Skip to content
Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00640
- Thesis Title
- Te Kore - Exploring the Māori Concept of Void
- Author
- Moana Nepia
- E-mail
- nepia AT hawaii.edu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- Ph.D.
- Year
- 2013
- Number of Pages
- 339
- University
- Auckland University of Technology - Te Whare Wānanga õ Tamaki Makau Rau
- Thesis Supervisor
- Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul
- Supervisor e-mail
- tina.engels AT aut.ac.nz
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Welby Ings, Wiremu Kaa
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English, Māori
- Department / Discipline
- Art & Design
- Copyright Ownership
- Moana Nepia
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, Māori
- URL where full thesis can be found
- aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/5480
- Keywords
- Te Kore - Māori concept of void, nothingness and potentiality; Indigenous and Māori epistemologies, kaupapa and tikanga Māori; Inter-disciplinary and creative practice-led research; Mohi Ruatapu; Te Aotāwarirangi; Ngāti Porou; Ruawaipu; Rongowhakaata
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Mohi Ruatapu, a nineteenth century tohunga (scholar) from Tokomaru Bay, on the East coast of New Zealand, positioned Te Kore (which translates as nothingness, void and also potentiality) within Te Ao Mārama, the realm of contemporary human existence. He also personified Te Kore within a whakapapa (genealogy) stemming from Tāne-nui-a-Rangi, son of primordial parents Rangi-nui (Sky Father) and Papa-tu-a-nuku (Earth Mother). This creative proposition provides a kaupapa or foundation for conceptualising the origins of existence unlike other Māori tribal accounts that position Te Kore as the nothingness from which everything else emerged.
How might Te Kore be considered a kaupapa for creative practice?
Ruatapu’s proposition provides a departure point for an investigative journey that follows Aratika, an appropriate pathway or methodological approach. The journey proceeds as a series of inter-related and cumulative investigations exploring how Te Kore may be perceived in different contexts. Within social histories of loss and devastation, for instance, Te Kore may articulate extreme states of emotion, and also the need for space or time to restore balance. Te Kore as an architectural or spatial void holds potential for social interaction, human activity and layering histories together.
The thesis proposes ways in which such perceptions might inform and generate decision making in performance, video and installation contexts where the absence or presence of light, sound, movement, narration and figurative elements give shape, form and substance to ideas. Understanding from these explorations is gathered and re-positioned to establish grounds for further interpretations through video, dance, creative writing, performance and installation. Te Kore as a kaupapa is thus both a subject and foundation for this investigation. The exegesis describes the overall approach, discusses the findings, and contextualises the inquiry. A DVD attached to Volume three includes documentation of selected performance and video work completed as part of this thesis.