Aberrant genotype — that fractionof a species which acts in a way counter to the majority and which therefore survives when environmental conditions change.

Early this year, over a bottle of Jammo, the playwright and poet Kate McNamara, myself, and a few others of the scurrilous persuasion (writer Jacqueline Caddy, photographer ’pling, artists Neil Freeman and Brian Hincksman, publicist Susan Emmett et al) decided to set up a radical press. Thus Aberrant Genotype was born.
As a rather undernourished infant facing the coming of the so-called ‘weightless’ (and maybe jobless) economy, AGP is precocious, idealistic and will not shut up. It aims to provide an alternative publishing outlet, a focal point for visual art, philosophical debate and performance. It intends to engage in conventional and electronic publication of works both challenging and beautiful. Baby AGP was officially delivered on 11 October at Gorman House Arts Centre, after our rumbustious narrative conference Slaughterhouse and performance MotherTongue, all part of the Festival of Contemporary Art.
But why bother to embark on such an ingenuous adventure in these straitened, frightened times? Well, we retain a currently unfashionable faith in the ability of human beings to build a better world, in the teeth of the politics of economic anorexia that lead merely to a paralysing pessimism. Since the mid-70s, we believe, the west has plunged into political, social, and spiritual decline, a result of capitalism’s rush to ‘globalise’, to form an international power structure beyond the control of most national governments. Over those years, many voices have been raised against the predatory and alienating ‘individualism’ so engendered. There is now widespread opposition to this in many parts of the community, and, indeed, all round the earth. Yet the juggernaut rolls on.
In our stubborn leftist way, we believe that a flourishing of oppositional, progressive literature and art is long overdue, a flourishing which makes intelligent use of the burgeoning internet and its potential to facilitate not ‘privatisation’ but international solidarity. We wish to try in our small way to promote that flourishing.
To us, the point is not to turn back the clock to some imaginary egalitarian age; despite near-full employment, Australia in the Menzies era was far from that. But the point is even less to turn the clock back to the 1920s, back to poverty in the midst of plenty, ‘artificially’ created by the state and corporate managements in the interests of a gilded few. Even Appalling Pauline knows that we (as a nation) are richer than we’ve ever been, so why the ‘austerity measures’? Are we at war? Or are the few at war with us? Perhaps it’s time to fight back.
To that end, we want to encourage people to feel hope again, instead of cynicism or despair. To feel that it is possible to transform our society into one that is as humane, just and compassionate as we can make it. We are sick of self-inflicted starvation and the neo-liberal logic of the chopping-block.
AGP is a democratic collective. We are looking for innovative and critical work that may not be easily publishable elsewhere, work from people from culturally disenfranchised backgrounds such as Aborigines or women, work of high quality that is born of dedication and commitment. We are seeking courageous, outspoken performers across all art forms. Our baby will require all the nurturance it can get.