Self-isolation is hard. Art can help everyone. Artist in Residence is an immersive podcast series made in collaboration with ten New Zealand artists across theatre, music, poetry and dance. Each artist has made you a 15-minute personalised performance to help with one thing you might be feeling in isolation and as we transition out of it.

Jo Randerson lives in Pōneke with her two children and husband Thomas LaHood. She is the Artistic Director of performance art company Barbarian Productions, who are based in an re-purposed bowling club run by the local community (in the now dis-established suburb of Vogelmorn). Jo is a playwright, short story writer and poet: her most recent book is The Wind Is Up and We're On. She has received the Bruce Mason Playwrighting Award, the Robert Burns Fellowship, Winston Churchill Fellowship and is also a New Generation Arts Laureate.

As a performer and director, Jo creates interdisciplinary work which brings people together to share perspectives where there is tension. Another favourite topic for Jo is how to improve the infrastructure for artists in our country so they can live sustainably, and most of all, how to use poetry – in the smallest and broadest sense – to create change.

Artist in Residence: Jo Randerson

The Comfort Zone

Jo has created The Comfort Zone, an audio performance from lockdown, to listen to when you want to change things up.

Put your headphones on and go out for a walk – at any time of day.

This episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, our RSS feed and right here.

If you're listening from mobile, Apple, Spotify and Soundcloud are preferable to the below player (as the sound won't cut out when your phone goes to sleep!)

We recommend headphones.

Each artist has provided you with sleeve notes for their episode. Jo's sleeve notes are below.

Sleeve Notes for The Comfort Zone

Jo Randerson

When I feel unsure, annoyed or lost, the best place for me to go is outside. Being in the air, with the trees, with the ground and the sky, the energy always flows better, whereas in a small whare with your whānau you can get stuck in a feedback loop, where one argument just bounces around for hours. Every time our family leave the house, everyone's mood picks up. The elements of the natural world are an essential circuit breaker and place of re-orientation for me, so when this project arrived, walking was the obvious choice. Especially at the time of lockdown – when so many people were out walking, perhaps seeing their neighbourhood differently, finding new pathways they didn’t know about. I wanted to mark that time.

When this project arrived, I had also been listening to a few mates who were finding lockdown quite challenging with their partners and families. Little things. Little things with big consequences, like an argument about a cupboard representing long-term patterns of domination. I was also thinking about change, how needed it is – on a domestic scale, and in the national and global arena. I am still wondering whether we will be brave enough to make the big changes we need to make, to leave neo-liberalism behind, or was that a lockdown dream? Could the destructive patterns of the colonial patriarchy (well-proven over centuries to be failures) be getting nailed into their coffins? I don’t know the answer. I know what I am hoping for, and I know it will mean being brave enough to do things very differently.

Thank you Kate for asking us to be part of this series. Ngā mihi nui to the other amazing artists for your beautiful work. Con and I made this on the streets of Vogelmorn in Pōneke, and in our garden sheds. We hope you enjoy this whenever, wherever it finds you.

Episode Credits

The Comfort Zone was created and performed by Jo Randerson
Composition and sound design: Conrad Wedde
Additional sound design: Byron Coll
Dramaturg: Thomas LaHood

Theme music: C. Frances Duncan and Ruby Solly
Graphic design: Sarah Gladwell
Produced by Kate Prior for The Pantograph Punch
Made with the support of NZ on Air

You can listen to Artist in Residence: Jo Randerson on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, our RSS feed and above.