in a theatre production. Lighting is cued, illuminates objects in space and is gone. This
temporal aspect is reinforced throughout the design process – costumes are sketched and swatches acquired, actor’s movements and
lines are recorded, sets are detailed and constructed, yet the physicality of lighting is illusive. The lighting designer’s primary artefact
articulating their intentions is a lighting plan, yet this document is often already constructed and standardised form by the performance
venue. This paper examines the lighting design for Twelve Angry Men presented at the Zenith Theatre in October and November
2014 and the impact of a standard rig on the process for realising the illumination of this production. The lighting designer’s
experience will be used as a platform to evaluate the functions of a standard rig in contemporary practice. The paper briefly discusses
the intersection of the creative praxis of the lighting designer and the standards many venues impose upon the realisation of the
illumination.
Simon Dwyer has over twenty years of experience working in many technical and production roles in the entertainment industry
across Australia and New Zealand. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Central Queensland University examining the theatricality of
the lighting of the Sydney Opera House. Simon has presented original research in the creative industries at numerous conferences
and has written on a wide range of topics including architecture, education, facilities management, literature and the performing arts.
[email protected].
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Sophia Errey
Independent Scholar
Fashion 2
Working the Work and Talking the Talk: Project Runway
Project Runway, (2004- current) has proved to be a highly successful reality show with a strong following, despite a relatively static
formula and a low level of direct audience participation. In 2008 it received a Peabody Award “for using the “television reality contest”
genre to engage, inform, enlighten and entertain” but it has received little independent critical evaluation. While the careers of the
judges and presenters have been considerably impacted by their presence in the show the contestants have generally been only
marginally successful in establishing careers in fashion.
Using the first ten US seasons I will examine some of the reasons for these outcomes. In particular I will focus on the frameworks and
terminology used by judges to evaluate designs, and compare them with the criteria deployed by contestants in assessing their own
and other’s work.
Dr.Sophia Errey was born and educated in Melbourne, and was a senior lecturer in Art History and Theory at RMIT University,
Melbourne between 1973 and 2010. She is currently a free-lance artist, writer, and lecturer. Her interests include fashion, decorative
arts, psychoanalysis and contemporary theory, all of which were utilized in her PhD by Project “Fashioning in the Image of Time”
(2010). Her publications include catalogue essays and book chapters on fashion, ceramics and metalwork.
Melanie FerDon
Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design
Queer/Gender 1
To Queer or Not To Queer
This paper discusses the idea that Gay and Lesbian role models in the media have relegated Queer further into the margins. Media
has not only normalised Queer for heteronormal consumption, but has also been instrumental in normalising the Queer community.
Television series’ like Modern Family, Glee and The New Normal have guided the younger generation of Gay and Lesbians into a
more acceptable way of fitting into a heteronormative society. This has pushed people who nostalgically yearn for difference further
into the shadows. I will present historical images of female impersonators, with anecdotal accounts of pride in difference, and images
of a contemporary Queer identity who also embraces difference.
Melanie FerDon is a senior lecturer at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, where she teaches Contextual Studies in the
Undergraduate program; Visual Theory, Cultural Studies, Social Science, Art Theory and Gender/Media Studies. Melanie’s research
is concerned with how gender and identity shifts across boundaries with the influence of popular culture. While this research mainly
involves Western Culture, she is interested in how this filters into other cultures and societies, and the slippage that occur because of
this.
[email protected]
Kath Foster
Independent Scholar
Curating 1
AN EXPLOSION OF SEEING: The Impact of Pop Culture on the Murals of John Foster
John Foster was a New Zealand painter who produced a significant body of work between 1970 and 2003. Foster studied painting
under Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston in the late 1960s then went on to produce 14 large murals.
This paper will consider a pivotal work in Foster’s career, the Prayer and Healing Service mural of 1985-7 (Fig. 1), and the extent to
which it embodies a deep and permanent shift in Foster’s way of seeing due to the admission of popular culture: it juxtaposes images
from television and print media and early digital images with iconic fine art and street scenes from Auckland city.
These diverse images are equalized by their treatment in paint. Carefully composed and meticulously executed, painting is offered up
as an antidote against this new way of seeing, creating a visible struggle which is extended for moral and political ends in a later mural
that this paper will discuss, Foster’s Requiem for the Victims of War 1992-3 (Fig. 2).
Fig. 1: detail of Prayer and Healing Service mural by John Foster, 1985-7, 2.4m high by 12m long. John and Pat Foster Collection
Kath Foster is Curator of the art-works of her late parents, the John and Pat Foster Collection. She has organised exhibitions of John
Foster’s murals at the Whangarei Art Museum (2014 and 2015) and Mahara Gallery, Waikanae (2015). Foster holds a Bachelor of
Arts in Design Studies and has tutored Design History and Theory at the School of Design, Victoria University of Wellington (2011-4).
She was awarded the Chartwell Trust Student Art Writing Prize in 2010. Recent speaking engagements include the Dowse Curatorial
Hui in 2014, guest speaker at Requiem exhibition opening at Mahara Gallery, and special guest on Paekakariki 88.2FM.
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Rachel Franks
State Library of NSW / University of Newcastle, Australia
Fiction 1
‘A World of Fancy Fiction and Fact’: The Frank C. Johnson Archive at the State Library of NSW
Australia has a long history of debating the value of different types of reading, ideas of ‘literary works’ versus ‘popular fiction’
dominating debates. In 1939 Australia imposed import restrictions – ostensibly targeting pulp fiction – that lasted two decades. In
response to this action a number of publishing houses emerged, almost overnight, to fill the void and supply Australian readers with
pulp stories of every kind. One of these publishers was Frank C. Johnson. Johnson’s success ran parallel to efforts to ban the
importation of cheap storytelling: when restrictions were lifted in 1959, Johnson could not compete with the influx of overseas material
and the introduction of television. The State Library of NSW acquired Johnson’s Archive in 1965. This paper looks at Johnson’s life
and unpacks some of the materials within this collection, which includes a rich reservoir of correspondence, a stunning array of
original artworks and examples of printed materials exemplifying the era of quick and dirty publishing in Australia.
Rachel Franks is a Coordinator, Education & Scholarship at the State Library of NSW and a Conjoint Fellow at the University of
Newcastle, Australia. Rachel holds a PhD in Australian crime fiction and is an active researcher in the fields of crime fiction, food
studies and information science. She serves on several boards and committees including the Editorial Board for The Australian
Journal of Crime Fiction. Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and published in a wide variety of books, journals
and magazines as well as on social media.
[email protected]
Patrick Fuery
Chapman University
TV 1
Between Daryl and Rick: (Lacanian) Anxiety, Missing Objects, and The Walking Dead
A resistance to binarisms should require us to not position Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes as oppositional versions of masculinity. It will
always be tempting to read them along such lines: the (in)adequate Father position they variously adopt; the enculturation of Daryl
(despite his recurring wanderings back into nature) and the wilding of Rick; the capacity to lead and organize a group versus the
statements of individualism and the loner – the list can continue. Rather than see the two men as binary positions, this paper argues
that the interstices between the two is a unifying moment based in the negotiations of anxiety.
The anxiety here is a specific type, devised by Lacan over a series of seminars. For Lacan, anxiety is deeply embedded in an interplay
of complex concepts, including desire, absence, objects, and signals/symbols. Lacan’s version of anxiety commences from the idea
that it is not a lack that creates anxiety, but a lack of a lack. It is, in other words, a curious construction of a specific type of presence. It
is this (psychical and cultural) presence of such objects that creates anxiety. At this most straightforward level, these objects are, of
course, the walking dead. They are the presence that has replaced the true objects of lack. Lacan specifies that anxiety involves an
object that cannot be rendered in the Symbolic order – it cannot be represented, or at least hold its representable shape. (In this way it
reminds us of both the Freudian uncanny and the Kantian sublime). What is crucial to such a reading – and this is interpretation
beyond the straightforward - is that we cannot see this as simply a formula to undo anxiety by removing the walking dead. That is, the
anxiety is not the presence of the undead object. For Lacan, it is the lack of separation from the object that creates anxiety, and not
the lack of the object itself. The anxiety exists because the walking dead have occupied the place of the true object. This paper
contests that this true object is an objet petit a between Rick and Daryl.
Patrick Fuery is currently Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chapman University, California. He was previously professor of
film and critical theory at University of London, Sussex University, and Macquarie University. He is the author of 9 books.
[email protected]
Bryce Galloway
Massey University
Fan Studies 1
One Girly-Man's NZ Zine History
I have witnessed significant growth in New Zealand fanzine activity over the last 15 years. In the early 00s, multiple NZ zine
distributors represented local product alongside international post punk / post Riot Grrrl titles. By 2010, distributors had been replaced
by the greater communality of localised zine festivals. Current fora include five annual “zinefests” across major urban centres,
significant collections at several libraries, and a scattershot of retailers, public workshops, exhibitions, and educative projects (school
and tertiary). The significant increase in NZ zine activity appears contradictory to the parallel rise of the Internet. This contradictory
condition is excused by the increasing craftiness of NZ fanzines that already boast a traceable Craftivist / Riot Grrrl legacy. But as
craft meets ubiquity, there is a danger that NZ fanzines are on the brink of becoming dominated by titles that are apolitical and
decorative; at odds with the forces that spawned them.
Bryce Galloway is a champion of analogue self-publishing. Galloway boasts authorship of New Zealand’s longest running fanzine
(Incredibly Hot Sex With Hideous People (2002 - present). Galloway co-organised Wellington Zinefest 2009-2011, instigated Hamilton
Zinefest, co-curated the NZ zine surveys Zines Aus Neuseeland (Frankfurt) and small press (Hamilton), also running university zine
11
electives and delivering a raft of public zine-making workshops and lectures. Previously, Galloway was known as one-half of avantpop group Wendyhouse; satirists noted for their use of toy musical instruments and anarchic comedy. Galloway also makes selfeffacing comedic video, such as the well-travelled Hair Transposal Video (2011).
[email protected]
Steven Gil
University of Queensland
TV 2
Mad Science from Beyond the Stars: New Perspectives and Images of Science through the Figure
of the Alien Scientist
More so than real-life scientists, those from fiction have exerted a major influence on popular conceptions of science and the people
who undertake scientific research. Examinations of scientist characters in fiction focus predominantly on human figures. However, the
Science Fiction genre offers the ability to depict extraterrestrial and non-human characters in the role of scientist. While some of these
fit rather easily into general stereotypes of the scientist as mad, bad, or dangerous, others pose overt challenges for traditional
categorizations. In doing so, they provide new perspectives and images of science in popular culture. Part of a larger project, this
paper focuses on the extraterrestrial scientists of Stargate: SG-1 (1997-2007), analyzing them in connection to other fictional scientists
to see how they reshape and engage with broader discourses of science.
Dr Steven Gil holds a PhD. in Cultural History and conducts research into the history of science, science fiction, and culture. His work
has been published in several academic journals and edited collections. He is also the author of the upcoming book, Science Wars
through the Stargate (Rowman & Littlefield), and co-editor of the forthcoming Journal of Science and Popular Culture (Intellect).
[email protected]
Laura E. Goodin
Australian Institute of Music
Food 2/Writing
Genre Conventions: The Beginning of the End?"
This paper asserts that the boundaries between genres of popular fiction (such as science fiction, fantasy, or horror) that evolved
during the 20th century as a complex discourse among writers, publishers, booksellers and readers are beginning to decay. The
proliferation of Internet access offers new capabilities for readers of genre fiction to form fan communities independent of publishers
and their traditional gatekeeping roles; this in turn has given writers new freedom to transgress the strict genre conventions that have
governed commercial success, as it is possible to reach – and interact with – these fan communities directly. Through interviews with
genre-fiction practitioners and a survey of the literature, the paper finds that increasingly specialised niche markets for idiosyncratic
forms of genre fiction are contributing to new models of marketing for writers, and that these models may offer unprecedented artistic
freedom not only for writers, but for all artists.
American-born writer and academic Laura E. Goodin holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Western Australia;
her research looks at the idea of genre tropes and the boundaries between genres in popular fiction. She also attended the 2007
Clarion South workshop. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Michael Moorcock's New Worlds, Andromeda
Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Adbusters, Wet Ink, The Lifted Brow, and Daily Science Fiction, among others, and in several
anthologies. Her plays and libretti have been performed on three continents, and her poetry has been performed internationally, both
as spoken word and as texts for new musical compositions. She currently teaches at the Australian Institute of Music.
[email protected]
Helen Goritsas
Academy of Information Technology, Sydney
Film 2
Dialogical Meeting: An Encounter Theory of Cinema ‘Would we know the day any better if there
were no night?’ Andre Bazin
Throughout the history of film studies the problem of authorship has challenged film theorists. In such a collaborative medium as
filmmaking it is conceivable that both authored elements and varying levels of shared authorship in a finished work occur.
Notwithstanding the array of post-structuralist arguments aimed at diminishing the author to an abstract entity, culminating in the
declaration by Ronald Barthes of ‘the death of the author’, film critics continue to evaluate films as works of individuals. This paper will
investigate the merits of widening and extending the definition of the director as ‘author’ to include a ‘relation between’ a more
comprehensive position defending the primacy of the human factor in a theory of art and aesthetics of cinema. An ‘Encounter Theory
of Modern Cinema’ will be proposed, signified by the two words 'artistic' (which refers primarily to the act of production) and 'aesthetic'
(which refers to perception and valued appreciation). This paper thus proposes a model of a dialogical enquiry founded upon careful
examination and observation of the link between creative process and viewer perception, as well as a relation of address and
response to address evading reduction through signification.
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Dr Helen Goritsas is an award winning director and Senior Lecturer of Screen Studies and Production at the Academy of Information
Technology, Sydney. Helen has previously served as president of Women in Film & Television NSW, as MMW screen music program
manager, in partnership with APRA-AMCOS and festival director of the Greek Film Festival of Australia. Helen is also an experienced
screenwriter, reviewer and film judge, having judged the 16th–20th WOW Film Festival and Tour, 48 Hour Film Project, Sydney Film
Festival, Dendy Awards and the IPAF ATOM Awards.
[email protected]
Melissa Gould
Auckland University of Technology
TV 2
Christian Cultural Markers and Television Commercials: An investigation into the appropriation of
Christian Cultural Markers in Non-Christian Advertisements on New Zealand Screens
Advertising functions as part of the cultural fabric of our everyday lives, regardless of our intentions to seek it out, or try to 'change-thechannel'. Television in New Zealand operates as a playground for commercial narratives. The lines between programming and
advertising have blurred to form a competitive stream of corporate voices striving to be heard. The television commercial is designed,
as a highly constructed piece of persuasive communication, layered with cultural messages and meanings. Christian cultural markers
are an aspect of the language of television commercials, and are not restricted to Christianity promotional communication on
television. This presentation will examine the appropriation of Christian cultural markers in television commercials for non-Christian
products on New Zealand screens, while illustrating how television commercials operate as a cultural text.
Melissa is a PhD candidate for the School of Communications at Auckland University of Technology. Her post-graduate studies, from
which this data originated, explore the place of religion in television advertising in New Zealand. Specifically, her focus is on examining
the nature, form and function of Christian cultural markers in televised advertisements for non-Christian brands and products. Melissa
has presented lectures for the School on media communication theory and image analysis.
[email protected]
13
Tim Groves
Victoria University of Wellington
Film 2
Serial Killers, Style and Post-Classical Narration
Serial killer films such as Manhunter (1986), Se7en (1995), The Cell (2000), Natural Born Killers (1994), and
Suspect Zero (2004) employ visual style in a conspicuous manner. This stylishness is particularly evident in
the various imaginative acts associated with the intuitive work of the profiler figure, such as flashbacks,
dreams, and hallucinations. We will argue that the overtly ‘materialized textuality’ of these sequences can be
interpreted as examples of post-classical cinematic narration (Thanouli, 193). Consequently, this stylishness
seems to provide us with privileged access to characters’ mental states that moves beyond a structure of
sympathy (Murray Smith) or even empathy (Carl Plantinga) towards what Film Studies has come to dread:
‘identification’.
Dr Tim Groves is Senior Lecturer in the Film Program at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include serial killer
films, contemporary Hollywood cinema, affect, hypnosis, telepathy and psychoanalysis.
[email protected]
Tim Groves
Victoria University of Wellington
TV 1
‘It Feels Good because God Has Power’: The Serial Killer Mastermind and His Disciples
Recent contemporary crime television series such as The Following, The Mentalist, and Hannibal have featured a criminal mastermind
who stages astonishing (and frequently vicious) crimes, manipulates others to commit murder on his behalf, and continuously evades
law enforcement authorities with an ease bordering on contempt. Philip Simpson and Mark Seltzer contend that identity crises are a
fundamental aspect of the representation of serial killers. Thus my paper will analyse the ways in which the group dynamic implicates
both the master serial killer and his subordinates. Although the former controls or even hypnotises his followers in a manner
reminiscent of the despotic leader of crowds theorised by Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud, he remains inseparable from them. On
the other hand, the obedient and submissive behaviour of his acolytes emanates from their own suggestibility and/or their willingness
to occupy what François Roustang designates as the position of the disciple, no matter how dangerous that might be.
Works cited: Freud, Sigmund. “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, volume 18. Trans. and ed. James Strachey et al. London, England: The Hogarth Press and London Institute of
Psychoanalysis. 18: 67-143.
Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002.
Roustang, François. Dire Mastery: Discipleship from Freud to Lacan. Trans. Ned Lukacher. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1982.
Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Simpson, Philip L. Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film and Fiction. Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University, 2000.
Dr Tim Groves is a Senior Lecturer in the Film Program at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include the serial
killer subgenre, affective contagion, and post-classical Hollywood cinema.
[email protected]
Ann Hardy
University of Waikato
Religion 1
Still a Spiritual Journey? Changing Audience Reactions to The Hobbit film trilogy
The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2015) have been a significant international cultural
phenomenon in the early years of the twenty-first century. This paper takes data generated from a large-sample longitudinal online Qmethod study (see Davis & Michelle, 2011) into audience receptions of The Hobbit trilogy, undertaken four times over a period of 3
years and analyses it within a framework of religious and spiritual reference. Most participants provided qualitative responses as well
as detailed demographic data and it is these qualitative statements, where respondents are particularly eager to explain what the
books and/or films mean to them that provide the bulk of the evidential material for this paper. This paper unpacks what might be
categorized as varieties of spiritual responses and tracks changes in the strength of these spiritual responses over the period of the
films’ cinema distribution.
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Work cited: Davis, Charles H. and Carolyn Michelle, 2011, ‘Q Methodology in Audience Research: Bridging the Qualitative/Quantitative ‘Divide’?’
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 2, 2, pp.559-593.
Ann Hardy is a Senior Lecturer in the Screen and Media Studies Programme at the University of Waikato. Her research interests and
publications range over the areas of New Zealand media, the intersections of media, religion and culture, and the roles that audiences
play in the circuit of culture. For the last 3 years she has been a member of a team doing an online longitudinal study of international
audience responses to ‘The Hobbit’ movie trilogy. She is also a researcher on the Marsden-funded ‘Te Mauria Whiritoi’ project: ‘Māori
astronomy, ritual and ecological knowledge’.
[email protected]
Erin Harrington
University of Canterbury
Queer/Gender 2
Living deaths, wicked witches and ‘hagsploitation’: horror and / of the aging female body
Representations of the aging female body in horror film have rarely been studied, and what few analyses there are of the older,
menopausal and post-menopausal woman in horror film have drawn from theories of abjection, camp and the grotesque. In this talk I
suggest that these negative representations, which situate the body as both deficient and ‘too much’, can be linked to broader (and
highly gendered) issues of medical management and bodily surveillance. I map the relationship between sex, reproduction and aging
in such figures as the witch, the mad spinster and the ‘psycho-biddy’ before considering how these stereotypes, and other such
horrific or derogatory representations of the aging female body, might be confronted and reworked. To do this I interrogate American
television show American Horror Story (2011-), which radically celebrates and playfully explores (although not unproblematically) postmenopausal sex and desire through its repeated headline casting of 65-year old actress Jessica Lange as a range of characters who
both dread and celebrate the intersection of age and sexuality.
Erin Harrington is a lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury, where she teaches critical and cultural theory. Her research
and teaching centres on popular culture, visual culture, horror, critical sexualities and drama. Recent publications and works-inprogress look at monstrous mothers in horror cinema, parody and pastiche in theatrical Evil Dead spin offs, affect in so-called ‘torture
porn’, and Deleuzoguattarian film analysis. She is currently completing a book - tentatively titled Women, horror film and monstrosity:
gynaehorror – which will be published by Ashgate Publishing in 2016/7.
[email protected]
Phoebe Hart
Queensland University of Technology
Queer/Gender 2
Intersex Onscreen
Early references to intersex (hermaphroditism) in ancient texts, such as in Salmacis and Hermaphroditus from first century Roman
poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, honour the joining of man and woman ‘as a disembodied spiritual idea’ (Gilbert 2000, 144). In actuality,
people with intersex variations straddle the gender divide, and therefore have ‘provoked crises of representation in Western culture’
(Williams 2003, 127). Throughout history, people with intersex variations have been positioned somewhere between ‘prodigy
literature and pornography, mythology and medical discourse’ (Gilbert 2000, 145). Indubitably, contemporary representations have
changed in step with societal values, “political correctness” and ethical standards, yet it could be argued there is still slippage, and,
moreover, very little is seen or heard about intersex at all. Where once there was the awe and horror of the highly visible carnival
sideshow or medical treatise, the intersex body is now rendered absent by medical intervention, which is invoked to fix the intersexed
in both mind and body. This paper presentation explores the representation of people with intersex variations on screen and in popular
culture, arriving finally at texts originating within the intersex community. Intersex filmmakers disrupt unwarranted categorization and
erasure, by “owning” discursive practices, privileging our voice and creating a new messy dimension. Our work defies current medical
interference and promotes ethical debates around the will-to-normalise what is considered to be aberrant, deviant and abject.
Dr Phoebe Hart is an award-winning television writer, director and producer and a screen studies academic at the Queensland
University of Technology with an interest in screenwriting, autobiography, digital disruption, identity and representation in
documentary, cultural studies, and feminist phenomenology. She is known particularly for her autobiographical road trip movie,
Orchid: My Intersex Adventure, which has been screened and broadcast globally. Her biography can be found at:
http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/hartp/
[email protected]
15
Craig Hight, Anne Hardy
University of Waikato
Religion 1
Still a Spiritual Journey? Changing Audience Reactions to The Hobbit film trilogy
The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2015) have been a significant international cultural
phenomenon in the early years of the twenty-first century. This paper takes data generated from a large-sample longitudinal online Qmethod study (see Davis & Michelle, 2011) into audience receptions of The Hobbit trilogy, undertaken four times over a period of 3
years and analyses it within a framework of religious and spiritual reference. Most participants provided qualitative responses as well
as detailed demographic data and it is these qualitative statements, where respondents are particularly eager to explain what the
books and/or films mean to them that provide the bulk of the evidential material for this paper. This paper unpacks what might be
categorized as varieties of spiritual responses and tracks changes in the strength of these spiritual responses over the period of the
films’ cinema distribution.
Work cited: Davis, Charles H. and Carolyn Michelle, 2011, ‘Q Methodology in Audience Research: Bridging the Qualitative/Quantitative ‘Divide’?’
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 2, 2, pp.559-593.
Simone Hine
University of Melbourne
Visual Arts 2
Stillness/Motion/Performance
The relationship between stillness and motion has been a preoccupation of photographic theory since the invention of cinema. From
Walter Benjamin to André Bazin to Roland Barthes, photography’s ability to arrest motion and cinema’s use of that arrest to create the
illusion of motion, has defined both mediums and shown them to be both formally and conceptually interlocked. In this paper I will use
practice-led research, focusing on three works that I have produced over the past decade, in order to articulate the way live
performance can disrupt established understandings of photographic based mediums. In particular, I will consider the way that
stillness within a live performance can create the appearance of death within the diegesis of the work, despite the extra-diegetic
knowledge that the performer is alive and thus in motion. This play between diegetic and extra-diegetic content, mirrors and reverses
the way stillness operates as a paranarrative of cinema.
Simone Hine is an artist and curator based in Melbourne, Australia. Her practice uses performance, video and installation. Hine has
exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout Australia including the George Paton Gallery, Melbourne, Brisbane Powerhouse, and Institute
of Modern Art, Brisbane. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Careof: Organisation for Contemporary Art, Milan, QUT
Art Museum, Brisbane, and the Art Gallery of Queensland, amongst others. Hine was a founding co-director of Beam Contemporary,
which, from 2010 to 2014, was an experimental commercial gallery in Melbourne representing young and mid-career artists from the
Asia-Pacific region. She is a founding co-director of Screen Space, a not-for-profit gallery that opened in Melbourne in 2010. Hine is
currently completing a practice-led PhD in Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.
[email protected]
Peter Hoar
Auckland University of Technology
Performance 1/ Radio & Audio Media
Asking the People What They Want: High-Brow vs. Low-Brow and the 1932 New Zealand Radio
Survey
In 1932 the New Zealand Broadcasting Board conducted a survey of its listeners. The Board distributed 50,000 questionnaires to
radio license holders of which 24,000 were completed and returned. The brief questionnaire gave listeners some multi-choice
questions about reception and home radios before asking them to rank programme types according to their preference. These
answers were combined to produce and overall hierarchy of listening preferences. Along with the completed questionnaires, many
listeners also sent letters full of suggestions, complaints and advice about what was being heard on New Zealand radios. This paper
draws on the survey results and letters to present how New Zealanders thought about “High” and “Low” cultures as broadcast media
began bringing mass culture into the home and undermining traditional cultural values and choices. Analysis of the survey material
illuminates the origins of popular culture in New Zealand.
Dr Peter Hoar has taught radio at Auckland University of Technology for a decade. Before joining AUT he worked in radio, television
and journalism and is also a qualified librarian. His research interests are in the field of sound studies particularly in media history,
listening practices, and technology. His Ph.D. thesis was a history of audio technologies in New Zealand from the 1890s through the
late 1930s and how ideas about sound and listening interacted with records, radio and cinema. He regularly contributes concert
reviews to Radio New Zealand Concert’s arts programme Upbeat as well as documentaries on composers and music.
[email protected]
16
Gray Hodgkinson
Massey University
Design 3
‘Displaced’- Animated Movie
The animated movie “Displaced” is a symbolised narrative inspired by the Tampa boat people incident of 2001, where rescued boat
refugees were refused entry into Australia. The movie is firmly located in a space that mixes Star Wars and Japanese Anime, and at
the same time continues the tradition of an animation film auteur.
This paper will discuss several symbols used in the movie that are intended to contextualise and personalise ironic aspects of the
situation. Focus will be placed on the refugee girl – dressed in her Tibetan style native clothes, running to catch her ship, with her flight
suitcase and plastic water bottle. These ironic combinations, created by third world technological leap-frogging, challenge our
perceptions of visible wealth and value as represented by dress and possessions. The presentation and discussion will explore how
these processes create a sense of intrigue, discovery and comprehension, and ideally give the viewer a sense of collaborative
engagement that they can take away with them.
“Displaced” – Animated movie. 10mins 17secs. 1080pHD. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQCGgXHDe2o&feature=youtu.be (low resolution and minus soundtrack - soundtrack is under construction).
Gray Hodgkinson is a digital media designer and researcher, with a specific interest in visual research methods and computer
animation. Has been a leader of the computer animation programme for 14 years at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.
Gray has been developing animation education for 17 years, and has been instrumental in creating links between tertiary institutes
and industry in New Zealand and internationally. Gray has also given presentations on animation research and pedagogy at
Melbourne, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Australia. And now, new technology around motion capture, game engines and virtual
reality has created exciting new areas for animation to explore.
[email protected].
Nick Holm
Massey University
TV 2
Brezhnev as Background: The Americans and Marxism in the 21 st century
The Americans, currently in its third season on the American cable channel FX, is a television show about two deep-cover KGB
agents in 1980s America: incorporating aspects of both espionage and domestic drama, the show is inextricably situated in the
ideological struggles of the late Cold War. However despite this historical specificity, and the protagonists’ commitment to the Soviet
cause, the show remains vague on the political details of the Soviet project. I will argue that this political vacuum at the heart of The
Americans is emblematic of a new political moment in popular culture: one where the Red Menace is no longer alien or ominous, but
simply somehow ‘oppositional’ on pragmatic rather than ideological grounds. Broadening this observation, I will argue this new
situation marks a shift in the relations not only between large-P politics and popular culture, but also with respect to the reception of
Marxist-derived approaches to popular culture.
Nicholas Holm is a lecturer in Media Studies at Massey University, New Zealand where he teaches courses in popular culture and
advertising. His research addresses the political role of aesthetics, in particular the aesthetics of popular culture, which he has
explored in published articles in Cultural Critique, Transformations and The Journal of Popular Film and Television. His current
research addresses the political aesthetics of media humour and its relation to liberal politics.
[email protected]
Olivia Hopkins
University of Sydney
Film 3
‘How Do I Know What’s Real?’: Southern Religion and Alternate Worldviews in The Reaping
(2007)
Horror film that engages with concepts of the Southern imaginary is frequently read as presenting the US South as a negative place
full of superstition and ignorance (Crank, Herbert-Leiter in Leiter 2011, Graham and Monteith 2011), arguably never more so than in
films with religious themes. However, due to the nature of the horror genre these beliefs often turn out to be well founded. Using an
interdisciplinary approach that combines queer theorist Judith Butler’s concept of sites of resistance and African-American critic
Sharon Patricia Holland’s ideas about the validity of alternate cultural experience, I offer a reading of Stephen Hopkins’ The Reaping
(2007) in which I argue that it is not only possible but productive to embrace the alternative worldview: that the characters present a
new way of understanding and engaging with the world around them rather than symbolizing a lack of education commonly
representative of ‘the South’.
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Olivia Hopkins is a fourth year doctoral student in Film Studies at the University of Sydney (where she also tutors American Studies),
completing a dissertation on the connections between queer theory, horror film, and the Southern imaginary. She is a member of the
Golden Key International Honour Society and has been accepted to present at multiple international conferences, including the
Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Conference (2013, 2014, and 2015 for which she was awarded a
Madonna Marsden International Travel Grant), and the last two years’ POPCAANZ conferences, working as an editorial assistant on
2014’s conference proceedings.
[email protected]
Rosanna Hunt
University of Tasmania
Queer/Gender 2
The 'indie' femininities of Frankie magazine
At a time when print media is said to be in decline, Australian indie lifestyle publication Frankie magazine has been an industry
success story, with circulation figures that now surpass glossy women’s titles such as Cleo and Australian Vogue (AdNews 2015).
With its illustrated covers, retro aesthetics and focus on crafting and handmade items, Frankie seems to evoke nostalgia for bygone
eras, yet it must also be understood in the context of the current ‘indie’ trend. This paper examines the ‘indie’ femininities constructed
in Frankie, in the context of debates surrounding postfeminism and media representations of women. Drawing upon textual analysis of
recent issues of the magazine, the paper explores the ways in which Frankie blends nostalgia for mid-century feminine lifestyles with a
more contemporary politics of gender and sexuality. This paper suggests the success of Frankie might reveal the appeal of these
somewhat contradictory ‘indie’ feminine identities.
Rosanna Hunt is undertaking a PhD in the Journalism, Media and Communications program at the University of Tasmania. Her
project on ‘indie’ niche magazines combines textual analysis and industry research, with a focus on gender and consumption practices
in the texts as well as contemporary niche publishing strategies.
[email protected]
Bruce Isaacs
University of Sydney
Film 5
A Transcultural Genre Aesthetic: Sergio Corbucci’s Django (1966) and il Grande Silenzio (The
Great Silence, 1968)
In Janet Staiger’s seminal reading of film genre, the hybrid as generic form contaminates the long history of Hollywood genre cinema,
and indeed, of genre formulation; it is not a reaction to the end of a classical system, nor is it a spontaneous industrial, aesthetic, or
even cultural phenomenon (Collins 1993). Further, Staiger suggests that the production of generic hybridity is a political act, intended
to transgress the hegemonic structures of a ‘colonizing’ textual codification. The phenomenon of generic cross-pollination, and the
aesthetic practice of mixing genre systems, is thus a transgression of a dominant generic ideology. In this paper, I intend to use
Staiger’s formulation to propose a model of genre hybridity that articulates through transcultural exchanges between the American
imaginary configured in the classical studio Western (1939-1945) and a strategic ideological inflection of this imaginary in Sergio
Corbucci’s Spaghetti Westerns, Django (1966) and The Great Silence (1968). I deliberately deploy Corbucci as a counter-voice to
Sergio Leone’s hypermythologising of the American West in the Dollars Trilogy (1963-1968) and Once Upon a Time in the West
(1968). Against the recuperation of the idyllic West in which industrial capitalism triumphs and a pre-industrial age recedes as
nostalgic reflection, Corbucci’s Spaghetti Westerns not only subvert the path to maturation of the newly industrialized nation (common
in the genre), but present an exceedingly bleak, almost nihilistic image of the expansion of the American West and its impact on a
colonized Other.
Dr Bruce Isaacs is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sydney. He researchers on a range of topics, most recently the
philosophical implications of the transformation of cinema from a celluloid to digital based medium; this project resulted in the
publication of The Orientation of Future Cinema (Bloomsbury 2013). He is also the author of Toward a New Film Aesthetic (Continuum
2008) and is currently developing a project on the notion of a transcultural genre aesthetic across European and American film
traditions.
[email protected]
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Nigel Jamieson
Auckland University of Technology
Design 1
A Survey of Augmented Reality in Australia and New Zealand
The purpose of this paper is to undertake and present a survey of Augmented Reality practice in Australia and New Zealand. This
survey, while not exhaustive by any means, attempts to chart some of the past, current and future developments for Augmented
Reality (AR) technologies. Through interviews with industry leaders and start-ups, researchers, scientists, technologist and artists, this
study asks questions across a spectrum of inquiry where AR is being implemented; areas such as marketing and promotions,
engineering, environmental sciences, interactive entertainment formats (theatre), artworks and games. While not a ‘new’ technology
by contemporary standards, the speed of development and up-take of AR in recent years has been significant. This paper – as well as
presenting a ‘snapshot’ of current trends in AR – also examines the implications of this technology across broader social, economic
and political effects, such as ‘the Internet of things,’ contextual computing, and surveillance and privacy.
Nigel is a new media artist and Senior Lecturer in Digital Design at AUT University. Research in interactive real-time 3D graphics and
allied screen and network technologies is a continuation of Nigel's professional, international experience in the area of 3D animation,
digital video graphics, interactive digital media, and digital art practice. Nigel’s current research centres on dynamic data visualisation
of complex systems, virtual and augmented reality applications and mobile geo-reality.
[email protected]
Lee Jensen
Massey University
Fashion 1
Skank
The popularity of animal notes in contemporary perfume
When rumours that Mother Monster’s first fragrance was going to evoke the smells of blood and semen - an olfactory evocation as
provocative and vivid as her performance and identity - proved to be untrue, and that Mother’s – Lady Gaga’s - Fame turned out to be
a perfectly pleasant but unremarkable Floriental, disappointment was one of the major threads on perfume review blogs. Fragrance
fans were actually ready and primed for something dirty, unsettling, rank, dark as the liquid itself.
I intend an interrogation of this contemporary fascination with the animalic, the embracing of skank, in the world of perfume. Because
there are fragrances in which the notes we are meant to experience are the smells of blood, saliva, semen, sweat and maternal milk.
This interrogation will connect with concepts of abjection, and the emanate intoxications of carnality, as these notes migrate from
Niche perfumery to Mainstream, through the vector of celebrity culture.
Lee Jensen is a lecturer in Massey University’s College of Creative Arts. He teaches in the undergraduate degree of the Bachelor of
Design and Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours program, and supervises Master of Design and Master of Fine Arts students. Lee is a
designer, researcher and an artist. His fields of inquiry include pre-modernist ornament and decoration; the Historic Avant Garde of
the early 20th century, especially Futurism and Dada; histories of type design; and most recently the expanded sensory experience of
our world, especially olfactory. His work is image based and manifests in a variety of media.
[email protected]
Rosser Johnson
Auckland University of Technology
TV 3
Revisiting Scannell’s for-anyone-as-someone structure: the commodified listener / viewer as
“someone special?”
Paddy Scannell’s analysis of broadcasting as a ‘for-anyone-as-someone structure’ (2000: 5) remains a key theoretical delineation of
the role radio, television (and, now, digital media) play in everyday life. In essence, the development and deployment of the ‘foranyone-as-someone structure’ allowed the speech patterns of broadcasting to gain and retain relevance to individual listeners and
viewers within a mass context. As recent research has demonstrated (Ekstrom et al 2013), Scannell’s model remains relevant to
contemporary mediascapes, particularly in relation to formats, like news, where broadcasting “speaks” directly to listeners and
viewers.
There is, however, another level on which broadcasting speaks its listeners and viewers – the wider, systemic level set by the rules,
standards and norms within which individual networks, stations, and people “make” broadcasting happen. From this perspective, one
can note that Scannell developed his model within the British context where commercial messages, where they are present, are
relatively limited in reach and scope by regulation and professional practice. This paper will argue that a different category of listener
and viewer exists within highly commercialised media environments like New Zealand’s – the commodified listener / viewer, who is
spoken to by her broadcasting system as “someone special”. Works cited:
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Ekstrom, M., G. Eriksson & A. Lundell (2013) Live co-produced news: emerging forms of news production and presentation on the web.
Media, Culture and Society, 35(5): 620-639.
Scannell, P. (2000). For-anyone-as-someone structures. Media, Culture and Society, 22(1): 5-24.
Rosser Johnson is Associate Dean Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies at AUT. His research
interests are infomercials, promotional culture, detective fiction, and media depictions of mental ill-health.
[email protected]
Timothy Jones
Victoria University of Wellington
Gothic/Horror 1
Every Day is Halloween: Goth and the Gothic
Gothic narrative began to be situated in Goth subcultural milieu in the eighties and nineties, in films such as The Return of the Living
Dead, The Lost Boys, and Edward Scissorhands; in novels and stories by Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite and Caitlín R. Kiernan; and in
Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. These are narratives that feature heroes who are Goth or Goth-like, present the subculture as
reaching beyond the ordinary to offer a space distant from the cultural middle, and allow the staging of Goth or Gothic fantasies. In this
mode, the Gothic text does not articulate the traumas and crises of American history, as it is often thought to, but becomes a textual
space where the loss of the great American narratives might be consolingly replaced by the naughtily playful stuff of Halloween. The
Gothic Goth ultimately provides instruction for readers, facilitating their desires for the enjoyably horrible.
Timothy Jones is a Lecturer in English at Victoria University of Wellington. His book, The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American
Culture has just been published as part of the Gothic Literary Studies series by University of Wales Press. He has contributed to
Gothic Studies, the Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Gothic and the forthcoming Cambridge History of New Zealand Literature, and is a
deputy editor of the Journal of New Zealand Literature.
[email protected]
Vicki Karaminas, Justine Taylor
Massey University, Wellington
Fashion 3
Sailor Style. Representations of the Mariner in Contemporary Fashion
Young and forced into celibacy during long months at sea, the sailor has been considered the archetype of sexual availability. The
openness of sailors to sexual activity has also been represented in popular culture from the lyrics of Cole Porter “What’s Central
park/without a sailor’; the homoerotic paintings of Paul Cadmus and Charles Demuth, the sailor in tight pants in Tennessee Williams’,
The Rose Tattoo and Lieutenant Seblon in Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest. The uniform featuring a striped boat-neck top and bellbottom pants has come to represent a homoerotic masculine ideal contained in the depiction of the wondering sailor as uncomplicated
sexual trade. The mariners not only stress masculinity in the display of their bodies, but they also play with the signs of masculinity,
bare chest and pronounced muscles, exaggerating and displaying at the same time signs of gay culture. As Richard Dyer writes,
muscles are “the sign of power natural, achieved, phallic.” The look of the hard muscular male body appropriated by gay men and
made popular in the illustrations of Tom of Finland. Tom’s drawings repeatedly display images of men dressed in uniform such as the
sailor with hard bodies and oversized exaggerated genitalia pressing against the crotch of their trousers.
The romanticised and eroticised freedom signified by the sailor’s uniform has had a great impact within the domain of fashion. The
elements of the sailor suit, striped of blue and white, cloth or peaked cap, anchors and brass buttons, and braids have been translated
into nautical themes by fashion. Designers such as Coco Chanel, Jean Paul Gautier, Givenchy, Dior and Kenzo have all included
elements or interpretations of the theme in their designs to trigger an imagined response from their inspired consumers.
This paper will examine the myth behind the representation of the sailor and the ways in which the sailor’s uniform has influenced
contemporary fashion.
Dr Vicki Karaminas is Professor of fashion and Deputy Director of Doctoral Research at the College of Creative Arts, Massey
University, Wellington. She is a founding member of the Popular Culture Association of Australia (popcaanz) and New Zealand and its
current President. Vicki is editor of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture and co creator of the fashion label OPUS 9 (with
Justine Taylor).
[email protected]
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Mimi Kelly
University of Sydney
Visual Arts 2
Still Fraught, Still Relevant: Performing through Popular Culture
Australian artists Sue Dodd, Tamara Elkins and Markela Panegyres each draw on the world of popular culture in their performative art
practice. This ranges from the employment and re-working of fashion and body adornment; shrewd stylistic reference to particular
cinematic styles/genres and celebrity culture; the cultivation of fictitious hybrid characters and theatric contexts; and the use of
experimental ‘low fi’ video techniques and image display. In considering select works by these artists, this paper firstly examines the
anxieties that arise in art that openly works through the influence of popular culture and the spectacle of affect. Given that the
meaningfulness of the exploration of popular culture within contemporary art is still met with some cynicism, the paper will go on to
give consideration to the attraction that this subject may hold for artists, and the conceptual insight that it may elicit. Arguing that
Dodd, Elkins and Panegyres’s art on the one hand demonstrate acute awareness for the problematics associated with late-capitalist
homogony, yet on the other hand, successfully highlights how popular culture can also work as a “legitimate object of enquiry.” The
paper will conclude by reasoning therefore, that these artist’s approach can be seen to function as both a critique and validation of the
sociopolitical significance of popular/consumer culture in our lives. Particularly for its ability to forge deep personal meaning, mobilize
social change and facilitate somatic pleasure through the infinite creative possibilities of the fictitious.
Mimi Kelly is a photomedia artist (mimikelly.com) and writer, currently completing a PhD by research through Sydney College of the
Arts, The University of Sydney. Her academic studies focus on body politics and gender theory. She recently undertook a residency at
the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, where she will be returning in late 2015 as supported by the Institut Français. Reviews Editor
for The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, she is currently co-editing (with Adam Geczy) an anthology of writings on Australian
Performance Art.
[email protected]
Emma Jean Kelly
Independent Scholar
Curating 1
Queering the Archive, Double Curatorship: representing 30 years of HIV/AIDS in Aotearoa New
Zealand in the work of Gareth Watkins and Paula Booker
Gareth Watkins’ multimedia exhibition 30 at Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision presented thirty years of HIV/AIDS in Aotearoa New
Zealand. The exhibition purported to look ‘…at ways people cared for loved ones and ultimately remembered them’ (NZFA, 2014 ).
Archival materials presented via multiple simultaneously playing screens on loop included news bulletins of the 1980s period, low
budget video of PWA (People with AIDS), artist responses, family members’ stories and quilts hanging on the wall. There was a nod to
Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) as the screens faded to blue at regular intervals and Welby Ings’ voice recites a poem he wrote for his
dead lover.
Paula Booker’s second rendering of the original Wellington exhibition for an Auckland audience in 2015 introduced new material
regarding heterosexual women with the disease, often overlooked in the rhetoric of the ‘gay plague’ discourse which continues to
permeate some understandings of HIV/AIDS.
Works cited: Agamben, G. (1989). Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berlant, L., & Prosser, J. (2011). Life Writing and Intimate Publics; A Conversation With Lauren Berlant. Biography, 34(1, Winter 2011).
Jagose, A. (1996). Queer Theory; An Introduction. New York: New York University Press.
Juhasz, A., & Kerr, T. (2014). Home Video Returns: Media Ecologies of the Past of HIV/AIDS (Web Exclusive). Cineaste
Kelly, E. J. (2014). Unpublished thesis on Jonathan Dennis and the New Zealand Film Archive. Auckland University of Technology,
Auckland.
NZFA. (2014 ). Curator at Large Gareth Watkins. Retrieved 11th June 2014, from http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/about-thearchive/news/introducing-2014-curator-at-large-gareth-watkins/
Emma Jean Kelly is a former image archivist who passed her PhD thesis examination on Jonathan Dennis, founder of The New
Zealand Film Archive on the 27th March 2015. She is a member of the Auckland University of Technology Gender & Diversity
Research Group. She is interested in curatorship, archive and biography through queer and feminist theory via Annamarie Jagose
(Jagose, 1996) and Lauren Berlant’s ‘intimate public’ in relation to life writing (Berlant & Prosser, 2011). Kelly’s work consciously
produces new material for the archive while simultaneously accessing past documents, both resisting and embracing the role of
archive as biography of the nation (Kelly, 2014).
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Emerald L. King, Denise N. Rall,
Victoria University of Wellington
Fashion 3
Looking at Schoolboys and their Uniforms before the end of the Japanese Empire
The military uniform particularly in the Anglo-European tradition has always been tied to the strictures of propriety that reflect the
mores of the day. In Victorian times propriety and the sense of decorum dominated every aspect of society: recreation, entertainment,
the military and most notably funereal wear. In Victorian times, military dress was specifically designed to express a multilayered
functionality determining rank, regimental allegiance, branch of service and of course awards, medals and ornamental elements.
These highly tailored uniforms carried on their back the virtues of the day – a disciplined body that initiated a change in Japanese
culture as they sought to both emulate and challenge British/European incursions into the East, while seeking regional dominance of
their own.
It was by disciplining the body (Black, 2014) that facilitated the adoption of such a militaristic uniform by the Japanese schoolboy –
which also stood as a symbol of legitimate membership in a world dominated by British/European Imperialism. In the 1880s these
uniforms were also proscribed as mandatory attire for Japanese schoolboys befitting a quasi-military style of regimental education
modelled on European ‘gentility’ that also held the promise of military power. Here, the military uniform as schoolboy clothing showed
the change in Japan’s view of themselves on the world stage at the at the height of the British Empire. Works cited:
Black, P., 2014. ‘The discipline of appearance: military style and Australian flight hostess uniforms 1930–1964’ in D.N. Rall (ed) Fashion
and war in popular culture (Intellect) pp. 91-106.
Craik, J. 2005, Uniforms exposed: from conformity to transgression. Berg: Oxford.
Dr. Emerald L King is a lecturer in Japanese at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She studied in both Australia and
Japan before receiving her PhD from the University of Tasmania in 2012. Emerald’s research interests include violence in text;
masochistic theory and kimono in Japanese literature. Her recent interest in uniform and costume arose from her active participation
in cosplay (costume play) in Japan and Australia. She has published articles on cosplay and manga including “Girls Who Are Boys
Who Like Girls to be Boys…” (2013) and was asked to guest lecture on cosplay and costume in Australasia by Yokohama University
(Japan) in January 2015.
[email protected]
Wing-sun Liu
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Fashion 1
Eric Li, University of British Columbia
Magnum Lam, Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong
Viahsta Yuan, University of British Columbia
Elita Lam , Hong Kong Design Institute
Heritage, Fashion and Design
Heritage is becoming popular in industries such as tourism, restaurants, and arts. Fashion designers, brands and marketers try to
build up their identities and images by showcasing the unique cultural elements they affiliated to. Cultural heritage, in this sense,
becomes a commodity in the market. This proposed research seeks to examine how designers in particular, construct the meaning of
cultural heritage through different commoditization practices as well as how these identity markers create value for the possessors.
We also aim to explore the politics in this cultural re-construction practice. This study aims to examine how designers and brands
integrate cultural heritage in creating new identities in the market. To examine how fashion designers and brands integrate cultural
heritage in their designs and brand images; to identify what cultural symbols were adopted and re-produced in the fashion industry.
LIU Wing-Sun coordinates the the Global Fashion Management (MA) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is interested in
the application of ethnosemiotics to explore the symbolic meanings of fashion and brand versus the identity construct(s) in different
socio-cultural settings. Among others, he has published in Fashion Theory, The Design Journal, Journal of Consumer Behaviour,
Journal of Global Fashion Marketing… A recent study is on sensory marketing/ design, which will be published in The Design Journal,
2015. He is in the editorial boards of Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, Fashion, Style and Popular Culture and sessional chair for
the Global Marketing Conference.
[email protected]
22
Sean Lowry
The University of Newcastle
Visual Arts 2
Are we Still a Band? Negotiating the Antipodean Extremities of Intermedial Expansion and
Medium specificity in Art, Music and Popular Culture
The Ghosts of Nothing is a collaboration developed by Sean Lowry and Ilmar Taimre using an album of “expanded cover versions”
(titled In Memory of Johnny B. Goode) as the overarching frame for an expanding “open work.” This experimental negotiation of the
antipodean extremities of intermedial expansion and medium specificity in art, music and popular culture is centred around an
allegorical repurposing of mythic icon of Johnny B. Goode, anachronistically re-cast as the generic emblem of the alienated artist
known as Pierrot. To date, this episodic series of expanded cover versions has been shapeshifted into a “rock opera,” a “radio play,”
and a global “tour of abandoned music venues”. Through a dedicated website, Lowry and Taimre present the foundational
components of a “story” loosely suggested through a series of mutant reinterpretations of iconic songs, most altered well beyond
recognition, and linked to a sequence of found images. Remixed re-medializations for the “radio play” and “the global tour” have also
introduced spoken word elements and mime-based performance into overall textural the mix. This paper will chronicle the conceptual
development of this expanding project of pseudo-cover versions, remixes and re-medializations.
Dr Sean Lowry is a Sydney-based visual artist, musician and writer who is currently Convenor of Creative and Performing Arts in the
School of Creative Arts at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Lowry has exhibited, performed and presented his art, music
and research extensively both nationally and internationally and his published writing appears in numerous international journals and
edited volumes. Lowry’s conceptually driven artistic practice employs strategies of concealed quotation, erasure, subliminal
appropriation and intermedial expansion in both traditional and expanded exhibition formats designed to operate at the outermost
limits of recognition and medium specificity. Lowry is also the Founder and Executive Director of Project Anywhere: Art At The
Outermost Limits Of Location-Specificity (www.projectanywhere.net). From September to December 2014, Lowry was Visiting
Scholar/Artist at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. www.seanlowry.com
[email protected]
Billie Lythberg, Giles Peterson
University of Auckland
Curating 1
Taking it to the street: Pacific auto-curation in public spaces
Pacific ‘pop culture’ artists work at the interface of customary and contemporary practices as important social and political
commentators. They explore the compelling challenges of inter-personal and cross-cultural understanding, reconciliation, bravery and
leadership: what it means to be ‘modern warriors’ in contemporary society. The landscape under interrogation here is Aotearoa New
Zealand, including the internet highways of ‘dot-co-dot-nz’, and specifically the negotiated territories of public art and auto-curation.
The possible pathways to and through these terrains will be considered through the artworks and experiences of Benjamin Work,
Siliga Setoga, Allen Villi and Cerisse Palalagi, who are mapping new directions in both real and virtual time-space continuums. Our
paper positions these artists as navigators, charting courses between ancient practices and contemporary innovations, keeping alive
the pathways of their forebears while exploring new avenues for themselves and their art.
Billie Lythberg is an interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences scholar working at the intersection of art history, anthropology and
economics. Her core research interests are indigenous economies and aesthetics, with particular foci on Tongan and Māori arts,
entrepreneurship and ‘gift exchange’. Billie’s research proposes new approaches to and outcomes of material culture research, digital
repatriation and reciprocation, and ‘community’ engagement practices. She is particularly interested in the possibilities for reframing
encounters between Europeans and Polynesians in the long eighteenth century, and their material, artefactual and philosophical
legacies for contemporary communities.
[email protected]
Russell Manning
Monash University
Film 1
Wes Anderson Does Not Exist
This paper argues that the traditional vocabulary used to describe Wes Anderson’s films, dominated by ‘quirky’ and ‘off-beat’, are also
used to marginalize his work. Therefore I argue that a binary classification of quirky/normal is an ideological as well as descriptive
move. This ideology splits cinema into mainstream and arthouse categories, and as a result unwittingly preferences one form over the
other to the detriment of viewer participation and appreciation. Instead I offer a dissolution of this binary form of thinking and posit a
different vocabulary to encounter this type of cinema, especially in the construction of a vocabulary of meaning and value. The paper
is underpinned by the work of French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard, whose thinking on semiotics became an effective antisemiology, useful for deployment against any ideologically charged aesthetics. Wes Anderson is quirky, but only within a world where
quirky is permitted to go unchallenged. I will formulate another world.
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Manning’s PhD thesis aims to pose the question of whether there is a Baudrillardian film-philosophy. But it is also a justification for the
admiration of the films of Wes Anderson and Charlie Kaufman. As such my writing and publications are channelled through a
Baudrillardian prism, calling upon his major themes to interrogate what I argue are merely claims for homogeneity made against these
two filmmakers.
[email protected]
Sky Marsen
University of Southern California
Design 2
Experiencing the Digital: Representations of Human-Computer interaction in Marketing Texts
The proposed paper explores some ways in which digital technologies, the human body and physical space are re-conceptualized in
popular culture through texts that promote them. In particular the paper examines conceptual changes in major advertisements of
digital technologies produced by two major corporations, Apple and Microsoft, since the 1980s. It investigates how advertisements of
hardware devices have represented the space in which humans and machines interact, and how these promotional strategies underlie
a re-conceptualization of the human and the device as agents. Using a narrative-semiotic approach and multimodal text analysis, the
paper explores the advertisements through these interrelated questions: 1) What semiotic and discursive techniques are used to
represent the relations between the human user as agent and the machine as agent? 2) How are the digital technologies represented
as ‘interface’ or as ‘tool’? 3) How is the space or place of the interaction between user and machine represented?
Sky Marsen is a semiotician and narrative theorist. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with work in communication, public relations,
semiotics, the public understanding of science, and narrative in different media. She has lectured internationally, including in New
Zealand, Australia, and the United States. At present, she is Associate Professor in Management Communication at the University of
Southern California.
[email protected]
Jodi McAlister
Macquarie University
Popular Romance 1
This Modern Love: representations of romantic love in historical romance
Historical romance is one of the most popular and recognisable sub-genres of the romance novel. The period setting is key to the
construction of the romance: historical heroines often find themselves bound by more restrictive social rules than their contemporary
sisters, particularly when it comes to appropriate female sexual behaviour.
This rather Foucauldian notion of a repressive society has an interesting effect on the portrayal of romantic love. While historical
heroines often break the rules of their own societies, I contend that they regularly follow recommended contemporary patterns for
romance, especially when it comes to the relationship between love and sex. The picture of romantic love offered by the historical
romance is distinctly modern, despite the effort authors make to create historically accurate backdrops for their novels. In this paper, I
will draw on the history of romantic love and several key texts to discuss the ways in which the historical romance regularly portrays
romantic love as transhistorical and universal, as well as how this has changed over the genre’s history. I will explore the scripts for
love and sex followed by several historical heroines, and will ultimately attempt to draw some conclusions as to the appeal of modern
love in a period setting.
Jodi McAlister has recently submitted her PhD thesis in Modern History and English at Macquarie University. She is a literary
historian, and her work focuses on the historical evolution of the portrayal of sex and love in popular literatures. She is the chair of
Popular Romance Studies for the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand.
[email protected]
Margaret McAllister, Donna Lee Brien
Central Queensland University
Gothic/Horror 2
Looking back to see ahead: Reassessing The Snake Pit for its gothic codes and significance
While the linking of mental illness and the Gothic is prevalent and persistent in the popular imagination, little sustained investigation
has interrogated prominent examples of this co-relation and the typographies which can be drawn from such a consideration. In this
context, we present two approaches that reveal how Gothic tropes are utilised in the representation of mental illness in popular
culture. Firstly, we dissect The Snake Pit (1948) in order to investigate how the Gothic operates in this classic and influential film, the
filmic techniques used to establish and develop Gothic elements, and how mental illness is used to illuminate both aspects of societies
in disarray and the cultural anxieties around this. Secondly, we work from the series of Gothic tropes identified in The Snake Pit in
order to interrogate whether other films can be classified in this way, and the additional tropes needed in order to round out a
24
taxonomical approach mapping the Gothic in mental illness films. In the process, we will demonstrate the power of popular culture to
not only describe, portray and define mental illness, but also illuminate the human condition and act as a powerful catalysing agent for
change.
Professor Margaret McAllister, Presenter, (CMHN, RN, BA, MEd, EdD) is Professor of Nursing at Central Queensland University,
Australia. Her research and teaching focus is in mental health and nursing education. She has co-authored several books: Stories in
Mental Health, The Resilient Nurse and Solution Focused Nursing. She publishes sharing creative approaches to teaching, as well as
her research in the areas of therapeutic mental health nursing strategies and nursing education. Over her career she has been the
recipient of four awards for excellence in teaching, including in 2010, a national citation for outstanding contributions to student
learning for the creation of Solution Focused Nursing. She is Associate Editor of The Journal of Nurse Education in Practice.
[email protected]
Damian McDonald
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
Film 3
Firearms as a Motif in Popular Culture
Firearms are a polarising issue – and understandably so. They are, however, a part of our material culture. The Museum of Applied
Arts and Sciences has an extensive and impressive collection of arms, armour and edged weapons, and I have been privileged to
work with the collection. One aspect of my interest in firearms is their place in popular culture. They are ubiquitous in many genres of
film and television, and also in gaming. Broadly, as a society, we accept this. Guns would have to be the most featured tools in our
popular culture entertainment. Using examples of cinema and television and drawing on the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences’
collection and other sources, this paper will examine the place of weapons in filmed entertainment, and their use as a dramatic tool: as
humour, horror, necessity (or lack thereof), truthfulness (or lack thereof), and as a deus ex machina in screen writing. In this paper, I
consider weapons as an extension of the human experience, reflecting different cultural meanings in the US, UK and Australian
cinema.
Damian McDonald is a curator at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia. He works closely with the Arms and
Armour, Health and Medicine, and Technology collections. Damian is also a writer and rock musician. He has curated two exhibitions
opening at the Powerhouse Museum in 2015: Wartime Innovation: Learning from Loss, and Recollect: Health and Medicine. Damian
is interested in the myriad ways technologies influence culture.
[email protected]
Julie McIntyre
University of Newcastle
Food 1
Chardy and Savvy: Cultural highs and gendered hangovers from the world white wine boom
Now is a key moment to study popular wine culture in Australia and New Zealand. From the late 1990s these nations one after the
other led the second wave of wine globalisation. This manifested as an invasion of Australian Chardonnay and then New Zealand
Sauvignon Blanc into UK and US glasses. Now, as the fizz goes out of the world wine boom, this paper explores the relative
antipodean cultures that bubbled up at home during the heady period of wine production and export. In doing so, it reveals a
feminised, seemingly mid-to-low brow consumption of ‘Chardy’ and ‘Sav Blanc’ concurrent with a contrasting elite, masculine, red
wine drinking culture that venerates French discursive notions of fine wine centred on place-based terroir.
Julie McIntyre is Research Fellow on the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant “Vines, Wine & Identity: the Hunter Valley NSW
and changing Australian Taste”, a project of the Wine Studies Research Network at the University of Newcastle. She has published on
wine history in journals such as Australian Economic History Review and Australian Historical Studies. Her book First Vintage: Wine in
Colonial NSW (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2012) was shortlisted for the 2013 NSW Premier’s History Awards and won Gourmand
Publishing’s 2013 Best Australian Drinks History.
[email protected]
25
Mhairi McIntyre
Deakin University
Film 4
The Goddess Unveiled: Female Power in Contemporary Cinema
In the British Isles, goddesses played an important role in shaping pagan Gaelic culture and mythological narratives. They
demonstrated the primordial powers of nature and landscape until patriarchal and Christian ideology displaced them. This paper will
examine representations of the goddess in contemporary popular film. Using an ecofeminist lens, I will show how female power has
been suppressed, especially in connection to magic and nature. I argue that the goddess can be recognised as occupying fairy or
witch figures, and is thus seen as dangerous and feared. Such representations significantly limit the reception of strong female
characters in modern cinema. I am attempting to creatively reconstruct positive depictions of female power through my screenplay
thesis. This paper will outline that journey and how I have drawn on characters from popular cinema to restore the notion of the
goddess.
Mhairi McIntyre is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, Melbourne. She completed her Honours degree in Creative Writing and is
now focusing on screenwriting. For her thesis, Mhairi is researching Scottish Gaelic folklore and will be writing a feature-length
screenplay.
[email protected]
Kimberley McMahon-Coleman
University of Wollongong
TV 3
Why Doc Martin hates being called Doc Martin: Autism Spectrum Disorder on TV
Autism spectrum disorders are becoming increasingly prevalent among university students (Dixon & Tanner, 2013). In order to better
understand these students and accommodate their social disability in the classroom, academics need first to understand how the
disorder presents. In a reversal of a “Theory of Mind” strategy which uses television programs to teach people on the spectrum social
skills, so too can neurotypical teaching staff get an insight into the thought processes of students on the spectrum by observing
television characters who demonstrate the symptoms.
Despite the showrunners’ refusal to “diagnose” the character officially, Doc Martin’s eponymous Dr Martin Ellingham is generally read
by audiences as being on the spectrum. The show and the character offer insights into the workings of Martin’s mind and humorously
point out the social ramifications of his very literal thinking and non-existent bedside manner. This paper seeks to explore the ways in
which this character from popular culture may be utilised as a means of addressing stigmas and misconceptions within the university
classroom. Works cited: Dixon, R. M., & Tanner, K. (2013, July). The Experience of Transitioning Two Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome in
Academically Focused High Schools. Australasian Journal of Special Education, 37(1), 28-48. doi:10.1017/jse.2013.5
Kimberley McMahon-Coleman teaches in Learning Development and the School of Education at the University of Wollongong. Her
work has been published in a number of journals, and in Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle (2014), Open Graves, Open
Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture, (2013), The New Harry Potter Casebook (2012), and Fanpires: Audience
Consumption of the Modern Vampire (2011). With Dr Roslyn Weaver from the University of Western Sydney she has written
Werewolves and Other Shapeshifters in Popular Culture: A Thematic Analysis of Recent Depictions (McFarland, 2012). Kimberley can
be found in cyberspace at http://shapeshiftersinpopularculture.wordpress.com and on Twitter @KMcMahonColeman.
[email protected]
Diana Marks
Independent Scholar
Fashion 1
Communicating with molas: activism in dress
The mola blouse, sewn and worn by the women and girls of an indigenous people, is a form of wearable art, subject to fashion trends.
From the 1940s through to the 1970s it was fashionable for Kuna women to depict images related to local, national and international
politics on their molas. The time intensive method used to sew molas maintains the focus of the producer for many weeks on the
image being created. The selection of examples in this paper provides evidence of the wide concerns of Kuna women, including
support for local candidates and awareness of national politics, from the time of universal suffrage in Panama until the early years of
the military dictatorship. Living on the Atlantic coast of Panama, the Kuna people encounter many nations of Latin America, and are
close to the Panama Canal. Inclusion of candidates and issues related to US politics in molas was also popular, since at the time the
Kuna were in contact with Americans living and working in the Panama Canal Zone.
Dr Diana Marks completed her doctorate on the evolution of the Kuna mola in 2012 at RMIT University, Melbourne and continues to
research the mola in museum collections. Her current research includes the dress of indigenous peoples in the Pacific.
[email protected]
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Carolyn Michelle
University of Waikato
Religion 1
Still a Spiritual Journey? Changing Audience Reactions to The Hobbit film trilogy
The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and The Hobbit (2012-2015) have been a significant international cultural
phenomenon in the early years of the twenty-first century. This paper takes data generated from a large-sample longitudinal online Qmethod study (see Davis & Michelle, 2011) into audience receptions of The Hobbit trilogy, undertaken four times over a period of 3
years and analyses it within a framework of religious and spiritual reference. Most participants provided qualitative responses as well
as detailed demographic data and it is these qualitative statements, where respondents are particularly eager to explain what the
books and/or films mean to them that provide the bulk of the evidential material for this paper. This paper unpacks what might be
categorized as varieties of spiritual responses and tracks changes in the strength of these spiritual responses over the period of the
films’ cinema distribution.
Work cited: Davis, Charles H. and Carolyn Michelle, 2011, ‘Q Methodology in Audience Research: Bridging the Qualitative/Quantitative
‘Divide’?’ Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 2, 2, pp.559-593.
Renee Middlemost
University of Wollongong
Film 4
Unexpected Allies?: S/exploitation, the Bechdel Test and the Films of Andy Sidaris
Cult films are transgressive by nature, and as Grant (1991) notes, this quality is ‘central to their appeal’. In order to illustrate the
transgression within cult films that Grant discusses, this paper examines the work of director Andy Sidaris, and in particular the film
Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987). The disparity between representations of men and women on screen has been at the forefront of studies
carried out by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2010). From studies such as these, the Bechdel Test, as coined by
Alison Bechdel in 1985, has re-emerged as a simple measure of female equality on screen. The Bechdel test requires only that female
characters are named and speak to one another about anything other than a man. As Moss (2014) notes: ‘… Incredibly, the majority
of films fail’. This test has been used to illustrate gender inequality in screen representations to great effect on films released from
2006 onwards, but perhaps unsurprisingly, not on representations of women in exploitation or cult films.
By rearticulating Hard Ticket to Hawaii as an s/exploitation film, the unexpected ‘…synthesis of hard and soft’ (Andrews, 2006) in
representations of women within these films is highlighted as a trope typical of the genre. A textual analysis of Hard Ticket to Hawaii
will be conducted both within the framework of the Bechdel Test, but also by positioning this film as part of the canon of s/exploitation
films. Whilst it is challenging to make the argument that this film constitutes a feminist text, 1980s cult action films such as Hard Ticket
to Hawaii are worth re-examining and re-thinking as part of the canon of s/exploitation films. In this context they may represent a
surprising ally for equal gender representation on screen despite their derivation from classic exploitation films.
Dr Renee Middlemost is an early career researcher and sessional academic at The University of Wollongong, Australia. Her recently
completed PhD thesis was entitled Amongst Friends: The Australian Cult Film Experience, which examined the audience participation
practices of cult film fans in Australia. In addition to cult film, her research interests include Australian film, film and television studies,
fandom, audiences, celebrity, cultural studies and popular culture.
[email protected]
Helen Mitchell
Massey University
Food 2/Writing
Written on the Body: Tattoo Narratives
I have been photographing inked subjects in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and recording their stories since 2006. Written on the Body
examines the increase of commissioned artworks in a regional survey of individual tattoo collecting and investigates the diverse and
sometimes profound motivations for tattoo acquisition. This paper details the development of my photographic documentary project on
tattooing and investigates complex issues around augmenting identity, appropriating cultural symbols, marking life changing events
and employing tattoo as a social passport; it is a development of research undertaken for my MFA thesis. The photographic
component is intended for exhibition and ultimately, publication. In undertaking this cross-cultural, geographical survey of tattoo in
Aotearoa, New Zealand, some fascinating and often quite profound personal reasons for tattoo acquisition are revealed that provide a
surprising and complex biography of the subjects interviewed.
Mitchell’s current research practice in photography focuses on Tattoo Renaissance narratives within contemporary New Zealand
society. Her images reflect concerns around construction of personal identity and cultural exchange. This exploration combines
studio portraits and documentary photography with interviews from tattooed subjects. Mitchell explores how the customized body
functions to transform and reinforce a sense of identity, individuality and to record personal experience of tattoo culture.
[email protected]
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Matt Mollgaard
Auckland University of Technology
Performance 1/ Radio & Audio Media
Pop, Power and Politics: Local Music Radio as a Public/Private Partnership
In 2005 a major multi-national media company launched a New Zealand radio network that played only New Zealand music - Kiwi
FM. Within a year it was clear that the experiment had failed, with the network attracting only negligible audience ratings and
unsustainable commercial revenue. It was at this point that the New Zealand government stepped in, granting the network free
broadcasting spectrum and significant funding in return for the ongoing promotion of New Zealand music. How this happened provides
a fascinating insight into ‘third way’ approaches to the creative industries, and in particular, local music as a cultural, political and
economic commodity. It also engages with the rhetoric of national culture in the formation of Public/Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the
creative industries. This paper explores Kiwi FM from behind the scenes, using previously unseen documents and interviews with key
players in order to interrogate the utility of Public/Private Partnerships (PPPs) in promoting local pop music.
Matt Mollgaard is Head of Radio and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology.
He edited the 2012 book Radio and Society: New Thinking for an Old Medium and convened the 2011 Radio Conference: A
Transnational Forum in Auckland. Previous publications have interrogated the ownership of New Zealand radio, effects of
deregulation of the media and the mythology around ‘pirate’ radio. Matt spent 25 years in New Zealand commercial radio working as
an announcer, manager, sound engineer and music programmer across a variety of radio stations.
[email protected]
Marcus Moore, Catherine Bagnall,
Massey University
Visual Arts 1
Toward the Butterfly Machines
Taking embroidery silk and turning it at 750rpm we seek to shape and figure things of the everyday to ‘become other’ attendant on
contemporary intersections of the human / post-human condition and its relevancies to the everyday. Our contention is ‘pop’ provides
for transformation’s in-between-ness that enables the surrendering of a priori human centered knowledge--that which arguably both
governs and limits our (inter)actions and being in the world. Within this framework we address material ontology and ‘becoming’ nonhuman creature—so stitching tiny lines of silken embroidery threads into clothing is to stitching oneself into/as a butterfly. Speculation
to the sensuality of materials enables inanimate materials to change and perform. There is involvement of intense concentration and
pleasure in this process. One looses oneself in the accomplishment and to the shimmering pinks, silvers, greens and pale blues in
butterfly-ing. Of course one cannot become a butterfly but certain clothing and the sewing itself onto dress, and into machine, enables
a “becoming” more “butterfly”. Set silk spinning: stitching and flying and glittering as wings hum and whirr. Fluttering transcendence
activating sublime myriad—the realization and rupturing of being butterfly occurs simultaneously as an aesthetic of transformation /
transformational aesthetics.
Dr. Marcus Moore is an artist and writer. He has published on Marcel Duchamp, on New Zealand art, and on visual culture in
reputable journals in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. In 2012 he curated the comprehensive historical exhibition
(Post)Peripheral Relations: Marcel Duchamp and New Zealand Art and is presently embarking on a curatorial inter-disciplinary and
cross-cultural research project, manifestation(s) of the sublime in Aotearoa New Zealand visual culture. He is senior lecturer at the
College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.
[email protected]
Wyatt Moss-Wellington
University of Sydney
Film 1
What is the Suburban Ensemble Dramedy?
The success of American Beauty (1999) inspired independent filmmakers and studios alike to experiment in a cinematic mode that
came to be a defining feature of American millennial cinema: the suburban ensemble dramedy. Some films continue to pay off on
relatively small investments, such as Little Children (2006), Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and The Kids Are All Right (2010), while many
others extend the scope of the genre with little fanfare. In this paper, I anatomise the genre, and indicate some precedents to this
enduring mode of American filmmaking, including family crisis and infidelity melodramas, and ensemble filmmaking focusing on a
particular generation (including the work of Lawrence Kasdan and Richard Linklater). However, the equalizing of concerns across
generations, families, neighbourhoods, ethnicities, genders, personalities and dispositional ideologies is specific to the genre. The
focus on ethical conflict resolution asks how we can live well together given current socio-political circumstances.
Wyatt Moss-Wellington is a PhD student at the University of Sydney. In 2012, he completed an MA thesis on the cinema of John
Sayles. His research interests include humanistic filmmaking, cine-ethics, social realism, literary Darwinism and social narratology.
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Moss-Wellington has also worked as a progressive folk musician, a film industry public relations consultant, and entertainment
journalist.
[email protected]
Paul Mountfort
Auckland University of Technology
Comics 1
Tintin as Spectacle
Tintin has been viewed and read in a variety of ways, but the franchise has seldom been approached in terms of its evolving
transmedia modes of cultural production and reception. The story of the franchise, however, is in many ways as fascinating as the
Adventures themselves. It is one of commodification that in many ways prefigures the transmedia mega-franchises which were to
follow, such as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter. This paper offers a reading of Tintin that builds on notions of
commodity fetishism (Marx 1867) and capitalist spectacle (Debord 1967). I argue that the decades prior to 1950 can be viewed
revealingly through the lens of John Crary’s elaboration of Debord’s precise if symbolic birth date for the Society of the Spectacle:
1927 (Crary 2004). Fredric Jameson’s analysis of late capitalism’s decadal phases through the 50s, 60s, and 70s (Jameson 1991)
supplies similar frames for the period post-1950. Jameson charts late capitalism’s development decade-by-decade from the mid to
late twentieth century: the preparatory phase of ramped-up new product and technology production in the 1950s; the ‘psychic break’
with wartime shortages and cultural, as opposed to merely economic, turn to late-capitalist sensibilities of the 1960s; and the
crystallization of the economic system and ‘culture of feeling’ in the crisis-ridden 1970s. As with Crary’s, these temporal nodes provide
a series of simultaneities with milestones in the franchise that offer new ways of reading and viewing Tintin in the twentieth century.
Paul Mountfort (PhD) is Chair of the Centre for Creative Writing at AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand, and Vice-president of
PopCAANZ (The Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand). His research interests include comics, Orientalism,
oracle-texts, transmedia storytelling and the broader semiotics of popular culture.
[email protected]
Gjoko Muratovski,
Auckland University of Technology
Design 2
Design Management Education: Educating Design Managers for Strategic Roles
This paper highlights the need for cross-disciplinary education for design managers, and it examines some of the challenges and the
opportunities associated with this type of education. For the purpose of this study, cross-disciplinary design education is defined as an
amalgamation of inter-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, and trans-disciplinary practices and research. The study argues that such model
of design education has the potential not only to prepare design managers for strategic roles, but also to advance the field of design in
relation to other disciplines.
Biography
Dr Gjoko Muratovski is practicing designer, design academic, and design educator with broad international experience spanning from
Europe and the USA to Australia and Asia. Dr Muratovski has experience in overseeing, developing and teaching various design
programs, courses and units, ranging from design history, theory and research, to studio practice. Currently, he is the Head of the
Communication Design department at the Auckland University of Technology. Dr Muratovski is also the Chair of the PopCAANZ
tracks on Business and Design.
Email: [email protected]
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Ashlee Nelson
Victoria University of Wellington
Comics 1
Future Gonzo and Transmetropolitan: Spider Jerusalem as an Embodiment of Hunter S.
Thompson
Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan sees an adaptation of both Thompson’s Gonzo journalism and Thompson himself as a character in
the medium of the graphic novel. This paper examines how Thompson and Gonzo are adapted to the graphic novel form.
Transmetropolitan is not just a story about a Gonzo journalist, but also includes many fictional articles of Gonzo journalism. Spider
Jerusalem does not merely reflect Thompson, but instead fully embodies Thompson as a character and journalist. Additionally,
Transmetropolitan is a dystopian story set in the distant future and this paper also seeks to analyse the implications it sets out for the
continued importance of Thompson’s style of in-depth participatory journalism and Gonzo narrative, which within the context of the
series is portrayed as the most truthful, insightful, and best form of journalism.
Ashlee Nelson is currently in the first year of her PhD in English Literature at Victoria University of Wellington, focusing on the New
Journalism covering the United States 1972 Presidential election. Originally from the United States, she relocated to Wellington in
2007 to attend Victoria University, and foregrounded comic studies in her Masters thesis.
[email protected]
Baden Offord
Curtin University, Western Australia
Queer/Gender 3
Kissing as an Everyday Human Right: Queer Interventions in Popular Culture
The act of kissing in public spaces by queer (LGBT) activists has become a popular means for claiming social, legal and political
recognition. The ‘Memorial to Homosexuals persecuted under Nazism’ in Berlin, which shows same sex kissing in a video, is perhaps
one of the most poignant contemporary queer examples of same sex presence. In popular global culture, in film, novels, pop songs
and on youtube, representations of same sex kissing are now ubiquitous. In this paper, I examine the notion that kissing is a human
right for LGBT people based on the theoretical understanding that one of the principles of human rights is social recognition in
everyday life. As part of my discussion I will draw on recent representations of same sex kissing found in film and on you tube. I will
argue that expressions of same sex kissing in the public sphere can be regarded as queer interventions in everyday popular culture,
demonstrating LGBT human rights in innovative, provocative and creative ways.
Professor Baden holds a Chair in Cultural Studies and Human Rights and is Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin
University, Australia. An internationally recognized specialist in human rights, sexuality and culture, his approach fosters self-reflexive,
interdisciplinary and empirical research into cultural, social and activist aspects of human rights as they relate to the everyday. His
most recent co-authored publication in the field of Australian Cultural Studies is titled Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of
Enlightenment Values (with Kerruish, Garbutt, Wessell and Pavlovic, 2014), which is a collaborative work with the Indian cultural
theorist Ashis Nandy. Baden is Vice President (International) of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia.
[email protected]
Lauren O’Mahony
Murdoch University, Perth
Fiction 1
“More Than Sex, Shopping and Shoes” 1: Cosmopolitan Indigeneity and Cultural Politics in Anita
Heiss’s Koori Chick Lit
While chick lit has attracted praise for offering readers engaging representations of women in the prime of their lives, the genre has
also received criticism for focusing on particular groups of women and largely excluding others. Merrick (2006) for example argues
that “details about race are almost always absent” because of the genre’s overt emphasis on the “white girl in the big city [who]
searches for Prince Charming” (vii-viii). Similarly, Guerrero (2006) accuses chick lit of a “popular ethnocentrism” built on an
assumption that “women of color don’t exist in urban worlds of glamour” (100). Australian chick lit published in the early 2000s
appears to support Guerrero’s accusation of chick lit’s “popular ethnocentrism”. Yet, since 2007, Indigenous author Anita Heiss has
singlehandedly revolutionised Australian chick lit by writing what she calls “Koori Lit”: novels featuring cosmopolitan Indigenous
heroines. 2 Heiss’s novels follow most chick lit in adhering to the essential romantic elements as theorised by Regis (2004). Yet,
Heiss’s Koori lit deploys chick lit’s familiar romantic format to a political end, exposing readers to discourses surrounding
contemporary Australian cultural politics including issues relating to racism, the stolen generation and black deaths in custody.
Overall, this paper argues that Heiss’s Koori lit exemplifies romance’s power to position readers to reflect on important contemporary
issues thereby encouraging social awareness and ultimately social change.
Works cited: Bushnell, Candace. 1996. Sex and the City. London: Abacus.
Fielding, Helen. 1996. Bridget Jones's Diary. London: Picador.
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Guerrero, Lisa A. 2006. "‘Sistahs Are Doin' It for Themselves’: Chick Lit in Black and White." In Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction,
edited by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, 87-101. New York: Routledge.
Heiss, Anita. 2012. Am I Black Enough for You? North Sydney: Random House.
———. 2007. Not Meeting Mr Right. North Sydney: Bantam.
———. 2008. Avoiding Mr Right. North Sydney: Bantam.
———. 2010. Manhattan Dreaming. North Sydney: Bantam.
———. 2011. Paris Dreaming. North Sydney: Random House.
———. 2014. Tiddas. Australia: Simon and Schuster.
Higson, Rosalie. 2008. "Wagging the Finger Wrongfoots Romance." The Australian, 23 August.
Merrick, Elizabeth. 2006. "Introduction: Why Chick Lit Matters." In This Is Not Chick Lit,
edited by Elizabeth Merrick, vii-xi. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Regis, Pamela. 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1 Rosalie Higson, "Wagging the Finger Wrongfoots Romance," The Australian, 23 August 2008.
2 As Heiss has stated, “Aboriginal women...did not appear in contemporary Australian women’s fiction until I put them
there”. Heiss, Am I Black Enough for You? , 215.
Lauren O’Mahony is a lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her PhD focused on
the narrative conventions of romance and feminism in Australian chick lit. She has published her research on the rural romance novel
in The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of Popular Romance Studies. In 2013, Lauren won a ViceChancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award.
[email protected]
Lauren O’Mahony
Murdoch University, Perth
Popular Romance 1
In Search of Feminist Romance in Australian Chick Lit
In November 2005, Australian author Melanie La’Brooy published a defence of ‘chick lit’ in The Weekend Australian newspaper.
La’Brooy responded to claims that chick lit was antifeminist because of its preoccupation with romantic love. In defending ‘chick lit’
La’Brooy asked, “Does romantic idealism immediately polarise a desire for political, professional and social equality?” This question
taps into two primary concerns expressed within feminist analyses of women’s fiction, especially romance fiction: Is feminism and
romance compatible and how can ‘overloaded’ concepts like ‘romance’ and ‘feminism’ be best applied to the critical analysis of
popular culture? In light of these questions, this paper explores the relationship between feminism and romance in five sub-genres of
Australian chick lit (urban, suburban, ‘Koori’, rural romance and red dirt romance). Textual analysis of key chick texts shows that some
clearly exemplify feminist romance. Others however remain faithful to the romance plot while selectively engaging with feminism. This
paper argues that feminism and romance combine variously in Australian chick lit; some representations are retrogressive while
others critically represent women’s issues and champion gender equality.
Dr Lauren O’Mahony is a lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch University, Western Australia. Her PhD focused
on the narrative conventions of romance and feminism in Australian chick lit. She has published her research on the rural romance
novel in The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of Popular Romance Studies. In 2013, Lauren won a ViceChancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award.
[email protected]
Simon Order
Murdoch University, Perth
Music 1
Remix: Lighting the Creative Fire
Simon Order (presenter, with Leo Murray, Jon Prince, Sara de Freitas) is a sound student at Murdoch University who studys music
technology as a core discipline. Students develop their skills as ‘creative audio technologists’, preparing them for opportunities in a
range of audio-related industries. Curriculum design for Sound students at Murdoch University has historically attempted to simulate
the work challenges that face students when they graduate. In 2011 a work-integrated learning (WIL) program developed around the
activity of the audio remix was introduced for music technology students. In collaboration with the record label Hidden Shoal, students
were required to remix professional music artists on the Hidden Shoal roster. The WIL collaboration has now run successfully for three
years. Anecdotally, students have stated that the collaboration is profoundly stimulating, teaching staff have been positive about the
learning outcomes and the industry partner has been similarly impressed by the finished work. However, a secondary aim of this WIL
program was to use the process of producing an audio remix to stimulate student creativity. Whilst both the definition and
measurement of creativity is a contested theoretical terrain, creativity self-rating scales have been widely used to provide insight into
the perceived value of creative prompts. This paper reports on preliminary self-rating research from students who reflect on their own
creativity after completing their audio remix. It was anticipated that students perceived the remix program as enhancing their creativity.
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This preliminary study points towards more detailed additional research and refined testing methods for creativity to determine the
extent to which this is down to the audio remix as a learning experience.
Simon Order’s research specialises in two main areas. First, music technology studies, which includes user-interface usability, student
creativity in sound production studies and music technology in teaching and learning. Second, radio studies, which includes radio
production, community media, Australian community radio and radio public policy. His professional background includes audio
production roles in the U.K. television and music industry, radio station manager and professional photographer. Simon continues his
professional practice as a composer and producer of electronic music. Simon now teaches units in radio broadcasting, sound
production and music technology at Murdoch University.
[email protected]
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Martin Patrick
Massey University
Music 1
Wild Gift: X’s Punk Poeticism
This paper discusses the Los Angeles punk band X, particularly focusing on their second album entitled Wild Gift (1981), and the
ways in which it intermingled a hardcore punk aesthetic along with elements of jazz, folk, and rockabilly, pointing the way in prescient
fashion towards the music today called “Americana.” Beyond that, X showed a striking emotional maturity for a so-called punk band,
the content of their lyrics, by Exene Cervenka and John Doe, who met at a poetry workshop, not shirking away from speaking of
emotional strain, separation and divorce, and urban desperation. Ultimately, many eclectic interests, when sutured together, became
the basis of X’s powerful sonic approach. Intriguingly, X is now a historically acclaimed band but without recognition on the terms that
now define pop success, but recently a reformed X toured widely and a major 2011 exhibition of art from L.A. took its title from X’s LP
Under the Big Black Sun.
Dr. Martin Patrick is an art critic and regular contributor to many international publications, including Art Monthly and Afterimage. His
research involves critical writing on interdisciplinary practices and experimental uses of media in the contemporary visual arts. His
articles include “Performative Tactics and the Choreographic Reinvention of Public Space,” Art and the Public Sphere (2011), and
“Unfinished Filliou: On The Fluxus Ethos and the Origins of Relational Aesthetics,” Art Journal (2010). Two of his texts were included
in One Day Sculpture, D. Cross and C. Doherty, eds. (2009, Kerber Verlag). He is currently a Senior Lecturer at Massey University
Wellington.
[email protected]
Giles Peterson
Whitecliffe College of Art and Design
Curating 1
Taking it to the street: Pacific auto-curation in public spaces
Pacific ‘pop culture’ artists work at the interface of customary and contemporary practices as important social and political
commentators. They explore the compelling challenges of inter-personal and cross-cultural understanding, reconciliation, bravery and
leadership: what it means to be ‘modern warriors’ in contemporary society. The landscape under interrogation here is Aotearoa New
Zealand, including the internet highways of ‘dot-co-dot-nz’, and specifically the negotiated territories of public art and auto-curation.
The possible pathways to and through these terrains will be considered through the artworks and experiences of Benjamin Work,
Siliga Setoga, Allen Villi and Cerisse Palalagi, who are mapping new directions in both real and virtual time-space continuums. Our
paper positions these artists as navigators, charting courses between ancient practices and contemporary innovations, keeping alive
the pathways of their forebears while exploring new avenues for themselves and their art.
Giles Peterson has been an independent curator of Pacific contemporary art for almost twenty years. He has focused his curatorial
practice on working with young, urban Pacific artists and analysing the intersections between traditional values, contemporary art
practice, and street culture. He has a special interest in relational curating in the Pacific, and over the past decade, has become one of
the world’s leading experts in this field. Since 2006, his curatorial practice has been primarily concerned with artists whose work
reflects the diverse experiences and concerns of Pacific migrant communities, addressing questions of identity and identification,
globalisation, technology, and colonisation.
[email protected]
Lorna Piatti-Farnell
Auckland University of Technology
Gothic/Horror 2
'I Warned You About the Mirrors': Ghostly Reflections and Cultural Hauntings in The Skeleton Key
As both a cultural and an aesthetic entity, the mirror functions a site of transformation, intermingling, and conceptual trans/migration;
beyond providing ‘mere images’, the mirror also conjures multiple entities, reproduced copies that exist outside of the rational confines
of tangibility. Even at the most embryonic level, the mirror is connected to the framework of the Gothic via the notion of the ‘double’,
the terrifying ‘other’ that challenges our cultural certainties, and that which we believe to be known, stable, and proper. The mirror, in
this sense, is inevitably uncanny, for it breaks the boundaries of not only the body, but also of the self.
Taking this in-between status as a point of departure, this paper analyses the part played by the ‘Gothic mirror’ in the transcultural
cinematic context of The Skeleton Key (2005). In the narrative, the mirror is an instrumental presence in the performance of hoodoo
rituals, and sits at the intersection of legend, superstitions, and Western (ir)rationality. With Southern Louisiana as a geo-cultural
backdrop, mirrors in The Skeleton Key are gifted with the ability to transport souls and convey the cultural hauntings and traumas
hidden behind the notion of ‘magic’. As an agent of super/natural transformations, the mirror operates as a locus of exchange where
Old World folklore and New World re-imaginings clash, mingle, and merge. I aim to show that, as heimliche and unheimliche collide in
the metaphor of the ‘haunted mirror’, contemporary preoccupations surrounding ethnicity, history, and national traumas are uncovered
through the blurred and intangible margins of the ‘reflection’.
Dr Lorna Piatti-Farnell is the Director of the Popular Culture Research Centre at Auckland University of Technology. Her research
interests centre mainly on contemporary popular culture, and lie at the intersection of Gothic studies, cultural history, food studies,
twenty-first century literature, and film. She is President of the Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA), and Gothic
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and Horror Area Chair for the PopCAANZ. Her publications to date include three monographs: Food and Culture in Contemporary
American Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2011), Beef: A Global History (London: Reaktion, 2013), and The Vampire in Contemporary
Popular Literature (New York: Routledge: 2014). She has recently completed an edited collection on The Lord of the Rings and fan
cultures (Intellect, 2015), and is currently working on a new monograph for Palgrave entitled Consuming Gothic: Food and Horror in
Contemporary Film.
[email protected]
Anne Pierson-Smith
City University, Hong Kong
Fashion 4
Where there’s a Will?: an analysis of the use of fashion brand narratives to win hearts and minds
in the high street
Recently a number of high street fashion brands such as Jack Wills and Top Shop alongside Abercrombie and Fitch, GAP, Forever
21, H&M and Victoria’s Secret have set up shop in Hong Kong to showcase their brand in the region and expand into the lucrative
mainland Chinese market. The new arrival of these brands and their hyper-theatrical launches have invariably been met with great
enthusiasm from the local consumers who turn out in force at the opening event to be part of a brand’s arrival and its presence in the
territory. They have also become part of popular discourse and culture amongst and across a varied youth demographic. The paper
will examine the various brand narratives used as they attempt to differentiate themselves and jockey for position in a highly
competitive niche marketplace far away from their home base. It will examine the challenges that these brands face in adjusting to an
overseas market as a contested site where success is not always guaranteed.
Anne Peirson-Smith, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, City University of Hong Kong. She teaches and
researches the creative industries, fashion communication, popular culture, public relations and branding. She has recently coauthored books, Public Relations in Asia Pacific: Communicating Beyond Cultures (John Wiley, 2009) and Global Fashion Brands:
Style, Luxury & History (Intellect Books, 2014). In addition, she is an associate editor of The Journal of Fashion, Style and Popular
Culture (Intellect Publishers) and The Journal of Global Fashion Marketing. She is also on the advisory board of The Journal of Global
Business and The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture (Intellect Publishers).
[email protected]
Stefan Popescu
University of Sydney
Visual Arts 1
Transgression, Performance Art and Family Values in the Video Art of Huck Botko
Huck Botko is a slippery character, straddling a fine line between visual art, performance, documentary and psychopathology. Are his
video-works therapy, revenge, practical jokes or just plain malicious and insane? In this paper I investigate the inherently
transgressive elements in Huck botko’s performances in his family-revenge videos (Fruitcake, 1997, Cheese cake, 1998, Baked
Alaksa 1997, Graham Cracker Cream Pie, 1999). I will discuss his performances in the context of both traditional concepts of
performance and transgression yet identifying a new culture of video performance-art shift that is more a product of our contemporary
hyperreal video culture.
Dr Stefan Popescu is primarily an artist and academic, but wears many hats. As a filmmaker, he has written and directed four feature
films since 2007. Having completed his PhD in Film and Digital Art in 2007, he is also an academic at Sydney College of the Arts,
Sydney University. He published his first book entitled Material Affects: The Body Language of Film in 2010. Stefan is also interested
in emerging, alternate and marginal forms in cinema and is currently one of the directors of the Sydney Underground Film Festival.
[email protected]
Michael Potts
University of Canterbury, Christchurch
Queer/Gender 1
Homosexuality as Degeneracy in Twenty-First Century Literature
“Since the world and everything in it had changed he had come to re-examine the question of his sexual orientation, wondering
whether it even was an orientation or something less fixed in his persona than a figment from a bygone cultural ideology” ~ James
Howard Kunstler, A History of the Future (2014).
My presentation will demonstrate that the idea of homosexuality as symptom and marker of degenerate and decadent culture is still
being perpetuated in the literature of the 21st century. It will examine how this perpetuation is an aspect of an ideology of antimaterialism that has a long and disturbing lineage in Western thought and culture, and it will discuss how current manifestations of this
ideology attempt to justify their prejudices by spuriously conflating liberationary movements with consumerism to imply that they are a
manifestation of unsustainable and decadent modern liberal society.
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Michael Potts’ doctoral thesis was entitled “Progressive and Reactionary Attitudes to Technology in the Literature of the Twentieth
Century” and was completed at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, in July 2014. Notwithstanding the title, the thesis was not
about technology as such, but rather how reactionary ideologies often manifested themselves by referencing anxieties about what was
“natural” and the general direction of modernity. As such, they were often remarkably successful in translating reactionary fears into
coded discourse that was often unwittingly picked up by later progressive movements. I have a continuing academic interest in such
coded or sublimated discourses.
[email protected]
Donald Preston
Massey University
Design 3
Island Love: How Our Islands’ Shape Shapes Our Identity
“Ever since Cook charted the first map of the Aotearoa [New Zealand] outline in 1769, the two-dimensional shape of these islands
has been part of our consciousness” (Hamish Thomson, ProDesign, Feb/March 2006) ” Forget the silver fern on a black background
John, forget the koru, and the southern cross…
When did it become ok to be identified as two (with addition of a nice graphic ‘full-stop’) awkwardly aligned Islands stuck in the bottom
right hand corner of the world? That distinctive shape and ‘bottom right’ position have become important symbols in the country’s
cultural lexicon. The physical isolation, the graphic shape formed by the three main islands, and its traditional placement on world
maps has helped shape New Zealanders’ sense of identity. Visual representations are key in the construction of a nation’s identity.
New to nationhood, New Zealanders are enthusiastic symbol makers. Many countries build symbols of their identity on their
cartographic form, but in New Zealand, as no other country, its form has become embedded in the symbolism of nationhood. That
outline has become so familiar that the vaguest approximation, the merest abstraction, is easily identifiable.
Donald Preston is a designer and educator researching the visual expression of national identity, cultural narrative and signification.
His focus on New Zealand’s historic and contemporary cartographic representation provides a fresh approach to issues of identity and
cultural expression. Preston has loved and been fascinated by real and imagined maps from an early age. The atlases of his
childhood took him to fantastically exotic places that seemed far more exciting than small town New Zealand. Preston’s research
contributes to conversations on the construction, development and expressions of national identity, and how they can inform and
create insights into the 21st century.
[email protected]
Denise N. Rall, Emerald King
Southern Cross University
Fashion 3
Looking at Schoolboys and their Uniforms before the end of the Japanese Empire
The military uniform particularly in the Anglo-European tradition has always been tied to the strictures of propriety that reflect the
mores of the day. In Victorian times propriety and the sense of decorum dominated every aspect of society: recreation, entertainment,
the military and most notably funereal wear. In Victorian times, military dress was specifically designed to express a multilayered
functionality determining rank, regimental allegiance, branch of service and of course awards, medals and ornamental elements.
These highly tailored uniforms carried on their back the virtues of the day – a disciplined body that initiated a change in Japanese
culture as they sought to both emulate and challenge British/European incursions into the East, while seeking regional dominance of
their own.
It was by disciplining the body (Black, 2014) that allowed the Japanese schoolboy to adopt such a uniform as a symbol of legitimate
membership in a world dominated by British/European Imperialism. In the 1880s these uniforms were also proscribed as mandatory
attire for Japanese schoolboys befitting a quasi-military style of regimental education modelled on European ‘gentility’ that also held
the promise of military power. Here, the military uniform as schoolboy clothing changed Japan’s view of themselves on the world stage
at the at the height of the British Empire. Works cited:
Black, P., 2014. ‘The discipline of appearance: military style and Australian flight hostess uniforms 1930–1964’ in D.N. Rall (ed) Fashion
and war in popular culture (Intellect) pp. 91-106.
Craik, J. 2005, Uniforms exposed: from conformity to transgression. Berg: Oxford.
Dr Denise N. Rall is an adjunct lecturer in the School of Arts & Social Sciences at Southern Cross University in Lismore, NSW. She
holds a PhD in Internet Studies from Southern Cross University as well as an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of
Wisconsin. Her eclectic research interests include textiles, fashion and wearable art, as well as how technology impacts on women’s
roles in computing, domestic work, craft and social protest. Her recent edited book, Fashion & War in Popular Culture (2014, Intellect)
surveys conquest and military warfare as it appears in fashion, textiles, bodies, art and design through the lens of popular culture.
[email protected]
35
Denise N. Rall
Southern Cross University
Fashion 4
Can we ‘repair’ repair? How, when and where?
This discussion opens up the window on repair as a problem in temporality, by exploring the incentives in ‘value-adding’. From Gill &
Lopes’s paper, ‘On Wearing: a critical framework for valuing design’s already made’ they delineate the problem of ‘wearing’ as it sits
between two theoretical standpoints, in their words: ‘a theorization of “practices” (social theory) and “things” (material culture)’ (2010:
309). They then build from Heidegger’s terms of how things dwell in the world, as ‘material, encountered, and used entities.’ (Gil &
Lopes 2010: 311). However, repair becomes a stage beyond ‘wearing’, when presented in a garment that moves from simply ‘used’ to
‘tainted’ (Douglas, 1966). So the first issue is how to reclaim the garment for repairing. In speaking of craft work, other authors have
tagged that time spent in repair is not valued in preference to time spent while making, yet historically, repair has always been
associated with artisanal practice (Adamson, 2013: 147). Recently, re-making has arisen through popular campaigns of sustainable
clothing associated with trends in ‘eco-fashion’ and ‘upcycling’ through the reclaiming of various types of cast-off materials.
First, this discussion evaluates where repair stands in relation to two parameters, importance and urgency. Second, other modalities
for repair will be evaluated, such as theories drawn from conversational analysis. Reclaiming vs. recycling will be addressed, and a
definition for bricolage 2.0 will be offered.
Dr Denise N. Rall is an adjunct lecturer in the School of Arts & Social Sciences at Southern Cross University in Lismore, NSW. She
holds a PhD in Internet Studies from Southern Cross University as well as an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of
Wisconsin. Her eclectic research interests include textiles, fashion and wearable art, as well as how technology impacts on women’s
roles in computing, domestic work, craft and social protest.
[email protected]
Holly Randell-Moon
University of Otago
Religion 1
Is Prince William a god or celebrity? Whiteness, sovereignty and the British monarchy
The media production and consumption of the House of Windsor in terms of celebrity culture is a crucial way in which the British
monarchy is legitimised as an important part of civil and public life. In this paper, I focus on print news reporting of two state visits by
Prince William to Australia and New Zealand in 2010 and 2011. Although these visits are enabled by white diasporic links between
settler countries and the United Kingdom, I argue that media tropes of celebrity aura and divine charisma function to ex-nominate
whiteness and race from media reporting on the British Royal Family. The celebritisation of constitutional monarchy has the effect of
displacing the racial and religious power that authorises constitutional monarchy. As a result, the persistence of the monarchy as a
contemporary expression of Australia and New Zealand’s settler colonial history is removed from view.
Holly Randell-Moon is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her publications on popular
culture, gender, and sexuality have appeared in the edited book collections Common Sense: Intelligence as Presented on Popular
Television (2008) and Television Aesthetics and Style (2013) and the journals Feminist Media Studies and Refractory. She has
published on race, religion, and secularism in the journals Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, borderlands and Social Semiotics and
in the edited book collections Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences (2008) and Mediating Faiths (2010)
[email protected]
Bruno Marshall Shirley
Victoria University of Wellington
Religion 1
The Presence of Religion in Popular Music: An Analysis of “Glory”
The use of religiously significant musical devices by classical composers like Wagner or Elgar is well-documented by musicologists.
However the historical religious significance of some musical devices remains relevant in contemporary popular music and their use
can reveal insight into the social and political intent of the songwriter. To demonstrate this I will examine the Oscar-winning song
“Glory” by Common and John Legend, which draws on devices of African-American Gospel music, Islamic hip-hop and Protestant
hymns in its musical composition. I argue that these religiously significant devices are deliberately used to situate the political
message of the song in broader historical context by evoking African-American religious history.
Bruno Marshall Shirley is a postgraduate student at Victoria University of Wellington, writing his Masters’ thesis on the intersection of
religion, politics and history in contemporary Sri Lankan Buddhism. He is also a musical director, music educator and composer, with
a musical “Bloodlines” currently being workshopped in New York City.
[email protected]
36
David Sinfield
Auckland University of Technology
Design 1
Typographical ghosts: A contemplation in real time, on mystery and recovery
Exposed to the eroding forces of time, materiality and the elements, urban signs may tell stories that reach beyond their original
meanings. As part of lived space, they also intersect with our lives, marking both the erased layers of commerce and the nature of
recollected narrative. This practice-led research project is concerned with storytelling though a reflection on signage typography as a
form of palimpsest. It explores intersections between narratives of personal experience and these erosions in lived space. Using the
potentials of spatial-temporal typography, sound and narration, it asks what is the potential of eroding typography on signs to enhance
the evocative nature of re-collective storytelling?
David Sinfield is a senior lecturer in Communication Design at Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand and
program leader of the undergraduate Visual Communication program. His research is concerned with the potential of animated
typography to capture the human condition, whether as film titles, or animated monologues, or as political commentaries on urban
decay and social injustice. As a graphic designer, his research is located in the areas of narrative inquiry and social commentary with
specific focus on the concept of palimpsest as a way of reading eroded signage and metaphorical relationships it might have to
remembered places and experience. In generating creative and social discourse it investigates relationships between typography and
narrative with particular focus on spatiotemporal modalities.
[email protected]
Tania Spława-Neyman
RMIT University
The diary of a mender: Making and mending to make sense of ‘abundant consumables’
Fashion 4
In times past, the everyday relationships that individuals formed with their own personal garments were much more
enduring than today. These relationships would manifest through prudent material practices integrating sorting, repair and
adaptation — a crucial, intermeshed system that responded to the omnipresent problem of material scarcity. However, as
shown in Susan Strasser’s history of waste management, the rise of disposable products and modern consumer culture
throughout the 20th century steadily displaced these practices of careful use, re-use and repair, fostering “a new kind of
relationship to the material world, to production, and to disposal”.(p. 173). Within today’s climate of seemingly abundant
and readily consumed and disposed of textile-based products, frugal acts of repair and re-use that were once common
are no longer conventional or widely practiced.
Being able to so easily procure more new things makes material maintenance non-essential, but what do we really lose
when the ‘worn-out’ is discarded? This question is explored through an ongoing, durational project wherein all of the
author’s garments — cheap, new, old, well-worn, loved and unloved — are considered with respect and are duly
sustained within their owner’s ecology. Mending supersedes disposal, often against reason, opening further query … Are
such practices a product of their time? Do I have the time to be spending on this material?
Works cited: Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000).
Dr Tania Spława-Neyman is a fashion practitioner and sessional lecturer within the School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University.
She recently completed a PhD by project within RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design titled “Care Making: Practices of gleaning,
using and future fashioning”. This practice-based research explores creation within a balanced ecology of objects that reshapes both
professional design and everyday living practices. Her research interests are epistemology of practice, designing through making and
sustainable practices.
[email protected]
37
Geoff Stahl
Victoria University of Wellington
Food 2/Writing
Making a Mockery of Meat: Translating Texture and Failings of the ‘Flesh’”
This paper considers the fraught nature of meat analogues, colloquially known as “mock meats” (such as Tofurky, facon, veat,
soysage, etc.). Meat analogues offer up a semiotic and ethical provocation, an uneasy and unsettling one for some, a comforting and
nostalgic one for others, through their aspiration to “meatiness.” As these parodic foodstuffs in their very naming make apparent, in the
Western diet meat remains the preferred point of reference, the former unable to escape what Derrida refers to as the privileging of
“carnophallogocentrism.” Drawing upon media stories, advertising and promotional material from mock meat manufacturers, and
questionnaire and survey results of vegans and vegetarians, this paper examines the ambivalence and signifying fuzziness of meat
analogues in relation to larger debates about consumption and food ethics.
Geoff Stahl is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is a co-author of
Understanding Media Studies (Oxford University Press, 2009), and the editor of and contributor to Poor, But Sexy: Reflections on
Berlin Scenes (Berg, 2014). His research focuses primarily on music making in the city, scenes and subcultures, advertising and
urban semiotics. A long-time vegetarian, this is his first foray in to food studies.
[email protected]
Mark Stewart
University of Auckland
Fan Studies 1
Appropriate’ Fandom – the Television Industry’s Efforts to Model Fan Behaviours
The connection between fandom and fetishism, between fandom and excessive emotional display, is one which has been tracked by
the literature of fan studies, and can often be treated with scepticism by the television industry. However, the industry is also faced
with the reality that fans with depth of engagement are those with the most economic potential, and as such, need to be cultivated. I
argue that some recent television series have worked to present an ‘appropriate’ model of fandom, presenting an example of how the
television industry would like to see fans engage with their texts. Survivor (2000-present) has found several ways to present these
‘appropriate’ representations, specifically through the engagements with host Jeff Probst, and the use of ‘fans’ within the text itself, as
exemplified by the 23rd and 26th seasons contestant, John Cochran.
Mark Stewart graduated with a PhD from the University of Auckland in early 2015. His work has focused on the shifts in television that
occurred around the turn of the millennium, taking into account industry, audience and texts themselves. Most recently, Mark has
accepted a post-doctoral position based at Massey University, funded by a Marsden Fund grant, working with Dr Kevin Glynn and Dr
Julie Cupples on their project entitled “Geographies of Media Convergence: Spaces of Democracy, Connectivity and the
Reconfiguration of Cultural Citizenship”.
[email protected]
Paul Sunderland
University of Sydney
Film 5
Immersion and Historical Space in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon
As with much of Kubrick’s cinema, early audiences and critics of Barry Lyndon (1975) responded to the film with a mixture of
confusion and disappointment. The film was praised for its historical realism and its ‘painterly aesthetic’, achievements attributed to
Kubrick’s meticulous research and his use of contemporary art to recreate the look and feel of the eighteenth century. But the film was
widely criticised for being long and tedious, with a cold and distant tone that prevented engagement with the plot and identification with
its characters. In assessing the film in terms of its adherence or otherwise to the conventions of classical narrative cinema, these early
critics neglected the film’s unique aesthetic achievements. I suggest instead that Barry Lyndon offers an alternative mode of
spectatorship characterised by a tension between classical narrative immersion and the distanciation of modernist cinema. In this
paper I focus on the film’s use of a technological innovation – the zoom lens – to effect a cinematic trompe l’oeil that collapses the
diegetic immersion fundamental to classical narrative cinema. The use of a slow reverse zoom punctuates the film with moments of
transition that move the spectator from an immersive historical space, into a space of contemplation outside of the cinematic image.
This transition from immersion to contemplation is fundamental to the film’s critique of the construction of history through art.
Paul Sunderland is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney. He completed a Master’s
dissertation in 2013 on camera movement in the cinema of Stanley Kubrick, and his article “The Autonomous Camera in Stanley
Kubrick’s The Shining” was published in Volume 39 of Sydney Studies in English. He currently teaches at the University of Sydney
and the University of Newcastle. His thesis examines immersive aesthetics in popular Hollywood cinema.
[email protected]
38
Amy Taylor
La Trobe University
Gothic/Horror 2
The Sonic Gothic: The Ominous Soundscape of Matthew Saville’s Noise (2007).
A sense of the ominous pervades the film Noise (Saville 2007), and the source of this ominous tone and mood may well be the gothic.
For the characters in this film, there is a sense of menace as they are threatened by an unknown killer or killers and their fate is
undetermined. In the case of Noise, the sonic gothic provides the tension of anxieties: of the individual, and the anxieties of the larger
community. The use of sound transplants us into lead character Graham’s head, and therefore we share in his fear. His bodily
experience is shared with us, as well as his emotional experience.
The gothic is a narrative of fear, and here sound performs to accentuate the fears both within the film and without. Utilising the works
of Philip Brophy and Philip Hayward and Harry Minassian, this paper will argue that the sound is the instrument to understanding the
other gothic elements of this film – its sense of lawlessness, the monstrous, unstable boundaries and the notions of light and dark.
Works cited: Brophy, Philip. “I Scream In Silence: Cinema, Sex and the Sound of Women Dying.”
Cinesonic. The World of Sound in Film. Ed. Philip Brophy. North Ryde: Australian Film Television & Radio School, 1999: 51-78.
Hayward, Philip and Harry Minassian. “Terror in the Outback: Wolf Creek and Australian
Horror Cinema.” Music, Sound and Horror Cinema. Ed. Philip Hayward. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2009: 238-248
Amy Taylor likes to watch films, and to talk, read and write about them. She is a Melbourne based writer and researcher, with an MA
and BA in film studies, both from La Trobe university. She reviews films for Film Blerg, and occasionally contributes articles to
Women, Money and Style. Amy is currently gearing herself up to start a PhD, as she thinks the title ‘Doctor’ will suit her. Don’t ask for
her top five films, as she can’t narrow the list from six.
[email protected]
Justine Taylor, Vicki Karaminas
Sydney University
Fashion 3
Sailor Style. Representations of the Mariner in Contemporary Fashion
Young and forced into celibacy during long months at sea, the sailor has been considered the archetype of sexual availability. The
openness of sailors to sexual activity has also been represented in popular culture from the lyrics of Cole Porter “What’s Central
park/without a sailor’; the homoerotic paintings of Paul Cadmus and Charles Demuth, the sailor in tight pants in Tennessee Williams’,
The Rose Tattoo and Lieutenant Seblon in Jean Genet’s Querelle de Brest. The uniform featuring a striped boat-neck top and bellbottom pants has come to represent a homoerotic masculine ideal contained in the depiction of the wondering sailor as uncomplicated
sexual trade. The mariners not only stress masculinity in the display of their bodies, but they also play with the signs of masculinity,
bare chest and pronounced muscles, exaggerating and displaying at the same time signs of gay culture. As Richard Dyer writes,
muscles are “the sign of power natural, achieved, phallic.” The look of the hard muscular male body appropriated by gay men and
made popular in the illustrations of Tom of Finland. Tom’s drawings repeatedly display images of men dressed in uniform such as the
sailor with hard bodies and oversized exaggerated genitalia pressing against the crotch of their trousers.
The romanticised and eroticised freedom signified by the sailor’s uniform has had a great impact within the domain of fashion. The
elements of the sailor suit, striped of blue and white, cloth or peaked cap, anchors and brass buttons, and braids have been translated
into nautical themes by fashion. Designers such as Coco Chanel, Jean Paul Gautier, Givenchy, Dior and Kenzo have all included
elements or interpretations of the theme in their designs to trigger an imagined response from their inspired consumers.
This paper will examine the myth behind the representation of the sailor and the ways in which the sailor’s uniform has influenced
contemporary fashion.
Justine Taylor is a fashion designer who has been designing collections for the past 15 years. Her first label, Justine Taylor sold to
Barney’s in Japan, and was stocked next to the likes of Anne Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela. Her second diffusion label,
JUSTINE.TAYLOR.MADE retailed throughout Asia and Australia. Justine has taught fashion design at Whitehouse Institute of Design,
Billy Blue College of Design and the University of Technology in Sydney. She is currently completing her doctorate in fashion design
at the Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. She is the creative director of the avant guard niche label OPUS9.
[email protected]
39
Rebecca Trelease
Auckland University of Technology
TV 3
The Bachelor and the ‘management of liveness’
Paddy Scannell’s phenomenological approach to ‘live’ television culminates in the ‘management of liveness’ (Scannell, Television and
the Meaning of Live, 2014, p. 154). The ‘live’ event is a formatted sequence of moments of time, and Scannell demonstrates the
resulting structures with studies of radio, football, and a catastrophe on television. Scannell does not explore the extensive formatting
of the reality television genre, despite his conclusion that ‘the latest reincarnation of [everyday life] is reality television’ (p. 37). This
research will consider Scannell’s approach with a case study of Season 19 of The Bachelor (ABC, 2015), exploring how the show
subverts the previously established format of ‘live’. The Bachelor utilises Scannell’s understanding of live television by modes of
address and various aspects of live/recorded live, and establishing the natural routine of the journey. Yet over the course of 19
seasons (not including The Bachelorette), the show has evolved significantly in that it now guides the viewer through an elaborate
‘management of liveness’. This season in particular features multiple modes of address as it changes from dissemination to dialogue
within a single piece to camera. Conflicting representations of ‘live’ exist within the one moment as reflective interviews are interrupted
by enquiring contestants. In subverting the expected management of liveness, The Bachelor guides viewers through a dynamic
representation of the meaning of ‘live’.
Rebecca Trelease is a PhD student at Auckland University of Technology.
[email protected]
Vassiliki Veros
University of Technology Sydney
Popular Romance 1
Romance Fiction Need Not Apply: investigating book club selections by cultural institutions
Cultural institutions marginalise romance fiction because they do not select books for inclusion in programs promoting reading, such
as book clubs. Book group selections are made by cultural arbiters such as librarians and reviewers in Australian libraries and the
ABC’s The First Tuesday Book Club so as to promote reading. These selections are aimed at social readers who are often highly
literate. Research into book clubs show that they are predominately female spaces (Long, 2006; Devlin-Glass, 2001). The books
chosen for either library book club kits or for discussion on the public broadcaster’s reading show are given literary authority, much like
literary "Best of" lists and Award winners. This paper will discuss how book club selections are given cultural legitimacy and how
romance fiction continues to be excluded and to not been seen as literature that can be read critically.
Vassiliki Veros is a PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney in Information and Knowledge Management. Her thesis is
exploring library practices that marginalize romance fiction. Vassiliki has over 20 years experience working in public libraries and is
passionate about reading. She is a regular on the ABC’s 702Sydney radio show The Blurb with Linda Mottram where she discusses
libraries, romance fiction, and other pop culture narratives.
[email protected]
Alison Vincent
Central Queensland University
Food 1
Richard Beckett and Sam Orr write about food
Richard Beckett (1936 – 1987) has been described as ‘a sophisticated larrikin of the old school’ (Walsh 1993, p. 19). In the persona of
Sam Orr he wrote ‘pungently opinionated’ (Walsh 1993, p. 19) restaurant reviews for the short-lived Nation Review in a prose style
described as ‘contemporary trendy obscene’ (Halligan 1977, p.18). However, there was much more to Richard Beckett than the
larger-than-life Sam Orr. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Beckett published widely on food matters, from guides to restaurants to a
history of food in Australia (Convicted Tastes, 1984) and books on gardening and growing food.
In this paper I will explore Beckett’s contribution to food writing in Australia and in particular his role as a restaurant critic. Works cited:
Walsh, R 1993, Ferretabilia. The life and times of Nation Review, UQP, St Lucia.
Halligan, M 1977, 'Writing about food. Ted Moloney, Johnny Walker, Leo Schofield, Peter Smark, Sam Orr and all', Quadrant, vol. xxi, no.
1, pp. 16-19.
Alison Vincent has qualifications in science (BSc (Hons), Food Technology, UNSW) and history (BA, MLitt, UE) and is currently
enrolled in the preliminary stages of a PhD at Central Queensland University. Alison’s research explores the writing of restaurant
critics in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1970s and 1980s and the of role restaurant criticism in establishing standards of good taste.
[email protected]
40
Naomi von Senff
University of New England
Gothic/Horror 2
Cannibalising Christmas – Injecting elements of horror in Joe Hill’s Christmas tale “Nos4a2”
(Nosferatu).
Joe Hill’s Nos4a2 invokes Victorian themes of Vampirism, searching, and exoticism combined with references to his father Stephen
King’s Cujo, Salem’s Lot, The Shining and Christine. The novel brings vampirism firmly into the twenty first century – resorting to
haunted landscapes and places, and elements of vampire mythology neglected by Twilight, True Blood and Buffy. The heroine
Victoria, is able to create her own roads and her ability to find things through her psychic and kinetic gift is paralleled by the Charles
Manx. The two enter into conflict when he kidnaps her son to save him by maintaining his childish innocence. Manx’s noble goal to
save mistreated children is coupled with his requirement to draw off their energy and consume their soul to ensure his eternal youth,
and damning the children to exist as fragile creature who don’t understand the consequences of their actions. The horror is mixed with
humour and Hill’s interpretations of madness and visionary gifts. Hill has created a modern day resurrection of gothic imagery turning
the happy immortals into the truly soulless vampires and lost children. Hill also utilises the horcrux motif from JK Rowling preserving
his soul in his car, the Rolls Royce Wraith, and capturing a soul of each child in a Christmas ornament which preserves his evil legacy.
Naomi von Senff is currently studying at University of New England, Armidale, and she currently holds the following degrees:
B.Mus Hon Opera.(University of Newcastle) B.A.Hon (University of New England), BA Hum (Deakin University).
[email protected]
Corey Walden
Auckland University of Technology
Design 3
Diary of a Murderhobo: The Mapping of Participant Divertissement within Dungeons & Dragons
Permeated and referenced throughout popular culture, Dungeons & Dragons has become iconic as the cardinal and archetypal
tabletop role-playing game, spawning its own genre of gaming. The past forty years have seen participants drawn to the game by
notions of ‘fun’ or ‘enjoyment’, however as some sociologists argue, there are elements of tautology to this reasoning. While this
critique may offer verity, qualitative research would suggest participant rationale is at least superficially valid, yet evokes a call to
further understanding.
This paper offers a preliminary analysis of the underlying motivations for playing D&D examining concepts such as engrossment,
identification, play, freedom, self-expression and various adverse affects associated with the game. Theoretically positioning Gary
Alan Fine’s Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds (1983) as the primary textual framework underpinning this
research, and juxtaposing this with a participant Internet survey (2014), this paper seeks to explore these factors, while acknowledging
and maintaining the oft repeated maxim that the game is ‘fun’.
Corey Walden is a Master’s student and Communications tutor at Auckland University of Technology. The foci of his upcoming thesis
centres on the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, exploring the construction of community, and the vehicles through
which identities are explored and negotiated within this ludic pursuit. This exploration is positioned within the context of emergent
digital technologies, allowing a proliferation and validation of ‘hobbyist’ gaming, of both digital and non-digital types.
[email protected]
Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough
University of Sydney
Film 1
Digressions During Sex Talk: Advertising and Cinematic Form in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac
Lars von Trier and his company Zentropa employed an innovative tactic for advertising Nymphomaniac (2013), where parts of scenes
of the film were released online every month before the film was released. The sequences seldom involved climactic events, but built
tension. Then came a trailer that featured sensationalist, climactic scenes. The film is almost situated between the trailer and the clips,
at once climactic and anticlimactic, moving through interrupted climaxes, as it follows the protagonist’s—Joe’s—sexual and
metaphysical journey. This paper will explore how Nymphomaniac is situated between the sensationalist, populist tropes of
commercial cinema while at the same time exploring themes associated with the more ‘serious’ art film such as metaphysical yearning
in the face of mortality. The paper will suggest that Nymphomaniac challenges cinematic form by both being an ambiguous work of art
and an example of tawdry advertising.
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Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough is an editorial assistant for the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. He is currently completing his
PhD on Lars von Trier and philosophical notions of the tragic at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. He uses 19th
Century German aesthetics to understand questions concerning the relationship between high art and popular culture in cinema. This
aspiration is evidenced in his thesis and a number of his publications, including the book chapter, ‘The Tragic Artist on Screen as an
Aesthetic Theodicy,’ in Socrates and Dionysus, ed. Ann Ward (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2013).
[email protected]
Angela Warren
University of Tasmania
Fan Studies 1
Chuck, Blair And The Porter: Negotiating The Rules Of Play After The Gossip Girl And Sleep No
More Crossover
When, in an episode airing in late 2011, the fictional Upper--‐ East Siders of the popular television show Gossip Girl visited the immersive
theatre production Sleep No More they brought formerly distinct fans and fandoms into conversation with each other. That
conversation—taking place online and within the physical space of Sleep No More itself—made visible many of the unspoken rules and
dominant practices within each of the fandoms. Drawing on survey, interview and extant social media data this paper explores how
different fans responded to the episode itself and the ‘crossover’ of fans that ensued. This example suggests that, in order to maximize
the broader social benefit of concepts such as ‘affinity spaces’ and participatory cultures, we must understand the significant influence
of the entry--‐ point or ‘portal’ on what norms are established, how they can be communicated and contested, and by whom.
Angela Warren is a PhD Candidate at the University of Tasmania. Her current research is focused on the audience and fan
practices at the heart of the site--‐ specific immersive theatre production Sleep No More. She holds a first--‐ class Honours
degree in English from the University of Tasmania and a Bachelor of Visual and Performing Arts from the Victorian College of the
Arts. In addition to her academic interest in storytelling and fan and audience practices she is a published creative writer,
theatre reviewer, playwright, and erstwhile alternate reality game puppet--‐ master in training.
[email protected]
Josh Wheatley
University of Sydney
Film 3
Of Toys and Trash: The Crisis of Waste in Pixar's Toy Story Films
The Disney/Pixar Toy Story films (1995-2010) continue to develop the creative possibilities of animated cinema by constructing
worlds, making objects lively, and exploring the politics of their agency. However, looming over the liveliness of the plastic figures is
the crisis of waste. The films have an active engagement with concepts of trash, with the threat of ‘becoming waste’ explored in a
number of dynamic dimensions. In the film series, the toy objects not only recognise their own manufactured nature, but also
recognise the pressures of their material reality against a potential loss of value; as the heartbroken Lotso-Love Bear affirms, ‘We're
all just trash, waiting to be thrown away’. Played against spaces of destruction, ranging from a next-door neighbour's yard to the
apocalyptic terminus of the rubbish dump, the films interrogate the politics of matter and waste. This presentation looks at the ways in
which concepts of trash are explored in the Toy Story film series, and how approaches to trash aesthetics in cinema can critically
engage us with the liveliness of material objects and spaces in contemporary culture.
Josh Wheatley is currently undertaking his PhD in the Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Sydney. His area of
research is trash aesthetics in contemporary American cinema. His thesis engages postmodern and ecocritical approaches to trash
materialities in film, examining networks of value, waste and the image.
[email protected]
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Kim Wilkins
University of Sydney
Film 5
(Re)constructing Berlin: Framing the City in Tom Twyker’s Berlin Films
Cinematic place both reveals a connection to the locality and is a fabrication constructed and edited for a specific film’s milieu. All films
are constructions, and thus all film worlds are invariably artificial spaces. That is, all narratives, those filmed on location or on a set,
artificially configure their sense of ‘place’. Berlin is a city in which complicated and dynamic identities interact and intertwine. It is a city
where the footprints of wars, kingdoms, revolutions, and rebellions are still alive. November 9, 2014 marked 25 years since the fall of
the Berlin Wall—a city once divided was unified once more. This unification, however, was not without complication. Berlin’s various
histories and ideological struggles exist side by side; Soviet Plattenbauten, Nazi structures, grand pre-war Altbau buildings, and
palaces stand between vast ruins and new structures. Since reunification Berlin has been undergoing constant construction and
reconstruction. This paper looks at Berlin as a reconstructed physical site and as a cinematic construction in the films of Tom Twyker.
I consider the way in which Twyker’s Berlin functions as space and place for both a German and international audience.
Kim Wilkins is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, where she recently submitted her doctoral thesis on a mode of cinematic
expression she calls ‘American Eccentricity’. Her work on this area has been published in the New Review of Film and Television, and
in a recent collection on Wes Anderson through Palgrave MacMillan.
[email protected]
Francesca Zampollo
Auckland University of Technology
Design 2
Food Design, Meanings, Stories, Memories, Emotions
In Search of Meaningful Food is a reflection on the meanings attributed to food, and therefore, the personal, and impossible to
foresee, relationship between people and food products during and after consumption. Food products are designed with a specific
function, and to elicit certain emotions. But what happens really when people buy and use these products? A range of uses and
contexts are applied to the food product and many unpredictable meanings are applied to it, creating emotional memories that often
follow people throughout their life. Homemade food is created usually to feed friends and family for a specific occasion, or for no
particular reason other than being together. Some homemade food instead becomes incredibly meaningful, filled with emotional
significance, and protagonist of the strongest memories one can have. In Search of Meaningful Food is about those memories and
those meanings, showcasing the connection or discrepancies between design intentions, and how food products are actually lived. In
this study data collection was conducted sending an international call for participation where I asked people to send me a short video
where they tell the story of their most meaningful food. 108 videos from 15 countries have been collected so far. Thematic Analysis
has been used to analyze the transcription of the videos. In this paper I will offer an outline of this study and its initial findings: I will
highlight the emotional potentials of food showing some of the videos collected as part of data collection, and I will provide an
overview of the initial findings, and the reasons why food becomes meaningful. Such findings provide a portrait of what is ultimately
important about food, why it becomes meaningful. In the Design field these findings can be used to motivate and channel the Design
process towards the generation of a food product, service or system that has the potential to be meaningful for people.
Francesca is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art and Design at AUT. Francesca has a PhD in Design Theory applied to Food Design,
and is the Principal Editor of the International Journal of Food Design published by Intellect. In 2009 Francesca founded
the International Food Design Society, and since then organized the First International Symposium on Food Experience
Design (London, November 2010) the first academic conference on Food Design, the International Conference on Designing Food
and Designing for Food (www.fooddesign2012.com London, June 2012), and she is now organizing the Second International Food
Design Conference (www.fooddesign2015.com New York, November 5-7 2015).
[email protected]
The Sixth Annual Conference of The Popular Culture Association Australia New Zealand
www.popcaanz.com
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