#ōtautahi christchurch

[hamishpetersen]

MA Thesis: "No, we don't need you."

“No, we don’t need you.” Māori contemporary artists, feral poetics, and the possibility of decolonial methodologies for Pākehā/Tauiwi arts-workers.

Abstract

This thesis annunciates the mechanics of coloniality as a force upon Māori curatorial and contemporary artistic practice, and pairs this understanding with learnings from Pākehā/Tauiwi attempts, including my own, to disobey coloniality through relational practices of research and writing towards decolonial ends.

Part 1 addresses the nature of coloniality as a system of power determining the nature of the cosmos, self-servingly and falsely cast as a universal truth in the image of European subjects. I attend to the ways in which Māori artists and writers have negotiated the claims of Pākehā/Tauiwi critics and curators on the terms of engagement that define their art and lives. Chapter 2 attends to Te Maori (1984-7), while chapter 3 brings these ideas to bear on Jacqueline Fraser’s Matakitaki (“The View”) (1993), and exhibitions Whare (2002) and New Zealand Maori Culture and the Contemporary Scene (1966). What becomes clear is the ongoing cosmological struggle of Māori artists to exhibit on the terms they set and have the full implications of their work rub up against a colonial artworld and a disciplinary art history.

Part 2 beings with an exchange with Alex Monteith about the collaborative project Kā Paroro o Haumumu: Coastal Flows Coastal Incursions (2014 –) and its decolonial potential, which alerted me to the disciplinary role of art history as colonial instrument. My poetic, autoethnographic practice becomes increasing visible here and in the final two chapters with Martin Awa Clarke Landgon, Ana Iti, and their artworks. These conversations and encounters demonstrate Māori conceptions of relationality and experience in the mire of neo- colonial Aotearoa, while methodologically keeping me conditionally, bodily accountable as I write about them.

I take these relationships up as offers calling for reciprocity. In response, I produce a text that—in its methodological and written reflexes between history, conversations, theory, artworks, reflections, and poetics—provides an uncertain, feral writing for our irreconcilable relationships.

Submitted November 2021

[city-flag-tournament]

✯ Round 1 ✯ Match 32 ✯

The current flag of Iisalmi, North Savo, Finland

Propaganda:

None

vs

The current flag of Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand (Ōtautahi, Waitaha, Aotearoa)

Propaganda:

This flag manages to include a lot of obvious and subtle symbolism. The red triangle is a reference to the southern alps--a main feature of the South Island. The four Lymphads are in reference to the four ships that arrived in the port of Lyttleton to bring British colonials to Christchurch. The lamb and wheat are in reference to the industry around Christchurch--mainly farming. the Bishop's hat is in reference to like, *christ* *church*. Except the goddamn church had been under repairs for 13, 14 years.

Tournament Policies: ✯ Choose the flag that's more meaningful to you! ✯ Be respectful of place names and cultural symbols in your commentary! ✯ If you want to submit propaganda, you may do so at the submission form linked in the pinned post. It will only be included if it is submitted before the next post with that flag is drafted and will be included in all subsequent posts the flag is featured in.

[musicofaotearoa]

MODEL HOME

Model Home is an indie band from Christchurch | Ōtautahi They're currently working on new music My Favourites!

Find them SPOTIFY INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK

[sandumilfshou]

spring in ōtautahi 🌸

[artisthomes]

Home of Ngaio Marsh in Cashmere, Christchurch, Aotearoa

[dreamingofacity]

This is Pūtaringamotu.

10 years of this blog, and counting. Today I feel moved to post! Hello to anybody still on Tumblr :)

[have-you-been-here]

Christchurch Red Zone, Ōtautahi, Aotearoa New Zealand

[ayin-me-yesh]

How People in Aotearoa Can Help Palestine

Upcoming Protests Around the Motu

Saturday 21/10/2023

Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland – Aotea Sq rally and march to US Embassy, 2 pm. Event page.

Kirikiriroa / Hamilton – Opposite Flynn Park, 1 pm. Event page.

Pōneke / Wellington – Steps of Parliament, 1pm. Event page.

Whanganui – Tram Shed, 11:30 am. Event page.

Ōtautahi / Christchurch – Bridge of Remembrance, 1 pm. Event page.

Saturday 28/10/2023

Pōneke / Wellington – March Civic Sq to Parliament. 2 pm. Event page.

Write to Your MP / the PM

There are suggestions for writing to your local MP at the main webpage shared below.

And here's an additional letter you can send to the PM.

[lord-numbskull]

guys i just wanna share that my first 35mm roll came back and

i freaking love this film

and i am a Big fan of sheep also

taken at Awaroa/Godley Head in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand

[hamishpetersen]

Eating at...

An impromptu text written after eating at the restaurant Londo, in Ōtautahi Christchurch before moving to the UK. PDF designed by me for fun.

https://londo.bar

Eating at

LONDO(3)

Papa is a māmā.

After we finished our desert, my dad said he felt like he had been for a walk in the hills for the night and was arriving back at the car, wishing he didn’t have to go home. The last time I saw my parents, I told them we were moving to Britain; to go farming and vist standing stones, maybe live in the highlands and save some cash caring for plants so that C could make more work in the studio. A way to vacate our selves, or position ourselves elsewhere, requiring us to span a distance between our present and possible versions. We sought out how another piece of land, which knew our old people, might move us so.

Canteloupe is canned fruit salad and eighties holiday sunsets. Anti-anxiety herbal remedy in the first course. Granita disappears and comes back in the pasta. First pork in five years. Blooded salt, melonwater running.

A friend has started their PhD to understand how manipulations to the environment of carrot crops on the canterbury plains can speed their biennial seed cycle. Grow a strong root one year, send up great umbels of flower to set seed the next. A big investment. Canterbury’s immense stakes in the global carrot seed market makes for an abundance of research funding in the area. 

Carrot as speculative capital. Dusty. Aniseed sweet. Of a certain age. Ryegrass gone silver in 4:33pm light. Will be a different shade tomorrow. Carrots have been simmering in that pot for years now. Lorna got married last week! Jewelled rods accross the plate. One of these days the chestnuts will be full and ripe enough to make pie. Caramel roots buoyed by romesco; whatever ectasy that is. Sit down, saucepan in the middle, over-ripe toms and the last basil. Talk for hours. 

In Riverton we bought a few tiny Urenika seed potatoes. More like shrivelled yams than our idea of potatoes. I put them in the ground before Christmas and as the zuchinnis paled and powdered themselves I dug up the smallest bowlful of finglerling tubers from the mass of stems. I had to leave thousands of tiny siblings in the ground — marbles who turned glinting, giggling, glassy when rinsed. The following Feburay my flatmate got excited about putting winter greens in and dug up the potatoes that had grown from those abandoned gems. Twice as many, twice the size. Sometimes doing less is better. The tohunga who had these for dinner for centuries really knew what they were doing. 

Sailing a crisp across Lake Buttersauce. Invisible sechuan heat tempered by lemons. When well-boiled, they hold a texture of sandy loam that melts in contact with saliva. We attend a soil cupping. Notes of burnt sugar and echinacea. Abstracted, well-seared cow rectangle galumphs around the table awaiting affection. We take the potatoes for a victory lap.  

Buckwheat filled the garden bed with paddly green leaves until it was warm enough for the tomatoes go in. Hearted leaves  now dangle yellow on jointed scaffolding. Once chantilly cream dollops attracting hoverflies and floating in the breeze on reddish stems, the flowers have become seeds; pyramidial, black. 

When husked, their stony, roasted innards are steeped, syruped, and whipped frozen with cream. Toasted barley tea. Infintely more than bread and beer. The land given maximum and methodical love that it may return; animate. Not just land but lond. From before. Not just papa but Papatuuaanuku. The soil and the waters. Your islands or mine. We go deep into the tunnels to leave our offerings. Can I make a golden silk from this carrot, a cicada’s worship in a cup? Fill it up. Now cannot be before. Look after the new growth in th old place.

When we sat down to dinner my mom handed me a brown envelope. This dinner was my birthday present and I knew there would be a small card. My parents are reliable in these formalities. Small theatre. Inside the card my father had written in his quickest, way-out-the-door handwriting, “You are going to fly away. Take me with you.”

A low, 5:53 lemon sun and the crunch of another evening.

Rats eat the fallen walnuts overnight. 

Pull the drapes

[gothwizardmagic]

So basically the government said, "we're going to count this whole big island as one city instead of the multiple towns it actually has." As like an administrative thing. In America we would call that a county. I understand now.

Nope, not quite! Sorry if I wasn't clear enough - Ōtepoti is a city on the island Te Waipounamu. There are two other cities on the island, plus a ton of independent towns and villages, and the island is broken up into seven regions, which are our equivalent to counties. Ōtepoti is in the region Otago. You can see the city borders in this map, though it uses the colonial name (Dunedin) - Ōtautahi (Christchurch) and Waihōpai (Invercargill ) are the other two cities. The different coloured sections are the seven regions, and the outlined sections are the districts within those regions.

Everything I described in my last reply is in that outlined area labelled Dunedin, which is a bit smaller than Rhode Island - the lines on that map are the city borders. Dunedin has a population of about 125k people, the island as a whole has about 1 million. Aotearoa is a lot bigger than people internationally tend to think it is, because of our relatively low population. Here's a scale comparison with the US.

[like-the-cut-of-your-jib]

From SailGP and the New Zealand SailGP team promo

« ITM NEW ZEALAND SAIL GRAND PRIX SET TO BE THE WORLD'S LARGEST TICKETED SAIL RACING EVENT

Fans lucky enough to secure a spot at the ITM New Zealand Sail Grand Prix | Christchurch will be part of history! The event is set to be the world’s largest-ever ticketed sailing event with 22,000 fans expected across the weekend (plus on-water spectators). Voted best venue on the Season 3 calendar by SailGP athletes, the Season 4 leg of the circuit in Christchurch is set to be even bigger and better than its debut last year.”

Kudos to the Southern Hemisphere fans. Be safe everyone!

AND more musical guests announced:

SailGP has announced an epic music line-up for the ITM New Zealand Sail Grand Prix, with multi-award-winning Kiwi drum and bass icons Shapeshifter and singer-songwriting legend Sir Dave Dobbyn set to perform across the two-day spectacle, 23-24 March 2024.

Shapeshifter will bring their five-strong line-up to entertain fans post-racing on Sunday 24 March. Hailing from Ōtautahi Christchurch themselves, the group have performed sold-out shows around the world but admit there’s nothing like playing to a home crowd.

Shapeshifter released ‘Amokura’ in 2023, a single that honours the rhythms of the Cook Islands and shares a name with the New Zealand SailGP Team’s high-performance F50 catamaran. A perfect alignment between the band and the most exciting race on water!

Performing on Saturday, Sir Dave Dobbyn has written the soundtrack to many New Zealanders’ lives, with a string of hits to his name including ‘Beside You’, ‘Be Mine Tonight’ and ‘Slice of Heaven’. Both artists will play on the Platinum Lawn, with performances amplified to the rest of the Race Stadium via large screens.

[mackmp3]

Hiii Mack, firstly welcome back to tumblr!!! Secondly I come here asking you for music recs once more!!!! Do you have any like maybe alternative indie ish even rock bands form aotearoa you could suggest? I’m wanting to listen to more musicians from here, but so far all I have is crowded house and the Beth’s!

hihihihiiiiiii lin yes omg ofc i have more music recs heheeeee

(i was only for for a little but hehe thanks i'm happy to be back here too)

OKAYYYYY AOTEAROA BANDSSSSSS

first of all i'm gonna plug the band Sandfly they only have two songs out but i know those guys & they're really cool i went in a bookshop in sydney with the singer/bassist once heheeee

uhm i bought self titled the album Males the other day & it's pretty cool, dunedin band from early 2010s i think, it's like indie rock

ebony lamb had an album out a couple months ago & she's pretty cool, the singles are a good place to start

aldous harding and marlon williams are folk-adjacent musicians from lyttleton (arty town just outside of ōtautahi christchurch) and they both do some cool stuff

& there's this whole thing called The Dunedin Sound from the 80s & 90s, most of the best nz music is from there/then imo - the two starters for that would be the soundtracks to the films Scarfies & Topless Women Talk About Their lives - there's lots of bangers on those <3

[bravecrab]

Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland just had severe flooding last night. Insurance companies are saying this is going to be the most claims since the Ōtautahi/Christchurch earthquake. And this is from severe rain. I hope this is the wake up call we need to start taking climate change seriously in this country. People were suffering enough with inflation and a housing crisis, this needs to radicalize people. At least two of our political parties want to invest more in fossil fuels. We need to protect people, we need to make sure the displacement doesn't help the rich profit (read up about the gentrification of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina). I hope my fears are unfounded, I hope the reality proves me wrong.