HOWLING OUT AT A SAFE DISTANCE 

Screened in Sovereign Pacific / Pacific Sovereigns, 2020-2021, CIRCUIT Artist Cinema Commissions, Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington 2020, Grand Hall, Christchurch Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Ōtautahi Christchurch 2021, Artspace Aotearoa, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland 2021, curated by David Teh

Howling out at a safe distance uses four partial editions of the historic Māori language newspaper Te Pīpīwharauroa as a way to think about the grey areas in language and understanding. In the video I use A4 sheets of paper with windows cut into them to isolate words and brief phrases from the articles found in Te Pīpī, which are about searching for something, translation, speaking to one another, and loneliness.

I ran the text through Google Translate and relied on my own limited knowledge of te reo Māori to navigate the many inaccuracies, with significant help from maoridictionary.com. At times, the meaning was immediately clear; other times, I could only grasp the general sense, and occasionally, the text remained completely opaque and confusing. This process closely mirrors the experience of learning te reo Māori — or even trying to find your way through the layered and often obscured histories of Aotearoa.

Howling out at a safe distance can be viewed online at CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image.