I can’t seem to focus, can’t clearly see, what’s going on? .
The trees have begun to encroach, the wild cats linger waiting for their next meal, and what point is there if you can't get a good look over the fence? Gladly I sit, not content, but thankful in knowing it is not raining, at least not heavily, yet. Water runs down my back. Moisture has built up on my shoulders while facing prevailing winds, I have nowhere to wipe the droplets off the lens of my glasses.
Looking out, an action is taken and a direction faced, in this specific case, at 316°. Smoke signals, a steam or vapor calling from the past, here to help transport / transfer cognition into the past, to 1971. Now fifty years on since the episode of its construction, this site is being re-considered, questioned, acted in/on, photographed once again. With a desire to find and make new connections to a past moment I stand on platforms to see a little further into the offing. From a peripheral position, I am trying to look to see what is going on. Milan Kundera writes in his novel Immortality, “....In Aristotle’s Poetics, the episode is an important concept. Aristotle did not like episodes. According to him, an episode, from the point of view of poetry, is the worst possible type of event. It is neither an unavoidable consequence of preceding action nor the cause of what is to follow: it is outside the chain of causal events that is the story….Life is as stuffed with episodes as a mattress is with horsehair, but a poet (according to Aristotle) is not an upholsterer and must remove all the stuffing from his story, even though real life consists of nothing but precisely such stuffing.” The ‘stuffing’ is everything outside of the direct focus, the deconstructed information.
The history of the site and its surroundings are this stuffing. In recent history, the Hokataka, Griselinia, cats, and Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd now define Signals. The trees located at either end of the field at Fred Amber Lookout now hold presence over Signals, existing as a visual stuffing, their presence imposing in on the form of the sculpture itself. Based on their growth, according to the footage in the documentary Four Shapes for Four Spaces, it seems the two Hokataka flanking the field were potentially planted in dedication of Fred Ambler in 1957/8. In the documentary, shot in 1971, the trees located between the car park and the field and on the other end of the field are about two and a half meters tall. Now fifty years on, each tree seem to be reaching near the height of Signals, which stand 11 meters in height, giving precedence to shifting time and the ever changing landscape.
Since this documentary was produced a Griselinia has also been planted next to / below the Hokataka that is pointed out in the below. For approximately the past 35 years wild cats have also fed and live below this tree, their presence protected by both the Hokataka and Griselinia, and maintained by a community group. This group is made up of volunteers who are private citizens and public officials, who care for them daily. The cats and group have received a range of reactions during their occupation. There are a number of people who are now “registered cat feeders,” volunteering to visit each day to lay out cat food. “She saw in the cat a superb independence, pride, freedom of action, and constancy of charm (so different to human charm, which is always spoiled by moments of clumsiness and unattractiveness); in the cat, she saw her paradigm; in the cat , she saw herself.” This mirrors the reaction to the construction sponsor of Signals, which stands in stagnant repose next to a tree that continues to claim its place in the site.
Jim Allen secured Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd as a sponsor for the construction of Signals in 1971. Comalco (N.Z.) Ltd is now known as Rio Tinto Aluminium, it is a 100% owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto Group. This is the same company who had the New Zealand Government fund the construction of both the Manapōuri Power Station and aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point, whose builds were also completed in 1971. Since the 1950’s it seems this company has received various reactions from local bodies who understood the apparent transgressive attitude toward environmental issues this company has regularly actioned since this time. But, in a parallel sense of the cats at the Fred Ambler Lookout, it is a similar case of public officials having vested interests, and arguably this company continues to operate just within the law.
This being said, we as consumers are complacent, we drink out of aluminium cans and require metal for our digital technologies to operate, and as artists we often continue to look for funding where it is readily given.
At this moment the Tiwai Point Smelter is again being audited for environmental negligence, an ongoing issue since it was opened in 1971.
Kundera, M. (1990) Immortality, (Trans. Peter Kussi, 1991), Harper Perennial, New York, 313. (Excerpt originally found in a folder at the Paul Cullen Archive, Henderson.)
Dawson, J., Lucas R., Connor J. (2011) New Zealand's Native Trees, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson. 248.
https://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora/species/corokia-macrocarpa/?download=pdf Accessed 22-5-2021)
Conversation with registered and unregistered ‘cat feeders’
Kundera, M. (1990) Immortality, (Trans. Peter Kussi, 1991), Harper Perennial, New York, 104.
www.comalco.com (Accessed 24-2-21)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manapouri_Power_Station (Accessed 24-2-21)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Tinto_Aluminium (Accessed 24-2-21)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiwai_Point_Aluminium_Smelter (Accessed 24-2-21)