bicultural fashionistas?

went to a label launch on wednesday night - which was rather more interesting than you might have expected given that the clothing was designed for 35-55 year old ex rugby players. what was intersting was that, given the label's name, Haka, the company had done their darndest to ensure that local iwi Ngati Whatua were with them all the way, working on ensuring that the use of a Maori taonga by a pakeha company would work as well as it could - they seem to have successfully placated Ngati Whatua, but i'm not sure how well it will be recieved further south by Tainui etc

any way, back to my knitting: we, the invited guests, were welcomed through the Maori gallery of the Auckland Museum, onto the marae. a tradtional powhiri then followed. all steps were explained to us by a Ngati Whatua representative. At the end of the powhiri, we were to partake in the hongi ritual, which symbolises the joining of the manuhiri (guests) with the tangata whenua. As the kaumatua and company directors moved forward to particpate, the vast majority of the invited guests ducked through the doors into the museum foyer - obviously the call of the bubbly and nibbles was too strong. i was horrifed: it was incredibly rude, but more that 90% of the guests ignored this part of the ceremony, which was explained to them at the outset as a symbol of kotahitanga or togetherness.

what's wrong with fashionistas and rugby players? this is new zealand in the 21st century - we should be able to partake fully in the rituals of others without embarrassment or indifference. in no way was this confrontational or difficult: for women, the ritual involves shaking the hand and kissing the cheek of each member of the tangata whenua's welcoming team. Men will be required to do the hongi or nose press, but Maori always guide you through it: just watch the guy in front of you and do as he does.

it reminded me of a story i once heard ( i'll give no more details then that for anonymity) about a kiwi couple, who are christians, who were invited, when living in japan, to attend a ceremony a local buddhist temple by a family with whom they had become close. during the ceremony, they sang christian worship songs and prayed aloud - "to keep the devil away"

how rude: do we not think that God is all- powerful? then why would we presume that observing a ceremony from outside our world view and experience will damage our faith? surely God knows our hearts even when we are in the temple? why could they not sit quietly and learn from the dedication to prayer that buddhist monks are renowned for?

why couldn't a group of pakeha new zealanders observe and participate in a ritual that had been explained to them? why were they afraid of joining in with something new? what does that say about biculturalism in New Zealand?

searching for meaning

having a very interesting conversation last night about art has prompted some thinking today . . . i think stemming from that age old dilemma about art and the artist - wherein immoral, corrupt human beings create objects of beauty. i remember confronting the dilemma myself in my teens when i realised that picasso was a womanising misogynist - but that guernica was one of the most profound and distrubing comments on war in the 20th century. perhaps its easier as a christian to understand this, since we know all himans to be broken people, who, in their brokeness, still attempt imago dei in creative acts.

the dilemma is further heightened for me by the reaslisation, a few years later, that art is not a force that necessarily improves or ameliorates the morality of the audience. this realisation came about in descriptions of concentration camp guards who would go home, kiss their children and listen to beethoven . . . encapsulated in the popular culture by the character amon goeth in spielburg's Schidler's List - a sensuous man who responded to beauty but whose morality was totally corrupt. it is these two aspects of the dilemma of art - it is not necessarily produced by moral beings or enjoyed by moral beings- that leads, i think to adorno: "After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric." adorno, especially, was thinking of german culture, where the same society that produced Beethoven, Brecht and Mann could produce Hitler et al.

this dilemma is explored in a number of postmodern works - i think in particular of literary works - but the rise of abstraction into its purest forms since the holocaust is not insignificant either. what many decry as postmodernism's relativity and playfulness - think The Name of the Rose, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Underworld, etc etc - is in fact an attempt to find a poetry (art) that is not barbaric, after Auschwitz.

as we move away from that pure postmodernism into a broader sweep of the novel's styles, my hit pick for the week, a book, that while not at all inventive, playful, ludic etc in its style, is, like those classics of postmodernism, attempting to find a language that can write pain without diminishing it - Mister Pip by new zealand writer Lloyd Jones. His lyricism never overrides the power of the book's heart, which is a quiet contemplation on the meaning of art.

bringing me back to where i started: which is this - while art is not always a force for the good, it can be. there are moments when 2 hearts/souls/minds can join in the liminal space between the work and the audience, when a person can feel less alone, more human, just because, someone, somewhere, has once felt like them. great art can pierce the soul in just the right place, break the ice inside us, save us from the life we know. when we read (or in any other way interact with art) the people we meet are familiar to us, because as Twain said - we've met them on the river. its the river that art is for - that place of undisclosed and unfulfilled longing within us - which artists (be they moral or immoral) try in a broken, human way - to expose, reveal, connect.

only connect.