 So here we are, Toi Whakari, the National Drama School, the National Library of New Zealand, and me, third-year performance design student, standing here ready to collaborate. I'll look at the collection online and go for a site visit and get some quotes from staff while I'm there. Then I'll show them that I know. I know history. I know what the information, I know they want the information that proves that I've been there and I've absorbed and I understand. I know because I do well at these things. I'm an A+. So here I am with proof of my all-knowing knowledge and all my information ready. But then they go and blindside me with a provocation and that's what they call it. What am I supposed to do with this? Where's the essay question and digital death spiral? What's that got to do with the National Library? What do they want from me? They're changing the rules. A National Library means authority, treasures, expert, preservation, Kate Shepard and getting it right. My perspective, how do I qualify that? And what do the other students think? The class is disruptive. It's chaos. But it seems to be part of the plan and there's more direction to follow. I can't really answer these questions in the way that I've learnt how to learn. I need to move between then and now, us and them. I need a sense of why they did what they did in order to work out what that has to do with me. We are the masters of access and since content has become so accessible we need help to become literate and how to contextualise and make meaning and that's what these provocations do. The following images are from Aki in Archives New Zealand in 2012 and Koho in the National Library during this year and they give a sense of what this approach produces. This is Timotima Paula. He's Tongan. He stands in front of a vault that holds the Treaty of Waitangi documents projected on the door as security footage of what is inside the vault as well as a countdown. In this photo he has 23 seconds left to convince the audience that his politics and opinion of race in New Zealand are as valid as the other four competitors two Maori, one Pākehā, and ones are the African waiting for their turn to speak. This is Cunt Free Sanders and she sits in the position of protester which grew out of research into iconic imagery of protest, the right to delete as well as preserve and the question of what a National Library is for. On the back you can just make out the Library's security guard whose watchful presence became part of the show. So much of the historical content that Hiramea Tuiloma moves through deals with specifics of our landscape. With his group he created a physical score that evokes this landscape in search into native birds, Matataki, the paintings of John Walsh, the films of Vincent Ward and New Zealand poetry. Adam Brown on the mic in the tumble room. The audience are shaped by the action of three performers who move in and out of multiple personas, representing and appropriating voices inside and outside of the Library's collection. The politics of voice, whose voice gets collected and whose doesn't, they appropriate and splice together verbatim material interested in how liveliness of the relationship can exist between voices recorded and those that repeat them. And then there's me. Hannah McDougall, 21, born in New Zealand and has been a member of the National Library and then there's me. Hannah McDougall, 21, born and raised in Christchurch to a national bank manager and an accountant. Fourth-generation Pakiha with no real interest and family lineage, listens to Skrillex, likes contemporary art, restaurants and smoking. Standing at the National Library with the presence of Molsworth Street outside, they asked me, what's the conversation that the Library wants to have with your generation? What do they need to hear and what's your contribution? We are communicating through online and I was impacted by the evolution from standing on Molsworth Street in a motorcycle helmet protesting against apartheid to sitting behind a laptop and being able to argue about five different issues or dislikes in the space of three hours without any real connection to a single group, community or idea. I was looking at all of these examples from the collection of protest, women's suffragette, the teachers, the trade unions, the springbok tour, Waitangi Day protest and we don't function in those ways anymore. We are two just jointed and separated from any real physical connection to people or place. The definition of reality has changed. Freedom of speech, the power of people, no censorship online or in life. We are many voices inside one voice without a face and without a name. There is no organization, no membership, no group and no ideologists. There is no fixed ideology. For a brief period of time, we may share the same route, much like commuters on a bus. When we share this route, things can change. None of us are as cruel as all of us, but nobody can speak on behalf of us. If you want to see what we can do, try to shut down our message, try to censor our speech, then you will see what we can do. We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. There's a desire in people for freedom. Freedom to sit outside of tradition and pre-determin moral codes that are no longer relevant. They're no longer relevant because of what I grew up inside of. I was watching porn when I was 12 and it's only getting younger. In fact, it already is. And that's not the problem. The problem is, what are we going to do with that information? You're not going to be able to protect your sons and daughters from certain things. In fact, you've already failed. What are you protecting? And what's the worst that can happen? We're trying to figure out what is inside of new morals when what is currently set up is not working. And it's hilarious all of these companies and businesses and leaders and institutions that are trying to target us and relate to us and they can't figure out why it's not working. We are a generation that operates on face value when it comes to accessing online information. We can be known to call ourselves Generation OS13, which is operating system 13. The message that comes up on a website when you have entered an area where information is restricted and you don't have authority to access it. We believe it's no-one's right to dictate what information is accessible. This is the foundation of our internet, but not just our internet, how we function in life. We have the illusion of being seemingly unmotivated because young people don't care about anything anymore. But we are seeking a way to exist that encompasses our values which might be different from yours. There is an erosion of boundaries between the real and the virtual as we move in and out of lives on screen. We are holding magnitudes of information next to each other simultaneously. Candy Crush, next to quotes about nihilism, next to a torrent for catching fire, next to dark net software, next to the Treaty of Waitangi, next to job offers via email and this is an ultimate freedom. It is so liberating to be able to pick and choose when, how and what we want of information. But this means in my mind that no singular piece of information has any priority over another. This is how we are consuming and therefore how we are making judgments about your collections. But we know that there are things that you are hiding and our question is why. There is clearly a tension that exists between unlimited access and the relational dynamics of taonga that protect innate boundaries. As we are rapidly learning to survive without you, the place, the house, the authority, what are we losing and what's your position. This performance project offers an opportunity to make overt and heighten this tension with a focus on questions not summary, engagement and not contemplation and with this in us comes a respect for what could come fully of infesting and conversations of national significance.