Local Time is a four-person collective, comprising Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Alex Monteith & Natalie Robertson and based in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Local Time has been named as a collective since 2007, usually working in collaboration with maintainers of local knowledge in specific sites. Our individual practices engage in debates concerning colonial histories and cross-cultural exchange through time-based media art projects, contemporary art teaching and critical writing. Our shared past includes two international symposia, which attempted to incorporate bi-cultural principles and responsiveness to mana whenua in their staging as well as in their thematics, establishing settings for exchange and dialogue shaped by tikanga Māori. This genealogy reflects our attempt to reconcile our experiences of colonial and indigenous knowledges and temporalities, the connection between the aesthetic and the political, and so with the way the cultural is political.

Formed to consolidate and extend this history of collaboration, our name was chosen to reflect the idea of being ‘on local time’, adapting to local conditions while remaining sensitive to the way they are structured by ‘global’ formations. Our collective activities combine opportunistic responses and long term, ‘slow burn’ engagements. The purpose of Local Time is open-ended, embracing instability and experimentation, staying open to discovery in and across political, community, and art contexts.

Recent sites for Local Time projects have included Waitangi (2017), Mangere maunga (2014) and the Waitemata Harbour (2013) in Aotearoa New Zealand; Footscray, Australia (2014); Delhi, India (2013); and Rarotonga (2015).

email: info @ local-time.net