Resonant Voices: Young artists reimagining collective futures through transmedia stories.

RESONANT VOICES

Young artists reimagining collective futures through transmedia stories.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

This Zine and research was created on unceded Country.

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on whose country we live and work, the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation (Naarm) and pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. To find out more about the Traditional Owners of the land on which you live, see: AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia.

Furthermore, we recognise that the storytelling, community, creativity and resistance that were the anchor points of this program has taken place on this land for tens of thousands of years. First Nations people are the oldest storytellers on this land and we have so much to learn from their stories. We have so much to unlearn about the colonial stories we have been told about this land. There are stories poured into every rock, tree and step of this beautiful country that we have the immense privilege to walk upon.

We are critically reflecting on our roles as storytellers, creatives, resistors and what it means and looks like to be in solidarity with First Nations people on this land. As settlers, we continue to move toward understanding our call to action and our positionality and privilege.

This Always Was and Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.

CONTENTS

THE JOURNEY

THE RESEARCH PROJECT

Parminder Kaur Bhandal

Calev

Olivia Chung

charli gayheart

Oscar Kearsley

Kirra

Lily Thủy Linh Nguyen

Summaiya R.

蓉Sylvia

THE ARTISTS: ... and their work.

R E S O N A N C E

/ ’ r ɛ z ( ə ) n ə n s / | r e s · o · n a n c e n o u n

T h e q u a l i t y i n s o u n d o f b e i n g d e e p , f u l l a n d r e v e r b e r a t i n g .

T h e p o w e r t o e v o k e i m a g e s , m e m o r i e s a n d e m o t i o n .

A q u a l i t y o f e v o k i n g a r e s p o n s e .

A q u a l i t y o f i m p a r t e d v o i c e d s o u n d s .

In imagining this project, we realised that the many traditional forms of research - reports, papers, books and presentations, limit how far voices can travel and who hears them.

"Social change happens from building community and sort of building a movement where people are heard..there's the sense of understanding that we have a common purpose"

- Research project participant

THE RESEARCH PROJECT

Resonant Voices stemmed from a long-term research project that looked at building youth activist capacities. Through this project we heard from hundreds of young people, ran activist training and research programs.

It emerged as a platform to help foster creative perspectives that arose from young people's voices as a starting point for community dialogue.

In response to calls from young people in our research over the last two years, we have conceptualised an arts-based, youth participatory action research project in which we:

Aims:

act together to build connections, community and to generate knowledges for and by young people

co-create new understandings, meanings and representations through transmedia arts for social change

create a collective of care that supports young people to develop their own stories, events and creative pieces for community

OUR APPROACH

Resonant Voices is a creative container focusing on building relationships, community care and unlocking the power of our collective imaginations through creative storytelling.

This is an experiment. We ask, what happens when we bring voices / ideas / thoughts / fragments together to reflect and reimagine - to ignite new ideas, symbols, meanings for action, for our future? How can we experiment with trans-media tools to connect, heal and act?

Trans-media storytelling is a narrative approach that utilises diverse platforms and media types (sound, poetry/writing, image, performance) to tell a story across interconnected forms of media. The story is fragmented into various elements which complement each other, creating a more nuanced and immersive experience.

'Creative arts and cultural practice are at the heart of social movements, creating new ways of seeing the world and being, together.'

- Alison Baker, Producer

'We wanted to explore the potency of connections between young people and their stories.

Using transmedia storytelling techniques and contemporary approaches, the project mapped and reinterpreted fragmented understandings of this moment in time.'

- Madz Rehorek, Producer

RTISTS AND WORK

PARMINDER KAUR BHANDAL

Parminder Kaur Bhandal is a visual artist, creative producer, and poet, whose practice focuses on recentering peripheral bodies and disrupting traditional narratives around people and place. Across much of her work, she utilises forms of Photography, Video, and Installation to pay her respects to the community and the land that has so generously nurtured her.

PROJECT: 'Life and death'

A projection on treep stump, 2023. Using standing dead tree's as a motif for past experiences, relationships and places that continue to nurture one. This is a work that celebrates seasons of change. How even dead things can continue to be a source of inspiration and life.

'Royal Bloom' 'Resileint Sun Blooms'

'Parminder's log projection had a beautiful dynamic between nature and memory.'

-Oscar Kearsley, artist

CALEV

Calev is an artist living and working on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. In a bold departure from their comics, illustration, and sculptural practice, Calev has entered the audiovisual field with their first transmedia work, Snail Mail, in collaboration with a snail. Snail is a snail who lives in a mailbox on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation. Snail may comprise of a single snail or multiple snails. They have never been sighted and are known only by the leaving of their poo in said mailbox.

PROJECT: LINK 'Snail Mail'

In a longitudinal collaboration with snail(s), Calev has produced an audiovisual projection accompanying a textural arrangement which aims to explore the parallels between life in a mailbox and life as a renter during a housing crisis in Naarm and under capitalism.

OLIVIA CHUNG

Olivia Chung is an emerging artist based on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Working across sound, video and poetry, she explores the liminal attitudes of trauma that pervade our increasingly capitalist society. She hopes to bring attention to the insidious ways trauma impacts us on a personal and societal level, offering shared space to contemplate alternate modalities of living geared towards collective liberation and embodied healing.

PROJECT: LINK

Behind Olivia's work is an investigation into our prevailing social paradigm’s invocation and alarming abnegation of trauma. Through her research into 墓志 铭 muzhiming (Chinese epitaph), she draws parralels with the ways in which Western hegemonic institutions dismiss, reject and erase the stories of those who exist on the peripheries. Layering broken poetry excerpts and glitched, overstimulating visuals, she demonstrates some of the consequences these capitalist, colonial frameworks, which serve to distance ourselves from the present and recede collective consciousness. Her debut into music production unveils an ethereal sonic landscape which offers listeners an opportunity to contemplate and reconnect inwards, to consider the ways their own narratives have been shaped, and to hold space for resistance and dreaming against these increasingly oppressive structures.

'没有⼈倾听哭泣的⼼ (no

one listens to weeping hearts)'

THREADS TRAUMA

Understanding how it is shaped and how it manifests on an individual and societal level

SOCIETY

Contemplating how different hegemonies shape the institutions that inform our beliefs, attitudes and values

HEALING

Dreaming of embodied, intersectional, holistic ways of healing, on individual and collective levels

- Olivia Chung

charli gayheart

charli gayheart (fae/them) is a queer disabled collagist and writer in Naarm. fae utilises art and writing to express and understand themselves. exploring their experiences of love and loss, fae encourages us to reflect on and validate our grief.

PROJECT: 'depths'

'grieving to heal'

'sunshine and rainbows: embracing sweet + sour'

An ode to the transformative power of grief, charli has created a funky and fruity collage that simultaneously references the joy and grief fae feel towards their brother, their younger self and more. in this piece, fae explore queer joy, inner child playfulness, death and rebirth, in addition to loss. together. An interactive piece, charli encourages us to tie a ribbon to the black thread, symbolising what we are grieving and providing an opportunity to engage with and honour our grief in a collective space.

'The ribbon tying created an invisible bond with everyone in the room'

- audience member

OSCAR KEARSLEY

Oscar Kearsley is an artist from Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). Focusing on photography, print and asemic writing, his work explores the anxieties of youth in the modern world; regarding both the exterior world and the mind.

PROJECT:

'Asemic #1'

This experiment in large scale asemic writing explores the relationship between linguistic expression of inner thoughts and mental states, displaying the struggle of reconciling with the limits of the connection between language and psyche. By taking an abstract approach to calligraphy, the artist attempts to blur the line between art and writing by using false linguistics to reclaim the ability to describe one's thoughts and emotions.

'Untitled'

Through inspiration of post-war Japanese photography, this photo series expresses with harsh monochrome contrast a portrayal of masculinity in modern youth and the spectre of anxiety that hangs over us in the modern day, both internal and external.

'sachallenge uthtoproperly sstheirmental

-Oscar Kearsley, artist

KIRRA

Kirra is a Lived Experience Consultant with Berry Street’s Y-Change initiative and a Youth Focused Peer Support Worker at Take Two. An artist, writer and speaker, Kirra’s key areas of expertise are in youth mental ill health, homelessness, family violence and sexual assault.

PROJECT

'One word, multiple truths.' 'I don't think about my emotions, but become overwhelmed by them.' 'I'm Sick.'

'We need to treat borderline personality disorder for what it really is - a response to trauma.'

-Kirra

LILY THUY LINH NGUYEN

Lily Nguyen is a photographer and illustrator living in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). Her art practice explores cultural identity and storytelling, stemming from her Vietnamese-Australian background. Recently Lily has developed further work on themes of public safety for women navigating social and cultural situations.

PROJECT:

'hush'

Lily created a series of dynamic paintings that reflect intimate stories that her friends and family have shared among personal lived experiences from Yourground (an interactive map that has over 6,000 quotes from Melbourne women and gender-diverse people about public safety). Public safety has been an ongoing issue for women living in the Western suburbs. A resident living in St Albans quotes, 'nowadays I find that I don’t feel as safe as before'. Through highlighting the trauma some of these women face in my artwork I hope that women in Australia can walk home at night without fearing about the multitudes of scenarios that can happen.

SUMMAIYA R.

Summaiya is an aspiring poet who finds solace in artistic expression through diverse mediums. She lives in Naarm (Melbourne). Her upbringing in a culturally rich environment exposed her to the beauty of Urdu and Arabic poetry, igniting her passion for the art form from a young age. Her poems serve as a canvas for her innermost musings, with each verse reflecting her deepest thoughts and emotions. Drawing inspiration from her own life experiences, she delves into themes related to trauma, grief, love, and depression.

PROJECT: LINK

'Beyond responsibilities' 'Beyond their shadow'

Video pieces with acoompanying poetry.

蓉SYLVIA

蓉Sylvia is an emerging sound artist, based on unceeded Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung lands. She birthed her love of music in the bustling streets of her hometown, Singapore, before moving to Naarm to immerse herself in new soundscapes. Through deep listening, Sylvia explores the sounds of the beings and spaces she is in, translating them into music that bring light to journeys often kept in the dark by our society. Her words and voice gently touch the tender spaces within us that crave to be held and loved.

PROJECT

Purple flowers.

'THE MUSIC PIERCED MY SOUL EFFORTLESSLY, LIKE A WARM KNIFE GLIDING THROUGH BUTTER, INSTANTLY TRANSPORTING ME TO THEIR WORLD. THEY PLAYED A CAPTIVATING MELODY WHILE TOUCHING UPON A PROFOUNDLY RELATABLE SUBJECT. '

-Summaiya R.

[Verse

1]

My Love told me she’s gonna go

She wants to see what’s beyond this world

She told me there’s gonna be

A bed of purple flowers over there

[Chorus]

She said to me it hurts to breathe

For everyone else’s needs

Please, we can’t all live

And have it all if we shall be

I cry till my eyes bleed

I sleep every night and wish

For the light on the other side

'Diverse approaches allow us to meet young people where they are in terms of curiosity, craft, technical ability etc, and also meet the world where it's at — noisy, kaleidoscopic thing that it is.

- Janak Rogers, Associate Lecturer, Journalism (RMIT) and audience member

MAPPING RESONANCE

resisting

Questioning and resisting societal and institutional power structures

reclaiming healing care

(Re)authorship of narrative

and grief

Connecting to and caring for land

m o v ingthroughtrau m a hope

Imagining ways forward

Collective healing and finding hope and joy

seeds

WHAT'S IN OUR BAG

Tools for our future

questions

post capitalist desire

pathways through grief

sand from Jawbone reserve

maps for our ideas

RESONANT VOICES

About the Authors/Producers

Alison Baker

Alison Baker (she/her) is an associate professor in the Institute of Sustainable Industries and Livable Cities at Victoria University. Her research focuses on identity, belonging and community building across a range of contexts. She mobilises creative and participatory research methodologies, specifically visual and sound storytelling to explore and develop young people’s sense of social justice and activism.

Christopher Phung

Hiếu/Christopher Phùng (he/him) is a healing-centered movement facilitator, artist and researcher. His creative practice aims to create cocoons of care that support people with lived experiences of structural injustice to creatively self-determine and transform their futures. His creative work has been part of the west writers program, red pocket press and the emerging writers festival.

Madz Rehorek

Madz Rehorek (she/her) is a photographer, curator and producer based in Narrm, Australia. From a family of Czech puppeteers, her work is often physical, messy and playful. She is a 3 time Moreland City Council grant recipient for her collaborative project, 'Atlas', which combines public photography, and journalism with community members across Melbourne's North. Her interest in contemporary visual storytelling began when she co-founded Ruffian Gallery, a home to socially aware photographers in Footscray, VIC (2012-2016) and curated photojournalism for #DYSTURB (NYC, Toronto, paris, bogotá, 2016-2019).

RESONANT VOICES

This Project

This Zine was created as part of the arts-based action research project called "Building Solidarities with Youth People through Activist Creative Knowledges" funded through the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS).

This Zine

The photography featured throughout this zine was taken by Madz Rehorek. She was also the designer of this zine.

The Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies

CRIS is an independent think-tank, researching some of the trickiest challenges that our society is facing – racism, societal division, systemic bias and disadvantage, economic inequities, extremism and discrimination. Our team is passionate about creating meaningful social change.

We produce robust evidence and rigorous analysis that shapes policies for social inclusion and resilience and supports people and communities working in these fields. At the heart of our approach is a genuinely inclusive and collaborative practice. We partner with organisations working on the ground and work with communities at all stages of the research process, from design to dissemination.

Suggested Citation: Baker,A., Phung, C., & Rehorek, M. (2023) Resonant Voices: Young artists reimagine collective futures through trans media stories. [zine]. Naarm, Victoria.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Victoria University CRICOS Provider No 00124K (Melbourne)

Western Sydney University CRICOS Provider Code: No: 00917