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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.Item Entanglement : an investigation into the effective union of contemporary art and science communication : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Hughes, Claire I.Virtual reality (VR) technology is increasingly providing opportunities for new contemporary art experiences. This creative practice research has been developed to provide one such contribution. It offers innovative employment of the immersive capabilities of VR to engage with and convey complex scientific theories, and to stimulate changes in mental processes to unlock these concepts. The research highlights empirical similarities between art and science to propose that creative aspects of art can be considered proximate to the creative qualities required to understand quantum theories. In order to reveal this, the body of research engaged specifically with quantum entanglement, because of its well documented existence¹ combined with the more challenging considerations of how ‘communication’ can occur at a quantum level. By providing metaphoric immersive experiences of quantum entanglement, a contribution of ‘scientific communication’ is made as defined by the evocation of awareness, enjoyment, and interest, questioning of opinions and providing new perspectives of understanding.² This research posits that there is a fertile, effective terrain to explore in the union of the fields of contemporary art and science communication. Considerations of constructivist theories of knowledge and the concept of paradigm shifts³ are used whereby new insights into knowledge processes can be experienced through VR art. Here, simulacra, cognitive dissonance and the technological sublime afford a framework to create experiences of conflicting realities. It is due to the immersive strengths of VR which are exploited and subverted through my designs that these experiences can be facilitated for the viewer. The culmination of this research is Entangled, a VR art installation which provides interplays between virtual and physical spaces while also offering entry-points to contemplate and understand quantum theories. Critical analysis of this project is supported by focus group and questionnaire responses. These findings prove how viewers perceived the project as an aesthetic art work and that by recognising scientific underpinnings, an effective engagement and participation in elements of scientific communication occurred at varying levels. The work provided new perspectives on the properties of quantum entanglement. This facilitated cognitive and experiential awareness providing opportunities for viewers to encounter conflicting knowledge systems. The challenge in this creative practice research was to create aesthetic experiences that contravene common sense reasoning and provide insights into the type of thought processes and experiential perception that is required to deepen and expand our understanding of our physical reality. In the present era of an evolution of super- technologies, now past its nascent stage, Entangled offers exposure to the types of interfaces that this thesis asserts will increasingly be encountered when comprehending our reality in the 21st century and beyond.⁴ ¹ References to the proven existence of quantum entanglement are provided in section 1.6. ² This definition of scientific communication is expanded in section 1.1. ³ Paradigm shifts are times when the familiar framework has to be profoundly changed. This is discussed in detail in section 1.3. ⁴ Quantum entanglement is only one possible area that will cause our experience of reality to change radically. For example biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and human/AI interfaces to name some.Item The quarry : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2019) Bauer, SusannaThis creative practice research proposes a fictional archaeology as a conceptually and methodologically distinct mode of inquiry into the traces of human engagement with the material world, and as an exploration of alternative, non-linear notions of temporality. The research is situated within a contemporary context, one characterised by its heavily mediated environment and associated shifting experiences of materiality, space and temporality, which linear, chronological narratives seem increasingly inadequate to capture. An archaeological imagination, following Michael Shanks, captures a ‘sensibility’ towards material traces, that is applicable across disciplines. It becomes articulated in this research through a material encounter based on physical proximity and a spatial articulation of time.¹ Fictionality, besides indicating the shift of archaeology into art practice, situates this inquiry within a fictional realm, in distinction from other projects anchored in actual archaeological objects and sites. Fictionality further designates an affinity with narrative, as a meaning-making connectivity, which this research explores in non-linear ways, through an emphasis on transformations of material traces. This affinity becomes also articulated through a conversation with Max Frisch’s novel Man in the Holocene (1979), and interspersed biographical notes, that accompany this research, and which tether the fictional and abstract character of the project to the particularity of individual narratives. The structural configuration of the exegesis is aligned with the processual, interweaving unfolding of the creative practice. The project sets out to construct traces referencing architectural remnants, artefacts, inscriptions and fossils, through art processes that employ found materials, model assemblages and spray-painting, combined with photography, video and animation. The research employs a mode of material thinking, which indicates a practical and conceptual development based in processuality, and a direct engagement with materials. Transformational processes form the methodological centre of this project; initiated through material thinking, they are the main strategy by which a non-linear temporal journey of material traces is articulated in the practical work. These transformations generate pathways across media and dimensions resulting in a suite of art works with different material states, that are indexically linked, but resist direct, linear comparability—they are instead suggestive of a connectivity beyond chronological sequentiality. A selection of material outcomes of this research has been presented in an installation titled The Quarry, at Toi Pōneke Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, which is also discussed in this document. ¹Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination (Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press, 2012).Item The assembly of liquid : against an excess of order : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2018) May, CameronThe Assembly of Liquid is a creative exploration of systems in a prolonged state of irresolution. Using sculpture, electronics and installation, I am creatively investigating notions of how technological processes can remain open ended through the connection of multiple dynamic components. Using commonplace industrial objects, I attempt to fabricate a synthetic but dispersed organism. Sensors, code and electricity form connections, making objects porous. This installation exists in a state of sustained self-modification, as much artwork as ongoing construction site. This experimental installation explores technological frameworks to evoke more liquid and multi-sensory phenomena.Item Framing traces : exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2018) Sharples, MoniqueFraming Traces explores the way in which the physical object of the picture frame, in combination with site, becomes an object through which an individual could experience the past. This is achieved by playing with the relationship and balance between presence and absence. Visual cues from site, geographical location and the picture frame itself form conditions for viewer reflections. These are what make up the conditions of engagement. As the viewer selects, analyses and categorises aspects of these cues in the context of their own experiences, biases and emotions they are able to attach an idiomatic meaning to the picture frame. Through the writing component, the analysis of picture frames is located within a material culture framework. The personal and cultural layering within one's own interpretation and the coexistence of the two alongside place creation is considered in the authorship of the work.Item Whanaketanga/Evolution : exhibition report for Masters of Māori Visual Arts at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2017) Morgan, Tracey"Whanaketanga | Evolution, focused on technical construction and application using various materials. As art evolves, we find new ways to express concept, thought and imagination. This Exhibition Report is aimed at maintaining customary concepts and techniques using new materials, not customarily associated with Māori weaving such as cane, chain, screen mesh, perspex and plastic. Whilst the customary use of Māori woven taonga serves a utilitarian purpose, the challenge was to show new ways of thinking aimed at creating new forms of art not necessarily seen before. This biography of a decade of practice as a weaver begins with works completed over the past two years, submitted and exhibited as part of the Master of Māori Visual Arts journey. The exhibition is supplemented by previous works to demonstrate a personal evolution into new works employing non-customary materials."--ForewordItem Once more, with feeling : an enquiry into The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa's exhibition Gallipoli: the scale of our war : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Museum Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.(Massey University, 2016) Haig, Nicholas GrahamThis thesis examines The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s exhibition Gallipoli: The scale of our war. Conceived in partnership with Weta Workshop and formulated during a period of institutional uncertainty, Gallipoli was ostensibly created to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. This research investigates what this exhibition and the methodologies and practices deployed in its development reveals about how Te Papa interprets its public service role, and concludes that Gallipoli signals an intensification of its hegemonic function. Marked by a discursive engagement with critical museology and theoretical perspectives pertaining to the ethics of memorialisation and practices of governmentality, in this thesis a transdisciplinary approach is adopted. Employing a qualitative and grounded theory methodology and inductive processes, anchoring the research are interviews with Te Papa staff and Gallipoli visitors, documentary evidence, exhibition ‘text’ analysis and autoethnographic reflections. This thesis suggests that Gallipoli is characterised by a distinctive ‘affective public pedagogy’. Further to this, it is argued that Gallipoli not only has significant implications for Te Papa’s pedagogical functions, but also for conceptions of subjectivity, citizenship and nationhood in New Zealand in the twenty-first century. It is contended that recent developments at Te Papa have further problematized its exogenous and endogenous relations of power, and that the ritualised practices of affect afforded by Gallipoli are ideologically prescribed. It is also determined that Te Papa’s legislative responsibility to be a ‘forum for the nation’ requires reconsidering.Item Jacks of all trades : the role of exhibition officers in regional museums : four case studies from the lower North Island, New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Museum Studies at Massey University(Massey University, 1996) McAdam, Stephen GraemeThe aim of this thesis is to explore the roles of Exhibition Officers who work in regional museums in New Zealand. Research comprised interviews with the Exhibition Officers, Directors and Curators (or equivalent) of four institutions, and an examination of institutional documents, including job descriptions, salary scales and annual reports. The roles of Exhibition Officers include the design, fabrication and installation of exhibitions; the design of publicity material and some functions traditionally regarded as "curatorial". The variety of roles is partly due to institutional requirements of these positions and partly because of the wide range of skills which Exhibition Officers bring from previous training and experience. The extent of the curatorial functions performed by Exhibition Officers depends on the boundaries of the Curators roles in each institution. Two of the participant Exhibition Officers had a major role in the curation of exhibitions. The flexibility of roles in some institutions makes it imperative that there is a mutual understanding of each other's roles by Exhibition Officer and Curator. A discussion of the status of Exhibition Officers in their own institutions and among the wider body of museums was important to the discussion of their roles. While Directors spoke of the high esteem in which they held their Exhibition Officers, in most instances this was not matched by awarding them with a salary that equated with other high status positions such as the institutions' Curators. Where status may affect the performance of the Exhibition Officer is in resource allocation. It is clear that in comparison to curatorial functions, the exhibitions function in some of the case study museums has a low priority in the allocation of staff resources. It is likely that the lack of recognised qualifications held by Exhibition Officers constrains their status among the wider body of museum workers. This is hindered by the fact that there is currently very little appropriate training for Exhibition Officers. The informality of communication and exhibition planning documented in this study is at odds with the formalised and prescriptive approaches to be found in museological texts. There is a need for the development of literature on museum practice derived from ethnographic studies in New Zealand museums and museums of similar size and function in other countries. This will provide practitioners and students with a more accurate representation of issues and practices in museums than some museological texts drawn from the larger institutions overseas. A discussion of exhibition planning in the participant museums showed that the inter-relationship between museums and the public needs to be enhanced by making exhibitions more visitor-focused. This may be achieved by instituting formal evaluation of exhibitions and focus group research. It was apparent that there was little critical feedback from the public on museum exhibitions. This makes it difficult for Exhibition Officers to ascertain if exhibitions are meeting goals, or if exhibitions are being provided that the public wish to see. This thesis supports the contention that to understand the workings of museums, more research on the roles of museum staff and museum practice must be carried out.