- [Woman] When the blue bottles washed up amongst the banana lounges the people break the coconut water. Make my body influence with electrolytes. When the mall crickets emerged from under ground and ruined the useless greens for many golf guards that carry around tartan bags. When the Christmas beetles came too late and in little numbers because entrepreneurs built high rises of studio apartments for french bulldogs on their backs that blocked out an orange sky. We should have seen them as heralds. A fern unfolds its fronds next to the needles of a cactus beside the flora are beetles that were Scarab and Shot. These used to heralds of a season. Binary gold, information of the ifs, health. Each buzz of wings, dot, dot, dash, dash, dot. Each little button flying from Cumberland woodlands, the beetles crowded awning lights onto the porches, tiles, or wood. Any surface lit up. A carpet of them when we walked outdoors. Human soles would crunch on an exoskeleton. Their shells of black, but if you looked close upon them you would see all the colors that ever existed. Glints of brown and pink, yellows, and greens. We got less as years went by. Cumberland woodlands burned, smoke bubbled across the three sister, and torched eucalyptus filled out nostrils. And then those entomologists told us we would never see them again. These were our first signs. Sometime before water surrounded the village on this old mountian, people had day lives and night lives. A world void of sun, full of economy, populated with trucks, and wheeled motorcades, and service workers. In this night economy, people had jobs. There were guards who stood sentinel. Kept us safe because balaclava people with menacing eyes tried to take our things. I knew back then how the taking things can lead to deaths. How a man holding a double barrel shotgun, a bang, to the riddle of death. So the sentinels stopped this taking, this death. They are gone, a bunch of people long since gone with no more nylon bomber jackets and expendable sticks that used to crack over skulls. And I was one of those night service worker. So I would see the dark world in the way no one did. And there were weeks I never see that UV hue. One night we ended service, came outside to an empty carpark. Don't know why I'm saying that word to you, "carpark". Might as well say "castle". You wouldn't know it if it was in front of you. And as the streetlight hung over us, we breathed in the smoke, it filled our nostrils, and could see tiny particles under the light. And I said "This isn't right, there's no way this is right." "There is no way this, a normal thing." We were in an era of change. Let me tell you how we came here, before the water leveled up to the cusp of this mountain village. We floated up, peddling ourselves buoyant on our freezers. Using the microwaves as floaters, appliances as rafts, white goods as boats. A fleet of the big body ice fridges from the petrol stations carried a family or two. A woman with short bangs died because she wanted to save turtles. So she used a metal straw in a messenger style cup, held it in her hands, walked, and tripped over a shag wool rug. I still see the metal straw going through her eye, cracked into the iris into her brain. Blood poured down her body into the drain, down sewers, to the sea, and mixed into salt water to marine reptiles who didn't care. Long head turtles bit and oysters tried to filter mess. They didn't give a fuck, they still choked on the rest of the plastic straws. Homo sapiens are idiots, they tried so many things to stop the world burning. They created the system of bins to throw away things in the right way. Plastics. Plastics were these things like glass, but soft. Made from petroleum and chemicals. They used them to put water in and build cars with them. And once people were finished, they put them in one of three bins so they could be burned away to make more petroleum chemical. And they, the homo sapiens of them, liked to play a trick on themselves. Thinking they could stop weather changing, seas from rising, skies being scorched by using the right straws and putting plastics in the right bin. A lady in a ballgown bangs a sledge hammer through a wall, and then she arranges name tags on a table. Her money comes from dirty wars and the slow drip of a water board. For dinner, she eats the creatures that kill themselves in the sea. There's eels, oysters, mussels, that poison themselves in the toxic salt water. And the over carbonation, it makes the animals spasm figure eight. Their death spirals for our viewing pleasure. Gorging through glitter micro beads and kill themselves in sacrifice. Served up on tables made from the bones for those in ballgowns and . - Welcome everyone. - Hello. - Hi, Pete, do you wanna say hello? - Hi, how you doing everyone? - So for those of you who don't know, my name's Brian Fuata, I'm a friend of these guys. And also a fellow dream sequencer. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the Gadigal people. This land was- - I think this is Bidjigal. - Oh, Bidjigal. Ah, this is Bidjigal. - I think so. - Yeah, sorry about that. It's Bidjigal land. We're also- - And Peter's Ngunnawal. On Ngunnawal country. - Ngunnawal country, so Peter's coming from Ngunnawal country. We're also at the, well, Latai and I are also at the Sydney Airport, domestic airport, and about to fly to country. to be precise. And so we'd like to acknowledge and pay respects to elders passed, present, and emerging. So- - Thank you. - Thank you. You would've seen the work guys, which in the visual, it's just a starting point. Which is why Latai and I decided to do it from the airport. What was the starting point of this work? - Well- Peter and I actually did a two week residency in December 2019. And we started to think about how we might work together. And we still haven't figured, we still hadn't quite worked that out, what we might do. But we did have lots of conversations about a lot of things and it was also at the time of the bush fires. So that was quite... A heavy experience for us at that time. That really kind of set a very particular mood and conversation that I think has carried through to this residency, the Dream Sequence residency. And we were able to use, begin this, the Dream Sequence residency with the text, some text that Peter had written from our first residency. So that was a starting point. And you know, we were working with the premise of dream sequence being digital works being made from home. And as you know, cause you did the first one, you did yours at home, so that domestic setting. But this time, we're number seven, we have a little bit more movement. - And the restrictions have become a lot larger and also the world has become a lot less, kind of sort of, tense. - Yeah. - Compared to the original, the first batch of dream sequences. And something you had mentioned about, sorry Peter, I'll get you to jump in, but something you said about the space of the airport as kind of sort of one of the few public spaces that have contained this kind of sort of containment that the domestic space did when Covid first kind of came about. - Yeah, well, I mean I think because what we've been trying to explore is this other space, this other place. And yeah, the airport is somewhere that we, you know, during lockdown, we weren't able to access. And so we thought that it was a good place to just investigate. And then I've also got some other ideas around airports as well, but this transitory space, that kind of worked well with some text that was previously written. So we just started to imagine it from there as well. But the airport is also to me this kind of place where, you know, if we felt like it's a domestic space as well, like. This transitory space where we can't depart, go somewhere. But this is also what, you know, some of the ideas of what we're exploring. And so, yeah, domestic in the same sense of ideas of home inside your dream sequence. - And perhaps even the idea of the interior, like, the home and the body or something like that. Pete, do you want to jump in? Like, what was your kind of sort of feelings around kind of like, the texts that began out of this pre-Covid, but pro-fire space. - I remember during after one of our workshops I was walking home. And as I was walking home, which is only like 15 minutes away from Utp, this was before the sky became scorched orange. - Yup. - And I just really remember losing my breath because the smoke was already still so heavy in the air. And when you're walking home after a residency and you're losing your breath, you know, you think about how you can make the art that you're creating socially relevant to the environment. You feel like you don't really have a choice. You have to respond to this climate catastrophe that First Nations communities around the world have been happening for generations. But for us we're just starting to see the kind of beginnings of it, or feel rather, the beginnings of it. So when you're in that kind of emergency space, it's in your body, you have to kind of create work that's relevant, right? You'd love to kind of sit in an artist studio and think about the way doors work, you know? But, you just kind of, the relevance is too much. And in terms of the airport space, you know, what happened, I think me and Latai, we didn't know how this show was gonna happen. We didn't know what was gonna happen with it. And we went out to dinner and then we just started talking about airports, and we're like "What the fuck's going on with airports?" And it was just after lockdown, and we went and were like "Do you wanna drive there?" And we just drove to the airport, and it really captured our imagination, like the emptiness of it all, the fact that we could just go into this space that wasn't being used at all, you know? And I think that's kind of how we came into it, came into the text. - Cool. - Yeah, actually, I just wanna add one thing. I remember also around that time going to a rally at the Prime Minister's office and one of the elders was doing a welcome to country, and he was talking about how the smoke that we're inhaling is the dead insects. And, you know, these things, you know, all of this, what we're breathing in. And so we had lots of conversations around these, what we were experiencing personally, but also how people were describing things as well at that time. And it was, you know, so it really kind of set some potentials for us to, you know, look at the state of the world. You know, then, which is the same now. But now, the pandemic, which is only a year after. - I digress a tiny bit to kind of sort of, again, I'm loving this idea of the airport in particularly because I'm reminded of something that S.J Norman, our indigenous artist, S.J Norman spoke about in one of his works with Joseph Pierce. It was about the kind of like, the airports as a space of threat, where POC, BIPOC bodies are kind of sort of moments of threat. And I like this kind of sort of, how you've paralleled the kind of sort of overall climate crisis of the fires and then proceeding that, Covid, in relationship to the project of dream sequence. But then also that you've placed what you know, what we know, BIPOC, and also marginalized bodies, being a conduit of threat, and danger, and crisis in an airport. So you've almost kind of sort of like, kind of exaggerated the... Something, there's a something about- - Yeah, it is a place of threat, and it is a place of overwhelm, but it's also a place of transit where it's nowhere as well. And we were really interested in being held in this space, and that's what we're also experiencing of like, you know, the emphasis on what we don't know, and where we don't know where we are. - Yeah. - Anymore, you know, like, we don't know how to move beyond certain borders. So it was, yeah, it was quite a metaphor to be able to, you know, think of the airport as this very public space that has very different connotations for lots of different people. But also this in between space, you know? That it is often also nowhere, it's not defined, often not defined as part of a country, so. - Which is interesting in light of the title of the work. Which is "Auntie...", what is it? You guys have kind of created this character who's a kind of sort of auntie who's an oracle. Like an oracular character in this space of the, in the context of crisis, and in the kind of precarious ambiguous space of the airport. What does this auntie character mean? - You go, Peter. - Well, no, tell the genealogy of Auntie Oracle Codex. - Well, I mean, the thing is that with the dream sequence we really wanted to go "Okay, we are continuing our collaboration that we're still trying to figure out what it might potentially be." So we thought, "Okay, we're gonna use this... This work to work on something quite specific." And this character, you know, which is not quite usually something that I do in my practice, character work. But you know, our conversations were around "Maybe we use this to kind of figure out who this character is, what their voice is." And you know, we both spoke of powerful women in our families. You know, I had some big conversations with sister around, you know, matriarchs in my family. You know, positions in monarchies. You know, there's a lot of stuff, but also, I think the most important part to me, as the eldest daughter, and my mom's sister, who is the eldest daughter, ideas of genealogy and that this is a knowledge system, and understanding social structures, and the hierarchies. But the matrix of information, you know, that happens, the matrix of genealogy and wisdom that sits in time, when people marked time, their presence, and when you know how they're connected to each other, and generations before them, and generation after them. You can start to see this network of valuable wisdom, you know, of time as well. So we were talking about that and we, you know, lots of things, we had lots of kind of imagination around, you know, this person in time who is telling us, telling us about who we've been, but us in the present. - But there are also in the text, Pete might want to speak to this, is like, there are also like, playful stereotypes of like, the ethnic auntie, the ethnic mother. And so there's, it's quite a hilarious text at points. Could you speak to the roll of comedy perhaps? In the, yeah. - And so, like, the character's name, we called her "Auntie Oracle Codex." The codex element is, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, cause we'll, yeah, go ahead. - I called her "Auntie Oracle Codex", and the Codex element is the genealogy stuff that Latai talked about, and how this character can understand this, what we'll call an intangible cultural heritage, codex, genealogy, structure. You know, she, they embody that. And I think the oracle element comes from she is coming to tell us about the futility of our actions in terms of trying to battle the climate disaster. So the idea that we can stop climate change by putting things in the right bin. You know, things, all those kind of "if we shop in the right places, if we offset our travel through green credits", we can actually avert climate catastrophe, and you know, we can consume our way out of this basically. I think that's what, that's where the comedy you're talking about comes from, Brian. Just this idea of, like... And it's kind of it starts with the body, and it ends up in kind of like, I would say, extends outwards into society. You know, so, it's like this obsession with like, coconut water, you know? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you describe- Sorry, you go. - But this is the thing, that there comedy is also true to our relationship. - Yeah. - If you spend time with us, rolling around in the car. - Oh, I have. - I mean, "You" out there. Like, yeah, you know, that's how we go on. That's how we roll stuff out, we laugh at lots of things. - And dark things! Dark, serious things, yeah no, there's a text, there's a bit in the piece where it's like, again, some person has just gotten, like, a steel straw and then it's gone through their iris. In the name of kind of sort of like, environmental consciousness. - Right into the consciousness there, bro. - How more conscious can you get? - Recyclable tools going right into your brain, bro. - Only 14.95 Cool, do, is there anything more on that? - Yeah, I mean I, I think it's... I really enjoyed, cause it's like, I'm still in a place of like, I don't wanna perform. - No, I know. - Like, shit's really going on, you know? And I don't wanna make a performance, you know? So there's something about, for me, that was quite an interesting challenge was to, how to make a performative work and it not be, and my body not be visible and present. Which is what usually happens in my work, or has a lot. And so it kind of also, yeah- - Which makes me, do you mind, if, let's speak about a process perhaps, or kind of sort of like, a new methodology. Cause you do come from quite kind of sort of vastly different practices. Pete, you from the literary world. And you from a kind of sort of- - Award winning literary world. - Award winning literary world. You, award winning body based. - "Uh, you, award winning." And still we're here in domestic. Where's my business class? - We do have. - Oh, that's not accessible, accessible arts practice. I'll tell you later. - Oh, okay. - Eat out of the camera. - Oh, okay, okay. I want to, I wanna kinda sort of like, open up the conversation around kinda sort of interdisciplinary practices. And if we look at this kind of like, your writing practice, and your essentially body based practice that performs yourself, how did that come about? And I know that this project was just only the beginnings of it, so please viewers out there, understand that this is a work in progress, this is a practice in process. And a practice in progress, so, I wonder, yeah, maybe. - You go, Peter. - You know, I think we have a really solid rapport, and so what would happen a lot is we'd have these kind of like, and maybe we have attentions to informations and details that both capture our imaginations in the same way. And so the hardest part was engaging in a dialogue with Latai, but at the same time, documenting it so it could be turned into something later. And I just, you know, and I dispute the contest of literature as not coming from the body. - Yup, cool. - Because, you know, I find myself, like, I've just been doing a residency down here in Canberra. And, you know, I sit at my desk for like an hour or two, and as I'm typing away, I'm just finding myself swaying the rhythm, like, with the energies coming out. That doesn't mean my work is actually good in the first trial, no one's is. But I do feel like that writing comes from elements of the body, you know? And, you know, I think Latai's got a body based practice as well, so, I think there's just, we can make, you know? - Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the intersections of our practices is really interesting, but it's still an exploration that I think we don't want to nail and say "Oh, we're gonna make a play." - No, of course. - You know, you know, "Oh, that's what happens when these two types of artists get together." It's like, what we really, what we've been very clear about is that we don't want to say what we're making just yet, but we just want to play around with ideas and get to know different things about ourselves as makers. You know, cause, yeah, there's, we just want to make some money, and we just want to make a TV show. - Amazing. - You know. - Amazing. - Well, I mean, it's despite of that that also that the form doesn't need to dictate to us. - No. - What we are going to make, you know? So what we are looking for is, you know, building on the things that we, and on the rapport that we have with each other, and the things that we think about the world. And the things that we are experiencing as people in this country and, you know, all the other things that influence that. - I grab from what you've just said just then, that like, the form is, that form is relational, but the form is relational, right? And that like, you two meeting together, or actually any person, any two bodies being in space will generate or necessitate a kind of sort of some kind of performance. I guess that's what's happening. - Yeah, totally. I mean, the thing is like- - And that's the medium, the medium is relational. - Yeah, and that just because while Peter is the writer, it doesn't mean that it's solely his responsibility to create the text. Like, the text is being generated through things that we're discussing and then, you know, Peter writes stuff, and then we kind of work at it. What came out in this process that was really interesting was, you know, actually delivering that text and understanding the difference between, for me, writing for reading, and writing for delivery. That was a huge thing, and that, a really huge thing. And also questions around "What would somebody from the future sound like?" You know, you know? We recorded so many versions and listening back, you know, and hearing my Australian accent, and then just unpacking that and questioning why would, would that person, would that character speak that way? You know, and ideas of what different people from different places sound like. What is Oceanian voice? What is, you know, yeah. What is that voice in that environment in the future? You know, what does Codex sound like? You know, all those things, you know? What informs that voice? So, yeah, before you even start performing anything, like all the questions that come up is what's really the stuff that you want to explore anyway. Yeah, but. - I think at the core of our collaborations is this question of ideas. You know, and the ideas that capture us. And so this idea for me, it's Auntie Oracle Codex from Rayon Island. The airport is a transitory purgatory space. She's kind of stuck there, you know? And to me, the next part of this for me is kind of the origins of Auntie Oracle Codex. And I'm curious about this, the codex part, and the oracle part. I'm curious about what dimension, which space she comes from, how did she generate the resources, and skills, and knowledge? There was like a tiny bit of a crack for me when we went into, when me and Latai both realized that both of the islands we come from have an intangible cultural heritage that's been ratified by the United Nations. - Wow, yeah, that's right. - Yeah, yeah, we were just, we were like, I don't know what we were talking about. And it's like, it's for Peter's Island it's lentils, and for mine it's a dance called Lakalaka. And so we're like, "Cool! Next residency is lentils and Lakalaka." It sounds cool. Cool, we know what we're doing next. - But it's like, you know, we talk about it like some dumb wog food, right? Like "Ah, some wogs are making lentils", right? But it's like, lentils from like, a very specific valley that depending on like, which moon cycle you plant them in, and which altitude you put them in, and each like, yield has a different flavor to the other yield. Based on how long they're kind of put in the ground for, and when they're taken away from, and the weather of that season as well. - God, amazing. - It's such a, you know, we talk about it, "Oh, they're just lentils." And Latai, your coconut water dance, you know what I mean? But. It's so much more complex than that. Right, it's really like, there's no wog food in island dancing, you know, like. What we say at the fucking community cultural festival. - So much going on in our collaboration. We love it. But, yeah, it's... Yeah, I think the humor also adds to how we kind of adsorb some of the complexity around the things that we thinking. And also it's a release, because sometimes it's like "Oh, this is too heavy, this is too much. I need a break, I need to sit down, I need to lie down." You know, and so we find ourselves laughing. But, I mean, one of those pieces, we honestly, we just did in 10 minutes after like, cause, you know, the edit. And then it's like, actually that's really good. Let's keep that, you know? - And one of the image was like, a family, or like, a whole village just sliding in the ocean on White Goods. - So appliances are White Goods, you know them. - Like massive freezers. - Yeah, massive freezers. - Massive freezers and. - Yeah, and just the convenience of those, that, you know, that thing, that item. - There's something, I know, I mean, you guys essentially still kind of sort of improvising on finding you speaking about, like, what is the voice of this oracle, and there is so many ways that you could apply that search, right? So you'd like, in terms of like, there's the actual kind of like, there's a physical voice, and then there's like, the psychological voice. What I found interesting in the film that you guys have made is that there's, I mean, there was such a... - The audio-visual. - The audio-visual. I was gonna say, there was a beautiful kinda sort of, you notice that the voice slowly degrades, or the slowly kind of sort of is effected in some way. Are there any kind of sort of improvised thoughts around that, or? That you could speak to? Just make something up. - We always knew that we wanted to have a distortion on the voice, and actually it got to a really frustrating part actually where I just kept hearing my own voice. And I just could not, I was literally, I couldn't handle it anymore. Like I just didn't believe any of it. - Can I stop you there for a second? - Yeah, go ahead. - Do you wanna speak about your like, insanely nerdy score? Pete, you know about the score that she had written for? - Yeah, yeah. We started the score together. And I just went a little, I went OTT with it because I needed to, to find how she might speak. And so, yeah, we did things like, started off with. - Stop, stop, stop. Brian, you think that was nerdy and weird, fuck you. - The score was like trying to find this talk without, because you know, the problem is bad acting as well. This is a major fear. Super bad acting, you know, just didn't wanna be that artist. And so devising this score meant that it could just start to create some rules around how one might start to shape the way that one speaks. And so, yeah, we started with things like, like the "T's" and stutter. The "T's" were the, you know, vowels that we, no. Nouns that we, is it nouns? You know, rounding out "O's" and "U's". - "O's" and "U's" became "Oz". - Became "Oz". There was some combinations of, that were trialed, where a "W", an "F" sound might be sound, like almost like a "WH" sound. Lots of stuff, lots of things that just came in and out. What was the purple ones? So it was completely color coded. So Brian actually saw the score when I was losing it. - Losing your mind. - And then all that really needed to happen was for it, because we were all working remotely, was that the shifts weren't happening as quickly as if we were all in the same room. Like, you know, you read it out, you go "Do this, do that." And then like, "Oh, let's put an effect on it." You know, so, there were delays in the kind of process that actually put me into a bit of a state where I just went more, got more and more nerdy with that score, you know? And just had more and more rules, but then it became really difficult and I could still hear myself. And it still sounded like bad acting! - Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was something you said in the, with the score that you both had come up with, that you were also thinking about the kind of sort of, the supermodel accent that... - In the 90's, so in the 90's. In the 90's, was on TV, and Kylie on TV, and they would speak with this accent which I heard was called a transatlantic accent. - A transatlantic accent. - And so I was like "That's what we've gotta, that is a clue into what someone might sound like." Is they might have this, not a transatlantic, I called it a transoceanic accent. - But it's like the embodiment of the airport. - Yeah, yeah. - In the voice. - Oh my god. - It's the embodiment of the airport. Which what I loved about, in terms of like, like perhaps it's something that you guys can kind of sort of continue working with the more that you find the voice of this character. The more that you can find a physicality of this character's voice in regards to, I love this idea of different tonalities, different kind of features that are all contained in the same body. - Was the other thing a part of the, remember when we shortened, we decided not to go for "O's" and went for "Oz", that was part of because of my family who, my mom and dad who actually can't say "O". They just can't make that sound right. - That hard "O" sound, yeah. - They can't do, yeah. - Cause it's so Germanic, that sound, right? Super Germanic, and so when you, yeah. Peter's parents, any language that have that have the vowels Ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, and not, A, E, I, O, U. You know, if you just apply those vowels to a whole series of words, it changes the way you speak. You know, I did look at some people also who have already been relocated from the islands, you know, and listened to the way they speak. So the "R's" are pronounced in a very particular way. But, you know, we also had tried any feminine words that had "R", to roll the "R's". We also, you know, we had so many, quite a lot of rules, and, you know, just to create this kind of, this breaking of the English letters, of the alphabet, and words. But still having to speak in this, you know, language. But, yeah, breaking it. - ...Where we were working and we found some language that the character wouldn't use. Like, Peter and Latai language. - [Both] Yeah. - Like, I think clocked it and we had to get rid of it. - Yeah, yeah certain words. - In the reviews of the process, just before the last recording, we're just like "No, no, the character would not say this stuff." - Yeah. - Do you know what I love about this idea of the transatlantic accent, is that the accent comes through the body going through places. As opposed to a kind of sort of conceptional logic of just kind of the score, right? Where you're like literally creating a kind of Frankensteinian mechanism where you, it's not, it's disembodied. The idea is that like, of your voice, or the collective voices, is that it is actually going through your personal lineages. And so there's something really nicely organic about that that I quite like. - Yeah. - You want to speak to that perhaps, like, cause it's the accent, this moved through the body. The body is actually, you know, the body picks up the accent as opposed to what, like a, a cerebral exercise. - Yeah. I mean, I think that's like most things that we catch, right? Viruses, bacteria, just moves through our system, you know? And so, but these things are always changing as well. Like, you know, like even thinking in my language like, you know, we've just recently, like I've just recently learned that the original word for greeting is not the one that we've been using. And the one that we've been using apparently was created because it's a better response to "g'day", good day. Like the formality of "good day" and then the response Which is "I'm glad you're well." But the original greeting is which is a greeting from the heart and from the center, which aligns up with other languages from the region, like You know, words that have the word "life" or "love" in them. You know, across the Pacific. So you know, these kinds of relationships, relationships in language change over time for lots of different reasons, and when you remember them, and then get the way that they're pronounced, the way they're said, affected by environment or other things that, you know? Yeah, so, that is kind of picking things up and dropping things and, you know, deliberate use of certain words is really, you know, important to think about in, you know, . Would they say that? Would they use that word, or does that word sit inside, you know, their knowledge base? - Pete, can I just throw this to you? Can you speak to this? - Yeah, what specifically? - Just around kind of sort of like your thoughts around kind of sort of, I mean, character, for want of a better word. - In language? Character in language. - And around accent, perhaps, just as a starting point. - I mean, also Peter, talk about how, like, you were really adamant, like, "This person doesn't sound like you." Like, my accent. Remember? - Look, I think, let's talk about this like within the kind of frame work of who me and you are as well. Like, one thing that we both have in common is that we're both kind of diaspora kids. And we both come from communities, right, where like, my community had a very big like, Pacific Islander, , New Zealander population, right? Your community had a bunch of Greeks. You know what I mean, like, we understand the geographical kind of environment that we both come from. But then at the same time I think we imagine, we have an imagined homeland, you know? Like, I think that's a really important thing to have. I think the importance of diaspora experience is the imagined homeland. Like, me and you, we'll go back to our islands, we'll go back to place, we'll have all those knowledges there, but it's not the same as being raised on this, on these lands. And so I think part of our process of creating this character person is kind of being those, let's be honest, creative, romantic children of the diaspora. And how I imagine homelands exist. Does that fair Latai, or is that wrong? - Yeah, yeah. No, that's fair, we talked about that. - But also you two have a twisted idea of what reads romantic, right? - [Both] Yeah. - So, I mean, cause like, inherent to your kind of sort of idyllic imagination is also lived reality of being an unseeded country and how that kind of sort of post colonial, or actually, continual colonial condition fractures the romance. Fractures the kind of idyllic and- - I want to talk about that in terms of like, uncomfortability and never being comfortable. You know, while doing this residency I had this conversation with someone who you would say had kind of really controversial views on Israel, right? Really opposite to what I believe. And we're in this position of something really uncomfortable, right? And to me, being uncomfortable is the norm. Like, my dad was a fascist, my mom was a communist, I can just exist in an uncomfortable situation. You know? I didn't need a resolution to stuff, if that makes sense. You know? - Brian just has to move his bag too, cause we're actually taking up so many seats. - Yeah right, man. - No, those are yours. They're not yours. Oh, I took them off the counter because I thought they were yours. - But you know, like, we're also on stolen land. That's part of the uncomfortableness, you know? - Well, yeah, Peter, yeah, exactly. Peter was just saying "Well yeah, we're all living on stolen land." - Sorry, I had to stop, I had to get the bags , but, but you were talking, I loved this new, this conversation around the uncomfortability. - Well, it's, yeah. I mean, it's this thing of feeling displaced. Like it's, you know, but, I mean the thing about the romanticized idea of, you know, our own homelands is that even to be there would be also there would be discomfort. You know, there would be, you know, it's not like, so. It's romanticized, but we're very, we're also very clear that there's, I don't know if anybody's comfortable anywhere. - Yeah, yeah. - But yeah, how do we negotiate this and generate ideas around who's comfort is more important, you know, as well. - I mean it's also kind of sort of, we've gone beyond our time. We've exceeded, we've gone to like 40 minutes, 50 minutes. - Oh no, we've gotta wrap it up. But it's actually a really nice kind of sort of closing point, to kind of refer it back to the airport and the space of the kind of like, the body in crisis of the airport, or ambivalence that we have just ended in this conversation of that, like, everyone feels uncomfortable. - Yeah, yeah. I think we should wrap it up, thank you. - Pete, did you want to say anything more? - No, I think, yeah, I want to thank you. - Thanks. You guys gotta make a TV show. - We'll see about that. Let's see if we can get some European money to do some stuff, huh? Get that Euro Euro money! Cool. - Okay, excellent. - Bye, guys! What happens now? - Thank you Akil, thank you James, thank you Utp. - Thank you Veronica We really appreciate you having us.