Welcome to this weekend of presentations and conversations being held for artists, writers, theatre makers, performance artists, dancers, musicians, activists and academics who are using their various disciplines and mediums to examine Pakeha relationships to historic and current colonisation, in particular exploring ideas from the slippery fields of critical whiteness studies.
The weekend of events is being hosted by theatre practitioner Madeline McNamara and visual artist Jack Trolove (both of whom will be presenting work in progress).The idea is that we create the space we have been craving; a window of time where work being made in this area is supported, challenged and explored - a collective devotion of time and energy by a group of artists, makers, writers and educators coming together to better understand some of the complexities and dynamics specific to this area.
Presentations during the weekend are looking inspiring. They include finished work, excerpts, works in progress, starting points, and reflections on making work.
The weekend will include facilitated conversations which will give participants an opportunity to respond to the works and contribute fully to discussions around these themes. The emphasis of these conversations will be on how we use various art forms to articulate some of the unspeakable complexities of focusing on whiteness/whitemess while resisting the tendency for such a focus to reinforce the 'power' of whiteness. We are asking how through our creative work, can we 'see' ourselves and our positionalities in order not to be 'neutral' or 'passive participants' in conversations around identity and power.
The weekend of events is being hosted by theatre practitioner Madeline McNamara and visual artist Jack Trolove (both of whom will be presenting work in progress).The idea is that we create the space we have been craving; a window of time where work being made in this area is supported, challenged and explored - a collective devotion of time and energy by a group of artists, makers, writers and educators coming together to better understand some of the complexities and dynamics specific to this area.
Presentations during the weekend are looking inspiring. They include finished work, excerpts, works in progress, starting points, and reflections on making work.
The weekend will include facilitated conversations which will give participants an opportunity to respond to the works and contribute fully to discussions around these themes. The emphasis of these conversations will be on how we use various art forms to articulate some of the unspeakable complexities of focusing on whiteness/whitemess while resisting the tendency for such a focus to reinforce the 'power' of whiteness. We are asking how through our creative work, can we 'see' ourselves and our positionalities in order not to be 'neutral' or 'passive participants' in conversations around identity and power.
Problematically many of the works being presented during the weekend, sit within a relative void of Pakeha artworks on issues of race, power, 'whiteness', privilege and colonisation in Aotearoa. While the works in focus specifically examine Pakeha relationships to privilege and colonisation this decision is a response to decades of work by Maori, Pacific, Asian and other artists, activists and academics who have called for Pakeha to develop an understanding of our cultural paradigm (including dominant culture).
This weekend is open to anyone for whom these conversations are useful.At the epic end of the dream-spectrum, we hope the works and conversations will contribute to an unsettling of settlement.
