Hamilton Op Shops

View Hamilton Op Shops in a larger map

Op (opportunity) shops are *brilliant places where you can

get second hand clothes, furniture, cutlery and almost anything

that people are willing to give away. People give the op shops

things they no longer want/need, and the shop then sells it cheap,

using the money generated for the charities they are part of.

They are usually staffed by volunteers.

Op shop shopping is brilliant because

1) you are reducing waste and helping the environment

2) you are challenging the consumerist mindset

3) you are saving money

4) money spent goes to a good cause

5) you find very interesting things

Op shopper for life!

UPDATE: .pdf file available for printing. write to feddabonn AT gmail DOT com to get a copy.

the promised land

torn away from our vision

of the happy hunting grounds,

we are condemned

to an english heaven.

so torn away, in fact

that the only term i know

to explain it

is borrowed-

a bland american rendition

of another tribe's afterlife.

[published in blackmail press 26]

[much thanks to deepthi for the title]

leave us our hills

digging out an old post in response to the murder of chongkham sanjit and rabina devi by the police in the indian state of manipur. see the initial story here and a deeper analysis here.

leave us our hills

goddamn you chinky rebel fools
(who water these hills with our blood)
goddamn you indian army goons
(who water these hills with our blood)

leave us alone, you bastards,
leave.
to eat and sing and dance and sleep
a quiet meal
a happy song
a drunken dance
and
sleep.

deep.

without
constant, constant, constant
memories
of your
goddamn guns.
and bloody countries.

leave us our hills.
leave.
all you bastards,
leave.

in search of another perspective

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot, lately, is about Colonialism and indigenous cultures. This is not to attack and aportion blame, but to get a better understanding of the presumptions we (I) make, and where possible, to challenge them. Nor is this an attempt to suggest that the West/North is evil and the East/South is good- I think all cultures can learn from each other, and none have all the answers. With the caveats out of the way, look at these two examples.

1) 1) The Zo tribes (spread across Mizoram, Manipur, Assam and Myanmar) were head hunters- they would bring back the heads of their enemies as trophies. My grandfather’s ancestral village is called Samlukhai, quite literally ‘[place of] head hanging by hair’. We seem to have been taught to be ashamed of this part of our history, and most people speak of this time as ‘dark ages’ of a sort. Reuben, a filmmaker/songwriter friend, recently pointed out to me that the issue with head hunting was not so much the taking of the head, as the fact that one had to kill the person the head belonged to! The problem, he said, was the killing. While we no longer take heads, we still kill in war, though no longer with the chem (machete/dao). Killing has become a sophisticated business now. And is it any more acceptable because we do not take heads? Shouldn’t our shame be the killing, and not the head taking?

2) A large part of New Zealand European art between the 1860s and the 1970s has been of landscape. This is a beautiful country, and on the surface it seems reasonable that artists would devote so much energy to capturing it. Apparently though there was a bit of an agenda here- the landscapes were empty. This served the purpose of the New Zealand Company who wanted to attract European settlers here, conveniently leaving the Maori tribes out of the pictures to deliberately give the impression of a vast empty land that was just waiting for the settlers to come and take over. By leaving the Maori out of the paintings, they glossed over the fact that this land belonged to someone- the tribes! A predecessor of the modern tourist brouchere, I guess.

The connection? In both cases, it has been a dominant Western/Colonial perspective that was generally accepted as ‘fact’, even to the extent where, as in the case of the Zo tribes, we beleive the lies we have been told about ourselves! Happily for the Maori, they have managed to hold on to many of the things they find important, increasingly challenging the Euro-centric worldview with appeals to their own.

This is what I am asking: what will happen to my worldview if i take off the red spectacles I have always (unconsciously, sometimes) seen the world through, and try green spectacles instead? What will happen if I deliberately look at the world through 'tribal' value systems (if such exist)? Will I come to a very different understanding of the world? Will it be any better?

I'd be very glad for company, whether you are a tribal or not. Care to join me?

a book about death

forbidden tunes in forbidden places

A historically logical starting point for studying art in Aotearoa New Zealand is the rock art of the South Island. Maori came to Aotearoa New Zealand sometime around 900 A.D (Keith, 2007) though the majority of rock drawings found is thought to date about 500 years ago (Thompson, 1989). The carved rock art of the North Island is thought to have been made at a latter date, and does not have the stylistic unity of the South Island drawings (Dunn, 1972). There were a few fanciful theories advanced for their origin, from human sacrifice rituals to shipwrecked Tamil sailors (Keith, 2007), but there is little doubt now that these drawings were done by Maori tribes. Though tempting, it has been pointed out that comparisons with the rock art of Australia, Africa and Europe are unhelpful, unless done within the context of each particular culture (McCulloch).

The rock drawings were originally done in charcoal or in red ochre that was brought to the site. According to the Ngai Tahu Maori Rock Art Trust, "the rock art paint was made from animal or bird fat mixed with vegetable gum and soot or kokowai i.e. red ochre to make black or red paint. The pigment created was known to be particularly long-lasting, and was referred to as, 'an ink that would stand forever'" (Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust, 2009). Over the years, they have been the target of vandals, some of whom were well meaning if foolish. Apart from vandals, though, not much attention was paid to these drawings, and they do not appear to have been considered ‘art’. While there were intermittent (and ‘unscientific’) records of these drawings, it was only in the 1940s that Theo Schoon first recorded and studied these paintings. Schoon, however, could not keep reproduction and intepretation apart, and it was only in the 1960s, with the work of Anthony Fomison, that there were accurate drawings made (McCulloch). While Schoon was probably one of the first persons to truly appreciate the artistic value of these drawings *, he was also guilty of vandalism, tracing over the existing drawings to make them clearer (Thompson, 1989).

Earlier intepreted as having ritualistic or religious origins, these paintings are currently interpreted as being the work of ‘hunter-gatherers’ of the pre-european moa hunter period. The objects drawn are primarilly animals, birds and humans, and range from scrawls to well executed figures (McCulloch).

While there have been few references to these drawings in ‘serious’ New Zealand art, Schoon’s contemporary, A.R.D. Fairburn used almost literal transcriptions onto furnishing fabric (Thompson, 1989) refering to this period as “my year long struggle on behalf of culture” (Randerson, 1995). Also in the 1950s Louise Tilsley used designs derived from the cave drawings for placemats (Randerson, 1995). The Taniwha image from the Opihi river has been used on a (now withdrawn) New Zealand stamp, though it appears to be interpreted in the more clear cut style image of latter Maori carving. While other historical Maori motifs are commonly in use by contemporary artists (and the tourist industry), I am yet to come across the use of any of these cave drawing motifs being recycled or intepreted in contemporary art. Many of these sites are left woefully unprotected, even though the tribes try their best with the limited resources they have. While tribes like the Ngai Tahu have trusts to take care of these treasures, they need more support, as blogger Marty Mars has pointed out.

And finally to the question I have been dying to ask. Is there, really, any difference between this rock 'art' and the much maligned graffiti today? While a lot of the graffiti we see seems to come from an adolescent desire to leave a mark, there is also a large body of work that employs artistic principles, if on a different canvas, with different tools. Banksy, arguably one of the most well known contemporary graffiti artists, has done brilliant and incisive work, using the streets of Bristol for his canvas. My favourite piece (pictured here) was secretly installed at the British Museum, and was undetected for 3 days! A large part of graffiti art has to do with Hip-hop culture, and many ‘taggers’ have now moved beyond the hastily scrawled four letter poem of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘A Poem on the Underground Wall’, often speaking of “protest and marginalised identities (Zemke-White, 2007).” If art is for the purpose of our coming to terms with the world (Keith, 2007), the cave drawings and the graffiti of today seems to me art of the purest vision-art for its own sake, without thought for commercial potential.

Photographer Adrienne Rewi has documented Maori/Pacific inspired graffiti art on her blog, but this seems yet to widely catch on, and probably as she points out, for deeper cultural reasons. As Auckland street artist 2Tone laments, people do not “[attempt] to create something that is true to themselves and our local scene”(2Tone, 2007). Maybe an uniquely Aotearoa New Zealand style will emerge, just as an unique Maori art did. Maybe the ancient rock artists are spiritually connected to the taggers today. Too tenuous a link? Probably. But hey. Who knows?

NOTES:

*”Schoon [was] able to see [these drawings] as art because European modernists opened their eyes to what was then called by the Europeans the ‘Primitive’. Miro, Klee, Picasso and most other European artists who shaped 20th century art were able to make the art they made because in part their imagination had been freed by looking at the tribal art of Africa” (Keith, 2007).

Bibliography
1. 2Tone. (2007). InForm: New Zealand Graffiti Artists Discuss Their Work. (E. O'Donnell, Interviewer)
2. Dunn, M. (1972). Mori Rock Art. A.H.&A.W.Reed.
3. Keith, H. (2007). The Big Picture: A history of New Zealand art from 1642. Godwit.
4. McCulloch, B. (n.d.). Maori Rock Drawings: A matter of Intepretation. Maori Rock Drawings-The Theo Schoon Intepretations . Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch City Council.
5. Randerson, J. (1995). When Rock Art met the Placemat. The Modern World Conference (p. 2). Wellington: UNITEC School of Design.
6. Thompson, P. (1989). Maori Rock Art-An Ink That Will Stand Forever. GP Books.
7. Zemke-White, D. K. (2007). Inform: New Aealand Graffiti Artists Discuss their Work. Reed.
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taniwha
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa
10. http://www.teara.govt.nz/TheBush/UnderstandingTheNaturalWorld/Taniwha/en for the Taniwha picture
11. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pickard/14668113/ for the Banksy picture

12. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opihi_rock_drawing2.jpeg for the Opihi rock drawing

13. http://www.ngaitahu.co.nz/RockArt/overview.htm

14. http://mars2earth.blogspot.com/2009/03/ngai-tahu-rock-art-needs-protection-now.html

15. http://maorilifestyles.blogspot.com/2009/07/cultural-graffiti.html

for lalgarh

die, hate.

i am tired of grieving

over lives i can do nothing for

but write another poem

die, anger.

i am sick of cursing

at vague smug faces

memorised

from website photographs-

fat

with the wealth rolling up the chin

and pudgy little fingers

(looking remarkably like mine)

dealing out

judgments dipped

in blood

and gravy

die, hate

die, anger

and take the fingers

as you go,

kill.