title: All I remember is forgetting

authors: Hobson, Guy Marcus

subjects: Art

abstract: All I Remember is Forgetting is a novel about the complex weaving of memory, relationships and works of art. We observe these through the eyes of Roger Phillips, whom we first encounter washed up and living in his car after the failure of a third serious relationship. Unsuccessfully married twice, Roger has not navigated matrimony as well as he might. Instead he has escaped into a world of painting, photography and sculpture.
    The main driving force behind the narrative is a wooden box containing Roger’s collection of 600 art postcards. These are pictures collected from galleries and museums around the world. Thirty years in the collecting, it took Roger’s second wife, Margot, only fifteen minutes to pitch them all into a landfill north of Auckland. Also missing were his most treasured books. Gone were all the stories from the myths of the Greeks and Romans on which he fed his imagination. So much so, in fact, that he is convinced that Eris, goddess of strife and discord, has been on a mission to ruin his life. While every book held special meaning, it was to each postcard that Roger attached his most personal recollections – the gallery, the surrounding city, the occasion and the person he was with. Each a complex narrative. All the memories of his life were tied to those small pieces of card; suddenly they were lost for ever. Art had always been Roger’s escape, his safe haven, but also his erotica, wrapping him in the beauty and hidden narratives in the lives of artists and their models. The imperfect fragments of Roger’s life show us that love is not best understood through art. Roger fails to see the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair. Breakage and mending are part of the history of your life, to be celebrated not disguised.

This is a many-layered exercise in ekphrasis, where dramatic verbal descriptions of works of art are layered with descriptions of Roger’s married life. In some cases both become so entwined that they form an entirely new layer of art. The novel weaves the highs and lows of Roger’s journey; both the pain and the humour. Through the lens of great art and its creators we find mirrors, reflections and the distortion between life and art. We travel from Sheffield and London to Paris and New York, before coming firmly to rest in New Zealand.
   
Do not believe everything that Roger tells you, but remember the words of Oscar Wilde: it is only through art that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

text: All I remember is forgetting All I Remember is Forgetting is a novel about the complex weaving of memory, relationships and works of art. We observe these through the eyes of Roger Phillips, whom we first encounter washed up and living in his car after the failure of a third serious relationship. Unsuccessfully married twice, Roger has not navigated matrimony as well as he might. Instead he has escaped into a world of painting, photography and sculpture.
    The main driving force behind the narrative is a wooden box containing Roger’s collection of 600 art postcards. These are pictures collected from galleries and museums around the world. Thirty years in the collecting, it took Roger’s second wife, Margot, only fifteen minutes to pitch them all into a landfill north of Auckland. Also missing were his most treasured books. Gone were all the stories from the myths of the Greeks and Romans on which he fed his imagination. So much so, in fact, that he is convinced that Eris, goddess of strife and discord, has been on a mission to ruin his life. While every book held special meaning, it was to each postcard that Roger attached his most personal recollections – the gallery, the surrounding city, the occasion and the person he was with. Each a complex narrative. All the memories of his life were tied to those small pieces of card; suddenly they were lost for ever. Art had always been Roger’s escape, his safe haven, but also his erotica, wrapping him in the beauty and hidden narratives in the lives of artists and their models. The imperfect fragments of Roger’s life show us that love is not best understood through art. Roger fails to see the philosophy of kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden repair. Breakage and mending are part of the history of your life, to be celebrated not disguised.

This is a many-layered exercise in ekphrasis, where dramatic verbal descriptions of works of art are layered with descriptions of Roger’s married life. In some cases both become so entwined that they form an entirely new layer of art. The novel weaves the highs and lows of Roger’s journey; both the pain and the humour. Through the lens of great art and its creators we find mirrors, reflections and the distortion between life and art. We travel from Sheffield and London to Paris and New York, before coming firmly to rest in New Zealand.
   
Do not believe everything that Roger tells you, but remember the words of Oscar Wilde: it is only through art that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

year: 2021

title: King Lear Beyond Genres: paper for: Shakespeare Beyond All Limits: Australia and New Zealand Shakespeare Association Conference

authors: Houlahan, Mark

subjects: Shakespeare

abstract: King Lear beyond Genre: or, what does Lear really, really want? Famously the two main texts of King Lear, Q1 (1608) and F1 (1623), locate two distinct genres: a “historie” (1608), and then a “tragedie” in 1623. The bulk of the play in either text conforms to genre signals Renaissance audiences would readily understand, and which Shakespeare deploys frequently in plays tragical or historical that draw on Chronicle sources of Roman, British or Danish history. There’s a battle for succession, and rulership, at the end of the final scene, is passed to a new regime. The moral scale of the action is indicated by the frequent use of “high, astounding”, ethico-philosophical terms. When Lear triggers the division of the kingdoms in the first scene of the play, he initiates this kind of tragical history. For the duration of the play, the rest of the characters play lethally inside these genre boundaries. But what makes King Lear so compelling, so baffling and so difficult is that, when he goes into the storm, on the heath, Lear is, in effect, trying to leave that convention-bound play and enter a new realm of discourse altogether. This requires a new kind of dramaturgy, a third kind of genre for which, even now, we don’t really have a name. In the end, Lear enters back into the historical/tragical terrain where the play begins. It’s the friction between these kinds of playmaking, I will suggest, that are at the heart of the text’s “power to claw”.

text: King Lear Beyond Genres: paper for: Shakespeare Beyond All Limits: Australia and New Zealand Shakespeare Association Conference King Lear beyond Genre: or, what does Lear really, really want? Famously the two main texts of King Lear, Q1 (1608) and F1 (1623), locate two distinct genres: a “historie” (1608), and then a “tragedie” in 1623. The bulk of the play in either text conforms to genre signals Renaissance audiences would readily understand, and which Shakespeare deploys frequently in plays tragical or historical that draw on Chronicle sources of Roman, British or Danish history. There’s a battle for succession, and rulership, at the end of the final scene, is passed to a new regime. The moral scale of the action is indicated by the frequent use of “high, astounding”, ethico-philosophical terms. When Lear triggers the division of the kingdoms in the first scene of the play, he initiates this kind of tragical history. For the duration of the play, the rest of the characters play lethally inside these genre boundaries. But what makes King Lear so compelling, so baffling and so difficult is that, when he goes into the storm, on the heath, Lear is, in effect, trying to leave that convention-bound play and enter a new realm of discourse altogether. This requires a new kind of dramaturgy, a third kind of genre for which, even now, we don’t really have a name. In the end, Lear enters back into the historical/tragical terrain where the play begins. It’s the friction between these kinds of playmaking, I will suggest, that are at the heart of the text’s “power to claw”.

year: 2023-12-07

title: Culture and collaborative conservation? Inter-cultural difference and the Maungatautari Project

authors: Harms, Matthew

subjects: Inter-cultural navigation

abstract: This thesis situates and examines the role of sociocultural difference and biculturalism in the Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain project, a multi-stakeholder community-based biodiversity conservation project in the Waikato region of New Zealand’s North Island. In the project, Mana Whenua (local indigenous Māori groups) and Pākehā (New Zealanders of British and European descent) from the area endeavour to interact and partner in the non-profit Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust (MEIT) as its primary stakeholder groups. Utilizing sociocultural anthropology, three years of participant observation, participant interviews, fieldwork data and contextualizing history, the role of culture and issues of biculturalism and partnership are examined in relation to the respective sociocultural backgrounds and identity of project participants. Findings indicate that sociocultural difference in the form of varying beliefs, values, attitudes, practices and protocol, and identity/cultural politics have led to dissonance and strained stakeholder interrelations that negatively affected the project. In some instances, a post-colonial ‘neo-paternalism’ marginalised local Māori cultural input and needs in the project. At other times project participants successfully bridged inter-cultural differences. In these occurrences they created a collaborative, complementary, bicultural partnership which valued, sought to understand, and incorporated differing sociocultural aspects, advancing project goals. Further analysis identified an ongoing risk of future multi-stakeholder dissonance relative to culturally-derived disparate views on such issues as cultural harvesting, species reintroductions and care, ecotourism, development on the mountain, and biodiversity research. Normative solutions are identified which can aid Maungatautari stakeholders and other culturally-heterogeneous multi-stakeholder conservation groups work toward and produce inclusive, inter-cultural partnership.

text: Culture and collaborative conservation? Inter-cultural difference and the Maungatautari Project This thesis situates and examines the role of sociocultural difference and biculturalism in the Maungatautari Sanctuary Mountain project, a multi-stakeholder community-based biodiversity conservation project in the Waikato region of New Zealand’s North Island. In the project, Mana Whenua (local indigenous Māori groups) and Pākehā (New Zealanders of British and European descent) from the area endeavour to interact and partner in the non-profit Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust (MEIT) as its primary stakeholder groups. Utilizing sociocultural anthropology, three years of participant observation, participant interviews, fieldwork data and contextualizing history, the role of culture and issues of biculturalism and partnership are examined in relation to the respective sociocultural backgrounds and identity of project participants. Findings indicate that sociocultural difference in the form of varying beliefs, values, attitudes, practices and protocol, and identity/cultural politics have led to dissonance and strained stakeholder interrelations that negatively affected the project. In some instances, a post-colonial ‘neo-paternalism’ marginalised local Māori cultural input and needs in the project. At other times project participants successfully bridged inter-cultural differences. In these occurrences they created a collaborative, complementary, bicultural partnership which valued, sought to understand, and incorporated differing sociocultural aspects, advancing project goals. Further analysis identified an ongoing risk of future multi-stakeholder dissonance relative to culturally-derived disparate views on such issues as cultural harvesting, species reintroductions and care, ecotourism, development on the mountain, and biodiversity research. Normative solutions are identified which can aid Maungatautari stakeholders and other culturally-heterogeneous multi-stakeholder conservation groups work toward and produce inclusive, inter-cultural partnership.

year: 2018