Environmentalism is just looking after your home.
When I got out of art school knowing I was going to be an impoverished artist but painting was
everything for me it didn't matter. I wouldn't have money because I would have the biggest garden
in the world, that was the rivers and the lakes and the hills which all belong to us. You don't
get much wealthier than that. So when someone came along one day and started to take it away. Is that
when you become an environmentalist? I'm not sure it's just a natural thing to fight against
it.
My name is Sam Mahon. I live in the country, I've always wanted to live in the country I was
raised in the country but oddly enough everybody else who lives in the country thinks of me as
an imposter which is fine because that's what artists should be they should put everybody on
edge so it's my job to put the world on edge. An artist is a different thing for different people
you know if you say am I an artist it puts me into a box I think. What I like to think is I'm a
renaissance kind of character a bit of an engineer as well. It's called the one percent it's kind of
self-explanatory. Whenever this thing's on public display kids love it they just want to see all the
movement but the same time you've got this idea this one person being supported by all these
hard-working people down here, you've got cattle been crammed into boxes, the dairy industry,
you've got a guy trying to catch a fish he can't pull it in it's got no meat on it anyway, women,
children, right in the centre of all this sort of nasty darkness is you've got Ronald McDonald
slowly turning and grinning at the whole thing everybody on their backs has the label of some
bank. Well New Zealand seems to look very pretty to anybody who visits it, environmental Disneyland
in a way. The way I view it is when you're a kid you make a cake for your friend out of dirt
and flies and you put beautiful icing on the top with little sprinkles. We do, we have this icing
we've got to be careful because underneath that there's a lot of dirt and we have to
somehow make the whole structure good. What's wrong with the rivers? What's wrong with them is
how I measure them against when I was young drink from any river and Canterbury without
worrying about getting sick. If a kid goes to river today they might think, "Oh well we can't
drink this water, that's natural. We can't swim in it, that's natural." That's how things are,
so we take our daughter to one of the four main rivers in Canterbury. We will find cyanobacteria
mats at the sides of the old swimming holes just lurking and we're reluctant to take her there.
Art should change people's minds and it's a tool just as in a conversation if I want to change
your mind I could choose music, writing, dance something, I've picked the best tool for the job.
We've done so many things to try and attract public attention. We started a political group
called We Can, a party launch was in the middle of the Avon River. We had a table
set up with candelabras and wine and and every time you do something like that it
gets them to the front page right and that's the trick. If you can make the enemy laugh
then you're winning. Art has to be fun and when I made the Nick Smith sculpture
laughter reigned. I spent the whole winter making a life-size sculpture of Nick with his nuts
hanging out taking a crap in a glass of water. And we drove it up to Nelson where every Saturday
he has his caravan at the local market. So here's this huge freaking thing right beside his caravan,
Nick opens the door looks out sees himself there jumps back into the caravan for about two minutes
and then he jumps out again and ran away and I thought to myself, this is art at its best
at its very best. And what was cool about it was that mothers and their kids were having
their photographs taken beside nick's testicles and nobody was upset everybody was laughing,
it's a tricky thing to carry off. If you can have everybody happy at the same time
break their hearts. [Video playing] "Tonight we have a special guest the leader of the
opposition the honourable Judith Collins. Welcome please." [applause and music playing]
I thought it'd be quite nice to have those spitting image puppets where you can
create an image of the politician and then create these dialogues with them, again entertaining but
somehow get the knives in there at the same time. [Video playing] "Do you think politics has been an
unhealthy occupation for you too? Are you ready to retire? [Puppet speaking] "I get thousands of
emails from people that saying you just can't do it." Video is another tool every bit of technology
when I come across it is I think how can I use this as a tool to better express my ideas.
In that using video you're also saying what is the public use to watching? What are they most
attuned to watching or looking at the moment? So you choose their medium
and then you invade it. [Music video playing lyrics] 'Send us down some
foot and mouth disease because our country's running from the mountains to the seas
with shit.' Just turn up turn up in the street if there's a protest turn up people will see the
numbers and politicians who have the power to make change will only take note when there's a bunch of
people. If you meet a politician in a room and talk about a problem nothing's going to happen,
so the best you can do is go down the street and be seen. And so with awareness there's
a slow turning so we do have that hope that in this country there is a turning, I can feel now
there is a wane against that farming lobby now which says it's not good enough.
We need to be able to take our children to a river without them getting sick. [music playing]
Make your voice known and don't be afraid because there's plenty of us around there to back you up.
[music playing]
For me this is like a learning playground. I came here I didn't have a clue what permaculture was,
I didn't have a clue about growing my own food. If you had told me like three
years ago that I'd be really passionate and interested in sharing videos about
gardening and food forests, I would have told you that you're crazy.
Permaculture isn't gardening, permaculture is a framework, a toolkit of changing the way you think
about the world and the way you interact with it in a way that's creating the future that we want.