By the time they opened the first Museum of Rap in Fatehpur Sikri no-one could taste, smell, feel, hear or remember it anyway
Fatehpur Sikri was a city built by a Mogul king to be a perfect city; but it was on high ground and not near any lakes or rivers, so no-one ever lived there because there was no water. In 2004, the National Bank of India opened the first Museum of Rap there.
All the stars from television, film, and music were expected to arrive in cabs and step out of a painting or a limousine onto a red-carpet conveyor belt. The stars then had fifteen minutes to line up behind and then have their photos taken in a wooden picture of Beyonce Knowles, Justin Timberlake, Tupac, or the cat from Friends. Many stubborn stars refused to take their heads out of their image and stumbled around until they accidentally hanged themselves in the wood.
Outside the Museum of Rap, many entertainers have come to cash in on all the hype. Ten-year-old girls have brought their dancing bears dressed as Madonna, Brittany, and Run DMC. A dance school has opened next door for girls to train their bears using only bells, knives, and scissors. Another entertainer painted many different species of animals with black and yellow stripes, and people pay to see them raped by a real tiger.
Not-so-famous rap stars have brought their own spotlights, and have tied capes to small animals, and are dropping them from scaffolds.
Because the way everyone and everything looked was all important, people lost their sense of smell and needed dogs to smell if food had expired, and homeless people carried bees in glass jars to check if their bodies were decaying badly enough to worry about.
As people’s sight strengthened they lost more and more memory, so musicians were able to do cover versions of hits while they were still on the charts. And many sitcoms were able to use the scripts from other sitcoms the day before.
The empty water pipes of Fatehpur Sikri were used to circulate the same three or four scripts through all the TV studios and hopes of the people.
The Russians knew perfectly well that the happiness of the African animals was that they had such low expectations - before the pets were introduced
In Africa, every animal knows which animal it can eat and which animal can eat it. They are happy at the end of every day because they know they have met one and avoided the other. In the 1960s, the Russian scientists dropped lots of cats and dogs into the jungles of Africa. The pets, brought up with people, raised the expectations of the African animals about things like food, shelter, lifespan, and rugs.
The pets convinced the African animals to have just one baby, rather than their usual thirty. As a result, the next generation of only-child African animals were full of self-importance and self-esteem. Many baby African animals died thinking they could play with and boss around animals that were born to eat them. The mothers hated their one child because they wouldn’t drink all the milk their udders produced for thirty babies. And the fathers felt guilty about not being able to stop killing food for thirty when they only had one kid.
The pets convinced the African animals they could be whatever they wanted to be, and sold the African animals skins of greater animals than themselves to wear. Many giraffes drowned wearing crocodile skins, and many elephants died falling from trees wearing monkey suits. African animals wore fake skins as to trick better-looking species to mate with them, and then that one baby was hated by both parents as a sign of a lie and of gullibility. Most African animals shaved their fur so they could constantly change into other skins, and so died of a common cold instead. The Russian scientists realized that the key to happiness is keeping expectations low. Luckily for Apollo no-one believed Cassandra that in the future no-one would believe in him
Luckily for Apollo no-one believed Cassandra that in the future no-one would believe in him
Apollo had given Cassandra the ability to see the future because he considered her his earth girlfriend. Cassandra had become famous for inventing the things she saw in the future. Everyone threw parties for her until Apollo returned to earth and saw her kissing someone else, and he decided then that Cassandra could still see the future, but no one would believe her.
By the time the Greeks came to invade Troy, Cassandra was locked in a mental prison with her followers because the Trojan people said she was telling lies, plus she was going mad because no one would believe her. She was jailed for telling people that in the future there will be no Troy; no one will have ever heard of Troy; in the future, no one will believe in their heaven; in the future, no one will believe in Apollo or any of the other gods, and in the future, an army of Greeks will sneak into the city of Troy inside a ridiculously big wooden horse on the eve of a battle.
The people of Troy, who hated Cassandra for questioning their myths and beliefs, melted down all her inventions to turn them into arrows and cannon balls. And all her doctors were replaced in the army hospitals by men in god suits and gypsies with crystal balls.
All of Troy wanted to take their chances with myths and gods, rather than Cassandra’s bleak prediction that all people were just a small part of the earth’s biology. In her old age, Cassandra went completely mad; with every person she saw, she got a little piece of the future, but like a massive jigsaw puzzle with a picture, she couldn’t fit it together. She ended up living at the racetrack, mumbling to people the names of the winning horses long after the races had been won.
Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan, her sister, brother-in-law, and two guys from the newspaper the day she tried to elope
The Helen Keller pictures are about Keller’s attempt to control her world without sight or hearing. When she realizes everything in the world has a name (a word to describe it), she knows there is a life for her beyond the world of names given to her by Annie Sullivan, her family and friends. In both pictures, Keller has marked all the objects she can now name, and outlined them like a shadow board so that she always knows where they are. In the eloping scene, Helen waits by the road outside her sister’s house for her boyfriend, who won’t come because Helen’s brother-in-law threatened to shoot him if he took Helen away. For Helen, knowing the names of things was like little stepping stones away from her clinging and alcoholic assistant (Annie Sullivan), painfully boring and self-righteous friends (Mark Twain), and her hopeless and stupid family.
After everyone went blind, everyone was afraid they wouldn't be able to remember what they now couldn't see
After everyone went blind, everyone was afraid they wouldn’t be able to remember what they now couldn’t see. And everyone became overprotective of their memories and of any contradicting memories. When someone died everyone thought they should build the coffin in the shape of their memory of the dead person. Many corpses were torn apart in the fight. Some grievers agreed on a compromise but had to squash or cut off parts of the hardening corpse to fit it into the compromised coffin shape.
Fingerprints became an important part of recording where you were when your memory failed you. The city became covered with fingerprints and footprints, and it became illegal to wash any surfaces. Also, models had to be touched now instead of looked at, and it became the most unglamorous job there was.
When people couldn’t see they became more aware and afraid of the things they could never see like radio waves, love, and bacteria. Bacteria like Tibercle, Entamoebe, and Bacilli became household names, and there was even a petting zoo of bacteria.
Most people tried to keep their memories through taste. They would have cake, soft drinks and lollies to remember their childhood, junk food to remember their teenage years, and alcohol for the rest. They mainly became fat, which wasn’t a big deal because no-one could see them anyway.
The best way to remember your memories was to buy shadow boards, and the best way to make money was to build them. Everyone used shadow boards for their keys and household items, but the rich and powerful used them to remember events in their lives. They tried to convince people to recreate events to refresh their memories. And many people were put in jail for forcing people to recreate events in their lives and for kidnapping people from their past.
In the end Pavlov saw only bells and saliva
Pavlov proved that animals want to do as little thinking as possible. He proved animals will accept an easy substitute over something real but difficult. His dogs were satisfied with the sound of a bell, rather than looking for or fighting for food. In his last years, Pavlov dreamed of a world where all people were trained to be satisfied with substitutes rather than real things. Pavlov was always covered in saliva because when he rang his bells, all his laboratory animals became over-filled with saliva, as though they were feasting on a giant meal. On National Science Day, Pavlov put on an exhibit of saliva and bells at Red Square. There was a parade of fit kiddies ringing bells to start the saliva sprinklers made from deer. A dog fountain was made from putting food in dogs’ mouths and repeating the process after the food had fallen through the holes in the dogs’ throats into the saliva pool below.
There was an exhibit to show that animals will crave anything if they can suck it through an udder, and a race to demonstrate which part of the body reacts to an attractive woman. Pavlov’s dodgy brother set up a stand claiming he could train the body to lose weight with the sound of a bell; he called himself Dr. Elephant Man. Men gathered around to watch a mouse circle a pole and felt compelled to put money in bras tied up on a clothes line. The top panel is Pavlov’s heaven where everything is made of hay, and the Russian police just ring a special bell to make you see brick, metal, and skin and feel happy, anxious, or sad.
The Incomplete History of Milikapiti
Just about every problem in Milikapiti can be solved by covering it in petrol and reducing it to ashes
If you see rubbish on the ground, why pick it up when you can set it on fire? If there’s a chair in the way of the T.V., why move it when you can burn it to the ground? Just about every problem in Milikapti can be solved by covering it in petrol and reducing it to ashes.
During burning season, you are woken up on Sunday mornings by kids in nappies walking around your backyard with a 1.25-litre plastic coke bottle full of petrol and a box of matches hoping to find some tiny shrub or blade of grass that hasn’t already been burnt to a crisp. Every house in Milikapiti has an iron drum constantly billowing smoke out the front, and the community dogs have to get up on hind legs and look into the fire for the less burning things to eat. Most Millikapiti dogs have burnt noses and tongues.
In Milikapiti the dogs hang out in packs. When two packs meet each other the two lead dogs – instead of fighting each other – lie on their backs
The white men in Milikapti are all called Les, and their way of being friendly is to convince you that they are no threat to you in any way. One of the white men in charge of water said – when I asked him a question – “What would I know? I’m just a fucking dumb cunt,” while his wife stands behind him nodding approvingly. When two white Milikapiti men meet, it is a race to see who can degrade themselves as quickly and as completely as possible.
In Milikapiti, the dogs hang out in packs. When two packs meet each other, the two lead dogs, instead of fighting each other, lie on their backs in acts of total submission, while their three or four bitches stand behind them chewing nappies.
Because a man in his 30s showed his dick to the mechanic everyone was banned from the club that weekend
There are no police in Milikapiti. If someone does something bad, they are talked about behind their back until something worse happens. If it’s really bad, the community council has a meeting and decides on a punishment, which can be banned from the club for a month, banned from the club for 3 months, banned from the club for 6 months, banned from the club for 1 year.
Hardly anyone believes in promised wives and just about no one would use it as an excuse to hurt a child
Hundreds of nappies are brought in on the barge every fortnight. It’s hard to dispose of them, so some people throw their dirty nappies on each other’s roofs. Once I was sitting under the tree, waiting for the shop to open with some children, when the one still in nappies wanted money. She kept trying to sit on my lap and put her arm around my neck. It felt like when you’re unexpectedly falling and tasted like a mouthful of your own blood. Hardly anyone believes in promised wives, and just about no one would use it as an excuse to hurt a child.
On the way to Milikapiti from Darwin the guy who said he knew the way – didn’t
The four little Irish girls, still wearing their sweaty, itchy Irish outfits, started crying when they got out of the ship from Ireland at Darwin and had to get in a canoe to Milikapiti.
Fifteen-year-old girls from Ireland, whose parents wanted 15-year-old boys, often ended up in Milikapiti teaching middle-aged Tiwi mothers how to be good wives and how to pray. None of the six thought to ask directions. The four nuns were recorded as lost somewhere between Ireland and Milikapiti, 9/4/1962.
This is Dr. Clyde Fenton. In the early 1930s he brought his own broken down old plane and made himself the first flying doctor in the N.T.
Despite having a free medical clinic, most Tiwis won’t get help until the absolute last minute. In Milikapiti there are 2 nurses and a doctor flies in on Mondays. Just about everyone walks around with something bandaged.
According to his autobiography, Clyde Fenton’s sister died in China in 1936 while being visited by their mother. On the day he heard, Fenton flew from Katherine to Darwin, welded an extra fuel tank to his plane, put another fuel tank in the passenger seat, and flew from Darwin to China across the Timor Sea during cyclone season, while Japan were fighting with China without any landing permits or visas, and without telling anyone or bringing any money, and anyone who complained was some kind of “blasted dim-witted bureaucrat.”
The first prisoner of war captured on Australian territory was Hajime Toyashima who crashlanded on the Tiwi Islands on the way home from bombing Darwin
The first prisoner of war captured on Australian territory was Hajime Toyashima, who crash-landed on the Tiwi Islands on the way home from bombing Darwin. He staggered to the beach where he saw lots of Tiwi women out crabbing in low tide. Hajime grabbed one of the babies left on the dry sand as a hostage. The Tiwi women just thought he was offering to carry the baby, so they returned to the community with Hajime following behind them, yelling in Japanese with a gun to the baby’s head.
When Hajime started to hear the Tiwi men, he handed the baby back to the grateful Tiwi women and ran off. Eventually he was caught by Matthias Ungara who, before delivering him to the Whites, toured him around all the communities.
Tiwis only get bits and pieces of White culture, phrases that fall from the sky, like the leader of the tough gang who irons his Celine Dion tour T-shirt, or when a friend visited me from Germany, an old Tiwi woman wished her good luck and, “Heil, Hitler.”
When a fight breaks out everyone is so related and allied that you can’t predict who will take which side even in football games
Whenever you’re talking to a Tiwi about other Tiwis you’re always thinking, am I talking about his brother, uncle, nephew, son….
When a fight breaks out, everyone is so related and allied that you can’t predict who will take which side – even in football games. The anthropologist Baldwin Spencer in the 1920s said that when there was a Tiwi battle, people kept changing sides so everyone just went home.
It took the nuns a couple of months to realize that more girls would attend P.E. classes if it involved less netballs and more shotguns
When a really old Tiwi woman took all her clothes off and danced naked on the stage at the club, another really old Tiwi woman yelled at her, “Put your clothes on, Joan. Your possum’s dead”.
Sculptural Installation
The Incomplete History of Milikapiti
When all the Whites came to Milikapiti, they gave all the Tiwis sugar, flour, beer and the dole. The Tiwi hunters – famed for their ferocity and courage – were no longer needed to hunt and kill food for the community. The Tiwi hunters had no purpose, so they lost their self-esteem and just sat around the club drinking beer.
Because the Tiwis ate only flour and sugar their teeth started to fall out. The government provided only one size of too big false teeth for everyone.
When the Whites gave all the Tiwis ladders, everyone could get their own mangoes, so the best tree climbers in the community lost their jobs and their importance, and drank beer. Because the Kookaburras got ladders, they no longer felt they needed to fly, so their wings shrank and they put on weight.
Which was fine until they met the King Brown snake, who remembered how things used to be and killed the kookaburras, whose now tiny wings could not fly their fat bodies away from King Brown’s bite.
King Brown’s poo covered the ground all over the Tiwi Islands and was a constant embarrassment to the people and the animals.
Is there anything more humiliating than seeing your father humiliated? When the government gave everyone the dole, the proud Tiwi warriors got the same amount of money as the obnoxious baseball-cap-backwards-wearing teenagers, who got the same amount as the old Tiwi women, who got the same amount as the guy who just sleeps in the broken-down old car all day.
When the Whites gave all the Tiwis glasses, the owls with the best eyesight felt valueless. They started stealing everybody’s glasses in the community, and sometimes this created domestic violence.
