Kiran Dass: My cultural highlights of 2023

Thursday, 28 December 2023

WORD Festival programme leader Kiran Dass at home in Lyttelton. She plans to explore her hometown through lens provided by Jared Davidson’s book on NZ’s history of prison labour.

The Press has asked a few of the Mainland’s leading figures to tell us what they enjoyed watching, listening to, reading, and experiencing during 2023. We continue our series with WORD Festival programme lead KIRAN DASS.

What book, or books, did you particularly enjoy this year? 2023 has been a blockbuster year for Aotearoa fiction so I have my work cut out for me as a judge for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

My Aotearoa book of the year is Jared Davidson’s Blood & Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, $49.99), which is Aotearoa social history with a strong narrative drive.

It looks at how some of Aotearoa’s most significant roads, buildings and spaces were constructed by the labour of prisoners, and is an important book about labour, capitalism, colonisation, and the crucial role that prisoners played in public infrastructure.

King Loser - a documentary following the crash and burn of the Kiwi band of the same name - is Dass’ favourite film of the year.

I love the idea that history should be challenging while leading to radical social change. I’m going to make a little map for myself of places in Lyttelton and Christchurch that Davidson writes about, and explore my new hometown through the lens of this vital book.

Which film, or films, stood out for you? King Loser directed by Andrew Moore and Cushla Dillon. I am a music and documentary obsessive who is annoyed by most music documentaries.

US cult favourites Dead Moon in concert in Invercargill, 2002.

Andrew Moore and Cushla Dillon’s King Loser documentary charts the crash and burn of the legendary Auckland band, and is the best New Zealand music documentary I’ve seen. It forgoes the annoying, flabby trope of having droning talking heads placed to validate the music - it only includes interviews players from the inside.

Strong volatile personalities, loyalty, flammable conflict, with quiet insights of tenderness and care, you don’t need to know who King Loser are or to have heard their music to be absorbed in this scumbag screwball Aotearoa Spinal Tap. I hope it will be an example to other filmmakers on how to craft a music doco.

What new music, or old favourites, did you have on high rotate this year? Dead Moon - Going South (Live in New Zealand, 1992). Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Dead Moon’s Fred and Toody Cole are among my favourite rock’n’roll couples.

Keith Richards may have called Invercargill “the arsehole of the world”, but Aotearoa’s most southernmost city is where one of my favourite records I heard this year was recorded.

Kraftwerk live at Wellington TSB on November 29.

This double live LP is an incendiary document of Portland Oregon rock band Dead Moon’s 1992 show at Invercargill’s Glengarry Tavern. Speaking of the Rolling Stones, it features a searing cover of Play With Fire sung by Toody.

Dead Moon had been invited by Nirvana to join them on their Nevermind tour, but turned it down because they’d already committed to coming to New Zealand for their own tour.

I was spinning records at Lyttelton Coffee Company the other morning and played this. A punter asked me if I could turn it down. I turned it up.

What was the best live show, gig, or theatre of 2023? It was a real honour to have Roy Montgomery and Clementine Valentine join us for a live show as part of WORD Christchurch this year at the beautiful St Michael and All Angels Church.

I was sitting in the front pew basking in the epic reverb drenched, swirling majesty of Clementine Valentine and had a fever dream moment where I couldn’t be sure if it was a dream or really happening. Real goosebumps.

Roy Montgomery’s eloquent and moving reading from his collection of verse Endurance published by Kōwhai Press, which was launched that night, was generous, raw, and a privilege to be sitting in on. Quite a few people have told me they doubted there was a dry eye in the church.

And Kraftwerk at Wellington’s TSB Arena. This was an ecstatic two-hour long sensory experience. These German musical technicians put on a dynamic and euphoric multimedia show of synths, volume and immense bass.

Favourite tracks were Numbers, It’s More Fun to Compute, Computer Love, Radioactivity, Tour de France, and Trans Europe Express. I hope that one day “New Zealand Tour” will expand to include us music lovers in Te Waipounamu.