Kate van der Drift

Dazzled (Numbed?) by a Myth (2022)

Single channel / Digital Video / Colour / Sound

The essay film Dazzled (Numbed?) by a Myth (2022) explores the fragile ecology of the Hauraki Plains through two readings. The first traverses past social and ecological transformation in the Plains. The latter reading grapples with what remains — shifting margins and precarious territories.

Credits & notes

Narrator: Geva Ngapō Downey (Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Porou)

Dialogue Editor: Jackson Hobbs

Passages used with permission:

Part I
Geoff Park, Ngā Uruora: The Groves of Life
Victoria University Press (1995)

Part II
Letter to Barbara Hurd, citing her work in
Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Human Imagination
University of Georgia Press (2008)

    Related essay

    An artificially made waterway bisects a green field.

    To See Obliquely: Kate van der Drift’s Listening to a Wet Land

    Essay
    By Alena Kavka · February 1, 2023

    "The reality of being in this country as descendants of settlers is something that is more akin to the reality of swamplands" — Alena Kavka writes on Kate van der Drift's show at Pah Homestead

    Listening to a Wet Land

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