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Audiovisual Cultures episode 108 – 2021 End of Year Guest Showcase automated transcript


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hello and welcome to see this twenty eight twenty one and if you're gassed showcase we made it very another year we had some really fantastic guests here on audio visual cultures through quite the past year whether you've recently joined us or you're just here for the good parts this recap of highlights is free a I'm Paula Blair and in making audio visual cultures I investigate a wide range of areas and audio visual media and the creative industries these include cinema television streaming live performance music audio production and the visual arts and much more anything you can think of that might be considered audio and or visual culture that's what we're in today so the issue has been going since March twenty eighteen and we've covered a lot of topics since then in the past year I've re branded the podcast opened its own dedicated YouTube channel and have been learning more and more ways of making improvements and sign quality editing my performances and interfere and communicator on how to get the show right there and better ways are incredible patrons at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures have been instrumental and supporting all that work and I can keep going but cite them and there are loads of exclusive extras and early releases on pitching on so please stay find a satire and consider giving regular support to sustain and improve this show fires are our hosts a cast have also been tremendous and offering training and tools to facilitate marketing in rage so banks thanks to them as well if you follow AV cultures part on the socials you may have seen this year Spotify rocked three which we learned we've been dying noted in twenty two two countries in the past year which I'm really bowled over by I am I'm just so grateful anyone's listening a toll but the idea that strangers and countries I've never been to your last thing not so exciting and I'm really grateful massive thanks to everyone where ever and higher for your last name we've got more great things coming your way and twenty twenty two so I really hope you stick with us for the rest of this episode we're going to go through some highlights of twenty twenty one we hit the ground running and January with two fascinating discussions with filmmaker Justin McAleese and urban planner missed office Shareef was both in different ways talking about storytelling hopefully when you get on sat a lot of your decisions are already made because you've made them with the producer the director or the writer whoever happens to be in your you know what you're trying to accomplish and I mean really that's what it comes down to it's not like oh what do I want to do in this situation that's like very forced tear sort of concept you want to be like what serves the story what will help the director accomplished the most amount of information in the least amount of time it really that's what you're trying to do David Fincher American director has a quote you know like basically my job as directors deciding what information to give out when and that's really what directing is about and and by proxy that's what cinematography is about is putting people with a sense of what the context is what the vital information about a frame is in where to leave their eyes and how to feel about it so consciously without even attempting to tell them why do you feel about a certain way with the actors of the dialogue or the action or any of that stuff just like you know one second and you're like oh I get what this is when when I was young and now may bind to hold but anyway so I I'm listening to Ted talk on YouTube I was very inspired by that and it what makes it Ted talks special is the way they tell the story it's not like a lecturing university or a TV program that's why it's so special and I was like okay but how about mixing this kind of story is and then the plot casting and urban planning and also L. like after work are you doing I am part of statics Stockholm team and what we do is like I do content researching medical select co coaching people how they talk and giving feedback about their speech I was trying to combine that not makes a boring lecture and not to like sort of stand up comedy or something you know I want something like as a how white would love to listen to we all know that's it why we like TV shows and seriousness as a storytelling like it's art and culture is about storytelling so I wanted to do with the podcast says something like this like this format is not going to be like a feeling that you're in the police station like a question and answer you know like okay what's your name what do you do what's your project because there are many puts us like this and when you hear when you listen to them you you feel sometimes bad for the kids to be back home but give him some time to briefing notes express himself or something like this so I decided and I tried my best to that leave the platform open to the guest because it's not like Mustafa sherry fair podcast it's urbanistic out and ideal for many suggest that people are the storytellers because I'm listening to them and learning I can start my own show and talk but today most urbanised case listening and learning because this is the goal every guest is the storyteller I just leave them to talk just like how you doing now like you just you know leave the flow and that's always a good flow when you give people the the freedom to express themselves and always I don like control so much for the questions just like a main questions and then see what happened because in the end what comes from heart ghost others people's hearts so it says that there is like it and aim why I say the guess is a storyteller because the format of the ports gas is a kind of story to inspire us because the aim in the end it's about us getting inspired by people and hopefully we transform this inspiration to actual action in our offices when we really work with the projects in February I had the great pleasure of connecting with artists and performers Shay Donovan hello we got into some tough topics there was a lot of joy and positivity and her approach to working online during Oct nine part of my philosophy a little bit here has been to kind of resist adapting existing work to the digital space which I see a lot of people do beautifully and I think there's a need for that and that's a great way to exercise practice that that's your you know what you're feeling called to do but I think for me what I've been enjoys creating work specifically within these restrictions like being very intentional about embrace those restrictions and those obstacles and maybe mine them for a different way of making work rather than trying to adapt my normal practice within the constraints of the digital space I've been enjoying creating collaborating in new ways just in fun March was a bumper Munson database three fantastic episodes as well as celebrating the podcasts third anniversary with a special offer on P. Treon and freshening up the branding I had a great time talking with artist Clinton Kirkpatrick then producer towards MMN archer Katrina Michaels I'm production manager tab appeared safe from all duties entertainment followed by filmmakers large hand rakes and Nissan R. A. can here's Clinton toss could train at Debra Larson Nissan talking about creating characters and world building yes it's kind of like for me you know there is a lot of I realized a lot of hard storytelling and even one during the line of my research and my own destinations like all right Bach to your soul G. S. and then within the solar cheap what creation myths are I'm actually in the process of investigating various creation myths that have existed throughout human history in all different cultures what I'm doing is I'm checking pieces of the box you know whether it is modern day creation mess or Egyptian creation myths or whatever creation method is misty slow characters to come into my work I've read this creation myth recently where you these logs all from the sky and they create this ball you marshy area and then from this the first Youmans cute today I'm just like this is the right way you know it is the heart of storytelling heart arts for me that is my work is people look at my work and I'm like what is not or your moderator I listen to it all over the years really care either but it's like I listen to it all but I always think if you take the time any artist we have to see what they're doing to walk to invest it up but certainly for me when you start to investigate what might work as smaller practices there is a whole lot where you know there's a whole lot of world's arms you know hello world see arms there's a lot more still to come you know when we created this to really give it that immersive experience we asked all of our performers not only bring their characters to life but bring their characters to reality in the fact that we asked for Facebook pages to be created or Instagram accounts or linked in or you know we wanted to give them an online presence that our audience could go and find these characters in the real world each of their characters has a website that is dedicated to their characters professional backstory so for those audience members that want to really go down the rabbit hole to really explore their opportunities to find hints of these characters living in the on the internet so and I know between you've got some fun stories of guests that have reached out to you but I want you to speak if you can the creation process of trying to help build this character not just when you are on stage for that hour and a half but that lives in the real world I mean it was a fascinating experience to me because I am used to the rub us %HESITATION for instructing my character based on the clues in the tax and healing back to the technical in this case I'm creating the taxed the text is nearing it's it's very it's a flip of that kind of process but the exciting thing about being engaged in that creation is that you know the material so well my carrot so what's in the box and I can rattle off the drinks menu and like you know when in doubt to give extra Fulda to rely on and I have a lot of fun my car is a mystery themes box so I got to come up with the most terribly punny names such as the George all Mancini on the picture of Dorian gray Bruce Rankin steam %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION bill and I have so much fun and so then I can make a game throughout the show all kind of assigning a signature cocktail to aghast and you know that he's here a lot had to go back to you it's fun and it's it is interesting having online presence with the character of I've had people reach out to me through my character my keys Instagram and I think Jim would leave like they think I am ninety there are elements of me he and Maggie had but I've not bought Tenda musician on the lot I got but it's it but it's really like someone was asking when my next gig was and I was like I mean but we've actually from my apartment that that okay it's funny how it's fabulous it's state like how much they invested in the lead in the wild and I think having those clients to you you know we have like will also %HESITATION connected on social media and things and having this carrot to how those elements as well grounds %HESITATION as a human one of the videos of my characters Instagram is me playing accordion and I haven't you know people reach out to me asking about the accordion which I will always happily talk about you know it's a great way to connect and %HESITATION I find like I did it creates another layer of emotion about it integrates in that technology even beyond the shot we had a really robust writing team when you're first coming up with this I mean we all kind of sat around a table are set into meetings just trying to like nail down the concept nail down the story you know we had thirty plot points that came and went and then the amount of research we have an entire told that talks about all of these libraries these historical libraries that are actual actual places you know they had actual significance in history and we had to pull all of that material just so that we could get back home to the performers so that when they had that fodder to keep pulling from as well but we didn't you know Todd night we we didn't just great this it was such a collaborative effort we were getting materials every day I remember you know our writing team would send us a draft of one scene it while at the same time somebody would send me a draft a character you know like Katrina would send me at the bar menu you know and then the next day somebody else send me a song I think between even wrote an entire song it had a clue it fell by the wayside as we change the gameplay my hustle but I once long and then there's another song that carries with links to another one who's a history teacher %HESITATION and I needed to see that was a pneumonic device about the toll limit and I up it's working credible it's all about last so it's gonna be talking I will I will pay you know and during the pandemic which is been such a time of you know we've all had to go inside of our bubble right a lot of us were missing that creative outlet so I think that pulling in all of these performers and what not to and allowed everybody to find a quick creative outlet in a time where were all very frustrated because we can't live our not our lives as normally as we want right so I don't even think we asked people with some of the stuff that got created you know I just said Hey could you have a little ditty because I think that Maggie you know I think a tree to your character and this other character they know each other and they went to school together or something and next day I have a page long twelve verses of the Ptolemaic empire you know so like it really gave us all a chance to be really creative you know and push the boundaries of how can we keep telling stories in a new imagine of way and just make everybody laughs because everything is so twenty twenty right then we did this D. I. Y. A. thing again with a little more budget this time via %HESITATION worked for an acting school we worked with their students on a movie together based on on their character vicious because we your last and me we are also from the acting department so we could work with that and we are making films we could work with that so the second movie with the together %HESITATION was also on many many festivals and was %HESITATION sorry how do you say and that his English is better than it was discovered it was discovered from a release Emmons and you have to write it really is %HESITATION %HESITATION yes get released in the U. S. yes it's behind bars yeah the Blu ray yes SRS and I'm also I was really proud of that and really happy about it the second movie is about seven girls in the pharmacy and then maybe %HESITATION cherished florist so it's it's kind of fantastical but very very subtle and it was the first time for us that we've worked with a non sambal and those were seven girls who were like in their twenties early twenties early twenties they were just finishing drama school not so easy but it was fun and it was also it for us we learned a lot to work with a big group I work very closely with the actors four of them M. when we were developing Leon I think and you said and I had just started hanging out again and I don't know I I was thinking about how to do a lo fi science fiction project that was still having it was still dreaming about getting into cinemas and making something that that woods translates to a wider audience so I was thinking about how how can I use John ready to do that that was on my mind and then I think we just had a really long conversation about death because that's the fun guy I am I basically just took that conversation which was really long and turned it into a script so that would be these two characters in that center which I think I because Nissan and Leon is not me but that would be a lot of the stuff in that that we had discussed that's how that sort of came about so so so I in that sense worked with Nissan to come up with it all and then %HESITATION for back it means and later permeates actually we started working with this acting school like Nissan said I was a teacher about and I get sort of bored with teaching acting and not doing anything so I started developing characters with the students I had originally planned this was Nissan's idea to to make short films with them so they could use that all the demo reels and and in case of the beckons group we quickly realized all right this is not the short film this is possibly a future and %HESITATION yeah I mean they came up with that characters had different exercises to improvise and to come up with characters intuitively plus with characters that would fit them and would be what they would need in the demo rear to %HESITATION and then what I would have them improvise with each other and come up with scenes and then slowly we would all see all right this is a possible setting like all the characters you came up with would probably do community service at some point they're all pretty antisocial and then we would support the characters and situations together and see how do these incorrect and then we would think all right you too make an interesting committed you'll so let's think about that and I think we had half a year it was really luxurious and our kids bed hobby yelp of just playing around and then I would go and they have seen all the stuff they would have come up with themselves and then I would just read the script according to that and %HESITATION mid was more compressed with the next thing we did with that school with over many ex but it's really similar to it then we may do a web series together also called the acting students we worked a lot with that school to find out projects where we would have them improvise all the dialogue on sets and I would just go okay now that thing you said was funny do that again so yeah from this very close work with the actress the characters and I look I think I mean I like that and I like the results yeah me too we got musical in April with host of the world fusion show Derek Jordan and me session down he's he talked about modeling Siri and lasts an ideal locked on circumstances we used to do live improvisations when I was working at B. C. T. V. N. properly but because the lock down it's been closed so we've done various workarounds one is that I will get my artists to record a solo video of them playing and then I will basically play along with that and try to pretend that's life sometimes well depending on how good I'm able to do that you would think it is live a lot of the times most the time see I seem to be able to pull that off but now that we're in lockdown mode I stopped doing the live or this kind of improvisation over top with her video the new format that I'm using is just taking pre recorded videos from my casts %HESITATION and that's been the last few shows just because I wanted to keep the show going I felt it was more important to keep the show going so I'm not doing a live music right now but we'll get back to it I mean things will open up again we'll be able to do that again but we have great audio engineer and we have three cameras at BCTV so its quality is very high somewhat limited now more at my soon calls but it's still fun and it's still I get to showcase these fantastic artists and I feel like the workaround is better than not doing the show it also I'm just trying to keep everything going forward what has your lock sign experience pain as a musician well in this league panic those laws my money is gone for more than a day most welcome and I'm still going to a new routine so I thought well this is a fun clothes look on as the %HESITATION I have the rest of my life %HESITATION gig of the form and %HESITATION you know we'll be doing it when I'm eighty the way in the out to the local public realm panicking so you take him two years out three years out even I've seen it all but in the grand scheme of things is not nothing too big so I thought well a mother trying you last time I have to try to be as productive as I can be and %HESITATION flex new muscles reading when you do a loss against you and you end up just being all of heart and soul of %HESITATION during the same thing all the time is is so can be very relentless off from twenty three I've done lot tunings here pretty much solid for the past ten years so that's my target I'm sorry it's good to kind of step wife not really in the cry of them wrote music and talking to people %HESITATION AA or podcasts and training people is good you can't convert them selves in in a frying pan lot harder and musician or filmmaker will put costs social media personal really bubble as things went quiet people that is very cold for what you do not tell you what you should be creative and try and log me off my music but I see a above that mediates its to me to be cry if it's an issue of free lost all lock and navigate myself that's more important to me they're not you play music as much as I love playing music well hello I lost all the Arkham controlling BB king mackerel basically nothing my strife people strive for that because it all has no point being in a high jump playing music well %HESITATION on paper they sound amazing but the end of the day you're welcome to somebody else in your control involvement %HESITATION which is always good we went stateside in may with a fabulous catch up with my old pal from queen's university Belfast Dr Gary Rhodes and my new friends fellow arts podcaster Neeson rocklands can you remind me so happily of my arrival in Ireland but also so I try to be unflappable that's impossible and one of the spookiest moments and not a horror film spooky but I guess you'd say nervous moments was when I walked in to teach that course because I felt a little out of place not only is it immigrate myself and living in another country for the first time but I felt I felt a little %HESITATION I would never want to be seen presumptuous in teaching a course on Irish cinema in Ireland I had taught Irish semi actually America previous a couple of times what I ate that was a bit nervous actually going in to teach all of you because I thought gosh I feel ill at ease real ill informed maybe you know to take all that long since as an American and in Belfast what I suppose my interest would be two fold in and one I think it started with horror and they're certainly these tremendous connections between horror and Ireland Irish literature Irish folklore from obviously the bean she threw a film I saw and I I don't think a lot of Irish film scholars I don't know that any of never really talked about it much but when I was ten twelve years old I I was in love with horror movies I was also in love with Francis Ford Coppola who directed the godfather films in Apocalypse Now and early in his career he had made a film called dementia thirteen race early nineteen sixties and it was a gothic horror story set in Ireland it was actually shot in Ireland and you know it's readily available on YouTube it's rather well known film in terms of cold blood studies because it was basically a second film but I think Irish film studies it's completely unknown connections go deeper I mean stoker was Anglo Irish they're such a great tradition of Irish gothic novels and as I grew my interest in horror I grew in my interest at heart literature as well as horror films so there's all these fantastic connections and Irish horror stories on film but the other thing to happen to me when I was a teenager was by about the age of thirteen and of course you know I grew up in the state of Oklahoma I grew up in a town that I will in American terms certainly most mmhm we probably consider small town twenty five thousand people I grew up in I guess I'm trying to think of the the best way to say it but it probably a and is a native American everything you know kind of a masculine type culture in terms or that parameters and so John Huston's films spoke to me greatly as a teenager his films like the Maltese falcon an African queen and these films with Humphrey Bogart who was one of the great cinema tough guys and you know his later films like the man who would be king with Sean Connery and Michael Caine and you know you can kind of see probably quickly understand maybe or or see that you know kind of okay a lot of his films in his life %HESITATION I became fast about Houston's life he was quite an explorer and hunter and you know very masculine and all that very much human waves kind of hit me way of twentieth century American cinema and he was deeply interested in Irish literature and by the time I was in high school he was making his film the debt based on choice and there was a credible documentary film made about it Houston and showed the behind the scenes footage showed in talking at length this is before the kind of making of featurettes we know today by by a large number some examples but they weren't it was before DVD it was before that cottage industry so to speak so I S. I became entranced by the time I was sixteen and seventeen I became entranced with James Joyce and the dead when Houston said in his mind it was probably the greatest short story ever written in the English language that spoke volumes to me the film version he made which I found to be quite faithful I'm talking at length for question and now maybe wearing what but my interest came from these different angles from horror as well as Joyce and then about that same time Beckett because I was also one of my other favorites as a teenager was a Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett had made keeping film yeah you know later in king's life of course and and a kind of although guard film and I was I was also getting in transfer you know it's easy to romanticize thing when you're a teenager and I you know the passion for it all and I was and I was getting interested in basket because of then his work with Keaton and I was particularly intrigued because Kevin brown will have made this incredible documentary about Keaton and had forty two Keaton's saying you know you didn't even understand the film he made with that you know which I think yes he's one of the yeah exactly here is what the genius filmmakers in my mind he he said he didn't quite understand it but he liked packet and everything so I was coming in Ireland for all these different directions to conclude I would say that in the night you know in the nineteen nineties America really when their kids always had this love affair with Ireland is regrettable exceptions during some immigration periods baby in the nineteenth century and so forth but there's a lot of love affairs in in the later twentieth century certainly from you know everybody you know celebrating St Patrick's day to the nineties when the commitments particularly the film version you too there was a particular love affair with I mean it happened different times before in the sixties I think with JFK for a lot of people but in the nineties it was like it was Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan's films were exploding onto the scene not my left footed one you know at the academy award and Chris I was graduating from high school and about to start university right at that moment then there's you too and I particularly fell in love like I heard it on the radio and I was driving I mean I remember the moment so clearly I was driving down I. forty in Oklahoma City are your state that runs around a lot of America and I'm burning down the highway in an old car the only one I could afford at the time I'm burning on the highway and this voice comes on the radio this ban what I didn't know the name and I had to ask a friend later that day who is singing this and it was the cranberry so you're gonna set but you know I heard including that kind of Irish weighed in at the end of the song which went from the Irish but meeting pop music even more Irish sound at the end of it just seem to speak to me in ways and again as a more romantic young person a romantic maybe more the German sense of that term my great grandfather was from Ireland scored so on Cherokee and mainly that but I'm you know I have a McCord whose family was actually from the north of Ireland even America from Cork and I had many once is a little tiny child very memories on more work well on all of that and so I had that connection to Ireland as well so forgive this long biography ladies that I fell in love with this and then I fell in love with an Irish woman who was in America and all roads lead you know what I had to leave but I had to leave and it was this tremendous love affair I cannot tell you how achingly I miss Carrickfergus one of my favorite places how much I've missed the Belfast city centre the people there there's so many Dunluce there were so many places I like to go and go repeatedly I just unending love affair there's nothing ever wrong with having back position with that stuff if you're not judging the culture around you then you're just being ignorant to whatever's going on and being ignorant not understand the culture is not going to nourish you as someone that appreciates the culture and you're being a producer like you know if you're going to make content you know make sure you make it was a good purpose I mean if you think you're producing the content these extra help culture one way or another %HESITATION by the stop you I think part of us being podcast assisting our podcast is preserving the cultural little bit so the way we're sort of helping with people understanding and analyzing the culture I'm sure you have it on several occasions I've gone back to like you know seeing how movies were like the fifties and sixties and seventies stuff and seeing the mentality that the world had then and see how different it is now well the stuff that we're making right now can you imagine what people you know twenty fifty a hundred years from now if they go back and find the stumble upon this L. as wow this is what their culture was like during this kind of situation and how much you wanna bet that like at least two or three generations from now people are gonna be curious on how people were during cove it there go back these podcasts and stuff be like wow this is how they got your cove it we talked about before but like you said it yourself would like the public access TV will you ever come back and see some of those old public access TV's and see just like how they did their stuff you know how they would set up their shows I get getting that look into like their realities and such you know like if we're watching like movies in the seventies some like that how much like the Cold War may have influence on the make certain movies and such like that's something that we're never going to experience but like as an analyst we can look back and how they're making movies in the seventies such realized okay this is how they got through the potential existential dread that they could die tomorrow from nuclear warfare going back to like the thirties and such seeing all those like the classic Looney Tunes and such are like the classic cartoons where they they influence are they inspire people hate you should go to war or you should help people you know it invest in the military in such as nail if you go back like that's how they got through the potential jet that they could be aerated by Germany tomorrow you know that's something to help them yeah as an analyst you're always going to be looking back and so we're making stuff right now that other analysts chemistry look back on then it's going to benefit society at the in the day Jan was all about creativity with artistically week absent a K. eight slayer one artwork and doctor Rabaa Mikhail I researcher with University College London's community covert project definitely so I mean I can't say you know it's it's always been enjoyable and definitely being able to have people to do it because of Hobbs you know the office and the spectrum what people saw knocking down its costs awful and you know I want to start selling at comic conventions that was a really difficult time because you get like really hot streaks up point and then it's like oh you know like I'm I'm just here to sell like my outlook on the effort you know for minimalism issue some people are just unfortunate very nice I think you know especially when you are on the PP should always want to encourage people to us I've always believed in my positive reinforcement opposition positive like pushing people you know like I'm always happy to criticize someone in a positive way if someone says tell me everything that's wrong with this also well we'll bill as long as you let me tell you what's wrong with it as well but yeah it is great and also in Leeds as well one of the amazing conventions I mean it's most target now but fall festival thought was I could not festival and that was one of the first proper conventions I want Sir I used to go like religious in a best friend of must win sisterhood and offered them as well and but I'll go on just look all the emission outlook connection with plan for like Olean although she's all these amazing comic out as far as criminal we need to do this when you know any upon this of them would call themselves such an amazing time G. situation out work I actually met should should a lovely woman called Valentina and she ended up I think I'm ever at fault double on the gun shows at work was so inspiring that was another Austin's been amazing to me Schendel designing my first ever thought it was she designed it for men gosh you're so lovely she's helped with my outlook as well and she thought about what she moved back to Italy I like I miss all the time which moved up to a million and she still bought a shirt she was like and it only shows the only on the phone so so when all of a sudden jaw crusher men's and basketball advise yeah I think I think it's really important personally I try to match all the also Paul I don't and never will I mean I myself to forget about all of my friends so I do not stray if Boston Celtic forget also it works my hooks yeah I think especially if you wanted to start out just dole so critical of yourself that's probably adversity given to myself even non if all the advice because people think that have to be perfect straight away in a society where we feel we have to do everything right the first time it's not all I'm sure to give an opponent diminishes and shows a lot of people produce all the mission on this quiet Walmington on the people really thought about working for the sometimes I don't like as much like so many people out there think oh gosh you know you really really good tomorrow you know so hi Kim imposter syndrome will be all see some of the actions that we've been doing with participants have been around people's experiences of lock down their experiences of pandemic their experiences may be accessing subsidized or experiencing loneliness or isolation or the anxiety that comes with the pandemic and expressing that through all forms sorry we've run a couple of very very interesting workshops the bathroom is run by somebody called Marana he works with us he is actually PhD student he's whacking on interventions with people with dementia and say she doesn't so very interesting things such as embroidery said the mindfulness that comes with android jury analysts say the find my skills and you know everything that comes with doing this very very intricate and still full think for a long period of time hello webshop was on collage and we looked at how we might be able to express our feelings food medium of college and denied that might involve looking at lots of old magazines and you know dissipate pad over things that you might have lying around and looking at maybe what the newspapers and thinking about thinking about white why you're picking them out and say you know when you see somebody's collection piece of paper they might have used to set in color they might be used to set some pictures that might be sets and what's to bring the picture together save it might look like a complete mess of the picture it might not be completely as that sixty correct it might look wonderful that's beside the point well the points of the clutch is is to look at that and think how does this reflect my experience and in looking at reflecting my experience how do I tend to talk about my expense had I frame my experience and if I can have this old narrative around the experience then maybe I might be able to address the issues that come up during the experience for example my college in particular I happen and I thought this is very very interesting I was thinking why are you doing this myself my clutch looked at that Meghan and Harry into G. and I picked up pictures of Meghan and Harry and for some reason I also picked out what's that what to do with the interview was around understanding and telling my side of the story and your family and these kinds of things and and and I'm picking these things out and thinking why I picked these things out maybe I'm thinking about my family maybe I'm thinking about my %HESITATION laid the I. eight projects myself well the way that I am talking about how I experienced things and when you look at these and then you look at %HESITATION everybody's colleges and you ask everybody to talk about the colors you can see some very very very interesting stories you know you have about people's experiences and rather than sitting down and doing a traditional interview with somebody which we might do in reception you know it might be very very structured when you got somebody to express their opinion through the medium of all his meeting the college you might get a lot more rich states if not you might get a lot more interesting data from that goal you might get more of a glimpse of the passage rather than excessive structured ons is that they might want to tell you just to tell you save we won these elections just for that practice to understand how people have been experiencing quite a bit and that's one of the things that we've been doing is part of that committee got the project we will say it does not focus groups of people so we've spoken G. as well because they subscribe as in people that work in the community %HESITATION whacking intoxication and community people lacking in that close our teas and social activists and teachers to Austin about well what do you think of the various constipation what can we do to make these things much more accessible for people with what do you think of the other issues around what's happening you know on these patients stuff yeah and as well as that would diagnoses like traditional Quincy black which we have to take we headed back to the states in July for excellent conversations with Dr Charlie hole and palm Munter to talk about their newly published pics funny rules and feeding feed him what I would just really you know like to thank you again for giving me a chance to talk about my mom and to really promote the family rules book just so it's so important to those of us who have been care givers with people who suffered with Alzheimer's and dementia I understand that it's not easy in a row to be on we have to find ways we all have to find our own ways to get those memories back we know that our loved ones are not going to remember them no matter how much we want them to have moments when they'll remember them but they won't be the same and of those memories when they're stolen from you find a way to get them back in this was just my way of giving those memories back to my my children my grandchildren my brother and his family a way for them to kind of remember %HESITATION you know Graham on the way in which they wouldn't remember her normally yes and so now when you see and hear Fanny rules you'll know that I'm talking about my mom well when the power if you think about it I mean they're such a great strong you know conversation about that is the fact that here we have an individual with a twelfth grade U. S. education %HESITATION which means no college no formal education beyond that who is wise beyond her years I mean things that she would tell me one of those conversations that she would tell me is about being mediocre she says don't be mediocre don't be lukewarm just want to be hot you want to be called she said because mediocre is just a block and it just settles for whatever and so I took that message and I think crafted into this one and it's that mediocre settles to the bottom and complains about the view and I never wanted to be a person who complained about the view I wanted to celebrate the view and so she would also tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be so if you want to understand how I can actually move from this or town in West Virginia and I actually received two post graduate degrees end up with a PhD you know all of this is because the fact that this woman said I can be whatever I wanted to be but whatever I wanted to be be the best of it that I can't and she didn't put any parameters on it she said if you want to be a janitor you want to sweep floors she said that be the best floor sweeper there AS and Fannie told me that I needed to clean in the corners because she said it could floor sweeper will clean the corners because anybody can sweep in the middle %HESITATION I've been a feminist since I was about eight and try to get girls and the little league that was impossible back then so I'm hoping that it will ring that bell loudly this is what we do to women and what we've always done it women in this business and we need to rethink that %HESITATION because it's not worth it no people shelf life it shouldn't be a matter of shelf life it should be a matter of what they can contribute and for how long my publicist you telling me the lot of the people who are reviewing it are women so I would guess that's the natural audience I mean the subtitle is women of a certain age in Hollywood but I think anyone who is curious about how things work you don't have to be a film historian to be curious about how Harvey Weinstein could happen and video such an ogre for so many years how did he get away with that kill the casting couch she goes all the way back home it was on a normal accepted event info woman wanted to be up on that screen triggered a light on the couch first it was just %HESITATION unfortunately and given I don't know that that's true anymore I don't think it is certainly there are rules predators out there but it's not as widespread as it once was and I think anybody who cares about the issue will be curious about the stores at least I hope so it was fun to write because of the feminist background I I'll say that because I was a clinical psychologist for so many years I felt that I could get inside their heads and give the reader %HESITATION some idea about how women think about these things how they process that kind of a precedence and disappointment %HESITATION barrel aging process itself you know if we know some of them did pretty well without I think the strength of my writing is always the internal dialogue it's not so much what happens is how the the woman processes the information and that was extremely fun to write because I think I know more about that probably than anything having been in practice so many years I took some time off in August and released some back up material while I was away from the computer June and July were really busy with recordings and normal service resumed with guests focusing on positivity and creativity respectively Dominic Sam and Daniel Hass hi Michelle younger generation because I'm pretty all right now I'm I'm around forty rise hotels and I can see people young so things like that so that's what I want to say and I want to tell people of course is not good to hear it sometimes the younger people feel like it's that nagging your nagging me right now I'm gonna want to bring it out it either more reality form that this things that's happened it happens to everyone so I want to talk about it happens to everyone we cannot hide it we can we have to break break through the wall and share it the man is difficult for me like for example it's hard for me to show my feelings to my wife sometimes she said you know you don't hold my hands anymore than that %HESITATION why don't I hold my hold on the hold is in well I don't know why it's just it's not like I'm I'm a touchy feely kind of guy you know it's hard to open up sometimes so doing this part because actually helped me as well because I feel like if I do good out there good will come back if I motivate people I will motivate myself as well just like there was a a youtuber dive was watching the other day he told us he said everyone has the same amount of time in the week what we do in that time brings a success %HESITATION differs between different people so if I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is I look at myself on and go to Instagram or whatever instead I could have used that if you know a few seconds and morning when I wake up look in the mirror and say I'm gonna do well today so in that actually brings a little bill impact to your own life and two into anyone's life right or if you're if you're a kid and you in the house if you wake up in the morning instead of going down there say Hey mom what's for breakfast you could say Hey mom good morning right Houston well things like that I mean there's just one tiny thing that can actually bright as a person's life but if my kid if you wake up the monies that had that good morning %HESITATION I feel good you know I feel good and not not a whole good but still good right in just one step up on once they would build upon upon just one tiny happen as a but not happen this eventually I feel like eventually everything will fall into place and everything will picks up from there see details like this the seven habits habits it's been an interesting Sir journey for man and not some space because like I said it was really my my good friend do is a lot more in depth with film I've always grown up watching films and really enjoying cinema but for me it was wasn't something I really thought about getting into what was interesting was I feel like what I sort of looked back and found with everything is that for me personally I think that the storytelling aspect is really where I feel like I've always had the most deaths and success wins but I've always kind of struggled with the transition from page to screen as far as like visualizing what angle is to use and constraining myself to like okay fine but the tripod here with this sort of lands like this is a result I'm going to get I can't do it in my head so %HESITATION you know for a long time I I really was telling myself okay you know I really wanna do writing and directing and I can take on both but with the project that I did in twenty eighteen I really found that you know while I can do it and I can make it happen I feel like it's better for me to have the right people by my side that can actually translate what I'm writing better than even I feel like I can and again maybe that some kind of like weird mental hurdle which in ten years I'll figure out that like it's just me serve protecting myself from actually making the films as a director myself but at least at this stage in my life I'm sort of feeling like where I need to go with things is finding really good directors who can translate the writing and the way in which I can write the writing if that makes sense it's one of those things were as I'm writing something I only see it as kind of a stage play where is like everything just kind of a flat canvas and it's all sort of coming to life around me but I'm not seeing like you know okay when this person's talking like this if if I have this sort of camera movement or something like that none of that enters into my mind even the least bit I think with you know as time's gone on I just sort of made that mental jump so it's been nice because as I look back on everything a lot of the films that I've made or worked on you know I was either more is like as co directors somebody that was there just one set hoping things go smoothly you know maybe more as a producer or something like that and there's always been in my mind the best films that I've made with a good team and not one of those things where you know when I tried to make on I feel like they work and I feel like they have a good message to them but as far as how everything comes out on the screen there's not a lot of refinement you know I feel like I'm more of this let's just have a camera free flowing and stuff like that and that always just doesn't work as fast as it could for something that's just more visualized by someone who can make that transition more than I can in September %HESITATION do you drama producer boleh more help to celebrate our one hundredth episode entry nerd style with fascinating stories about adopting his father's literary works while also contributing to the advancement sent audio technologies and modes of production we then heard from Dr Fiona noble about her researching contemporary Spanish cinema I'm talking about alternative approaches to the academic so they I have to say mystically lucky in that I'm pretty good with the theory of things but not so good with the practice and so I have gained producer editor who is amazing %HESITATION figure out ways of executing the crazy ideas that I come up with and I had his passed away a few years ago but I have this wonderful wonderful engineer what you believe yourself to a stop not only was he triggered recordings but he could just build devices that hi imagine during you need to have the particular thing that we were talking about do you go back so I like working in stereo I like doing as much with the stereo space as I possibly can one of the hardest things was to figure you know do I want to block actors around in the stereo spaced and then somehow walk the production or the creation of sound effects in some way that tracks them and when you put all this stuff in the same recording board line up and sound like it's the same spot this isn't very difficult to do of course the more you utilize the stereo space the more difficult it is and I want to get really clean dialogue tracks I like to not worry about anything but the voices when I'm in the studio that's the only thing I want to deal with I record all my voice is moderate but I need a visual tracks they can be hand around the stereo proceeding on waste with both panting you know so panning and volume and a little bit of reverb to create you know are they from the back of a culture to use things like that but then how to make the sound effects follow rob so I was talking to Howard our engineer and there's some kind of a joke it's only funny to engineers I don't really understand it but they would make this joke about it monophonic Kampot meeting some sometimes you would cancel liberal left to right which of course you can't do it I had heard him say that a couple of times and I was like how hard we've worked with MS technology which I'll explain in a second I want you to build me a monophonic camp and so she did the way you talk about three months later he came back with more acts okay so this is the pattern and over here we've got one of the lot one of the dogs is the volume which is you know basically does your in and out of this does your back and forth and okay now explain how this thing works yeah that's such a good question I think that was one of the key points that came back for and I'd submit the first draft of the manuscript to the publisher is and the talks about four I needed to do to prove that threat and the idea of subversive Spanish cinema city the big not that it wasn't there but that you know just by adding things like and the conclusions each chapter unexploded back you can prove that threads together and the artists such readers on their anonymous obviously they are such pertinent questions that really made me think about the significance of the title and how it related to what I was talking about it because I think if you look at the carcass of material for the big and the filling car pass it probably looks quite mainstream in some ways I'm not necessarily looking hot experimental filmmaking in Spain that's not part of what that be extinct there's some really interesting things happening in kind of alternative cinematic practice says worst filmmaking practice in Spain especially kind of post economic crisis that's not my forte told us not something I'm particularly knowledgeable back to somebody like Rebecca north send you she has the blog nobody knows entity where she talks about Spanish cinema I don't know how active she is barking at the minute she's from the northeast actually and I don't know if you've ever come across %HESITATION but she's a really knowledgeable person I buy alternatives Spanish cinema practices that's not what this because it's not a private kind of we cannot what's happening with the mainstream if that makes sense it's more about looking hot you know the key players all Spanish cinema there are some films in there that are less well known there are some filmmakers you know the likes of petrol model of our who is probably you know the most well known Spanish filmmaker certainly in the U. K. ET bought depict deals rather with subversive nests within those kind of mainstream contacts and looking out hi %HESITATION the positional filmmakers we're working under Franco's the likes of Carlos Salazar or at least customer Langat London about a name he's the uncle off have yet course people like them your last identifying filmmaker is under Frankel working June the dictatorship shooting about a strict censorship conditions that there were at the time so it's looking at those kind of precursors to what's happening in contemporary manifestations of performance and that presentations of performance in Kentucky sponsor and kind of seeing the offense comes through you from those oppositional filmmakers into the present day and what that looks like and how you can become %HESITATION means all speaking out against the common additives or the dominant ideas in society October so a reunion with merry at Spiro sketchy I previously spoke today at the twenty eighteen late shows this time we discussed her ad member French performance landing I also reached out to other friends of artist Sally match and a bunch of us recorded memories of Sally for an episode released ahead of commemorative events marking the first anniversary of her death in case you missed the hidden track at the end well here southeast coast companion and collaborator Tom Jennings reciting his first the North Sea fought in a way I found it in some ways liberating because I'm going to have number %HESITATION while I'm on an island in the Atlantic and that's why %HESITATION that and and the hard to get my head around them has but also very exciting I've got somebody producing will be in Africa during the time of the production and it's and my director is in Ireland it's just kind of also beautiful that I'm someone who's very international and I've traveled a lot and I have friends all over the world for me it's always been about you know other time zones and languages etcetera so it feels like the world is kind of stepped up to accepting that is more common than normal in every day and that excites me because it's just really creating that feeling of collectivity globally and %HESITATION I personally love that so in a way it is deliberating the strike while B. R. R. your chili but streaming islands you they can go worldwide and research that I think is a worldwide competition and %HESITATION we're having an yes it's exciting it's exciting to have that but I performed live for the first time the other week here on the island we had a little open Mike at the cafe and actually there's a lot of performers on the Simons strangely enough and it's the first time I'd perform live the new year and a half last time was in Newcastle actually enough and he was just so exciting for everyone just like all you know we have been sharing this moment an audience it's been difficult yet challenging but if we can find a way to have a balance in the future it's kind of interesting it does open up a lot of possibilities I know there's a lot of companies have in the states and in other countries you know been working digitally already for years they were kind of ahead of the game a little bit if you will yeah it's an interesting chance yet like I'm saying I think it's about the balance I want it all to go online forever now they really don't but how can we find a way to you know make a hybrid form or medium it's interesting we're definitely it's been a learning curve imagine a moderate offshore breeze when the tide begins to wane with the lapping of tiny waves blown back against the grain battles in the sun crackle as they shift this way and that while you stroll along the shoreline with Sally chewing the North Sea fast in November I never did like this museum and Stacy asked McKenzie frankly and caught up with Brandon Conley talking about detecting world a cheese your own adventure calendar that we have very much enjoyed this month's I do really enjoy this topic I like talking about the British Museum because truthfully I have a love hate relationship with that because the very first time I got to visit the British Museum was in the summer of twenty eighteen so I had not yet finished my degree I was the summer before my senior year of budding anthropologist just like jumping in my seat waiting in line to get into the British Museum because it is you're absolutely right this global institution where you can see thousands of years of human culture across the world in one place started walking through and seeing all of the things and wondering where they came from and how they came to be into that institution and learning more about the ways in which those objects were acquired and then some of the contentions regarding the fact that a lot of those objects have been requested to be formally returned and subsequently denied so the more I learned the more that the magic was kind of stripped away from me so it's been really wonderful institution I absolutely believe that something like that should exist but at the same time yeah you have really big ethical questions that need to be answered and yes people do challenge me on this topic they will often say well especially in the case of the British Museum if they started giving things back they have to give everything back and then they have nothing left which is such an exaggeration and far from the truth but I think that certainly concessions do you need to be made very simply the start you told a few items you have in your infantry unless you go through the store you will lose on the choir of right and so the my simple level keeping a record of well I have a small lamb well I I you know I I'm carrying this style the other not to spoil it I need to objecting counted but you keep the title of those the next can influence the choices that are available to you at different points so for example if you got a big cocaine to come across a big gulp padlock you can unlock it and if you don't you can help so at the most basic level yes you're actually do a physical symptoms but there are other things you may wish to record and write down old drawl at various points finally in December I had a delightful time with the of the last of the Cinemalaya Neil's podcast and learn lows but life as a jobbing actor in the U. S. film and television industries from Kate H. anarchists yeah it's I mean it's funny you say it's like kind of like a research project which I mean that I think that's a perfect example of what it is because %HESITATION I went to school for history I'm a trained ademas historian because you know that's not my field and I want to sound too pretentious in there I'm not gonna call myself when the film historian but %HESITATION you know I did study anyway %HESITATION anyway you are to no sales the story no one but no I am I studied history went to school for history because as I said before was a lifelong passion and I really do think that film is a good way of introducing not exactly educating because obviously you know there's too much Hollywood stuff like the last tool which is in the army %HESITATION but now which is actually funny like to go on a limb that little tangent armor medieval representations of armor are better in the first half of the cinema rather than what is going on today unfortunately but I think it's a great way to really see what people are into and see what they're not into and then see how they can relate it back to our world tangy and how to understand what we're doing wrong or what we did do wrong in the past whether it be through art or social movements and how we can fix that today and I think through filmmaking that introduces a lot of topics that are can be often difficult and can really meet people not make people but can really make them feel comfortable enough to talk about those issues so all of it is being an open vessel so to be comedy to be drama and just really being open and so when you're open and you know your team is setting you up for these projects and you're going out for these projects and you're up and you're down and you're crying you're vulnerable you're happy in your court you're sad the most important thing is just to be true to your authentic self you have your bass line and then you have people you study with Susan Batson B. A. T. S. O. and she is an amazing book called truth she's doing virtual people can you drop ins for twenty dollars a day Monday through Friday she has a lot of international people who study with her she's Nicole Kidman's acting coach for over twenty years you'll have been noticed I sure Madonna %HESITATION brushy coach is all these people for their films so being trained by the crown telegram right so you can be trained at what level and and it's like the best investment you're gonna make is in yourself with your time to follow the the food you eat the coaches you study with the podcast you listen to the people we associate with so all of that goes hand in hand with the characters I choose because based on life it's not just linear and I could tap into different experiences that I personally experience or that I've observed to being a great observer I love observing and so something directly hasn't happened to me I can with Google you can research it you can watch some like minded movies you can check out the director projects that they did a part for T. that's for films or TV shows you know the tone of the show grey's anatomy it's always sunny cold case you know the tone of the show you know the casting director like no other body work %HESITATION in there do great work you have to build a relationship with the casting director they keep bringing you when they like your work so if they want you on the show it's just a matter of time before it happens you just have to keep up and just show up and do great work and then make sure you're taking care of your body mind and spirit because they like I said they're very hand in hand with one another you know doing different characters is like it's always sunny it's like corky it's far sign in and they're like oh they like that then you can that's permission to play to take that a step further and discover where you can go when you get on set you've already done the preparation so everything I'm telling you studying coaching researching that's the tone of the show that's the preparation of the character before you show up when you get to set you already know your lines you already know your character and it's an opportunity to get out of your head and get more into your got into the intelligence of your body and to play and be professional because there's the takes a village and there's hundreds of people on set and especially now we want to be very mindful of staying within the parameters of everyone doing their job to make a party is you know the hair stylist like if they ask you your opinion cool but they're already communicating with directors and assistants and people and everyone has the domino effect of how they're showing up in everyone's doing their best so you know when you have the character you that's your ultimate time where you get to play and have a lot of fun well what a year it's been and it's because of you the listener supper still going and approaching four years of learning more and more of a different landscapes and audio visual cultures but I want you to tell me what have you enjoyed what would you like to hear more off and learn to fight and what might be missing that we haven't touched on yet and I know there's lots of topics that we haven't touched on and we're working our way Brian tape let me know by email to the audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com MSH eighty cultures part on any of the socials it's been a tree privilege to speak to so many interesting guests from such a diversity of backgrounds and I'm really looking forward to what twenty twenty to bring I'm always happy to hear from folks who'd like to cast on the show and I'll be back nagging at my artist friends to come speak to you because their class and she really need to know about them for night mind yourselves and catch you next time
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Audiovisual Cultures episode 77 – The Amabie Project with Johanna Leech automated transcript


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hello and welcome to audiovisual cultures with me paula blair i’m really super excited to be joined this time by artist johanna leech who is going to talk about the amabie project that she’s been working on and curating throughout the lock time period in 2020 and it’s hopefully going to culminate in an exhibition but it’s all online and you can see it on instagram so i’m going to let her explain more about it because she’ll explain that a lot more articulately than i can um huge huge thanks to our members over at patreon.com forward slash av cultures for all your really valued supports if you are interested in joining and there are three tiers of membership at the moment there’s to pay what you can which is one pound one dollar one year or whatever um and that’s that’s going to get you access a bit early to the new episodes that come out you’ll get to hear it a day before everybody else and then there are a couple of other memberships there’s a behind-the-scenes membership and a star supporter which will get your producer credit on any future stuff so do take a look through those if you’re able to help out and for other ways to support uh and just help out the podcast do listen right to the end and i’ll give you some other ways that don’t involve a membership um but do make sure you subscribe you hit that button just so that you never miss a new episode and i’ll help us out as well so this one was a lot of fun to record uh joanna is a it’s a very very good friend of mine and i’m really proud of all of her work it’s a really visual episode as well so if you’re listening to the audio only i have put the link to the video in the show notes and do make sure you go and see that um because um uh joanna actually shows us through quite a lot of the work that all of the artists involved have been creating and shows us through the instagram so if you’re able to see that i’d really highly recommend it so enjoy very much and i will see you on the other side

so i am super excited to be joined by my longest serving friend and artist joanna leach hello joanna hello how are we finding you today not too bad thanks just in limbo like the rest of us i think so trying to continue on at least try and do something productive excellent yes we’re gonna talk a bit about your productivity and what you’re keeping busy with and if it’s okay can i just ask you to explain to everybody a bit about your background i mean um i mean we first bonded over our mutual love of dinosaurs and i think that’s something that’s held us very close together all of these many very long years yes definitely and it’s in my artwork you know fascinating sinclair uh dinosaurs from the world’s fair absolutely um so would you kindly just talk us through a little bit of your own arts practice and then we’re going to talk about the really big project that you’ve been working on more recently sure so i’m a visual artist based in belfast and i also work as a program manager for a local cinema and arts center so sometimes a lot of those influences working quite um across lots of different art practices and arts fields and work can bleed into my practice a little bit um so instead of kind of having a sketchbook or kind of doing lots of drawings like every day like most artists would or quite frequently my thing was to collect objects collect stories and um making notes and taking photographs so you know like if you look at my iphone now there’s like 20 000 photographs that i’m kind of constantly referring back to so that that’s my sketchbook so it kind of gives you an idea of what kind of way i sort things in my head i’m also dyslexic so it just means that a lot of the time maybe written format isn’t as easy for me and the visual stands out really clearly because of that so it just means then i can have this amalgamation kind of like my work is almost like a little museum of its own you know you could have a look at my exhibition and there could be stuff that could be historical that i find something interesting there could be local lore and legend um or there could be just an experience or a place that i’ve been to so the working kind of become things where it’s maybe like more social practice where i’m maybe using the objects in a way to perform to an audience where like the object is shown in a way where it tells a story or it itself is quite humorous and you kind of look at it and it gives you a chuckle you know like i always like the work to be familiar to the audience and very much um kind of open for everyone to interpret um so my recent exhibition would have had things like a neon sign that said guns and gold and kind of like a really um particular lovely um neon golden color and that was a replica of one that i’d seen in america and just that ideas of those two words together um is it’s quite interesting and then i had wall drawings including wonderful dinosaur um and then i had stories about the dinosaurs that i’ve done work with and collected from all around the world so i had kind of display tables which had objects as well as stories all displayed together so it’s kind of it takes you on a journey and that’s kind of always say to people like i’m explore um showing you my discoveries essentially and then there was other things like photographs from kind of um attractions or places from around america so that that work kind of stands alone quite well just as a photography as a photograph um but um and then i’ll do sometimes just really kind of scale back drawings so it just it just really depends brilliant yeah and this has a really close connection with the current project that you’re working on so you’re curating this group of work of all kinds it’s it’s cross media and it’s artists working in all different modes and from different backgrounds and all sorts of things so um can you tell us a bit about the amma bay project please yeah so amabe is a japanese yukai and ukai is kind of like a mythical kind of magical creature within japanese mythology and this particular character would come out whenever there was sign of a pandemic or else maybe something to do with um crops and um different times where you know people would have worries about things they could look towards the emma bay for um some comfort so you know she’s a mermaid character and she kind of comes out of the sea and is very kind of mystical and i was just kind of really interested in that with the internet kind of in the era that we’re in now this character made a resurgence kind of through the start of the lockdown and it just meant that there was a lot of people kind of posting pictures of her or a lot of japanese people like taking a bit of solace you know to actually do a little drawing over or stick a little picture up of her in a window and with everything that was elsa it was happening throughout the internet and in the uk we kind of had all the kind of things so like help the nhs and the rainbow kind of became this icon of camaraderie and hope for a lot of people and that came from kids in america he just did it one time and you know then people started to kind of replicate that and it kind of spread like a virus but uh a very positive one and amabe was kind of doing a bit of that it was um kind of trading on kind of um if you kind of had like hashtag a mabe challenge and when i saw that i kind of thought oh you know but what i’m really interested in is i had been to japan last year and um i have connections through flex art studios where i’m based with a really cool art space called arts ongoing which is in tokyo and i kind of met those guys and i kind of always kind of thought oh you know what like what would i do if i went over and did a japanese residency so at this time where you know there’s pandemic i can’t go to japan as much as i would love to and looking at those connections and just i think the event manager in my head of kind of going what can i do you know i can’t go into the studio and you know it’s a really hard time to feel inspired how can i reach out and make that connection between that kind of sense of this viral connection but also bringing it back to artists practices but then looking at the connection between japan and belfast and especially because of flax art studio so they’ve been running for a number of years in exchange and one of the main artists who’s a really good friend of mine um shiro masayama um he is the only northern ireland artist based in japan and i was like me and him were like sharing each other like pictures of a mabe and being like oh you know we should get everyone in flax to make an imabe and then we’re like but why should i be kind of making that quite narrow so we owned it out because we wanted to share it with three artists arts ongoing and various other things like shearer would have a lot of connections um just you know to see if artists in general who are based in japan and uh the isle of ireland um or someone you know who’s still kind of connected to ireland are still connected to japan um what would they do and to kind of make it initially like an instagram that could become an exhibition so it was just to see like what would happen so i think it was something that kind of came up between me and sharon were like hey wouldn’t this be fun to do that and they kind of grew from there

and so um with the irish connection is there was there another mythical form from from irish mythology that you were looking at as well or was it just the mlp

well originally um i was talking to um close friend um martin boyle um and martin was kind of my sounding board and very thankfully and just about the right up and like how i was going to do the call-out and what he was interested in and what i kind of thought was it’d be nice to give people that option if they don’t want to do a mabe so whenever we did the call-out we kind of had it that it was if you could create a mythical creature to protect you what would it be and surprisingly a lot of people just did do your marble and that that’s cool too i mean she’s so beautiful and of course i did one of her but um i did like that idea of looking at art mythology and it just meant then if there was japanese artists who were like you know mommy’s quite a normal thing for them they could choose to do something different or an irish artist who feels very strongly with that now we didn’t get as many kind of ones that are quite irish-based we did also get one that was a beaver which i thought was really cool because um that person was just kind of had their own reason of thinking why he could be a quite an iconic character so it is it is mainly a mob but i think whenever we’re displaying that in the gallery you know it can maybe have a couple of different zones it was originally inspired by the irish connections of saint brigid and it was like the first of february and it was kind of the start of spring and how people would kind of um make woven um crosses that you would hang up on your door and there’s these kind of ceremonies called biddy boys and it was basically like you made like an effigy like this female character who sometimes was dressed in your grandmother’s clothes and again it’s this idea of bringing forth a good harvest and and hoping for the best which a mabe does as well and and i was just like when you look at the documentation of you’re like what’s so bizarre and then it brings in connections with mummers and the idea of going door-to-door connecting with your community and making these kind of woven hats and things they’d have on so there’s one of the pieces is me wearing a mummer’s hat and you know i think that could maybe be a bit of a project on its own and i think mabi kind of took over because i think a lot of artists were making work from home and it was probably a bit easier to do that so i definitely think that that could grow in a different way but there’s only maybe a few that are kind of included within that okay great it’s really fascinating and stuff so um so shall we should we take a look at some specific examples of this and the the really wide range of approaches that all of the artists took because you’ve got animators you’ve got people working in sculpture in different ways you’ve got people here illustrators and comic creators and all sorts of people so um shall we have a quick look at some of the examples sure we definitely had a you know a wide range of people but i think i’ll maybe just start off with the original image that is mainly known about a map so this is one that would have been like kind of in the local um news and kind of documented before so i’ll just share my screen here so you can see

um so you can see this here um which is just a really beautiful image and you can see kind of the three legs coming from the sea a beautiful man of hair and um i just thought this is a really good starting point because it’s it’s also that flexibility that people can can change her into anything that she wants to be so i’ve got the instagram here which is kind of the format of showing it visually online so we have um submission from different artists to despite 25 artists including two young people that have been included and i like that because you know it’s the fact that you’re in lockdown and your children are there so i really kind of like that one of the artists is like oh you know can i include my child’s one or you know someone was actually collaborating with her niece which was really nice so um as you can see this is just a really quick thing and this is just you know like uh shiro playing around with a new app that he’s brought together but it just it just worked so well and it’s that kind of again embracing the kind of online kind of quality of that so just for the audio can we just describe what was happening there sorry um

okay so with shiro’s um video he’s using this app and um can i turn the music on or would that i think yeah you should let’s try

so um he’s just made a little drawing of an amabe which kind of pops up in this app and then it kind of comes and scuttles around the floor so it kind of like moves around on the table which is just really sweet and then um we had some more stuff that was a bit more obscure so this one here i really like because there’s kind of a description here this is by chris watt and he kind of just looks at this idea of um stories of contorted human forms or similar kind of rock faces and the natural forces and the ancient humans and bones and you know um that one there i just thought was just really nice and quite unique um some quite a skeletal image that we’re seeing and um so it says he came up with a concept for the painting after visiting melon head on the very north coast of ireland so um yeah so there’s just this skeletal form that’s it’s almost like it’s embedded in the rocks it’s against the rock faces in a bit of a kind of fetal position yeah there’s a triangle protrading from an eye that kind of an obscure kind of um things in the foreground and kind of makes it quite dream like um really kind of bright neon colors and along with this really kind of strong blue blue and white for the skeleton’s body itself which is really nice um i will just see i could go on and talk about every single one let’s just have we scroll so you can see just like some of them against each other so um this is another japanese artist um which is absolutely gorgeous um sitting on buildings on fire almost yeah so emily um she’s actually just studying um at the moment and she’s studying in london but she’s japanese and she had a couple of versions there’s a couple of versions of this one um this is a collaboration with grace mcmurray and her uh five-year-old niece oh the embroidery little embroidery which kind of has a mermaid she’s got wings um and just like a couple of sequences i like as well it’s like just you know like weak cuts of purple and and blue so paula thought you’d enjoy a bit of embroidery so just really simple one um clinton patrick and again his one is more that kind of unseen unknown character because when you talk about the japanese uk sometimes they’re literally an inanimate object sometimes they can look almost human and sometimes it can be quite bizarre so i like that his was much more free in the way that was represented here we have an artist who bid on ebay for um something that was supposed to be made from a mabby’s hair right it was a brush on the internet so his kind of piece is um and he ordered it here it is in his home and he had done a residency in flax recently so he was over in belfast so it was just really nice to kind of have people’s work so um that was that one in particular was cool like you said about graphic artists yeah i have some graphic artists in here so we’ve got vanilla doran and we have um grace farley and then i think there was and molly henry in particular this kind of one too hmm as you can see you know there’s a real mixture of things um tomohiro tomahiro to also been to flax on a residency t and it’s weird because now that i’ve been in japan i’ve seen these kind of you know this is just outside a shop somewhere but i just love as well that it’s got it’s got the mask on so this is kind of like an everyday image someone who could have stumbled across this kind of um amazing kind of sculpture and then it being put with like there’s a kind of scroll to my bed it almost looks spry painted but obviously done on photoshop or something beside it so it just supposed in the tools i think is is really interesting definitely love these little guys with their masks so it is a real mixture of things so sometimes people made things in their homes some of them have done ink drawings or used like found objects like davies here um using hair um this is the image that i had mentioned before myself the kind of bummer hat on um so there’s kind of two in the series and i had actually taken these quite a while ago back in the america or back in the folk park i think it’s the one in belfast yeah so um is that the ulster folk and john smart museum yeah no one’s else’s [ __ ] transport museum so you can go there and there are often weavers i’ll kind of show you that and then if you want to look up mummers there is um different mummers groups from around think the main ones are in antrim and they still perform wedding ceremonies and do different things when i worked for um belfast photo festival a few years ago as a director we actually had an exhibition um by jim mcginn he actually went around and documented mummers over the years and looked at folklore but also looked at the traditional music he was very interested in traditional music so he has a lot of work that’s to do with those so i think that probably had placed it in my head originally um just looking at that um and then one little miniature performance um

this is just done over zoom oh actually we do have sign for this one let’s let’s try it again

so this and another worker kind of a gif so um what you have here is um she need brennan casuals doing a live performance on zoom to me and she has put in the background um like there’s a big kind of um mummified fish in the ulster museum so it’s in the background and you’ve got the ulster museum itself so she’s put on kind of like a sequined top um a nice long wig and has like a duck bake so she’s kind of wiggling around kind of as if she’s looking at herself you know um which i think is really sweet it’s kind of like just reminds me of the internet it’s like a weird kind of tick tock but an artistic tick tock or something um just really simple um which is nice so um and then we have some ceramic pieces like chris’s um here and then the more irish one um jim rick’s was one of the first ones but this was the kind of ones i was hoping for this kind of amalgamation of irishness as well and so he’s kind of muggy mutant various um kind of characters um and jim ricks is a he’s an irish um oh forgotten the name

he lives in america but he’s an irish i wrote this down didn’t i yeah he’s an irish conceptual artist so um yeah so that’s kind of examples i haven’t got all of the work up and the last one i’ll show you is my piece apart from so i have the irish piece which is the two photographs together and then this one is a drawing that i made and it was just that kind of like cathartic drawing and because i i like tracing things and drawing them over and over again and getting them really simplified but then whenever it’s locked down and you have to like stick it to your window it’s like coming through you know trying to draw it i kind of like that lockdown process i had because then you’ll have people here who yeah maybe you can’t go out and and make things i was surprised we did get as many ceramic things as possible so some of the artists might have changed to video pieces and we also have fantastic one um by amy mcgee and she has and i’m going to use it as the opening piece for when you go into the exhibition and it’s a video piece and she’s made puppets and she tells you dma by story and it’s just absolutely stunning wow really nice so i’ll hope by the date where we do hopefully show it i will have all of them online at the moment that’s just most of them and we also have um this have a video of how to make your own amabe by a japanese artist azuri um and that it’s about 15 minutes long so we have to just kind of uh link over to that and so he makes a little paper and a where the little bake is kind of in the paper and you can make her talk say whatever you like okay so you can see like it’s already such a wide range of work and there’s still more to come yes so you mentioned um a hopeful exhibition as do you have any more detail on that at the moment or um what do you know what can you tell us sure so um pollen studios uh based in belfast um had offered to do the exhibition with us so and um quite a few of the pollen artists all submitted as well so um they’ve been really tight knit with us on the project and with current lockdown methods there are some galleries are currently open at the moment but maybe some of the larger um organizations like the mac and the golden thread gallery and for pollen then um people will probably do it by appointment we’ll have an opening hopefully november 5th which is usually like a late night art where people come out um and we have we’ll have all the safety measures in place and you can basically book like an appointment to come along so i’ll probably put you know some weekend dates in and an evening each week that people can come along throughout november fingers crossed and um if it does get put back because naturally that’s what’s happening at the moment you know it’s kind of part of the project yeah in a way because the project was made during lockdown and it means that if you have to book in for an appointment see it it’s almost becoming a performance you know you’re becoming part of the exhibition by able by being able to come along and of course then with people who especially aren’t able to uh for health and safety purposes and things come out i will have the instagram up and i’ll maybe kind of do a bit more of like um an exhibition online and kind of look at that just for kind of access to make sure and especially for the japanese artists as well that they can kind of see all the work together and for my previous shows i always kind of shoot a video where i can talk through things and just means then that people who can come can still feel connected to it and um do you think you’ll have a lot of the physical works there or will it be you know because there’s quite a lot of sculpture for example um so would it be photographs of those or will the actual workspace and do you think to show so i’ve contacted each of the artists and kind of just had a chat with them and as well like i’m kind of self-funding this and i don’t have any funding for it but obviously i’ve been supported by the arts council for years so i don’t mind you know contributing some especially my own time but also some resources so i have a small budget for kind of contempo temporary prints um for some things and then a lot of the local artists i’m able to kind of go and collect the work but i just kind of ask the artist you know what way they want it shown because some of the video works obviously will go on screens and which particular one the beaver that i mentioned um which is lovely um it’s a gif and i think it would look really nice on on a tablet or on a phone so it’s kind of displayed in the way it was meant to be viewed but yes especially as japanese artists obviously i give them the opportunity if they want to post it they can post it over and i’ll return it but you know we don’t have unfortunately enough budget to kind of get that over um but we’ll be able to reprint some of those so especially like a zoo um which isn’t a zoo and the work that had the um amabe hair object don’t want to lose that on getting it posted over so um i think a print of the two beside each other so like the internet um image of it being sold and then the image of it in the house i think together would look really nice so um actually we will have quite a lot of the artists um are up for having the drawings or the ceramics physically there and then the rest of the stuff then we’ll kind of print um maybe in like a temporary manner or i thought about have mine displayed on the window because i’ve i do often have window drawings so i think it would work really well as a window drawing as well so you know the work will change a bit in the space too

and then i suppose you it must be a factor now you have to figure out how many people you can have in a space and how far apart your things you know that sort of stuff has to maybe be considered now as well in poland’s not a huge space so that’s quite complicated yeah i think it’s kind of um well then again in the millennium court art center that i went to recently it was like one bubble per half an hour so and then it would be frequent cleaning and things like that but because i’m coming from a venue i’m already used to doing that currently for my job and work so i’m very aware of all the exciting terms and conditions and health and safety policies um all over that so i can make it as safe as possible okay well fingers crossed that can go ahead but as you say even if it’s delayed it just adds more time and possibly more overlooking from the email base to help us out hopefully i know come on guys

um that’s brilliant joanna thank you so much for that um do you is um

before i ask anything else um shall we because we had those links of scream but just for the audio and do you want to point people just towards where to see these sure at the moment no worries so to find out more about the exhibition so it’s joannaleach.com and that’s spelt

j-o-h-a-n-n-a-l-e-e-c-h and then um you can do forward slice forward slash amabe so a m a b i e and on instagram it’s a mabe underscore project and that shows you all of the stuff that we’ve came in so between the two of those we’ll kind of have all the details we hope that we’ll create a facebook invitation page soon enough so otherwise um if you follow pollen art studios on facebook and they will then have that online i also have a facebook artist like page so if you just search for my name that i spelt earlier on um you’d be able to just kind of like my page and then those updates for things like the events and stuff will come up as well um i suppose just on this i mean how do you feel about exhibitions going online more and more because i’m personally loving it because it means i can see stuff in belfast and i’m stuck here in newcastle so um but how are you personally finding that and feeling about that as an artist i think it’s good and my previous um solo exhibition that i mentioned before um it was in millennium court arts center and it’s only you know about 40 minutes from belfast i think 40 minutes to half an hour away from belfast city center but there’s so many people who can’t drive um you’re artists mainly um i you know i didn’t learn how to drive until i was 30. so there’s just kind of there’s a lot of people here although it’s not that far away and on our transport system isn’t great that actually i realized even when i was doing an exhibition that was just outside of belfast um i did a recorded walk around of my exhibition which was called wanderlust and fantastic oddities so if anyone wants to look up you know what the work that i kind of described that showed a lot of my work was kind of like a little survey of everything i’ve done so far they can look it up online and there is like i have like a ton of photographs really good documentation and then just a little walk around with me with video and then that’s great because i can share that to people and i have artists that i work with in the states and you know even then all the people who are in belfast that just couldn’t get so there are you know three other reasons can have access to it and i think you know i discovered that before lockdown how important that was and i think it continues to be very important because there’s also even times where i maybe go to an art exhibition opening and you’re too busy kind of chanting whoever’s with you having a glass of wine and it’s quite busy and then you’re kind of like oh you know i’ll go back and then i’ll sit with the work or i’ll look at it for longer and sometimes you just don’t get that opportunity so i think the more that arts and things can go online i think it’s great but it doesn’t take away from that actual experience because a few weeks ago i mean i’ve been self isolating um quite a lot and working from home and um i just decided that when the mac reopened i went to see the exhibition at the mac and again you booked into a certain slot and it’s a huge space so you know it’s it’s a bit safer than maybe going to a small kind of gallery space and i also went to the golden thread to see their show um on the same trip and it just is like there’s no way like that buzz and feeling of going to a gallery you know it’s not as if you know all virtual stuff is going to make it worse or people won’t go out to galleries if they can look at it online that you never nothing can change that idea of just the silence of the space the concentration on an artwork the experience of the artwork being out of your house just you know you can’t you can’t it was just such an amazing experience it almost felt like i was going to a church and it was my religious experience like that’s that’s what it felt like for me was getting back into gallery and just gave my heart that little extra beat that i needed that’s you know like i think seeing art um in person will never be diminished essentially what i think yeah now that’s good to hear or is that very romantic romanticized yeah no it’s no it sounds good i totally understand you mean i imagine i’ll feel the same when i feel able to go to a gallery again um but for now it’s just not really for me and um but yes i i know the space as well that you’re talking about so i can just imagine it and it would be a bit i can imagine it would be a bit safer because they are really big rooms that you’re in um but also it must be nice to have peace in them because they’re only letting so many people in at the one time so that must be quite a nice element of it as well you feel like you have maybe a more intimate experience possibly yeah and i hope that’s what maybe the mabae project would be like because then if there’s people like you both of us are saying you know we don’t want to be you know gallivanting around with um everything that’s happening in the world right now whereas if i knew that it was just myself and my bubble going to a place for a specific time we know people have claimed it and you go in see the art and go away and like you said and have that piece to experience and for as long as you want um i think it’s really nice and um if it’s okay and you did mentioned about working at the strand art cinema as well so you’re used to that is it okay if i just ask you quickly about how that’s going and sure you know the cinema experience because that’s quite similar it’s another sacred art space that we need to protect and um how is that experience are you finding of working at a cinema but also people coming to that cinema again

like i think from i kind of had to make it kind of you know oh welcome back to the strand covert video um just to put out on social media just so people knew the experience and i mean like as far as any kind of covered procedures and things like we have every every box ticked and more you know we’ve changed our screen in times where it is and people coming in and out of the building and there’s um like special cleaning that we have like a fogger machine that antibacterializes the seats and everything never mind then you know just having cleaning stations and cleaning more so we we have that all kind of ticked so i actually have been to a few screenings while two screenings since lockdown because i know the strand is as clean as it can be and also we’re a small cinema and we’re in a rural space we’re not the city center so we’re never super busy anyway and then with we’re not particularly busy but it just means that you can book exactly where you’re sitting you’re socially distanced and so i was able to i went and saw tannen and um the other event i went to was a global film screening um which we’re doing at the moment and it was with green book and then we kind of had a discussion on kind of black lives matters and um different things like that so if yeah just give me that buzz because you know we’re kind of you know a vintage cinema um designed in 1935 so that kind of encompassing kind of red curtain feel and you’re sitting in half back seats and the experience is just so lovely and just being immersed in the film because i just thought no matter how many times i’ve watched inception um boogers for nolan i’ve forgotten half the time what happens in it and it’s because i just kept on watching it at home a few times or maybe had a glass of wine can’t remember the ending very well so it meant that with tenant i had that full attention span i went in no one not it it’s christopher nolan and you know there’s gonna be questionable things about it too but it’s gonna be an amazing cinematic experience so i did feel like i kind of said there maybe it’s because of my previously religious background but that kind of i’m that ultimate buzz of being like in your synagogue you know it’s like you know the room itself and the space and and just being spread out and and the feeling of being feeling safe because um people around you are further enough away and you just get to switch off and fully enjoy a film and i notice so many more things in green book than i did watching it at home because i missed it and the first kind of cinema release there was a few times with things i was like oh oh that’s not and i was like doing the talk afterwards like i was like i was noticing things more and i’m supposed to know more about the film so yeah i disagree if you’d like you know the experience of being innocent is never going to take away from watching those you know films on on netflix and whatever yes it is great that those um platforms are there so in the global film screenings i’ve made it that you can go on to the strands website and you can read like a resource about your green book so it has the recording of us doing the talk it also tells you that you can watch green book on amazon prime so i’ve kind of make packages afterwards and make it accessible to people who can’t go so they can still feel like they’re part of it so they can watch green book from the link and then um obviously they would need to you know pay for that or have amazon prime but then i would recommend and give links to the films that we mentioned in the talks because you always forget when you’re listening to something like that brilliant so i have resources of different films that are good to watch like moonlight um and then i have a connection with belfast which talks about frederick douglass who um you know would have been one of kind of the main people to kind of abolish slavery and he had been the belfast and that connection i had read an article about it in 2012 so i was able to like place that too so we’re in the strand we go beyond film sometimes and with special events then i can still bring in an online audience or i just give people that chance to go what was that film she was watching and then i can tell them about the original grain book and how it really was for americans um and you know recommended documentaries and stuff so um i think you should get get out there and support your local spaces if we can all stay open you know they’re closed in the south at the moment so um it’s good to support those spaces but uh not you’ll never get over that kind of cinema experience or um my partner was telling me oh we were talking about vr and he said you know you can get vr which makes you be in a cinema and then it projects your netflix film oh yeah but you have to wear a really heavy headset and you can’t it’s the smell of it too it’s other sensory things it’s the way the light is it’s the way the sound kind of almost hugs you because it’s um soundproofed and it’s all of those things you know it’s when the lights go down it’s like oh you know give a ticket you know he had all those things like um like i think uh there’s uh i was gonna say um mark cousins always talks about the romanticism the cinema but in the way he kind of describes it you know um like on how he he likes it i think he’d say like sitting in the front seat is it in a front row i like sitting in the front i like just ignoring if there’s other people i like feeling like i’m there by myself and it’s just for me with the big screen exactly well if people go to this round you might be um very small amount of people there and it will fill it likes your own screen if i could get your feedback probably exactly but the feedback you know from customers when i did that covered video and i got a couple of voxpos was one of them was like a guy who was a film student and um he was just desperately back he’s like i’ve been three times this week it’s like oh it’s so lovely and then you know it’s weird because the family audiences haven’t really came back so i think families have got so used to being in lockdown and getting to schedules i think you know i’m hoping there’ll be a time where those guys are able to come back and enjoy themselves and that bit of you know your parent as well okay you might be watching a kid’s film but you know your kids are going to be quiet hopefully beside you for an hour and a half enjoy it you know take the time for yourself to watch a movie and and enjoy it yeah it’s just worrying with so many outbreaks and skills at the moment so it’s very worrying to take children anywhere i think at the moment that’s one of the things but yeah we just have to find a way to help cinemas survive i think if we can yeah um and i think well the strand is spoiled because we’re supported because we are a charitable organization we’re supported by the arts council so loyalty burned

well just compared to maybe some of the other independents um who you know like my wage is funded by the arts council because i’m doing all this outreach and whenever it was locked down i was doing online videos and events and supporting artists and pain artists so we can kind of do that and we’re a bit luckier than some of the other spaces that might just be going on on solely the income they got in the door

right um is there anything else you would like to say put out there or anything before we go well no i think we’ve already talked about it so i had mentioned my website so if people want to see my work because they can save the exhibition at millennium court which kind of encompasses all of that and yeah keep an eye out for the amabe stuff you can get um most of a sneak break you get on the instagram at the moment there is most of the work there and so yeah so um just thanks so much paula for having me on the chat it’s been really good brilliant yeah no thank you for doing it it’s brilliant i’ve been following the project with interest and it’s such a lovely idea because it is just that idea of care and something looking after you but also a collection of people who are all spread out they’re all dispersed coming together to work on something like this it’s a really beautiful things it’s a lovely thing to be able to highlight and put out there really so thank you very much for showing us so much of the work it’s wonderful no problem

this has been a cosy pea pod production with me paula blair and my very special guest johanna leech the music is common grounds by airton license under a 3.0 non-commercial attribution and is available from ccmixter.org episodes release every other wednesday and you can get those anywhere that you find podcasts but also you can subscribe to my own personal youtube channel if you find pea blare you can see the full recordings now that we’ve been doing the video versions as well do please share and subscribe to help other people find the show be part of the conversation with av cultures pod on instagram and iv cultures on twitter and facebook we’re always happy to hear from potential guests so if you’ve got an idea for a show or something that you’re working on that you’d really love the world my tiny bit of the world to hear about then please do get in touch i’d really love to hear from you and if i’ve invited you and i haven’t heard back from yet i’ve got an open door policy so there’s it’s never too late and um everybody’s really busy and stressed so don’t worry about it um i’m always also happy to have suggestions from listeners about topics that you something that you think you’d like to hear us try to cover i do try to make those and i do keep a list um there are loads of suggestions that have been in the past i haven’t got to yet just because i haven’t been able to access this stuff and that is partly where your support comes in so even if you want to send us a dvd or access to something that you’d like us to see that would be really helpful so i do wear all the hats in the making of this program and um so if you could support my work and you there are the memberships and patreon as described earlier on but you can also drop me a fiver at buy me a coffee dot com forward slash p e a blair or you can give any amount so like a pound or something if that’s all you want to give at paypal dot me forward slash p e a blair and just anything at all really really helps so huge thanks for joining us i hope you really enjoyed this i loved making this episode keep well stay safe and as ever be excellent to each other and i will catch you next time

transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 73 – Arts Collaboration with Dawn Woolley and Zara Worth automated transcript


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welcome to audiovisual cultures with me paula blair in this episode i have a great conversation with artists sarah wirth and don willey who are collaborating on work that engages with systems of belief in contemporary culture and this is a topic which takes us through a really wide range of areas in modern life it’s really super fascinating huge thanks to our members on patreon.com forward slash av cultures for all your support as many of you may know it has been a summer of managing a lot of tactical hiccups to put it lightly and um getting by with very small struggling machine so to help the recovery fund if you’re able to you can slip me a fiver at buy me a coffee.com forward slash p e a blair or you can listen to the end and i’ll give you a few other options if you can help out even if you can just share the podcast and spread it around that in itself is a really huge help

so for now i really hope you get as much out of this chat as i did um zara and donner working on some really fascinating stuff and have been for quite a while so i really hope you enjoy this hey don and zara good morning good morning hi i’m doing well um thank you so much for joining me for this so we’re gonna talk about work that you’re both collaborating on and um but first i think it’d be nice to establish a bit about your individual practices and um we also have a really nice connection through all working with yorkshire sculpture international 2019 um and i had the chance to spend a day with sarah during that but i never got to meet you don and it’s really lovely to connect now and um so if it’s okay i’ll start by asking each of you to maybe take us through a little bit about what you did as engagement artists for that and then we’ll we’ll edge into your what you’re working on now and we’ll see what comes up so if it’s okay don could i ask you to go first because i don’t really know what you did last year yes absolutely um i was working with the yorkshire sculpture park and a group of women or actually two groups of women who were doing um english as a second language courses in wakefield and so they were from uh various different places particularly in um sort of indian continent and africa and i was kind of taking them around the sculpture park introducing them to the different amazing things that are out there and also to the hepworth we looked at some of the kind of key sculptural techniques within some of the work that we saw um and then just made things basically so sometimes it was sewing sometimes it was building it was kind of really quite varied we just sort of went through different things and in the end i photographed a lot of the sculptures and objects that they made and then made some banners uh like pop-up banners that were displayed at the sculpture park and i think they are with um wakefield council’s education department now so hopefully they’re on display in the library or something like that fantastic that’s great and zarya you were based in leeds weren’t you yeah i was um working with the henry moore institute and um abby grange school so a group of year nines were the group that i was working with the majority of the time on the day that i met you we were also doing lots of different um workshops as part of the sculpture and school day so i was working with all ages on that particular day but the majority of my time was spent working with a group of year nines and we spent most of our time in the classroom um in the art classroom so i did a i devised a project to create a piece of work working with them and which was called prayer hands ipad poses because i was really struck by the fact that one of the sort of selling points that the school traded on was the fact that they got um or they gave ipads to all of their students and the ipads were really embedded in their learning and obviously this is so different to some school experience that i had i was really fascinated by this um especially since because i suppose there’s so much about like kids spending too much time on their ipads on their iphones then they’re giving them at school and told to do everything on them um and i was interested in trying to make a piece of work that was you know relevant obviously to my practice and my own interest in social media and handheld technology but also to devise a piece of work that facilitated the kids to get into a headspace where they could start recognizing their day-to-day lived experience is valid reference points for making art from and so you know the fact that they use ipads every day in their day-to-day life at school that that is a valid subject to make art about so we um did we made casts of their hands in poses um and gestures that they used whilst holding and operating their ipads and then painted them golden and put them together so it was kind of you know looking at the ways that we use our bodies in relation to technology but also creating an absence of that technology which in in so doing was also kind of drawing attention to the fact of its constant presence in our lives and hopefully they you know got out of it i think i think they um yeah i think they enjoyed it yes that’s great and so how was it then was it through doing ysi that both of you find out about each other then yeah yeah yeah um we actually met on the group interview day for the engagement artist and we happened to be sat at the same table and i guess in that we were kind of giving brief overviews of some of our interests and i think um zara had mentioned that she was interested in like use of technology and social media and things and i was like oh well actually that’s what my research is about as well so we just kind of kept the conversation going from there really yeah and i think i’d i can’t remember it would have been probably about a year after i’d finished making a piece of work called a drawing made by cutting up my body weight in celery which was obviously really tied into like diet culture and particularly on social media in particular on instagram and wellness culture and i’d also just made a piece of work titled wellness and which really really tied in with all the things that dawn was saying and i was listening to john speaking yeah yeah

yeah yeah and i think is it because both of you have done in very different ways work that’s somehow to do with some kind of religious iconography isn’t that right yeah yeah and i think zara’s is probably a bit more overt than mine and but i’m interested in consumer culture quite broadly um and how objects are sold to us with these kind of using pseudo-religious techniques and languages um so i’d done a piece of work called wishbook which was an instagram based project about kind of unpacking some of the the kind of mystical uh language of commodities um uh yeah and i kind of also make um strange objects that you can maybe see behind me that are kind of related to anthropology and objects of worship from different cultures but made out of packaging material so kind of contemporizing these ideas of fetishism and commodity worship

and then the language as well as kind of a yeah interesting the language is kind of a shared theme because they’ve also we’ve both looked at hashtags as well and i’d made a piece of work um in 2018 called chorus and where i’d looked at how about this absolutely i’ve made i’ve rewritten the choral version of the lord’s prayer using hashtags from wellness posts on instagram and and they were really but they’re really interesting as humorous as it is and i presented it as both sheet music and as a sing-along karaoke um but what was interesting is that there’s the kind of obvious ones that you’d expect with like you know food blogger but then some of them are very quasi-religious in the promises that they’re making you know things like healing foods and and things like that and and i’d come across um a few social media instagram wellness influences that are really problematic in particular and that that became kind of a starting point for the work that we did together looking at sort of these celebrity influences and the promises that they make with these different ways of eating and living and of course social media is so strange really when it comes to food because you know there’s a it’s actually so removed from gestation and actually from not gestation just to do purposes no one that is removed from gestation but it’s not removed from gusted free purposes and it’s so removed from digestion was what i was looking for um and yeah it so i think it kind of lays bare the hidden kind of mythologies and signs laden latent in the images that um are shared of food yeah and they’re quite polarizing so or polarized um like communities but also in the language so we particularly looked at the clean eating phenomena which is very wrapped up in these kind of religious ideas of cleanliness purification um sin free eating um and then the the kind of opposite of there’s there’s kind of an eat dirty trend which is kind of it which is the polar opposite of clean eating it’s it’s very masculine for a start where most of the clean eating people are women of a particular type um and yeah it’s just like all of the codes and the permissions that are wrapped up in all of that that kind of language and the images that are attached to them are really fascinating so so we started by kind of comparing those kind of posts really um and we made a a visual essay by um screen grabbing images relating to sort of predetermined hashtags to do with clean or dirty eating and just made it into a kind of slideshow to show those to to show the comparison quite clearly and then again and that then became we did we put together some well we wrote some papers together following the publication of that piece um that really i suppose unpacked it in a bit more detail i looked particularly at the people behind that you know these um the influences because these very much like religion um these trends as it were kind of gravitate around or towards um yes celebrity-like people and it’s fascinating as well because if you’re not in that you probably would never come across that but then you find these people that have millions of followers um yeah that take you know their guidance as like a dictator um that is being espoused with absolutely no actual scientific underpinning about certainly with the clean eating trend is probably worse for this where um i’m thinking in particular of this guy called uh he’s he uses the ha the um account name medical medium he’s called anthony williams and he um has so like thousands and thousands of followers and he claims to receive his knowledge about um food from a high-level spirit who tells them things that are like beyond like science and he and it sounds crazy and kind of laughable and on one hand it is but on the other hand he’s literally also telling people to come off chemotherapy and start um following a diet of celery juicing so as much as it sounds you know humorous actually there’s very very tangible and you know life-threatening consequences of people taking what he’s saying seriously um and he clearly does wield a lot of influence and a lot of power in people’s lives and which is sad yeah and well even less extreme cases you know that are not being um spoken to by high-level spirits um they still appear to have uh not like knowledge and experience as nutritionists or dietitians and things but they don’t so so there’s i think there’s a danger throughout it not not just at the whole level kind of big influences that i think we talk about a lot and we kind of want to draw attention to um in the work that we do and it all links back to kind of the post-truths as well and making it kind of wider which is something that in certainly a wellness that i kind of emphasize because the so in wellness it’s basically a kind of digital collage combining appropriated images of wells and then the accompanying hashtags go kind of down the rabbit hole as it were going through other hashtags to find other hashtags and it takes you from wellness and through a kind of you know progression into total nonsense but it ends in it actually ends in trump and i genuinely did follow the um hashtags as i’ve made that work yeah it seems that there’s um there must be a real relationship then between that kind of activity and evangelism it sounds like yeah

do you want to say about it yeah um i because i do look at um diet cultures in my own research and i’ve particularly been looking at um the rhetorics around the obesity crisis and a kind of the treatment of fat in our cultures and there is um quite strangely but also quite logically there is quite a a kind of evangelizing about the body so you know like that idea the body is a temple it’s gift you’re supposed to look after it if you’re not there and that kind of underpins anything to do with the body as not as imperfect is also immoral so and you come across that a lot and it uh and i think that’s also tied into some of those um languages about um you know personal responsibility that’s also very sort of neoliberal um view of health uh so so yeah and then you get kind of advert rhetoric like your only limit is you uh which is a kind of nike slogan and pretty much any night slogan you pick will will underpin the idea of personal responsibility and expectation of driving to achieve good health um that really undercuts uh the very real um social economic disparities that stop people from achieving health and also it’s very ableist point of view um yeah so there’s all of these things going on and they’re deeply moralizing kind of arguments i was thinking about this this morning actually because i was watching i’ve seen um judith butler’s shared uh possibly shared a video of jews but they’re talking about um the pandemic and about um health but also about the fact that you know people talk about this idea that we’re going to have create this new world but actually you know you’re it’s also revealing how embedded social racial economic inequalities are just so embedded in our kind of capitalist system but i was thinking about the fact that um we often talk about like life choices so i you know wherever i live um there’s a like a really big problem with obesity but it’s also a very you know not a well-off area at all and so talking about life choices implies that everybody has the same choices available to them which they just do not like and i was thinking of well i suppose i didn’t really get to a conclusion but how we need to change the word choices to a better word that reflects that not everybody has the same choices available to them when they’re making um decisions about what to buy what to eat whether to exercise etc um and social media eclipses that hugely and then makes you feel absolutely terrible for not being able to kind of self-actualize to this extent but i was also thinking that just kind of to explain maybe the way that i come into this area i’m more interested in um belief systems and meaning making um and the kind of religious side of things um so and and not always in a kind of like necessarily really critical away or or sometimes kind of so like obviously i’m very critical of like wellness cultures but actually the work they’re making at the moment and around selfies and um yes online self portraiture more generally is not actually it’s kind of maybe the opposite that you would expect you know in terms of the criticism offered or the critique offered um in i’m sort of i’m making comparisons between selfies and online self portraiture and religious icons in saying that actually you know these are valid expressions of a kind of i ideal super super ego to live up to whether that is helpful or not to the individual you know is questionable but actually you know is there not actually something about the human condition which you know where we feel obliged to find images and in case of where we’re maybe uh atheist to make our own images for us to live up to and to make our own images to aspire to whether those are positive images is another issue you know in entirety like um but yeah not just kind of total selfie bashing yeah and i can kind of um echo that sentiment my phd ended up being a lot about selfies quite unexpectedly because um i started out and ended talking about still life but somehow selfies crept in to that discussion and i’ve just finished a book that will be out next year which is about commodification and social media and how what that does to individuals bodies and actually selfies of different types are a good way to examine that to see what the trends are and although i think selfies have um well they make people visible they they kind of they’re a statement of presence which is fairly uh universally available although obviously that depends on technology internet connections and so on um but it does kind of level the playing field about who can be represented basically um but unfortunately there’s a real um trend towards very um polarized gender representations and i think actually expectations of gender performance that are becoming even more stereotypical and there is actually um evidence of um through academic studies that show gender stereotypes are more prevalent in selfies than they are in advertising for example um so the work that i’m kind of working on now and some of the projects i’m initiating are about how do you

inter intercept in that process of making gender stereotypical and i think it’s kind of to do with the reward systems online that you know if you behave in a certain way that’s expected you will get likes follows and so on and we know they have very you know pleasurable physical effects on the body so um so it’s how do you change that what’s given the reward basically and how do you open out representation to be actually democratic and welcome lots of different types of bodies different genders and so on so so yeah i’m kind of a thumbs up for selfies with a very big butt at the end

and i think as well like one of the things that i’ve always found frustrating is you know when in discussions about selfies that they quite often level around criticisms of young women representing them and often let’s be serious regurgitating really problematic um images of a kind of highly feminized you know in whatever narcissistic and yeah narcissistic way but also just like you know you’ve given you’ve told young women that your value in this world is to look a certain way to behave a certain way you know to be kind of quiet to be sexy to kind of just to to have a body that looks certain way and then when they then adhere to that you then tell them off for that and i think that it’s more important to kind of offer a critique that exposes the the kind of the mason age machination i kind of speak like how that you know how how that’s operating you know as people are using that as an image for themselves to aspire to and then also is dawn saying to think about ways that we can kind of offer alternative ways of um yeah being more inclusive and and having different types of identity kind of less and less binary representations of gender etcetera and and that you’ve made me think as well about um a really influential series of lectures that i attended when i was at goldsmiths which were um michelle for has um the age of um lectures on the age of appreciation lectures on the neoliberal condition and he talks about um appreciation economies on social media and which we you know is kind of perfectly evidenced by the fact that you know of course people want to young people want to get likes they want to get appreciation and follows um and it’s so difficult when you know people are being you know they’re getting that appreciation which is like saying yeah this is good what you’re doing is good to then be told actually you you know you’re reproducing really problematic images so how do we intercept in the system okay yeah absolutely and so is that that’s the work that you’re collaborating on now is that is working through ways of maybe trying to do that or no we’re currently well we just finished writing a book chapter for um a book on food cultures on instagram in which we talk about the um artworks that we’ve produced together and individually for instagram uh but actually that our kind of current collaboration is looking more broadly at these kind of the the kind of pseudo-religiousness of contemporary society basically um which we are we’re putting together an exhibition proposal at the moment um so we’re kind of looking around to see which other artists are are kind of kind of dealing with this subject in interesting and varied ways yeah it’s far more general i suppose in what we’re trying to you know pin down through the exhibition and obviously our personal interests and work is about kind of presentations of um culture that kind of intersects with the religious or the quasi-religious um but we’re also kind of interested in other you know artists who are working in similar areas but maybe like the religious but other um presentations of um contemporary culture so obviously like i’m quite interested in selfies and comparing them to icons but maybe we’ll find some artists that we want to work with who are interested in maybe the resurgence of interest in tarot or the resurgence of interest in astrology um and crystals and things like this and yeah yeah yeah and i mean because i’m currently working on like votive paintings in my interest and i’ve kind of done uh work around fetish objects but we’re also thinking about well and this kind of relates to zara’s um piece of work uh does turn selfies into a hymn and we’re thinking about what about spells and prayers and these more ephemeral things and how do we enact those things in contemporary culture um in ways that maybe we’re not thinking about so so yeah we don’t know exactly what we’ll find out through that but it’s quite an exciting research process

and i was just thinking about the to go back to the the book chapter worked on together i suppose and that we were really thinking more specifically about instagram as um kind of a space that could you know be a site for art but as well as a subject for art so we brought together works that specifically um actually kind of permeated that space as well as disrupted it and and then how those were strategies for kind of exposing some of those operations and that we talked about earlier

um so where is that chapter going to be available um

no um i i i assume it’ll probably be early next year okay and then it’ll come out and the book’s called you are what you post isn’t it okay is it yeah okay i think that’s i didn’t know that the final title no we probably should have checked some of these details because i don’t actually know who the publisher is either okay yeah are you looking it up sorry so our chapter is called creative consumption okay and um i think it’s going to be published with bloomsbury academic press yeah you are what you post food and instagram is the title of the book and um yeah bloom’s academic press but i’m not sure what the timeline is for how well everything’s gonna be publishing especially

yeah yeah it’s glacially slow anyway but it’ll be even

yeah yeah i think a lot of people are finishing books because they’ve got so much time at home so um so maybe there’s going to be a backlog with the publishers

so i i’m really interested in those metaphors around consumption you know because we we consume the commodity items and that sort of thing but also you know the consumption of food and intake into the body and then that kind conflating that with the idea of consuming religion digesting religion um and then those similarities that you’re working through that you’re finding with our use of social media so what we consume but also what we put back out again on social media um so i mean i was i was thinking about um if you’d like to talk about the materiality of your work as well because you both work across lots of different media and i am done looking at your website you work a lot with actual food as well and you know sorry you have done a bit as well and um you know so are there any relationships with the actual materials that you use often if you want to have it through that definitely and i think um at the beginning of doing my phd i was using food as a sculptural material so kind of making um objects out of blemonge and cake and meat uh often rotting food things as well so um it was kind of this idea and i’m quite interested in how food is advertised so it’s and it is again this kind of binary between um the good for you food and then the naughty treat um and how um how you know it food is almost always in one of those categories so how do you play with this idea of something that’s kind of um seductive but dangerous or um kind of desirable but repulsive at the same time and so so yeah so using food to make things but kind of transforming their shape in some way to make them more more kind of problematic or challenging and also trying to relate them back to the body in some way to talk about this idea of you are what you eat basically um so yeah so sometimes it was like my bleming dentata which had white chocolate teeth uh or i’ve used things like um uh um you know like weight loss girdle things and um those types that are meant to suck your body in but filled with potatoes and things um to really play around this relationship between body and food it’s funny i was also thinking as you were speaking down about um the kind of gender divide in terms of um how legible these foods are as signs and that’s something that i found with the celery drawing that um when i’ve shown it predominantly women just get it like they can just they find it very legible as a piece of artwork because of the connotations of um celery and celery’s a funny one because it it’s like a perfect kind of example of kind of the post-truth uh situation though it’s kind of predates the post-truth in its own mythology as this minus calorie um because it yeah it has this reputation as being something that takes so much energy to digest that you actually burn calories from eating it which is not true but the the work plays off that idea but also kind of the violence of the idea that this idea that you would be purposefully eating food that will actually um like deen your issue yeah it does the opposite that food is supposed to which is yeah give you energy and pleasure and all the rest of it and plus i mean personally i absolutely hate celery so much and so i i found it quite interesting the reception of that piece that you i found you had to kind of explain it a bit more to predom predominantly to men and whereas women who are really the primary targets of diet culture and found it far more legible in terms of like my more recent work though the materials i’ve been using i have been working predominantly with um gold gold leaf and imitation gold leaf and i mean the choice to work with the imitation gold is like primarily is economic because it is so much cheaper but obviously dealing with these kind of um themes about identity and like projection of identity online and and the kind of performance of that as a kind of projection of an image um obviously really lends itself to this idea of using materials which aren’t quite what they appear and and i’ve been making kind of large paintings on um on polythene so it has this diaphanous quality as well which brings this slight kind of immateriality to it as well but but equally really lends itself back to um these different religious objects that which is where there’s a nice point of connection with dawn’s work so kind of referencing like veils and shrouds and but also being quite ghostly and speaking to this idea of like religious presence and imminence is there anything either of you are working actually i was thinking about the idea of self-care because this is quite a big buzzword now and if that’s coming up anywhere in what you’re searching through um well because the votive paintings that i’m working on at the moment and i can um if i can find one i’ll show you on so they are kind of about their self-care culture in a way but it’s also and that they’re on broken old mobile phones so it’s kind of this idea of the phone being um the site that we make you know and votives are kind of like their prayers um asks for help um biographies to do with miracles and you know so so they and i think social media is also a sight for all of these things like we kind of show off things we ask for help we confess things um you know cite our achievements and so on so it’s kind of thinking about how can i express the function of these as powerful objects in our lives um but it is also very much to do with that neo-liberal rhetoric where self-care is not just look after yourself it’s like it’s your responsibility we’re not going to help you and that’s a very commoditized language as well so it’s like self-care is making the right consumer choices basically and that expectation that everyone can make those choices um so yeah choices yeah which is no choice at all really yeah when people just don’t have you know not everybody has the same choices a set of choices available for them i i imagine like a a kind of dinner party analogy like some people have a platter and other people have like a saucer yeah well and i i’ve recently um just revised a chapter for a book on um uh well the book is their productive body so it’s kind of about the body in contemporary consumer culture but um my chapter is on the quantified self movement so i’m really interested in self tracking culture and which again it seems to be a very equal thing like you just get a phone or a wristband thing with a pedometer you can track things but um but now it’s increasingly tied up with work wellness programs as well so that it’s kind of like you’re being tracked all of the time so your free time has kind of been co-opted by work um in america it’s also really tied into um insurance like um getting money off insurance insurance policies and things so so actually your ability to provide data makes you better off than other people so there’s an inequality there already and i read an article i can’t remember the name of the the writer but they did say basically your employability will also begin to hinge on how well you can produce data because if they you know if your company want to provide you with um life insurance and health insurance they want to know that you’re not going to cost them a fortune and you prove that with your um self-tracking data so so yeah these inequalities are uh growing and and becoming really embedded throughout our lives in quite a scary way actually yeah but that was a bit of a tangent sorry that’s all yeah i was thinking earlier when i was looking through all of this about the data self and the convergence with surveillance culture that’s happening and we are self surveilling now with all of these yeah yeah there’s a great book i think well i’ve definitely read i’m pretty sure zara has read it as well um by bernard harcourt called exposing the self oh well you should but it is like this link between um the pleasures of social media and the surveillance aspect and he kind of makes the point that actually the um how uncannily the apple watch for example is like a a prison tag or a you know community a probation tag rather so so we’re kind of these um yeah punishment and surveillance techniques are really embedded within our our leisure activities and the pleasures of our life as well so um yeah it’s interesting but who knows where that’s going to end up because it took off so quickly and become so um you know fully accepted so quickly yeah the speed of it is as such a problem as well for people to kind of it’s sort of happening as pace beyond which we can be kind of reflective and also fully knowledgeable especially as it’s it’s just absorbed into kind of the like necessities for you to function in society as you were saying like about trying to access healthcare so that your kind of need to be able to access healthcare in the states for example is going to trump the front of the word the need for you to actually be really careful and think very selectively about how you’re going to manage your personal data and but actually kind of we don’t know the long-term effects of these choices that are being made for us and certainly when you’re you know without being hugely stereotypical but of an older generation where these this technology is particularly foreign to you and like i realized that my mum and her friend had never turned off the like um okay hey siri so they hadn’t realized that the phones were constantly listening to them and they were absolutely horrified but then of course why would they know that you know when it was and they just thought it was just really helpful function but they never considered the fact that it would mean that their phone would have to be constantly listening yeah absolutely um and well i think um research has shown that those inequalities you know that the age inequality is you know very evident but also things like if you live in a rural place rather than a city you’re less likely to be using these technologies um and then you know all of the the social um categories already exist so if you’re marginalized in any other way in your life you’re marginalized in this as well and and i think the speed thing that zara said also means i mean it’s a fascinating subject for research um and people are doing really amazing work on this but it is really like um as soon as you’re kind of working on something it’s already moved on quite quickly so it’s kind of um like that that kind of trying to keep up to critique all of these social phenomena as they’re happening is is very difficult um so we’ll see how that one plays out as well i think yeah that’s again it’s me kind of um really badly paraphrasing what judith butler was talking about when i was listening to her talk um and she was talking about different speeds of violences that happening against different groups and you know social inequalities is like a slow moving violence against groups in society that are marginalized that are more vulnerable and this is just one way in which um further kind of injustices are enacted upon those groups um whilst tiny groups just get richer and richer and richer

cheerful i mean there are also amazing organizations that are looking at things like data equality um and how to try and prevent some of these um you know discriminations and inequalities happening and also some amazing organizations who are trying to redistribute old technology to people to to try and level the playing field a little bit so there’s um like here in leeds there’s media north west who gather up people’s old laptops and um tablets and things like that and then redistribute them to school children who need them you know and this is kind of initiated because of the lockdown so and that kind of awareness that technology inequality is even um you know more exacerbated by by the situation that we’re in at the moment um and how can we try and even that out a little bit so um so yeah so there are there are people doing things to help which is good yeah yeah and overcoming that and built obsoletism i think in the machines because it’s that idea of choice and autonomy comes up again it’s say um well you have to get the new whatever it is you have to get the new version of the iphone and then but you have to get this special connector because it’s not compatible with these other things and you know it’s you don’t really have that many choices when and you’ve also got too much choice at the same time well that’s what literally just happened to me at the start of this i realized this laptop is a 2019 um edition a version laptop and yet my headphones for my phone which is it is a new phone which makes it sound like i buy technology all the time i eek it out to the point that it just all dies at once and i’ve been to where i have to have two different types of headphones because the connection is different

yeah well and like i spend a lot of time thinking about what what products am i using that are single use and how can i change them so they’re not single use anymore um and i do think you know that whole idea where and apple are terrible for it every time you get a new computer um you have to have a new cable uh you know you can’t connect to a projector in academia like hdmi cable or so it’s like you have to keep buying these things that are well they’re going to go into landfill sites anyway um unless you recycle them which you actually can do um but the the energy and the pollution causing processes to um extract the metals and the minerals and things that are needed to make them and then to actually make them and to ship them out you know it’s like i don’t know how as a society that is allowed because we know we’re in a terrible state you know there is a climate crisis and so i think those kind of practices should be um legislated against yeah basically and especially when you look at these the specific minerals as well and where they come from a they’re not limitless resources that can just be mined indefinitely but b the conditions of and the locations of which you find such resources and minerals are predominantly in the developing world and the conditions in which they’re being mined are hugely dangerous and you know taking um lives of people that are being forced to mind them because they have no other choices available choices yeah well i was about to say we we we can choose to be ethical consumers but actually to a point we can but then it’s like okay which computer do you buy then that doesn’t you know do all of these things that isn’t going to need to be replaced in three years because you can no longer update the software for example you know it’s like i think we’d struggle to find a really clean um technology company to to change too so and i think that these companies as well by building in the obsolescence have have shot themselves in the foot in some way because like i say these resources are not infinite so then now there’s now seems to be more schemes about recycling and and to get back the minerals and the different compounds and reuse them but it and it only seems to be very recent that they’ve clocked onto this yeah and that they’re still saying that we need to keep producing these things where actually they should be saying we need to extend the shelf life of these things because extraction reproduction of whatever it is you know that again there’s still pollution causing processes that use energy as well that then have to that has to be produced so um so yeah i i do think it’s good the more recycling we can do but it’s not the answer we need to be consuming less and that’s that’s the deeply unpopular uh take for consumer culture because obviously we are in economies that demand growth and expansion so so the idea that consuming less is the way forwards really doesn’t fit in with that that kind of dominant economic idea

yeah and i think just to tie it in a little bit with that idea of self-care there’s that expectation of us taking care of ourselves and yet so you know how many of us know how to fix a basic thing on a computer that goes wrong how do we how do we know how to care for our technologies and that sort of thing we’re actually kept out of those systems you know where and they’re made so complex that we can’t possibly do we have to go to a specialist and spend money so even prolonging their life is a form of consumerism as well also thinking about like self-care is like yeah we’re kind of looking after ourselves but we’ve also we’ve also already had our industrial revolution so who are we to say you know we’ve had the luxury kind of you know comparable affluence and the benefits that that’s brought to us other countries they haven’t had the the industry revolution yet um and they look at us and we’re saying okay we need to stop we need to stop producing stuff you need to stop producing stuff for us and and there’s saying well why should we you know it’s all very well in that yeah and and i think that whole self-care um the idea i mean you there’s a kind of idea the feminist ethics of care which is something completely different which is um i think more communal and about community rather than the self-care that’s kind of consumer culture self-care is you look after yourself and everybody else should be lacking looking after themselves so you know it’s saying act in your own self-interest which is not acting in the interest of the environment and it’s amazing how many more single-use things there are now um into in kind of relation to self-care and i’ve got some of those you know like face mask sheets um that became a really big thing and it’s like i don’t it’s one another one of those products where i’m like why are we allowed to make this because it’s a a kind of fibrous um fabric basically that you kind of use for 10 minutes and then throw in the bin it’s like and then it’s packaged as well so it’s kind of creating all of this waste and for what like what it’s more convenient basically i guess that’s a selling point um but but i do think that’s the kind of selfishness of the idea of self-care that we have um in our society now well it just makes i’m reading and part of a research group that i’m involved with we’re kind of slowly reading through um haraway’s tentacular thinking which just feels really relevant here in terms of the she’s calling for she’s calling for thinking thinking she keeps on insisting think we must think we must but also thinking you know outside of ourselves like thinking in a web and of all the different like you know every ecology not just about the beyond the individual beyond the human um and and people as you know sadly the culture certainly is you know capitalist culture is thoughtless and it it um encourages thoughtlessness and in that it self-care encourages you to not think beyond yourself but it’s kind of core it’s just like put this plastic sheet on your face and don’t think about where that’s come from what’s been required to make that what that what’s going to happen when you put that in the bin where that goes you know what implications that has yeah and well to kind of go back maybe to where we began um these are also very gendered products that we’re talking about and um it’s not just that we are selfish consumers we are also absolutely disciplined to perform these kind of rituals of self-care and kind of commodified beautification basically i think as women particularly we are chastised for this kind of so mindless consumption but also absolutely expected to do it so um so i think there is a kind of gender equal inequality at the heart of this kind of really problematic idea of self-care as well because that’s not equally expected or distributed sure absolutely i had a scary thought there about the idea of relics because of uh what you’ve really both been working on before and just the idea of all of these laptop cases and stuff being found by archaeologists in the future it’s gonna be a layer of um disposable face masks along with them yeah and plastic gloves yes the the kind of idea for my relics series did sort of come out of that not in terms of technology but but this idea that the packaging which is not the thing that we buy and it’s kind of that it protects but then it’s immediately wasted and discarded uh but also a lot of time and money goes into the design and development of the packaging and the kind of finessing the rhetoric of what these things say um so yes i kind of came to the conclusion that as a society we wouldn’t be uh remembered for these fascinating uh religious objects that will be kind of unearthed um in a thousand years time it will be plastic pollution um so i kind of i was trying to reimagine this plastic waste as these sort of pseudo-religious uh relics

it’s something i’ve been aware of with the materials that i’m using and i haven’t really dug into sorry very deeply but you know i am working with polythene which is completely unenvironmentally friendly and but i suppose i’m quite interested in this idea that i’m making something that is using those materials that the materials i’m using are supposed to be once used materials and well not the gold but um the polythene sheeting is a dust sheet which is intended to be used once which i would absolutely never use for that purpose and instead i’m using it um for its material qualities the fact that it’s slightly transparent and it’s you know very lightweight and has this beautiful kind of diaphanous quality and also if you move past it it creates this sort of success sounds which i absolutely love but also the fact that i’m using material which um will be really long lasting you know which which is interesting because obviously within the art market um part of the value of an artwork is decided on what it’s made on and how durable it is which also kind of ties in with value assigned to religious objects you know the older they are greater value is assigned to them certainly in western culture and where we’re very interested in this idea of the original and and also it feels like a kind of a nice juxtapositional contrast when i’m making uh work about intransigent uh images and the online to make something tangible and manifest but which is made out of these materials which are both kind of different and lightweight but also actually very very durable could i ask you both to is there anywhere you want to point people to to find your work so your websites your social media and is there anywhere where we can maybe see your joint work as well oh that’s a good question the well my website is dawnwooley.com and i do put some work on instagram as well which is dawn seawoolie in terms of our joint work the the slideshow that we mentioned at the beginning is called immoral foods and um that is on what is that on in media rise in media red it’s a media commons um online journal basically so that that should be quite easy to search um but i don’t think there is any well yeah we haven’t really published anything else yet have we no they’ll be the book obviously the um book chapter that should be forthcoming and and we do have plans to make our first well maybe not first because i would count this slideshow as a kind of artwork but a new um physical collaborative artwork which maybe we’ll show in this in this show or another show depending on when we make it yeah yeah but that could also be an instagram thing as well like yeah i think it will be it might be published as we go along um but we haven’t worked out the details of that yet sure no um and my work you can my website’s zaraworth.com and i actually have two inspired loads of instagram

and then i have my personal account which i do share bits of artwork on but then you know just personal stuff as well which is just zara worth and then i do have um an instagram account which i consider a kind of an artwork and a space specifically for for work um which is zara underscore worth this has been audiovisual cultures with me paula blair and my very special guests don willie and sarah wirth the music is common ground by airton licensed under creative commons 3.0 non-commercial license and is downloadable from ccmixter.org to support my work in making this podcast as well as patreon membership you can give a donation of any amount with paypal dot me forward slash pei blair or you can give a regular payment with a wide range of currencies via librapay.com forward slash pei blair be part of the conversation with av cultures on facebook and twitter and av cultures pod on instagram uh thank you so much to don and zara for all your time uh it’s been really brilliant to hear from you and thanks everybody out there for joining us take great care be accent to each other and catch you next

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Audiovisual Cultures – A Little Bit of Good special automated transcript


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hello and welcome to this special co-production between audio visual cultures and monkfish productions i’m your host paula blair and i’m delighted to be joined by claire murphy morgan from monkfish hello claire hello hi paul it’s lovely to be here great to have you and kelly coats from the youth and community charity projects for change hello kelly hello paula great to have you as well kelly the mission at monkfish is to nurture artists through creative interventions in new and unusual spaces they work through the arts to collaborate with a wide range of communities and to support individuals to unlock their creative potential you can see more at

http://www.monkfishproductions.org projects for change addresses the needs voices and rights of young people working in partnership with others to create youth work projects that help young people develop and flourish into adulthood you can find more at

http://www.projects4change.org and both of those web addresses will be in the show notes wherever you’re accessing this recording we will hear more from kelly and about the collaboration between projects for change and monkfish shortly for now i’ll hand over to claire who’s going to tell us about monkfish’s current project a little bit of good in the world i am yes thank you very much so a little bit of good in the world is a project that asks us all how can creativity help us to do a little bit of good with what we have where we are and and it’s very much an arts and culture focused project because mungfish productions is an arts organization and it came out of um holocaust memorial day 2020 because one of the things that monkfish was kind of grappling with and we’re still grappling with is that at the moment in the world we’re currently living in a lot of people feel incredibly powerless and they feel that there’s not a lot that they can do but we were really inspired and by and the kind of the stories of of holocaust survivors and of the whole theme of holocaust memorial day 2020 which is standing together and it is very much about a a project that supports people to look at how we can stand together to support each other to make the world a better place for everybody and just by doing your small little good bit of good whether that’s you know saying good morning to your neighbor whether it’s doing something for a friend whether it’s just being kind to a stranger those little tiny bits of good add up into a big good and we felt that as monkfish we wanted to do something really creative around that so we worked with newcastle city councils holocaust memorial day program and the arts team at newcastle city council to facilitate a workshop about a little bit of good in the world and it was a theater drama based workshop which supported a lot of participants to explore what doing a little bit of good meant for them and it was it was an absolutely fascinating workshop pre-culvert 19 i have to say so the world is a very very different place to what it was on the 27th of january which is of course holocaust memorial day and so we were able to kind of get some ideas from that group and we were delighted to be able to work alongside projects for change because there was a project related to holocaust memorial day or connected to it called 75 memorial flames which marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of ausfitch berka now and it was asking community groups from across the uk to make their own memorial flame which could be included or uh featured in a national uh commemoration exhibition at the holocaust memorial national ceremony and so we were delighted to go down to london with some of the wonderful young people with projects for change and with the arts team at newcastle city council and and the project’s kind of grown and developed um since then and we’re working really closely with projects for change on the next sort of exciting little bit of good in the world journey and so that’s something that we’re really excited about so going forward we’re trying to sort of get a sense of what a little bit of good in the world means as a bigger project and it’s a new project it’s growing all the time but it’s emerging um in a really exciting phase at the moment and monkfish has come up with sort of four the four c’s if you like of a little bit of good in the world and i’d like to to share with you now what those four c’s are which kind of has come out of our work with projects for change and also the workshop that we ran on as as part of holocaust memorial day on the 27th of january um so i’ve got by magic a little power point here which i’d just like to to share with you all the main kind of focus of a little bit of good in the world the kind of the main sort of uh talisman if you like is this quote from the marvelous desmond tutu who um for those of you who may not know who desmond tutu is he’s a leading light in the campaign against apartheid in south africa and uh was archbishop in south africa for a long time and he um is very inspirational very committed to social justice and we felt uh that this quote just summed up beautifully what we wanted to do uh do your little bit of good where you are it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelmed the world and that kind of set us on the journey for a little bit of good in the world so the four c’s of a little bit of good in the world creativity obviously monkfish is an arts organization it’s what we do and we are really committed to how creativity and the arts can be a focus for doing good with where we are and and with what we’ve got and how kind of creativity can develop um a really exciting set of opportunities for people to work together but also how being creative and how taking part in arts and culture can’t help people to express how they’re feeling and to um share that really how to to kind of express and share that with with the world and we work in a variety of different arts contacts so this picture is from late shows in newcastle which is a free open to all uh cultural activity that happens every year and this was our music residency and it just allowed people to come through the door be creative make sound together and through make and sound create an interesting space so creativity can be at the heart of what we do and be at the heart of

communities the next c is connection so the other sort of aspect and focus of a little bit of good in the world is looking at how those creative bits of good connect with each other for lasting positive impact and how can artistic or create a creative activity help us to make those connections happen and we’re really delighted to be for example working with arts and projects around the city including projects for change which obviously we’ll talk a little bit about later on the third c is critical thinking and we think that this is really important part of a little bit of good in the world about how creativity and connecting with each other can help us to challenge bigotry polarization discrimination isolation misinformation there’s a lot of conspiracy theories flying around the internet at the moment for example how can being create us help us to ask some really interesting critical questions and support people to perhaps in interpret information or misinformation that’s put in front of them that keeps them apart from others and our final c is citizenship so if you’re thinking about creativity connecting with others developing your own critical thinking it allows us to be active citizens and thinking about our place in the world and how we can work together to affect that positive change for each other and how arts and creativity and culture can really sort of help us to do that so those are the kind of aspects that we think could support people to be active citizens and creativity and arts can absolutely be at the heart of that so going forward those are the kind of the things that we thought could really underpin a little bit of good in the world so it’s going to develop as a as a longer term project that monkfish will be sorting and facilitating and and co-leading with other arts and community organizations and with artists as well

thanks so much claire a little bit about a little bit of good in the world excellent thank you so much claire kelly can i bring you and i to tell us um a bit more about projects for change and uh to um maybe talk about the current project that you’re working on with monkfish as well okay thanks paula um well projects for change has been going um just two years now we’ve been running projects for a year and a half even though it feels like much longer um and projects of change came about really um due to a decline in youth provision nationally due to austerity um and we have this idea that you know every young person should be able to access youth provision on their doorstep you know they shouldn’t have to um step on a bus they shouldn’t have to go elsewhere it should be there and freely available um and since we got up and running with our first ever project which is called the changemaker volunteer project um a year and a half ago um it’s been absolutely non-stop and we’ve had lots of opportunities to really work quite closely with lots of different people um and working with the monkfish um arts has been wonderful our young people get a lot from working um around the arts um because they get to be engaged in questions you know questions that people don’t often ask them um and you get their unique perspective and that’s what working with claire kind of gives these young people a voice um and so the young many of the young people have met claire before during the 75 flames project and but now she’s come back and she’s that familiar face so the young people already know her they’ve spent some time with us some of them quite a lot of time when they visited london um but here she is and she’s asking the young people these these questions about their lives you know how’s lockdown been for you and how has it impacted you how has it changed your community um i mean two of our young people um from our polish have polish descent and so there’s a there’s a there’s you know there’s lots of different perspectives there you know one of our young people’s very who’s involved is very arty and she sees the world through that kind of lens um and they’re coming up with this amazing stuff and they’re all having very different experiences of lockdown and they’re coming up with this alternative view which isn’t a mainstream view it isn’t the view that’s pumped out through the media or any other place really it’s unique to them and i think that’s what’s really special about it that you know young people don’t often get asked those really important questions about um what is what does doing good mean to you um you know how has the current climate of what’s going on how has that affected your life how can you make a difference within this context and it’s been you know it’s been really uplifting to have this project after lockdown and help young people to um process processing come to terms with everything that’s gone on it’s been a real it’s been a real pleasure thank you so much kelly that’s brilliant that’s really encouraging to hear would either of you like to elaborate on anything because we’ve had some really lovely examples there of the music and the 75 flames do you have any other examples or things that you see that you that the two initiatives will come together to do in the future shall i talk a little bit callie about the res arts residency that’s literally about to come up any day now shall i talk about that um so we are literally in the very final few days of their of um of doing a call out for an artist in residence a visual artist to come and work with the young people and up at projects for change in the outer west of newcastle um which is a group two groups of young people have been meeting in a in a kind of a detached youth work setting in new bigon hall and also in calgary and um as kelly was saying i’ve visited with my monkfish hat on gone and visited the young people to talk about what’s really important to them and what kind of key issues and topics are really important to them as young people so for example nature reclaiming spaces and self-care friendship and connecting there’s a number of different um areas of life that are just so important to them so we i’ve done a call out and for visual artists an open call out for visual artists to come and and put forward some proposals for how they might work with uh the projects for change team of young people to make new visual art space work in response to the the brief that the young people have put forward which covered a lot of those themes and so the deadline for that is actually next week and we’re looking forward to seeing what artists out there have by the way of ideas which we can put in front of young people and and see what they would be potentially interested in working on as as a program of activity so and again it’s on the theme of doing good of of what it means to do good and and and also about supporting those young people as cali was touching on as active citizens as young people as people who really care about their local community so that’s kind of the next phase of of this project and and we’re hoping that it will be a long term um opportunity for us to do more exciting work with projects for change and in partnership and it’s been a huge privilege from my point of view to work with cali and the young people because i just think they’re amazing and i’m really looking forward to seeing what this artistic residency is going to bring

great thanks claire and kelly uh because you’re working directly with the young people and the communities involved are you finding at the moment that the activities might be helping even beyond the surface they might actually be helping with well-being and and you further ramifications such as that yeah i think claire claire touched on the idea of connection which is really important and we’ve kept in touch with a lot of our young people online but there’s a set there’s a section of our young people who don’t communicate well online and some of them don’t have internet access or the technology to connect with other people like that and so meeting them out and detached youth wig has been the ideal opportunity to just check in with them and make sure that they’re all right um but i think it can’t be underestimated the effect that lockdown’s had on young people um especially where young people have had their education interrupted at really sort of pivotal times and so you’re talking people who are about to take their gcses people who are mid-floor about to do their a levels people about to go to university um and actually there’s been a lot of um there’s been a lot of mental health sort of issues a lot of staying in their room you know a lot looking at the same four walls being confused about what day it is kind of losing all of their routines um and also being confused about um the messages that have been put out there as well about you know what they’re supposed to be doing um and i think that it’s gonna take up it’s gonna take a lot of effort from people in you know all sections of society to try and young people through that um and that’s our next step really and um doing work with the arts is another way of helping young people so art is um understood by a lot of people as being very healing and we’ve we’ve recently done a a mural with them a very small group of young people and i think for them that really benefited them and getting involved with moonfish art it’s going to be something else that they can focus on they can pull their attention into they can they can off they can bring themselves and their ideas to it um they can have some positive outcomes for themselves that’ll raise their self-esteem because it’s very easy when you haven’t got a structure within your day to kind of slip slip back into a lot of um self self dislike um you know feeling low that’s very that’s ordinary you know that in these circumstances that’s kind of a normal reaction to you know being isolated and spending a lot of time alone maybe a lot of too much time online and all of those things so i think anything that we can do to work with the young people to try and coax them out of that um isolation to try and include them and get them connected with the community is absolutely 100 the way to go i would say

i think it’s about supporting young people to to to have their voices heard as well and about trying to find accessible and creative ways to do that as well um it’s just something that is just so important as citizens of now and and adults of the future

it’s really important i think to bring that access to the arts to them as well because especially as you were mentioning kelly with their school being interrupted you how many of them have art supplies in their homes and all sorts of things you know and to be able to to bring something to them and to build up trust and to let them experiment with things and try out what well you don’t necessarily have to be good at some things that’s another sense of the word good as well it’s you don’t have to be the best at it or brilliant at it but you can enjoy it enjoy it for the love of it and um being part of a community being part of a group of people doing lots of things and you’re contributing so um there’s a lot to be said about that too

yeah either of you have anything else you would like to add to that i think just watch this space for a little bit of good in the world and and if you want to find out more about the project you can visit the monkfish website and we also have a a little bit of good in the world facebook page as well and is there any uh social media uh sort of uh accounts kelly where we can find out about projects for change as well yeah of course you can follow us on instagram it’s projects for change underscore uk or you can go to our facebook page which is projects space for space change um and also on twitter it’s hashtag um at ppc underscore uk excellent excellent thank you um brilliant so if that’s everything then we’ll wrap up thank you so much for having us yes thank you thank you paula and audio visual cultures thank you very much uh thank you both very much for joining us uh so this has been a joint production from audio visual cultures and monkfish productions funded by arts council england with me paula blair claire murphy morgan and kelly coates do check out monkfishproductions.org and projects4change.org to follow these fantastic initiatives and to see how you can get involved and what they’re up to be part of the conversation with av cultures pod on instagram and av cultures on facebook and twitter the music is common ground by airton used under creative commons 3.0 license thank you so much for joining us for this special collaborative co-production

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Audiovisual Cultures episode 67 – Moon Paw Print automated transcript


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hello and welcome to audio visual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of arts and culture I'm full of black and I'm delighted to speak this time to the music producer man Paul Penn to joins me over Skype huge thanks to members at Petri on dot com forward slash AV cultures and to everyone listening sharing and engaging on social media listen to the entire ways of getting in touch and supporting the podcast for night do you enjoy this chat with many friends well thirty day all right thanks so you're otherwise known as main call friends yeah and so we're gonna talk a bit about your work and producing music as many friends if it's okay can I ask you what the name because they just really love but it's just for many of the best scifi you know it's it's it's safe but thank you well we ask you by that sure I think it was it was a couple years ago like I hides which is big listing the names as kind of racking my brain trying to figure out like what would be a nice name they can use that alludes to something that makes you want to listen to music or whatever %HESITATION like give songs and apply business B. S. because people would say your stuff sorry species and so for fun like I had a few names are %HESITATION Donna think like one was like space bar martini and things like this is really like Rondon the ins and then there was one called %HESITATION are we dined was like many call print because I love them they like about this like is this love every time it's all rights regardless of what shape it's in particular if it's full or whatever it's not a war with assist like I think it looks really you know beautiful whatever it is in the night sky and %HESITATION I wanted to do some of the main islands Mintoff and came up and like that kind of works and I was kind of thinking about what we come to someone's mind if they hear it's on and part of me was like it's kind of like it's B. as Snoop Dogg or something because it has not competition but it's also like it's maybe something about the on the one because we have checked it should print on the moon the sort of how just kind of iconic dot looks was really cool to me and I just happened to print on the Clermont on this far and like sort of plan it was really interesting I was like if we find a palm print of some kind that would be really it is because a lot of questions it would be very alien to be very new a different cell I was like yeah it kind of works and just sort of caught on I just didn't really think of anything else but yeah that's kind of the story behind this yeah where the name came from I guess the folks are made us joyful image of dogs for liking your minds yeah yeah yeah I can't think of what would it be would it be if a cat would be a blogger would be a little for like you know what Paul is it is thank you reason it wasn't actually in on a more I guess it was more so like thinking about like an alien type thing it's great I could never picture but I was like maybe it's is something of an alien kind of things so but I was I was the final like names like flying lotus and stuff like guys I was listening to it at the time he just hides just really creative names you know and just let ME GA kind of like they're able to develop world around the knee and like what they represented through their musics and spoke with Holly presented there are anyway so it's like it's kind of cool to have them so it really is I guess the wonders of the night this idea that there's a trace of something mysterious the man that's how to buy your music and what kind of chains and things that you may so you've got a new album that you're going to be releasing in a couple of months is that right yes yes our dreams a year it's coming out %HESITATION June twenty sixth just drop the single there last Friday I'll take time tonight's and it's the first single to the album there's another one %HESITATION single come out next month and then I'll drop the album in June this sort of a debut independent album release there's something quite that scary %HESITATION about the signs that you make is merit my music knowledge is not really up to scratch but it makes me think of very chilled all rights reserved that makes sense yeah yeah acid rain up on volume do you know if you relax but it's still got this fat up high pitched voice says the reputations the box words signs some children it's really relaxing its invokes images you know so I think there's quite a lot to be trying to get into the air this week so you're saying that could you describe the signs that you me thank you for your comparisons that that's love that I love it how creative people get to describe music like a good friend of mine a support call call and artists and he once described it as %HESITATION awesome jobs and stuff so it's like it's like it's always really creative means the key that's really nice I guess I would describe it is to me I kind of see it as experimental hip hop I guess because I come from I'll be in my sort of me and John %HESITATION of what I'm influenced by our produce really K. pop artists and stuff and R&B artist so I'm kind of I'm ready and not round but I guess with the main parkland school project to give me the opportunity to kind of bland a lot of Gianaris together like electronic %HESITATION and I take that as a way of experimenting with just %HESITATION making sort of anything that comes I'd so sometimes I just don't have any and for sometimes it's just that dynamic something I'll be like I don't know how to describe this but I know what it means to me or what kind of feeling I'm trying to get across and I guess my approach to the art and with the signs and stuff is just trying to capture feeling and emotion of whatever I'm going to free up put it into a song and whatever the listener then interprets it's up to me and I think there's beauty and maybe letting it go and be like Hey this is yours now this is like what you make of it and what you want to call and what you want to predict diners and so subjective I think because people see it is so different each person sees is so different and that I think is kind of a beautiful thing too because it means it's it's open I guess to the listener to make into their own and people said that they like to put on his arm and they're you know writing poems or maybe they couldn't play less when their child and or or their programming and stuff and I think that's cool too like I think it's cool to have like a real world application of music this certain extent and I am just happy to be present whatever it is that they kind of need and you find it kind of fits into people's lives and different way work maybe even music is the focus right they sit down and they put on their phones and psych they want to get immersed into a world you can do that or it can be solved and looming and sort of impending in the background it may be S. fills this purpose and Odysseus I give it to the audience I'm like you know just do what you want that's what I said I'm I'm happy with that I'm happy with just the fact you take it take the song you like as long as you do what you want the dots that's more than I could ever ask for the firm he started recording re talking about a buy sell missile I think Sam is very much a medium where you bring so much of yourself to that and I think that's what I'm getting from this into your music and listen to you talking about it is that I think you bring something up yourself to yet and that's part of why it's quite hard to pin dying light signs because it's so subjective that assigns whatever people are bringing from that we're both originally from Belfast and when I started listening to your music it made me saying all the lineage that may have come from and whether that's deliberate or not possibly know if you're coming Friday from a I have runs but I think for me you know and it's a very productive runs straight at you know that NH from public that marriage turns as rates stable punks and aids and then reeve came up very from east Belfast and spread like wildfire and you know there's always a counter culture going on where if they're just saying knows everything that's going on around them and for Niantic's relatively more children of history and not where music is playing in a way it's flourishing it's not so much anger anymore but they're still urgency for things and I don't know it's a very exciting yeah just because I'm hearing just something of three years it's very different it's more mature its last urgent it's more thought %HESITATION I don't know if me saying that to you what do you how do you feel about that do you think that's nonsense or do you think there's something in March I I think there's definitely something in it I think it's in the remnants of generations being passed on to an extent I was kind of lucky I was like born in ninety five I think our generation hi this was a certain amount of freedom we came with the internet and so forth to find different influences internationally and stuff like run the internet run the globe you can tap into different artists from America and so forth and you're getting into whatever you're interested in you've got that immediacy of what you want to listen to you can go and do it not even like Spotify and stuff is like everything on there and I think coming west %HESITATION there's just a load of just you're exposed to everything and anything but the one thing you kind of kind of skipped an extent is where you come from because I feel that even subconsciously that's going to alter how you approach your work and how you go about this making styles and if I look back in my old old stuff that was really D. S. and ride it when I was and they've been in Belfast and so forth and I'm glad school night I felt like it had maybe more darker undertones I think that was because of seeing that guy because it was a really nice generation who grew up in but you did see the rap names of things happening there and so forth I'm like there was still somewhat of the religious divide and so forth and in the country and it's just I feel like it a fax even if you don't tap into not even interested in it will affect you to a certain extent because that's gonna bleed free you know from what stories you're here and so what the current environment as I think as artists we all kind of reflect our environment so I found that the more I kind of ventured out of Belfast actually not just in my searches online to find different music in different films in our forms it felt like the more I would travel the more eclectic my work became whatever the market top in two different things to different places and take the influence of this place without police and in this scene but I've seen emerge it all together and experience so I do think it the very bottom line bill Haas is there and you're seeing the research is like kind of beautifully and I was even the hip hop scene in Belfast it's really cold like it's it's probably it's it's stepping its all time high of having an actual scene there there's a lot of the great artists and they're kind of thriving in this all prices their sponsors gigs happening and it seems like there's been a beautiful I come from the dark ages being a beautiful I come to house %HESITATION basic as a means of expression I think a lot of people have stories to tell in the remnants that still exist although we don't need to like to dress them directly and keep I guess repeating the stories from those times we con find a more positive outlook on these things and like you know five through music I think music and and so on and so forth in these different art forms are springing up and all that and %HESITATION bringing communities together and we just get in a more diverse overall like the young things because of that and I think it's beautiful to see international phones not like a big finally queen's film theatre Delphos and stuff like it's always planned international films and you've got those choices the kind of projects and it's I guess it's it's a better time than never to do so so it's cool just to kind of see yes these things are factors but as a collective society in the because artists and stuff in our society were like going forward you know you mentioned that you're in Glastonbury and that's a fairly recent he is now and then it's a really strange times too at least until another podcast that you shared with me that you've been on very recently as well they'll share with others as well and then he said he moved over just in September is that right yes yes it is a tender and like it being here presents pretty much it's sort of like a two year ordeal here because going like you're doing like a PO scraps and sign design and artificial practice at the university law school so I'm just kind of seeing a time here and I I felt that you know the city's being very cool %HESITATION very like artistic and stuff really really creative place and it's very sort of inspiring in particular around B. S. tearing apart and stuff is really cool a place to be I think there's a lot of yeah a lot of cool things happening with this sort of music you may ask was there something that you read most CJ online anyway or would you do cakes and things as well how would you be part of the gay culture and normal circumstances not during a pandemic clocks yeah nearly all online all night like I never got a gig in Belfast actually I had my like first proper gig was in Mississippi was in like this please hold off beat which is like a comic book store turned nightclub type thing it was really like a really cool sort of venue because it sold records during the day and then it would hold showcases the music at night and so for for film so I went to like a film screen in there and stuff too and it was it was very I remember being very nervous for that gig because something kind of in pans on yet when you're in Mississippi and you think this is kind of the capital of music in the world you know with like blues music and stuff and it just felt like there was something to be said about pressure like I hope I can kind of a mind to what this audience wants but it ended up being a really cool sort of night and I did %HESITATION a good friend I met over there called Connie and his Dodds worked on Forrest Gump what interests and so his dad worked for Cartoon Network it's time I believe his dad was an artist and a fall attentiveness we stopped him in his brother the start up their own little company and stuff and they %HESITATION ended up at the time I had this like mixtape on soundcloud of just sort of instrumentals I'd meet and just different things at different genres I fused together and this call live by night in this sort it I guess it's interesting the conceptually it was an earlier version of dreams a eugenics that it was kind of exploring the night skip and like signs nocturnal signs and things of this nature on I ended up sure not too much I met him in class over there was like studying abroad and he really liked it he's like we're gonna like I need something to this we can meet this like visual representation of the album and we shook yes to live to the audience and Mississippi and it went down really well I think was a really nice mind and just as the first gig it was really it was really interesting that I can do it there and like ever since then like I think that was one of the moments where something kinda clicked something was kind of walking and I was like yeah there's something to really to be explored here and I think they appreciate it the sort of the outside perspective the music coming into Mississippi like he's not the dip just exposed to say blues and so forth like that is it a cornerstone of music in Mississippi but across such a wide variety of T. S. there is amazing the kind of how culturally rich Mississippi is not way so it's really cool to kind of go there and it was an interesting backdrop at a time like this is just as Donald Trump is coming into elections and so forth so there was it was really like at the time itself was really really interesting place to be you know it was it was cold it was really really fun to do that yes since then I've kind of been more open to doing gigs and live performances on stuff done if you since then and it's great if you've been anywhere else in your travels before being in stock yeah yeah and in the pandemic another place I can I guess if there's a problem too was on China which was fine it was like a real kind of exposure to something really really different to what I've always known I went up and so forth it was everything was flipped and was in this %HESITATION was in a place called Chengdu which was co and I remember going to a gig there at this place and it was it was really interesting because we've basically at the top of this %HESITATION skyscraper there was this building that was like multi functional I think at the bottom it was like this like almost like post office please in the middle was a hotel on and towards the top it was like there was a few floors were just kind of like a bond and and at the very top there was a night club and you would just kind of go up there and you can see the whole city skip on the lightness of the police like it was just crazy because you would like kind of goal for blow when you hear the echoes of the party going on above yet and just we %HESITATION we've been basically %HESITATION planetary was just it was remixes of western songs like her like Frank ocean had just like the song by Frank I think it was it was remixed I think it was thinking about you %HESITATION and they remixed into this like club track I just never heard anything like it it was just very it's just really suited what they were doing and they were like remixing all these popular songs with the reporting in such a way and it hired an atmosphere to get that had such a cool thing going on and there was another like really needs secretive venue there that was really interesting it was called the duo Joel admitted DJ over there and he was telling me about this place and I was like this and really interest me is like yes I did the sticks and select changes based on this like a series of rings the city goes on the further you go outside of the city a bit more desolate it becomes but I'm sure he's being this is a few years ago I'm sure it's been a bit more built up and around the outskirts but you end up taking a taxi one night and we got to stick V. eight address you know defined this venue on verdict on this tax in the Group One to that it almost felt like the countryside and we're going to all these like big houses and stuff and I kind of find this place you know like robot to give up and just go back to this big taxi for eventually like we just here like this fear kick drum like really beating in the background like okay it must be done arts so we'd like you know follow the music and we end up getting out of this venue and it was really really nice it was just this heist that was in the middle of nowhere pitch black around your neck it was really lively inside there was a break dancers and stuff and I was there with my good friend who was at B. boy B. boys are like big B. dances to hip hop and they kind of all the workstation of sort of like very rhythmic dances and so forth is really cool kind of what to do and he he was a super interesting characters called Jackson and he came with me and he was just there sort of break dancing in the middle of the middle job placement system was really past experience the music Terry and I think it inspired me massively like going there and just seeing how quirky and unique you can kind of take music so I guess that's what China told me was because there are certain things in China where I went there to kind of do an internship so I had this like sort of professional life there it worked out like a game company and I would go there and that would be you know you're kind of you're in your office you're doing your work a man all my colleagues stuff they would go home maybe play a game and stuff on the phone blooms it they'll be the comeback in the next day so I was I was thinking like is there more to explore in China's on other side of it it's kind of lively like that is there in my life sort of thing and it turned out there there was quite a big one and it was it was a really interesting the kinda to go explore and and kind of find little all she got news and stuff to go see you product gaming ERISA leaves work for gaming companies I heard you talk about a bites gaming tanks and that's a good thing in the previous forecast sees it as well I'm sure if that's something that even just gaming at south Indian music it's not something that is relevant to the music that you purchased nine yeah I think gaming is because I spent like a lot of my teenage years this is a gamer that would be my thing like I would just be kind of %HESITATION after school go straight on to the gamut of like friends online display all day I think gaming kind of opened up something in me like with different sizes but I actually like I just remember like we have like these %HESITATION cons of whatever the scammer cons it would just be like bond them together with and only recently I started sort of thinking about about that time and how it's reflecting things now I like to kind of not the tennis I like life is a game but they do tend to see like similarities between like the things you do back then when you go into a game you find your people you find like a little like we like to play with and you go and explore the games and everybody has their own thing a recent years I got got into this thing called slime collective which is a series of artists and stuff it's sort of multi disciplinary electors %HESITATION animators there's straight up just artist another friend of mine's clinic restraints that we make music together under social interaction and so forth and it's just they design clothes and stuff today and it's kind of cool like I'm seemed like a bit of similarity between dot and like things going on I specially with everything being in I guess categorized in the family we're all in these I. categories of what we're interested in everybody has a little round on it kind of feels like and I've always seen it as something to be said about it being similar to the set up of Gambian how works little pockets of interest here and there and everybody having their own thing and like it's kind of beautiful when you do get a crossover if things need to get like yeah when you explore maybe it's like exploring a new gimmick you got so much more to jump in Sir and you can interested and not in the in the sense of like maybe eventually exploring the different art forms you know like because that's on the conversation or friend and we're kind of talking about how you don't need to kind of lock yourself in as okay I just make music or just make films someone not like maybe it's complimentary to your work to kind of dive into different art form and maybe okay spend some time trying to make a short film and trying to do this and like how that maybe we can inform your creation process behind your music because I think everything's connected and now I think everything's kind of I think everything informs each other and everything is in Tennessee will like music releases knowledge how things about music video and like the promotion has maybe a visual light city and childish Gambino if you're familiar with him or Donald Glover that key he's really good at odds I'm a massive fan of his albums called because the internet and with static he he decided like we just don't need to release an album we can hop exhorted extracurricular things to be involved with it like he developed like a film scripts you can read along as you're like listening to the album I think he was able to cross like an audio world reading exist and %HESITATION that kind of able to see it's more than just interpreted the album you got his interpretation Terry then you ha I think that's going on and to personally in his lyrics but dammit deeper layer is he's actually brought us the story behind it which it's just just a real interesting sort of match and it's it's like you can exist in %HESITATION for a long time member stand in like a year or so just digest not I will run over and just how intricate it was and how I think that entrances got me into like maybe I try to push more visually and stuff and trying to like do more things visually because I just don't think you need to just do audio to create a margin you can go deeper if you want to get used to it and this is not even just restricted to just special elements that but it would make sense in light and sensation and feeling what can you hook you hello from within someone there's not really any limits anymore it feels because of the tax G. Sims yeah massively you look at things to me I can be really interested sort of looking at down some stuff at the minute just like I'm starving how to meet a guy I went to this appendix two months ago or so my girlfriend was like this pole dancers showcase and we kind of land of the observe like how much I I can succeed Johnson is like the ultimate artistic statement the things because it's sold like revealing to your like danser comes she has their soul on the stage they get everything they wanna say art and the dons in the articulations in the movement and that's all so precise and calculated the fluidity and stuff to me is very like similar to music but the honesty of the don says that's right there are humans right there and just they're doing this thing for me like I can kind of hide behind things is like the guy who does music like I can put out something and just my artwork here and like that's the song and hello maybe I'm doing the same thing it's like taken stuff from my soul and put it there the issues I'm not on the line as much as a dancer and even my friends Jackson as Tonya bunch I know who did it like break dancing like you to give it everything and he would like to be an active club or whatever and people would just be like turning heads and looking out and he just like how the circle run if you would be so in sync with the music if you like this to just lose themselves to your enemies just he was describing this process and stuff to me and how he gets teleported somewhere and I can feel that when we like we sometimes like maybe not that it's a skip isn't but it's more so like you're getting into a really true round with yourself whether we like spiritual or you know you're just kind of getting some absolute like true version of you that has no %HESITATION your innovation during security all that is like to the side it's like this is me you do your thing and then it can be a beautiful statement I think dances that'd be kind of cool maybe in the future to elect incorporate like dance movements I calmed down myself a terrible like a daunting but I feel like the work with dances would be amazing yes firing you know like really really cold today and sort of it %HESITATION create tracks for I love that love to that kind of get into that one on you know and how to live shows maybe cool plans for that after times yes that's six it's quite nice seats three the question of collaboration because you do already however it was very simple so you've mentioned as it caressed prince yeah you have some visual collaborators as well which I like to talk a student more Savaria sure so visually of god for the Jews Yom there's a good friend of mine so if Crean artist is called on cam and he is doing the sort of still image artwork which I've just been sort of blown away by the stuff he's able to create rather Sam song and like within like two days got something that's really even know what it doesn't move it's not animated or anything it's a stable peace artwork like the layers and stuff he's able to kind of look in there and like the feelings like I kind of sit with us are in the overtime stuff chemical photo Michael this is what he meant by putting maybe this year and like I kinda like to deconstruct his work not bad so I'm like I'm also fond of what he's able to do he's been very helpful and friendly Daschle side of the album of yeah for the single releases in the album artwork itself he was eating these dads and yeah I worked across the board with a lot of like visual people like my friend Chris as well he goes under wall poly for his stuff like he has an immediate some videos are posted on Instagram and stuff and he's just a really good on the meter and he's into photography and stuff mine is like doing great and just sort of explore and I'm selfishly and and then my friend and there is a filmmaker who was on the podcast to make fun of his sort of films short films are just I think very we were talking about how our environment of forms things are there on like I think he's created just capturing like the environment of our lives and so forth and he has a good really nice new approach to traditionalism I think it's filmmaking Terry like it seems almost gradual but it's the new inform to an extent that has deeper sort of layers to peel back on and I've got a friend to call law goes under arts advocate U. K. he's designed the artwork for the social interaction stuff which is stuff I do with it Chris prince these sort of drawn S. and he's putting us on these backdrops they're kind of minimal and so forth in a really cool because the social interaction music it's all very conceptual tunic we're releasing this thing called RCP this sort of concept is to reflect sort of the current atmosphere %HESITATION and worked on it for like two years but it happens not at the pond on making stuff going on with like this might be an interesting time to sort of release it so we did the artwork for lots there's so much people hurt individuals that are there that creates that the masses that's really cool to work with them my friend Tom Dick does front tier pitchers yes the Belfast he shot some stuff for me over the Christmas period I went back to visit Belfast and they keep jam and we shot some cool reflection shots and stuff and maybe can be used in that kind of closer to the dreams you promotion of like the kind of include them yeah I've just been kind of across the board just open to anybody who I kind of want the class breaks I think everybody has something we can all work on you know like I think we all have abilities that the network that for me it's not always a by doing this on track to someone's Gilmore they produced a song like I might do the sign design for something or I love working like video game makers you know what this is sign in like little signs that this fit into your game like the kind of like get into the mind state of the atmosphere in the world of the game and trying to like take a signed and maybe create a sign from scratch by synthesizing or just take a sign of recorded being like how can I fit this in your world and maybe that's the extent of the collaboration of doesn't always need to be sort of you do the maths on track you do this it can always be subtle things but then you learn so much from them say that's a really good plan to me something as well because I think it's one of the most probably the most underrated areas of some making army began making as well as sign to sign and date the intricacies of the complexities of that because it's one of those things where you notice it if it's not right that she get it so right it's invisible it's such a scandal and we don't appreciate enough I thank I agree I think it's one of those things really under look like if it's not there it's you can really tell can ruin a film the beautiful thing is the ultimate compliment for assign designer is you don't notice it you don't notice the sign design because it means everything went smoothly I think that's sort of nice and particularly it's like I remember when I first got into sign design I didn't realize how in depth it is there so much to it from mixing approaches to just understand and and artistic when you first get into it the way you kind of sense already was completely different like you kind of develop your range of listening over time and if the money years you put in the more you like you start to hear like well there's a stereo speakers audio exists and %HESITATION this will model sounds like part of stereo and it's like you kind of go in blind I look the same when you first start because things are a bit less like you just use the listening I learned this action you need there's different types of listening I guess the way I would describe it is that is practically last minute just sitting down and kind of like trying to analyze okay what is going on in this piece on that you're really like you may close your eyes just really in tune with everything in your last name for every fine detail but a lot of people will just listen normally where it says you're just kind of like your gross maybe in a film you're so caught up in the visuals and what's going on your mind the visuals that the audience is going to complimenting you but if you took the audio away of course would have to see in the fact of the film I think our films based survive off the jump scares especially like the fallout seem sort of formulaic approaches like a rise and then the real moment that can capture yeah you know but if he did not actually like yeah I think it's like a connection between it's a visual and audio to really get a strong I put something you want to get into your upcoming album of that mark as we just mentioned that a little bit at the start but is there anything more detail that you want to expose previa and a way for people I guess I can kindly talk but the concept of like dreams here yeah that's a great line I think it was like when I first got the gloves go I start to have music really intense streams it's kind of a funny story like because when I first got here moved into a place %HESITATION and I live right beside the supermarket so anytime I go over when I first moved in it was September the weather was was nice and cherries and stuff reduced everywhere so I just how the league though to charities and I just beaten cherries the bottom lines of cherries almonds I didn't realize this but %HESITATION cherries how this like natural chemical called known soon and part of the studies show that increases the intensity and the vividness your dreams are also I think one of those acts as the body type so I was eating cherries like not more like white out these crazy dreams going on at the minute on top of that the whole week give them any peace so that just so weird but also so I guess kind of cool because I've always loved the idea of dreams like back and that's them underground like I like to like the Citrix if you've heard of it I was a kid named like practicing and stuff and I had like a lot of fun trying to no idea of the control in your dreams it came out of reading this thing one time where someone said like we spend so much of our life and our dreams you know it's a shame that that just goes away I think in our sleep at that time just goes away and I don't think it does I think we equally live in our dreams we cool you like how the police there that is important to like understand or existing and I'm like we still don't know a lot about it the dream state unlike what informs it like different sort of people in psychology of opinions and sort of like the Exxon S. like I was looking into the call young and stuff and Freud and they hope you're sick dream dictionaries and stuff what does this mean we deconstructed and I'm really interested in the idea of the subconscious they kind of talking to us and our dreams sometimes if things are going on in life like I have a dream I'll wake up and I'll be like okay that's what I need to do is what I need to change or like my subconscious is always like kind of like telling me to do this a lot in the dreams I feel like like things that we kind of under estimate in our day to day because we're caught up in a resources or delete the dream kind of take us from not and they can give us a new perspective on things and and like make us maybe make positive changes in your life and stuff and I was like it's really interesting that dreams exist for this purpose I feel like there is we can give them a real nice sort of undertone in our lifetime like helpless and former decisions and improve your life since then so since that time I'd be really interested in dreams and it just so happened that from the classical movement and just getting more exposure to having dreams and when it's locked on there was a lot of cases people have been locked on dreams they call it you know just intense dreams because we're not getting the visual exposure of our data that life going outside and seeing things happening in society were confined to rooms so I feel like I was an older sort of urge to like continue to dream exploration dreams he is out of this sonic response to dreams to my dreams I guess but also dreams of hard for eighteen years and sort of trying to capture the dreams B. S. and like the idea of being in my personal experience dreams can be very they can have to be very interactive up close and personal where everything feels so real are they can be almost very Norman like your desktops but you're floating almost in your very very whimsical I kind of want to kind of explore both sides of a lot of like try and capture what it's like to be in a dream like states and the album and maybe I could inform the listener to maybe engaging out more so towards night let's see how that diet you talking about a listings it's reminding me of films I have seen that attempt to do the same thing but visually I'm not a fan of this person but stand back it she's trying to make a gothic films so fans where you work just as you were falling asleep that moments of I think a call it closed diversions so when you close your eyes because you can still see stuff colors and shapes and things even your rhymes and tell that it's lighter knocks and he tried to after that and his experimental sounds quite affects a lot of a Sam's are trying to act explorer or perish with the visual things that happen in dreams you know one box of overlaying and double exposures and all sorts of things headphones are usually completely silent there's no sign to tell them and it's making me think kids here music maybe your album was like a bit of a dark side of the main type thing to do ET do you know if people watched it race may be submitted on silent or whatever animations if they have them sign it you know it's something that it being this possibility for people when it actually gets items where else sure not be great yeah this is whatever you want to make of it whatever way and like I might just like we just beat out more like you're almost sort of sleep in art I used to do like a lot of commuting roughly on a bus for two yards I would just listen Everytime up like okay I'm listen to an album I never just sometimes close my eyes and then just be sort of taken away and you open your eyes you're there and they all just got you through that and it almost went into a different world so like I kind of liked that idea of exploring what it would mean to make an immersive worlds you can jump into and from me always that seems like it's in night time and I'm not sure why I think that kind of coincides with the main thing to you and like the previous work of live by night and stuff it seems that I find that very poetic it's a time for reflection is a time sometimes or solitude it's a time for exploration to you like what you want to do you can get done in the day so I've always find the night as like freedom to an extent I like to work at night and stuff I just felt like this could be an album night sort of nocturnal album and there's a guy from just bigger producer I was mentioning like burial they have the time for his music and it's like night bus music like you're riding the bus at night you're kind of going it's a kind of melancholic but it's really immersive in your distinguished in industry Lynette's he's really good at capturing a lot and like I think I've been inspired by him Jenny stands well by the night time and like exploring and sonically sort of way of whatever my interpretation of this because everybody has their own interpretation I guess in their own thing which is the subjectivity of I guess we're talking about when they do get the album whatever they do with it I guess I would just like to know sometimes like just out of curiosity like sometimes you wonder because on the Spotify thing you can see Spotify artists out and it tells you who's this and throughout the world and so forth like you get like different cities and countries unlike other insects in new countries that didn't know before freedom here in a like sometimes I like to wonder like what were they damn when you're listening to the song like is it just I don't know if I could just out of curiosity like what we've done inspire you to do or what is it in the background for what is it I guess this is something I have to like be a P. seven never know and that's the main thing seriousness like whatever it is it is but it's kind of cool like things are going on I said if you put like this may be a part of you somewhere you'll never go in the world because like the schools the filmmakers to any artist who they put stuff online that people are absorbing it from different places under different circumstances and and like they get to see you whenever we did anyway you know so it's kind of interesting idea that you're putting stuff out to the world and stuff going on with your basic plans are there and like the number it is it's kind of interesting these paintings here he's chilling nights yet he is that keeping company with like that one yeah yeah then pope Francis well thank you so much for your time it's been so lovely learner and market your music and I'm gonna keep an eye on it for your album dropping in June make sure we share it on everything do you want to quickly goes free your socials for people to find you sure I think I'm just merely on Instagram says he may pop prints on there and and make operating the spaces on all streaming platforms that we can find the music and so forth but Paul I really appreciate you have me on the podcast here really I'm fine this is what it represents so it's really cool thank you so much I love the charting and yeah thank you thanks you've been listening to audio visual cultures with me pull the player I'm a very special guest man Paul prints this episode was recorded and edited by Paula Blair and the music is common ground by err tune east under a three point zero non commercial creative Commons license this is released every other Wednesday with thirty release when availability patria members I'm also very grateful for donations to the poor pay dot com forward slash P. A. prior to support my writing as well as making the podcast be part of the conversation with eighty cultures on Facebook and Twitter and eighty cultures pod on Instagram wash your hands stay home if you can and speak accents to yourselves and to each other thanks so much for listening catch you next time