mano tini

"I am caught in the perplexing dialectics of deep and large; of the infinitely diminished that deepens, or the large that extends beyond all limits"

- Gaston Bachelard 'Poetics of Space'



Taking time to look and listen while the camera records these observations. I am exploring the concepts of connection & duration as they relate to the image we have of a moment in experience. Looking from the Maori concept of time I nga waa o mua, walk backwards into the future with your ancestors always before you. Time is all encompassing, the past exists in the present and feeds the future. This concept extends to consider the connection between moments which are present to us, and those which, though not present are connected through wairua -as an ineffable presence through all duration. In this respect I seek to explore how imagery might address the unseeable and the unknowable. I focus on minor events in the natural world, and their connection with major effects over extended duration.


*readings - looking at ways to weave together connections / interconnections:

'In the sand drawings of the universe, the grandmothers & grandfathers explained that each sand grain represented the different brothers & sisters of Papatuanuku, and that every space between the grains of sand represented mano tini, the thousands of measured forms of distance in time & space measurements. These drawings illustrated the vast distances of time & space. Of how the growth in the koru or frond of the universe was so simple, for it had multiple dimensional forms that radiated from the middle of the universe and away from each growing stem of creation. Then the grandmothers carefully made squares in the sand drawing. The houses were divided into earth, water, fire and air. These were to represent the terrestrial Te Mana Tai Whenua'
- Whispers of Waitaha Grandmothers Stories


...'and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw that form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.'
- James Joyce The Dead The Dubliners

The life of the mind is given form in the places and spaces in which human beings dwell, and those places shape and influence human memories, feelings and thoughts. In this way the spaces inner and outer -of mind & world- are transformed one into the other as inner space is externalised and outer space brought within.
- Gaston Bachelard

'The World is wholly inside & I am wholly outside of myself' - Merleau Ponty