Author: kowhai

090909 (but still all about the 04)

090909 UpStage Fes­ti­val Pre­view from UpStage on Vimeo.

9 Sep­tem­ber (tomor­row) at 2pm get thee to a “real life” (RL) access node at the New­Dowse (or a com­put­er that does­n’t have all of the bells and whis­tles blocked) for the 3rd UpStage Fes­ti­val, 090909.  www.upstage.org.nz will play host to 13 live online per­for­mances, ‘cyber­for­mances’ no less, that span 9 time zones.

How does it work?

Well.…..

UpStage is a web-based plat­form that enables peo­ple any­where in the world to par­tic­i­pate in live online per­for­mances, cre­at­ed in real-time by geo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­persed per­form­ers.  Audi­ences inter­act through a text chat tool.  The play­ers use images, audio, video and text to cre­at the per­for­mances, oper­at­ing “avatars” — graph­i­cal char­ac­ters that move and speak aloud.  The per­for­mances are access­able to any­one with an inter­net brows­er.

WOW turns 21

Three mem­bers of the Welling­ton­ista are already glee­ful­ly plan­ning our out­fits for the open­ing of the Mon­tana World of Wear­ableArt Awards Show in on the 24th of Sep­tem­ber at TSB are­na.  The huge mar­ket­ing push has begun with ads pop­ping up near the air­port and the details of the WOW wan­der are being ham­mered out as I type.  The show is worth around 10 mil­lion dol­lars to the Welling­ton econ­o­my and we will no doubt see cre­ative lunges for our atten­tion on a par with ‘that ice­berg’ and ‘those reapers’.  Let’s hope they do Welling­ton proud with more cre­ativ­i­ty and less brand­ed bumpf. 

Last year the supreme award went to Welling­ton­ian Nadine Jag­gi and this year sees Welling­to­ni­ans dom­i­nat­ing the field again with 40 out of the 165 gar­ments from locals.  Last year Aun­ty Helen (or her COMMS peo­ple) did a mighty job of writ­ing a speech on the fly but although I am sure the awards will be “World Class”™ I am not sure that we need John on stage with giant paua encrust­ed key for the occa­sion this year (but if he wants to give the paua dress anoth­er out­ing.…)

Safe Passage

Today deliv­ered a bright and cheer­ful blue-dap­pled day in the city but there were dark forces abroad.  Three grim reapers were seen around town this after­noon com­plete with scythes and flow­ing dark hood­ed robes.  They were spot­ted at the begin­ning of their jaunt in the dank, dark alleys of Left Bank; then again at the library hit­ting the romance and mur­der mys­tery sec­tions; lat­er at New World doing a spot of shop­ping; and tak­ing some air on the water­front at dusk (pho­to cred­it Domini­ka Zielin­s­ka).

They were har­vest­ing more squeals and smiles than souls and seemed to be a hit with the tourists.

To what do we owe this psy­chopomp?

Waku waku desu

This Sat­ur­day is the main event for Welling­ton’s Japan Fes­ti­val which kicked off 6 July with the Friend to Friend exhi­bi­tion in the Fletch­er Chal­lenge Foy­er.  The organ­is­ers Asia New Zealand Foun­da­tion, Welling­ton City Coun­cil and the Embassy of Japan (along with the spon­sors of course) are always bring­ing us beau­ti­ful free cul­tur­al events. 
 
Thanks for that.

Our recent guest poster was right­ly excit­ed about Music Fair of Japan that is part of the Japan Fes­ti­val, unfor­tu­nate­ly both con­certs are ful­ly booked. Zan­nen desu ne!  How­ev­er don’t despair, there is plen­ty of Japan­ese cul­ture to par­take of:

• Food and Craft mar­ket runs from 1.00pm until 8.00pm
• Cul­tur­al Show from 1.30pm until 7.00pm
• Friend to Friend Pub­lic Speak­ing Con­test from 2.30pm until 4.00pm (for all of you out there that think that they might sit their pro­fi­cien­cy test ‘one day’)
• Tea Cer­e­mo­ny from 3.00pm until 4.00pm

More details can be found on the asia:nz web­site (now with RSS for their event cal­en­dar).

If you don’t make it along, don’t for­get that the Japan­ese Embassy runs free movie nights on the last Tues­day and Thurs­day of every month at 6.00pm. They often spon­sor oth­er free events that usu­al­ly book out fast.  You can find details on their web­site here.

Tanoshi so desu!

The Whimsical Work of Drypnz

Drypnz will be famil­iar to many Welling­to­ni­ans with his dis­tinct street style grac­ing the streets, alley­ways and gallery walls around town.  From the paid mur­al work and  oth­er com­mis­sions, to paste ups and throw ups around town which are a gift to the city, Drypnz is a pro­lif­ic, hard work­ing artist who deserves plen­ty of recog­ni­tion (and to get paid).  The Welling­ton­ista were lucky enough to have a sneak peak at the new show open­ing at Manky Chops tonight, and got­ta say, we are not dis­ap­point­ed.  Those lus­cious juju lips with their geisha girl pouts were there in abun­dance of course but there is a range of work, dif­fer­ent sizes and medi­ums and there will be prints and T‑shirts avail­able tonight as well.

Head on down from 7:00pm until about 9:30pm tonight, the crew at Manky Chops are always friend­ly and put on a good par­ty.

Take your wal­let, I sus­pect the small­er works are going to sell fast.

Breaking news: Pleiades visible at dawn

So today is the offi­cial start of Matari­ki, for some time now there has been a push for Matari­ki to become a pub­lic hol­i­day, Min­is­ter of Maori Affairs Dr Pita Sharples last week announced the Maori Par­ty had draft­ed a bill to make Matari­ki a pub­lic hol­i­day.  See what the Prime Min­is­ter thinks of the idea here.

Some accounts have Matari­ki as a moth­er and her 6 daugh­ters assist­ing Te R? as he turns around and heads south.  I like this sto­ry bet­ter than the Greek ver­sion of Pleiades which has the sev­en daugh­ters of Pleione and Atlas turned into stars to ‘save them from Ori­on’s dis­hon­ourable inten­tions’.  Where are the kick-arse god­dess­es of leg­end when you need them?  In Japan­ese leg­end the sun god­dess Amat­era­su was lured out of her cave by a good old bit of bur­lesque danc­ing and silli­ness per­formed by the volup­tuous god­dess of mer­ri­ment Ama-no-Uzume.  That is cer­tain­ly one way of coax­ing the sun out of a funk.

There are a range of things around Welling­ton planned help get the Matari­ki cel­e­bra­tions rolling:

Nocturnal Sunshine

Well today there is time to squeeze the out the last of sol­stice by squeez­ing out a quick post to mark the occa­sion.  Mid-win­ter is offi­cial­ly here with the end of the short­est day, the end of the grow­ing pow­er of cold and dark­ness and the start of the growth of warmth and light.  While there is plen­ty to cel­e­brate about mid-win­ter (mulled wine, boots, hats and scarves spring to mind) there is some­thing heart­en­ing in the knowl­edge that the days will be get­ting longer and us hardy Welling­to­ni­ans can give our­selves a pat on the back for sur­viv­ing the worst of it with our love for Welling­ton intact.  After all, there is no such thing as bad weath­er, just bad clothes.

You may or may not have noticed but the ener­gies of the Welling­ton­ista have been divert­ed into the twit­ter­stream some­what of late, but hey we find plen­ty of our read­ers there these days too!  Sol­stice is get­ting a few a men­tions around the place and I found  this charm­ing tweet:

@RowanSmith Went to Druids’ sol­stice do at Stone­henge Aotearoa. Druid: “We give thx to the pow­ers of the East and to the guy hold­ing this light for me”

So we are curi­ous, do you mark Sol­stice?  Are you plan­ning any­thing for Matari­ki this week?  Let us know in the com­ments or on twit­ter @wellingtonista, a post on hot tips for Matari­ki is planned for tomor­row.

24 Hour Arty People

So you can’t sleep right?  If the Fringe fes­ti­val has left you all over stim­u­lat­ed and you are in need of night time nov­el­ty may I sug­gest that you head to the Wat­sui tonight for the start of a fre­net­ic 24 hour art gum­ball ral­ly around Welling­ton.  Welsh artist Bed­wyr Williams is going to give us his spin on the ONE DAY SCULPTURE series by tak­ing a used sta­tion wag­on around 24 loca­tions in 24 hours, aim­ing to stack up 24 works on the roof rack by  mid­night tomor­row.

Planned itin­er­ary after the jump

Volunteering Tea and Comfort

The streets of Welling­ton on a day like today are a joy, the sun is shin­ing, the breeze is more balmy than blus­ter and you prob­a­bly have a home to go to if you need some cave time.  In Welling­ton the streets are shared with all, and if you head into the CBD you will see suits, stu­dents, hip­sters, chil­dren and gold-card hold­ers util­is­ing pub­lic space along­side street peo­ple and alco­holics.  Auck­land is respond­ing to the chal­lenges of in-your-face social prob­lems by con­sid­er­ing a bylaw to force home­less peo­ple off the streets by mak­ing the police respon­si­ble for mov­ing the prob­lem around. Good luck with that one. 

Welling­to­ni­ans can’t afford to be smug about the issue but at least the focus is on a range of solu­tions includ­ing a wet hos­tel and liquor bans.  There was plen­ty of thought­ful dis­cus­sion over at Poneke about this issue last year.