Conversations with the Assembly #9: Hana Pera Aoake

“The body has always been central to my practice because I think, your body is your body. And I think especially having a child and seeing the way in which each day she looks a little bit like other people that I love and seeing the way in which she is made up of all of these other bodies that have come before me and before her. We have within te reo Māori, as a way of introducing yourself, something called a pepeha. You introduce yourself as a mountain and as a river, and you introduce your tupuna, or your ancestors, as yourself. I think I've always written about my body because it's my body, but it also doesn't belong to me. It belongs to many other beings and entities that have existed and will exist. You say, ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua, ko au’— ‘I am the land, and the land is me’.”

Conversations with the Assembly is a podcast produced by Cristian Tablazon in conversation with the inaugural cohort of the Regional Assembly. Foregrounding personal and networked histories, their distinct voices, and the imbrications of their diverse practices with the nuances of identity, locality, and place, the relations of production, and the broader geopolitical life, each episode will amplify, challenge, and entwine the many threads of discourse and dialogue that unfold during the Regional Assembly.

To read more about the Regional Assembly click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/programs/regionalassembly

To read more about Regional Arts Australia click here: https://regionalarts.com.au/about/about-regional-arts-australia

The Regional Assembly is a Regional Arts Australia program delivered through the Regional Arts Fund. The Regional Arts Fund supports cultural development in regional, remote and rural communities in Australia. The program is managed by Regional Arts Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.