art & the capitalist crisis

May 26, 2009 cultural activism Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

direct action presents…

art & the capitalist crisis:
creating spaces for a 21st Century Revolution

A Public Forum including these topics:
* Why does so much contemporary art alienate the majority of working people?
* Art as a form of resistance to the capitalist state
* how can art be effective in helping create alternatives to war, poverty and unemployment in the 21st Century?

When:
Sat, May 30, 2pm

Where:
New International Bookshop, Victoria Trades Hall, Cnr Lygon and Victoria St, Carlton

Speakers include:

Kate McCulloch
PHD Student, University of Melbourne. Representation of War: Vietnam Veteran Artists. This paper will examine why representation of the Vietnam War at War Memorials, has not drawn widely from Vietnam Vet artists.

Adam Broinowsky
PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne/The Centre for Ideas (2007-).
Adam Broinowski has made documentary (Hell Bento!), independent solo (Vivisection Vision: animal reflections, Gherkin) and group performances (Know No Cure, Hotel Obsino, The Great Gameshow of Pernicious Influences, H20) and collaborated with many companies (Company B, desoxy, Dramalab, La Mama, Magpie, nyid, Playbox, Salamanca, Snuff Puppets, Stalker, Gekidan Kaitaisha, MONO), touring to South America, Europe, UK, US, Asia and Australia. He gained his MA (Theatre of Body: Ankoku Butoh – Gekidan Kaitaisha 2003) at the University of Melbourne, was a research fellow at the University of Tokyo (2003-2005)

Sarah Rainbird
Visual Arts Manager, Gasworks Arts Park
Editor of new publication called: Harmonic Tremors: Aesthetic Interventions in the Public Sphere

Van Thanh Rudd
Rudd is a visual artist who regularly exhibits around Australia and internationally. Current exhibitions include NAM BANG! at the Casula Powerhouse, and an up-coming exhibition at SLOT space, Redfern, Sydney (july). Controversy has followed much of his artwork including the recent censorship of Economy of Movement – a Piece of Palestine by Connex Melbourne. He is the founder of The Carriers Project and is currently establishing a visual arts collective called The C.E.O.s (collective engagement operatives).
Rudd is also a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

entry by donation
for more info call 0432 335 996
www.directaction.org

“Our aims: the independence of art – for the revolution. The Revolution – for the complete liberation of art!”
Andre Breton and Diego Rivera

flyer

at Fed Square fighting workchoices

May 26, 2009 Past gigs and events Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

November 30, 2006. Yep, we felt very rockstar indeed rolling into Fed square on the back of a huge flatbed truck, playing in front of 10′s of thousands of angry people, angry at Howard and co’s rotten workchoices- what choices? The choice to be super-exploited, easily sacked… we gotta get rid of these laws, and it doesn’t matter who’s governing them, hear that Kev and Julia? Bad laws  must be broken!

fed square gig

fed square gig 2

rolling down flinders st

rolling some more

paolo et al

fed sqr gig

Bios

May 26, 2009 About us Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

Scotty Lew – percussion, vocals
Scott has been playing percussion for 20 years. He studied Cuban percussion from 1989 until 1995. he has played with Musiki Manjaro, Kenny Lopez Sex Mambo and Skin 2 Skin. In 1996 he went to Senegal’s famous E’cole des Arts for two and a half years and studied with Ballet Jamm Africa where he learnt Mandinkan drumming under Abdou Diouf. He also studied the kora (Mandinkan harp) under the tutelage of Kaw Cissoko, Lamin Cissoko, Lamin Kouyate and Djali Bouba Kouyate. He founded Melbourne based percussion ensemble “Safara” and became a well known West African percussion teacher. He toured with Djali Bouba Kouyate in 2005, and now plays freelance percussion in Melbourne.
Scotty is a founding member of The Conch and a major creative contributor.

Sean – trumpet
Sean is a versatile trumpet player and composer based in Melbourne. He has performed on television backing Kate Ceberano and Marcia Hines and has toured and recorded with ‘The Funken Wagnells’.
Sean currently performs with the The Cairo Club Orchestra and regularly fronts his own ensembles that feature his original compositions and arrangements. Sean is a dedicated and passionate secondary school music teacher in the state system. He is thoroughly enjoying ‘The Conch’ as a way of connecting people, contributing to a better society and fighting back against increasing world wide injustice and oppression.

Jo – vocals
Jo was singing along to Carole King’s Tapestry when she was 2 years old. She studied to be a music teacher at Melbourne University back in the 90s, majoring on the clarinet, and performing with a range of orchestras and ensembles. Her love of singing saw her and two friends become Saffron, an acapella trio, singing original songs as well as creatively arranging some classic and contemporary tunes. She taught music and drama in secondary schools in the late 90’s. For the past few years she’s combined her love of music with a passion for social justice, performing at a range of political and cultural events around the country, in particular bringing some of the great struggle songs of Latin America to Australia. The Conch, with its awesome music and damn timely message keeps Jo awake at night with excitement…

Nick – drumkit
Nick studied drums and percussion throughout his secondary school life and completed Year 12 music solo performance on tuned percussion. During this time he played with the Preston Brass Band and toured New Zealand and the UK before specialising in drum kit and playing in various original and cover bands around Melbourne, including “The Committed” a Commitments cover band and his original band “Mint”. He has been teaching drums and percussion in secondary schools for nearly twenty years and currently runs a rock programme at Doncaster Secondary College as well as coordinating the music programme at Thornbury High School. He is very excited to be playing the variety of rhythmic feels in “The Conch” from Latin, Reggae, Ska, Hip Hop, Funk and Rock. “I’m having a ball!”

Mel – keyboard
Mel has been involved in a diverse range of music and theatre projects for the past 12 years, as a performer, keyboardist, violinist, composer and director. Her passion for avant garde theatre has lead to her collaborating as a writer/director on such shows as There’s a naked man in my lounge room, The great chocolate advertisement and currently, as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Goddess Wanted: Must provide own pedestal. Reflecting Mel’s strong feminist outlook, these works have explored issues of domestic violence and the family, mental illness and women’s empowerment. Mel’s also studied jazz and contemporary music at The Gordon Institute, and has just bought a gorgeous new Roland keyboard upon which she hammers out the funky keyboard lines of the Conch.

Ralph – sax
Ralph started playing the saxophone at the age of eight in the Healesville Concert Band, then later took up a music scholarship at University High School. Working professionally as a musician whilst still at school lead to poor academic grades and he decided to skip the HSC and enrol at the Victorian College of the Arts where he graduated with a Bachelor of Music performance. Since then he has performed, arranged and composed in many of the varied ensembles in Melbourne and has toured extensively throughout Australia plus recent tours to South Korea and Tonga. Ralph completed a Masters degree in Music in 2005, and also wrote a thesis entitled A SEARING SOUND A Preliminary Investigation into the Legend of Australian Saxophonist Frank Smith. Having a strong social ethic and a healthy disdain for all forms of authority, Ralph feels that playing in The Conch in today’s political environment is as important as any endeavour he has undertaken to date.

Neilo – trumpet
Since graduating from VCA in 1993, Neil has performed extensively in and around Melbourne. With experience ranging from orchestral/chamber groups & musicals through to numerous big bands, latin, funk, rock and jazz combos, Neil brings a wealth of musical experience to ‘The Conch’. He is also one hell of a nice bloke, and we love him.

Jim Glasson – sax
Jim has played clarinet, flute and sax with the British Rock Symphony alongside Eric Burdon, Thelma Houston, Glenn Shorrock, and CDB among others. In 1998 he toured with Demis Roussos (yes THE Demis Roussos) and has played with Vince Jones, Mike Nock among others. In 1995 he played for 3 months with the house band at the Hard Rock Café in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Jim was a founding member of the government funded, avant-garde jazz orchestra The Australian Art Orchestra, and has performed in front of audiences of over 10,000 people with the Legends of Motown Australian Tour, alongside The Four Tops and The Temptations.

Stue – vocals

Jo-jo – Bass

Shane – Guitar

forest gig

Obama under growing pressure to end US blockade of Cuba

May 24, 2009 Making revolution Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

By Marce Cameron

From www.directaction.org.au

How Long Does It Take?

May 24, 2009 Making revolution Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

From www.counterpunch.org

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

How long does it take a mild-mannered, antiwar, black professor of constitutional law, trained as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, to become an enthusiastic sponsor of targeted assassinations, “decapitation” strategies and remote-control bombing of mud houses the far end of the globe?

There’s nothing surprising here. As far back as President Woodrow Wilson in the early twentieth century, American liberalism has been swift to flex imperial muscle, to whistle up the Marines. High explosive has always been in the hormone shot.

The nearest parallel to Obama in eager deference to the bloodthirsty counsels of his counter-insurgency advisors is John F. Kennedy. It is not surprising that bright young presidents relish quick-fix, “outside the box” scenarios for victory.

Whether in Vietnam or Afghanistan the counsels of regular Army generals tends to be drear and unappetizing: vast, costly deployments of troops by the hundreds of thousand, mounting casualties, uncertain prospects for any long-term success – all adding up to dismaying political costs on the home front.

Amid Camelot’s dawn in 1961, Kennedy swiftly bent an ear to the counsels of men like Ed Lansdale, a special ops man who wore rakishly the halo of victory over the Communist guerillas in the Philippines and who promised results in Vietnam.

By the time he himself had become the victim of Lee Harvey Oswald’s “decapitation” strategy, brought to successful conclusion in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy had set in motion the counter-insurgency operations, complete with programs of assassination and torture, that turned South-East Asia and Latin America into charnel houses, some of them, like Colombia, to this day.

Another Democrat who strode into the White House with the word “peace” springing from his lips was Jimmy Carter. It was he who first decreed that “freedom” and the war of terror required a $3.5 billion investment in a secret CIA-led war in Afghanistan, plus the deployment of Argentinian torturers to advise US military teams in counter-insurgency ops in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

(Though no US president can spend more than a few moments in the Oval Office scanning his in-tray the morning after the inaugural ceremonies without okaying the spilling of blood somewhere on the planet, it has to be said that Bill Clinton did display some momentary distaste before settling comfortably into the killer’s role. “Do we have to do this?” he muttered, as his national security team said that imperial dignity required cruise missile bombardment of Baghdad in 1993 in retaliation for a foiled attack on former President G.H.W. Bush, during a visit to Kuwait. The misisiles landed in a suburb, one of them killing the artist Laila al-Attar.)

Obama campaigned on a pledge to “decapitate” al-Qaida, meaning the assassination of its leaders. It was his short-hand way of advertising that he had the right stuff. And, like Kennedy, he’s summoning the exponents of unconventional, short-cut paths to success in that mission. Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal now replaces General David McKiernan as Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s expertise is precisely in assassination and “decapitation”. As commander of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal was in charge of death squad ops, with its best advertised success being the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

The phrase “sophisticated networks” tends to crop up in assessments of McChrystal’s Iraq years. Actually there’s nothing fresh or sophisticated in what he did. Programs of targeted assassination aren’t new in counter-insurgency. The most infamous and best known was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, designed to identify and eliminate cadres of Vietnam’s “National Liberation Front”, informally known as the Viet Cong of whom, on some estimates, at least 40,000 were duly assassinated.

In such enterprises two outcomes are inevitable. Identification of the human targets requires either voluntary informants or captives. In the latter instance kidnapping (ie extrajudicial seizure of “enemy combatants”) and then torture are certain, whatever rhetorical pledges are proclaimed back home. There may be intelligence officers who will rely on patient, non-violent interrogation, as the US officer, Major Matthew Alexander, who elicited the whereabouts of al-Zarquawi told Patrick Cockburn on this site that he did. There will be others, US personnel who will either personally reach for the garden hose and the face towel, or delegate the task to the local talent. It has been thus, without remit, through the entire course of Empire. Not so long ago CounterPuncher Prof. Bruce Jackson of SUNY, Buffalo, sent us an illustration from the May 22, 1902 issue of the original (pre-Luce) Life. The only military action the US had going at the time was in the Philippines, where Pershing was fighting the Moros — Muslims who wanted independence from US rule. A pipe-smoking GI pours water into a funnel held in the mouth of a barefoot prisoner by another GI, who sits on the prisoner’s genitals and points a pistol at his throat.

McChrystal, not coincidentally, was involved in the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad’s Camp Nama. (He also played a sordid role in the cover-up in the friendly-fire death of ex-NFL star and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.)

Whatever the technique, a second certainty is the killing of large numbers of civilians in the final “targeted assassination”. At one point in the first war on Saddam in the early 1990s, a huge component of US air sorties was devoted each day to bombing places where US intelligence had concluded Saddam might be hiding. Time after time, after the mangled bodies of men, women and children had been scrutinized, came the crestfallen tidings that Saddam was not among them.

Already in Afghanistan public opinion has been inflamed by the weekly bulletins of deadly bombardments either by drones or manned bombers. Still in the headlines is the US bombardment of Bola Boluk in Farah province, which yielded 140 dead villagers torn apart by high explosive including 93 children. Only 22 were male and over 18. Perhaps “sophisticated intelligence” had identified one of these as an al-Qaida man, or a Taliban captain, or maybe someone an Afghan informant to the US military just didn’t care for. Maybe electronic eavesdropping simply screwed up the coordinates. If we ever know, it won’t be for a very long time. Obama has managed a terse apology, even as he installs McChrystal, thus ensuring more of the same.

The logic of targeted assassinations was on display in Gaza even as Obama worked on the uplifting phrases of his Inaugural Address. The Israelis claimed they were targeting only Hamas even as the body counts of women and children methodically refuted these claims and finally extorted from Obama a terse phrase of regret.

He may soon weary of uttering them. His course is set and his presidency already permanently stained the ever-familiar blood-red tint. There’s no short-cut, no “nicer path” in counter-insurgency and the policing of Empire. A targeted bombing yields up Bola Boluk, and the incandescent enmity of most Afghans. The war on al Qaida mutates into war on the Taliban, and 850,000 refugees in the Swat Valley in Pakistan. The mild-mannered professor is bidding to be as sure-footed as Bush and Cheney in trampling on constitutional rights. He’s now backing into pledges to shut down the kangaroo courts (“military commissions”) by which means the US have held prisoners at Guantanamo who’ve never even been formally charged with a crime! He’s threatening to hold some prisoners indefinitely in the U.S. without trial. He’s been awarded a hearty editorial clap on the back from the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Obama deserves credit for accepting that civilians courts are largely unsuited for the realities of the war on terror. He has now decided to preserve a tribunal process that will be identical in every material way to the one favored by Dick Cheney.”

It didn’t take long. But it’s what we’ve got – for the rest of Obama-time.

The Landscapes Meat Made

From the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—when reliable records began to be kept—to the mid nineteenth century, the European diet varied little. Grains took up about 90 per cent of a family’s food budget: rye, buckwheat, oats, barley, maize. From the moments that the victuallers and provisioners in the Napoleonic wars pioneered the organization of the mass-production line and also modern methods of food preservation, the stage was set for the annihilation of both time and space in matters of food consumption. The vast cattle herds that began to graze the pastures of the western United States, Australia and Argentina signalled the change.

David Hamilton Wright, a biologist at the University of Georgia, once wrote that ‘an alien ecologist observing. . .earth might conclude that cattle is the dominant species in our biosphere.’ The modern livestock economy and the passion for meat have radically altered the look of the planet. Today, across huge swaths of the globe, from Australia to the western plains of the United States, one sees the conquest landscapes of the European mass-meat producers and their herds of ungulates. Because of romantic ideas of ‘timeless landscapes’ it is hard to grasp the rapidity of this process, with spans as short as thirty-five years between the irruption of a herd onto virgin terrain, over-grazing, soil erosion, crash and eventual stabilization, with the plant communities finally levelling out, though reduced in richness and variety, and the land altered forever.

As Mexico reels from the swine flu panic, there’s angry talk of the disastrous impact on that country of North American methods of intensive livestock production. The initial swine flu deaths came near the huge pig factories in the state of Veracruz, owned by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of Smithfield Farms, centered in North Carolina and now expanding into Eastern Europe. Intensive pork production in North Carolina in the 1990s sponsored the emergence of the H1N1 swine flu virus in 1998, the year North Carolina’s pig population hit ten million, up from two million just six years earlier, achieved by cramming 25 times more pigs into each factory, each one a stinking nightmare to the people living nearby.

In our latest newsletter I visit the world that intensive livestock raising has made, from the Valle in Mexico destroyed by Spanish sheep ranching in the 16th century, to the trashed landscapes of Texas and California today. In the same brilliant issue Steven Higgs probes the safety of nanotechnologies. Moms, hold that nano-toy, and that nano make-up! And Senator Jim Abourezk looks back on the occupation of Wounded Knee, and the role he played.

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

About The Conch

May 21, 2009 About us Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

entertaining, inspiring & organising to change the world!

The Conch aims to use our music to inspire struggles and the thousands of individual activists who everyday do something to improve the world.

Our music comes from anger and from love and we use it to educate, agitate and help organise. Join the movement alongside The Conch.

another world is possible…..!

Our world is increasingly divided: a vast majority drowning in deprivation and exclusion, a tiny minority soaked in luxury and power. Only 4% of the wealth of the richest 200 odd people would be enough for basic education, healthcare, adequate food, and safe water and sanitation for all the world ‘s people ! You can get depressed or be indifferent but The Conch urge you to imagine a different future and fight for it!

The Conch aims to help mobilise and inspire communities to organise and to create a new vision of society. Mobilised and organised, communities have the power to change things, locally and globally. Like all expressions of culture music encompasses both the old and the past, and can open the road to the future and the new. We can and do choose to use our music to express all the suffering and the joy of the past and to inspire those in struggle with the stories of victories, lessons of defeats and the passion of the everyday lives of struggle that ordinary working people lead.

Because we want to be part of the movements for social change, we want to be part of the thinking and discussion that goes on among them. We want to help raise conch-ousness and be a platform for all those others who want to make music and art for the revolution!

We’re not a band but a social change project. Everyone is welcome to be part of it. Give us your ideas for our music, for our discussions and for our musical actions. Join the movement alongside The Conch. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. Arundhati Roy

We have done benefit gigs for Refugee Action Collective, Friends of the Earth, Council of Single Mothers and their Children, The Bolivarian Circle, Green Left Weekly, Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network, the Your Rights at Work campaign and many more. If you would like to book the conch let us know!

There’s lots you can do to be part of The Conch and the movements we participate in with our music, ideas and our activism. Get in touch with us at info@theconch.org

The Conch is:

Scotty – Congas, Percussion
Jo – Vocals, Percussion
Nick – Drums
Mel – Keyboard
Shane – Guitar
Jo-jo – Bass
Sean – Trumpet
Neilo – Trumpet
Ralph – Sax
Jim – Sax
Stu – vocals

And a growing horde of Conch friends, including; Barry, our sadly missed Italiano Paolito, beautiful Bec, Greg, Reg, Cam, Serious Steve, Mike, Ben, Hammo, Ian, Jordan, another Greg, Nick, Rodrigo, Sashi, Joel, Viv, Andy, Jeff, another Ben, Craig, yet another Greg, Robbie, Barnaby, Jo, Ryan, Karen, Neda, Gutty, Tim, Lachy and the list continues to grow… this band is a movement!!


There’s lots you can do to be part of The Conch and the movements we participate in with our music, ideas and our activism. Get in touch with us here to find out what’s on and what you can do!

it’s the end john howard, it’s the end…

May 26, 2008 Music, cultural activism Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

Forrest gig: Gellibrand Clean Water Campaign – part 2

Oct 26, 2007 Past gigs and events Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

The right to clean water part 2…

special thanks to greg “pops” gear for guest appearing! and to everybody who turned up that night to support a great cause, hear the Conch, and finally for some of the best dancing we’ve seen in ages…

for-gig 1

for-gig 2

for-gig 3

for-gig 4

for-gig 5

for-gig 6

for-gig 7

for-gig 8

for-gig 9

Forrest gig: Gellibrand Clean Water Campaign – part 1

Oct 26, 2006 Past gigs and events Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

best conch gig ever, everybody says so…In August 2006 we took a Conch road trip down to a gorgeous place known as Forrest to do a benefit gig for the Gellibrand Clean Water Group. A local community organisation involving people from around the Otways district, the GCWG are fighting for their right to clean drinking water! Seems fair enough, but once again profits and business interests are being put ahead of the wellbeing and safety of local communities as clean water supplies are threatened as the companies running the blue-gum plantations carry out aerial spraying of dangerous pesticides.

We had such a fantastic night, and the wonderful Eva took so many photos, this is only the first batch!

forrest 1

forrest 2

forrest 3

forrest 4

forrest 5

forrest 7

forrest 6

forrest 8

forrest 9

forrest 10

forrest 11

forrest 12

fun at fishy studios

Aug 26, 2006 Past gigs and events Leave a comment
Posted by Conch

on the fishy balcony...

the infamous fishy studios weekend, where, in a matter of just hours our 4 track demo was recorded! we missed you ralphy, but guddy (aka russ) was a magnificent dep – cheers guddy! and thanks to robby for his magificent tech expertise and to neilo for his wonderful hospitality, ahh jeez make it big hugs all round…

horns

scotty and sashi

lads

sound man

guddy