Shared responsibility: Making work in communities across Asia-Pacific

 

Facilitator Artist/First Nations leader Dewayne Everettsmitt with R // R members David Nalo (Lokol Eyes, Vanuatu) and Shay Vigona-Goudge (Artback NT, Darwin NT) 

'What are the responsibilities of regional festivals and organisations, in their respective communities and contexts Across Australia, Asia and the Pacific.'

The final full day of Regional // Regional concludes with Selena de Carvalho and Dewayne Everettsmith chairing a panel where the artists get to ask the questions around the topic of responsibility within regional festivals and organisations. Masoom Parmar (Alif Arts, Bengaluru India), Jeannie Park (Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja, Jogjakarta Indonesia) Alex Wisser (Cementa, Kandos NSW), Shay Vigona-Goudge (Artback NT, Darwin NT), Dely and David Nalo (Lokol Eyes, Gaua Vanuatu) take the hot seat for an informal conversation–open to the other participants and the public–illuminating common threads between seemingly disparate practices. 

Masoom Paramar begins by sharing more information about India’s current political context, where their government is increasingly aligned with right-wing values. He explains that 'if you make a work that is challenging dominant perspectives, you have to protect the artists [from negative experiences] but then it's hard to sell tickets.' While there are 1.4 billion people in India, and ideally a large arts-going public, he suggests that actually means there’s a larger population of people who may not understand the need for artistic practices that challenge dominant ways of thinking. In his organisation, Alif Arts, and as an independent performing artist, Masoom has small-scale conversations about safe spaces, taking inspiration from the Arts House Melbourne cultural protocol document. Feedback workshops for audience members have been a key part of development. They stage a work they think is radical, and the audience is prompted to think about how it makes them feel, which can be quite radical in the contexts he makes work in. 

The great diversity of cultures, religion and language across India bring strength to its creative practitioners, yet also complexity at home and in its regional context. 'India is not often included in the Asia Pacific region, so where does it fit in? Even though countries across Asia share common issues and joys–approach to life, work and relationships–there still seems to be a discord between the countries.' Yet there have been moments where communities develop abroad within a festival context: '[When Asian artists appear at your festival] there’s a certain ease you enter with, you feel more safe and better understood in the regional context, to take information home.' Equally, he has had positive experiences visiting Australia for festivals and conferences, describing how Aboriginal land acknowledgements in Australia have inspired him to acknowledge dance lineage in his own personal practice. 

The topic of pace is raised by panel chair Selena de Carvalho, and Shay Vigona-Goudge picks this up from her context in the Northern Territory, where many of her collaborators are from remote Aboriginal communities. They are guided by the pace from within the Aboriginal communities, to ensure 'projects are for and of the community, [that we’re] not making things for elsewhere'. As well as respecting and understanding cultural protocols on a macro scale, Shay is describing making context-specific cultural protocols as a guide for what they do when their work traverses so many different Aboriginal communities. There are some nods among the group as this type of approach could be useful working between other First Nations groups and indeed, across the Asia Pacific. 

 

Artists Dewayne Everettsmith and Selena de Carvalho interviewing Festival Directors and Regional // Regional members 

David Nalo can relate to Shay’s comment about slowing down, explaining that Vanuatu is often called ‘the timeless place’. The focus in his work with Dely Nalo, their collective Lokol-Eyes, is about traditional knowledge as a vehicle for the practice. Encouraging, helping and inspiring young people of Vanuatu to engage with traditional knowledge. With many of their young people leaving for work in Australia or New Zealand, they have to be creative about ways to engage the next generation in their culture. They’ve found that through arts projects and festival environments, locals can see through others’ eyes how important their own culture is. All having a positive impact on knowledge exchange and cultural legacy. 

Their sense of responsibility to their community on the island Gaua is strong: while many people are leaving, David and Dely are going back to their origins. They note that when you're working with and for Indigenous people or communities, 'you have to walk the talk. It's how you gain respect within the community'. 

Expanding on this approach, Dely says that responsibility starts with oneself, from the inside. This comment seems revolutionary in an age where we constantly seek input from outside influences, seeking excuses or validation for our behaviour. But when you are responsible for yourself and your actions, from there you can influence the people around you. She puts this in more straightforward terms, simply stating that 'because we have the ability to respond to the challenge that our people are facing, we feel like we must start.' 

'Responsibility starts with oneself, from the inside. This comment seems revolutionary in an age where we constantly seek input from outside influences, seeking excuses or validation for our behaviour.' - Dely Nalo, Lokol Eyes Vanuatu 

Noting that this work cannot be done alone, panel co-chair Dewayne Everettsmith highlights the need for trusted allies who can support practitioners who have capacity to begin facing these challenges. In his practice as a singer-songwriter and as a professional in the arts industry, he has seen that artists, particularly those of First Nations background, need to be able to work and collaborate 'with people whose voices are privileged in the system, in order to make the work.' 

Communication and responsibility comes up frequently for many across the network, as Jeannie Park has noticed in her work for Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja, an arts centre in Jogjakarta, where they work with people from all across Indonesia who speak a variety of languages. 'Often there might not actually be terms in local languages [for what we are talking about], and sometimes things get lost in translation'. 

Jih-Wen of Step Out Arts, Taiwan, chimes in from the floor, to share an experience on what else gets lost in translation. Whilst working on an artist commission in London’s Chinatown district she found herself negotiating relationships with the Chinatown community. After completing the commission, which used specific Chinese language characters, local residents requested an alteration to particular characters which may come across wrong when out of context. As a producer, Jih-Wen managed the neighbourhood stakeholders and the artistic relationship in a dance-like push-pull between artistic intent and stakeholder until a point of resolution was reached. Still, she noted that there was no right or wrong way to adapt to this situation, nor could they have predicted the reactions the work was met with. 

 

Regional // Regional member Jih-Wen Yeh of Step Out Arts, Taiwan 

Speaking from his experience building a community arts festival in the town of Kandos in regional New South Wales, Alex Wisser says the notion of ‘regional’ is a commonality that generates an understanding of societies and relationships often invisible or ignored by people in cities. 'Relationship is at the core of this notion. Differences between the people [in Kandos] are real and they're quite radical. But they all get along because they have shared and common needs. They just learn not to talk to each other when they disagree, or not to talk about those topics.' This differs to metropolitan regions where the idea of ‘community’ is understood as not only proximity, but a system of shared values, which he says can actually be more abstract: community is 'like an idea you have about the commonality you have with the people you live nearby. It's not denying that these cities are full of communities, but it's more abstract. Being in a city, you find yourself in situations of proximity where all you can do is make assumptions. Having a system of assumptions makes you feel secure in situations where you are unfamiliar. By contrast, regional areas make you constantly aware that human relationships are concrete things, they're not ideas, they're not thoughts.' 

After a week of embodied interpersonal exchange, these words echo with clarity around the room. Rather than letting things slide with a glib 'I’ll get back to that' the week has enabled a pace shift and a deep engagement. Everybody went down a few gears. People have spent time getting to know each other, rather than keeping things surface level, with blinkers on. This session held a mirror up to the micro-community in development throughout the week: Regional // Regional participants co-created their own set of shared cultural protocols. 

Regional // Regional is an initiative of Asialink Arts at the University of Melbourne and is supported by major partners. The Yulgilbar Foundation, Circle 5, and Konfir Kabo and Monica Lim. The Regional // Regional Tasmanian Gathering has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. With thanks to venue partner Theatre Royal Hedberg. 

 

 

 

Susie Anderson is a writer of poetry and nonfiction whose work reflects on the hidden layers of culture, memory and place. She is a proud Wergaia & Wemba Wemba woman from Western Victoria whose poetry and non-fiction writing has been published in a variety of publications in Australia and abroad, including Meanjin, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Suburban Review, Portside Review, Archer Magazine and more. She has also written extensively about visual art from a First Nations lens for galleries such as National Gallery of Victoria and publications like un Magazine, Artist Profile, Artlink and Art Monthly. Her debut collection of poetry, the body country, was published in 2023 and shortlisted for the Victorian and NSW Premier's Literary Awards. 

https://www.susan.fyi/ 

All photos by Jillian Mundy, https://www.jillianmundy.com.au/