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.
Similarly, I, Jane Korman, also dream of peace and harmony and so I have embodied her persona.
For five years, from 2010 to 2015, I appear at protests and sites of conflict, inviting dialogue and trying to raise an awareness of prejudices that have been ingrained through family beliefs, fear, ignorance and the media.
Fast forward 10 years - 9.5.2024.
Since Hamas’s vicious attack on Israeli citizens on 7.10.23, the world has spewed hatred towards Israel and Jews. University campuses throughout the West - the USA, Europe and Australia - have morphed into pro Hamas hot spots riddled with poisonous rhetoric. Jewish students have to hide their identity and no longer feel safe. Signs like ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’ and ‘You are Hamas’s next targets’ are commonplace.
Jew hate is becoming normalised.
All this is no longer a bad memory - a nightmare from the past.
Today I am scared to attend these anti Israel/Zionist/Jew rallies held every Sunday in Melbourne city. 10 years ago I used to attend as many as I could as Miss World Peace. Yes they were scary then too, and I prayed I wouldn’t get a knife in my back. I held 2 flags for peace, the Palestinian and the Israeli one. The Israeli flag was always ripped from my hand.
What was the most confronting was seeing people’s faces distorted with hatred towards me - calling me a ‘f…Zionist’ because I also carried the Israeli flag. There was no-one to talk with, no chance for dialogue, only chanting and screaming.
Today the rallies are way bigger and the demonstrators are way scarier - the hatred is palpable.
What do we do with all this?
I think that now, more than ever, we need to try and pursue peace - somehow, someway.
Maybe it’s still possible to repair the fractures for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike? And a better future for the rest of us
This project is divided into 5 subsets:
Miss World Peace in The Middle East
Miss World Peace in Dead Europe
