Oce[and]esert: a Multimedia approach to land
Installation & description
Land and place are constantly informing how we are understanding our relations to one another, and to the lands we are from and come to inhabit. When traveling, we carry these stories with us into the spaces we enter into. These experiences differ from person to person, making for the perception of a place to be both largely relatable, and extremely personal. Moving from the localized community in Hawai’i to Tucson, Arizona for graduate school was an experience that took me out of the island’s familiar oceanscape and into the desert. Feeling estranged and out of place, I longed for the familiar sounds, terrain, stories, and culture that I grew up in. Everything was different. The ocean is a central force of nature that informs my ontologies, which stems back to the indigenous Pacific Islander cultures I embody. How was I to operate outside of the land that sustained me throughout my life?
In searching for a sense of place here in Arizona, I was gifted with reading and learning about some of the stories and indigenous practices of this environment. I began to understand that the indigenous stories and communities of this land view the desert as a fundamental feature that defines their cultures in a similar way that the ocean is to Hawai’i. Furthermore, I came to recognize that the desert is of the ocean, as in, there was once (and perhaps still is) an ocean that has left its stories fused into the desert.
By making these connections, I then saw traces of the ocean everywhere. I wondered how two places, though seemingly disparate, might actually overlap and share space together; additionally, I considered what it would look and feel like to consider places in a collaged way. By layering/weaving places together in a form that mirrors similar patterns of people leaving and moving into different places, I considered what knowledge/ways of thinking can be gleaned from holding places in suspension to (rather than in opposition from) one another. In doing so, one of my goals for this project is to recenter the importance of indigenous stories to understanding land.
For this project, our central research is an attempt to locate the relationship between the ocean and desert through the landscapes of the “Southwest” in relation to where I call home: Hawai’i. Drawing from experience in living within both landscapes, I use positionality-based research to imagine how these two landscapes might converge, diverge, and speak to one another. By speak, I mean to consider what one place can say about the other, and vice versa. In doing so, I explore how these lands are being conceptualized within the cultures and ontologies of their indigenous inhabitants; this in turn defines their communal and cultural identities. In addition to this, I also consider the possibilities that might arise in the experience of viewing lands together. As a result of these observations, three central questions were developed out of my thinking with the ocean and desert:
How can the ocean and desert be considered in a way that bridges communities and cultures together as a form of collectivity/reparation to indigenous communities?
Who does this thinking concern/affect? As in, what forms might be appropriate as a method to widen the accessibility for audiences beyond academia?
What are the affordances of art and positionality-based research and art making within this project and more broadly, academia? What might that look like for future projects?
These questions continued to inform my process for this project.
Oce[and]esert: a Multimedia approach to land
Installation & description
Land and place are constantly informing how we are understanding our relations to one another, and to the lands we are from and come to inhabit. When traveling, we carry these stories with us into the spaces we enter into. These experiences differ from person to person, making for the perception of a place to be both largely relatable, and extremely personal. Moving from the localized community in Hawai’i to Tucson, Arizona for graduate school was an experience that took me out of the island’s familiar oceanscape and into the desert. Feeling estranged and out of place, I longed for the familiar sounds, terrain, stories, and culture that I grew up in. Everything was different. The ocean is a central force of nature that informs my ontologies, which stems back to the indigenous Pacific Islander cultures I embody. How was I to operate outside of the land that sustained me throughout my life?
In searching for a sense of place here in Arizona, I was gifted with reading and learning about some of the stories and indigenous practices of this environment. I began to understand that the indigenous stories and communities of this land view the desert as a fundamental feature that defines their cultures in a similar way that the ocean is to Hawai’i. Furthermore, I came to recognize that the desert is of the ocean, as in, there was once (and perhaps still is) an ocean that has left its stories fused into the desert.
By making these connections, I then saw traces of the ocean everywhere. I wondered how two places, though seemingly disparate, might actually overlap and share space together; additionally, I considered what it would look and feel like to consider places in a collaged way. By layering/weaving places together in a form that mirrors similar patterns of people leaving and moving into different places, I considered what knowledge/ways of thinking can be gleaned from holding places in suspension to (rather than in opposition from) one another. In doing so, one of my goals for this project is to recenter the importance of indigenous stories to understanding land.
For this project, our central research is an attempt to locate the relationship between the ocean and desert through the landscapes of the “Southwest” in relation to where I call home: Hawai’i. Drawing from experience in living within both landscapes, I use positionality-based research to imagine how these two landscapes might converge, diverge, and speak to one another. By speak, I mean to consider what one place can say about the other, and vice versa. In doing so, I explore how these lands are being conceptualized within the cultures and ontologies of their indigenous inhabitants; this in turn defines their communal and cultural identities. In addition to this, I also consider the possibilities that might arise in the experience of viewing lands together. As a result of these observations, three central questions were developed out of my thinking with the ocean and desert:
How can the ocean and desert be considered in a way that bridges communities and cultures together as a form of collectivity/reparation to indigenous communities?
Who does this thinking concern/affect? As in, what forms might be appropriate as a method to widen the accessibility for audiences beyond academia?
What are the affordances of art and positionality-based research and art making within this project and more broadly, academia? What might that look like for future projects?
These questions continued to inform my process for this project.
Oce[and]esert: a Multimedia approach to land
Installation & description
Land and place are constantly informing how we are understanding our relations to one another, and to the lands we are from and come to inhabit. When traveling, we carry these stories with us into the spaces we enter into. These experiences differ from person to person, making for the perception of a place to be both largely relatable, and extremely personal. Moving from the localized community in Hawai’i to Tucson, Arizona for graduate school was an experience that took me out of the island’s familiar oceanscape and into the desert. Feeling estranged and out of place, I longed for the familiar sounds, terrain, stories, and culture that I grew up in. Everything was different. The ocean is a central force of nature that informs my ontologies, which stems back to the indigenous Pacific Islander cultures I embody. How was I to operate outside of the land that sustained me throughout my life?
In searching for a sense of place here in Arizona, I was gifted with reading and learning about some of the stories and indigenous practices of this environment. I began to understand that the indigenous stories and communities of this land view the desert as a fundamental feature that defines their cultures in a similar way that the ocean is to Hawai’i. Furthermore, I came to recognize that the desert is of the ocean, as in, there was once (and perhaps still is) an ocean that has left its stories fused into the desert.
By making these connections, I then saw traces of the ocean everywhere. I wondered how two places, though seemingly disparate, might actually overlap and share space together; additionally, I considered what it would look and feel like to consider places in a collaged way. By layering/weaving places together in a form that mirrors similar patterns of people leaving and moving into different places, I considered what knowledge/ways of thinking can be gleaned from holding places in suspension to (rather than in opposition from) one another. In doing so, one of my goals for this project is to recenter the importance of indigenous stories to understanding land.
For this project, our central research is an attempt to locate the relationship between the ocean and desert through the landscapes of the “Southwest” in relation to where I call home: Hawai’i. Drawing from experience in living within both landscapes, I use positionality-based research to imagine how these two landscapes might converge, diverge, and speak to one another. By speak, I mean to consider what one place can say about the other, and vice versa. In doing so, I explore how these lands are being conceptualized within the cultures and ontologies of their indigenous inhabitants; this in turn defines their communal and cultural identities. In addition to this, I also consider the possibilities that might arise in the experience of viewing lands together. As a result of these observations, three central questions were developed out of my thinking with the ocean and desert:
How can the ocean and desert be considered in a way that bridges communities and cultures together as a form of collectivity/reparation to indigenous communities?
Who does this thinking concern/affect? As in, what forms might be appropriate as a method to widen the accessibility for audiences beyond academia?
What are the affordances of art and positionality-based research and art making within this project and more broadly, academia? What might that look like for future projects?
These questions continued to inform my process for this project.
