Manaakitanga and Coviviality

http://collection.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/collection/results.do?view=detail&db=object&id=462

Manaakitanga and Conviviality, I think it's all about human behaviour in a particular community and their usefulness and contribution to their community, and their togetherness and hospitality to the people presented at a particular function or gathering.

As Manaakitanga comes from the culture Maori, it's all about togetherness and sharing upon the tribe or the community they belong to. And sometimes special intvities from other community or tribes.

People gathering for a certain occasion and contributing their talents and other values that will be valuable for their community. Sharing of food, thoughts and heartfelt appreciation of all people by singing or and speeches and other activities.

When it's applied to art, it's a celebration of of various artists with many different latents from cooking, decorating, singing, music and dance. Now in the modern world it has even broaden up to togetherness of people who lives together in one nation or country and welcoming people from other countries with the richness and uniqueness of ones culture and community.

At the end of the day it's a valuable massage passed to people how one care for each other by offering the best they got.

According to Maori Culture :

“Manaakitanga is an all encompassing phrase. Manaakitanga is a very
powerful way of expressing how our community has cared for one another,
how Maori and European cultures work together, how we care for our 3 million
visitors a year. Manaakitanga is a feeling, it implies a responsibility upon a
host and an invitation to a visitor to experience the very best we have to offer”.http://www.nzgs.co.nz/download/Manaakitanga.pdf

Conviviality as defined in "The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary",

the English word convivial to the french convive that translates literally as 'live together with' and produce the word conviviere that defines 'a member of a company who eat together'.

This also makes me think as humanity, when people stick together it's more stronger and this can be balanced in a society.

this can be seen from even animals behaviour, how a group of heina's kill their pray and feast on it together and on the other hand the togetherness also will show the strenght of the community or group.

For example in animal documentaries it can be seen, when a herd of cows or other animal is attacked they try to stick together, so they look big and strong and it's hard to prey or defeat on them.

In ocean the small fishes gather in a big formation of the ball or other shape which makes them look huge as one group when it's attacked.

So conviviality is practiced among different religions, races, tribes and even among other living things.

When it comes to an Artist in a community his purpose can be same as either promoting his community and it's people by his work and sharing it with people from other communities, cultures or even country.

So I think the relationship between an artist and the community will be, he or she will get all the support of the community to share their work of art and offer the best of their art with others.

Garry Hill's Voice Ground

Graphic Equalizer

An interesting concept of Visual Art done by Gary Hill which was held at AUT School of Visual Art.

As I entered the dark room with a huge wall screen in front with a comfortable distance from the screen to sit down and enjoy the sound and visual effects of the work.

I found it very interesting as his work was based on sound and it's movements.

As we always known and heard voice can be heard not seen, but I saw the voice in the movement of the sound, it was well presented with white sand that was poured on the surface of the black speaker, that made an added job by the contrast of both color black and white.

Having said the sound can be only heard, but there are ways the new technology had made it possible by human being able to hear and see the sound at the same time.

For example the graphic equalizer does the same job, they create and paint the the sound.But for me this work of Gary Hill was more unique because it's manual and not digital or graphic.

The movements of the sand was highly sensitive due to the voice control, it was well presented and recognised by the patterns and formation of the movements of the sand.

It's also interesting that the artist included only the hands to be displayed, which gives a more uniqueness to his work.

Hands as the visible part of human body and voice as the invisible part, which makes me think the sensitivity of both senses of touch and hearing.

The work of Gary Hill has inspired me with the idea of making sounds to visual art, which can me used for paintings, posters, Music logos, T-shirts etc...