Bamiyarra Not So Still(s)

Describe your idea and concept of your work in relation to the festival outlines:

Bamiyarra Not So Stills(s) was produced as part of a year long media arts initiative with a team of young Hazara from Dandenong and another in Afghanistan. The genus of the project grew from the Home Lands initiative to connect young people from refugee backgrounds to their home lands and separated communities. It sought to create dialogue between young people and their home lands, however it became more about a conversation they undertook with their new home land, Australia.

What kind of communication approach do you use?

Bamiyarra Not So Still(s) is a mixed media installation by young Hazara in Australia and Afghanistan working in collaboration with Melbourne-based artists. The installation combines photo essays, video projections and sound in a collaborative work that explores the experiences of young people from refugee backgrounds, highlighting their aspirations and hopes for future generations and those they had left behind in their home lands.

What are in your opinion concrete benefits to the society because of your communication?

Firstly audiences found an exhibition environment that did not discriminate, did not judge, did not point fingers so to speak. It sought to indentify common ground between participants, gallery attendees and passersby.

Secondly, the response within the Hazara community itself can be best described by this quote from one of our participants. ”In each of the art pieces a silenced story is hidden - the story of deprivation, limitation, and oppression. In this project we have also gained the confidence of working with young men and women. The interaction between men and women is quite low in our community, let alone working in the medium of videos and photos, which is quite sensitive. This has been a milestone step for us.” Farkhonda Akbari, Bamiyarra collaborator

Ultimately we found a great deal more empathy and compassion communicated through this work. Audiences appeared to learn, by and large, that Hazara's were no threat to them, that they saw to make significant contributions within their newly adopted home land.

What did you personally learn from creating your submitted work?

Over the entire twelve months, and then some, I had lived inside this project and it has lived in me. I have met a welcoming, warm hearted community who for all they have endured, carry no malice, show no sign of judgement and drink more tea than I’ve seen harvested in the plantations of Sylhet in north-eastern Bangladesh. They’re never short of slap-stick gags and spirited counsel. Through their friendship I have visited cultural terrain I had barely known existed, and had mended in me that which I had not known was broken. We could all do well to know these people. To embrace them, and all who seek safe haven on our shores, is to embrace ourselves. There is no them, there is only us.

Why is your work, GOOD communication WORK?

It sought not to judge, but to engage, to find common ground with participants and audiences.

Where and how do you intent do implement your work?

The work was produced within the City of Melbourne and exhibited at Signal, the soundscape and projected works were seen along the Flinders St side of the Yarra River and again at Federation Square during the recent Light in Winter festival. The entire work was also exhibited at the Casula Powerhouse, NSW, and finally in the Walker St Gallery, Dandenong.

Did your intervention had an effect on other Media. If yes, describe the effect? (Has other media reported on it- how? Were you able to change other media with your work- how?)

That we screened our projected work on the exterior of the Signal Gallery, with images that were suggestive of people drowning, accompanied by a poem read over a soundscape in both English and Dari, and that no one took offense, was perhaps a sign that we could tell stories that expressed loss and grieving that did not necessarily seek to sing out a single culture or community. This form of media making was extremelly productive. It was described as such by those who covered it on Radio National, SBS and local newspapers.