October 15th Solidarity - Remember the state terror raids

Tame Iti’s lawyer Annette Sykes announced that they have successfully secured Tame’s passport so that he can travel overseas. Tame is due to appear in a production of TEMPEST II in Italy and may travel to other European cities and Japan to do further performances. This is a major victory for the case as Tame can now continue his work in educating people worldwide about the struggle of Tuhoe.

About the performance: TEMPEST II is the second chapter of the performance series Tempest.

Tempest is the performance of a staged hearing, within conditions of detention and loss of sovereign rights. The language of Tempest is dance and its oratory signals the rebirth of an indigenous voice in the telling of the shifting conditions of political right, from the scientific journey to witness the transit of Venus that coincided with colonial conquest, to the current geopolitics of the Pacific reflecting the wider post 9/11 global community.

Tempest inflects towards the Shakespeare work, though draws away from being either a staging or an adaptation of it. Rather, Tempest is the collision of the island geography of the play and the political writings of the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, concerned with our contemporary crisis of the destitution of rights, whereby any citizen may be constituted as a detainee and any urban condition may become that of the camp.
TEMPEST II features the veteran Maori activist Tame Iti. On the 15th of October 2007, police carried out anti-terror raids, focussing in his community in Ruatoki. Tame Iti was arrested and is currently on bail. TEMPEST II also features the recently freed Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui who was detained for four years without trial in a New Zealand prison.

For more information on the performance, visit http://www.mau.co.nz/