It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes? ONE MOON COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist Every morning, before I even look outside my window, I look at another season. It appears on my phone. My mother has a habit of telling me the temperature back home. I think it is her way of sharing something real, something happening around her body, across the 6,000 miles between us. "Yesterday was so hot and stuffy,"

FILM COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Millie Lies Low (Michelle Savill, 2021) As everybody’s third or fourth choice for a Commonwealth nation — including ourselves, judging from how many of us move to Australia — it’s perhaps not as much a mystery where all the self-diagnosed ‘imposter syndrome’ in New Zealand comes from, especially if you’re competing with your colleagues for the best opportunities. The

EDITORIAL | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Tashi Donnelly she/her | @tashi_rd | Editor Your connection to reality has been interrupted by doomscrolling, binge-watching, and opening seventeen tabs you intended to read. Please do not attempt to disconnect. Click CONTINUE to proceed with Debate: Screens. Loading Debate: Screens… Please wait. I’ve tried writing this editorial over, and over, and over again. The problem is that there are no outside perspectives anymore. Screens

FILM COLUMN | ISSUE SEVEM | MATARIKI Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist The pūrākau about the formation of Matariki tells us that its stars were formed by an act of grief and anger by Tāwhirimātea, the god of wind and weather. To match, I’ve dusted off three essential films on the subject of wind. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928) Checks out. If there was ever a more comprehensive depiction of wind in film, it’d have to be called Wind 2.

SPILL THE TEA WITH TASHI | COLUMN | ISSUE 7 | MATARIKI Written & illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor-in-Chief Scroll to the bottom of this webpage to submit your own question for Tashi to answer: https://www.debatemag.com/spill-the-tea-submissions Q: Dear Tashi, I feel bad writing this, but I have a very irritating classmate. They talk over other people a lot and also talk over the lecturer, interrupting them and disrupting the discussion. I have neve

"Have you Eaten Yet?" COLUMN | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI Written by y Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist Illustrations by Sophia He (she/her) | @meoskyan.art | Graphic Designer Every time my mother calls from China, she asks the same question within the first two minutes: “Have you eaten yet?” For many Chinese people, this question carries a weight that has very little to do with hunger. Conversations happen around dining tables. Friendships begin over shared m

ARTS | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI Written by Tohu Harris (she/her) | @tohu._.harris | @tohu_wairua_aroha_ | Contributing Writer Project Introduction This practice-led research project explores my identity grounded by my whakapapa Māori and connection to God. I seek to find harmony between these two worlds, culture and religion, establishing wairua as the common thread that binds them both. I navigate the complexities of this multi-dimensional state of being through painting and

HOROSCOPE | COLUMN | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by László Reynolds (he/him) | @laszloreynolds | Contributing Columnist It is recommended to read your rising sign first, then the Sun after. You can read for your Moon sign as well, especially if you were born at night. Aries You’ve made it over the crest of the hill (hell?); any lingering extreme heat is fading in the rear view. What’s left is a lingering heaviness. If you look closer, though, the reason it’s so h

FILM COLUMN | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist A Bucket of Blood (Roger Corman, 1959) Whether you’re burdened by imposter syndrome or choked by a creative block, if you’re an artist in a rut, seek the protagonist of A Bucket of Blood for reassurance that you’re not fucking up this badly. In this dark comedy, Dick Miller plays the nebbish Walter, a busboy at a beatnik café who doesn’t fit in with the so

THE HOT LESBIAN | COLUMN | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by This Week’s Hot Lesbian, Wren Probett (she/her) @inkdogshirts | @hot_lesbian_initiative | Contributing Lesbian What could possess someone to wear a shirt that reads “Gay Dog” or “Dyke”? What must go wrong in a person’s life, for them to spend hours carefully carving those words from linoleum? Of all things, why a shirt? I mean, are you planning on wearing that on the bus? At the mall?? If you’ve seen my sh

KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by Jana Nee (she/her) | @jahncreates | Contributing Writer The darkroom in my high school art class was my creative haven. At sixteen, I spent most lunch breaks there, developing negatives from my film camera. I made strange, carefully staged images of fish heads with doll bodies. There were no creative constraints, and I embraced that freedom, experimenting and finding my voice through art photography. I learned to mix ch

Carrying Care KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by De Jana Sveistrup (they/she) | @dejana_sv | Contributing Writer Photos by Camden Jackson @camdak.g Studio space with hurricane fence displaying yarn collection, crochet panels and paintings. Photo by Camden Jackson Craft has a way of offering many metaphors to life, such as threads of connection, having a yarn, and unwinding. The art of craft is powerful in its ability to connect. After the resurgence of

Tohi Kumi Koloa KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by ‘Uhila M.L Jr (she/ her) | @uhila_nai | Contributing Writer The project Tohi Kumi Koloa, delves into the Tongan practices of ngatu barkcloth and kupesi embroidered relief stencil, as a lived document of my ancestors. The work is grounded in the Tongan way of thinking, making, and doing, while adapting to the present day. A practice that exists within and across the past, Tonga, and the present, Aotearoa

KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by Jeorja Duffy (she/her) @jeorjaduffy & Te Ra Awatea Kemp (she/her) @te.ra.kemp | Contributing Writers @herehere.co We, Jeorja Duffy (Ngāti Kuri, Sa’fanene, Pākehā) and Te Ra Awatea Kemp (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Ātiawa, Pākehā), both embrace craft at the heart of our art practices. Through generational craft, we utilise knowledge such as crochet and quilting in our personal artworks. Working with the handmade, we found common g