TE HAA KUI O TANGAROA
A film by Khadija von Zinnenburg CarrollSound Design
Video Installation, 5.13 mins, HD Video, 2019. Longer version being prepared for premiere during Manifesta 13 in Marseilles, 2020
Comissioned by TBA21–Academy’s ‘The Current II’ Convening ‘Phenomenal Ocean’, Venice Sept 2019. Link
A film created by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, with Jody Toroa, for TBA21–Academy’s ‘The Current II’ Convening ‘Phenomenal Ocean’ featuring the launch of the Ocean Archive, led by Chus Martínez.
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy, von Zinnenburg Carroll’s film addresses the conflict at the core of the environmental crisis. On the one hand, life, like the whale in the film, is dying because of pollution. On the other, people of the ocean – like the Maori community featured in this film – have agency in turning these tragedies into cultural life, finding a way of moving forward by honouring the dead and campaigning for a better political future.
The death of the whale leads people in the small village of Muriwai that it beached in to relearn the customary ways of removing her bones and curing them to make Taonga – cultural treasures – that in turn tell the history of their relationships. While her flesh is too toxic to be consumed as it was when the Pacific Ocean was cleaner, her soft bones can be used to fertilize Kauri trees that are dying. The whale thereby lives on in the healthy trees and carvings on the tribal meeting house, which keeps oral histories alive in contemporary art.
The video was made with the Rangiwaho community in Aotearoa/New Zealand during a time when their material culture was returned to them for the first time after being looted in the scientific raid of Captain Cook in 1769. It is in the context of this political agency that the whale is a sign, that from the tragic legacy of colonialism, new Taonga can be made. This is part of healing the colonial wound, and it is the wounds deep on Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa’s body that the viewer witnesses as Jody Toroa tells her story.
This is a short prelude to a larger project in a particularly momentous context, because this community has just won a campaign to have their valuable material culture that was looted in the scientific raid by Captain Cook, returned to them. It is in the context of this political agency that the whale is a sign, that from the tragic legacy of colonialism, new Taonga (cultural treasures) can be made. This is part of healing the colonial wound, and it is the wounds deep on Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa’s body that you see as hear Jody Toroa tell her story. It is a work of ecofeminism made by a group of women and is about the conflict at the core of the environmental crisis. On one hand - life, like the whale in this film - is dying because of pollution. On the other, people of the ocean, like this Maori community, have agency in turning these tragedies into cultural life, and finding a way of moving forward by honouring the dead and campaigning for a better political future.