Texts | CHRISTOPHER BRADDOCK

Moana Nui Social Art Practices in Aotearoa

07-12-2018

Vea, John; Braddock, Chris. Moana Nui Social Art Practices in Aotearoa. DATJournal Design Art and Technology, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 2, p. 291-324, Nov. 2018. ISSN 2526-1789. Available at: https://ppgdesign.anhembi.br/datjournal/index.php/dat/article/view/95

This article discusses emerging methodologies in Moana Nui a Kiwa (MNak) (Pasific Peoples) performance art practices in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). It explores the ways in which artistic research guides research questions and final research outputs within the context of a practice led PhD degree. John Vea’s (Tonga/NZ) underlying research methods reference Timote Vaioleti’s work on ‘talanoa’ as a MNak notion about respectfulness in personal encounters with people. Vea’s performance practice engages with MNak minority groups — exploring tropes of migration and subsequent interaction with hegemony — where ‘co-operations’ with collectives and small groups challenge some traditional research models of leadership and authorship. These indigenous approaches encourage a different reading of theorists such as Chantel Mouffe and her ideas of navigating artistic activism and agonistic spaces of shared cooperation.

Rehearsing Practice as Research

07-12-2018

Texts, Writing

Webb, Olivia; Braddock, Chris. Rehearsing Practice as Research. DATJournal Design Art and Technology, [S.l.], v. 3, n. 2, p. 325-352, Nov. 2018. ISSN 2526-1789. Available at: https://ppgdesign.anhembi.br/datjournal/index.php/dat/article/view/92

This article explores ways that artists work with people in forms of social performance art practices. Approaching, directing and organising people involves an ethics of attentiveness, including modes of listening, that allows for diverse research outcomes. In this context, Lisbeth Lipari’s 2014 book Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement discusses philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the face-to-face encounter with another as a meeting that must embrace difference. Practices of listening and attunement play a critical role in Olivia Webb’s PhD project at AUT University where her art practice engages participants and diverse communities in music and song. For these projects Webb draws from her experience as a trained choral singer and performance artist and asks how listening is translatable across different cultural groups. These practice-led methodologies, based on ideas of participation, actively amend and redirect her projects.