Bits and pieces: sketches and catching up on indigenous cultural and environmental news.

I've been making so many sketches, ink paintings, mono-prints, and writing pieces of flash fiction which seem to be serving as character treatments/back stories for the characters in film (of which there are so far 7 and two are non-human: A wolf that can't swim, and the haunted ocean).

Here are a small selection of some of those bits and pieces - but i've taken photos of some of it through some plants to hide bits cos I'm so excited I don't want to give things away until June when I put my show up (although I'm vert aware that this project is a massive one and that I won't have things up to a satisfactory standard (aesthetically and in terms of communicating my message fully) by June so I think i'll need to focus on one or two characters, one or two film locations and one or two dialectics/strands of story to try and represent for then. I'll try to make it into a wholesome show, that people can enjoy and learn from independently from the overall film project.

Dom loves Scarlett

This is a screen print I made in my last year at uni. Cool huh? It's a still from a film I made which shows a man (Dom) drumming in response to a projected video on the wall which I made of (that white shadow you can just make out) of a woman bellydancing. Read about that project here. And watch the video too!

and I loves Grimes and the Singapore Botanic Gardens

This a sketch/idea for a monument in The Swaglands, for my film

Script and screenplay grabs from social media, books, songs - all pieced together to implicate us all into the narrative of post-Colonial climate activism and issues. I think it's important to use pop culture references and genres (such as punk, street, gothic, contemporary fiction and soap operas as these are all products of culture and referencing both implicates that scene and the producers of that culture, as well as engaging niche and youth audiences, and also heightening the relevance and urgency and 'everyday' of the problem of environmental poverty and Colonial legacy.

Outfit/costume studies for my film's new character (currently called Molly) who is a Chinese lady whose family died from respiratory diseases and cancer due to living in a literal toxic wasteland in an isolated Chinese industrial town. She then left home, started walking, and found herself in The Swaglands.

I've also been catching up with indigenous environmental and social politics and indigenous culture news (I got distracted by watching some Simon Reeve BBC documentaries - especially the Greece ones - and also submerging myself in a pool of Americana music) and as well as my trusty old sources i've found some really engaged/engaging new magazine and media channels. I'll put links to all of them here because (as I said in my last post - if you are an artist, or general practitioner in the culture realm then you should know how the institutions that support your career and future are funded, and what that funding means for the environment and indigenous lifestyles, as well as how that funding shapes the meaning of 'creative freedom').

• Briarpatch - A truly grassroots Canadian magazine on culture and politics.
• Mispon Festival website - You can finds heaps of podcasts and film recommendations on here. They are an organisation based in Saskatchewan, Canada and run workshops for indigenous culture engagement, a yearly film festival, and generally publicise and promote indigenous filmmaking.
• Broken Boxes podcasts looks at artists processes, and Art Beat Conversations (another think to look at!!) Episode 20 is about "This Is A Stereotype" which is an artist film about indigenous identity. 
• RezX is a magazine and TV programme is basically (another Canada based) lifestyle critique and news platform. There's a good podcast on the Mispon website which interviews ResX's founder Chris Ross about how it started - he's a chiller and it sounded like a really fun creative party time! It's Episode #11. Listen!!
• This is a great article about indigenous misrepresentation on Canadaland's website.
• Access TV is a grassroots social media TV network based in Connecticut. So local news, cultural, social and political commentary, without corporate sponsorship. I think you cn weatch Episode 1 of ResX TV's show on here.
• This is an online paper, and I can never quite tell who curates it exactly, but my recommendations and blog have been featured on it a few times. It free and monthly, and collects news and culture about indigenous and environmental issues. It's called Indigenous News.
• And my fave new TV show (i've only seen two episodes) is Redfern Now, from 2012-2013, which is an indigenous Australian soap opera/family drama series which is based in the rough suburb of Redfern in Sydney . Here is episode 1. 

I've been considering how to write my screenplay/script and I know I don't want it to come from me entirely. I want to pull information, opinions and situations straight from the mouths of people who ARE implicated into situations that I am not in terms of social exclusion and environmental poverty. Because I can't assume to speak on behalf of anything or anyone that lives outside of my scope of experience and knowledge. The way to do this I think (this is how I am accessing those other opinions and stories...) through continuing to go to all the talks, seminars etc on environment/Colonialism/art and culture/indigenous rights that I go to and pulling from those. To also keep engaging on twitter, facebook etc with people and groups of people who CAN speak about the things I can't.

Something that Chris Ross says that helps to sum up my approach to writing my screenplay is that there are various types of knowledge; Street knowledge, Academic knowledge, Spiritual knowledge...

He thinks of spiritual knowledge as being the hidden section in the library that nobody goes to, but which contains all the teaching of history and creation. Ross explains that what he likes about social media is it can point those of us who don't know where to look or how to access that hidden section, in the right direction - social media tells you where to look: to the sources i've listed above. Very cool!

And I think that altough articles on those media platforms may be as close as many of us get to meeting with spiritual elder knowledge, but having the empathy is important.

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I also try to keep up with contemporary art in London of course because I like to, and sometimes I find something really important and beautiful.
I bought a ticket to see Ben Rivers in conversation last Wednesday but I had to go to bed cos I had a migraine (I keep missing amazing things due to migraines!!). I also went to the RA Masters Interim show which was ok - but very segregated from real life. But then it's the RA Masters so of course the was probably likely!
I listened to this conversation with Maureen Paley which is fun and interesting and quite helpful for young London artists learning how to position themselves. Shame I don't have instagram Maureen! If ever I find I can spare the money to buy myself a Fairphone (literally does what it say on the tin - a smartphone made of environmentally and socially responsible components) I will get instagram. But I will NOT buy some blood-drenched i-phone thank you very much.

And as I don't have instagram I will share with you the things that inspire me that I would share on instagram if I had it:

• the book Southern Cross The Dog by Bill Cheng, which I just finished. (blues, devils, Mississippi, witchcraft, loss and weather)
• The last 3 songs on the album Elsie by The Horrible Crowes (Black betty and the moon, Blood loss and I believe Jesus brought us together.
• The Grimes covershoot for Nylon Singapore.
• Ian Perkins' guitaring
• Evie Wyld books and interviews
• Redfern Now (as I said above)
• Anything Gothic!!!!
• Oranges
• James Lee Byars - his obituary on The Indpendent is a great intro.
• The show Stowaway about dangerous journeys of immigration.