Cuttings is a dynamic new play that grew out COVID and the beating red desert heart of Mparntwe/Alice Springs. It’s about to have its South Australian premiere at the 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival. In 2020, long-time Alice resident, novelist Jo Dutton (From Alice With Love), received a Creative Fellowship from Arts NT. She had a lot going on that year. Diagnosed with degenerative neurological condition Parkinson’s eight years earlier, she’d recently had brain surgery, travelling to and from Adelaide for treatment and recovery. Keen to discover new opportunities for her writing in lived, collaborative settings, Jo turned her hand from prose to play writing, and books to theatre. A mother of daughters, Jo had watched the rise of the #MeToo movement with…
Stories from inside life’s big top.
Posts by Megan Spencer
A powerful new voice arrives to set the Australian music scene on fire. Tanzanian rapper, musician, singer and hip hop artist Katanga Junior has called Mparntwe (Alice Springs) home for only a year. Yet already he’s one of the hardest working musicians in town, igniting the stages of festivals and music venues alike. Ferociously talented, his unique blend of rap, reggae and ragga sets dance floors ablaze. His first EP Moto (“fire” in Swahili) is due for national release on September 4, 2021. “I called it Moto because there’s burning and fire in the lyrics,” reveals Katanga when I interview him from home, “with fire in the music and the cover art. Yeah, fire is definitely the vibe”. Fifteen months…
Categories: interview
Tagged: Alice Springs, desert music, hip hop, interview, katanga junior, moto, Mparntwe, music, new music, tanzania
I always jump at the chance to write about music. Sadly it’s been a while. Music writing is something I love to do, especially when it involves the work of Jez Conlon, a friend and artist I’ve written about previously here on Circus Folk. Cloud Sequence heralds a new artistic collaboration for Jez, mostly known for their work and collaborations under the banner of Cooperblack. This is a a critical response to a new work by Cloud Sequence, and a paid post. Forming in 2019, Cloud Sequence is Saar Amptmeijer from Utrecht, the Netherlands (an accomplished, highly progressive multi-modal artist), and Jez Conlon (a talented musician, composer and sound producer) from Adelaide, South Australia. Both live and work in Mparntwe/Alice Springs in…
A fantastic thing has come out of making From A Whisper To A Bang! A slew of people have taken to visiting the grave of my great-uncle, Richard “Charles” Spencer, Private, 5218, AIF, (1899-1918). Generous strangers all, asking for nothing in return. Something I never considered when I began making this podcast series about remembrance, three years ago with the welcome of 2020. Richard’s final resting place is in the small CWGC cemetery of Spoilbank, a few kilometres south of Ypres in Belgium. I tell his story in Episode 03: ‘City As War Memorial’. Thousands of people in Australia and all over the world have listened to it. Sad and astonishing as it is, it is a gateway into something…
Categories: From A Whisper To A Bang, Personal Essay, Photo Essay, photography, podcast, Remembrance, tribute, War
Not long ago, a ‘call to action’ floated across my social feeds. “Gondola. Need one. Anyone selling theirs? Or could help hook a sista up?” It was from Melbourne artist Laila Marie Costa, an old friend of a friend whose art I’ve seriously admired for many years. Given her line of work it wasn’t unusual. She wasn’t kidding either. Reaching deep into her Italian heritage and harking the call of refused, obsolete, junk objects – the addiction fever-grip to which she’s been answering her entire artistic life – I intuited she was in the throes of (another) new upcycling project… While the self-described “creator of art stuff… curator of collections, riffage musician and champion weeder” later told me she “wasn’t…
You might have noticed, it’s been a bit quiet around here lately. Well, for the last 6 months or so anyway. Something really BIG has taken up my time. For the best part of two years really… The biggest creative project of my life. I’ve been working with sound since the late 1980s, and working in radio most of my life – from the early days at 3RRR, to triple j, then on ABC Local Radio and Radio National too. Radio’s always been my “first love”. When I relocate to Berlin in 2015 as a freelance media maker (and as a newly-minted meditation teacher!) I add “podcast maker” to my suite of skills. It seems a “no brainer”. Helping set up…
Earlier this year, after travelling many miles and relocating for the umpteenth time in my life, I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end of a lovely act of kindness. It happened when I met Australian collage artist Karen Lynch in person for the first time. I’d recently moved to the “southern creep” of Adelaide, Karen’s home city. On a sunny day in May we arranged to catch up in one of the sleepy seaside villages between our respective suburbs that only ‘the locals’ know about. We’d been ‘virtual’ blogging buddies for 4 years, encouraging each other and interacting as co-members of the very first intake of Pip Lincolne‘s ‘Blog With Pip’ (an online “how to” course for bloggers),…
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision… is the most abject treachery; and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.” – Virginia Woolf, ‘A Room Of One’s Own’. I’ve long been an admirer of Alice Orchard. We met a decade ago in Darwin when I was living there, working in radio. I’d up-stumped from Sydney, and, in search of like-minded souls who lived and breathed music, found my way to Happy Yess, a tiny…
Jeremy Conlon has a new album. I’ve written about his work before on Circus Folk. He’s an unpredictable composer. A great live performer. And his music excites me. Beautiful But Dangerous is one of the new tracks. Swarming, menacing and punctuated by ominous piano, it sounds as if the hounds of hell are growling up from Hades, “the end of the world is nigh”. It’s just as this unique Australian composer wishes it to be on this, his tenth recording, ‘The Degradation Suite’. Beautiful and dangerous perfectly sums up the aural effect of taking in this epic, atmospheric journey into a heart of darkness. Achingly beautiful, it also kind of hurts to listen. “Harsh climates breed hard humans, and the slow…
High-res version
In February 2018 Auspicious Plastic was selected as a finalist in the Frankie “Good Stuff” Awards in the ‘Writing + Podcasts’ category.
I submitted an excerpt from “Episode 10“, featuring a conversation with dedicated diarist and digital publisher, Carrie King. It went into the running for the ‘Writing + Podcast’ category, and the People’s Choice Award.
Bobbing around out there on that roiling sea of podcasts, sometimes it can feel as if you’re in the boat alone, rendered invisible by thick fog and heavy swells. So it’s very nice to receive some acknowledgement. And an oar back to shore…
I was chuffed (and genuinely surprised!) to be selected as one of six finalists in the category. And grateful to everyone I’ve interviewed for the series so far, Cooperblack for the theme music and Studio Ink for the lovely logo design. And to my late Mum Margaret who inspired it all.
Thank you to everyone who has listened to the series, been touched it, and who voted for it in the ‘People’s Choice Award’.
POST UPDATED: ‘Auspicious Plastic’ didn’t win the category, but it was great to be selected along with five other auspicious finalists. Read more – and about the winner (congrats Taku Mbudzi!) – on the Frankie website.
TAKING A LITTLE BREAK: ‘Auspicious Plastic’ will return in 2019. In the meantime there are 14 episodes to catch up on or to re-listen to – on Soundcloud, and/or listen+subscribe on iTunes.
