Lecture Two - Week 8

Lecture - 

Looking at Reading:

Recap: 'The Image World'

-The photographic
-Two attitudes
-Information space
-Mediated Authority (Bohemian dreams, "cybernetic forest", you are the product).

New Zealand as a place has been mediated and displayed: 

"This is New Zealand" - dir. Hugh MacDonald (1969) - Made by New Zealand national film network.
The nation and "the aesthetics of investment space".

Mediating Aotearoa New Zealand
-Te Papa/Weta Workshop - 'Gallipoli the Scale of our war'
The Nation: Monuments and Memory
"Anzac day is now characterised by an unchallenged, solemn acceptance, a vague bundle of motives and feelings that embrace the nationalistic desire for a founding trauma and the sufferings of our grandfathers" - Tim Corvallis, "Statues with Blind Eyeballs', 2015.

The criticism of New Zealand

Gallipoli is a way to place New Zealand in world historical events.
The GCSB powerpoint slides - the publishing scandal of these powerpoint are not intend for public eyes.
Look at Te-Papa-Spy-Exhibition-Idea-Summery (some of these things may be useful?)

In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] - Lisa Reihana (2015) - represented as a New Zealand representation - Interview with Reihana on Maori TV.

How can indigenous voices be expressed in this historical context today? How do Polynesian artists express the space of New Zealand on contrast to Te Papa or Gallipoli Exhibition?

** ON SLIDE SHOW THERE IS MANY RELEVANT QUOTES TO THESE TOPICS - COULD BE INVESTIGATED.

Questions to take away -
How is contemporary experience shaped by the screening of information?
What forms of cultural memory are being encoded in powerful institutions?
What are the implications of the blurring of boundaries between entertainment, technology, business and culture at large?
What possibilities are available today?

Thoughts and Questions to investigate in tutorial:

Are we needing to use exhibitions that already exist or are we using images that could be collated to create an exhibition? Cause from the lectures and readings they are all based around pre-existing exhibitions.

Tutorial -

Nation -
-Articulation of being a 'New Zealander' 'Kiwi' etc
What are we told over and over again that are part of who we are?
-What do you remember from school that have been told to you are part of New Zealand
-How are these displayed?
-Inclusions and exclusions


What are defining things about being New Zealander?

100% Pure
Kiwi Burger Song
Pineapple lumps
Rugby
Pavlova
KiwiFruit
Kiwi
Sheep
Farming
Meat
Possum Fur
Maori Culture - designs, powhiris, waiata, hungi
Gumboots
Landscape and scenery
'Friendly' perception
Flag
Tuataras
SilverFern
Hobbit - PeterJackson, Weta etc.
BBQ - This is in Aussie as well


These could be separated into materialistic and cultural

How are these displayed?
Propaganda
Media
Artworks
Advertisements
Videos
Facebook and social media

Inclusions - Things that are only New Zealand
Maori Culture
Kiwi
Hobbit - Peter Jackson
Tuataras
Silver ferns

Exclusions - (Things we choose to leave out)
Drilling
Mining
Forest industry

Further Discussion into these - 

100% Pure - Tourism industry, government, propaganda - how we want to be perceived by the rest of the world. False advertising - overreaching slogan/ideology - pure of what? What does this mean, imagery we are seeing. Tourist attracting imagery and landscapes. Colours. History of these places? Still untouched places - people haven't been there? Inclusion and Exclusion. National parks being sold off to other places and other countries are buying into our countries etc. We're nowhere near the top of the list when looking at countries with places that are actually pure. We as New Zealanders need to know its not true.

Kiwi Burger Song - Hot pools, ruby balls, chilly bins, cricket wins, jandals - tokens of Kiwiana throughout this song. Speaking to a larger ideology - Kiwi burger an american industry and cooperation with McDonalds tapping into our New Zealand identity. Kiwi-burger that is identified throughout the world with different techniques - it has one aspect (beetroot) that is seen as New Zealand.

Maori Culture - Complex due to treatment, Maori were excluded. Hungi, Haka, are dominant in New Zealand frequent media. Where does our information come from? How do we identify? A manufactured identity of the New Zealand culture. Tokenistic engagement with the Maori Culture. We are a 'young' country - Only young if colonisation never happened - chopping off of history.

Discussing terms and aspect - 

Looking at images and how they relate to the terms.

FEEDBACK -

Constructing an exhibition with different artists and people around a similar topic, which discuss the set terms and a theme which can relate to one another to be discussed.

TO DO:

Select two terms from - environment, technology, identity, collective belonging, consumerism, ethics to use and start thinking through ideas and moving forward with a topic for my essay to highlight parts.
Images from different artists which relate together to form something which could be critiqued together as a whole.
More refined for topic - images that you are going to use and write about.