MUMA Podcast

This is a three-part audio series documenting the event ‘VERS: On Pleasures, Embodiment, Kinships, Fugitivity and Re/Organising’. Initiated by Monash University Museum of Art in Naarm/Melbourne, VERS took place over two days on Kaurna Country in Tarntanya/Adelaide at Samstag Museum of Art and ACE in June 2022. VERS was developed by a curatorial panel consisting of Arlie Alizzi, Frances Barrett, Archie Barry, Léuli Eshrāghi, Jeff Khan and Melissa Ratliff, and emerges as a response to their collective discussions and deliberation on queer artistic and curatorial practices. A group of attendants including arts workers, artists and curators from across Australia were invited to come together to reflect on these questions and the title themes of pleasures, embodiment, kinships, fugitivity and re/organising. Seated in a circle, the event was structured around a rolling conversation and a series of performances. For full details on each attendant and theme, please download the VERS program from the MUMA website, monash.edu/muma.

This is the second episode of VERS, which includes a recording of the curatorial introduction, a reading by Dominic Guerrera and the first half of the conversation which addresses the themes of re/organising, fugitivity and kinships. It took place on 18 June 2022.

This episode has a strong language warning and includes discussion about mental health.

Credits:

This project was commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art and presented on site and in association with Samstag Museum of Art and ACE. It has been supported by the City of Adelaide. VERS graphics by Hana Shimada. VERS performances curated by Frances Barrett. Audio setup, technical support and recording by Mosaic Audio Visual. Podcast editing and production by Tilly Balding, Solstice Podcasting. This podcast is supported by Solstice Podcasting, Monash University Museum of Art and Samstag Museum of Art.

Link to VERS program: https://www.monash.edu/muma/public-programs/previous/2023/vers-on-pleasures,-embodiment,-kinships,-fugitivity-and-reorganising

This is a three-part audio series documenting the event ‘VERS: On Pleasures, Embodiment, Kinships, Fugitivity and Re/Organising’. Initiated by Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in Naarm/Melbourne, VERS took place over two days on Kaurna Country in Tarntanya/Adelaide at Samstag Museum of Art and ACE in June 2022. VERS was developed by a curatorial panel consisting of Arlie Alizzi, Frances Barrett, Archie Barry, Léuli Eshrāghi, Jeff Khan and Melissa Ratliff, and emerges as a response to their collective discussions and deliberation on queer artistic and curatorial practices. A group of attendants including arts workers, artists and curators from across Australia were invited to come together to reflect on these questions and the title themes of pleasures, embodiment, kinships, fugitivity and re/organising. Seated in a circle, the event was structured around a rolling conversation and a series of performances. For full details on each attendant and theme, please download the VERS program from the MUMA website, monash.edu/muma.

This is the first episode of VERS, where we listen to a conversation between Brian Fuata, V Barratt, Daniel Jaber and Frances Barrett held on 17 June 2022.

This episode has a strong language warning.

Credits:

This project was commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art and presented on site and in association with Samstag Museum of Art and ACE. It has been supported by the City of Adelaide. VERS graphics by Hana Shimada. VERS performances curated by Frances Barrett. Audio setup, technical support and recording by Mosaic Audio Visual. Podcast editing and production by Tilly Balding, Solstice Podcasting. This podcast is supported by Solstice Podcasting, Monash University Museum of Art and Samstag Museum of Art.

Guests: Akil Ahamat Ellen van Neerven Host: Kate Barber In the first episode we hear from NSW-based artist Akil Ahamat together with Meanjin/Brisbane based writer, editor and educator Ellen van Neerven, whose four poems open the Language is a River publication. NSW-based artist Akil Ahamat introduces their two single-channel video installations in the exhibition, Muscular Dreams 2016 and So the spaces between us can stay soft 2018, and discusses the use of storytelling and very specific vocality within their work, the 1990s film Space Jam and how sneakers have been a major part of their life. The episode concludes with Ellen van Neerven reading their poem, The only blak queer in the world, from the collection Throat, published by University of Queensland Press in 2020. Links: Fanon, Frantz - The Wretched of the Earth, [First published 1961] Valencia, Sayak - Gore Capitalism, Semiotext(e), South Pasadena, CA, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA [2018] van Neerven, Ellen - Throat, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld [2020] Space Jam, Warner Bros. Pictures, Burbank, CA, Dir: Joe Pytka, [1996]

Guests: Archie Barry Pip Wallis Sarah Rodigari Host: Kate Barber The second episode in the Language is a River podcast commences with a conversation between artist Archie Barry and curator Pip Wallis, discussing Barry's work Scaffolding (Preface) 2021, and speculating about the future potential of vocality together with the recurrence of singing as a medium in their practice. This is followed by artist Sarah Rodigari introducing the sound component of their installation work, Towards an Affective Measure, 2021, developed from a series of walking conversations the artist undertook with accounting academics while on residency within the Monash Business School, Monash University in 2021. Links: Archie Barry's website https://archiebarry.com/ Pip Wallis's website https://pipwallis.com/ Sarah Rodigari's website https://sarahrodigari.org/ Form x Content, Sarah Rodigari and Dr Naomi Stead in conversation 'What is Queer Accounting?' Interview with Dr. Amanda White and A/Prof. Nick McGuigan on the queer aspects of the accounting profession

The final episode of Tree Telling, titled Future Tree, features special guests who are thinking about and actively engaged with the future of trees. Dr Jen Sanger and Steve Pearce from The Tree Projects are on a mission to preserve Tasmania's giant trees for future generations. They will be talking us through the complex logistics involved in photographing one of the southern hemisphere's tallest trees; an 84m tall eucalypt called 'Gandalf's Staff' located in Tasmania's Styx Valley. We are also joined by James Burgmann-Milner, an emerging writer, cultural studies PhD candidate and teaching associate with the Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub, Monash University. James' doctoral research focuses on narrative forms of climate change communication, and he discusses representations of trees within climate fiction (cli-fi) and a return to focussing on the arboreal world within climate fiction. Guests: Dr Jen Sanger and Steve Pearce, The Tree Projects James Burgmann-Milner, Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub, Monash University Host: Kate Barber Links: Eucalypt Australia Heat and Light, Ellen van Neerven, UQP, Published 2015 Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub Tasmanian Big Tree Register The Overstory, Richard Powers, WW Norton & Company, Published 2018 The Swan Book, Alexis Wright, Giramondo, Published 2013 The Tree Projects, Tasmania

For Special Branch artists, activists and academics share their deep and personal connection to trees. Author, art historian and curator Janine Burke, reads an excerpt from her most recent book, My forests: travels with trees, published by Melbourne University Publishing (MUP). Marc Parlange, Provost and Senior Vice-President of Monash University, discusses the ways in which his academic research has intersected with trees across various sites in France, Burkina Faso and Vancouver. Associate Professor Haripriya Rangan, School of Geography, University of Melbourne and Pat Lowe, environmentalist and activist, share with us a convivial conversation about their shared fascination with the charismatic boab tree and theorise about how the boab found its way to the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Guests: Dr Janine Burke, author, art historian and curator Pat Lowe, environmentalist and activist Associate Professor Haripriya Rangan, School of Geography, University of Melbourne Host: Kate Barber Links: Janine Burke, My Forests: travels with trees, MUP, May 2021. Pat Lowe, 'Falling in Love with Jimmy Pike', Conversations with Richard Fidler, Sarah Kanowski, August 2018, ABC Radio. Haripriya Rangan's academic work on forests and regional change. Haripriya Rangan, 'Iconic boab trees trace journeys of ancient Aboriginal people', April 2015, The Conversation. Haripriya Rangan, Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko into Indian History, VERSO, 2000. 'The Chipko Movement': Haripriya Rangan, Sharachchandra Lele, Sunandita Mehrotra, Sunderlal Bahuguna, The Nagrik Podcast, Spotify, September 2020.

As part of Melbourne's Urban Forest Strategy, over 70,000 trees were assigned individual IDs and email addresses to allow people to report on their condition. An unexpected result was that people from around the world started writing personal letters to the trees, including love letters, musings on life and bad tree jokes. In this episode we learn about the City of Melbourne's Urban Forest Strategy and hear a few of the love letters written to the trees. We also speak with composer Ciaran Frame, whose sound installation and performative work titled 'The Urban Forest', situates the audience in a multi-sensory, experiential world, foregrounding and celebrating the diversity of tree species using the City of Melbourne's data on every living tree in the Melbourne CBD. Through this work Frame seeks to answer the question 'what if trees could make music, what would they sound like and what would they say?'. Guests: Ciaran Frame, composer, media artist and educator Giuliana Leslie, Project Officer - Urban Forest and Ecology | Parks and City Greening, City of Melbourne Host: Kate Barber Links City of Melbourne Urban Forest Strategy City of Melbourne Urban Forest Visual Ciaran Frame, The Urban Forest Ciaran Frame, website Livia Gershon, 'The Tree Huggers who saved India's Forest', JSTOR Daily, March 2019. Margaret Burin, 'People from all over the world are sending emails to Melbourne's trees', ABC, December 2018.

I speak for the trees centres on trees and those who speak on their behalf. Professor Tim Entwisle discusses the concept of plant blindness-the inability to notice or recognise the plants around us-and ways in which we can increase our plant literacy. Professor Jaklyn Troy addresses the ecological knowledge and deep connection First Nations' people have with Country, together with a call for the reinstatement of Indigenous names for plants and trees in Australia. The episode closes with author Ben Walter reading his essay in response to the catastrophic fires that decimated Tasmania's Tarkine wilderness in 2016. Guests: Professor Tim Entwisle, Director and CEO, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Professor Jaklyn Troy, Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research, University of Sydney Ben Walter, author Host: Kate Barber Links: Tim Entwisle, Curing plant blindness and illiteracy, Sydney Environment Institute, March 2014. Angelique Kritzinger, 'Plant blindness is a real thing: why it's a real problem too', The Conversation, September 2018. Jaklyn Troy, Trees are at the heart of our country - we should learn their Indigenous names, The Guardian, April 2019. Ben Walter, Speak for the trees: hope and hopelessness mingle in the singed Tarkine, Meanjin, Autumn 2017.