Join us for the Meanjin/Brisbane launch of Un Magazine 18.1. Hear editor Tara Heffernan in conversation with contributors Daniel McKewen and Yannick Blattner. This issue considers the badaud as a defining subject in contemporary culture. ‘The badaud’, according to the Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (1867) ‘is curious; he is astonished by everything he sees; he believes everything he hears, and he shows his contentment or his surprise by his open, gaping mouth.’ Easily entertained, but always seeking novelty, the badaud is the ideal consumer, imbibing a pervasive strain of conventionality and anti-intellectualism. Though the badaud has never had the reach of its iconic counterpart, the flaneur, the term might perfectly suit the contemporary subject.
-
Tara Heffernan is an art historian and critic presently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her work concerns modernism, the avant-gardes, and the lineages of the New Left. She regularly contributes to Melbourne’s Memo Review and national and international publications like Artlink Magazine, Third Text Online, and Overland. She was a judge for the 2025 Darling Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
Daniel McKewen is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art at QUT, Meanjin/Brisbane. His work investigates the intersections of popular screen culture, economics, and politics, and has been exhibited at Art Gallery of South Australia, UQ Art Museum, and Australia Centre for Contemporary Art, and in the 2014 Sydney Biennale.
Yannick Blattner is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based artist who explores the intersection of labour and leisure, interrogating their class-laden values and evolving cultural expectations. In 2022, Blattner was commissioned to create a large-scale installation for the opening of Coffs Harbour’s Cultural and Civic Space, received second prize at the Redland Art Awards, and was a runner-up in the National Emerging Art Prize.
