BIO

Cassandra Barnett (Raukawa, Ngāti Huri, Pākehā) is a writer across worlds, language unlearner, avid weeder, reo dreamer. In 2021 published her chapbook How | Hao, and she has published additional poetry and fiction in many journals and anthologies including No Other Place to Stand, Action Spectacle, Cordite, Brief, OraNui, Tupuranga, Te Whē ki Tukorehe, Landfall and Black Marks on the White Page.

Cassandra also writes about art, and was an art academic for 15 years. She spent her PhD (and all the years since) thinking about how to activate art writing against the imperialist, objectifying, colonising tendencies we are taught in our institutions – and how to make it real, personal and alive!

Her art essays have been published in many publications, including Robin White: Something is Happening Here, Animism in Art and Performance, Counterfutures, The Spinoff, Pantograph Punch, Ann Shelton: Dark Matter, World Art, Eyeline and others. A co-edited anthology about Toioho ki Āpiti school of Māori visual art, Ki Mua, Ki Muri, is forthcoming. Cassandra was a founding member of the publishing collective Taraheke, has worked on many small-run zines and grassroots publishing initiatives, and performed her work at many literary events over- and underground. In 2022 she was a joyful guest on the Hikurangi whenua of Te Kawerau a Maki, as the Auckland Regional Parks Artist in Residence.

WORKSHOP – NOTHING ABOUT US

For Ramp Festival Cassandra is offering a workshop called ‘Nothing About Us’, which explores some alternative ways of responding to art in writing. If you are a creative writer looking for visual inspiration, this is for you! If you are an artist or art writer looking for new ways to express aesthetic ideas in text, this for you! One word for poems written in response to artworks is ‘ekphrasis’. This workshop starts from ekphrasis but speculates further. Together, through pen-to-paper exercises, we will ask whether writing alongside (rather than about) works of art can be a starting point for writing diverse, compassionate futures – futures in which neither people nor artworks are othered.