Convened by Eugene Hansen with Cassandra Barnett and Rangituhia Hollis
Saturday 25 May
19:00 – 20:30
Te Kura Hoahoa – School of Design Innovation, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, 139 Vivian Street, Te Aro
Convened by Eugene Hansen, our evening panel discussion will bring together creative practitioners, academics and technologists and connect creative AI practices into the ongoing discussions around machine learning, AI, te Tiriti o Waitangi, and data sovereignty with a focus on AI’s implications for contemporary Māori arts.
Eugene Hansen (Maniapoto) is a senior lecturer at Massey University’s Whiti o Rehua School of Art, Wellington. Focusing on co-authoring and working collaboratively, he has a long-term multimedia art practice exhibiting nationally and internationally. Eugene attributes his interest in collaboration to growing up in a remote, rural Māori community where cultural production was modelled as an inherently collaborative embracing of mātauranga Māori. He lives in Wellington
Rangituhia Hollis is of Ngati Porou and Ngati Kahungunu descent. Born in Napier, New Zealand, he has been exhibiting his art publicly for 20 years. He has Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland (2009). He has a practice that incorporates references to virtual reality, gaming culture and documentary-style home videos, exploring heritage, connection, dislocation and urban Māori experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand’s postcolonial context. His work has been included in significant exhibitions of Māori art including Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces currently at Te Tuhi, Auckland and Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2021.
Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa, Ngāti Huri, Pākehā) is a solo māmā, educator and writer exploring cultural and ecological futures across poetry, fiction, nonfiction and more. She has a PhD in art writing and philosophy (UoA 2014) and a Master’s in creative writing (VUW 2018), and traverses Aotearoa’s cultural divides with visual and aural poetry, ekphrasis, fiction, fictocriticism, bookmaking and theoretical essays. Paper, books, the earth and handmaking have her heart – but always with a speculative, futurist bent. In 2021 she collaborated with <the chronicle of ___> and some AI characters on the chapbook How | Hao and the audio work A Strange Climate. Her painting series ‘Separation Strategies’ was also exhibited that year in Flat Earthers (Engine Room, Wellington). In 2021-2 Cassandra was a founding member of the Wellington-based publishing collective Taraheke (#landbackthroughliterature) before relocating homewards, where she is co-editing a book of whenua stories with her South Waikato hapū. Thus she slides between ancient modes of storytelling and very recent ones, whilst always seeking the folds that give away their proximities. Cassandra has published extensively in many art and literary journals and anthologies. Her most recent book is Ki Mua, Ki Muri (co-edited with Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, 2023), about the contemporary pedagogies of Toioho ki Āpiti School of Māori Visual Art. She is currently completing a book of poetry about kauri dieback, rāhui and constraints (drafted in Waitākere on the Auckland Regional Parks residency); a manifesto/collection of her indigenous fictocriticism; and another speculative chapbook with <the chronicle of ___> and artist Kelly Joseph. Further publications can be viewed at www.cassandrabarnett.com