A Parliament of Fog

A Parliament of Fog is the latest iteration of “Working Together”, a slow-burning publishing project that explores relationships and proximity through the lens of artistic practice, following a politics of interconnection.

For more than a decade, fog has rematerialised throughout the work of lawyer-turned-artist Layne Waerea. Her public interventions and performances explore what she describes as “legal-social subjectivities,” centering the implications of Te Tiriti o Waitangi as Aotearoa New Zealand’s only living treaty with Māori. For Waerea, the act of chasing fog pursues a physical or ideological space where borders can be tested—“a fertile area where there are lots of question marks”—and where imagination, hope, participation, and failure can be explored.

A Parliament of Fog celebrates ten years of Waerea’s ongoing project the chasing fog club (Est. 2014), and also marks the occasion of its second-ever “Annual General Meeting.” Developed over 2023-24 within a fraught political climate leading up to the New Zealand elections and the first term of a new right-wing coalition government, the publication approaches the club—and Waerea’s recent practice—as a springboard for taking the pulse of the moment. 

Reflecting on the recent activities of the club in dialogue with a group of collaborators, A Parliament of Fog considers how conditions of opacity, uncertainty, and transition might offer space for collective reimagining.

Featuring contributions by the chasing fog club (Est 2014), Sophie Davis, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Deborah Rundle, and Layne Waerea.