Panel discussion: Auckland’s volcanoes
An upcoming panel discussion at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) will explore the volcanoes and lava caves of Tāmaki Makaurau.
Knowing the Living Volcanic Field, at 6.30pm on Thursday 29 May at AUT’s City Campus, is a LASER (Leonardo Art-Science Evening Rendezvous) and screening of artist Nat Tozer’s Erotic Geologies, presented by AUT School of Art and Design's Associate Professor Janine Randerson and lecturer Ziggy Lever.
About Knowing the Living Volcanic Field
- When: 6.30pm on Thursday 29 May
- Where: WG404, The Paul Reeves Building, AUT City Campus, 55 Wellesley St East, Auckland CBD
- Admission: Free
In Tāmaki Makaurau the ground beneath our feet is a living field; in the shape of ancestral maunga and in sacred lava caves, we find the youngest volcanic mantle in Aotearoa. The base rock that our islands rest upon stretches back 500 million years into the deep time of Gondwana, while Rangitoto is only 600 years old, the newest of the fifty-three volcanoes of the 200,000-year-old Auckland Volcanic Field.
The memory and prescience of future volcanic events are inscribed into the names of our maunga, existing and excavated, the subject of scientist and researcher Sylvia Tapuke’s Kaupapa Māori approach to toponymic research. Volcanologist Kate Lewis (Auckland Council) recounts the fiery formation of the lava caves and the intermingling of geological and cultural heritage. She works to transform imminent threats of development into opportunities to get to know our volcanic relations. In resonance with the process of connecting cultural narratives, artist and film-maker Nat Tozer explores the underground as a site of human meaning-making drawing on science fiction, catastrophe and mythic journeys to the underworld. Her moving image artwork Erotic Geologies, which presents cyclical time and highly mobile geology as main characters, will be shown during the panel. Moving image innovator Sam Tozer will discuss his work on compositing an emergent whenua from geo-data in this imagined world.
The panel will be hosted by AUT School of Art and Design's Associate Professor Janine Randerson and lecturer Ziggy Lever, both artists who also explore our geological pasts and futures.
About the panellists
Sylvia Tapuke (Tūhoe/Samoa) is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland, and her study is titled, A Kaupapa Māori Approach to Map the Socio-Ecological Patterns of Volcanic Feature Names in Auckland, New Zealand; and Implications for Risk Knowledge. She acknowledges the people of the land and the opportunities to connect with like-minded people locally, in different regions across Aotearoa, New Zealand, throughout the Pacific, and beyond.
Kate Lewis (Tangata Tiriti) has degrees in geology and volcanology and is a geological heritage specialist at Auckland Council. Her role in geological conservation aims to protect a wide range of natural features, such as volcanoes, sand dunes, fossils, and waterfalls, both through the regulatory system and by spreading wonder and love of geology through lectures and one-on-one chats.
Nat Tozer (Tangata Tiriti) has recently presented Erotic Geologies at Gow Langsford (2024) and Sluice Biennale in Lisbon (2022), Is it a rock, is it a mirror at The Metamodern in Literature, Art, Education, and Indigenous Cosmologies: An Interdisciplinary Symposium at AUT (2023), Future Fossils at Māter Mater Silo 6 (2022), and Tidelines & Islands at ABSTRAXT Northart (2024).
Sam Tozer (Tangata Tiriti, Kati Māmoe) has created moving image work for the permanent iwi-led display in Hokianga Footprints of Kupe (2020), Brett Graham’s forthcoming moving image work for Wastelands, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki (2025), and was the Technical Director for Lisa Reihana’s In Pursuit of Venus {infected} at La Biennale di Venezia (2017), Ihi at Aotea Centre (2020), Taiwhetuki - House of Death at Honolulu Biennale (2015), and Nomads of the Sea at Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2019).