Junctures - The Journal for Thematic Dialogue

Venis, Jane

Review: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back (London: Routledge, 2000)

Gorman, Peter

English

"Mains Hum"

McKinney, Cushla

Review of David Edwards, Art Science: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation,(Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2008)

Day, Robin

7
Editorial
Day – Editorial – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
roBiN daY
Control and intellectual Property
The topic of this issue of Junctures is Control and this is the second time this theme has 
been chosen for an issue. It is timely that I write for this editorial on the topic of control of 
knowledge and information. This is a matter that is being debated widely with the current 
discussion about copyright and the ownership of information very quickly becoming a globally 
significant issue at present. Otago Polytechnic supports Junctures: The Journal for Thematic 
Dialogue and takes a strong position in the debate over the treatment of Intellectual Property 
and Copyright. Simply put, this position holds that decisions over Intellectual Property and 
Copyright essentially remain with the creator. Surprisingly, this view is not held widely 
amongst the governing bodies of education communities internationally. This has now led to 
initial discussions with the editors of Junctures over how our position at Otago Polytechnic 
might be better reflected in future by the journal’s acknowledgement of licensing options. I 
will return to this issue later. 
The predominant view is that decisions over Intellectual Property and Copyright tend to be 
vested in the institution in which an academic works through the employment relationship. 
Institutions in this way retain ownership over material developed and can and do retain the 
rights to any commercial benefits of opportunities that may arise from this ownership. The 
effect of this is that Intellectual Property is locked up through mechanisms of control over 
how information and research are used. This creates very real problems over the future use 
of research and information and the ownership of Intellectual Property. The re-use of and the 
development of future knowledge are considerably constrained by legal complexities and by 
the mechanisms of ownership of Intellectual Property and Copyright. 
The development of open access publishing and, more recently, the call for open access 
to educational resources have followed the rapid development of the Internet. Significant 
changes to the way in which we seek information, use information and transmit information 
by the use of the Internet has led to shifts in thinking around the publication of material from 
what has previously been a paper-based system to a fully digital system. In the digital domain 
a paper-based system limits the opportunities around how information can be stored, used, 
8 Day – Editorial – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
re-used and developed and opportunities for knowledge creation and development are lost 
through the paper- based mechanisms of control over information and the dissemination of 
research. 
The number of Open Access Journals has rapidly evolved. Currently the Directory of Open 
Access Journals lists, at least at the time of writing this editorial, some 3698 journals in the 
directory of which 1275 are searchable at the article level, and some 213487 articles are 
available in the directory.1
Recently the Australian Government – as an outcome of a significant review of the National 
Innovation System, a report that talks about transforming Australia in the global context 
of innovation,2 – supported a recommendation that “Australian governments should adopt 
international standards of open publishing as far as possible. Material released for public 
information by Australian governments should be released under a creative commons 
licence.” A further recommendation is that where research content is funded by the 
Australian government this “should be made freely available over the internet as part of the 
global public commons.”3 This is a significant step and is being supported by a significant 
fund of $A25 M in order to enable the initiative. 
Most recently JISC in the United Kingdom announced a ₤5.7M initiative to pilot the 
development of open educational resources which includes all and any tools that support 
access to knowledge under an Intellectual Property Policy that promotes open use sharing 
and adaptation.4 
Otago Polytechnic has an innovative Intellectual Property Policy and has received significant 
national and international interest in this. The Wikieducator platform5 lists Otago Polytechnic 
as a featured institution because of its innovative Intellectual Property Policy.6 
While Junctures has remained relatively silent on the matter of ownership of material, it 
clearly vests the ownership of copyright – as under the standard copyright protocols – with 
the authors. Thus, the control over decision-making regarding the publication of material in 
Junctures is retained with the rightful owner, the author. It does, however, behove us to re-
consider the issue of copyright and the use of creative commons licensing as an alternative 
mechanism that provides for authors to make decisions about the use of and rights to the use 
of their work. The Creative Commons attribution licence framework provides a way forward 
for individuals to exert their ownership in the ways that material may be used, shared or re-
used.7 This is a discussion that we are beginning to explore and we will be progressing this 
over the next few months at Otago Polytechnic in order for our journals, for example Junctures, 
to stay current in relation to international shifts concerning licensing options. Discussions at 
Otago Polytechnic about these matters are informed by a spirit of supporting research and 
the dissemination of information, rather than by a need for unnecessary control.
I hope readers will appreciate this issue of Junctures and will consider the material included 
as pertinent to issues of control in our contemporary society. George Petelin presents a 
stringent critique of tertiary institutions’ control over academic life – the very kind of control 
we at Otago Polytechnic are trying to avoid through, for example, our Intellectual Property 
9Day – Editorial – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
Policy.  David Roach and Andrea Egan consider how an equivocal definition of indigeneity in 
New Zealand impacts on Māori self-determination. Lyn Plummer explores issues of control 
through language – spoken and visual – in her artist’s pages referring to her life in Papua 
New Guinea. Pirkko Markula explores the framing of the obese body in a control society. 
Deborah Crowe visualises control through her tightly ordered and structured drawings for the 
woven construction of textiles. Patrick Crogan delves beneath the choices afforded us by an 
instance of popular gaming to expose the limitations and controls which become clear under 
scrutiny. Nhu Tien Lu’s assemblage of creative fiction and non-fiction in various voices brings 
the tragedy of domestic control and violence home to the reader. Ruthann Robson’s story 
suggests the mechanisms of gendered control across academia and the world of strip clubs 
and includes pointers to sexual difference and preference and the concomitant struggles for 
control. Poems by Roberta Feins, Scott Wiggerman and JD Smith subtly play with issues of 
control and add layers of meaning to this issue of Junctures; as do review essays by Michael 
G Martin and Max Oettli, respectively on control of paedophilic urges in Barbara Gowdy’s 
Helpless and on the control of photography in North Korea as instigated by The Ministry of 
Truth: Kim Jong IL’s North Korea with texts by Christian Kracht and photographs by Eva Munz 
and Lukas Nikol. As an assembly, this group of contributions provides much food for thought 
about control and – in some cases – about its more sinister effects.
1 See http://www.doaj.org/ as last accessed on 15 November 2008.
2 See http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx as last accessed on 15 
November 2008. Recommendation 7.8, p. 20. 
3 See above: Recommendation 7.14, p. 21.
4 See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2008/10/openaccess.aspx as last accessed on 15 
November 2008. 
5 See http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page as last accessed on 15 November 2008. 
6 See Policy. http://wikieducator.org/”Otago_Polytechnic:_An_IP_Policy_for_the_Times” as last 
accessed on 15 November 2008. 
7 See http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/ as last accessed on 15 November 2008. 
Robin Day is Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of Research at Otago 
Polytechnic/Te Kura Matatini ki Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Dr Day received his 
PhD from the Flinders University of South Australia on the topic of recognition for prior 
learning and is currently charged with implementing Otago Polytechnic’s Intellectual 
Property Policy.


Control and Intellectual Property

Mare, Estelle Alma

Architectural Quality in the Group Design of Historical Sacred Places and its Decline in Modern Architecture

Evans, Marian

Review: "Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies"

Enszer, Julie R

55
Julie R enszeR
The Former Prime Minister 
I hate how these women hide themselves beneath head scarves,
she says and for once I don’t disagree, I don’t try to understand, 
I don’t try to see all sides, I just sip my diet Coke; I look at the woman
two tables away, a few strands of her hair have fallen across her face; 
I want to tuck them in; in twelve hours, I will be at the airport, stamped 
and ready to leave for Thailand; I will be exhausted and sick. It is ironic: 
I will have a sore throat, not from my talking but from my silence in the face 
of the rhetoric of the former prime minister – he wants to incite 
opposition to the US war so he throws verbal red meat to this largely 
Muslim crowd. The Jews this; the Jews that. The Jooosss control America;
the Jooosss control all of the banks; the Jooosss control Hollywood. Unoriginal.
Misguided. Wrong. But I tell myself, there is not a leader of a Muslim country 
who doesn’t serve up such pork fat to his people. I am uncomfortable, 
but I am silent; I get a massage, I buy a Turkoman carpet. 
The next afternoon he speaks in solidarity with the holocaust denier jailed 
in Austria, he asks, Where is his freedom of speech? Ironic from one 
who jailed many: children from Australia, his own deputy PM. He asks, 
Why can we not question the number six million? He asks, What if 
it was 5,999,999? He passes it off as a joke. It’s not funny. Then he talks 
about Auschwitz. He says, There was nothing found there after the war. No camp.
No oven. That evening, we boycott the final formal dinner; I stare at the hair
of the woman two tables over. I will go to the airport early the next morning 
shrouded by darkness. I will keep thinking about the woman wearing 
a Donatella Versace scarf as a hajib; pink, grey and textured, made 
from the finest silk. I will wonder if she bought it in Italy. I will wonder
if she spoke to the shop clerk with her perfect, British-accented 
English or if she spoke perfect Italian also with a British accent. 
I want to touch her scarf, her head, her hair. I don’t. I study 
the lines beneath her scarf: her ears, her tied up hair, her skull. 
I imagine them as my own. I want to believe in some sort of transcendent 
feminist sisterhood: Donatella, Zarina, and me. I want to believe 
she isn’t thinking about the final solution for the Jews. My throat hurts. 
I tie my hair back in a knot. I board the plane. I walk away.
Julie R Enszer is a writer and activist living in Maryland. She has previously published 
in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, 
Bridges, and the Jewish Women’s Literary Annual. In addition to writing poetry, she 
is currently writing a novel.
PoeM
Enszer – Prime Minister – Junctures, 9, Dec 2007


"The Former Prime Minister"

Beevors, Michele

80
MICHELE BEEVORS
Debbie does Disney (Notes to Self)
Michele Beevors, 005-06, Debbie Does 
Disney, resin and paint, approx.  metres 
high (courtesy of the artist).
ARTIST’S PAGES
In Revenge of the Crystal,1 Jean Baudrillard 
sets out to explain our relationship to  different 
types of objects. He explains these relationships 
through the psychoanalytic theories around fetish, 
castration and substitution, a replacement for 
and a longing to return to a point of origin. The 
bygone object and the attendant sentimentality 
attached to it, are symptomatic of that longing, 
while the gadget (an ipod shuffle for example or 
an automatic can opener) are connected to us 
through use. Baudrillard describes the state of 
play within capitalism where all commodities fall 
within the categories of luxury, degradation and 
conspicuous consumption. Continuity is assured 
to the collector through ownership. 
As capitalism has evolved, more and more new 
forms of commodity live for a moment and 
then are discarded without delay. The pure 
commodity form is one that obeys the law of 
planned obsolescence, over and over again, 
almost instantaneously, worn out by the time 
you have unwrapped the package. The pure 
commodity comes without the slightest vestige of 
functionality. It obeys only the laws of commodity: 
new-instantly-old.  Movie merchandise is the 
prime example of the pure commodity form. It just 
exists, without use, and without history, and then 
you forget about it. It sits in a drawer, taking up 
space, a coloniser of overlooked spaces.
Beevors – Debbie Does Disney – Junctures, 6, June 006
81
If the pure commodity form is without history then 
it does not assure the collector a connection to the 
past. What is our relationship to them? 
Is the pure commodity form (without function and 
origins) a remembered construction or cultural 
fantasy?
This is a fantasy that only ever existed in the Disney 
version of childhood and in the la la land of Hollywood. 
Disney merchandise is the prime example of the way 
commodities’ authenticity and lineage are created in 
the company itself. The myths of creation attributed 
to Walt ignore the workforce of hundreds of (albeit 
Disney) trained animators, imaginers and cleanup 
artists. Insider jokes from one movie to the next blur 
any reference to a point of origin (everyone laughs 
anyway). The stories of Cinderella, Snow White 
and Sleeping Beauty were moral tales designed to 
illustrate the consequences of bad behaviour. greed 
and envy are replaced by a banal formula, now selling 
toxic waste to China.
Disney has translated these horrific moral tales into 
sentimental and banal tripe so they can be used 
to sell other commodities ad infinitum. A truncated 
list of available merchandise in the Princess range 
includes:  bedspreads and canopies, pencils, rulers, 
makeup, computers, dolls and figurines. These are 
designed to encourage the child to sit, but not for the 
child to do. All of the merchandise Disney produces 
becomes collector’s items just the same. More than 
any collector of contemporary kitsch could ever hope 
for. 
Michele Beevors, Psychokiller and 
Friends, 004, resin and paint, 
approx. 4 and 3 metres high 
respectively (courtesy of the artist).
 1 Baudrillard, Jean. “Subjective Discourse or The Non-functional System of Objects”, in Revenge of 
the Crystal (London: Pluto, 1990), 35.
Michele Beevors trained on postgraduate level at the Australian National University 
in Canberra and at Columbia University in New york. She is a sculptor who exhibits 
widely in Australia and New Zealand and is Head of Sculpture and a senior lecturer in 
the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Beevors – Debbie Does Disney – Junctures, 6, June 006


"Debbie does Disney" (Notes to Self)

Lonie, Bridie

Review: François Cusset, "French Theory, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis" (Paris : Editions de la Découverte, 2003/05)

Morseth, Martha

 65
MARTHA MORSETH
Reclaiming the Space
I’ve decided to reclaim the footpath, 
not all of it, 
just a narrow strip of concrete 
I fleetingly occupy occasionally.
I will stand my ground by walking staunch,
refusing to give way to broadshouldered young men 
marching towards me in collision course. 
I’ll no longer step into the gutter
when morphing teenage ectoplasm materialises or 
single-minded, Cyclops businessmen 
power down on me. 
Under my arm I’ll carry an umbrella 
with a long metal tip.
I’ll point it like a trident and say,
           ‘Oh, I am sorry’ 
when I skewer a miscreant who doesn’t stay left, 
someone who doesn’t obey the rules,
someone who is reluctant 
to give an old lady some room.
Dunedin writer Martha Morseth has published widely in New 
Zealand magazines and literary journals and has published 
a collection of poetry: Staying Inside the Lines (Titahi Bay: 
Inkweed, 2002).
Morseth – Reclaiming the Space – Junctures, 5, Dec 2005


"Reclaiming the Space"

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