Thinking outside the proverbial box is more than just an overused expression for the Wizard of New Zealand. He has built his entire identity on thinking laterally. Of course the irony is that said boxes are quite literally taking over his favourite city. So it’s not surprising he’s a little miffed.
“It’s cruel barbarism. They are destroying the soul of our city,” he says of the temporary cargo container stores occupying Cashel Mall. Never one to take insult lying down, he’s armed himself with flyers and petitions to protest against what he describes as the “emotional destruction of our physical heritage”.
While the earthquakes and devastation they caused were a natural disaster, the destruction that followed them was what he calls a “man-made disaster”. “Often independent engineers’ reports obtained by owners of significant buildings, stating that they could be saved and strengthened, were simply ignored and the buildings razed to the ground.”
Instead of carefully rendering the ruins safe and fencing off sites to decide what to do later, he says the Government demanded the demolition, often unnecessarily, of many heritage buildings and the immediate clearing of the sites.
“Tourists might want to come and see interesting fenced-off ruins, but no one wants to look at empty bomb sites and tourists certainly won’t come to see this,” he adds, gesturing again towards the container mall.
“The world is full of boxes. It’s the way our minds work now; sterile… no passion,” he explains.
He’s certainly lacking none himself. The English born educator, comedian, magician and politician has become somewhat of an icon in New Zealand. In fact, if the number of tourists who approach him as we talk are any measure of global status, he is likely one of the most successful brands, with a reach even the most successful can only dream of. He’s what we call world famous in New Zealand; about as Kiwi as Phar Lap and pavlova, but unlike the aforementioned, Australia actually did have him first. It was across the Tasman where he honed his ability to challenge the most embedded of conventions.
With a double honours degree in psychology and sociology from the University of Leeds, Ian Brackenbury Channell, as he was then known, moved to our neighbour’s corner of the South Pacific to both teach and learn. It was here where he began to challenge the “complacent and dull” university bureaucracy and while he did achieve reforms in participatory democracy, a significant part of his fulfilment was from the entertainment he provided.
So he set out to “blow the university up with funpower” by starting one of the first student movements in Australia with the moniker Alf (Action for Love and Freedom), which later implemented ‘The Fun Revolution’.
If the Sydney Morning Herald’s description of the University of New South Wales as “the university that swings” was anything to go by, Channell’s movement was a success.
While his “inactive and irresponsible” head of department was convinced he was mad and succeeded in getting him dismissed from his sociology thesis, he was able to convince the Vice Chancellor to appoint him as the official University Wizard with a small honorarium paid to allow him to continue his social experiments.
He allowed his driving license, social security ID, passport and other important documents to lapse so that he could become a fictional character… a radical new conceptual art form. He received backing from the World University Service headquarters in Geneva to travel around Australian universities to promote his new revitalisation movement, until the headquarters were taken over and he was cut off. He began to work for Melbourne University as an unpaid Cosmologer, Living Work of Art and Shaman.
But it wasn’t to last. “I could sense a dead end coming from the intellects; the rational thinkers. The more rational you try to be, the more insane you get. Rational thinking is what damages the world.
I couldn’t join the academics; the universities were preventing free speech; it was calculated utilitarianism.
I couldn’t see a future in that.“
So in 1974 the Wizard migrated to Christchurch and began to speak on a ladder in Cathedral Square.
Wearing a brown, animal skin like costume, a la The Flinstones, he began addressing astonished locals in the recently improved Cathedral Square on such topics as the evils of usury, the need for an established state religion, the necessity for men to inspire obedience in their wives and the dangers of secularisation, especially multicultural, Disneyland type Americanisation.
The City Council attempted to have him arrested, but he out-manoeuvred them and became so popular they were forced to make the square a public speaking area. In 1982 the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Association issued a statement which deemed the Wizard to be an authentic living work of art and the City Council appointed him Wizard of Christchurch. In 1990 the Prime Minister, Mike Moore, an old friend, appointed him the official Wizard of New Zealand.
Then, in 1995, the City Council actually joined forces with the Wizard, hosting a ‘Wizard’s Conclave’ involving various ‘wizarding rituals’ around the city.
While he does not intimidate others, or even break the law, satisfied with bending it into some rather surprising shapes, he has continued to stand up for what he considers the greatest social injustices of the city, including the telephone box war which broke out in October 1988.
On one side the Wizard and a few members of Alf’s Imperial Army; on the other Telecom New Zealand. This massive organisation had recently taken over the telephone operations of the dismantled Government Post Office, which proceeded to paint the historically red telephone boxes blue. It was a war the Wizard would ultimately win.
Today he is most notable perhaps for his controversial utterances on the now crippled pavers of the Cathedral Square, dressed as a prophet with his pointy wizard’s hat. But it’s the controversial viewpoints he proposes that have played more of a part in his image. “He hates women,” I am told emphatically as I animatedly tell others of my imminent meeting with the Wizard himself.
The subject comes up in discussion too. It’s then that I begin to realise his modus operandi, or at least think I do. He’s written academic papers on the evolution of gender roles and I suspect he just plain and simply likes to challenge the norm. Comments such as “Good women are educated feminists who don’t like kids and housework,” do nothing to dampen this suspicion. He has his own feminist at home. “The feminist works; she’s the one supporting me,” he explains quite proudly.
While he does receive a modest annual honorarium, it is through his partner Alice Flett’s support that allows for his radical lifestyle. While he goes so far as to say he thinks women are trying to take over the world, he seems only to take issue with the men who allow themselves to be controlled by women. He’s averse to working too, explaining that he “couldn’t possibly have a job; I wouldn’t think it right to work for someone.”
He’s probably not far wrong. An incredibly intelligent and fascinating human, one couldn’t imagine him conforming to any degree of conventional living. “My life is an experiment in reality,” he tells me. “In 40 years no one has been able to understand what I’m doing.
“And you know what? They don’t need to.”
But if what he’s trying to do is to stir debate, get people thinking and challenge convention, he’s certainly succeeding.
