TEZA
The following are projects currently under development for the Temporary Economic Zone of Aotearoa (TEZA) at ISEA 2012 in New Mexico. This is stage one of a temporary community project, exploring the best way to inhabit and exchange site as a visitor to a new land. Unlike other Special Economic Zones which exploit local resources, the TEZA comes with the intention of looking to bridge cultures and work in conjunction with the local people of the area in order to build renewal and connectedness.
For an outline of the TEZA concept go here. For details on the curatorial leaders and production team go here.
Bell Tents in New Mexico - Tim Barlow
Transported from the colonial era of New Zealand and contemporary New Zealand film-making these tents will be made of a lightweight, waterproof and ecologically sustainable material and form the starting point of the TEZA camp. Intended as a modern solution to temporary housing, political occupations and to evoke the Pueblo architecture of the communal Kiva. The layout of the village will be organised around a central larger sized tent that will function as a meeting house and Pou according to aspects of Maori tikanga. The tents will be semi translucent, able to be lit at night with projections and renewable energy light sources. Originally used by the British army and colonial forces in New Zealand, TEZA sees these tents occupied by more benevolent contemporary forces.
Tim Barlow is a Wellington artist with an MFA from Massey University Wellington 2011. He has extensive experience nationally and internationally in film and television art departments, and specialises in crossing barriers of film production and art production. He has worked on collaborative projects with community and film based organisations. Commissioned projects include Manawatu Art Gallery, MONZ, Artspace (Auckland), Dowse Museum, Wellington Activity Centre, Vincents Art Workshop and many film production departments and will be the technical project leader for the TEZA.
Pouwhare- Te Urutahi Waikerepuru with Kura Puke and Stuart Foster
Central to the collection of shelters will be the Pouwhare, the central 'teepee' in which people gather and share stories, as around a fireside or hearth. Pou are traditionally tall (wooden) structures, connectors between this world and the next. They are receptacles that come in many shapes and sizes to house and accommodate varying forms of energy. Pou can be present in many ways e.g. icons, chants & incantations, waiata or songs, karakia or prayers, landscapes, seascapes, forests and the human form. For the TEZA, the pou-as-teepee represents the shape of Te Urutahi's Maunga, (mountain), Taranaki. It also provides a connection between the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa and the First Nations People of USA. The enclosed space within the teepee creates a Tapu (sacred) space symbolizing Te Ao Marama – The World of Light – The Physical Realm that connects with the dwelling place of the Atua - Te Wahi Ngaro - the Spritual Realm.
Te Urutahi Waikerepuru, cultural advisor and Pouwhare concept designer, is highly experienced in cultural bridging. She has used her managerial skills to develop initiatives that focus on developing people and communities. She is committed to ensuring that Mātauranga Māori (traditional Māori knowledge) interfaces successfully with mainstream knowledge by sharing her knowledge of a Māori world view through the use of a range of art mediums and did this within the ISEA project: Uncontainable Nature in 2011 (Istanbul) alongside her father Te Huirangi Waikerepuru (curated by Ian Clothier, Nina Czegledy and Trudy Lane).
Artist Kura Puke and spatial/interactive designer Stuart Foster will develop a laser light project integrated within the Pouwhare. Both are also lecturers at Massey University, College of Creative Arts (CoCA) in Wellington.
Kura Puke is an artist working with fibre-optics and light-emitting diodes. She is a member of various research groups including the WATT who hosted the international conference Wellington Lux 2011 and SuRe, the CoCA Sustainability forum. Kura works with contemporary lighting technologies to create 2D and 3D animated, illuminated installations. Her latest projects include responsive, portable panels driven by customized software, sensors and solar power capability. These works explore how visual culture can continue to communicate and foster cultural sustainability and well-being in the 21st century based on a Maori based aesthetic and cultural methodology. Key areas of interest include; Maori visual culture, globalism, Maori cosmology, sustainability technology, innovation and cultural identity.
Stuart Foster is a spatial designer and researcher specialising in digital interactive performance environments, digital fabrication and spatial representation practices. His specialist skills focus on interactive technologies that operate across the digital and physical realms through the use of emergent digital technologies. Recent projects include interactive technologies integrated into performative environments in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space and Wellington Lux 2011.
Blue Marble - Julian Priest
The Blue Marble is an outdoor kinetic photo-voltaic sculpture in the form of a large sphere covered with blue photo-voltaic cells. At dawn the sphere sits at the bottom of a hill and as the sun shines, it slowly rolls up the hill. At night it lights itself and slowly discharges electricity into the grid as it rolls back down.
The Blue Marble will be installed as TEZA's power station providing electricity to other artworks and forming a key infrastructure. The Blue Marble models a balanced energy economy and casts technology in the role of the absurd hero Sysyiphus.
Julian Priest is a Whanganui based artist and researcher. He was an early community wireless networker in the UK and became an activist and advocate for the free networking movement, exploring wireless networking as a theme in fields of arts, development, and policy. Since 2005 he has developed an artistic practice around participatory and collaborative forms and shows internationally, most recently at the Dowse Art Museum and as part of Performance Arcade, Wellington. His current interests are themes around the physical and cultural boundaries between technology and the environment, and the connection between energy and information. He is a board member of the Aotearoa Digital Arts trust and lecturer in creative technologies with the Interdisciplinary unit at A.U.T University in Auckland.
Mahinga Kai - Simon Kaan
Mahinga kai (food gathering) is a key component of Kai Tahu (a Maori iwi/tribe) cultural identity, including the traditional sites, species and practices that provide food to its people. The continuation of a mahika kai culture (the customs and specific places for food gathering) provide the centre that hold the tribe together.
For this project Kaan is proposing to explore ideas around traditional food gathering, food preparation, and the sustainability of two iwi: Kai Tahu (from the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand) and an as yet unknown to him indigenous people of New Mexico, a Pueblo people. It is hoped that the project can explore the wider issues surrounding Mahinga Kai and how each culture addresses issues such as colonisation, environmental concerns and sustainability. It is anticipated that there will be both a virtual sharing of ideas about food as well as a more physical exchange. The virtual aspect could be in the form of sharing food over Skype, in the hope that ideas around it can generate stories and rituals both old and new. How can this work when two peoples are in separate places? How important is locale when food is shared?
Simon Kaan is based in Dunedin with Maori and Chinese ethnic background. He has built a strong reputation as a painter and printmaker. His work as a performance artist commenced with The Asian at Blue Oyster, and he recently created a work for the Wanaka Arts Festival.
Baggage Bank - Number 8 Collective
Upon arrival at TEZA the temporary multidisciplinary non-entity (TMNE) must register their baggage with the Baggage Bank. At the Baggage Bank they must declare and deposit three items of baggage. After which they must select nine items of baggage to be used as currency whilst in TEZA. A condition of trade is that they must ‘explore’ and register three resources ‘discovered’ whilst in TEZA. The resources must be entered into a data bank using the Baggage Bank Mobile Electronic Analogue Prysmical Drawing Machine. Baggage may be traded at any time with other TMNE’s - these are in essence navigational devices, assisting in establishing a place to talk from - a turangawaewae.
Baggage Bank asks us to contemplate what affectations we bring as guests and what we are willing to surrender, trade and exchange in order to enter dialogue.
Number 8 Collective collaborate in residencies, community based projects, public seminars, curatorial projects, and exhibitions nationally and internationally. Past projects include Indigo Blues at Blue Oyster, Dunedin, Mynah at Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing, China, Island Poverty in Vanuatu and Fair Game, Southland Museum & Art Gallery, New Zealand.
To lead a dog's life - Jenny Gillam
Gillam proposes making video documentation of a tamed wolf or cross-bred wolf-dog and handler tracking the boundary of the camp. The video footage, viewed within the camp, would suggest a continuous monitoring of the boundary. The footage might also be presented off-site in an urban art gallery, placed alongside footage of the wolf/dog exploring the gallery space prior to the install of a show, so that the gallery viewer becomes conscious of a prior event having taken place in the gallery and of another art zone established in the desert. She is applying for the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance Residency which focuses on preserving endangered wolves. She would like to use the NMWA’s wolf tracking software to chart the wolf/dog’s movements during filming around the perimeter of the TEZA site and within the gallery.
Throughout the world wolves are protected in some areas, hunted for sport in others, or may be subject to population control or extermination as threats to livestock, people, and pets. However, they are also recognized as keystone predators because they help maintain a balanced ecosystem.
Wellington based Jenny Gillam’s exhibition practice investigates the socio-politics of ecology (particularly our relationship to animals) in relation to urban neurosis and its manifestations in popular culture. It explores notions of ‘Place’ as a temporal construct; nature and its artifice; the real and the imagined, and is realised as installations, video performances and has recently extended to the behavior of living organisms observed in a gallery.
OOgle - James Charlton & Jan Krauss
Releasing squadrons of flying robot drones into the TEZA, OOggle will bring together opposing notions of the real, the mapped and represented. Flying at low altitude the drones equipped with data projectors and GPS devices will transpose Google maps satellite, street view and photo images onto the physical landscape. The result is a collision of representation and reality.
With a range of several kilometres the radio-controlled drones will serve as both guides to and guardians of the space. At times leading visitors to points of interest, other times shepherding them away from prohibited areas, the complexity of coercion and freedom is explored in regard to landscape.
Only viewable after dark daytime visitors to the TEZA during the day are invited to upload images from the zone to PicassaWeb. Downloading these as they traverse relevant GPS coordinates the drones will reveal the traces of occupation left by others in the digital terrain while the physical landscape is left to tell its own stories.
James Charlton gained his BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts and his MFA at the State University of New York at Albany. He exhibited extensively throughout the USA, and lectured in sculpture at the University of New Hampshire, Monserrat College of Art and the State University of New York at Albany. Returning to New Zealand in 1991, Charlton became one of the founding members of the ASA School of Art Visual Arts Degree, and was subsequently appointed Curriculum Leader of Sculpture at Auckland University of Technology. He is now Programme Leader for the newly established Bachelor of Creative Technologies at AUT where he lectures in Sculpture and Interactive Media and is currently Director of the Interdisciplinary Unit.
Neighbourhood Air - Janine Randerson
An interactive, online work driven by live air quality data. The data is generated from real-time weather and air quality levels. A current prototype in Auckland sees a disused traffic control box converted into a weather station to monitor the changing levels of Nitrogen Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide and Volatile Organic compounds that are released at street level on a busy Auckland street. Atmospheric optics, or the refraction of sunlight reveals particulate matter in the air as visible colour gradations. The interface uses an abstract visual language, where optical effects of colour and gradual movement invites a slower form of looking, rather than direct identification of a skyscape. Neighbourhood Air includes an 'air story-exchange' function where participants can swap an air quality story from their own neighbourhood with a story from Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland).
Janine Randerson is an Auckland based artist who works with a range of time-based media including 16mm film, digital audio and video and computer programmed interaction design. She has exhibited internationally in Australasia, Asia, Europe and South America. An interest in the effects of technologies of observation on aural and visual perception is a recurrent theme in her work: from remote satellite imaging to the sonification of micro-meteorological data. Her most recent collaborations are with climatologists and meteorologists at the Bureau of Meteorology (Aus) and the National Institute of Environmental Research (Denmark). Janine is currently a Lecturer in Art and Design at UNITEC, where she teaches art and design history, theory and research practice. She is a doctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne.
Conversations with Stones - James Charlton & Phil Dadson
Conversation with Stones is a performative discourse between the physical and digital in which the artists converse through the sonic material interface of stones and the touch interface of an iPad to manipulate both acoustic and visual elements of the work. Occupying different material realms the performers share control of the central projected image of a 3D space in which a planar terrain and “sonic boulders” are moved and morphed by touch and acoustic input.
Phil Dadson 'plays' a number of small stones collected over many years from diverse regions of the globe. Each stone is selected for and paired with another stone for their unique sonic properties. Each stone requires the specific material properties of the other to resonate. Strangely impersonal in contrast to these stones Charlton’s interface is a touch screen tablet whose aesthetic of technological austerity while seductive is less intimate.
Phil Dadson is a sound and intermedia artist with an interdisciplinary practice including solo performances and exhibitions; building experimental instruments, video/sound installation, music composition and graphic scores, sound sculptures, sound-stories and improvisations with invented instruments; founder of New Zealand's most original rhythm/performance group, From Scratch he has exhibited and performed extensively internationally.
Desert Songs - Brit Bunkley
A collection of 'dangerous' animals found primarily in deserts that will interact with each other (in a currently undetermined way). Embossed words have been placed on their day-glo bodies with appropriately aggressive titles, words or phrases from rock songs (created with 3D displacement maps in 3D Studio). Bunkley is proposing a diorama-like environment with a constantly changing lighting state this proposed project also has an affinity to the Los Alamos Manhattan project site not far from Santa Fe.
Originally from the United States and now based in New Zealand Brit Bunkley's current practice includes large scale public sculpture, installations, as well as the creation of “impossible” moving and still images and architecture designed using computer 3D modelling, video editing and image editing programs. The content often focuses on an oblique sense of paranoid apocalyptic fear tempered with a sense of whimsy and irony. Recently he has shown with Mary Newton Gallery Wellington, Pataka Porirua and has major public work commissioned for the Whanganui riverfront and O'Connells Bay Sculpture Park, Auckland.
Eco sapiens Roundtable: A Walk Through Deep Time - Trudy Lane
We live in a human scale of time. Days, weeks and deadlines. Years and generations. Amid mountains and mesas which measures their ages in eons, we invite local astronomers, geologists, physicists, biologists, philosophers, cultural commentators, artists and the New Mexico public to join on a roving discussion of our planet's deeper scales of time. From the chaos of the early solar system and the formation of earth, to the emergent complexity of life, the walk instigates a discussion of time, energy, and the genealogies of who we are and where we all come from, across scientific, philosophical and cultural perspectives.
Held in both places, the project will link the Wai exhibition at 516 Arts in the city centre, with the storytelling center of the TEZA desert site and continue the Ecosapiens discussion developed at ISEA in 2011. The installations are developed as workshops where a streetscape and desertscape will be selected for the 457 metre long walk which represents 4.57 billion years. Locally relevant materials are developed to demarcate the timescale for each installation. Workshop participants will also be further developing the GPS-triggered smartphone soundscape which layers together the thoughts and ideas from walks past and present, allowing multiple readings of the timeline, depending on your movements within it. The platform can then be offered to any local organisations who may be interested to continue to develop it.
Trudy Lane is an artist whose work seeks to create inspiring models of encounter between specialised cultures of knowledge. Her current project involves creating a research retreat at her family farm house in Miranda, New Zealand. This space is known as the
House of Wonder.
