- Spoken Word
- Informative
It's September 1973. Barbara Hammer and Terry Anderson have parted ways, and are back at their respective schools: Barbara at San Francisco State University, Terry at the University of British Columbia. The vibrations of their Summer tryst reverberate across their letters to each other. In this chapter of New Friend, I trace the days, weeks, months, and years after the photographs, through the trials and tribulations of being a lesbian mother in the 1970s, waning interest in lesbian feminism, and the beauty and calamity in a relationship that unfolds over distance.
New Friend is a five-part radio documentary exploring the context behind a series of photographs taken by the artist and experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer. The photographs were taken over one weekend in August 1973, on Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, in the Salish Sea.
Thank you to all of those who shared their stories, memories, and voices for the purposes of this project.
In this chapter, you heard the following voices (in order of appearance):
Barbara Hammer
Florrie Burke
Derek Anderson
Andrew Durbin
Mark Street
The rocks, plants, trees, wind, and water of Hornby Island Ja-Dai-Aich.
Sounds from Vancouver, BC, San Francisco and Berkeley, California, all courtesy of Radio Aporee. These recordings were made on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and the Ohlone.
Barbara Hammer and Terry Anderson, through their diary entries and written correspondence, are voiced by Martha Ross.
In this chapter, you heard excerpts from Barbara Hammer’s films "Dyketactics" and "Jane Brakhage" (both 1974), "Tenderfictions" (1996), B-Roll from "I Was I Am" (1973), and previously unpublished footage from “Marilyn Frasca and Barbara Hammer go Clamming in the Northwest / Barbara Mediates out loud on leaving and staying in the Pacific Northwest, 1988 March 4" (1988), part of the Barbara Hammer papers at The Beinecke Library of Rare Books. You also heard an excerpt from an Oral History with Barbara Hammer, recorded for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art by Svetlana Kitto (2018).
Mixing and Mastering by Robert Steenkamer
Thank you to:
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Barbara Hammer Estate
Hornby Island Community Archives
Cashmere Radio, Berlin
96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio
KOW, Berlin
Company Gallery, New York City
Rebecca Dunne
Emma Walter
Emily Harrison
All beings, human and more-than-human, of Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, and its surrounding waters—where I am a part-time, uninvited guest on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral territory of the K'ómoks First Nation.
New Friend is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
by Bitsy Knox (2024).
Photo Credit: Barbara Hammer, "Terry, Hornby Island, British Columbia, 1972".
