Join us on Saturday 25 March, 12pm - 4pm, for a durational performance by Olivia Webb and Noel Meek, with Jake Kīanō Skinner (Ngāti Rangatihi), Elliot Vaughan and Annabelle Thorp.

“Blood, bile, intracellular fluid; a small ocean swallowed, a wild wetland in our gut; rivulets forsaken making their way from our insides to out, from watery womb to watery world: we are bodies of water.” Andrea Neimanis in Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology

“All things are possessed of wai although water may not be present; all entities manifest as one-of-many, and therefore have their existence as an influx . . . by the world.” Carl Te Hira Mika (Tūhourangi) in “When ‘water’ meets its limits: A Māori speculation on the term wai”

Hydrological thinking challenges colonial thinking, challenges capitalist thinking, it seeps in and undermines individualist thought. It does this by disregarding barriers and borders, real and imagined, by overflowing and soaking into disparate worlds and connecting them osmotically. 

“Just as the sea is an open and ever-flowing reality, so should our oceanic identity transcend all forms of insularity, to become one that is openly searching, inventive, and welcoming." Epeli Hau’ofa in “The Ocean in Us”

In a time of hydrological crises, we ask how being kōpūwai, being watery, can help us navigate an oceanic epoch, while also piloting us towards a decentred and decolonial performance practice.

“It takes me back & drags me tidalectic into this tangled urgent meaning to & fro .  like foam .  saltless as from the bottom of the sea .  dragging our meaning our moaning/song from Calabar along the sea-fl-oor sea-floor with pebble sound  & conch & wound & sea-sound moon.” Kamau Brathwaite in Barabajan Poems 1492–1992

A site-specific durational artwork, Resilience Training: Tidalectics explores the anxiety and joy of our relationship with water in the Anthropocene. A meditative performance, Tidalectics uses water, sound, breath and the body to explore our complex interactions with water as a bottled commodity, an oceanic connector, an inimical force in the climate crisis, and the bearer of all life on earth.

Resilience Training: Tidalectics is a part of CubaDupa Festival. Read more about CubaDupa, here.

Olivia Webb

Olivia Webb is an artist and musician of Dutch-Pākehā descent based in Ōtautahi. She loves working with others and is most interested in questions about how we live together. Her recent artworks explore identity and belonging through participatory projects which foreground practices of listening. Olivia’s projects often utilise the human voice, particularly in song, as well as performance, video, multi-channel sound, and composition. Olivia has a Ph.D. in Art + Design (AUT).

Noel Meek

Noel Meek is an improvising musician and composer based in Ōtautahi, working with electronic, electroacoustic and found instruments. His work in recent years has taken a turn towards the non-human world and Te Ao Māori in an effort to explore what decolonised music truly rooted in the whenua of Aotearoa might sound like. Recently he has presented scored performance works with SCAPE Public Art, The Adam Art Gallery, St Paul St Gallery, The Len Lye Foundation and CoCA Toi Moroki.