Sender Dovchin, Associate Professor, Curtin University

Laura Rascaroli, Professor of Film and Screen Media, University College Cork

SONIC MODERNITIES: CAPITALISM, NOISE, AND THE CITY ESSAY FILM

1 December, 9.05am-10.05am

In 1970, Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Henri Roger opened their British Sounds with an interminable tracking shot of the assembly line at the British Motor Car Company in Cowley, Oxford, the overwhelming screeches of the factory competing for auditory prominence with a male voiceover calmly reading from the Communist Manifesto. In the context of a sceptical form that derives from a literary genre, the role of voice has been central to the coming-into-being of the essay film as an object of study – much less so that of non-vocal sounds. Here, I move beyond the logocentric interest to analyse the function of sound and noise in the production/disruption of the essayistic argument. I reflect on film sound in relation to the evolution of specific urban modernities, and simultaneously on what an analysis of sound can tell us about the city essay film as a genre. While the sonic manifestations of capitalism mutate, contemporary architecture censors sonorities, and new digital technologies erase noise, I turn to the case study of Bo Wang and Pan Lu’s Many Undulating Things (2019), an essay film on Hong Kong which unleashes sound as a form of critique of the city as image, and of the cinema’s role in creating it.

Laura Rascaroli is Professor of Film and Screen Media at University College Cork, Ireland. She has published widely on European and world cinemas, experimental nonfiction, and space, the city and architecture in film. Her work has been translated into several languages. Among her books are How the Essay Film Thinks (2017), The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film (2009), and From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (2003, with Ewa Mazierska).

Deidre Brown, Professor, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland

RECOLLECTION: THE REINVENTION OF AUCKLAND’S COLLECTING INSTITUTIONS

30 November, 9.15am-10.15am

Collecting institutions have been regarded as anchors of European intellectual life. Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Auckland Zoo and the Domain Wintergardens were considered cornerstones of Auckland’s identity as a civic centre of importance at the time of their establishment. Closely linked to corresponding institutions in London, they can be interpreted as far-flung manifestations of imperialism in their missions, collections and architecture, even though they were built when the Empire was in decline. However, their location in cultural landscapes with rich and ongoing indigenous histories never made their colonial foundations particularly stable. In this presentation, I will discuss how these institutions have sometimes struggled with difficult legacies and sought to reorganise themselves to be relevant in a changing world. Whereas in the past, collecting institutions displayed the Empire’s reach across the worlds of plants, animals and objects, they have since changed focus, resituating themselves as conservators of human and non-human worlds and the presenters of diverse stories relevant to local conditions. The reimagining and retrofit of their missions and infrastructure—and (re)presentation of their collections—represent the challenges and possibilities of a city coming to terms with a complex past, present and future.

Dr Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) is Professor of Architecture at Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning and Codirector of MĀPIHI: Māori and Pacific Housing Research Centre at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau. Her research interests include Māori art and architectural history. She has written several books, including Māori Architecture (2009), the multi-authored Art in Oceania (2012) and a forthcoming Māori art history with Dr Ngarino Ellis.

Francis L. Collins, Professor, Te Puna Mārama | School of Social Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland

Cities, Migration Regimes and the Racialisation of Labour

2 December, 9.35am-10.35am

While national territories and borders are often the stage for migration politics, it is specific urban and extra-urban places that manifest the patterns and experiences of mobile people’s lives and their differential inclusion into extant social formations. In this presentation, I take up this urban-migration articulation through a focus on the ways in which contemporary forms of migration management contribute to a racialisation and precarisation of mobile people. To do this, I offer a synoptic account of  migration regimes in Aotearoa in the first two decades of the 21st century, which have had as their aim the establishment and management of categories of temporary migrants that feed into labour, educational and tourism markets. While these regimes facilitate and condition migration into diverse geographies—rural agricultural and horticultural spaces, towns and urban centres—cities, and perhaps Auckland in particular, have become central in migration, both as a site where mobile labour is concentrated but also where its national and transnational economic value can be coordinated and extracted. Building on this proposition, I highlight a multiplication of labour that has been created and extended by the growing reliance of employers on non-citizen and non-resident workers that is fundamentally racialised while also surfacing along intersecting axes of gender, class and legal status. I also argue that racialisation links to varying incorporation into urban life, economically, socially and politically but also via the geographical and temporal conditions that mobile people are subject to, including their (non)place in the city.

Kobus Mentz, Director of Urbanismplus and Adjunct Professor Master of Urban Design, Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland

The New Imperatives required to address our global challenges and help our cities prosper

1 December, 4.15pm-5.15pm

The future seems alarming as a daunting array of seemingly insurmountable issues, such as climate change, environmental degradation, poverty and urban decline, are rapidly moving from the fringes to centre stage, all with significant social and cultural impacts.

Many urban professionals are unsure as to how to proceed as current day practices do not seem to be enough. In response Kobus will discuss an approach he has developed over several years which defines new imperatives required to address these challenges. He will also outline which future-relevant challenges, future-relevant thinking and future-relevant skills professionals will need to consider.

As a practitioner he will draw from his internationally recognised growth strategies, urban regeneration plans, and numerous influential demonstration projects. As an academic he will draw from the delivery of urban design training for over 1,000 mid-career professionals, decades of part-time teaching, and the publication of numerous articles.

Annie Goldson Professor Communication, Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland

Closing Plenary (2 December): Film Screening followed by Q&A with producer and director, Annie Goldson

2 December, 2.15pm-4.10pm

Red Mole: A Romance (2023, 85 mins) is a feature documentary that traces the origins, performances, personalities, and fate of the 1970s radical theatre troupe Red Mole, which emerged, in fact, from the University of Auckland’s English Department. The film is both an underexplored history of an influential group of charismatic individuals and a poignant personal story. It interweaves a history of Red Mole, told through interview and rich archive, with the personal journey of Ruby Brunton, the daughter of the two founders of Red Mole both of whom died prematurely. A large section of the film addresses Red Mole’s years living in New York. Prior to globalization, New Zealanders often embarked on their OE (overseas experience), trudging overland to London where they ‘pulled pints’. Red Mole, influenced by America’s Beat poets and NYC’s theatre avant-garde, chose to live instead in the harsh albeit exciting Big Apple for the decade of the 1980s. Their theatre was an anarchic blend of political satire, mask, dance, physical theatre, and poetry, quite different from the restrained, Brechtian-style avant-garde of New York theatre of the time, yet they were surprisingly successful for a period until the city proved too difficult. The film explores New York through the eyes of the surviving members of Red Mole and through Ruby’s musings, as she returns to significant locations in the East Village, the former strip clubs (where the Red Mole woman danced to make money) and Central Park.