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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep13: Art School, access, and confidence, with Mia + Eric

 

EPISODE NOTES

 

 

 

"It's been life changing, art practice changing, we wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for our time together."

 

This week on the Unmasking Unschool podcast, 

I speak with artists Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis. They share insights from their 15-year collaborative art practice,

and what unfolded in our coaching journey that formed part of their ongoing project 'Art School'.

 

You'll hear about their struggles with art world opacity and inaccessibility,

and the resulting self doubt, and sense of not belonging,

as well as the breakthroughs that enabled them to recognise the value of their work,

and embody that value with a new level of confidence,

and the ripple effects - including in how they care for themselves within their practice.


Mia and Eric talk about their unique approach to access,

and how the desire to foster a poetic, adaptive and relational culture of access

informs their artwork: 'A Guide for the Prepared,'

 

To learn more about Mia + Eric's practice:

miaanderic.ca

@mia.and.eric

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

[00:00:00] Hey, sibling, you are listening to the Unmasking Unschooled podcast. This is for visionaries, creatives, and changemakers who happen to be autistic, who are done with pathology paradigms, the masks and misinterpretations of the past and the burnout cycles that come from trying to fit in with what doesn't work.

[00:00:31] You are here to create new aligned life structures, to innovate industries, to design liberatory solutions, and create new culture by becoming yourself. My name is Louisa Shaeri . I'm an artist, coach, and founder of SOLA Systems. This is all about you getting unstuck, reinventing and elevating your sense of self.

[00:00:51] Self, having the social context and frameworks to make a life that makes sense for how you make sense so you can finally experience who you're here to be in your fullness. Let's deep dive into it.

[00:01:08] Today's episode, I am joined by two wonderful people, Mia and Eric, who are two artists from Canada who form an artist team working internationally across disciplines context. They're gonna tell us about. The practice in a moment, and I had the pleasure of coaching them through quite an epic process. And we're going to talk about that as well.

[00:01:34] But let's start off by bringing you on Mia and Eric. Do you want to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Mia Rushton. I'm one half of the artist team, Mia and Eric. And I'm Eric Moschopedis. And I obviously am the other half of Mia and Eric. Mia and I have been working together collaboratively for 15 or 16 years. And Mia has a background in the visual arts, craft, printmaking, textiles, and my background is in theatre and in performance.

[00:02:02] And we have been life partners for nearly 20 years. And, five years into our relationship, we started making work together quite accidentally. And I think we always anticipated we would only do one project together. And here we are 15 years later. Our practice really does bring together craft and performance.

[00:02:20] And we think of ourselves as multi species ethnographers, who study the lives and deaths of organisms that are linked to human social worlds. So we're really interested in interspecies relationships, biodiversity, and place based knowledge production, particularly in small towns, uh, cities, and in rural spaces.

[00:02:38] So we work in all of those spaces, urban environments. fields, coastlines, and forests. Our work is very heavily social practice based, though we don't typically use that terminology. We often, we use art and social engagement, and most people kind of view that now through the lens of social practice. And our work is very site specific and community specific.

[00:02:58] So when we go into creating a project, we never know what the outcome will be from the outset. Instead, we do extensive research and we do extensive community engagement. We work across disciplines, often working in art galleries, performance and theatre contexts, but also a lot in public spaces and really building networks of people and creating communities.

[00:03:24] We're independent artists, but we work more like an organization in a way. We juggle multiple projects at a time and kind of work project to project. Yeah, so there's so much going on in both the Uh, in terms of both your practice together, the relationships that you build as part of that practice. And then also obviously you have a personal relationship together.

[00:03:49] And what we entered into was not necessarily a, a typical coaching arrangement either. Mia and I I had coached before as part of unmasking unschool and then you both approached me to be part of one of your projects called art school. Do you want to talk about what art school is about and you know, why, why it was necessary for you to create art school?

[00:04:15] What the aim of it is? Was and, you know, what you were intending with, uh, deciding to bring me into that project. Well, me and I, we've been working together since 2008. And in that time, we've created nearly 40 individual projects, participated in 24 residencies, tour to over 30 cities, largely in Europe, Canada and South America.

[00:04:37] We've done 32 artists talks. We do lectures, we do workshops. We've made dozens of publications. So we've been extremely busy. In a 15 year period of time, arguably, I would say we've done a career's worth of work in 15 years that maybe most other artists would do over the course of, you know, 30 or 40 years.

[00:04:55] And so. All of that is to say that because we've been working at such a rapid pace, we never really took the time to thoroughly and thoughtfully ask what we actually do. Who are we as artists? What is the emphasis of our practice? How do we engage with our work? Who are our communities? What, what processes are we using?

[00:05:15] What methodologies are we using? And most importantly, who are we? I think in the work, we've never really stopped to do that. And there's reasons for that. We'll we'll talk about that today. I'm sure, but ultimately we created art school. Because we saw this major milestone in our practice, we were 15 years in.

[00:05:33] So we devised this project called art school, and it's a very simple structure. There's four semesters. Each semester is four months each, and each semester is led by a mentor and artist colleague, and, um, each semester is thematically based. So we're looking at neurodiversity, biodiversity, sustainability, and community engagement.

[00:05:53] And we really knew with art school. that we needed to start looking at neurodiversity. Mia's autistic and I'm ADHD. And we've never really stopped to think about that in the context of our practice. But we also knew that if we didn't do this semester first, Every other semester would essentially be undone by investigating who we are in the work.

[00:06:18] Mia might speak to this differently, but certainly, I was at a place with our practice where I felt like we were out of control. And we didn't have control over our practice. And we didn't really ever talk about this, actually, Louisa, in all of our time together. And I think only because I can admit it now, but I think we were at a place in our practice where art school was a last gasp for us.

[00:06:39] It was either art school is going to change our work or change what we do, or our practice was probably going to end. We're doing this podcast, so, um, spoiler alert, our art practice hasn't ended. But So it was, there was like this sense of desperation, I think. You know, we had like kind of a, we were able to speak about art school in a certain way to funders, but I think internally, intuitively, we knew that this was critical for us at this point in our practice.

[00:07:07] I mean, that's, that says so much, right? I feel that in my body, this, this, uh, feeling out of control and given the amount of work that you created, what you managed to achieve in what is already like, it's such a difficult thing to maintain in artistic practice and to maintain it and keep working for 15 or more years.

[00:07:29] It's an unbelievable, Unbelievably difficult thing to do and it makes sense to me that this question of who are we in the work if you are going, going, going, going, there isn't that space and time to integrate and to notice who you're being in that practice and how you're being me. Yeah, I know that you, you had a sort of process that you went through as part of Unmasking Unschool where who you are through the lens of what does it mean to be autistic.

[00:08:04] That had already happened to a degree before we started working as part of your art school. Is there any part of that process in Unmasking Unschooled that you want to talk about? That's a super vague question. No, I think it's a good question because I think that where Eric and I got to in our coaching process with you wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't gone through the process with Unmasking Unschool.

[00:08:29] It really helped me feel more grounded and comfortable with my new identity as an autistic person. I was finding ways to kind of integrate that. Information into my life in general and so then it made sense to apply that into our practice because it's such a big part of my life and and what I do on a day to day basis.

[00:08:50] So I feel really fortunate that I found your podcast pretty soon after my kind of, um, diagnostic assessment journey and, um, kind of early into that process of integrating being autistic into my identity. And so I feel like it was really helpful to. Go through that whole process of having lots of insights and breakthroughs and learning new models for being myself in a different way, and then applying that to our practice.

[00:09:25] And then so when we started working together as part of art school, first of all, there was two of you instead of one, which I don't normally do. And then we also doubled the hours. So we were doing two hours with a break in between. It was in a way, a very intense process, partly, I think, because. It was possible to go to difficult places and I think some of the trust that you and I had built Mia made that easier and, you know, your familiarity with the solar system process and these phases of, you know, starting with the hard stuff, starting with what's uncomfortable and we really did start with what was hard to look at, right, in terms of your, your practice and how you were working and looking at, okay, What's not working or, or what's being, what's hard right now?

[00:10:15] What was the experience of being in your practice like? Beyond the, the external signifiers and the, the sort of, uh, the work itself. And so maybe we could talk a little bit about some of the problems that we identify, because I think anyone who works for themself, anyone who has a creative or artistic practice will be familiar with when you are someone who's in charge of.

[00:10:41] Your own working schedule when the guarantees that you're going to be financially supported, you're going to be okay that you're going to make it happen on institutionally backed as a kind of permanent job. There's things that you have to deal with, you have to take responsibility for, and that can lead us into a certain way of working.

[00:11:02] So do you want to talk a little bit about Yeah, where you're at the start and some of the things that we identified as what we wanted to work on. Like Eric mentioned, I think we were kind of at the end of our energy. We were experiencing burnout all the time. It felt like we were just kind of chasing opportunities and saying yes to everything.

[00:11:27] Because there was a sense of scarcity and precarity, um, we didn't really feel stable. Like we just had to keep working and overworking to kind of prove ourselves. And I think we came into the process with you thinking that We had to burn it all down and start again and restructure everything because it wasn't possible to keep doing what we were doing.

[00:11:55] Yeah, so this sense of having to prove, prove yourself, uh, it leads to this sort of striving, this kind of compensating, overproducing, uh, working, pushing past. And there was a point at which in the coaching, we identified, you know, how do you want to feel when you're being artists in me and Eric, when you are working and, and What you came to was this sense of wanting to feel that you get to decide, we get to decide, and that became a sort of mantra guiding light for where you wanted to go and how you wanted to feel.

[00:12:39] Yes, I think that one of the things that we came to this process with, and Mia kind of referred to as constantly burning out, and it's true, over and over we were burning out, it wasn't just like, you know, a one and done, it was like, It was one and then again and then again and then again and each time the burnout came easier and faster And I think that part of the reason we were burning out was us overworking to try to prove ourselves and I think there's this common sense by artists who are in the art world of Not belonging or feeling like frauds and I think that that's That's kind of like a, to answer your question in a way of like getting to this moment of like, we get to decide that backstory of why did we feel this way?

[00:13:23] And I think for me, that idea of feeling like we didn't belong in the art world or in the, in the different art worlds that we work in, and I don't feel that way anymore, just as a caveat. Um, but it was very true when we first started working together, but something that occurred in that through the process of art school is that we started to realize, well, wait a second.

[00:13:46] We've been working together for 15 years. We have a very unique way of doing our work and creating our work. We have a very unique way of engaging with the communities that we work with and that we are two very different unique artists. working together. And how is it possible for us to be fraudulent if what we're doing took 15 years and those uniquenesses to build what we're doing?

[00:14:10] Some of what my experience was of working with you was really being able to see that in the way that you work and the way that you engage with the communities that you work with, the process being different every time. There really is no pretense. There's no posturing. You're not, you're not faking it.

[00:14:29] And there is, you know, a genuine, real depth of care and, and so you are going to the, the degree that's required for that care to be part of your practice, you are, you are doing the work for real. And so that sense that you still had to prove yourself was really. In the way of you being able to recognize, I think, all of the, the things that you were doing and, and just trust and allow yourselves to embody it fully as, yeah, we know what we're doing, this is who we are, and we don't have to doubt it.

[00:15:08] Yeah, even though we were, I think, showing that care for the, for the process and for the people that we worked with, we weren't exactly extending that care to ourselves. And we felt like we were kind of imposing ourselves on the people that we worked with, in a way. Because of the kind of fluid and changing flexible nature of our practice, we often work with galleries, like I said, but we don't necessarily make visual art.

[00:15:39] And sometimes we work with theater or performance festivals, but we don't make things for the stage. And so we kind of like shift in between these like blurry edges of categories. So it felt like we didn't really belong anywhere. But I think that what we realized is that we were confusing belonging and fitting in, and because we, we do actually belong in the spaces that we're in.

[00:16:03] Working in that, that we have been working in, we have received a lot of recognition and support. We just don't fit into the categories that people have decided should exist. And that that's been liberating and exciting because it means that we get to decide which systems and which structures are interesting to us and which support us and which ones don't and which ones we want to engage in.

[00:16:26] So, uh, we get to decide being a focus of our process together. I think felt really. exciting, really supportive and became, it gave us a lot of agency, I think to feel more in control of our process. Yeah. And I think if there's a, an accompanying mantra to we get to decide it's that we're unique in our togetherness.

[00:16:52] Yeah. So as part of, we get to decide it's about you knowing and feeling like you have permission and you have the agency to make decisions that support you within your practice. And part of what we've looked at. Has been the specific instances in which. Belonging was harder to access because accessing what needed to happen or what was expected or full participation in different interactions that you were having as part of your projects, as part of working with galleries and institutions and curators was that some of those expected ways of doing things weren't actually accessible.

[00:17:34] Mia, do you want to talk about that? Yeah, it was a really interesting thing for me to realize why I was feeling like I didn't belong was actually because my access needs weren't being met, or I wasn't aware of them and I wasn't asking for what I needed. So, yeah, a lot of it comes down to. The pace, um, like group conversations and the need for clear communication and direct feedback.

[00:17:58] So it's been super helpful to, to identify those things and be able to notice. When I can provide them for myself and also to start creating a culture around our practice, where those things are just built in, the art world is so opaque and. It really doesn't provide a lot of feedback or clear communication.

[00:18:21] So many processes are difficult to navigate, I think, probably for most people. And then for someone like me, who really needs to understand the whole process, why things are happening, it's just so difficult to access. Yeah. And so meeting. Access needs starts in our own relationship to ourself and how we're being in our life.

[00:18:46] That was also part of what we looked at in terms of you're working together. The fact that you had different access needs, the both of you and identifying What those might be, but also recognizing that that opacity in the art world, even though there's a lot that's come about in the last four, three, four years around access riders and learning from disabled folks and different types of resources that are being created and normalized.

[00:19:20] When it comes to access needs that aren't consistent, that are relational, that are context based, that are depending on what happened before, how you are on the day, what the particular activities or relationships or the people or the energy is, then there are aspects of access riders or having some kind of document that don't cover that and that don't necessarily cater to that.

[00:19:47] For that, and so we had a really, I think, a lot of really interesting and difficult discussion around what are we talking about with access? What does it mean for you in your relationship, both personally, professionally, like as artists and also the relationships that you have with the world? What does it mean in terms of what you say yes and no to how you communicate those needs and even more than that, you know, access is often seen as a way to include a way to empower people within existing structures, but as artists, you are people who are used to questioning are used to creating your own structures.

[00:20:33] You have the freedom to decide how you work and what those structures might look like. And to invite people into it, and so what are you modeling and thinking of access in terms of culture, a culture of access, what does access look like in terms of how relationships happen. And I was really excited that when you came to this idea that what is access, it's about how do people access us.

[00:21:06] Do you want to talk a bit about that? Just to kind of echo some of what you were saying that we. Because of the way in which Mia and I work, it didn't feel, having an access rider or a list of, um, a list of things that we would need for the work to be able to take place, just really didn't make sense to us.

[00:21:29] We recognize that for some people, having a clear list of things is valuable, but again, as you said, our practice is so fluid and our processes are always changing. It would constantly would feel like we're putting things on a list and taking things off of a list and a list didn't feel Like the right approach for us instead What really made sense was as you said creating a culture and the thing that we started to to craft for ourselves We're describing as a guide for the prepared and this guide for the prepared is for ourselves How do we access our work?

[00:22:01] but also How can other people come into the culture that we've created around our work and around our practice and the methodologies that we use? So that not only will, when the time comes, will we feel comfortable saying actually something that would be very valuable for us in this particular moment, or in this context, or in this way of working is X, Y, and Z, but that also other people who may or may not have very much.

[00:22:27] Explicit access needs that those folks also feel comfortable saying, actually, in this context, I think this is going to work better for me. So it's creating this space for open dialogue and the space for collaboration and trust and generosity. I feel like I'm apologizing for being put off by, you know, Uh, being put off by access riders, and it's the same way that we're put off by climate, you know, some of the emphasis that are occurring in the climate change world around, um, green tools or these kinds of things that organizations are meant to use.

[00:22:59] I think when things are kind of dictatorial that way, it doesn't provide the space that's really necessary for an honest conversation. Now, I understand that sometimes to have those honest conversations, you need to have those access needs met in advance. But for us, because of, we understand how we work, processes that we've created and the methodology that we have in our practice inherent in those things are the needs for access.

[00:23:27] And it makes sense to me that, that your perspective is relational because of how you are used to working and what, what your, the kind of methodologies of your practice are. And they are so context specific that this isn't about. Declarative statement, uh, that, that we require people to adhere to. It's that everyone comes in different forms and with different needs.

[00:23:50] And when you need something, it's not a deficit. It's not a lack. It's inviting something it's, it's value. It enables connection to be more possible. Yes. I think that's exactly it. And this guide for the prepared that we're creating it's obtuse at times. It's poetic at times It's designed to draw people in to be Clear and at the same and concise while at the same time not be any of those things The guide for the prepared is really actually another artwork that we're now sharing with people that we're going to work with.

[00:24:28] So it's not meant to be a prescriptive, but it's meant to be an opening up. It's meant to create the context of mystery and of kinship, which is language we use quite a bit when we talk about our practice. And it's that kind of thing we want to try to share with people. It's this thing where we can say, okay, we want to work together.

[00:24:47] By the time we get to the point where we know we want to work together, a lot of work has already been done. And so I think that it should come as no surprise to people that what we're handing them is this artwork that opens up a space for conversation. I think what I see the guide for the prepared doing is really setting the scene for a conversation and kind of doing a bit of world building, setting some expectations around the relationality of our work around generosity and communication and creating a kind of culture where an access document wouldn't need to exist.

[00:25:25] I think that's what I'm really excited about, is creating this culture around our work and around the way that we talk about access, um, that is more from the inside. When I started thinking about writing an access doc, or an access writer, it was really from the outside, more like a policy or some sort of Corporate thing that fits into a system, but that's really not in keeping with the tone of our work or the way that we like to be in relation with people.

[00:25:57] So this kind of flipping of the idea going from, we need an access rider to participate. To providing a document where people can know how to access us and be, uh, invited into our process is really exciting and generative, I think. Yeah, these things like access riders, policy, neurodiversity. Or have a place right there.

[00:26:23] It's useful. We need to draw on all the different strategies. But if we're not thinking about what's beyond that, and we're only thinking about adapting to existing structures and systems and ways of doing things, we're really closing down what the value is and the possibility and the potency of what we might be calling access needs.

[00:26:46] There was a moment in our coaching journey where you had a moment when that way of disclosing felt appropriate and was a breakthrough for you. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, it was a really, um, interesting part of the process for me when I realized that I had done enough internal work and reorganizing that I felt safe and comfortable to disclose in a residency.

[00:27:12] Thank you. To other artists that I didn't know that well, um, that I am autistic as part of a way of introducing myself, just stated plainly as kind of a fact, one aspect of myself. And. I don't exactly know how it came up, but we described it as like orienting to a fuck it compass, which I really liked because it just felt like that was the kind of feeling that I had in that moment.

[00:27:37] It's like, okay, I'm in this room. I can just say the thing that's on my mind. And not really worry about what the reaction might be, good or bad, I'm okay with it, so I'm just going to do it and put it out there and see what happens. And, yeah, I've been working up to that moment, trying it in different ways, in different parts of my life, disclosing to different people that I know well, that I don't know as well.

[00:28:07] Sometimes by Email or a text message so I can kind of control the pace of the conversation and consider my response in case things don't go well. Also gotten more comfortable just talking to people more generally, more casually about it in conversation. And so yeah, the fuckit compass has been developing.

[00:28:31] Strengthening, getting stronger. Yeah. I loved that moment so much because fuck it, uh, was really a new level of ease for you and there'd been a journey to get there, but for that to feel like a state that you could access, like, fuck it, let me just do it. Let me just say what's useful for me right now and send to myself.

[00:28:54] in my own life, my own experiences. And then, so that provides such a clear sort of discernment for, yeah, when you are in an environment where that feels possible, then something in terms of a culture access is happening. Yeah, I think it was possible because we had, as a group, done a lot of work to create a culture where it did feel possible.

[00:29:22] And there was a sense of ease both before and afterwards that I hadn't really experienced before. And so it was like, yeah, this really interesting experiment. And then kind of a data point where I can feel like I take that into the future and be like, okay, this is feel similar or not, or is it still possible in this new situation?

[00:29:43] So there's a moment that happened in the coaching journey that I would love us to talk about if you're up for it, which was really, I think, one of the biggest breakthroughs that I witnessed in you both. And speaks to this question of access, speaks to feeling like you get to decide and that you're legitimate in what those decisions are, which is really needing to recognize who you are, what the value is that you bring, the work that you had been doing, the level of insight and what your practice represents in the world.

[00:30:22] After years of striving, years of trying to make sure that it's working, of trying to fit in with and, and work with different institutional structures and, and existing systems, that can sometimes be hard to recognize, especially in the context of art, where there is this opacity, there is, uh, often a lack of explicit, overt, you know, unedited feedback.

[00:30:50] Feedback isn't operationalized. You don't get someone in your corner saying. You're doing it. And so for me, it was a real pleasure to be able to feed that back to you and say, uh, hello, you are so much further than you think you are. You are so much more established. You've already proved yourself. And maybe you get to enjoy that now.

[00:31:12] Do you want to talk about that? That moment and maybe what's happened since I think we concur. That was the moment in this art school semester that changed everything for us. What had been happening for me and I for obviously for 15 years is that we were operating in a way where because we felt fraudulent, we were overcompensating.

[00:31:33] We were overworking. We were working in ways that wasn't healthy for us. And a large part of that was because we I think we're trying to prove ourselves. The analogy I would use is that we had been acting like emerging artists for 15 years, constantly trying to prove ourselves. We've since talked to friends about this and they're shocked when I say we never understood the value of our work.

[00:32:01] We had zero confidence in the work that we were doing. That just felt like who we were. I guess we just kind of always assumed this is how we'll always be working. And I think through the semester, the kind of two months that we're leading up in this semester of art school, to that moment where I had said to you, Louisa, I said, what is the obvious thing that we're not seeing?

[00:32:20] Like, we felt like we'd spilled our guts, we'd shared, uh, tons of stuff about who we are and what we were feeling and, and, and, uh, but we were wrestling with this, like, what is the thing that wasn't obvious? What, what are we not seeing? What is the thing that we need to know? And through that conversation, like, a light switch turned on, and me and I suddenly, for the very first time, had confidence.

[00:32:43] And that's a weird thing. Again, when we tell the story, share the story with our colleagues, a lot of them are like, what are you talking about? And we said, no, we've never had confidence in what we were doing. And sometimes that, when I think about that now, it, it really breaks my heart in a way, but it also makes me really excited moving forward.

[00:33:00] And that moment, there's no going back from it. I don't know how else to describe it. That moment of like instantly having confidence. changed everything because we were then able to look back at our work retroactively and say, ah, that's the value of what we've done. This is how the work is valuable to us.

[00:33:20] This is how the work can be valuable to the communities we have worked with, but this is how the work can be valuable to the communities that we will work with. It's this major turning point in in our practice and and I said at the outset when we were talking about art school that the desperation we felt that If something didn't occur in art school our practice would likely have ended and I think that was the thing that needed to happen We needed to notice and we needed to be able to see and value what we were doing and since then There's not a day that goes by where I don't think of that moment.

[00:33:58] It's a really strange thing to be able to suddenly have confidence in ourselves, confidence in our practice, confidence in our work. Confidence in our relationships and our relationship to each other. When we combine confidence with understanding the value of our work, the role our practice can play in supporting our thinking, and that we have agency that we didn't know we had before, that changes everything.

[00:34:26] So in many ways, instead of being liberated from our practice, we've been liberated in it. Our work can be a place to support our practice and our practice can support and care for us. And for me, I feel this lightness in our practice now that I didn't ever feel before. I feel joy in the work that we do that I never had before.

[00:34:47] Um, when I think about our work, I get a tingly feeling. I never had that before. But for me, now, that, that tingly feeling is what I need our work to do. And if it isn't doing that, then I have to ask why. Why is that not occurring? And we have the skills and the tools now to go back and look at it. We're able to see things now that we didn't see before.

[00:35:17] And we're able to see our practice in a way that we didn't see it before. Yeah, there's just no turning back. I think the, the, the most important thing that happened that day is that I genuinely feel like we exited from survival mode. Um, and we were able to move into kind of new realms of possibility because we know now that we're good enough, that we get to decide what we do, that we're unique in our togetherness, and ultimately we have nothing to prove.

[00:35:51] It's from here on in, it's just, like our art practice is pure joy. So just for listeners to know, tears are being shed, and I want to For anyone who's in a space where you feel like you're in survival and you're striving, you know, often that can be a material condition that you're dealing with. Often that can be what's required is survival is pushing past is adapting to something that that doesn't actually work or that doesn't fit you or thinking that you need to.

[00:36:26] And that becomes the means to the end of making something work. And then so for you both arriving at where you're at now and having so much evidence, like you said, to the contrary, that you've done it, the difficult beginning of an artistic practice, where you don't really have a lot of that evidence to really believe in what you're doing.

[00:36:55] And so what you've been adapting to got you here. It wasn't that it's necessarily wrong or bad, those versions of you made this moment possible, but this moment means adapting to a different experience of what your practice is like, which is that tingly feeling, that sense of ease, that sense of confidence, that being the new standard.

[00:37:22] This is how it's supposed to feel, what it feels like to be in our work. I love that so That was a huge shift for me as well, not seeing My well being at odds with our practice, that's kind of the mode that I had been operating in, is that I had to keep working super hard and pushing myself past all my boundaries in order to keep doing the work.

[00:37:48] But now I have this new sense that I can take care of myself through doing the work and that there's more space in our practice to support. In between us finishing our coaching and us recording this, you've come to the end of one of your projects in a very exciting way. I'd love you to share a little bit about that project and what, what it involved.

[00:38:18] Yeah, we just installed a video installation, a culmination of a four year process working with communities in three different locations. Um, so we've, since 2020, been working on a project called Three Woods that engaged people connected to woodlands in Germany, Norway and England. We did a lot of research around the history of the spaces, the ecology, talking to all sorts of different experts in the field of woodland management, and built out networks and communities around each of these three different regions.

[00:38:55] And we, uh, We did all kinds of different experiments and projects, workshops along the way, but our final project was this video work that invited forest caretakers to perform abstracted choreographies of their work. their care work for the forests on video. The final work is a nine channel installation, kind of a video portrait of people caring for forests.

[00:39:25] It's a way of distilling all of the really dense research that we did into a very embodied experience, both for the performers and for the audience members. It was definitely the most ambitious project that we've worked on in our practice together, uh, so far and I think going through the coaching process as we were finishing this and as we installed it gave us this new sense of being able to celebrate all the work that we did to get to that point.

[00:39:56] We definitely in the past would finish one project and quickly move on to another without really acknowledging what we'd done or how anything had turned out. So it was, yeah, so lovely to just take a moment and pause and notice everything that's going on. Had got us to that point of watching it happen.

[00:40:20] It was great. Well, we were in Norway after the work had been installed. We really truly celebrated the work. We celebrated who we are. That it took, again, this idea of us being unique in our togetherness and creating all of those communities, having relationships with 200 different people across three regions.

[00:40:43] All of that culminated in this really gentle, beautiful work, and I don't know if in the past we would have ever properly stopped to enjoy it, but we genuinely did, and we also got to share that with a lot of the people who we worked with on this process. That moment of celebration, that moment of community that this work created, those are the things that I'm willing to sacrifice everything else for.

[00:41:12] I love hearing the way that you talk about it because. You know, one of the things that happens when we don't see and recognize and celebrate who we are and what we're doing and the, you know, the, the uniqueness of, of what you're doing and who you are, then other people don't get to be in that celebration with you.

[00:41:35] And especially for you both, who, yeah, you, you work with so many communities and people, it's really not about you, so often. And so what can be mistaken for something that is egoic or some sort of self interestedness, it actually gives permission for other people to feel good about who they are. One of the things that we did was also look at Your respective strengths and the different roles that you play deciding which of those that you really wanted to foreground and live out loud and which you wanted to delegate or spend less time in and for you, Eric, something that seemed to happen from my observation was that.

[00:42:22] Your love of writing was something that you claimed in a much more explicit way and I'd love for you to share an excerpt if you would from a guide for the prepared, which is that that piece of work that is inviting people into the culture of your practice. Would you be up for reading a bit of it for us?

[00:42:48] Yes, it would be my pleasure. A guide for the prepared. Everything living is dead. Everything dead is now living. Birds, dogs, trees, mountains, aunties, grandmas, childhoods, lost lakes, forgotten histories, open pit mines, ghosts. We are all haunted, all of us. Open a map, trust a friend, picture the end of time.

[00:43:17] There we all are, written into the landscape. New kin and old kin, apparitions and ideas, crusts and coral, drags and drag, iron and idiocy. Think of this as a starting point within a larger cycle of beginnings. An ontological choreography of life worlds and mutual accommodations, where the body's experience becomes the answer.

[00:43:42] Autism and distractions. Encounters that teach us how to understand understanding. In a world of human histories and bat futures, human histories and mycelial machinations, human histories and hysterectomies is the thing we are all looking at. A point within a structure that is not quite circular, but from a distance appears round.

[00:44:05] A conglomeration of ideas and relationships. We can proceed in nearly any direction so long as we stay with the trouble, the mess, and the muck. This is a guide for the prepared where species and textures, communities and relationships, patterns and ADHD will teach us how to understand understanding each other.

[00:44:25] This is a guide for the prepared where actual beings are linked to actual responsibilities. How do we understand understanding each other in this moment? We approach with kindness. We approach with curiosity. We approach with generosity. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's been a complete honor, a pleasure and a joy to be part of your practice, your process.

[00:44:52] And I want to thank you for trusting me and also for coming onto the podcast to document a little bit of what that journey has been for all of us. I would love for people who are want to experience your work to know where they can keep track of what you're doing. Thank you so much for having us. It's been so amazing working with you.

[00:45:19] I loved it so much. If people would like to learn more about our work, you can visit our website, miaanderic. ca. We're also on Instagram at mia. and. eric. I just want to echo Mia that this process working with you Louisa has been beautiful. It's been life changing, art practice changing, we wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for our time together.

[00:45:46] Thank you. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

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