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Moving Islands: Contemporary Performance and the Global Pacific
Diana Looser
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Moving Islands reveals the international and intercultural connections within contemporary performance from Oceania, focusing on theater, performance art, art installations, dance, film, and activist performance in sites throughout Oceania and in Australia, Asia, North America, and Europe. Diana Looser's study moves beyond a predictable country-specific or island-specific focus to encompass an entire region defined by diversity and global exchange, showing how performance operates to frame social, artistic, and political relationships across widely dispersed locations. The study also demonstrates how Oceanian performance contributes to international debates about diaspora, indigeneity, urbanization, and environmental sustainability. The author considers the region's unique cultural and geographic dynamics as she brings forth the paradigm of transpasifika to suggest a way of understanding these intercultural exchanges and connections, with the aim to "rework the cartographic and disciplinary priorities of transpacific studies to privilege the activities of Islander peoples."
Figure 19. Michel Tuffery, Tava’e ma le lua Solofanua at Brandenburg Gate Berlin (Tropicbird and Two Horses at Brandenburg Gate Berlin), 2011. H. 290 × L. 270 × W. 3 mm. Laser-cut comb in black acrylic worn by female dancers in the Apia, Porirua, and Sydney performances of Siamani Samoa. Based on Samoan selu pa’u/selu la’au, the intricate design echoes the fretwork on German-era colonial buildings; the three holes at the base reference German coconut plantations in Samoa. Depicting two horses from the Berlin Quadriga with a Samoan tropicbird (instead of the Prussian eagle), the comb recalls the presence of Samoa in Germany, alluding to Tupua Tamasese Lealofi II’s visit to Berlin in 1910. Photograph by Diana Looser; personal collection of the author, gift of the artist.
Figure 20. The Royal Samoa Police Band perform to a backdrop of Michel Tuffery’s photographic montages and video art combining German and Samoan imagery, in Siamani Samoa at Carriageworks, Sydney, 2015. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Susannah Wimberley.
Figure 21. Eleanor Svaton as Effie Von Elsner in her role as Sadie Thompson and Tyler Tanabe as Gerald Haxton in Kumu Kahua’s production of The Holiday of Rain (2011), by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. Directed by Harry Wong. Photograph courtesy of Kumu Kahua Theatre, Honolulu, Hawai‘i.
Figure 22. Promotional still for the solo stand-up comedy show So So Gangsta (2013) by Samoan/Welsh comic James Nokise. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Matt Grace.
Page 222 →Figure 23. 21st Sentry Cyber Sister (1997). Wearable art piece made up of twenty-seven parts, each created by one of the members of the Pacific Sisters art collective: Rosanna Raymond (Samoa), Ani O’Neill (Cook Islands), and two of the founding members, Suzanne Tamaki (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Maniapoto) and Niwhai Tupaea (Ngāti Katoa). Tapa, feathers, bone, harakeke, nylon, shells, seeds, coconut shell, videotape, plastic. A guardian figure who protects the museum’s collections, the 21st Sentry Cyber Sister wards off racism and signifies the contemporary presence of Māori and Pacific cultures and their drive toward self-determination. In the Pacific Cultures Collection of Te Papa Tongarewa | Museum of New Zealand, courtesy of Te Papa and the Pacific Sisters.
Figure 24. From left: Erina Daniels (Mary), Simon Vincent (Peter), Rina Patel (Ila), Semu Filipo (Solomon), and Sam Selliman (Anna) in and what remains by Mīria George, directed by Hone Kouka. Tawata Productions, City Gallery, Wellington, 2005. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Matt Grace.
Figure 25. An installation of urban taros remains after a performance of Cultivate (2015) by John Vea and HEPT Collective at Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, the site of one of New Zealand’s largest urban regeneration projects. Photograph courtesy of John Vea.
Figure 26. Above: Luke Willis Thompson, How Long? (2018), 16 mm color negative film transferred to digital video, silent. Below: Luke Willis Thompson, Autoportrait (2017), 35 mm, black and white, silent. Installation view at Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Victoria University of Wellington, 21 February–15 April 2018, curated by Stephen Cleland. Photograph by Shaun Waugh.
Figure 27. Les Champignons de Paris uses the device of fluorescent paint to indicate the elusive yet inescapable effects of radioactive contamination. Play written by Emilie Génaédig and presented by La Compagnie du Caméléon, directed by François Bourcier. Le Petit Théâtre, La Maison de la Culture | Te Fare Tauhiti Nui, Pape’ete, Tahiti, 2017. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Stéphane Sayeb and Victoire Brotherson, Tahiti Zoom.
Figure 28. Wearing radiation suits, actors in Les Champignons de Paris (Guillaume Gay, Tuarii Tracqui, and Tepa Teuru) watch archival footage of former French president Jacques Chirac announcing the end of nuclear testing in French Polynesia in 1996. Play written by Emilie Génaédig and presented by La Compagnie du Caméléon, directed by François Bourcier. Le Petit Théâtre, La Maison de la Culture | Te Fare Tauhiti Nui, Pape’ete, Tahiti, 2016. Photograph by, and courtesy of, Emilie Génaédig.
Page 277 →Figure 29. Protect Our Aiga, Samoa (2020), pictorial image from Michel Tuffery’s Handle with Care series, an ongoing project begun in March 2020 in consultation with Pacific Health Plus, Porirua, that responds to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The campaign was designed to convey simple messaging directly to Māori and Pasifika communities, which have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The images, which were displayed as posters in different public spaces, adapt vintage postage stamps from Aotearoa New Zealand and other Pacific Islands. While encouraging community members to “stamp out” coronavirus by staying home, washing hands, and wearing masks, the posters emphasize ties to ancestry and culture as part of a holistic approach to healthcare and urge particular care for elders. This poster is based on a Western Samoan postage stamp, “Samoan Girl and Kava Bowl,” issued in 1935. Courtesy of Michel Tuffery, MNZM, and Jayne Tuffery, with special thanks to Lee Pearce.
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