Hidden City

Such ‘alternative’ practices tend to be relegated to the past and romanticised as part of ‘simpler’ and ‘less-developed’ societies, that either resulted in tragedy as the commons were unmanaged, or became replaced by capitalist efficiency and development. 

Stevo’s back and forth migration from Wellington to Waikaremoana allows him to move back and forth between—and even simultaneously inhabit—multiple economic identities. Hayward’s depictions of his movements and his diverse socio-economic practices refuse to tell (only) the story of dispossession, revealing how Stevo enacts something bigger, something more empowering. In a way, he is a ‘postcapitalist’ subject, one who refuses to identify only in the story of capitalist accumulation or dispossession, one who both draws on and enables a ‘something else’ that is already here in part.

Kelly Dombroski and Gradon Diprose

These two video works originate from a larger documentary project Heather has undertaken with Steven Winiata, following him as he negotiates waged work in Wellington and the diverse economy that connects his home near Lake Waikaremoana to his life in Wellington