Commentary in category: Writing

"By reframing Paul’s cinema with new films, we hoped that an archive could be brought to life; speaking, breathing and collaborating to create new context for contemporary media arts practices." - Solomon Nagler

Foliage, soil, silence. It Was a Cave Like This (2017-18) opens to the lens drawing a gentle, verdant line, bringing the viewer into the cool sensations of an undergrowth. A voice; “You helped do this.” “...You helped light this flame.”

"... Johns’ is deeply immersed in the symbol not as a western cultural apparatus, a semiotic of contested bio-politics but as a divisible structure, a meditative aid that backs onto a compassionate, beatifically contemplative worldview" - Hamish Win

What strategies do contemporary artists employ to test media representation of reality and the means through which we channel and consume it? How do artists expand the documentary form through various material processes and formal strategies? How do artists deconstruct the surfeit of images we already have and the means by which we receive them? Can 'truth' and fiction exist in the same space? What historical artworks could be part of a revised genealogy of current documentary practices in Aotearoa New Zealand? How could an ethic of care, as understood through sustained relationships with Indigenous and diverse communities be played out through documentary practices?