Flowing with the future (surviving Batman), 2024

Jody Haines.

The premise for this work originated while sitting on and with tommeginne Country in March 2023. Over two weeks, immersed in sand, sea, salt and wind, I created a series of video works and self-portraits, working through a string of performative acts and drawing on two texts – The White Possessive, Aileen Morton Robinson, and Research is Ceremony, Shawn Wilson. Through this relational way of being/thinking, I explored making images with the more than human kin I was surrounded with – sun, salt, sand, trees, and animals – creating a series of lumen prints exposed to the sun and fixed in the salt water of my ancestors. These lumen prints have been brought into this new body of work.

The lumens were scanned and printed onto fabric and made into clothing worn to create a series of self-portraits for this project. Why? These elements are a direct link to the Country of my DNA and offer a way of exploring and maintaining the feeling of being on Country while not on Country a metaphorical cloak, a shield, an ancestral hug, a reminder to breathe and connect. To flow.

But how can we remain in the flow of being on Country when living within an urban environment? Cities are a tribute to the ongoing neo-colonial project of capital, disconnect and individualism. They sit in opposition to a relational approach to Country—a violent blockage to flow. Yet, this is where I have chosen to live, a visitor on someone else’s land. And through proximity, participate in this violent blockage of another’s Country. Cities and their violent histories will remain, and there is no immediate removal of their existence outside of a cataclysmic disaster. So, I am searching for ways to remain in the trouble, as termed by Donna Haraway, and explore ways of flowing with the future that fit with a relational methodology—thinking historically while in the present.

For the images located outside the Mechanics Institute, Brunswick, I followed a path along the Maribyrnong River that in 1835 was travelled by John Batman before entering the Birrarung and determining a location for “settlement”. He had come by boat from the land of my ancestors, the land of my birth. There he was a bounty hunter. On this side of history, he’s described by many as the founding father of Melbourne. Three images explore this path: listening to the Wind, 2024; Batman’s Landing, 2024; and Blak Swan, 2024. Cloaked in ancestral significance, I explore my entanglement with this space, this history, and the more than human kin I am surrounded by while continually searching for a way to disrupt the colonial blockage within and remain in flow.

Acknowledging the physical spaces of the colonial blockage led me to look inward for the next three portraits. Here I sit with the blockage that lives within my psyche – an internal mind escape from the clutches of colonialism. Wearing A cloak to disrupt,2024, A shield to protect, 2024 and A (metaphorical) hug, 2024. Each portrait is accompanied by the Lumen image, which made the print of the fabrics worn in the portraits.

COMMISSION BY – Arts Meri-bek, Meri–bek City Council and shown as part of PHOTO2024 and Future River, Counihan Gallery + BlakDot Gallery, curated by Kimba Thompson.