- Hi everybody. I am here with the wonderful Claudia and Nicholson and we're here to talk about her work and old spelling of my name, which you've presumably just saw instead of the open Q and A we're going to be having a conversation about this work. But before we begin we want to acknowledge the people as the traditional custodians of the land and waters on which we stand today. And which we meet today. This is always be Aboriginal land and there's more Claudia and I wanted to acknowledge this particularly because this work touches some notions of place in the significance of place or we thought it was important to do it in this way. So just before we begin as well we're gonna do a quick visual introduction. So do you wanna start Claudia?

- Okay, so I I'm a woman. I'm wearing a white shirt today. I have black hair tied behind my head with a part in the middle. I'm wearing a necklace with little diamond tees on it, with my sleeves rolled up and behind me there is an artwork of a drawing of a hand by Sidney McMahon. And to the other side of me, there are three small photographs. One is of a place, one is of a child, and one is excellent.

- And I am sitting to the right of Claudia. I'm the man. I am Brown skinned, short black hair with a bit of a stubble. I've got glasses that are clear and a brown corduroy jacket and a white t-shirt. And so, yeah I guess I also wanted to introduce myself a little bit. My name is Ivan Muñiz Reed and I'm a curator and I work and live between Sydney and San Francisco, sort of, with the current strange climate in jumping around a bit. I think, particularly relevant. I wanted to share that I was born and raised in Mexico and this is significant as well because it is one of the many reasons why I have such a strong connection with Claudia's work and practice. And why it also brings in me all this sort of nostalgia, because I've also migrated to Australia. And there are elements of like being in between cultures that really resonate with me. And so, yeah, as many of you might know, Claudia was born in Columbia and then she grew up in Australia. And a lot of her practice deals with notions of identity of her own identity, of what a Latin identity might even be or Colombian identity. And this is one of those, this is a subject matter as well. It's very present in this work. So maybe let's start talking about the work and old spelling of my name. So I thought maybe, yeah, why don't we start by you giving us like a broad introduction of the work and then we can get specific.

- Okay, so the work , I started developing this work actually, as soon as UTP invited me to take part in the Dream Sequence. So that was really at the beginning of lockdown in Sydney. And I was thinking about like how to make work or thinking about, yeah. Like, how to make work from inside my apartment basically and working with what I had. So I decided to look over all my video video and some photographic archives since in the last decade roughly it does stretch a bit outside of that. So early trips to Columbia and other places in Central, South and North America as well as my archives from Sydney and from where I live. And I thought that, I really took the idea of Dream Sequence very literally. And I'd been thinking a lot about my dreams during ISO and like a mapping of place that happens in my dreams. Like I often wake up and remember dream from like four years ago, because it was in the same place as the place I just dreamed or when to Columbia last time, I realized when I got there, there was like certain moments when I was like, I dreamt I came here. Even though I'd never been there. So I just wanted to sort of, I tried to capture that in a video form for this work.

- It's definitely very dreamlike. I think, it's, for some of us who know you we know, and we spot friends that we're familiar with like JV or friend, but then it also moves back in time to photographs of your early childhood. And then a lot of video of the different travel that you've done. I also recognized, for example, Oakland. There's some cranes in there that are like a very iconic sort of thing that you see when you're on the bark from San Francisco to Oakland. So it does really feel like a dream in the sense that it doesn't have a clear narrative or it feels a little bit dislocated, but yeah, so I mean, I found it really interesting that you were kind of addressing memory through dream and also the relationship that like memory dream, dreaming and identity all have together. In that they can be really fuzzy and that they bleed into one another. But yeah, it's interesting also what you're saying about the sense of place in dream because, although often dreams don't make sense. We always have a sense that we know where we are, right? It's like it's school or it's, we know whether we're in this country or another country. For example, in my case people always ask me what language I dream. And I just, I couldn't answer you because this implicit, like I'm talking things that happening but I don't know if it's in English or Spanish like I don't remember. And I think it's very interesting that in regards to like identity and particularly, in your experience kind of to try to deal with an identity that is caught between two things. So that's pretty amazing. And so, this is kind of the first time you've used something that's like very personal or is this.

- I'd say I frequently like drama and biography in my work. I guess usually I try and sort of, I have made very personal work. And then recently in the last few years I guess I try and stretch it so that it like the, it has a foundation in my own biography, but that it's sort of, it really accessible to multiple experiences. But I'd say this is like, yeah, quite explicitly personal.

- Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's what I can say. Although, I mean, your work is always super personal and it's very, it is about your lived experience. And it's very clear that you're sharing with such honesty. I guess my question was more like this is the work where I actually see physically as opposed to having references to things. And yeah, maybe I just wanted to hear a bit more about that. Like how, what was the thought process or.

- Well, I think at the time that I started making a work. I've got it here actually. I was reading "zami" by Audrey Lorde. Any spelling of my name by itself could be. And it's, don't think I'd do it justice, but it is like, I guess the book is really personal and it draws on her experience, but at the same time it's sort of positioned as a methow biography. So, you're left wondering, like, what was real in it What was not? And I just found her like, the way she described her experience with her friends her sense of place, community identity it was really intersectional. And I just wanted to have a goal at creating, I guess a visual form of, I mean, it's not going to be visual form of that book, but I wanted to have a goal creating like, sort of getting that sensibility in to a video outlet. Hmm, and so just the title is a reference, right? So the title of her book is A New Spelling of My Name. And your work is an Old Spelling of My Name. Which is also a reference to your own change of name, right? Yeah, so I was born Claudia S Brands as far as Castro. And my name has changed when I was a baby when I came to Australia to live with my family here, to Claudia Nicholson. And I guess I was thinking about, the change of that name and sort of, I guess "Zami" like A New Spelling of My Name. This is like coming into this new identity and sort of coming in to, Audrey sort of comes into her own. In this book, it sort of chronicles her life from being a young child to like, I guess maybe early late twenties, early thirties, from memory. Whereas I'm sort of, I guess I approached this project as sort of, from a perspective of looking at identity, coming into my own through looking back, I guess, I was adopted and thinking through like, what it means to sort of have that disjuncture or that disjoint from place, from community and culture and sort of how to, I was looking back at my personal archives of going to Columbia going to other parts of Latin America. Which were all sort of really they were places of formation I guess or by identity of like just this process every decade of trying to figure out where I'm from and sort of wanted to put that in visual forms. I guess that the relationship to the book.

- Yeah, there is the sense of, as the the through the landscapes and the sounds of the market vendors and this kind of loving American sensibility that you capture so well. It's so familiar to me as well. And I think, in a sense like we're not, what I was saying to you the other day that when I'm looking at the shutter landscape I feel like that is framed by the small details that people might not notice. That they don't understand this place, which for example, the plastic chair we've got on a branding or the sounds and the little toys. The informal marketplace in the street and you to that mobile and there's this real sense of nostalgia. And I think there is also a sense of, like yearning and maybe a bit of like, it's a perspective from the outside of it's an outsider's perspective. I don't know is that how you feel when you look at the footage or?

- I think, yes, definitely. And we spoke the other day and when you said it now like it looks like an outsider's perspective. I think that really nails it on the head. And I'm glad that I managed to capture a sense of stability. Because I've sort of had to learn that sensibility or like this is a process of learning what that sensibility is. And so, I'm glad I captured it, but yet it is very much like an outside looking in, I think like, I just found footage yesterday of Columbia from back 10 years ago, which I thought I'd lost, through my core filing. And yeah, I think it was kinda confronting looking at that footage. So I was like, wow, it's so like, it felt almost way a stick some of it. And I was like, I can't use this. Some of it I can, but I was like, all looking at like the ethical lines of it. But I think, like the change of that footage to maybe footage I've captured more recently shows just a different understanding of place or like my role in that place, so, I don't know, it just.

- Yeah, I think that would be such a difficult decision because we all take footage of the trips we do. And there always is this kind of like, we make exotic and other places that we idealized. But for you it means something very specific. And I think that's why, the reference that you have to ordering orders is really interesting. And also it basically from what I read of her. She calls it a buyer mythological philosophy. Am I getting that right?

- Yeah.

- Buying Mythography. I got them wrong like 10 times the other day. But it is very much a biography. So there is the mythography, that mythology in her book is more, I'm thinking of the memoir as myth. And I find it interesting to think of the idea of fiction in your work, of myths in identity as well. Because it's always this thing that you kinda can't grasp or it's not real, or as much as you try and reproduce it. It is something that's external to you. And I think you're in this very unique position which a lot of people within the diasporic identity and subjectivity would relate to. But yeah, I wonder if you could tell us that this idea of fiction like, where is the fiction in your work and specifically in this work?

- I wonder if I am, I'm not sure if it is as much fiction as it is, like, where I don't know certain things like specifically where I'm from. A lot of those things it's like filling in that gap with guesses.

- Yeah.

- And so I guess, it's not fiction but it's not like definite . So there's that sort of, I feel like that's kind of at times liberating space to make work in. Like, I've come to terms with that space since it's like, what am I learning? What am I pulling from? And what am I referencing? I'm not anchored to a specific place or point or people in. And I see that as both, that's just the reality of my identity rather than necessarily a loss or anything else.

- Yep, it's sort of like taking on interpreting an identity as well.

- Yeah.

- It's like, even for people that never gets geographically dislocated. Sometimes identity can be a tough thing to process. And I think then looking at it from the outside. And something as complex as Latin identity or Latin X which is already in minefield. We've spoken about that as well. Like, there's all the layers of the Latin X. And for start over in the concept of Latin being a one size fits all for Latin America that it just isn't right, 'cause there's so much diversity. And then there's the binary of indigeneity and non-indigenous and then there's mestizo which is a complicated loaded word because also a lot of Latin American countries use the concept of Mestizo to sort of incite people to have this kind of sense of nationalism and to become independent from the colonial powers. So it's a really loaded history that you then have to deal with at a sort of different age. Yeah, I was wondering is this is the myth maybe the Latin American identity as well. Like it's you kind of taking on something that itself is like, it's a mythology. But the single kind of an American identity.

- I hadn't thought of it like that. But yeah, maybe it's that sort of, that slightly out of reach. Like space that is And yeah, maybe like maybe the work is striving to reach something or reaching for something, but it's just like a little bit out of reach.

- And then maybe I wanted to ask as well, there's some waterfalls in the video and that relates to another body of work of yours, where you've looked at drawings from the national library in Columbia. Do you want to tell about that a bit?

- Oh yeah. So, I've been looking at that archives of the national library of Columbia. Within them they have like a set of watercolor paintings. And they were commissioned on the spot. I don't remember the year or the names of the individual artists. This is just like the beginning of some research I've been doing. They were commissioned by the government. There's also commissioned by the government to map Columbia through watercolor paintings. And so this year I sort of, I was aware of them before but this year I started to really look into them and then I started to make paintings sort of based on these landscapes that, yeah, there were colonial tool of mapping. And that's what I'm sort of trying to reinterpret them and also sort of imbued that mythic dream space. I don't know if it's anything now but like that dream landscape sensibility that we've been talking about. And so I've been working to create this in paintings as well as now this video.

- And they're also sort of a sense of pride, right? For Columbia. It's like, this is how we define our nation. We've got this beautiful waterfalls we've got this and that. And so it's an interesting tool for like identity building as well.

- Yeah, and they've just got a very clear colonial gaze in them as well. So the people that are painted in the way that they're painted and stuff like that. I don't really know what people think of them from Columbia. Yes. Interesting, yeah.

- Yeah.

- And in terms of the archival material that you've used, was there a process in how you selected it or was it very sort of intuitive or?

- It was very intuitive. It was just a long process of just trynna access old hard drives, phones. It was a revealing process. About my file keeping and some footage I've lost over the years. But yeah. it was just sort of, I did group of things. Like, I looked at some, like I've taken a lot of videos of sunsets or like the sun. So I sort of did try and use that to transition one scene to another, in some places in water. Miss a lot of footage. And I don't know. We were recording a couple of days before the preview. I don't know if it made it in, but there's a lot of footage of me locked inside somewhere. I was not able to open doors. It's mainly 'cause real estate agents are like prove that you're locked in something in there. And you're like, the door's broken. If there's heaps of footage of me. Or just being about 10 bathrooms.

- Wow.

- And then I also have been in lots and lots of bathrooms before and I dreamt about being locked in 'cause like, I, even when I was younger I used to get off being locked outside of places. So, they might be in the work. I think that'd be at least one footage in the work.

- Okay, excellent. I'll be looking up.

- Anyway, I guess what I want to say was that was things that sort of kept popping up. So, whether it was at locks or like close up of a bug crawling on me. Friends, I don't know like they just the sunsets, water. So I think I sort of just started to group them in that way.

- Okay. And then, I guess there are a couple of shops that I kind of really hanging on. I'm hanging on to. Which to me like very vulnerable. And it's like, like, we're looking at something we shouldn't be looking at. Like when you're flossing your teeth and then you're looking at yourself in the mirror and it's like a very generous and very vulnerable place that you're coming from. And I just wanted to know how you felt about this and whether, because it seems to me like this. It's something that I hadn't seen before and we were practicing how you're dealing with this vulnerable side of sharing this part of yourself.

- Well, I guess what I also wanted to do was sort of bring in small homemade videos I'd made for mainly partners over the years. And I guess in that. Yeah, like they are vulnerable and they're quite like the finish on. So often I consider quite beautiful little videos that were gifted to people. I mean sure. What some people make those kind of videos. And so I sort of wanted to just bring snippets of them in. And I thought about the video. Like the way, like even as a simple tool to show time passing like you've got me at different stages of my life. And then in mixing that up, the chronology of the work gets a bit skewed, I guess. Yeah. I guess that's the sort of, sometimes it's putting personal things into the work and give it a certain energy. That can work.

- Yeah, it certainly, it gives us the sense of like a video diary.

- Yeah.

- video log or something like that. But then, it's interesting when you jump between times and even, we were talking also this idea of fiction and the difference between just a straight up kinda video documentation of stuff versus what you're doing which is like layering things and editing things with a certain aesthetic, which have to meet again like just like nostalgic, almost like nineties sort of vibe. And then, there's also the other concept which I've brought up with you before I should have mentioned it again, but of the counterfeit. The counterfeit stuff in your practice. And I know that, I've seen it in the sawdust beautiful sawdust carpets that you do. There are all these references to the unofficial market of like luxury products are Adidas or Gucci. And, in this case also we hear in the Sanford like this, like a sped up version of a U2 song and there's that shot where there's the street vendor with CDs of like adults entertainment of time into the little kind of plastic satchels. And there's a lot of the counterfeit thing. I think it's like a reoccurring thing. And I think my interpretation of that is, it's also a little bit like what I perceive of your stance of like reproducing your, this identity or this culture rather than just being it. That tension between those two stances that you're sort of like giving yourself permission or not giving yourself permission or feeling like it's the real thing, or it's not the real thing. Yeah, I wonder. Sending it.

- No, I really love that thinking 'cause I don't even think I do it really consciously all the time. Like you're right. Like the music is very like I'm ripping songs from things and yeah, I think even if I try and pull that up. I have to turn that down in my work, it sort of comes back in, I guess even with the paints we're talking about, they're still sort of like a counterfeit landscape painting in a way. I don't really have much to add to that, I do really love that interpretation of my work and the presence of...

- I keep on telling that they are counterfeit.

- I guess like in my couple of books, like I did used to put the, I haven't made one for a while. So, I did put like the added that symbols or the Nikaya like mixing them up a bit, to sort of be like a little indicator that this work was being made from a position that was not necessarily. Like, I didn't learn it from community. I learned it externally as a way to understand a way back to something I guess. And so for me, the counterfeit always were a little bit of a signal to that, that this wasn't quite the same as the other carpets, the domain. And I, I sort of over the years have dropped it a little bit, like turned it down a bit, but I still think it really heavily makes its way back in in different ways.

- It's super Interesting. Yeah, when I have a U-turn on like C thirties. I know, lets go on then. And then I also wanted to ask you about the work of ` We were talking about Audrey Lord before and just for context, she is a black . She was a writer and feminist and civil rights activist. And she wrote a lot about the black female consciousness. And I think Sherry Morinaga. In a similar kind of ilk. She writes a lot about the Chicano consciousness. And I think she's been an important figure recently and reference in your work. So I was wondering whether you could tell us about that.

- Yeah, so they were friends, which is a nice thing to know. And I think I read both of their books earlier this year and actually I read Sherry while I was traveling around as well which was really enlightening. I think it really informed my, I wanna know if I did a trip as part of the creativeness of class fellowship and met with Yvonne in San Francisco. Anyway, I picked up the books there on that specific trip. And it was reading showy and she speaks about the right to remember. And I see if I get this right. But like the, sort of the idea that where there's as people of diasporic identity or displace from homeland and when you remove language remove sense of place, like once you removed from all that like how to make your way back to that. And she speaks about sort of the right to remember. And so I've taken that to me like the right to build memories and to learn through making and to sort of try and work my way back to connect to a place that I feel is really significant to me. Like emotionally, spiritually like place means a lot to me. But it's like how do you sort of articulate that, I guess, or build that.

- Yeah.

- And I think what you're talking about, with the counterfeit, like, do I have a right to do this? Do I not?

- Yes, exactly. Like, you give yourself permission.

- Yeah. And I think actually, reading the way that she wrote about that in her experience. And I'm like, she's a writer and a theater maker. And the idea of like, I guess the physicality of acting or like performing, not acting, I guess. As a way to get yourself back somewhere or writing. I think I'm trying to apply her methodology or ideas to making.

- Yeah, I think it's a very powerful concept and I think it's very appropriate as well to what you're doing. And I think this is another thing that I've learned past him before, and you're not sure about it, but I I get a real decolonial reading. I think particularly with this relationship you have with Sherry. And I think it's, maybe it's like a less of art decolonial reading is not necessarily talking about any sort of direct act of de-linking or whatnot. But it is to me about like reading scribing and identity or a subjectivity that has been invisibilized in a way. And I think you're doing it not through grand narratives and the sort of mainstream that has been passed on to you. You're doing it through your own experience with personal lived experience of queer women of color who was born in Colombia is now here and is dealing with this kind of thing. So I think you underestimate how decolonial it is to put forward your perspective as such. And I think that's why the right to remember I think really resonates with me. And I think a lot of like the decolonial theorists that talk a lot about how every form of knowledge has been colonized. And so, sometimes it's hard to realize that but I think memory and history are forms of knowledge that have been colonized. And so I think what you're doing and the way you describe it as well, often you've described decolonial or this form of resistance through movement and through the body. Like in the in the work you did in the character works you invited the dancer who emulated Selena Antonia. And it was through her dancing that she's doing this sort of radical, breaking of the systems of the patriarchy because she's remembering through the body and through something that is outside of the mainstream. So, I don't know how you feel about this whether you feel like the decline is part of it or maybe just don't wanna sort of use that word but there is something about just having your voice.

- Yeah, I agree. And I think that's also another really nice interpretation of my work and it's not that I don't wanna decolonize or anything like that. It was more sort of just not sure how to use that term tomado .

- Its kind od daunting. It's like, wow, am I doing the right thing saying that.

- Yeah, like I think, you know, day to day the ethics of the way that I try to enact in my interpersonal relationships or just life. I hope it's a decolonial and I think just being queer and what the lesbian in brown sort of, I don't really know anything else outside of that. So it's a decolonial identity. Yeah.

- Well, yeah. And I will write that down. I think that's to me is the most decolonial key aspect of it that it's a memory and an exercise in identity construction from the perspective of a queer Misty's a woman. I don't know if you even feel comfortable with the term as mestizo and I just think that that's something that we don't see often. And it's very, that's why I just think it's important and it's very valuable ' 'cause then people could see themselves represented as well. I just think that's extremely valuable.

- Thank you.

- And is there anything else? I'm just wondering if we've left out any sort of other ideas maybe this the soundtrack, there's also a soundtrack.

- Yes. So this soundtrack is being made currently and I don't know what it's gonna sound like yet. So James is putting some stuff together for me at the moment. And I've given him like a range of songs to think about you think the YouTube song with or without you, there's no conceptual rationale, except that it sounds really beautiful, slowed down and sped up. And I love that song. So I sort of just started making it to that song thinking I would change it out but it's really stuck around and followed through. And I was also looking at Alysia Frampton's work. Who's a musician sound artist who lives in the U S and he's from Bolivia. And just makes really incredible soundscapes that I think really capture like the sound of, with that blanket terming it like a really Latin-American sound whether it's specifically hand in but just the little grabs of sound whether it's the way the radio is or the advertisement. So like cars with the loudspeakers going through the streets, like little takes really small samples of that. And really makes beautiful sound of it. So I was thinking about her when I thought about how I wanted the work to sound. So I felt like the way she lay a sound is what I was trying to do with image. But obviously, James is making the sound and I'm really looking forward to what he does.

- That's exciting, yeah. I can't wait to hear that. I love this, both the sped up version of it and the of the YouTube song. I thought that was amazing. I thought that was very somehow weirdly descriptive of Mexico. Like there is this like co-opting of culture to spinning it up in the strangest place. that he'd just like why? Pan paps, when you go in certain places and these guys play really iconic songs.

- With the...

- Beautiful parts. It's like that to me is a real and DM sound.

- Excellent. And so I guess maybe to close I just How do you feel about the the format and working with video in this way, like this kind of video collage do you think it's something you'll do again?

- Well, for me, like I sort of have, I feel like I dabbled in a lot of different things and video I don't usually, I guess make myself. So, for me this exercise was an exercise in like making do in like ISO with what I have and the tools that I have. So, it's being made in premiere but it was made in a movie initially. And so, like, this is the extent of what I know to do with the video and I'm by myself. And so, I think I don't know, I think I've work with it again. What I know about this work which you would have just seen, which isn't finished yet is that it is like the beginning of a work. So I imagine, what I imagine that this residency has given me the opportunity to do is to start a new hopefully significant video work that I can keep working on after this residency. So I've just sort of, it's the beginning of something, I guess.

- That's fine.

- Yeah.

- Well, it's a super exciting project. I'm sort of, you've definitely made the best of lockdown. And I think sometimes it's weird how like the weird circumstances then allow for something beautiful, like this to happen. But I've really enjoyed it. And I can't wait to see with the soundtrack. And I really related to it. And I think, like with all of your work. I find it so easy to connect because you're very honest and you're very vulnerable. And yeah, thank you for that for being honest and vulnerable. And yeah, you giving us something that we can really relate to.

- Thank you. And thank you for your very wonderful interpretations of my work. It means a lot to me. No, no.

- Yeah. No, it means a lot to hear them and to sort of get a different perspective on my work or a perspective that sort of, knows the references really intimately that I'm sort of trynna tease out or whatever. And I'd just like to thank UTP actually for the residency. It really did come at a difficult time. at the beginning of lockdown. Losing a lot of work and just the opportunity to be paid to make work this year. I'm really grateful for it. And thank you for supporting me and the other artists that you supported through this time. Thank you.

- Amazing. Thank you.

- Bye.