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Hextape

@soft_jaws

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Femme bike workshop and publishing project. Info and bike service bookings —>

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Workshop open again for bike servicing and 1-on-1 mechanics classes, one woman operation, North Melbourne, sliding scale. Here to make bikes accessible/recyclable/not so serious.

- $60-180 sliding scale to service your bike, plus the cost of any larger components that need replacing - which can be your choice of new or refurbished, priced accordingly. Service free for mob.
- 1-on-1 mechanics classes, sliding scale $30-80 for 1.5hr session
- One week turnaround for services, same day for small things (tube change etc), availability depending

Looking forward to meeting you and your bike. Details and booking link in bio.

Pics 1 and 2 by @yaseera.jpg 🤎
3 and 4 from the mechanics class I teach at the Bike Shed by @soft_jaws

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8 months ago

“The ones happy to die politically on this hill they insist on calling Arapiles in defiance of those who survived their ancestors literally dying on Dyurrite. Yes, surely all this quagmire needs is some Age of Enlightenment round table ruled by rationalism to carve out a solution that sidesteps cultural heritage and colonial responsibility alike by half a metre, climbing route intact.”

‘An Uphill Battle’, issue 8 of Soft Jaws is up, on the Sisyphean route to the bottom taken by rock climbers over Dyurrite mountain in Wotjobaluk Nations Country, western ‘Victoria’ and my own decision to never climb it again. It is a long one, and was a long time coming. Huge thankyou to my illustrators Dom Sargent and Leonie Brialey, editor Priya Kunjan, to Sanch and others for the insights, and the Traditional Owners who have so generously made knowledge available to us; knowledge that is already staring us in the face.

Link in bio to read or listen. by @soft_jaws

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2 months ago

‎ليش في كثير عسكر؟ / Why So Many Soldiers? The films Of Samia Mikhail at Dukkana, 9 August

The works of filmmaker Samia Mikhail explores the enduring presence of Lebanon’s civil war. “I was crossing every day between west and east Beirut,” Samia says. “One day I was queued up at the barricades behind two women with suitcases, returning to the country. They kept asking in French ‘pourquoi il ya tent boucoup de soldiers?’” Shot on 35mm film, her works combine tableaux, stop motion, luscious set design and encyclopaedic knowledge of her city of Beirut.

Please join us for a screening of Samia’s films and a talk by the artist, and music by Farnaz Shahimi and Blood of a Pomegranate in collaboration with Bensin and Hextape. Refreshments from Samia’s garden and tea will be available. At Dukkana, 99 Harding Street Coburg, Wurundjeri Country, Sunday 9 August, 5-8pm, $10 entry.

Samia is a filmmaker, writer and interpreter, as well as a prolific gardener, life of the party, and my dear friend and exacting Arabic teacher. She describes herself as a leftist who doesn’t believe in countries or war.

Farnaz Shahimi is an Iranian Tanboor player who began her musical journey with Santoor, a traditional Persian instrument, before falling in love with the Kurdish Tanboor and dedicating herself to it for the past 20 years. Before moving to Naarm in 2019, she performed for a decade as a soloist and with ensembles on various stages in Iran (where I was lucky to first meet her and hear her play).

Blood of a Pomegranate is a Soviet born Armenian diasporan folk-industrial-noise musician making art against the nation-state. She will collaborate with Bensin and Hextape for this special duduk-forward set. ❤️ by @soft_jaws

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2 months ago

Come to the Bike Shed party next Sat where we are raising money for our mutual aid bike projects. This event has my greasy prints all over it: an alley cat race (rip mess life; for the uninitiated it’s like a bike scavenger hunt); an art exhibition (of all the entries to our recent mural comp, because you can take the girl out of community arts, etc); bike tarot; live music from some of our talented volunteers, staff, and mechanics course grads including electro acoustic music made with bike wheels and maybe a bell orchestra; and me and Bee will DJ for ya as Double Butted using the old Vapor Noir sub.

The Shed is a place of lore, larger than life characters, ridiculous bikes, beautiful people, and a place I’ve come to feel at home as a mechanic (see pics). While I’ve been there we’ve fixed up and given away around 100 bikes a year to orgs like Palestine Australia Relief and Action, Wheel Sisters, River Nile School, and more. Now we want to get a big new batch of bikes fixed up for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and to run our mechanics course free of charge for folks in their network.

Come along or buy some raffle tix if you can’t, to support. Links at @thebikeshed.brunswick by @soft_jaws

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3 months ago

My bike was stolen from my unit’s bike lockup in Brunswick East last night. I made the frame myself, built the wheels, and built it all up. Has a clapped out SRAM Rival group set on it, C17 saddle and no name because it was made in a shed to fit my body and has done 1,000s of km since it was built as my daily three years ago. It’s probably already in pieces in a chop shop but the brazing, stays and dropouts are fairly recognisable if you see the frame around. by @soft_jaws

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4 months ago

1. Me and Serge at the Bike Shed. This 84 year old Italian stallion does more for fem mechanic visibility than the rest of brunswick combined!
2. Doms hands full of upper Merri prickly pear
3. The Afghan film festival in Dandenong, all time greatest bikepacking trip
4. Nights in Samia’s sunroom فصحى classes
5. Hiking Mt Feathertop
6. Fire bath at Loz and Tiffany’s which I made way too hot and had to wait 3 hours to get in
7. Rosh Hashanah in Braitling
8. Billie’s flame
9. Trying to sleep thru a Newhaven sun
10. One of Dad’s paintings by @soft_jaws

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4 months ago

Soft Jaws is now a zine too, for turning the page as God intended. If you want to, they can be ordered from the web shop I somehow managed to set up, link in bio. The online version will keep rolling as usual; paid subscribers will receive a zine in the mail with each new digi issue published 👀

Thankyou so much to everyone reading, it really means a lot!

Background paintings by Dom Sargent, Rosy Murphy, Anna Savage, Camille Therese, Sidney Nolan, and unknown. Bag by me =) by @soft_jaws

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4 months ago

What does the Australian wheat belt have to do with the wars on terror? The conquest of bread and Y2K deja vu, oil and fertiliser, WMDs and hard to find nukes. Issue 7 ‘No Bread For Oil’ is up on Substack, read or listen but other way check out the genius illustrations by Dom.

New newsletter name, after a favourite workshop tool used for handling delicate or strange-shaped objects in a vise grip — may I be so lucky in writing.

Thankyou Priya for the edits and thanks everyone who tunes in and subscribes. by @soft_jaws

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6 months ago

My film ‘La Duree’ will be live-scored — me on cello, @samc.wav on electronics — in a rare return to putting on secret location shows, in collab with @cazzo_di_b & @good__mess__ :~)
La Dureé is about the iron horse, time travel, and risking your life as a way of honouring it. I’m looking forward to playing cello alongside Sam, who is coming over from Ōtautahi just for this (!), having become a dear friend of correspondence ever since he asked me to contribute to a sample pack fundraising for the Beirut Synthesiser Centre.
Sunday, 8 Feb from 4:30PM, with sets also from Bensin, Babyxxan, Happy Axe x Lieverd, Modern Cylinders, Skriv, and a live score also from Approximate Man. Message for location or if you’d like to help out. by @soft_jaws

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8 months ago

3 years j’adoring Dom by @soft_jaws

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10 months ago

‘Too many DJs, not enough justice’, about the effective disarmament of our revolutionary spirit by contemporary art and its insatiable appetite for subaltern confessionals and aesthetizised evidence via Forensic Architecture, Calais, Palestine, and Narrm. How much ~contemporary art speaks truth to power or works as counter-forensics; how much is unwittingly shepherding insurrection into a shallow ditch of perceiving, being perceived, mooching around etc?

Link bio / please subscribe / thankyou to everyone tuning in. Illustrated by my love Dom, edited by dear friends Yaseera and Priya by @soft_jaws

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a year ago

works July 2024-July 2025
1, 2. Stained glass handbags worn by @flaneuxe
3, 4. Strobes Are On The Nose musical with @our.carlson, @goldenscissorpuppets and comrades for @darebin_arts
5, 6. Apocrypha circus show score for @oozingfuture
7, 8, 9. Essay on @extr.emelyne for @liquid_architecture
10, 11. Video essay with @yaseera.jpg for @latrobe_ai
Thanks to everyone involved :-) by @soft_jaws

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a year ago