Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons

by Eric Michaels

This is the account of the author‘s period of residence and work with the Walpiri Aborigines of western Central Australia, where he studied the impact of television on these remote communities. Sharp, exact, and unrelentingly honest, this volume records with an extraordinary combination of distance and immersion the intervention of technology into a remote Aboriginal community and that community’s forays into broadcasting.

"His tone is well-versed, casual, even intimate, and although he refuted claims that he had 'gone native,' his writing reflects a great sense of connection with and loyalty to the Aboriginal culture. As a researcher, Michaels had great strength of character, determination, and belief in his own work. The essays in Bad Aboriginal Art provided a fascinating account of a changing society by a talented, dedicated researcher whose premature death has left a void, and a legacy, in contemporary Aboriginal ethnography."
— Afterimage

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

In the foreword of Eric's diary, Paul Foss summarised his career in these terms:

"After finishing his doctorate, Eric accepted a fellowship from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra to research the impact of television on remote Aboriginal communities - eventually published as The Aboriginal Invention of Television, 1982-86 (Canberra, AIAS, 1986). He remained in the Central/ Western Desert region where he involved himself in claims by Aboriginal media associations for increased local autonomy in video production and circulation (cf. "Aboriginal Content: Who's Got It - Who Needs It", Art & Text, 23-24, 1987; and For a Cultural Future: Francis Jupurrurla Makes TV at Yuendumu, Melbourne, Art & Criticism Monograph Series, Vol. 3, 1988). At the same time, Eric became interested in the new acrylic 'dot paintings' carried out at Yuendumu and Papunya, occasioning the essays "Western Desert Sandpainting and Post-Modernism" (in Warlukurlangu Artists, Kuruwarri: Yuendumu Doors, Canberra, AIAS, 1987) and "Bad Aboriginal Art" (Art & Text, 28, 1988). With these writings, exemplary in their refusal to romanticise indigenous cultures, Eric gained a wide following in Australia for his non-ethnographic approach to Aboriginal video and art."

Michaels, E. (1990). Unbecoming: an AIDS diary. Sydney: Empress Publishing. pp. 12-13.

But, what distinguished Eric's life as much as his brilliant career was its end. Eric was one of the first known residents of Central Australia to die with AIDS. And, in typical style, he did that in a very public and assertive fashion by documenting the last months of his life in a diary that was to be published after he had gone. "Unbecoming" is a remarkable volume. It is a confronting, 'warts and all' account of what seems like everything he did and said and thought as the virus took its final toll.

Eric Michaels home page;
http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/wava/er...

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Michaels remains one of the most influential scholars in my life. This collection, with a foreword by Dick Hebdige, brings together many of his essays and reports on and with the Warlpiri Media Association. His understanding of language and the spaces of media are without equal. This is a beautifully presented collection and a fine introduction to his work.

[Velvetink]

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