Rural Utopias Residency: Ana Tiquia in Esperance #5
Ana Tiquia is currently working with the community of Esperance. This residency forms part of one of Spaced’s current programs, Rural Utopias.
Ana Tiquia is a transdisciplinary artist, cultural producer, curator, and future strategist. Integrating participatory art, design and futures practice, Ana creates public interventions: works that invite audiences into dialogue with ‘the future’. Her practice is one of inclusion that aims to ‘future’ with other humans, creatures, and things – to generate diverse, plural, and transformative future imaginaries. Ana has a deep commitment to the role of arts practice in relation to future inquiry, imagining, and social-ecological change. Her projects explore energy and material futures, futures of work and labour and the power dynamics encoded in algorithmic systems
Here, Ana shares an update:
This last fortnight has been focused on documenting and filming stories of people who actively practice the giving and sharing of their time, knowledge, resources, wealth, and culture.
During my stage one residency in Esperance, I was struck by the strength of the community's gift economy, or 'diverse economies' to use the framework offered by JK Gibson Graham. I'm interested in how other-than-capitalist economic activities contribute to both the formation and sustaining of community in Kepa Kurl / Esperance.
Part of my intention for Seeder Futures has become to create a small collection of films on people giving and sharing in Kepa Kurl / Esperance, and to gift these to the community in a way that will enable them to be commonly held and owned.
Gifts are particular things though, there is a mutuality to gifts that is crucial. A gift has to be something of value (or at least be appreciable) by both the giver and the recipient. Not all things that are given can be called gifts! Initially, I was interested in documenting these stories through digital documentation of objects with accompanying text, but this quickly changed after a chat with Lynda at the Esperance Museum. Lynda mentioned a series of videos that Caitlyn Edwards, a local artist, theatre maker and Coordinator at the local Volunteer Resource Centre produced for Volunteer Week 2022. The videos had been well received and very much loved, partly for their role in elevating a group of people in the community whose crucial work often goes unnoticed, but also for the way in which film could tell these volunteers' stories. Hearing about Caitlyn's films made me rethink the format I chose to document and present these stories of giving and sharing through.
In an earlier part of my life I made and produced a lot of moving-image work, but it isn't the medium I tend to make work in these days. I had originally started a collaboration with local artist and filmmaker, Dan Paris, to create video documentation of some of the more process-orientated parts of this project.
When having a chat one afternoon with Dan, I mentioned these stories of giving and sharing in the community. Dan asked me if I was planning to film any of these; next thing we'd come up with a plan for filming community members, including a visual treatment and approach!
This past fortnight we've met and interviewed seven inspiring members of the community, filmed them on-site and 'in-action' as they've engaged in practices of giving and sharing of their time, knowledge, resources, and culture. For this week, I'm sharing photos of a few of the people we've been in conversation with and the activities they're engaged in.
Image description
1. We interview Christiane Smith. Christiane works for the Shire of Esperance, but wears many other hats in the community. Christiane is a passionate and inspiring advocate for volunteering. Amongst her many volunteer roles she's a lieutenant and one of a very few women serving in the local fire brigade, which is almost entirely volunteer-run.
2. Interviewing Sam Starcevitch on her farm in Salmon Gums. Sam is a co-founder of charitable organisation Farmers Across Borders. Farmers Across Borders was founded to take donations of hay and feedstock and distribute them to drought and flood-stricken rural communities. Sam has coordinated hay runs that have distributed feedstock, shared hope, and facilitated connection between farmers and communities – expanding the definition of 'neighbour' across regional and state lines. (Photo by Jai Bennier )
3. A sow and her piglet that escaped and ran wild in Sam's garden just before we arrived to film. (Photo by Jai Bennier)
4. Sam and her one-eyed horse, affectionately referred to as her "Cyclops".(Photo by Jai Bennier)
5. Sam with Dan and Jai–dream team film crew for our interview and shoot out at Sam's farm.
6. Filming with Katie White, Esperance-based botanist, ecologist and botanical artist who shows us some of the wildflowers she's collected on a recent field trip. Amongst Katie's many roles within the community, she works with the Esperance Wildflower Society and the Esperance Herbarium – a key resource for collection and classification of plant species in Esperance, one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. The Esperance Herbarium collection exists largely due to the dedicated work of local botanists who have dedicated an extraordinary amount of their time and knowledge over decades, to understanding, documenting, and sharing the biodiversity of this area for future generations.
7. Filming Kyza (Kyron Smithson) as he sets up for an Open Mic night at Cannery Arts Centre. Kyron is a musician, music promoter and mentor and his work contributes to almost all of the live music events and festivals in the Esperance region. Kyron has been instrumental in sourcing funding and creating opportunities and pathways for local musicians to build their music performance and recording skills, grow their confidence, and providing them with platforms toperform to new audiences; at the same time contributing to Esperance as a destination to experience new music. The Open Mic night is a free, monthly event where new as well as more established performers can try out new work or even perform for the first time.
8. Kyron and performers at the Open Mic night.
9. Open Mic Night at The Cannery Arts Centre – open air, fairy lights and live music as a full moonrises.
