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On 14 November 2016, the Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake and tsunami occurred in Aotearoa New Zealand, impacting the city of Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). As many people reside in apartments in Wellington, we undertook a survey followed by interviews to understand evacuation information communicated to apartment dwellers, and how residents used that information for decision-making. Immediately following earthquake shaking, some apartment dwellers stayed in their building as per official advice, while others evacuated because they felt safer outside. A small proportion evacuated because of the tsunami threat, and many of these participants did so because of the 'Long or Strong, Get Gone' evacuation advice. Others were unclear whether their apartment building was in a tsunami evacuation zone. Some returned immediately after the initial evacuation, while others with damaged apartments evacuated for weeks to months. Participants used regular information upates particularly via social media channels, to inform decisions about returning after longer-term evacuation. However, communicating with the Body Corporate or landlord was difficult, and apartment dwellers reported having trouble getting information about the damage status of their building, making decisions about returning challenging. Given the unique context of apartment dwellers, communication strategies should be honed to assist responses to a future event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within participatory geography and relational aesthetic art literature there have been calls to focus on how participation is framed, who is included and excluded, the types of relations involved and the effects of such practices. Linked to these concerns, questions have also been raised around how participants are framed and understood in participatory projects. For instance, as self-determining and knowing subjects who become politically affirmed through participation, or as subjects caught up in complex processes of becoming. In this article I show how the participatory art project ' Productive Bodies' in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, enabled participants to articulate the complex contradictions surrounding waged work, redundancy and unemployment. I suggest that participatory art projects can be a useful way for subjects to explore these complex processes of becoming. Useful because in this case, the project enabled participants to both acknowledge dominant disciplining discourses around waged work, while also creating space to imagine and enact alternatives to more dominant and limiting discourses. I argue that participatory art projects like Productive Bodies can help subjects move away from cognitive understandings of social change and political demands because the process understands subjects as always-already affected by wider societal discourses. Such an understanding recognises the complexity of subjectivities whereby subjects are both complicit in perpetuating and subjecting themselves to more dominant discourses, but also often desirous of change. Participatory art projects like Productive Bodies can enable subjects to articulate these complexities, while also catching glimpses of other selves and other societal relations through affectual-embodied encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]