Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Performing Arts Honours

School

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts

First Supervisor

Joanna Pollitt

Abstract

This practice led research project is an investigation of archiving and returning to my own Māori relationality held within my patrilineal ancestral lineage. Connecting with and remembering my ancestor John Wynter, the research engages with creative responses and archival poetics to examine an emerging autobiographical improvised practice. The thesis is crafted as a triptych, a body of work that has three parts which each in their own way capture the returning moment to my Māori ancestry. Each part acts as a korerorero… a conversation… which is entangled and weaved within the thesis of the coming to know and the returning to my Māori lineage. Part 1 is a korerorero with the field of research already present and acts as a way to acknowledge and honour the many artists and scholars who have been working in this archiving and lineal way, connecting me to my ancestors and Indigenous knowledges. Part 2 embraces the voices and experiences of Māori identifying artists who provided the time and space to sit and korero with me about personal practice, connecting to Matauranga Māori and the experience of knowing who you are and who has come before you. Part 3 uncovers a meeting place via studio practice for a korero crafted between myself and my personal histories of ancestry and place as a contemporary experiment drawing on the concept of archival poetics by Natalie Harkin. The form of these archival poetic responses accompanies the writing manifesting as photographs, video and prose that capture the experience of coming to know my history and the complexities of embracing this in the present. Leading with my own form of 'mana', my personal spiritual force, this research pays tribute to the past through the story of Wynter as a personal provocation to deepen my connection with my Whakapapa and Aotearoa.

DOI

10.25958/r242-aa78

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