based on notes from parenzana residency notes by Sarah Neville

Along with my family I was in residence at foam for 3 weeks in October 2013, firstly at Castello Parenzana near the legendary town of Motovun in Istria and then amidst the urban landscape of Brussels. In company with my five month old daughter Florence and together with Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney, I investigated ancient and contemporary myths formed from making meaning of natural disaster. My husband Matthew and four year old daughter Miranda contributed to the project remotely from home in the Adelaide Hills in Australia. Miranda shared her understanding of the natural world through creative storytelling and painting and Matthew participated by responding to the concepts emerging at Castello Parenzana through an exploration of sound.

This project has been on slow boil for me for several years. I have struggled to contextualise my research within the contemporary dance or theatre worlds and feel that this project has been finally seeded in suitably fertile ground within the cultural laboratory of foam. I have enjoyed a couple of successful collaborations with Nik Gaffney in Adelaide in the late 90's and with this project it seemed like the right time to pick up the collaborative thread. My husband Matt also collaborated with Nik in the past and was looking forward to participating in the residency in Croatia along with Miranda. However, when state funding fell through our family had to ecomimise and we decided that Florence and I would travel to Europe and Matt and Miranda would contribute to the project remotely via daily skype meetings and email.

The area of research stretches over the fields of history, psychology and anthropology. Artistic forms put into play include photography, story telling, poetics and theatrical improvised movement.

This project is based on ancient world fables that spring from anxiety about the future. I am investigating the time old tradition of looking back to look forward. Hence, mining mythology to decree the future of a conflicted world anchored in the anxieties of our times. Nowadays with climate change on the political agenda and summers becoming hotter, there is a real fear emerging about the future of the globe. Hail in Melbourne CBD in March might once have been interpreted as the wrath of an angry God. Delayed flights in Europe due to the explosion of the Icelandic volcano are named by insurance companies as, “An act of God.’ The question is how does the superstitious imagination make sense of all this? Why is the volcano angry and why are the summers too long? I am extremely interested in the sublevel panic that pulses through current media hinting at a dire future of floods, famine and fires. It triggers reasoning inspired by practical knowledge about the impact of greenhouse gasses and the evolution of natural disaster along side creative narratives born of moral blame. By referencing past myths through a highly contemporary lens, we can assure ourselves of our ongoing capacity to deal with and understand natural and social disaster through our imaginations and creativity.

• The aim of the residency was to consolidate the concept, locate methodologies of practice and to search for an aesthetics to guide the work
• The aim of the project is to work with a concept and series of methodologies that can be extended in multi-platform processes and outcomes. Potential outcomes might include; live performance, enacted scenarios, a photographic study, a community workshop and a lecture.

• concise description of the way the research will be (has been) developed from establishing the problem definition to the final results

The site for this residency was in a house amongst vineyards in an old part of Istria. Florence and I were among friends and we are all highly motivated individuals. Therefore we began an informal discussion that developed over a week, with ideas becoming more focused over time. Simultaneously we continued to expand our scope of research as we shared our knowledge and experience and chased down leads. Whilst not consulting literature or media we firstly located our own knowledge and feelings about climate change and the stories that have and could emerge to make meaning of this. From this we narrowed the area of interest from Clasical Mythology to Weather lore.

This led to the construction of creative tasks which then informed the formation of new questions and follow up tasks. Tasks included:

• Nik focusing on highlighting the 'supernatural' in nature
• Staging photographs around the gardens with the characters of The storyteller, The child, The mother(s)
• Researching Weatherlore
• Noting Proverbs about weather
• Putting the weatherlore proverbs with the pictures
• Aiming to create contemporary proverbs about the weather
• Recording a storytelling soundscape

Whilst in Croatia, the foam residency was structured to include my whole family so my husband Matt contributed a sound score and our daughter Miranda sent drawings and stories in response to the creative content generated. Foam founders and collaborators Nik Gaffney and Maja Kumonovic, not only contributed creative ideas but picked up the ‘hard to do with a baby in your arms’ tasks like note taking and documenting.

• justification of the methodology

• concise description of the actual outcomes of the research

• comparison of the expected and the achieved results
• suggestions and comments on the research process and its results
• description and suggestions around the collaboration process (if applicable)
• suggestions for the future work based on the conclusions of the research
• comments on the response of the public (if applicable)

Traveling and working with Florence by my side has been a joy.During my residency, Florence’s smile, giggle and attentive observation of the world was a delight. My journey was enriched by her look of awe and surprise at Dubai airport, her fascination with all the safety videos on the plane, her cooperation in falling asleep promptly whilst travelling or when in transit no matter whether she was in a car seat on the floor under a table in an airport, her ability to laugh at almost any situation, her love of baby food from 3 countries, her loud and confident contribution to all serious arts discussions with her own baby babble, and her amusement in waking up amongst changeable scenery day in and day out and often night in and night out when I prammed her to restaurants. Florence’s generosity in sharing her morning song with Nik who accompanied her trilling and omming with his own basset tones put smiles on everyone’s faces. Her post- presentation cuddles with Maja helped calm everyone’s nerves after intense discussions.

In my experience working in the arts cannot by design be a selfish pursuit, so there has not been a giant shift in perspective in my life now that I am responsible for a baby. Just as in the art world, where teams of people work together, the responsibility of caring for Florence is not mine alone. My husband is informed and involved in everything Florence and I do and his opinion along with the point of view of Florence’s Grandparents and wider family is always considered. My work has always depended on working closely with other artists, whilst simultaneously working one or two full-time jobs outside of the arts to support my practice. It goes without saying that if I didn’t always have a sense of others in the world then collectives would fail, partnerships dissolve and collaborations would bomb. Often my paid work has included caring for other people’s children, so having Florence with me as I work is a familiar challenge and joy.All in all I am arriving home with a creative vision dreamed up, a new network of futurists met, a very creative collaborative experience and a world of possibilities to develop my work through avenues opened in Europe. For Florence I hope she has gained a sense of herself in a larger world, a tolerance of travel and somewhere deep in her conscience the knowledge that the world is full of creative and strong personalities who can envisage a fantastic future. For Miranda I hope she learns that no matter where I travel and for how long, I’ll always come back (and perhaps next time she can come with me). More importantly I know Miranda realizes that wherever I am, my life includes her and I cherish her involvement in my work. For Matt, we both know that creative collaboration is part of the glue of our relationship, whether that be formalized in an artistic collaboration or the creative stuff of flexible parenting.

• literature used in the research (books, magazines, journals, URLs…)
• media used in the research (film, audiovisual media, photographs…)
• visual/sonic/tactile material generated in the research to be archived at FoAM