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S2 Wk2 - CIRCUIT Cast 93: Alex Monteith

Updated: Jul 27, 2022

I saw this exhibition at Artspace last year and was struck by Monteith's work Deepwater Currents. After looking it up again on the Artspace website I came across this podcast interview with the artist - below are some notes...


Born Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1977 and moved to Palmerston Nth, New Zealand in 1987 with family. Currently live and work in Auckland. Completed BFA in Photography in 2001, MFA in Intermedia and the time based arts and DocFA at the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. Between 1999 and 2012 actively involved in art discourse through exhibition, panel discussions and gallery floor talks (art galleries, film festivals, TV and radio both nationally (NZ) and internationally). Also a competitive surfer for 6 years, was the Irish National Women’s champ in 2001 and represented Ireland in both the 2002 ISA world surfing games in Durban, S.A. and the European Surfing Championships in 2001 in addition to competing on the NZ national circuit.


Mana Moana Resident Israel Randell talks to Alex Monteith about her new CIRCUIT Artist Cinema Commission Deepwater Currents.



Notes:

- approached this work from wanting to use the filmic process to understand te moana as someone tauiwi and living in the pacific for many years (originally from Ireland)

- using film to make studies that are attentive to the place and space, as well as in making art; very interested in the politics like a kind of thinking plane around te moana; has a personal relationship to it as a surfer and with a family living in Piha that has connections to Samoa and Ireland (many island countries in the mix)

- culmination of 5 months of work, studying the currents and ocean at Piha while wanting to connect the specifics and the narratives/study around what is coming in in the waves and currents

- Covid-19 pandemic happened in the middle of this time period, which mean we couldn't connect with anyone else; pushed to look at the home studio as a space to connect to own archive; had gathered information on storms that had affected the Atlantic in Ireland in 2015, and drew back on these when considering the currents coming in and out of Piha

- the film touches on bits of lore, does observation from a day to day basis on the coastal area around Piha, and around Whatipu once the lockdowns lifted; everything else had been made in that space in the studio, drawing from the archive, from the internet and distant friends, and from the local beach and ocean

- process of unlearning of terminology and assumptions in a neo-colonial era, particularly ones around claims on the ocean; within the science realm; on one hand some trouble there with the calculating nature of it, but on the other it becomes a method of connecting and reconnecting to the sea in a holistic and philosophical way

- in reflecting on the water at Piha, began looking into thermohaline circulation: the large-scale circulation of seawater driven by surface temperature and salinity levels; takes around 1000 years to make a complete circuit; started to look at narratives speaking of the sea both in Ireland and in Aotearoa, different cultures and references to these cycles

- literature in Ireland, specifically poetry, was looked at; one story, The Three Waves of Erin, were recorded and passed down by monks over centuries; the waves were understood by the sound of them on specific coasts, this mirrored the ability of certain rangatira to divine the sounds of the waves and predict events based on their nature; an interesting cross-cultural connection of listening to the note of the water and the way it acts across different cultures throughout the ages... sacredness of sound; the sound reflecting off each bay and cove is different depending on where you stand; there are places and bays in all countries that have a specific note

- the water that comes in to Piha has come from somewhere else and will go on to somewhere else; was interested in where the water went, including in relation to stories that have been told about it over the centuries (those records of those specific encounters with that same water in its journey)

- in terms of Whatipu and Piha, the screen image has often been about telling a story other than it (i.e. using it as a backdrop for something else), so was interested in giving these places their own arena and spending time studying what that might be in filmic terms

- as tauiwi, thought about the concept of settlement; relationship and history of Te Kawerau ā Maki iwi, and specific lands held and navigated under colonization; thinking about the legends and stories of these places; political aspects re. the Treaty of Waitangi and land settlements

- concept of sovereignty, working through that; was interested in the way of trying to listen to the stories of taniwha or that touch on Taitomo island at Piha (still owned by Te Kawerau a Maki) that speak of warnings; complexity in language; paying attention to ocean time, korero and lunar cycles allowed her to pull back out of these colonial language systems and reconnect with the ocean on a more holistic level

- filmic language itself has its own complex relationship; a tool under capitalism, the potential to be using a potentially toxic language to undo some of the issues being looked at; one way to get around this was to think of the flow of ions in the filmic process relating to the flow of water, but then began considering the relationship to the iron sands and mining of minerals needed to process film... continued getting looped back in and out working through these relationships in the projects process; interconnectivity unavoidable and complex

- process of attentiveness; interested in the ways we live in relation to sign, in relation to the sea...

- sometimes observing something in its lulls reminds us of its own agency, sovereignty or power; noticing that through taniwha, cycles, waves, stories... a humbling experience, but also invigorating and connective

- observes places that held stories around taniwha as they can be stories that hold warnings for us; looked at that aspect in both science (rogue waves) but also storytelling; an unpredictability but remaining mythology around certain dangerous spaces

- large systems are incrementally changing due to human activity, from as local as iron sands mining or land moving to climate change; observing a relationship with the water will always tell something back

- working in a film allowed for a linear format and narrative structure, the use of multiple clips, text overlay, narration, etc.; there was initially a natural feeling of linearity to the shooting of footage, which she was conscious was a quite Western/colonial way of thinking about time (one thing after another); in order to break this order of time and challenge this notion, footage was intentionally put out of sequence or not in the order that it had been shot; cycles back and forth between spaces and questions


Overall, much interconnection and exploration between personal history and connection to place, connection with the histories and stories around ocean and water from multiple avenues - by indigenous peoples, under colonial settlement, via political institutions, mythology, personal connection, distance, science, film etc.; poses many questions and meanders through different spaces and histories in the process of exploring from a particular starting point; a depth to the research and narrative storytelling that reflects the subject of the narrative itself in its fluidity and nebulous nature...


“I was thinking about what you think is knowledge, what you find out through machinery, and what you find out through attending to things that you see.” - https://www.circuit.org.nz/writing-and-podcast/circuit-e-book-sovereign-pacific-pacific-sovereigns

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