Newsletter #3 / June 15th
Sweet Tee / Georgia Lee / Catherine Bainbridge / Nikki Giovanni
Welcome to the third FORA newsletter, where we lay down some topsoil rules
I dug up the topsoil in the back part of the garden and now I stare at clay, every day.
fora: plural of forum i.e. the fora of the internet
forum: a situation or meeting in which people can talk about a problem or matter especially of public interest (Cambridge)
the marketplace or public place of an ancient Roman city forming the center of judicial and public business / a medium (such as a newspaper or online service) of open discussion or expression of ideas (Merriam-Webster)
PPS: post-post-script (from the latin post-scriptum/written after)
from Robert Sullivan’s 1847 A Dictionary of the English Language
Songs for the week
Sweet Tee and Jazzy Joyce’s It’s My Beat (1986)
Further reading on Sweet Tee and Jazzy Joyce:
Sweet Tee’s The Real Queens of Hip-Hop profile
Jazzy Joyce’s The Real Queens of Hip-Hop profile
Jazzy Joyce on Instagram
Georgia Lee’s Yarra River Blues (1962)
Further reading on Georgia Lee:
Introducing Miss Georgia Lee (2010) ABC radio documentary
The Sydney Morning Herald 2010 obituary
Articles for the week
In Defence of the Bad, White, Working Class — Shannon Burns (Meanjin, 2017)
Never Be Alone Again: Hip-Hop Sampling as a Technique in Contemporary Australian Poetry — Liam Ferney (Cordite, 2020)
Movie for the week
Catherine Bainbridge’s 2017 Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
Further reading on Rumble:
A good piece to end on
The Keith Haring Foundation has scanned Haring’s journals from 1971-1989 — with the aim of digitising the entire collection— and made them publicly accessible here. This particular screen grab details Haring’s love for George Condo, an artist who is done no favours by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s label on his 2010 Rush Hour which details his many lines of derivation.
Further reading on George Condo — the 2017 long-form video interview The Way I Think
Further reading on Keith Haring — Between Politics and Mythology (interview, published 2005)
see you next week xx
What FORA wants
The FORA newsletter seeks to bring forward the intertextuality that we reside in, and the inextricable ways in which art and life are linked. That is an obvious point, but one that must be constantly remarked upon, as it is one we are constantly surprised by. To be reminded of these circles is to be drawn back into the fold, equipped with the tools of thinking critically and acting compassionately.