Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 112 - Mar/Apr 2023 i frankie Magazine

As kids, we’re asked to define ourselves as if our identities are set in stone: what our favourite colour is, who our best friend is, what job we aspire to. Of course, we grow older and find that our goals, the things we like and want – even our fundamental beliefs – can change completely. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind (you don’t have to be a unicornologist whose favourite colour is yellow forever) – in fact, after chatting to the folks in this issue, we think it’s pretty healthy. Sometimes it’s hard to leave the desires of your past self behind (page 20), but embracing new possibilities is what makes life exciting. You might wake up one day and decide to start a flower farm (page 37) or…

experience Every cat owner remembers their first time – the first time your cat voluntarily crawls onto your lap and settles down like a furry hot water bottle. It’s a sign that you’re a fundamentally good and trustworthy person, rather than the selfish and cynical arsehole you suspect yourself to be. A small mammal who’s sort of your prisoner loves you, and that’s all that matters in the world. So, the big question: how do you trick a cat into loving you earn a cat’s affection? PLAY HARD TO GET Cats aren’t just smaller, cuter dogs. They’re more like Tinder dates. Treat them with reciprocal indifference, and you’ll probably make them curious. Eventually they’ll text you back (metaphorically speaking). On the other hand, if you come on all clingy and…

real life farm raiser The Farm Raiser crew first met while studying at the University of Melbourne’s Burnley Horticultural College, and bonded over a desire to grow food in the city. After uni, they each went their separate ways to gain experience before regrouping and starting their not-for-profit farm in 2018, in the Melbourne suburb of Bellfield. Tell us about this piece of land. Patrick Turnbull: The farm itself is on Department of Education land, at Waratah Special Developmental School. I was living around the corner and for a uni assignment, approached them about how they irrigated the school. I noticed this 1.5-acre patch out the back and thought of growing there – they were really happy to back any plan that increases the community of the school. Now a…

Hi Yan, tell us a bit about yourself. I’m an emerging self-taught artist, born in Shanghai but raised in Melbourne. I have a background in urban planning and interior design and my art merges abstraction and realism. I’ve always had an interest in how our constructed environment can evoke memories and create a sense of alienation or belonging. Our environments are shaped by us, but also shape us. What kind of techniques do you use? I use acrylic paints with brushes to lay down background colours, airbrushing with fluid acrylics to either outline elements or create gradients, and stencilling to incorporate patterns and people. How did you begin playing around with airbrushing? I’ve always been interested in investigating different methods of paint application, and was finding that I would stop…

Frances O'Connor is an Aussie actress making her directorial debut with Emily , an imaginative film about novelist Emily Brontë. We asked Frances about Hollywood, staying true to your creative self and upsetting Brontë purists. EMILY IS YOUR FAVOURITE BRONTË SISTER True. I identify with her more. I’m an introvert; she was an introvert. And Wuthering Heights really transported me when I read it as a teenager. I grew up in the hills of Perth, and up there in the winter, it’s pretty wild and woolly. We didn’t have any houses around us, and I grew up with three sisters and a brother – we were pretty feral. Our little culture was similar to the Brontë culture; my parents were intellectuals and academics. I was always interested in creative…

something to say I’ve always hated my birthday. I’m jealous, awed and baffled by people who look forward to theirs with excitement or even indifference. What is their secret?! They must be Leos (Leos really love birthdays, don’t they?) or glass-half-full types, or people who don’t spend every moment of their precious, fleeting lives wondering whether everything is falling apart. They must be so relaxed! A birthday’s primary function is to mark the passage of time, which prompts far too many existential questions for my liking. What have I done that merits celebration? Have I really wasted yet another year on this winding road towards certain death, scrolling through my phone and binge-watching mediocre melodramas about rich people? I could have been curing cancer or ‘living life to…

PITCH THAT TENT! BY DEIRDRE FIDGE Camping is divisive. We’ve all met people who LOVE it: outdoorsy types who own expensive gear and practical gadgets, who frequently go away on weekends and return annoyingly perky. In the other, uh, camp, you have anti-campers: pale from lack of vitamin D, they scrunch their noses at the prospect of eating below-average food and living in your own filth. But crucially, there is a significant population who sit in the middle: the Occasional Happy Campers, of which I am one. The premise of my debate, Madam Speaker, is that many people feel alienated by the outdoorsy zealots and have shunned camping without giving it a fair go. With respect to zealots, I am very pro-camping without knowing Kathmandu staff on a first-name basis.…

LETTERS@FRANKIE.COM.AU Dear frankie, I was thrilled to read “Page not found” in issue 111. I work at a library in a small town in Canada and have been unplugged for over 10 months now. One day it occurred to me: I am surrounded by the best type of content (books, of course). I went cold turkey on the apps and have never looked back since. Many friends ask if everything is all right, “What happened?” etc. when I say I am not on the platforms anymore. But I also notice that when friends call or text me these days, we have more meaningful conversations. It is wonderful to hear more people are choosing to be unplugged and living for the here and now. Thank you for all the wonderful stuff…

something to say I recently turned 34, which means I’ve been mostly single for almost a decade. If I had read that sentence 10 years ago and known it was my future, I would have been horrified. At the time I was in the thick of a long-term relationship with someone I thought I’d be with forever. We had it all figured out: we’d eventually get engaged, then married. We’d have kids that looked half like him and half like me. We’d take them to Disneyland every year. We loved each other’s families, and we loved one another the most. I was totally set. But then things changed, as they do. We changed. Nothing happened; no one was cruel. But the relationship that I entered when I was 20 was…

my project Why the name Albatross? Albatross is a character in one of the stories from my favourite Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi. It means taking time to do things you like and being yourself. When the right moment comes, you can fly up. What led you to ceramics? I started to make ceramics about four years ago. I was a pastry chef for many years, but I always wanted to study something related to art, so I decided to study fine art in 2017 at UNSW. My majors were painting and ceramics. After I graduated, I worked part-time as a pastry chef until September 2022, when I decided to do ceramics full-time. Where does your magical style come from? I’m an only child in my family, so when I was a…

mantelpiece Hi Jessica, what is OCD? The Office of Collecting and Design is part exhibition, part archive and part nostalgia machine. A collection of collections, it is devoted to the diminutive and the discarded. What kind of collections do you house? Hundreds of drawers are filled with countless collections. Loose doll parts, pencil stubs, dice you can’t play with, used pink erasers. On the main gallery table, we have candy jars overflowing with lost buttons, marbles and trinkets. The walls are lined with displays of rickety dollhouse furniture, empty matchboxes and lonely dominoes. Are visitors allowed? Yes! The museum is open to the public – visitors are encouraged to sit and peruse books in the Reading Room, open all the drawers, look in all the boxes, take stuff out of…

How would you like to make money – fast? I thought you might. See, I’ve discovered this amazing new investment opportunity, and it pays 30 per cent annual returns! How? Don’t worry about the how. The how is unimportant. I could show you all these charts and diagrams and things, but all you need to know is that it works. And I can prove it – look, I’m standing in front of a Lamborghini! If that doesn’t scream ‘legitimate business opportunity’, I don’t know what does. Welcome to the lucrative world of Ponzi schemes, where the money flows like water… until it doesn’t. Perhaps the most infamous case is that of Charles Ponzi – the guy after whom the scheme was named. In the early 1920s, Ponzi cooked up the…

thonet no.14 chair (1860) Some objects are so ubiquitous, it’s odd to think they had to be invented. Though you’ve probably sipped thousands of flat whites from a simple, curved-back chair like this one, it didn’t just emerge fully formed from the primordial ooze. It’s the result of years of hard graft (including bankruptcy) by German-Austrian cabinetmaker Michael Thonet, who developed a game-changing technique for bending wood using hot steam (instead of carving it by hand). Thonet’s breakthrough made it quick and easy to mass-produce and transport sturdy, affordable and lightweight furniture, like an early version of IKEA (minus the Swedish meatballs). In 1853, Thonet established the Gebrüder Thonet company in Vienna with his five sons, and set about making furniture in his signature ‘bentwood’ design style. In 1860, he…

something to say I’ll admit it. I’m a fiend for a celeb. I can’t help it – I feel like I learn celebrity gossip against my will, my fingers navigating to tabloid content online with a mind of their own. My thoughts wander to places where I, too, am a person of influence. In this world, I have chance encounters with my idols and make such an impression that I immediately become part of their circle. Truthfully, I don’t know why I entertain this fantasy – in the few close encounters with stars that I’ve managed to wrangle, I’ve behaved like an absolute grade-A loser. It’s 1999. I’m 10 years old, wearing iridescent capri pants as I queue to meet Vanessa Amorosi after a live in-store performance. I tell her…

THE TWIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD The Nigerian city of Igbo-Ora is home to so many twins, it organises an annual festival in celebration of doubles. Up-to-date stats are tricky to pin down, but a 2002 report from the BBC cited Igbo-Ora’s ‘twinning rate’ as high as 158 per 1,000 births (other countries are closer to 12 per 1,000). Locals believe the phenomenon has to do with their love of eating okra leaves and amala (a dish made from yams and cassava flour), which they claim impacts ovulation. Boffins aren’t totally sold on the theory, though – some suggest that it’s simply a matter of genetics. THE HOME OF THE ‘DOOMSDAY VAULT’ The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (colloquially known as the ‘doomsday vault’) is a highly secure facility that resides…

You might recognise Phoebe Lou as the frontwoman of Snakadaktal, the indie pop band she started with her friends in high school, or as one half of Two People, the more experimental duo she and Joey Clough formed from the ashes of their former band. Now, she’s stepping out on her own with her new solo project Phoebe Go. “I was daunted by the idea, but I felt in my gut that it was something I really needed to try to do, and that I would find a lot of meaning in doing,” she says. Melbourne’s lockdowns provided the perfect opportunity for Phoebe to write some songs of her own (when she wasn’t playing Animal Crossing like the rest of us). Writing by herself, rather than with or for a…

learn something new BOK CHOY Aka: buk choy, pak choy You might have seen this one sold under a number of different names, but just to clear up any confusion: they’re all the same thing. There are three main varieties: the big bok choy, which has crisp white stems and darker, slightly crinkled leaves; baby bok choy, which is a smaller version of the aforementioned; and finally, what most people think of as bok choy (and what the major supermarkets call ‘pak choy’) – the one with light green stems and spoon-shaped leaves. The entire bok choy is edible and is rich in vitamins C and K. These greens have a sweet taste and are a great addition to stir-fries or noodle soups, though watch your mouth – those long…

Some say that showing your houseplant kindness will help it grow, but what if the secret to a happy, healthy plant is showing kindness to yourself? That’s the premise of Kinder World – a free mobile app where you can grow pot plants by completing small self-care activities. Developed by Melbourne-based studio Lumi Interactive, Kinder World blurs the line between mental-health app and game (and evokes the vibe of a Studio Ghibli flick while doing it). The idea for the app was born during the pandemic, when Lumi co-founders Lauren Clinnick and Christina Chen were looking for mental wellbeing tools. “Apps like Headspace and Calm weren't working for us; we have millennial Swiss-cheese brains and can’t sit still long enough to meditate, so we wanted to offer people relaxing experiences…

I’m a brewer and cellar lead at Stomping Ground brewery in Melbourne; I’ve been working here for four years. Before that, I managed a craft beer bar in New Zealand. I make the beer at Stomping Ground, and a day-to-day part of my job involves tasting it, smelling it, seeing what’s going on – understanding all of that. I’m constantly looking at data to see what needs to happen to the beer – when the yeast needs to be pulled off or, sometimes, when to add fruit to it – those kinds of things. Working in the brewery is very physical – at Stomping Ground we make four batches of beer a day. A batch of beer roughly has 400kg of grain in it – so you’re having to lift…

Cub Sport’s Tim Nelson is no stranger to inward journeying. As the band’s lead singer and songwriter, he’s penned four albums that chronicle the winding path to self-acceptance, laying bare his attempts to unlearn the shame around sexuality and gender that hark back to his Pentecostal Christian upbringing. After coming out in 2016, Tim identified as an atheist. Since then, he’s married his long-time love and bandmate Sam Netterfield and written Cub Sport’s 2020 album, Like Nirvana, which was rich with religious themes. He’s now “more open to believing in something”, continuing his exploration of faith in the band’s forthcoming album, Jesus at the Gay Bar. The record borrows its name from a Jay Hulme poem that details an encounter between Jesus – who happens to be partying at a…

art attack My creative process has always been thoughtful, meticulous and detail-oriented, so when I was introduced to embroidery, it felt like I finally found a medium that complemented my style. I studied art and design at university and was offered to study abroad for a summer at the Royal School of Needlework in the UK. This was my technical introduction to hand embroidery, and I was taught Jacobean crewelwork and goldwork embroidery – very old and traditional techniques. I now use these techniques in contemporary contexts as vehicles for my own visual language. My food series began from my obsession with the egg as a motif. I found an empty robin’s nest and blue eggshells scattered on the lawn outside of my studio one day. I wasn’t sure if…