Building a Community Through Her Sound, Her Story — Michelle Grace Hunder and Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore.
The following is a transcript of the Emerging Keynote at the One of One International Women’s Day Breakfast, March 8th, 2019 at the Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda, Melbourne.
Her Sound Her Story was created by Michelle Grace Hunder and Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore.
photography credit — Tanya Voltchanskaya
Part 1 — Michelle.
Good morning and welcome everyone. This morning, Claudia and I would like to tell you the story of how our project, Her Sound Her Story changed our lives, and made us realise that one of the major keys to equality is seeing the magic in ourselves and our connection with other women.
I’m a country girl, born and raised in the Goulburn Valley, or what is also known as Yorta Yorta land, in the area of Shepparton in North West Victoria. I was a typical tomboy, excelled in sport and surrounded myself with men, were I felt comfortable in trying to prove that I was as good as them at sport and gaining their respect. Feeling proud that I was always ‘one of the boys’. I wasn’t like other girls, I would laugh at jokes that other girls would be offended by, I could take a joke. How cool was I?? I wore this like a badge of honour, and had very few close female friends. I would go on to work in major sporting organisations, at the National Basketball League and at Melbourne Football Club. Talk about a boys club, the women were forced to wear skirts and heels as uniform, even when it was totally impractical to do so. But I was put into some of the most intimidating of situations, surrounded by 30–40 men in some instances and was able to hold my own. I didn’t trust women, I had bad experiences of older women feeling threatened and actively working against me to stop me progressing. Little did I know at the time that the sheer fact there was such a lack of women, was creating this horrible competition through the few that were working in these organisations, and the environment was often horribly toxic. Fast forward many years, when I finally picked up a camera at the age of 31, I gravitated towards taking photos of a genre I adored, Hip Hop, and felt comfortable in an environment that again which was completely dominated by men.
I have no negative words to say about the hip hop community in Australia, I was absolutely welcomed with opened arms, supported and propped up by many incredible men that I call some of my best friends to this day. But as I got older, I started making some pretty amazing connections with women, and a lot of them came through the arts community in Melbourne. In 2014, I released my first self-published book called Rise ‘ A photo-documentary of Hip Hop in Australia’.
I had travelled the country for 2 years, taking photos of 182 faces, but only about 10 of them were women. I had searched high and low and struggled to find women or female identifying artists making hip hop. This lead me to start to be curious as to why this was the case. I wanted to do a new project that shone a light on women, originally it was going to be a photo series of 10 women. I remember my references for the project being really moody black and white portraits, as I wrote down the names of 10 really amazing female artists that I wanted to work with. The first portrait I took was of a artist I had met recently, Thelma Plum. The portrait was taken in her house, and I experimented with compositing, which I had never worked with in my work before. It involved laying of another images on top of the portrait I took, in this instance, some flowers. The result was really beautiful and built my confidence to push myself with these series to be really individual and reflect the artist. Around the same time I kept hearing this conversation about the gender disparity in music industry. It was across the whole spectrum, not only artists but behind the scenes. Why was this happening? I realized that portraits were not going to do this project justice. It was a bigger conversation, and I thought potentially conversations with these women, along with portraits, would be a more worthwhile project. I called up Claudia, a friend who I had been working with on a number of her video clips, and asked if she liked the idea and I think the word documentary was tossed around. We had no idea what we were about to embark on, or how much it would change us as individuals. Off we went, and started to line up interviews with artists we knew, or had been recommended to us by other artists. The process was quite organic, and originally, the interviews quite short. The first 2 years were pretty cruisy, we did interviews when we could, and had started to gather quite a bit of pace, and landed some pretty big names. Julia Stone, Missy Higgins, Tina Arena, even Renee Geyer had agreed to talk to us and have their portrait taken. After around 40 interviews were conducted and photos were done, we had the opportunity to do a large scale exhibition with the support of The Emporium in Melbourne, who built an entirely new infrastructure of light boxes, to show the photos and speakers with sound bites from the interviews. At the same time, Claudia, who was struggling to find if there was actually a documentary in all of this work we did, had the idea of doing a concert with some of the incredible women we had worked with along the way. The concert became the opening night of Melbourne Music Week. It was an entirely female line up, including the whole band. It sold out in a week.
Something really special happened that night, and without it, I’m not sure there would ever have been a documentary.
Part 2 — Claudia
We were 2 years into a process, and I think unknown to me at the time was that was as much a personal journey to Michelle and I as it was about creating a big body of art and sharing with the rest of the world. I had many moments wondering why we were even doing this, I had little to no investment in this subject matter. I had already convinced myself that I didn’t really care much for relationships with women. When we previewed the film, I remember the moment I was asked, ‘What were the biggest challenges you faced when making the film?’ I was almost proud to reply. “I didn’t like women”. The room gasped into silence. I thought about that moment long after. What was I really trying to say? I didn’t like myself, my excruciatingly painful relationship wth my own sense of worth, sense of self and feminine nature.
Back to the moments leading to the concert — we had launched Her sound Her story. I was the film maker. But there was no film. We had no storyline, I hadn’t ever cut a feature length film. So I missed the prescribed deadline of making a documentary and releasing it at the same time we launched. I had always envisaged a row of 10 women in stage at the end a of big concert, having not been able to make a film I think I was desperate to use my creative thinking in another way. So said to Michelle I think we should do a concert, and just all like many other moments, she said yes and off we went. We had now become booking agents, graphic designers, we were going our PR, the admin, event coordinators, website developers — you name it. We had tasks and we just did them. Tag teaming as we would go. Playing good cop bad cop. Getting shit done. We couldn’t afford extra accommodation so over the 3 days of the launch we hosted most of the artists at my house.
In those 3 days we had our own styling and make up team for everyone, the exhibition at emporium, gourmet breakfast party, a rehearsal, a concert and after party. It was joyous, there was a buzz, it was magic. 3am in the morning the morning of the concert, everyone fast asleep in my house. I’m up editing some intro videos to be projected in the venue that night. Everyone else is asleep. I remember thinking to myself thinking. How special, all these precious women asleep in my home. The gentle lull of them all carrying me through the night. Through another sleepless night. The concert came, and it was as wonderful as you can imagine. There was the community together. Arm in arm, literally hanging off each other. Falling in deeper in love and admiration for one another. It was in those 3 days that I realised the greater work at hand of what Michelle and I were doing here. We were nurturing these women, and so with that I also saw the responsibly and a great honour of sharing their story. My own relationship to women had changed. My relationship with myself had started to change. I was being carried through life by the stories of these women.
We often recall in interviews just got much making this film charged our lives changed us as women. At this point we are still an independent venture, we decided that the small revenue we made from the concert would pay for a sound mixer and animator create some the work I couldn’t do. But to edit and craft this whole story still lay on me. I stalled, stalled for a good 8 months, with Michelle patently waiting for me to start. To something, do anything. She was watching me crumble away as so daunted by the monumental task. So off I went to live with my mum. So Icould live and breath this film. It started to reveal itself. I was listening, I was empathic and the messages were really important. 40 hours of interviews into 10 hours, a 6 hours edit. Finally I could show Michelle.
Part 3 — Michelle
After Claudia had found the ending she was searching for the documentary, and decided to forge on with the documentary, I was in an unusual position of being completely involved and invested, but not being able to physically do much of the real guts of putting the documentary together. During this time we were still doing interviews and taking portraits, adding to the already monumental amount of footage and content we already had. One thing that was really important to us both was to be as inclusive as possible. During this time we were both being educated about the importance of inclusiveness of trans and non-binary women, and wanted to include women from as many different backgrounds and walks as life as possible. Different ages, different genres. Claudia would say that she would want any little young girl to see their face represented up on the screen, to inspire a future generation to perform or work in the music industry. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t made a documentary understands what that looks like. Over 50 hours of footage to go through to, to try and pick out what might be the best bits, and attempt to put that into a story line. There were some really low points, once you are 3 years into a project this big, without any money coming in to support the hours being spent, its pretty rough. There were many many times where I know Claudia wanted to give up, and questioned whether if it was all worth it. I remember distinctly when Claudia went me the first cut of the film. I think it was around 6 hours long, and it didn’t have any story line at the time, it was basically picking out some of the best parts on a time line. I remember seeing all these faces, and being really overwhelmed with emotion. Not only for the enormity of what we had done, but by the impact I knew the film was going to have when it was finally released. I needed to support Claudia through the hardest of hard times, because I realized how important this film was, that we owed it to all these incredible women to tell their stories. But it was a continual effort, for both of us to find the drive to continue, to support each other through times of very low motivation. Often, when we were at our lowest, we would do another interview and it would immediately give us new energy and inspire the journey to continue. We had an opportunity to preview the film at Face the Music, in November of 2017. It put a deadline on finishing the film, and that’s probably when the most pressure and stress kicked in. At the same time we are running our businesses, and finishing this absolutely huge project at the same time. Days blurred into each other. There were many tears. Many times of wanting to give up.
Part 4 — Claudia
This was the most testing year of our friendship, we birthed our baby and getting through the first year was a real struggle. Nothing was out of the table or really could be discuss because we were in a delicate situation. Where Michelle had been patiently waiting for me to finish and I was crumbling under the pressure already. So all she could do was focus on supporting me and we deal with everything later. I had been cry everyday making the film. I remember one night going out into the back yard, sitting in my back yard on the grass wondering when the 18 hour days would end, when my life would return to normal. When would I know it was all worth it. 2 weeks out from the preview, my body took over and I tore my ACL clean all the way through. I couldn’t walk. And then it came the paned preview date, I stayed up for 72 hours before that happened , sleeping three 20 minute intervals. Michelle at my house for the last leg of it. I exported the film from my laptop at about 4am the morning of the preview and there it was that night up on the big screen for everyone to see.
Part 5 — Michelle
The timing was really bizarre. The #MeToo movement hit the world around the same month. Finally, people were open to actually hearing women’s stories, and we were about to premier a film we had been working on for almost 4 years. I cannot explain what it was like in that room that night we premiered. I believe we had over 20 of the artists from the film in the audience. There was the most electric energy, people were laughing and crying. We received a standing ovation at the end of the film. I remember bursting into tears because I didn’t know if I believed that moment would actually come. It was the most intense feeling of pride for us both that we had managed to pull each other through to complete such an important project. To be surrounded by such incredible woman, who we considered friends, was the most beautiful feeling and one that we both treasured with all of our hearts. Through the making of the project, we formed the most solid bond with each other, and with the women in the project.
Part 6 — Claudia
I remember the premiere night of the film . There it was again that feeling like the night of the concert, we are opening night and all those women together again. There’s that magic, there’s that spark again. an inducible sense of solidarity, coming together. We did it Was it worth it? Every moment and I wouldn’t have it any other way. That release also brought on the after math, we now had to deal with all our emotions, all our the anger, all the stuff we had been holding inside from having to go through so much together. Never before given ourselves the time to actually process it because we were so focused on creating the work, we had to be. So this last year, been incredible because we released this film, and it’s had sell out screenings around the country, a season nova cinema, countless industry screening. We released this film and then went on the road talking about talking about how we made it. Talking about each other. Talking about women coming together. There was a great moment in the creation of this film where I realised that every messge we were sharing with the world had to be something we lived by. I was driving home to important for when banning together. Michelle and I had to band together. We have had to embody of that message for any of this to work. We entered a marriage together. In the last 4 years of life, when I look at everything we did together. It’s remarkable to think that was done by the 2 of us, two women. There are now 88 photographic series, 12 part vignette series, 3 photographic installations, a concert, billboards of the photos from the series that Helen generous helped us get going, mentoring programs, and a documentary. The relationship Michelle and Ishare is the true currency of what we have created together. It’s living proof of the capacity women have when they band together to create. Her Sound, Her story was funded on our friendship. We have now become women in music ourselves, been embraced by a community. This community. That very much tour feels like family. The story is simple, my friend came to me one day and asked me to make something with her, we held hands, jumped in the deep end and kept swimming. Together. I’de like to leave you with the wise words of Mama Kin, “Any chance you get to gently and subversively challenge the statues quo in your own way of thinking about women… listen to what you are saying about other women, because obviously you are thinking that the world is saying that, to you.”
That is your cue. Even in your own mind’s eye. Find a way to see her. Because we have to do it on these smaller frontiers and make big waves.
