location : slipway, waiorua bay
time : 4.45pm
duration : -
duration : -
notes
: a locational piece for tape involving a reading of the the list of
ships recorded as wrecked on Kapiti island between 1828-1883, during
times of european trade with Maori, and the establishment of whaling
communities on the island, in the decades immediately prior to the
passing of the Governmental act declaring the island was to be an
uninhabited bird sanctuary, recorded onto one side of a magnetic tape.
supplemented on the other side with interviews with the current Maori
community of Kapiti island, some who have been personally coming to the
island for over 60 years, of shipwrecks they recalled in the area and
fragmentary and half-recalled stories of drownings and the narrative of
the destruction of the local lighthouse, one of the island's few
built-environment landmarks that could be seen from the sea. text and
documentary elements erased by re-recording of the same tape next to the
sea, at the approximate location of several of the sites in question.
the tape palimpsest then buried under rocks at the shoreline at Waiorua
at the site of the current slipway for boats on private Maori land, at
low tide. location marker : orange buoy. retrieval proved difficult, and
ultimately a failure, making this a contentious work in terms of my
stated mandate to leave no trace of anything i do on the island. inconclusive results : work lost in the space between being : about
loss, an ambiguous time-capsule, a material/environmental pollutant.