iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 11/09/2026

five years on from its premiere, Analects of Kung Phu, the 85-minute collage film I cut for artist Jason Phu, is heading overseas - it'll be on display as part of the Busan Museum of Art's upcoming exhibition Future Museology from the 26th of September through March 2027

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 18/07/2026

very successful book fair haul at Trades Hall today - particularly stoked about The Book of Fantasy

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 01/06/2026

fell down a bookplate rabbithole

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 28/01/2026

My cyberpunk video collage RESET is now on display in Singapore at ArtScience Museum as part of the exhibition Another World is Possible, which runs until 22 Feb. It was single channel at ACMI in 2024, but for this exhibition it's been fractured and placed onto a heap of screens, which is fitting.

A collection of screens - including older TV monitors and contemporary LCD screens - show clips from sci-fi films. They are arranged almost in a pyramid form.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 30/12/2025

The ten best books I read this year.

A stack of books on a table, with a small plant behind them. The books are: Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan, The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth by Adrian Duncan, The Railway Station Man by Jennifer Johnston, The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor, Fraud by Anita Brookner, Summer by Ali Smith, In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano, Randall Jarrell's Book of Stories and On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 18/09/2025

gameObject Permanence explores lost, cancelled, abandoned and shut down video games, from less-storied entries in the Sim franchise and a Superman clone for the NES to a window into the final day of The Matrix Online. Game Worlds runs until early February 2026: www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/gam...

A menu screen in the style of PS1 demo discs.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 18/09/2025

My new video work, gameObject Permanence, is now on display in Melbourne as part of the massive @acmimuseum.bsky.social exhibition Game Worlds, curated by @astroblob.bsky.social + Bethan Johnson: www.acmi.net.au/works/125360...

A grid of footage from MMORPGs is presented next to a countdown timer. Beneath the grid is a TV news-style ticker.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 22/08/2025

saw rRoxymore play at the Royal Exhibition Building tonight. entrancing stuff, though it did occur to me that you could describe some of the sound as an ambient dub take on Max Richter's Blue Notebooks

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 15/08/2025

you know what they say, one LSD: dream emulator day a day keeps the doctor away

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 15/08/2025

this afternoon I took myself to Docklands (cursed) to check out a secondhand bookshop (wonderfully chaotic)

A stack of secondhand paperback books, featuring work by Muriel Spark, William Trevor and Sarah Hall.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 16/07/2025

finally sent this in, probably wavered the most on which Mondo Rock track to select

My votes for triple j's Hottest 100 of Australian Songs - featuring The Go-Betweens, Julia Jacklin, The Whitlams, Mondo Rock, Yothu Yindi, Kylie Minogue, The Avalanches, Icehouse, The Belair Lip Bombs, Midnight Oil

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 16/04/2025

A proto-Twilight Zone episode, PKD's Time Out of Joint (1959) is entertaining and slippery on paranoia and the surveillance state before grounding out with a disappointing exposition dump twist.

Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint, moodily lit, on a balcony table.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 16/04/2025

The Wrong Case: a booze and pill-filled detective story riffing on Hammett; the content belies the form, it's messy, woozy, and eventually, even brutally, sharp.

James Crumley's The Wrong Case, a Vintage Contemporaries edition.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 16/04/2025

After Charlotte Wood, another strong lockdown story from Australia. The Burrow is a moving novel of family ties and miscommunication, both without and within. Some characterisation is a bit on the nose but still, it works.

Melanie Cheng's novel The Burrow, which sports a rabbit on the cover.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 16/04/2025

A host of Flannery O'Connor feeling in Angels until it veers abruptly into territory of its own. Bracing and upsetting, with a frankly remarkable final stretch.

Denis Johnson's Angels and a pint of beer.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 21/03/2025

I got my sister the Giramondo reissue of Alone last year, and she loved it, so I decided to read Milk. It's a strong and moving, if recursive, collection - file under: Greek diaspora, neglectful parents, lifelong sorrows.

Beverley Farmer's Milk resting on a wooden balcony table, overlooking a creek.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 21/03/2025

The Children of Dynmouth is funny, nasty stuff, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and, at times, Saki. A very strange pulled punch of an ending that gets better the more I think about it. Definitely keen to read Trevor's short stories from around this period.

William Trevor's The Children of Dynmouth and a beer.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 21/03/2025

Dept. of Speculation is short, sharp, propulsive and didn't necessarily go where I expected it to. Immediately started on it again as soon as I finished. The capsule prose reminded me of Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This.

Jenny Offill's Dept. Of Speculation on a Melbourne tram seat.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 13/03/2025

Mirrorshades was a chance op-shop find when I was in the midst of my cyberpunk video project. It's all over the place, low strike rate in quality and more a showcase of writers than subject.

The Bruce Sterling-edited anthology Mirrorshades

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 13/03/2025

My first Modiano, In the Café of Lost Youth, is Simenon by way of Paul Auster's City of Glass. Entrancing stuff.

Patrick Modiano's In the Café of Lost Youth

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 13/03/2025

The Railway Station Man is so elegantly told and constructed. Funny, moving, evocative - very keen to read more Johnston.

Jennifer Johnston's The Railway Station Man

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 13/03/2025

The Human Stain was my first Roth, and it was pulpier than expected. Didn't really care for the detective windowdressing but I enjoyed the messiness of genre nonetheless.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 27/02/2025

Have been meaning to read Gass for so long. A strange and beguiling collection - the titular story deserves all its acclaim, Mrs. Mean has transfixing sentences, The Pedersen Kid carries the Modernism baton. Icicles was a bit of a slog. The introduction in this edition, though, is essential.

William H. Gass' In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 27/02/2025

A.S. Byatt's debut owes a lot to Elizabeth Bowen (as she notes in her intro), though it really comes into its own in the back half. Knotty, messy, interesting. Amusing how often possess/possession pops up in the prose.

A.S. Byatt's The Shadow of the Sun next to a pint of Guinness.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 27/02/2025

The Thin Man: Lighter fare by design, not a bar on Confidential Op stories but a mildly entertaining diversion nonetheless. Couldn't help but picture William Powell.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 11/02/2025

My first Laing, and one that had been on my list for many years. Not sure it fully comes together in the end but the Wojnarowicz/Darger section is excellent, and there are many lovely (and often moving) sentences throughout.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 11/02/2025

Sarah Hall's Madame Zero: Mrs. Fox and Evie are worth the price of entry alone, the former absolutely floored me. Less sold on the future dystopia stories (though the wind one landed).

Sarah Hall's short story collection Madame Zero

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 04/02/2025

My first Nicola Barker and already it's very clear why she and Ali Smith are mutual (and mutual Muriel) admirers. Funny, often visceral, and shot through with a multitude of abandonments, not least our attachment to a sense of self.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 03/02/2025

The Son of Man by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo: didn't do much for me. Cinematic pretensions saddled with distractingly florid description and clunky dialogue. Seems to want to be a literary mesh of On Dangerous Ground and Leave No Trace, doesn't touch either. Neatly designed (and very tense) ending.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 03/02/2025

This Patricia Highsmith collection has been my bedside table book the past few weeks. All over the shop, really. Some seemingly solid stories just peter out. The only real highlight is When the Fleet was in at Mobile, which is chilling.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 29/01/2025

I read at least ten Simenons last year, and I'm looking to keep the pace up in 2025. This is an early Maigret, and a fairly common conceit (battle of wits gives way to war of attrition). Amusing to read it so soon after the Fantômas sequel which also has its climax in an abandoned manor.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 29/01/2025

Strong strike rate in Mary Costello's first collection; the only lesser stories are back-to-back in the back half. The China Factory, Sleeping with a Stranger, and And Who Will Pay Charon? were the highlights for me.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 29/01/2025

Some brilliant vignettes throughout Orbital (ham radio, for one), though I was decreasingly taken by the precise-seeming descriptions of the planet, which were rhythmically repetitive. Neat structure, though.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 20/01/2025

Ali Smith's fourth seasonal novel (delightful, moving) is the first to plainly be a sequel. Surprise connections were a light thrill in the middle two; here the connections are abundant. Understandable, as she sets out to chart her own theory of relativity.

Ali Smith's Summer on paperback atop the bar of a Fitzroy pub.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 18/01/2025

Finished Marzahn, Mon Amour earlier this week (I am steadily but surely making my way through the Dublin Prize winners) - personal (and often political) stories of life within and without the GDR, a light touch (it's a novel about chiropody after all), though really moving towards the end.

A very pale-looking beer next to a paperback edition of Katja Oskamp's Marzahn, Mon Amour

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 18/01/2025

solid Saturday scores (the Chekhov has been my mass-market white whale the past year)

A stack of paperbacks, including The Portable Chekhov, and books by Anne Enright, Claire-Louise Bennett and Mieko Kawakami

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 13/01/2025

The sequel came out this week here so I guess this was good timing. Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth uses whimsy as a tool, spinning a charming if clunky fable about language, memory, and cross-cultural connection. Didn't entirely land for me but a pleasant enough time.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 12/01/2025

a fortuitous Salvo's find. I got the Giramondo reissue of Alone for my sister for Christmas, and she messaged this morning to tell me it might be the best novel she's ever read.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 12/01/2025

today's pickups were worth a long walk in the rain, I'd say

A stack of secondhand books, including The Portable Henry James, Anita Brookner's A Misalliance and Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 07/01/2025

Fraud is my first Anita Brookner; I was taken in by the premise and then surprised, pleasantly enough, that it's a different novel entirely. Reminds me of Muriel Spark (Memento Mori by way of The Driver's Seat) and, for a brief spell, Middlemarch (doctoral duties).

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 07/01/2025

The Silent Executioner by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre: deeply silly stuff, and not a bar on the first Fantômas entry, though the abrupt and pithy prose has its charms.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 05/01/2025

First book of the year done, Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever - sharp and funny, intermittently gutting; a novel of fits and starts seemed fitting to start on.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 31/12/2024

I read 100 books this year (a first for me) and these were the best of the bunch.

A stack of books: Septology, The Gate of Angels, Remainder, Autumn, Surfacing, Elizabeth Costello, Solar Bones, A Shock, Human Acts, Possession, The Go-Between, No One is Talking About This, Solenoid.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 11/12/2024

a nice mention in ArtsHub's review of The Future & Other Fictions: www.artshub.com.au/news/reviews... my video work RESET is on display at ACMI until late April.

A paragraph from an exhibition review mentioning my video work RESET, which is an essayistic collage about 'cyberpunk' cinema.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 10/12/2024

currently reading I know I'm a season late but other things got in the way

Ali Smith's Spring and a pint of Guinness on a pub table, set against a tiled wall and window.

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Conor Bateman @norbateman.co · 08/12/2024

weekend pickups had been thinking about the Powell/Pressburger A Canterbury Tale this week, so Chaucer popping up felt serendipitous

A stack of secondhand books, including J.G. Ballard's Cocaine Night's and Yoko Ogawa's Revenge

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