(un)settling : performing landscape, woman, Aotearoa : an exegesis submitted to Massey University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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2024-08-08
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Massey University
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Abstract
This practice-led doctoral research explores my relationship to landscape, land and whenua as a Pākehā woman in Aotearoa New Zealand, through video mediated performance works. Recorded and edited as temporal markers of live events, these works actively reflect on my uneasy relationship with ‘settling’, as they tease my Pākehā self as a beneficiary of colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Positing landscape as a western constructed narrative of dominion over the natural world enmeshed with colonial grasping of land, I focus on unsettling the landscape habits I have in an exploration sensitive to decolonial possibilities.
This creative research engages with decolonial discourse, which seeks to re-imagine the world on alternative epistemic foundations (Gallien 33) with the aim to dismantle colonial systems of domination (Bell et al. 605), while centering Indigenous voices (Smith Decolonising Methodologies). By utilizing the guidance inherent in a decolonial and feminist approach, these works consist of a series of creative acts which challenge the “common sense” of settler-colonial logic (Rifkin 322) and western landscape conceptions. As a whole these creative works add up to a” 'decolonial gesture”, an act or series of actions that intentionally refer to and challenge colonial norms and systems (Mignolo 14).
The moving locus of these works is The Chrysalis, a 1973 home-built horse float repurposed into an off-grid base and home. Living out of a paddock in Tangimoana was a return to my birthplace and a metaphorical access point to the landscape dreams of my farm labourer forebears. Following the feminist/decolonial strategy to think out of place, this creative body of work is sited in Manawatū, the rohe (home territory) of Rangitāne o Manawatū, Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Kauwhata, where my family has lived for five generations.
Framing my relationship to land in terms of Barclay’s Fourth Cinema, as a “view from the ship,” I draw upon the writings of Eduardo Glissant, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Rosi Braidotti and Maria Lugones, and an awareness of feminist positioning, all of which lend wisdom to subjectivity, relationality, decolonisation and the processual nature of these creative thought/acts. I unpack aspects of the work through the avant garde cinematography of Maya Deren and the performative practices of artists Julieanna Preston, Sally J Morgan, Holly Walker and Marja Helander. With these feminist and decolonial thinkers by my side, this research unfolds over time to become a moving constellation of reflections where works sit in relation to each other. This research contributes to a burgeoning decolonial discourse, including its expression and communication via a performative and lens-based practice. The research offers visual and physical evidence of a person of settler descent grappling with these historical and current cultural and geographical tensions in a series of doings.
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decolonial, performance, art, settler, decolonization, video, New Zealand, feminist, gender, colonialism, landscape, land, Manawatū, decolonizing, decolonising