What are you looking at?

A conversation with Leyla Stevens and Melanie Lane, reflecting on Balinese and Javanese dance, diasporic bodies working within and from traditional stories in contemporary practice, and the intersections of cultural knowledge and choreography.

This episode was hosted by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie and produced and edited by Lisa Campbell-Smith for Contemporary Art Tasmania. Sound courtesy of the artist, Leyla Stevens from the artwork 'Patiwangi, death of fragrance', 2021

Leyla Stevens: https://leylastevens.com/

Melanie Lane: https://melanielane.info/

For her final episode of What are you looking at? podcast Pip Stafford talks to Nadia Rafaei, Alex Kelly, and Amy Spiers, asking them: What *can* art do?

This episode explores how art can contribute to social change in the world. Nadia talks about the importance of exploring political identity through her work, Alex discusses how artists can collaborate with or contribute to social movements, while Amy shares how her work aims to highlight some of Australia's history of colonial violence. They emphasise that art can help unravel complex topics, tell stories, imagine futures, inspire conversations and act as a resistance tool, challenging ingrained structures and systems of thought.

This episode was produced, edited and hosted by Pip Stafford for Contemporary Art Tasmania. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Alex Kelly: https://echotango.org/ | https://unquiet.com.au

Nadia Refaei: https://www.nadiarefaei.com | https://www.instagram.com/tpanlutruwita/

Amy Spiers: https://amyspiers.com.au/

Zoe Samudzi: https://www.zoesamudzi.com/

This episode discusses Feras Shaheen and Jay Hennicke's exhibition at Contemporary Art Tasmania, Our Side of Things. The installation and associated programs were a vivid representation of freestyle football battles, workshops, and a celebration of the culture, incorporating dance, design, and sports. In this interview Feras recounts his experience combining his interest in dance and football, while Jay talks about his journey as a freestyle footballer that started at 14. The episode records their insights into this unique culture and its representation within the gallery. They share the inspiration behind aesthetics of the installation, freestyle football competition experiences, and their influences from other cultures and communities.

Episode produced by Pip Stafford for Contemporary Art Tasmania

Additional live audio courtesy of Feras Shaheen and Jay Hennicke from Our Side of Things main event, 26 August 2023

https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/programs/our-side-of-things/

Artists are well-known pack rats. If you conjure up the stereotypical artist's studio in your mind, it might well be a sort of wunderkammer of materials of creation, inspiration and detritus. Artists also use collections, archives and the more orderly functions of taxonomy as material and conceptual underpinning. What do artists and archivists have in common? What are you looking at? host Pip Stafford explores the tensions between the past, the now, the subjective and the relational as it rubs up against the real, human lives and inspirations of artists. Featuring artist Ashe, artist and archivist Samara McIlroy and Gabbee Stolp talking about grief, online scams, the unruliness of digital memory, and the Sydney Olympics.

**Editor's apology: this episode states that in Ashe's exhibition This Too Shall Pass, the performer was replaced with an image of the artist. This is incorrect - the photograph is not of the artist.**

To read more about Ashe's Contemporary Art Tasmania exhibition, This Too Shall Pass and read Sebastian Henry-Jones' B-Theory: https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/programs/this-too-shall-pass/

To read Gabbee Stolp's Inventory: https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/journal/

The texts mentioned or quoted in this episode are (in alphabetical order of author name):

Sara Ahmed, Happy Objects, The Affect Theory Reader (Melissa Gregg and Gregory J Seigworth, Duke University Press, 2010), p 29 - 51

Kathy Carbone, Archival Art: Memory Practices, Interventions, and Productions, Curator The Museum Journal 53(2), 2020, p 257 - 263

Elisabeth Kaplan, We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity, The American Archivist 53(1), 2000, p 126 - 151

Music for this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions

What are you looking at? is produced for Contemporary Art Tasmania by Pip Stafford

Greed/Rakus/Geirig curator Lisa Campbell-Smith talks to lead artist Tisna Sanjaya. Interview translation by Daffa Sanjaya.

The Jeprut artist community was founded in the 1980s in Bandung, West Java. Indonesian artist, Tisna Sanjaya is a leading figure in this community movement, and has gone on to produce many collaborative performance based art actions within this unique movement. Jeprut is a Sundanese term for a regenerative force. The performances held as part of Dark Mofo in partnership with Contemporary Art Tasmania and Project Eleven were a rare blend of contemporary, ephemeral, immersive spaces for shared experience steeped in traditional Sundanese spiritual practice understood through the global scope of art as activism.

This project was presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania and Project Eleven in partnership with Dark Mofo

This episode features a track by Jeprut Artist Collective called Sinyur

Artists: Bi Raspi, Yoyon Darson, Ayi Ruhat, Yaya Suryadi

This recording was engineered by Chris Townend, recorded at Frying Pan Studios at MONA. It is the first ever professional recording made by the musicians collectively.

For more information about Greed/Rakus/Geirig click here: https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/programs/greed-rakus-geirig/

The C word is “class”. In this episode Pip Stafford and guest host, Andrew Harper, talk about the friction between class and art, featuring interviews with Mish Grigor and Miriam McGarry.

Miriam McGarry’s Hidden Cities podcast: https://hiddencitiespodcast.net/

Mish Grigor’s Class Act: https://aphids.net/projects/class-act/

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

Episode produced, edited and hosted by Pip Stafford.

What are you looking at? producer Pip Stafford and CAT Communications Co-ordinator Nadia Refaei took a visit to Broom and Brine farm in winter 2022. This episode is an interview with Broom and Brine's co-founder, artist, boxer and gardener, Grace Gamage. Listen now to hear more about her practice, and the history of plants.

Grace's work featured in BIOGYM at CAT earlier in 2022: https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/programs/biogym/

To read more about Broom and Brine: https://www.broomandbrine.com/

This episode was produced by Pip Stafford

Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

Tomoko Momiyama and Joel Stern in conversation at Contemporary Art Tasmania, speaking about the concepts and experience of creating 'Listening Within the Opacities of our Times and Places' at Contemporary Art Tasmania.

Following a month-long residency in lutruwita with Contemporary Art Tasmania, Japanese artist-composer Tomoko Momiyama presented a new collaborative work with Tasmanian artists, musicians and practitioners expanding upon her long-term research into the ethics and aesthetics of listening.

Curators:

Lisa Campbell-Smith

Joel Stern

Collaborators:

Maggie Abraham (percussionist)

Finn Clarke (sound recordist)

Rosie Hastie (lighting assistant)

Georgia Shine (cellist)

Jon Smeathers (AV gallery technician)

Joe Weller (trombonist)

Ursula Woods (filmmaker)

The exhibition and residency was funded by the Australia Japan Foundation and supported by Asialink Arts.

For more information head to: www.contemporaryarttasmania.org

Japanese composer and artist Tomoko Momiyama speaks to Pip Stafford about her collective sound practice.

Tomoko Momiyama works internationally as a music composer, artist, dramaturg, and producer of multi-disciplinary art events, installations, and performances. Tomoko’s works, many of which are community-based and site-specific, have been performed throughout Japan, as well as in different parts of Asia, Europe, North and Central Americas, and Africa.

www.tomokomomiyama.com

Sounds featured on this episode:

'A Cave Dream' for Soprano, Period Clarinet, Period Violoncello, and Fortepiano

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama in 2010.

Commissioned and performed by niwebyrth ensemble:

Lilith Verhelst (soprano)

Soren Green (period clarinet)

Anton Baba (period cello)

Tullia Melandri (period fortepiano)

Performed at Korzo Theater in Den Haag, the Netherlands on Feb 12, 2010.

'Subli ng Karagatan : a Chant for the Sea Forest'

Commissioned by the “33rd Asian Composers League Conference and Festival: Likha-Likas: Reconfiguring Music, Nature, and Myth” and composed during a month long residency in Batangas, Philippines.

Performed by:

Sinala Subli Dancers (Luisita M. Abante, Severino D. Cruzat, Beda M. Dimayuga, and Neri G. Manalo), SBC-PAO Repertory Brigid (Jan Jilliene M. Alday, Rhainne Cshyra M. Dimatatac, Veronica Mae E. Lalusin, Drecz Alecz A. Maderazo, Wendhyl M. Manalo, Michelle C. Marqueses, Ma. Zshalia Eleni M. Muñoz, Ma. Gloria Isabelle N. Pechay, Carl Joshua B. Seno, and Angela Denise S. Viceral), and the audience of the 33rd Asian Composers League Conference and Festival.

Performed at Laiya beach in San Juan, Batangas, the Philippines on Nov 11, 2015.

Code Purnama Hatiku

Commissioned by API Regional Project and Pemerti Kali Code

Performed by:

Agus Supriyanto, Dani Koco, Dian Novita Sari, Gardika Gigih Pradipta, Ibnu Sutapa, Risma Kurniawan Riski, and Soyono.

Performed at Jogoyudan village, Yogyakarta, Indonesia on Feb 2011.

For more information about Tomoko Momiyama's project at Contemporary Art Tasmania: https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/programs/listening-within-the-opacities/

In this bonus, short episode of What are you looking at? Pip Stafford talks to Gay Hawkes about the experience of losing her home and studio during the 2013 Dunalley bushfires.

Gay’s exhibition, featuring works made before and after the fires, continues at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery until August 2022.

https://www.tmag.tas.gov.au/whats_on/exhibitions/current_upcoming/info/gay_hawkes_the_house_of_longing

This episode was produced and hosted by Pip Stafford.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Additional audio from ABC News Australia.

With many thanks to Gay Hawkes.