(Photograph - Reuben Jelley)
A couple of weeks ago I was in Christchurch, New Zealand which has been slowly reconstructing itself after a major earthquake five years ago. The desolation of this event has left some deep scars on the city but projects like Gap Filler and Greening the Rubble have galvanised the creative community to reclaim the city through a range of curious initiatives.
The dance-o-matic, mini golf and even a little library have sprung up on central prime real-estate where buildings once stood. They hunker beneath massive experimental murals painted on walls which were once internal and cheekily ask both local and visitor to play in a city which has suffered so much. It is a place where you feel guerrilla art is extruding itself from every angle, and blossoming where bureaucracy commonly suppresses.
So I was moved to write this below, which in my mind captures the mood and personality, or at least what I saw as a visitor. But then just a few days later and a week before the five year anniversary there was another large quake. There were no fatalities but I can't help but wonder how the residents cope with the uncertainty of when the next quake with shake.
Christchurch poem
Illustrated city full of shakes
Rubble relaxes over recent mistakes
Phoenix esq and heavy with art
A new generation dressing up sharp
Creative expressions over vacant plots
Filling gaps with cultural crops
Astro turf sofa
Dance 'O' Matic
Mini golf pop up
And wind blown plastic
Trailing from balconies
And building site cages
Segmenting reconstruction in proportioned phases
Fresh heads gather
New baggage reclaim
Growth of ideas
Retreating the frame
City wide sculpture
Open gallery spaces
Smoothing the scars
Reconstructing the faces
Beside tags marking buildings
Cleared and dated
Rogue architects barred de-robed and implicated
Album art blossoms beneath hungry cranes
Knitting girders over truncated drains
Shanty containers a new city core
Personal intimate accessible and raw
Iron now rises banded and braced
Designed to instil confidence in this place
Trams scuttle neat
Reinventing the mystery
Varnished veneer across facades of history
Awaiting the inevitable
As history folds
Brand new archeology
Modern legends in the moulds