Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul | Auckland University of Technology (original) (raw)
Papers by Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, Dec 19, 2017
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, 2014
Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2022
The imposition of names […] across the Moana," writes Hūfanga 'Ōkusitino Māhina on page 43 of Cra... more The imposition of names […] across the Moana," writes Hūfanga 'Ōkusitino Māhina on page 43 of Crafting Aotearoa, "has been highly problematic". None of the terms applied by early European explorers to the waters between New Guinea in the West and Rapanui in the East (e.g., Spanish Lake, Pacific Ocean, Oceania) properly describes them. The book renames the region Moana Oceania yet cannot avoid similar problems when describing aesthetic practices of making. Terms like art, arts, crafts, toi, tufunga/tufuga, faiva or nimamea'a-taken from four of the 13 languages in the book-all point to artefacts, practices, histories, hierarchies, knowledges and relationships deemed to be the same in some sense, or at least related. <...>
The book is complex, fascinating, monumentally informative, and sometimes problematic. The latter seems unavoidable, and its lack of conceptual clarity may be related to a still widespread helplessness when faced with the task of classifying the artefacts of ‘the Other’. This, a societal condition, is not the responsibility of the editors, though perhaps a firmer stand on positionality, engaging the world views they are committed to articulate more recognisably, could have been more productive than attempting to produce a unified voice throughout the main chapters. With the benefit of hindsight, Chitham seems to have come to a similar conclusion (Objectspace & Norwegian Crafts, 2020, p. 20:05), but that might have been more difficult to discern in real-time.
This is small fry, though, given the scale of the task they have collectively taken on: “terms like ‘art’ or ‘craft’ and the typical objects that they can accommodate need to be shaken up – and perhaps even be replaced entirely” (p. 12). The result is not only a formidable reference book, but one that exposes the status quo and the staggering amount of work still to do until there is an ‘us’ in ‘our terms’. The book’s conceptual gaps and fissures may even be its greatest contribution to the ongoing ‘crafting Aotearoa’ project: they allow others to enter the debate and articulate different parts from their perspectives.
The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, 2018
Originating half a century ago in Europe, the critique authenticity and identity were quickly tak... more Originating half a century ago in Europe, the critique authenticity and identity were quickly taken up in the USA, and subsequently in countries like New Zealand. Towards the end of the twentieth century, someone using the word ‘authentic’ in New Zealand was immediately under suspicion of essentialism. Māori who did not want to relinquish notions of authenticity and identity often became targets of such criticism. The notion of identity is, of course, further complicated in diasporic situations, where its articulation at the intersection of dwelling and travelling claims continuity within discontinuity. This paper explores notions of identity and authenticity as performance, in the force field of past and present imperialisms and globalisation, through the histories of several ‘travelling houses’ from Samoa and Aotearoa New Zealand. For more than a century, Pacific houses have been displayed in fairs, parks or museums: three Māori wharenui (meeting houses) and a Sāmoan fale tele (council house) were instrumental in performing European and Pasifika identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Three fale and Te Aroha o Te Iwi Māori, the central and largest whare at the Māori village, were built at the Polynesian Cultural Center (Hawai’i) in 1961–63. In 2004, a fale arrived at the Tropical Islands Resort in Brand, Germany, which had been built on commission by tufuga fau fale and was reassembled at the resort. These houses not only signify but per/form identities, according to inconsistent, even conflicting values. Our paper investigates exchanges between three regions, worlds apart yet with shared histories. We first explore notions of place and identity at exhibitions featuring Māori whare and fale Samoa in the USA, Europe and Aotearoa New Zealand. Then, we address aspects of critical regionalism relevant to (post)colonial contexts and, finally, we discuss exhibitions as performative practices. We deliberately see-saw between diverse geographical, theoretical and political positions, to generate relational spaces that transcend geo-political boundaries, yet remain local and specific.
In February 2003, the University of Auckland English department's home page was headed by a curio... more In February 2003, the University of Auckland English department's home page was headed by a curious image: a cropped and horizontally flipped low resolution reproduction of Martin Droeshout's notorious engraving of William Shakespeare for the 1623 folio of his plays. 1 The right side of his face (the left in the original) is marked by a Māori moko (facial tattoo). I will return to this image later. In June 2003, a portrait of Rau, the main character of the video game The Mark of Kri™ accompanied an interview with Jay Beard of Sony America's San Diego Studios at ign.com. 2 Like Shakespeare's, half of his face is covered with what would in New Zealand be seen a Māori moko. Beard describes Rau's world as "one of barbaric disorder" and the portrait has the inscription "Rau is this bad-ass. He really is." The images point to different contexts of appropriation (and counterappropriation) within "virtual worlds" where the internet brings into close proximity instances taking place at great distances and following different trajectories. Alongside a meanwhile widely acceptable fashion of tattooing in many western countries, the wild man (and sometimes woman) is increasingly making a reappearance in the most advanced media systems.
Non-Standard Architectural Productions, 2019
Introduction: Performing Samoa in Germany Googling for an image of a fale Samoa (traditional Samo... more Introduction: Performing Samoa in Germany Googling for an image of a fale Samoa (traditional Samoan house) in 2005, Albert Refiti stumbled across an aerial photo of the former CargoLifter hangar on the former Soviet military airbase, 60 kilometres southeast of Berlin. The roof looked at first like that of a gigantic fale afolau, but a closer investigation of the context revealed that the fale was actually inside it: the hangar houses the Tropical Islands Resort, where a fale Samoa forms part of a Tropical Village and where, from April to November 2005, “The Call of the South Seas” was the evening attraction.
Tourism Fictions, Simulacra and Virtualities, 2019
Culture, tradition and iconicity in tourism At Sinalei Reef Resort &amp;amp; Spa, on the ... more Culture, tradition and iconicity in tourism At Sinalei Reef Resort &amp;amp; Spa, on the south coast of Upolu, Samoa, villas fusing &amp;quot;authentic Samoan architecture with stylish, contemporary décor&amp;quot; are &amp;quot;nestled into the lush landscape&amp;quot; (Island Escapes). Built by Samoan owners and opened in February 1996, it quickly became one of Upolu&amp;#39;s most exclusive resorts. An authentic Samoan experience is promised, &amp;quot;Welcome to our world of pure and natural beauty. With authentically crafted elegance and widely renowned Samoan hospitality, it is the Sinalei generosity of spirit that creates experiences never to be forgotten&amp;quot; (Beautiful Samoa). Even after a rebuild following the 2009 tsunami, it retains &amp;quot;the authentic, generous Samoan hospitality it has always been famous for&amp;quot; (Island Escapes).
Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 2021
In 2019, the Vā Moana–Pacific Spaces research group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) be... more In 2019, the Vā Moana–Pacific Spaces research group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) began to investigate how core Moana and Māori values can be translated from onsite, embodied engagements into digital environments. This was prompted by our wish to provide access to all those who could not travel to attend a conference in late 2021 for our Marsden-funded research project, ‘Vā Moana: Space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity’ (2019–22). The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally reframed this premise, as providing offsite access was no longer simply a ‘nice option’. The crisis challenged us to find out how virtual participation in events can uphold values of tikanga (correct procedure, custom) and teu le vā (nurturing relational space). In particular, our research examines practices foregrounding vā as the attachment to and feeling for place, as well as relatedness between people and other entities. We have observed an emerging conceptual deployment of ...
One might assume that an interest in Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and learning goes hand-in-hand... more One might assume that an interest in Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and learning goes hand-in-hand with an interest in change and diversity – but under certain conditions, the latter tends to overshadow the first. Being open to diversity can, and often does, come at the price of an awareness of difference that is particular to Indigenous peoples. As a consequence, mainstreaming under the banner of inclusion along the lines of gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, or religion (Pope, Reynolds, &amp;amp; Mueller, 2004, p. xiii) can dilute or even undermine Indigenous or, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori people. The inability to understand Māori perspectives can act not only as a barrier to students wanting access to higher, particularly postgraduate education, it can also prevent the emergence of new forms of knowledge and research.
British, German and American traders, bureaucrats and military, rubbed shoulders in Apia, Samoa a... more British, German and American traders, bureaucrats and military, rubbed shoulders in Apia, Samoa as the nineteenth century came to a close. Amongst them, they settled their imperial rivalries by contract in 1899: Western Samoans became German compatriots and were thus presented in 1901 at exhibitions in Frankfurt and Berlin. Thirteen years later, New Zealand (a member of the Commonwealth) took control of Samoa. Accordingly, a Samoan fale (house) was presented at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in Wembley Park and, in 1940, at the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. The fale exhibited in 2005 at the Tropical Islands Resort in Brandt (60km southeast of Berlin), next to five other indigenous houses from tropical regions shares some important features with its predecessors – despite obvious differences. The tension between local and global contexts and customs shaped conception, production and reception in all cases. There is a dynamic awareness of many encounters with Europeans in S...
My Desk is my Castle, 2011
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, 2017
Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts Issue 18: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of mat... more Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts Issue 18: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of material narratives Surface and ornament have been extensively reviewed, admonished, discarded and pursued. More recently there has been a renewed interest in the writing of Aby Warburg and Alois Riegl, while numerous studies have addressed these issues relative to Semper, Adolf Loos, Hermann Muthesius, and Le Corbusier. They have been made prominent by issues of animation and digitation. Incrustations, protuberances, textured expressions, smoothed surfaces, surfaces enlivened as screens, are they ornament or cladding? Interstices 19: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of material narratives pursues the tension between ornament, adornment, object enlivenment, cladding, surface and pattern, and an exploration into the strange animations inherent in surface-pattern continua. It is with this sense of the spatial effects potentiated by surface pattern that we may consider surface / pattern at a range ...
... (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul and Dale Fitchett AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand ..... more ... (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul and Dale Fitchett AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand ... As will become clear, we were unable to answer these questions during our recent projects in the Cook Islands (Dale) and Samoa (Tina). ...
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts
In classical Pacific buildings, figures or textures like lalava (lashings) performed iconic and t... more In classical Pacific buildings, figures or textures like lalava (lashings) performed iconic and technical functions simultaneously. What happens when the latter are assigned to different methods? The Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland (opened in 2004) shows that the figures’ binding features outlast their technical necessity. The building attracts a diverse audience — perhaps because in the right constellations it binds together ancestral knowledge and present practices, despite many concessions to alien regulations and rules of production. However, its Pacific atmosphere also attracts non-Pacific people. What conditions enable arresting patterns on refined surfaces “to symbolise and effect relations of mana” (Tomlinson & Tengan, 2015: 17) and to channel affective force — even beyond the initiated? How can the notion of iconic power (Alexander, Bartmanski & Giesen, 2012) be a valuable strategic resource and an ordering principle by which to juxtapose contradictory perspecti...
Educational arts research as aesthetic politics working papers in art and design, volume 5 http:/... more Educational arts research as aesthetic politics working papers in art and design, volume 5 http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/ind... of 2 3/04/2012 6:11 p.m. Kathleen Vaughan: The importance of asking the 'right' questions: considering issues of interpretation in art-as-research Jane Webb: "Reconsidering forms of knowledge; or what happens when you try being a Neoplatonist Jennifer Webb and Donna O'Brien: "Agnostic" thinking: creative writing as practice-led research working papers in art and design, volume 5 http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/ind... of 2 3/04/2012 6:11 p.m.
What was once classed as 'savage ornament', which could not possibly register as architec... more What was once classed as 'savage ornament', which could not possibly register as architecture, has today morphed into the stuff of 'iconic architecture'. From another perspective, what began as a whare tupuna or a fale tele has sometimes turned into curios, for a time only or for ever. Along with the changes in status, these houses also changed their performative roles. This paper briefly traces the journeys abroad of Māori whare and Samoan fale, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were designed for purposes other than that of their destinations, and some fale and whare that were designed to travel abroad in the 1960s and early 2000s. The houses in the former group often travelled with an accompanying expectation: that relationships would be performed and fulfilled. In the latter case, this expectation seems to have been replaced with more instrumental ones. But on the websites promoting them, relationships still feature as important parts of their...
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, Dec 19, 2017
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, 2014
Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2022
The imposition of names […] across the Moana," writes Hūfanga 'Ōkusitino Māhina on page 43 of Cra... more The imposition of names […] across the Moana," writes Hūfanga 'Ōkusitino Māhina on page 43 of Crafting Aotearoa, "has been highly problematic". None of the terms applied by early European explorers to the waters between New Guinea in the West and Rapanui in the East (e.g., Spanish Lake, Pacific Ocean, Oceania) properly describes them. The book renames the region Moana Oceania yet cannot avoid similar problems when describing aesthetic practices of making. Terms like art, arts, crafts, toi, tufunga/tufuga, faiva or nimamea'a-taken from four of the 13 languages in the book-all point to artefacts, practices, histories, hierarchies, knowledges and relationships deemed to be the same in some sense, or at least related. <...>
The book is complex, fascinating, monumentally informative, and sometimes problematic. The latter seems unavoidable, and its lack of conceptual clarity may be related to a still widespread helplessness when faced with the task of classifying the artefacts of ‘the Other’. This, a societal condition, is not the responsibility of the editors, though perhaps a firmer stand on positionality, engaging the world views they are committed to articulate more recognisably, could have been more productive than attempting to produce a unified voice throughout the main chapters. With the benefit of hindsight, Chitham seems to have come to a similar conclusion (Objectspace & Norwegian Crafts, 2020, p. 20:05), but that might have been more difficult to discern in real-time.
This is small fry, though, given the scale of the task they have collectively taken on: “terms like ‘art’ or ‘craft’ and the typical objects that they can accommodate need to be shaken up – and perhaps even be replaced entirely” (p. 12). The result is not only a formidable reference book, but one that exposes the status quo and the staggering amount of work still to do until there is an ‘us’ in ‘our terms’. The book’s conceptual gaps and fissures may even be its greatest contribution to the ongoing ‘crafting Aotearoa’ project: they allow others to enter the debate and articulate different parts from their perspectives.
The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture, 2018
Originating half a century ago in Europe, the critique authenticity and identity were quickly tak... more Originating half a century ago in Europe, the critique authenticity and identity were quickly taken up in the USA, and subsequently in countries like New Zealand. Towards the end of the twentieth century, someone using the word ‘authentic’ in New Zealand was immediately under suspicion of essentialism. Māori who did not want to relinquish notions of authenticity and identity often became targets of such criticism. The notion of identity is, of course, further complicated in diasporic situations, where its articulation at the intersection of dwelling and travelling claims continuity within discontinuity. This paper explores notions of identity and authenticity as performance, in the force field of past and present imperialisms and globalisation, through the histories of several ‘travelling houses’ from Samoa and Aotearoa New Zealand. For more than a century, Pacific houses have been displayed in fairs, parks or museums: three Māori wharenui (meeting houses) and a Sāmoan fale tele (council house) were instrumental in performing European and Pasifika identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Three fale and Te Aroha o Te Iwi Māori, the central and largest whare at the Māori village, were built at the Polynesian Cultural Center (Hawai’i) in 1961–63. In 2004, a fale arrived at the Tropical Islands Resort in Brand, Germany, which had been built on commission by tufuga fau fale and was reassembled at the resort. These houses not only signify but per/form identities, according to inconsistent, even conflicting values. Our paper investigates exchanges between three regions, worlds apart yet with shared histories. We first explore notions of place and identity at exhibitions featuring Māori whare and fale Samoa in the USA, Europe and Aotearoa New Zealand. Then, we address aspects of critical regionalism relevant to (post)colonial contexts and, finally, we discuss exhibitions as performative practices. We deliberately see-saw between diverse geographical, theoretical and political positions, to generate relational spaces that transcend geo-political boundaries, yet remain local and specific.
In February 2003, the University of Auckland English department's home page was headed by a curio... more In February 2003, the University of Auckland English department's home page was headed by a curious image: a cropped and horizontally flipped low resolution reproduction of Martin Droeshout's notorious engraving of William Shakespeare for the 1623 folio of his plays. 1 The right side of his face (the left in the original) is marked by a Māori moko (facial tattoo). I will return to this image later. In June 2003, a portrait of Rau, the main character of the video game The Mark of Kri™ accompanied an interview with Jay Beard of Sony America's San Diego Studios at ign.com. 2 Like Shakespeare's, half of his face is covered with what would in New Zealand be seen a Māori moko. Beard describes Rau's world as "one of barbaric disorder" and the portrait has the inscription "Rau is this bad-ass. He really is." The images point to different contexts of appropriation (and counterappropriation) within "virtual worlds" where the internet brings into close proximity instances taking place at great distances and following different trajectories. Alongside a meanwhile widely acceptable fashion of tattooing in many western countries, the wild man (and sometimes woman) is increasingly making a reappearance in the most advanced media systems.
Non-Standard Architectural Productions, 2019
Introduction: Performing Samoa in Germany Googling for an image of a fale Samoa (traditional Samo... more Introduction: Performing Samoa in Germany Googling for an image of a fale Samoa (traditional Samoan house) in 2005, Albert Refiti stumbled across an aerial photo of the former CargoLifter hangar on the former Soviet military airbase, 60 kilometres southeast of Berlin. The roof looked at first like that of a gigantic fale afolau, but a closer investigation of the context revealed that the fale was actually inside it: the hangar houses the Tropical Islands Resort, where a fale Samoa forms part of a Tropical Village and where, from April to November 2005, “The Call of the South Seas” was the evening attraction.
Tourism Fictions, Simulacra and Virtualities, 2019
Culture, tradition and iconicity in tourism At Sinalei Reef Resort &amp;amp; Spa, on the ... more Culture, tradition and iconicity in tourism At Sinalei Reef Resort &amp;amp; Spa, on the south coast of Upolu, Samoa, villas fusing &amp;quot;authentic Samoan architecture with stylish, contemporary décor&amp;quot; are &amp;quot;nestled into the lush landscape&amp;quot; (Island Escapes). Built by Samoan owners and opened in February 1996, it quickly became one of Upolu&amp;#39;s most exclusive resorts. An authentic Samoan experience is promised, &amp;quot;Welcome to our world of pure and natural beauty. With authentically crafted elegance and widely renowned Samoan hospitality, it is the Sinalei generosity of spirit that creates experiences never to be forgotten&amp;quot; (Beautiful Samoa). Even after a rebuild following the 2009 tsunami, it retains &amp;quot;the authentic, generous Samoan hospitality it has always been famous for&amp;quot; (Island Escapes).
Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 2021
In 2019, the Vā Moana–Pacific Spaces research group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) be... more In 2019, the Vā Moana–Pacific Spaces research group at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) began to investigate how core Moana and Māori values can be translated from onsite, embodied engagements into digital environments. This was prompted by our wish to provide access to all those who could not travel to attend a conference in late 2021 for our Marsden-funded research project, ‘Vā Moana: Space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity’ (2019–22). The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally reframed this premise, as providing offsite access was no longer simply a ‘nice option’. The crisis challenged us to find out how virtual participation in events can uphold values of tikanga (correct procedure, custom) and teu le vā (nurturing relational space). In particular, our research examines practices foregrounding vā as the attachment to and feeling for place, as well as relatedness between people and other entities. We have observed an emerging conceptual deployment of ...
One might assume that an interest in Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and learning goes hand-in-hand... more One might assume that an interest in Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and learning goes hand-in-hand with an interest in change and diversity – but under certain conditions, the latter tends to overshadow the first. Being open to diversity can, and often does, come at the price of an awareness of difference that is particular to Indigenous peoples. As a consequence, mainstreaming under the banner of inclusion along the lines of gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, or religion (Pope, Reynolds, &amp;amp; Mueller, 2004, p. xiii) can dilute or even undermine Indigenous or, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori people. The inability to understand Māori perspectives can act not only as a barrier to students wanting access to higher, particularly postgraduate education, it can also prevent the emergence of new forms of knowledge and research.
British, German and American traders, bureaucrats and military, rubbed shoulders in Apia, Samoa a... more British, German and American traders, bureaucrats and military, rubbed shoulders in Apia, Samoa as the nineteenth century came to a close. Amongst them, they settled their imperial rivalries by contract in 1899: Western Samoans became German compatriots and were thus presented in 1901 at exhibitions in Frankfurt and Berlin. Thirteen years later, New Zealand (a member of the Commonwealth) took control of Samoa. Accordingly, a Samoan fale (house) was presented at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in Wembley Park and, in 1940, at the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. The fale exhibited in 2005 at the Tropical Islands Resort in Brandt (60km southeast of Berlin), next to five other indigenous houses from tropical regions shares some important features with its predecessors – despite obvious differences. The tension between local and global contexts and customs shaped conception, production and reception in all cases. There is a dynamic awareness of many encounters with Europeans in S...
My Desk is my Castle, 2011
Interstices: journal of architecture and related arts, 2017
Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts Issue 18: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of mat... more Interstices Journal of Architecture and Related Arts Issue 18: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of material narratives Surface and ornament have been extensively reviewed, admonished, discarded and pursued. More recently there has been a renewed interest in the writing of Aby Warburg and Alois Riegl, while numerous studies have addressed these issues relative to Semper, Adolf Loos, Hermann Muthesius, and Le Corbusier. They have been made prominent by issues of animation and digitation. Incrustations, protuberances, textured expressions, smoothed surfaces, surfaces enlivened as screens, are they ornament or cladding? Interstices 19: Surface / Pattern a pursuit of material narratives pursues the tension between ornament, adornment, object enlivenment, cladding, surface and pattern, and an exploration into the strange animations inherent in surface-pattern continua. It is with this sense of the spatial effects potentiated by surface pattern that we may consider surface / pattern at a range ...
... (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul and Dale Fitchett AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand ..... more ... (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul and Dale Fitchett AUT University, Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand ... As will become clear, we were unable to answer these questions during our recent projects in the Cook Islands (Dale) and Samoa (Tina). ...
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts
In classical Pacific buildings, figures or textures like lalava (lashings) performed iconic and t... more In classical Pacific buildings, figures or textures like lalava (lashings) performed iconic and technical functions simultaneously. What happens when the latter are assigned to different methods? The Fale Pasifika at the University of Auckland (opened in 2004) shows that the figures’ binding features outlast their technical necessity. The building attracts a diverse audience — perhaps because in the right constellations it binds together ancestral knowledge and present practices, despite many concessions to alien regulations and rules of production. However, its Pacific atmosphere also attracts non-Pacific people. What conditions enable arresting patterns on refined surfaces “to symbolise and effect relations of mana” (Tomlinson & Tengan, 2015: 17) and to channel affective force — even beyond the initiated? How can the notion of iconic power (Alexander, Bartmanski & Giesen, 2012) be a valuable strategic resource and an ordering principle by which to juxtapose contradictory perspecti...
Educational arts research as aesthetic politics working papers in art and design, volume 5 http:/... more Educational arts research as aesthetic politics working papers in art and design, volume 5 http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/ind... of 2 3/04/2012 6:11 p.m. Kathleen Vaughan: The importance of asking the 'right' questions: considering issues of interpretation in art-as-research Jane Webb: "Reconsidering forms of knowledge; or what happens when you try being a Neoplatonist Jennifer Webb and Donna O'Brien: "Agnostic" thinking: creative writing as practice-led research working papers in art and design, volume 5 http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol5/ind... of 2 3/04/2012 6:11 p.m.
What was once classed as 'savage ornament', which could not possibly register as architec... more What was once classed as 'savage ornament', which could not possibly register as architecture, has today morphed into the stuff of 'iconic architecture'. From another perspective, what began as a whare tupuna or a fale tele has sometimes turned into curios, for a time only or for ever. Along with the changes in status, these houses also changed their performative roles. This paper briefly traces the journeys abroad of Māori whare and Samoan fale, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were designed for purposes other than that of their destinations, and some fale and whare that were designed to travel abroad in the 1960s and early 2000s. The houses in the former group often travelled with an accompanying expectation: that relationships would be performed and fulfilled. In the latter case, this expectation seems to have been replaced with more instrumental ones. But on the websites promoting them, relationships still feature as important parts of their...
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics (Vol. 2): Ecology, Social Participation and Marginalities. Eds. Bobic N, Haghighi F. Routledge, New York, NY , 2024
Without sustained struggle, neither Waipapa Marae nor the Fale Pasifika (Māori and Pacific meetin... more Without sustained struggle, neither Waipapa Marae nor the Fale Pasifika (Māori and Pacific meeting places, communal buildings and teaching spaces) would have been built at the University of Auckland-at least not in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, they are home to Māori and Pacific students, academics and their communities-and coveted event sites for others-in an institution which, for most of its existence, has considered itself as part of a European tradition stretching from medieval origins to today. The politics of place and space creating Waipapa Marae and Fale Pasifika took many modes and forms. Māori university members and local communities struggled against, operated within and were constructed by (neo-)colonial national politics. They deployed traditional forms and practices in order to resist such politics, to create diasporic spaces in the metropolis of Auckland, and generally to initiate change. This chapter examines the history of these complexes; the politics of space deployed by Māori and Pacific academic staff, students and community representatives; issues that were contended, fought over and partially settled; the role of University finance in the provision of cultural space; changes in the cultural landscapes over the last three decades; and, finally, Māori and Pacific self-determination within a future University. Through an examination these local cultures and practices of resistance, it examines how and under which conditions the institutional architectural environment of the University of Auckland was able to be transformed, and how such transformed architecture, in turn, created and enacted alternative political realities.
Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations, 2022
Conclusion to Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations. Berghahn.
Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations, 2022
Introduction to Engels-Schwarzpaul, A.-C., Lopesi, L., & Refiti, A. L. (Eds.). (2022). Pacific Sp... more Introduction to Engels-Schwarzpaul, A.-C., Lopesi, L., & Refiti, A. L. (Eds.). (2022). Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations. Berghahn.
Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations, 2023
Hinemihi is an example of what I call travelling houses. Locating Hinemihi in a wider network of ... more Hinemihi is an example of what I call travelling houses. Locating Hinemihi in a wider network of Māori and Samoan houses in Europe and the USA, this chapter focuses on aspects of translations and transmutations that are activated when the houses themselves move (or are moved) away from the people. At several levels, the chapter addresses epistemological questions regarding translation and transmutations. Translation, with its literal sense of moving from one place to another, appropriately mobilizes meaning and expands interpretive frameworks, facilitates multi-perspectival discussions, works around the blind spots in each culture and helps to uncover or articulate new affinities between Pacific and Western types of knowledge.
My Desk is my Castle. Exploring Personalisation CulturesChapter: Globalised Desk-top Skirmishes? Reporting from the coloniesPublisher: Birkhäuser Architecture.Editors: U. Brandes & M. Erlhoff, 2012
General introduction to the topic of atmospheres, including coverage of its history, development,... more General introduction to the topic of atmospheres, including coverage of its history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus, as well as an introduction to Gernot Böhme's work.
In A.-Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul & M. A. Peters (Eds.), Of Other Thoughts: Non-traditional ways to the doctorate. A guidebook for candidates and supervisors (pp. 311-323). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
In A.-Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul & M. A. Peters (Eds.), Of Other Thoughts: Non-traditional ways to the doctorate. A guidebook for candidates and supervisors (pp. 163-179). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
This chapter explores how some assumptions of the cross-cultural study “My Desk Is My Castle”, fo... more This chapter explores how some assumptions of the cross-cultural study “My Desk Is My Castle”, for instance that “desks substantially differ from country to country” since specific cultures have “an enormous impact” on organisation and arrangement of objects on a desk, play out in the specific local context of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. In globalised cities like Auckland, as the fabric forming the “specific culture in which the … office work is located”, there are many distinct ethnic migrant communities. Further, the overlaps and distinctions joining or distinguishing the Māori Tangata Whenua (Indigenous) population from hegemonic New Zealand culture are not easily identified and interpreted, even by locals. The discussion explores such local conditions surrounding the photos taken by AUT student researchers, relates them to two theories that take an active view of the creation of identity and space, reflects on the limits and potentials of the Auckland part of the project, and suggests some interesting questions to be explored in the future.
The Status of Oral Traditions in the History of Philosophy: Methodological Considerations Symposium, 7.-9. September, Universität Hildesheim , 2023
As a metaphor for tofā sa‘ili, former Samoan Head of State, Tui Ātua Tupua Tamasese Efi cites the... more As a metaphor for tofā sa‘ili, former Samoan Head of State, Tui Ātua Tupua Tamasese Efi cites the ninth of ten ritual greetings to the heavens. Tofā sa‘ili is the human search for “wisdom, knowledge, prudence, insight [and] judgement” through reaching out in “reflection, meditation, prayer, dialogue, experiment, practice, performance and observance” – with awareness of the limits of human knowledge and the relationships between cosmic, human, animal and plant life (Tui Atua, 2018a). To explore these relationships within Samoan and more widely Pacific traditions, we think along with Souleymane Bachir Diagne, who has a long engagement with art as “a form of philosophical thinking” (Drabinski, 2019). He has also written about the reception “in the Colony” (Diagne, 2008) of Henri Bergson’s concepts, two of which are fruitful here: intuition and duration. Diagne argues that Bergson’s break with Western philosophical tradition helped African philosophers articulate and extend traditional local thinking across and beyond Africa. Notably, Senegalese poet, philosopher and statesman, Léopold Sédar Senghor created the terms “reason-eye” and “reason-embrace” to distinguish between “two ways of knowing”. The first carves out a difference between perceiving subject and perceived object; the second draws subject and object close, rather than defining them in opposition (Diagne, 2019: 25). For Senghor, who inscribed his own philosophy into “Bergsonism’s dynamic, evolutionary cosmology”, spiritual energy is especially to be found in art (Diagne, 2019: 9). Through Diagne and Senghor’s transformative lenses, we will canvas the connections between different forms of world building in Samoan communities. We will trace philosophical thinking in muagagana; in lauga (performative oratory) and spatial practices in the fono; and in the material manifestation of Samoan ontologies in fale tele and malae. To understand transformative processes through which contemporary Samoan thinkers seek to translate Samoan values into the globalised world of the twenty-first century, we will predominantly lean on the writings of Tui Ātua Tupua Tamasese Efi. As with Senghor’s work, this is “not a case of reviving the past so as to live on in [a Samoan] museum. It is a case of animating this world, here and now, with the values that come from our past.” (Senghor quoted in Diagne, 2019: xviii; see also Tui Atua, 2018b)
Paper presented at the 2016 Meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO),... more Paper presented at the 2016 Meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (ASAO), San Diego, USA
This conference panel was an opportunity to explore Other Thoughts and Renegade Knowledges in pos... more This conference panel was an opportunity to explore Other Thoughts and Renegade Knowledges in postgraduate research supervision. The first, namely the thoughts of non-traditional researchers in newly emerging disciplines, were explored by 28 authors in Of Other Thoughts: Non-traditional ways to the doctorate (Engels-Schwarzpaul & Peters, 2013). As I was editing this book, though, reflecting on recent developments in the New Zealand tertiary sector, I began to feel uneasy about the educational system’s remarkable ability to assimilate difference. In a neo-liberal knowledge economy, any form of knowing presents as an exploitable resource. The ascent of different kinds of intelligence into the preserves of academic knowledge production (for example, in the areas of postgraduate research inspired by creative practice-led and Māori and Pacific approaches) is therefore always about to be institutionalised. This presents chances and challenges at the same time.
Conceptually countering the inward movement of new arrivals carrying Other Thoughts into the academy, Renegade Knowledges are produced by those who, dissatisfied by established academic contents, practices and procedures, turn away, towards an outside that is, not unlike Michel Foucault’s heteroto-pia, still linked to the institution.
This paper engages in a series of questions arising from the potentials and pitfalls of using dig... more This paper engages in a series of questions arising from the potentials and pitfalls of using digital technologies in teaching and research in Pacific communities. As will become clear, we were unable to answer these questions during our recent projects in the Cook Islands (Dale) and Samoa (Tina). We are colleagues working together in the Department of Postgraduate Studies of the School of Art and Design, AUT University, and our projects were framed by the conditions driving university strategies in Aotearoa/New Zealand: the imperatives of the knowledge economy and the increasing globalisation in the Pacific.
Technologies, be they the specific practices involved in distance learning and teaching, or those driving design collaborations or research through digital means, always correspond to “technologies of the self” (Foucault). These technologies’ formation is significantly influenced by lasting discrepancies in the global flows of information, technologies, people and capital. Research and teaching are inevitably caught up in this predicament. Two case studies (of a Master of Art and Design programme delivered in the Cook Islands and a research project in Samoa/Germany about traditional art and architecture in the globalised leisure industries) provide tangible contexts for this paper. They will propel a wider discussion of cross-cultural collaborations in indigenous and economically disadvantaged communities in the Pacific.
Scholarly translation of Böhme, G. (2013) "Der Glanz des Materials" in Atmosphäre: Essays zur neu... more Scholarly translation of Böhme, G. (2013) "Der Glanz des Materials" in Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Frankfurt a.M.. GER: Suhrkamp Verlag, 49-65.
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