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Have you checked out The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice? Well then get onto it. If you think it sounds very lofty and important, that’s ’cause it is. These are the fellas who brought us the very awesome ‘Your voice in the house’ campaign - a resource that lets you locate all the polis who represent you in every house of parliament with just a few mouse clicks.
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Also, one of its head honchos is our very own web guru Hammy Goonan so obviously they are very discerning and wise in all of their activities.
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This is further proven by their latest project ‘En Masse‘, a campaign to “Rethink Copyright in our digital age; to Reclaim culture by encouraging people to step outside the current intellectual property regime; and to provide the tools to Redo cultural outputs, remixing them into something new.“. Pretty ace yes indeed.
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The whole shebang will be launched on Tuesday at 7:30pm at Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St with the screening of the new remix doco ‘RiP: A Remix Manifesto Screening‘.
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On the facefuck invite Hammy says that in the doco “web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film features mash-up musician Girl Talk, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow”
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Can’t wait.

If ever there was a city addicted to rules and regulations it’s Melbourne. Just this past month dozens of bike riders have been charged a couple of hundred bucks each for cycling along the wide, virtually deserted, paths of the Carlton gardens. It’s illegal to carry marker pens around the streets for crying out loud. We are hooked on convention - our hunger for conformity is sick I tell you, SICK!
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Thank lord we’ve got some expert artists on hand to help us. Between the 16th and the 18th of this month eleven urban artists (including our very own Rayna Fahey) will come together in one awesome project - equalling a 12-step program to help break Melbourne’s habits of convention.
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Curated by Lynda Roberts of Public Assembly (another Craft Cartel regular participant)’The Interventionist Guide’has its HQ in the subterranean gallery, Platform, at Flinders st Station. From there it spreads out into far-flung and forgotten corners of the city. The cabinets within Platform provide illustrative mapping devices, a ‘users guide’ to creatively intervene within a range of urban spaces selected by each artist to reveal the unique nature of each location and the creative potential it offers. Lynda will also be temporarily overlaying an alternative map on Melbourne’s Information Way finder signage to show the location of the Interventionists and their installations and projects.
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Lynda is inviting the lot of you to get involved by taking the radio powered ‘Transistor Show’ or gentle sensory walk alternative tours with artists Neil Thomas, Anthony Morgan and Iian Abrahams, listening to violinist Cye Wood’s strings reverberate in underground tunnels and walkways, watching as office walls and wire fences are transformed into blank canvases for the works of Projector Obscura and Radical Cross Stitch, being confronted with odd behaviour by the Roarawar Feartata Collective and delighted by tiny microgalleries and playful experiments with mirrors by jeweller Caz Guiney and Light-Jacker Ceri Hann.
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So check out the Public Assembly website & facebook invite for The Interventionist Guide, and rock up to help out with an interactive artistic wake-up call to confront all that is predictable and boring in our city.
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YEAAAAH!

It was only a matter of time before we found an excuse to get our gear off, really, and here it is. The Naked Brunch is being held as part of the Fringe Festival at Bebida Cafe tomorrow (Tuesday 6th Oct)at 325 Smith st Fitzroy and Craft Cartel has been invited along to craft in the altogether, the way God probably never intended us to but bugger it, we’re doing it anyhow.
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If you decide to rock up and strip off you will be entertained by a naked poet (what a delightfully awkward idea!), the handsome and hirsuite pole-dancer Agent Cleve and, of course, crafting from us (Cunt Fling-Ups, what else?). You will also be fed, though who knows if you’ll be able to digest anything with all the wobbly bits bobbling around.
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Frankly the whole idea makes me feel a little uncomfortable and like couldn’t I just spend the morning plunging toilets instead, please? I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to this one except that uncomfortable is interesting and interesting is everything and there was a bunch of flowers involved.
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So come join us as we prepare for some intense therapy sessions. It may not be fun but it will be FUNNY.
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Check out the little article about it in today’s Age. BYO pin cushions.
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You can book online at melbournefringe.com.au or call 03 9660 9666

Last Saturday a trio of hardcore Craft Cartel muck-around-ers, Kiki Ando, Hannah Raisin and myself, banded together to form live arrt/craft/improv group, Birdie Fizzle. The loose idea was to style ourselves as a kind of interpretive dance troupe (only messier and wankier) and create sculpture in response to live music. The first live music gig we played with was Peaches DJ set at Roxanne Parlour and oh my fuck it was fun.
Photos will follow (surely someone has some…?) but basically we built a giant bubble out of plastic sheets and sticky tape which was held aloft by a small fan. We then sat inside and started to fill the bubble with smaller bubbles of condoms and surgical gloves (might sound naff but was actually awesome - trust). When Peaches started to play we went manic with spray bottles filled with paint until the entire bubble and everything and everyone in it was covered and we were slip sliding around the floor and walls. It was how I could imagine the mud of Woodstock might have been only multi-coloured and highly toxic. Eventually a bogan reveller ripped a hole in the bubble and it all came crashing down but we danced on regardless and then (and this is the best bit) we got asked to jump up on stage and dance with Peaches.
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Later on I felt compelled to tell Peaches that we weren’t actually, you know, ‘real’ dancers (in case she was severely mentally impaired and had failed to realise this). She very sweetly assured us that this is why we were good and that the large heckling person at the side of the stage was a sign we were “doing something right”. She then declared that our style was “Geek Spaz”. Ah, happiness. I’m going to get ‘Birdie Fizzle = Geek Spaz’ t-shirts into production immediately.
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If you want Birdie Fizzle to spaz your next festival or gig in exchange for champagne and lolly riders and those dog-tag backstage passes that make us feel so special, drop us a line.
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It’s practically our slogan - what’s not to love?
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Created by metARTmorphosis a.k.a Laura Mappin - the lady also makes crocheted golden tampons to commemorate menopause: respect.

Trashbag Rehab is coming again this Monday & it’s an old favourite: Cunt Fling-Ups (crafted cunts flung up over power-lines in the way shoes are flung).

Shoe flinging has a long & illustrious history in the world of activism – from the very first ‘saboteurs’ – French workers who threw their sabots (wooden clogs) into machinery - to the Iraqi journalist who spawned a shoe tossing craze before the last US election by chucking his at Bush. We’re proud to join this tradition with beautiful crafted cunts, weighted with shoes & flung up high, to reclaim the streets for women & cunt lovers in general.

If you want to make a fling-up BYO old shoes, otherwise you might like to craft a cunt fascinator in time for spring racing season. There will be a beauty pageant (sans swimsuit) at the culmination of the event with a prize consisting of all the old crap from the bottom of my unwanted gifts drawer.

* PLUS!
* Free MUFFins for early comers
* Tunes will be spun by the genius behind the Fringe fashion show ‘I love my cunt’, Kiki Ando
* Jewellry designer Birgit Holdinghausen will be on hand with a display of her wondrous silver vulva pieces
* We’re honoured to have the team from upcoming doco ‘Cunts the movie‘ along to capture the fun.
*Sculptor, Greg Taylor, who’s stunning ‘Cunts and other conversations’exhibiton has caused controversy and delight around the world, is kindly lending us some of his porcelain pieces to display on the evening.

Check out the action at our last Cunt making session here

Monday 7th September
5:30-8:30pm
The Workers’ Club cnr. Gertrude & Smith st Fitzroy
$4/$8

Guys, you are most welcome – no need to have a cunt to participate, you can make one when you get there.

RSVP on our Facebook page or just rock up - all materials (except shoes!) provided x

Rayn & I have been invited to help shape malleable, eager young minds with our crafty smarts. Or something like that. We’ll be talking to 3rd year Victorian College of the Arts students this Friday. As a 1st year VCA dropout I feel uniquely qualified for the job. We’ll be talking about . . . ? Fuck. Maybe we should do some preparation. Actually no, this crew have just dragged themselves through at least 15 years of schooling so they know all about preparation. What we can help them with is flying by the seat of your pants winging it pranking. Can’t wait to help set them on the path of the windy and wide. Anyone want to come help lead them astray?
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This is going to be fuuuun.

Now why would anyone suggest I am partial to cheap & hyperbolic headlines, hmmm? Surprising but true - some Craft Cartel members have dropped out of the fold, offended by the title of our next Trashbag, ‘CUNTS!’ (which is going to be awesome, by the way, head to our facefuck invite to RSVP).
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*sigh*
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Here’s one email from a (now former) Craft Cartelian:
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“Hi Casey,
I am a member of this group in facebook, and am just wondering, why do all your session titles have to have expletives in them? It’s always ” clits/ cunts ” etc…is it that you are trying to make some sort of feminist statement with regards to a woman’s sexual organs? Or am I just reading too much into this…? Think about, if a men’s group had ” reclaim your cock” in their title, do you think you would find it sexist and offensive? Perhaps not, but I think it’s unnecessary, I find it offensive, it intones to me a lack of imagination when it comes to writing. I am at a loss- I think you will lose members as opposed to gaining them.
There are millions of other words in the English language- try some different ones!
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No longer a member”
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And the response:
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“Hi,
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Thanks for dropping me a line - I do appreciate you explaining you position and your feelings rather than just disappearing silently. Unfortunately it’s not a surprise that some are offended by our use of the term ‘cunt’. The reason the next workshop is titled CUNTS is precisely because the word is deemed to be the most offensive in our language and I find that offensive. I think it is wrong that a word that describes a part of the female body doubles as a derogatory slur and I think it is through positive use of the word and positive discussions about female bodies that this will change.
I don’t think the correlation to a ‘reclaim your cock’ group holds because the word ‘cock’ simply doesn’t have the same negative power as ‘cunt’. Why is that? What is it that’s so horrifically scary about female genitalia that makes this word the worst swear word we’ve got? These are the questions that I hope will be raised and discussed at the workshop. To shy away from using the word ‘cunt’ would just be perpetuating the negativity and fear associated with it.
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Regards,
Casey”

If you’re in Melbs, tune in to Triple R (102.7 FM)around 10 tomorrow morning - Rayna & I are getting jiggy with our knitting needles to lend support to the community station’s disco-themed radio-thon. There will be freaky deaky finger-knitted headbands. There will be funkadelic mirror balls. There will be glitter to the max. The joint is gonna be crammed with craft so far-out righteous dynamite you will feel the fever over the airwaves.
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Dig?

Yes, it was a blast. A cartoon styled dynamite stick up the bum sort of blast. Our latest Trashbag, Bang! Knit! Purl! KaPOW!! - crocheted explosives, was pretty crackers.
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We had icy-pole sticks & toilet rolls!
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We had a mega-magna doodle!
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And instructive interpretive dance from the Easy Going Super Knit Sisters Sexy Teacher Homicidal Hair Craftivist Dance Troop!
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Plus entertainment from keyboard extremist Casionova, DJ Peat Moss & Deb Hall’s mesmerising Underwater Puppetry
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We had neat prizes from Crumpler, Obüs and Incube8r, plus the spectacular transformation of Brent Fox into Bio-EnviroMan at the expert hand of bodypaint artist Emily Zoey Baker.
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And most importantly we had crocheted explosives
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Lot’s & lots of crocheted explosives
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& we had fun
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If you missed out check out the tutes on our homepage & get knitting - all explosives will be gathered to help our guerrilla craft war against loggers of native forrests.
You can also check out the event on ABC TV Sunday Arts program this weekend at 5pm - featured in a story about underground crafts.
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We’ve donated a buck from each payer (55, all up) to The Wilderness Society to help with their fight against Gunns Pulp Mill & other twits - give them more! They are ace!