Huaka'i through Mahina

Installation & description

Ua ho’i ka noio ‘au kai i uka, ke ‘ino nei ka moana: “When the noio bird returns from sea to land, the sea will be stormy.” (Pukui ‘Olelo No‘eau, No. 2787)

Indigenous epistemologies and wayfinding practices offer a map of navigation and survival to people who are in relation to the land. In contrast, the excerpt in chapter 55 presents a traumatic tempest that alters the course of David's life. With an inability to interpret the influences of the moon, clouds, storm-birds, wave patterns, wind, sky, colors, etc. to evade danger, David instead recounts his fear and confusion through his descriptions of nature.

This multimedia installation thus envisions an alternative understanding of the text that recognizes and honors the importance of nature: allowing for a story with no shipwreck, where death might have been avoided, and where one’s relationship to land provides shelter rather than displacement for all those willing to listen.

This piece includes a projected film as an interpretation of these differing modes of thinking. Suspended together, we demonstrate the shore of written and oral traditions, informed by the novel and Hawaiian/O’odham ways of knowing. On the ground, O’odham and Hawaiian representations of moon phases overlap and merge together, forming both the foundation for the piece, and for indigenous knowledge. The 30 moon phases painted on mirrors also reside on the ground— to look then, is to also reflect back on to the self. 

We invite you to walk on/touch/interact with the space however you are drawn to do so. We ask you to consider your participation: How do you choose to interact with the piece? And perhaps, more importantly,

what do you offer in return?

Details

Huaka'i through Mahina is a contribution to "Big Book Field Studio: Design Methods and the Canon" directed by Dr. Jacqueline Barrios. Collaboraters were tasked with thinking about Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield by taking part in a pilot studio set in Tucson to explore, and begin to answer questions about place.  This collaborative and interdisciplinary field studio, a site-specific arts and design workshop, will culminate with an exhibition and catalog of prototype projects, in the form of short films, live performances, maps and architectural drawings, and ‘zines or other micro-press publications (among others), that address the lines of inquiry set out in this brief.  In the course of the project, collaborators will conceive, propose, research and produce this prototype, using the literature to prompt meditation and engagement with Tucson’s urbanscapes,  Prototypes will be presented in a multimedia installation (visual or 3D pieces, film, dance, printed works), in the form of an exhibition (digital or in person), and accompanying print catalog. The products of this studio form a key resource for a new undergraduate 15-week GE course, of the same name,  conceived as the pedagogical outcome of the studio, where UArizona students might forge their unique author-ity as readers with the power to make such books matter in our time. This course will be offered through the Department of Public and Applied Humanities, as part of UArizona’s College of Humanities  Fearless Inquiries Project, whose aims include supporting curricular (re) design work as part of the Dorrance Dean’s Award for Opening the Canon. 

Media