Category Archives: Wellington

Expressive Arts at Massey Wellington campus

Ski trip yields important safety communication data

Fieldwork with a view – Mt Ngauruhoe from the slopes of Mt Ruapehu

Staff and students from the School of English & Media Studies enjoyed the stunning view from their ‘office’ yesterday as they undertook fieldwork on Mt Ruapehu.
Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley and Bachelor of Communication students Oscar Mein and Eden Cowley helped collect data about people’s behaviour during a lahar warning test run by GNS Science and the Department of Conservation.
The fieldwork is part of a research collaboration investigating ways to optimise safety communication at the skifields that includes English & Media Studies staff and students and Massey’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research. Some of the issues for mountain users include lahar warnings, avalanche risk and general mountain safety.
“The agencies in the front line of mountain safety such as GNS Science and Department of Conservation have been working together for many years and have very good data about the risks and about public behaviour,” Dr Tilley said. “As we saw at the lahar warning test yesterday, though, it’s still the case that not every mountain user knows what to do. When the siren sounds, people need to immediately get out of the valley floor and climb to higher ground – some do, others do only when other public-minded bystanders call out to them repeatedly or a ski patroller moves them, and some remain where they are, hypothetically in the path of a massive fast-flowing gush of boiling water, sediment and boulders.”
“The next step in the research is to identify the missing link between someone knowing about a risk and responding appropriately. We also need to know more about those mountain users who genuinely aren’t aware of the risks or how to mitigate them.”
“That’s where communication staff and students can make a big contribution. We’ll be bringing a humanistic or people-centred approach to understanding the communication processes. Some of our students will have the opportunity to extend the research with funded postgraduate study, living on the mountain next ski season and conducting ethnographic and focus group research to identify communication patterns and norms, and make recommendations about how, when and where to create the most effective safety messaging.”
Dr Tilley said understanding ‘mountain culture’ could be the key to unlocking the right communication tactics. “Groups of people who share an interest and affinity, such as for family ski trips, snowboarding weekends or climbing expeditions, create and define their own group culture. They establish behaviours, thoughts, and norms that define their identity as a member of the group.
“Effective communication occurs when the identity that a message assigns to a person matches the identity she or he wants to claim in a situation – so to target a particular group, you have to have very good research about how they construct their identity as a group and what notions of identity are appealing.”
“Creativity also has a big role to play. As well as documenting the culture and its communication, our students will need to make innovative and creative recommendations about practical ways to communicate that produce a positive sense of identity that includes being knowledgeable and proactive about safety.”
Yesterday’s lahar warning test research project activity was recorded by Alison Ballance, producer and presenter of Radio New Zealand’s weekly science and environment programme Our Changing World. Alison’s story on the project will be aired on RNZ in the next week: go to http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/20140911 for the story and the podcast.
Links to more information:

Ruapehu Lahar information from DOC: http://www.doc.govt.nz/documents/about-doc/concessions-and-permits/conservation-revealed/lahars-from-mt-ruapehu-lowres.pdf
Footage of the 2007 Mt Ruapehu lahar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x5tZAHEoRU
TVNZ 4-minute video about Ruapehu lahars: http://tvnz.co.nz/meet-the-locals/2007-episode-81-video-1883399

New creative activism paper launching 2015

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Massey University’s School of English & Media Studies will lead the way in Aotearoa/New Zealand arts education by launching a new paper in creative activism in 2015.
Launching simultaneously at Wellington and Auckland campuses in first semester 2015, 139.333 Creativity in the Community will immerse teams of students in the art and science of creative communication for social change, with guidance from experienced Expressive Arts educators. Students will be able to make a film or documentary, stage a collaborative community theatre event, use creative writing, or combine all of these, to work with a community group on a real issue.
Wellington course coordinator Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said “communication activism pedagogy is an emerging trend internationally. It involves teaching students to apply their creative communication knowledge and skills to work with community partners to promote social justice.”
“We are seeing increasing application by social justice groups in Aotearoa of the power of the arts to drive change – for example Women’s Refuge is working on a giant statue of Kate Sheppard made up of the voices of people who want to stop domestic violence, and Greenpeace has been staging performance art all over the country with a lifesize polar bear. Not to mention the amazing work that theatre practitioners, such as the group Te Rakau Hua o Te Wao Tapu Trust to name just one, have been doing for a long time because of the recognition of the power of theatre to change lives.”
The Creativity in the Community course will equip students to plan, implement and evaluate these kinds of applied arts projects, giving them hands on experience in delivering creative activism but also requiring them to understand the ethical and managerial dimensions.
“Our Expressive Arts students already have a strong foundation in devising projects that use creative writing, theatre and multimedia by the time they reach third-year (see for example at left a student multimedia/theatre performance addressing issues of identity and binge drinking, from Wellington Creative Processes students 2014). This paper enables them to capstone that training by taking it to the next level, working with a community partner.”
Dr Tilley said there was a strong research and scholarship base behind creative activism that students will connect with in ‘Creativity in the Community’ to understand how to make their arts interventions effective and compelling.
“Internationally, students have worked on issues such as gender inequality and violence, ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination, and health disparities and issues affecting those who live in poverty. Our students will research their communities and team up with local NGOs to choose projects that respond to genuine need. We know that this benefits the students as well as the communities, as service learning has been proven to develop skills in teamwork, project management, risk assessment, communication, professionalism and a host of other competencies that will ensure our students hit the ground running when they enter the workforce. A big plus of creative activism pedagogy is that it also develops students as engaged citizens who feel empowered to use their voice effectively to create a better world.”
Dr Tilley will coordinate Creativity in the Community at Wellington, while at Albany campus it will be led by Dr Rand Hazou, a specialist in applied and documentary theatre who has international research links with social justice theatre projects, as well as strong connections with theatre-for-social change groups in the Auckland region.
“We are really looking forward to launching this project and seeing the students’ learning come to life in real social change,” Dr Tilley said.

Links:
139.333 Paper Information for 2015: http://www.massey.ac.nz//massey/learning/programme-course-paper/paper.cfm?paper_code=139333
Bring back Kate campaign: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kate-Sheppard-statue-nears-completion/tabid/423/articleID/354173/Default.aspx
Theatre as a tool to transform: http://artsaccess.org.nz/theatre-as-a-tool-to-transform

Loops + Splices Symposium: Changing Media Technologies, August 1st

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All scholars and practitioners interested in film and media are welcome to attend the Loops and Splices symposium on changing media technologies on Friday 1 August at Victoria University of Wellington.

The symposium has been organised by Media Studies lecturers Radha O’Meara and Alex Bevan with colleagues from Victoria University. It will feature a keynote presentation by Professor Ian Christie from University of London’s Birkbeck College on the history of 3D in photography and film, as well as presentations by Massey Media Studies lecturers Kevin Glynn, Sy Taffel and Allen Meek.

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fhss/about/events/symposium-loops-and-splices-changing-media-technologies

Attendance is free, but attendees should register by emailing Kathleen Kuehn before the end of July:
Kathleen.Kuehn@vuw.ac.nz

Symposium Programme

Schedule: 1 August 2014 Hunter Council Chamber, Hunter Building, Victoria University of Wellington

9.30-10.30am OpeningPlenary

Chair:MiriamRoss

ProfessorIanChristie(BirkbeckCollege)

“Denying depth: uncovering the hidden history of 3D in photography and film”

10.45-12.15 PanelOne:Archaeologies,Bodies,NewTechnologies

Chair:KathleenKuehn

AllanCameron(Auckland),“Facing the Glitch: Abstraction, Abjection,and the DigitalFace”

JulieCupples(Edinburgh)andKevinGlynn(Massey),“Technologies of Indigeneity: Māori Television and Convergence Culture”

MaxSchleser(Massey),“A Decade of Mobile Moving-Image Practice”

SyTaffel(Massey),“Arch/Ecologies of E-Waste”

1.30-3.00pm PanelTwo:AmateurPracticesandEverydayLife

Chair:RadhaO’Meara

RosinaHickman(Victoria),“A pastora lparadise?: Landscap eand early amateur filmmaking in New Zealand”

O. RipekaMercier(Victoria),“Screen(ed) Culture in the 48 Hour Film Competition”

MinetteHillyer(Victoria),“Formulas for the Interior: Homemovies, television and the practice of real life in public”

DamionSturm(Waikato),“Smashing and bashing as affective commodity-spectacle? Televisual technologies in the Australian T20 Cricket Big Bash League”

3.15-4.45pm PanelThree:MediaLoops,AestheticHistories

Chair:MichelleMenzies

AllenMeek(Massey),“Testimony and the chronophotographic gesture”

MichaelDaubs(Victoria),“What’s New is Past: Flash Animation and Cartoon History”

KirstenMoanaThompson(Victoria),“’Now Isn’t Simply Now’: A Single Man and the Color Image”

LeonGurevitch(Victoria),“Cinema Designed: Visual Effects Software and the Emergence of Design”

4.45D5.15pm ClosingPlenaryPanel

Chair:KirstenThompson

Ian Christie and OrganizingCommittee

The symposium committee would like to thank

Adam Art Gallery, New Zealand Film Archive, School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington, School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, and the Visual Culture Group of Victoria for generously supporting the Loops+Splices symposium.

Symposium Organising Committee

ProfessorKirstenThompson:Kirsten.Thompson@vuw.ac.nz DrMiriamRoss:Miriam.Ross@vuw.ac.nz

DrKathleenKuehn:Kathleen.Kuehn@vuw.ac.nz DrAlexBevan:A.L.Bevan@massey.ac.nz

DrRadhaO’Meara:R.OMeara@massey.ac.nz MichelleMenzies:michelle.menzies@gmail.com

Ian Christie (Birkbeck College,University of London)

Denying depth:uncovering the hidden history of 3D in photography and film

If stereoscopy has been a more significant and continuous presence in modern imaging media than is conventionally recognised, why has it been consistently marginalised by photographic and film historians? After its huge popularity in the second half of the 19th century, there were expectations that stereo moving pictures would follow. Yet even after practical display systems emerged in the 1930s, resistance has continued,often fuelled by a mixture of economic and psycho-aesthetic justification.What’s the problem?

Ian Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a curator and broadcaster. He wrote and co-produced a BBC TV series The Last Machine, presented by Terry Gilliam, in 1994; and the exhibitions he has worked on include Eisenstein: His Life and Art (1988), Spellbound:ArtandFilm (1996) and Modernism:Designing a New World (2006). A Fellow of the British Academy and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University in 2006, with a lecture series entitled ‘Cinema Has Not yet Been Invented’, he is especially interested in mediaecology and archaeology, and in audiences-the subject of his most recent book.

Symposium Web Page

Twitter #vicloops

Full house for compelling performance

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The audience for Violeta Luna filled the Massey University Wellington Museum Building theatrette to capacity on Friday for her mesmerising performance of NK603.
Members of the public joined Australasian Drama Studies Association conference delegates to watch open-mouthed as Luna transformed in front of their eyes from a traditionally-dressed Aztec woman planting seeds by hand to a blood-spitting, tape-bound embodiment of the toxicity she sees wrought on her people and the environment by monocropping and genetic modification.

Fixing the audience with her stare and moving among the seating to get up close and personal with attendees, Luna issued a wordless yet wholly eloquent challenge to all present. Using visual images, music and physical theatre, despite not having a single word of dialogue, she effectively called into question the environmental, social and political consequences of the globalisation of agriculture. Her show charted a trajectory from indigenous Mexican traditions of small-cropping and organic companion planting to foreign-owned mass crops, automation, wholesale use of pesticides, fungicides, and the alteration of seeds that renders them non-renewable.

“It is important for me to work with audience interactivity, with direct contact, where the public becomes co-creator of the work,” Luna said. “The experience of immediacy, of the shared instant and the accident, gains new meaning in these actions.” Audience members at NK603 were in the firing line as corn was thrown, and some were handed bright blue balls of pastry representing over-processed, artificially coloured and genetically altered foods.

The following day Luna presented an equally powerful keynote address to the ADSA conference, charting the territory of her many theatre projects, both solo and collaborative, that address issues of social justice. “My work is the result of a dialogue between the language of theatre and the language of performance art,” she told delegates. “I create a multi-dimensional space where different elements (music, dance, ritual, behaviors, etc.) converge to create new narratives and alternative realities.”

Luna spoke about her collaborative works with Guillermo Gomez Peña, Secos & Mojados, and Pocha Nostra, which have included a live acupuncture work where audience members placed needles with flags into Luna’s body to signify colonisation “In performance art, the artist’s body is considered as the main platform for the work. The body is like a conceptual map where the artist creates her personal cartographies, a metaphorical space- a body that is in itself subject and object- and the signified and signifier of the creative work.”

Her repertoire has included a number of works collaborating with community groups, particularly immigrant women dealing with culture shock and marginalisation, who find rituals of healing become available to them through being able to participate in performative re-creations of their experiences. “In performance art, the female body transforms into a ‘liberated zone’ for creativity, and also for the reinvention of gender within inclusive contexts, where ‘the feminine’ is not generalized through pre-fabricated concepts. Instead, it is particularised, presented, through a specific, self determined woman, with her differences, her own biography.”

Luna was brought to New Zealand by the Expressive Arts program in the Massey University School of English & Media Studies, as part of Massey’s co-hosting (with Victoria University of Wellington) of the ADSA 2014 conference.

International performer in Wellington

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The Massey University School of English and Media Studies is bringing renowned international performance artist Violeta Luna to Wellington this month and you can see her free – for one night only.

Violeta Luna’s performance combines video, physical theatre and electronic music by her collaborator David Molina, to create a multi-faceted narrative of forceful and subversive imagery, mixed with powerful rituals of memory and resistance. Addressing topical issues of globalisation, indigeneous peoples’ rights to flora and fauna, and genetic modification, her show will take the audience on a spectacular and thought-provoking journey.

Born in Mexico City, Ms Luna qualified in Acting from the Centro Universitario de Teatro, and La Casa del Teatro. Her innovative work combining theatre, performance art and activism to explore modes of awareness-building and community engagement has taken her around the world.

She has performed and taught workshops throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the United States of America. While in New Zealand, in addition to her keynote presentation and public performance at the Australasian Drama Studies Association 2014 conference, Ms Luna will deliver an experimental theatre and performance workshop exploring issues of body and identity, at Massey University’s Wellington Campus Theatre Laboratory from June 21-23.

• Violeta Luna will be in New Zealand for the ADSA conference, June 25-28 2014, see conference details at http://www.adsa.edu.au/conferences/next-conference/restoring-balance-ecology-sustainability-performance-vuw-25-28-june-2014/
• Her evening performance at the conference is open to the public – Come to the Grand Hall, Museum Building, Massey University, 7pm to 8pm, Thursday June 26. See details and a map at: http://www.eventfinder.co.nz/2014/violeta-luna-nk603-action-for-performer-and-e-maiz/wellington

New works explore contemporary identity challenges

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Three brand new devised theatre/multimedia works that premiered at the Arts on Wednesday Wellington Student Theatre Showcase last week were united by a focus on identity challenges for young people in a digitised 24-hour-networked world.

In a confronting piece called ‘Bad Days’, students Eden Cowley (pictured left, as ‘Jessie’), Maggie Tweedie, Khawa Khoshaba, Virginia O’Connor, Nadia Stadnik, and Razvan Grigore, all from the second-year Expressive Arts paper Creative Processes, scripted a series of contrasting identities depicted on and off social media such as Facebook, to explore contemporary struggles between appearance and reality, masked and unmasked personae, pride and vulnerability. Juxtaposing stylised live action with large-scale multimedia work, their performance traced a typical ‘night out’, contrasting glamorised full-screen images of partying and friends with a more sobering reality of anxiety, self-doubt, depression and next-day regrets by the actors on stage.

The second work, called ‘Ear Ear’, took a more humorous approach yet still explored compelling issues of inclusion and exclusion, and the interaction between the human body and modern technology. Shaqaila Uelese, Kathleen Masoe, Genevieve Coleman, Leleiga Taito, Mallory Mackenzie and Rachel Templeton devised an original and highly satirical ‘self help group’ scenario, where all the participants were ears, seeking help for abuse at the hands of their head-phone-wearing, ear-piercing humans. Technically sophisticated, the piece was carefully timed so that the human actors appeared to manipulate images on the scene, creating a seamless choreography of live bodies and fantasy images, such as talking ears.

The final item of the show, ‘The Gift’, offered a film-noir-style exploration of creativity, in which two muses (Stevie Greeks and Azeem Balfoort) were followed by the camera as they explored the minds of artists and attempted to sway them into either darkness or light. Jack Biggs as The Poet, Kit Jenkins as The Musician, Kim Parkinson as The Painter, and Fraser Baker as The Sculptor gave convincing portrayals of artists struggling with issues of creativity, individuality, plagiarism, self doubt and yet often finding renewed life-force in their art. ‘The Gift’ was directed by Oscar Mein, who received an award for ‘Best Student Director’ after the show.

Jack Biggs, as ‘The Poet’, struggles with writers’ block.

Actor Antonia Prebble keen to do more Creative Writing

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Actor Antonia Prebble basks in completing her BA

With timing any actor would be proud of, Antonia Prebble graduated from Massey University with a week to spare till her 30th birthday.

Back in 2002 when the-then teenager had already committed to a career on screen and stage, she told herself that she would also like to undertake tertiary study and complete a Bachelor of Arts by the time she turned 30.

That milestone rolls round next Friday and, after crossing the stage to be capped yesterday among graduates from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, it will be a double celebration.

“I’ve been studying quietly away one paper per year for the last few years toward my BA and now I’m basking in its completion!”

Majoring in English Literature, she says the curriculum really helped her understanding of the plays she was reading and performing in.

Hers was a conscious decision to slowly complete her degree so she could focus mainly on her career but also simultaneously enjoy the process of getting a tertiary education.

The star of television dramas like Outrageous Fortune and The Blue Rose, leads a busy on-the-road lifestyle, so studying via distance learning proved invaluable.

“The distance library service was so impressive with people responding to my requests very quickly wherever in the world I was.”

Ms Prebble sat one exam at the New Zealand Embassy in Paris while she was briefly based in the French capital for a separate theatre course.

“They organised a moderator who was a Kiwi expat and it all helped make the experience so much easier.

If Massey wasn’t here I would have been unable to do the degree,” she says.

“Now I’ve finished I’d like to do more creative writing. I did one paper as part of my degree and now I have the freedom [from studies] I would like to explore that a bit more.”

Having just returned from a stint in the US state of Louisiana filming the television show Salem (based on the 17th century witch trials), her next priority is more theatre and screen work including a trip to Sydney next week to audition for new roles.

“But I definitely wanted to make it back to Wellington to graduate in person.”

Created: 30/05/2014 | Last updated: 30/05/2014

International recognition for Expressive Arts student

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You may have seen talented musician and composer Shaqaila Uelese featured on TV1 (Tagata Pasifika), TV3 (news) or in North & South Magazine and newspapers nationally, or heard her on the radio. She’s been all over the media this week for her fantastic piano playing, and her selfless service as a volunteer and fundraiser.

The Massey Wellington student garnered the widespread media attention after her original interpretation of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody went viral on YouTube with more than 700,000 views – and was shared by Brian May, the original Queen guitarist, on his own page. Shaq is currently playing concerts around the North Island and in September, she will play by invitation at an event in Australia.

If you are in Wellington, you can see Shaq play in person next week, as well as perform as an actor in a show she has co-written, as part of the May 28 Arts on Wednesday Wellington student showcase.

Shaq is part of a student team from the class Creative Processes, who have devised an original multi-media performance piece, called ‘Ear Ear’, to premiere at Arts on Wednesday next week. Appropriately for a musician, the show explores the importance of sound in our world and provokes empathy with those who live with hearing loss, through a dramatic exploration of auditory deprivation.

It is one of three innovative new experimental works to premiere at the free lunchtime show, from 12.30 to 1.30 in 5D14 Theatre Lab.

Shaq is no stranger to using her artwork to draw attention to important causes and perspectives. Over the past year, in honour of her late father, she’s been travelling around New Zealand, along with a support crew including other students from her Massey Wellington classes, to play public koha piano shows to raise money for the Cranford Hospice and Cancer Society NZ – Wellington Division. Her Play for Life piano marathon has raised more than $6,000 so far.

See more at:

http://www.facebook.com/PlayforLifePiano

http://www.facebook.com/Shaqmistro

http://www.facebook.com/WellyArtsWednesdays

See the Bohemian Rhapsody video and Dominion Post story at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/10039996/Pianists-public-performance-pays-off

See the 3News interview at: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kiwi-pianist-finds-a-kind-of-magic/tabid/418/articleID/345282/Default.aspx

Radha O’Meara, Media Studies lecturer, researched why we love to watch cat videos.

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New research from Massey University has discovered why cat videos are more popular than, say, dog or baby videos: the latter are equally “cute”, but comparably far less popular.

The answer, according to Massey University media studies lecturer Radha O’Meara, who viewed hundreds of cat videos online in conducting the research, is in the watching.

“Ultimately cat videos enable viewers to carry out their own surveillance, and we do so with the gleeful abandon of a kitten jumping in a tissue box.”

However, Dr O’Meara said this carelessness was an illusion for the viewer, who’s online viewing was tracked and sold as consumer data.

M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture publication

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Original theatre works to feature at next Wellington Arts on Wednesday

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Save the date now for your next Wellington Arts on Wednesday culture-fix – and be the first to see brand new devised multi-media/performance works by Massey Wellington theatre students.

The Student Theatre Showcase at Wellington Arts on Wednesday on May 28 will feature a modern drama mosaic entitled ‘Women and War’ (with a linked series of pivotal scenes from the great modern dramatists Ibsen and Brecht, directed and performed by 139.303 Modern Drama students), plus three brand new, innovative short multimedia/performance works devised by students in 139.223 Creative Processes.

In their devised works, the Creative Processes students use theatre, film and creative writing to explore ideas about individuality and creativity. Their works engage with both Classical and Enlightenment ideas about ‘genius’ and ‘the muse’, subverting and challenging myths of the ‘tortured artist’ while simultaneously acknowledging the students’ own struggles to find an artistic ‘voice’. The result is a series of personal and compelling narratives about artistic processes, and the place of art and creativity in 21st Century Aotearoa/New Zealand Society.

Where: The Theatre Lab, Room 5D14, Massey University Wellington campus

When: Wednesday May 28, 12.30 to 1.30

What:

Women and War – Key scenes from ‘A Doll’s House’ and ‘Mother Courage’ reinterpreted for our times
‘Not Me’, ‘Support Group’ and ‘Noir’: The premiere of three original performance pieces about creativity
Q&A with the student directors, writers and performers at the end of the show
Free light refreshments

Artwork credit: By Virginia Wickham, Creative Processes student, as part of her ‘Me Box’ assignment work.

Follow the Arts on Wednesday Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/WellyArtsWednesdays