Transcript of the Artist in Residence 2022 – Cassandra Barnett

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[Piano music plays. Birds singing in the background. Auckland Council pohutukawa logo in the top right. Shots of shrubs with sea in the background. Screen title reads Hei Konei Being Here. Cassandra Barnett enters walking on the pathway to the park while saying Kia Ora. The sign board on her left says Whites Beach.]

Cassandra: Kia ora, ko Cassandra tōku ingoa, he uri ahau nō Raukawa ki uta. Ko Ngāti Huri te hapū, ko Pikitū te marae. My name is Cassandra and I'm a writer.

[Cassandra continues walking on the walkway looking at the sea on her left side.]

Cassandra: So this is set down at Whites Beach whose name in Māori is Arerorua, Two Tongues...for now I've called it “People to Come”.

[Monochrome image of the sea and mountains/foreshore. Cassandra continues her walk through the bushes with sea on her left side.]

Cassandra: At two tongues, tuuii have taken up residence. They like it here, though they weren't made for salt or the chop of waves. They reckon it was named for them - a clue laid down in the naming times to summon them and so, in the change place times, they came:

[Cassandra walking down to the beach and towards the sea.]

Cassandra: the birds of the two syrinxes.

the special ones,

born to duet with themselves.

doubled, like the wave-rock cymbals

bookending this beach.

[Views of the sea. Cassandra talking as she stands on the beach.]

Cassandra: Quite a magical place. I will tend to think I'm going for a walk just for the walk, and lose myself in it, in that slow time. But of course, once you start losing yourself, everything rushes in. And naturally, all sorts of impressions...and from those impressions, ideas and sparks of all sorts of things start forming. So if I have something on me, I invariably whip it out, be it a phone or a pencil and paper, and start recording and jotting the things that are coming.

[Cassandra continues talking while walking on the beach.]

Cassandra: Yeah, it's kind of a relay between that and putting them away to just be here because it’s when they're away and I'm just being here that everything comes. But then the writer in me wants to capture the everything.

[Image of sea and Cassandra typing her poem on the typewriter in the background. Shot of Craw Homestead at Anawhata, Waitākere Ranges Regional Park with trees.]

Cassandra: It's been amazing to be back here out west in the Waitākere o Hikurangi. Te Wao Nui a Tiriwa.

[Series of shots of the bush and corridor at Craw Homestead. Shot of Cassandra’s writing desk including books and pens. Cassandra typing at her writing desk.]

Cassandra: It’s definitely had a feeling of homecoming for me. I grew up in Titirangi, although at the time that I grew up I was fairly disconnected from my Māori whakapapa, although I knew about it.

[Series of shots of Cassandra typing and talking while sitting at her writing desk inside the room at Craw Homestead.]

Cassandra: But I was yet to make all the journeys. I've made since in life, back to my tūrangawaewae. And I do feel quite cautious to even begin to write about being here. I can't help but always be really conscious of the many interests and bodies, from the mana whenua Te Kawerau a Maki and their kaitiaki role and then the rangers in Auckland regional parks and their custodian roles as well and the deep thorny complexity of what this land, this whenua, this ngahere, is to people.

[Shots of vehicles driving past Huia Rd. Three sign boards displaying Huia Rd, Waitakere Rahui Area and Market Huia Hall Labour Day Mon. Shot of sign board of Waitākere Rāhui Area with cars passing in the background. Cassandra talking from her writing desk.]

Cassandra: The “paradoxical beauty of rāhui”. It's funny because I don't remember writing that, but that is totally something I would say. Of course, there's a lot to unpack there, not least the meaning of the word rāhui. And that's complex. And I'm not an expert, but I am, you know, I have a common or garden grasp of rāhui within Te Ao Māori and its uses to place restrictions on certain areas, sometimes for spiritual reasons, sometimes for more environmental reasons.

[Shots of trees with sky in the background.]

Cassandra: But a temporary restriction that is during a period of tapu or invokes a period of tapu and allows an area to heal or process. Things that have occurred there and to regenerate and renew itself.

[Cassandra talking from her writing desk.]

Cassandra: And then I have a kind of artist's interpretation of rāhui, which is looser and not literal or technical, but it's in relation to the idea of constraints which certainly in English are used in the creative context as this idea of again, imposing a restriction on yourself by perhaps curtailing what is available to you to use, whether it's in my case as a writer, things to do with language.

[Shot of Cassandra standing next to her writing desk and looking at her work. Shot of her various pieces of work at her writing desk.]

Cassandra: And the idea is that by having certain constraints to work within, it forces your creativity. There's a whole lot that suddenly isn't available to you, whether it's a certain kind of words or letters or grammar or whatever. And so within that, you kind of have to work harder your creative muscle to discover ways around the restriction, not to trespass it, not to break it. But yeah, just to discover from within, if you like, other ways to approach the thing you're approaching.

[Images of Cassandra painting while sitting on a sofa.]

Cassandra: Yeah, I'm in a state of inquiry. I guess, into how we... it's always how we do these things in Māori and then what happens when you take them into English because English changes everything, it really does.

[Shot of Cassandra standing next to her writing desk looking at her work. Shot of Cassandra talking while sitting on a chair.]

Cassandra: There’s a series of pieces that I wrote, that were more focusing on sound than meaning, and I decided that I was going to, between the two languages, English and Māori, the sounds that were coming up for me that I was latching on to were the “wh” sounds, the “ff”...and the well, the “f” in English, the “wh” in Māori, also the “th” - t h in English, which are sounds that to me all speak to Wheke who is the atua of the wind in the trees, the breeze in the trees, the more inchoate sounds of the forest. And of course Wheke has “wh” in her name as well, so I had been gathering these words with “ff”in them like thrift, which crops up in the kauri science because “ill thrift” is one of the symptoms of kauri dieback. It's when they're not taking up nutrients at a typical ratio to the amount of nutrients they're not feeding properly, not growing as fast as they should in relation to the nutrients they are getting. ...ill thrift…...And fall, fallen, fell - these words and in Māori...Anawhata, whata...Arawhata...because these are in the names around here and then all these - whata, whatu, whara, whaka - all these Māori terms.

[Shot of Cassandra’s work on table. Cassandra standing next to her writing desk looking at her work. Shot of the typewriter. Cassandra talking from her writing desk.]

Cassandra: Anyway, they were floating around and they kept popping up in poems and thinking about things like karakia and how we approach before we harvest rongoā. for example, we do karakia before we harvest the earth for the earth paint we do a karakia, and there are karakia for these things which I do use. But sometimes when I go and talk to Tāne, I don't have a karakia for whatever it is.

[Shot of Cassandra standing in the bushes writing in her diary with sea in the background. Cassandra talking and sitting next to her writing desk.]

Cassandra: So I just, I'm busily writing my own, making up little chants that are sort of meaningless, but are just to mark moments and invoke a relationship. So this is one of those.

befell te thrift e tuu e

kua whara te -ometer

e tuu e

e wheroia te -ograph

e ngaa thrift e ngaa fall

whatu whata e tuu e

tahi rua toru whaa

ffffththh hii aue hii

[Shot of Craw Homestead with trees. Cassandra typing on the typewriter from her writing desk.]

Cassandra: I mean, the vast idea is to invent new language that's the vast idea, to find new language, to express things that haven't yet been expressed, to forge new paths for us, who need new paths. Yeah, that's a lifelong journey.

[Shot of Cassandra walking through the bushes.]

Cassandra: And at the same time, I say it modestly like, you know, it's hard work and I feel stupid every day trying to do it, but,

[Shot of trees with sky in the background. Cassandra walking through the bushes and towards open grassed area.]

Cassandra: you know, you inch forward, you inch forward by doing this practice. And I'm someone who has lived under the constraint of being a solo parent, working for a long time and not had the time, the luxury to explore in this way. It's kind of been all coiled up inside me for a long time.

[Series of shots of trees, Cassandra walking in the open grassed area and looking at the sea.]

Cassandra: The opportunity as an adult to research this land in a different way from my felt experience of it as a kid and to learn the stories and the histories, is amazing.

[Duration of video: 10 minutes 18 seconds.]