CHAPTER ONE
Beyond Landscape
Rod Barnett and Hannah Hopewell
HH: Rod, we spoke briefly the other day on landscape and politics, or was it the politics of landscape? Either way, “and” the little conjunction between landscape and politics holds my attention. Perhaps the and here yields less the act of addition, that is, the question of what might be meant by landscape plus politics, and more the potential of a contrapuntal relation, something of a coresponding, a correspondence. How then do landscape and politics speak to one another, or show themselves in relation? Seems with landscape and politics, a leaning into the middle1 is required. It’s late afternoon and I’m in my sitting room, the tide is at a low ebb. I’m watching three kōtuku ngutupapa2 systematically wade their way across the flattened seagrass of the intertidal. They have their heads low, and whilst their lanky legs slowly step forward, their heads sweep side to side allowing their spoon-like bill to feed on the tiny critters exposed by the silty low tide. Nearby, and moving in a comparatively hectic fashion, a pair of tōrea pango3 on little orange legs zigzag through the shallows. If the early summer northerly wasn’t blowing so intensely, kāruhiruhi4 would be fishing in the channel – but not this afternoon. They are likely to be perching tight in the almost lifeless macrocarpa just around the point. Since I have lived here, which is only two and a half years, the kāruhiruhi are onto their second macrocarpa tree perch. The first lost its needles and became brittle, yet before it toppled, taking a good chunk of the crumply cliff with it, the birds decamped to a flourishing neighbouring tree. It now lies with the noke5 and hekaheka6 as they return it to the soil. The kāruhiruhi must have known their resting spot was about to be no longer, and I’m sure they well know the days are numbered on their current home. Perhaps we humans are not the only ones to “shit in our own nests?” Beyond Landscape
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