Artist Residency 2022
Resident Artist Diary

Clara Ehrenwerth was 20202 an artist in residence at the Goethe-Institut Wellington. Here she reports on her impressions in Wellington and elsewhere.  

PART 4: I GUESS THIS IS GOODBYE

It's the third day of the new year and I'm sitting in sandals at Auckland Airport, preparing to fly back to the German winter. In front of me is the runway, behind me are nine weeks on the other side of the world, which very quickly no longer felt a bit like the other side of the world.
Although I really don't know anything about logistics, it's easier for me to understand and summarize the busy shuffling around on the airport apron than the last sixty days. So many new impressions, thoughts, encounters.
I have earworms from the songs of the Tūī in the Botanical Garden, the cawing of the Kākā and from the many bird sounds that I still can't identify. I have earworms from the electronic self-checkout voice in the supermarket: "Quantity needed", "Please place item in the bagging area", "Thank you for shopping at Countdown". I've had an earworm of "Purea Nei" for days and have tried to find a recording of it, but nothing on the internet even comes close to the versions sung somewhere together by everyone who happens to be there - before a reading, at a party, in the evening sun. (As I write this, of course, the melody is already settling back into my ear).
I've walked the City to Sea Walkway and the Escarpment Track, been to Otari Wilton's Bush and Zealandia and the Zoo, and the Eastern and the Southern and the Northern Walkway (Western Walkway, where are you anyway?). I stood in the sunset at Princess Beach, I stood in the sunset at Island Bay, and at the Atatürk Memorial, and at Mount Kakau. I think I'm allowed to say now: I can't think of a city more beautifully set in the landscape than Wellington (possibly not even an imaginary one).
When I wasn't walking, I held my snapper card up to the scanners on the buses, full of imaginary native pride - incredulous that a local transport ticket in Aotearoa currently costs about a sixth of a German ticket. Nevertheless, for the first time in my life, I regretted not having a driving licence, because you can hardly get anywhere outside the capital without a car. And, confession: I didn't understand the waste system until the very end (although waste separation is also the first duty of citizens in Germany) - where is the compost? Washing out plastic packaging? And why do you put the rubbish in bags on the street in the windiest city in the world?
Luckily, the airport in Auckland is better organised than my thoughts. Now, for example, boarding is called for the flight to Singapore. I'm afraid I'll have to get there pretty soon.
Okay, I admit it: I'm also looking forward a little to the boredom, the ordinary, the everyday. After all the impressions that have poured in on me for weeks, I actually have a bit of a longing to look at the white wall behind my desk again, day in and day out - in my office on the other side of the world.
Goodbye, Aotearoa! Farewell, Wellington! See you soon, sometime.

PART 3: A VERY DIFFERENT TUNE

I stood rooted to the spot. What was that? Was there someone whistling? Right above me?

I was, admittedly, quite overtired, having arrived in Wellington only a few hours ago. Through the veil of my tiredness, everything seemed a bit unreal on my first New Zealand walk anyway. The infinitely tall trees in the Botanic Garden. The palm trees in the wind. Bolton Street, which is as steep as a ski jumping ramp. The motorway that runs right through the cemetery. But that sound? Tü-tü-tütü-tü. An evening chant in a minor key, followed by an affirmative click. A melody that - perhaps with some punctuation - could easily be the first five notes of a Bach fugue.

But in fact it was a bird that was both composer and performer here - a tūī, as I later learned on the internet. They also looks a bit like a cocky opera singer with their pompous white tuft of feathers on their neck. Of course, I knew beforehand that Aotearoa has a unique fauna - but I wasn't prepared for that. How different an evening, a morning feels when the birds contribute a different sound.

Over the last few weeks I have learned that every tūī sings their own tune. From my observation, it's actually mostly five notes, but I don't know if this finding is ornithologically tenable. In Wellington, melancholic melodies seem to dominate. When I was in Napier last weekend, the tūī in the pedestrian zone was singing a more cheerful hit. But I guess that goes with the weather.

Since the first day, I've been trying to capture the tūī songs because I know that when I travel back to the German winter in January, they will always remind me of my time in Aotearoa. So if you see someone standing under a tree with one arm stretched far up to record a tūī chant with their cell phone, whistling animatingly, so that the birds join in: that's me.

(I have not yet managed to take a photo of a recognisable tūī. Therefore, here are some pictures of trees where tūī are hidden – for sure!)

PART 2: NEXT LEVEL