Yesterday's News' Nat Thomas exhibition ctalogue

8/2/2019 'Yesterday's News' Nat Thomas exhibition ctalogue

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YESTERDAYSNEWS NAT THOMAS


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ExcErpt from SullivanS travElS (1941), we d deed

by pes Sges

Sullivan: ths e s anSWEr css. i shws wee

wke d dkg heds he sd ke bh shes. i

w hs e be ey de ds, sk esd he bes h he ege .

lEBranD: B wh e se.

Sullivan: a e, b i d w sess . i w hs

e be de. i w hd e. i w hs

be e dgy - e s he seg hy.

lEBranD: B wh e se.

Sullivan: Wh e se .

HaDrian: Hw b e s?

Sullivan: Hw y k b ss e ke hs? Wh

he wd g sde, wh ses g he see, wh

g deh ggg y eey e, wh ee sgheed

ke shee!

HaDrian: mybe heyd ke ge h.

_______________________________


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Yesedys news s je bsed es d he ed

i se d why i e ke se hes. i y be we

ed d ed qy, we-esehed js, b e e

h i d yse kg ks ke Hywds shes

weddgs, se sgey edes ge bd. is e de.

thee e s y sses be eed b d eed wh d

i beee h s ke hge. Hwee hees

deyg he e i ee wd he e wkgs he es

ee i w ee kw. is se.

i hk b he ed . re mdhs sess, i ek, s h

hes wys kw hw esy dsed ee e. By ey se,

ss eeby gss, ed, eee d ess.

Yesedys news ddesses ed dse . the ehb

es wg d DvD ge the th ewse 1967

(he ye y bh) he d 70s.

the hedes e ges, hg hesees he ges y,

eg y ed . pees ke-

G: i pd $290 t Be a vg ag, B i Dd Wk,

lSD Gg r nked Dw m, d y p es

Shd ces S u f the Hdys? lke sed hey wh

ew e

my ue Jh sed by the th d hdys, s kds s he

b shed ese hs sk d es, eyes wde, k s sed

e he he hg gw s. i ws sede

ghy ese, eg he ess 70s hes, g he

bg bbs d yg dehe he heeky s. i ws ewse,

b we wee hee he ews e.

Sullivan: thees be sd kg ee gh. Dd y

kw h hs se ee he? i s h, b s bee

h hg hs k-eyed .

---

n ths 2012

________________

________________

_________

_________


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Calamity NatBy Dan Cass

Sharpshooting legend Annie Oakley (13 Aug 18603 Nov 1926), born Phoebe Ann Moses,performed with Buffalo Bills Wild West show for 17 years.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Miss-Annie-Oakley-peerless-wing-shot.jpg


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I.

...the West is America only more so. 1

Nat Thomas is a character. But rst I want to talk about me.

Recently I have been reading histories of the American West, to learn aboutsuccess and optimism in a time of change. It has made me realise that NatThomas is like the Wests Calamity Jane. She amuses us, tells the truth andwatches our back.

Australia in 2012 feels a bit like the wild west, with miners, moguls and robber

barons running amok. We are all of us stuck in the fossil fuel badlands, butdreaming of a new continent of possibilities, a solar frontier.

The strategic goal of my business as a lobbyist (and a large part of the meaningof my life) is to search out how to accelerate the passage to this new continent,to a Solar Age.2 On present trends, solar and other renewable energy will getcheaper than conventional electricity for the whole world, rich and poor, overthe course of the next decade. But that is not fast enough. We dont have thatmuch time left. The future, as philosopher Tony Fry says, is already almost full.3

My hunch is that when we nd out how America was so successful as a userof non-renewable resources, then we can make our century successful as auser of renewable energy. I suspect that it comes down to power and timing;when to lay down the law and when to shoot from the hip.

Our starting point is Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis. Turner presented

his ideas to the American Historical Association in 1893, in an essay titled TheSignicance of the Frontier in American History.

Turner proposed that the process of pushing a frontier westward across theNorth American continent in the 19th century and to a lesser extent, the 18th,created the optimistic character of the USA. Turner believed that the frontierforged the characteristics of the American intellect:

That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness andinquisitiveness, that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to ndexpedients, that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artisticbut powerful to effect great ends, that restless, nervous energy, thatdominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that


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buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom...4

The restless trajectory launched by the explorers and Indian traders, pilgrimsand prospectors of the American West enveloped the whole world duringAmericas century (the 20th). Our ideas of progress are still animated by the

nervous energy of the American West. As the quote atop this essay says, theWest is America only more so.

The critic Robert Hughes and others have mischaracterised modernity assynonymous with the Age of the Machine (in a naive dichotomy with romanticism).

A more realistic view is that the idea of modernity is a cyborg constructionpartmachine, part organism. In a literal sense, the westward creep of modernity

away from the Atlantic coast was primarily a story of humans and animals, evenwhen punctuated by iron and gunpowder.

The idea of America became closely associated with its technological conquests.

It was technology that enabled the wars against the Indians (and sundryEuropeans), the destruction of the American Bison and Passenger Pigeon,the spread of the telegraph and railway. But the self-image of the Republic and

its citizens also drew heavily on the evolutionist ideas synthesised by CharlesDarwin in The Origin of Species(1859).

Every era seeks to naturalise its passions, claiming they are in harmony withthe true order of the universe. Modern people see themselves reected inthe dominant scientic metaphors of the time. For example, we understand

A treaty negotiation

group made up of

Dakota men from the

Great Sioux Nation.

The US-Dakota War

of 1862 was one of the

major conicts of the

American West. Image

c.1858


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ourselves today partly in terms of computer science, as network nodes, receiving,

transmitting and generating content, as if that is the medium of the social bond.

Religious Americans and Americas politicians, with their nascent doctrine ofmanifest destiny, naturalised their actions with organic, evolutionary metaphors.

Frederick Jackson Turner was exposed to paleontological evidence of evolutionunder Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin and agreed that if living things evolve,

from primitive to ever more advanced forms, then a similar process must holdsway over technologies, ideas and human societies.5

Turner interpreted the contemporary germ theory to explain the westwardexpansion of European civilisation across America. He proposed that while

the settled cities back East were evolving in the linear fashion, like Europeancities, the frontier society had to always start from the primal state. American

society was constantly recapitulating its own evolution at the Western Frontier;

Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along asingle line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancingfrontier... This perennial rebirth, this uidity of American life, this expansion

westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity

of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.6

In the 20 years that I have been involved in the climate debate, I have seenit regress to a primitive state. Climate scientists never used to get deaththreats in the 1990s, when global warming, as it should be known, rst cameto prominence. Since then, the UNs climate laws have shown themselves tobe weak. The Kyoto Protocol, which is the only binding agreement, runs out

this year.

Al Gore with Suntech

founder Dr Zengrong Zhi,

who was a solar scientist

in Australia until he went

back to China because he

had no support. A decade

later, Suntech was the

largest solar company in

the world and Zhi was

Chinas richest person.

Image July 2010. www.

rechargenews.com/energy/

solar/article220737.ece


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Proponents of soft technology and appropriate technology in the 1970s werethe pioneers of the solar frontier. The almost half a million Australian households

that have some sort of solar technology (solar PV, hot water or passive solararchitecture) are the settlers. The explorers today are the mavericks who are

saying that we should be carbon neutral, then go beyond zero emissions andhelp the Earth repair itself.7

The race is on to dominate the new renewables economy. General Electricis the biggest technology company in the world and it is now a leader insolar, wind, smart grids and all the rest. America and India have policies inplace to bring the price of solar down to below coal and gas electricity withina decade. Expect to see thousands of electric cars within a few years, evenon Australian streets.

But progress is not assured. The solar frontier is a erce place. There are

plenty of dirty rotten scoundrels, all out to make a fast buck. Black hats withbig guns lurk in every saloon. Media proprietors and mining barons, golddiggers and rent-seekers, lobbyists and ad men are all whoring themselvesto the highest bidder.

Rupert Murdoch

with his 2nd biggest

News Corporation

shareholder, Prince

Alwaleed bin Talal.

Image 2009. http://

thelede.blogs.nytimes.

com/2010/08/26/saudi-royal-backs-

imam-and-fox-news/


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If civilisation is going to make it through the 21st century, we need to arc up

now and shoot from the hip. As Tony Fry has argued, if we wait much longer

then, the future will be full, of our rubbish.

We could imagine new versions of prosperity, a reprised frontier spirit of energy

independence and self-sufciency.8 If things go very badly, we will need storiesto tell around the campre when the seas rise and chaos descends.

II.

In an era when the truth is too inconvenient to talk about in polite (resources)

company, Australians need a source of honesty. According to WilliamShakespeare, King Lear failed to see what his evil daughters were up to, so

he needed a fool to whip the dog of truth out of its kennel (Act I, Scene iv).

Shakespeares contemporaries would have recognised Calamity Nat Thomas

as a fool. She says what we cant say. She crosses the line. She goes too far.

Editors sense that the public sees through vapid reportage and analysis, sothey cast their cartoonists to be the Elizabethan fools (or the Calamity Janes).

Cartoonists like Ron Tanberg, Fiona Katauskis and First Dog on the Moon have

an almost exclusive license to tell it as it is.

So how are we to read the media?

Even the quality media is so ungrounded that trying to understand the world

from the pages of a newspaper requires not just reading between the lines,

but reading between the Tweets. We teach ourselves how to sift through vast

quantities of churnalism without getting cheated by the misinformation.

Nat Thomas knows how to read a newspaper. She has been using the media

for a long time in her own art and in collaborative art made as Nat and Ali and

DAMP.9 She even provoked commercial TV and radio current affairs programmes

into condemning her art.

Nat often clips both of Melbournes dailies. The Ageis the Fairfax broadsheetcoveted by Gina Rinehart, the iron-ore heiress who is now acknowledged to

be Australias richest person. The other local daily is the Herald Sun, a News


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Limited tabloid belonging to the traditional owners of the Australian medialandscape, the Murdoch clan.

In Yesterdays News, Nat has drawn on The Truth, a tabloid paper that foldedin 1995. The Truthwas a racy read, with Page 3 girls and a seeming obsession

with depicting the sexual revolution and drugs going down in suburbia.

I think that the reason Nat takes the mainstream and low-brow media soseriously is that she gets it. She knows that it is both serious and absurd, likelife. Its not just that she knows we are headed for global warming and otherexternal catastrophes. Nat is attuned to the internal calamity of being a humanwho cares and thinks but ultimately must love, live and die without knowing

enough or doing enough that is good.

Nat looks to tabloids such asTheTruth to nd the lies thatthe powerful want us to believe.

Nat reads for clues to what isgoing on beneath the surfaceof the news, like an analystreading the analysandsdreams. She un-polishes the

turds. She sifts for fools gold.

Like countless millions of otherpeople around the world, Nathas thought a lot about RupertMurdoch lately. I suspectthat Nat and Murdoch wouldhit it off. Compared to GinaRinehart and the late Kerry

Packer, who was another ofAustralias media moguls,Rupert Murdoch is a scholarand a gentleman.

If Murdoch were everimprisoned for hackingfelonies, Nat would visit himin the stockade. Shed bring

him clippings. Shed makehim laugh.


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Next time the Murdoch clan throws a big party in Melbourne, Nat might be there.

Shes one of the worlds great party crashers. Thats how it rolls in the wild west;lawless and unpredictable. As Frederick Jackson Turner said, the frontier takesus back to primitive conditions and the perennial rebirth of the social state.

If there is any justice, then we could surely use our collective practical, inventiveturn of mind to replace fossil fuels with renewables. But we would need to beas eet and audacious as a work of art. The question is, can we muster our

frontier courage, before the future is full?

Dan Cass is a consultant based in Melbourne.He writes at www.dancass.com/blog

1 Clyde A. Milner II, Introduction in The Oxford History of the American West, eds.Clyde A Milner

II, Carol A OConnor and Martha A Sandweiss, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 2

(emphasis in original)

2 Physicist Fritjof Capra dened Solar Age to mean all renewable energy technologies. See his book

The Turning Point: science, society and the rising culture (New York: Bantam Books, 1982)

3 Australian philosopher of design Tony Fry has turned increasingly to sustainability theory in recent

years. He proposes a new way to understand the entropic impact of pollution and destruction, in terms

of time and human potential. As we wreck the planet, we are diminishing our options and in that sense,

taking away time or lling up the future (with junk). See Tony Fry,Design as Politics (Oxford: Berg,

2010)

4 Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Signicance of the Frontier in American History, (1893), p.18

http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/turner_frontier.pdf, (accessed 9 Jan 2012)

5 The Darwinism debate in philosophy and politics was always more than just a dispute between

creationism and evolutionism. Social evolutionists could use Darwin to justify competitive capitalism

or other schemes, such as anarchist communalism. See for example Petr Kropotkin,Mutual Aid, afactor of evolution, (1915) available as an ebook at Project Gutenberg

(http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341)

6 Turner, p.1-2

7 For examples, see Zero Carbon Britain (www.zerocarbonbritain.com) and Zero Carbon Australia

(www.zerocarbonplan.org).

8 For the best revision of these new ideas of prosperity, read Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth:

economics for a nite planet, (London: Earthscan, 2009).

9 Here is a video of Nat and Dan and Kylie Wilkinson talking about art, cooperation and climate, on a

DAMP work at The 6th Asia Pacic Triennial of Contemporary Art held in Brisbane (20092010).

(http://vimeo.com/35123265)


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SHoutinG at tHE nEWS

Whe i ed the as Hed S y he news led

ewse (he ge y mx!), kes e see ges ge

gy. i ke sees d ke:

Yehyehyeh oy eses shd e e he cBD wh

he k gee ee seeh. tkes he ese byg

ge yeh. the y sekes eed he y sqe shd be

yg esy seg s yeh.

or

ae y ses?! i d carE b K Kdshs be ge

he es ge hdbgs. Ye s wh he, ehe

i, s s gssg b sges! Hw d y ee kw hw yseeess ghs he g hs?

or

mg gs e he bkbe g bsed ey. le he

se ge ge gdhdes d d se coin. reses

? mgh ss e ... wh b he h, edey shehdes?

Wh b hse jbs?

obk as. th ds js sg hee dg hg. oe

h sh, y ge wk e hdsey (d he bke).

few dedes shd d bee he e e. Yes yes...

uhhh... y ee?

is he we. i geey ed ewses es whe i w

ee. i ke he edg ewse weeked e

b hees seess b as ewses d w i es

yse ke ses. oe es ke he hese dys; whs

eed d hw s eed.

a b sh. mybe ey.

Gg bk e i y, i s g ed wh ed

he ey 80s. my bes ed G c hd e d d hey

eeded e kd.

Y ge $14 week d y kes e hs. Esy esymg! sd G.

____________________

______________ __________

__


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my bke ws d, Dd ws eed s he b he

wh wk eh d s i g y s jb. Bk he, js

ws be ee. lkg s, esg he wgs

ss d eg he ee he h.

as i gew de, i eed he hse the fh Ese, eghe -seeg ess, bg eed seeh d

bsh he h b eeyhg h es he b. f pe

mses s ey hes.

Kee he bsds hes ss .

news ege hd be , bsed d we bjeey

hewse ws js. i ws se, wse,.

a ge gee se seeed esbe e i s hgh,

the pje e tv shw ( whee he he s)

che 10. Hw des wk? We, the pje e se see

sses he ews, he h/be he ews/s wh

d eesss he es. me ses see

eh he des e e d he he ed (

whee he he he s) shs eeed k e . c

he Ytbe ke hsg se e e seeg gdhe

d... wee .

my h we y gey.

i shd ghe he k i gess. thee e ey qy ews

ses d tv shws hee. i js ese he eee he

js hese shes ese, s hey e de s

se sbjee esee e ees. is sey

se wds uSas f news nh Kes es ess we ded

bee.

as e, i eed hse se w bw h dye, d ew

d ge y e dghe kss d e he b Wege.

---

mg fye 2012

___________

___________

________


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Jokes with

No Punchline

Always go too far because

thats where youll nd the

truth. albertcamus

Nat thomas likes her jokes quick

and dirty and with a signifcant

bend to the left. In Yesterdays

News Nat makes us privy to her wandering

eye. For this project she spent weeks

lming the newspaper archives held atthe State Library of Victoria in pursuit

of her own media interests. The result

is a meander through the pages ofThe

Truth newspaper from the 1960s and 70s

displayed alongside her own archive of

newspaper clippings, pasted over the

walls in a manner she describes as like

the psychotic characters in flms theres

always a wall in their home displaying

their collection dedicated to the object of

their obsession. She loves newspapers,

she explains how theyre an absolute

bargain for all the entertainment theydeliver to your doorstep each day. Her

investigation into the media is both

absurdist and slapstick, it strays from the

path of investigation and side-staggers

into the gutter part Samuel Beckett,

part Benny Hill.

Nat uncovers a truth from within the pages

ofThe Truth. We all have some recollectionof that trashy tabloid. I visualise it in-situ,

dissected in a TAB betting room for the

racing form guide, or in the company of

a beer and its drinker in a front bar at the

local. It possesses a degree of absurdity

that satirists strive to emulate, and still

it curiously occupies a real place within

Australias print media history. We

deftly identify the irony and humour inThe Truth,the journalistic vulgarity that

simply takes things too far. We cast a

critical eye through the mediation of

Nats lens and she allows us all in on the

joke and the unfortunate truth. It was a

newspaper marketed to the working class,

to a predominantly if not exclusively male

readership and owned by Murdoch during

the period Nat has selected. It allows us

a glimpse into the ideological health of

those subsisting on a poor media diet and

by ANgelA brOpHy


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draws into consideration the true impact

of contemporary equivalent shock jocks,

or Andrew Bolt and Americas Fox News.

At its best The Truth is humorous and

salacious, at worst it elicits hatred and fear.It bypasses conservatism and heads straight

to vile misogyny. Here women would never

make the status of the Madonna, theyre

just simply always the Whore. From the

harshest lessons of the 20th century weve

learned that the most effective propaganda

is inherently insidious and undetectable.

For us today it is difcult to believe that

The Truth was ever read compliantly. Thisexhibition calls into question the general

health of all our media and comes in the

wake of theNews of the Worldscandal

and Robert Mannes Quarterly Essay:

Bad News documenting the blatant bias

of The Australian newspaper.1We arereminded of the medias inherent paradox:

the essential role it plays in sustaining a

healthy democratic society and as aneffective tool of capitalist agendas.

Nat is rarely verbose, she reveals all

this quite simply through displaying the

newspaper headlines, as she explains

theyre just jokes with no punchline.

Nat: Whats the difference between

Rupert Murdoch and George W. Bush?

me: I dont know, whats the dif

[sileNce]

me: Okay okay, my turn. Whats the

difference between The Australian and

The Truth?

sileNce [laughter]

Nat: Okay, Okay. Whats the difference

between... um Gina Rinehart and

Rupert Murdoch?

[laughter] 2

1 Robert Manne, Quarterly Essay 43: Bad News.

Black Inc., Melbourne, September 2011.2 Transcript from a telephone conversation

between the artist and the author, February 2012

[may or may not be true].


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WHat a riGHt roYal Stuff up

(igy bewee rupErt WEnDi e he g es d

b bekky)

rupErt: (s) th bdy kd. Y ge he he wd; eey

y, eey e d he ee ed hs bdy es

hgh he ed. Sgs bg kee y h sh yes

wh e dse bese s hs ey! He dd e .

lzy, sy wk es, why y dy...

(WEnDi ds e se geee. ths s he s he dy

she hd hed . rupErt es, hgg ge)

rupErt: ths bdy Wd Wde Web! is js s ded essy d

ebe. i g he dys whe we eeded ws shedde

eey ges e. (Wsy) i ed he se hse

hes...

(they bh se heessy dw he es bee he,

eh ed e e h he s. WEnDi

hs deed hs es)

rupErt: (esg) the dge hes de he bd ie wked

se he adede dys... d be bdy be. iebe!

theye g he se y bd, w heye g e e.

Qesg he ee, he we, d he s e. (Ss se

og) o e e bdy tv! i maKE he news; i d w

be he bdy ews! a he hd d ws kee se dse.

(Desdey) is ge sh.

(pses, he hshy)

rupErt: i shde se e e he whe he ws hd. Beg

he bsss d s s deee segy; s h

ys sgh he hds. Bdy rde... the dss sd

hee ws he . ad js whe he y tv de ws s

hgh. ths whee he e ey s.

___________________________


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(Swy shkg hs hed, he eeed e)

rupErt: i se h pe W d hs bke ke.

WEnDi: (se we e, g he e he ys ses

he eqe sesss)Whs de s de. lee d e wd. tke y bd esse

be d eebe, hey he ed he heqebk yes new

Yks es. Js ke se hey d, y kds skes.

ae s se, s he, (dg ) hey s beee he

ae De...

the Bsh w wys be shyd bes; s ssed dw he

hgh hse ese b shs. theye ee ked y; heyese y de d sess. Y he ps

he ge bese hey ke hee. the bsed wehe, hey

kee he y e sd hesees i e!

(they g s. a eg se s rupErt dks WEnDiS

esy dg. She ey s edbe ss he hks

hse)

WEnDi: fw y de d s hs ye wh es twe

. i he b ge kw he re i kw hey w e y

js s i d. le he see he y re. tk b y ees

, es, e d s.

rupErt: Yes, i w. oh i d s y Wed, i js eeg s

ebe se he be eed. ie bee bdy e dw by hse

se e, by y ebes, b i shd e y. Y e y

k y e(se). the esh hs g s sbe Wed. Whee dd

y ge ge gs hs e ye?

WEnDi: i kw hey e y es s i hd he w Bwe

Qeesd.

oh e, i s sy, b y wee kw wh ws heg e

Bghy. Y y he h hs he ge dw. the

sgee...


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rupErt: Hw e he gs chese esss g g?

WEnDi: Sshgy. the gs he sssed he se behks. res

ssed swee, hs s e ge h s gessg dg .

i w e y dw.

i s hgey e gge d e...

rupErt: ad hge ke.

my e tv shws, s kd, wee Dysy d pse: ce Bk

H. i wd he ed be b we, wehy y,ssg wh he sbgs e s, ee d he

gd ze. cs he Ee, heg he egy bd,

he ss y w. pe mses d pesdes shg

es ee y eee. W y s.

my bkgd hgh s se pse, ghg sy wh he

dg s y hed dd ed he g ess.

(td chese ohes py o. ase.)

---

n ths 2012

______________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

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a ghs eseed. n hs b ybe eded sed y by yes, ee eh (dg hyg,edg y ee syse) whess he bshe

cee cey phghy 2012 d he s

iSBn 978-0-9806922-9-7

cee cey phghy s sedby he v Gee hgh as vd s sssed by he as Geehgh he as c, s s dg d

dsy bdy. cee cey phghys sed by he vs as d c Segy, e he as, se d eygees. ccp s ebe caos ceyas ogss as.

fs bshed he ehb

n ths: Yesedys news

10 feby 1 a 2012

404 Gege See

fzy vic 3065 as

+613 9417 1549

e @.g.

w www..g.

________________

imagecoversfroNtaNdback:

Nat Thomas Yesterdays News 2012

(details)

single channel digital video36 min 0 sec, dimensions variable

(video stills)

courtesy the artist


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NatThomaswouldliketothankMorganandMaxine

Fayle,AngelaBrophy,DanCass,ElvisRichardson,

AdrienStewart,KarraRees,TraceyHubert,Christina

Apostolidis,AndrewBurford,SaloteTawale,Lucreccia

Quintanilla,VikkiMcInnes,KylieWilkinsonand

ColourFactoryfortheirsupportforthisproject

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Yesterday's News' Nat Thomas exhibition ctalogue