I went to the This Is Not Art (TINA) festival in Newcastle the weekend before last. (I was hoping to put up some pickies, but my camera broke.) (Update - see pics below)

TINA is a novocastrian venture started many years ago by the ultra-hip Marcus Westerbury. The aim of the festival seems to be jointly to improve Newcastle’s main import (tourists) and also to make something happen in that very sleepy, unemployed little city.

I do remember the very first TINA, except back then it was called “The Fringe Festival”, and I was going to put on a performance art piece in an abandoned shop front. I don’t recall what happened - only that it all seemed to fall through fairly quickly, and the only remnant of fringe was a giant combe that my partner in crime and I spray-painted onto a very secluded wall (I think it was between to buildings!) Ah, young passions.

Then there was The Pod - an arts and living space inside a warehouse. It all seemed very privileged to me at the time. Then The Octapod, and by that time I was in Sydney - living it big in the Big Smoke. Yeah right.

But this TINA, I actually went and I actually had a good time. The attendees were numerous, and from exotic places like Brisbane and Melbourne. There were so many places to go out and have a good time, but I ended up being really drunk at a crappy hiphop emcee battle, booing all the sexists (we were pretty hoarse by the end). The workshops were dizzyingly various - on all kinds of topics and with so many pannelists. I was only able to attend one workshop: “Subterranean Sex” about DIY porno. The pannelists were Anna Brownfield (feminist video pornographer), someone from ManJam (a DIY male strip club) and Domino from Slit Magazine, which is a volunteer-run lesbian sex mag based in Sydney - woo! Suicide Girls were also tipped to come, but didn’t. That was a pity because the audience had reserved a lot of criticism for SG for basically propagating patriarchal crap porn while pretending that its something novel and ‘alternative’. What’s with them being called ’suicide’ anyway - how is that positive or alternative?

There was also plenty of criticism for ManJam for their generally lax attitude to developing their own politics. There were lots of problems with their last performance in Sydney just propagating racist and patriarchal crap - a black-face ‘golliwog’ transvestite performance, a huge sign proclaiming “MEN ARE BACK” (like, where did they go?), a running policy of ‘no cunts on stage’ even though women helped to set up and run the show on the night…aaand a flyer that showed 2 men fighting gladiator-style with penis weapons in front of a giant cunt. It was pretty interesting to hear ManJam explain that they are ‘just doing whatever they feel like’ and shouldn’t be censored when they are being racist or sexist - like hello? that’s the whole problem of patriarchy! Men “just doing what they feel like”, when that is derrogatory and hurtful, isn’t good enough anymore.

On the flip-side, Slit Magazine told of coming under fire for censorship when they asked a performer not to perform a black-face piece at one of their gigs. Lots of audience members agreed with Slit’s critics that this is censorship. I prefer Slit’s view - racism, sexism and homophobia get all too much airtime in this sick society, so much that its really up to liberationist spaces to close the doors on it and create a haven from sexism, racism and homophobia.

Pics