A Strange Climate
Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa), 2023.

A dialogue at several removes, created in collab with Best Boy the AI, reimagining proto Elsdon Best’s ethnographic adventures in Maaoriland as a long series of evasive manoeuvres, red herrings, detournements and other ingenious defences on the part of his subjects (and their atua).

I tried to take out all real names but failed, and had to un-real a few later. I probably shouldn't have pronounced the reo Māori correctly, but maybe Best’s pronunciation of te reo was ok too. It was something of a survival skill back then. Besides, is it Best talking - or his ingenious ‘informer’, or an imaginary avatar conjured between them?

I wanted to draw a parallel between what early ethnographers did to our culture when they dragged it into their own ideological paradigms, and what AI creators are doing with indigenous languages and cultures now. I wanted to highlight that AI is still created by humans with agendas; that there is always an agenda, be it the doctrine of discovery or the doctrine of labour-saving (ha) or the doctrine of technophilia or whatever.

I wanted to hold space for, draw attention to, the fact that Māori had and have different agencies, different (non)ideological paradigms. You edit out our vastness when you speak of us in your language. But our vastness remains, here in the negative space. It may be doing things to you, too. It may be controlling/limiting your understanding right back. It may be telling you the stories you want to hear - always abridged, the most tapu parts concealed or redacted - so you’ll stop hounding us, stop stealing from us, and go away. Your story is not us. Your AI is not us. So here, have them.

You start to look funny when you say you know us, when you say you can speak for us. You start to sound funny when you speak with our voices. You look funny when you say you know.

Catch us if you can.



Simulated huia call, December 2016, Simulation by David Antony Clark.
https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/huia#