Over used word at Art School #1 "Appropriation"

Tze Ming Mok, "Race you There", Landfall 208, Dunedin : Otago University Press, 2004, pp. 18-26.

James Clifford , " On Collecting Art and Culture", in The Predicament of Culture : Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, CAmbridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1988, pp. 215-251.


Two very different responses to two very different readings. Cliffords writing was like Anthro 105 meets Fine Arts Critical Thinking 101. Cool. Key words - fetishism vs. Obsession, "relativist anthropology" , enthnographic contextualization, "art-Culture system", Archiving. Makes sense as Meyer has Ph.D in Art history.
"Race You There" struck more of an emotional chord rather than an intellectual one. I ended up reading this excerpt for fun one night (please dont make fun of me) just because it seemed interesting - kind of like an extended journal entry. I guess the blend of race and culture in New Zealand is kind of a key factor in New Zealand culture , and indeed informs creative Practice in New Zealand. Especially relevant to the show at the Auckland Art Gallery , Picturing History: Goldie to Cotton , which more looks at culturalism in the sense of origins and the development of the land but still makes me think in a similar way in regards to race , culture and minority in NZ.
Being an obvious kind of kiwi gal, with kiwi accent and maybe a greeting in Maori ,it isn't very often that I get asked where I am from. But something that does interest me is in relation to my boyfriend. He is Korean by ethnicity ( often placed as" other Asian" by administration), but is as Kiwi as I am and could probably say two words in Korean. When he gets asked about where he is from, he usually replies, "Wellington," his hometown. The Questioner looks confused as this is obviously not the answer they were looking for. The next question becomes more tricky, "Well, what ethnicity are you, where are your parents from?". Sometimes it just isn't enough to sound and act the same, becasue if you look different, people are always going to know and ask that dreaded question that so often has a long-winded answer - "Where are you from?" Even friends of his - though they pride themselves on being offensive, still ask him if he needs chopsticks to eat his hamburger, or call him "Chink" or "Chinamen" - not only generalising his heritage with all other Asian cultures, but effectively creating the barrier of 'us' and 'them'. Particularly in regard to Asian individuals and communities, it seems that Asian communities will struggle to get the acceptance that Pacific and Maori cultures have in NZ, no matter how many or few people there are of each culture.
Perhaps we are all a little 'colourblind' (20) as Ming suggests, until it we feel we have been unjustly targeted as 'them' - no matter how 'us' we really are.How is it that when I go shopping into as Asian clothes store with my boyfriend of half Chinese flatmate, the latter are fawned over and fussed over by sales assistants, where I am left to my own devices??
Being colourblind seems only to apply to Pakeha and visually European people - there is no question that ethnicity has bearing on who you are and how you form your identity. While as NZ pakeha , it is a fact of being that here in New Zealand, colour-blindness is alive and well. It seems colour is only considered colour when it is not white.

Site Specific and stuff..

James Meyer, "The Functional Site; Or, the Transformation of Site Specificity" in 'Space,Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderberg, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press 2000, pp.20-23.
Geoff Park " Theatre Country", in 'Theatre Country : Essays on Landscape and whenua', Wellington : Victoria University Press,2006, pp.113-127

Geoff Park discussed some ideas and issues in his writing "Theatre Country", particularly in regard to colonialisation and the picturesque. Something of interest to me was his idea about the beauty of scenery being something Western, something forced upon the physical land and the Maori essence and psyche that existed before the creation of the Western colony.

Park's idea that 'What Maori lost when English taste for scenery took their most beautiful coast or lakeshore was not just a tradeable commodity.. the greatest impact of taking a people's native country can be on their psychic, spiritual landscape." (127) really caught my imagination in a sense that few of the other readings did. Perhaps this is because of my experiences with Maori Land claims and grievances in my lifetime, or maybe it was just because it is an idea that seems so disconnected from my life and where I live.
From my outlook of history, I look at this and can see the relationship between land and community differs greatly between Maori and Pakeha. Even with initial colonization, Pakeha settlers dealt with land as they always had- a tradeable commodity,to use Park's title. The unruly and wild New Zealand land held no special value for the newcomers, and had no connection with the land in any more sense than ownership. It seems maybe something hard to modern people, especially Pakeha, to have any spiritual connection with land, especially in a city like Auckland.
Maybe nowadays its less more about a spiritual connection with physical land and more about a sense of attachment and a sentimentalization to a place?
Creative practice in NZ seems to be both inhibited and influenced by our history, culture ( or lack of ) and geographic position - and a way of questioning these things that make us NZ and New Zealanders.