Miwi Wisdom - TarraWarra Biennale

August 27, 2014 Carl Kuddell

2014 August - TarraWarra Museum of Art Healesville VIC

Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website and video links may contain images and voices of people who have died.

Change Media was invited to collaborate with Professor Diane Bell on her recent one-act play with Ngarrindjeri weavers, called 'Weaving and Whispers: Miwi Wisdom' to launch at the TarraWarra Biennial 2014 'Whisper in my Mask' in Healesville, Victoria, August 16th 2014.

The co-creative, community-driven play focuses on Ngarrindjeri women's knowledge, the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair and the role of anthropologists and curators in suppressing traditional oral knowledge.

Our contribution included creative support for the performance team, prop-making, the production of a three-channel moving image projection to illustrate and illuminate the play, for 3 projectors, and the video documentation of the work and the Q & A, produced in collaboration with our community partners from the Ngarrindjeri Media Team.

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A Word from the Playwright

In ‘Weaving and Whispers: Miwi wisdom’, we invite the audience into the world of women’s weaving. What do Ngarrindjeri women talk about while they weave? What does that have to do with women’s sacred knowledge? How is this knowledge understood by the institutions dedicated to conserve and preserve Indigenous knowledge? Stories, told as women weave, reveal the hidden truths of their relationship to their country, families and sacred beliefs. This knowledge is inaccessible to those who privilege written texts and dismiss oral traditions. Through their Miwi, their 'sixth sense', located in the pit of the stomach, Ngarrindjeri wisdom comes to full voice.

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We have been busy shooting exquisite footage of Auntie Ellen Trevorrow's weaving techniques and worked with Diane Bell and Darrell Sumner on the moving image elements, prop design and dramaturgy of the play.

The play was presented in two performances at the TarraWarra Museum, at the launch of the international exhibition ' Whisper in my Mask', co-curated by Djon Mundine OAM and Natalie King in Healesville, Victoria.

Credits: Moving image creation and documentation

Change Media

Jennifer Lyons-Reid - Artistic Director, Editor

Carl Kuddell - Creative Producer, Editor

Johanis Lyons-Reid - Director of Photography, Trainer

Ngarrindjeri Media Team

Laurie Rankine Jnr - Second Camera

John Karpany - Third Camera

Cyril Trevorrow - Supervisor

Weaving and Whispers Play

Professor Diane Bell - Playwright, Co-creative Director and Producer

Cast

Aunty Ellen Trevorrow

Ellie Wilson

Debbie Rankine

Destiny Rankine

Stephanie Russell

Djon Mundine AOM

Dr. Karen Hughes

Professor Diane Bell

A special thanks to the team at Tarrawarra Museum Healesville for the invitation to be part of the 2014 Biennial ‘Whisper in my Mask’:

Djon Mundine OAM - co-curator of the Tarrawarra Biennial

Victoria Lynn - Tarrawarra Museum Director

The documentation and moving image production was supported through

The South Australian Government Arts SA Partnership for Strategic Communities

Tallstoreez Productionz

Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority

The Play and Performance were supported by generous contributions to the '21st Century Lamington Drive' for the ‘Ngarrindjeri Women Weavers Project’ designated by the National Foundation for Australian Women as a preferred donor fund;

by the Meningie Uniting Church through a gift to the Ngarrindjeri Lands and Progress Association

and by Victor Harbor Removals through donation of boxes for props

We Are Ngarrinjderi - ABC

June 1, 2014 Carl Kuddell

Ngarrindjeri Media 2014 June - Coorong SA

Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website and video links may contain images and voices of people who have died.

We are Ngarrindjeri is a Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority and Change Media collaboration.
Through our ongoing groundbreaking cross-cultural partnership with Ngarrindjeri, Change Media has worked with the Ngarrindjeri Media Team, headed up by Luke Trevorrow, Clyde Rigney and Laurie Rankine Jnr, and the wider Ngarrindjeri community, to create a video to represent Ngarrindjeri culture, past and present, as part of the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority’s Indigenous Cultural Support program between October 2013 and June 2014.

The project included eight collaborative workshops with Ngarrindjeri community members and their media team. The script for the video was developed with thw Ngarrindjeri Media Team over several months to identify the best way to represent Ngarrindjeri culture and ongoing connection to their lands and waters.

The participants and stakeholders decided to use excerpts from the Ngarrindjeri Land and Sea management plan for the narration. The very poetic text was developed over years by Ngarrindjeri elders and had been approved by their leaders. We then workshoped the most appropriate and feasible way to visualize the narration, to be shot across 3 main areas of the vast and beautiful Ngarrindjeri lands and waters - in the Coorong, on the Murray River and at the Encounter coast around Pt. Elliot, Goolwa and Victor Harbor.

The result is an inspiring video featuring several generations of Ngarrindjeri, elders past and present, and the breadth of Ngarrindjeri culture, lands and water, heritage and other activities.

Credits

Producer: Carl Kuddell

Director: Jennifer Lyons-Reid

Writers: Ngarrindjeri Elders - edited selections from Ngarrindjeri Land and Sea Management Plan by Luke Trevorrow, Clyde Rigney Jnr and Laurie Rankine Jnr, in consultation with the NRA Board and Change Media

Production management: Luke Trevorrow, Laurie Rankine Jnr

Director of Photography: Johanis Lyons-Reid

Camera: Johanis Lyons-Reid, Owen Love

Editors: Johanis Lyons-Reid, Jennifer Lyons-Reid

Narrator: Ngarrindjeri Elder Major Sumner

Sound recording: Carl Kuddell

Participants and contributors include:

Auntie Ellen Trevorrow

Uncle Darrell Sumner

Uncle Major Sumner

Prof. Daryle Rigney

Prof. Steve Hemming

Margaret Sexton

Ngarrindjeri community members

Ngarrindjeri heritage rangers

Tal Kin Jeri dancers

Ngarrindjeri Media Team

Laurie, Owen, Johnny and Daryl

Funded through the Australian Government Office for the Arts Indigenous Cultural Support

Partners - Arts SA Strategic Community Partnerships, Indigenous Cultural Support, Office for the Arts, Department of the Attorney General, Ngarrindjeri Land and Progress Association, Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority, Ngarrindjeri Ruwe Contracting, Tal-Kin-Jeri Performance group, Tallstoreez Productionz

Meningie Foreshore Restoration

May 27, 2014 Carl Kuddell

Ngarrindjeri Media 2014 May - Meningie SA

Advice: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website and video links may contain images and voices of people who have died.

Between April and May 2014, Change Media worked with the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority and its media team and the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, to produce a co-creative documentary about the Meningie Foreshore Restoration project.

The video was developed with the key stakeholders and shot during a one day production and training day at Meningie on April 16, 2014.

The edit included a one-day workshop with the Ngarrindjeri media team to finish the 5 minute promotional video.

The video showcases the amazing work done at Meningie, including the planting of over 23,000 local native plants, the naturalization of the concrete drain into a wetland corridor, the interpretive trail with signage, seating and bird watching platform.

It features all stakeholders, the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority rangers and heritage team, members of the CLLMM Restoration Project, the Coorong District Council, the Meningie community and school, the Friends of Meningie group, and Ngarrindjeri elder Ellen Trevorrow.

The project was funded through The Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth Recovery Project is funded by the South Australian Government’s Murray Futures Program, and the Australian Government

Positively Fabulous - Women’s Voices

March 1, 2014 Carl Kuddell

Women Living with HIV workshop - Bangkok ICAAP Women's Voices 2014 March - Bangkok International

Change Media collaborated with GloballyAware’s Artistic Director Kim Davis and women living with HIV from across the Asia-Pacific region during a series of co-creative community workshops in Adelaide, Melbourne and at ICAAP conference in Bangkok. We produced a 15min documentary and a series of Women's Voices interviews as part of a large scale public art project GloballyAware is creating for global HIV conference AIDS 2014 in Melbourne in July 2014.

‘Positively Fabulous’ will be a large-scale interdisciplinary community health-arts collaboration between GloballyAware, Straight Arrows, Living Positive VIC and Change Media, connecting Women Living with HIV, global stakeholders and communities through co-creative film-making, innovative public arts interventions and social media strategies, with on-line engagement via Feral Arts’ PlaceStories and ABC Open platforms.

‘Positively Fabulous’ combines an online platform with innovative engagement strategies through digital media and public art events and accessible peer-produced resource kit.

During the project we collaborated with women living with HIV to support their voices and offer them a platform to address the decision-making that affects their health, well-being and quality of life. With long-term benefits reaching well beyond 2015, this interactive arts project amplifies HIV-positive women’s voice for self-determination and effective harm reduction, human rights, social justice and equality.

View 18 short Womens Voices interviews here: