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.