Jakarta can feel oppressive for residents and visitors. If you’ve heard stories about the traffic, the reality is much worse. As in any city though, there are many people doing good things. Journalists Fergus Jensen and Rebecca Henshcke have been living in Jakarta for around 15 years. For the last nine of those they have […]

I picked up this book at Gleebooks, which still brings together a great curated collection at the edges of academic and general audience publications. It caught my eye because of some writing I am doing with Dr Kirsten Seale about typography and urban renewal. Tinkering has had a renewed interest in the past few decades […]

  I was recently in Hobart with a team from Frontyard for the Hobiennale. Hosted by Kickstart Arts, we spent four days making a book based on conversations emerging from our online image archive. We also did our best to get to know the site, St John’s Park. Across the road from our makeshift publishing […]

I don’t often get boating invitations. This week, when Clare Britton asked my to climb aboard the newly renovated ‘Sally’ at the Tempe Pier, I didn’t hesitate. As part of her research project A Week on the Cooks River, Clare is spending time observing, describing, rowing the Cooks. AC: So can you tell me what […]

With a few recommendations, we went to the Sydney French Film Festival to see Tomorrow, a 2015 documentary by Melanie Laurent and Cyril Dion. The film presents five chapters, each telling a local activist story that addresses the global challenges of Agricultue, Energy, Economy, Democracy, and Education. Predictably, the agriculture chapter was most interesting to […]

We are reading this book because Anna Tsing’s book Friction had such an effect on the collaboration that is Mapping Edges. This book is about the most valuable mushroom in the world, the Matsutake, the commodity chains within which it exists, and its relationship with humans, trees and others. Through its ability to nurture trees, […]

We read this debut novel by Briohny Doyle for our speculative fiction book club. It is set in a not-too-distant future when environmental catastrophe is completely normal and immersive cinema about disaster is the most popular entertainment. The protagonist is Max Galleon, a filmmaker and family man who can’t remember anything without his implanted digital […]

This book, Marrickville Backyards, was necessary preparatory reading for our field work in Marrickville. Published in 2001 by Marrickville Community History Group, with only a small print run, this book is not easy to get your hands on. We found it through Sydney’s much-loved Gould’s Book Arcade. Our second hand copy comes with a note on […]

I just finished reading ‘A Philosophy of Walking’ for obvious reasons. Mapping Edges are avid walkers, and philosophers of walking. The book is a wonderful meditation on what walking does for thinking. Gros begins with the proposition that walking is not a sport, and then he meanders through history (albeit mostly Western male history), telling […]

I don’t often get boating invitations. This week, when Clare Britton asked my to climb aboard the newly renovated ‘Sally’ at the Tempe Pier, I didn’t hesitate. As part of her research project A Week on the Cooks River, Clare is spending time observing, describing, rowing the Cooks. AC: So can you tell me what […]