Informit Records: Quarterly

Arena Quarterly, ISSN 2652-4775, is available from Informit.

Arena Magazine is currently included in two Informit full text products: Australian Public Affairs collection: Full Text - Issue 1 (1991) onwards, and Humanities & Social Sciences collection: Full Text - Issue 100 (Apr/June 2009) onwards.

Arena Journal (peer reviewed, published by Arena Printing and Publishing Pty Ltd, ISSN: 1320-6567) is included in: Australian Public Affairs collection: Full Text - Issue 1 (1992) onwards, and Literature & Culture collection: Full Text - Issue 21 (2003) onwards.

PDF copies of all individual articles are available for purchase from Informit.

"In the past six months, Australia has seen one of the more startling and significant…

War without, rot within

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Guy Rundle

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

In the past six months, Australia has seen one of the more startling and significant episodes of rapid political change in its recent history. In short order, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted first a degree of lassitude and disbelief, and then a rapid mobilisation that saw the development of a new entity-the National Cabinet, combining federal and state leaders. The need to respond to an emergency, and the desire to avoid the mass…
"The beach shacks look out at a grey dish of cracked silt. These houses are…

This is water

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Dan Schulz

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

The beach shacks look out at a grey dish of cracked silt. These houses are made of dust and are slumped on the sand, many for sale and some abandoned; a bed half-made from when its occupant rolled out from under the doona for the last time many years ago. If you walk onto the lake bed and look back at the village, the houses look like moviegoers, all facing forward and eager for the…
"I'm drivin' in a rusty skyhawk sport...

To the tune of ‘On the Road Somewhere’ ; To the tune of ‘fahet uns die fuchse’

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Kevin Hart

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

I'm drivin' in a rusty skyhawk sport...
"In 2017 Damien Hirst, the notorious Young British Artist (YBA) - who has been 'Young'…

Apres moi, le deluge: Artists after art

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Justin Clemens

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

In 2017 Damien Hirst, the notorious Young British Artist (YBA) - who has been 'Young' for such a long time now that he probably needs to be considered 'forever young' - launched his latest extravaganza at the peak global art-industry show, best known to 'hoi polloi' as the Venice Biennale. The show, entitled 'Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable', took a preposterous fictional scenario as its premise: a decade prior to the Venice show,…
"Review(s) of: Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology: Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential and…

To let things live: Anthropology, images and the breach of distance [Book Review]

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Melinda Hinkson

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

Review(s) of: Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology: Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential and the Possible, by Lorraine Mortimer, Indiana University Press, 2019; Phone and Spear: A Yuta Anthropology, by Miyarrka Media, Goldsmiths Press, 2019.
"'Does anyone here think that's actually going to happen?'

There’s no time left not to do everything

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Tim Hollo

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

'Does anyone here think that's actually going to happen?'
"The Australian government has had significant success in stemming the spread of COVID-19. Aside from…

‘Not the Hilton’

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Claire Loughnan

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

The Australian government has had significant success in stemming the spread of COVID-19. Aside from lockdowns of schools and many businesses, border closures, and limits on movement within the community, it introduced quarantine measures for returned travellers that initially helped to stem the spread of the virus. In late March 2020 it announced that all those arriving at Australian airports and docks from overseas should self-isolate for fourteen days. As evidence emerged of returned travellers…
"In a perspicacious address last November, former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby said 'today,…

Fuelling ‘the China threat’

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Scott Burchill

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

In a perspicacious address last November, former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby said 'today, the Australia-China relationship is at its lowest point since diplomatic relations began forty-six years ago'. At the level of official contacts, especially at heads-of-government level, Beijing has put Canberra in the deep freeze. Raby said the blame for this state of affairs is shared by both countries, though not evenly given the spate of diplomatic errors made by recent Liberal-National…
"Everything started when I was four years old...

West ham ; All I think about is Jacqueline ; The duende came ; Trench Art

Arena Quarterly no. 3

John Falzon

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

Everything started when I was four years old...
"Radically uneven material histories of COVID-19 are unfolding across places, bodies, species, institutions and economies.…

Whatever it takes

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Lisa Stefanoff

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

Radically uneven material histories of COVID-19 are unfolding across places, bodies, species, institutions and economies. Senses of the pandemic and its futures are also playing out differently in every imagination. I write from a 'before' or a 'not yet' within the global corona story-a knife's edge, a desert cliff: Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Central Arrernte country, where at least for now we remain a COVID-free zone. As Melbourne enters level 4 restrictions in response to a…
"Review(s) of: The mirror and the light, by Hilary Mantel.

Make or Mar: Hilary Mantel’s ‘The mirror and the light’ [Book Review]

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Valerie Krips

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

Review(s) of: The mirror and the light, by Hilary Mantel.
"The monuments are impossible to miss. Rising from the flat and otherwise featureless Vanni -…

No space for memory?

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Lia Kent

Sep 2020

PDF available from Informit

The monuments are impossible to miss. Rising from the flat and otherwise featureless Vanni - the broad, scrubby northern region so different from the dense, fertile vegetation of the island's south - these official markers to the end of the civil war project a story that is unashamedly heroic, triumphal and militaristic. In this story of good versus evil, of Tamil terrorists versus Sinhalese protectors of the nation, there is little room for multiple narratives…