Living oN Water Stage Two

 

What are we doing:
We are at Stage Two of a multi-year project about/around/with people who choose to live aboard boats in Auckland, with a focus on the Waitematā Harbour. Part sociological and ecological investigation and part creative and aesthetic exploration through the project we will consider the social, environmental, physical, political and emotional aspects of choosing to live part or all of your life on the water. We are both concerned with the specificity of living on the water and how this enables us to reflect on the wider world. 

This project will happen in a number of stages, of which this the second one – the development and collection of material phase – film, sound, stories and other strange things that might wash up on the shore. Where we work with you to tell stories of living on water through interviews, distributed sound recordings, mapping of the harbour and filming. To find out about stage one scroll down to the bottom.

We are taking a transmedia approach to the project. This includes a focus on non-linear story telling and presentation across multiple platforms and mediums which means there are multiple pathways through a subject for an audience

From our investigations during Stage One the following lines of focus emerged:

Deliberate living decisions – Why people choose to live on a boat and what that means for them practically and politically
Moving around on water – the boating aspects of living on a boat
The ecology of the marine environment – the wider environment within which living on a boat happens.

While each of these crossed over with each other they did not, in obvious ways, all intersect at the same time. This is the advantage of a multi work transmedia approach, a collection of works and approaches will weave together to connect these lines of thinking.

Over the next 12 months we will be focusing on the following projects:

1. a distributed field recording endeavour

We will be inviting boat dwellers to participate in recording the sonic environment around the places they both live a pass through and share those back to us. To make this possible we are creating kits with 3 types of mics, contact, hydrophone and omni-directional to send out.  From these recordings we will create our  ambient soundscapes and also create a repository for participants to create their own from the collectively created audio material. 

2. an on water continuously-filmed non-linear-narrative, possibly multi-screen film 

Think the Russian Arc by drone.  https://youtu.be/ZV1kphEEXn8 We think it would be amazing to collect a dispersed flotilla of boats and film it in a series of continuous shots by drone. Together with you we want to develop a series of vignettes to communicate aspects of living aboard – from the great to the disastrous and on one glorious day go  out on the water and film it.  

3. sharing the stories

To paraphrase a boat dweller we spoke with – once I started sailing a boat, suddenly I had great stories to tell at parties. As part of both the film development, and also through separate structured interviews as well as group story telling and sharing sessions we want to develop a collection of true, real, tall stories by you and reshare them with the world through written and oral forms – maybe even put the most dramatic or funny ones on a radio show on the ham radio network.  

These are just 3 of about 25 ideas that we explored and we still love lots of those other ideas so things may shift or grow

Timeline:

In the first quarter of 2021 we are going to focus on 1 and 3, with a little bit of 2. We think the greatest potential for 2 will emerge out of the relationships and stories we build together through 1 and 3 and that, given it will be a complicated day out we should put a lot of planning into it. But, we’re also down with improv testing of concepts along the way if you are out with your friends and a drone 😛  

Our commitments to you for Stage Two:

At all times we will do our utmost to create a safe environment for you, socially and physically. We can’t control the weather, but we can fiercely moderate discussions and make good decisions about safety.
We will respect that you will have different capacities to participate at different times and not ask more from you than you can give. 
If you no longer want to be involved in the project we will respect your choice and remove your material from the project.  We will let you know before the end of the project when the final date to withdraw is.
Anything you tell us will be treated as confidential* unless you give us permission to use it.
When we are filming or recording we will always tell you in advance. If these are group sessions we will give you the option of having your contributions excluded from the public facing part of the project or anonymised.
Where we are working with your stories we will consult with you about how they are presented.
With your permission, we will acknowledge your contribution to the project.
We will keep you up to date with the project over its development, unless you opt out of updates.

* The exception to this is if breaking confidentiality is a serious threat or injury to one or more persons. We won’t do this lightly and our disclosure will be to the most appropriate person who can do something about the threat or injury

Who are we: 
Melissa Laing is an artist based in West Auckland. In 2013 she built a row boat from a book and has been hanging out on the water in it since then. She’s also a researcher, curator and producer working in community arts and urbanism. You can find out about her here: melissalaing.com

Robin Paulson lives on a boat. He trained as an engineer before realising that humans are more interesting than pieces of steel and timber, prompting a complete re-evaluation of his life and taking the decision to study sociology. He has since extricated himself as much as possible from the dominant capitalist/property system, although this is a work in progress. He currently uses a community workshop “Hackland” to repair and improve his living situation and occasionally makes what one might generously term artworks, in the form of timber sculptures.

This project is currently being created independently of any institution, however it has received support from Creative NZ for Stage One. Over the course of the project we will likely partner with galleries, museums, film festivals and community organisations to develop and present parts of the final project. Some of these organisations will be government or local government funded. 

How to contact us:
The best person to contact with questions or changes to your participation is Melissa
You can contact her on melissa@melissalaing.com or 0211829451.

version 1.02 published 18 December 2020