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).