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Audiovisual Cultures episode 109 – I’ve Been Walking with Janet Sternburg automated transcript


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hello dear listeners welcome to the official cultures stuff podcast where we take into different areas of the parts media and creative industries I'm Paul the planner and in this episode I have the most fascinating conversation which I hope is one of many ways Janet stern Burke as you hear Janet is a writer and photographer based in Los Angeles we talk mainly about hi Janet came to photography website really planning to be back in nineteen ninety yes as a mode of expression or thinking or being in the world while walking while going for EMS walks around cities we get into a quite a lot of detail and thinking through what those acts of walking and photographing in teal and trivial butts we really only scratched the surface so I hope China will return when her next project comes to fruition this timer me in the talking up bites her photographic NSA back I've been walking and some of her earlier work but she's already working on the same sets haven't revealed themselves to her as we record I must say I feel so lucky to be making these kinds of connections and I'm really glad that you can share them with me as well I hope you learn as much as both down and I do from this talk actually that's a really nice thing is that down it felt that that was important for her to say that she really learned something from talking to me today and I love that I love that this is happening on the show before hand you over a massive thanks to our glorious past trends over at Peachtree on dot com forward slash AP cultures but he supports and all the ways I struggle really to keep this go weighing just a quick reminder as well that all the important links for this episode and if you want to become somebody help site to show those are all in the show notes for every you're accessing this episodes if you hear any binding a toll in the pocket cranes I think I should manage she cried the mites but %HESITATION if you hear any binding or popping noises I'm recording this on the face of November twenty twenty one I live in England it's going moderate there with fireworks and all sorts might make her next door neighbors it's very quiet and there because they have a beautiful Kali and he's not been having a fun week so you know I I think they've taken I think a lot of the dog owning places and hence the her his or her off somewhere else having a break so apologies if there any banging noises are coming sorry that I haven't managed to get out of a spot it's not time of the year and I thought it was worth mentioning I was going to leave this until a quieter day but I'm on my own may as well do something I am a bit scratchy because I've been talking all day I can't concentrate on anything else so I thought get just get this done while I'm while over there anyway just thanks so much for listening and please do check out John it's website on her backs and perhaps even days out while you listen to us describing them enjoy this episode Janet Sternberg I'm so delighted you're joining me today on the official cultures you've been trying to set this up for a while a nicer finally saying our recording and it's just such a pleasure and an honor to have you very warm welcome have completely lovely and that yes we have had a back and forth before we finally got to this but I think it's been good enough where you're not we send each other things we talked a little bit from our respective homes you in Ireland now I'm in England's women get enjoy so I have a sort of stealing that not even this is not that formal it feels simpatico nice so Janet you got loads of experience I think we're mainly going to talk about your more recent photography years got it back I just a moment cold iced and walking and photography and I say back but you've been a writer for a long time he's been a researcher you park Jan Feldman media and all sorts of areas so you just got a wealth of experience that we can learn from and I'm so excited to get into a lot of issues that come up straight your work today would you be happy to give my listeners a bit of an overview about you and how you would like to describe yourself without be all right it would be although it presents a problem because I've really never been in England at school getting myself no no I'm quite serious I I I think it's actually a bit of an issue because people who do multiple things they either have to condense themselves into a single description and that makes people happy because they know how cool you are it's it's clear however if you do a number of different things often more or less at the same time it reminds me of something that I read that I find very still interesting there was a writer whose name at this moment is %HESITATION escaping me but it will come back to me and from the nineteen forties who was both a photographer and writer and she did a very beautiful book of photography on the left side of the page and a novel on the right and there was every page and it was not illustrative it was just somehow it just the right oblique angle to each up there and he went back to his publisher for hopefully a new book and the publisher said the world is not ready for an ambi dexterous person maybe said writer maybe he said artist but you take the point and I think it is not working many many more people especially those a lot younger than I am in fact doing multiple things that are not self conscious about it since you asked I am and your what as said to describe myself well I think it well in terms of work although there are many other angles to come into about myself but in terms of work ethic of actually %HESITATION sensibility maybe is better than engaging work I think I've always been a writer I mean was a little girl my mother says March first workers work I don't know if that's true but it's a nice will lead she started fairly wide mother gesture when I was six years old I wrote something a barrister to say what it was but I will I've gone to she's fantasia movie remember and I was so thrilled by it that I came back and asked my mother for paper and pencil the reason I'm embarrassed that wasn't true really that much my first writing was movie Curtis it was more about how much I loved it actually so that's been my intention given many many years when I ran away from that identity I do other things but underneath the beating heart has always been the word and I've always been interested in the word and the image and I've made some forays in that direction I did are still many years ago on the writer Virginia will short term for public television and there was an actor who is evoking Welch not literally playing her but there is quite beautiful landscape not England like England and voice over work courage and after I did that I realized that there has to be a better way of doing it because the visual and the words for each other your room and there were too many maybe like I'm doing now but too many rich and so trying to solve the problem of imagine board is another feature of my life and I think I might have made a real attempt at it recently with this new book we can come back to that but to finally end up the saga not really in nineteen ninety eight I finished a book and it is due to ten years in the writing which is a little bit much but then again you asked me to describe it so I'd like to try to get it right and I was in a very funny position that was new to me the book was set in the past historical and personal and I looked up and I couldn't see what was around me what was in the present I could see it but I couldn't feel it is something and the upshot of this is I went to our second home in Mexico and set myself a little practice of walking every day without a goal without thinking and I saw a window and I liked what was in it and I thought I want to take a photograph first time I've ever thought that and %HESITATION I went to the town square and the only thing that was available was a disposable camera and a lot more to say about that if you want but my life since nineteen ninety eight has been very much photographer writer writer photographer and whatever else you want to add in to talk where she is leading the pack small that's really informative Janet I think that actually sets and it gives us a really fell picture and we can start getting into some details fire when I was reading straight that piece that you're talking about where you describe all of this happening it really struck me that you were because it's very autobiographical and it feels that your photography and stop going that direction as well it's a way of writing the south it's a way of reflecting your style and I feel that there's a lot of South Park teacher coming three and very subtle ways your photography so this wondering if it's not something you have been thinking about aids or what you thought up I thought well I route to be honest I'd love to know how you see that but I will respond briefly I think the through line through all of this is that the way I'm in the world is as a Polish you know they can sound so highfalutin you know %HESITATION %HESITATION addict this poetic that I don't mean it that way it's just how I feel and see the world in terms of being moved I don't know how else to shared without sounding good day and I've always loved autobiography in general not memoir I don't like that would warn bitch because I refused to call one of my books memoir which is sort of stupid because it you know booksellers remember when they were bookstores shelves they didn't know where it went but I really felt memoir and I've said this before so excuse me if that sounds canned but it's me more me me me me me me me we are no that doesn't interest me what does interest me is all the levels and prismatic facets of the cells the cells third time inspection history and connections to other kinds of thinking so I kind of think that everything I've done in church home grocery is as a visual Polish and I think as such the images reveal that fashion having said that I would like to know how you seen an element of an autobiographical self in the work can I ask you of course yes absolutely when I read your text and when I look at your images it comes across to me that it's high you see ed Scriven ye the salvinia ways that you can start seeing boasts the world's and yourself and the world that's really what strikes me by a lot of your images I really love you telling your own story a bite hi you think him to begin dating tests it's really spontaneous it's very much you know you you strike out you go for a walk with site a real practice beside it direction was IT destination you're just doing the acts of walking so it's quite performative in life I'm not sense and I'm really interested in life performance artist while so it kind of takes me dying not area at it's sort of a bite life and arts and arts and life and about play and not really planning anything but spontaneity rose you know contingency rose and that idea of you just felt so compelled suddenly to take a photograph and to just make an image either forty receding I think that's where to me you're documenting how you were saying something out last time that's what you felt compelled to day and then doctor finding right where can I get a camera and so he got a little disposable cameras because that's it's available to you and then you discovering that there are limitations I thought that's a really special box of limitations and again not hi you're seeing the world's and making art out of something very every day not ideal really strikes me as on again it's for me not very much relates to the the art lice relation maths and life performance %HESITATION so there's a life nice there's a spontaneity to the photography and it's not planned date stash but you D. S. specific poetry poetry come see us in those races while Rory Burr evoking an image and repeating out into words some high so I'm really starting to see high at your images are poetic and not sunset if you know what I mean so so to me that's where it's autobiographical toy you say yeah that's helping you realize how you see the world so it's an official culture center it's a way of saying but it specifically your way of saying and that moment I thought time and not play yes and I think there's something really fascinating if I thought that's really worse delving into quite a bit well I hope a lot that I can get some sort of a transcript of our conversation what you're saying is something I would like to have and to go back to and I think it's very astute when I hear about elements of autobiography I changed things somewhat more narrow lead that you're because I'm not a documentarian and any way at all and I think that this question of how I see which of course then devolves to how you see or anybody else to see but that is kind of exactly what I care about think of a few more things to say about what you just said and one is that I always follow my own path and sometimes most of the time is able I think I just I think I can say at this stage I'm seventy eight that it worked out you know like everybody many a bump in the road but I have said well you know maybe I'll get an MFA in writing this is when I was in New York and lived in Manhattan for many many years before coming out west and well maybe I'll do that I'd already worked for some years in the quote unquote other non academic part of the world and I went up to Columbia and I sat in on a class and everybody in the class was looking toward the professor who is a very well known published horse and it seemed like we were kids and they were vying for his approval and they were competing against each other and I walked out and I had a sort of a modest migraine headaches on the way back walking to my apartment in the Upper West Side and I thought no just that's not me it's not for me I can't do that so I didn't something else I studied with one person publishers work I admired because I thought that his approach which was very straightforward would be very useful for me because I can get fancy I don't want to get fancy so everything is beautiful match and so there's no orthodoxy in my life which I realize religiously lately but it cuts to the next thing two more things one is the idea of starting an art form late in life which is what I did with photography because I love the way you're describing the spontaneity but I think that can only come at some level when you don't have a great big critics standing on your shoulders you know we've all had bad words listening tools and been in the world of art region for awhile and that that's really great about we live for you can just say okay I can I'll just do it I'll just do it I'm not going to subject it to a whole set of questions about whether I can whether Ryan from mission whether I'm good enough and that's really something I wish I'd known younger I think would be a great thing to have his young life your dog birthday but it didn't happen later and the last thing the third thing is I think a little bit of what you're talking about is what I love and think of in whole or treat whether it's one word or image or whatever and that's our world it's a show should emerge room not I mean I really love documentary work and being here it actually is a form of witnessing political and otherwise but that's not what I'm doing I'm going %HESITATION and without thinking a lot about it it's like yes this this is something that really I know it's in my territory and it relates to this and it relates to that none of which I'm thinking at the time but it's in a social way of being in the world and making leaps rather than logical connections so I think that's where that comes in from Israel Warrnambool many parts sorry not a toll no that's what we're here for it to talk all of this all right that's exactly what we're here for I just wanted to pick up on what you're saying obey this idea of being late in life in coming to some saying because I think this is something we need to talk about it more and more as a society really is what does that even mean to be are your mates career or emerging I really good friends of mine she said they no longer with us but she was in her seventies and she made this point to many many times that it's never too late to begin any art form and we're constantly emerging and evolving and becoming a hero so it it's a really interesting thing to say goodbye it's being late in life and the way it has this connotation alls I didn't come to the cinema and I I wanna just troubled out a little bit because I think will actually become the things when they're ready for them and then there shouldn't really be a timer I'm not if you know what I mean so I just sort of one that say click dot points a little bit because it seems like you've come see photography at a point where you were ready for it and it was ready for you okay and that was on your terms you know so I I just think you know that's really important so not going to go the pine trees don't have to dictate to me hi I'm Megan hi I create some high I see things and how may be in the world you know so I think it just made me think about I don't know if you have a response why do or should do should there's a really interesting article in the last month in The New Yorker magazine by the renowned and he's writing about how we broadly speaking obviously the west and certainly the United States as a culture we like to think well it's generation Z. your generation extra which we attribute certain qualities and by the same token he talks about well we like to think of the sixties and the seventies and characterized those initial your way but he was pointing out first of all with the generational thing shifts and changes and it's also a vast generalizations talk about well generations G. is more benevolent and more political you know it's it's just a way it's like saying I'm a writer as opposed to I'm a person who does many different things it's a way to have a handle on the world but it's not true handle at least that's what I feel very strongly reading him and I have felt it at all other times too it's a way of being read Dr of the complexity that is in the world there is this phenomenon that people of Britain about about late like Sri H. everything and isn't it interesting that Dillinger Corning had Alzheimer's and he could paint so wonderfully when it was in this whatever eighties years yes %HESITATION I can't so I think that's pretty interesting what drops away perhaps not that Alzheimer's is something one wants and that's not what I mean obviously but but that what drops away is I think a bit of what I was talking about earlier and that strictures that one is imposed on one cell and there is a freedom and %HESITATION what's greater luxury in life is there than to feel free and that's shared I think I am recognizing something that everybody recognizes especially if they're self reflective or or somewhere to almost intuitive and that is what they really are sh dangers that one has to recognize and I think for quite awhile now I'm gonna be very personal those of you who are listening and I feel like it you've got a lovely face and next a deal that I can be that but you're quite awhile through a complex of reasons parents home life whatever I wanted to be known and I wanted to have my work life or admired nothing is terribly wrong with that I was never any good at pushing my work in the world but it has itself gone into the world to one very small but real degree and it's been really didn't recently one of my books the archives for it was acquired by a %HESITATION wonderful our client is a great great pleasure you know it will go on but right now I am in the middle of another stage and I'm trying to figure it out when I say I'm the middle I'm you know I'm not I wouldn't either side but it certainly feels as though I don't need any of that M. at doing it and watching it is running counter to what's right for me now and I think Colbert played a big role at mac because for a year I was able and again please anybody who's listening I do know how unbelievably fortunate I was during this year and most people or not but I have an apartment I have dogs euro and in no way to consider equivalent shoes I have a husband I have a life that was to a large extent on zoom but the ability not the ability the freedom not to have to be social just to be quiet and go and look and read me back to what it was like when I was nine years old when I would check paper and pencil and whatever things %HESITATION option this monastery across the street from us I'm Jewish monastery have this tremendous a war because it was a miracle very beautiful S. self conscious about being Jewish in the middle of all of that but that's neither here nor there I was kind of exalted when I would go up there and that's what I was feeling that you're a collision that it was a return to that little girl and she's who I want now to get to stage I mean it's obviously I can't catch her again but I can look toward off happy finding her again so right now I'm involved in during a ceremony things to make the book happen in the world I've been walking macbook one Amazon of terror moving right along you know when I have some wonderful events coming up I'm doing a book signing at a gallery very good photography gallery a week from Sunday and they asked me who I'd like to be in discussion with and it was an easy answer but aren't one person said yes you read genius I think Antonio dimazio minerals scientist whose work is having rate really important to me and then we became friends so this that was a thing on top of batch so this is by no means a complaint what could be lovelier when sitting in a terrific gallery talking in front of people and exchanging ideas with Antonio dimazio so it's not a complaint it's a kind of we know what people used to go around with forked sticks looking for water dousing your no it's like I'm doubting myself she wrote that's a fussing about it cutting it and I really understand what you mean when you're connecting west that young version of yourself that still in there somewhere I think well maybe a lot of us have done not I. P. I hear about a lot of people discovering their inner child and dating it might sound strange but an acting styles parenting and trying to have a connection with their young south again so I really understand what you mean when you say that that's a lovely way to go up I did as well as wondering if we can talk about it by the technology because I think what's interesting here is almost a lock of tack and your photography and that's the point Hey it comes to mind as well you talk about eight the sense of freedom that you have and to me I think that our autonomy you have a choice to be autonomous and just folding lock back into the idea of autobiography and it being a bite the cells do you there south discovery happening here there's several action their self awareness happening you know it's really fascinating to hear that you're discovering a lot about yourself there's an emergence of yourself coming straight and not just yet S. C. H. but yet previous agents as well as she as you look back as well as in the here and now I am sick forward so there's there's really something and not I think but again I think just thinking about the cameras that you've been using so previously you've been using disposable cameras and may even then and she iPhones and I mean we very much associates the smartphone way taking self fees E. date out but in a very different way you know it's a very different way of approaching sells porchetta SLC or at marking yourself in the worlds marking your journeys you know the unplanned nature of your journeys I think and I've been walking when when you set and ready B. Weston's MHS and you start to recognize actually there's some patterns here there are different shapes that are emerging there's hi you like it hi space is taken up how you see yourself and reflective surfaces and you just might catch those you might see yourself an M. car window being reflected its or you'll see just a snippet of somebody going by on the skateboards and deal take a fractional image of that person or you'll see some water but through a hole in a bit of concrete you know it's how you frame sayings and and highly stylized exceeded as well by their relatively restrictive framing of the phone or is a disposable camera and you talk quite a bit of by each focused on high you don't actually have control over focus on its may be quite a flattened image and not sort of saying so again it's coming back said it's how you say but also we can't really change the focus of our ice you we see what we say and that's a bit like comedies communists C. as well they can't really do anything T. tactical with holiday see eyes are %HESITATION and G. ready if that was the human eye which I think is really lovely I think again you you're sort of back to basics what you're really pushing the limits of dot BSX technology if that makes sense I was wondering if you have any further sought some mountain what you're thinking it's a match and if that relates to anything else that's come up in your stinking sense there I do sure the first thing I just want to go back to the image of the US skateboarder which is just his legs in a window above because I just want to talk briefly about feeling the way that emotion becomes a feeling to be more precise and just re reading to Moscow because he was black I was wandering around and there's a large flows of nearby and even Google Tokyo downtown and there's the Japanese American national museum and then down this long sh it's really a pedestrian street but it's quite a wide one is usually on the contemporary arch and it's usually has lots of people and during colder there was nobody and when I saw the pair of legs on the skateboard first I recognized that it was a remarkable image because above that is glass that is should be reflective and it almost makes the upper half of him look not only is though he's only partially remember almost as though he's bursting into flames because of that kind of rate of goals of what some call him and then the strange brick subside it's Jeremy with the feeling was first and he's alone he's a skateboarder usually something which challenge some way in the context there was no context and so I just want to begin by acknowledging the something that I think is the spoken enough about in photography and that is the emotion of taking a picture of the feeling of checking the picture I think perhaps it's some not part of the tradition of straight talk or street which has been to a very large extent not completely by a long shot in the hands of men and I think men are not that comfortable talking about feelings that may be archaic so be it but I I do think it's time for that to enter into the world of singing the other thing is you know I usually very very clean I have read this respect for people who really are technically magnificent and there are a lot of them Mr tell your story and sometimes I prefer to say always confusing well not really a photographer %HESITATION an image maker because that die offs my hat to the people who work within the traditional exquisite means of photography and I do in a sense I mean there's a lot of composition is a lot of howling trolls there's a lot of juxtaposition over traditional elements of photography all the necessary ones I work with so it's not like I'm in nine weeks in World War during around going back briefly did the disposable because it has no direct the you know this you know because there's only automatic focus it took me away from the initial thing that photographers I've been trying to do with her and that is just say I'm like this I make sure I don't like this %HESITATION Blue Ridge and if you can't do that another world unfolds and that's everything in the frame being of equal value and although I am not a Buddhist I read a lot of Judaism and I think about this on my own practice it necessarily and I think it is a somewhat Buddhist approach to refuse the hierarchy of values that one can very easily holes in photography kind of comes with the territory the other thing is that when I was in college which I think that's a picturesque story but we will go next I studied philosophy and I'm still really interested in philosophy so when I saw those first images from the disposable not only did they interest me as images but I realize that a lot of those several things which I've mentioned minimum depth of field and focus I was getting something that I haven't seen before although I didn't think of it that way other people have said that because when you're working with reflection which I was there's always an option and free lander I mean these are great great show tiger first but you know where the photographer is you know he's standing somewhere and you see that imagine you do understand the space between the photographer and what he's looking at etcetera and what I saw I was getting was something that had none of that that's what I saw was this particularly since I had no strictures against brewer I loved it actually %HESITATION and I loved passengers and looking closely at complex emergency room health things in Japan a trait that I was involving a philosophy and it was philosophy about mind and abolished in a certain way politics because if you give up the idea of sharpness if you give up the idea that everything has to have enough facts a wind around ishe you find that you're giving up the idea that the world has to have borders and boundaries and you're also moving into a territory that says well I may need those borders and boundaries but my mind does need them my mind is porous and so I would have backed him not just your way of seeing but a way of being and that was really really important to me for quite a long time and again I think that traditional photography people don't quite talk that way and a little outside of the discourse and that's just fine with me going back to your earlier point it's it's a kind of freedom to come and say well yes senior yes streaming yes thinking it's all part of the process and so I really love developing what I'm telling you in two minutes which was in fact a number of years but those years the article was replaced by the digital I couldn't get things developed I couldn't get things printed so are you do you keep those should be optional I mean I'm not very technological I can work with the computer but I don't need to let my work and again that's not exactly anti technology it's not anti Photoshop I'd just like to work with how are you seeing drawback to your fridge and not try to turn it into something that exists between me and the world which is mine manipulation of the world that can be a bit naive sounding close you missing who may be interested in philosophy but it's also true I mean there's just some anyway sure at the level I'm talking when I thought should be digital I started with like an iPhone four year or we're not working with an iPhone and but I continue to get what I want with the new book I'm sure you've noticed a lot of the work isn't inter penetrating isn't forest isn't reflection and I we we have moved into a phase that shows I can have both I can do things that are more well this is what I see and more this is how white banks but many years ago a wonderful man who really cared about my work said Janet you really have to start with a better camera like bought a bunch of other people said it and of course the criterion is are you getting what you want and if I am which I am at this point why learn the whole apparatus of what is in itself a very technologically important art form it's not the way I won't watch that's a really excellent points and it strikes me as well that when you become reliant on the technology the technology does the heavy lifting you you're using very powerful cameras are you're working with different lenses and you're choosing a different lands it becomes stay apparatus that is forming a imagine you're really just pointing it out but it does all the rest of the work in a way and not to adults denigrate that but it's just not as you say it's not what you want that's not what you're looking for and there are lots of people like there he are doing that they're doing it extremely well and they're making incredible images like that but that's the thing it's you making it so it has to be in the exact medium that you want to need it today and I think there's a lot of the static value and that may be the last the end of the year with a sort of meds tack no it's not even low tack it's it's pretty decent stuff in homing iPhone cameras are incredible I think near the old iPhone I have is a Bascom I've ever had in my life he however I know that you know to me because I you know I I know exactly the sort of disposable cameras she you mean and I used it was a lot when I was a teenager you know and then the nineties and early two thousands but I lost a lot of static I actually really like the aesthetic of those older photographs and that sort of lower quality photographs I quite light this is very strange but I quite like odds to talk free inverted commas because they're something spontaneous about it there is something totally unique about it it's an image that's maybe on plans on there something actually quite unique and special about that that I find that's not what you're doing but that's just personal interest I just like that again the contingency of things I suppose on montages passionate about west and boxers the photography so they the more performative side effects so especially with I've been walking I mean what came first did she have the idea that you wanted to do the topic can it be a bike that same or was it you we are finding that you were just going walking and you risk taking photographs and it came from what you were just standing there actually but I will go back for seconds sure I think that what links the people who do this remarkably technologically advanced photographer I'm not talking the people who manipulate on talking about the ones who must cortical straight photography in what I'm doing is that the link is that were ravaged by the world were ravaged by color and texture then sometimes I'll show you something I wish I could think of a good example I think we'll get of my friend Joe and cellist who's just a master at on the textures what one of the things that classical photography on local vision is not classical it's very much your own and I look at I think that's so beautiful and it requires so much knowledge to do that this is not putting down my shelves and it isn't saying that I don't have the sophisticated change on the line I know the I can capture in my way the ravishing the ravishing interjection room color in the world I'm really just pointing to a link between low tech and high tech and that we're both using it I think for this since Aug warning to what's the word I'm looking for ravishing I think you saw the thing on century I write about something called the gas and you're out in the world and you see something and you're just now and are almost instinctive level this is it this is what you are my goodness %HESITATION yes gas click again between the gas and the collectors composition and other things to do some sort of self evident jester WYO that kind of came naturally so I don't want to make a large distinction other than one of honor and respect between the people who capture the world through very high degrees of technology and the very simple forms that I'm using because I think we're both responding to the world engine troubles in the same well I'm trying to recall because you were talking about several things one was the technological in a sense version mark I know you were not in again this simplistic respect but my really wanting to talk about donating %HESITATION but then you remember what else you were saying after that incident really yes there is a bit of a chicken and egg question is hi did depict come a bite sized thing so yes of course of course well you know again the word organic %HESITATION such a cliche but I do believe in it and they're very particular almost biological since your honor I started walking out and they started checking pictures and I got interested in them and I do what we all do which I just love and thats bring the stuff home look at it if you change promising think about it printed out of the home printer try it next other images tries you what they're saying is blue all that kind of thing and I do that every day now I realized pretty much every day that I was checking pictures I was posting them on Instagram which was a new thing for me and your %HESITATION world reckon it should empty shooting and sure people not bastard people should your unusual images and there could be a book sure that's when that became a real possibility as did something else and baggage the initial feeling that I'd heard of seeing emptiness and despair and as I write each are in the introduction to I've been walking the %HESITATION extinguishing of people's aspirations which has a particular product comes from because I've seen it in my parent's life all of that shock started to evolve and I didn't quite know what it was evolving churro just was taking pictures but then someone should remember right it's not so much emptiness and despair or whatever that you're seeing it's human traces in the middle of bash and that went %HESITATION yes that's right old so shortening project it becomes it becomes that's what I'm trying to describe I didn't say I'm gonna do a book about no no no no I'm not even a bomb distortion which is kind of went out there but it be changed again too or maybe repeat too much but we have seen during that time and then I didn't lucky in terms of my professional suppose I have to say career I'm not too fond of that word but it is a reasonable ordinance describe something special because good things have happened like %HESITATION someone seeing the war that person was from Germany she happened to being at my home %HESITATION she happens to be familiar with the world of photography we kept in touch she said I'd like to bring these images to a publisher they said yes and then that was in two thousand seven sixteen century never change and that wasn't the chamber I think they're really wonderful monograph we're wonderful people who I didn't know what was really exciting wrote about my work notably I will I will add distance one in Moscow and still thrilled with this association %HESITATION the director Graham vendors and I have his email in action above because Jones definitely a piece of good fortune but I. centrum work and he said yeah I can see my waiter writing about this and %HESITATION she's seen that book but it's on she arranged for page prose poem because the book is big and it's about seeing the child receive that about my work it's quite a thrilling piece with this book after I felt I had enough questions remember Justin that's J. publisher and they said yes who knows what makes the world turn one's favor or go the opposite direction but these are examples of that much and I loved working with these people and it was all between Berlin where they were insuring Los Angeles and so is all online on June June marvelous designer wear the same wavelength and the chamber production and editorial team could say to me things like well I don't think that's a strong and images that Michael %HESITATION yeah if you're right or no show we made a book we made a very short time a year and a month well all the chicks in the photographs were taken and all the production which which I think is kind of a record of Sir Arthur Foulkes extremist settlers I think it reflects perhaps the urgency and immediacy of that but yeah became a book wonderful that's scripted you've cultivated such a productive relationship then was a publisher that's pretty into here said John I mean I'm wary of keeping me any longer you've been so generous with your time and all of your ideas and everything just have to interrupt and say what's recently Grange is when you're given the opportunity to statements arts and be honest about them and in this particular sometime she wanted candy you know you say things you said before and obviously some of this I thought about that before but I do feel that in this particular conversation I said some things that were new to me which means I learn something so I have to just tell you that it isn't just general I'm sure of it %HESITATION that's really wonderful to hear okay that's great I'm I'm so glad that you feel comfortable enough and that you feel that you've learned something as well I certainly have learned things and not so what this podcast is all about is everybody learning things to her so I'm so glad that that's happened very late and we mentioned before is that we're really just scratching the surface I think here and I know you you need to go so you're so welcome back anytime I've loved this conversation I will love to have more conversations this year I think you're you're fabulous and I think you're working nights something in me at at night said intellectual curiosity that reminds me why I got into all of this in the first grade in addition if you re that's what you want I like your word I tend to think of inspire but I think it's not it's just a marvelous March and if we can do that for other people that's just great %HESITATION passing on the spark I will tell you I know myself very well I get absorbed and that means that I probably will not raise my hands and checked all what can we do this again but if you want to would you contact me and I will say yes in a heartbeat I'm just telling the truth about me because I don't just get absorbed absolutely okay will very quickly before you go I know you've got a website we G. just point our listeners to your website I'll get it in the show notes but if you just say it for them where can we find you online what a something first nobody knows how to spell my name right so I'm gonna %HESITATION stern Berger S. G. E. R. N. B. U. R. G. everyone I won't tell you what everyone does but I want planted in your mind but Bergesen shitty Star City is how it translates if you I kind of like that and because I have a hosted Mexico I sometimes want to say see ya sorry one meter or not you're still a bit one Nita Dane Estrella just see but I I like to think that we're thinking about manage moving back to so if you know that you can find me anywhere I have two websites one is for photography and it is W. W. W. if you want to think that way Janet Sternberg photo dot com Janet Sternberg photo is one word and it's your case and then I have another one and it's for writing what's surprisingly books and that one is W. W. W. G. Sternberg dot com so it's not hard I would have been nice Google Christian so I can be found on the writing website there's a link to the photography one why should one of these days we don't go back maybe yes maybe no so I am find a ball I would love to do phone by and large %HESITATION on the cryptocurrency website up at the top is my email and that's wonderful thank you for that well thank you so much for doing this and I think I definitely will be in touch as she possibly in the new year and to look at and say a lot more stuff I think I love it I love to do you know what you're doing and love to give you a loan New York I'm going to show you something no not really R. O. this year's cannot see this that one holding up is a plastic sheet of %HESITATION you know the kind of thing you can slip photos insurance your ticket nine half by elevens spiral bound and %HESITATION here it is holding it up and you know just which one selfish you know writes a little I don't know something it she says new also it exposed I'd been walking and so course I look at it and I'm trying to find out what it's about you will find its way all right lovely thank you Paula bye bye thank you John thank
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Audiovisual Cultures episode 59 – Personal Film-making with Éanna Mac Cana automated transcript


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hello and welcome to the audio visual cultures the podcast exploring arts and cultural production I'm Paula Blair and I'm really happy to be joined this time by Ian McKenna he talks to us by his moving image practice many thanks to membership Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures for your continued and much appreciated support the podcast is free to access but not to make and distribute they say this into the end to find out more ways to be part of audio visual cultures for now I enjoy the discussion my and I'm gonna so my slash mark great for circa aren't quite as I had the pleasure of Lincoln street quite a lot of your work because you've been putting it on he changed a lot of the work that you had and installations and and film festivals that's really exciting so you've been mostly making short form films so far is that right yeah at the moment I would like to push on to more long form projects not been writing a couple things that are beyond anything I've done so far one of the reasons as a financial our financial because you can only afford so much short forms good for audience attention things like that when you're in the autumn exceptional or if it's online you know people tend to not watch too much for too long especially in the sort of the phones that I like I'm a big fan of slow cinema and that's what and that sort of culture that's a bit more difficult I think then it might be useful to try and get an idea if it seems and she said come through in your work by talking first of all may be a bite when your most recent film set you up loaded so last week he uploaded I read a short animation called screen I find that one really striking visually as well as the audio it's really fascinating we found some debate twenty five seconds it's all right I really love the way you focus on small details and you've got this recurring image of a hydraulic hospital bed space areas and so %HESITATION there's a sense coming three of it you use the shapes of things in their car abstracted but it's so clear what they are you know it's very minimal very pared back but I find it really packs a punch yeah it really conveyed a lot of isolation and it was quite intense but there's also this idea of busy ness and there's a lot of other stuff going on in the signed happy to talk about what it is you're exploring and not screening I sort of hit us like a and then between film from a terms of work lan's love my work I had a film at a while back %HESITATION enactors the bad racism but I'm also I I've written a short film that I sort of had in mind %HESITATION hasn't been made yet but it's close to other sort of static look good screen %HESITATION ready part Bach images I kind of want to choose have a teaser almost have something in mind or were introduced the next short film well I plan to shoot down short film estimated and block light so for me I was kind of just test out different ideas I like to focus on the one detail some some I'm a big fan of Theodor Dreyer's optional Joan of arc in the not so there's a lot of just it's like a bad against double cross got stalled so that sort of thing but was again excellent as well not only on screen but in previous work focusing on the details and %HESITATION singer objects I guess running and to me or what people take away from the previous when needed was it the rectory where specifics in a hospital is that it will migrate G. use of faulty camera for part of it and some of the tech is that right sure is that a different one I used to smoke the camera for the previous one and so in the beginning yeah yeah %HESITATION are you saying comment but I I bought a a number one for right tree vocabulary I used faulty camera soul download Sony small comment it fitted perfectly with the seams of mortality and the LX you know something Dan real I try and find a lot of my work but then withdrew right tray %HESITATION I bought the same coming because I love the last four that's a fact was brilliant and I I'm you know just a local blues like nineties nerds because Arnold films that came out this summer kind of silly but still like them you know like the Blair witch project yeah but I thought maybe aren't on it when I'm on the phone that works fine %HESITATION short amount for a tree news two films that way if you if you're from third thinking about grace the I. losing somebody and he's left behind and how it affects them themes range remembrance and directions you go through when you visit a gray area for around a week %HESITATION I was researching a lot in the last few years then to you know old Irish culture and the culture of this card for an interlock nowadays or if it's just sort of surviving as well %HESITATION interest in high changes over time and that sort of thing about the form the cane and work at it you know can instead of the mouth of the cease so archaic ritual work usually %HESITATION woman will perform it but it kind of died down there's a number of reasons why it doesn't work cups of church work too big of a fond of women home and sort of power quality G. number take place over to say stuff away usually they don't really like the I think there is an association are works for pagan rituals goes back a long way so it was nothing but I had met the in the lead up to a cause try to find someone to perform but eventually turned out to be just coincidence virtual someone speak Irish as well as waters I am not the Armagh Reimers and a member the log treatments Dara he was talking to me about it you know hi it's just a human response really sort of took the dog not study what I was getting out I was trying to there was no like sort of I guess like national sentiment it was just I was really talking about your expression of grief but I will talk to the man well sort of right now from a couple different perspectives sort of controlling but my own history but people you know the possible entrance with a little bit of research about eight point nine years ago and is described as a cry baby on the crying it was this signed it just came from my friend it did not say how a particular there aren't any necessary words to you or if it's just something that emerges the fading that could emerge the sign from the body yeah that's right most of my life I suppose it was like a sort of poem yes but I I did you know one man Francis Quinn what we're working to get her on the shoulder if you're getting into those sort of moments where the words are really coming up yeah you know just kind of like roll with it %HESITATION welcome those kind of conduct as you described in like manner not even just mumbles or you know cries all because Shiro it's electrical work but for the most part it is water going back to work the sort of history of I think there's like a lot of links to the Jewish and our cultures as well so in trucks fascinating what's the point of origin yes %HESITATION yeah yeah it came up actually and %HESITATION previous recording I did with an artist who's also based in Belfast she was born in Iran she was talking about practices that were really quite similar from her parents culture feels something just quite natural about it in a way it's a natural response to something I think visually that one because that's one where I thought the night vision use where it's quite a grain and then you've got these distortions are it's breaking up a lot of my work as well it's kind of just circumstance again with the calmer it was that's faulty common interest students good luck %HESITATION it suited the mood the night vision really the only light up what county that so if you just put a figure against a wall on the extra cost light across her uncle night vision that's great stuff but we can I can be very effective to go alongside the words so and was there might be some like pouches works but if they cannot just recording close we had recorded an accidental theatre that's right Shastri score %HESITATION cars go by so I was still a lot of the coast just to eliminate those so instead of the tween what Francis was Sam it came back around and worked in my favor because it sits commerce talent %HESITATION what she says will expose these things keep reemerging and other pieces so the rag trade one that has the bad images again but you've also got it seems like a young man visiting some sort of memorial and tying a rack on a trade going down the rabbit hole again there were old traditions and cultures for a lot of people still have probably more so than the actors gaining less someone from wells drilled visitor well technically well kept their rights or part of something the baby belongs to a person tie it to the right track selected hope I guess maybe it cools into by a pro or send a message something to someone I guess or something special %HESITATION so I'm so I'm not too sure that's true but there's plenty of holy wells and Arland specially hello source close just because something does on some some of them are just been lost over time as well so myself but this is just nice like simple act of documents on Oct but maybe this time yeah because there's a lot of focus on removing the grant and stay close up action of the hand stepping into water repeatedly it's almost like a cleansing part of the ritual I wonder if it's a failing %HESITATION if we separate from any religious connotation for a moment if it's an active trying to feel like you're doing something when you feel powerless in a situation of somebody isn't while or maybe in the process of dying and you're fading quite helpless about that so you it's there maybe doing something is what helps yeah I think you're right Justin something like simple lock blacked out whatever it may be it doesn't have to be connected to religious or you know it doesn't have to belong to the old Irish culture or anything like that in your state it's just a simple act of going to get someone's some sweets store and bring them to the person who's on world just visit and some of them talking to them structural work here this time you get more directly into the following a young person dating with grace and your fiction film removal that was a longer pay say is that right that you had a quite a few film festivals because again the Irish things are coming up and then to do with one part of it the aftermath lawyer %HESITATION decided some of that and so lot of Irish folk gospel so got it in Dublin that knows what and %HESITATION the contest you here I thank people who were maybe decide not here were able to connect to you know a bit more than what was brought so it's following a young man he seems to have a job as a roommate filled person maybe needs religious icons which manages to accidently damage some of them so there's quite a point it's thank you bye in faith and they act swiftly and stuff so he finds out about his father being taken now and he seems to just know that yeah I'm gonna miss her yeah but yes I see what you mean it by really appreciating so cinema and not it's a very quiet %HESITATION minutes very stale and so when there is action you really notice sets yes it's very considered and that's very internal type of foam nothing that's what I was really traffic across all like I think the average shot length and removal is quite long some shots that go on programs and kind of wild I guess for a short song yeah I was looking at a lot of collects in them %HESITATION I'd watch a lot of care star means work right now all right excellent I was also a hem that makes sense because there's quite a lot of journeying on roads and %HESITATION then remain so yeah that yeah yes run scheme where but said she found that one Armonk with a twist on that it was good from the Americans just not many people except in the roads and stuff yes Iran's held nearby that mom so that's a big part of the film yeah there's a woodland it's very K. E. N. N. he received something suddenly happens because he sort of just runs away from it the main character and then later on after time as possible after the way the main character is played by transaction he %HESITATION return slots for %HESITATION I guess it's like a appreciation for what it means and it went away you know you get like when places hold such meaning to sometimes fall for me at least I don't really hold any resentment or bitterness towards them I just kind of look at them and that's what the main character does so there is a better route right I wrote as well as a sort of big wave at the burgers when he returns he sees a communication tower and I was kind of Lincoln and %HESITATION earlier in the film or some %HESITATION so I was trying to pick up some from there I wasn't too sure what exactly transaction isn't comparable isn't because see it or feel it so it does feel like a lot of your films are trying to work through things do you feel that that's how your filmmaking is is just trying to work through things here especially the short films as well and part of the cane and someone to find the right in the car I guess they're just releases of you know what I want for in hospital I've been talking about the steps she frowns on stocks as well bush will make and it's a bit more difficult for me to find a release and settlement because it's not really about being creative when you're all set you have to get the job done film and %HESITATION and parts of that again for me are I don't really find a creative release the more maybe I'd like to write that sort of thing you know I think for the farmers they can go on stage and get that instant release boardwalk tractors or people are like expressing cells but also making nothing it's only when you're maybe writing or doing some smoke from a I find a release not since the tools to get it done yeah yeah I think there's no room for emotional so you kind of just need to get the job done at least if you're still short films I produce all of them as well I wish I didn't have to books maze runner online get a job it'll probably really important practical experience though because hopefully that sets you up if you want to expand and not sort of career because you are so very young you've got options and for what area you want to do because you're ready multi skilling at the moment with I have to remind myself up thank you you know when you're taking on the rails for a lot of the toxicity obviously learned a lot about that's good experience and I try and removal was a it was a tough shit I felt at the time I hadn't done a good enough job directing the things about but I guess just kind of part you know I suppose if you're if you're have a death spiral the house at the same time then realistically you know and you're very young film maker and it is a very difficult job today so to have me at at seventeen minute film doing about much of the work by yourself at your age that's pretty impressive in itself I mean unless they have seen worse I'm not damning it with faint praise it's a good phone but you know I've seen a lot worse buying more professional people so don't put yourself behind don't be hard on yourself I think all of us or at our whole lives are always constantly learn and it's good to be there to get things to go well I can do better I will do better next time because you know happened any mistakes but not that you made mistakes it's a really tight found fascist more just accept that you're young and you're gaining experience and you're doing it really well so there's a heart to take from what you're doing and it's very brave to do a lot of the same since well because you're looking at things that are quite mature for your age I think your generation are quite an interesting correct because he might have some more maturity because of things going on in your life so that people just a few years old and you might not have so I'm quite interested to learn about what's going on is people your age at the moment in there for a year at a time I what's going on I'm in my own little world whatever yeah like a lot of people my age are color to your name and stuff and I just kind of trying to figure it out I thank the detail a lot of people obviously comes with a lot of pressure on banks adding different people figured out I don't think any of this really truly figure it out just to survive he just couldn't hurry I think anybody ever says a good little sauce diet thing that probably lion to be honest you're asking me about a film education having been a content provider and thirty comments for some education and having had a background of film education he told me before that your son medication the center up to this because of health issues right you're going three year periods it seems to me from the right side of self educating and just staring at me in learning by doing it as far to say before I worked for al Qaeda back I went to Manchester for yeah twenty six and twenty seven ten studies from working there but before that I was making phone Burke I didn't even amidst a skill and I made films outside about and then %HESITATION yeah I came back and was in hospital for but I don't know I guess I just pop my color blinded by it you started filming and I sort of had these images from my house so I started to look back on capital C. phone services will soon I guess I've got experience from me I've definitely learnt the most just a muscle do you wonder hi the experiences compare it was clear heart broken in a way when I was teaching and I taught briefly at the university of Salford probably at the same time that you remind Chester yeah and I was a theory person attached to a a new film production degree you know we had so many excited radiant Tasiast sick young people the old one and three directors producers cinematographers so last and tell them they're probably at the end of your degree you'd have to go in as a runner anyway because it's not your discounts tracking yeah you know I always wondered about just the aspects of that that your film production education that's formalized an institutionalized because I worry that a lot of young people are going into it thinking that they're going to come right straight away B. in Tarantino or whatever ironically because he's not allowed to give those old phone apart from going to cinema and I feel like that's what's lacking is they're not going to the cinema they're just watch and stuff your TD which is fine but then thinking they're going to move to Hollywood or something when they're finished %HESITATION it's not very realistic so just wondering if what you're experiencing you're still in the middle of it so we're finding ice but yeah if you know your different experiences just gotten in there and just stay in it anyway I have good experience of my course managing what I go back in the I remember %HESITATION of course later said at the start of the collection phones good summer that was my mobile you know because I go to settle I watch a lot of that is I watch a lot of phones that's a big ass character you mention card you know he he worked in the TV rental store for years but I just watched like carrentals numbers or talks with watching films but part of it for me I guess some people go into unity I'm not gonna make excellent courses because they don't really know exactly what they want to be a generalist maybe some people are going to not work but A. S. film industry is a bit of a tricky one because again as you're saying it's like you graduate from a soul mate control but you're still going to have to take up an entry level and the film industry unless you called the connection to the ground I don't think people read enough about what the course entails they usually set up the course detailed enough before after it so you'll know what you're sort of getting into but I think people don't pay much attention and there's a lot of pressure school you need generally not just whistle that can you know look you gotta get out on your life and then further down the road that can cause a lot of problems it was that it is free for one moment we were in office he wants to direct this is when I was at Manchester I was surprised how many people didn't put their hands up you know I just take as a given the people up at the moment and course and direct short souls but a lot of people I guess maybe didn't know yet or maybe their trusted server settings what we're there to make films and stuff but there's a lot of farmers just yeah there's a huge amount today I think life experiences probably in a way more useful or been educated in other areas can be more useful as but I'm hearing on this and other podcasts that have a lot of people he fell foul kinds of production roles and it's just so fascinating the amount of different things the point of different expertise that goes into making one program or one found sharks I worked in our department for over so many different departments and crazy and journal folks a lot of moving parts so yeah there's a lot going on you'd be surprised special music productions check out the E. at the moment do you have to hustle for work is it a combination of your own projects and working for other people there how does that work for you at the moment so my heart was working in the art department in the summer well so my eyes and I like that little bit of the Jewish nocturnal wish the how to a more steady job or I wish that I called paid for what I want to do so much I don't really make too much money off my own phones are covered contact it's like production designer so that work for him usually you'll swing up sparkles I'm sorry I kind of just want to focus on my own thing but then I got side tracked I need a bit of money as well I'm hoping maybe script almost study job I guess but I'd like to do something in around what I'm interested in the is it okay to ask if I if this whole time he's gonna Seuss's the short documentary he's done with the artists Sharon Kelly he's got I think it's today they were recording at her expressions opening and the golden tried to gallery because it is an investor moments while the reason for the phone and her work is pretty stunning as well yeah it is she's done a great job they're not talking about you just came out of nowhere I came back from I had a residency in Hong Kong I came back from there talk with my mom about her show and stuff and I just sort of the idea and vision make some for southern %HESITATION started piecing together the show looks great my own such a going beyond our so she's such a big influence on the slim %HESITATION so it's nice to just make some four nine it was a free what's not because what she's doing is she's drawing in charcoal on translation papers so you get the sense of a delicatessen and circles just sitting on the paper it could slide off at any moment so sense of hate to have to go to it is to work with these very delicate materials and so thank you very any picked up and the camera work you've got a lot of different focal ranges going on around me for it you just recapture that precarity through the proximity the close ups and everything else going on three different lancers I have a fifteen on third and six and then I sort of rain just to work with so my mom still some really interesting things with Celtics all the work you know in terms of the medium she's working on connects to the subject matter of memory and you know I fraudulent so much of the work is I've been stolen right out of sorry right yeah and then bump stocks in there every five minutes as well so its rating of a subject matter because that's really into her own childhood is not what happens after this old place but there's something very tenuous by thought for memory that she seems to have been there's photographs made in a play I guess what a lot of my mom's records contemplate of offense I think she's going to leave however bucked and usual major bustled through these images to she found her child so she doesn't want to talk with articulate and events serious amounts of school or work as well with respect to the cut it should be treated as she speaks related to grief and silence of the truck made a specific source of inspiration doctors well you know she did your cheatin automation these are things I look to as well as references and grown up or under my daughter's focus on Nordic stirs I think it just kind of rubs off on June I'll look at things but if you're going about a project or visually Allah I'll I think there's a lot of lost an entrance from them on holiday compose events on paper or on the complex do you want to sending about the residency then in Hong Kong something very exciting S. R. four months months ago I applied because I was on the go away somewhere on my phone well I might as well do something with the rest and so on to look at and what's going to start a year pretty much for us Tomlin residents in Hong Kong and then %HESITATION over somewhere things just kind of started with capital murder so it's kind of interesting going into the you know because I wasn't I I wasn't aware of what was going to happen in Hong Kong and I wasn't really too public I guess at the time when I applied yeah I'm not alone to the phone call so it wasn't too bad to be honest but it was just sent trucks to be there at that time this is the time when there's major protests happening yeah I was there for the month of October and %HESITATION straits clan on the flight over I had just finished up by one round I'm not sold by the individual gets the collective a lot of them arrived into this place where people are fighting for their individual rights the same thing but you can so sort of big box it was very Allah cart make together what is your residency entail fun I wrote a script for bisexual myself right now and then I made some installation work about how to show that they're studying cold flu projects so I had to show that are accepted my video work you know what I just thought Hyundai controlled everything to a different expression titled that was just made up of these plaster cost plastic cups that collected while I was in hospital nurses with public schools thanks to them your tech tomorrow over the course of cost us to start collecting the I. cost those and made a split bad I'm just laid out on the floor I kind of disconnected from although I was like a spectator took what was going on in Hong Kong I didn't really want that so I wasn't interested enough so I I didn't really lucked out interfere with what I was doing to be honest with the video work and the installation again it kind of falls along to where I am creatively I can really well maybe outside forces made their way and and I didn't realize what the instruction book from A. I. this was to do with myself there was no room for me in Florence from what's happened in the old call because you you know a young person he's been through quite an ordeal that's a lot to work three and itself yeah yeah I find myself in my head a little yeah and there's an overwhelming amount of stuff going on in the world in general at the minute so it's really difficult to start getting ready and entrances and I agree and caring about one thing a lot of but all the other millions of things going on so it that's not a bad thing to be introspective Eric's sister overwhelming to them as well so I don't really know what's going on in the world I guess it's always been our best but when you go free I guess something traumatic and then you come out the other side you're not going to run you almost think the world will be peaceful but that doesn't just keep scrolling do you think you trying to find some sort of peace and yourself maybe it's not as active as possible yeah I guess I would like to thank thank most car helped me last year almost like a delay strengths are and what happened when I was in the hospital and I think things really struck me last year and I almost became a worked out towards the end when I came back to Hong Kong in Hong Kong where we can reach you that's great until residents need seem to have been doing quite well that getting your working savages and Belfast another but beyond this file is fortunate because I Peter Butler's Michael sabar trump he runs the %HESITATION password yes or a no time I got out of hospital and these videos to kind of want to do something with them right shoot for a few days and it scored one of his on court street none I thought to be honest I was kind of down the thought you know it was just it was a nice way of wrapping it up but then I don't remember too much of what happened but I I was able to get the crescent only a few months after on I did like a complete new body of work pretty much within two months and that was the homework in the king and %HESITATION I was running a cold front that after a committee it should come scratch you know I really like your work so that's frustrating because I'm trying to push things on them it's been difficult to get shown criticism thank installations with a lot of hard graft and patience keep at it and see how it goes we've done quite a lot and quite a short space of time Stampy pace with fast do you feel like you're exploring a sense of a connection to the Irish nicer Irish I tend to say because it feels like this is a question that's come up in a broader sense with people I think mostly because of what's going on lasts for accents after the referendum a few years ago and I feel like a lot of people from the north from north in Ireland from Ulster are reassessing their identity because I know I certainly have in the past few years I was just wondering if in a very personal sense because there is so much that we we've talked about it but CPOs practices that could be considered as traditional Irish practices but what a friend does that mean and %HESITATION what kind of direction you know there's a lot of question marks that come up from that but I just wondered if he had any thoughts on that or if that was part of what you were working through as well it is a great way to get it kind of brings back to what we're talking about earlier and that idea of human response to grief and relation to the king and I work under my Irish title and there's a lot of fiber strains from it are just human responses %HESITATION she came and things and I think that's what they should pay to be on a motor history works Gaelic culture these are just things that people go deal thanks I think to make it to you I'm not speaking about you I'm speaking generally to make a political is the wrong thing to the yeah that's fine I don't really think politics and identity in terms of my work ethic I don't really think about it too much at the moment I'm just kind of worked in truth my sort of demons %HESITATION trial almost get food %HESITATION there are locked there was just one of my friends after all but both techs society and %HESITATION I say it does make its way into your work one way or another I guess I'm speaking about hospital environment maybe something can be said about the lock of baths or things like that too and I chose them I think they always find their way in some parts but I don't really see doctor at political message I'm trying to send them through its an idea in a way maybe you have to renegotiate things with your own body because socks at the last count of what you were surprised when second impact said started because that was the first to be offensive what's yesterday this screen and it just struck me some action images of a and the signs of a shaky have status made just five cents of that isolation in a very busy environment I thought about that but I guess there's a contrast from Stalin do you have anything you want to plug is there anywhere on the internet you would like to direct people if they want to see your work the website and I maintain dot com but I think I'm going to be changed not sent yet somebody you should probably if you're older yeah to search for your name and it's crazy to find great SCO it's been really brilliant here for me to hear more about your work I run the query to say and how you work progresses thanks for optimal thank you very good luck with everything and get a her exhibition you've been listening to audio visual cultures it's me Paula Blair and my very special guest in the McKenna this episode was recorded edited and produced by polar bear the music is common ground by our tune licensed under creative Commons noncommercial three point zero license and is available for dine note on C. C. mixer dot org if you like what we do please help us make production and distribution costs with a regular payment to never pay dot com forward slash P. EA Blair or make one off donations to pay pal dot me forward slash PDA prior episodes are released every other Wednesday subscribe in your chosen app so you never miss a new release and do you remember that our backlog of episodes is all available on each tape visit audio visual culture shock wordpress dot com our fellow AT cultures politics on Instagram and eighty cultures on Twitter and Facebook for more information and useful links thanks so much for us then and catch you next time
transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 28 – Art and Activisim with Emma Campbell automated transcript


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welcome to the official cultures the podcast examining signed an image based cultural production I'm your host ball of their I'm delighted to be joined by artist and activist and Matt Campbell primarily practices photography and is a co director of Belfast based organization alliance for choice I'll be back after my talk with them in ways hi to get in touch with us tonight enjoy the discussion I am hello thanks so much for speaking with us today and hopefully we'll get some interested in information about your photographic work as well as your activism and that is our particular way you like to identify yourself would you like to tell us how you present yourself first I like to call myself %HESITATION activist artists I sometimes also where an academic caps with three days of benefit of having a child sabbatical without but usually I'm I have three interchange lack of activist artist and academic correct me we first met actually at an academic conference my memory is terrible but I've really stupid ability to be able to remember ready precise things like that so we've met I think at that contemporary gender performance in practice conference at queen's university Belfast in twenty thirteen this is not %HESITATION and he presented on your photographic series when they pick their hand site like skills if that's not too far back you go free I was wondering if you wouldn't mind describing not for S. and that'll help us he sends the sort of work and activism the ETA there's three different parts to the when they put their hands on skills and what I presented at conference I had done the first two parts the very first part was a video which was a short film I think it's just under five minutes I guess it's kind of a bike the decision making process or I guess the internal dialogue of somebody he decides that they are living in Northern Ireland and they need access to an abortion so bad mind I can started work in this in about two thousand and ten I'm at that time the public conversation around abortion haven't reached the almost cultural it's not like culture but kept inside the Techni saturation like people are talking about whether or not they agree with that it's very much on the cultural horizon at the minute but at the time it really wasn't and I wanted to show hi what was in the public forum one the words of politicians which were hugely lacking in understanding which were obviously mostly still are mostly but even more so than normal female voices I typed the transcripts from the two guys and asked them to debate on abortion we're two miles basically as soon as the part of devolved from Westminster to not not engine went those proposed a motion in order to ensure that the nineteen sixty seven I could never be extended %HESITATION that no change would ever be me into the eighteen sixty one act he is definitely at the extreme end along with a few other people cook from in P. sixteen year he was still alive in two thousand at that time as well a lot of quoting from the Bible and there's one or two dissenting voices in the form of mostly women two or three women politicians and one man called David Irvine and his coke one of his clothes he says hi we ever put ourselves in their shoes when they put their hands on next kills our choices and the bollocks so that's kind of where that came from I guess I'd like to because of its image of justice under Stockton very reminded me the skills obviously can be interpreted like to ski %HESITATION sufficiency is kind of hinted at something towards the sea and travel up so after reading tree and stump some of the coach Mike to status as you can imagine I wanted to be able to show Hari this is what the public conversation also on abortion and this is the kind of thing that would be hi we figure right what we do in the world is formed I'm especially something like stigma hi stick with problems of different directions that's something like that would be informed by not just your own personal close family feelings on the subject but then also your wider community whether that's a church community whether that's what community whether it's if you're in a football team or whether you're in a sewing circle whatever it is that's your psyche by a community what they think abortion and then there's the community at large and another case that would be going in Ireland on the public conversation around it was so lacking in young and lacking and really cutting because it's mostly women but not office the all women women at the sap center all think portion argument soon the physical narrative of the piece is I guess it churning from Norman island through the domestic crown and then I see such a bit of %HESITATION I guess you didn't matter force of nature and water and all that kind of stuff at the time lots of people thought it was maybe too so no I didn't actually pick compared to what we can talk about nine really doesn't seem so that's all especially when you got the voices of the politicians in the background I think that was the piece that you saw at the conference yeah and I was possibly still working on the photographs nine does not signed yet but you've got the video online as well haven't G. nine yeah because I re watched it again recently and I think it's even more poignant night because there's been no setting assembly for over a year and a half so the emptiness of the grinds of Stormont's the desolation tire that you pick up in the images I mean it's quite a scary form of foreshadowing and that's really interesting I watched it recently and I must watch it live really fascinated again you know just the innocence of the place you know this place car and they're not they're they're not doing their jobs and they're continuing to deflect these issues and then the next part of the series was up by the actual journey and so I met with activists in London from Americanization cold a person's point mark and they raise money and fund women coming over for abortions and they put them up in their houses or meter from the station or whatever help people need to they were in their infancy I think I started in two thousand and nine so they're still learning even though actually like that would happen before but they've been a little in the nineties and then studied new fashion of the organization can apply to US nine I use lots of the first person stories narratives that they have %HESITATION some from %HESITATION Rossiter she's an activist she's been doing very much that work from the seventies and I retraced the steps of people so I traveled to Birmingham Manchester Liverpool and London on Buscando clean that number of Chinese probably almost twenty journeys until the first year he was a bit more experimental because I didn't know what was going to taste so I take maybe four or five different cameras with me just to see what it would look like I even had a bustle of maybe photographs and thing in my mind actually a journey was really great photographs of places that people state and when they have to go over so that was the first thing I thought of and you know I did that as well but when I go back and happened on the journey I don't really really felt like the journey was a really important thing and so to me it's more just journeys and I took the stories with me on the box when I reflected about it afterwards because I come from quite %HESITATION I guess kind of a photo journalistic documentary background was taught my undergraduate by post the right type landed in people that are very much in that mold and can craft a lot of like what I eventually did for that it's going to cost I realized it was really a performance so like noon retracing the steps off women record at that position to me going through it was only one of the best trappers like you've been on the spot are you from that you thought it was from emigration control just got interesting I really tried then to do the pictures all from I'm the first person perspectives I didn't get a lot of research by fans to talk first do you K. in the seventies and eighties and they have lots of very core beliefs are wrong to not victimizing women in photography so if they were asked to go wouldn't make you know if they were commissioned to photograph and article this poor woman in it deprived area of London they would engage the people that ever photographed in and ask them I don't want to be portrayed instead of just going in and then being in fact in Patoka Fayette altering the people they were the subject of the photographs and so I guess I don't guess I know that I was very very much in the forefront of my mind when I was trying to do this first person thing whatever I produced it then it just seemed to resonate might not with everybody some people didn't get it I remember showing that the creators from other countries and they were a bit confused on the aisle I think that was because they didn't understand that abortion was illegal in Northern Ireland soon the network I had to do like a one oh one yeah they're like but it's taking them to and you know it was a cold musician west if I showed it to anyone from anyone from our end on that island in a hundred percent blacks the nation needed and so I think that resonance is what helped get the show in the copper house gallery I'm glad as he is of them one of the main guy says and his partner run the coverage gallery showed him the book tell me %HESITATION but he actually cried he never happened to me and put put your people never give somebody credit your photographs yeah I thought it was it is very emotional and %HESITATION then come back response was was something that kept thinking that I had to keep working and the firm I mean I'm just thinking back to I'm hoping I'm not miss remembering stuff that certainly for me watching this video they're so focused sometimes on the menu show you the tiny things a tiny seemingly incidentals and it just made me think about it if you do go on a journey like that that where you're maybe being very pensive very thoughtful it's a huge thing in your life today what is it that you focus on and what then do you remember about that day to remember those you I can't keep clutch onto those tiny things hi the raindrops fell you know for example that sort of thing definitely a sense of especially when you read the story so these people are going through something that for some of them it's an easy decision as in the very much know what they want to do because of the stigma surrounding it it makes it welcome back %HESITATION obviously it's about your body so lots of people forget that while women are needing access to abortion that means they're pregnant pregnancy even very early pregnancy can carry a lot of symptoms to your experience in this very orderly physical thing that you're going through like some people have to pretend not to experience morning sickness in order to hide there are you pregnant six of the people to know that are going for a portion all of this is going on and then at the same time you're having to think about it get into a study that you've maybe never been before making sure you can offer the right stuff in the box make sure you got your passport and all these extra things that some people would find stressful just to go out many pre remind typical on why you're feeling the effects of RT pregnancy while you're doing something that's heavily stigmatized and why you're doing something that is considered not just stigmatized but considered illegal in your own country so you do get a sense from the stories that way but that portion on one hand but in actual fact many of them talk about not knowing how to use the trams or not knowing if they were at the right because there's like two stations in the proposal and there's a million stations mountains and the right the right station or take it to cat and there's definitely not kind of worry about the details come straight and you know if people have made the decision to make the journey you also get a sense of man made this decision where complicated human being and so we will have lots of different shadings appoint up to session they've definitely made their mind up when they're going on this journey so the feelings that come through our especially when people are retelling the story afterwards it's like why did I have to do that another country by today afternoon J. that Johnny why did they have to be miscarrying or on the way back to Northern Ireland or Ireland I was trying to put myself as well you know there's also this very calm and I can I think in the Irish and northern Irish psyche all the trouble of emigration there somebody in everybody's lives he's moved away to work you know you're not living in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland for ten years there was something very familiar as well making the journey because I would have in my early twenties I would meet the cheapest possible journey which would have been a seventeen hour bus journey from London or whatever not to go to boulder and earn more money I was able to fly you casually but it meant that the physical journey was something that I felt would be easy to identify with for for anyone in Ireland and Northern Ireland for all the reasons that are tied to problems with hi we are treated the systems are available to assist us so since it isn't just even about abortion one of my tutor said to me if you realize you're trying to photograph something that's comfortable I like them thrown on the chat show ends its second let you know so I suppose I was trying to think of the photographs and some of them feel like maybe slightly psycho geographical some of them feel very dark and very hot I think some of them fade a bit here and a bit more like breaking away I think it was the second what was trying to date and then the ones on the bus you know you're just there for if you do not adjust your date you're there for ours and ours and ours and you'll be different people on your wondering why everybody else is on the bus and also the stories where people would like I wondered as I had this feeling that some I everybody knew when they were traveling through there is always different factors I guess Hey I was trying not to be too natural as well looking at them I feel that captures all the range of things they imposed feeling of shame that you have or that you imagine that it should be she M. followers back to those Brady Monday end stretches of time and then nothing that's what's happening and you count ready settle today anything and the tiredness of it it's tiring thing today even if you do travel for pleasure as you say or when I was living in Belfast I was back and forth to Britain for job interview you send for conferences for research whatever so you do when you do you see those images she do you relate to just stay active the journey the travel %HESITATION you know so I think the opposite they comes across very well and and expose sent to move on then from journeys but then the other element of journey being identification and passport photos and then to another project you've done a stiff passport butterflies it was hard to get from under the other there's another project in between maybe wasn't as successful as I felt I was talking very much about an individual's experience with the first project and then the second project I had an offer from women on web hi abortion pills to countries where it's legal and they've done a few take actions on they said I was allowed to go and use our photo archive and do whatever I wanted so I couldn't really turned on the offer you know it was a great offer and I got to go to to it's called a tree at eighty T. R. I. a and it's just fantastic library or archive all gender studies and history and emancipation of women in us or not because women web based in Amsterdam I use their images on some of them are very you know take on low quality digital cameras back in the early two Titans so the quality wasn't grand I was like I'm going to make this into something interesting and so I made them into collages with historical images from the National Library archives of item from around eighteen sixty one and when the act was I guess I was frustrated that a lot of the interaction you would get on talking about abortion in Ireland and Northern Ireland was staring on the basis of it was almost like a douche cheaper products company on those comments definitely happened any I got interviewed on the guardian or whatever and what was Diana or something in the media it was printed in England that would have come up quite a number of times I guess I was trying to think of a way to do it without service used in the archive images to maybe speak up a little bit about the idea of the Irish native American lives but also the impact of colonialism because obviously there is no law is a pretty strong there wasn't all before that so talk about it like that collage you know I've done collage for years and years ago but haven't done that in years and so it was a bit of an experiment but it didn't really resonate I still enjoy some access but and I don't think it resonated with people he didn't know enough to fight it it almost require you to do a little bit written before the pictures %HESITATION that for me meant that maybe there's been this feeling in the project the project after that was the passport photographs on the basis of the idea %HESITATION the first project I I'd been so careful I'm worried about stigmatizing people shares then I worried that I was making the woman invisible and it was you know was I making the woman in this one the abortion sicker and discipline and so I also realized from an interview I had with the student actually he said I I've noticed that the pro life side you know they used to feed a symmetry they used to you're not women being mothers a lot look see feel and materials but the giant completely out of proportion is blown up already floating in space or you creepy things like a pretend Tom to come in through the belly a lot of pro choice or pro reproductive justice imagery is really a step by an awful lot of text so it's just difficult how do you make something that they jumped and talks about the people that need access to abortions or talk about the people that are involved in fighting for access to abortions I'm so I originally thought maybe I'll get people to send me their passport photographs of do something with them and I haven't really thought I was going to get the first picture kind of tried with with those city to how the power of our gyms to what he does I didn't go away of sepsis when they wouldn't treat her she's seventeen weeks pregnant %HESITATION she clearly started to happen already miscarriage but because they could still detect fetal heart beating here and also there was an element of racism and that's what I've heard that Affleck who treats her family had given explicit permission to activists to use her image so that it would never happen again and so I tried was hers but I felt like her image was used so much already the reason I was using it was because of it being you so much and placards and posters and stuff around the pro choice argument I like I felt like it'd be slow because the pro choice side as it were how to Durst in mentoring and use and so then that's when I thought about getting activists to send me a card images and I did faxing to them might chop them up make things over the top of them when I was re photograph number then realized you know what contemporary way okay and photographs of yourself as a self pay it's very kind of Instagram and current activism is very smart what people call for swift feminism has a huge focus on social media and the sharing of images and memes and doc thanks and maybe I could use this form to better illustrate the ideas out there it was trying to insect no but %HESITATION but partial insight powerful images of activists in abortion seekers because there aren't any and and so we'll have news of all in tears and I photograph people of marches %HESITATION Nestle Kraft people choice events sometimes I specifically did a calling people cold under the studio okay and then %HESITATION I either ask them to tell me something but active it is %HESITATION are you something up like abortion activism of the time and I used three different apps then do you like a digital symmetrical image of the person and which I overlaid elements of activism are elements of the abortion rights struggle over them the reason I sort of the whole the butterflies the same was party today with my with my research had on I was looking into the relationship between feminism and photography feminism as we know it so feminism from if we imagine that began with the suffragettes even though we know whatever comes before that they would describe himself feminists have to touch it but if we imagine the suffragettes started country wide movement on an international movement on feminism then the token fee was born at the same time so photography and feminism for me felt like two tenths of maternity the first ever color photograph was taken Robert Maxwell and little tartan like roots acts almost exact political respecting it looks really like okay like or other fly like you I also had the fortunate that's it he %HESITATION natural history unit in Hartford I have a friend he married %HESITATION research scientists Houston is PhD in art so I don't know what else you would get the case but they had rows and rows of cases of bugs and butterflies and things and obviously lots of them have been collected to the eighteen hundreds I started to make these connections about Holly also the suffragettes were the first ever political great to be under political surveillance but the state and the met office and London thought state of the art at the time camera because the cameras up until then be very still in order to get the tear picture exposure times for so long the suffragettes knew this and they would shake her head vigorously so that they can get an accurate representation so whatever this new camera was developed I can't remember the name of it yes I they had a guy hi that match up for high in a fine invite Holloway women's prison to get accurate likenesses of them and then once they realized that discount why they were able to do a much better surveillance up on the suffragettes hello Lou they were being watched in this way the suffragettes Olson you depart the image I'm very much thank you very much so you know there's an awful she in that so much of the artistic links in the suffragette movement on the militant thanks to help and %HESITATION dined for normal narrative somewhat the suffragettes were but thanks very much you the part of art image %HESITATION they had chapters all across women and chapters of seamstresses artist there's an interesting link because arch often the first third level education establishments that women wear light intake so it makes sense that a lot of the suffragettes a lot of the already subject scheme from an art school background the used imagery and they there's a first ever woman pressed should hope for is a woman call Christine Brun who worked at the same time as the suffragettes and sheeted decent stick images off their marches and all the pageantry and they asked her to be there they knew they were going to get great pictures because she did pictures of military curry in a totally new way and in a way like a modern day this call you know I'm not a day of asking a photographer to turn up to your protest like and so that you know they need to carve the image and so I wanted to combine all of the soul to my head no and so one image because the law is from eighteen sixty one he was invented our coverage this color photographs I think it's eighteen thirty six and then the suffragette movement was nascent about time so all of these things felt like a really good mix he asked me something I don't I'm not sure came up with the idea of making the passports into a butterfly collection I thought it was something harmful up like the act all kidding the pain through the woman felt like it very easily showed this active state violence at the nine women abortions was a fight this appropriateness sexual behavior greatness of public conduct and all of these I think almost like a hang over from a Victorian era it's still this Victorian although we're not under that spoke about surveillance because look people like I asked her do and political work because also my activism I do not actually on the ground political stuff like kind of defending and escorting women to and from my strokes or helping women find out how they can get access to abortion pills I mean you that lots of us and how they are dressed as watched we then need is for certain when some of us had our offices and workspaces rated on international women's day two years ago and so it felt like everything came together for me in my head in this one idea and I'm still making them so at every Jenny I wanted to make twelve because of this problem in a week at that point the jumbled from the whole of Ireland and then once I very quickly and easily got twelve people I was like I I make forty because our site is trouble in a day and then it was forty quid a week and the only I've been to international conferences the people there it kind of hits a bit more to global struggle as well I've taken progressive man our activists but I still haven't made them into butterflies because I'm not sure what to do with that yet or whether it needs to be something slightly different yeah the butterflies it's still in progress I was and I'm still trying to get as many women as possible I've reached out to some colleagues and comrades who you were campus thing I'm working really hard in the run up to the referendum I didn't ask them in the middle of it all because it was a very long time I'm very intense but some of them got back to me now I I've got some of their images this is well there's some people that I feel like the project will be finished unless I've got them into you know I counted in every activists but there's some people I feel like I come to the site yes I want to make sure that I have you know black women's bodies an immigrant women's bodies in there I want to make sure that there's trans men and women there's no binary people on there I want to make sure that that piece is as intersectional as our activism trying to me I shown in very old etymology boxes and then you name modern actions and then online I guess they just like portrait images but interestingly the image is already been used there's a researcher call Sally Shelton at the university campus she did her research paper called can the state controlled swallowing it was but access to abortion pills and she didn't know what it means to use %HESITATION contacted me after she interviewed me as well the actress for books and then contacted me about using some of the images so it's been used for that and then also %HESITATION there's a part that's just I called reimagining global abortion politics okay they've used a selection of the butterflies on the front of that so I thought that was great if you can manage it excellent like there's an awful lot in those images and they're kind of it is but it sounds like they need an awful lot of explanation but actually when people see them they don't need the explanation like the last one so it's a very layered there's a lot of texture in them there's a lot to you don't just sort of flip through them you can actually start one for quite a long time to get a lot of information from it %HESITATION yeah because I should say as well that I I'm sure there's a magnifying glass there because they're you know they are the size of passport photographs to get very intimate with them that's fascinating because I've only seen them online so there Baker online but that actual active peering out them probably it would be quite perform with meaningful when I was reading online fight as well a friend of ours signed an appropriate hall baby like the idea of butterfly collecting being inappropriate healthy for women as well yeah especially if you were an unattached or single you see you know the aspiring middle classes that some Heidi Fleiss collecting once one of the things that young single women were a light to it seemed a fitting and there's something about it as well that talks a lot about femininity I think you know the home by expressions of femininity or what is feminine that's kind of encapsulated especially and then on a Miller creature like a butterfly partly because the work is fine but it's a fight not an unbiased I've never tried to say that this is non biased piece of work despite much client problem I very clearly stated position on it never made the work I couldn't recall press gallery edit any prices or anything on them because I want people to access the images and use them because of what they are and easy to access for people I think is well it's important to note I think you touched on this earlier as well the difference between those images because that like a lot of the thesis and the more smiling faces are happy faces are trying to help you faces where human to the sorts of faces that in contrast with the order violence of some anti choice poster enhance that kind of thing it's a real tonic anyway and I hadn't really thought actually but the idea that there weren't ready images attached to the pro choice movement I think somebody like Civita risks becoming a martyr figure she was the person Alcentra from so I feel like it's a whole other I wanted to paper and it just itself but I think there's something in the idea that once this mini state this news person the TV version of the handmaid's tale with manta and you see a person off that red and white outfit more abortion or reproductive system or even the next act sexual violence this image has night brilliant may become a kind of shorthand for each state oppression of women yet because we haven't really had anything else I can think of anything quite so powerful and the other thing about it is that it doesn't limit you to a request or a gender even necessarily again the way the eagerness in which that image has been taken up unused I thank shows high much something like that is needed how much more of these images are needed absolutely I haven't seen any episodes of them in steel and I haven't read to pick but I know what that image is you it's so distinct if you see it and you go all right that it's not OK a crash and you know you just associate that language with the image of the types of cloaks that the women are made to wear I'm really well I'm feeling the other thing about butterflies which I have mentioned is it not a especially with the result in Ireland my ideal version all exhibiting them would be tough like almost like a swarm of butterflies to so many because you know it really felt that will start activism when if we had a run this and to its intent but there may be five or ten people would turn up to meetings sometimes of something hitting use we get more people than it would fade away again very quickly and then we saw over the last decade nine we saw this gradual but steady progressive movement and lots of young women involved in the movement lots of feminists who were involved in the seventies come back and we joined in the activism really feels like it's galvanized hold not just two generations of hold sway of all women and trans men and other portions stickers all over Ireland and Northern Ireland suddenly feels like we're at that tipping point where we can't be ignored anymore and I think what I want to get right with the next P. Sean's hopefully off to put our prices up and the feeling that are everywhere night kick yeah and they're taking flights I suppose this is another metaphor that can be used as a one of the images from the race next question which is often trademark I don't know if you knew last yes yes ma'am yeah it was a great show I am part of array which the studio group in Belfast we had a studio show there and I did one for him all of them sitting in a very all kind of formation and then the next tram I tried to have it so that they were all trying to burst type of the frame on I had some of the family some of them just directly on to the wall it was kind of testing that idea yeah I think it worked on I think the next exhibition like going to play a bit more yeah yeah there's other ideas while pushing through a border which is something that is needed at the moment as well now that the Republicans as replacing a portion so that northern Ireland's is tiny that'll blow both people not getting health care that they need and the awareness has really resonate mean living in England for four years nine months I was teaching in universities it was shock and high level students know by north in art and in general yeah thank not me having to explain to them I'm from the same country as you so that in a broad sense but also the not knowing that abortion was illegal and part of the U. K. exemptions would find not quite distressing you know and whatever their own story was the idea that they kids and something happened unexpectedly that vacates sort products and they had options and choices S. A. got pregnant during the studies whatever the idea that they wouldn't be able to say that was very distressing them and so they would actually then start to talk to their friends we that you know it was really wonderful to see that awareness spreads and Britain I think they're so wonderful and delicious irony in the fact that the D. U. P. you know we know nobody ever really publicly stated but we know that they're not sitting here because %HESITATION enjoyed wide in the tale of the dog too much in Westminster the spotlight it was shown on them whenever it was clear that Theresa may needed them for the argument actually kind of put them in the nasco it shone a light on gay marriage but it Sean a light on the fact that they haven't been setting government it's a light on the fact that even people who work Tory supporters I'm traditionally seen as leaning towards the right in the U. K. more cast to be associated with them at the time and up Stella Creasy launched the amendment on to the queen's speech which forced the government to say %HESITATION joined with a deep make us any less pro choice on in a way the P. U. P. accidentally chaos funding access in England obviously we've been working very hard in the background to make sure the conditions are right but when the market was brilliant and I think it also shines a light on like devotion in Northern Ireland as we know it's very different to devolution in Scotland and Wales and I think brexit on these issues have shown like on holiday dysfunctional actually boils on high much really the Westminster government were always just trying to ignore it I'm hoping that it wouldn't close any difficulties and your comments from recent secretaries of state like to redo the Philly or saying things like you know what you're talking about legacy issues and that you know eventually northern's just might have to get over it under even a sense from her I find it having also lived in England and then walked to programs where they talk about the history of the conflict it's very clear that there's no consideration of what the British government's rule act you know and I'm speaking to somebody who grew up in east Belfast okay fine teas the people I grew up around we're all unionists who very much wants to be part of the union but I think it very much shows stop there's no teaching of Irish and northern Irish history I'm not sure because to me that it's still a colonial blocked it's still something that they haven't dealt with properly and with brexit and everything it's just showing how it's foolish and heart and and I don't know if you remember the quotes from parts Thompson and Jacob Rees Mogg but the borders I can if you like you zero yeah and then it funny hi abortion noise kind of in the mixed doubles worse before hand it would have been one of those things all yeah we'll sort out your impression after we worry about this either all these other types of oppression you know there's always is better now I feel like it stop city scene or something core and central to the values of the D. U. P. versus the values of runes you know people if there's anything else you think you would like to say please stay if you wanna plug websites pages any publications or year exhibitions coming up please work away reimagining global politics and then there's another one I did lots of collaboration to ship all Kansei and we who wrote a chapter on art and activism and art into Northern Ireland thank you for taking the time to chat with me about %HESITATION less it's been really fascinating I used to write because I don't get to talk about if I often ask me question I'm I'm all for like ten minutes they do high schools and you get a lot of questions about the activism part not so much about the arts part of what you do now so where is intended do the other way around nah it's good to change stuff once I got off the phone here than I have to be boring what I call it that Appel activism sales to people looking thing all that stuff that has to happen so that's the point isn't to to raise a concern maybe there are things that a lot of history are those invisible boring online or just talking to people and unseen work it's always important to remember that people every day and on the same things as well as very physical active things yeah like tonight so get ready to do a workshop with Scalia died tonight there's a few women's groups that we have some connection to us because we did suffragette workshops with them while they were cold challenges and choices of twenty first century and to some of what feminism but now I'm going back today and much more the reason we did it is because the last stage in the course of the six week course talks about abortion reproductive rights because we felt like especially a lot of the working class areas you could win the first week and say right we're gonna talk about abortion we had to introduce ideas of Ptolemy and remove the stigma of the word feminism first but anyway one of all the groups by the end but locked up %HESITATION we got funded with the open university today more workshops with people put an exhibition we were part of cold might be my life so it traveled all around the U. K. and included my journey photographs I was in London at one point as well and at that point I also think it was it was a picture produced some of that had individual stories and %HESITATION that stories from all over the UK and today Northern our stories we're gonna do is annoy them and specific budget but the brilliant thing about this in a way is a common one in our street in there shows you how much more of a struggle and how you create drama it making people travel so we're we're gonna watch one of these groups tonight and they're they're all excited about it because it's been like a year and a half since the last workshop so me I'll be fine on it you know what C. compared to teach in an underground environment sometimes he would do presentations in an underground environment and let Chile get nothing back that when you go into these workshops catch up them up for questions on them telling each other stories and it's just it's so but now I just look at what happened with us straight up to the referendum was unbelievable not prepared for it I remember when I booked a family holiday to Lanzarote eight full week after the referendum to tidy %HESITATION that's up and you know give it enough time just not in the office what happened we had to temporarily recruit other medium medium level for alliance for choice it was actually everybody's phone off the hook for two weeks %HESITATION nations coming in and what sort of shut outs from activists in this life and then a bit more awareness from eminence in England as well really helpful we send stuff over to the London our script but they sell it for we also put their offense late in our email grip on a lot of our email group will be because we were at the labor party conference last year so lots of our supporters are actually English as well unless I have to say hello my tears in the run up to the referendum after the referendum collapsed in tears all folks amaze and kindness and people so we sent %HESITATION such and such is the name of whatever it was awesome somebody still needed a box of time which is just stuff like that but it's just sort of let me think I enjoy books thank you very much much miss grace many thanks again to MF for helping us begin to think about art and activism and the ways that the personal is often the political you can learn more about her work and see examples on M. S. website at Emma Campbell dot co dot UK and I've included links to many of the other artists scholars and organizations am I mentioned in the extended show notes available for patrons Spieth Petri on dot com forward slash P. A. prior suggestions for topics to be added to your list or if you'd like to be a cast we are not AP cultures on Twitter and Facebook under email as audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com thanks so much for listening and for all your support all the best and catch you next time