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.