AustLit

'IN 2008, FINNISH performance artist Pilvi Takala embarked on an audacious project called The Trainee. For one month, she worked as a marketing intern at the global accounting firm Deloitte. Instead of carrying out the usual responsibilities expected of this role, Takala did…nothing.' (Introduction)

'I CAN’T REMEMBER exactly how it started. With a random sighting, perhaps, of a lone surfer carving up a sunlit wave: like entering a cathedral for the first time and seeing all that stained glass. But from that point forward the sight, smell and sound of a storm swell steaming into shore exerted a devastating pull on me. I was a thirteen-year-old provincial boy from Swansea in South Wales, and already a student in the science of Atlantic swells, the way they travel to shore in neat parallel lines, in sets of three – a prime number. Swells have order but it comes from disorder; their source is always chaos. They arrive on shore in graceful step, wearing bridal veils of pale spindrift. What the eye can’t see is their fantastic propensity for violence.' (Introduction)

'Musician, singer-songwriter, author, composer – Dave Graney wears many hats. Since 1978, he and his collaborator and partner, Clare Moore, have fronted bands including the Moodists, Dave Graney ’n’ the Coral Snakes and the Dave Graney Show. But Graney’s no stranger to the world of non-creative employment – he’s worked everywhere from a Mount Gambier timber mill to London’s historic Lincoln’s Inn, all while writing, performing, recording and touring music in the UK and Australia. In this conversation, which has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity, he talks to 4ZZZ’s Ian Powne about his working life as a self-described ‘failed bludger’.' (Introduction)