As I write this on a bright Sunday morning, my body is reluctant to hold me through the need for these words. My body is terse and tender, but I persevere. These words are important, where they represent an insignia of visibility for many whose experiences are not captured with nuance, or simply not present at all. I experience this daily, when encountering mainstream news as well as trusted media platforms that depict women’s unpaid domestic labour throughout this pandemic as gaining new sightlines of acknowledgement from their ‘male’ partners. Everywhere here, I am not. If such lines of visibility—undeniably not nothing—reveal what this pandemic has afforded us in insight into womxn’s work, I’m drawn to incite the words of Wiradjuri poet Jazz Money[1]. In her poem / unprecedented times / 2020, Money reminds us that for many, nothing about this pandemic or its conditions as specific to a time that can be considered ‘now,’ is unprecedented.

and when the sacrosanct of elsewhere

exported their fears of anyone

not male not white not them

and sickness of the mind snatched the sacred vision of all bodies

/ the times were unprecedented /

As I write this on a bright Sunday morning, Guling season according to the Wurundjeri calendar, I recall encountering the words of Fayen d’Evie[2] writing from inside foraged moments between caring for her son at 5am, 1am, 7pm. Encountering d’Evie’s reflections on balancing the demands of artistic and maternal labour became a significant moment of recognition for me. Like d’Evie, I begin this writing with an understanding of what will be unmet expectations around the attentions afforded this text. This is a pragmatic fact, whilst also being deeply emblematic of the greater economy of womxn’s emotional labour – always, but particularly now, when resources are increasingly compromised. It is mid-August 2021, orchid and wattle season in Victoria, and we have just entered a phase of tighter Covid-19 restrictions during our sixth lockdown. The closing of childcare and other such measures are the latest attempt to pull us back from the precipice of rampant Delta spread. But such restrictions are not unprecedented for many who have lived for so long knowing the impacts of marginisation, fear and dispossessed agency.

and to all bodies

who have feared their government

the four walls of their house

or a world not designed for them

/ these times are unprecedented /

As I write this on a bright Sunday morning, my body is stressed and stretched, leaping ahead of me with adrenal chase. I feel like a “calendrical metronome,” to borrow the words from Lauren Berlant[3]. My body is a yo-yo effect of multiple needs causing the string to become shorter and more taut with each cyclical exposure to unending lockdown and its fallout: time. I acknowledge that this body is not threatened by acute violence, or by terminal illness like Berlant’s own seated reflections on early pandemic isolation were, whilst accepting that this body, it’s work, is a kind of omen of acute portent. I think of this body as a kind of Volkswirtschaft – what Hannah Arendt[4] describes as the “collective house-keeping” of a disintegrated private and public realm towards the organisation of the “nation,” where such disintegration has occurred at a vampiric level in relation to womxn’s work during lockdown.

This body under duress of Covid-19 is at the behest of a conveniently engineered form of state-sanctioned alibi in what this virus has enabled. Where Arendt[5] reminds us that “freedom is located in the realm of the social, and force or violence becomes the monopoly of government,” our bodies are asked to comply to the monopoly. We are asked to enact a range of border policies and anti-natural boundary defenses, to protect not only ourselves, but also the sanctity of the white-settler nation. We can acknowledge this whilst still being grateful for a public health response that has, for the most part, genuinely protected the welfare of its citizens.

Astrid Lorange[6] makes the point that borders are not just “a technology of sovereignty or a division of property” but also “a psychological and social technology that splits identity and relations.” In a recent conversation on 3CR, therapist and activist Jill Faulkner[7] articulates the function of systemic violence aimed at disrupting and disintegrating the collective needs of womxn and other marginalised bodies towards the leveling of imbalances of power. To this end, projects such as Katie Sfetkidis’s Present/Memory work to correct such imbalances by collecting womxn’s experiences. In this instance, the work is made more potent by the fact of these experiences being premised within the context of a near-decimated arts industry.

As I write this on a windy Sunday afternoon, I think of the ways that Present/Memory deals spatially with the layering and compounding of in/visibilities; how this project tussles with the dimensions of multiple forms of erasure and in this, voices a particular double-bind. The artwork and discourse that will be archived from this project and its eighteen months of research are fated to the invisible, unreachable realms of deep time underground. This fact is a powerful metaphor for the conditions of how subaltern and subterranean bodies have always been made to occupy space, time, and discourse above it. Sfetkidis’s project asks what it means to bury – relegate or exile, safekeep or store – what are largely invisible contours of the lived experiences of womxn, to a further site of invisibility. The burying of this content, comprising personal testimonials, hand-made face masks by artists Beka Hannah and Phebe Parisa and other pandemic-related paraphernalia, points to the profound impasse that we continue to confront: the double-bind of what Lorange[8] describes as the point of cleavage. “That word, cleave, is important because it implies both separation and joining: to cleave is to bring together in a broken relation, or to separate what is nevertheless indivisible. It’s a word that contains opposite meanings, but not by chance. For to force a space between something is to admit the force that is already at play.”

As I seek conclusion to this writing on a still Sunday afternoon, my body cites the mess of unmitigated paradox and contradiction, where the ongoing effects of this pandemic force us, our bodies, to be the cleavage between unending separation and joining; of simultaneous isolation and solidarity. For to wedge time and space between us and this moment, in the unearthing of this capsule decades from now (calculated as one week for every death resulting from Covid-19 in Australia), will surely ratify, if not alleviate, the collective weight of this moment.

References:

[1] Jazz Money, ‘/ unprecedented times / 2020,’ Rabbit Journal, issue 32 'Form,' 2021, pp. 80-81.

[2] Fayen d’Evie, ‘Mother-Hooded’, exhibition text for Noriko Nakamura: The force that the warrior adopts during the evolution of the pale pink rose, Caves Gallery, 2019.

[3] Lauren Berlant, ‘In the morning I yell,’ in Brad Evan’s ‘The Quarantine Files: Thinkers in Self-Isolation’, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020.

[4] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1958, p. 28.

[5] ibid, p. 31.

[6] Snack Syndicate (Andrew Brooks & Astrid Lorange), Homework, Discipline, Melbourne, 2021, p. 168.

[7] Radio A & A, episode 4 with Jill Faulkner, 3CR Community Radio, Monday 23 August, 2021 <https://www.3cr.org.au/satelliteskies/episode-202108232300/radio-and-episode-4>.

[8] Snack Syndicate, ibid, p. 167.

Abbra Kotlarczyk (born Mullumbimby, Arakwal Country, based Naarm/Melbourne) maintains a research-based practice in art making and writing of criticism, poetry and prose. She is an independent curator and academic editor for socially-engaged, practice-led artistic research. Her practice is hinged on visual, linguistic and increasingly sensorial modes of inquiry that take place trans-historically through expanded notions of care, labour, queerness, publication, citizenry and embodied poetics.

Daniel Santangeli: This is Smart Arts on RRR. And joining me in the studio is Katie Sfetkidis., visual artist who is presenting an exhibition called PRESENT/MEMORY at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre. Katie, welcome to SmartArts.

Katie Sfetkidis: Hello. Thanks for having me.

DS: So this exhibition at the Queen Victoria Women's Center, it's up at the moment and it's running until the 13th of March. And this this project started in your role as the QVWWC or the Queen Victoria Women's Centre's Feminist Emissary. Can you tell us what is a Feminist Emissary and how you got into the role?

KS: Oh, yeah. I started as the Feminist Emissary in the beginning of 2020, and the centre was looking to expand the understanding of what the centre means and sort of around this idea of a Women's Centre Without Walls. So the idea of the Emissary was someone who I guess could be in the world representing the centre or engaging with people through the Centre, but like outside of the building And, not long after I got that position, the pandemic hit and [that's] sort of where I came up with this idea to I guess speak to women across Victoria about their experiences of the pandemic and create an archive of experiences of what women and non-binary people had been going through.

DS: And so, I mean, would have been a bit of a surprise for you to commence in this role at the Queen Victoria Women's Center and then for the pandemic to hit. In talking to women and non-binary people to collect these stories for this exhibition, what did you discover about their experiences during the pandemic.

KS: I think for me, the things that I found most interesting was that, you know, were like people had such different experience but that everyone, even people who are going through the most difficult situation, was still able to try and find some point of reflection or some like kernel of positivity that had also come out of this period. And there was a real emphasis throughout a lot of the conversations on like this shared empathy, that we were suddenly, suddenly a part of, I guess, like social dialog or that, you know, community and a sort of understanding of community had become really important. And I think that was really interesting to me and a bit unexpected actually.

DS: And I guess also during this time, would also have been the time that, you know, Grace Time would have possibly been announced as Australian of the Year and the Brittany Higgins allegations would have probably been quite hot in the media at that time as well. And that, that resurgence of marches by women on Parliament. Did you find that that was resonating at all in the stories that you were collecting.

KS: A little bit. I mean, I feel like the stories like definitely because I've interviewed people over the course of two years of the pandemic. So the stories really track, I think, people's experiences of..yeah I guess like the different phases of like lockdown like and so I think more than being about sort of like big, broad political movements, people were really, I think, wanting to share like really intimate details about their own personal journey with the pandemic. Which of course, I think speaks to those bigger desires for change that, you know, people like Grace Time and Brittany Higgins are like bringing out. But actually, I yeah, I think what's in the archives that's quite interesting is that it's sort of deeply personal. And I guess, like going back to that feminist idea of like the personal is really political. And I sort of really minute stories in themselves resonate in a political way.

DS:And can you paint a bit of a picture for us of the exhibition itself? What can audiences expect when they when they step into the exhibition?

KS: Yes. So from the interviews that I've collected over the years, I have created a series of large scale banners. There's one banner for each person that I did an extended interview with or some people who I actually spoke to them over a period of a couple of times. And so there's 16 large scale banners. They're 2 meters tall by 1.5 meters wide. And each one sort of features a different participant and a different little quote from their interview. And yeah, I guess like some of them are talking to, you know, directly to understandings of the patriarchy or the pandemic and other sort of quotes are, you know, more about sort of you know, personal reflection. Yeah, I feel like there's sort of a mix of like hope and also like anger within those quotes. And I guess in the middle of the exhibition, there's also the Time Capsule, which is a steel ball that has been designed to look like a COVID molecule. And there's this big steel ball that's then been being covered by this sort of bright pink crochet beanie is what we're calling it, and that sort of sits right in the middle of the exhibition. So people can come and see that. And I think throughout the exhibition there'll be periods, like currently it's closed, but I think actually next week I'm going to open it. So there'll be points in the exhibition where you can come and actually see what's inside it as well.

DS: I mean, I'm just imagining unburying this in the future and how terrifying it will be for whoever discovers it. What's actually in this COVID cell shaped Time Capsule? What did you put in it and why?

KS: So I guess the focus is the collection of stories and so they actually and the artwork so they're in a book that we have created that you can actually purchase from the Women's Center shop and the book has got a collection of the testimony and also the artwork and a few other sort of written longer form written pieces sort of reflect on the first two years of the pandemic. And then there's also, I guess like other siller items, there is a roll of toilet paper, there's a bottle of hand sanitizer. As part of the project I commissioned two artists Phebe Parsia and Beka Hannah to make a series of masks that all the participants received. And so there's some of those masks in there. There's a RAT test in there. Now, there'll probably be like a sourdough recipe, other silly things like that.

DS :As long as there's not actual sour dough in there, you know?

KS: No, I was like, could we put sourdough in there?. And then I was like, Oh, God, it'll probably like take over the whole thing.

DS: Katie, how long are you burying this Time Capsule for? When is it going to unburied?

KS: So we think it'll be about 50 years. So the date has of changed a bit, but we're sort of trying to base it on like one week for every COVID death in Victoria. So it's still a bit in flux, but I guess we're getting closer to the burial date now. So it's looking like it will be sort of roughly around the 50 year.

DS:...a week for each Victorian who has died from COVID19, which is really when you start to do the math a week every Victorian over 50 years, is is actually quite a terrifying and startling number. And who will who will unbury the time capsule? Was there a ritual on the other end of this experience for and on burying it.

KS: Well I think we sort of just I mean figuring that out at the moment because I guess pre OMICRON I always thought that it would be me but now the numbers have sort of gone so high that like that's seeming less and less likely. But I know that the CEO of the Women's Jo Porter, her niece had promised to come back and find it. So I think we'll have to find some. And there are some younger participants in the capsule. So in that sense, so I'm hoping that, you know, maybe we can convince them to come back and pick it up.

DS: I hope I'm there for the unburying, let's say over 80 something. So we'll see and hopefully you'll be there for it as well. But tell us about the actual burying itself. So this Time Capsule will be buried, when will it be buried and can people come and be part of that ritual of burial, burying the time capsule?

KS:Yeah, so it's going to be buried on the 12th of March at 3 p.m. at the Women's Centre. And so people can come and there will be yeah, there'll be ritual performance. There's a new composition that's been written by Rachel Lewidont and that'll be performed by a small choir, and they're going to perform that work as the burial is happening. And that's been written especially for the ceremony. And yeah, I guess it will be, I kind of see it as a a sort of point for everyone to sort of reflect on what the last few years have been. And also, you know, I guess like come together to share that experience. I think it was really important to me that, that the burial happened with other people. And, you know, it's why we've sort of rescheduled it a few times. But it looks like this time it's going to be able to happen.

DS: And Katie, I mean, we've been talking about this this work that you've been that you've created for your exhibition,PESENT/MEMORY at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre. But I mean, you're an artist who you actually a bit of a shapeshifter, really, in the way that you work. You know, you're you're also a lighting designer. You've run for council. You you know, you're a visual artist. Is constantly pushing the work the way that you work. What is it about this this project? In what way are you pushing yourself and your practice with this project?

KS: Yeah, I mean, I think this is the first project that in a lot of ways, like, I tried to sort of de-centre myself. So a lot of the other performers work or projects that I've done, like, for example, like running for council. Like I was definitely like at the centre of the work and I think this is like this new project definitely came out of that experience and like really wanting to, you know, like how do I engage with the community or with people that like I don't have contact with in my day to day life and like how can I have sort of, you know, conversations with people about their experience and because I think that's what I kind of went into politics thinking that it would be about. And it definitely wasn't that. So I think for me, I was like, okay, well, like if I can't do that through, you know, running for council, like how can I do that maybe through these other projects? And so that's what I think a lot of the work has been about, like, you know, and it's just extremely difficult. but also like really rewarding. And I feel like I've met some incredible people who I'll stay in touch with and share this connection with maybe, you know, without the project, I would never have met with because they sit outside my, you know, very small, like, arts bubble.

DS: It's a really extraordinary exhibition. I can't wait to actually come and see the exhibition itself. I know we've spoken in the past about it and the the opportunity for audiences to come and reflect on the experience of COVID-19 through the exhibition itself, but also that maybe put a little bit of closure from burying the Time Capsule that you'll be burying on the 13th of March at the Queen Victoria Women's Center. Katie. Where can people find out more about this exhibition.

KS: So they can go to the website qvwc.org.au and they can find out information about the exhibition. And we're also inviting people to add their stories to the Time Capsule. So on the QVWC website there's a web form where you can add your story and those stories will be collected into empty hand sanitizer bottles. So you'll be able to leave your message to the future in a hand sanitizer bottle and they'll be going into the pit with the Time Capsule at the burial ceremony. And yeah, you can come to the exhibition. The exhibition is open Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. And at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre Building, which is 210 Lonsdale Street, and it's also opened on Saturday from 12 -5. And I will be in the space every Saturday. So if you want to come and see the exhibition and also have a chat about the work, I'll be there on Saturday.

DS: Katie Sfetkidis, thank you so much for joining us on SmartArts on RRR.

KS: Thank you. Thanks Dan.

Katie Sfetkidis is a multidisciplinary artist and lighting designer. Her work explores feminist and political histories and their impact on the contemporary lives of women, and she is interested in the role of the artist in public life. Her most notable public artworks include A Feminist Poster Project (2021); Dear Minister (2019) and The Mayor Project (2018). In 2020, Katie was appointed the Feminist Emissary for the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, where her work is currently on show in PRESENT / MEMORY, an exhibition of new artworks based on interviews with Victorian women and non-binary people. She has chosen to discuss Donna Gottschalk Holds Poster at Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day Parade, New York 1970 by Diana Davies.

Tell me about this work.
This photograph is of a young woman at a queer rights protest in New York. I’ve had it pinned up in my studio for about five or six years now. It’s travelled with me through all the different studios I’ve had in that time; I always pin it up wherever I’m working. I came across it while reading an interview by Sharon Hayes, an American artist who reperforms protest movements, and I’d always thought that it was Hayes in the photograph re-enacting a protest scene. But it’s a photograph of Donna Gottschalk. Hayes became fascinated by the original image and has used the text of the sign as the title of one of her works from 2008.

There are many layers of authorship here: Diana Davies as the photographer, Donna Gottschalk as the subject/author of the sign, and then Sharon Hayes’s use of the sign in her work, which is your point of contact with it?

Recently I realised not only is it not Hayes in the photo, but that the woman in the photograph is also an artist in her own right, a lesbian photographer who documented gay rights movements and queer culture in America in the ’60s and ’70s. I’ve been thinking about all these layers of that image alongside my own changing relationship to it over time. There’s a woman in the background looking at her in complete shock, like, “What are you doing?!” There’s something about that look which also played into my assumption that it was a performance, like an audience reaction. It reminded me of the responses I’ve had to my own work.

Do you take protest photography yourself?
No, but I collect protest photographs, and it’s an artform I’ve always been sort of drawn to. I attend rallies and I live in the CBD, so it feels like a big part of everyday life and I’m interested in the communal aspect of it. But then, in my own work, I always just want to be on my own. Sharon Hayes’s work has interested and influenced me because she’s engaging with protest movement histories but she also performs her work as a solo actor. That speaks so much to my own activism and my artistic work. I think a lot about protesting and what it means now. I think it’s really changed. Protest photographs feel so ubiquitous; everyone’s taking a photo and putting it online. Maybe that is a bit of nostalgia in me for these other moments in time – they seem very precious because they exist in a different context, outside of social media.

How does that older protest aesthetic in photography influence your practice?
Sharon Hayes talks about her work being somewhere between a performance and an action, and I really relate to that. I don’t think so much about the aesthetics of it, even though I love the ways the text and placards can be used to disrupt or send a message. It’s also playful and joyful, there’s a little wink and nod to something else which I try to emulate. The balance between trying to be sincere about something, and political, but also being playful, that’s important I think my work used to be very camp, I used to perform as a series of weird characters in my work, and I think that’s something that’s slowly been stripped away. I realised I didn’t need that character anymore, I can just, like, be myself. When I did The Mayor Project, it was supposed to be funny, but I also did it with the utmost sincerity. I never made fun of anyone, I was presenting myself as being here, as being serious about what I’m doing, but there was also something inherently funny about it because I was never going to win. People were always so surprised that I could speak coherently in public but that’s what artists do all the time, we talk about ourselves.

Let’s talk more about Sharon Hayes. When you look at her works, you come to be unsure of what you’re witnessing, whether it’s real or not.
Sharon influences me from a conceptual standpoint. She talks about being unwilling to concede the space of politics to politicians and reporters and her belief that artists have a role to play. That ethos resonates for me. I don’t want my work to just exist in the realm of the art world, I want to exist as an artist in the world of politics and institutions and in the street. I love that questioning of those boundaries of what art and activism are and how they sit in relation to one another in her work. Like Hayes, I’ve also explored performative activist work before. I did a project where I ran for mayor a few years ago. The campaign went for six weeks. During that time, I never told anyone that it was an artwork. I just said, I’m here as an artist and as a genuine candidate, because I didn’t want people to suddenly think that it was a joke. I thought that if I’d said it was an artwork then everybody’s just going to think that I was taking the piss. The language you use can really change the meaning. Sharon Hayes talks about her work as not a performance but an action. Similarly, that mayor campaign I ran was an action, but it’s also an artwork. Hayes has spoken about other public works she did where she was performing using some protest placards. She said she never told anyone she was an artist during those performances. She would always talk around being an artist instead. I did a few performances for A Feminist Poster Project where I played with that boundary too. I made feminist posters which I had attached to backpacks and corkboards, and a group of us walked around the city with them on. It really provokes people to stop and ask questions. When people see you and they read the text, it’s sort of within the realm of their understanding. Once they have had a second take, they’re like, hang on a minute, this doesn’t quite fit with what we expect to see, and it’s challenging to explain it to them without saying it’s performance. Language in particular really shapes how people then perceive a work. I think I’ll continue looking at this image, and my relationship with it will keep evolving over time as I continue sitting with it.