date : 25.05.2012
location : slipway, waiorua bay
time : 4.45pm
duration : -
duration : -
notes : a locational piece for tape involving a reading of the the list of ships recorded as wrecked on Kapiti island between 1828-1883, during times of european trade with Maori, and the establishment of whaling communities on the island, in the decades immediately prior to the passing of the Governmental act declaring the island was to be an uninhabited bird sanctuary, recorded onto one side of a magnetic tape. supplemented on the other side with interviews with the current Maori community of Kapiti island, some who have been personally coming to the island for over 60 years, of shipwrecks they recalled in the area and fragmentary and half-recalled stories of drownings and the narrative of the destruction of the local lighthouse, one of the island's few built-environment landmarks that could be seen from the sea. text and documentary elements erased by re-recording of the same tape next to the sea, at the approximate location of several of the sites in question. the tape palimpsest then buried under rocks at the shoreline at Waiorua at the site of the current slipway for boats on private Maori land, at low tide. location marker : orange buoy. retrieval proved difficult, and ultimately a failure, making this a contentious work in terms of my stated mandate to leave no trace of anything i do on the island. inconclusive results : work lost in the space between being : about loss, an ambiguous time-capsule, a material/environmental pollutant.