Junctures - The Journal for Thematic Dialogue

Holden, Jenny

English

"Power Cut"

Plummer, Lyn

42 Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
Image on opposite page
Opus #5  Embedded in the Pattern (Lucretia after Cagnacci) (detail), 2000. From the installation series 
Cantata: A Play of the Trace & Modulations: Cantata ReConfigured, 2000-2010. Chiffons, laser print, paint 
and mediums on shaped stretcher in perspex box, 55 x 40 x 3.5cm (photography: Rodney Browne). 
43
LYN PLUMMER
“Little Asylums Amid Chaos”
Mi yet, mi longpela winim olgeta, lukim,
nau ting ting tasol,
nau harim tok tok bilong ples
nau painim painim planti kainkain tingting olsem
wanpela liklik tret samting,
bilong wokim samting olsem bilum.
Dispela ya olgeta bilong wokim samting tumbuna
bilong mi yet 1
ARtist’s PAgEs
Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
44
Within the layers of reference in the series of installations Modulations: Cantata ReConfigured 
is the search to reveal “the will to communication.” Modulations infers changes in pitch and 
tone and, consequently, in the connotations possible in utterances and the traces of marks 
of all types. My installations over the past nine years involve both the mark/trace, as well as 
sound, in the form of cantatas. These traces are a way of marking/referencing the existence of 
an experience; a way of taking possession of an experience; a way of controlling its existence 
as memory, if not the actual experience in real time. The layers of reference and ideas are 
extrapolated from long contemplation and observation, combined with my experiences and 
studies while in Papua New Guinea.
We tend to take for granted the possession of language and the sense of control that this 
facility gives us. The nature, rhythm and structure of different languages relate directly to 
the character of the medium and its processes. For instance, stitching, lace-making and 
embroidery, too, have vocabularies that form languages. These variants in communication, like 
the visual arts languages, while tangible and vital, are in a sense silent and are therefore often 
not recognised or are overlooked in relation to the metaphors they imply and the unspoken 
aspirations and conditions to which they frequently refer.   
Each of the sound tracks, in earlier as well as the current series of installations, forms an 
important link to the idea of a language evolving and the discovery of a voice that can describe 
and can evoke the realisation of the right to challenge and the ability to dissent. Words/
declarations – while not providing the power of total control over the environment that it was 
first thought could be achieved by thus calling to the gods – in the utterance of singular sounds, 
or by developing and repeatedly exclaiming names of certain phenomena in an interactive 
situation and through strings of words, can, nonetheless bring forth a sense of satisfaction 
felt through the level of control that can be achieved and experienced. 
My years of living in Papua New Guinea (and before that, envisaging and reading about it 
while a teenager) were important experiences in forming my understanding of the structure of 
the societies we fashion in order to retain semblances of control. As an artist, what interests 
me is the structure of systems of communication languages and how they construct our time 
and space. 
I became fascinated with the notion that the sounds of words carry unspoken meaning 
and intonations beyond the word’s sign indication of concepts and things. These sounds 
communicate beyond their literary signification and, if the sound becomes the focus, 
then it emphasises underlying connotations and expands the power and breadth of the 
communication. As I listened to the ples2 languages and asked my Papua New Guinean 
companions for translations, some insights connected my observations regarding the act of 
binding to the utterance of words. I realised that just as we had in the past crudely bound 
together two things with twine, or string, to make a tool, a shelter, a weapon, that we had 
also made utterances to help us to control and to survive in the chaos of the world as we 
encounter it. Both of these rudimentary processes – binding with twine and binding with 
utterances – were efficient to a limited degree. In time, we began to develop more decorative 
and descriptive/narrative approaches to both.
Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
45
My observations led me to conclude that, over time, binding and interlacing became more 
and more decorative and the decoration expanded both beyond the areas that needed to 
be fastened and also beyond the amount of twine needed to hold the elements together. 
Eventually the interlaced cane, twines, strings, ropes, tapes and threads became wider and 
wider, forming ornate patterns that both fixed/fastened and decorated sophisticated tools and 
rigging such as adzes, arrows, masts, lintels and posts. It seems that the interlacing eventually 
became independent from the binding process and, as the breadth of the entwined band 
widened, the new, “unbound” fabric could be shaped into objects such as carrybags, belts, 
and head-coverings and capes. 
The ideas surrounding the interlacing of sound with spaces and pauses became intertwined 
with my insights into binding and the references in Tok Pisin to the small spaces either piercing 
objects or between things – such as the holed sheets of Marsden Matting, which are called 
lais,3 brought in by the Americans and left lying around Papua New Guinea in their thousands 
after the Second World War and subsequently used for a myriad of unrelated uses. 
In certain of the words of some of the languages of Papua New Guinea, generically called ples 
tok,4 I thought I detected sound remnants from those early raw declarations and passionate 
intonations that were said to be entreaties to a higher power for assistance in controlling the 
hostile environment. The essence of the breath seeming to be forced out, constrained, or 
disrupted by the shapes formed by the chest, mouth, tongue and teeth to reveal the energy 
of these sounds and to accentuate their power. Such resonating utterances call into service 
a reverberating, potential energy – utterances that may not summon the gods, but still have 
the power to summon up great human energy, especially when chanted in unison.
The poetry produced in the years that followed these observations of mine, investigated a 
widening space/pause surrounding chosen sounds/words, and also the vibrations that came 
from their rhythms and the patterns of echoes (real or imagined) thus created. This work 
also experimented with a reduced vocabulary and the shifts in meaning that occur as the 
juxtapositions and spaces are shifted from one word and one pattern to another. From the 
early 1970s, I have been exploring the idea that, through a systemic reduction, the control 
of restraint can create spaces and forms that are dynamic and that engender multi-layered 
readings and responses.
The insights into hovering sounds that are connected to isolated consonants that click, bump, 
heave, tug, hiss, kick, shudder and lull and the yowling vowels that are wailing, squealing, 
crying, smouldering and directive, moved into the visual works, and the control that sounds 
and intonations have over our lives and responses became a constant concern in my visual 
works since 1977. After many years of experimentation through materials and with sounds, I 
discovered that a long theoretical history backs up these insights with regard to attempts to 
control our environment and to condition it through utterances. 
Since the late 1990s, investigations into notions of the “trace,”5 as well as a fascination with 
the codes embedded in texts, such as the litterae formatae6 and other covert meanings of 
texts and combinations of letters and numbers, have been bound into my work.  
Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
46
Over the past few months my sense of helplessness and sadness in observing my mother’s 
loss of the ability to converse – through her loss of command of meaningful words and sounds 
– has underscored for me how the loss of language highlights, more poignantly than any other 
human loss, how vital the capacity for coherent articulation and communication is for us to 
keep some semblance of control over our personal situation and our environment. 
Stefan Merrill Block is a young American who is surrounded by relatives who have suffered 
early onset Alzheimer’s. Therefore I was drawn to what he had to say when he was recently 
interviewed when visiting New Zealand. He has written a moving novel, The Story of Forgetting, 
wherein he has created an imaginary space. In his interview on National Radio NZ, he shared 
how he has tried to understand the place to which the afflicted may retreat. He has created 
a fabled structure for that place. He has reconfigured the oblivion into a mythical landscape 
named Isidora (“...a fantastical land free from the sorrows of memory”).7 He stresses that this 
place is not allegorical: “It is a way to give it hope.”8 But I noted that this, too, is a place without 
words; as memory also implies the memory of the meanings of words and of letters.
When listening to this interview with Block, I was drawn to his eloquent way of relating how 
he reduced the personal quality of the experience, added to all one’s research and insights, 
to an essence, in order to generate a resonance. I identified with his statement about making 
visible, control (or a sense of control) – and therefore revealing what he referred to as hope. 
He stated:
But I think that I am obsessed and compelled towards art because, either 
positive or negative, there are these, like, ‘little asylums amid chaos’ where 
things make sense in some way. I mean that to speak the truth in some way, to 
speak it in a way that it is going to resonate, you have to hold off; you have to 
cut something out. It’s like this little room we build for ourselves where things 
temporarily make sense even if the news is sad.9
As artists we create structured spaces and this is not possible without the tight control of 
restraint and reduction and a considered emphasis on the resulting active, reverberating 
space and forms. Here, through art, we are able to create spaces that hover lightly above the 
minutiae and catastrophes of everyday existence – these spaces present a sense of a ples 
masali 10 – a haus tambaran 11 – spaces that are “little asylums amid chaos.”
Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
IMagES On OPPOSITE PagE
Top row from left:
noviate Velate (Detail of Veil). From the Installation series RE enact\DIS enchant, 1994-1996. Fabric, steel, oil 
and acrylic paint, mediums, tissue, polyurethane, 260 x 110cm diameter (photography: Rodney Browne). 
Opus #2 Manuscript, 2000. From the Installation series Cantata: a Play of the Trace and Modulations: 
Cantata ReConfigured, 2000-2010. Canvas, brocade, paint and mediums, gold threads, on shaped stretcher, 
55 x 40 x 3.5cm (photography: Rodney Browne).  
Shredded Remissions. From the series Adroit Performers, 1988. Fabric, lace, letters, images, thread, hair, 
oil paint and mediums, polyurethane, approximately 40 x 20 x 20cm (photography: Rodney Browne). 
Bottom row from left:
47Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
Haus Tambaran, Sepik, Papua New Guinea, 1965 (photography: Tony Plummer). 
Elections in Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea, photograph taken by the author while staying in a village 
in the Southern Highlands, 1976. 
Eastern Highlands man with bilum woven cape, Papua New Guinea, photograph taken by the author while 
staying in a village in the Southern Highlands, 1976. 
Southern Highland woman in mourning, Papua New Guinea, photograph taken by the author while staying 
in a village in the Southern Highlands, 1976. 
48 Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
49Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
50 Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
51Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
IMagES On PagES 48-50:
Installation view Modulations #2: Cantata ReConfigured, 2007, Southland Museum & Art Gallery, 
Invercargill (photography: Rodney Browne). 
Installation view Modulations #3: Cantata ReConfigured, 2008, Forrester Art Gallery, Gallery 2, Oamaru 
(photography: Rodney Browne). 
Installation view  Modulations #3: Cantata ReConfigured, 2008, Forrester Art Gallery, Main Gallery, 
Oamaru (photography: Rodney Browne). 
1 I am looking seeing, looking  –
 now 
 thinking a lot, 
 now
 listening to the sounds of the languages,
 now
 looking for many various kinds of ideas like fine threads that are woven like bilums,
 now all this is part of making my individual art.
2 Ples is the Tok Pisin word for homeland and ples tok means the language of that area. (Over 800 
different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. It is also recognised as probably the world’s 
most linguistically complex country.)
3 The Tok Pisin word for Marsden Matting is lais, and the notion of lace being associated with mechanical 
patterns and a web being placed over the organic world became another important aspect of my 
concepts and association of ideas and images. This led intuitively to an extensive investigation of 
all types of weblike structures and their associations with lace – such objects and concepts as cane 
navigation grids, chicken wire and organic structures such as the woven net bags of PNG bilums 
and decorative and primitive binding of all types. (Marsden Matting: the holed metal lengths which 
were clipped together and formed the airstrips built during The Second World War in PNG. Material 
taken from an MFA Seminar Series lecture by the author entitled “Foundations, Formulations, Layers 
and Accretions: Macro-perspectives on Micro- associations”, presented on 7 November 2007 in the 
School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand. 
4 See endnote 2.
5 Trace & écriture: (trace): “Whether written or spoken, no element can function without relating to 
another element which itself is not simply present. Each element is constituted on the basis of the 
trace in it of the other elements of the system. Nothing, in either the elements or the system, is 
anywhere ever simply present or absent.” J Collins and B Mayblin, Derrida for Beginners (Cambridge: 
Icon Books, 1996), 70.
 “A trace is what a sign differs/defers from. It is the absent part of the sign’s presence. In other 
words, through the act of différance, a sign leaves behind a trace, which is whatever is left over after 
everything present has been accounted for.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction” (trace), 
as last accessed on 28 June 2008.
 “In deconstruction, the word écriture (usually translated as writing in English) is appropriated to refer 
not just to systems of graphic communication, but to all systems inhabited by différance. A related 
term, called archi-écriture, refers to the positive side of writing, or writing as an ultimate principle, 
rather than as a derivative of logos (speech).” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction” (écriture), 
as last accessed on 28 June 2008.
52 Plummer – Little Asylums – Junctures, 11, Dec 2008
6 “The litterae formatae, or letters commendatory, took their name from the seals that were attached 
to them... In these letters, the Greek alphabet is used in place of numerical signs. In order to prevent 
fraud or imposture, it was said that the Fathers of the Council of Ni[c]aea had formulated a decree 
to the effect that the litterae must contain such a series of letters as, on addition of their numerical 
values, that would determine the origin of the document.” See www.newadvent.org/cathen/01333a.
htm Arthur S Barnes, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume X (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 
1911). 
7 From cover synopsis of The Story of Forgetting (New York: Random House, 2008).
8 Notes on interview with Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting, Tuesday 27 May, 2008 
with Kathryn Ryan, nine to noon, Radio National NZ: 
 Block: Isidora – a mythical landscape where people go when they lose their memories to give it a 
geographical place. Not an allegory. A way to give it hope. For the way the family take... and reconfigure 
it into a mythical fable, it is very similar for me to the way fiction writing feels to me. (My précis of 
answer.)
 Block: A way to understand where they go into the oblivion of Alzheimer’s and reconfiguring it into a 
mythical landscape.
 Ryan: Do we reconfigure in a positive way for the most part, do you think?
 Block: I don’t know that we configure in universally positive or hopeful ways. But I think that I am 
obsessed and compelled towards art because, either positive or negative, there are these like “little 
asylums amid chaos” where things make sense in some way. I mean that to speak the truth in some 
way, to speak it in a way that it is going to resonate, you have to hold off; you have to cut something 
out. It’s like this little room we build for ourselves where things temporarily make sense even if the 
news is sad.
9 Ibid.
10 Ples masali – place of spirits.
11 Haus tambaran – spirit house.
Lyn Plummer holds an MA(VA), by research, from Monash University, a PGDip FA 
(Sculpture) from the University of Melbourne and a DVA (Painting) from the Australian 
National University in Canberra. She lived in Northern Queensland and Papua New 
Guinea for many years. She has been Academic Leader of Painting at the School of Art, 
Otago Polytechnic, since 1998. She has taught Sculpture at Cheltenham School of Art 
(now Pittville Studios, University of Gloucestershire) in England and also in Australia, 
at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne; and she has also taught Painting and 
Drawing and Art History & Theory at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales.
Since 1994, as well as the sculptural and two-dimensional elements, her work has 
incorporated multiple and multi-tracked soundtracks, which have been created in 
collaboration with Australian artists Rodney Browne and Mark Finsterer. Digital media 
installation artist Rodney Browne has created three individual, computer-generated, 
soundtracks for two installation series, and composer-musician Mark Finsterer 
has composed and performed one for the series RE enact\DIS enchant. Browne 
and Finsterer are currently collaborating with Plummer on an interactive video and 
soundtrack for an exhibition at Latrobe University Museum and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 
for the Contemporary Art Fair in 2010.


"Little Asylums Amid Chaos"

Stupples, Peter

Visual Voices: Heeding the Microcultural Contexts of Art

Robinson, James

113
control
trust
unsafe
agenda power manipulation 
form
 
control
logic
assumption
binary sequence crystalise
order
control
wealth 
poor
consciousness input manifest
time
control
no
no
none forget ended
death
control
out
of
grinding tectonic cloud
flesh
Artist’s PAges JAMes rOBiNsON
Control
Robinson – Control – Junctures, 8, Jun 2007
114
control
light
water
gravity splinter forever
wish
 
control
anger
hurt
blame rhetoric accountable
self
 
control
baby
man
child woman operating 
system
 
control
con-
trol
mythic disorder fierce
chaos
 
control
oblivious
birth
sorrow joy flight
horror
 
control
jealous
asshole
critic lonely oppresser
cry
 
control
wind
sky
dream circus warrior
movie
 
control
abandon 
army
ghost fear parasite
lunacy
 
Robinson – Control – Junctures, 8, Jun 2007
115
control
narrate
inner
cycle eternal expand
contract
 
control
it
you
them us me
tight
 
control
vote
little
eat sleep work
life
control
nature
man
spirit god devil
shit
 
control
language
sex 
vagina
fluid star mind
becoming
 
control
whole
communities
stabbing
each other psychically
beautiful
 
control
waste
waves
enemy down landing
soon
 
control
antenna
virus
pandemic insurgent militant
jesus
 
Robinson – Control – Junctures, 8, Jun 2007
116
control
cunt
bitch
wanker moron fuck
asshole
 
control 
parent
social
mechanic mainframe family
demise
 
control
uncontrollable
update
edit galactic neural
flood
 
control 
bible
enema
bombing son hope
suicide
 
control 
pub
addict
pokies fat failure
dread
 
control 
soft
landings
upon deserted beaches
again
 
control
goodbyes
ending
love lost makes
break
 
control 
witness
protection 
attack self hate
help
 
Robinson – Control – Junctures, 8, Jun 2007
117
control 
drug
remedy
fake motor crash
zombie
 
control 
biosphere
doom 
population multiply fever
lust
 
control
selfish
temptation
grandiose rational arrogance
suspend
 
control
hip
hop
insular pedigree lotto
cult
 
control
control
control control control
control
 
a line cuts space
ends where it began
nowhere 
everywhere
i’m not myself
never was.
James Robinson is an artist working in New Zealand and abroad. His practice is 
experimental and ranges across an urban graphic aesthetic and the use of text 
to expressionistic painting using mixed media and a constructivist method. He is 
interested in the “wonderfulness” of the world and in its abhorrent political and social 
dimensions. During 2007, Robinson is the artist-in-residence at the McCahon House 
in Titirangi, Auckland. The images shown are from his 2007 series on Control (mixed 
media), photographs by the artist.
Robinson – Control – Junctures, 8, Jun 2007


"Control"

Child, Madeline

104
Madeleine Child, “Cheezels” from Pop-pop, 2006, ceramic clay and glaze, each approx. 20 cm in diameter.
Madeleine Child, “Popcorn” from Pop-pop, 2006, ceramic clay and glaze, each approx. 20 cm in diameter.
Child – Pop-pop – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
105
Madeleine Child
Pop-pop
My new ceramic work is brightly-coloured and festive. That is, until one looks closer. A heap 
of ‘cheezels’ spills onto a table; and multi-coloured popcorn in pink lavender, chrome yellow, 
rose madder and a lysergic green makes one feel sick. Looking at these massed objects one 
can smell the cheezels and the popcorn – as if one has just stepped into the foyer of a movie 
house. The work is evocative of smell and of taste through the ways in which the texture of the 
clay and the glaze have been combined. We are transported to another place and this place 
is a nostalgic one as we remember a childhood in which cheezels and popcorn were always 
partly allowed and partly disallowed. My project is called Pop-pop and is prompted by my sons’ 
desire for junk food and the constant battle over food and preservatives alongside a loss of 
innocence in the face of food additives and genetically engineered crops. At the same time, 
however, the pieces are also a spontaneous response to the shape and tactility of cheezels 
and popcorn as comfort food. I blow them up to large size, each about twenty centimetres 
in diameter. The works are fun and playful and these characteristics are poignantly at odds 
with the serious issues at stake. The pieces also play with the tension between attraction and 
repulsion; between desire and guilt; and between bodily needs and informed opinion – and 
they do so on a material level. We see the opposites playing out in front of our eyes through 
the contrasts between the lumpiness of the clay and the seductive qualities of the coloured 
and glazed surfaces.
Madeleine Child is a lecturer in ceramics at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art and 
completed her master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in London. She exhibits 
regularly and is currently the recipient of an Otago Polytechnic research grant to explore 
the material possibilities of clay and glaze. 
Child – Pop-pop – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
aRTiST’S PaGeS


"Pop-pop"

Jutel, Annemarie

107
ANNEMARIE JUTEL
On Cartwheels and Other Things
A tall girl.  Gangly.  Skinny even. Waiting in a group of other adolescents.  Wearing a 
gym suit, blue shorts, pinstripe (horizontal) sleeveless top.  Looks pretty geeky.  White 
legs are marbled and goosebumpy, and arms poke out like those of a scarecrow. Hope 
no one is watching.  Teams are being called.  The numbers dwindle.  Karen Bingler is 
one captain.  Leanne Payne, or Vanessa Bondurant, or some other magically perfect 
girl is the other.  The tall one is not the last to be picked.  Not quite.  Too noisy to be 
ignored.  She’s hoping someone will remember that she can get from base to base 
rather quickly.  Or that she made a catch (surprise, or rather, coincidence, probably) 
last week.  The last ones to be chosen are not much worse than she is.  They’ve called 
a bit less attention to themselves.  They don’t care (or at least don’t appear to).  They 
usually wear glasses, get good grades and play the oboe.  She cares.  She wants to be 
part of it.  She gets good grades, and plays the flute.  But playing the flute isn’t quite 
the same thing.  Boy can she run!  But before you get to run, you have to hit the ball 
(fat chance!), or if you run in the field, you have to end up with the ball in your mitt 
(it would have to be a pretty big mitt!).  Didn’t make the cut on the basketball team. 
Tall enough.  Taller than anyone else who tried out.  Couldn’t jump right.  Legs, arms 
went in all directions.
Here I am.  Grown up now, and a champion athlete in my own right.  I have raced in four 
countries; even have two full shelves of trophies. (Well, I would have two full shelves of trophies, 
if I were the kind of person to put trophies on shelves.  Actually, most of them are just wrapped 
in newspaper and stuffed in a cardboard box somewhere.)  It’s amazing, I tell my daughter, 
to be grown up.  Now I can choose what I do.  You usually choose the things that you can do, 
that you want to do.  Grown-ups don’t have to stand around, waiting to be chosen last for the 
softball team.  And then I tell my daughter how amazed I am that she can catch, and that 
she’s more likely to be captain of the team than last-chosen.  And she says “Oh, Mom!”  or 
more accurately, “Oh, Mah – aaaaahm!”, dragging out the last syllable of a two-syllable “Mom” 
to punctuate the what-would-you-know-anyway?  Or she might even say, “not everybody’s as 
un-co as you!”  (the “un-co” meaning ‘uncoordinated’, but of course, implying ‘un-cool’ in my 
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
108
book as well as in hers). Of course, her great-grandfather played baseball last century before 
my dad was born.  The family legend was that he played semi-pro.  (My arduous genealogical 
research revealed a somewhat less glamorous position in the commercial league, but that 
must have seemed as impressive as semi-pro to his un-co family.)  The way Dad learned about 
his father’s prowess was through a father-son baseball game at school, where he went from 
being, like me, last-chosen, to being the first one snapped up when the teams were called. 
That was not-uncool (he probably thought it was ‘swell’) !  He couldn’t believe it. His own dad 
had some kind of magic that didn’t go unnoticed by the boy-equivalents to my Vanessa, my 
Karen, or my Leanne.
But, as I said, I am now a grown-up, and I get to make choices.  So, twenty-three years later, 
I choose to go back to school.  Not junior high school, but university.  Finally old enough and 
confident enough to get a degree in fizz-ed.  After all, I am a champion now.  Not just some 
kid who can’t catch a ball.  I can do what I want!  But there was a catch.  ‘Doing what I want’ 
included a required course in gymnastics.  The wheels of time started turning back…
Gymnastics: embarrassed in front of the mats.  Centre of attention.  Everybody’s 
watching everyone else.  Looks easy.  Why’s my leg going the other way, and 
where are my arms supposed to be?  You just step and stretch, and throw your 
bum up into the air.  I look like a fool.  Better clown my way out of this one.  Give 
up?  NO!  But I don’t know what to do!  What are they doing?  How do they know 
where their legs are supposed to be?  Watching the others take bigger strides 
towards perfection.  I’m stuck and can’t get out.  An eternal prisoner.
And now, I am old – twice the age of many in the class. It’s another liability.  By breathing the 
same air, sitting in the same room, undertaking the same tasks, I am marginalised.  Before 
I even start!  As a kid, maybe, I could have concealed my ineligibility, my inability, my mortal 
flaw by acting like everyone else.  But now, it shows before I even open my mouth.  If I could 
take them for a run, they might forget that I am different, ‘cause they couldn’t keep up.  My 
mana could come from my performance, as it certainly won’t come from my greying hair, or 
my skill in gymnastics.
Most of them can do cartwheels.  OK, so maybe they can’t all do them, but they will be able 
to soon.  They all seem to be magic too, as if they’ve lived charmed lives.  The main thing is 
that they don’t even seem to know about people like that girl-prisoner of yore, the distressed 
runner of today, and the many other prisoners who don’t understand why gravity only works 
on them and why their clumsiness affects their lives so much...  
“Just watch what I am doing, then you try!”
yeah....right!  I can’t see what you’re doing.  Would you mind doing that in 
playbac?.  Slo-mo?  And again?  And again?  Can I do it in slo-mo too?  Then 
I’d have the time to put my hands and feet in those places where yours fall so 
perfectly.
I could no more do a cartwheel than fly to the moon.  It’s not an age thing.  It’s just me.  I 
can’t do a cartwheel!  I can run like the wind.  Faster than any of those magic people, but I 
can’t move, I can’t glide, I can’t jump, I can’t catch, I can’t dance…
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
109
The teacher, Peter, didn’t say anything reassuring on that first day of gym class.  Nothing like: 
“Don’t worry, there will be some of you who won’t succeed.  You’ll still pass the course.  The 
important thing is to try your hardest.” No “if you can’t do some of the harder moves, we’ll 
have other things for you to try.”  Who’s he fooling?  I can feel the magic dancing around all 
these people in the gym, and farther and farther away from me.
Handstands are the first obstacle.  We start with a rolling movement backwards.  “May be hard 
on your abs,” we are told.  I’ve got abs of steel, so this should make me feel more comfortable. 
I know that if my t-shirt falls down while I am inverted, I won’t feel ashamed.  My younger 
classmates might even be envious because I have ripply abdominal muscles. But surely it 
takes more than abs?  Otherwise, I’d be a star.  
The women in my group are taking this all very seriously.  They assume a school-teacherly 
‘good try’ approach.  I am lighter than they are, and easy to spot.  With good abs, good support, 
and good spotters, I achieve the almost-impossible.  I master the handstand in only a few 
sessions, though I need some help balancing, and I very frequently do something wild, like 
fall flat on my back, with no advance warning.
I anticipate similar success with cartwheels.  I start writing this piece after the first session, 
convinced that I am on the verge of a breakthrough.  (And yet, as hindsight will tell me, how 
far away it still was!)  I think to myself:  “In about two weeks of two classes a week, plus a few 
extra evening sessions, I will master this!”  A still-believing fizz-ed student, I mutter about how 
techniques can compensate for lack of skill.  I also start to believe firmly in the pedagogy that 
was foreign to my junior high school teachers and in the support proffered by my classmates 
– the support that was lacking those years ago.  However, I have forgotten about magic.  I 
still don’t have that.
Over the Easter break, we bribe one of our fellow students, Roger, an accomplished gymnast, 
to coach us twice a week.  There are some others who also want some extra help:  a ballet 
dancer, a kayaker, a varsity basketball player, and another ‘mature’ student who’s almost 
my age.  She’s thirty-two...  
Roger is barely older than my son, and we’re a far cry from the nine-year old boys he is used 
to coaching at his gymnastics club.  He’s valiantly assuming a directive posture:  gently 
guiding and attempting to correct our deficiencies, and progressively getting more and more 
frustrated with me.  Well, maybe not with me, but with the fact that he is impotent in his 
inability to advance my skill.  He doesn’t know what else to try and yet he desperately wants 
me to succeed.
One particularly awkward, very attractive young male cartwheeler can slam-dunk with his big 
arms and bouncy legs (his own variety of the cartwheel), and he does this periodically when 
there is a ball available and when mats aren’t out yet.  Proof of the similarity of the skills is 
that within two sessions, he is not only cartwheeling, but doing backward flips off the beat-
board and then off the mat.  Effortlessly.  Like his slam-dunk-cartwheel.  Pure magic!
“With these lessons, I’ll be flying!”  I tell myself, and I make attempt after attempt.  I think I 
am getting there, but the kind look on Roger’s face tells me I am not.  I have told everyone 
that I am going to succeed by the end of the Easter break.  What will I tell them now?  I don’t 
embarrass Roger by crying, though I feel like it.
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
110
And now it is assessment week.  Or rather, pre-assessment week.  Break is over and we are 
back in class.  We all find a little space on the mat, and review our accomplishments.  I do a 
forward roll.  Dizzy.  I try a . . . gasp . . . cartwheel.  No go.  I join another tentative gymnast.  He 
spots me for a handstand.  “You’ve come a long way with that!”  he heralds enthusiastically, 
thinking he is being supportive, good teacher-like.  I find him aggravating.  I never had trouble 
with handstands.  Even in the beginning!  I try another cartsmash-crashwheel, and decide to 
give up.  I am going to sit on the bench.  I hope no one tries to talk to me, because I’ll start 
bawling.  Right there.  In front of all those magic people.  
“I’m on strike, Peter!”  I mutter when he comes to inquire about my progress.
“YOU may be, but I haven’t given up yet”, he retorts, unaware of just how discouraged I am.
We try a down-hill cartwheel on some slopey ramp thing.  It’s worse than the flat ones. 
Introducing new apparatuses and perceptions ruins everything I had rehearsed up until then. 
I am more distressed than before, struggling to keep it all together.  The ‘confidence’ word 
keeps getting tossed around.  I am starting to hate it.  Nothing is wrong with my confidence.  I 
believe in myself, but it appears that’s the mistake.  There is nothing to believe in.  It’s all about 
magic and I don’t have any.  He suggests we try a sideways handstand.  Just so that I can get 
the feel of where I am supposed to be.  I manage that.  And again.  And again.  My shoulders 
hurt.  Keep going.  I’ve got that part down.  Dabbling with magic?  I am hoping so.
The next session will be the test.  Has any of this become a part of me?  Can I go from sideways 
handstands into putting my feet down on the mat, preferably one after the other?  A different 
student leads the warm-up each day.  Usually it involves an aerobic-type rhythmic smile-and-do-
what-I-do kind of exercise.  Today is no different.  And up-and-knees-and-arms-and-up!  Leaves 
me behind as usual.  Can’t tell my right from my left, and can’t change movements as quick 
as real people.  Just when I settle into a rhythm, everything changes.  Doesn’t augur well.
Change of pace.  There is a nice white stripe on the mat, asking me to go for it.  I start before 
I have forgotten what I am there for.  And I barely have time to think.  Let’s try a sideways 
handstand.  And bring my legs down one at a time.  It just happened.  Like that.  I am not 
quite sure how.  It’s not about confidence.  I already knew that.  It must just be magic.  This 
time, no kind looks.  Surprised faces.  “Hey, that looks great!”  Are they just trying to make me 
feel good?  I do it over and over, and either there is a general class plot (maybe there is...), 
or…am I really getting there?  Everyone says something (which confirms the fact that they were 
watching me all along, but somehow it doesn’t bother me in quite the same way today).  I have 
done a cartwheel!  Not a grand cartwheel, or a fancy cartwheel.  I am not slam-dunking yet. 
Just an ordinary cartwheel.  But I did it.  No magic.  Just a cartwheel.  I think I’ll keep doing 
cartwheels every day.  Just like going for a run.  After all, there is a bit of magic there, too.
Moving on.  Vaulting is the next challenge in Fizz Ed 103, but I’ve got magic 
now.  I can do things like real people.  Like anyone else.  Vaulting?  Sure, no big 
deal! Peter hands out instructions in a matter-of-fact way.  It’s just another easy 
skill:  Start with hand-springs across the mat.  “They’re just like handstands, 
with a little spring from the arms”, explains Peter. No panic.  No goosebumps.  
No marbled legs. Should be sweet. Just like a handstand, he said. Worth a 
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
111
shot.  At worst, if you over-balance, you roll out: “Tuck your head, and bend your 
elbows.” Child’s play! I listen carefully, and think things through.  I remember 
the kinaesthetics of the cartwheel and how it feels to be like everyone else. 
Tumbleweed connection. I’ll do this too. And no one’s worried about me 
anymore.  I am just like them.  No school-teacherly watching out to make sure 
I know what to do.
The run up’s easy.  I’ve got wings, and I’ve still got abs, so up I go!  Feel that 
balance point, arms a bit wobbly, and then one of those freeze frame moments.   
Help, I’m going over! Bend your elbows.  What else already?  Oh yeah, tuck 
your head.  That’s two movements at once – a big ask!  Too late.  Crashspring.  
Broken toe, sprained neck (better than breaking the neck and spraining the 
toe, I guess).  No more cartwheels for a few months, and no more courage.  
When the toe gets better, I am back to where I was. Un-co and awkward. The 
magic vanished.  I thought I’d caught it, but in fact, it was just a brief glimpse 
— enough to put me back in my place…  
______
I’m loping through Ross Creek.  That makes it sound like I am walking on water, 
or at least splashing, but no, that’s what we call the Ross Creek Reserve, a 
huge expanse of native New Zealand bush about four kilometres from home.  
You drop the “reserve” and just call it Ross Creek – everyone knows what you 
are talking about.  I am actually padding up its hilly trails, feet firmly on solid 
ground.  It has that incredible dark feel that only New Zealand bush can have.  
Little shiny leaves and manuka flowers, rusty rimu needles and cabbage trees, 
flax and silver fern.  And then a bellbird chimes.  Its clarion call is like no other 
sound on earth.  And I can’t believe I am here.  For hours, if I want, all I hear 
is the mantra of my footfalls, punctuated by the peal of this miraculous bird, 
softened by the rustle of the wind, and highlighted by the passing of another 
nameless runner’s breathy “hiya” as our paths cross.  
In front of my computer now, instead of on the tumbling mats, I reflect upon this whole concept 
of magic.  Forty-four now (my, how time flies!) and confined to my seat.  The six inch surgical 
scar wrapped like a koru1  around my malleolus keeps me off the beaten track.  I hobble to 
the swimming pool, and pretend to run in that watery medium.  They call it ‘aqua-jogging’ 
and yet it’s really ‘bobbing’.  I get little pleasure out of this: FM93 ROX is a sad stand-in for 
a bellbird.  But aqua-bobbing will have to do.  Nostalgically vigilant, I let it (prepare/remind) 
me of the running (perhaps/never) to come again.
Do we resign ourselves to our inabilities?  As in my pre-cartwheel days, I tumble.  Crash, bang. 
Magic’s gone.  But, in its departure, at least, I have finally understood where it ultimately 
resides.  Magic lives in our choices:  free to avoid the gymnastic mats if we so choose, or free 
to ramble over bush tracks in anonymity.  As I told my daughter, I am free not to wait to be 
last-chosen for the softball team.   However, right now, I can’t choose to go for a run, and my 
prognosis is guarded.  Running may become a figurative cartwheel provoking nostalgia rather 
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006
112
than terror over my inability to perform.  Being deprived of my freedom to choose takes me 
back, reluctantly, to the mats of junior high school, and yet simultaneously, takes me forward, 
with cognisance, towards the understanding and acceptance of who I am and what I can do. 
Even in my anxiety over whether I will ever run again, I put my fingers to the keys and watch 
words spurt out as if from a fountain.  I find other things that help me to identify what I value 
and enjoy doing;  all the while, grieving over my at-least-for-now stride-less existence.  
It doesn’t occur to me to think about Karen Bingler and what she has made of her life.  Yes, 
she was magic, but the mats aren’t before us to prove that any more.  My gymnastics mats 
are in Ross Creek, in the pages of the academic journals who will publish my work, and in 
my own sense of self.  It was fun to do a cartwheel.  One of those at-least-once-in-my-life 
types of experiences.  But I didn’t have to do it.  I’ve got my own special magic, and already 
always did.
	 1	 Koru	is	the	Máori	word	for	a	spiral	shape.		It	comes	from	the	curled-over	shoot	of	the	fern	tip	as	it	
emerges	to	become	a	leaf.
Annemarie Jutel obtained her doctorate in physical education at the University of Otago 
in Dunedin, New Zealand.  She has represented New Zealand at the world duathlon 
championships, and ran competitive track.  She is relieved to say that at forty-eight 
she can, and does, run again.  
Jutel – Cartwheels – Junctures, 7, Dec 2006


On Cartwheels and Other Things

Heidema, Johannes

Labuschagne, Willem

Hintikka’s Alternatives

 67
REVIEWS
Peter Gärdenfors, 
Conceptual Spaces: 
The Geometry of Thought
(Cambridge Mass.: MIT, 2000)
By Willem Labuschagne
The topic addressed by Gärdenfors1 in 
Conceptual Spaces is representation. 
How do high-level concepts, represented 
symbolically (i.e. by language) arise from low-
level neural processes? This book details a 
response based on something new, namely 
a topological approach in which the notion of 
spatial nearness plays the central role.
I first heard Gärdenfors describe this approach 
in a talk at the International Congress 
on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of 
Science in Florence, 1995. Gärdenfors, 
a Swedish professor of philosophy who 
achieved fame for his contributions to logic 
in the area known as belief revision, is a tall, 
elegant fellow and a charismatic speaker. 
Still, I left his talk in Florence feeling as if I had 
dined on candy floss instead of steak – the 
topic was interesting, the approach novel, but 
there was a dearth of nitty-gritty details. Five 
years later, Conceptual Spaces appeared and 
at last we have a feast of details.
In order to place the book in context, two 
opposing lines of thought in cognitive 
science should be mentioned. The symbolic 
tradition views thought as the manipulation 
of language, and has scant respect for 
semantics. Daniel Dennett has been one of 
the most influential advocates of this model, 
for example writing that2 “...brains...can only 
be synta[c]tic engines, responding only to 
structural or formal properties. According 
to the traditional distinction in linguistics, a 
sentence’s form or syntax is one thing and 
its meaning or semantics is another. Now 
how does the brain manage to get semantics 
from syntax? It couldn’t.” In other words, 
Dennett asserts that the only representations 
of information in the brain are symbolic 
representations, and thus that cognition is 
(only) a matter of processing language with 
the help of syntactic rules.
The alternative model has been articulated 
particularly clearly by Stevan Harnad, who 
espouses a three-level theory of representation3 
in terms of which perception involves first 
the construction of iconic representations 
– topographically organised analogs of the 
sensory input – followed by the construction 
of higher-level categorical representations 
by means of some kind of analog-to-discrete 
transformation, culminating finally in symbolic 
representations. Loosely speaking, the model 
says that if you look at a landscape you 
first have a pattern of neural excitation in 
the brain that resembles the picture on the 
retina, with bits that are close together in 
the retinal image corresponding to areas 
of excitation that are close together in the 
brain. This iconic representation undergoes 
a change that exaggerates some differences 
while discarding others, in much the same 
way that an accurate photo of a landscape 
(or person) may be caricatured or reduced to 
a line drawing. This hardening of boundaries 
changes what was originally continuous 
variation into discrete parts that may readily 
be distinguished – here is a tree, there a 
building. The omission of detail required by 
the change makes the result more generic, 
so that it can stand for a whole class of items 
rather than one specific item. And at this 
Reviews – Junctures, 5, Dec 2005
 68
point it becomes possible to attach labels 
(symbols) to the representation, which brings 
language into the arena.
The problem with the three-level theory of 
representation has always been the middle 
level. How exactly is the analog-to-discrete 
transformation accomplished? In his book, 
Gärdenfors approaches the middle level 
activity from a geometric perspective. 
However, this is no dry geometry text. 
Gärdenfors’s account draws upon the full 
panoply of cognitive science – psychology, 
philosophy, logic, computer science, and 
linguistics. The lasting impression created 
by the book is of the extraordinary breadth, 
both substantive and methodological, that 
the author has at his command.
So what is a conceptual space?
Crudely speaking, a space is a mathematical 
structure with dimensions along which 
measurements may be noted. But conceptual 
spaces are unlike the spaces used in natural 
sciences like physics, for Gärdenfors sees 
conceptual spaces as human, or at least 
agent-oriented (since one would expect our 
understanding of other animals and even 
our design of artificial agents to benefit 
from the theory). Whereas in physics one 
would measure, for example, the absolute 
wavelengths and frequencies of light, a 
conceptual space concerned with vision would 
be structured according to the way a human 
perceives the light, which is something rather 
different from objective measurements of 
wavelength and frequency. While wavelength 
still plays a role, the dimensions of the 
conceptual space are partly determined by 
the agent architecture, and what is important 
is not whether the wavelength is so many 
nanometers but whether the agent perceives 
it as blue. After all, it is a fact of perception 
that colour constancy requires a term such as 
blue to be associated with various different 
wavelengths depending on the context (i.e. 
depending on the time of day, whether the 
sky is cloudy, and so on).
(To see how different perception and physics 
can be, the reader is invited to visit the 
webpage http://www.scientificpsychic.
com/graphics/shadow.jpg, which illustrates 
how the same shade of grey, i.e. the same 
absolute wavelength of light, may, depending 
only on context, be perceived by a human 
agent either as black or as white.)
One begins the construction of a conceptual 
space, therefore, with quality dimensions 
– such as hue, saturation, and luminosity, if 
we continue to take the perception of colour 
as an example. Such quality dimensions 
correspond to ways in which an agent can 
judge stimuli to be the same or different. 
Gärdenfors gives examples showing that 
researchers who want to model the conceptual 
spaces of agents can identify relevant quality 
dimensions by statistical techniques such as 
multi-dimensional scaling.
Quality dimensions form clusters called 
domains. For example, a stimulus object 
cannot have hue without also having a degree 
of saturation and of luminosity, so those three 
dimensions together form the colour domain. 
Dimensions such as weight or pitch would not 
form part of this domain but would belong to 
their own clusters.
A conceptual space consists of one or 
more domains together with a notion of 
distance (a metric). Non-mathematicians 
tend to be surprised by the suggestion 
that there can be more than one kind of 
distance, but Gärdenfors shows that it is 
necessary to consider various kinds of 
metric. Two examples illustrate how notions 
of distance can differ. The Euclidean metric 
is (roughly speaking) a way of measuring the 
distance between two points in the space 
by taking the length of the straight line 
Reviews – Junctures, 5, Dec 2005
 69
connecting those points; whereas the City-
Block metric measures the distance by, as 
it were, following the streets (i.e. going first 
horizontally the necessary number of steps 
and then vertically, instead of cutting straight 
across like the Euclidean metric).
The metric associated with a particular 
conceptual space has a very important role 
to play in the construction of categorical 
representations (the middle level of Harnad’s 
theory of representation). Gärdenfors 
postulates the following role for the metric: 
Given a conceptual space, certain subsets 
of the space are convex regions. Roughly 
speaking, if you have two measurements 
in a convex region then any measurements 
between those two will also fall in the convex 
region. Or visualise a convex region as a fat 
blob, like the inside of a circle or a square 
rather than the inside of a wasp-waisted 
figure eight. Basically, convex regions are nice 
things to have, according to Gärdenfors, who 
suggests that concepts, or properties such as 
“is blue”, correspond to convex regions in the 
relevant conceptual space.
The mechanism proposed for the construction 
of categorical representations is  known as 
a Voronoi tessellation of the space, which 
is a process that breaks the space up into 
convex regions. The metric forms the Voronoi 
tessellation with the aid of prototypes.
Here Gärdenfors links conceptual spaces 
with a well-established area in cognitive 
psychology. A prototype may be thought of 
as a cognitive reference point. Consider the 
colour categories again. It is known that 
humans, regardless of ethnicity or culture, 
agree on certain areas of colour space as the 
best examples of basic colour terms in their 
language.4 That is to say, there are certain 
small bits of colour space that everyone 
would agree best exemplify red, green, blue, 
and so on. (And this is not a theoretical 
assumption but a thoroughly tested empirical 
fact, not only for colour categories but for a 
variety of other ‘basic’ categories5.)
Let us, following Eleanor Rosch, call these 
points the prototypes of the colour categories. 
And let us suppose that we have a conceptual 
space in which certain points, the prototypes, 
have been identified. Now the metric 
associated with the space can be used to 
annex to each prototype all the points in the 
space that lie closer to it than to any other 
prototype. The result is a Voronoi tessellation, 
a breaking up of the (continuous) space into 
a discrete collection of convex regions. At 
last we have a mechanism to accomplish the 
analog-to-discrete transformation required by 
Harnad’s middle level of representation.
Mindful of his roots as logician, Gärdenfors 
proceeds to link conceptual spaces with 
Jackendoff’s views on semantics6 and 
with intensional logic. He draws a new 
philosophical distinction between properties 
and concepts. He shows that conceptual 
spaces provide a rich framework unifying 
various discussions pertaining to artificial 
intelligence and theory of mind. But for 
me the key achievement is to cast light on 
the previously problematic middle level 
of representation, and thereby to deal a 
stunning blow to those who, like Dennett, 
attempt to construe cognition in terms of 
syntax only, without internally represented 
symbol-grounding semantics.
1   Peter Gärdenfors, Conceptual Space: The 
Geometry of Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: 
MIT, 2000).
2   Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room: The Varieties 
of Free Will Worth Having (Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1984), 28.
3   Stevan Harnad (ed.), Categorical Perception 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1987), 535-565. 
Reviews – Junctures, 5, Dec 2005
 70
4   Eleanor Rosch Heider, “‘Focal’ Color Areas 
and the Development of Color Names”, 
Developmental Psychology, 1971, 4(3): 447-
455.
5   Eleanor Rosch, “Principles of Categorization” 
in Alan Collins and Edward, E. Smith (eds), 
Readings in Cognitive Science (San Mateo: 
Morgan Kaufmann, 1988), 312- 322.
6   Ray Jackendoff, Semantics and Cognition 
(Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1983).
Willem Labuschagne is a senior lecturer in 
the Department of Computer Science at the 
University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand 
and a member of its Artificial Intelligence 
Research Laboratory. His research is devoted 
to the exploration of the logical semantics 
of nonmonotonic logic. His current goal is 
to find psychological and epistemological 
foundations for nonmonotonic logic. 
Reviews – Junctures, 5, Dec 2005


Review: Peter Gärdenfors, Conceptual Spaces: "The Geometry of Thought" (Cambridge Mass.: MIT, 2000)

 7
EDITORIAL
Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue is the product of a group of academics who
wearied of disciplinary isolation.  While speaking within a group of specialised researchers
offers a certain comfort and the sense of being understood, it also imposes constraints.
For, at the heart of all research is the secret dream of making a difference, and within the
confines of highly specialised scholarly organisations, it is often hard to make an impact on
the greater academic environment.
Even within our own ivory towers, as academics, we often stumble across the interesting
work of colleagues from a department across campus, and wonder if it just might have the
potential to influence our own research, our own lives.  It is often more by accident than by
calculation that we transgress disciplinary boundaries.  I recall the rewarding experience of
explaining the principle of the Foucauldian panopticon (a theory of social control) to a
lecturer in anatomy, a brilliant man whose work revolved predominantly around the
exploration of the inert and passive body, as opposed to the socialised living body of the
Foucauldian model.  But, our subject was the same, our respective curiosity equivalent,
and the exchange fruitful for both of our future scholarly endeavours.
Junctures seeks to establish conversations and collaborations between people who do not
necessarily already interact through conversations revolving around specific themes, rather
than around specific disciplines.  By so doing, we hope to make certain that scholarly
reflection may diffuse to a wider public of eager, albeit, in some cases, novice, readers in
the discipline.  Already, in the preparation of the first issue, the collaborative process has
been intellectually rewarding, as managing editors from information technology to the fine
arts have worked together to produce a cohesive publication.
The first issue of Junctures focuses on the body.  However, within this focus, there are two
distinct threads which have emerged from the successful submissions.  On the one hand,
we have the discussion of weight, and on the other, the discussion of otherness.
Peter Stearns opens this issue with a discussion of interdisciplinarity and its important role
in the furthering of knowledge, using overweight and obesity as a heuristic for his case.  In
support of his argument follow two articles on overweight and obesity: the first, by Glen
Gaesser, explores how scientific evidence does not support the current obsession with
weight loss, while the second, by Annemarie Jutel, seeks a cultural explanation for this
misplaced obsession.  Ellen Goldstein provides a poetic interpretation of issues surrounding
weight loss in a small community preoccupied by this goal.
 Junctures, 1, Dec 2003
8
Brendan Hokowhitu describes how contemporary representations of the Maori sporting
body function to perpetuate bio-racist discourses, and Diane Halstead uses Homi K. Bhabha’s
articulation of the third space to acknowledge the hybrid body and incorporates this concept
to understand the absence of her own Caribbean culture.
Gala Kirke interactively responds to the bodies of nine texts through a deconstruction of
notions of corporeality; while Ana Terry writes alongside Don Hunter’s recent exhibition and
they jointly contribute to the issue with their visual essay.  Three reviews again allude to the
body and round out this first issue of Junctures, which the managing editors hope will
enlighten readers as it brings together the artistic, the scientific, the cultural and the
techological.
Annemarie Jutel
(Editor)
 Junctures, 1, Dec 2003


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