'Cool Calm and Collective'

Last week I attended Night School at my friends studio space down at Elam. Six Elam students have created a collective, called mark. The aim, "to share knowledge and contribute to everyone’s learning rather then withholding skills, resources and time due to your own time constrains on individual projects". The greatest part is that this collective is open to anyone and everyone, getting together three times a week to discuss local and international issues, history, contemporary art theories and work, and a whole bunch of other stuff you could possibly name and yeah, they'd probably be talking about it.

The Treaty of Waitangi was the big subject last week, with two articles from Paul Holmes and Rodney Hide, hitting the spotlight. And for good reason too. Let me just give you a hint as to, the attitude, of these articles...

"Waitangi Day produced its usual hatred, rudeness, and violence against a clearly elected Prime Minister from a group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision. This enables them to blissfully continue to believe that New Zealand is the centre of the world, no one has to have a job and the Treaty is all that matters." - Paul Holmes, 'Waitangi Day a complete waste', Feb 11, 2012

And that's just the first paragraph, not even the worst of it. Rodney ain't so sweet either...

"The Waitangi Tribunal is our Babylonian priesthood. Its members spend their days poring over a tatty old text seeking guidance for modern-day government.

The funny thing isn't that they do it. The funny thing is that anyone takes them seriously." - Rodney Hide, 'End the Treaty gravy train', Aug 12, 2012

Again, just the first paragraph. So we picked these articles apart, bit by bit and discussed both sides of the story, but it was a full circle agreement that we all found these articles to be full of racism, hate and biggotry.

To fully understand and have any form of judgement other then under my own morals and feelings, I needed to understand a little more about WHAT the Treaty of Waitangi actually IS and HOW and WHY and what exactly is said in the articles within. One gets taught these things at High School of course, but with passion and enthusiasm? Perhaps not. And in saying that, I never retained much information on the subject because, simply, it was just not made that interesting. It was just another tick in the curriculum box, I feel, and this is what I suspect to be the reasons for all the hate for Waitangi Day and the "irrational Maori ghastliness with spitting, smugness, self-righteousness and the usual neurotic Maori politics, in which some bizarre new wrong we've never thought about will be lying on the table." ....Seriously Holmes? You on crack B.

So we went through the Treaty (the english version), and Titiriti (the Maori version), and how Pakeha signed the Treaty,and Maori signed Titiriti. This is where trouble starts though, because both agreed to what they wanted, therefore both were promised what they wanted, but the translations between the two were a little mixed, you see. (I'll get Lana from mark to shed some serious light on this cos she's a boss and I'm still learning.) We came to the conclusion education may be the best step to defeating this looming dark cloud above our heads, but do people even think it's relevant? What is relevant then? Our "Contemporary New Zealand Racism" as one member of mark put it wonderfully, last night. And you can't have contemporary without history, infact what can you have without history? So yes, in my opinion it's relevant.

Speaking of contemporary, and another matter we discussed; our good friend, Meme.

And in particular... the New Zealand Meme page on Facebook.  

Meme's are interesting things - oh, and pronounced "Meem"- they highlight generalizations of people and culture and turn them into repetitive jokes, and they're relatable, they sometimes speak the thoughts everyone forgets to mention, but as soon as they are, all you can say is..

"Yes!!! hahaha!!! Yes yes!!!"

But Memes have progressed, like everything, and have become a way to express racial stereotypes and criticisms in sometimes, not the most intellectual way.

Here's the most talked about NZ Meme of late...

And I just found this one with the title "This should be the new Maori Flag" 

....

Anyway, the attitude that comes along with these Meme pages and the creation of these images comes with conditions... you can like these pages and interact with them, as long as you remain light hearted... 

There are a lot of unspoken rules when it comes to Meme pages and image creations... Like not being cruel towards disabilities for example. 

The New Zealand Meme page has written this about it's page, 

"Any relation to real life people or events is purely coincidental. We do not own or take credit for any of these photos/images posted on this page unless otherwise stated. Any content on this page belongs to the Republic of Facebook and the internet and we do not take any credibility or responsibility to any emotional, physical or metaphysical damage caused by these images. Nor are we trying to alter any political, racial or social views. Furthermore, please understand that this page was not made with the intention to offend people, their races, their political, or their religious views."

That's Interesting.

mark discussed last week about potentially shutting this page down, about reporting it and even potentially taking it to the Human Right Commision. They posed the question, should articles like Rodney Hide's and Paul Holmes' even be allowed to be be published? Should these Meme's be allowed on the internet with their blatant racism?

My question is, if you were to stop these things from hitting the net, where would the censoring stop? 

The censoring itself would be by someone, and their subjective opinion. 

Everything would be compared to the last thing that was censored, and people would ask, "Well... if Holmes wasn't allowed to publish that article on Maori and Waitangi Day, then why should this article on gay marriage be published..." etc etc etc

Alright, i'm done now. 

It was an incredibly interesting night and I invite anyone who wants to come along, let me know and i'll send you all the details. mark are doing something awesome here and as a collective of art students ourselves, we should get together and support each other - and further our knowledge on a broader spectrum.

Guess I better get started

“All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you
get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone.”- Chuck Jones

Thanks for this Jeff, you good thing you.

The word "illustrative"...

"... has been some what derogatory in the context of art, because an illustration, as an image inspired by a text, implies an easy reliance on a source outside the artistic imagination. Like the equally pejorative "decorative", "illustrative" also connotes a graphically lively, colourful kind of drawing produced for commercial purposes or entertainment. Above all, an illustration is readable, suggesting a lack of discursive complexity that has in the past sealed its banishment from the fine-art discourse. If the literary equivalent of the drawing might be the lyric poem, illustration finds it's analogy in something closer to the ground: the narrative folktale, repository for the stock characters and the social and moral conventions of vernacular culture." - (2002). Popular Culture and National Culture. In Drawing Now: eight propositions (p. 104). New york: The Museum of Modern Art.

 

Matti Braun, parallel universes and science fiction.

     Matti Braun, 'S.R.' (2002-Ongoing)                       Picture acquired from here

This guy! Okay now this, this is what I'm talking about!

"The main hall of the Kunstverein Freiburg is full of water, from which the museum’s mighty pilasters rise like the modern furniture in the director’s villa in Blake Edwards’ 1968 comedy The Party. The 1930s building, with its huge ceiling window, seems to straddle a natural pool after Matti Braun lined the floor of the former baths with sheeting and filled it up. The black mirror of the pool is interspersed with circular slices of tree trunk, allowing daring visitors to cross the hall by jumping from one to the next. The title of this piece, and of the exhibition - S. R. - stands for Braun’s inspiration, the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. But the exhibition also explores science fiction, the visual poems of the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, Steven Spielberg and the dark waters that carry culture from one continent to another." - http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/matti_braun/

Yes yes bloody hell yes!

The reason I get so excited about this is because Braun is interested in what I'm interested in, and I've been finding it excruciatingly hard to find artists with the same interests (e.g. Science Fiction, Animation, Science in general, Geek subjects 101 etc etc). I can find a thousand who can talk politics and other cultural subjects I'm interested in, like participation or emancipation blah blah. But I find it hard to find artists who love geeky things such as I, and who execute their ideas profoundly well, and exhibit them successfully!

Well I just found an entire exhibition of artists, based around the idea of the Parallel Universe.

www.arnolfini.org.uk/blog/2012/03/20/parallel-universe-in-brief/

So happy.

"One of the central themes of popular entertainment today is the idea of a parallel universe. The Hollywood dream factory provides a constant barrage of escapism based on the pleasure of temporarily suspending all responsibilities of daily life and being transported to an alternative reality. Meanwhile, the new global world order is made up of multiple conflicting realities existing side by side. A Parallel Universe is a year long series of exhibitions, film, music, talks, performance and special events taking place in 2012, exploring alternative realities and co-existing worlds.

In the context of globalisation and instant communications around the planet it is no longer possible to argue that there is one privileged reality. Old certainties no longer stand and the super-rich live literally next door to the super-poor. Even the idea of universal human rights can be questioned as a Western tool for furthering its own ideological interests, in the name of ‘freedom’. If narratives of history are seen to be conditional, benefiting particular social and economic interests, re-telling histories becomes a significant part of creating new realities, and uncovering idiosyncratic pockets of forgotten history.

Thus A Parallel Universe explores the notion of multifold worlds, possible, parallel, fictional, desired worlds, worlds different to the one we live in." - http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/blog/2012/03/20/parallel-universe-in-brief/

I think I just confirmed my theme for 'Curate and Critique'

Check out the link to the Arnolfini website at the bottom of my blog. There's some seriously sweet stuff on there.



While i'm at it...

http://www.thefaceofpanic.blogspot.co.nz/

Tao and Laura Wells have started doing podcasts/downloadable radio shows! Take a listen, they have guests from artists to politicians to well, Sue Bradford is a regular. They also have an array of crazy music to listen to between readings on contemporary art subjects and theories as well as political readings. It's a rather educational and at times buzzy experience, but none the less, give it a whirl!
They're already up to episode 5 and they're all available from the site above.

In this episode you'll hear Dick Whyte (Who also did the film The Happy Bene) and Sue Bradford as well as the readings;

-Franco "Bifo" Berardi. (2009). The Soul at Work, from alienation to autonomy (p.37). Los Angeles CA: Semiotext(e). 

-Peter Burger. (1989). Theory of the Avant-Garde (pp.44-46). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

-Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley. (1968). The Autobiography of Malcolm X (pp.143-147). England: Penguin Books.

Iron Lass vs. Happy Bene

Actually this is a super interesting thing to watch after i've just watched The Iron Lady, (starring the wonderous Meryl Streep) a film about the tough old broad herself, Margaret Thatcher.

Photo from here

Her policies are somewhat familiar to some in our own country, contributing to the gap between the rich and the poor growing larger. And I don't know everything! The movie,The Iron Lady, left me with a lot of questions as to who she was and what happened in that time, but when as I'm watching The Happy Bene - the film below- I'm feeling a strange natural juxtaposition.

People are forced into jobs where they sit stagnent and unhappy, so what do we do about it, as a society? Is being on the benefit a waste of tax payers money? (My opinion is one for later.) Where does that money go otherwise? Maggie T clearly had a mindset of get off your ass and get yourself a job and make something of your life, and that's an amazing outlook to have, but she also went so far as to try and impliment the same tax for everyone, regardless of whether you were employed or not. The issues and questions Tao Wells raises in The Happy Bene are legitimate concerns we can all question.

I'm rambling, so listen to this!

'The Happy Bene' - by Wells Group

THE HAPPY BENE

a film by Tao Wells and Dick Whyte

A film by Dick Whyte and Tao Wells documenting the Wells Group operation; "The Beneficiary's Office".

"What you did Tao, I thought, was incredibly courageous and profound... To be both dependent on that system and to so publicly expose the issues around that system was very brave... to be a public beneficiary that's about as bad as it gets. " (Chris Kraus)

"You actually have to ask the question frankly should Creative New Zealand actually exist if this is what they do." (Roger Douglas, New Zealand MP)

"A vacant commercial space is a site of anxiety, more so than a vacant dwelling. If it happens to include a shop front, its emptiness becomes a concrete representation of crisis. An empty shop on the corner can bring down the whole neighbourhood. We use phrases like that: to bring down, to depress, as if to reify the mood. The Letting Space projects are partly a response to the anxiety, a way of replacing those conspicuous absences with another sort of activity, another kind of trade. But what of the empty office on the sixth floor of an otherwise bustling building? What of the emptiness of the spaces that we cannot see?

That Tao Wells' Beneficiary's Office occupied such a space is one of the least commented on aspects of this intensely debated project, yet it fitted in perfectly with the subject matter. Being unemployed means being less visible, having less of a voice, keeping or being made to keep a lower profile. And so Wells and the curators chose an empty office on the sixth floor of a downtown Wellington building, upstairs from a branch of the Bank of New Zealand. Below, the engine room of commerce; above, an interrogation of the nature and the value of work. Choosing for the first time in the series not to occupy a shop also meant a shift in the terms of implicit comparison, for business has a far broader set of meanings than retail, and these would quickly come into play." (Giovanni Tiso, read more: lettingspace.org.nz/essay-the-beneficiarys-office/)"

- http://vimeo.com/wellsgroup

There are so many awesome points considered in this film by Tao Wells and Dick Whyte. They talk about the happiness of workers, making their way up the chain day after day in the towers of our cities. They talk about "getting people involved in the direction of society" and the up-side to unemployment. This contemporary art project was designed to spark debate, and that's exactly what it did. The film itself is bare in aesthetic, but it's worth every moment of watching and incredibly interesting and thought provoking not just about economics and politics, but about our country and our people. I think about my partner sitting up in PWC everyday, coming home with sore hands and a sore back, starting at 8:30am and finishing sometimes at 11pm or 12. The people at the bottom, like my partner are kept unhappy so they strive for the top, and is even any peace there?

Tao questions us as artists and how we are supposed to live and work and think and be. Are we "neutered"? Are we "trained like obedient dogs"?

At 34:00, we hear Tao doing an interview on Radio One (Nov. 6, 2010) talking about art and artists in this time. If anything, check this out.