There are good ways and bad ways to restart a publication like this after a long hiatus.
In using the words “good” and “bad”, I also just mean “typical” and “atypical”. No real judgement, all illusory binary.
I also think typical and atypical refer to a way of being (in the arts, in publishing, in Australia) that somehow —after all that has gone on, after all that we and you and the world has experienced — feels confusing, irrelevant and elusive. Worse than looking back at a very strange, dated haircut, we are looking back at a very strange, unimaginable “then”, from the very ill-understood “now”.
Back in the day, the good way to restart a publication like this after a long break would be to tell you how wonderful things had been, how grateful we were for your patience during our holiday and how much we valued our volunteers, who all basically needed a rest. Working for free don’t come easy. Grind culture would have mandated that we then tell you all of the exciting things that are coming up and how wonderful and excited we are to be sharing these things with you. The tone would have been resolutely upbeat, the character perky and the promises somewhere between funder-obligation and humble brag.
But this is not the way we’re gonna do things this time around. Because we are not a typical publication. Because no one’s been “on a break”.
Over the past year or so, we have been talking with each other and with others about what it means to be in the world at this particular time and how we want to be able to do it. We’ve talked a great deal about where we came from and where we want to go. We recognised and have been grateful for all of the good things that we have had and mourned and recognised all of the things we have lost. We seem to be still losing things: time, health, security, certainty, moments of declarative enthusiasm. This kind of loss feels less clear in its valence. Interstitial. Imbricated.
On the practical front, during this time, we rearranged our governance to include all new volunteer members on the board. Everyone gets a say. No one has to give more than they can. Sometimes we are the stone and there’s no more blood. We returned to our organisation, its deep values, recognising that as much/as easy (particularly for others/funders) it would be to behave like a corporation, the antiracist and de-colonial ethics that underpin our desire to elevate the voices of Asian Australian and other marginalised writers and artists are also anticapitalist. We put down the master’s tools. We farewelled people and loved ones and supported each other as best we could from our homes. In time, there will be a good and proper space for introducing our new members and honouring and recognising those who are moving on. Promise.
For the first time, we asked friends for money. We’ve never done this before. It felt difficult. Unfamiliar. But our friends are pretty amazing. They expressed love and gave us what they could — 20 bucks, sometimes a lot more than 20 bucks, sometimes a lot less. Because it’s crappy to lose your job, your main gig, your side hustle or your casual-temp-justfornow admin role, or be a fulltime carer or need care yourself and to try and make ends meet. And in time, we’re going to find a place for saying thank you for that, properly. In the first instance, though, thank you for not leaving us in shame, instead offering compassion, kindness and support. We don’t take it for granted. We’re trying to do the same with your generosity, offering compassion, kindness and support to others. We know we’ll need your help in the future.
In the meantime, we are sliding into your DMs. Like this. Awkwardly. Without clever lines and probably only a few clever gifs.
Gradually, we will begin publishing work from your kind and generous contributions. I am sorry to any writer whose work languished in our inbox these past months, your precious work and considerate labour unfortunately crammed amongst relentless spam and a bunch of grant application notifications that everybody wanted to ignore. You’ll see these works in our Edition 46, Where You At. So far, you have been in beautiful, difficult and poignant spaces. Sometimes you have been angry, sometimes you have been lost, sometimes you have been deeply reflective. It may not have felt like it, but we were looking. In our small way, we will bear witness.
We are also about to start publishing another edition, No Compass. Supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria, No Compass is collective work; creative way-finding: navigating the future by understanding the past, with creatives and thinkers from Asian Australian Studies Research Network; It’s Not a Compliment; Peril Magazine; Southern Crossings; Teh Cha; and Writing Through Fences.
The project builds on the idea of “diaspora as methodology”, deploying diaspora as a political verb rather than administrative noun, to challenge the idea that diverse communities are “hard to reach”, instead considering them “easy to love” and challenging the justice of health, social, community and other systems.
Through new works in text, image, audio, video and performance, coupled with academic writing and analysis, shared across multiple “un-defined” community boundaries and networks, the project invites perspectives that engage with race, culture and the contemporary challenges of navigating Australian identity in the context of COVID-19, showcasing the lived reality of “Australian” communities, reflecting their dignified, complex and nuanced experiences, their self-defined identities and histories.
For my part, I am so grateful to be a small part of working with some amazing co-editors, both from within Peril and in other organisations we respect and admire. It’s comforting to be back again editing works and writing my own. The process of bringing together these works has been tentative and gentle and slow. For me, as a writer/editor/person, this is not the hero rejecting the call. This is the multiple side characters, abjectly refusing heroism. As the things gradually fall apart, wobble around us, as we wheel about looking for certainty, we know no grand narrative is coming to save us. Global solidarity, convivial participation and local action, is the architecture of a hopeful, simplified agenda.
We are moving through a world with a wholly incomplete discussion of discrimination, one that dislikes discussing equitable distribution and justice, and hates paying attention to institutional and governmental constraints, leaving ordinary individuals trying to work out what to do when the state does not, or cannot, meet its health (or other) obligations. We can’t simplify the stories of our experiences within the intersectionality of these rights. We are just wrapping our mouths around the words, articulate and inarticulate at the same time. We are right at the end of what language can achieve. No post-traumatic clarity yet here, because no one is fully post-trauma.
We start in whatever way is possible. Because the next step is all we can take.
This No Compass edition is supported by Multicultural Arts Victoria, as a part of the 2022 Ahead of the Curve Commissions.
