Part of a series of friendly video art competitions to create a work from a collection of supplied found footage, this piece centers on Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 royal visit to New Zealand, following her recent coronation. It was created in February 2004 for The Remix Project (v2.04).

Tension is created by use of the post-colonial gaze, and corresponding recent developments in the revisionist historical perspective. “Koro” is a colloquial Maori term for elder (with the capital K also standing for rebellion and radicalism), and “Nation” implies a sense of collective identity, and through that, accountability. The soundtrack is a dissonant drum ‘n’ bass/maori chorale “mash-up” of New Zealand band Shapeshifter’s “DNA (Pylonz Remix)” and “Po Atarau (Now Is The Hour)” by the Aotearoa Maori Chorale, which serves to further highlight the contrast between old and new.

This 30 second short film was created for the rADz (Radical Art Ad) series in November 2000.

“Radical Art Ads” are short, Haiku-like art films — ads that don’t sell anything. With ad-space during off-peak times being relatively cheap, Wellington-based producer Barry Thomas hit upon the idea of using these spaces to make very short films. Without any commercial incentive behind them and using Creative NZ funding, this was an innovative and unique way to nurture emerging talent. Screened in NZ by TV3, TV4 and Sundance Channel across their daily schedule (including prime time).

The visuals include a live audio visualisation generated from the soundtrack “Asturias (I. Albeniz)” performed by guitarist Timothy Dean Walker.

Created as a temporary site-specific installation for the ‘Elect Them All’ Arts Festival (February 2004).

Sat behind the bar throughout the festival on permanent loop, this film contains snippets of ‘They Live’ (dir. John Carpenter), the tongue-in-cheek music video for “Love For Sale” (from the movie True Stories) by Talking Heads and various contemporary TV advertisements. The idea was to catch viewer’s attention in an indirect way, with references to alternative narrative structures appearing in the middle of what would be ordinary television advertising — thereby alerting them to embedded consumer-based narrative that may exist within TV commercials.

Created for the BBC Radio 1’s “Superstar VJ” Competition, to promote the open source licensing model of hundreds of clips from the BBC Creative Archive Group.

All music ©2005 Blue Leaf (Creative Archive License terms apply).