What you see you don't see: Lisa Reihana'sDigital Marae
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/21500894.2011.527681
ISSN2150-0908
Autores Tópico(s)Artistic and Creative Research
ResumoAbstract This article offers a two-pronged, perception-based reading of New Zealand Māori artist Lisa Reihana's art installation Digital Marae. It is two-pronged because the article interweaves two voices, offering two responses – one more discursive, one more affective – to the artwork in question. The discursive, theoretical voice draws on the political aesthetics of Brian Massumi, which take as their starting point the processes of sensation and perception occurring during the encounter with an artwork. This approach leads to a delineation of the potential relational 'postures' a body may assume as different dimensions or poles of Reihana's work (with its Māori figures and references and its European aesthetic tropes) are perceived by the viewer, suggesting that via these real but abstract experiences both Māori and non-Māori audiences are given an opportunity to update and expand their feeling for how ancestral and familial and environmental connections can be meaningful in a contemporary world. The affective voice aims to convey to the reader an experience that approximates that offered by Digital Marae, thus prolonging the work's affective flows. The author's concern here is to be faithful to the immanence of the art experience – in this case, the experience of a work that itself conveys a (Māori) world view of immanent relations with gods and ancestors and environment. This concern necessitates occasionally puncturing the theory with affects that fold the reader, and the theory, back into themselves, thus more closely imparting what to the author is most important about Reihana's artwork. Keywords: Lisa Reihana Digital Marae MāoriBrian Massumiperceptionsemblanceaesthetic politicscross-cultural aesthetics Notes 1. Current director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand's National Centre of Research Excellence for Māori Development and Advancement. 2. Quotation paraphrased from seminar notes. 3. A Marcel Breuer Wassily Arm Chair, designed in 1925. 4. A Gerrit Thomas Rietveld Zig-Zag chair, designed in 1932–1934 (originally in oak and brass). 5. As installed at Auckland Art Gallery for the Walters Prize exhibition, 2008. The work has appeared in different incarnations at other New Zealand and international galleries. 6. Sovereignty is for Bataille (1993) attained during moments of absolute 'expenditure' or 'excess', including laughter, pain, orgasm and spiritual ecstasy; moments when any conservative, fixed sense of self is dissolved. Mana is viewed by Māori as a supernatural force given by a god and inherited at birth; humans are the agents but not the source of mana. 7. A New Zealand special effects company. 8. The paintings of C.F. Goldie (1870–1947) and Gottfried Lindauer (1839 – 1926) reflected Victorian attitudes toward Māori ori as an inferior, 'dying race', and are generally perceived as artistically weak, though they are also valued as records of important Mā ori figures in the early postcolonisation period. 9. Reihana's tribal affiliations. 10. Out of loyalty to the perceptual and affective experience of Digital Marae, I too have refrained from filling in details of the myths and traditions it references. But if you're curious, they won't be hard to find.
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