Week 11: Decolonising gender and sexuality

ZOOM SESSION

What time and when: 2:45pm - 5pm on the 11th of October 2022 

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Fafswag Vogue Battles is a unique website providing videos about a few takatāpui who are featured telling their experience. The video we watched during the zoom session featured Tamatoa (Pati Solomona Tyrell).  Pati is a Samoan descent who was born in Hamilton, as for his career, he is an interdisciplinary artist. The story he tells as a takatāpui is about his family doesn't support him in these activities, but he would still perform.

I am interested in how unique the structure of the website is made, its game-like style, its complexity and how much effort it would have taken to create it for its content. It is also interactive, learning more as you go along and opens onto the story and narrative, and builds connections, culturally, socially, and so on.

Beyond the traditional reason for 'clicking' challenges the idea of clicking for 'appearance', allowing the viewer to make s connection. Interactivity brings you into the experience with its content.

Well Takatāpui: A Resource Hub is a site to provide support and information for takatāpui and their families who are struggling to communicate with one another. 

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'Culture For Sale' (2012) by Yuki Kihara
It was described to be 'Human Zoo' of Samoan performers. They would be still until someone pays 20 cents to watch them perform physically and digitally. For the audience is an experience, but for the performers, it is tiring and humiliating, but they did it because they were desperate. Tito felt 'betrayed' and 'exposed', and Helen felt 'claustrophobic' for being paid to perform. They were paid to perform without any description on the performance, the meaning behind the dance.

Then I tried to see the similarities of the video with the photograph (which no descriptions) which are provided as resources by the course.

What I see as an artist is Yuki Kihara's beautiful work, for anyone to witness. But as a Kapa Haka performer myself who has only performed in special occasions and regionals, for performers in that sort of scenario, I could imagine how humiliating and exposing that would have felt during and after the performances. But they continued to do so because they were desperate for uniqueness, money and supporting they family and culture.

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In the breakout rooms, our group discussed about the creative component

With whom: Micah, Nesi and Ferina

Absent: Neriah

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List of what to do:

  • Add the description sections on the website
  •  pick up pizza boxes, 12th of Oct
  • meet early on Monday before presentation, location: fale
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INDEPENDENT WORK

This week we didn't have a group session to be focused on designing our layers. The majority of our group lives in the halls of residence, so the pizza boxes arrived at the halls around the beginning of the week and dropped everyone's shares of pizza boxes at the fale for them to pick up. Because I am developing the website, I had to dedicate two days to finish my layers in order to spend the rest of my time to focus on the website and my formal writing. 

My confirmed concepts for Whakapapa: Raukura; 'Kōtiro Māori E!'; Te Aho Matua; Whakapunake