Articles

Bruce Russell writes about the history of New Zealand DIY electronic music, which he argues sprang from a strategy of “mis-competence”. That is a deliberate misuse of instruments and audio equipment to achieve a sound beyond the machinations of the music industry. Misuse, Russell says, is the defining feature of New Zealand sound work. This article was originally commissioned in 2012 by White Fungus for the first issue of its sister publication The Subconscious Restaurant.

Roger Boyce explores through lucid, evocative prose the photographic still lifes of New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington. Casting an eye back across the history of painting, Boyce addresses the rich pathos of Pardington’s photography and its visually arresting forms. He describes in them an audacious “through a glass darkly” veneration of things and their inviolable circumstance, an amor fati.

Yao Jui-Chung is one of Taiwan’s most prolific and esteemed contemporary artists. In 2020, White Fungus editor Ron Hanson interviewed Yao for a major profile on the occasion of the artist’s mid-career retrospective, Republic of Cynic, at C-LAB in Taipei. The feature was to be published in a new online Japanese art magazine commissioned by a Tokyo art collector. After the project was aborted due to a clash over the publication’s title, this profile sat dormant in our archives for almost four years. It has now been published for the first time.

Sydney noise musician Lucas Abela, AKA Justice Yeldham, is one of the avant-garde's most electrifying performers. Playing music by orally manipulating mic'd-up shards of glass, he employs a range of unusual vocal and rhythmic techniques. His performances can be extreme, even bloody, but are also notable for the rich diversity of sounds he achieves through this rudimentary instrument. White Fungus editor Ron Hanson spoke to Abela about his unique musical trajectory and how a pandemic-enforced break from the stage altered his approach.

In the wake of the Covid pandemic, bats have once again been unfairly maligned. As the go-to scapegoat of choice for many, some even called for the mammals’ eradication. In Batlove Redux, Tessa Laird, author of the book Bat, part of Reaktion’s much-loved Animal series, mounts an impassioned defense of these marvelous creatures. Laird celebrates bats, recalling art and literature inspired by the mammals, while raising the alarm over their plight amidst a warming planet. She recalls her own heartbreaking experiences volunteering to rescue flying-foxes during forest fires at Yarra Bend Park in Australia.

In the realms of Taiwanese noise, sound, and media art, no figure is more influential than Wang Fujui. As an artist, publisher, curator, and organizer, Wang’s contribution to establishing these fields in Taiwan has been indispensable. In 2014, Alistair Noble interviewed Wang about his artistic trajectory. The interview was first published in the 14th print issue of White Fungus but is now available here.