contents

• VCA students fight job and course cuts
• I listen to Red Terror
• Report on the death of the VCA
• Save the VCA!
• Trotsky vs Stalin, Azlan McLennan
• McLennan v the world
• Connex attampts to censor pro-Palestinian art

VCA students fight job and course cuts

By Azlan McLennan
September 2009
Socialist Alternative, Edition 145

Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Music - hard to say isn't it? The once independent VCA, now part of Melbourne University, is even harder to stomach. The faculty's first dean, Sharman Pretty, has the job of selling the scrapping of jobs and courses, and overseeing the transformation of the VCA into a profitable outlet for the university degree factory.

For Pretty - a renowned thug in the creative arts in New Zealand - peddling the university's rotten agenda is not proving easy. After the Howard government discontinued VCA's funding in 2004, Melbourne Uni's "rescue" plan was to take over the college and appoint Pretty to slash $11 million a year off its budget. But students and staff have seen through the "Melbourne Model" - the official euphemism for these attacks.

Pretty has met with a wave of resistance by outraged students, past and present, and embittered academic and admin staff - as well as a barrage of abuse from the arts community around the country. The student-initiated "Save the VCA" campaign was unofficially launched on the faculty's open day in July. Prospective students and their families arrived to discover a tent city erected by current students, who tirelessly petitioned passers-by that day and throughout much of the following week to oppose the cuts. This week of protest was topped off by a 1,000-strong march to parliament by angry students, staff and supporters on August 21.

Pretty has met with a wave of resistance by outraged students, past and present, and embittered academic and admin staff - as well as a barrage of abuse from the arts community around the country. The student-initiated "Save the VCA" campaign was unofficially launched on the faculty's open day in July. Prospective students and their families arrived to discover a tent city erected by current students, who tirelessly petitioned passers-by that day and throughout much of the following week to oppose the cuts. This week of protest was topped off by a 1,000-strong march to parliament by angry students, staff and supporters on August 21.

This campaign is larger than anything seen since post-Voluntary Student Unionism days at the VCA. Against the odds, even after the deliberate smashing of their student union, VCA students have put Melbourne Uni on the back foot. What the VCA needs now is first of all a stronger fightback from the National Union of Students, linking up VCA's situation with the nation-wide cuts to education; and secondly a stronger response from the National Tertiary Education Union, to boost the confidence of the overworked staff, who are demoralised and intimidated by the endless rounds of job cuts. While the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance and the NTEU have thrown their support behind the campaign, more industrial action is needed to back up students taking to the streets to stop Melbourne Uni's wholesale slaughter of faculties and their workers.

Azlan was 2008 VCASU General Secretary.

For more information on the campaign visit: http://www.savevca.org.

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A new “Marxcore” band consisting of friends and associates of this blogger has begun its life. Their demo (produced by Ezekiel Ox of Mammal, ex-Full Scale) can be heard at their myspace page. Red Terror played their first ever show last Sunday, and it was a cracker.

The band has a great aesthetic, thanks in large part to work of front man & agitprop artist Azlan Mclennan. The band’s style is brutal and angry, but retain an often self-depricating sense of humor.

The songs are effective on their own merits as straight-forward pieces of hardcore venom. One song in particular can be sighted as an instant harcore classic: the band’s ode to K. Rudd, ‘You’re a Fucking Maggot’.

There is of course a political as well as a musical mission involved. McLennan is a committed devotee of the hardcore genre, but lements its nationalism. This nationalism is to be expected of our enemies on the Nazi-inspired rightwing of the scene. There is, however, also a tendency to patriotism (and other parochialisms) amongst the more socially progressive outfits. Red Terror seeks to buck this trend, and have thus produced a badge which lebels themselves as Internationalist Hardcore.

In addition to KRudd, Red Terror’s political targets include the killer pig Chris Hurley (and the police in general), Centrelink, the anti-Union goons of the Australian Building and Constuction Commission, sex offender & NRL chump Matthew Johns and postmodernism. And all of them have it coming!

If you like bands such as Toe-To-Toe (and you should), and perhaps even if you don’t, you should love Red Terror. Their sound is direct and unpretentious, their frontman is a livewire, and they something to say.

It is possible that some of you will find their work confronting or crude. Little do you realise, that that is the point.

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Christopher Edwards set out to find how much trouble the VCA is in, and why its new director is nicknamed the “Chainsaw”.

The “leaked” YouTube video begins with an official message: “The following video communication contains privileged and confidential information intended for the exclusive use of the University of Melbourne Academic Board. If received in error, please delete it immediately.” The screen is then filled with the handsome face of a man, clad in a white coat, being showered in money. Below this, a caption informs us that this man is a “Med Student.” Next, we see a beautiful blonde, equally as sophisticated, with a mortar-board atop her head. As money rains down upon her, we are told that “This is a Law student.” Then, a vagrant lies sprawled across a park bench, covered in a filthy sleeping bag. We are told that this penniless tramp is an “Arts Student.” Finally, we see the fiery image of Satan, glaring out of the screen, above a caption that reads: “this is a VCA student.”

This video, created by a former VCA student is, of course, not a real top-secret University of Melbourne video communication. It is a joke. But it is a joke inspired by a very real conflict. This video is but a single offensive move within the ongoing tussle between the Academic Board of Melbourne University, and the disillusioned students of the former VCA.

Since 1973, the Victorian College of the Arts has been a distinguished educator of young artists, and a prominent part of the Melbourne artistic community. With emphasis on professional-level specialisation and admission based on pure talent and artistry, the VCA became renowned for producing some of Australia’s finest artists, musicians, film makers, dancers and actors. Alumni of the VCA include controversial photographer Bill Henson, world famous artist Patricia Piccinini, Archibald Prize winner Marcus Wills, television star Vince Colosimo, Oscar-winning Adam Elliot, as well as Shannon Burchell and Michael Barker (the two chaps from the John Butler Trio that weren’t John Butler). With a hoard of successful graduates, the VCA entered the 21st century with a reputation for excellence. All was well.

But in 2003 the VCA was stripped of crucial government funding due to a rearrangement of Brendan Nelson’s education policies. As a result of the financial struggle, the VCA officially became a faculty of the University of Melbourne in 2007. On the 6th of April this year, the VCA name disappeared; it was to be replaced by the awkwardly titled “Faculty of the VCA and Music” or the VCAM. Following this transformation, the schools of Dance, Drama and Production have been merged into the singular school of Performing Arts; the school of Film and Television now ceases to be recognised as a school at all. Courses such as musical theatre and puppetry have been indefinitely suspended from the curriculum, and numerous staff members have been made redundant. Dramatic funding cuts are expected. This process has been described more concisely by recent graduate, Robbie McEwen, as “ripping the heart out of the VCA.”

By 2011, VCAM courses are expected to resemble the New Generation courses of the Melbourne Model. The VCA’s specialisation-based system will be replaced by the ominous “General Degree”. The potential effects of that were highlighted by Roland Marriot in a letter to The Australian. Marriot foretold that, “We will have organists who are also tap-dancers but can’t play a Bach fugue properly, trumpet players who are also glass blowers but can’t play the Haydn Trumpet Concerto... and so on.” The General Degree also makes professional-level specialisation possible, but only through additional postgraduate study. When asked about the impact this will have on future students, creative arts student Azlan McLennan replied: “How the hell does Melbourne Uni think an artist or a performer – whose parents are not CEOs or royalty – going to be able to afford to first study a generalist degree before they can even specialise in anything which will now have to be at postgraduate level?”

Azlan’s complaints on the matter come directly from the midst of the conflict. In 2008, he was the General Secretary of the VCA Student Union. In 2009, since the VCA was no longer a separate entity, there was no VCA Student Union. Azlan makes no attempt to hide his distaste towards this turn of events: “VCASU has always been the embarrassing bastard child Melbourne Uni would hope just disappear,” he claims, “and now their prayers have been answered.” Azlan touches on some legitimate implications of the collapse of the Union: “VCA students will no longer have an independent voice on campus and therefore will be a lot less equipped to fight back collectively against the attacks VCASU had been saying were coming all along.” Not only has the University of Melbourne failed to listen to the concerns of VCA students, it has also stripped them of their institutional power to effectively voice such concerns in the future.

It goes without saying that the disenchanted artists of the former VCA have not submitted quietly to what Azlan describes as the “hostile takeover” of their beloved College. Many students have thrown their creative energy into producing numerous works of satire, targeting their new Vice-Chancellor and his radical plans. Azlan himself proudly offers his own artwork as an example of such protest art. Azlan’s work, A Clockwork Model, depicts Vice-Chancellor Glyn Davis as Alex, the violent anti-hero of Stanley Kubrick’s film, A Clockwork Orange. In this piece, Alex’s principle interests of “rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven” are replaced by Davis’ less extreme, yet nevertheless deplorable penchants for “fees, ultra-elitism and redundancies.” Another work, Nothing but the Bollocks, depicts Glyn Davis and Peter McPhee as a Bourgeois bastardisation of the Sex Pistols, alongside satirical lyrics such as:

I jack up the fees, ain’t no free degrees
My future dream is a right wing scheme

With their student union dissolved, such protest art serves, for the former students of the VCA, as an invaluable mode of communicating their frequently neglected views. But, frighteningly, even this basic right of self expression (arguably a fundamental element of creativity and a free society) may soon come under threat, as students fall under the new rules of Melbourne University. Melbourne has a troubling track record of artistic censorship; in 2008, Creative Arts student, Rosalie Delaney, claimed that the University attempted to veto her artwork, due to its anti-Melbourne Model stance. Delaney was reportedly warned that no University politics were to be addressed within artworks produced or displayed on campus. She responded, tongue firmly in cheek, with a textual piece, entitled “I promise this artwork is not anti Melbourne Model”. Vice-Chancellor Davis, seemingly oblivious to what had gone on, was heard to describe the year’s Creative Arts exhibition as a “celebration of creativity, diversity and freedom of expression.” Azlan McLennan’s response to this situation was slightly less positive: “Political censorship is nothing new, of course. Hitler and Stalin both kept rigid control over the ‘culture’ of their respective regimes. It’s great to see Glyn Davis carrying on such a noble tradition.”

Whilst it is a questionable move to compare one’s opponent to Hitler, Azlan’s comments do, in their amplified way, touch on a frightening possibility for the future of the University, and its new VCAM faculty. Even within an undemocratic institution, such as a university, artistic censorship in combination with the disbanding of a student union indicates a sharp decline in student representation.

As if to confirm the fears of staff and students, Glyn Davis has appointed, as the first Dean of the VCAM, the notorious Professor Sharman Pretty. Pretty received press attention in 2007 when she was working in a similar capacity at Auckland University. According to an article, printed in the New Zealand Herald on August 30th 2007, Pretty’s controlling and aggressive approach to management culminated in the controversy surrounding the resignation of highly popular Architecture Professor Peggy Dreamer. Reportedly, despite offering six months’ notice, in order to avoid inconveniencing her students, Dreamer was ordered by Pretty to clean out her desk immediately. This decision caused protest on the part of the student body, hundreds of whom signed a petition in opposition to the move. Following these events an anonymous source within the faculty told the New Zealand Herald of the “climate of fear” with which Professor Pretty ran the faculty. The source accused Professor Pretty of using bullying tactics, threatening the autonomy of the staff, and making decisions based predominantly on financial concerns. According to the source, Pretty gained the title of “Chainsaw” due to her penchant for funding and staffing cuts.

Now, with the Chainsaw loose in the VCAM, the carnage is already visible. At least twelve support staff have been made redundant to date, with that number expected to rise. Funding cuts also seem inevitable. Granted, Professor Pretty has been more than capable of justifying her actions; numerous statistics show that the previous VCA was a wildly unprofitable establishment. According to statements made by Professor Pretty, in the past few years, the amount spent by the college has exceeded its income by about one third. This unscrupulousness has been attributed to over-staffing, with over 85% of all revenue going towards teaching salaries. Many staff members were required to teach an inefficiently large array of courses, 10 of which have an average of just two paying students. From an economic point of view, the VCA was a nightmare, “not sustainable” according to Pretty, who is apparently willing to make as many funding and staffing cuts as is necessary to transform the VCAM into a profitable business.

With these changes, it is entirely foreseeable that the VCAM could become an efficient and sustainable faculty; and that is exactly what the artistic community fears. Their beloved VCA of the past was effectively a non-profit organisation. All funds were diverted to improving the quality of the education, and embracing new forms of expression, no matter how unprofitable. The website www.savevca.org crystallises this ideal in its declaration that “The VCA should be considered a publicly-funded investment in our cultural framework.” The noble idealists who run this website still cling defiantly to the view of the VCA as a centre of artistic integrity, unburdened by the petty demands of the commercial world. They disparage any notion of commercial interest as “desperate economic rationalism.” Yet, the paradox of this ideal reflects that of the Picasso quote: “I want to live like a poor man, but with a lot more money.”
Indeed, a College of the Arts, no matter how good, still needs to be financially sustained. Whilst economic considerations may sacrifice the soul of the VCA, it can be argued that the VCA’s idealism led to its financial downfall. Did, perhaps, the VCA’s reluctance to “Sell Out” cause the financial circumstances that lead to its collapse?

Unions, deans, vice-chancellors and artistic integrity aside, perhaps the saddest story amongst all this is about puppetry. The real victims of this upheaval: the young aspiring puppeteers of Australia. Until last year, the VCA proudly clung onto Australia’s only tertiary course in puppetry. Now, the ruling powers at Melbourne University have deemed the course frivolous, and the Graduate Diploma and Masters of Puppetry have been indefinitely suspended from the VCAM’s every-narrowing curriculum. This course, once a shining symbol of the VCA’s openness to all art forms and dedication to fostering and preserving creativity, even in its least lucrative forms, now finds itself incompatible in a system driven by profit. This cut has bleak implications for the future of Australian puppetry. In the past, even Australia’s most notable puppeteers, such as Richard Bradshaw and Philip Millar, have found it near-impossible to have their art taken seriously by the government. Now that the puppeteers of Australia have lost one of their last allies, the future of the artistic medium within Australia isn’t promising.

In an open letter to the VCAM, Australian puppetry enthusiast, Naomi Guss wrote: “I am saddened to hear that Australia’s only course in puppetry may soon be gone; diminishing both the learning opportunities for aspiring puppeteers and the attraction of international interest in our local puppetry industry. Furthermore, it degrades the industry’s attempts to convince the public and the Australian government to accept puppetry as an integral part and professional area of the arts within our country.” This is what it has come to: an endangered art form, previously protected within the nurturing walls of the VCA, now abandoned in the name of profit.

At the height of his fame, Andy Warhol claimed that “being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” Over the next few years, students of the new VCAM should expect to be part of a changing faculty, intent on mastering the fine art of profiteering. If they can’t, like Warhol, find some hint of artistic beauty in the commercially-driven mutation of their College, then they will be left with only one choice: to raise one hell of a ruckus, and not be silenced until the VCA has been returned to its former glory.

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The renowned Victorian College of the Arts has become simply a faculty of one of the country's richest degree factories, following its takeover by Melbourne University.

Just over two years ago, the University promised that the Melbourne Model would offer students a new era of "academic excellence" and "landmark educational reforms". This apparently involves slashing unprofitable subjects, such as Gender Studies and Creative Arts, along with the staff who taught them. One of the first acts of the newly appointed dean, Sharman Pretty, was to sack 12 sessional staff. The Music Theatre and Puppetry courses have been "suspended", while there is a strong possibility that the undergraduate Film and TV course will be slashed. These courses are among the very few of their kind offered in Australia, taught by a limited number of specialists.

In her previous position as the dean of Auckland Uni's National Institute of Creative Arts, Pretty ran a regime of fear which led to unjustified dismissals, resignation of prominent academics and staff complaints of bullying and token democratic processes. In Melbourne Uni's eyes there couldn't be a more perfect person for the job.

The Melbourne Model is not about improving education or broadening students' choices. It is designed to limit students' choices - as well as staff job security. The only thing it is designed to broaden is the university's profits, by forcing students to pay massive fees for graduate courses after studying a generalist degree.

The model's architect is Kevin Rudd's best mate, Glyn Davis, a former headkicker for the ALP Queensland government. Davis has ordered the shaving of $11 million a year from the new art and music faculty.

Another effect of Melbourne Uni's hostile takeover is the killing off of the VCA student union. But hopefully students will carry on the proud history of VCA radicalism. In 1998 for example, students successfully fought the administration's plans to introduce up-front fees; and in 2003 we stopped the sacking of sessional staff in the Art School.

VCA students have initiated a campaign against the latest attacks. The VCASU has held crisis meetings attended by an unprecedented number of outraged students and staff, determined to organise a fightback. Students have set up a "Save the VCA" website and are planning further actions. And the National Tertiary Education Union has promised support. This is a good start to what needs to be an ongoing campaign.

Azlan was the 2008 General Secretary of the VCA student union.

For more info visit: www.savevca.org.

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The Howard years were a nightmarish time for anyone with even a drop of decency in their blood. The murderous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the horrors of mandatory refugee detentions, vile campaigns to stir up nationalism, and outrageous anti-Aboriginal racist attacks, all set against the a pervasive Islamophobic backdrop of the "war on terror" and the government's accompanying attacks on civil liberties.

Azlan McLennan is a Melbourne-based socialist and left-wing political artist. His current solo show, entitled Trotsky vs Stalin features several notable pieces - produced during the height of this period in 2006 - that generated high-profile political debates on censorship and political art.

Pay Your Way, is a détournement of the Connex fare-evasion signage, produced in January 2006, featuring the text: "Attention passengers - in the interests of personal safety non-Anglos are advised not to use public transport." This text is superimposed over a picture of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man shot dead in a London train station by police months earlier.

Pay Your Way was erected in displays at tram stops around Melbourne. A furore ensued and the work was promptly removed. Many "small l" liberal commentators actually supported the censorship, and levelled accusations that the work was Islamophobic - these were clearly cynical accusations made by the same self-proclaimed leftists who supported the central racist tenets of the "war on terror" and the racist vilification surrounding it! Their response merely played into the hands of the right-wing push to further the government's ability to suppress and intimidate those who chose to challenge the actual Islamophobia of their rotten agenda.

Another provocative work featured in the exhibition is titled Proudly unAustralian. This work, which consists of a burnt Australian flag, was produced in February 2006, just after the racist Cronulla riots that had - with the rabid backing of Howard - exposed the ugly face of Australian nationalism. The work was originally exhibited at Trocadero Art Space, where it was seized by police, and a fervent and high-profile debate followed, centred around the basic right to dissent. Again "small l" liberal commentators slammed the work as "offensive".

In defence, McLennan told the ABC's 7.30 Report, "Now more than ever, a hell of a lot of Australians are offended by what that flag actually represents and all the things that are being carried out in the name of that flag. Things such as the Iraq war, or Australia's treatment of refugees".

With the vile anti-Muslim racism of the "war on terror" still grinding on, Rudd's recent despicable attacks on refugees, and a renewed troop commitment to the occupation of Afghanistan, it is clear that no amount of accommodation to respectable "moderate viewpoints" is going to challenge the racist policies of the Rudd government. In a political era of so much capitulation and cravenness on the part of the "small l" liberal left around the continuing questions of the racism of the "war on terror", refugee rights and Aboriginal rights, it is refreshing to see work that takes an unapologetically oppositional stance.

The fact that these works still have relevance in 2009 is a testament to the longevity of these political questions - and a stark reminder that we still have a huge fight on our hands if we are to finally smash the vile legacy of Howard that Rudd is set on continuing with such gusto.

Many of the artworks in the exhibition can also be viewed online at www.azlanmclennan.com

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The term "political art" often has negative connotations. It is regularly associated with controversy, propaganda and "getting your art work confiscated from Trocadero Gallery by Footscray Police". Azlan McLennan is familiar with all of these and famous for the Proudly UnAustralian incident at Trocadero, which starred a burnt national flag. His work has been described as "art trash" by the Herald Sun, "scandalmongering" by Art Monthly Australia, and "warped and ignorant" by the Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. All of this comes in handy as he's doing a masters thesis about political art and censorship. McLennan launches his examination exhibition, Trotsky vs. Stalin, tonight at Melbourne University's George Paton Gallery. A warning: "This exhibit contains extremely violent imagery, which some viewers may find distressing." If you can handle it, say hi to McLennan. He's not nervous the examiners won't like it - he's nervous they won't hate it.

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