LINK 2023 Conference Proceedings

Introduction to LINK 2023

Marcos Mortensen Steagall — 2023-12-20

Robert Pouwhare é um diretor/produtor de televisão e desenvolvedor de aplicativos com 40 anos de experiência em produção de radiodifusão. Como artista, expôs pinturas e uma instalação escultural no Museu Nacional da Nova Zelândia, no Te Papa Tongarewa e na Galeria de Arte de Wellington. Ele também compôs músicas e é letrista de mais de 50 canções originais destinadas a crianças da kohanga reo (pré-escola de imersão no idioma maori) em um esforço conjunto de revitalização do idioma.

Mai Tawhiti: a story of research collaboration in Aotearoa New Zealand between a Māori and a non-Māori practitioners

Marcos Mortensen Steagall — 2023-12-24

In recent decades, there has been an emergence of academic discourse about the Global South and Indigenous knowledge internationally, opening opportunities for practice-led research due to the rich epistemologies from Aotearoa. In New Zealand, Māori designers and artists have enriched and redefined the conceptual boundaries of how research is conducted in the academy by providing access to different ways of knowing and alternative methods for leading and presenting knowledge. Despite the exponential growth in global interest in Indigenous knowledge, there remains scant research on creative collaborations between Māori and non-Māori practitioners. Engaging in these collaborative approaches requires adherence to Māori principles to ensure a respectful process that upholds the mana (status, dignity) of participants and the research. This presentation focuses on a collaborative partnership between Māori and non-Māori practitioners that challenges conceptions of ethnicity and reflects the complexity of a globally multi-ethnic society. This presentation was articulated through the poetic photographic installation called 'Tangata Whenua,' supporting a practice-led PhD project entitled 'KO WAI AU? Who am I?'. This project explores how a Māori documentary maker from this iwi (tribe) might sensitively address the grief and injustice of a tragic historical event. In this creative partnership, the researchers collaborated to record the land still bearing the painful remnants of the colonial accounts of the 1866 execution of Toiroa’s ancestor Mokomoko. This presentation contributes to the understanding of cross-cultural and intercultural creativity. It discusses how the shared conceptualization of ideas, immersion in different creative processes, personal reflection, and development over time can foster collaboration.

Carnival Land: An creative consideration of sequential storytelling to discuss cultural dislocation

Tatiana Tavares — 2023-11-05

This presentation will outline the practice-led research project Carnival Land, a picture book that weaves together sequential storytelling and illustration to discuss cultural dislocation. Based on my experiences as an immigrant from Brazil to New Zealand, it provides a narrative in metaphors and a creative orchestration of photomontage, bilinguality, and theatricised multi-page spreads. The story tells of the trials and eventual transformation of a young girl in a foreign land, where aspirations appear as costumes in an annual Carnival parade. Several theoretical frameworks significantly influenced Carnival Land. These were notions of transgression, carnality, and Carnival (Bakhtin, 1968); structure and discourse surrounding bricolage (Strauss, 1962); and writings relating to journey both as a rite of passage (Gennep, 1960; Turner, 1979); and as a process of immigration. Carnival has served as a primary metaphor, underpinning both the story and conceptual aspects of the work. Traditionally, people in Carnival parades participate in a symbolic ritual of identity change and re-negotiation of social and cultural contexts. They do this by assuming (in costume and behaviour) an alternative self. This transformative aspect of Carnival may be seen as a form of symbolical reversal, a brief moment of liminality that allows people to imagine new meanings and values in a ritual of performance. It is through this process that the performative nature of Carnival becomes a transformative process of being. The carnal (bodily) nature of Carnival enables specific linkages between the transformation of the self and the nature of immigration as a transitional physical/social/personal experience. Methodologically, the project emanates from an artistic research paradigm (Klein, 2010) that supports a heuristic approach (Douglass & Moustakas, 1985) to the discovery and refinement of ideas. The project employed autoethnography as a research design intended to facilitate the strategic accessing of personal experience and synthesised it into a fictional work. Thus, the research draws upon both tacit and explicit knowledge in developing the narrative, its structure, and stylistic treatments.

Residencing invitation poétics: a choreographic process

Janaina Moraes — 2023-12-24

This research is a choreographic practice. It is a choreo-lingual exercise that dwells with notions of language, context and displacement as experiences of transition(ing). As a journey towards (and around) home, this trans-national study engages with logics and theoretical positions from Latin America alongside with Aotearoa (New Zealand). As part of my practice-led doctoral research, I propose a choreographic process that is crafted around the notion of an invitation poétics. In this practice, notions of host-guest relationships and the context of art residencies are the orientation devices for discussing issues on hospitality, the position of the “other” and counter-colonial approaches to dance practice, curationship and the locality of art/pedagogy. For this conference, I will focus on the discussion of Art residencies as curatorial terrains of be-longing, stepping into counter-colonial practices of curation. Valuing pluralist, poly relations that engage in response to a situated territory, I navigate with quilombola philosopher and quilombo historian Antonio Bispo dos Santos (2015) and Beatriz Nascimento (2018) to envision curatorial practices as experiences of confluence. To emphasise cura within the notion of curation is, amongst other things, to bring attention to care as the operative practice of election, one that operates less in the realms of selecting and vibrates more through the notions of healing and enchantment – curative exercises of making kin. I will share how, finding in art residencies a fertile ground for exploring invitation poétics, I have invited (and responded to invitations from) a range of people – amongst dancers, non-dancers, artists and non-artists – in extremely different contexts – schools, libraries, houses, churches, villages, studios, streets – and for disparate reasons, or with very distinct focuses – aesthetical, social, pedagogical and so on; and how these experiences led me to learn from notions of aquilombamento, provoking me to think of curatorial practices that value ecosystems of care, learning, experimenting, conversing and co-curating as a re:pairing practice that experiments through sensing belonging with place, time and relations through bio-interaction and cosmophilia.

Co-designing collective housing for a regenerative future: Lessons from Indigenous communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and South America

Priscila Besen — 2023-12-24

Since moving to Aotearoa New Zealand, I have been attempting to learn about Mātauranga Māori and understand how we can embed values from local cultures and traditional knowledges into the design of our future built environments. These learnings help me rethink architectural design and pedagogy not only here, but also in my home country, Brazil, and the wider South American context. In the global context of climate and ecological crises, Indigenous knowledge can help us learn to live lives with a closer connection to the natural environment, to be mindful of the use of natural resources and to be more collective-oriented. Indigenous perspectives are important in our transition to a regenerative future, where we aim to go beyond sustainability to create positive impacts for ecology, health and society. In this context, I have been working with a team of researchers from Auckland University of Technology and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, on a project investigating co-design practices to develop better housing models with Indigenous communities. Indigenous concepts of ‘home’ are multidimensional and often extend beyond the physical and social environments where people live. Although there are diverse cultures across the world, fundamental ideals of ‘home’ are shared amongst many Indigenous communities, such as relationships that connect a person to all that surrounds them, connections to other people, living beings, land, ancestors, stories, languages, and traditions. Most housing options in colonised countries have tended to promote values of individualisation, private property rights and nuclear family units; public housing policies and architectural designs have often been imposed on indigenous communities based on non-indigenous ideals of good housing. However, more recently, these original values and collective forms of living have been re-emerging across the globe, with many successful examples of new collective housing co-designed with Indigenous communities. This presentation will share findings from this research carried out in Aotearoa New Zealand and South America, which investigates contemporary housing solutions co-designed with Indigenous communities. Case studies from different countries are explored, and interviews with architects reveal key lessons learned in participatory practices with residents. The findings show differences and similarities across the Pacific, highlighting key valuable shared principles that can be applied to all forms of housing for a regenerative future, such as multigenerational relationships, connection to the natural environment, shared spaces and resources and initiatives to create a real sense of community. The lessons learned about co-design processes can be valuable for designers working with collective housing in the Global South and other areas across the globe.

The epic and poetics of the Travesía as a space of resistance in design education

Herbert Spencer — 2023-12-24

The "Travesías" are an emblematic practice of the PUCV School of Architecture and Design, recognised as a radical element in the training of designers and architects. They originated not from a pedagogical intentionality but from an artistic impulse inherent in the poetry-craft relationship (and, within the framework of a school, in the teacher-disciple relationship). Their systematisation as a permanent part of the curriculum is a later phenomenon due to their resounding success in disciplinary apprenticeship. The theoretical and poetic foundations of the travesías are multiple and varied, each essential to the school. These include contemplative observation as the primary action of the craft, the permanent question about America and being American, the collective sense in the epic of undertaking a shared adventure and the sense of the Work from its inaugural and gratuitous sense. These elements coexist and intersect and amplify each other, constituting the rich complexity that defines the experience of the voyages. The contemporary context poses severe challenges to these fundamental principles, both in the installation of new subjectivities and new ethos and in institutional and normative aspects. Greater psychological fragility among young people results in a much lesser willingness to engage in physical adventures in wild environments, with less focus and much more fragmented attention. At the institutional level, the judicialisation of education and the right to free education commodify time, threatening the viability of travesías as an enterprise that exceeds mere instruction, to name but a few aspects that threaten them. Moreover, in an age that advocates tackling more significant practical challenges such as energy sustainability, access to clean water, climate change or social inequality, to name but a few, a "poetic purpose" is indeed an oxymoron. Furthermore, it risks being misunderstood as irresponsible: in times of urgency, there is no room for poetry, apparently. The sense of design as a problem solver does not necessarily reveal the depth and richness of the possible. This presentation seeks, first, to critically examine the meaning of travesías in the light of contemporary challenges and, second, to open a dialogue with the academic and professional community to discuss whether these fundamental principles are still recognised as valuable. Also, explore new ways and means of reinventing travesías, especially when their core values are threatened by the cultural and systemic transformations of our time.

Memories and Reveries: photography, memory and diaspora

Rodrigo Hill — 2023-12-24

This presentation aims to explore the intersection of photography with notions of memory and diaspora as catalysers for the development of a lens-based model of representation connected to affect, cultural perception and nostalgia. I will discuss and present my recent creative practice research project titled Desacoplado: Memórias e Devaneios (Displacement: Memories and Reveries) exhibited at the Auckland Museum as part of Toró: é tudo tanto group exhibition from March to October 2023. The project compiles personal archival imagery produced throughout the last twenty years, marking temporal points that preceded or at times ran in parallel with migration experiences to and in Aotearoa. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s notions on diaspora and Svetlana Boym’s take on nostalgia I constructed a theoretical model to support and inform my creative practice developments. Hall asserted that diaspora is surrounded by a sense of loss and connection while Boym discusses nostalgia as a feeling of loss and displacement. These distinctive concepts and views were useful to understand my own condition as an immigrant in Aotearoa, displaced from my home environment and yet part of an ongoing process of becoming. To address these concepts I started a process of reviewing my photographic archive, looking for imagery that could fit a family album of some kind, ranging from snap-shots, family photographs and archival imagery re-worked through montage, cropping, printing and picture framing strategies. This process covered multiple iterative stages and ways of selecting, compiling, curating and presenting the photographs. These methodological stages were useful to shape a model to address the ways notions of nostalgia and diaspora can be discussed and represented through lens-based and curatorial approaches, positioning photography at core as both practice and research methodology. This led to the compilation of 18 photographs, covering various personal moments and responses to diasporic experiences both in Aotearoa and my home country Brasil. My presentation at the 2023 LINK conference will aim to unpack some of the creative decisions, ideas and processes connected to Desacoplado: Memórias e Devaneios, highlighting the value of photography and creative practice as means to address complex research concepts.

Solastalgia: conflict and the fabric of life. Transdisciplinary creative practice research approaches.

Alberto Alvarez-Jimenez — 2023-12-24

The focus of this keynote presentation is to explore the value of transdisciplinary and creative practice research approaches to address complex concepts and principles. One of the outputs of this research was Solastalgia: conflict and the fabric of life, a gallery installation exhibited at Ramp Gallery in August 2023. This collaboration began with conversations between researchers in law, and visual and performing arts, in relation to international humanitarian law, specifically the principles of distinction and proportionality. As the research progressed, the pivot point became the investigation of the concept of solastalgia – the civilian experience of pain and distress caused by destruction of home and home environments. In the broadest sense, all research involves the researchers’ embodiment and especially so in arts-based and creative practice research. More specifically, using embodied research methods to gather and express complex nuanced understandings means paying attention to embodied experiences and their meanings in every moment of research. The work of movement/dance artists draws on heightened attention to sensory input, to proprioception and kinesthetic awareness, the thoughts and emotions in lived experiences in relationship with others and environments around us. In parallel, painting and lens-based approaches engage as methodological and curatorial strategies to immersive and sensorial bodily interpretations. Here responsive painting, photography, video of live and place-based performances were combined to bring nuanced insights into the many layers of the concepts and principles addressed. Bringing un-alike disciplinary knowledges into dialogue through embodied research, art practice and multi-media gallery installation, led to a variety of research iterations, including written, performed and exhibited outcomes. In sharing this keynote, researchers Alberto, Rodrigo, Karen, Declan and Xavier offer insights generated from engaging in transdisciplinary through creative practice research approaches. The research team will unpack and discuss creative practice processes, decisions and iterations as part of a complex methodological system that culminated in the curation of Solastalgia: conflict and the fabric of life as a multimedia gallery installation.

Practice as Research a collective form of activism from a South American perspective

Moira Fortin — 2023-12-24

As a Chilean living in Aotearoa/ New Zealand I am constantly looking to Latin and South America. Living in the diaspora has allowed me to examine and reflect upon the different socio-political issues arising in the region from afar and with perspective. As an actress and researcher, I am on an ongoing exploration considering how to share research projects from a creative activist standpoint, moving beyond traditional academic research publications into forms that are situated and accessed in the exchanges of everyday relationships and resistance. Written academic outputs are primarily intended for reading, although some contain images or photographs that complement and / or enrich the verbal content. These outputs tend to reach a small portion of the population, the highly educated elite with economic means to access books and participate in conferences or symposiums. Practice as research emerges from a rigorous process of research, critical analysis, and embodied distillation of academic texts. Practice as research relates to my aim to share research not only with wider audiences reaching communities with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It also relates to my intention to create work that could resonate outwards, across borders and boundaries, transferring content from one format to another, from the academic world to a medium of expression such as theatre, illustration, dance and/or digital. The concept of transposition emphasizes the creative process that operates in the transition from one medium to another, it “designates the idea of transference, but also that of transplantation, of putting something in another place, of removing certain models, but thinking of another register or system” (Wolf, 2001, p. 16). The transposition process creates a new object, precisely from other languages, cultural contexts, and disciplinary formats (Wolf, 2001). The idea of transmedia transformation certainly applies to my way of finding spaces to share research. Working across languages, Spanish, English, German and French has enabled me to work collectively and in collaboration with other artists, researchers, and activists. These collective actions have been produced through different media and artistic languages where each of us bring our specific artistic experiences, aesthetic incarnations, and gender experiences to inform our research practices.

Wolf, S. (2001). Cine/Literatura: Ritos de pasaje. Paidós.

Waving Spaces Together: The use of photography to produce narratives of proximity

Aline Frey — 2023-12-24

This presentation aims to explore the intersection between migration and photography, tackling two essential questions: How do migrants grapple with their emotions of displacement and settlement through photography? And, how are these coping strategies visually constructed in contemporary photographic projects? Through an analysis of diverse photographic projects, including "Belonging" (Frey, 2022) and "Traces of Brazil" (Frey, 2023), this presentation unravels the intricate ways in which migrant photography weaves together spaces and people across the globe. By closely examining these projects, the goal is to comprehend the visual narratives that emerge and the insights they provide into the migrant experience. Furthermore, this presentation seeks to explore the role of photography in the process of homemaking among migrants. Migrant photography, exemplified in projects like "Belonging" and "Traces of Brazil," congregates in both close and remote spaces, forming a non-physical and internalised territory. This intermediary space, situated between dislocation and settlement and facilitated by photography, becomes a potent mechanism for fostering a sense of belonging. Interestingly, this sense of belonging is not confined to a specific geographic space. Instead, photography, as a medium, offers a means to stand in an interim space of settlement and familiarity, enabling individuals to establish a connection with a sense of place that transcends physical boundaries. In exploring into these dynamics, this presentation aspires to contribute to on-going debates regarding the use of contemporary photography as a tool for producing and disseminating migrant narratives. The aim is to explore the potential of migrant media within interdisciplinary contexts, particularly in terms of dislocation and displacement. Through this exploration, I seek to better understand Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus clivé [cleft habitus] as an internal contradiction and subjective division acquired as individuals move from one social context to another. In conclusion, this presentation aims to shed light on the ways in which photography can display the complex experiences of migrants, offering a different perspective on the intersection of identity, belonging, memory and settlement.

Cultivating global citizenship: Reciprocity, people-to-people relationships, and cultural acknowledgement for building true internationalisation

Ana Azevedo — 2023-12-24

The internationalisation of Higher Education is an evolving non-linear phenomenon, associated with the globalisation of the world economy in the way it affects the needs and objectives of education. Over the past decades it has increasingly become a fundamental part of governmental agendas, through the interconnections between student learning, employment, university governance, education diplomacy, knowledge economy, socio-economic impacts and countries’ strategies to influence international reputation. As a result, it affects global politics, and the world's economy. In a world divided by concepts such as developed and developing economies, colonisers and colonised nations or student sources and student destinations, internationalisation became entwined with historical legacies. It is marked by contemporary challenges that created barriers for the development of a truly reciprocal and collaborative approach to partnerships. The progressive adoption of English as the mainstream language for research publication, the use of migration policies and the concept of full tuition fees for international students reinforced a colonialist, westernised idea of the world that may ignore indigenous goals and epistemologies. While the principle of reciprocity is a key element in the internationalisation discourse, its practical application can be challenging due to historical imbalances. This presentation will explore possibilities where commonalities between Latin America and New Zealand historical, geographical, and social contexts could lead into the development of a more inclusive and equitable approach to internationalisation in Education. The presentation will delve in possible answers for the question: would it be possible to leverage the values brought by diaspora communities, in alignment with those established by the Māori culture, for the development of a new model of internationalisation strategy, valuing developing a more inclusive and equitable approach to internationalisation of higher education? It contributes to an expanded understanding ot the structural aspects of internationalisation through the proposition of non-colonial approaches and a commentary on practice.

Have we asked the children?

Annelore Spieker — 2023-12-24

The ideas of the Spanish-Colombian academic Jesus Martín-Barbero concerning cultural mediations and the night map will be the primary focus of this discussion as the central theoretical framework for comprehending how young people create meaning in the media, particularly worldwide animated films. Even though the theoretical framework was formed within the setting of Latin America, the notions developed by Martín-Barbero are flexible enough to be applied to any media situation. This academic discourse is enhanced by the notions of hybrid culture proposed by Néstor Garcia Canclini. These ideas provide additional foundation for the concepts and theories that are discussed in this work. Within the context of multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand, the theoretical framework was tested with young people attending English-medium schools, formerly known as mainstream schools. Participants ranged in age from six to twelve years old, and there were boys and girls from multiple ethnic origins participating. The data collection took place over the course of three years and used, among different methodologies, work groups (resembling focus groups), online surveys, and interviews. The discussion with the children aimed to discuss sixteen different Disney and Pixar films and their respective twenty-four main characters. The purpose of the conversation was to understand where children feel the characters might have come from and why they have such ideas about those characters, films’ tales, and their places. The research also focused on what characters children and young people would identify the most and the reason behind this decision. According to the research findings, one of the factors that support children in comprehending their surroundings is the cultural context of their household and how the schools they attend provide conversations around the topic of cultural identity. This research aims to show how it is possible to enhance cultural awareness in young people in a fun and light way. A diverse media setting can lead young people to demonstrate more sensitivity to the similarities and differences between two or more cultures and use this in effective communication with members of other cultural groups.

Careta, who are you? Aspects of the carnivalesque in African Brazilian manifestations as strategies of subversion and resistance

Diego Barbosa — 2023-12-24

The element of nonconformity in opposition to the authoritarianism of the official culture present in European folk carnival festivities traveled with European colonisers to the Americas, where they were met by diverse African and Indigenous traditions, giving birth to new forms of manifestation in the melting pot of cultures collateral to colonialism. Existing under a colonial system willing to suppress any subversive or marginal aspects, diasporic Black culture made use of carnivalesque modes of representation to temporarily subvert the authority of the official institutions, having the resistance against dominant power through the crossing of its culture as an important part of surviving in this environment, connected with the local hopes, aspirations and tragedies of those who occupy to this day the margins of society. In Brazil, many of these marginal manifestations happen as festivals connected to the period of catholic celebrations. In this research I focused on how these elements can be identified in the collective popular manifestations of ‘Caretas do Acupe’ and ‘Nego Fugido’, both present in the region of Recôncavo Baiano, in Brazil. The strategies found in these manifestations pervade African-American manifestations associated with black cultural resistance, and display instances where African traditional practices crossed and resignified aspects of European culture, using the carnivalesque as the sign of double articulation that enabled them to create counter-narratives to mock, disrupt and resist colonial power. These ideas were then articulated in the photographic project ‘Careta, who are you?’, which explored narratives created to connect and mix my own moving cultural identity from Bahia while living in Aotearoa.

A glocal design mindset: challenges and opportunities of creative nomads in local and global ecosystems

Raul Sarrot — 2023-12-24

The design landscape –as the world itself– presents ongoing challenging scenarios that evolve hand in hand with technology advancements and the correlated impact on ecosystems and human behaviours. Specifically –at a global scale– it can be observed as a growing trend the emergence of opposing and sometimes colliding creative scenarios: while some design briefs increasingly demand a worldview and adaptable global design mindsets to connect with audiences in diverse ecosystems to deliver value to a challenging economy at scale, others –particularly with an Aotearoa New Zealand lens– are more so inclined to look inwards to recognise, understand and embrace the local indigenous cultures with an empathetic, ethical and mindful approach. With this in mind, what are the challenges and opportunities for diasporic creative nomads to transform these challenges into value-driven participation when adapting to their newly chosen land and related cultural ecosystem? How much of their best natural or learnt empathy –part of their design mindset– can realistically shift, pivot or adapt to incorporate and reflect the culture of the new ecosystem, and how much would they unavoidably still carry ingrained as part of their cultural DNA? Could their cultural background and global experience become an asset to add value as global acumen and –at the same time– help bring fresh perspectives when working in very localised cultural matters? Taking Descartes’ cogito, ergo sum as a starting point (from his 1637 Discourse on the Method, which later was translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”) and weaving diverse philosophical and artistic expressions and schools of thought –such as Wassily Kandinsky, Otl Aicher and Hundertwasser– this piece of research proposes an open dialogue offering insights into how post-diasporic designers could transform the challenges and cultural barriers to add value to their new adopted country or culture.