Victoria University in Token Gesture Wipe Out
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by Flake 7 Aug 2009 6:25 pm
13 Comments
From: Daniel Malone
Date: 31 lipca 2009 20:01:09 GMT+02:00
To: Jackson Wood
Subject: Letter to the Editor
Dear Sir
Regarding the exclusion of my page work from Salient ("issue 15: Te Aomarama—The Te Reo issue") and your letter of explanation.
I find both the action of the magazine and your response totally unacceptable.
Firstly I am completely baffled that you propose the' theme' of the magazine as the reason that my page work was excluded when it was clearly a response to this theme and your invitation for page works. If this work was found somehow irrelevant, or ill-informed, or even offensive, then I would rightfully expect an editorial comment to this effect, preferably with the standard intention of adjusting and publishing the work, as with any other magazine content.
The fact that such a failing in due process has taken place in a University / Student magazine, in the midst of a run of issues with the patent intention of engaging social and political questions is pathetic. Your abdication of responsibility to Ngai Tauira is cowardly as you facilitated their contribution from the same position of responsibility, as the magazines Editor, that you proposed that artists from the concurrent exhibition, The Future Is Unwritten, at the UVW's Adam Art Gallery, contribute page works. You didn't make a "Tough call", you made the quintessential easy call, and regretfully it seems you have engaged in nothing less than the censorship of an artwork for either the feeblest or the most banal of reasons: so was it avoidance of any genuine engagement, or simply laziness?
Lets give you the benefit of the doubt and look closer at the first of these which begs the question - was it simply a token gesture to hand over "95% of the content" to Ngai Tauira or was it in fact a meaningful act to facilitate a platform for some real issues, concerns and current affairs of Maori living in Aotearoa New Zealand to be engaged in?
What aspect of my page work failed to do this or compromised this process? Perhaps you didn't bother to ask this, any more than you passed such a concern on to me, but for the record while my 'New New Zealand Flag' is not a new proposition I felt it had real relevance to this issue of Salient and the present discussion around a Maori flag. It is not a proposal for a Maori flag but one that reconsiders the existing Aotearoa New Zealand flag in relation to our changing sense of ourselves as a nation and people. The text that I added for the context of this Te Reo issue was to reflect this transformation: whaka-maori / becoming-maori. It is a play on words, one that echos the Te Reo verb 'whakamaori' describing a translation or rendering into Maori, while giving air to the meanings of the single components. Whaka, with it's ubiquitous function as a stative verb prefix, a causing-to-be or change-in-process, is coupled with maori (again in it's stative form, with a small 'm', not as a noun), with its beautiful and remarkable combination of senses of belonging, of the common, and being unrestrained.
I can understand that these meanings might be considered esoteric, or misunderstood or even understood with negativity. However I also understand all of these responses to be legitimate within the realm of Art, of politics, and, call me old fashioned, within student magazines that claim to have produced 'world famous journalism since 1938'.
Mock-ironic parochialism aside, you needn't indulge your patronising concern that you have discouraged me from engaging in print media any longer. Such stupidity is precisely why I continue to do so.
Sincerely,
Daniel Malone
Warsaw, Poland
The Above Is a Response To The Following Email.
On 2009-07-30, at 00:06, Jackson Wood wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Apologies
Do you have an opinion on this piece; is it censorship or just the petulence of the unpublished one?
I guess it is their shit, and they have to work through it. Kia kaha.
here is an alternate suggestion for how he could have written to DM that is less mealey mouth and patronising:
"When I extended the invitation to you to submit a page work to this issue of Salient I acted hastily. Because of a prior agreement to gives editorial control of the magazine to the Maori Students association Ngai Tauira specifically for this week I actually have no editorial oversight over this issue of the magazine at all and I'm embarrassed to confess that I should never have invited you in the first place. I should have made this situation clear to you at the time, please accept my apologies for wasting your time in this way."
of course Daniel Malone is so inexperienced (NOT!!) he just doesn't understand that in the cold hard world of publishing sometimes he just wont make the cut.
run along now little Daniel come back when you are all grown up.
that would have totally infuriated me too. what a wet eared clot that editor is.
"...this is a busy job and I often forget/misplace/don't think of peoples' feelings when I don't publish their work."
worthy of freaking Oprah...all those misplaced feelings lying around
