In this episode, artist and researcher Dr. Kirsten Hudson explores the deep connections between art, indigenous knowledge, and ocean and land stewardship. She shares her journey from embodied practice to engaging with sea country, emphasising the importance of listening, responsibility, and purpose in environmental and cultural understanding.

Key Topics

Land acknowledgment and its context

Kirsten Hudson's artistic journey and interdisciplinary work

The concept of sea country and its cultural significance in Australia

The role of art in bridging indigenous and scientific knowledge

Environmental practices and sustainable art materials

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Land Acknowledgment and Cultural Context

00:57 Kirsten Hudson's Artistic and Academic Background

02:45 Journey into Ocean and Land Connection through Art

07:06 Decolonizing Knowledge and Indigenous Pedagogies

09:59 Embodied Practice and Listening to Country

14:50 Personal Connection to River and Ocean

19:59 Understanding Sea Country and Acknowledgment in Australia

26:53 Ode to Sea Country: Artworks and Exhibition Experience

33:42 Creative Processes: Making Films and Materials from the Sea

39:53 Responsibility, Purpose, and Deep Listening in Practice

41:50 Future Projects: Desert Residency and Community Engagement

Resources & Guest Links

Kirsten Hudson's Ode to Sea Country Exhibition - https://example.com/ode-to-sea-country

Symbiotica Art-Science Laboratory - https://symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/

Website - https://kirstenhudson.com

Twitter - https://twitter.com/kirstenhudson

Sponsor | ⁠The Australian French Association for Innovation and Research⁠⁠

https://www.afran.org.au/

TikTok | ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@ArtStrategyImpact

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/artstrategyimpact/

LinkedIn | ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-coldrey/

Keywords

art, indigenous knowledge, ocean governance, land acknowledgment, sea country, environmental stewardship, transdisciplinary research, cultural connection, sustainability, Australia

Transcript

Jess Coldrey (00:00)

Today I'm recording this episode on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Throughout Australia, many events, concerts, meetings and celebrations begin with an acknowledgement of country. But for people abroad, what does that mean?

This embedded form or signal of respect became a formal protocol in the early 2000s. It usually begins with mentioning the traditional place name and showing the name of local traditional owner groups, acknowledging the past, present, and future connection held to country. Country in this context with a capital C refers to more than a place - but the lands, water, sky, seasons, plants, animals, stories, ancestors and identity connected to place as a living and relational space shaped holistically by ancestral memory.

Today we meet with a West Australian artist, Dr. Kirsten Hudson, using art to go a step beyond acknowledging country and rather create a form of embedded listening and collaboration with both traditional owners and country itself, What role does art play in bridging this gap and how do we acknowledge connections to the ocean specifically? I'm Jess Coldrey and you're listening to episode five of Art Strategy Impact - the podcast Bridging Disciplines to reimagine how we live, build and belong in harmony with nature. This mini series on ocean governance is generously supported by the Australian French Association for Innovation and Research.

Dr. Kirsten Hudson is a transdisciplinary artist scholar based in Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja

The Noongar people have cared for a vast corner of Australia for thousands of years, stretching across the southwest corner of the continent and interfacing with both the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean. Kirsten creates films, performances and sculptural artworks that explore the boundaries of what is and isn't human. With a PhD in fine art and as a lecturer at Curtin University, she often collaborates across disciplines from Western scientists to Indigenous knowledge holders.

to inspire new ways of understanding the world. In this episode, we dive into Kirsten's recent ocean art project to take a step beyond the known and into the felt knowledge of and wisdom originating from the sea. So Kirsten, you have such a fascinating background and perspective on the world. I know you're both a researcher, a lecturer and an artist and your work really does span across a lot of different disciplines.

To start, I'd love to know how did your career journey lead you to start focusing on the ocean through your artistic practice?

Kirsten Hudson (02:49)

Hi Jess, thanks for having me. It's a really good question. I was actually only really thinking about it not that long ago around this kind of interesting pathway of practice. think I've always been really interested in lived experience and embodied knowledge. So that's kind of, I've kind of held that practice as an artist for ⁓ decades.

And so it's, I guess, you know, when you're interested in embodied practice, sometimes the easiest place to start is your own. So for my own practice, was kind of for quite a long time, I was a single mother, I was a teenage mother. So was really interested in this embodied lived experience of motherhood and that kind of grappling of bodies with each other in place. So I think with motherhood, you're so,

aware of, particularly if you're interested in ideas of maternity, it's more than one body and it's more than one body that you are responsible and accountable to and for, I think. So I kind of, that was my practice in my late teens and into my twenties. And then I was really lucky in the early 2000s to start working with these amazing art science

researchers at Symbiotica, which was the first art science laboratory in the world. And they were based out of the University of Western Australia. And I was really lucky to be invited into their life, been invited into their world and start to really listen to this more than human, other than human ways of thinking about our world. So I started being introduced to people like

Donna Haraway and Karen Baraj and Rosie Braedotti, who I'd already come across through this kind of through this feminist lens. So I started putting a couple of pieces together. I was like, hold on a minute. Like, I've come across these people before and that's that's why they're so fascinating because they're starting to talk about this this world in its richness and its vibrational capacity and its

this otherness that made sense to me. So that was kind of like the early 2000s and started really getting excited about the possibilities between art and science, but also the fact that there's, it's not really a difference. Like there is differences, but only when we enforce difference. So I started to really think about this productive conversation that happens in this.

cross-disciplinary role. So when you recognize the, I guess, the possibilities across disciplines, you start to get excited. So you start to move across disciplines. That's for me when I started to be really aware of moving across disciplines, which is why I would call myself a transdisciplinary researcher because I, I move between and across. So anyway, long story, but what happened was through kind of working with these

incredible people and being introduced to these incredible researchers and artists from all over the world. There was a point where I started thinking, hold on a minute, this is not new knowledge, this is ancient knowledge and it came through ⁓ a woman called, or I read a book by a woman called Linda, I think it's Taki Wahee Smith.

And she started talking about decolonizing research, right? So I was kind of came into that as a transdisciplinary scholar, as a feminist transdisciplinary scholar who was working with materials and practices that didn't fit within high art. So I was actually interested in it through that lens because I'd been introduced to ideas around third space and Edward Said and Homi Baba. I had been kind of interested in.

all these kind of interesting people but hadn't really, really put two and two together and went, hold on a minute, what I'm dealing with here is ancient indigenous knowledge systems. I'm really interested in Aboriginal pedagogies and I need to call it for what it is. This is the things I've kind of come in to have been through mostly white Western women.

who have been really interestingly grappling with these ideas, but fundamentally these aren't new ideas. These are old ideas being, for lack of a better word, repackaged with a Western language to maybe become more palatable or maybe, maybe to be really clear that we need to start honoring these incredible knowledges that are being currently dismissed.

So long story short, was kind of, I kind of got into that space in the 20, back 2010 and I started changing my practice and I started moving from more traditional experimental filmmaking into camera-less practices. So I was interested in camera-less photography and camera-less practices, which meant that I was fundamentally working with phenomena. So I was working with,

environments and systems and that weren't controllable. So for a range of different reasons, things were happening in my family. It was much harder for me to negotiate my world. And I was doing things like throwing film into my backyard or and burying it or I was sitting inside ⁓ breast milk and burying it with a placenta. You know, I had all this really interesting, interesting, I know these ⁓

⁓ traumatic events occur and I was trying to work out ways of allowing materials and natural phenomena to help me speak of embodied experience. So it was very at that point quite extractive, right? Because I was trying to use ⁓ environments and use natural materials and methods to tell my story, my story of loss, my story of grief. ⁓ So at that point, I recognized the power

but I was ⁓ co-opting it for myself to still tell a human story. But what happened was that I started getting, ⁓ I started listening, I started watching. ⁓ I started to realize there was a lot more to say than what I was controlling. And in fact, what was slipping outside the edges

Jess Coldrey (09:33)

Wow.

No.

Kirsten Hudson (09:53)

of the story I was kind of control or extract for myself was actually very, ⁓ not only interesting, but exciting and telling me more about my world and my life than I had realized. So I started taking some of the reins off in terms of what I was trying to say. And I then started to think about

what it might be to set up situations where I could allow for the world, ⁓ for the country around me and the critters that inhabited my world to have a voice. So that was my starting point into realizing that this controly little human ⁓ was missing out on a lot.

by not allowing space and time for the other, the more than human to speak.

Jess Coldrey (10:57)

What a ⁓ fascinating evolution of your practice. And yeah, it sounds like you've really kind of moved from that space of engaging with country as a sort of means for processing and self-expression into being really interested in creative practice of a way of understanding and engaging with different forms of knowledge, including the knowledge of country itself. Does that fit how you feel?

Kirsten Hudson (11:21)

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, look, I guess I got really excited at that point too. I'm a learner by heart. I'm a lifelong learner. I still am in awe of the power of education and learning. So I'm still fundamentally ⁓ so excited when something reveals itself and there's this aha,

moment. I find that incredibly joyful, incredibly joyful. And so all of a sudden, ⁓ things that had been said to me or I had read and I had understood ⁓ conceptually, like being this idea of listening to country and the idea of learning from country, all of a sudden, what I was discovering

was that there were this revelation of knowledge, this sharing of knowledge with me from my environment. I'm simply because I took the time to watch and listen and that I could not get that or learn that through any other means. And I think that was the mind blowing bit. I'm a researcher.

I know how to research and I think I had always believed that if you really want to learn something, all you have to do is look. And to an extent, there's a truth to that. You can Google, you can read books, you can talk to people. But there was something that I realized through this process,

really it was through a cameraless ⁓ filmmaking process was that you can't rush this knowledge, you can't force this knowledge, it is a gift and it will only reveal itself ⁓ through a process, you can't skip a process, you kind of have to develop the patience ⁓ of waiting and sometimes

it's not going to be given up to you because you're not ready. You can't see it. You'll miss it. And there was something so humbling about realizing I might want something. ⁓ You know, this lovely, you know, know, white privileged lady that I am. might want to find out something, but the only way I can learn it is through sitting in place throughout a whole season, throughout a whole year. ⁓

and I have to be absolutely watching and if I'm not, miss it. And that's no one's problem but my own, right? So, and I can't get that back except wait a whole nother year, right? So I don't know, there was something so exciting about another way of learning, but the humbleness of allowing to be taught, to allowing oneself

the place and the space of being open to listen in order that one can learn. So there was something, I'm still grappling with that, but I think I'm excited. I'm really excited by that because I think that's open to anyone.

Jess Coldrey (15:05)

Wow, amazing. And it sounds like your creative work is just such a pivotal way of like engaging with those knowledge systems and giving you that space and intent around listening that's grown into a much bigger thing for you, which is, just fascinating. And I know you live and work by the Indian ocean. It's a region with a very rich coastal environment. And I'd love to hear a little bit about what the ocean means to you personally.

Kirsten Hudson (15:31)

Yeah, that's it. Thanks, Jess. Look, I've never lived further than two kilometers from the Derbal Yerrigan Swan River. ⁓ I grew up in a very working class family ⁓ and the river was just it was absolutely embedded into our world. ⁓ So we were always by the river. My dad

builds boats, his panel beater, helps on the daughter of a sailor. ⁓ The only way we ever got boats was if my dad built them for us or, you know, Renaulted ones that people were throwing out or had lying, you know, on like to go to the tip. So we kind of got this privilege of this sport that would never have been open to us because of my dad's hard work and my dad's ⁓

like natural ability to make things and to fix things, but also the privilege of living so close to the river, right? So I spent way more of my time by the river. The river for me is deep family. It's the place I return to time and time again. I feel more at home by the river than I do with people.

the river as kin, as family. When I was younger, I felt that, but I didn't have the language for it. So for me, the river is deep, like deep family, like a sister. ⁓

And so for me, I feel like I stumbled into the ocean through that kind of lens, right? So you follow the river, you follow the Devil Yarrow again, and it takes you out to the ocean. So for me, the ocean was a place that was a privilege, but it was also a bit of a distance.

a lot more kind of special as well in many ways. It kind of has a different sense of class attached to it. So for me, the river is like my humble working class home. And then the ocean is like my rich distant cousin who's really fun to play with. But you know, that bit of a distance, so there was a connection, but there was a bit of ⁓ awe and a bit of hesitancy as well. So

Jess Coldrey (17:48)

Hahaha

Kirsten Hudson (18:00)

The ocean was just so fascinating for me because it didn't have the same familiarity, but it was so ⁓ sought after. ⁓ It was something we had to travel to. was a special event to go and spend time at the ocean. And when you went to the ocean, it was just the ocean. There was the, you know, there was the sand and then there's this incredible kind of vista. When you go to the river, there's

There's trees and there's cliffs and there's jetties and there's ⁓ a different kind of awareness of an ecosystem. So for me, the ocean and the river have this really fascinating, I feel in the middle of them. ⁓ I feel really cared for ⁓ by both of them. But the ocean was something that was a little bit more distant, a little bit more ephemeral, and a little bit more scary because of that.

Jess Coldrey (18:56)

I see. And in your work, you've also explored the concept of sea country. So listeners from overseas, could you tell us a little bit about what sea country means for you and more broadly, that concept of acknowledging country in Australia?

Kirsten Hudson (19:13)

Yeah, okay. So what I was doing with my film practice is I started off doing things from home. And so I was really aware wherever I stand, I'm always already on country. So even though this is, I mean, a Western sense, my house, ⁓ the land I get to live on is Wojak Noongapooja. And I've always lived on Wojak Noongapooja. So I was really aware of this.

this giftedness of being living on this place that was, I got to live on but was not mine, but there was a responsibility there. And then I moved on to doing another work that I was working with the river that was called Lalabai. And that was an acknowledgement of river country. And I was kind of, again, trying to work out ways of capturing the heartfeltness of the river.

And then I started working in the ocean as part of a residency that I was doing with the CSIRO and a whole lot of marine Indian Ocean Marine researchers. Some of them were interested in ⁓ modeling, climate change modeling. Some were interested in EDNA to do with seagrass and a whole lot of other kinds of ⁓

animal research around the health of the oceans. And there was another researcher who was interested in the human emotional connection to the ocean and starting to think about what it was that we need to see to connect with the non-human. ⁓ And so I know this is a roundabout way of talking about this, but for me,

This idea of acknowledgement of country, particularly at this moment in Australia, is really interesting. So although it's become more and more prevalent ⁓ within Australia to recognise the traditional owners and custodians of the place where you are standing, where you are presenting, where you're making work, it's also become more and more fraught. ⁓

because there's more and more discussions in this country, I think, about who belongs and who doesn't, who gets to live and who gets to live well and who maybe doesn't. ⁓ And so this idea of an acknowledgement that I think is an absolute gift and welcomed country, when you are welcomed to country by First Nations custodians of that country, it is

Such a gift, you learn through that too, because a welcome to country tells you about that place. It introduces you to that place. It shares with you ⁓ the beauty and the dangers of that place so you can negotiate that place healthily and safely and well. So for me, this idea of an acknowledgement of country

is not something that's tokenistic. It's not something that is just a, you know, I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I stand. ⁓ That's important. However,

have been taught by traditional owners and custodians and knowledge holders close to me that my job is not to repeat things. Anyone can do that. And that is actually not what an acknowledgement of countries. That's actually not a true acknowledgement. An acknowledgement is a deep personal awareness of the place in where you sit, place in where you stand, and why that might matter.

and why that is important to highlight the uniqueness of that place right now. All the things that led up to being able to be in that place right now and the importance of care so that that place is still available for others to enjoy seven generations on. So.

for me what I started to do was think about the responsibility I had as a wadjela as a privileged white lady to make work that was working with country, working with natural phenomena and natural phenomena is country, not just materials and not just things physical but

⁓ storms and wind and tides and currents and ⁓ the shifting seasons, this is all country, what does it mean to deeply be aware of how my health, safety and well-being are fundamentally caught up in that? And what does it mean to me personally think about why that matters? So I guess I started to think about the politics of acknowledgments of country, why they

are really important, but why it might be important to start to think about new ways of doing that so that they're not tokenistic reciting, but deep ⁓ dialogue ⁓ of place and of the histories that allowed us to be in that place. So I guess for me in this work, is ⁓ Ode, An Acknowledgement of Sea Country, which is the artwork that I did that came out of

the three month commission and residency I did with the CSIRO, I was grappling with my relationship to that place, to the place that was one kilometer stretch of beach along the Indian Ocean. They sometimes beach and sometimes underwater. So what is what what we see country and when there's country and then when

Jess Coldrey (24:58)

you

Kirsten Hudson (25:23)

Where does where does does sea country meets sky country and where does sea country meet river country? These these moments of meeting and my place of meeting on it. And what does it mean to try to for me capture the joy and the privilege of being allowed to be on this place? So I was I was grappling with new ways of doing acknowledgments in ways that felt meaningful and in a language that may ⁓

as a cinematic language, a visual language ⁓ that may allow for another kind of connection that sometimes words doesn't allow us to do.

Jess Coldrey (26:01)

Brilliant. And in your exhibition, Ode and Acknowledgement to Sea Country, I know the project involves creating new artworks, you're exploring cultural connections to the ocean and also those scientific elements that you mentioned. So for those people who haven't seen the exhibition, can you describe what did it look like and what did it feel like to stand in there?

Kirsten Hudson (26:22)

So, ⁓ over the three months that I engaged in the residency, ⁓ every week, sometimes more than once a week, I would go to this one stretch ⁓ of beach. We would call it Isolators. It's a surf beach. It's where I used to go with my children all the time. So I was familiar enough with that beach and it had a lot of amazing memories for me.

But I'd spent such a long time looking out, watching kids. ⁓ So this was quite a different walking practice. So it was this walking up and back. And over the course of the three months, I collected seaweed. So I collected seaweed and I did that for a couple of reasons. There are cultural ⁓ protocols around collecting other things.

My understanding from traditional owners and from knowledge holders, should not be collecting shells. ⁓ They come with their own cultural knowledge and to remove a shell from the beach can have impact on that ecosystem. However, I was told that I could sustainably forage and collect

seaweed that had been washed out of the sea, spat out of the sea and dumped onto the shore as it wasn't at that point ⁓ growing in a way that was ⁓ contributing to a living ecosystem in an overt way. It is, of course it is, it's you know this is you know the evolution and the way

nothing's ever dead and nothing's ever alive. It's kind of always part of a process. But I was collecting seaweed and I was like blown away by, my God, so much seaweed, so much kinds of seaweed, so many different colors of seaweed, so many different. I was just shocked, like my husband thinks I'm crazy. So I kept them like I was collecting all this seaweed and being just so fascinated by the colors and the shapes.

⁓ And I was collecting water. ⁓ So I would collect water, sea water, and I would collect seaweed. And what I did from that is every week I would come home and I would press the seaweed. ⁓ So some of the seaweed was pressed and then some of the seaweed was turned into a bio plastic. So I was creating a celluloid out of the macro algae that is seaweed and turning it into a more sustainable ⁓ celluloid.

for filmmaking. So part of it was the scientific research around, I wonder what that would look like. Can I make my own emulsions? What does it mean to start thinking about a more sustainable and healthy photographic and filmmaking practice because it's part of a petrochemical world? And what does it mean to start engaging in post petrochemical futures? And what does it mean as an artist to be interested in engaging with not just that as a concept, but that with an

So I would walk this beach, I would collect seaweed, would collect seawater, and I would watch the changes that were mind-blowing week after week after week. It was like walking a new place week after week after week. this ⁓ practice, this filmmaking practice, emerged over three months and basically I ⁓ built a film

over the course of three months. And as I was building this film through making my own celluloid and making my own colored emulsions that were photosensitive because seaweed is photosensitive by its very nature. So I was playing around with what's called a camera process called an anthotype. So I was adapting these historical

proto-photographic practices using seaweed, both in its image making, but also in its ⁓ celluloidal ⁓ creation. So I was kind of testing things and building this film, which basically turned out to be like an animation. So I would get this, ⁓ I hacked or made myself ⁓ a DIY optical printer, which allowed me to zoom really closely in.

Because that's the nature of film. ⁓ It focuses and enlarges at scale. You know, something that's, you know, 16 millimeter, 8 millimeter, 35 millimeter, right? That's just the nature of light and projection. So I was playing around with this and what I realized was when it came to start thinking about, how am going to show this as an exhibition? What I realized was that had this practice, this embodied

material practice of filmmaking for a very long time, but most of the time all that people saw was the final digitized version of the film. And I was interested this time in having more of a immersive, deconstructed experience of the filmmaking process, because through the filmmaking process, I believed an audience could have insight into

my process and hopefully my ⁓ extreme fascination, care and love of the place that I was walking. So I was trying to work out new ways of inviting people in to the world that I was living in that allowed me to produce a film. So in the end, I basically broke down or I allowed for all these components that made up my film.

to be visible, usually hidden, ⁓ or put to the side because that's, you know, post to, know, prior to the work. So there was long strips of the celluloid as I was experimenting with how do I create macro algae celluloid? ⁓ How do I do that? And how do I do that with ⁓ emulsion? So then there was all my tests of all the seaweed. ⁓

photosensitive emulsions. How do I put that in the sun? How do I create images? How does the light change that? So there was a whole lot of works on the wall that were my tests for photoreactivity, on photosensitivity and a color palette that starts to play with what happens when you change the alkalinity, what happens with the pH changes, because this is what's happening to the ocean. What happens when something is contaminated?

How do we see that? How did the film capture it? But how do we become present with that contamination? So there was press seedweed. was all these visual tests. But through those tests, you got maybe a fragment of a conversation of the experience that I was having week by week by week with the ocean. So I would say what in the end, it was an immersive deconstructed film that looks like an installation.

with the film also running and sound because the other thing I did was I have a bio sonification device that I could connect to seaweed and then I could reroute that into a synthesizer and the bio electric ⁓ electrical signals of the alive seaweed can play the synth. So you have this sound that the seaweed

Jess Coldrey (33:51)

Wow.

Kirsten Hudson (34:19)

created because of its biorhythms. And when you put that into your synthesizer, it ⁓ will play it. So you had sound, you had moving image, you had a whole lot of material play.

Jess Coldrey (34:37)

Wow, it sounds like something that probably would have inspired a lot of people to sort of attune to that broader sense of listening in everyday life and kind of imagining those little signals happening in the seaweed. suppose that, I mean, that style of listening of not just plugging something in and the synthesizer and all that, but like watching, observing, collaborating and knowing ⁓ the same place in a deep way, I think.

Maybe in the COVID lockdown, lot of people were, you know, obviously in their 5Ks and maybe doing the same walk down the same street every day, seeing the same things. And I think when you spend so much time in your local place, you get to know it on another level, seeing week by week, the different flowers that blossom or what birds come along and who likes what, or maybe what insects like this plant when it does this and...

you kind of learn to listen and kind of feel, you know, is a local ecosystem happy as it's stressed and you kind of over time can develop that attunement to the local environment. But it's not something that we naturally or perhaps intentionally choose to acknowledge in a personal sense

Kirsten Hudson (35:48)

Yes.

yeah, I think so. And I think that

for me, the joy of this is, I'm using this language that's very Western, right? Because I'm still trying to work out ways of capturing this, but it's so simple, yet it is so rich and so joyful. And I think that

that sense of being alive and sense of not being alone and sense of belonging and a sense of being needed. You know, I've had interesting conversations over a while with people who use the word resilience and they use the word resilience often in a way, it's meant to be a strength-based language, but often it's not, right? So people talk about the importance of

building resilience. So when you're talking about that, the assumption is it's not already there and it's often used ⁓ towards communities that have been seen as needing something else. My frustration around this word is that some of the most marginalized communities and the most marginalized peoples have the most solid resilience in the world. ⁓

because they're there, ⁓ they're surviving and they are dealing with systems that are constantly working against them. And that can be in human space or in a non-human space, but the resilience is real. Issues not resilience, right? And depending sometimes there is a need for ⁓

support, but the support is often access and opportunity and sometimes purpose. So for me, if I go back to this world purpose, for me, when I'm walking along now, not just the ocean, but anywhere I go, that deep sense of responsibility is not a burden. That deep sense of responsibility is one that I am needed. I, I as a human,

have something that is deeply needed to offer this world, the human and the non-human world. And actually this idea of caring, being a steward of the world we live in is so vital. And so for me, I think that practice for those three months has expanded my understanding of what is responsibility, but also the importance of ⁓

that sense of deep purpose, bringing a real sense of belonging and joy to one's life. And I think part of what I was really interested in in that particular exhibition, but also now going forward is what does it mean to live in a world and practice in a world? Whatever that means, what does it mean to practice in a world, practice deep listening, practice the care?

practice the bringing something into being that reflects all of those things in a way that can also allow space and time for other people to share that because I think the world is better when we all feel that because then we're not competing, we're caring together, we're sharing together and we have shared purpose and I think that is sometimes what's missing is that we often compete.

We're either competing for resources or we're competing for space or time. But actually, once you find shared purpose with people, even if you have such opposing perspectives, something shifts. So I think for me, this idea of my understanding of purpose came out of all these other things. And I don't know, I'm just kind of, I'm still thinking about that out loud, but that idea of how this idea of purpose comes out of

deep listening to country and being taught that in a way that I could never have learned from a human perspective. ⁓ So I don't know, there's something really in there that I find deeply rewarding and very grateful for.

Jess Coldrey (40:36)

Wow, that's some beautiful reflections there. Thank you so much for sharing that. And to close out our discussion for the day, I'd love to hear what's next on the horizon for your work. Any new projects you're starting at the moment?

Kirsten Hudson (40:49)

Yeah, I'm heading to the desert. So I have a three month residency that I'm going to stay in the middle of the goldfields in Western Australia. a place that the Western language is Kalgoorlie. ⁓ The First Nations language of that place is called Kalvkirla. And I'm going there for three months and I'm being hosted.

by the Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison. And I'm doing a science meets art, cameraless photography and filmmaking workshops in the prison for three months and also in community to learn with people, but to learn from the desert, to learn from desert country. Yeah. So I'm very excited. Yeah. So from the ocean to the desert. Yeah.

Jess Coldrey (41:39)

Wow, I can't wait to say that.

I love that. love how you're making space to get to know all different types of country and what they mean and what they're saying as kind of different people or different entities. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast and sharing about your work. I think it's going to give a lot of people an insight into both Australia's culture, but also different ways of looking at and understanding.

both the ocean and nature more broadly. So thank you so much for sharing about your practice.

Kirsten Hudson (42:17)

Thank you, Jess. Thanks for having me.