DIASPORA
FOOTPRINT
CYCLE
PUZZLE
OCEANS.

The following is a conversation that took place on 25 February 2020 betweenDr Jennifer Lavers (Canadian scientist, Adrift Lab), Hannah Catherine Jones(English/Bajan artist), Paschal Daantos Berry (Curator of Programs andLearning, Biennale of Sydney) and Brook Andrew (Artistic Director, 22ndBiennale of Sydney). Edited by Jessica Neath.

Brook:
I would like to start by reflecting on the words of Elicura Chihuailaf, a Mapuchepoet and oralitor born in the community of Kechurewe, southern Chile. He isexhibiting poems as banners and an LED sign at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney:There is a concept in mapuzugun or mapudungun called ‘Itrofill mogen’or ‘Itrofilmongen’ that means ‘biodiversity’. If we describe this concept, itmeans the totality without exclusion, the integrity of all living things withoutfragmentation of life … A human being, a living being, a stone – apparentlyinanimate – belongs to a place and has a ngen/spirit. This ngen belongs toa space as much as the human being does, and as they both share it thereis therefore a relationship of reciprocity, of interdependence … If we loveourselves, we can understand that diversity is extraordinarily valuable andthat it is essential to listen to the conversations of people, of the earth (nature),of the universe that we inhabit and inhabits within ourselves. This meansalways taking into account the circle of memory (which is present because itis past and future at the same time): silence, contemplation and creation. Theconversation is creation that is sustained in the voices – the thought – of theancestors who speak because they live in us. Conversation is an art in which themost difficult thing is not to learn to baste our thoughts; the most difficult is tolearn how to listen.We should listen – they are telling us– to the conversation of the trees; not onlywhat they communicate to us, but also to

their dialogue with other trees, to understand how they relate to each other (thedaily life of the forest) … Then, the trees and the forest are also telling us aboutthe territory and the history where they belong; of the air, the water and theclimate that has surrounded them … Human beings have been losing the abilityto understand the language of the earth …

There is an awareness of urgency in the world today, possibly due to a lackof engagement with, and listening to, the earth, as Elicura proposes. Regardlessof whether or not one believes in climate change, if one supports the movementof people due to war or other events, or even if one believes that someonecan be free of religious belief, attain gender equality or act on the humanetreatment of animals … There is a fundamental series of fears and obsessionsthat often reflect on economies of not only finance, but also of access to cleandrinking water, food and entertainment, or lack thereof. What does this mean foryourselves and your own practices, and those that involve broader communityand artistic collaborations?

Jen:
I am an environmental scientist, and mainly a marine scientist. The core ofwhat I do is the study of plastic in the ocean. For the past fifteen or so years, Ihave been working in a remote place called Lord Howe Island, which is about600-700 kilometres off the east coast of Australia.One of the challenging things with plastics and most environmentalpressures is that, as scientists, we can’t be all-knowing. We can’t be theeyes, the ears; we can’t see and do and measure everything and so weoften have what we call indicator species, or sentinels, that we selectbecause they serve a really valuable purpose. They basically are oureyes and our ears. We monitor one or two things really intensely andthey hopefully tell us everything we need to know. If that species or thathabitat is doing really well, then you can infer that things in the broaderenvironment are probably okay.I have become so incredibly passionate about Lord Howe Island, theseabirds that I study there, and the other ecosystems that I study all aroundthe world. I keep pushing the limits of where I go in this world, virtually to

But also, as a scientist, what is the point in monitoring these places sointensely to show patterns in trends and changes over time and talk about howspecies are declining or habitats are being disturbed, but then as a societywe do nothing about it? This is what I see unfolding before me time and timeagain. Wherever I go in the world, it is just the same story. You can’t escape thehuman footprint. There are incredible lessons that can be learned from this, butwe aren’t learning the lessons. We aren’t changing.

Brook:
Why do humans seem to be repeating the same old mistakes again – cyclictensions of repetition that extend to extreme violence? I immediately reflecton the new haunting process photos and installation of Mexican artist TeresaMargolles’ work on femicide. This work signalises the physical sites where,as Teresa said to me recently, ‘assassinations and disappearances of womenoccurred.’ These violent events took place in Sydney and its surroundingsuburbs. Teresa photographed volunteers signalising each scene usingwater and absorbing the essence of the site; that water is then used in theinstallation. Teresa said to me that for her, the stabbed body, with it multipleopen wounds, is reproduced within the interior of her installation, where waterdrips and evaporates on an electric hotplate. Drop by drop by drop, like anever-closing wound, always suppurating.Another site-specific tension is expressed very differently in thework of Mexican artist José Davila, who has created sculptures fromobjects on Cockatoo Island that hold memories of both colonial and recentincarceration, on the site where ships were built for the Second World War.The sculptures are metaphors for the forgotten welfare of sandstone, metalsand discarded objects of power. When I look at these sculptures, they teeterand I wonder if they are going to fall, yet they hold themselves togetherthrough uncanny support, which is of course gravity. It is surprising – theysurvive to reflect our own rejection of them, like a memory trying to get backto a place if visibility.Paschal, could you talk about some of the communities that you’ve beenworking with, and if they themselves reflect on the discarded memories orstereotypes that form them from outside of their control?

neighbourhood where, through a coalition of Blacktown Arts, Bidwill Uniting,Curious Works, Learning Ground and PYT Fairfield, the residents put togetheran event that redefined the community as a place that celebrated survival,trying to shift the way young people saw themselves and counter how the media portrayed Bidwill. It is an important project that hands back autonomy toa community that is often defined by everybody else.

Another NIRIN project that asks urgent questions is a Biennale partnershipwith Information Cultural Exchange, or I.C.E., which is a Parramatta-basedorganisation. The urgency of life and death is central to their residency projectin the dementia unit of a nursing home in Chester Hill called Abel TasmanVillage. There have been artists in residence at that site for two years. ArtistsVictoria Harbutt, Liam Benson and DJ Black President are working withdementia patients and Clinical Care Manager Sophia Markwell, on a programthat invites the audience to ponder the edge of life. It is a critical propositionabout how we might face our own futures and how as artists and arts workerswe might collaborate with the aged. This work transcends the often-reductivemeaning of what dementia is and also, as a bigger conversation, what death isor what it means to be on the precipice of being alive.

I.C.E. have another project that brings together two youth groups, theRenaissance Scholars and the New Age Noise Collective, who, throughcollaboration and exchange, are finding space for a critical look at the way weas institutions create those membranes that stop young people from engagingwith what we do. Both groups will spend the three months of the Biennaleattending the exhibition and programs, which will culminate in a critique ofNIRIN in the last week of the Biennale.

Brook:
Could you tell us how they came together?

Paschal:
I.C.E. has been working with Granville Boys High School for several years, andthe Renaissance Scholars come out of a school-based lunchtime club. NewAge Noise Collective is a group of young gender diverse people who havecome out of I.C.E., engaging in critical discourse and community building.The last project I want to talk about is about forgotten places, which is theBlacktown Native Institution, something that I appreciate you are very familiarwith, Brook. It is a place that was established in the 1820s for the indoctrinationof Indigenous children in European culture and religion; effectively, one ofthe first missions established in this country. In 2018, it was handed back tothe Dharug community through the Dharug Strategic Management Group. Inpartnership with Blacktown Arts and Blacktown City Council, and Create NSW,we will witness the transformation of this site through ceremony, communitygatherings and the beginning of a revegetation project.The Dharug community is redefining and reimagining the site outside ofthe problematic colonial constructs and definitions that always tether places totheir traumatic histories.

Brook:
The thought-provoking aspect of these projects is that we’re really looking atfrontiers. Jennifer reflecting on remote sites polluted with plastics, out of oursight and mind, and the Blacktown Native Institution – the first site of officialremoval, and trauma, of Aboriginal children. Most people have no awarenessof this incredibly painful and intensely powerful site, and how Major GeneralLachlan Macquarie’s actions were the first step towards broader officialpolicies of the removal of Aboriginal children. These are examples of a frontier,it’s a total edge and often out of sight.

prioritising, privileging diasporic peoples as conductors, as the composer, asthe soloist, as these kind of lead roles within the orchestral system which initself I see as a metaphor for a political system. I want to run a democracy, soI encourage this D.I.Y. conducting school where people can have this momentof, what is essentially a lot of power and respect through music. I know thatthat it is influencing people’s lives for the better and that it is ongoing. It’shappening at rehearsals every Wednesday night, it’s independent of me now.The most important thing about The Oweds is that they exist throughsound. There’s image in some of them, but it’s predominantly about sound –it’s all about vibrations and frequencies.

Brook:I know that for me to be invited by Adrift Lab on a science research trip toLord Howe Island was such a privilege … Jen, you yourself have talked aboutsound, smell and many other ways that animals signal to each other and tohumanity. Like the aromatic smell of smoked fish papers sourced from WestAfrican smokehouses in Ghanaian author and artist Ibrahim Mahama’s A Grainof Wheat (2015–18) exhibited at Sydney’s Artspace, or the pungent smells andtastes of octopus ink mixed with vodka in the installations of French artistLaure Prouvost … The smell of smoke that will occur throughout NIRIN forFirst Nation healing ceremonies … Scent is a powerful sensory ability for allliving animals. Jen, can you share the hermit crab scent story?

Jen:
A lot of my work over the last decade or so has been looking at plastic onbeaches, which at first may seem harmless, especially in a remote location.However, what we have found is that plastic bottles and containers are a hugeproblem. Unfortunately for things like hermit crabs, when a plastic bottle isresting peacefully on a beach, if it happens to come to a resting position whereit’s on a slight angle with the lid off or the bottle broken, there is an entrypoint for the crab. If that opening is at an upward angle, when the crab fallsinto the container the angle prevents it from getting back out again, becausecrabs have little spikey legs that don’t have any claws or a way of grippingonto the smooth surface of a plastic bottle. They can’t come back out againand those bottles sitting in the blazing hot sun act like a greenhouse andbecome extremely hot and you can imagine what happens. This is a very tragicsituation. You think of all of the beaches you’ve been to all around the world,and the fact that there are bottles, containers and all kinds of things virtuallyon all of the world’s beaches and there are also hermit crabs on thousands ofthe world’s beaches. There’s a collision of native wildlife and human debris,but it’s actually a lot more sinister than that.
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Crabs over eons have evolved as nature does, to be very specialised, andthe number one hot commodity in crab society is an empty shell. Crabs haveto moult every year and remove their own natural red shell that’s made outof chitin, that’s the only way they can grow to the next size. When they growto the next size, they obviously have to find a shell that is a little bit biggerand suitable, and so shells are a limited resource. Crabs have evolved thisincredible sense of smell. You wouldn’t think that a hermit crab can smell, butthey can, and that sense of smell is attuned to one thing and that is the smellof their dead comrades. That is because when another hermit crab dies, thatmeans there is a shell that is now available.
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If you put those pieces of the puzzle together, basically what you haveis everywhere around the world where we have plastic bottles and containerswashing up on beaches, crabs then become entrapped. When they becomeentrapped they die, when they die they release a scent, the scent attractsmore hermit crabs, additional crabs fall inside the bottles and basically it just

becomes a cascading event of more and more and more dead hermit crabs.The maximum number of hermit crabs I’ve ever recorded inside of one plasticdrink bottle is more than 500.

Brook:
Hannah was reflecting on ongoing trauma and the diaspora … and the wayin which these stories that we are all reflecting on, well, people might ask:how does art bring this together? How do scientists, scholars, musicians andcommunity people bring all these stories together? I was just wondering if youhave had conversations about your own disciplines in regards to shifting thenarrative. I know, for instance, that you Jen have worked with other artists. Isthere a possibility of connection in what you are all saying? Are there thingsthat speak to one another?

Jen:
I was thinking when Paschal was talking earlier, one of the problems that I amconstantly struggling with is that we keep doing the same thing over and overagain. We keep making the same mistakes and how do we learn from this?How do we prevent this from happening? What role can science play in tryingto stop this cycle? And so in my small way, it is not a perfect solution by anymeans, I have partnered with artists or other scientists or just other thinkerswho approach these environmental issues in new and innovative ways so thatwe’re communicating to a more diverse, broad audience. We’re engaging withindividuals who normally may have turned off from the issue.As scientists, we traditionally only communicate from our ivory tower invery dry, technical language. We only communicate among ‘our own people’within the science community and don’t reach out. Science communicationis becoming much more of a thing and yet there’s still so much room forimprovement. We can put out all the videos we want of seabirds dying withhundreds of pieces of plastic in their stomach or a whale becoming entangled,but for a lot of people that’s just too confronting.If you want to get people connected, then it is that sense of smell andtouch and sound and getting people to really understand and feel in theirheart what these animals are about and just how crucial they are to our kindof survival.

Hannah: In terms of what Jen is saying about communication – how do we breakthrough? You see all this imagery of the plastic in birds and feticides, and weall respond to a heartbreak story, but we also become desensitised. I thinkthat so much of it lies in literally the breakdown of community and hyperindividualisation. I mean, the way in which I experience it is that, you know,there’s a lot of pressure to be like, ‘make sure you do your recycling, take outyour recycling, use a reusable container…’ Do this, do that.All these are individualised solutions. Yes, we should be doing that. Yes,most of us are. But that’s not the thing that’s going to flip it. It’s obviously thehuge, huge companies that are making these decisions that negatively affectus all – they’re beyond our control. Then there’s also the kind of crushingreality of just kind of existing and the cycles that are set up in the world for usto have our Netflix, have our Deliveroo, and just ride out the depression. That’sthe way it is: depression in a medical sense and also in just a general sense,particularly if you’re diasporic, especially when we’ve got Brexit, we’ve gotBoris Johnson, we’ve got Trump, we’ve got Bolsonaro.It’s devastating and I think of the exhaustion of trying to survive underthese conditions, the amount that you have to work. What you need to relaxafter you’ve done your work is time alone to try and break through that

exhaustion, which I think is really important. I don’t know what the solutionis. I mean, getting together in real time and space outside of our solo screendominated lives is, I think, part of the solution. There’s a breakdown ofcommunities.

Paschal: I think what I find interesting about a project like FUNPARK, for example, is thatthere were all these systems put in place in the 1970s, creating welfare statesand immobilising people by placing them on the peripheries, neighbourhoodsoften easily forgotten by governments. It took Karen Therese, who grew up inBidwill in the 1970s and 1980s, to return in 2014 and ask: how do we defineour own narrative? How can young people in stigmatised communities beempowered to define their own identity?Through collaboration, by resurrecting memories of the nearbyWonderland fun park, she brought back the idea that there used to be a lot offun in this neighbourhood. She used fun parks as a curatorial device to be ableto remind people within the neighbourhood that you could enact this kind ofsmall revolution and that you could activate a space between the communityand government and say: ‘We’re not waiting for your handout; we just wantyou to be part of the conversation to solve this cyclical culture of poverty, thisturbid violent thing that nobody wants to address.’

Brook:
I think taking back your own communities, or how one perceives and makesaction for one’s self/selves, is very empowering. The installations andperformances of Sāmoan/Persian artist, curator and author Léuli Eshrāghi andthe Central/South American Colectivo Ayllu, they both interrogate First Nationssexuality pre/post/ongoing colonisation – we see clearly the destructive anddisabling force of Christian conquest, ongoing racism and prejudice oversexual diversity and murder of queer and trans peoples, and how this hascreated emotional, cultural and psychological riffs. Though this also creates aspace of action, revitalisation and taking back control, it is often very difficultto create work in these spaces, though it is essential to do so.I was wondering, Jen, when I hear you talking about your work – there isurgency, but do you feel like you are in a bit of a cave? Is there any joy at theend of the day? I mean, how do you find relief or release? Are you sparked bysomething more recently, some kind of social change?

Jen:
I’ve had to get really honest with myself and, also, with anyone who asksme that question. So, the honest truth is that I would say, 90–95 per cent ofthe time the days are extremely hard and I suffer from crippling eco-grief,or what I call pre-TSD. I don’t call it post-TSD because for me the war on theenvironment, the thing that I love, the thing that defines who I am and what I doevery day, that war doesn’t have an end date. It’s not post for me.The thing that I love, everything that I do, the thing that drives meonwards, that has defined my career, my life, as an Indigenous person, is thething that I feel the most connected to in this world, you know, nature. I literallyhave spent my entire 41 years on this planet watching it be destroyed and thespecies that I feel the most connected to are declining extremely rapidly andto the point where I’ve sometimes said to people that I feel like one of my mainroles in this world is to document the extinction of species. Those are somepretty harsh realities.Are there glimmers of hope? Yes. And are there other bright spots? Yes. DoI cling to them? Yeah, absolutely. Lord Howe Island is what I call my happy place.It’s where my husband proposed, simply because of that, it is that important to

Hannah:
I think a lot about empathy and I’m thinking about, you know, the potential oftransforming these pieces of plastic into something else. I’m trying my best tothink of the parallels between what we’re talking about. I admire how broad thisconversation is, but I think it’s essential we acknowledge that we are not makingexplicit parallels between animals and diasporic peoples. Ultimately, I think it’simportant that scientists and artists are having a chat together because there issuch a huge hierarchy in what we consider to be the top knowledge, of theoryover practice in art, science over art, and so on and so forth.I’m not hopeful and obviously, I’m not a scientist. I’m hearing everythingthat you’re saying Jen, and the pain of watching the planet – not the planetnecessarily, but the species, upon it – die as a result of this infinite andimmeasurable greed. I don’t know what happens to people at a certain age,with a certain amount of power; awareness of their own death? Do they say:‘what’s the point, let’s just make as much money as we can and then die.’ Ithink that worldview exists in the evil politicians, and they are evil, and I thinkit also exists a lot within people who are just trying to make it, especiallydiasporic communities. Like, you just want to make as much money as you canand enjoy your life – that’s all you can do.

Brook:
Reflecting on empathy, I close my eyes and hear the voice of Haitian feministinterdisciplinary artist Gina Athena Ulysse. Her installation performancecautiously assembles physical and sonic materials in a movement towardwholeness and a quest for beauty in nature, despite our human tendency todenigrate the earth and each other. I am wondering, Hannah, about your music,the orchestra you spoke of and how it has its own life. You are giving joy andsonic vibration through your work. I can feel it in both you and Jen, and alsothe projects Paschal is talking about. I am wondering about this balance. Isthere a fine line too that you are walking, the same that Jen was talking about?

Hannah:
Of course, the ultimate cycle when considering the diaspora and art is thisinfinite ability, a survival ability to transfigure trauma into joy through arts.Like, that is the cycle and that is the thing that keeps going. It’s a methodof survivance. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have the tools or skills to havea creative outlet. It keeps me going to try and share this, to try and do thiswithin communities, with various music groups and different players. Thesevibrations matter.Getting together with a group of people and rehearsing for twelve weeksto put on a concert that lasts an hour where you’ve got someone making theirconducting debut who never thought they could do that. The audience there,300 people in the room, is solidifying community. Those vibrations don’t goaway. They stay around. It’s quantum.

Brook:
Diaspora is constant … this movement of people is captured in the video‘painting’ From Sea to Dawn (2016–17) by Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh,Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. Exhibited at Campbelltown ArtCentre, the video intervenes and subverts media imagery of migrants arrivingvia boat (those who did survive) and walking across lands, representationsof the European refugee crisis sourced from mainstream television news.From Sea to Dawn is, I think, a choreography of persuasion … to right thewrongs of impersonal and often judgmental and ignorant stereotypes ofexiled people who are in desperate situations to save their families from war.Like the Armenian artist Anna Boghiguian’s installation in the powerhouse at
Cockatoo Island … her work of hanging rusted cages, barbed wire and floatingmounted drawings of people fleeing or entrapped. I look at your work Hannah,and also these artists’ work, as a kind of rerouting of the negative cycle ofrepresentation, or just plainly exposing the reality through a poetry of imagery.Artists have this capability to transform the often terrible into something else.Is that what you’re talking about too, Jen? Even off the island, you’re stillthinking of that place?

Jen:
Absolutely. It gives you somewhere to go to remember, to draw from andbalance. That’s why the messaging that I try and put out is about being real andhonest with people about the situation but is also giving them everything theyneed to feel that places are still beautiful, that species are still present, thatthere are things worth fighting for. This is so you feel a sense of motivation,not just all trauma and heartbreak and then you feel demotivated – that’s notthe end goal.

Paschal:
For me, the empathy, as you mentioned Hannah, gives me a little bit of hopethrough a project like Blacktown Native Institution.Brook, you’ve been part of that project since 2014. I have been across thatproject for a number of years. When you become part of these conversations,it can often be challenging because you have to witness – and of course, it’smuch harder for First Nations people – these really difficult conversations thathappen on site about what this piece of land is and the kind of horrific historythat is so painfully unresolved in this country. We keep activating these spaceswith the community in the hope that perhaps the conversation gets betterevery year, and then we will witness the site start to transform and hopefullyarrive at a place where First People have autonomous control of their lands.At the Blacktown Native Institution, the Dharug people will determine whatthey want to do with the site. This gives me hope, coming from the Filipinodiaspora, a huge diaspora of people who are often relegated as the labourersof the lands we arrive in.I feel like the empathy I have always felt for First Nations Australians isthat, at a molecular level, the 500 years of colonial history in the Philippineshas given me the vocabulary to understand what it feels to be totally colonised.I get to a point where I think, within my own particular context, it is so late, itis too late. Within the context of Indigenous Australia, I really feel like there isstill so much that can be done. There is still this space that can be reclaimedand that can be absolutely corrected even if for people like me, unfortunately, itfeels a little too late. That is a sad thing to say.