Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson is currently working with the Victoria Park Community Centre, in consultation with creative arts therapist Cara Phillips and the St. Mary’s Outreach Service. 

Through Know Thy Neighbour #3, the artist positions herself directly with/in the community, unravelling the themes of home/less/ness, both far away and at our doorstep. Investigating the complexities of Victoria Park's urban and social identity, she seeks to witness, absorb and poetically re-express the hidden experiences felt in her engagement with private and public spheres. Witnessing exchanges of nurture and rituals of care, the artist de-constructs the hidden social relationships through ethical and therapeutic practise, intersubjective collaboration and field work as part of Know Thy Neighbour #3,  hoping to understand its memory, its presence and its transformation as a place.

Here, Elham shares her reflective script as a work-in-progress for the first iterative film-poem developed in Victoria Park.

My mother came from over the ocean, to Boodja. She came as a child, over the desert, under a midnight sun. From a place, with ruby red pomegranates in the backyard, and a sapphire bird that sings a Persian lullaby on its branches. 
Her home is far far away. They held a gun to my grandmother’s chest on the corner of her house in my mother’s homeland. A place where my ancestors rest. I don’t think I’ll be able to visit it in my lifetime. What is home? My mother doesn’t feel home. I ask her, do you miss home? 

My grandmother’s shoes walked over a desert across the ocean, 
she walked 5 million 475 thousand steps. But she still feels place, less.
I find myself at the edges of placelessness. At the intersection of traffic lights, signs, 
“Have you ever felt invisible before?” at our very doorstep. 
What would we hope for if we were in your shoes? 
So long as I am comfortable, I am honored, I am happy – let him remain? 
If he is hungry, let him remain so? 
If he is shelterless, homeless, so long as I have a home, let him remain in the wilderness? 
I see mothers, aunties, cousins, sisters, daughters, sons. 
I see mothers, fathers, uncles, daughters, sons. 

The air was suffocating tonight. I walked 10 thousand 678 steps today. I am welcomed in swift arms, hidden smiles, half hidden faces hiding treasures. 

-She tells me she’s on her final page in her colouring book. 

They say my home is your home. 

-The world was too much for him sometimes. He would cuddle his knees, close his eyes, and cover his ears. 

-He loves bright red paper ladybugs. He grabbed its wings and it fluttered; it flew!

-She told me how she loved to paint the moon, and the ocean. 

-She would bring home stray dogs in her childhood. Mum didn’t mind. 

-He says he lost his sister, her name tattooed on his wrist.

Is this what home is?

Is it a rental agreement? Is it owned? Is home a birth right? 

Is it the thousand million steps we take?

Home is far far away and at our doorstep.

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