Sam Hamilton

Chinook land, Portland, OR

Te Moana Meridian Conference

Co-presented with Boom Arts

Conference participants:

Sam Hamilton

Cristina Lara, Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde

Dr. Lana Lopesi, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Race and Ethnic Studies, University of Oregon

Alyshia Macaysa, Executive Director, Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition

Ataahua Papa, Auckland Arts Festival

Bogosi Sekhukhuni

Hunter Shobe, Professor of Geography, Portland State University

Moderated by Jason N. Le, Curatorial Fellow, PICA.

Access notes: Live captioning will be available.

DESCRIPTION

Te Moana Meridian Conference is the ongoing public program counterpart to the experimental opera Te Moana Meridian, which centers around a speculative United Nations General Assembly Resolution to formally relocate the international prime meridian from the UK to Te Moananui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. Te Moana Meridian Conference submits the UN policy proposal to rigorous critical debate by a diverse range of thought leaders across the fields of art, culture, science, politics, history, and advocacy. This event at PICA will be the third such convening, following an inaugural conference held in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2022 with Artspace and Vā Moana Pacific Spaces. 

As Te Moana Meridian Conference continues to bring in fresh perspectives to collectively map, consider, and network the vast political, cultural, and technological issues that transect the prime meridian, the project seeks to build the deliberative body necessary to explore the question: How can we construct a means of collectively calibrating time and space that genuinely benefits the global commons?

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sam Hamilton (Sam Tam Ham) is an independent, working class, interdisciplinary artist from Aotearoa New Zealand of Pākehā (English settler colonial) descent based in Portland, OR. After 20 years of working independently and professionally across experimental music and sound art, moving and still image, painting, writing, performance, stage, cinema, and curatorial projects, Hamilton's practice today operates more like an ecology than a discipline. A messy but verdant garden full of old and new growth, hidden places, edible arrangements, toxic weeds, garden parties, frolicking, and most importantly, the life-affirming ferment of deep existential entanglement. What physically emerges in any given season through the confluence of this garden depends most simply on what vessel(s) best serve the idea at hand. 

The long song

a meandering garden path

Both an entrance and an exit

Hamilton's work has existed in a wide range of contexts, including Converge 45, Portland; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Portland Art Museum, OR; Transmediale, Berlin; Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival; Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland; as well as a research station in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, an active volcanic island crater, a billboard, a functioning Shinto shrine in Japan, an anarchist squat in Athens, Greece, the Australian outback desert, a dank underground parking lot, some dude’s apartment in Lima, Peru, and on the radio. 

In addition to their solo work, they have collaborated extensively with artists across Aotearoa New Zealand, Sāmoa, Australia, Kiribati, the US, Finland, Japan, and Peru, including ten years spent working with the internationally acclaimed Lemi Ponifasio MAU Dance Company, touring major works to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY; Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAB; Ruhrtriennale, Ruhr; KVS; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; and more. 

Their work has been recognized with a Creative Capital Award, Oregon Community Foundation's Creative Heights Award, and an Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award, among others. 

SPONSORSHIP

Te Moana Meridian Conference is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.