Audio Tour: Muzi Quawson

 Muzi Quawson speaking about her slide installation

NARRATOR: This slide installation is by Muzi Quawson. The main character is an American called Amanda Jo Williams.

MUZI QUAWSON: I met Amanda Jo Williams the summer of 2002; we were introduced by another girl that also features in the narrative, a girl called Hollis, who appears with red hair.

They described to me the town that they lived in was Woodstock, and they were in a band. Also what interesting for me about Amanda was the fact that at the time I met her, she was twenty-two, but she had twin babies, and the father of her babies was like, thirty years older than her, and they kind of lived in this hippy, bohemian lifestyle.

For me, when I heard that they lived in Woodstock, my immediate connection was the Woodstock music festival, which happened, perhaps in 1969. And the kind of original essence that was created back then is no longer there. So in a way these people live in a kind of bubble. It’s like people that have flocked there because it’s the famous town of Woodstock; if you want to live out a fictitious lifestyle, and you want to be a musician, and be a hippy, you go there. Politically, there’s contradictions in a way; they don’t want to work, but at the same time, they want to sustain a lifestyle that is perhaps supported through a government that they won’t openly say that they’ll vote for, but then their finances are coming from that particular government.

My relationship with entering into America comes through cinema. When the photographs are presented as slides, it returns to the initial invitation; it’s kind of through the celluloid, and the kind of cinema screen. So I’m very much conscious of presenting the work in a cinematic aesthetic. And I’m very aware that my style plays on this hybrid of fact and fiction.

NARRATOR: If you like, as you view the slides, you can hear a recording Muzi Quawson made of Amanda talking on the phone with her mother. Just press the green PLAY button.

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