IN/DIGITAL SPACES

The Physics Room and Te Matatiki Toi Ora, The Arts Center brings together IN/DIGITAL SPACES, an interdisciplinary performance installation developed by Bea Gladding, Janaye Henry, Nicholas Ahu Gartner, and protectionspell. Debuted at Tiny Fest 2024, we’ll be revisiting the digital realm this Matariki. IN/DIGITAL SPACES takes us into te ao hangarau, the technological world, spanning past, present, and future. The artists delve into what it means to be Māori in a digital space, inviting the audience to experience a representation of Māori computational existence. What does it feel like to be Māori in a tech-driven future? What might it mean to be Māori 1,000 years from now, in a world where technology has become all-encompassing? The installation is a chasm, a gap, a void—an immersive space where these questions and others can be explored, uplifting and elevating our voices as tangata whenua, coexisting with and within, the future of the digital world.

Te Reo o te Whakataukī e Hīkoi Ana
with Josiah Morgan, Directed by Bea Gladding

Join us in Pūmanawa Gallery on June 19, from 5.30pm.Te Reo o te Whakataukī e Hīkoi Ana is a performance to support the ideas present in the exhibition IN/DIGITAL SPACES - The Hīkoi epitomises the themes of past, present, future, guided by the whakatauki ‘Ka mua, ka muri’ (walking backwards into the future). Josiah Morgan will actualise through a Hīkoi from Pūmanawa Gallery through the Art Centre, made visible in the gallery space through live stream.
We will have warm drinks and light refreshments.

Performance duration: 50 min (Approximately)
Date/Time: June 19, 5.30pm, performance starts 6pm

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Bea Gladding (Ngāti Porou / Ngā Puhi) is a creative working across Aotearoa. Her connection to te ao Māori and its values have driven her work in both theatre and music. In Tāmaki Makaurau, Bea was the director of The Jingle Bellethon Telethon (Basement Theatre 2023) and was a performer, co-director and sound designer for Josiah Morgan’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for Auckland Pride in February 2024.Bea also performs regularly under their DJ and production alias MR MEATY BOY. MR MEATY BOY is about avoiding simplistic categorisation of club music and encouraging a more playful and open response from audiences.

Janaye Henry (Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) is a comedian, writer, and actress based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She recently made a splash onto televisions across New Zealand competing on Celebrity Treasure Island. She has been doing comedy for 9 years, improv for 10 and describes herself as a clown by nature, comedian by nurture. She is a screenwriter and her highlights include Taskmaster Season 2, Ahikāroa and Have You Been Paying Attention? An award nominated and winning comedian she is committed to diversifying the artist landscape in Aotearoa and curated the first wāhine Māori comedy show and the a Basement Theatre Christmas Show with Bea Gladding.

Nicholas Ahu Gartner (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is a multimedia artist based in Otautahi having recently relocated from Pōneke in order to pursue a career in education. He has exhibited works with TinyFest, Te Papa, the Wellington City Council & Te Herenga Waka the Victoria University of Wellington. Nicholas’s creative process is grounded in the philosophy that art should be used as an agent of change and this can be seen in the different themes communicated within his works ranging from the accessibility of technology and social justice to the impacts of colonisation on ecology. His most recent works involve creating audio visual compositions by utilising archival video footage and glitch video art creating an intersection between past, present and future.

protectionspell (Tangata Tiriti) Oscillating between states of TECHNOPAGANISM and DIGITALPSYCHEDELIA, protectionspell works as an auditory conduit to Ōtautahi’s silent rhythm. Summoning waveforms and spectra from the discarded data of a Matrioshka brain, their practice folds glitch, signal, and noise into trance-like architectures — part ritual, part systems interference.