A screening programme exploring travel as a conduit to new ways of being, curated by Fred Small, CIRCUIT's Kaiāwhina Mahi Whakaputa Production Assistant. With works by Zoe Bokany, Andrew de Freitas, Nahora Ioane and Tanu Gago, Karin Hofko, Jeremy Leatinu'u, and Susu 蘇子誠.

Rove explores the myriad ways we travel: as fantasy, across borders, to new places and spaces. In works by Zoe Bokany, Andrew de Freitas, Nahora Ioane and Tanu Gago, Karin Hofko, Jeremy Leatinu'u, and Susu 蘇子誠, this screening programme considers travel as a conduit to new ways of being.

How do films configure our ways of thinking about the capacity to change? We are adaptable creatures, but what does it mean to change? We might find refuge in unknown places, carry language to new lands, be tempted by love. We transform.

Reflecting upon the peripatetic nature of contemporary culture, the curator Nicolas Bourriaud notes, “Precariousness is at the centre of a formal universe in which nothing is durable, everything is movement: the trajectory between two places is favoured in relation to the place itself.”(1) Perhaps we can borrow this thought to reconsider our position in the world, and to see such precariousness instead as an invitation to continual renewal.

Each of the films in Rove track and record a kind of journey, from de Freitas’ character wandering along a riverside towards freedom, to Leatinu’u’s oral history that recounts a voyage from the security of home towards war. By recording these narratives, the transformations that these works speak of are extended from their point of origin to reach new people and places.

The artist and sound theorist Brandon LaBelle describes sound as “an energetic figuring of worldly matters which is never quite graspable, reliable, or fixed.”(2) Similarly, the films in Rove understand the world as ungraspable and ever-changing, thus asking us to be the same.

(1) Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction. New York: Lukas & Steinberg, 2001, p.49.

(2) Brandon LaBelle, 'Poetics of listening,' ESC: English Studies in Canada, vol. 46, no. 2–4, 2020, p. 274

Programme

Karin Hofko, Self-titled (2011)
Zoe Bokany, God is an Egg (2023)
Andrew de Freitas, Standing Wave (2013)
Nahora Ioane and Tanu Gago, Protection (2020)
Susu 蘇子誠, Coco and Aiai 可可愛 (2021-2022)
Jeremy Leatinu'u, Te Whakawhitinga (2022)

Rove is curated by Fred Small, the Kaiāwhina Mahi Whakaputa / Production Assistant at CIRCUIT. He has been working with us since the beginning of 2023 and in May 2024, he will be moving to Europe to pursue new adventures and further education. He is one of the facilitators at play_station artist run space, and has an audio-visual art practice alongside working as a support worker.

Thanks to Parrotdog Brewery for their generous sponsorship of this event.

ROVE ON CIRCUIT

Fred Small writes on Alex Plumb's film practice.

Arie Faber responds to 'Where this motion goes', Fred Small's solo exhibition at play_station artist run space. 

Angel and Fred reflect on their collaboration for Angel's work 'Towards the Sun', and how the score came to be.