Correspondence 1.2

Correspondence 1.2 cover designed by Emma Kevern

Correspondence 1.2 cover designed by Emma Kevern

Correspondence 1.2 has arrived!

Correspondence is a biannual tabloid, publishing pairs of works for the page, web, and ear, as openings into artistic practices and relationships. In Issue Two, the contributors bring their bodies to bear upon language and other threads within the conversations that extend from Issue One. 

Volume One, Issue Two, includes audio and print contributions from Terry Craven and Joan Fleming who continue their correspondence from Issue One; Kirsty Dunn, Kāhu Dunn, Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, and Āio Te Uruao Tamati-Elliffe who have expanded on the kōrero that was shared in the first issue; Sancintya Mohini Simpson, who has been corresponding with Issue One contributor Shivanjani Lal; and essa may ranapiri who corresponded with Faith Wilson, another contributor to Issue One. Sometimes deeply collaborative, and at others just distantly related, the relationships that hold this volume together are an indelible part of the work that has been made.

A new development to Correspondence and the Physics Room's publishing efforts is a new platform for digital publishing; this page! As well as this brief introduction, PDF downloads, and info on how to get a free print copy, you can now click the links on the contents list below to browse the full contributions to Correspondence 1.2. The HTML text adapts to your reading device, and includes the audio editions of each work embedded alongside the digital text and images with alt text for screen-readers. Following the release of Issue Two, you will also be able to read and listen to Correspondence 1.1 here

Explore the collected work of Correspondence below!

Contents

Details

Correspondence Volume One, Issue Two

  • Published June 2022
  • ISSN 2744-7529 (Print)
  • ISSN 2744-7537 (Online)
  • ISSN 2744-7545 (Sound recording)
  • Edited by Hamish Petersen
  • Designed by Emma Kevern
  • Printed by Allied Press
  • 1000 copies of a 32pp tabloid on 52gsm newsprint
  • Featuring new audio/print comissions by: Terry Craven and Joan Fleming; Kirsty Dunn, Kāhu Dunn, Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, and Āio Te Uruao Tamati-Elliffe; Sancintya Mohini Simpson; and essa may ranapiri.

 

Downloads

Download Correspondence 1.2 (PDF) Editorial note by Hamish Petersen (PDF) AGAINST THE END / REMAINDER by Terry Craven and Joan Fleming (PDF) Kato || Arero by Kirsty Dunn Kāhu Dunn, Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, and Āio Te Uruao Tamati-Elliffe (PDF) The Inheritance by Sancintya Mohini Simpson (PDF) Alba and the atua by essa may ranapiri (PDF) Biographies and Colophon (PDF)

 

Correspondence

Volume One, Issue Two

COVER

Editorial note

Hamish Petersen

Kia ora anō. 

 

In Issue Two the contributors have brought their bodies to bear upon language. 

 

While Terry Craven continues their practice of marking out extinctions with paint, plaster, and soil, Joan Fleming takes their collaborative text with Terry from Issue One as material to be grappled with. Joan has erased parts of their previous text and re-articulated the remaining words with new suffixes, tenses, and punctuation to arrive at a set of dense blocks, full of life. Words that were distant now rub up against each other, and with Terry’s images, where the names of extinct species have been abstracted with layers of repetition, or lost; perhaps taken back into Terry’s body. Sancintya Mohini Simpson, a friend of Shivanjani Lal (who contributed to Issue One), has piled the remains of burnt sugarcane on the floor and carved language back into them. These materials—sugarcane and language, so loaded with grief, labour, and survival—are reclaimed as a kind of maternal compost from which to grow. These are paired with a short poem and digitally-manipulated family photograph that tell specific, shrouded stories about Sancintya’s maternal lines. 

Following their exchange around Kirsty’s poem "Tongue || Tide" in Issue One, Kommi wrote a whiti, presented here as "Kato || Arero." Their kupu are embodied in the drawings by Kommi’s tamaiti Āio, and Kirsty’s tamaiti Kāhu, of their own arero on the previous pages. Though loosely related to each other, these parts are all jointed to the related bodies who gathered around kitchen tables in Ōhinehou to make them. These bodies become even more recognisable in the pātere Kommi wrote and recorded, and which you can listen to by scanning the QR code on page 17.  Nēpia Mahuika writes in Rethinking Oral History and Tradition that, unlike people, books cannot be held to account for their words; they cannot respond when questioned. The same could be said about audio files living on the internet. Arguably, sound has a closer relationship to an author though; speech resonates through the whole being as words are formed. This vitality courses through the ventricles of the poems by essa may ranapiri. Working in correspondence with Faith Wilson, who contributed to Issue One, essa’s work here puts their body into the time and geography that they share with Faith in their Clan Gunn affiliations. At times both archaic and colloquial, essa uses the tool of language as what ecologist and philosopher David Abram might call a spell: a way to conjure not just past realities and alternative presents into communicable form, but also manifest futures; bringing the distant and liberating near.

Issue Two is now online, alongside Issue One. You can listen to the audio edition of each contribution, adjust the digital text to your needs, or download individual PDF and EPUB files directly from the webpage for each issue. We have done this to allow better access into the stories in this volume.

It’s been nearly a year since we began work on Correspondence and again the whenua is turning inwards. The nights are long. Good time for listening, reading, or writing. More from us when Matariki returns. 

Take care of each other.

 — Hamish Petersen

 

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AGAINST THE END / REMAINDER

Terry Craven and Joan Fleming

Thank you for the unbearable hello. We are only keeping track. The end you drop on a white page, shadows exact as the name of my life.
...
What obligations do we hold open? Living names graven alongside who brought them. They smell our traps: the draw of the fallen so easily human— silks, stomach, and breasts. The black accidental, also human. First conceded cause.
...
You know to thicken texture from loss, to conceive a way to order these takings into a dark broth. Bodies like black loops, loops, possible black on black on “beautiful”. With black-black, might a viewer ask, Is there anything? Am I not? A bucket filled with spin will not hold her balance. So many birds mean nothing.

Record of taking [ ] into the body 1 (2021) 420mm x 600mm acrylic, chalk, oil pastel, and pencil on canvas

A set of minutes to the edge of drowning. Right up to the edge. Panic, this morning, was muddy with nothing. Worlds are risky, surely; empty of was. I observe you, small gesture: a black dot, thickening the entanglement. Fact: the sick land we happen on bites every want to belong.
...
Us us: complex pest, famous for nesting. A fine bag of disorder—binging on power—living where craving lives, in the lower path. A last night. A circle in dust. The dream’s determination to exterminate, while the dog feeds.
...
What can a fledgling do against Rat’s anywhere? Trees can’t remove the mark, so painful to look at. Hubris, endless. The dissonant underneath names Nature mine, supplier, waste. The river beds pool in rich red and aqua green punishment.

Record of taking [ ] into the body 2 (2021) 420mm x 600mm plaster, ink, acrylic, pencil, oil pastel, and soil on canvas

I know we are the body. And if we, there, in the body (where heat, fight, black, loss, and sleep keep piling up) don’t want to continue—¡wild, sick, crumbled!—I say that each dot was felt, as death sprouts a new head of arriving blossoms.

a new head of arriving blossoms (2022) 420mm x 600mm acrylic, gouache, oil pastel, saharan storm sand, and pencil on canvas

The text—by Joan Fleming—is an erasure of the polyphonic essay Joan and Terry contributed to Correspondence 1.1. The constraint Joan set was to keep all words in their original order, though tense and plurality could be altered. The paintings— by Terry Craven—were made while corresponding with Joan about how to take the facts of mass extinction into the body. Their correspondence spans Issue 1.1 and Issue 1.2.

 

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Kato || Arero

Kirsty Dunn, Kāhu Dunn, Kommi Tamati-Elliffe, and Āio Te Uruao Tamati-Elliffe
A colourful tongue poking our from lips, with the signature, Āio
A tongue and lips illustrated in Black and White
A tongue illustrated with brightly drawn monsters, and the signature, Kāhu
Kato || Arero

 

Pae kare, aku kare ā-roto 

i a au e ruku ana 

ki roto i kā karekare

Koia te pae tata

heoi, ua tātā ana,

uaua te ngau paepae 

i au e mau tātata ana

 

Patua rā i tēneki wā e wera 

                   ana te rino

Te rinorino whakahiamo 

Koirā ko taku tino kararehe mana atua

Kātuarehe e whakaatu rā taku ūpoko pāpura

E ruaki kai tō te wēra 

puha

E tuhatuha ana ki tōu nā waha 

                  e tūwhera ana mai rā

E kuhakuha ana a pukurua i te horo hūare, āe rā

Kūare kā 

mea e kore e areare mai ki au

Puare ana te kiteka, hore kau e hau pirau 

 

Tēneki au, ko mauri tau

 

Te mauka. 

Mauria mai rā!

Te mau takata. 

Mauria mai rā!

 

Te takata whakamau. 

Mauri atu!

Te mauāhara. 

Mauri atu!

 

Te maumahara. 

Mauria mai rā!

Mau te roko. 

Mauria mai rā!

 

Māu tōu ene. 

Mauri atu!

Mau ake nei. 

Mauri atu!

 

Te mau tūmārō. 

Mauria mai rā!

Ka mau te wehi. 

Mauria mai rā!

 

Te maumau takata. 

Mauri atu!

Te takata maumau. 

Pōuri atu!

 

Koia hoki!

He aha hoki!

Hoki atu, hoki atu...

               he rawe te roko i tōhoku reo Māori

E kī e kī, te kī a taniwha Pākehā

He hōhā

E hoki atu rā ki tōu 

nā hōpua

Kikī ana te wai i te hoki, 

waihoki ko ō kohī

Kohikohi tō weta 

E hī, e matira

Ko te waha 

o te ika

He wahaika

He patu e

He Rātū? E kāo,

he Rāmere kē

Meremere-tū-ahi

Ko te Paraire 

kai te haere

Kai te haere mātau ki te wai

Mātau i te wai

Mātauraka 

i te korokoro

Anā 

tō mokomoko!

Kā karu e pōhiri mai ana ki aku karu

taku kare pōwaiwai

Ko wai? 

Ko Wai Uiui 

He karekare o 

te taitai nunui!

Arā te reo pōhirihiri

Kaua hei hīhiri

 

Te reo e rere

Te wai e rere

Te ika e rere

 

Te manu e rere

Te iere, te iere

tere - teretere

te pūkā werewere

 

Kai te hiawai

Kai te hiainu

Pūpū ake te huare 

Tē aro i au 

kīhai i areare au

Mō te wareware au

Te koa 

te pukukatataka 

o te āhuataka

Ko taka te kapa¿

 

Kato || Arero: hei whakamārama

 

Pae kare, aku kare ā-roto 

i a au e ruku ana 

ki roto i kā karekare

Koia te pae tata

heoi, ua tātā (very heavy rain) ana,

uaua te ngau paepae (taikawa – latrine beam) 

i au e mau tātata ana

 

Patua rā i tēneki wā e wera 

                   ana te rino

Te rinorino whakahiamo 

Koirā ko taku tino kararehe mana atua

Kātuarehe e whakaatu rā taku ūpoko pāpura

E ruaki kai (kei - like) tō te wēra (whale’s) 

puha

E tuhatuha ana ki tōu nā waha 

                  e tūwhera ana mai rā

E kuhakuha ana a pukurua i te horo hūare, āe rā

Kūare kā 

mea e kore e areare mai ki au

Puare ana te kiteka, hore kau e hau pirau 

(laying it on thick) 

Tēneki au, ko (kua) mauri tau

 

Te mauka. 

Mauria mai rā!

Te mau takata (hospitable person)

Mauria mai rā!

 

Te takata whakamau. 

Mauri atu!

Te mauāhara. 

Mauri atu!

 

Te maumahara. 

Mauria mai rā!

Mau te roko. 

Mauria mai rā!

 

Māu tōu ene (go and bite yo ass)

Mauri atu!

Mau ake nei (forever and a day)

Mauri atu!

 

Te mau tūmārō (persistence)

Mauria mai rā!

Ka mau te wehi. 

Mauria mai rā!

 

Te maumau takata. 

Mauri atu!

Te takata maumau (wasteful person)

Pōuri atu!

 

Koia hoki! (I agree wholeheartedly!)

He aha hoki! (No way!)

Hoki atu, hoki atu... (I’m sick of hearing about...)

               he rawe te roko i tōhoku reo Māori

E kī e kī, te kī a taniwha Pākehā

He hōhā

E hoki atu rā ki tōu 

nā hōpua

Kikī (full) ana te wai i te hoki, 

waihoki ko ō kohī (diarrhoea) 

Kohikohi tō weta (faeces)

E hī, e matira (to fish (with a rod))

Ko te waha 

o te ika

He wahaika

He patu e

He Rātū? E kāo,

he Rāmere kē

Meremere-tū-ahi

Ko te Paraire 

kai (kei) te haere

Kai te haere mātau (mātou) ki te wai

Mātau i te wai (knowing in the water)

Mātauraka 

i te korokoro

Anā 

tō mokomoko! (serves you right!)

Kā karu e pōhiri mai ana ki aku karu

taku kare pōwaiwai

Ko wai? 

Ko Wai Uiui (Inquisitive Water) 

He karekare o 

te taitai nunui!

Arā te reo pōhirihiri

Kaua hei hīhiri (spring up (of thoughts), desire)

 

Te reo e rere

Te wai e rere

Te ika e rere

 

Te manu e rere

Te iere, te iere

tere - teretere

te pūkā werewere

 

Kai (kei) te hiawai

Kai (kei) te hiainu

Pūpū ake te huare 

Tē aro i au (I was not aware...) 

kīhai i areare au (...that I was not aware)

Mō te wareware au

Te koa 

te pukukatataka 

o te āhuataka

Ko (kua) taka te kapa¿

 

QR code
Tongue || Tide
QR code
Whakarongo atu!

 

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The Inheritance

Sancitya Mohini Simpson
"Amma" marked into a pile of sugarcane ash
The Inheritance

Sinking into

a dusty mattress

caressing dog-eared edges softened by time

they sound like

a tongue clicking

disgust flicking

she folds them over

like lovers

her haldi-coloured nails and sugar

in her body

her DNA

she unfolds

futures

her red bangles

jingle

her hand glides

as she sweeps

them into one stack

the weight

of the cards

the possibilities

wrapped in satin cloth

in her hand.

 

Works:

Amma, Sugarcane ash, digital photograph, 2022.

The Inheritance, scanned photograph and digital drawing, 2022.

Mother, sugarcane ash, digital photograph, 2022.

 

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Alba and the atua

essa may ranapiri
Dear Alba

 

what runs through this broken engine

what spat up out of Albion

what whakapapa gets cross-wired

the viking anachronistically clicks

on the image of themselves

helmet adorned with horns

two for each devil on their back

eagle wings eagle wings eagle wings

these wings turn into a bird

or seraphim so many-eyed

and many-wheeled

building their own way through the water

how meat did we have to make of life to get here?

fish and boar and other beasts

my own mythology of segmented flesh

strike up conversation in the savagery of it

from where I’m standing I can see all the tongues

that the English have cut out

did you bagpipe along to the gargling

blood pooling in the cavities of language

when it dries you have a new red paint job

making everything brand new for the next four seasons

a breath that takes the ashes out

what weapon did they give you

what mascot-ed populace

the first of you to come here

were on the endeavour

with that one that the kānaka maoli

would turn cooked

a part of me wished this line of blood never happened

look at how much it spilled

do I turn myself inside out

screaming peace or war ad nauseum?

but it looks like you decided

the alba in albion the war machine

chugging along

let me lie inside it and fall asleep to

its rumbling

praying that the highlands hadn’t been

so utterly compromised

that you never had to leave

 

A Shadow or a Snake
(after ‘Address to the Devil’ by Robert Burns)


did the devil exist before you lot got here?

the fish of Māui had ātua with their own ways of seeing the world

of being the world

but none to mark so utterly with horns

 

before the Devil came

Whiro got to hang out in the dark

like night-time was something completely natural to be in

then a story came

from Christian mouths

that turned us in Whiro’s stomach

evil was uttered over their sleeping form

 

when they arose again

the creatures in the dirt took on a new

meaning and we learnt to carve the word

evil into the night-sky

 

Tartan

when I found the words for who I was

or what it is I am

there was a knife-edge glint on the word woman

transformed in the light of the sun

just to see what it would be like

I started trying on

my best friend’s skirts

one was    the colour of wet hair in a storm

the other    a baby’s   blue room

freshly gendered

I slipped one up over skinny jeans

some grotesque parody of early 2000s fashion

a preschool child trying on their parents’ make‐up

but if it was a kilt?

 

someone shares    a picture of Oscar Isaac    on twitter

he’s wearing a suit jacket    with a grey kilt

there is no tartan

 

the kilt and the skirt

or the skirt and the piupiu

would they all get the same

reaction

from men at the service station?

 

I look up Gunn tartan on Google

there are so many possible options that I’m overwhelmed

I save as a dream of who I was

 

piupiu rustling around my hips

as I swing the poi

as I whir myself into being

lain on the ground as my mother wraps me in

tartan secures me in the fabric

would these moments have

settled my disturbed stomach?

 

     the only Gunn I’ve met

a man who gave me a Marvin the Martian

bike helmet for my ninth birthday

the house smelling of Christmas pies

or was it the slow turning of life into death?

his funeral was the first I attended

the first time I learnt that celebration could

look like a tear trailing down the cheek

bloodshot eyes trying to see where he had gone

I don’t remember anyone wearing tartan at the ceremony

nothing of that line made it into the church

the original colours have all been lost anyway

the sticks used to test the threads rotting

in the highland mud

 

Tangaroa at the Loch


Tangaroa watches his moko raise

their head above the water

like a finger breaking

through a black line

 

the taniwha of the loch is cautious

concerned about more bad flash photography

still feels a kind of way about that first photo

monochrome and grain

when the monster knows there is no one

except for

the foreign sea

sitting in the grass

they will climb up onto the land like a seal

all oily rainbow and flippers

bounding like a dog

to visit the carvings the long dead Picts

left to remind us

of their existence

 

Nessy thinks about crossing the short distance to

their koro

how easy it would be to bound

that gap between

but something stops them

 


and Tangaroa just watches with tears in his eyes

he has had time for some of his moko

oceans of it

but he never got to establish a proper relationship with

this lochness monster

the hours of staring at a screen and not pressing send

and the days of not even thinking about it

how long had it been?

was it before Tangaroa was even Tangaroa

Tagaloa perhaps

when the domain of water meant everything

 

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About the Contributors

essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Pukeko, Ngāti Takatāpui, Na Guinnich) is a poet who lives on Ngāti Wairere whenua. They have a great love for language, LAND BACK, and hot chips. Their first book of poetry ransack was published in 2019. ECHIDNA is their second book. They will write until they’re dead. (they/ia)

essa has been corresponding with Faith Wilson, who contributed to Issue One.

 

Terry Craven is a painter and co-owner of Desperate Literature, Madrid. He is represented by Arniches 26 Gallery and his writing has appeared in 3:AM and The London Magazine.

Joan Fleming’s latest book is Song of Less (Cordite Books, 2021), a verse novel exploring ritual, taboo, and the limits of individualism in the ruins of ecological collapse.

Terry and Joan’s correspondence continues from Issue One.

 

Kirsty Dunn (Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is a writer, researcher, and māmā based in Ōhinehou. She recently completed her PhD in Māori Literature in English at the University of Canterbury.

Ko Kāhu Dunn tōku ingoa. He tino pai a Godzilla.
Ko Kirsty tōku māmā.
Ko Sam tōku pāpā.

Kommi Tamati-Elliffe (Kāi Tahu/Te-Āti-Awa) is a propagator of te reo Māori. A musician/rapper and lecturer in Māori and Indigenous Studies who teaches reo throughout the community with regular collaborations with Kāi Tahu artist Turumeke Harrington, Kāi Tahu artist/writer Kiri Jarden, and Kāi Tahu/Ngāi Tai musician Marlon Williams.

Ko Āio tōku ingoa.
He pai ki ahau ki ngā kaipūtaiao. Ko Emma tōku māmā.
Ko Kommi tōku pāpā.
Ko Kāhu taku hoa.
He tino pai a Kāhu ki ahau.
Ko Kirsty tōna māmā.
Ko Sam tōna pāpā.

Kirsty and Kommi’s correspondence continues from Issue One.

 

Sancintya Mohini Simpson is a descendent of indentured labourers sent from India to work on colonial sugar plantations in South Africa. Her work navigates the complexities of migration, memory and trauma—addressing gaps and silences within the colonial archive. Simpson’s work moves between painting, video, poetry, and performance to develop narratives and construct rituals that reflect on her matrilineal lineage.

Sancintya has been corresponding with Shivanjani Lal, who contributed to Issue One.

 

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Colophon

Correspondence
Volume One, Issue Two June 2022


ISSN 2744-7529 (Print)
ISSN 2744-7537 (Online)
ISSN 2744-7545 (Sound recording)

Designed by Emma Kevern Printed by Allied Press, Ōtepoti

Published by The Physics Room Ōtautahi, Aotearoa

The Physics Room works within the takiwā of Ngāi Tūāhuriri.

Correspondence publishes pairs of works for the page and ear as openings into and through artistic practices and relationships. You can also access Correspondence as a digital publication including audio editions of each contribution and downloadable PDFs and EPUBs at www.physicsroom.org.nz/publications.

Correspondence is edited by Hamish Petersen, with assistance from Abby Cunnane and Amy Weng, supported by the whole Physics Room staff: Audrey Baldwin, Honey Brown, Chloe Geoghegan and Orissa Keane. To contact the editor, write to hamish@physicsroom.org.nz, or call the office at +64 3 379 5583.

Thank you to all of the contributors to and collaborators on Correspondence Volume One (Issues One and Two). Correspondence Volume Two will begin to take shape once Matariki returns to the sky.

The Physics Room is a contemporary art space dedicated to developing and promoting contemporary art and critical discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Physics Room is a charitable trust governed by a Board of Trustees.

© The Physics Room, 2022
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.by-sa/4.0/. Images are exempt and are copyright of the authors.

 

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