Som Chai meets my family & friends
I am so excited that Som Chai is now in Oz and has been granted a partner visa.
He's met my family and friends, and even come along to Uni with me.
It is wonderful having him here with me - no more lonely nights or awkward outings on my own!
I can throw my wish list in the fire now because he fulfils all my dreams. I am so proud of him - he is charismatic, generous and kind, and he is also Budhist and a meditator!
I wondered whether there was a difference between art made by a human and art made by a machine? So I made a fan that painted, and I became a painting human fan.
Conclusion: there was no difference.
Just an Ordinary Peasant is based on my uncle’s experience as an inmate at Treblinka extermination camp in 1944. His memoir recounts that while being forced to carry corpses from the gas chambers to an open-air pyre, he was handed a sack which held little children who were still alive. The guard commanded the sack be thrown into the fire. The woman I play in Just an Ordinary Peasant is a hybrid character created from the memoirs of my uncle, my parents and my own research. She sings and dances and also throws a sack of babies into the fire. This piece explores my own biases as well as questions the culpability of ‘ordinary people’ who were accomplices to the atrocities carried out during the Third Reich.
Miss World Peace in the Middle East
In her naïve way, Miss World Peace proposes ‘peace and harmony’ in the world.
I, Jane Korman, also dream of peace and harmony, and so I embodied her persona.
For five years, from 2010 to 2015, I appeared at protests and sites of conflict, inviting dialogue and attempting to confront prejudices shaped by family beliefs, fear, ignorance, the media and social media.
I carried two flags: the Palestinian and the Israeli. My intention was to stand for peace and open a space for dialogue.
Fast forward 10 years - 9 May 2024.
Since Hamas’s attack on Israeli citizens on 7 October 2023, I have watched with growing alarm as hatred towards Israel and Jews has intensified globally. On university campuses across the West -- in the USA, Europe, and Australia - protests have become increasingly hostile, and Jewish students no longer feel safe, and sometimes have had to hide their identity.
Signs like ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’ and ‘You are Hamas’s next targets’ are commonplace and hostility towards Jews and Zionists is becoming normalised.
This no longer feels like a distant memory — -a nightmare safely in the past.
Today I am afraid to attend the anti-Israel/antizionist rallies held every Sunday in Melbourne city centre. Ten years ago, I attended as many of these demonstrations as I could, dressed as Miss World Peace. They were frightening then too, and I prayed I wouldn’t feel a knife in my back.
I carried both the Palestinian and Israeli flags. The Israeli flag was repeatedly torn from my hands.
What stayed with me most was the transformation in people’s faces — the anger, the hatred in their eyes, directed at me; the shouting of 'you f… Zionist' simply because I held the Israeli flag. There was no-one to talk with, no chance for dialogue, no listening, only chanting and screaming.
Today, the rallies are way bigger, and to me, they feel way scarier. The hostility is palpable.
What do we do with all this?
I believe that now, more than ever, we must keep on trying to pursue peace - somehow, someway.
Perhaps it’s still possible to repair the fractures, to imagine a different future for Israelis and Palestinians alike?
And perhaps we might create a better future for all of us
This project is divided into 5 subsets:
Miss World Peace in The Middle East
Miss World Peace in Dead Europe
