Witehira the Wiz Kid
Photo credit. Johnson Witehira
It’s a beautiful day in Wellington. People are everywhere. This place is alive, it’s electric, and there is an energy here that is intoxicating. I’ve driven two and half hours from Whanganui with some friends to attend the Every Artist exhibition. A show I have some work in, but, I’m really keen to meet Johnson Witehira who also has work in the show. I’ve been a fan of his work for some time, and I’m super keen to finally meet the legend in the flesh. I’m supposed to give an artist talk after Witehira’s presentation, but, we are still racing around the streets, stuck in traffic, trying to find a park. Wellington parking on a Saturday afternoon, what was I thinking leaving Whanganui at 11am? We finally find a parking building, speed up the multilevel complex until we eventually spot an empty parking space four levels up, now we just have to get to the Wellington City Gallery.
I’m really late! The opening started about 30 minutes ago, now the pressure is on. I’m at a half canter crossing the courtyard but stop suddenly to wait for the giant glass sliding doors to open. This is my first time visiting the gallery. Everything in this city is concrete, steel, glass, even the people here seem polished, and refined. I’m greeted by a staff in idle conversation. I interject, and ask where I can find Aaron Lister, the curator of the show. The staff member gives me directions up the staircase, I’m met by another staff member who directs me to the room Johnson Witehira is giving his talk. I immediately feel a sense of relief. I’m late but not too late, and I can now enjoy myself, soak up the art and atmosphere of this majestic gallery space.
Photo credit. Johnson Witehira
I walk into Johnson’s room, it’s dark, there are people standing at attention, some sitting on the benches, all enthralled by this slick Maori guy dressed in a black tee, and dark pants. Jesus this fulla is smooth, he’s as sharp as his design, silky edges, and clever to boot. I turn to his works, they are pretty hard to miss, his arcade games are projected on opposite walls with benches set in front of each display, game controllers sitting idle ready to be picked up and played.
Impressive is a word that first came to mind, joyful was the other. Viewing these artworks is like seeing an old friend. If you grew up during the early 80’s, through to the late 90’s, and you're male, these artworks by Johnson will have a very different feel for you.
Beyond the technical wizardry to pull off artworks like these, Johnson’s jump n run video games are a surreal and clever take on New Zealand history. The scale of these works make the games immersive, you feel like you can walk into the action, it gives the works a sense of intimacy, and a connection to the viewer that catches you off guard. It’s an odd sensation and feeling, because I know I should be looking at these works with a sense of sadness, but in Witehira’s arcade ‘Maoriland’, I feel happy, and joyful.
The British based character game, grabbed my attention first. The playable character is depicted as a black silhouette with two white eyes, and a white cross displayed on the bible he’s holding. The bible is used as a weapon. The British character runs through the scene throwing his holy book at native Maori. Converting the natives into their final form, which, in some cases, is an inversion of the British character. The Maori native has his attire stripped, and replaced with each blow of the bible. At the point of full conversion, the civilized Maori drops a tongue that the British character consumes like a power pallet or power-up. There is a speed element tied to the objective of the game, for the British character his life bar appears to slowly decrease as time progresses. The player must guide the character through the game, running, jumping and converting Maori to gain and consume their native tongues. The tongues replenish a portion of the British characters life-bar only to slowly decrease again. If the life-bar runs out, the British character will die.
The choice to design the main character as a black silhouette, I find interesting. Both the Maori and British characters are presented as nondescript figures that are very similar in both design, and nature. Both characters venture through the game interacting with the native beasts, in a destructive manner. In one game the idea is to convert, and then consume an essential part of the native beast. In the other, the aim is to kill, and then consume. The British character uses the bible and religion as a weapon to tame, while the Maori character uses a patu and violence. Each character reshaping this hostile new environment by either force, or coercion. Witehira takes aim at both the Pakeha and Maori, ultimately asking us which action was worse? He also raises an interesting dialog about whether this destructive behavior is part of the human condition, rather than an issue about race, or culture?
Photo credit. Johnson Witehira
On the corresponding walls are 1980’s and 1990’s style arcade cabinet sides. There are no other cabinet components such as the monitor, control panel, or cabinet frontage or back. The cabinet sides sit on the floor leaning against the walls, as if ready to be reconstructed. There are two panels per wall. Each panel displaying the game art of the main characters in Witehira’s adventures in Maoriland. A relationship is created between the projected games, and the arcade cabinet sides. These panels look slightly out of place, both in terms of their relationship to the modern encoded web based console games, and the power relationship when compared to the large dynamic screen projections.
There is an awkwardness and uneasy flatness about them, you almost feel sorry for them. Even though they are cleanly designed, and they appear as out of the box kit set pieces ready to be assembled, the reference to the 80’s and 90’s makes these artworks feel old, outdated, and almost an afterthought of a bygone era. It wasn’t until I got home that I ruminated on this nagging question: Why did Witehira include this reference? Why did he not recreate the entire arcade game machine, and try to recapture the era of spacies in New Zealand?
What I realized was that, Witehira’s side panel references, very cleverly speaks to a subculture that remained hidden from mainstream New Zealand. Unless, you were part of that subculture, and lived that history, the spacies and spacie parlour phenomenon that developed during the 80's and 90’s, simply cannot be recreated. It was a moment in time that my generation experienced, that lives in our memories, and not in the history books.
During the early 80’s, gaming consoles were introduced into New Zealand homes through 8-bit computing platforms like the Commodore 64, the Atari 800, and the ‘Grandstand’ branded Sega SC300 systems. Owning these cassette or cartridge loaded gaming consoles, was a rare luxury among New Zealand families, for lower income families, owning a gaming console was extremely rare. The introduction of arcade games at family restaurant chains like Cobb ‘n Co, or at local Fish ‘n Chip takeaway shops, tended to center the gaming culture around providing entertainment for children within a family friendly environment. Gaming culture at its core during the early 80’s, was essentially about creating fun entertainment spaces for families, both in the home, in terms of the console games, and in family eateries, in terms of the arcade game machines.
The introduction of arcade parlours, or, ‘spacie parlours’ during the mid 80’s however, saw an interesting phenomenon occur, in which, the early gaming culture around the idea of family entertainment was reconfigured, and a distinct youth subculture, began to emerge. Teenagers and children began to increasingly congregate at these spacie parlours, and they quickly became a dynamic social space for youth. The spacie parlours also became a refuge for the disenfranchised. In major city centers, they provided a place for street kids to shelter, and in largely Maori populated towns, a place to breakdance, ‘show off’, and ‘hang out.’
An organic hierarchy developed out of this subculture, and in towns heavily populated with Maori, spacie parlors became a testing ground for young male aggression. Fights would often break out, smaller kids were picked on by larger kids. Spacie parlours became territorial throughout the country. If you were from out of town, or by yourself, and you ventured aimlessly into someone else’s spacie parlour without being invited, you would have gotten a hiding, or likely stood-over for your money. Most games during this period tended to be single player games. The dominant pecking order, and culture within these parlors, in my view, seemed to reflect this single player mentality, but, within a unique tribalistic social strata. Locals and regulars in these parlours were usually left to their own devices.
However, an interesting phenomena occurred during the late 80’s with the introduction of two player fighting games. This new genre of competitive fighting games appeared to change the dynamics of the spacie parlour power structure. Gaming prowess, and skill, became the new hierarchical paradigm. Size, strength, and intimidation, were no longer the predominant and requisite qualities needed to dominate the spacie parlour space. If you had skill, and you were able to beat much larger kids at say, ‘Street Fighter’, you could earn respect from everyone. Interestingly, the introduction of these violent fighting games, seemed to reduce incidences of male aggression, and in some ways, video games became a vehicle for that aggression to be channeled. Gaming culture for Maori transformed from building a reputation or rep by fighting in real life, to building a rep by fighting as a digital game character.
Around 1989, one of the first Street Fighter arcade games in Hamilton was installed at a local takeaway shop, near an overpass in the suburb of Frankton. Every Saturday, local Maori kids from all over Hamilton would congregate at this Frankton Fish ‘n Chip shop, to compete, and fight each other on the arcade. I would bike about 10km with my mates, and we would line up our twenties (placing a twenty cent coin on the arcade monitor bezel as a way to denote the order of competing players). I was a decent player, Ken was my favorite character, I learnt the Dragon punch and Fireball fairly quickly playing the right-side joystick, I was garbage on the left-side.
The spacies culture fostered amazing ingenuity, and creative problem solving skills, particularly within the Maori subculture. Most of my Maori mates, myself included, were pohara. We never had money. Besides digging into the couches, scrounging or checking behind arcade games for loose change at the parlours, Maori kids had limited access to cash to essentially play these games. Instead we developed ingenious ways to bypass the arcade machine systems.
In the mid 80’s, kids discovered the coin slot mechanism used a basic wire spring trigger. By simply drilling a hole into a twenty cent piece and attaching a string or fishing line, we could clock up the credits by fishing your twenny in and out. This loophole was fixed a couple years later, and the coin slot mechanisms were upgraded with a one way wire trigger. Once you dropped your twenny into the slot past the trigger, you couldn’t pull the coin back out. Like mad scientists, Maori kids discovered that if you used a large gauge piece of fishing wire, and bent an “L” shape at the end of the wire, you could bypass the new anti cheat mechanism.
While most mainstream New Zealand kids were at school learning about history, English, math, and science, disenfranchised Maori youth, and kids like me, whose minds tended to work at an accelerated pace, spacies became a venue where we could channel our energy, and focus our concentration skills. By the time I entered high school, the slow pace of school lessons became unbearable. I spent more time playing spacies rather than attending school, in fact, I failed School C because I was playing spacies instead of sitting my exams.
For me, Witehira’s artworks speak to a generation that sat at the borders of mainstream New Zealand youth culture. The reality and the experiences for Maori and Pakeha youth, within these gaming cultures, I suspect tell two completely different stories. For Maori kids who grew up during the 80’s and 90’s, spacies was a way to escape the realities of the environment we found ourselves in. The abject poverty, the abuse, in some cases the homelessness, the kinds of social problems that Maori are all too familiar with, were left at the door as soon as we entered the spacie parlour. Each time we entered and moved past the flashing screens, the loud midi music sequences blaring out of the arcades, we were transformed into a character ready to tame, or be tamed, by this sometimes violent, and unpredictable world.
Those small, and seemingly insignificant side panels, in my mind, speak to a more powerful, and uniquely remarkable period, in New Zealand’s history. For those disenfranchised youth of my generation, the history of Maori colonization, and cultural assimilation from the 1880’s meant little. For Maori youth of the 1980’s and 1990’s, our struggles may have been directly related to what happened to Maori a century prior, but, while we were in that moment, the only thing that was important to us was survival, and making it to the end of the game.
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