metamoderncreatives

Bios according to presentation order

 

Dr Alexandra Dumitrescu

 

Alexandra Dumitrescu writes poems, short stories, and literary studies. At the start of the millennium, she proposed metamodernism as a cultural paradigm and a period term. In 2014 she completed her PhD (Otago, Dunedin) with a thesis about Metamodernism in Literature, followed by a Master of Creative Writing (AUT, Auckland) with the novel Why Don’t I Keep a Diary or A Secret Story of Metamodernism. She received awards, fellowships, and scholarships from various universities and organisations at home and overseas. Her work was published in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, America, and Europe (Czech Republic, Greece, Romania). She taught at the Universities of Cluj (Romania) and Otago (Aotearoa New Zealand). She lives in Auckland, where she teaches at Manurewa High School and is a PhD Adviser for AUT. Garry Forrester called her “mother of metamodernism” in his 2014 memoir More Deaths Than One.

 

Lucy Boermans

 

Lucy Boermans is a motion design lecturer and interdisciplinary artist. Boermans’ research pathway looks to "atmospheres in motion" to realize new "points of crossing" (affective resonance) that could inform the establishment of a new, intercultural art school outside "the institutional norms" in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Boermans completed a Master of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts (first class honours) at The University of Auckland in 2021. Exhibited work and presented research includes: Towards a Collective Imaginary (poster presentation), Forum for Global Challenges, Birmingham, UK (2022); Turning (solo show), The Malcolm Smith Gallery, Auckland (2022); Unseen (group show), The Tuesday Club, Auckland (2022); Ecologies of Movement, LINK 2021, AUT, Art and Design Symposium, Auckland (2021); Iteration 12, installation with Michelle Mayn, mothermother, Auckland (2021); Our Symbiotic Habit: Telling Stories of Things That Matter (Paper Presentation), AAANZ Conference, Auckland (2020); Meeting Half Way (group show), Projectspace (2020); Materiality in Motion: Ecologies of Transformation (installation), San Diego (2019); Connected Bodies? In Search of the Affective Dimension (paper presentation), AAANZ conference, RMIT, Melbourne (2018); Hingespace (solo show), George Fraser Gallery (2018), Materiality in Motion (poster presentation), 13th Conference of Arts in Society, Vancouver (2018); Performance 2120, showing as part of Wunderuuma (AAG), The Gus Fisher Gallery (2017); Akin (solo show), Objectspace (2017).

 

Affiliation
PhD candidate at AUT, Vice Chancellor scholarship recipient.

Lecturer, Media Design School, Auckland

 

Dr James Charlton

 

James Charlton is a second-generation New Zealand Post-object artist whose work includes video, object-based sculpture, stereo-lithography, installation, robotics, interactive screen-based, and performance work. He lectures on sculpture and interactive installation, topics that reflect his interest in new Realist ontologies and parallel his PhD research on digital materiality with Plymouth University (UK).

 

Recent projects include: Thrown (Te Uru Gallery, Auckland, NZ, 2020), Rebound (KARST, Plymouth, UK, 2017), Catch|Bounce (LJMU, Liverpool, 2017), Three Action in 56 Bytes (Berlin, 2014), Waiting event: 64 bytes (Lisbon, 2014), iForm (Boras, 2011), Inside Out (AUS, UK, 2010).

 

Recent publications include: ‘Getting Things Straight,’ with Jim Allen (Anthology of New Zealand Performance Art  ̶  upcoming), Pocket-calls: Point(s) of Contact between Art Practice and Philosophy (Kaiak, Journal of Philosophy, 2021), No More and Less: The Withdrawal of Speculation (maHKUscript, Journal of Fine Art Research, 2019), Catch | Bounce: Towards a relational ontology of the digital in art practice (Plymouth University, 2017), catch/bounce: Stack Overflows and Digital Actions (in Digital Movement. Palgrave MacMillian, 2015), Post Screen Not Displayed (Post Screen Festival, PT, 2014).

 

Jillian Sullivan

 

Jillian Sullivan lives in the Ida Valley in Central Otago. Her thirteen published books include creative non-fiction, novels, short stories, and poetry. She’s taught fiction and creative non-fiction in New Zealand and America. Her awards include the Juncture Memoir Award in America, the NZSA Beatson Fellowship, and the Kathleen Grattan Prize for Poetry.  A  grandmother of eleven, her passion is natural building and earth plastering. She’s a keen environmentalist for the Central Otago Environmental Society, and co-founder of Under Rough Ridge Writers Retreat.

 

Her latest book is Map for the Heart- Ida Valley Essays (Otago University Press 2020).    

 

Session 1

 

Dr Albert L Refiti

 

Albert L Refiti is Associate Professor of Art and Design at Auckland University of Technology and specialises in the study of Pacific material culture and the architectural environment with extensive research and publication in the area including co-editing The Handbook of Contemporary Indigenous Architecture (2018) and Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations (2002). He and Rau Hoskins are co-principal investigators of the Marsden-funded Artefacts of Relations: building in the Pacific (2022-2025) research. Albert was Andrew W Mellon Senior Scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York (2019/2020), where he researched the design developments for the new galleries of the Rockefeller Wing in the department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. He leads the Vā Moana Research Cluster at Auckland University of Technology.

 

Pasha Clothier

 

Pasha Clothier is a collaborator aiming to bring about dimensional change across borders of culture, environment, and knowledge, now working with millennia-old imagery mixed with whakapapa, rocks, and plants. Acknowledging leadership in Indigenous practices in regard to the universe and environment, Pasha is now engaged in a radical enrichment of humanity's relationship to the environment and species, as a means of countering the climate crisis. Current artworks involve imagery that does not require rationality or logic to access and understand. In Clothier’s universe, a unity of feminine and masculine occurs on a trajectory to the essential; Pasha is māhū, the middle gender on Tahiti and Hawaii.

 

Affiliation
PhD candidate at AUT, Vice Chancellor scholarship recipient.

 

Hannah Hopewell

 

Dr Hannah Hopewell is a tangata Tiriti landscape architect, urban designer, and educator whose research critically focuses landscape-led urbanism and associated environmental justice. Hannah teaches at Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation / Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa, and practices design with Kaupapa Māori TOA Architects. Recent publications include Beyond Landscape in The Politics of Design: Privilege and Prejudice in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, (Non)landscape and (general) Ecology as agents of Creativity in Kerb Journal, and installations Ko Wai Au? | Who Am I? and Ko wai hoki koe? | Who the hell are you?

 

Daniel Coombes

 

Daniel Coombes is a creative practice PhD candidate and tutor in landscape architecture at Te Herenga Waka  ̶  Victoria University of Wellington. For several years he taught landscape architecture in Korea and China. Daniel has presented his research at conferences within culture studies, ethnography, philosophy, landscape, and architecture. His creative practice research is included in the forthcoming publication Fieldwork in Landscape Architecture  ̶   Methods, Actions, Tools (Routledge, December 2023).

 

Session 2

 

Lucy Boermans

(See above)

 

Shelley Simpson

 

Shelley Simpson is a visual artist based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She is currently a PhD candidate at AUT. Simpson received an MFA (First class honours) from Elam in 2016. In 2017, 2020 and 2021 she attended a summer school programme exploring Posthumanism with Prof. Rosi Braidotti at Utrecht University. In 2021 she created an Artist Lab for summer school participants. From 2017 to 2021, she was a member of the RM directorial collective. Simpson’s creative practice is an enquiry into the way in which matter – the material and non-material that makes up the world – is densely storied. She works to deepen the way in which we, as humans, can become aware of how embedded and embodied we are in complex material, more-than-human interactions.

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Natalie Tozer

 

Natalie Tozer is a multimedia artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau exploring narratives of the underground to unearth objects and knowledge. Working with time-based processes and materiality she is interested in mythology, debt forgiveness, access to the ground, digging, science fiction, anarchist anthropology and the collective.

 

Recent shows include Companion Pieces at Public Record, Māter Mater at Silo 6, National Contemporary Art Award finalists exhibition at Waikato Museum, He Iti and Piki Mai: Up Here for mothermother at the Aotearoa Art Fair, Femisphere 4 (online), and Salted Earth at Sosage Gallery.

 

Tozer holds an MFA with first-class honours (on scholarship) from the University of Auckland (UoA). During her time at Elam, UoA, she received the Lightship Award which funded the presentation of an open-air 110m video work at The Ports of Auckland, was selected for the Emerging Artists Show at Sanderson Gallery, and represented Elam School of Fine Arts at the Guangzhou Graduate Art Fair.

 

Tozer is a director at LOT23 Media which produces video media focussing on the collective such as the White Ribbon documentary Raise our Men to raise awareness of domestic violence, and ‘Oh No’ for the Sweet Mix Kids, which was in the official selection Music Video category at the NYC Independent Film Festival in New York and the PSA Union live streaming series for the Aotearoa Wellbeing Commitment to Universal Basic Services.

 

She is the founder and caretaker of the artists-run project and collective mothermother which continues to support curatorial activism for underrepresented artists since 2019.

 

Session 3

 

Dr Tasha Haines

 

Tasha is a writer and artist based in Wellington New Zealand. She has a PhD in literary theory and creative writing from Deakin University, Melbourne, and an MFA and a BFA in fine arts from Auckland University. Her diverse creative interests and experience inform her work on visual and textual hybrid forms, which has involved many years of visual arts teaching at tertiary level; and numerous awards, scholarships, publications, and mixed-media art exhibitions. Tasha seeks and welcomes opportunities to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects.

 

Janet Mazenier

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Based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Janet Mazenier’s art practice engages with landscape, the work acting as a kind of portal accessing and interpreting place, space and land.

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Mazenier’s artworks attempt to tell stories by providing a connection to our spirit of place, Papatūānuku’s genius loci…its Tūrangawaewae.

 

Although her artworks are inherently abstract, they speak of terrain, the unseen and hidden, sometimes of the uglier elements within the landscape such as toxic waste; and of the beauty contained within a multi-layered strata of wetland material.

Mazenier’s studio is located in a deconsecrated, historic church in Devonport. Although a working studio, people are welcome to visit.

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A finalist in the 2022 National Contemporary Art Awards, recent group shows also include the Mothermother iteration 14 lockdown special, The Places we Tread at Space Gallery, Whanganui, Spaces of Synchronicity, Uxbridge, Is It Real, Is It True, Flagstaff Gallery, Love Your Maunga, Maungauika/North Head, The River Runs Deep, George Fraser Gallery, Auckland.  She completed her Master of Fine Arts (First Class Hons.) at Elam, University of Auckland in 2021.

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Michelle Mayn

 

Michelle Mayn works primarily with harakeke, New Zealand native flax, using universal methods of weaving, binding, twining and knotting; often incorporating found objects.  Informed by traditional weaving practices alongside agential realism theories, Mayn’s object-based installations and small-scale sculptures considers how the life force of material might manifest through an installation practice. 
 

This process-based practice places primacy on materials, actions, and durational processes that drive the making.  As such material becomes a conceptual notion of itself.  Mayn’s intra-active installations utilise air currents, water, light, gravity, tension and other unseen forces to activate material whereby the viewer experiences the material world as vibrant and alive.

 

Michelle Mayn studied Traditional and Contemporary Māori Weaving at Unitec, Mixed Media at The Art Students League of New York in 2017, and holds a Master of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology. Mayn has exhibited regularly in New Zealand and internationally.

 

Day 2

 

Session 1

 

Emilia Ursachi Hasmatuchi

 

Emilia Ursachi (Hasmațuchi), born in 1980, PhD student in philology with a thesis focusing on multiculturalism under the coordination of Prof.univ.dr. Maria-Ana Tupan, at the Philology Doctoral School, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania. Bachelor diploma in Letters at the Faculty of Letters and Arts of “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu. Her main research interest focus on multiculturalism, postcolonial literature, globalization, and multicultural education.

 

Dr Rachel Spronken-Smith

 

Rachel is a professor in higher education and geography at the Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC) at the University of Otago. Following nine years lecturing in geography at the University of Canterbury, she returned to Otago to lecture in HEDC. From 2013-2022 she was dean of the Graduate Research School and is now back in HEDC. Rachel’s research interests include doctoral education, graduate outcomes, and undergraduate research and inquiry. She has won several university teaching awards and a national tertiary teaching award. In 2016 she won the TERNZ-HERDSA research medal and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018.

 

Session 2

 

Maria Ross

 

During her 15 years as a lecturer at AUT, Maria’s main research interest was developing critical thinking in tertiary education. She presented her research and led workshops internally and also participated in a number of conferences in Australia and the UK. At the same time Maria has been practicing and teaching Sahaja Yoga meditation for over 30 years and took part in international seminars in India, Australia, the UK and Italy.

At present Maria works as a communication consultant at MLabs (UK).

 

Dr Matthew Stevens

 

Matt is currently the coordinator for the postgraduate “Digital Transformation” courses at Media Design School and has had over 11 years teaching experience in interactive design across a range of undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate programmes. His research interest is in ecological forms of learning across and beyond the boundaries of schools, workplaces, the community and domains of practice. Informed by Classical Pragmatism, Contemporary Enactivism and Ecological Psychology, his PhD “Dissolving the Walls” (2020) explored “nomadic agile” forms of learning in which knowing and learning dynamically emerge from practice situations – involving learners, teachers, practitioners and workplaces. His current research project ‘Rewilding Learning’ involves real-world collaborations between teams of Media Design School students and Auckland Council. Prior to teaching, Matt was involved in web and interactive design and development, and before that ran his own independent cinema and film distribution company.

 

Session 3

 

Dr Siobhan Harvey

 

Siobhan Harvey is the author of eight books, including the poetry and creative nonfiction collection, Ghosts (Otago University Press, 2021 which was long-listed for the 2022 Mary & Peter Biggs Poetry Award (2022 Ockham Book Awards). She was awarded the 2021 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, 2020 New Zealand Society of Authors Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship, 2019 Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems, 2019 Robert Burns Poetry Prize and 2016 Write Well Award (Fiction, US). Recently her work has been published in journals and anthologies such as, Acumen (UK), Asia Literary Review (HK), Feminine Divine: Voices of Power & Invisibility (Cyren US, 2019), Fourth Genre (US), Griffith Review (Aus), Mslexia (UK) and, Out Here: An Anthology of Takatãpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021). She's a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Centre for Creative Writing, Auckland University of Technology where she holds a PhD in Creative Writing.

  

Susan Nelson

 

Susan is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores and celebrates authentic process and properties. “I love the evocative syntheses between the materiality of a medium and the mystery of figment. The ‘alchemy’ that occurs between imagination and matter that culminates into unique objects that share a kind of universal language.”

 

Her passion as a creative is complemented by a longstanding career in Arts Management where she has worked with Creative New Zealand, Touch Compass Dance Co, Indian Ink Theatre, and NZTrio in various strategic and management capacities.

 

Dr Marco Sonzogni

Director of Translation Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

 

Marco is a widely published scholar, poet and literary translator. He is a Reader in Translation Studies at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington where he directs the MICAT-Master of Intercultural Communication and Applied Translation and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation.  

 

Launches

 

Dame Fiona Kidman

 

Fiona Kidman has written about 35 books. She is a novelist, short story writer, poet and memoirist. Her work has been recognised with numerous prizes and awards. In 2006 she was the Katherine Mansfield Writers Fellow in Menton and in 2021 she was the Inaugural Irish Writing Fellow at Otago University. Her novel This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Jann Medlicott Ockham Prize for Fiction an several other prizes, including the Ngaio Marsh Award for Crime Fiction. She is a Dame Commander of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DNZM, OBE) and has been awarded the French Legion of Honour by the French Government, in recognition of her work on behalf of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust (it hosts New Zealand and French writers).

 

Dr Valentina Teclici

CEO, Scripta Manent Publishing House, Napier

 

Romanian-born, Valentina immigrated to New Zealand in 2002. In 1999, she completed a PhD in sociology at the University of Bucharest, with a thesis about street children. Her debut book, De la noi din gradiniţă (From our Kindergarden), Ion Creangă Publishing House, 1986, was awarded a national prize. Poems and excerpts from her creation for children are included in the bibliography and textbooks for primary and secondary education in Romania. She has published several books on sociology, poetry, and stories for children in both Romanian and English. Her work has been translated into French, Te Reo, and Spanish and published in many magazines and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. In 2016 and 2018, Valentina edited and translated the bilingual collection Poetical Bridges – Poduri lirice (Vol I & II) which includes the work of 24 Romanian poets and 24 poets from NZ.

 

Karine-Gwenaëlle

Karine was born in Neuchâtel, a little town in the French Canton, mentioned in a song by Zaz, ‘Je veux.’ She has been traveling since her infancy, having lived so far in five countries: Switzerland, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, and now Romania. At the age of 21 years, she considers herself quite the nomad. Art is in her blood; like her grandfather who was a painter in his free time, she likes to experiment with different mediums and styles. And like her mother who was a (closet) writer, web developer, and businesswoman, she tries to make sense of the world by putting her thoughts and experiences into words. Some of her writing deals with the many tragedies that have struck her; the biggest one was the abrupt loss of her mother at 17 and being left to fend for herself by the rest of her immediate family.

After she got her diploma and finished two years of cooking school in Murcia, in the south of Spain, her grandmother took her in. That is where she lives now in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania.

 

Sandra Arnold

Sandra Arnold is an award-winning writer who lives in rural Canterbury. She is the author of five books including The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell, Mākaro Press, NZ, Soul Etchings, Retreat West Books, UK and Sing no Sad Song, Canterbury University Press, NZ.  Her short fiction has been widely published and anthologised internationally. She has received nominations for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize.  She has a PhD in Creative Writing from  Central Queensland University, Australia.

 

Lincoln Jaques

 

Lincoln Jaques’ poetry, fiction and travel essays have appeared in Aotearoa, Australia, Asia, America, the UK, and Ireland. He was the winner of the Auckland Museum centenary ANZAC international poetry competition, a finalist and ‘Highly Commended’ in the 2018 Emerging Poets-Divine Muses, a Vaughan Park Residential Writer/Scholar in 2021, and was the Runner-Up in the 2022 International Writers’ Workshop Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems (judged by Janet Charman). He holds a Master of Creative Writing from AUT.

 

Irena Karafilly

 

Irena Karafilly is an award-winning Montreal writer, poet, and aphorist. She is the author of several acclaimed books and of numerous stories, poems, and articles, published in both literary and mainstream magazines, as well as in various North American newspapers, including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.  Her short stories have been published, anthologized, and broadcast, winning literary prizes such as the National Magazine Award and the CBC Literary Award. She currently divides her time between Montreal and Athens.

 

Her novel, Arrested Song, is about to be released in the UK (March) and will be available from Book Depository (which offers free shipping around the world).