Overland literary journal

I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together.

The Plains charts the psychic terrain of the freeway in miniature, peeling back the lid of the private vehicle to expose just one of the millions of dramas taking place in simultaneity, severed from one another yet still part of the same city-wide traffic ballet.

Some of the stories that have already been shared on shitrentals.org show not only the horrible state of Australia’s housing landscape, with hundreds of images uploaded showing mould in its various stages of progression, caved-in ceilings and electrical work that could only be the product of a drunk landlord — but also the more insidious nature of the real estate industry.

This is why we play. As a form of cultural diplomacy, music is a way for us to connect with people, communicate our story and our political position and generate action. We don’t just play for fun — we make music as our contribution to the broader struggle.

If in future an image of mine— of course, I have made the if-ness of your looking a multiple Ferris wheel turned to trolley car trundling down the street. Damn, I will show you something all right here, inside the daily or what you call private.

We like to gentrify sci-fi a little, suiting the genre up and setting it to work on blueprints for the future, to imagine an alternative into which we can escape. In doing so, we forget the genre’s capacity for derangement.

Palestinians in the West Bank plant roughly 10,000 olive trees a year, to make up for the roughly 10,00 trees Israel cuts or burns every year, since 1967. People I get but why — why bring trees into this?

As members and friends of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS), we write to express the urgent need to transform IPCS, into an Institute that takes up antiracist and anticolonial work in the Australian colony and transnationally.

If you’ve ever been called a Luddite, it was probably meant as an insult. The Luddite name has been so powerfully besmirched that it is now commonly used as a pejorative to denote technophobia or an irrational aversion to progress. At the heart of Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine is a denouncement of this mischaracterisation. And in dismantling the myth, Merchant revitalises the legend.

We, the undersigned Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance members, condemn the Australian government's support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and its refusal to vote in the United Nations for a humanitarian truce.

This essay explores the political ecology of suburban gardens, focussing on Sydney but also drawing on insights from cities around the world. It draws on my academic studies in geography and political economy, but also on an adult life spent largely as a labourer building and maintaining gardens, parks and urban bushland.

We, the undersigned, reject violence against all civilians, regardless of identity. We stand for freedom and for humanity and we call for an end to the root cause of violence: oppression and occupation. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We ask literary organisations to show solidarity and call on our governments to demand an immediate ceasefire and the opening of Gaza’s crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter unhindered.

BORIS A quick guide to another year of Overland, from your trusty feline, Boris. I liked the ginger cat story, though it made my human cry. I liked the talking cat, too, but I’m definitely in the “not wasting my time learning to talk” camp. But reading is good. And writing is fun, though it’s been challenging […]