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emikostudio2018 · 6 years

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Literature review (with out bibliography)

What I read to feed my (art) seed.

I am often asked, what area of art am I studying, and sometimes I want to say I am a painter, or sculptor, because I feel like that's the familiar answer that people expect. But alas, I am neither, and maybe both, along with, drawer, writer and marginal infiltrator. I am (dis)assembler of grammatical structures, (de)colonizer of spaces, and (re)constructive meditator.

Is this what you would classically call ‘artist’?

No, I think it’s what you would classically call ‘con-artist’.

To be that confident-artist though, I have to know my shit…and so I read. This year, I am Modern Māori artist, who loves science-fiction and questioning authority, because like some punk once said, “authority is only a system of control”…maaaaan. But the more I read, the more I learn how much I don’t know, and that ‘authority’ has systematically controlled me from learning about my own culture. So the perks of a contemporary art degree is, I can use this time to study whatever I want. When you think of me, think of terms like ‘Space-Māori’ or ‘Astronesian’, cause here I come baby. I’m taking this spaceship into my own control and using the knowledge of my tupuna to guide me into poetic, futuristic Māori art-jams through time and space.

Matariki, the star of the year, 2017 Rangi Matamua non-fiction

Matariki, the star of the year. It is full of insights and knowledge of Māori astronomy that I had never encountered before. One of the most exciting things about this book, is that it is Māori knowledge, told from a Māori perspective. We are in the age of Māori taking agency of our knowledge and legitimizing it. In the past Eldon Best had written about Māori astronomy and gathering what he could understand of the vast knowledge—which at the time was far superior than the European counterparts (3)— but he couldn’t grasp it all, and also couldn’t understand properly the way Māori saw the stars. For example Best translated “Matariki’ literally, ‘mata’ meaning eyes, and ‘riki’ being a plural of ‘iti’ which means small, so he told the world that Matariki meant small eyes. But Matamua revokes this incorrect translation. The story of the word Matariki does indeed include eyes, but they are in no way small. The ariki Tawhirimatea was so distort with the separation of his parents Ranginui and Papatūānuku that he tore his eyes out and threw them up to the heavens where they landed on Rangi’s chest and stayed there, creating Matariki, Te Mata o te ariki Tawhirimatea, which means the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea.

I have been reading this book, as research to feed into my own art practices and alsojust out of interest and wanting to know more about Te Ao Māori. There is a story inMatamua’s book about Te Waka o Rangi, captained by Taramainuku. Matarikimarks the prow of this waka. Taramainuku lets down his net and pulls up the spirits ofthe dead. They wait there on his waka until the next Matariki season where the wakacan be seen again rising just before the sun. When it is time to celebrate Matariki andthe coming of the new year, it is also the time to let go of the dead as Taramainukureleases all the spirits from his waka and they go into the heavens to become stars.Stories like these totally fall into my astronesian space Māori undertones of my workthis year, Māori been space Māori’s since way back.

The Lathe of Heaven, 1974 Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction

I read this book over the summer just been. While stuck in the hump of the book— which often happens to me—Le Guin just up and died. Her death wasn’t so unexpected to her family, I’m guessing—she had been sick for a while, and she was 88 years old—but the idea hadn’t crossed my mind, or rather the actuality. Probably because in my mind Le Guin was more like a hero, or the high priestess of sci-fi, or arch mage, maybe even close to divinity, but in actuality, she was human. So propelled by mourning and longing, I searched the pages of The Lathe of Heaven, looking for her. If at the time, I was worried at all about losing Le Guin and her genius I was quickly reassured in my faith. While a lot of Le Guin’s books have an anthropological base from which her social-political commentaries spring, The Lathe of Heaven moves more from philosophical questions. If you had the ability to change the world for better, should you? and could one even do such a thing against the formidable force of nature? Le Guin brings into focus human ambition to play God, only to back-hand that destructive notion by illuminating our very own human nature and “all the stuff we carry around in us”(125).

I guess the only relevance this book has to my art practice at the moment is that it is writing, and it is science fiction. I am mostly looking at Māori and Pacifika artists, but am not limited to this, and Le Guin is formative for me. In The Lathe of Heaven Le Guin challenges authority and warns about messing with nature, and reminds us how small we humans are. I think these are good things to think about and are a part of what I keep in my mind when I do anything.

Sleep Standing/Moetū, 2017 Witi Ihimaera with Translation by Hēmi Kelly Fictional, based on true a true story

In this fictional retelling of the battle of Ōrākau, Witi Ihimaera educates his audience on the historical three-day battle that ended the Waikato land Wars in 1964. I’m not a huge fan of Witi Ihimaera writing, but this seemed like a good way to learn about thebattle of Ōrākau without having to read a history book, and also from the perspectiveof Māori. I am Ngāti Maniapoto, and it’s frustrating that I know about the first andsecond world wars and the Oregon crossing but I don’t know about the Waikato landwars, which is where I am from and where I spent the majority of my life. I’m tryingto be this modern Māori artist, but because of colonisation, I don’t actually know ahuge amount of about my culture, and so reading this book helps. It also helps me torecognize writing that I wouldn’t call bad…just, not for me.

Nga Moteatea Volume I, 1928 (1959) Sir pirana Ngata, Pei Te Hurinui Jones non-fiction

I first remember hearing about Nga Moteatea a few years ago when my mum and Aunty were talking about one of our tupuna in the book, my great, great, great, grandmother, Hēmā Spencer. But I hadn’t actually opened the book until a couple weeks ago. The books became relevant to me as research and inspiration for my own studio practice, one of the weeks when my mind and body are exhausted of creativity, so reading is the best thing to do.

I’ve been trying to read as much Māori poetry as I can over the past year, and Nga Moteatea are recordings of the oldest poetry that we have. I think what I find most beautiful is the rawness of the emotions in some of the compositions. Matangi-Hauroa, in lamenting for the brave, talks about being woken in the night by visions of grief and lost companions “Give me a sharpened obsidian to lacerate my skin…..take away my blood, my body’s essence…so that all you may see ’tis indeed myself” (227). There is so much reference to places and nature and gods in these compositions as well, which have more weight or something then when similar subject matter is mentioned in more modern poetry…Well it feels like that reading this book.

Puna Wai Kōrero An Anthology of Māori poetry in English, 2014 Reina Whaitiri, Robert Sullivan non-fiction

There are many politically charged opinions around the use of Te Reo Māori and English, but there is a nice line in the introduction of Puna Wai Korero, that goes something like, English gave Māori a whole new language in which to describe their poetic aspirations. The book is homage to Hone Tuwhare whom Whaitiri and Sullivan acknowledge as “Aotearoa’s poet laureate.” I have read only a handful of Poems in this book, and have so many more to get through, not that it is a task, I just tend to read poetry a lot slower than anything else, I like to take my time with it.

I don’t know if it's a strange or dangerous thing, but I am always interested in poems that are written to the dead, or about the dead, this seems to be a reoccurring theme in Puna Wai Kōrero, as well as other Māori poetry collections. I guess it would only be dangerous if I was to write about the dead in an incorrect way, or not follow proper protocol around tapu. I can use books like Puna Wai Kōrero to know how to write about such topics appropriately. Another very useful thing this book does, is introduce me to a variety of Māori poets and give me a taste of what their work is like.

Moon story, Small Holes in the Silence, 2006 Patricia Grace Fiction

Often Rona has been portrayed as a hot-tempered forgetful woman, in A.W. Reed’sMāori Legends, he opens the story with this quote about Rona; “She was loved by her husband but, as happens only too often, their lives were spoilt by her quick temper and the sharpness of her tongue”(41). This quote is frustrating on so many levels, (…I’ll mention only two) firstly Reed shouldn’t be so god dam sexist, which he is throughout the entire book, he makes it seem like her hot temper was the cause of all her marital problems, and if only she quit her blabbering, her husband’s love would make everything peachy, and secondly he shouldn’t be so disrespectful of the characters he had the privileged to write about. In Patricia Grace’s version Rona has been under a lot of stress from an enemy attack and has been left with too many tasks of holding the small hapu together after their defeat. In her hurry to fill the calabashes with water, she doesn’t just stub her toe and bang her shin like Reed tells, in Grace’sversion she full on breaks her ankle and is knocked unconscious. The moon—who inthis story has been described as a conjoined twin to the earth—has a beautiful butlonely existence. When the moon takes Rona, they become close companions andtogether “collate the seasons, and roll and unroll the tides” (118).

Patricia Grace’s work is what I remind myself of when I write about women. There are so many slippery slopes in the English language that are oppressive to woman, and to work around them takes critical analysis of each word you use. Its like unlearning all the things you have been taught, and then reconstructing them to tell the story you want to tell. Epeli Hau’Ofa does a great job of re-constructing thought of how the pacific is viewed in his essay “our Sea of Islands”.

Tail of the Taniwha, 2016 Courtney Sina Meredith autobiographical (non) Fiction

This book helped me shape my own poetry over the past year, I think it started when Courtney Sina Meredith made me cry. She talked about saying goodbye to her family at the Auckland airport when going on her OE, and that longing when you are overseas and miss your family. This particularly made me cry because I had that same experience. The last time I saw my nana was at the Auckland airport, she always had a taste for drama and so she decided to die the first time I ever left the country. Courtney Sina Meredith helped me to feel confident enough to write about losing my nana and express those cooped up feelings I was holding onto.

There is an accessibility to Courtney Sina Meredith’s writing that is very appealing to me. She often uses ‘simple’ words, nothing too flashy if you know what I mean. Often people mistake this for a lack of knowledge of the English language (in my writing this is probably the case) but I view it as more of an egalitarian quality. I think there is skill in finding ordinary words and showing their beauty, what can I say, I’m a minimalist.

Por Vida, 2015 Kali Uchis Album autobiographical (non) Fiction

I think more than anything kind of research of inspirational value, this album helps my soul. Sometimes when you go through big events in your life, the music you listen to at those times become sentimental or holds you in those places. But I have been listening to this album for a couple years now, over which I feel I have changed and grown a lot, and this album still cradles me in close, and sends me confident into the world. Maybe this is because me and Kali Uchis were born only 11 days apart and we share the same astrological sign, having a connection that is literally written in the stars. Well, I don’t know if Kali would agree with that, but she probably wont read this, so I’m claiming it. I love her smooth beats and how her lyrics talk about clichéd situations, but don’t come off as cheesy at all, well not to me. Kali shows us that she is a tough ass babe, while also showing us moments of vulnerability. This is what I’m all about.

Cokes, 2018 Coco Solid Mixtape Autobiographical (non) Fiction

In an interview with under the radar, Coco solid says that there is no over arching theme to the mixtape, but if she was going to look at all of her work over all the years, there is always an “enduring idea of sovereignty”. Coco made this ‘enduring idea’ pretty clear by releasing Cokes on Waitangi day this year. Coco Solid is one of those inspiring, multi-talented, pop queens, that there really isn’t enough of. Over the past 20 to 30 years there have been many Māori wahine who have done the hard work of making their voices heard. Names like Dame Whina Cooper, Merata Mita, Robyn Kahukiwa, Patricia Grace and Lisa Reihana are amongst the wahine we will forever be grateful for and look to for reassurance. These are the ones who laid down the road for the next generation to walk on, and Coco Solid is doing just that. I feel like a lot of our responsibility as contemporary Māori is to uphold exactly that title of ‘contemporary Māori’. In the journey a lot of Māori make in reconnecting with their whakapapa, we have to be careful to not become caught in oppressive, clichéd orstereotypical ideas about Māori and what ‘Māori’ ‘should’ be, relevant here is one ofthose oppressive ideas of Māori being ‘stuck in the past’, a culture of ancienttraditions, when in actuality Māori have always been innovators and quick to adapt.This doesn’t mean ‘out with the old, in with the new’ we don’t have to chose new overold, that is a particularly western idea of binaries, like I said Māori are innovators, andI think our cultures allows for growth. In the RNZ two-part show on AotearoaFuturism, Coco Solid talks about making Māori art that can be futuristic if we want,and not having to fit into the small box that colonisation would like to keep us in.Genre’s like science-fiction are not associated with Māori art, we are only left withflora and fauna to create our art from, and Coco Solid just wants everything andanything to be available to her, and ‘is that too much to ask?’ I find everything that comes out of Coco Solid—and she does it all—so empoweringbecause I don’t make classically Māori art, but I still want my work to be of Te AoMāori and Coco helps to give me the autonomy and agency to go on my SpaceMāori, Astronesian pursuits.

fafswagvogue.com 2018 FAFSWAG, NZ on Air Non-(science)Fiction

What makes this website so good, is that these are real people, battling in real placesin Auckland, but it creates the (un)reality of some futuristic city, where fa’afafine runthe show and glamorously dance battle each other.

So much of what FAFSWAG do inspires me. They are decolonizing spaces andclaiming them as their own. The art collective Witch Bitch, do spoken wordperformances, I saw them perform down here last year, and was in awe of theatmosphere they created. Tamatoa from the FAFSWAGvogue website is one of thethree members of Witch Bitch, you can watch him perform through his story on thewebsite. FAFSWAG encompass everything that I want in my art, they are futuristicand yet work from Polynesian backgrounds, and bring that poly flavor into their9performances. They are strong and proud and support each other, by creating safe,decolonized spaces.

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