Wk 24 // Te Tuhi, "Haurere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear" exhibition + "The Giants"

Finally had the time and energy to venture out to Te Tuhi this week, just in time to catch the last few days of their current exhibition, Huarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear. Curated by Janine Randerson and featuring works from 15 artists and collectives, the exhibition text from their website reads:

Over a year of too much weather, artworks radiate outward weather signals and inward presentiments, heat, wind, grief and salt rain. Huarere, the weather, conjures rere, flying, and immersion in the fullness, hua, our saturated atmosphere. Artists give us means to radically imagine meteorological non-beings and other species, while in the midst of human struggles with the ‘one-in-one-hundred-year’ weather events that happen, paradoxically, every few months. sHuarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear at Te Tuhi is a ‘weather station’, a physical enclosure for six online ‘weather reports’ that took place from Matariki 2022 through Koanga, spring, and Ngahuru, autumn, equinoxes and return us now to Ihu o Hinetakurua, the winter solstice, 2023. The oceanic forces of Te Moana Nui A Kiwa drive our rapid weather and animate the artworks across shorelines from Aotearoa to Tonga, Rarotonga, Samoa and Niue. Winds whisper and scream: kupu, words, tohu, signs, rise and fade within the heated, damp atmospheres of our inundating isles. Our ‘weather ear’ attunes to sounds of birds and thunder – agitated, flying away – while our ‘weather eye’ alerts our senses, along with scientific instruments of weather observation. When the ‘atmospheric river’ entered our common lexicon, with each successive cyclone or deluge our bodies hooked into aches and scents of rain on the one hand, and the pulsing electronic blobs that creep across rain radars on screens on the other. In this exhibition, hydrophones or cameras reveal the spirits in glacial lakes and sea foams, while diurnal weathers spur the wind-cry of aeolian choirs and the aleatory electronic scores of remote sensors. Many of the artworks are less contained, expository events than un-presentational, ceaselessly rolling onward, rendering us sometimes helpless and sometimes hope-full. Weather is not just happening to us, we, humans, are happening to the weather. While the rising debt of the climate crisis is not evenly spread amongst all humanity, across the planet we share in innumerable losses: whenua, biome, creatures, people. Huarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear is Te Tuhi’s contribution to the World Weather Network, a platform connecting 28 arts organisations across the earth to document their collective experience of the new weathers. To signal the presence of this network, we have invited Emirati artist Nujoom Alghanem to present an image and sound work from her documentary film Honey, Rain and Dust (2016). Her work, like a postcard from a different clime, is inscribed with the Emirati experience of endless blazing Summer, full of sounds of a desert landscape, and the agitated bees that maintain life.

Wandering through the exhibition, I was struck by how immersive it was over all. There are several works that have gone into its curation, each with their own space within it, and the effect of them being in the space collectively evoked a feeling of collaboration and expansiveness that brought home the theme of the exhibition on a somatic level. I especially loved how the soundtracks of several which wove together through the space, intertwining with their neighbours and building on the feeling of being immersed in an ongoing happening of weather and experience.

Seeing these works has given me some inspirations for how I could potentially approach my own work in studio.

Of those present, I found myself gravitating back towards MĀKŪ te hā o Haupapa: Moisture, the breath of Haupapa (2023), an audio-visual installation featuring a large, dual channel projection and multichannel audio soundtrack:

Collaborating artists: Ron Bull (voice); Stefan Marks (programming); Janine Randerson (video); Rachel Shearer (sound); Heather Purdie, glaciologist and scientific advisor, University of Canterbury Live data stream courtesy of NIWA | Climate, Freshwater & Ocean Science The cracking and melting Haupapa glacier and lake, Aotearoa’s fastest growing body of water, are present at Te Tuhi through a live cast of mākū, life-giving moisture. Tiny bubbles of ancient breath and atmosphere are pressed inside Haupapa’s glacial ice—including sea breezes, pollens, carbon dioxide and methane, as well as the ash of Australian fires. Ron Bull’s voice, recorded live on the lake, is woven through the sound and images to gift and acknowledge Kāi Tahu matauraka, words and names of the elemental ancestors. Glaciologist Heather Purdie’s research has centred on Haupapa lake and Haupapa glacier for many years. She has discovered that the glacier is melting from within crevasses in the glacier accumulation area that retain the sun’s heat; and that at the end of Haupapa, there are submerged ice ramps in the lake, which cause large icebergs to split off that accelerate glacier recession. Rachel and Janine gathered images and sounds from visits to Haupapa glacier in March and September in 2022 with Ron and Heather as guides. Spring is the most turbulent month when ice calves off, separating from the terminus of the glacier and the water is grey, while in March in late summer the water is clear and bright blue. Sound sequences occur in response to specific weathers and wind directions, constructed from atmospheric field and hydrophone recordings from 30 metres deep in the pro-glacial lake, digitally manipulated to create layered ambient textures. The artists relinquish the ordering and qualities of sound and video to the weather conditions of Aoraki, recorded by NIWA instruments in place near the Haupapa glacier. Stefan created a connection hub gathering the NIWA data stream, which is then used by the reactive installation to subtly alter the brightness, direction, and movement of the images and sounds according to the real-time weather conditions, and wind direction. Depending on the weather, the image changes and the sound and vocal sequence is endlessly variable. On days of high solar radiation, bright, clear ice and sun predominate and also move the images on screen accordingly, on cloudy days, the image darkens.

It's hard to capture on camera, but the large space is illuminated purely by the dual projection. In each corner of the room, out of sight on the ceiling, are speakers that play a combination of field recordings - ice crackles and echoes, the voice of the glacier, and periodically that of the narrator. NIWA recordings and data also make an appearance, present through field recordings taken near the glacier and in its surrounding environment. There is a layering of sound - from within/from the glacier itself, from the environment it is situated amongst, and from a perceived human observer - which creates a wonderful ecological interplay. This along with the timelines of ecological, glacial, and human existence illustrated in the work create a beautiful spatiotemporal experience...

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On the way back from Te Tuhi, I decided to make a small detour and attempt some fishing at a favourite spot. The weather that day wasn't exactly ideal by fish standards, and unsurprising to me I returned home empty-handed, but appreciate getting out whenever I can. Doing so always helps ground me when my thoughts are too busy.

Taking in the surrounding environment reminds me of Timothy Morton's "Mesh" in motion and the quiet complexity of existence - the rising and falling tide, the wind across the water's surface, migrating cloud formations, the gradually eroding sandstone cliff of my lookout, neighbouring volcanic and greywacke , and the various signs of biotic life above and below the water... No beginning or end to where everything connects. I think about my own presence there, making sure to leave no trace of me or previous fisherfolk being there, and consider the act of fishing (which is not something I take lightly, nor something I think should be).

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The Giants

I had the opportunity over the weekend to see this film as part of the NZIFF. The Giants is a documentary that follows the life of retired Australian politician and environmentalist, Dr. Bob Brown, and the fight to protect Australia's old growth forests and rivers:

The Giants explores the intertwined fates of the trees and humans in a poetic portrait of environmentalist Bob Brown and the forest. From a seedling to forest elder: the film is a masterclass that draws on Bob’s 50 years of inspiring activism, from the Franklin campaign for Tasmania’s last wild river, to today’s battle for the Tarkine rainforest. Told in Bob’s own words, his story is interwoven with the extraordinary life cycle of Australia’s giant trees, brought to the screen with stunning cinematography and immersive animated forest landscapes.

Throughout the film, numerous voices contribute to its narration - Brown himself along with his friends and family, Aboriginal Australian and Torres Straight Islander activists and elders, scientists from a variety of ecological fields, members of Australia's LGBTQIA+ rights movement, and many others. While the film only begins to touch on the intricacy of life in the old growth forests, together they build a sense of both ecological intricacy and connection, and of human community coming together to work to prevent their further destruction.

I didn't know anything about the film before watching it, but my nerd self was secretly excited to see the use of point cloud and LiDAR technology in the more science-heavy segments. Many of the descriptions of the inner workings of the old growth trees were accompanied by point clouds created from them and their surrounding environments. I think these scenes were effective in contextualising some of the more biology-heavy information and secret inner workings of these spaces in a way that was understandable, regardless of audience familiarity with these topics.

It has also given me some ideas of how I could build my own moving image works further, and perhaps bridge some of the gaps between the science-/technology-heavy imagery I am exploring and the intimacy of experiencing their subjects of origin, which I've been struggling to navigate recently.