all right everybody um do you want to all turn on your cameras just to say a quick hello uh to our special guest today Ishmael Ma as they're all slowly dribbling in it's quite late here now cuz we're on daylight saving so I expect people will dribble in all righty well um I'm 6:30 afternoon yeah um it's still pretty sunny outside though yeah it's 8:00 in the morning so I'm going to share this um I'm going to share this PowerPoint oopsie continue to share i want to go back to the beginning um and just say okay what I'm going to say um it is a real thrill for us today to have um visiting the class Ishmael Mara who is uh the creative director of the MOA project which as many of you will know is the acclaimed multimedia unit at um the Bolang Art Center in Urkala and Ishmael has had um really quite a long and uh very very successful career considered to be one of um the the premier video artists uh in Australia but aides from making video art he is also has also made um prints he's made works in steel have you ever done painting Ishmail uh not yet not so many paintings but All right so um I I let's get started i'm going to um find a way to get your video a bit biggerish uh going to make it a what do they call it a spotlight there we go all righty awesome all right well um Ishmael thank you so much for joining us today um I was thought that a good place to start might be to ask you um if you could just um tell us where you're coming from and what goes on in this building um hello my name is Ishma and um I'm from northeast Anundan in Northern Territory in Australia place called Ikala and um this is the art center that we worked uh for many years um with lots of artists different artists all to the young you know been working here with us m and so um the art center has two parts to it um the book sort of the art center part which um we've talked about in class and we've talked about the um the saltwater um project um which helped form the Mula project so can you tell us like what does MUA do what is MUA so moka is like a keeping place or um archive um with doc documenting lots of culture and ceremony and languages u for the next generations and you know other people to see it in other communities um Mocha was um was born in 2007 um money from the Z water collections the artists donated the money to become um for the um the Mocha projects because in early days before Mocha times there was um anthropologist and you know all that missionaries and they filmed Yung alive um anthropologist like Donald Thompson's that came here in 1935 want to find out how yo live in uh in the top of the northern um top of Australia northern part of Australia and you know because all is or people lives in remote and just like everyone's uh tradition traditional way of living um people hunt spears and ceremonies and all that stuff and um documenting another anthropologist came Ian Dunlop's document all the ceremonies all the you know talk and then the others decided let's make our own videos and stuff so that's why Mocha became Ma to it's an that's an incredible story and we'll keep um I think we should keep coming back on that so um you but I flip forward because you mentioned 1935 when um Donald Thompson came which was of course the same time that um that the mission that that that Malan um allowed the mission to be formed at at Ukala and I guess this photo is is your um is your family um can you tell us about um the the you know you're a ma and you're a Rat Jingu leader now um can you tell us a little bit about um you know why the red jingo are important uh ridicule it's important um because my grandfathers here are standing and they were fighting for land right in 1960s and '7s and they stand against um other people and people came across and they said stop this is our land you have to go through us and they a young people came from other places want to take over this place but my grandfather stood up and stopped them um just for this land and yeah they're powerful man my grandfather is militum militum he was fighting for a land right Millet versus Noel and his younger brother is Roy America yeah and actually yeah I've made a mistake here Because um Milum is this one on the very right isn't he this is this is your grandfather here no no the second second this one so we got Wak Roy Malan and Ninich ninich right there we go amazing so this amazing family um uh who fought for the land rights and now you know now um uh you're part of the Rudach Jingu Corporation uh as well as the MUA so what tell me what is um what do you what does the Rudaching Corporation do um ridicule or corporations like I'm in the board member of ridicule corporation my my father's stands my my father's uh private business corporations um we stand for the community and help the community funds uh schools uh health you know funds uh community events like festivals and football and we help um funeral fund like when someone passed away we help them for get them money to to you know organize some funeral for the families and all that so yeah ready game corporation we have 10 business that we bought 10 different business um we have ridic of fuel uh and ridicers mining company and some sand that we sell it to them so yeah we have Mali village and we have um Marco village coming up across the road from hospital we're building 80 houses okay we're going to you know get rent it to the government they'll rent it up and you know housing for their staff like doctors and police or whoever um yeah it's amazing to think right because that you know not just an artist not create just the creative director not just a filmmaker but also um also working for the community in this way um okay so the first part of Mula that you talked about was the um archive so can you tell us what kinds of things are in the archive at Mocha and how do people access them oh we have yellow yellow is uh community access um we have 10 computers in yellow and the community can jump in and see all the videos that we make and plus all videos from antipologies um you know from football grand finals um um music footballs festivals that we films and plus we we go out um document the funerals when someone passed away and um family request for camera so we go and film it for 2 3 weeks you know filming and then documenting into the archive for the mocha and for the community so they can see it and come come here with USB stick to get a copy and then they'll watch it at at their house in the TV so you use the term yaloo um can you explain what yalloo means yalo is like um a nest yeah crocodile nests or other nests or sometimes yellow means when I when I'm talking to uh families and like a argument between families to families and I I will explain I I come from this yellow which is my mother's side I'm like this is my mother's side I come from mother mother it's a beautiful idea right so that that that that the Mula archive is a nest that people can come and sort of discover their um relatives their family photos but also that you're continuing to film um initiation ceremonies funerals football carnivals um so from that start it's not surprising I guess that pretty soon um Oh here we go this was a this was a project that you did uh this was at ME wasn't it mach in Melbourne and um as to be create artworks like just like our mocha project here yeah so it was kind of a nest in Melbourne to sort of see some of the things uh that people um could access what about um what about uh how do you how do you deal with um like restricted things or things when you know when somebody might have passed away or something like that yes some restricted videos or audios like when someone passed away we have to put aside for a couple of years in um disease folder like disease do not touch or in a private private folder um or video hall video and we keep it for one or two years until the families agreed to show the videos and stuff and then we show it to the community amazing um so it wasn't very long until you started making um you started making creative work um I think this was the first of your films that I saw um can you tell us a little bit about uh about Gulka this this film I made is a um 10-minute drama um it's about uh Gala and Galkka is like a sorcerer that kills other people with the dark spirits and um story about a family went out camping and um you know these kids it's been like not listening to mother and father and he's doing their own his own stuff and when he went um collecting firewoods with his brothers he was still collecting when the two brothers left already and then the gaka was there watching him and killed it because he wasn't listening it's a pretty amazing film and I'm going to um show it to the class uh on on Monday um what um what inspired you to make that film because um I've been listening stories from my grandfathers or grandmothers and mother and father about you know when everything get the place get darker you know my mom my parents always say do not walk around nighttime and I'm like why there's people are dark spirits and like that dark they they are family but they are dark they can kill people and do you know walk around and I'm like no they they won't kill people and they're like you know keep on telling me and I kept that stories from a childhood to you know I want to tell the story on the video and so you showed this um you showed this at GMA festival and you showed this at Primava which is the um which is a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney um what was the what what was the response um how did people respond to this film in at GMA but also in Sydney well GMA well I finished this finish everything and then the night uh finishing day and the night I just showed that really you know like straight from the toes yeah showing it and um the people got scared and um but it's like an interesting story and also because I chose the actors it's not really like mom and dad and you know they just everyone like difference yeah it's like little bit um they were laughing and also like it was sad because the mother have to cry for the kid you know and I put my grandmother's voice in there for the milary yeah that's very powerful at the end um hearing your grandmother singing or crying the crying the keening songs um how did you pick the actors for this film it's hard because I spot this man here um Unura because he's walking around with long big beard and you know white hair and he's going to be a good for the ga so I'll get him and then I asked everyone like you want to be in my film I'll pay you $500 for I'm like yeah Okay so that that's why everyone is Yeah joined in yeah yeah now they're famous they'll probably want twice that huh so I mean so Galka was Galka is an interesting film and it's a narrative horror film very y but also um you know it has there's elements of a kind of horror film about it as well um but after that you made this one which you were telling me before you're going to be showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales um and this is very very different to um Gala in pretty much every way imaginable um can you tell us about this work well I made this film um Monakal it's like other side um and it was in Zney in the train station for 10 years um it was yeah um train station escalator on top halfway and I want to show people that lives in the city life how we live here is more calm and not rushing and it's just you know relaxing pace it's like cuz in the cities you like I have to go in this time you know run and you have to be in time to get to this other area but here it's more like ah there's no time I have to just stop and talk to families and you know and keep moving so it's showing the other other life to the city people and it's just very slow it's like So how did you make this one um it's uh a 8K I mean 6K camera um I sat down recorded for 1 hour each films for 1 hour and just leave it for 1 hour i done it six hours yeah wow yeah so every day when the trains you know people get out from train just they rush but give them time to stop and see this like where's this place i want to go to this area and you know more relaxed not rushing yeah and and are you how are you um how are you going to display this at the art gallery in New South Wales of you well we um they're going to cut it bit shorter because the the screen is not big enough they have so that I just Yeah I've been talking to them last week um yeah so they got it it's their film now they bought it from me oh great um the Sydney M Sydney Contemporary Art or not Contemporary Sydney Art Gallery in New South Wales yeah yeah brilliant i mean it's it's it's such sort of slow meditative beautiful work this one um so it'll be really nice to see it um up again um okay and then pretty pretty soon after that you collaborated with another artist um Curtis Taylor on this installation Scars um which um I mean was interesting for a whole bunch of reasons one of them being that Curtis comes from a very different part of the country um do how did this come about well me and Curtis um been collaborating working um back and forth i like he came and stayed here with me for one week two weeks and then I have to fly to the desert and I haven't been desert area was in desert and spend time with him and his family um in a desert for two weeks with no receptions no internet just camels walking around and all that stuff first time seeing camel And um I was sleeping in the back of the youth on the the car in the swag and the camel was chewing my hair in in the morning and I like and I opened my eyes and I saw this camel chewing my like screaming like what is this thing and then Curtis woke up and talked in the language because That was the adopted camel that they adopted two camels and they grew up with in the community and they understand the language so so you're going you go to the desert and you're working with Curtis and Curtis comes and so what did you what did you um what did you how how did this collaboration work what were you guys thinking about well K is um it's more more about like when they go through ceremonies and they have to cut themsel in the ceremonies after ceremonies or sometimes if he adopted someone and brothers become a brothers the other one have to cut themsel and then they lick we have to lick their blood i have to lick right his blood and he have to lick my bloods to become my brothers so we adopted each other as a brothers he's my brother from desert and I'm his brother from the salt water and then yeah he made that video about scar going through ceremonies and I took Lage and I painted up and then I projected onto the lage which is the water design of Riyappa um so this so so these these you laral log coffins this is um these are this is Roua the um the that's the waters at that's Brema Bay right yeah and so when you did this were you were they were you um consciously thinking about like your work in relation to Curtis's or were they sort of fairly separate separate you know it's he's he we want to be like he's from you know mother country like desit mob and I'm from your mob from northeast and like showing works together as yeah you know it's very different yeah it worked really well though it they they went together beautifully yeah Um all right and then the next year this giant um this giant work for the Sydney Bianale um and I've put the link in here so everyone can go and have a look at the virtual version but this was this was this was a really you know highly collaborative work wasn't it had lots of different people what what money so tell us tell us how did you bring everyone together on that project well because here in Mocha we all different people different um tribes and cuz I'm already getting on this man is um Marako man and there is [ __ ] yeah and you know goodies good man all that stuff when we want to show the the audience that we're not the same people we're not we but we are I'm Mar is a Marapo and Kumach oh wow so in but in um in this work in Wami in Watami Man they all sort of joined together and then they're separate but they're also together in their own kind of way how did you what did what were the kind of thought processes for bringing them together or for ordering them yeah well this is um ordering because the season is and like uh I done the cloud stuff in the distance in the water and um there's crocodiles on the water and then when when you go down there's there's a fish underneath the water and then in that water we collect white clay gap burn you know that and gap is like a more everything you use it for hunting you put it um on your body so goose or kangaroo won't smell the sweat or anything well we use it for ceremonies dancing and sometimes people put gupp to show them that they are the warriors they like we're ready if you want to fight yeah it's it's amazing how um how how much how well the kind of individual parts of this all come together and and the music is really important in this I think um Yeah can you talk a little about the music in in in this piece yeah music well we say man um in yung way the man is there's a song lines and song lines is like uh stories when you talks about song lines is like telling I I'll tell you history of this land where where everyone's come from but through the song lines I can tell you the stories through the song lines So one of the this that leads really nicely into this project because when we were working on the exhibition Marian one of the things that all of the um all of the curators all of the elders that that consulted on the project said was that they needed to be ways to have song in the exhibition and you and Mr wani came up with a couple of really brilliant ways to do that um in this work and then um in in this work um which we we can talk about in a minute um but yeah I was just wondering wondering if you could talk about u well firstly the importance of song and why it was so important to have songs accompanying these paintings um the song is important because all the paintings you see is also the stories um from all people was told it's like a locations map which clan groups this you know paintings belong to and also the song lines that joints give you the strength of the the painting that's give the strength to the paintings and as we have two mies and it's like a ying and yang we made opposite Cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross close cross marriage we don't marriage to da or da or toka we married to da and mar to da and it's also means yi indi and mother and child and so in this work here you've got this um so 11minut loop of the waves crashing um but then can you explain what else is going on this is um the water that I made that video um there's a water crash and there's a songs that been played by two leaders or elders and or welcoming song in a in like a sacred way of welcoming erica's song man is Jambo Marowelli my uncles my mom's brother and Moan number two all America representing the da nations or da mates sings about the water and it's all about welcoming songs and they both sings about water in a different Yeah it's kind of amazing and but they you can hard you know they you can't really see them they're kind of hidden below it's almost as though they're kind of coming out from underneath the water you can like almost see them when they're the wave crash and you see them and see their clip sticks yeah it's very subtle and and and very beautiful and and really like one of the things I loved about this was the way in which visitors coming to the exhibition were kind of immersed in this space in this kind of waters crashing over it was it was really excellent but then when they came into the exhibition you had created um a slightly different um um installation of four screens um can you tell us a little bit about this one strength from afar there's a four different um video that I made and each video have a different colors representing different clan groups and different song lines so the one is white there and dancing about Japo pigeon song dance and then the blue is mpa and dancing about queen fish umari and um two I mean the red one dalong dong and dance dance about spirit dance and another green representing Dway and T and A and spirit tense of Ta nations Ta nations another spirit dance was nations um dialog so it's kind of amazing so the the one dancer moves through the four in a sort of a circle you know so circles through them um and but you use the same dancer in all of them right yeah yeah um so who was that uh this is Kar America i use it it's um a great great grandson of Malan yeah wow man America Molan's son is Wok's son is Bruno which is Kakar's father yeah amazing um which is amazing here because then he's dancing and there's his great greatgrandfather's painting and his father his grandfather's painting over here but um yeah and I mean what I love with this too is the same with the Watami Man is that that you you're thinking here about both the kind of differences between the clans but also their connections um all right uh so okay so then things started to get big so this one uh this one I'm guessing is one of the largest in scale works that you've done um Uh can you tell us about this one this is in um Australia um in Kenra National Gallery of Australia and it's about the the lights and how lights gives the energy to the earth and and um there's a different lights you can see there lights from the sun morning rising sunset to the you know hit the lights the sun hit the water make it make the water like glow and also there's lights on the lightning when there's thunder comes and there's lights on the fire when fire starts There's a light you can see see in the distance what's up there and can you tell us the meaning of the uh the title uh Jarat Tarwin jarat town it's light the meaning of Jarat is light light yeah amazing i mean it must have been incredible to see the work produced that large it was big and you know lots of speakers and lots of people came to this um opening and I was there standing talking to them and so when you do a work like that right that's like very much about sort of Yongu country and Yong song but it's on somebody else's country um you know how do you see that relationship like how do who you know how do you feel about seeing your work in other places i feel like proud and um like honor because like when I went to America and then seeing my old people my grandfather's paintings means like telling me that they they was there before me you know their spirit was there before me but I have to wake their spirits by you know come to this area and tap stick put some chapsticks on and start singing to wake the spirit up so you talked there a little bit about about bark painting and this is a work that involved images that came from your grandmother's bark painting and also her songs yeah um so you know your grandmother who was an extraordinary woman with enormous amounts of um of of of knowledge of particularly knowledge of plants and shellfish and things and she was an extraordinary bark painter so what what why do you want to bring in a bring her work into this kind of new medium like this what's the what's what are you thinking about it's uh ready it's like a rising festival and like a shadow spirit and I chose chose my grandmother because she passed away already and and she done lots of paintings that's still here in Book um computer archive and I went through all of her artworks from you know to the bush food into um terite mount into ants butterflies and all that and I collect it and I put it on the table and chose all the artworks from her and animated make them moved around and that's there that's like a artworks from her port put friends um so I use that and cut it up and it's like make her move around that artwork so her has spirit and also we done recording of her in um Mocha music studio m and it's we use that audio the milk to go with that with her artworks so it's like she's crying in her spirit and but her spirits the footprints walking around and her artworks moving around dancing around butterflies flying and all that stuff and the on the end the ants comes out and eat everything out which is you know her her spirits is gone like means she no longer with us she's gone that's what the ants came down and took everything out it's an amazing amazing video all right I think we've can we can we um open up to have a few questions cuz that was a a pretty amazing um survey of your work and I I I think we've got like four minutes which should be I'm sure people are going to have loads of questions yeah yeah um I have a question um so I really like your work by the way and I was just wondering I noticed a lot of your work um involves a lot of projections and just um also in terms of just inherently um using video uploading um to keep an archive of your community i was wondering if you've noticed uh the how accessibility to these types of technology has increased over the years and how that has impacted your work or affected how you've planned out your work and if so how so yeah um you know um we have um a team in Mocha team Joseph and all about technical works you know he works with technical but um you know we all work together help each other out joseph is good man you know such everyone all the artists here that works with Muka we all work together and in a way like one one answer to that question too is Mocha is the way in which a lot of this material becomes accessible to the community too right like lots people can come and borrow cameras and yeah well yeah like if they as us for um filming the ceremonies and and everyone's like all of us is busy and then there's we know people that um control the camera and then we were like "Yeah here's the camera you film it and give it back to us and we'll pay you for the film you made and we'll do the edit and put it into the archive for for the community which I mean it it would one question to ask would be how did you get involved with Moa it's a long story um Mocha was filming at GMA Festival 2009 and I I was year 12 standing there i flew from Darwin just to hang out with my families and see this special GMA thing and I've watched the karma and his uh project manager Rob Lane saw me standing there with my friends talking away you know watching the dance and he came to me he's like "Oh can you help us we're one man short." And I was like "I can't help you i don't know how to use the camera." And he said "It's easy i can teach you." and it's like $50 for hour and I like give me that camera i'll do it so I filmed it for four hours made $200 get the camera back and I flew back to D for schooling and finished school came back finished my A12 2009 2010 I was working for Ranger Ranger for a couple of months and then I went to shop to get some lunch and then Rob saw me there at shop having my lunch like I've been looking for you um I really like your shot can you work for Mocha project and I like no I got a job and then he begged me and then I just ah Mocha is like cuz the ranger look after the sacred sites and you know rangers look after feral animals and all that stuff and then like ah Mocha project it's like documenting culture ceremonies you know putting archive stuff I'll just jump in there and work for them so I left the range and work for Mocha for 2010 and And then I'm still here amazing yeah almost like 15 years well you I mean going through that slideshow you've made an enormous amount of work um I think one last question anyone want to jump in with one last question so we can and then we can let Ishmael go no and nobody I have one um as technology is advancing are you seeing any new types of technology that you want to try or that you think will be the most helpful for your projects new technology i don't know it's hard e lots of new technologies coming in and uh sometimes we don't trust new technology like AR stuff um but sometimes it's more like helpful like AR AR yeah you know when you like help me with the technical stuff and he'll they'll help you on the machines like yeah you have to do this and that instead of you have to do it like they think and you know work out stuff yourself so this I mean the new technical and technology is good and is helping and is you know keeping everyone's going so we're not stuck in other stuff yeah can you maybe just to to wrap everything up then um I was wondering if you you know I mean Balang is producing bark painting it's producing prints it's producing um steel things like How what do you think is the importance of using new media in your art new media is important i mean it's not really uh traditional but it's you know talks about same story but in a different way like in the print work and or metal work and you know because in the B paintings you have to use your colors you know like red color yellow black and white color and you rub it up to mix it up the But you don't have to do that and if if you're working working with metals you just use your machine you know and um but um print making also is using different colors different out from like traditional colors it's like a a temporary color but just I mean is it all just different ways of telling the same stories it's yeah different way even like um the video stuff uh animations or there is projecting work or you know maybe like um storytelling about voice over stuff and all that stuff all right well make the make the audience understand the world understand what we are going through you know because in the past all people done paintings and it's just a painting when you see it it's just a painting but it's a story underneath and nobody understand um about the paintings that's why we jumped in to make these artworks more clear so we can explain about this is this is the paintings there's a stories here like there's song lines you know this represents Marindi all that stuff yeah it's amazing I mean it's amazing to think like your um you know your grandfather your great-grandfather was you know they experimenting with back painting and now you're experimenting with new media and it's really you know keeping the stories very strong um well I think everyone should turn on your video and give Ishmail a big round of thanks i woke up 6:00 just to talk to Whoa 6:00 in the morning well thank you we appreciate it um and uh I'll hopefully see you in summer oh but or if not before then all right all right everyone well have a good evening have a good day get your coffee in your Ishmael yep m thanks so much thank you thank you thank you thank you Matt