On 1/02/2009, at 6:33 PM, Sarah Cook wrote:
> Contained within the expression is the fundamental question of what  
> are the necessary conditions for weaving people together  
> (technological or otherwise), and in particular in this context - a  
> time-limited residency in a specific environmental and geographic  
> place.

Kia ora all

Since the residency I've thought about how I could contribute to this  
dialogue, more difficult as the space of SCANZ recedes and the  
approaching need for other, institutionalised forms of evaluation  
grows (justifying travel, accommodation, etc). Institutional mundanity  
seems unhelpful in considering the space of relative autonomy that we  
seek in the arts - and yet one of the larger themes for reflection  
from this residency for me relates to the supporting infrastructure we  
have with us as we are woven together in "a time-limited residency in  
a specific environmental and geographic place."

On the one hand, being a participant with pre-existing commitments  
(both to the Local Time group, and the communities around Taranaki  
with whom we have worked previously) was a struggle. I'm taken back to  
Herman Pi’ikea Clark's comments at the symposium on the role of the  
first-born within his culture: it is to be spoilt, but also to be  
especially obligated.  From the outside it looks like the position of  
power (which is true), but the eldest is also the subject position  
which is most fully woven into the institutional/structural fabric of  
the community, for better and worse. There is a reason why many  
stories in the Pacific (and from my limited knowledge West Africa/ 
Carribean) feature a youngest-born trickster figure such as Maui- 
tikitiki-a-Taranga (who snared the sun to circle the earth, fished up  
Aotearoa, etc.).

If new media has a strength, it is in the desire to try out "a new way  
of doing things"; an impulse that has usually been the provenance of  
the youngest.  Not for them the stuffy worry about how things should  
be or how they've been done: let's do something exciting! And as an  
elder might say, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye; or  
perhaps more commonly the energy comes to an end when the brute  
political forces channelled by more conservative types come crashing  
in (conversations we've had on this list too frequently of late!). No  
matter - Web 3.0 is just around the corner, and we can start a new  
social networking platform which is better than the old one.

In European modernism, this space of novelty and mobility is developed  
in opposition to non-European indigenous cultures who are  
characterised as place-bound and static. We inherit something of this  
in the discourse of new media, yet it is striking that so many stories  
from indigenous traditions provide such strong characters (Maui,  
Coyote, Eshu) as models of invention and change. However, it is also  
true that the way "place" and "community" are commonly figured in the  
cosmopolitan new media world sits atop, as Craig Calhoun put it, "a  
thin conception of social life, commitment, and belonging" that seems  
hard to reconcile with an indigenous cultural perspective that sees  
the geography of the place one is in as an ancestor and the future  
simultaneously (note that this doesn't preclude travel). That  
disjuncture is part of what makes the themes of SCANZ so interesting,  
and props/thanks to Ian and Trudy for operationalising this by  
securing the guardianship of Dr Huirangi Waikerepuru who is one of the  
most skilled and inspirational intercultural practitioners I have known.

Some of that tension was echoed for me in my shuttling between our  
existing relationships in the region, our group, and the demands of  
the "weave" being sought in the residency, all of which I feel I  
attended to fairly poorly, failing to connect with a number of people  
in the way I wanted to. But it did raise the question about the time- 
scale which can be activated in a short-term residency and the  
temporal biases of the new media community. To extend the weaving  
metaphor, in classic new media mode the time-bounded "project" is the  
most significant focus and the purpose of the weaving is to produce  
the best possible project (say, a woven mat). The success of this mat  
might then become the basis for another weaving project which could be  
replicated or extended elsewhere, and the success of the artist  
generally relies on the success of their projects.

By contrast, if one is based in a particular place, before and after  
the mat project arrives, then the assessment of the project may be  
different. People might ask, "Who is deciding what the mat is made  
from? Will we need to look after it later? What weaving styles are  
assumed and will I learn from them? Isn't this just like that mat  
weaving project which didn't work ten years ago? Who are you to be  
weaving this mat anyway?"  To those who are relying on the success of  
the project, such questions are problematic and sometimes threatening.  
And it is true that sometimes any place needs the stimulation of  
outsiders to prompt a rethink of the decor, and the visiting  
practitioner of flooring arts can be just the breath of fresh air a  
place needs, precisely because of their lack of knowledge about  
previous histories.

However, I do think we know that individual projects and the  
infrastructure (places, people) required to hatch projects have  
different kinds of mobility which can be in tension. At the moment,  
part of my own growth as a practitioner is to explore the potential of  
people and places I already know more thoroughly, rather than assuming  
that the something I'm looking for is someplace else in the next  
project opportunity. The aim is not to be exclusive in how I engage  
with people (though of course that is inevitable), but to prioritise  
consolidation of the central infrastructure that supports the projects  
I'm working toward - a process that seems not always compatible with  
receiving visitors and new inputs in the way one would like. In that  
way, maybe residencies are easier far from home. Hei aha. I'm always  
optimistic that people who are on a related path to mine will tend to  
end up in the same places again (like this list ;) and the weaving  
will go on in its own way.

However I would like to point to the slippage between verb and noun in  
the various discussions about "raranga tangata" that Sally Jane and  
Sylvia have graciously passed along to SCANZ from Charlie Tawhiao. In  
contemporary English the term "weaving" strongly leans toward an  
action, and is less clearly placed in a tradition. In my experience,  
even (especially?) the most revered practitioners of raranga would  
never see it as being something consciously generated out of their  
"own" creativity, but more a process of learning to be sensitive to  
all the complexities of a practice that spans generations of  
ancestors. It's not so much something you "do", but if you choose to  
put yourself in the practice (or more traditionally, are chosen to be  
placed in the practice) it will make you.

This power is embodied in the sophisticated tikanga/protocols applied  
to working with harakeke ("flax") which govern who can harvest the  
plant, how it would be done, actions taken to protect people and  
materials from misuse, etc. An entire cosmology and philosophy is  
evident in the process. On the other hand, when we move to the  
Internet, the kind of weaving that takes place reflects a very  
different set of values: much younger, more voluntaristic and  
individualistic. If one is to give oneself over to the philosophy  
embedded in the Internet's history of networking practice, one is  
giving oneself over to masculinist metaphors rooted in European  
militarism (see e.g. Galison's work on cybernetics) and frontier  
spatialities.

The natural response then is to try and reshape the Internet to be  
what we want it to be ideally - but this is a more individualistic  
process that I think encourages us to take ourselves a bit seriously:  
we are trying to invent a genre of weaving, perhaps out of an improper  
purpose at the medium's beginning. That attempt to invent from a poor  
foundation would not really be the approach I think a Pacific  
perspective would take, and so I think that the promising metaphor  
(internet<->raranga tangata) is ruptured somewhat by this aporia or  
impassability between two worlds of weaving. That would give me  
caution about moving easily between indigenous cultural concepts and  
the space of new media - a caution I think Sally Jane attended to very  
effectively in her symposium presentation. When we weave people we  
also run the risk of instrumentalising them for a higher purpose and  
this has been a common thread in Internet discourse and  
colonisation.... too much to say here.

Far too much for one email and probably of limited interest to most of  
the list- but if I can finish with a plug for a book which takes on  
these topics which I don't think I've mentioned here before (below).  
Please order for your libraries if you're interested!

Many thanks to all the SCANZ participants for an excellent couple of  
weeks.

Cheers

Danny


Butt, Danny, Jon Bywater, and Nova Paul (eds.). 2008. PLACE: Local  
Knowledge and New Media Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars  
Publishing.

PLACE: LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND NEW MEDIA PRACTICE

Binding: Hardback - ISBN: 9781847184849  UK: £34.99 US: $52.99

<http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Place--Local-Knowledge-and-New-Media-Practice1-84718-484-7.htm 
 >

Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice explores tensions  
between global cosmopolitanism and local practices in the new media  
environment. This edited collection of work by practitioners and  
scholars emphasises political issues raised by artists working in an  
indigenous cultural setting.

Indigenous epistemologies provide sophisticated structures for  
negotiating belonging among communities who may become widely  
dispersed from their homelands. New media, by contrast, demonstrates  
biases toward the the dislocated: a cosmopolitanism implicitly located  
in the urban, where communities form and fragment in “virtual”  
environments. Nonetheless, questions of belonging and identification  
remain for those of us who use new media networks. Through analysis of  
a range of contemporary art and film projects, and tracking recent  
developments in cultural theory, the book provides diverse  
perspectives on how long-held attachments to place are transforming in  
the new media context.

Place: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice is edited by Danny Butt,  
Jon Bywater and Nova Paul. Danny Butt is a partner at Suma Media  
Consulting and editor of the book Internet Governance: Asia Pacific  
Perspectives. Jon Bywater is Programme Leader, Critical Studies at the  
University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts and is the New  
Zealand reviewer for Artforum magazine. Nova Paul is a film maker and  
Senior Lecturer at the School of Art and Design, AUT University.

"The contest over meanings of place stretch back to colonialism and  
forward to ubiquitous media. This collection draws together politics,  
aesthetics and ethics in a startling, innovative debate of exceptional  
value to both artists and sociologists of the new media landscape."
Professor Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne

"This book recognises the complex readings of what it means to be  
contemporary in a place. A compelling set of conversations that  
consider the alternative modernities and knowledge systems that  
destabilize colonial understandings of spatialization, self- 
representation and the role of new media art practice."
Professor Joel Slayton, San Jose State University

Table of Contents:

Introduction - Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Nova Paul
Chapter One: Local Knowledge and New Media - Danny Butt
Chapter Two: Pacific Parables - Raqs Media Collective
Chapter Three: Indigenous Virtualities - Allen Meek
Chapter Four: Compasses, Meetings, and Maps: Three media works -  
Rachel O’Reilly
Chapter Five: Bicultural Temporalities - Jo Smith
Chapter Six: Virtual and Material Topographies - Ayesha Hameed
Chapter Seven: Outage, Seepage, Blockage: art and cultural praxis in  
the network - Anna Munster
Chapter Eight: Making Things Our Own: The Indigenous Aesthetic In  
Digital Storytelling - Candice Hopkins
Chapter Nine: ...the fluid line... - Jason De Santolo
Chapter Ten: Strangers on the Land: Place and Indigenous Multimedia  
Knowledge Systems - Mike Leggett and Laurel Evelyn Dyson
Chapter Eleven: The Graffiti Archive and the Digital City - Lachlan  
MacDowall
Chapter Twelve: Play_Space: Interactive media practices for community  
participation and cultural transformation - Juan Francisco Salazar and  
Sarah Janet Waterson
Chapter Thirteen: Diwà — a Filipino aesthetic of knowledge, language,  
body - Fatima Lasay
Chapter Fourteen: Commons Conflict - Soenke Zehle


--
http://www.dannybutt.net