Lisa Stefanoff

Martu filmmaker and artist Curtis Taylor talks with Lisa Stefanoff about his work in the production and international promotion of Lynette Wallworth’s Virtual Reality Film Collisions, a project that tells the story of his grandfather Nyarri Nyarri Morgan’s experience of the British atomic bomb tests at Maralinga and ongoing care for his country. Curtis reflects on the value of different art and media forms for conveying Martu stories, enduring traditional knowledge and contemporary concerns, and discusses his own cinematic reflections on the powers, risks and roles of new media in Martu communities

Tjanpi Desert Weavers is the dynamic social enterprise of the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council.  Tjanpi (meaning locally harvested wild grasses) began in 1995 as a series of basket-making workshops facilitated by NPY Women’s Council in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands of Western Australia. Women wanted meaningful and culturally appropriate employment on their homelands to better provide for their families. Building upon a long history of using natural fibres to make objects for ceremonial and daily use, women took quickly to coiled basketry and were soon sharing their newly found skills with relatives and friends on neighbouring communities.

The film Remembering Yayayi emerged from a project to return raw 16mm film footage shot in 1974 at the early Pintupi outstation of Yayayi, near Papunya, by filmmaker Ian Dunlop, with Fred Myers as translator and consultant. Two subsequent remote Pintupi communities, Kintore and Kiwirrkura, were involved in the footage's return. The material had not been available for research (or other) purposes until 2005, when VHS copies were made from the workprint deposited in the National Archives of Australia. In 2006, Myers and Stefanoff took this rare historical visual material in Pintupi language to Kintore and Kiwirrkura, showing it to individuals and family groups and holding community screenings. Responses were overwhelmingly positive. The tapes quickly became regular entertainment for patients undergoing lengthy renal dialysis sessions and Myers received multiple requests for copies. Over several years, one of Myers' long-term Pintupi friends, Marlene Spencer Nampitjinpa, came to provide a moving personal commentary on the footage, enabling a feature documentary to be produced from it. This chapter draws on a conversation between Stefanoff and Myers to reflect on how the repatriation project became a catalyst for memory and produced new Pintupi community historical knowledge, particularly about outstation life, early efforts at developing local forms of self-determination and the transformation of lives and wellbeing over a 40-year period. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Noise-cancelling headphones dampen my kids’ garden-play yells and fade the rev of motorbikes on the red dirt track across the road. I tune out the final sibilant spinning of the clothes washer and the skeins of summer afternoon desert birdsong, and I listen again to the 11 interlaced tracks of Voice of the Rainforest, the endlessly wonderful Feld-Kaluli/Bosavi day-in-the-lifeworld opus, first published as a Rykodisc CD in 1991, played this time from its 2019 masterfully re-mixed super hi-fidelity ‘Concert CD’ re-release. The work occupies a shimmering place in my umwelt of perduring affecting presences—intellectual, aesthetic and pivotal. It’s a crack in everything, where (to pinch half an image from L. Cohen), the sound of the light gets in. Voices is a forest for remote listening-alongside and listening-through an ethnographic engagement, shaped by the wondrously dynamic Kaluli aesthetic dulugu ganalan (identified by Steve Feld and Bambi Schieffelin for European audiences and glos...

Executive summary: This literature review surveys writing about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and craft sector of remote Australia. The review has been compiled as a foundational text for the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies’ research project being undertaken by the CRC for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP). The Art Economies Project (AEP) is a unique opportunity to investigate, analyse and enhance key points of exchange within the sector, many of which are poorly understood, under-researched and characterised by different kinds of fragility or instability. The sector is a significant contributor to the cultural and social life of Australia and simultaneously creates important enterprise and employment opportunities for remote-area Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Broadly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to be employed in visual arts and crafts occupations as their main job (52%) than non-Aboriginal ...

Editor's note A shorter version of this interview with Green Bush director Warwick Thornton was first published in Meanjin Volume 65, Number 1, 2006, 'Blak Times'. This longer version is reproduced in Ngoonjook with kind permission of Warwick Thornton, interviewer Lisa Stefanoff and Meanjin.

This report presents research results drawn from surveys conducted with 57 independent Aboriginal artists in the Northern Territory, with a concentration in central Australia/Alice Springs. It seeks to provide some details about the little-known art-making and trade practices of artists who choose to work outside of art centres.

This article introduces paintings by Pintupi/Luritja-Arrernte town camp artist Kunmanara M. Nampitjinpa Boko from the Tangentyere Artists group in Alice Springs and discusses a project we began together before her death, to explore new media futures for her graphic desert narratives. I argue that Kunmanara's figurative and entextualized images articulate a specific central Australian mode of " survivance " and perform the " precarity " of their emergence through an aesthetic I call " vocal listening. " The artworks carry a new desert art " aura " linked to lived experiences of a bush-station-mission-community-outstation-town camp-town landscape that might " migrate " into animated, immersive, and interactive new media forms.

This spring, while New South Wales was planning family reunions and haircuts, and counting down till it crossed the '70 per cent double dose' line, and Victorian case numbers were still spiking, another, highly anxious, Delta-time story was unfolding across the Northern Territory. The landing of the virus, vaccines and pandemic misinformation in highly disadvantaged, deeply intercultural and enduringly marginalised, colonised country has been presenting unique immunological, informational, logistical and political challenges. Trust has been a casualty of these factors, vaccine suspicion and 'complacency' the fallout. But the practice of what I venture here to call 'relational medicine' is showing signs of successfully turning things around in remote Central Australian community settings. ALARMING NUMBERS In late October, vaccination rates in many remote settlements and Alice Springs town camps were still sitting dangerously below targets. In advance of Australia 'opening up', frontline community-sector workers were urgently trying to loosen the grip of vaccine suspicion and turn hesitancy and resistance around. Faith-based and other misinformation and fear seeded far from the desert floor had flourished in the context of zero community transmission in the first year of the pandemic, and any impact of anti-vax social media was obscured by steady urban NT vaccine uptake. With NSW, Victorian and international travel restrictions about to be relaxed, there were however grave concerns that a regional outbreak would be unavoidable, with dire consequences for unvaccinated communities.

The film Remembering Yayayi emerged from a project to return raw 16mm film footage shot in 1974 at the early Pintupi outstation of Yayayi, near Papunya, by filmmaker Ian Dunlop, with Fred Myers as translator and consultant. Two subsequent remote Pintupi communities, Kintore and Kiwirrkura, were involved in the footage's return. The material had not been available for research (or other) purposes until 2005, when VHS copies were made from the workprint deposited in the National Archives of Australia. In 2006, Myers and Stefanoff took this rare historical visual material in Pintupi language to Kintore and Kiwirrkura, showing it to individuals and family groups and holding community screenings. Responses were overwhelmingly positive. The tapes quickly became regular entertainment for patients undergoing lengthy renal dialysis sessions and Myers received multiple requests for copies. Over several years, one of Myers' long-term Pintupi friends, Marlene Spencer Nampitjinpa, came to provide a moving personal commentary on the footage, enabling a feature documentary to be produced from it. This chapter draws on a conversation between Stefanoff and Myers to reflect on how the repatriation project became a catalyst for memory and produced new Pintupi community historical knowledge, particularly about outstation life, early efforts at developing local forms of self-determination and the transformation of lives and wellbeing over a 40-year period.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

This article introduces paintings by Pintupi/Luritja-Arrernte town camp artist Kunmanara M. Nampitjinpa Boko from the Tangentyere Artists group in Alice Springs and discusses a project we began together before her death, to explore new media futures for her graphic desert narratives. I argue that Kunmanara's figurative and entextualized images articulate a specific central Australian mode of " survivance " and perform the " precarity " of their emergence through an aesthetic I call " vocal listening. " The artworks carry a new desert art " aura " linked to lived experiences of a bush-station-mission-community-outstation-town camp-town landscape that might " migrate " into animated, immersive, and interactive new media forms.

A contribution to the edited collection 'KIN - an extraordinary Australian filmmaking family', honouring the pivotal Indigenous media work of Freda Glynn AM, Warwick Thornton, Erica Glynn, Tanith Glynn-Maloney and Dylan River.

This essay conjures some of the context of the emergence and development of CAAMA and the significance of the organisation locally, nationally and internationally over the past 40 years.

Martu filmmaker and artist Curtis Taylor talks with Lisa Stefanoff about his work in the production and international promotion of Lynette Wallworth’s Virtual Reality film 'Collisions', a project that tells the story of his grandfather Nyarri Nyarri Morgan’s experience of the British atomic bomb tests at Maralinga and ongoing care for his country. Curtis reflects on the value of different art and media forms for conveying Martu stories, enduring traditional knowledge and contemporary concerns, and discusses his own cinematic reflections on the powers, risks and roles of new media in Martu communities.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art is a prominent industry in remote Australia, with two prevailing
business models. The principal one is a community-owned and community-governed art centre representing remote
area artists who are mainly located in northern and central Australia. The alternative model sees (many
fewer) independent artists working directly with private art businesses, either dealers or galleries, in the
way most non–Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artists operate. Although innovations such as online
sales and the growth of art fairs is changing the way artists sell and consumers buy, these two models
remain dominant.

This report presents research results drawn from surveys conducted with 57 independent Aboriginal artists
in the Northern Territory, with a concentration in central Australia/Alice Springs. It seeks to provide some
details about the little-known art-making and trade practices of artists who choose to work outside of art
centres.

This literature review surveys writing about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and craft sector of remote Australia. The review has been compiled as a foundational text for the ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies’ research project being undertaken by the CRC for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP). The Art Economies Project (AEP) is a unique opportunity to investigate, analyse and enhance key points of exchange within the sector, many of which are poorly understood,
under-researched and characterised by different kinds of fragility or instability.
The sector is a significant contributor to the cultural and social life of Australia and simultaneously creates important enterprise and employment opportunities for remote-area Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Broadly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to be employed in visual arts
and crafts occupations as their main job (52%) than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (9.7%) (Commonwealth of Australia 2012), and investments in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts centres generate positive financial returns to artists, calculated at a ratio of approximately 1:5
(Commonwealth of Australia 2007a).
This review is linked to the primary zones in which AEP research will take place, presenting the current understanding and gaps in each of the six areas of interest: the scope and scale of the sector; the business of remote-area art centres; artists and art business outside of art centres; marketing and consumer dynamics; remote area human resources; and e-commerce and licensing.
Publications describing the aesthetic, social, cultural and economic dynamics of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art economy have been generated by a broad range of people, from economists to anthropologists, art historians to art dealers. This diversity creates challenges in assembling an encompassing literature review. Despite the range of material, however, it is also clear that there are sizeable and important gaps in knowledge about the art economy. These gaps range from understanding the size of, and financial flows within the sector through to the barriers for remote enterprise and the opportunities for (and obstacles within) new marketing and business models. In contrast to the knowledge
gaps about the commercial forces at work is a considerable body of research into the social and cultural worlds of remote area art and artists.
Recent years have seen a major contraction in the art economy. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports a 52.1% reduction in sales in remote art centres (Commonwealth of Australia 2012:2) since 2007, which accords with other anecdotal industry information as to the fragility within the sector. Understanding this
fragility and the potential for expanding the success of the art economy, lie at the nucleus of the AEP’s research work.

Introduction to special edition of Humanities Research, a coda to a symposium, a photography exhibition and a screening program—Cruising Country: Automobilities in non-urban Australia—held at the ANU Centre for Cross-Cultural Research in 2005
(26–28 May).
Since the early twentieth century, motor vehicles of all descriptions have been
central characters in the settlement, governance and representation of Australia.
They have been, and remain, objects of desire and exchange, characters in
subsistence, ceremonial and market economies, sites of projective identification
and spaces of distinctive social experience. Local and national spaces, time,
histories and identities are reshaped in and through our car cultures. Represented
in paintings, sculpture, films, literature, music, ceremony and other media,
vehicles and the roads they travel communicate closely with the aesthetic
spirits of modernity and its postmodern discontents. This issue of Humanities
Research sets out to explore some of the key conjunctures of Australian non-
urban automobility—intercultural exchange and communication, power and
social transformation—from the vantage points of history, cultural studies, art
history, anthropology, and visual art. The authors in this volume examine the
ways in which car cultures in non-urban Australia produce social relationships
between car owners, drivers, passengers, their families, and their observers
through the mediating forms and forces of moving vehicles, petrol, bitumen,
and the inevitable debris of car wreckages and ruins. In this respect, the analyses
collected here provide fresh insights into what anthropologist Daniel Miller has
called ‘the humanity of the car’.