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Item Knowing, belonging & becoming-with the Ōruawharo : an ethnography of a river : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Albany Campus, Aotearoa, New Zealand(Massey University, 2025-11-17) Joensen, ClareThis thesis is situated in the northwest of Te Ika-a-Māui, the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand along the Ōruawharo river, a salty tidal tributary of the Kaipara Harbour. For over a hundred and fifty years, the Ōruawharo and surrounding district have been storied by a dominant ‘settler’ narrative which maps onto place, as names, text, histories, monuments and civic apparatus. However, this is not the only story of the Ōruawharo. There are multiple stories, multiple ways of knowing the river; knowings which produce different belongings. As such belonging to a place is always a process of becoming, and this becoming is produced relationally, as a series of “withs”, with both humans and non-humans. These becoming-withs produce embodied ways of knowing which in turn, remake place when given the opportunity to be known by others. This thesis aims to bring to light the unknown, hidden and subordinated Ōruawharo knowledges in order to reveal multiplicities and develop new ways of thinking about place. This is Pākehā research done inbetween Māori and Pākehā worlds in a Māori-Pākehā place; a form of research which comes with its own set of troubles. As it is a Pākehā imperative to decolonise (Shaw 2021b), I stay with the trouble (Haraway 2016), and through a level of discomfort, produce small decolonising acts in written text, public speaking roles and through the curation of an exhibit. Decolonising actions, spurred on by this thesis, have then led to others as people come to know more, including that which cannot be unknown. Drawing on knowledges generated with boats (boat ethnography), people (interviews and casual conversations), texts (archives, books, texts, journals, letters and documents), the curation of an exhibit and a wide range of encounters in my community, I debunk knowing place as a singularity and demonstrate the value of knowing place differently through these methods. Ultimately, this ethnography of a river offers a multiplicity of knowings-with and in doing so, shifts human-centric and settler-centric narratives with tendencies to dominate. With dynamism, knowing, becoming and belonging are shown as relational, embodied, in amongst the withs, ever in motion, shaping lives and reshaping place, place as seen, imagined, felt, understood, experienced and remade.Item Flesh, blood, relic & liturgy : on the subject of the museum : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Museum Studies, Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Manawatū, New Zealand(Massey University, 2023-09-30) Haig, Nicholas GrahamThis thesis models a methodology for disturbing the liberal-progressive accord in museum practice and for contesting the ascendancy of post-criticality within museology. Together the liberal-progressive accord and post-critical museology normalise a subject position that, despite appearances of agency, cannot act upon its socio-historical situation. How, I ask, might the subject of the museum be reinvested in ways that counteract its demise in the relation between the contemporary museum and museology? Seeking to re/establish the conditions of existence for (a) critical museology, in the first instance this thesis asserts the primacy of “the subject” as the museological problematic requiring theorisation. A poetical-analytical schema of flesh, blood, relic and liturgy, a schema that pivots on the transposition of the work of Eric L. Santner into a museological frame, provides the means for reasserting the primacy of the subject in a manner able to anticipate new capacities for action in that subject. Incited by the museal representation of violent legacies, in particular the centennial commemorations of the First World War, this thesis encircles one institutional formation and two exhibitionary productions: The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and its exhibition Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War and the standalone production, The Great War Exhibition. These monographs provide material instrumental to the argument. Emerging as a negation of the negation that follows the schema’s intervention into the relation between the museum and museology are three affirmations addressed to the prospects of (a) critical museology: (1) a critical museology must transfer crisis into the heart of its language; (2) a critical museology must attend to that which does not work but which is made to work in the museum; (3) a critical museology must strike at that which is not there.Item Inside Arcadia : an immersive, virtual phantasmagoria : an exegesis written in partial completion of a PhD degree in Creative Practice at Massey University, College of Creative Arts(Massey University, 2022) Doidge, MalcolmThis research explores Mātiu/Somes Island’s colonial past in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition project, Inside Arcadia, is a hybrid of sculptural installation, performance design and an immersive virtual reality; the latter a 360˚ digital scenography of Mātiu/Somes Island’s historic quarantine and defence sites. These features are experienced interconnectedly while wearing a stereoscopic Head Mounted Display (HMD). The research underpinning Inside Arcadia’s three exhibitions focuses on technological spectralities – the phantom experience of virtual disembodiment wearing the HMD. This discussion relates to defining how these VR digital scenographies comprise a ‘quarantine gothic’. The work of noted academics specialising in video game studies ontology is considered, including Espin Aarseth’s notion of virtual space as an allegory of space and Grant Tavinor’s discussion of IVR as a novel medium. European cultural contexts identify allegory as simply describing one thing by pointing to another, related thing, e.g., Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey’s deployment of allegory referencing Walter Benjamin’s notions of history and ruin. Inside Arcadia recontextualises this in Aotearoa/New Zealand as a gothic mode – a site-specific, digitally layered 360˚ mediation of historic animal and human quarantine and defence sites. Inside Arcadia also references a quarantine gothic, acknowledging the historic exclusion of Taranaki Whānui from cultural and ecological relations with Mātiu/Somes Island. Terry Castle’s interpretation of allegory as phantasmagoria or exhibiting ghosts in public is identified as having a key role conceptually and technologically in linking this past with the COVID-19 pandemic. This context is critical to understanding the role of Inside Arcadia’s HMD technology mediating a ghostly digital avatar whilst leaving a material trace of footprints on the chalk-floor installation. My argument above is demonstrated through Inside Arcadia’s three exhibitions. To help contextualise the field, this research references the works of Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi - Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tu-Te Auru), Brett Graham (Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Tainui), Sven Mehzoud and Stuart Foster regarding the historical European colonising gaze toward Aotearoa/New Zealand. The installation of my work at separate local sites contributes to understanding spatial porosity and spatial layering wearing the HMD, an action performing a ghostly avatar. These distinctions are demonstrated through extended analysis in the final section to this exegesis. As sustained throughout my creative research, wearing the HMD mediates Inside Arcadia’s layers of virtual space within its physical installation. When considered part of this site-specific palimpsest, Inside Arcadia emerges as an allegory of Mātiu/Somes Island’s colonial past, the haunting echo of a quarantine gothic returned amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.