Ph: Leah Jing McIntosh

 

Where do you come from and how did you get to where you are?

My name is Haneen Martin and I wear many hats across the art industry. I'm a producer at Darwin Fringe Festival, Co-Manager of the National Young Writers Festival, a Creative Producer at Next Wave, which is an arts organisation based in Melbourne. I am also a freelance writer, artist, consultant, producer, kind of whatever people need me basically (laughs).

Regarding my background, I am half Malay, half Saudi Arabian. But actually, within all of that, there are a bunch of different ethnicities. So on my biological father's side, Saudi Arabian but also Syrian. And then on my mother's side, we’re Malay. We also have Thai heritage, Indonesian heritage, my great grandfather came from the Maldives, a whole heap of different ethnicities. I was born in Malaysia and moved around to different countries for a few years, I then went back to Kuala Lumpur with my mother when I was about three and lived there until I was eight. I've now been in Australia for nearly 21 years.

I moved to Darwin three and a half years ago. I lived in Adelaide for 17 years and I loved living there, but it was really suffocatingly white in many ways. I didn't want to do what every other person in Adelaide did at the time, which is move to Melbourne or Sydney.  I was doing this horrific art history course in Adelaide,  it was so colonial; but I did learn about the trade between Makassar and Arnhem Land here in the Top End and how it had been going on for hundreds of years. Because of this trade route there's lots of intermarriage, some language embedded in there and things like that and I was like ‘oh that's that's incredible’. I'm not Makassan but I can speak a bit of Indonesian as well as Malay and  the archipelago I see is very connected and so I found that very interesting,  -that there's people that are like me already here and I've been made to feel like an outsider for so long, it felt so fascinating. And so I thought 'Oh maybe I'll move up and just sort of see what's around'. 
The other reason is that Malaysia doesn't allow dual citizenship and I have an Australian passport so I was stuck thinking, how do I move somewhere where I feel like I'm closer to home without moving overseas and having to deal with visas? When I moved to the tropics it made sense, it felt right, I realised living in the Northern Territory I am able to go to markets every weekend and in the markets are all the fruits and vegetables I grew up with in Asia, and the fact that it's here too is really great.

What was it like for you growing up as a migrant?

I think for a really long time I didn't understand what having a migrant background is or whether we even identified as being migrants. When we moved here my mom married to my stepdad who's lived in Australia his whole life, and we pretty much just flooded into where he's always lived with his own family. And it was really strange because there was a lot of hitting the ground running in terms of just getting used to this new place. Mum basically encouraged us to stop speaking Malay, I think for her that's just the thing that made sense at the time, not that we couldn't speak great English, Malaysia was colonised by the British. It wasn't an ability issue. But we did what we could to kind of fit in many ways. And as the time went on, it became clear that we couldn't fit in as much as we wanted to. And I guess now that I'm older, I'm realising that I never will fit in. 
 

I think for us as well being Arab and also being Muslim, we moved to Australia at the end of 2000. And within less than a year of us being in the country 9/11 happened, which really impacted what we were already experiencing in terms of racism and uneasiness, but then we really could put a face to the name, so to speak. It was really challenging. And it's still challenging to this day because I still find myself picking and choosing about who I disclose my Arabness too. And so that's an interesting thing to have to unpack. 
But ultimately, I think whilst the experience was generally challenging, I think it has also been a really fun one, I really like the fact that I can exist really comfortably between here and Malaysia. We've always gone back. Sometimes it feels like you're living a bit of a double life, but other times it's great. It's so much fun to be able to go between the different worlds.

Do you think being an immigrant has had an impact on your work/the themes you investigate today?

Yes, I think it impacts everything in a lot of different ways. I think the writing that I do, and the art that I make would be very different if I wasn't a migrant, because largely, I'm a storyteller, and the stories that I'm writing about are my experience. So at an exhibition I had last year, I was reflecting a lot on the types of foods that I was craving in response to COVID, and not being able to go back to Malaysia and not being home in South Australia, where my parents and brother are, and I think that had to do with a combination of, I guess that migrantness, but also reminding me of what  I was learning every time I was going back. 
In terms of how that might bleed into producing and that line of work, I think you just learn a lot about the different ways in which people communicate. When you can code switch and go between a lot of different scenarios, it's really easy to go 'Okay, I'm going about this the wrong way, I need to readjust' and you don't take it to heart too much.
 

What is something that you have learnt the hard way?

I am sure there are a million things. Right now for me there's something that I'm going through the process of unlearning, and is that I think my biggest sort of migrant behaviour is being able to barrel through things, no matter how I'm feeling. And that can impact your mental health. I am really trying to unlearn that and learn a bit more compassion for myself, but also for other people in terms of where they might be at and supporting them a little bit better through that process as well. That's something that I think I'm gonna be working on for some time.

 

How do you balance the projects you take on board?

Stressfully (laughs). I don't manage my time very well, or I've managed it very well, depending on how you are looking at it. And so I fit in a bit too much. I am constantly trying to work out where to pull back, and to let things go, and when do I just move through because this is really worth it and will be worth the time and a little bit of sleep loss and all of that. So for me I guess part of something that is underlying a lot of my practice at the moment is that I've been doing a Master's in Cultural Leadership through NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts) and I have learned a lot from that. I have learned a lot about what I don't like from that too, which has been really valuable. For me, every time that workload gets a bit too stressful, I remember that that particular part is going to come to an end. And it's gonna be all right. It's again a very migrant, particularly Asian migrant background mentality of like, I'm going to have a postgraduate degree, so that'll be fine. And so it's worth all the stress and the lack of sleep and everything.
 
What does burnout look like for you and how do you restore yourself?

I feel burnt out all the time. And something I've started doing is, -which feels like a bit dramatic, I make it really clear across my public social media that I cannot take anything else on for the next two months, 'please don't contact me, I'm not available', which feels ridiculous and really arrogant. But you know, otherwise people come in, and they will ask you to get involved with things, for no pay or something, especially if it's like a diversity panel or something like that. They always pop up when you're most burnt out. It's tricky, I don't know what the balance is. 
 

What does creativity mean to you?

I think the thing that people overlook, particularly with migrant backgrounds, is how much creativity is embedded in everything that we do, and the culture that we already carry with us. And so there are certain things that have become rituals in my life that felt like chores at the time, but I now realise they're really creative. The way that we cook food and present food to people is creative, how we think about what we want to feed people is creative. You know, everything I do is kind of around food at the moment, but also around beauty. I like to think about beauty a lot in terms of how we present ourselves to other people, whether it's to make yourself more palatable to others, or whether it's about embracing yourself, I don't like to see it as standing out. I think it's just like if you want to wear your traditional clothes, that's just what you're doing that day. And I think there's a lot of creativity involved in all of that. 

Because everything in all of our cultures is really exciting and colourful and beautiful. That doesn't just happen, It's not an accident. I think that's all creativity. And it's really exciting for me, when I see people of migrant backgrounds go into the arts, because it's so risky.  And I think for me, the ultimate in creativity is if we can help other people in our community see how creative they are, and bring them into what we're doing. So it's not so divided.

 

What are you grateful for?
Today I'm really grateful for long conversations with friends. And people checking in, just friendship in general. It's really easy to get very insular, and feel like nobody notices if you're run down. And part of that again I think is a very like migrant attribute. Like, it doesn't matter how stressed you are, you keep going. You don't put it on anyone else.

 

What are you looking forward to now?

I look forward to rest (laughs). I know that's not a very exciting answer. I do have lots of really great projects in the works right now. For example we recently just commissioned the first piece for a publication that I started with friends, it is called TEH I CHA, it is an online publication where we get to showcase Northern Territory writers of colour. 
But yeah, honestly, rest, the chance to slow down a little bit and spend time with friends. I'm very aware of the privilege that I have at this point where things haven't slowed down for me, and I work in the arts, like, that's ridiculous during this pandemic, but also, it's meant for me that there's no been no real allowances for the fact that a global pandemic is happening.

What are some words of wisdom for someone starting out in your field?

Seek out people like you in the industry. Generally speaking, I found there is a real strong sense of solidarity.  And the more you build up those relationships the better you get at communicating with people.
Also, talk things out. If you have an idea, test it, talk to someone that you trust and go, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ and see how they respond. What you will learn from that is how to develop your ideas better, because so much of what I've noticed in the industry, is how important it is to be able to articulate yourself. And that's not about speaking English really well, or anything like that. It's just about being able to get things down to a few interesting sentences when you're in a lobby, or when you run into someone, and they go, ‘what are you working on?’ And you can tell them, and that might make them excited, and they think of you later down the track when there's something else on. There's a lot of value in being able to test and practice and build those relationships.

Do you have a favourite word?

Yeah, it's makan which means “eat” in Malay. It's an interchangeable word, the way that the language is structured if you add a ‘an’ to the end, so if you go makanan, then that means food. I love it because it's the biggest gesture of hospitality ever. So when someone comes over to your house, you ask them if they've eaten,  -and if someone is having a bad time, if someone passes away or anything that happens, you ask, ‘have you eaten? Are you caring for yourself in that way?’ And if not, ‘I will care for you in that way’. 

Recommendations
 

Coconut & Sambal. A cookbook by Lara Lee. 
This book has the most incredible Indonesian recipes ever and really highlights to me the crossover of cultures across the archipelago as I grew up with almost all of the recipes in this book! I'm dying for enough time to throw a dinner party so I can cook exclusively from this book.
 

Dissect.
I have to confess I don't have the attention span for podcasts, but when I'm on a plane I love listening to things rather than reading. This podcast is so amazing, I started with 'Flower Boy' by Tyler, the Creator and I'm working my way through.

 

Connect with Haneen through her webpage