Dark Matters/Transient

An investigative and creative research project directed by Irihipeti Waretini.

DARK MATTERS/TRANSIENT [working title] sets a vibrant light on our capacity to transition in and out, through and amongst unseen matter. The fluid resolve that has built a strong, and living steadiness between Māori, Aboriginal & Oceanic peoples here in Naarm, Melbourne.

All images and video by Irihipeti Waretini

Through a series of conversations and various methods of documentation including film, sound, movement and contemporary storytelling…

DARK MATTERS is an inquiry to the customs and ways of being, of the Māori & Oceanic community that has created kinship ecosystems of care and culture with Aboriginal peoples here in Naarm/Melbourne. Promoting the theory that the same sacred navigational tools that allowed our ancestors to traverse and trade on open waters of the Pacific, are the very tools used today, to build and fortify these relationships and frameworks for cultural exchange.

The evaluation from this research builds capacity to provide frameworks and innovative pedagogies to support my community. Including a mentoring model for creatives to build self awareness and tools for creative sovereignty - Kō Au, and an application based service that offers the practise of embodying of those tools - Hāti. See creative examples below and insight further on.

Dark Matters creative examples: Djeembana Whakaora

Kō Au creative example:

Hāti creative examples:

Kō Au

Building Creative Sovereignty

This creative mentoring model aims to develop a deeper understanding of their own culture and build the tools creatives to include ritual and practises that are in harmony with Traditional Custodians culture and Lore.

Haati

The Practise of Embodiment

Hāti (Haati) is a social change project to enhance the representation of Māori ways of being, to capture the ways in which we, a diasporic community living on unceded Indigenous lands, foster personal and community wellbeing. To activate the regenerative creative pathways, strength based narratives and trauma informed storytelling that amplifies our interconnectedness to Indigenous Lore, our responsibility to Country and kinship with Traditional Custodians. This project aims to increase the visibility of the success journeys of our Māori diaspora community and to develop an interactive application with the strategies that encourage cultural competence and continuation of cultural practises. Based on the seventy phases of Te Kore (potential, formless thought) and motivated by fitness apps, HĀTI (working title) is a collective challenge that redefines our understanding of hauora (wellbeing). We're putting community care to the forefront to offer our communities different mātauranga (knowledges) from various practitioners so they can define what hauora means for them.

Based on the fitness challenge format which connects people into a common goal, that provides a support network toward individual goals and includes easy-to-follow guides for service users, HĀTI centers Māori methodologies and a holistic approach to wellbeing. To build an application that allows engagement of varying outcomes of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual benefit. Through different timed challenges of 14, 21, 30 and 70 days HĀTI will offer personalised engagement of Māori systems of wellbeing. Content will be created via various audio visual applications from movement and health based practitioners and re-envisioned by vocal and visual storytellers. Tools within the application will include invocations to stimulate energy, for rest and restoration. It will include fitness programs that honour the cycles of the taiao (environment) and bring awareness to our own cyclical rhythms too. Embedded with ongoing curation of creative content and experiences that inform and advocate the kinship and care between Māori and First Nations people.