CoCA - Centre of Contemporary Art

Fika is a collective of Christchurch Pasifika creatives whose members meet to give energy to the practice of storytelling through writing, poetry, prose and performance. Through collaboration and exchange, Fika maintain a sense of oral tradition and work to strengthen the voices of Pasifika peoples within Canterbury.

FIKA at CoCA

From June 16 to August, members of Fika will meet once a week in the gallery space provided by CoCA. Responding to exhibitions within the gallery and conducting a free writing exercise, the group will post their work to gallery wall. The writing will be a mixture of edited and unedited work, produced on and off site.

Free writing exercise
Amelia Hitchcock, Curator

I was lucky enough to be invited to join Fika for their first session of Free Writing at CoCA. We set up a couple of tables, and then all started with the same sentence ‘oblique tales from the aquatic sublime’ which we borrowed from Vertigo Sea.  The aim of the exercise is to write without editing; a stream of consciousness, for three pages, or however long you can stand it! If you get stuck, you repeat the last word or last line until the flow comes back. 

We each wrote a few pages, then read from what we’d written to the group. It was quite incredible how many different tangents we’d gone on from the one starting sentence. Following this, we split into pairs and gave over our text to our partner, who took to it with a craft knife, extracting sentences or sections that got to the core of what we’d written. 

Working collaboratively, we arranged the cutouts into poems, taking content from both partners initial texts. These are now displayed on the gallery wall. 

I’m looking forward to watching new texts appear on the wall each weekend. Toward the end of Vertigo Sea, FIKA members will choose the best works to be performed at an event - watch this space. 

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FIKA are the first community group to respond to the provocation below and activate the North Gallery 

At the opening of the Vertigo Sea, The North Gallery appears empty except for some vertebrae from the Canterbury Museum’s Blue Whale skeleton. This emptiness is deliberate.

Space is a premium in Otautahi, particularly in the CBD. So as CoCA re-establishes itself, we are opening thegallery up as a platform and resource. The emptiness is potential. It is an invitation.

CoCA is currently working with community groups who may come and utilise the space over the course of the exhibition. These groups range from artist collaboratives, education groups to NGOs. As the season unfolds, this space may host pop up exhibitions, spoken word performances, workshops, meetings and screenings. We may accumulate documentation from some of these, and the space may shift and change as community needs become apparent.

We will also use this space for discussions, for visiting groups to assemble and workshop, for children’s activities, and talks.