LINK Praxis

Editorial

Marcos Mortensen Steagall — 2023-10-24

Welcome to the first edition of the LINK Praxis Practice-led Design Research and Global South Journal. Established as an open-access academic journal, LINK Praxis aims to foster critical and innovative thought on practice-led design research practices emanating from the Global South. By bridging practice with academic integrity, we are committed to publishing high-quality, peerreviewed work centred on novelty, soundness, impact, and ethics. In our inaugural issue, we present ten articles that highlight the significance of practice as both an inquiry mode and a result of scholarly research, positioned from Aotearoa New Zealand. This edition celebrates a diverse range of contributors: eight Māori, one Pasifika, and two South American researchers who have collaborated closely with Māori counterparts. Journeying through this volume, readers are invited to engage with the multifaceted layers of Indigenous thought — from the realms of filmmaking and photography to the art of storytelling and performance. Each narrative provides a perspective into Global South’s and the use of creative practice as a methodological approach to scholarly research. The issue serves as an homage to the trailblazers – those who, through innovation and critical thinking, are reshaping the contours of design research with relationships with indigenous knowledge. We invite you to embrace the inevitable metamorphoses, challenges, and prospects that lie on the horizon, working to mould a design future that harmonises ancestral sagacity with design practice.

Bridging Binaries: Navigating Bicultural Space in Film Design

Welby Ings — 2023-10-25

This article examines how a researcher (a filmmaker whose lineage is both Indigenous and European) navigates ‘betweenness’ that is sometimes disruptive to cultural conventions. As a gay man who identifies as bicultural, I orient myself with, within and across worlds. From this position my approaches are largely shaped by the Māori values of manaakitanga (caring for the needs of people), kaitiakitanga (protecting and caring for all creation) and whanaungatanga (creating and sustaining relationships). These are supplemented by values emanating from my position as a gay activist and the resulting concerns with social justice and facing down the erasure, marginalization or exoticization of LGBTQ+ identities. Although I am of mixed race ancestry, I see my bicultural positioning as a way of accessing a form of epistemological pluralism that embraces intellectual, physical, social and spiritual ways of knowing. Thus, when creating the feature film Punch (Ings, 2022), it was necessary to find a place to stand, in practice, as a bicultural story designer. This involved actualizing productive care inside how the film production was experienced, working in communion with the land as a living being, and navigating tensions of transgression by establishing facilities for cultural guidance and insight within the project.

Urupā Tautaiao: Revitalising ancient customs and practices for the modern world

Hinamatau McNeill — 2023-10-25

Supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, managed by Royal Society Te Apārangi, this urupā tautaiao (natural burials) research has an explicit decolonising agenda. It presents a pragmatic opportunity for Māori to re-evaluate, reconnect, and adapt ancient customs and practices for the modern world. The design practice output focus is the restoration of existing graves located in the urupā (burial ground) of the Ngāti Moko, a hapū (subtribe) of the Tapuika tribe that occupy ancestral land in central North Island of New Zealand. In preparation for the gravesite development, a series of hui a hapū (tribal meetings) were held to engage and encourage participation in the research. The tribe drew on the expertise of an ecologist landscape architect and tohunga whakairo (master carver/artist) to transform the graves into a work of art. Surrounded by conventional gravestones, and using only natural materials, the gravesite aspires to capture the beauty of nature embellished with distinctively Māori cultural motifs. Low maintenance native plants are intersected with three pou (traditional carvings) that carry pūrākau (Māori sacred narratives) of life and death.

Mahi Whakaahua: A practice-led methodological approach into documentary filmmaking through a Kaupapa Māori Paradigm

Toiroa Williams — 2023-10-01

It is generally accepted practice that research writing should include a review of the methodology and methods designed to increase the chances of the discovery of new knowledge in the field of inquiry. However, in indigenous research, the over-reliance on Western paradigms and methodological frameworks can be problematic, because they do not consider the ontology and epistemology located in ancestral practices. By considering the Māori doctoral thesis: ‘Tangohia mai te taura’ (Take this rope), this article argues that a methodological approach for indigenous researchers must be extended to embrace many forms of knowledge, including Kaupapa Māori as an approach to scholarly research, informed by historical narratives, and knowledge based on oral repositories of experience that exist in indigenous waiata (songs), oriori (chants), karakia (prayers) and pūrākau (storytelling). As an extension of this, an indigenous inquiry that seeks to exhume lived experiences of injustice must also frame the genealogically connected, orally accounted experiences of communities as valued repositories of knowledge when designing a methodological approach to filmmaking.

Te Whare Rangahau (The House of Research): Designing a methodological framework for an artistic inquiry into Māori gender, identity and performance.

Tangaroa Paora — 2023-10-25

This article considers the methodological framework constructed for the doctoral thesis Takatāpui Beyond Marginalisation: Exploring Māori Gender, Identity and Performance. In this practice-led artistic inquiry the researcher adopted a critically iterative approach where “research questions were initially exploratory and reflective, serving to create an internal dialogue between the practitioner and the making” (Tavares & Ings, 2018, p. 20). The formative question underpinning the thesis asked:

How might an artistic reconsideration of gender role differentiation give a unique voice to takatāpui tāne identity?¹

The research sought to illuminate an experiential context, then generate visual and performance artifacts where the principle of irarere within gender identity and sexual orientation, might find a purposeful place to stand within te ao Māori (the Māori world view).²

Emanating from a Kaupapa Māori paradigm the study employed the methodological metaphor of Te Whare Rangahau, a research space that is populated with methods including karakia (incantation), kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) interviewing, iterative experimentation, pakiwaitara (poetic inquiry), photography, and choreography. In the thesis, Te Whare Rangahau integrated a number of features from Robert Pouwhare’s (2020) Pūrākau framework for practice-led, artistic inquiry - specifically his observation that in much artistic Māori research, through mahi (practice) and heuristic inquiry, the researcher may draw sustenance from both the realm of Te Kura Huna (what is unseen, genealogical, esoteric or tacit), and Te Kura Tūrama – (what is explicit and seen). Within Māori epistemology, a dynamic of mahi (practice) draws nutrients from these realms, synthesising and connecting elements in the generation of print based and performative artistic outcomes.

Unprecedented Times: Māori Experiences of Pandemics Past in the Time of COVID-19

Nicolas Jones — 2023-10-25

Covid-19’s (mate korona) spread across the world and the implementation of wide sweeping government instigated public health measures saw a growing notion globally that we are living in “unprecidented times”. This notion was also expressed in Aotearoa New Zealand with the arrival of Covid-19 to Aotearoa New Zealand shores in early 2020. While Covid-19 presents a new epidemiological threat, examination of Aotearoa’s historical twentith century pandemics and sporadic outbreaks of infectious diseases show similar challanges to tikanga Māori (Māori protocols, customs, and behavioural guidelines) as COVID-19 presents today. This paper contextualises Māori experiences of epidemics and pandemics of the past and explores the historical and contemporary assaults on Māori customs during times of disease. Drawing on archival research, contemporary sources, and interviews with kaumātua (Māori elders) conducted during Aotearoa’s first national lockdown in 2020, this study scrutinises both historical and contemporary New Zealand Governmental responses and media attitudes towards tangihanga (funarary rites) and hongi (pressing of the noses) during pandemics and epidemics. Alongside examining the cultural significance and importance of tangihanga and hongi to Māori, this study shows that far from being “unprecedented times”, many of the same challenges to these practices Māori have faced during past pandemics and epidemics have remerged during COVID-19. Through this examination, this study highlights that a pattern exists where tikanga Māori practices come under public and political scrutiny and attack during pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks. Kaumātua are bastions of tikanga and collective memory of pandemics and other crises of the past and have integrated tikanga based disease mitigation measures into their intergenerational collective memory corpus. This paper highlights both the importance of these tikanga practices to kaumātua, and how tikanga informed kaumātua approaches to COVID-19 public health measure restrictions and their personal hauora (health). By undertaking this study, this paper draws particular attention to tikanga as an imperative aspect of Māori identity that must be understood by health officials, and the continual importance of the tikanga Māori concept of tapu (restricted, set apart, sacred) in mitigating disease and maintaining Māori hauora (health).

‘Asi: Working with the unseen spirit

Cecelia Faumuina — 2023-10-25

In 1993, Wolfgramm referred to the climax in faiva (Tongan artistic performance)¹ as ‘asi (the presence of the unseen). This spirit of artistic expression is an agent sometimes identified when Oceanic people work together to bring artistic projects to their apotheosis. Building on the idea of the unseen spirit that energises and gives agency to artistic work, this article discusses occurrences that surface when young Oceanic people collaborate artistically, drawing on values from their cultural heritage to create meaningful faiva. Emanating from my 2022 PhD study ‘Asi - The Presence of the Unseen, the article considers how, in a group of New Zealand secondary school students aged between 10 and 18, ‘asi brought forward a powerful spirit of belonging that resourced their artistic practice. The research proposed that the ‘asi identifiable at the peak of an artistic performance, might also be discernible before and after such an event, and resource the energy of artistic practice as a whole. The research considered a co-created project called Lila. This was developed by a team of students who combined talents and experiences to produce a contemporary faiva for presentation in 2019. In understanding ‘asi the project drew on student reflections, the researchers experience and interviews with contemporary Oceanic youth leaders who discussed the nature and agency of ‘asi as a phenomenon that might resource artistic practice. The significance of the research project lay in its contribution to a distinctive understanding of ‘asi, such that we might identify and consider its potential agency for resourcing creativity and belonging inside the development and performance of contemporary artistic practices among Oceanic youth.

Rōpū Whānau: A whakawhiti kōrero research methodology

Jani Wilson — 2023-10-25

Kapa haka is not simply the song and dance of Aotearoa’s Indigenous people; it is deeply steeped in mātauranga Māori, and a way of simultaneously exemplifying Māori history, present, and future. Meanwhile, this ever-expanding archive and cartography tool is also a community-focused cultural practice, methodology, pedagogy, and way of life. Contemporary kapa haka - both competitive and for entertainment - fosters, develops, validates, and celebrates the Māori world, the language, and our ‘ways’; arguably the fundamental building blocks of Māori identity and what the West might consider ‘popular culture’. Kia Rite! Kapa haka for screens, is a Marsden funded project from which this article is but a tiny thread. It will focus on the influence and impact of screen production on the art’s ebbs and flows, and the conflicts between maintaining ‘traditions’ and exploring innovation in and towards the Indigenous-led creative academic future. Over the last century, kapa haka has evolved exponentially, and as the wider project will explore, in large part, as a response to the advancement of screen technologies.

An important strand in Kia Rite! will investigate the kapa haka audience, employing a refined iteration of Rōpū Whānau (Wilson, 2013), a conversation/discussion facilitation methodology initially designed for whakapapa related groups who were asked to respond to screen materials. For Kia Rite! Rōpū Whānau will view archival to contemporary kapa haka as a whānau, whilst also framing a multi-generational audience study that extends to include tamariki (children and youth). The inclusion of tamariki veers sharply from most human ethics practices in research, and thus presenting this as an idea may be a vanguard, and is undeniably experimental considering the sharp contrast from common research praxes. Exploring such responses to screened kapa haka in this way demands a kaupapa Māori/a-iwi design that is familiar to the whānau and has their best interests at heart. This article contends the best practice for such interaction is a whakawhiti kōrero (crossing over of stories, narratives, talks) methodology to reflect and embody the whakataukī (proverbial saying) “he aha te kai o ngā rangatira? He kōrero” which literally translates “what is the food of chiefs? It is talk”. This is an important aphorism since in te ao Māori ‘chiefliness’ isn’t what goes into someone’s mouth, but what comes out. Although related because it sits in the research paradigm, the distinction between focus groups and Rōpū Whānau is stark in many ways, as the latter were developed specifically to move beyond ‘safety in numbers’ methodologies (Kitzinger, 1994) to a ‘safety within the whānau’ format, as will be delineated in this article. Encouraging participants from the same whānau and including tamariki effectively invites the duty of care to protect tamariki mokopuna and other vulnerable parties, and in actuality provides an extra layer of ethics to alleviate some of the institutional anxiety about dealing with young people. This critical article brings forward the fundamental elements of Rōpū Whānau and for the most part have provided a platform for experimentation, both a nod to previous research methods and at crucial times, sharply diverge from them, and centrally pushing the boundaries of what group research is and what it can be.

Ki te kapu o takau ringa - In the Hollow of my Hand: Wānanga based Photographic Approaches to Place Representation

Rodrigo Hill — 2023-10-25

Ka matakitaki iho au ki te riu o Waikato

Ano nei hei kapo kau ake maaku;

Ki te kapu o taku ringa,

“I look down on the valley of Waikato,

As though to hold it

In the hollow of my hand.”

The words above are from Māori King Tawhiao’s maioha (song poem), a representation of his love for his homelands of the Waikato and the region known today as the King Country. Now imagine a large-scale photograph: a close-up of cupped hands, holding an object carefully. The phrase above informs Professor Tom Roa and Dr. Rodrigo Hill’s current research project titled ‘Te Nehenehenui - The Ancient Enduring Beauty in the Great Forest of the King Country’. With this project still in its early stages the research team will present early and ongoing creative practice developments, discussions and ideas about photography practice, wānanga, and place representation. The project promotes the use of wānanga (forums and meetings of focus groups through which knowledge - mātauranga - is discussed and passed on) and other reflective practices, engaging with and led by mana whenua (guardians of the land) providing a thread which will guide the construction of the photographic images. The research fuses wānanga, that is Mātauranga Māori (Māori Knowledge), and photography practice in novel ways, aiming to move away and challenge core photographic conventions and Eurocentric modes of place representation. Roa and Hill understand wānanga as a fluid practice of engagement which can be with mana whenua or with the taiao - the environment - either by itself or with the mana whenua. This is the essence of Kaupapa Māori Research.

Immersive Photography: a practice-led methodological approach to landscape photography research

Marcos Mortensen Steagall — 2023-10-25

In recent years, there has been a notable shift in the design field towards practice-led research, driven by the recognition of design practitioners as valuable contributors to knowledge production. However, the lack of well-defined methodologies for conducting practice-led research in academia has posed challenges to its progress and widespread adoption. This article aims to address this gap by providing examples of effective methodologies in practice-led research. The article emphasises the importance of robust frameworks that foster a symbiotic relationship between design practice and research, integrating theoretical inquiry and hands-on experimentation. It presents an innovative approach developed by the author during their PhD, which contributes to the ongoing discourses on practice-led research in design. The proposed methodology consists of four stages: the landscape, data gathering, reflection, and feedback. By engaging in iterative cycles of design exploration, critique, and reflection, the researcher gains a holistic understanding of design processes and their outcomes. This approach facilitates an in-depth exploration of the complex interplay between design concepts, materials, and the surrounding landscape. Ultimately, this article contributes to the discourse on practice-led research in the design field by introducing a methodology that embraces the practical, creative, and theoretical aspects of design inquiry. It responds to the increasing demand for examples of effective methodologies and provides a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners engaged in practice-led research at the PhD level.

The Māui Narratives: from bowdlerisation, dislocation and infantilisation to veracity, a Māori practice-led approach

Robert Pouwhare — 2023-10-25

In Aotearoa New Zealand, as a consequence of colonisation, generations of Māori have been alienated from both their language and culture. This project harnessed an artistic re-consideration of pūrākau (traditional stories) such that previously fractured or erased stories relating to Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga were orchestrated into a coherent narrative network. Storytelling is not the same as reading a story aloud or reciting a piece from memory. It also differs from performed drama, although it shares certain characteristics with all of these art forms. As a storyteller I look into the eyes of the audience and we both construct a virtual world. Together the listener and the teller compose the tale. The storyteller uses voice, pause and gesture; a listener, from the first moment, absorbs, reacts and co-creates. For each, the pūrākau is unique. Its story images differ. The experience can be profound, exercising thinking and emotional transformation. In the design of 14 episodes of the Māui narrative, connections were made between imagery, sound and the resonance of traditional, oral storytelling. The resulting Māui pūrākau, functions not only to revive the beauty of te reo Māori, but also to resurface traditional values that lie embedded within these ancient stories. The presentation contributes to knowledge through three distinct points. First, it supports language revitilisation by employing ancient words, phrases and karakia that are heard. Thus, we encounter language expressed not in its neutral written form, but in relation to tone, pause, rhythm, pronunciation and context. Second, it connects the Māui narratives into a cohesive whole. In doing this it also uses whakapapa to make connections and to provide meaning and chronology both within and between the episodes. Third, it elevates the pūrākau beyond the level of simple children’s stories. The inclusion of karakia reinforces that these incantations are in fact sacred texts. Rich in ancient language they give us glimspes into ancient epistemologies. Appreciating this elevated state, we can understand how these pūrākau dealt with complex human and societal issues including abortion, rape, incest, murder, love, challenging traditional hierarchies, the power of women, and the sacredness of knowledge and ritual. Finally, the presentation considers both in theory and practice, the process of intergenerational bowdlerisation.