The other day you were at Harold park, in Sydney, surveying the area for a possible tour coming up in August/September.
Whilst there you met another artist taking images of wasteland, an interesting man whose interest is more on the resilience of nature, and the beauty of regeneration.
We talked and exchanged links and opinions.
Since he made a little video shot at the old Tram depot in Harold park.
The artist is Gary Deirmendjian, here is his link and here his youtube chanel.

sweet pittosporum- berries, originally uploaded by the weed one.

pittosporum ondulatum.
In terms of weeds this is an interesting example, as is NATIVE and ENDEMIC to the area where this image was taken.
Yet, since European settlement and subsequent disruption of the landscape, this plant went well beyond the original pocket of growth, now being wide-spread the east and west coast, out-competing other vegetation.
This is one of the winners as Tim Low would have said in his books, one of the native species that actually benefited from human disruption.
Two particularity of the plant gave it the edge in comparison to other better suited to the environment:
1- It does not rely on fire to germinate, and in this modern Australia, were fire is increasingly controlled to minimize damage to property, such peculiarity is very important
2- It does well in rich soils, as opposed to other native vegetation that did adapt to a soil rather poor in nutrients

You gave a talk last week, a the Wildlife in The City forum, part of the Clubhouse at Performance Space and organized by Joni Taylor.
For the occasion you presented a mini photo/environmental survey of the area surrounding Carriageworks.
You thought it would have been nice while talking about the state of the wildlife in urban settings, to actually have a look at the botany present on site.
Of course the species were mostly weeds, Carriageworks is a newish ‘artistic quarters’ inhabiting what were the railways building yards, in Redfern, inner suburb of Sydney.
Railways are renowned to be some of the most important spreading routes for most of introduced vegetation in Australia. The long lines of transportation didn’t just link remote areas with the coast, they also acted as corridors for plants.

Together with you there were other concerned researchers, like a very interesting zoological expert, who spoke about a topical issue at the moment in inner Sydney, Flying foxes, the fruit-eating gigantic bats who famously inhabit the local Botanic gardens. The mammals are accused of killing a growing number of very old and rare trees in the gardens, prompting the management to seek a special ruling from the state government to shush them away from their preferred roosting site, see here for the controversy.

Also at the panel were present Makeshift, the duo with which you collaborated for the Hanging Gardens and Other Tales project, a year and a half ago, an expert on urban botany from the University of NSW, Brendan Penzer, a fellow artist and curator, and a representative from WIRES, the local not-for-profit organization that provides rescue for injured wildlife in Australia.

The aim of the day was to put together at the table a 50/50 discourse between art and science, as Joni wrote:

Wildlife in the City is part of the Urban Transformations series that will take place at the ClubHouse.

The event will bring scientists, botanists and zoologists together with artists who take an ecological approach to their practice.In the city, where urbanism and nature collide, flora and fauna have adapted to the developments around them. It will offer a unique glimpse into how the urban landscape acts as a backdrop to human/nature interaction, and how this is changing.

It is hoped that the meeting will inspire new works to take place in the public and urban arena.

This is a noble task, searching for new avenues and directions for both science and art in Australia, when it comes to assessing the reality of environmental complexity that inhabit our cities, but it would be a shot at the sky, if it wasn’t that Joni intends to use it as a starting point.

In the meantime you had enormous fun discovering another mad-case as yourself in the links of the dedicated blog:
The Society for a Re-natural Environment!!

Now, you readers thought you were wild arguing for a re-interpretation of the cultural value of aggressive non-native species,
BD Collier work takes it to next level, while you progressively try to back-up yourself with scientific data, shouldering your arguments with research done in the fields of biology, anthropology, social science, ethnobotany and so forth, Brian D Collier unashamedly keeps it kooky and art-real!
In projects like Teach The Starlings he seek collaborators to effectively piggy-back some peculiarity of an introduced species to USA, the ability to mimic sounds and to pass it on to the rest of the population, to set-up a viral intervention, which, in theory, would spread the whole span of habitat for the little birds..GENIUS!!
You love this project no end, together with great admiration for other adventures, like the Re-Natural Habitat Acquisition Program, which consist of an attempt at re-wilding areas, taking advantage of the pockets of lands which fall through the real-estate loop-holes.
Brian D Collier is, to your opinion, an artist to admire, strong, daring, inventive and immensely mischievous. An achiever.
Well done.
You going to contact him forthwith!

Yes indeed, a fantastic and charming speaker, with funny jokes every now n then, to lively up the audience partecipation, harnessing attention.
Yes indeed, a beautiful story of faraway lands, exotic people and striking colours.
Yes indeed, a noble message, broadcasting all of the good-doing of the National Geographic.
Yet, what about your connection to the environment? what about you, as a western world inhabitant, whose mother and mother’s mother lived on a land which no longer is considered wild?

What about the connections you as a ‘non-native’ have with your surroundings.
This speech is brilliant in its simplicity, missing the point that we all are natives, indigenous, inhabitants of the world, diverse and ever changing, different and bracketed.
Much gets lost, yes, but hardly ever the idea that remoteness means purity, denying the fact that immediacy is where you can act.
Maybe you’re just barking at the wrong tree

This shrub was introduced to me by my daughter, who swear by it as it grows proficiently on her school grounds.
still haven’t found a proper naming of it, yet, i’m happy she shows a knowledgeable connection with er immediate surrounding vegetation

robinia_sprouting, originally uploaded by the weed one.

on a side street in Surry hills, Sydney.
The tree planted by the council is a Golden Robinia, a cultivar grafted onto a Robinia pseudo-acacia root system.
The suckers coming from the roots is then the original plant.

Conyza, Sydney, originally uploaded by the weed one.

extremely tall, carving away concrete in an abandoned courtyard.
Would be interesting to find a study on the remediation capability of this plant, a truly pioneer when it comes to overcome concrete and tar.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The Facebook intervention is building up, with some plants getting more friends than other’s..
Interesting is that one in particular, Bidens pilosa (search for it on Facebook) is proving true to its vernacular name in Australia, Farmer’s friend, sticking to people and propagating from one friend to another in a viral mode.
So lately you have been interacting with a new found friend, Hanako, from Phuket, Thailand, who jolted you into some research about the distribution of the specie in her’s environment. Sure enough, the plant is there, in large numbers too, according to the Invasive Species Database, and according to a particular study on the feasibility for biological control of the plant in the Thai agricultural environments..
Below is a PDF of the study:

Bidens_pilosa pdf thai biological control

Both of the links are put together by scientists concerned with the impact the plant has with commercial crops, listing all aspects of possible prevention of further spreading of the plants.

Read that in conjunction to an earlier post on this blog, here.

So, this post will be a personal rant, which is no different from the rest of the postings on this blog,
yet, this very one comes along as a side stepping exercise.

This coming Sunday will be the 10th year you and a bunch of collaborators put on a short film festival: SquatFest.
The event started 10 years ago in a highly publicized and political environment, the Broadway Squats..
Lots have been written and said about what happened there in a brief 6 months of ‘public’ occupation,
but to keep the subject to SquatFest you paste down here the Media Release as it was readjusted
from Mickie Quick last week (the one you got ready was deemed, rightly so, a bit too ‘militant’,
nevertheless it got some media response last year, like this article on the Sydney Morning Herald).

But anyway, here it is below:

MEDIA RELEASE

SquatFest the “anti-Tropfest Fest” celebrates 10 years!

This Sunday! Secret Exciting Location!

What begun in 2001 at the infamous Broadway Squats as a singular act of defiance against the scale and commercialism of TropFest, SquatFest – the “anti TropFest Fest” – has continued to run every year since, always on the same night as TropFest

Utilising a different empty building in Sydney each year, SquatFest has reached its 10th anniversary, with organisers promising a special daring venue for this year’s event!

Last year’s SquatFest saw 400+ eager underground film buffs crammed into an empty warehouse in Annandale, and organisers are anticipating an even bigger crowd for the 10th anniversary this year.

The event has grown so big, that the SquatFest website now claims “the wave of anti-TropFest feeling is almost as big as TropFest itself”.

The organisers of SquatFest are particularly critical of the way that TropFest lost touch with its origins as local community event held in the close confines of the Tropicanna Cafe, in Darlinghurst. Unlike the behemoth TropFest event, there is no selection process of films shown at SquatFest, film-makers simply bring their film along on the night.

“Just before each film we get the filmmakers to stand up from their seat and identify themselves, and maybe even say a few words” says Mickie Quick of SquatSpace. “Members of the audience usually crane their necks to lay eyes on the film-maker, and we believe this acts as the best defence against film makers submitting bad films!” Quick adds that, “You see, if the film is bad, that filmmaker has to suffer in the silence punctuated by groans, with everyone knowing whodunit!”

But now that SquatFest has itself become quite large, and sometimes unable to screen all films brought along on the night, has the “anti-Tropfest Fest” become a contradiction of itself?

“Well perhaps it has”, admits Simon Daring also from SquatSpace. “In fact, we have a radical proposal to put to our audience and participants this year, as to the future of SquatFest”. He adds that, “after-all, we know of weekly and monthly film-nights being held in squats around Sydney, and we are a bit reluctant to be seen as the glammed-up, scaled-up cousin of that kind of community event, so we are going to do something about it.” However, Daring admits, “but not until we glam it up one more spectacular time!”

SquatFest is held on the same night as TropFest, this Sunday Febraury 21 at 7:30pm, at “a secret exciting venue”, to be announced on the day at www.squatspace. com/squatfest

Contact: Mickie Quick on xxxx xxx xxx

Other details:

WHY?:

The films at Tropfest are bad and you have to sit through countless offensive ads and embarrassing b-grade celebs, desperately trying to come up with something good to say about rubbish attempts by misguided young filmmakers eager to claw their way to the bottom rung of the Hollywood sweatshop. Fah-geddaboudit! You know you want to, so tell your friends:

“Sorry guys, this year it’s SquatFest for me!”

HISTORY:

SquatFest happens every year at the same date and time as TropFest. While the hopeful entrants for TropFest are fretting about whether they’ll get the chance to move up a rung in the Hollywood Sweatshop, artists and activists from ’round Australia are living it up, projecting films and videos in an inspiring squatted venue.

SquatFest began at the Broadway Squats in 2001, and has since made appearances at the Midnight Star Social Centre, the Sydney Park Brickworks, the Sydney Dental Hospital, under the grandstand at Erskineville, and many other amazing venues! Our film programmes have toured to Newcastle, Melbourne, Perth, and Indonesia, Italy and Canada

10 years
As far as anniversaries we should also talk about 10 years of Indymedia, read a fantastic article by Zanny Begg here speaking of the media phenomenon which erupted in the hey-days of No-Corporate-Globalisation movement, starting from Seattle, November 1999.

Those years shaped a generation, who found themselves in the streets with protective gear marching towards Riot Police Units..

Seems out of time nowadays to talk about protest and civil disobedience, yet those bursts of common goal, direct action and down right defiance against the imposed decision-makers shaped much of what you still doing here, now.

Despite the retaliation that happened soon after, with the terrorists years, when all at the sudden all demonstrations were outlawed and new laws and limitation put in place, we still kept going.
To this date, 10 years on and we still put together a film festival in a reclaimed space.
Find out where by subscribing to the free messaging system, go to http://squatspace.com/squatfest/sms.html.

Have a browse through a selection of previous years entrants on Engage Media.