The Vernacularist: The Environmental Issue

The Vernacularist The Environmental Issue

The Vernacularist ISSUE three The Environmental Issue ISSN 2350-3343 First published in 2014

by Depot Artspace 28 Clarence St Devonport Auckland 0624 New Zealand Phone: (09) 963-2331

Far North I, Skip James, 2014 This page: Far North II, Skip James, 2014 Far north of Aotearoa, these wild horses roam the beaches and seaweed gatherer huts nearby. See pages 54 -57 for more of Skip’s work.

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Individual texts copyright © the authors, 2014.

Individual images copyright © the artists as attributed, 2014.

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Nicholas J. Boyd Barry Brickell Nigel Brown Anna Forsyth Laura Giddey Virginia Guy Elisapeta Heta Timothy Hillier Stuart Houghton Alexander Hoyles Skip James Brendan Kitto Dan Kelly Lia Kent Mackillop Sarah Lancaster Julian McCarthy Susan McLaughlin Richard Pettifer Jemma Richardson Aaron Robertson Jacinda Rogers Kelly Rule Chris Ryan Denys Trussell Tom Simpson Arielle Walker Harriet Were

tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

editor’s letter

Here it is!

Today’s environment as experienced by people!

Non and semi-scientific perspectives on what it means to live today and be conscious of environmental responsibility for the future, the influence of the past in today’s environmental circumstances and how this is perceived.

In this issue you will not find statistical information on endangered species or how to resolve climate change (although had such an article been submitted it would definitely be included!). You will, however, find wellinformed and considered opinions on an array of environmental issues close to home.

For me, consideration of all of the environmental issues facing the world today gives me a similar sense of impending doom, to that which follows drinking five strong coffees. The sound bite from an early Red Cross television advert “The problem’s too big, what can I do?” starts replaying in my mind. But to my surprise after setting the daunting task of an environmental issue of The Vernacularist it was with relief that I began to review the content.

The brilliance of each of the articles submitted for this third issue of The Vernacularist, is the passion of each of the contributors for their particular subject — and how that passion is directed into activity that will bring and is bringing about real change and awareness. This focussed and direct individual activity is far more digestible than apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic theory (the end is nigh), which often leads to inner-questioning of the futility of living.

From a vernacular perspective this passionate activity also shows the continuation and evolution of a heritage of activism (to protect or better the social, natural and political environment) in Aotearoa New Zealand.

How relatable the content is provides me with furthur relief. On a recent eight hour bus journey through the North Island, I experienced the pastoral landscape of Barry Brickell’s ‘Mighty River Power’. As a city-dweller, at times I feel like the character in Kelly Rule’s illustration ‘Never Not Working’, trapped in a social economic environment where your perceived value is based on your physical and financial status (in addition to management of a projected persona — how often you update your social media and how many people care).

At times it seems my person has become my work (best become a shut in). But there is solace between these pages and it is in good faith that this issue has fallen under your gaze.

I hope you find some curious information here that will inspire you towards passionate living with the potential for positive change in the micro-climate of your being and existence as a vital and significant part of an evolving environmental ecology.

— Erin Forsyth

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

contents

Anna Forsyth, Geometric Cities, 6 Chris Ryan, Sunset Altar, 7 Nigel Brown, Susan McLaughlin, Below Pahia Hill, 8 — 9 Elisapeta Heta, The Story of the Whare in the Bush, 10 — 13 Denys Trussell, What is Environment?, 14 — 15 Barry Brickell, Mighty River Power, 16 — 19 Lia Kent MacKillop, 20 — 25 Aaron Robertson, Virginia Guy, And the Waters Prevailed Upon the Earth, 26 — 29 Nicholas J. Boyd, A Sustainable Practice, 30 — 33 Dan Kelly, Harriet Were, The Rain is Soft — Enchantment in the Age of Excess, 34 — 35 Timothy Hillier, 36 — 41 Jemma Richardson, Summertime, 42 — 43 Jacinda Rogers, Friends of Flowers — Beekeeping With Julian McCarthy, 44 — 45 Kelly Rule, Never Not Working, 47 Laura Giddey, Alexander Mark Hoyles, Sew Love the Earth — Sarah Lancaster, 48 — 49 Tom Simpson, Guitar Man, Cloud Gazers, 50 — 51 Arielle Walker, Street Art and the Politics of Public Space, 52 — 53 Skip James, Sri Lanka, 54 — 57 Stuart Houghton, Why We All Need to Get Along, 58 — 61 Brendan Kitto, Looking Down, 64

Did you know?

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Are you interested in contributing to future issues of The Vernacularist?

For contributor enquiries and all other Vernacularist related questions/comments email: erin.forsyth@depotartspace.co.nz

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Geometric Cities — Anna Forsyth The geometry of cities fascinates me.

The way we manoeuvre through the shapes and angles prescribed to us by town planners.

There is a strange geometry to the movement of the man on the street. He is often oblivious to his own shapes.

Our journeys are less spontaneous than we think.

Someone once held a set square to paper and we follow the line of their compass without even realising it.

All photographs and text by Anna Forsyth. Untitled images captured by Anna in Melbourne and digitally enhanced, 2014.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

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Image: Sunset Altar (Northern Shanghai), digital photograph. Chris Ryan, July 2014

Sunset Altar

— Chris Ryan (July/August 2014) Fujin Road station is significant in that it is the northernmost terminus for the original Shanghai metro system, Line one.

Shooting this a few weeks ago just before dark, I couldn’t help noticing how relentlessly the trucks were thundering along the highway beneath me. They seemed to bully smaller vehicles to the periphery and race on like ravenous she lions after a tasty zebra. I also had to wonder if there was a tube of toothpaste or a pair of child’s shoes in one of the shipping containers that might end up at my place in Auckland.

Looking across at the all too obvious and powerful absorption into the atmosphere, I remembered a logistics lecture I’d heard a few days prior at the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics and the explanation the lecturer gave us about how (rapidly) China had got to this point in time. Never once did he blame local or national consumption or the rapacious demand from the West and other trading partners. He firmly admitted there were serious environmental issues and offered the chance for foreign minds, ideas and systems to come and be a part of developing a better present and future for all, via a combination of skills and innovation.

Having spent almost two of the previous eight months in China, I perceived the locals to be far more than merely human rights and ecosystem abusers with a ‘to hell with the consequences’ attitude. I mention this because these very topics have arisen in various conversations I’ve been in, on the subject of China and its dealings. That is not to say that I condone political oppression and violations of freedom there or anywhere for that matter. My plea is only for a more detailed and sustained look at things along with a suggestion to maybe take a few weeks out, shell out a couple of grand and go see how this awesome nation actually operates. It is quite boring to hear the same worn out lines from those intent on blaming others for a shared problem that we can, and should, all be working towards solving in creative ways that come naturally to each of us.

Chris Ryan. BFA (Hons.) South Waikato born Irish/Samoan. Right now I’m forcing collisions between transience, use value, ritual and commerce through sculpture, photography and painting towards an MFA at Elam. I facilitate visual arts programmes for youth around Auckland and enjoy time in the bush and at the beach with my wife and three sons.

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Below Pahia Hill — Images and text Nigel Brown, Susan McLaughlin, Cosy Nook, 2014 9

tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Since 2001 Sue and I have lived below Pahia Hill in Southland.

Pahia Hill is at the eastern end of Te Waewae Bay on the Southern Coast.

Here on an almost daily basis environmental issues can confront you in a direct manner.

Or alternatively you can be seduced by its wild beauty and think the place has escaped any real environmental issues whatsoever.

The truth is this coast has faced mining, farming and developers and some fairly casual attitudes.

At Pahia or Cosy Nook we live beside a hill with a remnant of native bush, below which a neighbouring farmer armed with diggers and miles of plastic pipe is busy modifying the land and diverting water ways as he sees fit.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

In this part of the world farmers are good at creating eyesores, and destabilising the land is neither here nor there.

On the road into where we live is Rattlestone Bay which we have watched erode away since we came here. For several years now the road has been on the edge of a cliff, and Southland District Council and Environment Southland have let this happen to get a roading subsidy for a sea wall in the bay.

All the issues facing the planet are acted out in miniature here with bureaucracy and flawed procedures getting in the way of proper coastal management and long-term action. Instead the Resource Management Act is sacrificed in the name of a quick fix and a road first and foremost.

We have put up a mural to overlook the destruction — probably seen as a small folly unnoticed in the larger environmental picture.

“All the issues facing the planet are acted out in miniature here”

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The Story of The Whare in the Bush – Elisapeta Heta

Born out of a collective memory of childhoods and architecture school and dreams not-yet-realised in the ‘real world’, the four of us (Ruby Watson, Raukura Turei, Rebecca Green and I) through a flurry of emails and my post-travel enthusiasm to make something happen.

The (at the time) recently opened Moonrise Kingdom (a film by Wes Anderson) ignited our love affair with cabins, huts, and camping as a worldwide trend of tiny houses started to fill our internet-lives. Ruby suggested the building of a cabin, something she had wanted to undertake anyway, and it wasn’t dissimilar from my own curiosities — ideas quick fired between us. We were met with equal enthusiasm and support from Lynda Simmons, with the possibility of working towards the 2013 Architecture + Women • NZ exhibition put forward, and a semblance of a ‘brief’ emerging between the four of us.

Lynda had not long completed a thesis ‘From Man Alone to Larrikin’¹ looking at the work of her father Neil Simmons from 1958 – 1984. Her thesis explored, in part, the relationship of his architecture to that of the national identity dominant in New Zealand’s architectural culture. The ‘Man Alone’ culture that arose from the postwar discussion on architecture in New Zealand² centres on the myth of the heroic man, isolated, strong and hardworking, building a solitary hut from which to hunt and live with the land. Lynda, however, talked about her father’s design approach and lifestyle as not being grounded in the theoretical sense, or one of the “isolated, sublime condition, rather it is a working building, and part of an everyday experience as temporary living quarters or a working base… he appreciated the contemplative and artistic aspect of the hut experience, with its ritualised interior, while at the same time regarding its practical, functional aspects in a non-idealised way.”³ Hindsight has made me realise that this sentiment (the ritualised and the artistic, the practical, functional and non-idealised) has essentially, reiterated itself throughout every detail of the project, big and small.

Concurrent to expressions of excitement, long winded emails with links to the many worldwide examples of small buildings, architectural and artistic precedence, we four wrote objectives framing our naivety and our hopes for this whare — long before any hammer was ever purchased.

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“I’m excited about this idea of collaboration between four women, who all have differing approaches and seeing how it pans out. The idea of building a cabin in the woods/a whare in the bush is (a huge) curiosity, but what really fascinates me is the process this will take: the conversations, the drawings, the design, the making, the dialogue that will happen between us.

Then after being blown away by Anupamu Kundoo (a female architect), I became a little obsessed with the idea of actually creating a rich and layered space.

Although this is not a home, I love the idea of producing something so playful that perhaps is not limited by constraints which tie others down: we don’t have to live in this, it doesn’t have to accommodate a certain amount of people, it won’t have to meet a building code, it can just be.” ⁴ “I really enjoy this notion of the ‘elastic band’ theory as a feminine response to the already masculine arena of DIY construction and the desire to build a hut away from society. This could also tie in somehow with the idea of a “soft space”, being a materiality or a mindset.” ⁵ “Important to me is the ‘elastic band’ house theory.

Somewhere with welcoming and embracing walls for those that need it, expanding for and fitting to the needs of whoever occupies it. I hope this cabin reflects that and is open to anyone.

This project will be my foray into architecture after a bit of ‘time out’ post uni. Learning practical building skills as well as getting my brain dirty with a bit of architectural theory I hope we all get a space we feel is our own. Something we are proud of and feel connected to. And somewhere we can all use to pursue our own creative endeavours and encourage whanau to do the same with the space.” ⁶ And thus, this project sought to be more than the act of building, or the final reveal of said building. Rather, it was architecture as process, architecture as narrative, with the potential to ebb and flow with every site visit and every newly inducted team member.

The design of the whare was pragmatic and while we spent approximately four months (which equates to several emails and a couple of dinner meetings) planning, sketching and researching ways to design and build, the reality was much less orchestrated.

Haptic and spontaneous, and full of mistakes, but never anything like any design we drew to begin with.

The 4.1 metre by 2.4 metre floor plan was dictated by the maximum size allowable before we needed to seek building consent,⁷ whilst also maximising the donated timber piles given to us, and the minimum number of ply wood sheets we would need to purchase to completely cover the floor. However, once the piles were in and we started to build the timber floor, we had begun collecting excessive amounts of building pallets and beautiful pieces of wood. So instead, the floor came together as something of a jigsaw, and ultimately felt like a crafted piece of art.

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Each piece was selected, sometimesdebated, prepared and nailed together.

All the while our unit of measure was “we just have to make sure an earring can’t fall through. If it can, the gap is too big”, followed by laughter that this clearly, was not how ‘real builders’ did it.

And thus, our model of building continued this way.

Flexing with the materials on hand and the people available to help. French doors were acquired by a ‘love note’ to a renovating local, and the staff at the local hardware store laughed at us every time we’d come in to buy something, “you’re building a cabin?”. This project has always been an open ended dialogue about the celebration of how women practice design and privileges the experience over the end result it may not ever, truly, be complete.

Build days stretched beyond the summer we intended it to be done. Two years later we find ourselves, still returning to site with much to do, building into the sunset. ¹ Lynda Simmons, From Man Alone to Larrikin: The Work of Neil Simmons 1958 - 1984 (University of Auckland, 2011), 54. ² Robin Skinner, The Whare in the Bush: Unpacking a Twentieth Century Tradition, Fabrications 18, no. 1 (2008): 58. ³ Lynda Simmons, From Man Alone to Larrikin: The Work of Neil Simmons 1958 - 1984 (University of Auckland, 2011), 54. ⁴ Rebecca Green, 2 November 2011. ⁵ Raukura Turei. 2 November 2011. ⁶ Ruby Watson, 2 November 2011. ⁷ The maximum size of a dwelling before needing building consent is 10 square metres.

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The Vernacularist

WĀHINE

Empowerment, oppression, sisterhood, employment, stereotypes, divide, suffragettes, lipsticks, sexuality, power, – what does it mean to be wāhine/female today?

If you are interested in contributing to the WĀHINE issue of The Vernacularist please email erin.forsyth@depotartspace.co.nz

tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

What is Environment?

— Denys Trusselll

What is environment? Is it like ‘vernacular’, but even more so? Vernacular contains many cultural elements, some contradictory. Environment contains all things. It is totality. It is cosmos. But how can we talk about totality in a useful way? We are bound to sub-divide, to speak of particular environments. Yet we must always be conscious that, whichever environment we speak of, it is part of a whole; a whole that is infinite and therefore infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

Only then do we have the conception that gets it right. The rock pool that we gaze into on the coast of Waimamaku is an environment, bounded by itself. But it is also connected, even by the photons that arrive on the surface of its water, and that illuminate its depth, with the entire casual, synchronistic, rhythmic patterning of infinitude.

Once we have grasped that the environment of the sea anemone is part of a totality that holds all things, we can begin to understand ecology. This is the relationship of all, to all. Ecology is the mother science. It involves all other sciences.

This is opposite to the belief that all science, and the cosmos, is founded on physics and chemistry. In fact, all science is founded on connectedness, which is the basic principle of ecology.

Too many of our politicians, corporate leaders and intellectuals have not grasped this. They are locked into analysing small portions of the world without seeing the connections between them. That is why the hedge-fund manager in New York does not grasp that his/her decisions affect the behaviour of the sea ice on the Antarctic rim. That is why we are in big trouble.

The Vernacularist is themed around the arts. The arts, like ecology, depend on structures and meanings that are interconnected and invite a unity of perception about them ‘in the eye of the beholder’. A mind attuned to aesthetic unity is likely to be attuned to the physical connections within the environment as well. I began to ask myself about this common ground between the arts and ecology in the early 1970s. In 1989-90 I attempted an answer published as two essays in The Ecologist (UK). I added a third essay published in Tenemos (London) in 2007. These essays, collectively titled The Arts and Planetary Survival, set out with the assumption that artistic and ecological processes were parallel, if not the same, and that art, though an unliving artefact made by living beings, was, ‘bio-morphic’. Arts principles of being resembled the principles of being in organisms. In 2008 I published a book on the subject, The Expressive Forest: Essays on the Arts and Ecology in Oceania. These too looked at parallels between natural and environmental processes and the processes we use in making art.

These are not new ideas. They have been intuitions in us since intuition existed. They are, however, marginalised. The potent mechanism of the industrial system; the monetisation of the planet by finance capitalism, have pushed such ideas to the periphery and have done so now for several hundred years. They are now re-emerging because of the increasing realisation that we cannot continue plundering the environment the way we have been doing during the long spread of globalisation. Artists have been instinctively re-affirming connectedness. Back in the ‘seventies’ I soon found writers working on similar themes to those interesting me — for instance the poet Gary Snyder, the scholar and eco-philosopher, Theodor Roszak, the Russian (then Soviet poet) Andrei Voznesensky. I realised there had always been among artists a sense of the unity and connectedness of the natural world. It was their basic datum. It’s enabled them to make art ‘organisms’ — or what we call ‘works’.

The earliest poet of whom we have knowledge as a real historical person was Hesiod (c.750-650 BC). He farmed, in Boeotia. As a farmer/poet he believed farming was to be practised as a craft, like poetry, and that it had to work in harmony with the elements. This is nearly 3000 years ago. Why has our society not caught up with pre-Socratic Greece in this matter? Hesiod’s fine, long poem, Works and Days makes clear his distinctive following of the demands made by his farming environment.

Six centuries later the Latin poet Virgil, in his, Georgics shows a similarly ecological perspective on farming. We can come forward to almost any time in history and find such a consciousness connected with artistic expression. It is right here, in the poetry and prose of A.R.D. Fairburn (1904-1957) for instance. The visual arts history is equally saturated with a consciousness of unity and coherence in the environment.

As industrialism began to bite into the substance of nature, there was a dramatic reaction to it — a kind of supernova of ecological consciousness. This was the Romantic Movement, explicitly concerned with our relationship to environment.

One of its major ‘works’, Coleridge’s, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) remains one of the towering parables of ecological consciousness.

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Image: Three-dimensional fractal (ie mandelbulb) of power 9 created by Visions of Chaos programme, Soler97, 2010

tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

In 1991 — 2 I edited an eco-philosophical study by Edward Goldsmith, The Way: An Ecological World View (Random Century, London, 1992). It is, among other things, a revelation of ecology as a holistic rather than merely analytical science. Intuition and feeling are as important in understanding the environment as are data. But “The Way” is also a celebration of ecological perspectives in the indigenous arts and traditions throughout the world.

This helped me note that the earliest ‘art’ markings are carved into rock at Jimnium in the vast Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia. Fifty thousand years old, they tell the same story — that of an indissoluble link between human perception, art-making and patterns in the natural world — in this case an array of concentric circles.

Environment invites us to interpret it by using its own innate patterning.

Art is waiting in the environment to be expressed by ourselves. This depends on how we perceive the

environment, be it wild, urban or rural. However random and meaningless some human environments may seem, their existence relies on underlying cycles of the biosphere, without which human life would quickly cease.

We are dependent for life, for instance, at all times on the balance of gases in the earth’s atmosphere. Our social and artistic environments are existing, therefore by the good graces of nature.

It has long been the role of the arts, to affirm in its works what has been called ‘the critical order of nature’. This is a tension maintained between stability and modulated change. This balance is crucial to every species, every individual organism. Human artworks embody this tension. They are languages of forms, stable, yet capable of endless variation. They help keep us aesthetically tuned to the ‘critical order of nature’ day in, day out, sensitising us to the macrocosm that is wrapped around every aspect of our being.

Denys Trussell is a poet, biographer, musician and ecologist. His poetry, essays and criticism have been published in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, France and America. He won the 1985 PEN Best First Book Award for non-fiction with Fairburn, about the life of poet A.R.D. Fairburn. His poetry collection, Walking into the Millennium, was shortlisted in the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

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Mighty River Power – Barry Brickell

Sitting under a giant, wildly-branched, aerial root-encrusted pohutukawa tree, perched on a steep bank high above and with a sauvignon blanc in one of my equally crusty mugs, I looked with awe down upon the celadon-tinted great green greasy Wai-Ka-To, reminding myself that it is not the Limpopo River of Kipling, and that it is not yet greasy. Water of great sanctity, calming, soothing to watch, flowing slowly with infinite determination, neither to be ruffled (except by oars of skiffs) channeled, commodified nor bothered by monotonous drones of power boats.

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Image: Early Spring, or, A Narrow of the Waikato River, Kennett Watkins, oil on canvas, 598 x 1364mm, 1881. From the collection of Te Papa.

A great anger is there, waiting, a taniwha at every bend, if the laws of tapu are broken. What then of the Mighty River Power who’s several generating stations churn out the ‘juice’ that powers half of Te Ika a Maui?

I just wonder how this holy water feels as it courses through giant turbines, forcing their slow but unstoppable blades to run at absolutely constant revs, synchronising with each other all the way up and down the great river, their speed not fluctuating despite constantly changing power demand and variable river flows. Maintaining a constant vigilance against the potential anger of pent-up water and huge bearings that could overheat, the army of ant-like workers need to be on full alert day in, day out, all night too. Yet the taniwha at every bend is waiting (equally vigilant) for any mistakes as well as earthquakes.

So, when I look down on those gently moving now placid waters, I have to wonder how much original mana is left.

For millions of years this irresistible life force has carved its highly defined path that would have to be the envy of any hydraulic engineer and water race builder, setting an example of ultimate precision of gradient especially in its freedom path between Kaipiro and its outpouring into the sea.

Yet over this comparatively recent period of geological time, it has chosen at least two divergent paths, the former one via the Hauraki plains (which it created) and the vast fertile plains of dairy land Waikato (which it also created). Is this not enough to set any enquiring mind boggling? The origin of these fertile lands, rich in most essential minerals (except cobalt so I am told) we owe to gigantic volcanic eruptions that occurred in the Central Plateau just a mere millennium or two ago. Umpteen millions of tonnes of pummicial volcanic ash transported by the very river that flows so placidly by.

Not only is there a taniwha at every bend, there are one or two big ones underground, dozing along the great crustal fault line that runs from south west to north east, from Ohakune, through Eastern Bay of Plenty, out past Whakaari (White Island) and up through the active Kermadec Trench. Stirrings, deep within the earth here and associated taniwha are not asleep — they are merely dozing.

We now need to explain the grey-green (celadon) colour of the river. Why is it not crystal clear? Answers to these questions are many. Let us start with the first — volcanology. Every time there is an eruption from one of the dormant central plateau volcanoes, some fine siliceous ‘ash’ ends up in the rivers.

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When fine enough, suspended in water, this ash lends an opaline bluish green tinge to the water (e.g. Opal Pools Creek at Karekare, the bluish tinge to water from South Island glaciers). It takes months, years for this fine rock powder to wash out but it can be very beautiful and not at all harmful.

The main contributor however starts from early colonization of the land, firstly to a lesser extent by Māori then to a major and permanent extent by European forest clearing and farming. These agencies are responsible for the present and now permanent murkiness not seen in shallow water so much as when it is deeper. Forest clearing on steep slopes creates massive soil and clay erosion — where does it all end up after any heavy rain event? Well, eventually in the sea to form sediments on the sea floor which over geological time turns into sandstones as one sees Napier and East Cape.

This must be the finest example of recycling on a massive scale that has ever been recorded. Here, murky rivers are the great conveyor belts.

Pastoral farming must be the next most important contributor to ‘murky waters’, but in some ways, the worst, this as well as exotic forestry plantation. Both are massive contributors to steep land erosion; in the large quantities of soil and clay into adjacent waterways. When I look at the great river below my perch, clear glass in hand, I have to wonder just how much topsoil every cubic metre of that gently flowing water is carrying down to the sea. Even a teaspoon full represents many thousands of tonnes over my lifespan. But with farming in particular, we have another and even more sinister water pollutant: nitrogen and phosphorous from both fertilizer application and cattle poo (Reference: a paper recently presented by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment).

The tricky part is that due to their solubility, nitrogen and phosphorous compounds are not visible in the water; they are great fodder for algae and bacteria which are distressingly visible especially in lakes and slower flowing rivers. They also encourage massive water weed growth in lakes, ponds and drainage channels which Councils and farmers have to spend huge sums of money cleaning them up. In some South Island rivers, this nutrient enrichment problem has given rise to ‘rock snot’, a slimy algae that infests even faster flowing streams and rivers. Fonterra’s ‘clean streams accord’ although well intentioned, creates long term problems especially for dairy farmers as for many, large scale stream-side fencing is a massive expense that is forced under new legislation,

and would drive many farmers to bankruptcy unless better funding is available. This would probably require a change of government!

So, in the case of our Mighty River of the Waikato, will the joint venture between Tainui and the power company have any real teeth or will it be like Fonterra’s initiative in cleaning up the river?

Well, not easily, thanks to the fact that many thousands of people now live in towns and cities along the river. One cannot blame them – as human animals we all produce waste and our commercial operations (factories etc.) together with our love of cars, trucks and tar sealed roads is going to make the clean-up increasingly difficult.

I would like here to give an example of the tar sealed road and rubber tyre on a hot summers day, a story I have to recount as a result of its consequences never seem to appear in environmental literature. It was a very hot day and as I was driving along a heavily used main highway near Taupo.

Feeling like a cool fresh drink I stopped beside a culvert through which a small stream was flowing. Lowering my mug into the clear-looking water, I took a sip. Ugh! It tasted of a mixture of kerosene and urine yet there was neither smell nor discolouration — it looked clean. Unbeknown to me at the time, the stream was flowing alongside the highway rather than from a valley at right angles to it. This caused me to think about fish and other wildlife living in our streams; what is the effect on them? Heaven knows what toxic chemicals there are in tar seal, a petroleum refinery ‘waste’ product and in tyres as they wear out.

Huge expense is going into water treatment plants that process sewage and factory waste water. I know that Hamilton City Council has to spend millions on this yet such processed water can go nowhere else than into the river. No processed water can ever be as pure as natural water although modern technology is making some major advancement. It’s a vicious circle — the more of us there are, the more farm animals we need to feed us and the more wastes we produce. So, what’s the answer if we care for our children?

Conclusion: Stop breeding more human beings! (How?).

Expand rail use; reduce heavy road transport — a political joke? (No). Fence all farm streams and stop harvesting pines on steep slopes. (Oh yeah!). No wonder it’s going to be tough! I lift my glass to the Mighty River for the last time.

Images: Above, Waitomo Area Stream Showing the Effects of Erosion, Wiki-Commons, 2007. Top right, Ohakuri Dam, Wiki-Commons, 2006. Waikato river, Bottom right, Ngaruawahia Farm I, Jacinda Rogers, 2014.

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Lia Kent MacKillop 1. Silica Rapids 2. Huka Falls 3. Silica Rapids II 4. Turoa Ski Field All images photographed on 35mm Fujicolour Pro 400H, in 2014.

tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

And the Waters Prevailed Upon the Earth —Words by Aaron Robertson, images by Virginia Guy

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Not far north of Whangarei lies a trefoil-shaped flatland partly enclosed by the remains of ancient volcanic activity and known locally as the Hikurangi Swamp.

Although State Highway 1 skirts around its edge, those on their way further north are largely oblivious to its presence. When it finally emerges from the fog in which it is frequently shrouded, it might easily be described on most occasions as a nondescript plain; a patchwork in varying shades of green.

But this is a landscape with something of a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ identity. The majority of these 10,000 hectares have been converted to farmland which, through regular flooding, is continually seeking to devolve to its original marsh-like state, now largely preserved in name only. Despite the apparent peace that reigns here, it is a site of conflict, albeit a slow one with few immediately visible casualties. The upper hand in this battle changes with the seasons, between man’s attempts to maintain it as profitable pasture, and nature’s reassertion of its sloppy creation’s right to exist. It is a frontier land and a convenient microcosm of a greater environmental struggle being played out the world over.

It hasn’t always been so. With the end of World War One making a large pool of manual labour newly available, it was reasoned that such a level space should be fertile and easy to farm, if only the water could be drained away and the existing native vegetation cleared. With just a little application it was thought the land could be amongst the best in the north for raising stock. So through a combination of zeal and elbow grease, all but gone now is the manuka, the kahikatea, the harakeke. Gone too are the Wairua’s precious oxbows, the pleasure garden of native waterfowl, the stinking, peaty bog once ruled and rutted over by wild pigs, the fishery of Ngati Hau. But despite the years of imposition and the money spent, this has never been the lush New Zealand dairy country around which tourism campaigns are woven, but rather a pastiche of exotic locations that seem to have been hastily pieced together in the rush to make it pay: it is both the netherlands of earthen stop-banks and the Argentinean Pampas of our imagination. The land’s original cloak has been replaced by constantly re-seeded grass and the multitude of cattle that graze it, milking sheds and kilometres of batten fencing in varying states of repair.

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Most highly-prized of all, however, are the semi-mythical seven pump stations necessary to keep the water at bay, that turn migrating eels into easily digestible chunks in the process. Constructed in an afterglow of moon-landing euphoria and man’s ability to dominate satellites not his own, these sentinels were thought more than equal to the task which they were set. In retrospect, the extent of nature’s nostalgic desire was never within their ken. For even without ascribing some sinister motive to the gathering clouds, significantly less than forty days and forty nights of rain are needed to flood these pastures, driving man, beast, and all the cattle after their kind to higher ground.

Uncannily like the biblical narrative of terrestrial cleansing, water can sit on the land for weeks on end before slowly receding, suffocating the grass brown in its hold. A farmer’s yearly plans are thrown into more than mild disarray by deluges that turn large numbers of paddocks back into something reminiscent of what was one of the largest wetlands in the Southern Hemisphere. Fence posts are silently bereft, no longer having anything to fence, not knowing how to control the liquid state that comes and goes between their strained wires, power poles stand like pointy islands in a mirror-flat sea; their reflections on the face of the waters an apt visual metaphor for the not-so-secret double life of this place.

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It is an all too common visitation from the ‘Ghost of Nature Past’, a reminder perhaps that man shouldn’t get too comfortable on land he has tried to remake into something other than it was designed to be. Certainly the speed with which the earth here seems ready to throw off nearly a hundred years of cultivation might indicate that something wild still lurks not far beneath the heavily-fertilised surface.

For the moment though it seems like the slowly-blinking warning signal that goes unnoticed in a mission control room seldom manned.

Just what then, does the future hold for a resting place worthy of two-faced Janus himself? Will the spectre of climate change make this look like a short-lived farming folly, the last flourish of a utilitarian philosophy that couldn’t stand idly by while such a large expanse of unproductive flatland went to waste? Or will our ever-increasing ability to profit from new technology validate man’s stubborn perseverance in the face of nature’s cruel forces? The answer might well be one on which many of our futures may depend.

Virginia Guy is a fine art photographer. Her work has been exhibited at galleries around New Zealand. She is currently investigating using encaustic wax with her photography to lend it a new visual dimension. She lives in Hikurangi.

Aaron Robertson is a writer and musician currently living in Hikurangi. He has published poetry, essays, music reviews and art criticism in magazines both in New Zealand and overseas. He blogs at www.wordwhittling.com.

NOW OPEN

No.1 Parnell St, Rawene

A new socially conscious artspace has opened in the former Ferry House in Rawene. This beautiful historic building has been lovingly restored to accommodate cultural and creative activities, events and exhibitions that support communities around issues affecting them. This space is a new opportunity for artists. If you are interested in exhibiting contact lynnlawton@gmail.com or text 021685737 for any enquiries. If you are visiting Rawene you can find the building located at No. 1 Parnell St.

A Sustainable Practice – The Artwork of Nicholas J. Boyd

Nicholas J. Boyd (Nick) is a self-taught artist currently working at Carwash Studio Gallery on Upper Queen St in Auckland. Nick began to pursue life as an artist after being introduced to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in secondary school.

Basquiat’s disregard for convention led Nick to a personal revelation about social norms and individuality. Adapting to this new world view Nick began to create artwork; initially using acrylic and oil-stick, until 2009 when he began to teach himself traditional oil-painting techniques.

“I spent a day in the Auckland library and learnt the basics from the books there. The style became more about painting forms and representation.

When I began with oils, the main focus was to teach myself to paint with more clarity, technique, detail and to continually refine and include the ideas of classical oil painting into my art.”

Although many of Nick’s works are informed by nature he deliberately works with little or no visual reference in a manner after the surrealists painting “automatically” or “from the head”. “‘Is it possible to be wholly original?’ — I don’t think it is in the realm of our mental possibilities, we live by action and reaction, we observe then recreate. However this gave me the idea of creating straight from the head, from my own sensations and interpretations and the subconsciousness.

I believe this has helped me to develop greatly in terms of vision and creating a technique I might be able to call my own one day.

Being self-taught I am free to make mistakes, learn from them and incorporate them back into the work.

I start from nothing more than the idea of brushing paint onto a surface, moving, twisting, turning the brush rhythmically and building a composition from there. Letting the brush do the work and the arm follow, maintaining focus on the overall piece. Without any plan, start painting and let out part of your inner landscape onto the blank canvas.”

Cooking, making music, writing poetry, and a newly discovered passion for wood-working and joinery (alongside his oil-painting practice), form Nick’s expansive creative repertoire. Wood-working has become increasingly of interest and importance to Nick as he mainly uses reclaimed materials to build panels to paint on.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Image this page: Plantbird. Image previous page: Music. Image page 34: Earthling Thing. All images oil on found objects, Nicholas J. Boyd.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

“Sustainability is a very important factor in my work,” he says. “I can’t stand to see perfectly good materials being thrown out. It gives me a good feeling to be able to give things another life, to know they are not going to be rotting away in some hole somewhere.“ Travel abroad and around New Zealand has also played a key role in the development of Nick’s work, broadening his perspective on our connection to the land and informing his visual dialogue.

“I am very inspired by our natural environments. I am always blown away when I come across a beautiful vista or scene — effortless in their power to display beauty. A recent trip from Sydney to Darwin and back by car put me in some of the most intensely harsh but visually staggering scenes.

In 2006 — 2007 I spent 14 months in Latin America. Two of those I spent up in a mountain range in Chile on the border of Argentina (24 hours south of Santiago de Chile by bus plus 12 hours inland by a second bus), where I spent time helping a young group of Chileans who were setting up a self-sufficient community. It was an eye-opening experience to have the opportunity to be situated high in the mountains living from the land and building structures from materials straight from the forest, truly humbling and rewarding. All washing was done in the nearby river, and drinking and cooking water was piped straight in from the natural water source. Experiencing life in such beautiful surroundings and working with such inspirational people will never leave my memories; they inspired me and gave me the idea to try to live this way sometime in my life. After my time was over there, I hitchhiked to the border of Argentina and then spent two days walking into Argentina. I came across wild horses feasting on local pine nuts known as piñónes. To be alone and have experiences like this made me realise how special, important and beautiful our natural environments are to us.

I am very fascinated by ancient American history. It may not appear visually in my work, but it creates an interest and wonder in me which keeps me energised and inspired to create.

I spent two summer seasons living and working in Coromandel Town (the summer of 2011/2012 and 2012/2013), spending seven months at a time there. I first went there to catch up with a friend who was doing an apprenticeship at the time, but also met many great people and a lot of artists. I was invited to return to house-sit for a British lady for three months who had a full sized studio. I came back to Auckland to complete my first solo exhibition at Depot Artspace then went back and spent three months working on my art in the Coromandel. At that time it was a dream come true…part of my reasoning for moving there was to experience ‘small-town’ life in New Zealand as I have only really lived in our bigger cities. This experience made me appreciate how special life can be in New Zealand. I have intentions of moving back there someday.”

These experiences have also unequivocally informed Nick’s relationship to the land “I feel more connected to the understanding of the earth as a whole, rather than identifying with the idea of just ‘being a New Zealander’.”

Currently Nick is working towards a joint exhibition with artists Yonel Watene (featured in issue one of The Vernacularist) and Sam Edward which will be held at Carwash Gallery, level 2, 6 Upper Queen St, Auckland, November 21 — 28. You can see more of his work at www.nicholasjboyd.co.nz 41

The Rain is Soft Enchantment in the Age of Excess

Images: Harriet Were www.harrywere.tumblr.com Above: Cape Palliser, 2014

Words: Dan Kelly www.elhombredelsur.com

“The brushwood we gather – stack it together, it makes a hut; pull it apart, a field once more. Such is our way of thinking – we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates…”

– Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 1933.

No territory is hopeless. I still remember the words, imprinted on a wall in Venice and one of the themes of the 2012 Architecture Biennale. What did they mean? After all, territory has many forms, and not all are concerned with earth. In the realm of ideology, of rhetoric and advocacy, what hope exists?

It has been 50 odd years since the rediscovery of environmental consciousness, and yet the majority remains oblivious to its charms, present as they are — and our world continues to suffer. Now, more than ever, the environmental movement finds itself armed with a compelling array of statistics: the planetary boundaries we must not breach, the dollars to be saved in efficiency… on and on — all the logic of change, while our love lies elsewhere.

The drive to communicate in a way that might fit with thought today has obscured what we are trying to share. We have failed to realise that what motivates us, might just motivate others too. And yet, this (the demonstration of allure) remains the hardest task. Where does our love lie? What is the art that enchants, in today’s world?

We all see it. From every corner and with remarkable reach, it saturates our world. On billboards and in magazines, from strip malls to the high street, excess has become our art, and enchant it does… We want more, and more is required of us: more purchases, more time at work, deadlines and checkouts in seemingly eternal embrace — and us between them.

Excess now reaches such saturation that to point it out seems trite, as self evident as an assertion that the sky is blue or grass is green: is it not just the way things are? Yet in this observation the Emperor goes unclothed.

In order to the shortcoming of excess, we must first come to understand some of its history. For humanity, as for all other creatures, existence can be viewed as a struggle against nature and her whims — but it is not this struggle that changes per se, but our perception. When there was little to be done, the struggle demanded acceptance, a willingness to embrace the chaos – but as our technology grew (and with it our desire) we courted a life beyond limits, a control that could deny nature’s omnipresence. The rise of fossil fuels and the advent of modern society brought with it an aversion to chaos, its counter of control, and the illusion of escape. Darkness wasn’t simply danger, the unknown, to be treated with caution and respect —but disdainful, primitive, to be disregarded and dispelled.

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Dad’s wood stack, Waihopai Valley, 2014

The quest for control is one that takes many forms: the straight lines that impose order across our varied landscapes, the dominance of monoculture farming and its necessary chemical accomplices, the social norms and centralisation that reinforce a single dominant mode of existence – to the exclusion of all the other rich and varied ways of being.

Surplus and the safety it represents has fallen victim to our greed, the satisfaction of some control, autonomy, grossly exaggerated to the point where excess is best: ‘more, more, more!’ our culture cries, and with such ubiquity, who are we to challenge it?

The craving for control as an answer to our own cosmic impotence has been co-opted by the capitalist apparatus, and us with it. Now our control exists not as surplus crop to answer a cold winter, but through the commodification of identity: the idea that status can be controlled through possession; that we can obtain permanence and place with the facile swipe of a card or the transfer of funds. This is the answer to a world that will not be bowed: a redirection of energy via the path of least resistance.

Why does all this matter? The obsession with excess is an enchantment that we have had little say in. It has been marketed to us, sold as the solution to every human’s search for meaning and happiness — yet its very nature denies the finite limits of the world we depend on, and does little to deliver that which it promises.

In our search for more we have become disconnected from what we seek. There is nothing wrong with a desire for exploration, novelty and diversity — the products of human curiosity and the well from which our innovation stems – yet now we see this drive corrupted, reduced to an individual pursuit: commercialised, competitive, and removed from limits.

It might seem paradoxical that we need less to find more, but what other choice remains? In the exaltation of excess, anything less is seen as just that: lesser — less deserving of our attention, less enjoyable, less genuine. Yet this is exactly the misconception that we need to address. As Kakuzo, the Japanese philosopher and author, notes: “Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.”

Kakuzo’s view reflects wabi-sabi, the Japanese school of aesthetics that celebrates the beauty of imperfection and impermanence. Wabi-sabi focuses on ‘unpretentious, simple,

unfinished, transient things’; a patina that marks the passing of time, the soft patter of rain through the woods; grey, black and brown tones and the stillness of earth. What contrast between this simplicity, its inherent acceptance of limits, and the unrepentant desire for more now ascendant in the West.

Tanizaki explains: “we Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surrounding we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.” In this way, the appreciation of wabi-sabi can be seen as an element of Zen Buddhism, and in some sense, a form of training, “changing our perception of the world to the extent that a chip or a crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value.”

Inherent in wabi-sabi’s approach is an appreciation of diversity and the possibilities in limitation — not holding us back, but freeing us to see what is already there. As Wendell Berry notes: “If the idea of appropriate limitation seems unacceptable to us, that may be because… we confuse limits with confinement.”

It is self-evident that, as an action in a closed system, excess cannot be sustained indefinitely — and yet, how rarely we hear it confronted. Rarer yet is the notion that not only is it incompatible with our earth, but that in our slavish obsession we might have lost some of the nuance, some of the beauty, of all those things unnamed and unknowable — the magic in darkness, shadows and all their mystery.

In the logic of less there is a moment for reflection, connection and true appreciation, fragile and fleeting as it might be. It isn’t this transience that need define beauty, but in its acknowledgement, an opportunity to see it in more places, to remember the wonder we are capable of.

No territory is hopeless, least of all that we call our own. In the rage of a capitalist world, there remains a seed of hope; the excitement of wilderness, chaos and imperfection; rain on the roof, the aging of things — the transient, fallible beauty of our world rediscovered and cherished for its impermanence.

Might this be the basis, for a new enchantment?

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Timothy Hillier 1. Bike Tree Boulia Highway, Far North Queensland — March 2013 2. Gununa Playground, Far North Queensland — June 2013 3. Boat Dreams from Normanton, Far North Queensland — November 2013 4. Mount Isa Real Aussie, Far North Queensland (FNQ) — March 2013 5. Tjuntjuntjara Football Rainbow, Western Australia — June 2014 †

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Melbourne based photographer and film-maker, Hillier is constantly capturing the events and lives around him.

Working primarily in documentary films and vernacular photographs, he has exhibited in New York, Vancouver and around Australia, contributing to many magazines worldwide. Recently Hillier has been working on commercial projects with Greens Candidate Stephanie Hodgins-May and comedian Arj Barker, as well as video clips for Super Wild Horses, Dick Diver and for the Indigenous Hip Hop Project.

www.timothyhillier.com †from the series Book Your Own Fucken Life

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Summertime — Jemma Richardson, illustration by Kelly Rule

Summer starts with the purchase of a new pair of sunnies that fit whatever the trend of the year is, but as you hunt around local shops you can’t help but think back to the amazing pair you had last summer and fantasize about how great it would be if only you still had them.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

You and the girls say you’re heading over to the beach which the parents think is very wholesome and sweet, oblivious to its actual secret meaning of flirtatious young girls meeting up with older boys who can afford alcohol which you drink together in playground tunnels and in the backseats of cars. Once safely out of sight you and your friends shed the conservative cardigans you were made to wear and reveal your midriff underneath while also smelling faintly of the vinegar mum smothered on your sunburnt skin the night before. You quickly realise the elaborate ruse is pointless because those useless idiot boys are still lazing around in bed. Sick of waiting for them you decide to tan and swim some more before heading back home for lunch, hoping mum’s picked up a few punnets of strawberries from the vendors on the side of the road. When you wriggle out of the water the sunblock turns milky with water droplets on your skin, and sand coats your wet feet so you can’t put your shoes back on. This means you burn your feet on the scalding concrete as you snake your way back into suburbia seeking solace in the few specks of shade and shadow that hang beneath the pohutukawa trees lining the road. Three storey mansions become two storey houses that become one level state houses, where your mum yells at you for not wearing enough sunscreen when she catches the glow of your hot pink shoulders. “You’ll get skin cancer!” she lectures, forcefully smothering even more vinegar into your freckly flesh.

Soon after you’ve feasted on fruit and made you lips wet with watermelon juice you’re on your way to the house of the one kid you know with the chilled out parents who smoke in front

of you and don’t mind you drinking in front of them. There you’re finally approached by a pack of lanky silhouettes who shuffle over and mumble their greetings — the guys — who already want to get out of here and take you with them. You push your sunnies back into your stringy damp hair that tangles into the bikini straps at the back of your neck as you drive around town in fast cars with faster boys. Casually, like it’s an afterthought, you ask if he’s gonna be there and his mates shrug oh yeah nah maybe because they’re too busy turning up the radio when that one chosen anthem for the summer comes on and you and the girls sing along even more loudly and obnoxiously, serenading the shirtless brown boys washing car windows at the intersection traffic.

And that’s how the rest of the day is spent — hopping house to house, drink to drink so that by the time it hits evening you’re swigging six dollar wine from the bottle on the curb outside someone’s older brother’s mate’s house while watching unknown boys from unfamiliar high schools dick around on their longboards in the middle of the street. Your cheeks turn hot when you see that he’s turned up and he smiles and offers you a beer that you take even though you don’t like beer because, well, he offered you a beer and so you sit around the bonfire of apparently mutual friends flirting and getting bitten by mozzies but you don’t even notice because the buzzing of the mosquitoes gets lost in the buzzing of the crowd and the buzzing of beer in your brain. You volunteer to go with him to get hot chips at the dairy down the road, which you then take to eat on the cool evening sand with your mates and you grimace at the unsuspecting crunch of sand that has blown into your food.

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When the sky is black you switch your jandals for heels, which you carry while walking barefoot to the gig in the park nearby. No one brought blankets to sit on (damn it, every year!) and so you squat awkwardly on a few inches of jacket. You alternate between sitting, picking at the grass and dancing with your friends when the good songs come on. After a few hours everyone is enjoying the fireworks, but all you can think about is the damp bikini under your clothes and you try not to shiver, rubbing your bare arms and teetering on heels sinking into the grass as you try to peer at the stage over the men towering in front. He takes off his jacket and puts it around you. You offer him a reserved smile to say thanks, then when he looks away you smile harder and properly. After the show a bunch of you catch a taxi back to the suburbs only you lie about the address and do a mad dash the second it pulls over because none of you can afford the $60 cab fare after spending all your money on drinks and the new pair of sunnies. The driver’s yells and swearing dissolves in the air as you sprint away down the beach access and into a back street. Out of breath and hiding in silence up a stranger’s driveway you look at each other, faces burning orange under the glow of the street lamp.

Realising the night’s nearly over you decide to head to the beach again, only this time the sand isn’t warm and inviting but ice cold and uncomfortably firm. Still wearing his jacket you pull the collar up to your nose to keep warm and you get high breathing in his scent.

When the others are distracted he grabs you by the hand and leads you into the sand dunes where you kiss each other’s sunblock scented skin and feel the grass itching the back of your legs. He tastes like seawater and cigarettes and you drunkenly, idealistically, temporarily convince yourself that maybe, just maybe, this thing will last forever. His hair is stiff with gel and grease.

It’s starting! Someone calls with a stale, ethanol soaked voice. You clamber higher and higher up the sand dunes to watch the glow of the New Year fill the sky. Fresh rays of light cut through the cold and you realise crap I left my sunnies back at the other place, knowing that when everyone says don’t worry, you can go and pick them up tomorrow that you never will. Because tomorrow will inevitably turn into next week and then next month and then it’s already a new summer! So as the embers fade out and sun burns into focus you promise yourself that next year you won’t lose your sunnies, and as everyone’s voices become hoarse and sleepy, you fold your arms and feel the sunburn warm as ever, despite the chilly breeze and you think to yourself yes, yes, yes, this is all it ever is.

Jemma Richardson is a writer based in Wellington. She has previously completed writing workshops through the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University and now continues with it in her spare time. Her love for writing is equalled only by her love for cats and Nina Simone.

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Tom Simpson

Above: Guitar Man, digital painting, 2011.

Next page: Cloud Gazers, digital painting, 2010.

Tom Simpson is an artist and illustrator based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has created images for a wide range of projects, including children’s books, gallery shows, advertising campaigns and visualization for film and television.

Tom studied at Massey University and graduated in 2005 with a Bachelor of Design. He has also attended art workshops and seminars locally and abroad, and has taught classes in drawing and digital illustration. www.artoftomsimpson.com

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

Friends of Flowers — Jacinda Rogers talks to Julian McCarthy

Beekeeping is seeing a definite resurgence in popularity in this ‘land of milk and honey.’ I talked to local beekeeper Julian McCarthy (JM) about why beekeeping is taking off and his experiences being the caretaker of a hive-load of buzzing, quirky, unpredictable, hard-working, little honey bees.

The beauty of the flower — the colours, the soft enveloping petals and stamen — exists mostly to attract pollinating insects, predominantly the honey bee. This humble friend of the flowers is also the gardener’s friend and is responsible for pollinating over one third of all the food crops harvested and readily consumed in gigantic proportions.

For those who are not aware, millions of bees have simply fallen off the radar, abandoned their hives and died on an epidemic scale particularly in America and all over the world (approx. 80,000 hives of bees in America alone). Key contributors to the diminishing of the global bee population include poor diet, loss of habitat and pesticides. Pesticides are the suspected leading cause of this epidemic — large numbers of bees are now regularly exposed to various forms of pesticides when pollinating mono-cultured food crops (which they’re now being imported into America to do).

If we don’t want to live in a world where the hum of bees and their generous pollination of nature’s bountiful produce are severely reduced, what can we do? As I have discovered you can keep a hive of bees just about anywhere and it is surprisingly easy! Urban beekeeping is booming all over the world and the movements already starting to catch on here.

There are even beehives on top of the Auckland Town Hall!

The variety of flowering plants to be found in the city/surrounding suburbs is ample, the risk of the bees consuming harmful sprays or freezing over winter is less likely, due to a warmer microclimate and the recent organic gardening renaissance. It’s exactly this ‘foodie craze’ driving us all to raw-food, organic bakeries and markets fuelling this discussion on honey bees.

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

JR: How did you first get into beekeeping?

JM: I’d always thought it was an interesting thing to do, then somebody (a guy from Germany) asked if he could temporarily leave a beehive in the backyard where I was living… then he decided he was going to go back to Germany and he said “well you like bees don’t you?” and I said, “yeah”, and he said “oh cool you’ve got the bees!” (laughs) . . . it was near the end of the year around Guy Fawkes time. About three weeks later they swarmed!

JR: Is there a certain age group that tend to be more into the bee thing?

JM: It used to be sort of old crusty guys that always had them but now if you go to The Bee Club, there are a lot of families there. A lot of that is about the increased interest in the survival of the bees and what the flow on effect will have. The family gets a beehive and they’re very good there (at The Bee Club) at teaching people about stuff. I’m sure it’s what that’s all about, it’s the loss of bees and they’re trying to do something about that.

JR: Do you think they’re relatively easy to look after?

Compared to say, owning a cat, or a dog?

JM: They are! They’re probably a lot easier than that. The only thing is things like swarming and some of that other stuff that you’ve got to be aware of and know at what time of year that happens. Swarming basically happens from overcrowding in the early Spring. Although it might not seem very warm to us, new flowers are coming out everywhere and the bees start bringing in all this honey and they start freaking out and they go “hey we’re overcrowded, we’ve got to get out of here!”

JR: Is it hard to keep a hive in the city?

JM: It’s not hard to have a hive. You have to register it and that gets it inspected every year for major bee diseases etc.

These inspections are normally performed by somebody from The (Auckland) Bee Club. You have to have a certificate and you have to have an inspection certificate as well, to be able to do that — they also get paid a fee out of your annual beekeepers fee . . .

JR: Have you noticed any changes in the honey? Have you noticed that some years it’ll be darker and some years a bit lighter?

JM: Oh yeah, also as you take it off earlier in the season, there’s obviously things flowering that produce a different taste and different colour. I mean lots of honey is marketed as this type of honey, or that type of honey. Obviously if the hives are put in the bush and they sell it as something like rata honey, it’d probably be partly rata flowers, but it’d also be all kinds of other stuff. It’s the same with even clover honey, you know? They’d wander off the edges of paddocks and go into other things that they like . . . I have my honey and I give some to people and they say, “What’s in it?” (Laughs) and I say, “Who knows!” There could be a thousand different pollens in it!

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tHE VERNACULARIST — The Environmental Issue

JR: I feel like with this article, I’m kind of hoping people will think about whether New Zealand lives up to that clean, green image and in order to promote that image we have to actually get up on an international level — not just in terms of the amount of beehives — but in an environmental way of thinking . . . environmental design.

JM: It’s so rare here, isn’t it? It doesn’t get a lot of respect in our society does it? It has little value now, for most of the population and the media as well. It’s always hard to measure how far those ideas are getting, but as you say, something like bees is a pretty pivotal one in that way, because it really makes people think . . . they become aware of a whole lot more and start to think “oh where are these bees going, what if they go over there where they sprayed the school grounds” and those ideas start to link up, you know?

But in terms of current government and a whole lot of other institutions, sometimes things take a backwards step, like spraying weeds in Auckland like they did for a while.

JR: It seems that for people who were born after the 1950s in New Zealand — after that ‘simple’ life — it has been ‘progress or no progress’. We’ve just ignored everything up until this point, until our backs were against the wall.

Even now our backs are up against the wall we’re so used to having that ignorant mindset, that it’s hard for a lot of people to face the music on a lot of issues. You know?

JM: If you could become aware of something like bees and the interconnections they have, then a lot of that other stuff seems much more understandable. The more people start to make those connections (the cows crapping into the stream and producing methane gas/eutrophication — all this sort of stuff), how it’s all connected and the more people that see, you know, the more it just connects up (laughs). The actions of an “oh that’s just what you do”, mentality — it might have been said before, but there are consequences for everything.

JR: I think the main thing is getting young people interested in bees which I don’t think is as hard as it sounds considering the trend these days for organics and things like that. I think that’s hopefully kind of ‘in’ with all of it. The more people that can have their own gardens and have their own beehives, the better and that’ll change their mentality and hopefully everything else will follow from there. But, yeah, it’s a process.

JM: It’s interesting that one, it just made me think about things like . . . you know, organic juices and stuff like that . . . where some people will buy that and that’s part of their whole thinking, and other people will just buy it because they think well, that’s the best or that’s the purest, or as a status symbol. But the rest of their consciousness hasn’t gone to that; they’ll still be out the back spraying (pesticides) and doing all that stuff themselves.

You can find your local beekeeping club and other beekeeping information by visiting the National Beekeepers Association website: www.nba.org.nz

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Sew Love the Earth — Text Laura Giddey, images Alexander Hoyles

Sarah Lancaster doesn’t wear black, loves chocolate treats and is an eco-warrior in the world of sustainable fashion.

Sarah is the creative savant behind Sew Love Tea Do, a mobile sewing business that has spent a year popping up everywhere; in schools, community centres, festivals, markets, and in private homes. These mobile classes have encouraged people of all skill levels in the art of hand or machine sewing.

Now Sew Love has taken root for a three month stint in St Kevin’s Arcade on Auckland’s Karangahape Road, encouraging upskilling and upcycling. Such skills include how to make a tote bag so you can say no to plastic bags, a draft excluder to help insulate your home, or essentials like how to sew on a button, and hem your own trousers. Alongside the workshop there are oodles of recycled fabrics, a pick-n-mix refashioning bar, and upcycled handmade goodies for sale.

Laura Giddey is an Auckland based wedding celebrant, writer for PIKDAT, and community facilitator with Splice. She enjoys reading, baking brownies, The Film Festival, and performing a good parallel park. Find more of Sarah’s work at www.lauragiddey.co.nz www.pikdat.com www.facebook.com/Splice2014

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Sarah says, “There’s so much pressure out there guilting people into having to be green, which is all great, but I prefer to don my fabric flower crown, get down and creative and have some fun, promoting an eco-ethos positively.

Everyone is always welcome to come join the party!”.

Hailing from the countryside in the Coromandel, Sarah comes to this venture loaded with experience of op shopping, and upcycling long before it was vintage and ‘on-trend’. After tackling team recycling challenges in the workplace, and studying business through Te Wananga at night, in the weekends she dove head first into the Auckland craft market scene, and soon after she quit the 9-5 to pursue living the dream. She returned to tech to get her industry standard skills in garment construction and pattern making, then launched the Sew Love Tea Do website and mobile service out the back of her faithful ‘Rolly’ (Toyota Corolla hatch ’93). It’s been her dream for a long time to set up a space more permanently because “I just want to leave the bunting hanging up and the fabrics out in all their glory.” She’s hoping this longer pop-up will be a step on the way to a permanent sewing lounge in Auckland City.

Along with her is a team of family, friends, and volunteers, Sarah has been part of the ARTventure programme, a year long series of workshops and mentorship with eleven other creative entrepreneurs who are all helping build the creative community of our city and beyond. Sarah sums up her experience as “the most incredibly empowering and motivating year and it’s been life changing on so many levels.” Now Sarah and her clan of sweet sewing machines, Sister Elna, Suzie Singer, Brother Boris, Tabitha Toyota, Jane Janome, and Bessie Brother, are being joined by Rosie, an intern sponsored by the Artists Alliance programme. Soon the community is extending further to include guest tutors from the craft community in the space too.

The Sew Love values are threefold: 1) Share sugar with your neighbour. It seems more and more people are interested in getting to know their neighbours.

And not just knowing who shares the footpaths with us, but encouraging them by buying and supporting local enterprises and ideas.

2) Be nice to Mother Earth. It might be currently cool to be green, but it’s also sustainable for our world and our wallets. Our purchasing choices affect more than just us, so let’s focus on a ‘mend and make do’ attitude rather than continually consuming.

3) Be grateful for what you have. Our possessions have a life beyond what our society gives them. We can turn what appears to be trash into unique treasures and in turn, support a ‘no waste’ philosophy.

Sarah and Sew Love clearly exhibits these values in the mobile sewing classes and in the shop. Connections have been made between her local creative business and her neighbours in the arcade. The shop boasts an almost all inclusive selection of material, accessories, even shelving that is reused and recycled, and creations that have been made out of wedding dresses, skirt offcuts, promotional beanies, pillow cases, test fabrics, and more.

Sarah sees the potential in every scrap, in every idea, and in every person. She’s picked up an after school sewing class, helped a burlesque dancer create a martini glass outfit, restored a businessman’s vintage leather jacket, and even sewed up someone’s bike pants. Her mind considers all the options, then goes beyond to something unthought of. She’s also patient, fun, quirky and strong-willed and is a great host to a sewing lounge.

If you miss the Sew Love Tea Do residency in Saint Kevin’s Arcade you can find Sarah’s current location by visiting www.facebook.com/sewloveteado

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Street Art and the Politics of Public Space — Arielle Walker Street artists and collectives consistently use public spaces and landmarks to undermine and challenge political ‘norms’, ideals and legislations. This may seem in contrast to a typical view of Art, capital A ‘ ’, which is generally obscure and inaccessible, relatable only to those people inside the ‘art world’, hidden away in clean white gallery spaces.

When art is taken outside the physical and social confines of gallery space, it no longer exists in a bubble where rhetoric is necessary for the work to have meaning. For art to be successful in a public space, each work must stand alone, influenced by the social and cultural environment around it but open to the scrutiny of a wide variety of people and understandings. This is why street art is the most essential form of political art. This article explores the relationship between public space and politically driven art, focusing on urban environments in which an accidental encounter can physically take place; where art may be experienced “by people who did not expressly set out to encounter art” (Waclawek 2011: 66).

The word politics is derived from the 64

Greek Politikos, meaning of, for, or relating to citizens. Over time, politics has become viewed as being the domain of the government, something that the everyday person has little control over or part of. For those who feel that the current form of democracy does not allow their voice to be heard, art is a perfect entry into political thinking and action. Art that makes a political statement, even if it is intended as the artist’s personal statement, it becomes directly about the public. Robert Klanten, creator of art and design publishing house Gestalten, is of the opinion that “anything expressed in public, any art in a public form, that is, in a public space, must be deemed political” (Klanten et al 2011:5).

It is a common perception that street art consists only of the hastily scribbled work of ‘juvenile delinquents’, tagging their names over people’s fences and walls – something to be disapproved of, ‘dealt with’ and removed. Although tagging and vandalism is a part of street art culture, to focus only on the negative side of any artform or expression is to lose sight of the bigger picture. Graffiti is often used for bold statements about

women’s rights, immigration policies, consumer culture —topics that remain controversial, opened for dialogue through the disruption of public space. Even in a world where opinions are shared constantly through social media, there is something visceral about coming across these statements in the physical environment. The artist is present in the work, a physical trace left behind. One artist purposefully challenging this negative view is American stenciller Mobstr, who uses the graffiti removal system as a means to perpetuate his short urban ‘stories’.

He stencils these one line at a time, the next line appearing on the paint used by the removal teams to eradicate the previous line of writing. His actions highlight the lack of awareness shown by authority regarding the power of city walls.

Freedom of expression should be a fundamental human right, and this extends to our ability to express through our environment. Consider the fact that street art is illegal, and yet street advertising is not: this comes down to ownership, sanctioning, and money. Advertisers pay to present their

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into question whether the public environment does, in fact belong to the public. In his ongoing project OBEY Giant, American artist Shepard Fairey uses stickers to create points of intervention that contest the influence of billboard advertising.

The tagline ‘Obey’ is based on the relentless slogans and corporate agendas that dominate public space, though there is no specific agenda to the word, no context in which it is supposed to be read. These works not only encourage people to interact physically with their environment, but also to interact critically with ideas that may not be otherwise considered. “It’s not like when people walk into a gallery and say, ‘I know this piece is supposed to be good because it’s in a gallery, so I’ll just go along with the idea that it’s brilliant and wonderful.’

On the street, people aren’t bashful. They will say if they like something or if they think it sucks.” (Fairey, 2010).

Anyone can place these stickers anywhere, allowing the interaction of the community to extend beyond a simple reading of the work. Ironically, there are people who choose to tear down the stickers — seeing them as an ‘eye sore’ or ‘petty vandalism’ — and yet ignore the commercial images that fill public space. It is uncommon to see anyone tear down an advertisement because they find it disruptive or ugly.

The recent over-painting of the art in the Wellesley Street West carpark, Auckland, demonstrates this double standard applied to street art. What was once a vibrant area covered with murals by top New Zealand artists such as Askew One is now beige and depressing.

Irony again: Askew One has since created similar works in Silo Park, the only difference being that the Silo works were commissioned and therefore considered acceptable.

A more recent phenomena than traditional spray-paint, stencil and sticker graffiti is that of yarn bombing — covering objects with brightly coloured knitted crocheted pieces. These works interject warmth and softness into cold urban environments. An element of humour and oddity often accompanies these works — think of a statue with cheerful knitted legwarmers, or a bench with rainbow granny-squares.

Street art consistently provokes thought around the reclamation of public space through the interruption of familiar environments. This allows the engagement of every citizen, contesting the line between politics and art: these works are not ‘political-art’ — half art, half politics — but rather a fluid interplay between the two. In Art and Agenda, Bruno Latour states: “Instead of searching for more democracy only in the realm of professional politics, we draw attention to the new atmospheric conditions of democracy, to a complex set of technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and media that allow things to become public.” (Latour, 2005). Art that is readily accessible to the public is in a unique position to explore these new conditions of democracy. Street art is, in essence, politics by the people, for the people.

Arielle is an artist, writer and music-geek in her final year of a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree. She lives in Auckland with too many books and not enough shelves.

References: • Shepard Fairey. 2010. Interview by Iggy Pop. Interview Magazine. Accessed September 18, 2013 from http://www. interviewmagazine.com/art/shepard-fairey • Robert Klanten, ed., Gregor Jansen, ed., Matthias Hubner, ed., Alain Bieber, ed., Pedro Alonzo, ed. 2011. Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism. Prestel Pub • Bruno Latour. 2005 Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, exhibition introduction. 19th March – 7th April, Centre for Art and Media Technology (ZKM), Karlsruhe: Germany.

• Anna Waclawek. 2011. Graffiti and Street Art. London:Thames & Hudson Ltd, All images taken by Arielle. Previous page, unknown artist, Auckland CBD, 2012. This page Yarnbomb installation and detail (created/installed by Arielle with a group of friends), Symond St, July, 2014.

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Skip James Sri Lanka

Skip James is the Art Director and co-founder of Damaged Goods Zine. For more work along these lines check out @skjpjames on Instagram.

Above and previous page: Local market place. The smells can be overwhelming to ones who are not properly adjusted.

Above: Fishing shacks litter the shoreline as a local fisherman leaves work for the day Below: Daily activites become a community affair

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Above: At sunset the whole village comes out to bath Below: The best business is normally always at the shoreline. Fresh fish and delivery.

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Above: Local Tamil woman and daughter staring out to sea

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End of Species (excerpt) — By Richard Pettifer

1. HELL ON EARTH The Quetta to Taftan bus, in Balochistan, Pakistan, is unequivocally brown. It looks brown, it feels brown — it even kind of smells brown. I keep holding my breath periodically so I don’t breathe in the little particles swimming around me.

I came this far. I don’t wanna die.

I slink back in my seat, and I peer out of the tiny gap in the curtain I’ve allowed myself into the outside world so I don’t go insane. I’m watching the empty desert roll by, and each dune is a nightmare of kidnappers, extremists and terrorists which look as if at any minute they may explode into violence. You can feel the military in the air.

I look over at my security escort, a young Pakistani. He’s staring straight ahead and his eyes are wide. He looks really... alert. Well, that’s lovely. I guess.

I remind myself again why I’m here. Even by conservative estimates, bus travel emits 5 times less carbon than air travel.

But then I think about the two women who were captured by the Taliban two weeks ago from this very route. Aid workers from Prague, held up by gunmen posing as a routine military checkpoint and dragged off into the Afghanistan desert.

They were travelling to India overland.

I look around at the other people on the bus. They’re very quiet. They’re nervous. I think of the bomb blast a year ago that killed a busload of Sunni Muslims traveling to Iran. Are these Shiites? Or Sunni? I catch the eye of a child who glares at me suspiciously, as if to say “Westerner – you’ll kill us all”.

Taftan is on the Iran Border. They call Taftan ‘Hell on Earth’.

That’s accurate. You’ll never find a more desolate place. Desert, a checkpoint, and a couple of ramshackle official buildings that are so caked with sand they look like desert igloos. It’s everything you imagined the apocalypse to be.

We stop at the border, and the dark mass of people rumbles into life, and they swarm off the bus like black bees escaping a hive that’s been hit by a cricket bat.

I shove my stuff into a bag, and get up to leave. I notice the kid looking back at me. This time, he smiles. “Asalmu alykum” I mouth to him with a wave. This is how you greet people in Pakistan. It means ‘peace’. I hope it’s accurate.

I reach the door, and take one last look back at the brown interior of the bus. Suddenly it looks really inviting, and I think of running back and hiding under my friendly, old seat. But my escort taps his AK-47 impatiently at me from the bottom of the stairs. And I know, there’s no going back.

I step off the bus, and into Hell.

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5. DISCOVERING HUMANITY The word primitive when it’s used in relation to humans, can mean a lot of things. Most of them are bad. When you call someone a primitive, it means they know less than you.

Of course, the term is always used by someone who knows at least enough to use the term. So it’s not as though the ‘primitive’ ever has a right of response. It’s not like they can engage in debate about it.

“You, sir, exhibit all of the signs of primitivism – guttural language, nudity, cannibalism, lack of cricket and/or religion.”

“Unga-bunga. Unga-bunga unga-bunga. Unga-bunga.”

“Hmm. Hadn’t thought about it like that. I shall pass that onto Her Majesty. Perhaps you’re right — perhaps you aren’t just a link in the chain between men and apes.”

“Unga-bunga (thank you).”

So when Darwin describes the inhabitants of Tierra Del Fuego, southernmost point of South America, as ‘primitive’, he’s pretty confident they’re never going to be educated enough to read about it.

The exception to this is a Jemmy Button, one of three children aboard the HMS Beagle being returned to Tierra del Fuego. Four years ago, when Captain Fitzroy last visited, he found some kids trying to steal stuff from his ship. Being a benevolent, enlightened soul, he decided that, rather than punish them, he would take them to England for reeducation.

And Jemmy Button is called this because he was purchased at the expense of a button.

After the four year Erasmus program in the Mother Country, now he speaks English. And he’s obsessed with shining his shoes. And he spends a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror.

And now he’s being taken back home. For re-re-education.

And I guess if you drop someone with these skills back home after four years, someone who has forgotten their local language and/or how to survive in Tierra del Fuego, the outcome will be bad. Adapting can be hard. And some skills don’t transfer. Shoe-shining is not useful in a place where your daily weather report is “2 degrees and awful”.

And sure enough, when they return to Tierra del Fuego three weeks later, most of Jemmy’s stuff has been stolen, including most of the house with the white picket fence that the Beagle crew built for him.

So they load him up with supplies again and say goodbye, this time for good.

As they’re drawing away, and Darwin sees a curl of smoke from a signal fire lit by Jemmy to say goodbye, He decides Jemmy was better off for having been brought to England.

He hopes Captain Fitzroy’s generosity was appreciated. The future looks bright. But there’s a little seed of doubt — as if deep down, he knows that they’ve abandoned Jemmy. And maybe, to them, he really is worth a button.

Their next major stop is the Galapagos Islands — a story of Man’s conquest, categorisation and domination of nature.

Because if you’re Charles Darwin and you’re kind of into nature, then putting you on an island with a whole bunch of species that exist nowhere else in the world is kind of like giving a flamethrower to a Neanderthal.

The Galapagos Islands are a constellation almost mathematical in structure. They are a cluster of small islands, each within sight of the other, organised like a series of test tubes in a rack, like someone’s laid them out on a dinner table. And it’s here that Darwin makes a radical claim – that the Beagle stands on land that may hold the key to “the first appearance of new beings on this earth”.

There’s a big question in this innocent statement. Because up until this point, the dominant idea in the modern world was that whichever deity had reasonable amount of control over the different forms of life on earth. So to many it’s not a ‘mystery’ at all. It’s not even a question.

And it takes a very specialised naivety to ask that question.

In fact, it takes a young, knowledgeable idiot.

And it’s here, on these islands, that Darwin discovers the finches. And Darwin’s finches are not particularly special finches. They are just a little bit different to normal, mainland finches. It’s just that there’s 13 different species of them, all within a 100km radius.

This is pretty weird to Darwin. But not really at the time, because let’s face it, he’s seeing a lot of weird shit. It’s not until he gets back to London and starts to shop these things around that he’s like “Wait a second. That’s a lot of species of basically the same fucken bird in a really small area.”

And again, this won’t seem significant. It happens all the time. It’s just that it’s not so obvious.

And you can see this little seed just sitting there, waiting for the right time to grow. But right now, he doesn’t have a clue about how important they’ll be. He just has his assistant shoot a couple of them, and puts them in his specimencarrier for later.

And it isn’t until much, much later that these finches become the key piece of evidence in proving the idea of variation in natural selection, and the idea that, over time, a species adapts to its environment through a hereditary process.

That may not seem important to you, because you live in the world that came after. But on the Galapagos Islands and Tierra del Fuego, Darwin puts forward two ideas which will be constantly misread forever after. The first, an idea that race is linked with cultivation, and the second, that inequality, or competition, is necessary for the advancement of any species. And when you put these ideas together, you get a thing called Social Darwinism, an idea that would be realized 100 years later in Nazi Germany.

There are some things we agree we shouldn’t talk about.

They’re called ‘taboos’. And the extinction of the human race is one of them, because that outcome involves looking 75

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at a whole bunch of shit that absolutely no-one, not even the bravest, most educated, vodka-infused-gun¬to-thehead climate scientist, has the courage to really know. It involves the truth. And as any climate scientist will tell you, humans, as a species, hate the truth. They have this survival mechanism built in to their minds that says “don’t tell me the truth. tell me a story”. They hate the term ‘1st world’ because it creates a whole other sub-class of humans. They hate the idea that their own progress might be leading to their extinction. But most of all, they hate the guilt. It’s a non-productive emotion. It doesn’t help you survive. It doesn’t help you build your networks, it doesn’t help collect likes, and it doesn’t support your family.

And Darwin’s looking down at the different birds lying shot in his specimen carrier. And he’s thinking about Jemmy.

He feels the world spinning around him for a moment. For a moment, he sees the connection. For a moment, he sees through the smoke, and knows the truth. And suddenly, he feels this burden that will never be lifted.

Social Darwinism is an idea that in the struggle for life, a society will become more prosperous and competitive through its commonalities in ideas, cultures, and ethnicity.

As a model of the social evolution of humanity, it is terrifyingly accurate. But thank god, you can only really apply it to a world that has forgotten the things which make us human. A world that has forgotten how to cross those borders. A world where the individual no longer cares about people outside of their reality.

And that should never happen.

Should it.

End of Species was performed in various locations on tour in the United Kingdom by Richard Pettifer. A monologue detailing the mishaps of a journey without flying between Australia and Germany. In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on a journey to discover a new world of flora and fauna.

182 years later, faced with the imminent threat of climate change, monologuist, critic and director Richard Pettifer attempted the same journey. He was bashed, slept in an Iranian train station, and no-one seemed to know anything about global warming.

Richard is an Australian theatre artist, now based in Berlin.

You can find more of his work at www.richardpettifer.blogspot.de/

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Brendan Kitto, Looking Down, mixed format diptych (digital / 35mm film), 2014. www.route52.co.nz 77

Why We All Need to Learn to Get Along — Stuart Houghton

Above: Places that bring us together and full us with pride; Karanga Plaza, Auckland Anniversary Day 2013.

Left: Things that bring us together in the new Auckland; Queens Wharf Easter Fair, 2013.

Life in the New Auckland I am interested in the politics of urban geography in Auckland; how the way we have shaped the city then shapes how we feel about each other and the city in which we all live. How do we view community; or relate to any sense of a greater Auckland, or not. Is there any sense of belonging to an Auckland that is greater than the sum of its parts?

What might this mean for the future?

A city divided?

Aucklanders have had, and the majority still have, quite atomised and isolated lives from one another. Most of us live in suburbs perfectly graded by house price and inadvertently (perhaps) also by age, race, and income into segregated communities.

Fuelled by almost daily stories in the NZ Herald — that self-appointed mouthpiece for the city — our obsession with house prices and real estate in general tends to emphasise the things that separate us rather than the things that bring us together.

It is true that many Aucklanders can go about their auto-dependent lives with minimal contact with people different to themselves. Supermarket check outs and service station forecourts provide perhaps the most common daily encounters with anyone much different from oneself, before continuing in the bubble of personal space one’s own car provides.

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Above: We are all different and the same; Rugby World Cup 2011 brought a rare but palpable sense of this to the streets of Auckland.

We are all different and the same

But behind the net curtains and the steering wheels of this city there is massive diversity amongst us. It’s just that, from the way we live, you wouldn’t always know it.

This point was brought home during the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Any Aucklander who was down on the waterfront for the opening night; or interrupted travelling to or from the airport by Tongan fans stopping motorway traffic out of spontaneous excitement in welcoming their team to their city; or countless other moments that occurred during the days and nights that followed; we experienced the sensation of an Auckland different to the one we knew.

For me, the disruptions to normal Auckland life we experienced during the six weeks that followed gave a palpable sense of what it feels like to live in a city where all 1.5 million residents actually feel like they belong to something bigger than their own lives. Something bigger than the street they live on, the roads they drive down, the dispersed and disparate workplaces, schools, shops, and other individual places that make up much of the daily backdrop as they go about their lives.

For one short moment, Aucklanders of all stripes came together as one. It was no kumbaya moment; but it was vivid and striking and energising and exciting. We had seen nothing like it. For a short moment, we got a sense of what it would be like to live in a real city.

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So what does all this say about us?

The consequences of this kind of ‘them and us’ suburban life rears its ugly head whenever there is public debate either at a local level or across the city as a whole.

Debates around the unitary plan are cases in point: “If we are a more affluent suburb, that is just the way it is. You have to work a bit harder to live here… We want our environment to be nice. I want it to be better than some other parts of Auckland” (said a Belmont resident from the Save Our Cities group as reported in a Metro magazine story on the unitary plan in June 2013 www.metromag.co.nz/current-affairs/ brouhaha-in-belmont-unitary-plan/).

Currently, there is much debate about what should be Auckland’s spending priorities given the sizeable gap in the Auckland Council budget. This is an important discussion to have. But for me, the arguments advanced by some (see John McCracken: Black budget proves council has lost touch with reality www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_ id=1&objectid=11290695), demonstrate why we all need to learn to get along. Why we need to understand that we are better off together. This is fundamental to the basic premise of city life.

This shows up quite starkly in debates around transport in Auckland. As transit guru Jarrett Walker from Human Transit says, “if you do not want to interact with anyone who is not like you, then transit is not going to work for you”.

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Above: We need to do things that strengthen Aucklanders’ sense of togetherness; Auckland Lantern Festival 2012.

And why should we care?

Where might all this lead? We all know about the housing and transport challenges facing Auckland.

One of the dangers in the ‘new Auckland’ is a further hardening of the differences between life in the central city and suburbs and that on the periphery. This has major implications for equity. Auckland, like the Australian state capitals, already has a socio-economic distribution where the wealthy live centrally in the most connected and accessible places, and the poor are increasingly pushed to the margins.

To an extent, this is the way of large cities. But the difference between Auckland and more mature cities is that we lack the great levellers of public space and public transport that provide a forum for social exchange and tolerance.

Have we considered that if we don’t get these things right there could be big social consequences too? Might this lead to the kind of deep social exclusion and potential for unrest seen in the immigrés banlieues of Paris or closer to home, like the Cronulla riots in Sydney? To a reverse ghettoisation of the city perhaps? Are we about to experience ‘the great inversion’ happening in North American cities right now, the opposite forces to those that shaped the American dream in the twentieth century? And what might be the unforeseen consequences of such an upheaval?

We should also care because we are going through intergenerational change of the kind not seen since the milk bar moral crises of the 1950s and flowering of youth culture that

followed in the 1960s and ‘70s. The current dynamics are affecting both young people — wishing to stay in this city rather than being out-priced out of it — and for aging baby boomers — wishing to stay and age in place.

So we should care.

what should we do about it?

To me, all of this reinforces the need to do things that strengthen Aucklanders’ sense of togetherness.

The importance of public space and public transport. The value of local markets (look at those night markets!), of migrant programmes, the grass roots stuff. But also the importance of public events and celebrations big and small.

To start new festival traditions like Matariki and build on the great ones that have already established – Pasifika, Diwali, the lantern festival, even the Christmas parade and Christmas in the Park. To bring art and culture to the fore, to value things that tell stories about us and opportunities to tell our own stories.

For things that bring us together not apart.

We should think about these things in thinking about the new Auckland.

Stuart Houghton is a practicing urban designer living and working in Auckland. He is a keen observer and active participant in the changes taking place in Auckland urban life.

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— Kelly Rule

Never Not Working is an acrylic painting on paper expressing the economic/cultural issues of money and the constant need to work to survive. The image shows a lady who works as a stripper even when she is on holiday (represented by the palm tree) because money is hard to come by these days.

Image: Never Not Working, Kelly Rule, 210 x 294 mm, acrylic on paper, 2014.

Kelly Rule is an Auckland based painter/visual artist who creates works with a twisted sense of humour and a direct visual punch. His ideas and inspiration comes from the dark and often unseen life of society.

More of Kelly’s work appears on page 52, accompanying the short story ‘Summertime’ by Jemma Richardson.

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The Vernacularist The Good Grub

There’s a lot more to food in Aotearoa/New Zealand than ‘pork and puha’.

If you are passionate about the ‘Good Grub’, and would like to contribute to The Food Issue of The Vernacularist please email erin.forsyth@depotartspace.co.nz

The Vernacularist

WĀHINE

Empowerment, oppression, sisterhood, employment, stereotypes, divide, suffragettes, lipsticks, sexuality, power, – what does it mean to be wāhine/female today?

If you are interested in contributing to the WĀHINE issue of The Vernacularist please email erin.forsyth@depotartspace.co.nz

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