The End of this Blog

Allegory makes a Comeback in the Early Nineties.

2009-06-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

Everyday its like the wild, wild west 

Bunch of bad boys from the vista outlawed 

The softest of beat, the killa get away 

He leave Vegas in the end of the day in a fast car 

Driving a fast car, Are you ready to ride!?^¹

- Wycelf Jean, 2008

Among other things, Studies in Red and White^²presents us with some fairly straightforward ideas. One of the most pronounced is the fact that certain elements within very genre specific works (i.e. Westerns) can allude to things outside of that genre. The town-tamer Western provided a field on which metropolitan issues (crime and punishment, division and solidarity, conformity and individualism) could be heroically projected.^³

^{^{Gunfighter Nation is the close of a trilogy of books that was intended to examine the way American culture has been influenced and formed by it's own myths and experiences. It seems apt to note that, on top of his academic writing, Slotkin has also published three historical novels, about Nomads, Cavalry and the Old West.}}

This particular work was published in 1991, 46 years after Animal Farm^⁴and 37 years after Lord of the Flies^⁵. As a reader who thought I was going to be engaging with an academic text, I felt slightly belittled by the way in which Slotkin outlined all of the possible ways in which allegory could exist within works of fiction, presenting it like some sort of new discovery. I'm aware of the fact that both of the works of fiction I mentioned are of British descent; and that Slotkin is attempting to outline a particularly American condition. I'm just not so sure that American allegory, besides from it's heroic overtones, is different from any other nation's allegory.

Slotkins' use of dates and statistics seems to stage cause and effect relationships, between the popularity of the Western, and various historical moments; Posing the Western as an almost too perfect vehicle for intent. A perfect, stream lined medium (in the modernist Greenbergian sense^⁶).This article comes across like a fan trying to justify his obsessions: or maybe give them some critical weight.

Might be time to take another horse for a ride.

____________________

1 Fiasco, Lupe, and Wyclef Jean. “Fast Cars (Remix).” Lupe Fiasco – Return of the Jedi.

Unreleased/Bootleg, 2008.

2 Slotkin, Richard. “Studies in Red and White” Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America. New York: University of Oklahoma.

3 Slotkin, 352.

4 Orwell, George. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. London: Secker and Warburg, 1945.

5 Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, .1954

6Danto, Arthur C. “Embodied Meanings, Isotypes, and Aesthetical Ideas.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 65.1 (2007).

Principals.

2009-06-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

Martin Creed’s response to don’t misbehave! coincidentally refers to Christchurch’s status as the Garden City of New Zealand, with a garden of his own.^¹

In relation to the first principle^²raised in Michel Foucault's Of Other Spaces^³: Martin Creed's Work no.215^⁴

from the Scape 2006 Biennial ties neatly into some locally specific issues. Our first reading from Theatre Country^⁵introduced me to the notion of the populated landscape, and that it could be regarded as a condition of sorts. Creed's Work no.215, treats native plants in a very particular way, it designates them a place within a space that is both populated and transient. They are in a sense, both framed and isolated within the movement around them.

In the heart of the city, Work no.215 functions much like the eighteenth century cemeteries mentioned by Foucault in the second principle^⁶. Lined up in three groupings relating to height: (from a distance) these plants lose their traces of individuality. They serve as a monument for the ground on which the city stands, it's scared and immortal heart^⁷.

This combination: of the (usually sterile) median strip and the collection of native plants juxtaposes in a single real space... several spaces...that are in themselves incompatible^⁸. It is therefor true to the third principle^⁹laid out by Foucault.

In the outline of his fourth principle^¹, Foucault states that the heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time^¹1. One of the things that I've always liked about this work is it's resemblance to a hardware store gardening section. Hardware stores are a special sort of place: a world of possibilities and connections to be made. The sort of place where people go without the intention to achieve or retrieve anything, an intersection in suburban making.

This work looks almost like a mirage. Like most modernist, public works it can be experienced without the viewer exerting any physical wear upon the object. As the fifth principal^¹2describes, the visitor...is...absolutely the guest in transit^¹3.

According to the sixth principle, for a situation to be a heterotopia, the situation in question must sit between two extreme poles^¹4. This work is not dystopian: it is not an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad^¹5. Nor is it Utopian, the polar opposite of Dystopian: where nothing is wrong. This work seemingly highlights problems - At the same time it has an almost grandiose calm about it. We know, that if the trees are not watered and pruned this work will fade away. However it's

something that this viewer is willing to ignore, I don't think about the logistics behind it. The work sits on that patch of grass, almost isolated in space and time – a suitable illustration for something that I can't quite put my finger on.

____________________

1 Scape 2006 Biennial. 2006. Christchurch Art Gallery. 7 June 2009 (http://2006.scapebiennial.org.nz/artists.asp?id=8).

2 Foucault, 3.

3 Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.” Michel Foucault, Info.
[http://www.foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia]

4 Creed, Martin. “Work no.215.” Scape 2006 Biennial: Don't Misbehave. 2006. Christchurch.

5 Park, Geoff. “A Moment for Landscape.” Theatre Country: Essays on Landscape and Whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. 196-204.

6 Foucault, 3.

7 Foucault, 4.

8 Foucault, 4.

9 Foucoult, 4.

1⁰Foucault, 4.

1¹Foucoult, 4.

1²Foucoult, 5.

1³Foucault, 5.

1⁴"dystopia noun" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University. 7 June 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html subview=Main&entry=t140.e23522>

1⁵Foucoault, 5.

New Arrangements, New Arraignments.

2009-06-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

One piece of information from this article that really stuck with me was Johnathon Crary's statement: that by the late 1920's, when the first experimental broadcasts occurred, the vast interlocking of corporate, military, and state control of television was being settled. Never before had the institutional regulation of a new technique been planned and divided up so far in advance^¹. Perhaps it is because the relationship between television and censorship is a topic that regularly comes up in conversation with my father. “You know that in South Africa,” thats where I was born (and, as a pre-teen, immigrated to New Zealand from), “we didn't get Television until 1976.” Just as a contrast, New Zealand, a far smaller country with a smaller economy, introduced it's public to television in 1960.

Within Spectacle, Attention and Counter-Memory, Crary references a selection of writers that could easily be described as marxists of some description. The ones that I'm referring to are Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillad and Guy Debord.

Without even reading the main body of this text, one could assume, just from looking at it's references, that it had something to do with the politics of distribution.

In his essay, The Hell of the Same, Jean Baudrillad recalls Walter Benjamin's thoughts about what happens when a work (of art) is massively reproduced: that the work's 'aura', its here-and-now quality^²

is somehow lost. Crary mentioned that Television, as a new medium, required a new type of attention. It's in-sync combination of sound and film was something that the public had seen before in the cinema,
but in television, something different metabolized. Perhaps in the beginning, in relation to other available means of marketing, television appeared to keep this aura (that Benjamin spoke of) in tact. The sort reproduction that occurs in a television broadcast, is not necessarily the production
line reproduction where the same thing is made over and over again. The electron gun inside the TV is fired by a charge that is prompted by the broadcast signal: Making it a more derivative form of reproduction where the reproduction is always linked back to the original (or the enigma), and is in turn linked to every other reproduction.

Perhaps this is why Television has served as a such a formidable marketing tool?

____________________

1 Crary, Jonathan. “Spectacle, Attention and Counter Memory.”

October 50 (Autumn, 1989): 96-107.

2 Baudrillard, Jean. “The Hell of the Same.” The
Transparency of Evil.
London: Verso, 1993.113-123.

Some Kind of Monster.

2009-06-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a trailer for a low budget children’s film^¹; it’s about a ruthless, convertible-driving businessman who dies in a car crash and is subsequently sent back to earth as a dog to right all of his wrongs. A fairly standard The Shaggy Dog^²sort of plot: with a low budget finish. The only person who can see the dog as a human is his former P.A. It’s a plot convention that allows for intermittent footage of a man behaving as a dog, under the control of another man. The film’s 'B' grade sheen, gives these shots an almost pornographic quality. Men wearing collars, men submitting to a controller, crouching on their hands and knees; it’s the type of imagery that one could easily dismiss as weird shit^³.

It’s unsettling, and that’s why we feel the urge to dismiss it.

In his essay Is Humour Human?^⁴, Continental Philosopher, Simon Critchley states: humour explores what it means to be human by moving back and forth across the frontier that separates humanity from animality, thereby making it unstable…^⁵

This sort of humor seems to be a familiar trope in children’s films. It’s interesting that in his essay, Critchley speaks of Kafka’s short story Investigations of a Dog^⁶. The story is told from a first person perspective, or a first dog perspective. The central character is a dog that throughout the story guides us through what it means to be a dog. There are inherent laws that one must obey in order to be a dog. Even if they are alien in size and shape^⁷, dogs are all the same, they all have qualities with which the canine race alone is endowed^⁸. This dog even talks of when it was still quite a puppy ^⁹and the childhood events that shaped its view of what it means to be a dog.

Along with the aforementioned brand of humor (that explores what it means to be human), children’s films are full of all sorts of other tropes: Tales where morality triumphs and that sort of thing. These tales are no doubt intended to have some sort of conditioning effect.

Perhaps the sort of humour in question can have that affect too?

____________________

1 Quigley. Dir. William Byron Hillman. Perf. Gary Busey. DVD. Quigley Productions, 2003.

2 The Shaggy Dog. Dir. Charles Barton. Perf. Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Tim Considine. 1959. DVD. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2006.

3 Or something that belongs to a subculture; That you find it hard to relate to.

4 Critchley, Simon. Is Humour Human?.……

5 Critchley, 29.

6 Franz, Kafka. “Investigations of a Dog.” Metamorphosis
& other stories. Great Britain: Minerva,
1992. 83-126.

7 Kafka, 89.

8 Kafka, 88.

9 Kafka, 87.

Social Practice.

2009-06-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

One of the most useful things about this article^¹ is the fact that it describes a way in which cultural production can situate itself within a marxist framework. Its' author Alberto Toscano, is a lecturer in the sociology department at Goldsmiths University in London: An institution whose program only includes courses in the Creative Industries and Liberal Arts. Subsequently, it is of no surprise that the author's approach could be described as creative practitioner friendly. This framework relies on the assumption that any artwork could be considered an object of sorts. Everybody will have their own position on this: depending on how they situate themselves as an artist and as a maker. The way this essay (and inadvertently, Marx) describes it, even an individual's relationships can be considered objects of some description.


Toscano describes private property (an intimate component of capitalism) as the objectified powers of the human essence, in the form of sensuous, alien, useful objects^². On the same page he describes the fact that the distribution of the sensible in turn, functions as the expropriation of man's senses. He goes on to say that these objects, created by the individual, end up participating in the service of his own estrangement.

It's a simple way to describe the way in which the art market or art production fits into a society of workers and individuals. Works (of Art) could be considered to function in the same manner as objects. If a work is purchased, or if it is cognitively taken on board in some way: then the maker's essence is being objectified (which is not necessarily a bad thing). In the future, the work will go on to have new meanings and associations that the maker never foresaw: this gradual development could be described as a process of estrangement. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes awhile. Either way, it seems inevitable.

The above image^³, by CK Rajan, is from the same book as Destructive Creation... (I believe it was also featured in Documenta 12). To this reader, it (like many works featuring appropriated imagery) serves as an illustration of this process: the estrangement embodied..

Seen here, are two seemingly unrelated images. They appear to be from different contexts, produced with different aims in mind and (in this reproduction) look like they have been printed using different methods. The fact that the original makers of these two individual images, had different aims is especially poignant. What we see here forms a completely different dialogue, a far cry even, from what the images would have said individually. Like the empty shells ejected from a shotgun, this image is an offshoot from the process of re-evaluating history.

____________________

1  Toscano,  Alberto. “Destuctive Creation or Communism of the Senses.” Make  Everything New: A Project on Communism.  Ed. Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord, and Gavin Everall. London: Book  Works, 2006. 119-128.

2 Toscano,  121.

3  Rajan, CK. “Collages 1992-1995.” Make  Everything New: A Project on Communism.  Ed. Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord, and Gavin Everall. London: Book  Works, 2006. 137-148.

Fear and the Other.

2009-06-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

"What Kierkegaard said about God applies to politics too - Whatever we think, we are in the end bound to be wrong."

- John Reynolds

These words words adorn the poster John Reynolds did
for the show Free New Zealand Art at Artspace a few years ago. It wasn't necessarily my favorite at the time although, interestingly it's the only one that I kept. Adorning my walls with phrases like this reminds that sometimes it's OK to waver about my opinions, that perhaps, taking absolute positions on things
is not always useful.

Jaques Derrida is widely cited as an author who references Soren Kierkegaard quite heavily, and this chapter^¹of The Gift of Death is no exception, where he uses Kierkegaard's work to stage a conversation around the notion of the other. He references a specific, early, period in Kierkegaard's writing in which his first two publications (Either/Or and Fear and Trembling) were published.

Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard's once fiance, is said to have had a major influence on his writing. Kierkegaard broke off his engagement to her after the publication of Fear and Trembling. This break up is said to have changed his work forever^². Throughout his life he kept Journals^³, that give an incredible insight into his work and mind. In these Journals he continued to profess his undying love for Olsen, even after they parted ways. Many have read Kierkegaard's work as being autobiographical. There is a chapter in Either/Or named The Dairy of a Seducer^⁴, which tells the story of a man who endeavors to get a girl to fall in love with him: only so that he can eventually get engaged to, and then break up with her. As the title suggests, this chapter takes a diaristic tone, and it goes into into detailed descriptions of central male character closely examining everything around him. It is almost as if this character is imprinting himself upon all of the objects that he sees, as if they are things not separate from himself: a world a textual unity^⁵(to quote an expert).

It is said that Kierkegaard saw poetry as something that served as a reflection on the artistic process^⁶. And, in a truly poetic tradition, his life and writing seem to be hopelessly interconnected. In breaking off the engagement, Kierkegaard tried to create an entity that was not of himself, an entity that would go on living while he devoted his life to writing. Regine was meant to be another existence that wouldn't have to suffer or make sacrifices for it's work. It has been said that he tried to make Olsen believe that he was not the man she thought he was. Kierkegaard knew that if she continued to love him, she would never be able find joy again. Olsen would eventually get remarried, but Kierkegaard never lost contact with her.^⁷

Underneath the almost algebraic nature of Derrida's arguments there are some poetic undertones: based in failure and rhetoric.

____________________

1 Derrida, Jaques. “Tout Autre Est Tout Autre.” The Gift of Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1995).

2 Green, Ronald M. “Deciphering “Fear and Trembling”'s Secret Message.” Religious Studies 22.1 (1986): 95-111.

3 Kierkegaard, Soren. The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard. Ed Alexander Dru. London: Collins, 1958.

4 Kierkegaard, Soren. “The Diary of a Seducer.” Either/OR: Volume 1. New Jersey: Princeton University Press (1971). 297-440.

5 Yang, Chi- Ming. The Pseudonymous Authorship and Kierkegaard's Either/Or: The Anxiety of the Aesthetic. California: Stanford (1998): 36.

6 Yang, 37

7 All the sentiments of the preceding paragraph are echoed in this poem, written by Kierkegaard on the day Regine Olsen married another man:

Kierkegaard, Soren. “Soren Kierkegaard Writes to Regine Olsen on the Day of Her Marriage to Fritz Schegel.” The Kenyon Review, New Series

21.1 (1999): 86-87.

Door Knocking (or, a place to stay).

2009-06-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

In this essay, Foucault represents sexuality as something that in a way feeds on itself. Its appeal is propelled and amplified simply by engagement with it. As he puts it, At the root…sexuality… is a movement that nobody can ever limit…from it’s origin and in it’s totality... it is constantly involved with the limit^¹. On the same page he equates sexuality to Death of God, saying that they are bound to the same experience^².

What he saying here is that sex is more than a purely, mechanical instinctive act: we get more out of it than that. What Nietzsche meant by the death of god was that god wasn’t the only place from which to derive a moral code. By definition^³, sexuality is a term that encompasses many things: desire, pleasure, a personal view of oneself etc. Sexuality, as he says, engages with who we are, as humans. It engages with our limits and what we are ultimately capable of. I think in this instance, what Foucault is getting at is that sexuality might be just relevant as religion: as a reference point for morals and social behavior. It engages with something similarly etherial.

It is hard not to let my reading of this essay be coloured by his biographical details. Foucault was at times (by published accounts), a fairly naughty chap. He was, as we know, born into privilege: His father was a lawyer and official at the Chamber des Comptes in Paris^⁴. Later in life, Foucault himself would also become a licensed practitioner of law. At one stage Foucault was forced to publicly defend himself against a young, married woman’s father, who accused him of seducing her^⁵. The young protestant women had been staying with him, as a 'house guest' for months, and he had been teaching her. The affair occurred in Montauban, a small town in Southwest France of a strong Protestant persuasion. In that climate, for a gentleman like Foucault, that young woman (who is unnamed in the article) must have been a welcome bastion.

Like many other academics, Foucault was involved in revolutionary activities in his and earlier days: Like many other academics, many didn’t agree with or want to hear what he had to say. Perhaps there is personal frustration beneath the words on these pages.

____________________

1 Foucault, Michel. “A Preface to Transgression.” Aesthetics, method and epistemology. London: Penguin, 2000. 69-87.

2 Foucault, 72.

3 "sexuality noun" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University. 11 June 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html subview=Main&entry=t140.e70644>

4 Bernard, L.L. “Foucault, Louvois, and Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.” Church History 25.1 (1956): 27-40.

5 Bernard, L.L., 29.

At Heart and by Blood.

2009-06-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

From the outset, this Essay^¹positions itself as an extreme/polemic viewpoint. Perhaps it’s the Chicago punk background of its propagator, it’s clawing at easy targets (I.e. Starbucks) or it’s use of phrases like blood of their vanquished foe^², and gnawing the jugular of an Anarcho-syndicalist^³, but this essay doesn’t feel like it wants to be taken completely seriously or without a grain of salt.

The Bloody Latte introduces us to the idea that the consumption of certain beverages can serve as a cannibalistic act. Drink is transubstantiation a la the Catholic cannibalism of Christ’s blood and body^⁴. This cannibalism that Svenonius talks of is, by proxy, a symbolic cannibalism. Although in this essay it is never spoken of as symbolic. Rather, the language used encourages a more direct relationship with the signifier and the signified: a splash of “Habana

Club,” the Cuban national brand, is the bloody froth from the surf at the Bay of Pigs… tequila’s worm is
the dead yankee at the Alamo…^⁵

His argument, in some regards, makes a lot of sense. And since reading it, I’ve found myself thinking about the ways in which other beverages could be implicated in the system it speaks of.

However I do have problems with some of the very direct relationships (in this text), like the one mentioned above; In which the signifier is the signified. Svenonius’s argument seems sound in relation to the sort of framework I highlighted in my seminar: When somebody regards an object, or if it influences their thinking in some way, then it is almost the same as owning an object. By bringing an object into their world, they have by proxy, incorporated the object into their view of themselves or taken it under their umbrella^⁶. The discussion around estrangement in my blog entry called Social Practice might also serve as a useful reference point.

This sort of appropriation, in relation to one group of people taking resources from a group which they defeated, could be seen as a cannibalistic act: On par with with the post-battle cannibalism practiced by, just as a local example, the Maori of the early 1800s^⁷. However, I remain unconvinced that the meanings Svenonius attributed the signifiers he mentioned have such an enduring singularity. It seems to be at odds with my understanding of meaning: as something that has a fluid potential to it.

____________________

1 Svenonius, Ian. “The Bloody Latte: Vampirism as Mass Movement.” The Psychic Soviet. Chicago: Drag City Inc. 2006. 35-43.

2 Svenonius, 35.

3 Svenonius, 40.

4 Svenonius, 36.

5 Svenonius, 41.

6 Ninow,
Charles. Let's talk about economics and my fluttering heartbeat.
Critical Studies Research Seminars MFA. Elam Lecture Theatre, Elam
School of Fine Arts, Auckland, IN. 28 May 2009.

7 Masters, Catherine. “'Battle rage' fed Maori Cannibalism.” The
New Zealand Herald.
8 September 2007. 11 June 2009
<http://www.nzherald.co.nz/maori/news/article.cfm?c_id=252&objectid=10462390>

Something Magnetic.

2009-06-11T10:47:00.001-07:00

In places throughout, this article^¹almost appears to support some of the arguments put forward by political scientist, Samuel Huntington in his book the Clash of Civilizations. In this book Huntington proposes that after the cold war (which would be now), most major conflicts, rather than being between nations, would be between major ethnic and religious groups.

The idea of large-scale conflict between ethnic and religious groups is not unfamiliar; it dates back as far the human race itself. Still, Huntington's prophesies are a little worrying when you look at the global terrorist activity, of the last ten or so years. In retrospect, there does seem to be pattern.

Towards the end of this article, Seib starts to clearly deride some of Huntington’s theories. Stating that the last decade’s terrorist attacks are largely carried out my small numbers of people using the media to enhance the impact of their actions^². In classic terrorist fashion (I’m thinking in relation to organizations like the IRA and the ANC), the propagators this article describes commit acts that achieve more symbolic relevance than bloodshed. Their attacks are screened into the world’s living rooms as “virtual crisis”^³.

Clearly, the prospect of a world ruled by racial and liberal divides seems, well, depressing. Almost a little fantastical.

One problem that I saw with this possibility was that, the way the previous two world wars have played out: there have actually been two sides involved, not a multitude of individual states. A true race war (for want of a better term) wouldn’t necessarily allow for allegiances would it?

Further reading on The Clash of Civilizations helped account for some of these loose threads. The essay Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà vu?... by Bruce M. Russet et al., outlines the fact there are supposedly ‘core’ or dominant states within civilizations that have the ability to attract countries of similar culture and repulse those that are culturally dissimilar as a means of organizing collective security^⁴.

The above statements could be related back to Sieb’s commentary about the small numbers involved in terrorism. Perhaps these small numbers have the potential to serve as the aforementioned cores (or affective centres): With the ability to draw in other participants and help to compress/solidify groupings?

____________________

1 Seib, Philip. The News Media and “the Clash of Civilizations.” Media and Conflict in the Twenty First Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2003). 217-234.

2 Seib, 232.

3 Seib, 232.

4 Russet, Bruce M., John R. Oneal, and Michaelene Cox. “Clash of Civilizations, or Realism and Liberalism Déjà vu? Some Evidence.” Journal of Peace Research. 37.5 (2000): 583-608.

The Problem with Legislature

2009-03-22T02:36:00.000-07:00

...colonial laws, legal constructions taken from landscapes in which 'man is everything and Nature appears to be tamed and subservient.¹

One of the most significant issues highlighted in this essay, in my mind at least, is the fact that legislature designed to protect the environment can potentially have/has had an adverse affect on the way in which we appreciate and experience our (New Zealand's) landscape.

This essay speaks particularly about the fact that, due to the high amounts of land settlement during the 1880s and 1890s, specific laws were developed to protect the land. The laws made New Zealand into two kinds of country: one in which the urge was to advance human activity, and another in which the urge was to exclude it². One of the problems with these laws was the fact that they allowed no provision for a middle landscape – one in which the progression of both humans and the landscape was encouraged. Another problem was the fact that the laws staged the landscape as a resource that needed to be protected for economic reasons (tourism was, and still is a large source of income for New Zealand) rather than a living, breathing entity that needed to be protected because of it's own merits. There was no ignoring the knock-on financial benefits.

Geoff Park certainly has a cynical tone when he describes these provisions and their effects: It led my thinking towards today's Green (Political) Movement and how their methods measure up in relation to what Park was saying. The Green movement is not a centralized group

with centralized leadership. It consists of many different national
groups, and has a particularly strong following in New Zealand³, Germany⁴and Canada⁵. This environmentalist movement is different from many others because it operates within the political/parliamentary spectrum, achieving it's aims through legislature and referendum. While it may not be the perfect situation, to this reader (before reading Park's essay) legislation always appeared to be the best way to deal with environmental issues. Much like affirmative action⁶, it seems counter-intuitive at the same time as being the most direct way to deal with the problem.

I agree with the point that Park raised, that legislature governing the way in which we interact with the environment has obscured our relationship with it. I just wonder, in a profit driven economy, is there is really a better way to protect it?

____________________

1 Park, Geoff. “A Moment for Landscape.” Theatre Country: Essays on

Landscape and Whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006.
203.

2 Park, 202.

3 Green Party of Aotearoa. 22 March 2009 [http://www.greens.org.nz/].

4 Bűndnis 90/Die Grűnen. 22 March 2009 [http://www.gruene.de/].

5 Green Party of Canada. 22 March 2009 [http://www.greenparty.ca/].

6 “Affirmative action.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 22 March 2009 [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/affirmative-action]