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Biting the Big Apple: Mike Davison (+vid)

18 Jul 2008
By Ila Couch in New York It's 2:39am and it's a good thing I didn't quit the coffee toda

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Ila Couch

By Ila Couch in New York

It's 2:39am and it's a good thing I didn't quit the coffee today because I'm struggling with a few technical troubles that are taking the shine off the fact I finished editing my first video for TBI. Last month I interviewed Auckland artist Mike Davison who was in town exhibiting work inspired by his seven-year stint in New York City.

  • See Ila's video interview with Mike Davison on TBI YouTube.

    • Mike lived in New York City 14 years ago when it was in his words, "a more dangerous and interesting place to be". Even though people told him the city had already become quite sanitised, Mayor Giuliani was still "doing his best to bleach everything with a big police force that had run out of baddies to chase and were just shooting anyone who moved." Now days it's become so safe that everyone has moved here with their families. In parts, the city is like any other State in middle America which must be so comforting to tourists who can still slip into Starbucks for a familiar Grande Mocha Frappachino when the big city overwhelms them. It's a drag that variety is being traded for conformity but as Mike says, "I don't know where it ends but the city definitely never stops changing."

    It was while living in New York Mike found the freedom as a Pakeha to experiment with a type face he discovered mimicked the Maori motifs he so admired as a graphic designer. On a deeper and unexpected level his artistic exploration, combined with the mash up of cultures found in New York City forced him to question who he was: a Pakeha with values more attuned to Maori culture than the European values he was expected to align himself with. I have a mix of Maori and Pakeha blood and have always found the question of identity confusing too. Growing up in South Auckland I wasn't considered 'brown enough' by the other kids when I stood up to be counted as Maori for the school census. Not speaking Maori was another strike against me but sitting through my Maori Methodist Grandfather's sermons and comparing Christmas with my mother's Pakeha side to those spent with my Dad's made me feel I was Maori. Still even when you feel you belong it becomes as Mike says an issue of where you are "allowed" to feel you belong.

    That reminds me it's Maori Language Week next week where I will once again feel guilty that I'm no further along with learning Te Reo Maori. Anyone have any suggestions for a long distance learner?

  • Ila Couch is an Auckland born Freelance Writer, Photographer and Television Producer living in the United States. Her work has taken her to Aspen, Colorado for the Food and Wine Festival, on an MTV shoot to Los Alamos, New Mexico birth place of the Atomic Bomb and to Phoenix, Arizona where surprisingly people are building in the desert without using solar technology. She has been kissed by a camel in Texas, eaten bear meat in Florida, and earned herself a black eye and two stitches at New York City's Coyote Ugly Bar. Prior to leaving New Zealand Ila worked in Music Television and recently returned home for three months to direct the second season of Waka Reo for Maori Television.

    • See more Biting the Big Apple blogs

  • Contact Ila

    • If you are coming to the US to perform, exhibit or promote your creative endeavours please get in touch with her at bitingthebigapple@gmail.com

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