Call for Public Art Ideas

Public art ideas for vacant commercial space in Wellington in 2013 are being sought by an agency being established by the curators of public art programme Letting Space by the 17th of December.

Called Urban Dream Brokerage, the agency is a six month pilot funded by the Wellington City Council. It opens in December to assist in the revitalisation of the city through brokering the use of vacant commercial space by artists and the creative industries. While submissions are welcome at any time for projects needing space, the Brokerage is asking initial submissions for public artwork to be submitted to Urban Dream Brokerage by 17 December to urbandreambrokerage@gmail.com.

Urban Dream Brokerage founders Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram emphasise they are working as brokers rather than curators of projects. While artists will be responsible for developing and managing their projects,  as an agency Urban Dream Brokerage locates potential spaces for the projects and handles negotiation, licensing and the provision of insurance. Amery and Jerram bring to the Brokerage three years of experience working with property owners to realise a series of ambitious and innovative public art projects nationally.

"Where many artists come unstuck," they say, "is in the relationships with property owners and covering aspects like insurance when their use is short term use. It works for landlords, enlivening space and suggesting new uses to potential tenants, enables new business growth and the development business skills in the creative sector, and encourages a more lively, mixed used urban environment - something thats vital to a creative, future-looking city."  

Jerram and Amery note their are many similar brokerage initiatives occurring around the world due to their effectiveness, including over a dozen in Australia.
 
Any individual or group developing their own original work or idea are eligible to apply to the brokerage as long as their work, product, services or process is distinctive and unique. While the Brokerage is being established to support all original work and creative businesses, until April 2013 or until a further funding base is secured, priority is being given to public art projects (see below for the Wellington City Council's definition of Public Art).

Applicants must:

• Bring life to Wellington. Projects should be fresh, dynamic and open to the public. Priority will be given to those with a ground floor presence and accessibility (i.e. not projects that are about storage, office space, or that are rarely open). This can be anywhere within Wellington City Council boundaries - not just the CBD.
• Provide the unique and innovative. We are not interested in turning the city into another copy of itself or one type of gallery or space. Part of the selection process is the encouragement of mixed use, diversity and variety. Artists and the creative industries actively contribute to the thinking, use and design of urban spaces. Projects will also be helping ensure more diverse communities are represented publicly.
• Demonstrate professionalism and a very clear idea. Projects should have future potential for growth, and individuals/organisations should demonstrate that they are ready to look after a space professionally and responsibly.
• Pay attention to their project’s context. Projects should demonstrate an awareness of Wellington city’s current usages, issues and history. This includes, where applicable, recognition of mana whenua and the city's Maori whakapapa.

For a project to happen it also needs someone with a suitable property to get behind it. The Brokerage may not always be able to find such a space.

Public art is defined in the Wellington City Council Public Art Policy as:

• artists contributing to the thinking and design of public places and spaces,
• art concepts and/or artworks and/or design features integrated into urban design developments (including buildings, streets and parks),
• artists working in and with communities in public spaces,
• art processes and artworks in the public sphere that may be variously described as sculpture, murals, street-art, performance, new-genre public art, relational aesthetics, and/or installations.

Jerram and Amery encourage those interested to contact the Brokerage with any questions they have as to their eligibility or how the UDB can help them. email: urbandreambrokerage@gmail.com or phone 027 3566 128 or 029 934 9749

Help make dreams realty - a job offer!

Want to help revitalise Wellington city? Feel you can talk to both artists and property owners as equals?  Can you implement a plan in the face of big challenges? Have we got the job for you.

 Under the auspices of Letting Space's umbrella trust the Wellington Independent Arts Trust, with funding from Wellington City Council, we are thrilled to be able to announce a pilot for a brokerage for the use of vacant commercial space: Urban Dream Brokerage. 

Wellington Independent Arts Trust is looking to employ a self-motivated person to make a real contribution to the revitalisation of Wellington city. The Brokerage Coordinator will process applications by artists and creative industries with dynamic projects for vacant properties. They will locate owners of suitable properties, liaise with owners and agents, and negotiate with both parties to secure properties under temporary licensing arrangements. This is a paid part-time contract available on flexible terms.

Application due: 12noon, Wednesday 21st November 2012

 

Job description

Role

The purpose of the role is to successfully coordinate the placement of fresh, unique and creative projects into vacant commercial spaces within the Wellington city region, helping lead to the revitalisation of Wellington city in the eyes of the arts, property and business worlds alike. 

Your role will involve:

1. Implementing strategies to maintain buy-in from property owners and to promote the benefits of the brokerage.
2.  Developing plans and implementing the promotion of the brokerage to the creative industries, and meeting and discussing criteria with potential applicants. 

3. Liaising with other key stakeholders such as the Property Council of New Zealand Wellington branch, 19 Tory Street, arts and business groups, Wellington City Council and key individual affiliates connected to the property industry.

4. Research, document and maintain a database of applicants and property owners.

5. Develop and write editorial relating to successful projects, and develop newsletters or other informative material. 

6. Negotiate License Agreements and Special Conditions with property owners

7. Arrange property inspections to assess condition of sites and suitability for their use.

8. Coordinate repair and maintenance works and contribute to Property Risk Management procedures

9. Develop initial relationships with potential funders of the Brokerage.

10. Maintaining excellent relationships and networks with property owners and artists.

Reporting

The Brokerage Coordinator will be expected to be able to work independently, but will be briefed and guided by the Brokerage's managers Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram, in consultation with the Brokerage's advisory board and the trustees of the Wellington Independent Arts Trust. 

Contract

This is a position for an Independent Contractor for an Initial Period of approximately six months with the potential to extend on new terms. The Contract Fee for the Initial Period is $12,000. This is a

part-time contract for 480 hours, available on flexible terms but averaging 20 hours per week (pro rata $52 000 pa). 

The position is expected to start early December 2012 and run until at least the end of May 2013.

Selection Criteria

This position involves being able to work across the creative, property and business worlds. The successful applicant may have their principal experience in either of these areas, but in bridging these interests will bring an understanding and appreciation of all of them. 

Essential

1. Passion for the renewal and revitalisation of Wellington city and a belief in the important role the creative industries play in this as an agency of change.

2. Excellent verbal, and written and personal communication skills

3. Good thorough documentation skills

4. Good budgeting and project management skills

5. Confident, dynamic, tenacious and self-motivated personal qualities 

Important

1. Understanding and appreciation of the business and property worlds

2. Project management/coordination experience

3. Understanding and appreciating of the role public art can play in urban development

4. Experience/background in real estate, creative and property industries or urban development

5. Experience in negotiations

6. Experience with maintenance/building/property service providers 

To apply

Please email urbandreambrokerage@gmail.com the following documents:

1. CV – no more than 2 pages

2. Your written response to all the Selection Criteria

In the subject of your email please include the words: Job Application: Brokerage Coordinator [insert your name] 

Enquiries

Email as above or phone Mark Amery (027 3566 128) or Sophie Jerram (029 934 9749) 

The Wellington Independent Arts Trust supports experienced Wellington arts managers by providing an umbrella for significant independent arts projects. Managers Mark Amery and Sophie Jerram are curators of Letting Space an independent public art programme (for more information see www.lettingspace.org.nz). 

This position is funded with the support of the Wellington City Council Public Art Fund.

Party Interventions Wanted

Kia ora koutou Letting Space friends, 

We are looking for programming performance ideas /works for Open Plan, the party we’re having November 3 in Wellington (go to https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/Crowd/Details/531 to secure a place before October 28) - it's a chance for you to share short or small creative contributions that can slot within and/or work within a party atmosphere - in any media. Your ideas need to be with us by end of next Wednesday 26 Oct.   It's not a paid gig - but a way for us to swap creative gifts - and we will programme ideas based on what we can fit in where. Ideas to theplaygroundnz@gmail.com and/or sophiejerramandmarkamery@gmail.com

Some parameters:  We can make provision for short performances but we would love a range of work in unexpected places working unexpected ways. So the ideas could work in tandem with people there to hang out and catch up with each other. Think the opposite of a seated performance. Your contribution could for example involve handing something out, empowering the drinks trolley, performing an action, or doing something sporadically throughout the night. Equally you could draw people around you for a short period. Your contribution could also be a static image or object - we have wallspace and some wall light boxes.  

There are a number of interesting spaces in the car park and alleyway outside the venue - which is glassed-in so these sites are viewable also from inside. This area is lit by floodlights at night. You should feel free to visit the site in Forrester Lane, the Sustainability Trust to see it out.

It's not all about parties. We're running a talk at City Gallery on the same day looking at what public art might mean now in New Zealand:

MAKING DREAMS REALTY - A FREE TALK AT 3-5PM, NOVEMBER 3, CITY GALLERY WELLINGTON

What is public art in 2012 in New Zealand?  We'd like to suggest that Letting Space has helped to topple the permanent sculpture off its plinth along with other great projects.  

This is a rare chance to hear about the collective work of three independent New Zealand public art projects that have made an impact over the past three years: 

Sophie and Mark will discuss the Letting Space trajectory from utilising the refuse of the 2008 financial crash toward the exploration of community service.

Christchurch guests Coralie Winn and Ryan Reynolds from Gap Filler will look at the past and future series of projects that aim to temporarily activate vacant sites within Christchurch, to make for a more interesting, dynamic and vibrant city following the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.

Sam Trubridge will survey the vanguard Performance Arcade: an annual installation of shipping containers outside Te Papa (and this year in Auckland) that serve as a temporary community and venue for installations to engage passers-by in performance, live art and digital media. 

Earthmovers

Stuart Shepherd has shared photographs of a project he and Karin Van Roosmalen did with Gapfiller in September 2011, Lyttelton post-quake: Play Architects/Clay Architects. We wanted to share because we were always really enamoured by the project when Stuart talked about doing it, and hadn't seen any documentation until now.  

It involved workshops in making a town out of clay. Stuart picks up the rest of the story by email: "

"This was a very casual workshop. Open to all, though the local primary schools had been specially invited.
Clay was provided as discount rate from the Dunedin supplier, the furniture was already on site, the marquees were on special at Bunnings.
"It took place over a weekend... mostly on the Saturday and Saturday night... a steady stream of locals and visitors contributed, some kids spent all day at work.. it created a nice focus/activity in the middle of town.... the fairy lights stuck onto meat skewers created a magical little night scene... the clay village was left in place to weather back into the rubble.

The excess clay was used for another workshop in ChCh. I wasnt present for that second one."

Documentation of many of Gapfiller's other projects can be found at http://www.gapfiller.org.nz/

Life in Transition

Sophie Jerram in Christchurch

I felt like I’d crashed a family party at the inaugural meeting of the Life in Vacant Spaces Trust, Christchurch Monday 23rd July. It was a privilege to be a wall fly, albeit an interested, welcome and supportive one. Life in Vacant Spaces has been set up as a brokerage to facilitate creative and novel uses of empty space in CBD properties. The idea is close to the heart of Letting Space as we have been planning a similar service, the Urban Dream Brokerage in Wellington City. 

For months, I had felt very much there were two types of New Zealanders - those who had experienced post-earthquake Christchurch, and those who hadn’t. I was certainly in the latter camp until last week. 

I glimpsed, and felt, a bit of the carnage. Then I returned to the comfort of Wellington’s ‘stable’ hills. Those who have been through the trauma in Christchurch since the first earthquake in September 2010 are hurting and generally private in their grief. Although my colleagues and friends were practical and forthright about what was next to be done, they were still physically and mentally defined by the earthquakes’ damage. In all but one conversation I had in Christchurch, the instability of the city was the central protagonist in our discussion. 

 Bowling Alley, CPIT student project, Central City, May 2011, Produced by Gap Filler

Gaps versus vacancies

Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS), has been established as an independent trust and funded by the Christchurch City Council. It will facilitate the use of vacant land or buildings in the CBD. Others – artists, community groups, anyone – can propose a project and must be able to see the project through themselves. Two creators of such projects that have had traction already, and will be working with LiVS in future, are Greening the Rubble and Gap Filler. Marcus Westbury, from Renew Newcastle/ Renew Australia, is the chief international advisor to LiVS and we have also volunteered advisory support.

The fabulous Coralie Winn from Gap Filler questioned whether the experiences of Letting Space or the much larger Renew Australia project could offer much when addressing Christchurch’s needs. The spaces to be filled in Christchurch are rather different to Wellington or Newcastle’s surplus ‘for lease’ retail and office spaces. Yes, Christchurch has rubble and carparks where once there were buildings. I understand that 2400 buildings have to be removed.  And the Christchurch sites are loaded with memories, recent and sometimes traumatic memories, as much as historic ones.

I seem to have temporarily misplaced my sense of humour by Wayne Youle, Produced by Gap Filler in collaboration with Christchurch Art Gallery. Sydenham, Dec 2011 - present

It is true that the logistical and emotional concerns in dealing with recession-induced vacant shops and offices are very different to razed, open wounds in a grieving city.   

For a start, finding shelter for performance, artistic work or community gatherings may be easier with a roof. I would argue that there are ways of creating temporary structures in these empty sites but it's fundamentally not about practicalities.

What is shared between LiVS and Letting Space are the important relationships that need to be built and maintained with property owners. Having the discussion about what is valuable or worthwhile with property owners can be very enjoyable. Looking at the history of, and relationships between sites is important work that temporary, transitory or non-commercial activities can highlight. What I find exciting is the opportunity to raise the idea of increasing, even if temporarily, the ‘commons’.  Whilst building owners decide their sites’ fate, there are many possibilities for reanimating the city. Gap Filler and Greening the Rubble have really only just begun their work. These projects may influence the permanent use of these sites as hubs for creative, collaborative and genuinely emergent practice. 

Think Differently Book Exchange, Central City, The project began in July 2011 and is still running. Produced by Gap Filler

Common what?

The idea of widening the ‘commons’ has been of great interest to Letting Space over the last year - in particular since we’ve been running our Community Service series. This month I read a helpful summary on commons principles by Swiss-German writer and activist Silke Helfrich:

“Commons are not a thing that can be simply described but rather a term that establishes a relationship between different elements…Commons are actively created, preserved and expanded - by cooperative collective action…”

What she also points out is that commons don’t need to be equated with public ownership. “Commons are not simply resources and so they should not be confused with a specific form of ownership. It does not matter whether people, their water, their local seeds, urban spaces, free software or community supported infrastructures are involved, the issues are always fairness, transparent structures, self organization, (social) innovation, environments that instil trust and encourage creativity, as well as the awareness that the development of others is a precondition for one’s own development and vice-versa.”[1]

From Kim Paton's Free Store (May 2010) curated by Letting Space

For Christchurch’s transitional zones, I can imagine many activities that a flexible property owner would enjoy too. What about a site for a ‘shameless soup kitchen’ – to gather together those would like to share the cooking, in a well-designed communal space? What about a site for free public discussions? I could imagine these being run or curated by groups of people who can ensure there are no clashes and that usage is distributed equitably. What about other great meeting points: adult and child-friendly playgrounds or public hot baths?

Objects and relationships

A week after the Life in Vacant Spaces Trust was inaugurated, the 100-day plan commissioned by the central government was released. I’m keeping an eye out for transitional spaces in the ‘Blueprint’.  Yes, the plan allows for a good riparian verge on the Avon, and sites for public interaction - public commons if you like, in different precincts. Cycling and public transport is prioritised for the easy flow of people. 

What is interesting is how so much public discussion that ensues on public radio and television privileges the buildings – the ‘objects’ in the urban plan. Commentators are grasping for edifices to orient themselves by. I was surprised that the day after the launch, Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon interviewed Christchurch residents for responses – and chose only three business people of the city - as if it were only a site for business, rather than broader community exchange.

Tim Barlow's The Public Fountain and DANCE Art Club in Turangi, May 2012. Curated by Letting Space

“If you want a Heritage City, go to Dunedin” says a Christchurch friend

I’ve got a sense that members of Christchurch’s ‘social establishment’ - those that argued for Hagley Park’s cricket Oval perhaps – may share an aesthetic closely tied to colonial heritage. Earthquakes have made a mockery of the notion of permanence. On the whole, buildings do not get stronger with time. They are in an entropic free fall from the moment of construction. Now is the time to transition away from this attachment to old objects whilst retaining the values of decency and trust and other such goodies associated with heritage.   How can Christchurch assist with the transition of people toward being even more decent, generous souls? How can a city encourage more interaction between its citizens, and encourage the development and transformation of its people? There are many people in Christchurch who get this - Vicki Buck and others who have set up the Ministry of Awesome to make good projects happen quickly in the city. I would suggest that transitional spaces encourage transitional experiences. Let’s see more of it.

On the Life in Vacant Spaces Trust are skilled and diverse contributors - including Sacha McMeeking from Ngai Tahu (also involved in the Ministry of Awesome), whose current project is to establish a market for waste that can be used to remove the plastic from the Pacific Ocean. There is also Bronwyn Hayward, a very active political scientist with a particular bent for public participation. All of the board members and Council representatives are people who can envision a dynamic future and a caring, flourishing city. Before, during and after the inaugural LiVS meeting I heard talk about relationships as much as sites for relationships, and in building communities as much as resurrecting physical edifices. Give these guys the reins.

Meanwhile the Life in Vacant Spaces Trust is calling for applicants to its newly created roles of Project Manager and General Manager. Click on the links for more details.

---

[1]   Silke Helfrich, Muster und Prinzipien in Werk, bauen and wohnen 4|2012, p 9.

see http://www.werkbauenundwohnen.ch/en/content/commons

Getting into hot water in Taupo

A Week in a Hot Tub – Letting Space in Taupo-Nui-a-Tia May 2012

In Taupo we created some of our most ambitious work, attempting new art in a strange land. We intended for the Taupo public to fall in love with Tim Barlow's temporary public fountain, to fall into line with some sharing and caring storytelling, and to dance on the streets to the hippest mobile radio station in a truck, D.A.N.C.E FM 106.7, we had big dreams.

Yes, we wanted projects that would shake up the way contemporary art works with festival audiences and meet those who didn't know about the Erupt festival. We were determined to pop up in small regional communities we were all meeting for the first time. It was quite an eruption - full of incident, joy and spontaneous combustion. Here’s is Mark and Sophie's geyser of a week bottled into a travel diary.

Sunday 13 May - Monday 14 May 

 Sophie: First days in Taupo for me are full of the mundane things that also come with art projects - finding materials, shopping, drafting programmes and chasing people. The only place I can find wi-fi is at the McDonald’s. We meet the Erupt Festival crew and check out our sites. Tim is still fiddling with his fountain's engineering. Late on Monday night we welcome Mark and our intrepid Massey intern Laila O’Brien with hot spinach and lentil soup.

Tuesday 15^th May

Mark: Last day of prep and there’s the tension of everything working: will the geothermal geyser erupt? Will D.A.N.C.E FM’s new aerial - care of kooky, charming (but utterly pro) local Timeless Taupo radio - see them on air? Now we know what it must have been like to work with Len Lye.

Tim has driven up polystyrene rocks as a surround for his fountain. They were destined for the set of the ill-fated Christian motion picture Kingdom Come. I paint grey the gapfiller Tim has stuck the rocks together with around the Para rubber pool. It immediately has plenty of passersby fooled as being the real McCoy – it’s creepy how easy it is to fool people with the veracity of things when put in spaces they expect things to be legitimate.

In this case the fountain is placed on a strange hexagonal lawn outside Whitcoulls - as close as the town centre has to a central gathering point.

We went for this site as it seemed just the place Taupo should have for the community to mingle. A speaker’s corner, where temporarily a water vent and lots of people jumping will allow for lots of the letting off of steam!

We also get the storytelling session ‘shop;’ shipshape with furniture, a screen and visual material relating to geysers and public fountains. Tim also gets some of the books back that he’s sent out into the community to collect stories in – beautiful objects themselves in satchels.

 

The laneways here in Taupo provide some strong pedestrian urban design it feels good to draw attention to.

Sophie: D.A.N.C.E Art Club will be broadcasting from Wairakei Village School and Mangakino (a good 40 minutes away) on Thursday so intern Laila makes an extraordinary drive to both places for a flyer drop. She gets damp, and is shadowed by Mangakino locals in the dusk - sorry for that Laila! 

I drive to the Volcanic Centre on the road to Huka Falls to try and meet GNS scientists we had invited to be part of Tim’s talks. Librarian Sheena Tawera gives me copies of some very relevant articles from NZ Geographic. It seems the scientists assume much of their knowledge is commonly held. In fact, the map that I covet most, showing the hotspots of geothermal activity, is part of a series that has been disestablished.  Sheena squirrels around and finds me a copy.

Mark: By nightfall Tim has got the steaming hot water pumped out of Ian Warmington’s private geothermal bore and into Horomatangi Street by water truck. As soon as the hot water from deep under the earth’s surface starts pouring out the whole Letting Space Taupo collective collectively leap to one steamy conclusion: thermal pool time. The Public Fountain is thus christened by a winter’s hot dip in the main street of Taupo. Every town should have a public hot tub.

Sophie: One by one we get in. Swimming in the scalding hot water is pretty joyous in the drizzly rain.

Weds 16^th May 

MARK: I cycle ‘uptown’. D.A.N.C.E FM 106.7’s first broadcast is from the Rifle Range Road Retirement Village on the suburban rise above Taupo town centre this morning. Nice and high for broadcasting, if cold and grey. D.A.N.C.E started the day early, filming a dawn cooking show of Maila Urale baking the scones they are serving the senior citizens for morning tea! (images here).

It’s a slow tentative start which we only belatedly realise is because word had gone round the village that we were thought by the residents to be council officers coming to discuss the prospect of the village being closed down… After a rousing mihi, a cuppa, Maila’s scones and D.A.N.C.E FM being cranked up on the ghettoblaster with some mellow country sounds the mood warms up - lots of great korero and sharing of people’s life experiences.

The treat with this set up is that the radio truck is parked up outside, so the locals get to go out and tell their life stories to their neighbours inside the hall, 50 metres away. And across Taupo (here is some audio of Joseph, an offset printer being interviewed).

Finally we can see the glory of small temporary mobile community radio in action, bringing a tiny community together and broadcasting to the world beyond their flats’ doors.

SOPHIE: Tim’s first storytelling discussion in the shop is a cracker (listen here) - Jenny Pattrick’s story of a Pakeha woman who divined geothermal water and started to glow in the dark - crowns it for me – and (yes!) when the session is over we get to experience the fountain in full eruption.

MARK: I loved the whole model of community storytelling sessions in a shopping centre – such a nice parallel with D.A.N.C.E FM.  It feels very right. Dylan Tahau of Tuwharetoa kicked off with the indigenous geothermal stories that are a fundamental base of people’s connection to this region, and the one thing the whole session really brought home is how important stories are to connecting us. They are a way a community express their ownership of natural resources and sense of belonging.

By the end of the sess Tim’s fountain had been joined by the D.A.N.C.E FM truck on Horomatangi, giving jumpers on Tim’s platform some sounds to leap to. The guys set up a stall handing out more scones and a specially composed soda drink entitled a Volcanic Sparkle, featuring a cola syrup homemade by some artists friends in Auckland. A community party vibe soon developed - an impromtu kind of shopping centre block party in fact.

SOPHIE: Unfortunately not all the commercial neighbours are thrilled and I get into a bit of damage control with the Westpac Bank.

Thurs 17th

SOPHIE: Laila and Mark and I drive to see the gates of Aratiatia Hydro Dam opened upstream to create very spectacular rapids. Its one of the oldest, and smallest hydro schemes running. Meanwhile D.A.N.C.E are prepping for their big tour to Wairakei and Mangakino.

MARK: Tim’s fountain comes to life today both with increased interaction from the public but hoardes of school kids here for the schools’ storytelling sessions. There’s great video here of a rabble making the geyser go. It’s fly by the seat of our pants running the sessions with the kids but really amasing. Laila gets the kids drawing their ideas for getting a geyser pumped up and GNS scientist Paul White is brilliant in talking about the geysers that once dotted this area and why they’ve now disappeared (video here). I find my school teacher mojo. 

SOPHIE: Mark and I arrive at Wairakei community - where energy workers were originally housed - at 2pm to find the school hall in full disco with D.A.N.C.E Art Club running their ‘how to be a DJ workshop’ (images here).  It’s great to discover the little kids dancing styles. I wish we had organised a better place that wasn’t entirely controlled by the school, but this is one electric session.

Driving to Mangakino in three cars everyone takes a different route and we feel strangely lost. But when we arrive at Mangakino it’s like we’ve warped into another plane. Lake Maraetai at dusk is beautiful and the welcome from Garry at the Bus stop café (an old Bedford bus) and the 25 locals is magic (images).

MARK: One of my cultural highlights bar none. Working up a party with a group of locals in the dark (people emerge cautiously from the dark like possoms round a campsite). Over but a few hours, sharing stories over music and toasties, and under Linda T’s tutelage doing the ‘Bus Stop’ dance together outside the Bus Stop Café (video!). This really does feel like social experimentation of a beautiful strong nature. I loved the locals getting on air and singing and shouting out (audio!) to their small community across the darkness. 

Friday 18th

SOPHIE: Driving to the Waitahanui Kura around the lake Mark and I miss the community powhiri but are welcomed beautifully just the same. D.A.N.C.E are broadcasting from this small local school for the morning (images here) and welcoming the local Kohanga Reo. We experience a gorgeous greeting from the staff and students and I feel reluctant to return mid flight.

I drive back to town for the final Taupo Marama Arcade discussion and it is a corker (again, we have audio here). Even though we have a small crew there is the wonderful addition of Denise Roche-Green MP.  The talk is about sharing information and there is a sense of having hope for collaborative geothermal use and management.

 

MARK: Waihatanui is beautiful. It’s nice to see face-painting enter the relational aesthetics lexicon. Just a joy to spend time borascasting and making pictures with these gorgeous tamariki. It feels like we’ve been here for days we’re made to feel so welcome. 

SOPHIE: That afternoon we’re on the road again to Tokaanu - we open my sister’s family’s house, and we get to know the staff at the hotpools.  Linda T does a great set into the dusk in the carpark of the Tokaanu hotpools, and I cook dinner with Josh from DAC.

MARK: A savoured memory is cruising round steamy Tokaanu with Sophie (this takes approx two minutes from one end to tother) listening to Linda T play Ardijah and checking out when D.A.N.C.E FM fades in and out of signal. Linda T is DJing from the heart of the local Maori’s geothermal resource. The rest of the Club are, predictably, having a nice long well deserved soak.

Saturday 19th

Tim has summed up some extraordinary untapped reserves to pack down the fountain in Taupo late Friday and move it with help from Al and Gareth at council with water truck to Turangi. Astonishingly its up and going about 10am, and seems to be spurting at ever increasing volumes in a town centre begging for some kind of feature. Turangi tamariki enjoy a day of getting wet, and the plume rises high in to the crisp blue sky.

It feels like a great achievement to get it here. Turangi town centre, public works planned has a sense of vacancy for its size and the fountain fits in beautifully. One of our first encounters on the day is with a bloke who shakes his head telling us nothing lasts in this placee for long before getting vandalized. Turangi is a place in need of fun, and the amazing steaming geothermal resource which is Tokaanu nearby deserves to be celebrated by the people who are its guardians. (lots of joyous video here)

Saturday is market day and there's also a Ta Moko exhbition at the nearby gymnasium, so we hit town at the right time.

D.A.N.C.E almost take the top off their truck moving under the shop eaves into the town centre, yet the great delight here was having both projects working in tandem. The truck is parked close to the fountain (“water on my decks!” squealed Linda T at one point) - meaning D.A.N.C.E FM have a dance floor! Young and old alike are busy all day jumping to good sounds on Tim's platform. Turangi gives the work a good stomping over.

Meanwhile the radio station also serves as Tim's public forum today with Anna from DOC and David Livingstone from Tokannu interviewed on air about the geothermal resource.

DAC give out their volcanic sparkle colas, which has added meaning when we're getting real volcanic sparkles when Tim's geyser spurts.

At the end of the session Turangi paid the ultimate compliment when one of the kids rushed over the to the local hall to turn the power back on the work, after Tim had closed it off. They didn't want their public fountain to stop.

SOPHIE: We have some hard core fans now - I talk to a guy whose daughter was up at Wairakei school but came to in Turangi for Saturday morning soccer- he knew all about DAC so came back for more. Wrapping up at 2pm we drive hard out to Taupo site for the Festival of Lights.

It is cold. Ahi and I go for some kai as the others prep for the evening party. The party is tremendous - DAC pull out all strings to interview the families that are walking through the park at night. Tim turns up after packing down the Fountain in Turangi to celebrate the final night.

Mark and I find a natural hotpool at the park down by the river  - it’s very, very nice to relax into!

Keeping Busy

A journal about the Wellington premiere of Productive Bodies by Sophie Oxenbridge,  Sophie Jerram and Mark Amery. 

“There is joy in work,” Henry Ford famously said, but for many New Zealanders, the double-whammy of New Zealand’s post-Rogernomics ‘rogering’ and a global recession, means there simply is no work. So does ‘not employed’ equal ‘no joy’ for the hundreds of civil servants recently made redundant in Wellington, for the many more who are unemployed, between jobs, or those who choose a life as artists?

Imagine a project that created more energy than it drew on; a series of exchanges between people that broke social mores and instilled joy; a work that challenged the behaviour of public codes of conduct and recognised those who have been recently told they are part of the job-hunting queue.  This was Productive Bodies.

During the last week of the NZ Festival in March, Letting Space – in association with City Gallery Wellington- made a provocative, playful work led by performance artist, Mark Harvey. They took to the streets to explore what it means to work, to be gainfully employed, to be ‘productive bodies’, and to tie up so much of our self-worth with what we ‘do’. Harvey’s past performances have drawn on both his visual arts and contemporary dance background, using humour and bodily constructions to point to the idiocy of some of the beliefs we hold dear, particularly the idea that being employed is anything other than an arbitrary state. 

After a series of morning workshops in City Gallery, groups of ‘the unemployed’, students and artists, wandered the streets of Wellington in various degrees of “absurd productiveness” and tested out our freedom of movement in a variety of public spaces.

The first day of performance (click on the link for images) began with rearranging chairs into efficient rows at Clarks Cafe, before welcoming and congratulating people on visiting ‘our public library’. Security soon told the group to stop photographing in the building.

Purposefully nodding and making eye contact with all, the group made their way through the streets to the foyer of New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which is shedding staff in a major restructure. The group read staff poetry, held lifts, opened doors and thanked people, engaging them in conversation. The group’s arrival had been tipped off (link to security guards) and the Dominion Post wrote about the work the next day.

Elsewhere in the CBD the group provided feedback on handshakers’ hand grip and temperature, pedestrian barriers on crossings, handed out schedules of public broadcasting and, the productive piece de resistance, carried people across a dangerously narrow section of Lambton Quay.  

On Tuesday, rubbish bins were cleaned, more hands were shaken and the embattled Public service broadcaster TVNZ 7 got a boost with several copies of its weekly schedule being handed out and discussed with passers-by.

By Wednesday the group had grown to 25 with additions from Massey fine arts students. Every day, the Productive Bodies shared lunch prepared by Heather Johnston, around the big City Gallery boardroom table. The group trialled movement in the gallery: gallery visitors were offered protective shields  and there was exploration of what would make them feel more comfortable in the gallery The public were welcomed at the entrance to both City Gallery and Te Papa, with numbers swelled at Te Papa by school children.

In a lunchtime panel discussion Nobel prize nominee, academic Marilyn Waring reminded an Arts Festival Club audience why she was a crucial player in NZ political history, generously offering her best solutions to how we could re-value economic wellbeing and productivity. She did so in conjunction with a strong advocate of the General Universal Wage, economist Susan Guthrie and artist Mark Harvey, all discussing how we treat productivity. Audio/video of this discussion can be heard/seen here online.

Thursday, the performance returned its energy to the government district of Wellington. A healing circle appeared in the foyer of the Ministry of Health, and many public servants were applauded moving back and forward between The Terrace and Lambton Quay. At Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council, Productive Bodies asked how they could best be of help as a way of thanking them for their support. Dishes were cleared and water was poured.

On the final day, Friday, the group was joined by Michael, a German tourist who had encountered the group at City gallery. He was asked what would make him comfortable. “Having my friends here,” was his reply, and by the end of the day he had some new ones.

The performance headed for parliament, with the group offering compliments to the public along the way. A tunnel of confidence was created for parliamentary staff going into Bowen House, and applause given to security staff. At Parliament the group undertook trust exercises, made body arrangements on the steps, brought water for gardeners, and offered security staff sun shields. Activity for the day finished with waiata (Maori song) 'E Aroha' at the reception of the soon-to-be-folded Ministry of Science and Innovation and a rigorous game of line tag on the pavement outside. The group celebrated with a picnic in Civic Square outside City Gallery.

At 5pm Tao Wells, on the invitation of Mark Harvey, provided a response to the work at Enjoy Gallery (viewable online). Wells talk spoke positively of Productive Bodies' ‘love’ and situated it as being ineffective against the ‘dump truck that would come along shortly after the streets had been cleaned’. The greater part of his address and discussion centred around Mark’s position as a government funded academic, and the wider need for people in such positions to be overtly representing their universities as agents of free thought. 

Productive Bodies worked as a unique, transformative ‘social sculpture’ challenging all who were touched by it to examine their own ideas about work and self-worth. The smiles on people’s faces in the documentation say it all – Productive Bodies created small moments of magic and joy for people and, hopefully through its numerous small group gestures, kernels for people to feel more empowered about making personal change. 

Check out what some of the brave and wonderful performers have contributed in writing, here.