#ōtepoti

[dec0mposing]

So my neighbourhood flooded last night. We got three months of rain (and its still going!) in about 30 hours, I evacuated my home about 10:30 last night when water started pouring into my street from the road above, my home was fine when I left and is still fine, thankfully, but my community has been really devistated by this event, and my heart is hurting for our hapori.

[extincto]

Posters seen in Dunedin/Ōtepoti today

[deliriumdunedin]

Previews of some of the items coming with me to the Beloved Market here in Ōtepoti this weekend!

A range of items dated from the 60s to modern will be available!

Come on up to the Māori Hill Community centre this Saturday the 27th of July 2024 from 10am - 2pm and support your local vintage sellers!

For more previews and updates follow me on instagram

[spencerhall]

Li'l animation for Ōtepoti Zinefest!

More event details here

Stall registrations here

[devonannasmith]

Painted a big mural with some cool women for the FIFA fan festival here in Ōtepoti. The Dreamgirls Collective, Aroha Novak and Kell Sunshine 🌞

[clarityofblue]

I miss you, Dunedin, the home of my heart. (a.k.a. Ōtepoti). This is such a nice way to view the world!

In the words of the great AoNZ band, Split Enz:

Aotearoa, rugged individual, glisten like a pearl, at the bottom of the world...

The Pacific Ocean is huge.

[hamishpetersen]

Goldfish Bowl

Text commissioned for the inaugural exhibition at Wave Project Space, Ōtepoti Dunedin:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Wave Project Space (@waveprojectspace.otepoti)

Listen to “So Tough” by The Slits. Make a cup of weak tea just to keep your hands warm and look out the only window in the living room. Doesn’t get much sun in April. Less in May, this side of the valley. You try not to check your notifications. You try to sit still. It’s not easy.

James Varga’s pictures form a haphazard diary to the last eighteen months. Starting with a return to their childhood pencil copies of cartoons, Varga began drawing again. It was a way to record the important parts of their world, or process the emotional soup through which we each wade. Rather than making pictures to “say something,” painting became a practice of picturing the world Varga needed to see. Similarly, they use their mother’s surname to claim that part of themselves.   

The difference between a diary and an autobiography is the audience. “What should my reader know?” “Does anyone ever need to see this?”

Listen to “Identity” by X-ray Spex. There is a picture of Varga’s legs stretching out to a sunburnt Alexandra backyard. Dead washing machine and semi-rural ¼ acre dream detritus. There is a picture of chopped fish and fish heads. If you know, you know. Being Tauiwi or Tangata Tiriti in Te Wai Pounamu can be full of placelessness; being anywhere at all down here can feel like the wrong place to be. Sometimes, we blame ourselves. Varga’s POV pictures evoke this feeling of waiting around for something to make sense. But pictures like that of the dish of fish heads have a different effect; like the sour umami of a fish head soup on a table of boiled hams and carrots; finding what you were looking for. 

Listen to “Pay to Cum” by Bad Brains. Varga adds a generous cock to a pencil drawing of one of their friends. For a laugh? Or because it needed to be said? In my brief conversation with Varga, it’s clear they are trying to cut through the absurd violence of masculine performance. There is a CD case for John Rowles’ “HITS collection” on the floor in the photo Kari sends me. It’s beside a painting of a milk bottle and some pencil sketches of muscled butts. 

Pay to write, pay to play

Pay to cum, pay to fight

Listen to “Product of My Environment” by Circle Jerks. There is a picture of a scrotum driving a tank. Like anyone, Varga’s mind wanders. Even when resisting the internet as subject matter or medium, the testicular posturing and violence of the recent invasion of Ukraine brought these globally televised politics into Varga’s pictures. Whether the picture is literal and figurative, or abstracted, comical, and political, Varga’s work seems to always be an act of processing, never solved. 

On Zoom, Varga and I talk about displaying the pictures like a “salon hang,” recalling the Salon exhibitions of the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris where all the paintings accepted to the institution’s annual exhibition were crammed onto the walls. There’s an irony here for Varga as a self-taught artist. This antiquated mode of display can function in the opposite way to exclusive salons; more like an over-stimulating information soup, or endless Tiktok Trending page.

The high and the low are artificially separated in much of daily life. Instead, just as the punk poets Viv Albertine or Poly Styrene did, we are all cataloguing the boring, normal, enraging, hopeless, loving, small, vital, and forgettable moments of life in our own ways. Varga will keep going whether you’re looking or not. It’s one way of pushing through the clouds.  

[otepotirenaissance]

First Church Ōtepoti Dunedin - taken by me 🎀

[have-you-been-here]

Dunedin / Ōtepoti, New Zealand / Aotearoa

[ftblmaz]

Swiss Nati welcomed to Aotearoa and Ōtepoti by Kai Tahu with a pōwhiri including this performance of a Waiata called Te Waka o Raki which is about Matariki or the Māori New Year which rises tomorrow morning

[writtenonbone]

To people in Ōtepoti Dunedin 💕

[dec0mposing]

Fanny Wimperis, Marion Scott playing the Piano (1904) Glass negative photograph.

Marion Scott playing the piano at Carlinwark beneath a pastel portrait of her deceased mother.

[extincto]

This morning's sunrise. Absolutely incredible 🔥

[airandangels]

Large parts of the southern New Zealand city, Ōtepoti Dunedin, are currently flooded from an extreme rainstorm, yet another deluge due to climate change. Ben Nevell had something to say about it.

[nochd]

Kia ora! I followed you before even realising you were from Aotearoa. ^_^ Ko Ngāti Whakaue te hapu. Nō Ōtautahi me Pōneke au. Kei Ōtepoti tōku kāinga ināianei. Just sending a request for elaboration if you care to on your pretty fantastic point from the post re: insulating ourselves from right-wing viewpoints.

"Capitalism promotes selfishness and greed."

"Value is created by labour. Profit is theft."

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

"Reducing all value to monetary value is soulless and shallow."

"You can't earn a billion dollars."

At the very least, leftists need to become aware of the neoliberal answers to these, and start coming up with better counter-arguments.

Kia ora, e hoa. He Pākehā au. Kei Ōtepoti tōku kāinga hoki -- te hia te oruatanga!

I'm probably going to have to spread this out over a bunch of reblogs, but it's going to go quicker if I start by explaining neoliberal economic theory once to begin with, rather than going point by point.

The first premise is that value is subjective. Different things are valued differently by different people, and no-one is wrong about their own valuation of something.

This subjectivity is the foundation of all economic transactions. Economic value is created by the differential between two different people's valuation of a good or service.

Let's say you buy a coffee for $5, and let's say you do so freely. You wouldn't do that if that coffee was worth less than $5 to you. But the sale also wouldn't happen if the coffee was worth more than $5 to the seller.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say that if that coffee had cost $6 you would still have bought it, but if it had cost over $7 you would have gone elsewhere. Then that coffee is worth $7 to you.

Meanwhile, the seller would (hypothetically) be willing to lower their price if they weren't getting enough customers, but let's say only down to $2 a coffee. So the coffee is worth $2 to the seller.

In this scenario, you've paid only $5 for something that's actually worth $7 to you. You've gained value equal to $7 - $5 = $2. The seller, meanwhile, has been paid $5 for something that's only worth $2 to them. They've gained value equal to $5 - $2 = $3. You're both richer, in terms of total value enjoyed, than you were before you bought the coffee. A total of $5 in surplus value has been created out of nowhere, simply by the act of buying and selling.

I've described this transaction in terms of a dollar price, because that's an easy way to talk about value, but it's important to note that the logic works just the same if you're exchanging goods and services directly for other goods and services. If you don't have $5 but you're willing to wash dishes for half an hour in exchange for your coffee, then by definition that coffee is worth more to you than that half-hour of your time.

That, by the way, already illustrates another foundational principle: value is measured by what people are willing to exchange for it. People can talk all they like about what they want and what's important to them, but if they're not willing to put anything on the line, then it's just talk.

What we've seen so far already gives you the neoliberal answer to a couple of our bullet-points:

"Reducing all value to monetary value is soulless and shallow." -- the neoliberal economist would answer, if you're not willing to pay for something, if you're not willing to give anything up for it, then it is your claim to still "value" it in some sense that is shallow.

"Value is created by labour. Profit is theft." -- to unpack that a little, the difference between the sale price of a good and the production cost to make that good is created by the worker's contribution. The economist will answer, no it's not; it's created by the fact that the buyer values the good more than the maker does.

Workers willingly come in to work and exchange their labour for the wage they're offered; their acceptance demonstrates, by definition, how much their time and energy is truly worth to them. Selling labour to an employer is exactly the same as selling goods to a customer; once sold, the customer owns the goods and is free to do what they like with them, including sell them at a higher price.

(I imagine you can already see at least one of the major problems with this theory; but I'm going to leave counter-arguments for a later reblog.)

Also: "You can't earn a billion dollars." -- the economist would answer that if people are willing to pay you that much money, then by definition whatever you do for them is worth that much money. Provided, of course, that they're fully aware of what they're buying when they agree to buy it.

But if value is subjective, you might be asking, why do economists talk so often as if things had a "true" value or a "correct" price? That's where the market comes in.

Leftists love to use "market" as a word of scorn, but to neoliberals "the market" is simply -- people.

Let's go back to that $5 coffee. If you're only willing to part with $1 for a coffee, you're out of luck. The seller is not willing to sell at that price and the coffee will go to someone else, someone who is willing to pay $5. Contrariwise, if the seller asks for $8, they're not going to get many customers, and people will go buy someone else's cheaper coffee.

If the price is too high, some sellers won't find buyers; the coffee will go unsold, and it will be wasted. If it's too low, some buyers won't find sellers; the coffee will all be snapped up by the first lot of customers to get there, regardless of whether they're the ones who valued the coffee highest, and there will be a shortage. Either way, some surplus value which could have been created, won't be.

But in a free market, customers can choose whose goods to buy, and sellers can choose what price to sell their goods at. Mathematically, the price which will generate the most profit for the sellers is also the price which creates the most total surplus value for sellers and buyers alike, thus minimizing both waste and shortage. That's what's called the market price.

Remember, surplus value -- in neoliberal theory -- is basically people getting what they want. The ideal situation is for the greatest possible number of people to get the greatest possible amount of what they want. That's the same thing as creating the greatest possible surplus value across the economy.

I've already pointed out one of the problems with this aspect of the theory in a reblog of the earlier post. But again, I'll come back to counter-arguments at a later time.

In fact I think I'll wrap up here for now, because this post is already getting megabig. I haven't covered everything yet, but I'm going to save it for next time.

However, this is an ideology which is sincerely and seriously believed by people some of whom are very intelligent. Which means it's important not to underestimate its allure. So to counter that, I do want to impress upon you that according to this ideology, the best possible outcome for any situation is by definition that which is determined by the market, human consequences be damned.

If the market deems that climate disaster is better than cutting back on fossil fuels, then climate disaster is better than cutting back on fossil fuels. If the market deems that millions dying of Covid is better than lockdowns and mask mandates, then millions dying of Covid is better than lockdowns and mask mandates.

Just bear that in mind.

[aonoexpat]

07-10-2023

Aaaaand just like that, plans change...

I was very disappointed to receive an e-mail from the vineyard I was supposed to start working at soon, saying the start date would be pushed back until the 24th of October. They didn't apologise or empathise at all, just informed me. It had been the 9th at first, and had already been delayed until the 16th. On top of that, out of the past 33 days, I have spent a combined total of 22 waiting to hear back from them. They have consistently been very slow and minimal in their communication, and still haven't answered my questions, so this message was the final straw for me. I have heard that this is a cultural difference, that people here only plan a week ahead, but that simply does not work for me. I have spent enough time in this area, and if they only plan a week ahead, I'm not going to wait around for another three, only to possibly get blown off again when the weather still isn't right, or they decide not to employ me after all. The sunk cost fallacy makes me want to stick around and wait, but I'm going to cut my losses and move on.

I am in quite dire need of a job, however, so I've pinned my hopes on finding something either in Whakatū or in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. In a way this is more convenient, since Elrond's self-contained certification expires on December 11th. I'd like to have seen the whole West coast by then!

So, this morning I laced up my hiking boots again for the first time in a long time, and climbed Mount Iron. It was a 1.5 hour loop, but I still managed to get a blister on my heel 😖

It was worth it though, the view was amazing! It felt so great to be out in the sun again, no jumper needed, and on the way down I finally spotted a pīwakawaka once again ❤ I ended up getting a tattoo of one of these cute little birds back in Ōtepoti, so this was a very heartwarming encounter for me.

After getting some groceries and begrudgingly fueling up (the prices out here are painfully high), I set out on the road towards the West coast along Lake Hāwea and Lake Wānaka! It took me a while to find a parking spot that both felt safe (not right next to the road, and, I kid you not, no decomposing unidentifiable animal corpses around) and had phone signal. Anytime my phone said I had 4G signal, I pulled off the road at the nearest parking spot, only for the signal to disappear again the second I actually tried to load a web page. It got super frustrating after the fifth time, but the sixth time was the charm. The drive was absolutely gorgeous though!

Now I'm having a little improvised dinner and stargazing through Elrond's roof window. I'm listening to pretty tunes and looking forward to not being so alone anymore hopefully soon 😌