In explaining yet again, talking it through with yet another new person today, I delved more thoroughly into the many motives for wanting to study people who relocate to NZ. Putting into words, with hesitancy yet an increasing excitement too, I returned to another strand in the woven ropes of my self-directed passion for migrants and relocation.
Tivaevae was the original subject years ago during research for an art history paper that first sparked my interest in investigating the meanings imbued into the art forms that mirgrate along with their creators.
In choosing tivaevae, I was myself looking for meanings from my own heritage; a Tahitian grandmother whose handmade tivaevae quilts, so colourful, so practical, had adorned the beds and sofas of her home. And now mine.
I found through my research how these representative crafts of traditional polynesian origin, were being recreating to signify and represent new or transitional identities; symbols both of a lost homeland and a newfound home.
It seemed Cook Island women were and are still appliqueing motifs of nature, as is fitting for a traditional polynesian women's craft, but that living in NZ meant the motifs were needing represent and reflect a new environment; its plants and animals, its fish and flowers. New identities were created and reassured through such representation- new visuals clues to a heritage based on older, established wisdoms.
Not only were motifs new, but the uses for these quilted materials was altered- traditional ceremonies and occasions were changing with hte hybridity of a NZ-Cook Is mix present in the 1st generation... Different needs determined different ways of gift giving; practical needs of warmth for example (not an issue in the heat of tropical climes) being met with these padded fabric artforms.
Today not only did I recover a sense of connection to the visual aspects of relocation identity, but rummaging through old treasure boxes while making notes for a 21st speech I found interview notes with an old friend Lyn, an amateur artist and sometime tivaevae maker. Of Danish, not Pasifika heritage, she is 1st generation NZer, and felt drawn to tivaevae initially by its 'exotic' appeal. Having sewn American styled tiny patchwork squares as a child she was not daunted by the new technical challenges. She wanted to make a hybrid piece of 'home decoration, and make it her own.
She imposed a certain European flavour on her design, sticking to a red and white theme- the Danish colours dominated her design. These hot colours also spoke to her of the NZ tropical heat in which she feels at home. Working with a lighter fabric compared to the heavy, somewhat impractical nature of layers of traditional patchworking appealed to her as being far more user friendly in an era of machine washing...
And like a Cook Is family intended to give her finished product as a wedding present to her sister. An extension of a new homeland, a memento that creates, than than reminds one of where home is now.
So I have had a day of insights, past visions returning to reassure me I'm still on a path that seems true enough to myself. I am reassured my recent mental wandering off into the silent shrubbery alongside the path have not been in vain...
there's a method yet and I'm ending the year with a positive note to stay tuned, to stay energised, grateful and alert to all the twists and turns of this wonderful life!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
What about my home?
In my first few blogs I have been getting into serious debate about the meanings of home to relocating peoples...and realised I have not explored, here anyway, what home might mean to me.
Have I relocated to NZ? yes...as a child. And from childhood onwards, I've moved house over 20 times now (and counting).
So relocating is part of my life's pattern, part of what I've come to expect every few years.
Part of my norm, my 'usual' and not a bad part at all.
Much of the positives about moving house are about the way each new home comes to mean 'home' to me.
At what stage after the move do I look forward to coming back to my house because it will feel like 'home'?
When I'm travelling home in the traffic, hungry and weary at the end of the day, what is it about my 'home' that I am looking forward to experiencing?
Some of my thoughts over the last 15 months in this new place of home:
...The sunsets, sitting on the balcony, feet on the railings, silently soaking in the largeness of the light out there. Looking further, past those near office buildings- upwards and outwards to a red- streaked stretch of wide, quiet sky.
...I'm safe, I'm up high, there's noone above me...it seems physically safe here. Noone looks in, walks past, knocks on my door at odd hours - just getting into the building isn't easy. It lends a welcome veneer of safety anyway. I'm grateful every day for my veneer. A choice and freedom.
...It's so quiet, so free of unexpected, uncontrollable noises. No dogs, children, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, neighbourhood parties...(well, maybe an occasional Friday night!).
... It's just big enough for one. For me and there's no room, no guilty empty spaces suggestive of guests to fill them. Not even a fold down sofa bed... There's choices and freedom from choices.
... Afternoon sun-filled rooms, coming home to warm furniture, orange chairs turning soft and golden, warm breezes drifting aimlessly in around the floor, tired warm dry air over me.
...Clean, plain creamy walls, calm and uncluttered, able to let my mind wander, to think and dream.
...Safety in hearing other neighbours coming home too, knowing I'm tucked inside my warm golden room. By myself, but not alone. Choices and freedom from choices.
**************************************
Have I relocated to NZ? yes...as a child. And from childhood onwards, I've moved house over 20 times now (and counting).
So relocating is part of my life's pattern, part of what I've come to expect every few years.
Part of my norm, my 'usual' and not a bad part at all.
Much of the positives about moving house are about the way each new home comes to mean 'home' to me.
At what stage after the move do I look forward to coming back to my house because it will feel like 'home'?
When I'm travelling home in the traffic, hungry and weary at the end of the day, what is it about my 'home' that I am looking forward to experiencing?
Some of my thoughts over the last 15 months in this new place of home:
...The sunsets, sitting on the balcony, feet on the railings, silently soaking in the largeness of the light out there. Looking further, past those near office buildings- upwards and outwards to a red- streaked stretch of wide, quiet sky.
...I'm safe, I'm up high, there's noone above me...it seems physically safe here. Noone looks in, walks past, knocks on my door at odd hours - just getting into the building isn't easy. It lends a welcome veneer of safety anyway. I'm grateful every day for my veneer. A choice and freedom.
...It's so quiet, so free of unexpected, uncontrollable noises. No dogs, children, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, neighbourhood parties...(well, maybe an occasional Friday night!).
... It's just big enough for one. For me and there's no room, no guilty empty spaces suggestive of guests to fill them. Not even a fold down sofa bed... There's choices and freedom from choices.
... Afternoon sun-filled rooms, coming home to warm furniture, orange chairs turning soft and golden, warm breezes drifting aimlessly in around the floor, tired warm dry air over me.
...Clean, plain creamy walls, calm and uncluttered, able to let my mind wander, to think and dream.
...Safety in hearing other neighbours coming home too, knowing I'm tucked inside my warm golden room. By myself, but not alone. Choices and freedom from choices.
**************************************
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Migration narratives
I've been reading a fascinating review of a research study based on case studies of people who moved to NZ after WW2 - 'MIGRATION AND NARRATION' (Brigitte Boenisch-Brednich)http://tihane.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/migrating-affordances/
The researcher identifies 3 main narratives which i felt were just as pertinent today:
a) Stories about leaving and arriving
b) stories about the first year in New Zealand, which are stories about cultural misunderstanding, language problems, homesickness; basically about feeling alien, and being considered alien.
c) there is a form of narratives covering the whole life of a migrant: the narratives of comparing countries and cultures – the culture you come from and the one you are now living in.
The Estonian researcher Kai Pata who reviewed this study on her blog site (see link above) sums up the key aspect of comparing the countries, which was a common theme for the migrants questioned, and was an ongoing process; part of their settlement.
I felt strong links with my own interest in researching and identifying current migrant experiences, paritcularly of professional peoples, I've heard the same stories;
the feeling of alienation and isolation; of being seen as alien; of needing to compare cultures...
Maybe these narratives form part of a common journey to create what Ruth Hill Useem termed in 60's sociology speak as 3rd culture kids (TCKs); those children who became global nomads, whose parents eg. military, were constantly on the move
These children were forced to create their own independant identity that remained intact when they moved from 'home' to 'home'.
But it' s not just the children in these situations who face issues of where the home base is, but increasingly the world is a nomadic place for professionals, executive level personnel encouraged to participate in schemes which entail taking on the top jobs, the CEO positions on 2-3 yr contracts. And taking their families with them.
The need for a third culture becomes relevant not only for the individual's sense of identity but
as a way of surviving in the workplace, working out how to function in a space between, outside? of ones own familiar country's culture, but not wholly adopting the new country's ways.
The idea of workplace cultures, corporate cultures, institutional culture where certain unspoken norms and rules , dress codes and behaviours prevail is already a well known reality to many.
But in the personal, family, home lives of people who choose a temporary (albeit long-term) move for professional reasons, there is also a need to create something new.
Both in the workplace and outside world, the prevailing culture they face is new and unfamiliar in its attitudes, values and practices. Yet their own culture is needing to be preserved for the (inevitable and presumed) return home...
Yet also, alongside a dual carriageway as this, they start to realise their own culture with new eyes- that it has accompanied them not as a pre-packaged affair, remaining neatly in its little box to be taken out and played with at whim, but is in itself a moving, mobile, changing and growing live entity that refuses to be completly tamed and inert.
Somehow these people deal to and deal with a recreation of a 'third culture' for themselves; one still recognisable and distinct as 'home', comfortingly familiar signs of 'how we always do things', patterns as much of the past as the future...a culture sandwich that created an inbetween space- a temporary life zone.
An example many of us may relate to are 'suitcase people' who, knowing they are only staying a 6 months, as opposed to 2 years, might bring a few photos to place around the room. But probably wouldn't buy or hang any pictures...
Staying put for 2-3 years however, might entail buying certain key furniture items couldn't be brought with them. Decorating with carefully chosen signs of identity, making the place feel 'homely'.
And it's how people go about personalising their space that interests me; what do they do to create a zone of otherness, a cultural bubble in which the physical environment is made to help shape the estabishment of that 3rd culture, the home away from home.
The researcher identifies 3 main narratives which i felt were just as pertinent today:
a) Stories about leaving and arriving
b) stories about the first year in New Zealand, which are stories about cultural misunderstanding, language problems, homesickness; basically about feeling alien, and being considered alien.
c) there is a form of narratives covering the whole life of a migrant: the narratives of comparing countries and cultures – the culture you come from and the one you are now living in.
The Estonian researcher Kai Pata who reviewed this study on her blog site (see link above) sums up the key aspect of comparing the countries, which was a common theme for the migrants questioned, and was an ongoing process; part of their settlement.
I felt strong links with my own interest in researching and identifying current migrant experiences, paritcularly of professional peoples, I've heard the same stories;
the feeling of alienation and isolation; of being seen as alien; of needing to compare cultures...
Maybe these narratives form part of a common journey to create what Ruth Hill Useem termed in 60's sociology speak as 3rd culture kids (TCKs); those children who became global nomads, whose parents eg. military, were constantly on the move
These children were forced to create their own independant identity that remained intact when they moved from 'home' to 'home'.
But it' s not just the children in these situations who face issues of where the home base is, but increasingly the world is a nomadic place for professionals, executive level personnel encouraged to participate in schemes which entail taking on the top jobs, the CEO positions on 2-3 yr contracts. And taking their families with them.
The need for a third culture becomes relevant not only for the individual's sense of identity but
as a way of surviving in the workplace, working out how to function in a space between, outside? of ones own familiar country's culture, but not wholly adopting the new country's ways.
The idea of workplace cultures, corporate cultures, institutional culture where certain unspoken norms and rules , dress codes and behaviours prevail is already a well known reality to many.
But in the personal, family, home lives of people who choose a temporary (albeit long-term) move for professional reasons, there is also a need to create something new.
Both in the workplace and outside world, the prevailing culture they face is new and unfamiliar in its attitudes, values and practices. Yet their own culture is needing to be preserved for the (inevitable and presumed) return home...
Yet also, alongside a dual carriageway as this, they start to realise their own culture with new eyes- that it has accompanied them not as a pre-packaged affair, remaining neatly in its little box to be taken out and played with at whim, but is in itself a moving, mobile, changing and growing live entity that refuses to be completly tamed and inert.
Somehow these people deal to and deal with a recreation of a 'third culture' for themselves; one still recognisable and distinct as 'home', comfortingly familiar signs of 'how we always do things', patterns as much of the past as the future...a culture sandwich that created an inbetween space- a temporary life zone.
An example many of us may relate to are 'suitcase people' who, knowing they are only staying a 6 months, as opposed to 2 years, might bring a few photos to place around the room. But probably wouldn't buy or hang any pictures...
Staying put for 2-3 years however, might entail buying certain key furniture items couldn't be brought with them. Decorating with carefully chosen signs of identity, making the place feel 'homely'.
And it's how people go about personalising their space that interests me; what do they do to create a zone of otherness, a cultural bubble in which the physical environment is made to help shape the estabishment of that 3rd culture, the home away from home.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Relocation issues -NZ houses
Another aspect of homes that fascinated me during a couple of years of involvement with an relocation company is process of choosing a new home/ house for the incoming transferee.
The company I worked for specialised in settling foreign professionals (mostly executive level ) and their families to Auckland, and I was constantly intrigued by the issues these families faced in choosing and settling into their (short-medium term ) rental accomodation.
Concerns about not only areas to live in but the specifics of the NZ housing style, construction, interior layout and design were common queries as we looked at potential properties together.
Mostly northern hemisphere transferees, they frequently expressed horror at not only the poor quality rental properties on the market, but the high prices being asked for them (even taking into account executive budgets anywhere from $500 to $1000 + p/wk).
Most of them also came from being homeowners themselves and were facing a rental situation for perhaps the first time in a decade or more (if ever!). They often seemed surprised unprepared for the reality of parting with their money to go into a 'compromise' sitiuation- a less than mortgaged ideal.
An English family likened the separate little houses crammed and dotted amidst the tree-lined valleys in the East coast bays to 'shanty towns'.... although aware of the hugely inverse quality of the expensive housing there, this visual impression was not one to inspire comfort.
A Thai couple stopped mid-tour in Mission Bay and declared themselves to have arrived in 'paradise' with its beach and shops, relaxed park/ holiday atmosphere and spread out housing (compared to their years of apartment living in Bangkok). And could they please rent a place there immediately?!
So much of a transferee's expectations in coming to NZ revolve around ensuring a better lifestyle than what they had at home. Partially the is the unstated but understood compensation for making such a major, yet 'temporary' move (often an imposed, unwilling relocation for family members).
Where the executive transferee has already adopted a self-imposed positive approach to all things new and uncomfortable, as they were the ones who invited, or accepted the offer to relocate. If the family were unwillingly moved from their homes...their resistance can make the choosing of a new home particularly fraught!
House interiors bring myriad problems coupled with disbelief (!)for all but the most hardy souls, as they face their first winter in a typical unheated, unlined, uninsulated NZ weatherboard house with wooden floors and leaky, single-glazed windows.
Then there are the hopelessly high electricity bills for the old-fashioned heaters which they can't bear NOT to have going most of the time, not to mention the ;
...no-nonsense brisk responses of 'just put another jersey on' from uncomplaining NZ neighbours and workmates;
...blase dismissals of the need for double-glazing "in this climate", where they are also expected to keep the windows open in the day to ventilate their increasingly dampening house (due to the heaters being on 24/7....);
...and anyway double glazing would cost an arm and a leg and is consdiered a luxury;
...and gas heaters are even more rare and highly priced.
They're feeling colder than they ever felt at home in a snow-covered northern winter...!
And they hadn't expected a house that created physical discomfort and this was often a discouraging start to the long and emotional process of setting up 'home' in another country.
The company I worked for specialised in settling foreign professionals (mostly executive level ) and their families to Auckland, and I was constantly intrigued by the issues these families faced in choosing and settling into their (short-medium term ) rental accomodation.
Concerns about not only areas to live in but the specifics of the NZ housing style, construction, interior layout and design were common queries as we looked at potential properties together.
Mostly northern hemisphere transferees, they frequently expressed horror at not only the poor quality rental properties on the market, but the high prices being asked for them (even taking into account executive budgets anywhere from $500 to $1000 + p/wk).
Most of them also came from being homeowners themselves and were facing a rental situation for perhaps the first time in a decade or more (if ever!). They often seemed surprised unprepared for the reality of parting with their money to go into a 'compromise' sitiuation- a less than mortgaged ideal.
An English family likened the separate little houses crammed and dotted amidst the tree-lined valleys in the East coast bays to 'shanty towns'.... although aware of the hugely inverse quality of the expensive housing there, this visual impression was not one to inspire comfort.
A Thai couple stopped mid-tour in Mission Bay and declared themselves to have arrived in 'paradise' with its beach and shops, relaxed park/ holiday atmosphere and spread out housing (compared to their years of apartment living in Bangkok). And could they please rent a place there immediately?!
So much of a transferee's expectations in coming to NZ revolve around ensuring a better lifestyle than what they had at home. Partially the is the unstated but understood compensation for making such a major, yet 'temporary' move (often an imposed, unwilling relocation for family members).
Where the executive transferee has already adopted a self-imposed positive approach to all things new and uncomfortable, as they were the ones who invited, or accepted the offer to relocate. If the family were unwillingly moved from their homes...their resistance can make the choosing of a new home particularly fraught!
House interiors bring myriad problems coupled with disbelief (!)for all but the most hardy souls, as they face their first winter in a typical unheated, unlined, uninsulated NZ weatherboard house with wooden floors and leaky, single-glazed windows.
Then there are the hopelessly high electricity bills for the old-fashioned heaters which they can't bear NOT to have going most of the time, not to mention the ;
...no-nonsense brisk responses of 'just put another jersey on' from uncomplaining NZ neighbours and workmates;
...blase dismissals of the need for double-glazing "in this climate", where they are also expected to keep the windows open in the day to ventilate their increasingly dampening house (due to the heaters being on 24/7....);
...and anyway double glazing would cost an arm and a leg and is consdiered a luxury;
...and gas heaters are even more rare and highly priced.
They're feeling colder than they ever felt at home in a snow-covered northern winter...!
And they hadn't expected a house that created physical discomfort and this was often a discouraging start to the long and emotional process of setting up 'home' in another country.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Homes in time and space
In a recent lecture entitled 'The gift of truth', AUT's head of spatial design Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul discusses the Pacific cultural concept of not being alone in your body...Moreover the body functions as an environment melding both time and space where you ancestors also dwell; a kind of multi-habitation, essentially allowing them to making their time-space home in you! I kind of like this idea of my own body as a home base for my ancestors...! I can already think of a few who might be there/ here..Schwarzpaul goes on to describe the design processes as a cultural construct in itself (xf. Schwarzpaul), where meaning is created through the necessary and unconcious drivers of interactions with others. And I'm thinking also of the influences those 'many' persons who live and within us may have..This seems to me also part and parcel of the way we recreate 'homes' in a new environment- the relocated cultural construction which bears influences of past and present lives...
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thinking about home...
How do we make ourselves at home in a new country? What do we bring with us or create around us that enables our inner self to react as '''aaaah, now I'm home!'
I'm interested in exploring the built environment as an aid or hindrance to the process of resettlement. What role do the visual and sensory images and objects play in creating a physical and sensorial envionment that facilitates a smooth settlement process, a comforting sinking into soft pillow space we will call 'home'.
In my previous (and mistakenly deleted...oops! techno virgin at fault) blog reader Stan added a comment about the idea of home pages as home bases , staying with you wherever you travel to...people having a cyberspace place to be themselves maybe..
Ailsa added the thought that home is even more non-directional in being an interior place, being 'at home' as sited in one's self; the internal headspace of 'home', and thus inseparable...
A modest brown teddy bear functioned as the sole visual/ sensory image of home in my daughter's life; the only comfort (apart from the parental level) that she seemed to need as we moved around, renting and recreating our new 'homes' wherever we landed...
What can explain an immediate, unexpected and slightly disconcerting sensation of feeling totally and myseteriously at 'home' in a foreign country, a stranger's house, surrounded by a previously unfamiliar, unknown architectural style or design?
What are the physical determinants of 'home' and how do we go about recreating simulacrums in our own new place, our new home and work environments?
This is a start of a personal quest, a searching for paths and answers and new questions about moving, relocating, settling in and settling down... a mixture of personal exploration and hopefully merging with more formal reserach projects...stay tuned.
I'm interested in exploring the built environment as an aid or hindrance to the process of resettlement. What role do the visual and sensory images and objects play in creating a physical and sensorial envionment that facilitates a smooth settlement process, a comforting sinking into soft pillow space we will call 'home'.
In my previous (and mistakenly deleted...oops! techno virgin at fault) blog reader Stan added a comment about the idea of home pages as home bases , staying with you wherever you travel to...people having a cyberspace place to be themselves maybe..
Ailsa added the thought that home is even more non-directional in being an interior place, being 'at home' as sited in one's self; the internal headspace of 'home', and thus inseparable...
A modest brown teddy bear functioned as the sole visual/ sensory image of home in my daughter's life; the only comfort (apart from the parental level) that she seemed to need as we moved around, renting and recreating our new 'homes' wherever we landed...
What can explain an immediate, unexpected and slightly disconcerting sensation of feeling totally and myseteriously at 'home' in a foreign country, a stranger's house, surrounded by a previously unfamiliar, unknown architectural style or design?
What are the physical determinants of 'home' and how do we go about recreating simulacrums in our own new place, our new home and work environments?
This is a start of a personal quest, a searching for paths and answers and new questions about moving, relocating, settling in and settling down... a mixture of personal exploration and hopefully merging with more formal reserach projects...stay tuned.
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