I Am Somebody is a multimedia art project facilitated by the City of Hobart's Housing with Dignity Reference Group, in collaboration with Tasmanian documentary audio artist Helene Thomas and photographer Andrew Wilson. It honours the unique stories of five community members and tells of the impacts living without a home has had on all aspects of their lives.

My client for this project was 'Nature. Be In It.'

Owner and creator, Kara Spence, commissioned me to tell the story of her award winning school based program.

Randal Morrison is a third generation Huon Piner. He lives in Strahan, Tasmania. I met Randal at his saw mill in Queenstown and as we talked he reminisced about his times as a young boy going out with his father to the banks of the Gordon River to collect Huon Pine logs.

Here She Is is the grand vision of local artists Jessie Pangas and Anne Morrison (pictured here), an exhibition created by and about multiple generations of North West women.

This audio piece was produced for this Ten Days on the Island project. I recorded conversations with nine women about their connection to the North West Coast of Tasmania on a stunning property in the upper forests of Spreyton overlooking the bright blue waters of Bass Strait.

Anne and Jessie talk here about their inspiration for Here She Is.

http://tendays.org.au/2019/here-she-is/

Photo credit: Lauren McKinnon

Music credits: Claire Anne Taylor

Dr Emma Lee is a Trawlwulwuy woman who grew up on the North West Coast of Tasmania. When I sat down with Emma recently to record a conversation about connection to place we realised we hadn't seen each for well over 20 years. Turns out we had both got our Doctorate degrees despite our struggles with academic institutions in our late teenage years, we'd both been on a long journey of belonging and self-acceptance, and we were both no longer ashamed of saying we are women from the North West Coast, instead we were deeply grateful for the ways we'd been shaped by that place.

Emma speaks about country with the kind of respect and intention that calls you to honour its presence and the role it plays in shaping us, "Country heaves and pulses with life and death, you can hear and feel it breathe and it speaks to us... and so the connection is one that radiates through time and place and of the night sky and gives us the lore, how we're meant to live our lives... for me this connection is one of both anchor and freedom because it doesn't matter where I go in the world the North-West Coast is what defines me, my behaviours, my thoughts, my learning and understanding and so my narrative is as woven as the waves on the beach, the trees, the birds, the stars in the night sky, I am nothing without these things of country."

I wrote recently of an experience at the Devonport Bluff where I realised that I didn't just swim off the rocks there nearly three decades ago, I had carved out my identify there. My 14, 15, 16-year-old self. Shedding skin, growing wings. Being, dreaming, becoming. That day I had come home to her.

This audio piece was produced as part of a project for Ten Days on the Island called Here She Is. The project was the grand vision of local artists Jessie Pangas and Anne Morrison. I recorded conversations with nine women about their connection to the North West Coast of Tasmania on a stunning property in the upper forests of Spreyton overlooking the bright blue waters of Bass Strait.

Photo credit: Lauren McKinnon

Music credits: Ash Dargan - Oanyi; Dewayne Everett Smith - Palawa

Being a woman who grew up on the North-West Coast of Tasmania I loved having the opportunity recently to sit with other women who have similar connections to the place. The conversations called me to a place of deep inquiry about where I feel I belong.

I haven't lived on the coast since I was 19-years-old, 25 years ago. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever return to live there. Zoe Grey grew up in Marrawah, on Tasmania's remote, rugged far North West Coast, and I just love the way she speaks about her connection to that part of the world, "Connection to place shifts and changes as you grow and change, and comes in waves, I guess like any relationship. A relationship to place is like a relationship to a person, and that’s how I feel about Marrawah and about the far North-West, it feels like a friend, I feel a love for that place like I do for my family… I think a relationship to place or a connection to place grows and changes as you do... maybe sometimes you pull apart from each other and then other times you’re closer, you may go away but always come back… it’s given me everything I am today."

When I was younger I definitely pulled away from the North-West Coast, like a relationship I had outgrown. I needed to leave so that I could see and experience it with fresh eyes, eyes that had seen other landscapes and places, and ears that could now hear the timeless and transient stories of the relationship between us.

This audio piece was produced as part of a project for Ten Days on the Island called Here She Is. The project was the grand vision of local artists Jessie Pangas and Anne Morrison. I recorded conversations with nine women about their connection to the North West Coast of Tasmania on a stunning property in the upper forests of Spreyton overlooking the bright blue waters of Bass Strait.

Photo credit: Lauren McKinnon

Music credits: Claire Anne Taylor

The way this 18-year-old man spoke to me about women blew me away. He walked into my studio on International Women's Day in March this year, and he was eager to talk about the respect he has for women and his experiences he's had with women in his life, "I really enjoy the complete acceptance that I feel when I'm in the space of a woman who is allowing me to be completely raw and vulnerable and open." He then went on to say, "More than anything pride kills love. Pride is an absolute destroyer of love and to be gentle is to be in that space where you can begin receiving what you need to receive and given what needs to be given. Personally I believe women need gentleness... a gentle spirit, a gentle touch because to be feeling overpowered by a man is to be removed from your place of power yourself."

A Simple Act was awarded Best Story at the 2019 HearSay International Audio Arts Festival, Kilfinane, Ireland.

http://www.hearsayfestival.ie/

I was born in Beijing, China, to parents who were born in Russia. My Mum and Dad - I’ve never really known how they met - but they married and I was born, and when I was an adult I was walking through Hyde Park and I said, “God thank you for making me spastic. I’d hate to be normal.”

This is a life-changing situation for me. I sat next to this girl, I can’t remember her name, but I thank her for the rest of my life. She said, “George, I don’t want to sit next to you,” and she got up. I cried my eyes out. I cried my hurts, my insecurities, all sorts of things that were troubling me and I stopped crying and this beautiful presence came over me and said “George, I love you warts and all”.

And so I’ve got this problem, I’m addicted to unconditional love.

The Nayri Niara good spirit Festival is a three-day gathering of music, ceremony, knowledge sharing and arts, held on Bruny Island in southern Tasmania. This is a story about a special connection made between the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community and the Tasmanian Rwandan Community.

Music credits - Ash Dargan and Kobya