NAU MAI HAERE MAI!
Welcome to AAANZ 2019 Ngā Tūtaki – Encounter/s: Agency, Embodiment, Exchange, Ecologies in Tāmaki Makaurau!
We hope that you will enjoy the conference and your time with us in Tāmaki.
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This is your ultimate go to guide for the conference such as wayfinding, wi-fi connectivity, information about registration, breaks, key meetings, abstracts, biographies and much more!
The theme for this year’s conference had as its starting point a critique of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Tuia Encounters 250th commemorations taking place in Aotearoa in 2019: the notion of encounter was one to conjure with. What is understood by the word encounter? Does it connote an unexpected meeting or a purposeful exchange? What is gained and what is lost? How do we understand encounter/s in 2019? For some, encounters manifest as social, cultural and global provocations, whilst for others, encounters represent the history of exchange and colonial settlement. Recent events, both locally and globally, have highlighted the urgency for wider conversations regarding encounter. For this year’s conference we wanted to encourage presentations that re-consider disciplinary boundaries to counter dominant narratives and offer decolonising strategies and alternative viewpoints within the arts and cultural sectors. In this way, encounters have the power to be transformative.
The conference has four major themes:
Agency Embodiment Exchange Ecologies
The dynamics of Agency are contextual and are often influenced by hierarchies that determine who speaks and when, whose voices are heard, listened to and valued, and which histories are written and passed on. Embodiment explores how a diversity of cultural traditions and historical encounters are written into and onto the body. In this sense encounters are embodied with the body potentially becoming a battleground for contesting normative, gendered and colonial models of what a body is, or can be. Exchange often describes the art of giving one thing and receiving another, sometimes at the expense of balances in power, gender, and mātauranga/knowledges. Ecologies are characterised by relationships within complex networks of natural, social and cultural systems. The cultural properties of land are determined by the specifics of worldviews that produce ways of engaging with and caring for the environment. In what ways can whenua/landscape be considered as medium rather than genre, and be used as a stimulant for conversations about ecological crises?
Four keynote speakers will lead discussion on these themes. We are honoured to have Distinguished Professor Bob Jahnke speak about his own history of encounters and about living as an artist in Te Ao Māori with its inherent responsibilities to whanau, hapū and iwi. From Edinburgh, Professor Jill Burke joins us to explore the implications for the appearance of the female body of being under constant surveillance and policing, addressing the theme of embodiment. New Yorkbased Dr Maura Reilly, previously Professor of Art Theory at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in Brisbane is known to many in our field for the game-changing book on agency which she published last year with Thames and Hudson, Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. We are so grateful to these overseas speakers for putting their bodies and minds through the torment of long distance flying to join us here for these few days. Maura Reilly’s visit has been supported by the Chartwell Trust and Jill Burke’s by Faculty of Arts Research Support Funds. Unfortunately, due to recent surgery, Professor Geoffrey Batchen is unable to present the last key note, Going Postal: Photography and Exchange, and this will be read by Dr Sophia Powers who was appointed to the Marti Friedlander Lectureship in Photographic Practices and History at the University of Auckland in 2019.
This conference has been organised collaboratively by the Elam School of Fine Arts, the Art History Department at the University of Auckland, St Paul Street Gallery at Auckland University of Technology, Whitecliffe College of the Arts and Unitec Institute of Technology with support from the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and the Chartwell Trust.
The AAANZ Conference 2019 is supported by the Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae, and the School of Architecture, Unitec Institute of Technology, Waipapa Marae, Elam School of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, ST PAUL St Gallery and the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies at Auckland University of Technology, Whitecliffe College of Art and Design, the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and the Chartwell Trust.
The University of Auckland is proud to acknowledge Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei as mana whenua and the special relationship they have with the University of Auckland City Campus. Mana whenua refers to the iwi and hapū who have traditional authority over land. We respect the tikanga (customs) of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei as mana whenua and recognise their kaitiakitanga (stewardship) role over the land the City Campus is located on.
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