Talking Heads volunteer Nina Abeysuriya presents the latest episode of her podcast Being On The Inside, in collaboration with the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.

Nina interviews SMHAF’s associate artist Emma Jayne Park about curating online spaces, her projects Eat. Move. Sleep. Repeat. and Daily Dancing, and the ways we are experiencing lockdown. 

You can listen to the episode here: 

In this episode, I meet and chat with Emma Jayne Park, whom, along with Emily Furneaux and other artists, have brought us Eat, Move, Sleep, Repeat. This is a creative collaboration that was developed as a response to Covid-19 as part of the festival.

 

Emma, as part of her practice, curates spaces and in this conversation we examine how those spaces effect us physically, emotionally and how they impact our connections. We discuss the importance of permission for those showing up, how this is done face to face with body language and how difficult it is to read and recreate in 2D online interactions.

 

We get into what it means too Emma and others to be an artist right now and how the pandemic is shaping the creative landscape and how she hopes it may will look going forward. We also talk about how we maybe confronting our sense of identity challenging our work role identities whilst being furloughed and how we look at our systems of productions in general and the creative industries.

 

This interview took place during lockdown, the weekend after Dominic Cummings flew in the face of lockdown restrictions and caused a ripple of anger and unsettlement and before the essential and urgent conversation about race equality, justice and identity became more heard in the mainstream voice.

 

Emma hosts daily dance sessions and in this episode you hear me trying to show up for one and why I find being online more socially intimidating than offline.

 

– Being On The Inside host Nina Abeysuriya