![\"Holly](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/13510007-2.jpg\")
Holly Childs. Photo by Rose Thomas.<\/p>\n Holly Childs. Photo by Rose Thomas.<\/p>\n
A quick spin around Melbourne\u2019s Docklands reveals all the usual signs of \u2018urban renewal\u2019: cookie-cutter condos neatly stacked above estate agents and restaurants, malls, ill-conceived public sculptures and rows of well-pruned myrtle trees. Landmarks include the ice rink, the Melbourne star Observation Wheel, the Etihad stadium and notably, a Costco superstore. But the blandly affluent area has lived former lives as a swamp, an industrial zone, then was abandoned for a while, before \u2013 as post-industrial ruins\u00a0tend to do \u2013 becoming a nexus for the underground rave scene. These Docklands are the quasi-setting for artist and author Holly Childs\u2019 latest novel, \u201cDanklands\u201d, but Childs\u2019 readers won\u2019t recognise much of it. And why should they? If you\u2019ve never been to Melbourne (which looks like a fusion of Los Angeles and London\u2019s Canary Wharf), a Google streetview tour will show you areas in which virtual representation distorts physical reality. In fact, these data glitches, pixellations and\u00a0blurrily censored faces are a fitting introduction to Childs\u2019 latest tome. No Limit<\/strong> \n“Danklands” was published last December by Arcadia Missa<\/a> in London in a limited edition which sold out in weeks, hot on the heels of first novel, \u201cNo Limit\u201d, published by Hologram books<\/a> in April 2014. Like “Danklands”, “No Limit” fosters similar ideas within a less experimental narrative: it\u2019s set in Auckland, New Zealand against the backdrop of an active volcano and the threat of apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar in 2012. However, when asked why she chose New Zealand\u2019s capital as the setting for her debut, Childs is typically evasive, responding by emailing a link to a BuzzFeed article about the city\u2019s residents panic-buying chocolate milk in fear of imminent shortage. Perhaps she was trying to imitate the behaviour of some of her characters in order to further emphasise the blurred distinctions between life and art that her novels seem to thrive upon. Perhaps she was just being cute. Generation next<\/strong> \nAfter reading the book twice, one can\u2019t help but try to force a more linear narrative onto the characters and plot, even if it\u2019s just an ambient backstory. Even then one troubling question remains: What is really going on here? Answers seem few and far between, and the notion that authorial intent might guide the reader through this mysterious narrative seems utterly absurd \u2013 but perhaps that\u2019s the point. Childs tells Sleek that while she enjoys putting real or half- real things into fiction, she\u2019s creating works that don’t necessarily refer to a particular meaning, but that are more \u201cvibe or tone or texture. A wash or a gloss…and again I guess that relates to dredging and resurfacing \u2013 seeing through water.\u201d this stance is prose as mood board and being submerged in Childs\u2019s universe is at once breath- taking and bewildering. Holly Childs. Photo by Rose Thomas. A quick spin around Melbourne\u2019s Docklands reveals all the usual signs of \u2018urban renewal\u2019: cookie-cutter condos neatly stacked above estate agents and restaurants, malls, ill-conceived public sculptures and rows of well-pruned myrtle trees. Landmarks include the ice rink, the Melbourne star Observation Wheel, the Etihad stadium and notably, a…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[2570,416,2571,685,2572,2573,13,1863],"class_list":["post-20556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-arcardia-missa","tag-book-review","tag-danklands","tag-ella-plevin","tag-holly-childs","tag-hologram-books","tag-interview","tag-melbourne"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nDredging<\/strong> \n\u201cDanklands is all Melbourne<\/a>, but a paranoid mid-winter Melbourne performed on the hottest day of summer,\u201d Childs tells Sleek via Gmail, and calls Docklands \u201ca gateway to nowhere and very windy\u201d. Her book is described in the brilliant preface by Astrid Lorange as a \u201cdredgecore novella\u201d and the area\u2019s swampy origins have inspired a writing technique she refers to as \u201cdredging\u201d, recalling the process of clearing debris \u2013 both natural and manmade \u2013 from the beds of harbours, rivers and waterways.
\n\u201cThe idea of \u2018dredging\u2019, bringing things up from the bottom and the past, was one of my starting points for this novel,\u201d says Childs. \u201cIt\u2019s partially about maintaining \u2018the draft\u2019 in the final work \u2013 leaving things lying around, or pulling things up again that disrupt the surface.\u201d This \u2018dredging\u2019 gives the language its cluttered, ruptured, listicle-format style that reads like buzzy internetspeak: it\u2019s not constrained to linear formatting and contains disorienting but poetic portals to other things such as texts, ideas, graphics, videos and sounds. Any semblance of reality is fractured or problematised by Childs. The setting for the book switches between the virtual and the real in spaces that Childs describes as \u201cpersonal, discounted and discredited spaces of meaning-making. These spaces are online, in dreams, in imagination, in the future and in a sense, \u2018in secrets\u2019.\u201d As such, reading “Danklands” from beginning to end feels like logging off from a heavy browsing session, or waking from a fever dream.
\n\u201cE-create the universe every morning when you wake up. And\u00a0kill it every evening. Dream girl told\u00a0me to pare back the make-up, never look back. Logging-into-Skype\u00a0aural cue in background.\u201d (p. 5) This perspective is unmistakably millennial and is filled with\u00a0anxious characters having clipped, incoherent conversations over instant messenger \u2013 an approach which is probably quite alien to anyone who doesn\u2019t spend their lives \u2018dredging\u2019 out online identities through Tumblr, Facebook and Youtube. Take for example the novel\u2019s protagonist, Augusten. He is at once described as being \u201ccharming manipulative\u201d as well like \u201cguitar music\u201d and \u201cthermals\u201d, and exists in a fictional landscape that\u2019s composed of banal neuroses (\u201cJust wrote \u2018hey i\u2019m sad\u2019 in a text field but did not send\u201d) which is in turn set against a backdrop of inherent conspiracy theories created by Childs\u2019 constant references to 9\/11 and chemtrails.
\nAmid this paranoid world proliferates another reality composed of trendier signifiers from internationally-hyped musicians such as Kelela and Fatima Al Qadiri<\/a>, and Melbourne locals including poet Aurelia Guo and artist Andr\u00e9 Piguet. But despite this sometimes painfully self-conscious approach, Childs is nonetheless touching on some real concerns. Her characters struggle with their precarious lifestyles that are at once globalised yet isolated, and conducted from behind a computer screen, and their 140-character attention spans seem incapable of receiving or giving affection and are ultimately totally bereft of purpose and direction.
\n\u201cWe swim in the same streams in our consciousness, when we are asleep and awake. We will have many coincidences and agreements because we hold our breaths and see the other float by. Probably besties in another life.\u201d (p. 46)<\/p>\n![\"Holly](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/13510023.jpg\")
Holly Childs. Photo by Rose Thomas.<\/p>\n
\nNonetheless, both books owe no small debt to the emotionally blank style of Bret Easton Ellis, as well as the hazy sexuality and impending doom of New Queer Cinema director Gregg Araki and the cyberpunk soothsaying of writers William Gibson and Philip K. Dick. It\u2019s also clear that Childs is very aware of this cultural matrix and often includes overt references to fellow cohorts in her text. Early on in “No Limit”, several of the characters attend an exhibition entitled \u201cNot Dreams\u201d, featuring artworks by real artists including PB PR, Clara Chon and Amalia Ulman. \u201cI actually consulted the artists I included that in exhibition,\u201d Childs says.
\n“Danklands” also makes frequent allusions to post-internet art star Ryan Trecartin\u2019<\/a>s recent exhibition \u201cSite Visit\u201d, which the author saw in person halfway through writing the book and credits in her acknowledgements. \u201cSeeing Site Visit at Berlin\u2019s Kunstwerke gallery was the first time I\u2019d seen a Fitch\/Trecartin work IRL,\u201d she said and described \u201cthe manner in which space is used in Site Visit\u201d as feeling eerily similar to what she was already doing with “Danklands”: \u201ctheir work is so much about a \u2018vibe\u2019 and the dissolution of characters and rooms or walls or objects as characters too\u201d.
\nOn being asked about the drive to integrate such recognisable contemporary art and art world figures into her semi-fictional spaces, Childs says it\u2019s probably \u201cabout being from the periphery\u201d, and makes a somewhat inscrutable distinction between how art celebrity functions in Australia compared to established scenes in London, Berlin or New York. \u201cI\u2019m hyperaware of seeing but not being seen,\u201d she says.
\nBesides placing art works into the book, another of Childs\u2019 working tropes is to dredge them from the text and into reality. As part of the Arcadia Missa residency that allowed her to finish “Danklands”, Childs also curated an exhibition in London, \u201cQuake II\u201d, featuring works by Andre Piguet and Marian Tubbs. Tubbs created the book\u2019s cover artwork while Piguet\u2019s works can be found within its pages; a version of his \u201cfantasy medieval double-headed battle axe, rendered in epoxy resin, [with] handle gripped in acid lime like a tennis racquet\u201d is handed to a character named Bam by another named Andre?. Meanwhile, another axe is made by Andre? Piguet and hung, IRL, from the ceiling of Arcadia Missa in London. A clear precedent here is Reena Spaulings<\/a>, the name of sprawling art happening that encompasses a novel, a fantasy it-girl, a fantasy artist and a gallery space created by the Bernadette Corporation<\/a>, a multidisciplinary group who emerged from NYC\u2019s club kid scene in the Nineties. In both cases, confusion ensues.<\/p>\n![\"Danklands](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Screen-Shot-2015-04-08-at-16.05.45.png\")
Danklands by Holly Childs<\/p>\n
\nIf she\u2019s chronicling a generation, Sleek asks holly which of its countless labels she prefers. Millennial seems to be trending hardest but there\u2019s also Generation Y, Net Gen, Echo Boomers, 9\/11 generation and Generation We (#GenWe). She reminds Sleek of a missed one: \u201cehh ~generation next!~\u201d she writes in her web-comfy style, \u201cThe Pepsi \u00d7 Spice Girls proprietary generational tag \ud83d\ude00 <3 <3 <3 I love.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s a fitting label. As a generation growing up with instant access to information from all over the planet, we\u2019ve become conditioned
\nto expect access to the next big\u00a0thing as fast as our fibre optic broadband connections will allow us. Between the Y2k scare, 9\/11, tsunamis, nuclear disasters, Snowden\u2019s revelations and the financial crisis, it\u2019s certainly been one hell of a decade to dredge from.
\nTaken from Sleek 45, Silent Spring<\/a><\/em>
\nText by Ella Plevin<\/a><\/strong> \n“Danklands” by Holly Childs<\/a> is available through Arcadia Missa<\/strong> \nMore: Debora Delmar on green smoothies and consumer culture<\/a><\/strong> \nMore: Petra Cortright on selfies and the feminist question<\/a><\/strong> \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"