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.
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