 Welcome back to I think the Kawaii's human-human-architecture. This is 2017. Welcome. This is my first show this year. And I have to say, with this first show, my New Year's resolution is already fulfilled, mission completed. Because I have someone on the show for us today who I have tried to get on the show for years. It traces back to the good old urban transcendent show days and she had always turned me down. And this first time in 2016 I was successful. And I will share with you who she is, the way I got to know her. And I only got to know her as Kailei Chun initially. And she was sitting in front of me when I was in the classroom. And I tried to teach her materiality and I walked her through the different categories. And if we could get picture one, little did I know because as humble as she is, she didn't share with me anything. She was just sitting first row and taking notes as a best student does it. So she has experience in, I would call it probably insufficiently, traditional materiality of an artist of acetate and blood in this case. You want to share a little bit about that? Well, this particular piece Martin was in response to a show that was being hosted by the University of Hawaii. And I was in graduate school at that time. And we were hosting a number of French artists that were showing at the main gallery. But at the same time, the French government was experimenting with nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs in the Pacific Ocean. And so this was a little bit of a response to that particular action. And we know that all the fish migrate around the Pacific Ocean. So whatever we're testing in one part of the Pacific doesn't necessarily stay in that part of the Pacific. So this was a reflection on everything that's happening in the Pacific Basin area. And each little acetate has a little name on it. And that name reflected an island that exists in the Pacific Ocean. And so the paloo or the fish blood I use to adhere the acetate onto the walls of the gallery. And it's just a reflection and a questioning of our own action and how we impact others without really noting it or acknowledging our impact on the world because of our actions in a certain way. And I labeled that first picture with a materiality category blood in two ways because you also never talked about your ancestry and who you are genetically. You want to share that as well a little bit? I'm native Hawaiian and born and raised in Hawaii, Honolulu in particular. And also part German and part English. So part Chinese as well. So a mixture as most people here in Hawaii are but very grateful for who I am and who my parents are and my genealogy and my connection to this land is very important. And that's an aspect I think that really informs my work. It truly does. And let's show another piece. That's number two and I titled that glass. So I try to teach you about glass as well. But there we go a little bit. I know you know it all. So this project. No, no, no, no. I do not know it all. This is just, these are just glass containers or glass jars, glass bottles that are used for food. So in essence preserving what we make and whether it was, you know, spaghetti sauce or mayonnaise or pickles. A variety of bottles that we use to preserve these food stuffs that we use to sustain ourselves. However, in this case this particular piece was a collaboration between another artist, Nicole Sue with her name or is her name. And both of us are from Hawaii, born and raised. But there's an issue of what is Hawaiian and what is not. So it's not, you know, when you're dealing with Hawaii, it's not like California or New York. Oh, born and raised in New York, you're native to that area. Not the case here. For us native Hawaiian or Hawaiian, you have to be of the blood. You have to, your genealogy needs to be traced back before contact. And that's what, you know, distinguishes us as Hawaiians. So you can't just be born here and be called a Hawaiian. And, you know, we feel very strongly about that because our land has been taken away from us. And our identity, when somebody says that they're born and raised here and they're Hawaiian, you know, it's also another reach into taking another aspect of our identity away from us. And your work addresses that in a very, I would say, non-dogmatic way, which I appreciate a lot. So maybe number three, which I subtitled stone for obvious reasons, because it's part of that. So this piece is called Naukawai, and we have 40 stones that have been drilled into, and an inset or a pico has been placed into it. So there's an image. You can remove the pico from the stone. It's lama wood. If anyone is familiar with kapala lama, it used to be a place where you could find lama wood. And I have certain phrases or dates or proverbs that have been engraved into the pico, and then a corresponding image is inset into these stones. And so Naukawai translates to, the choice belongs to you. So what choice do we make? We have every choice that we make impacts another person. It doesn't just resonate with ourselves. So it's an interactive way of working and reaching out to people. And starting discussions, conversations about the issues that are impacting us today. And the next project is a concrete project. This project was created to commemorate the Native Hawaiian students, particularly from Kamehameha schools that were used to occupy certain islands, the line islands in particular. And so they're the Northwestern Hawaiian islands. And it was about this colonizing kind of endeavor on behalf of America, but utilizing Hawaiians because they could survive. They could fish, they could catch birds, they could live without contact for months on end. And so that was done in commemoration of the sacrifices that they made, but also to think about why it was necessary to do so. It was world war. Indeed. And you were hiding more things from me. And there's another category that we don't have an illustration, but I would like to touch on it verbally, which because you had some previous education at the east coast of the mainland at a pretty prestigious school and also studied another particular material and they're a very special person. So yes, I was fortunate enough to be educated at Princeton University and my undergraduate degree is in architecture. I was there during Michael Graves and his tenure there. So it was a wonderful experience. It was amazing. We really loved it. And then I also was able to be tutored. I took a couple of classes from Toshiko Takayasu, a famous ceramicist from here, Japanese, local girl, but very grateful for the experience and the warmth and welcoming that she gave me in New Jersey. We became lifelong friends and I am very grateful for her family that lives here today as well. There are more categories we have to narrow it down to an essence, but the last one we're going to touch on, the second to last one, is one that also is related to another very important mentor of yours and that's the materiality of wood and if we can have that. So this is a piece that I did for the Emperor of Japan on his last most recent visit to Hawaii. It was given on behalf of the Japan American Society to him and it was an honor to create this piece. It's a model or replica based on the Hokule'a and of course the Hokule'a is almost finished with their around the world tour. But Mr. Bowman, right Bowman Senior, I was his last apprentice until he passed and I was very fortunate to learn my woodworking skills from Mr. Bowman and lucky that I get to live in his house now and work out of his studio. So it's been an incredible learning experience for me and I'm just grateful for those people, for all of them that have touched my life in such a profound way. And seeing that I was... Including you. So nice of you. But the other way, Ron, I was thinking there must be more who makes you that very special person than you are and you were hiding that as well but also you weren't very successful at that point, less than with the previous things but whenever I get out of Hawaii and back in there's a little display at the airport that gives a little clue about who else you are and can we get image six and I know it makes you blush but you have to live through this. Many years ago. No, no, no. Many years ago. But swimming was really good to me. It afforded me travel across the earth and very grateful for those experiences and discipline, routine and challenge. So it was a big part of my life. This was in the picture, it refers to the rough water swim but I swam nationally and internationally. We're talking Olympics. You're just so humble. Oh, no, no, no. Not Olympics but national teams. So I represented United States of America in several. So with that we're going to take that little break and when we come back we're going to share when all came out. See you then. Thank you. Aloha. My name is John Wahee and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today. Served actually in public office but if you don't already know that here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee every other Monday. Thank you and I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Okay, I'm here with Brett Opegaard in the Faculty of the School of Journalism in the Department of Communications at UH Minoa. We've had a number of shows. We have a movable feast going on and we talk about journalism. We talk about language. We talk about communication in general and we talk about the effect of that on the country and on individual people. Brett, it's so good to be able to discuss this with you in our movable feast. Oh, it's my pleasure. This is a great opportunity. You'll have to come back again and again, okay, deal? That's the deal. Brett Opegaard. Hi, I'm Jay Fiedel. We care about everything. Thanks. So we're back with Kaili Chun and as promised, we're going to share how it all came out because at that time when we... I did my best to try to teach you something and I should have known you should have taught me. There was an exhibit coming up and the Picture 7 it was published here in the Star Advertiser in the Arts chapter there and the next picture is one that I took at the exhibit in the I.I. Gallery. E.E. Sorry, E.E. Gallery, yes, which is now the Agora or it's not anymore. Yeah, right. Kakaako. So here you are in front of at that time very current work and it's still current because it's in my mind all the time. I just love that piece. And that is also in this little lecture here of materiality that segues us into the materiality of steel. So tell us about Veritas. So Veritas is a piece that I did for 24 hours so it was a pop-up quote-unquote exhibition and it was held at Waimanalo Beach and I have 50 steel cells that measure 8 inches by 8 inches square by 8 feet tall. So not quite large enough for a human body to fit into but you know of human scale and the reason that I placed these 50 cells, first of all the steel cells were originally meant to represent the other meaning the colonizer, the commodifier culture, United States of America, you know that sort of thing. But when I placed them on the beach over time, over that 24 hour period it changed from that to representations of us, of Hawaiians. They became silent sentinels calling out to the ancestors saying that we are here and we are present and we are part of today's world as well as tomorrow's world as well as yesterday's world. And I had a lot of help with this in particular my former student, now assistant, Nicholas Bright who has become my partner essentially in creating art and I want to recognize him because he's been a big part of my creation. And so we made these, not all of them but we needed to make 50 of them and we put them on Waimanalo Beach because it's a very Hawaiian community except the beach homes are not owned by Hawaiians primarily they're non-Hawaiian owned and a lot of them are not necessarily occupied so people don't necessarily live in them year round. So you have, I just wanted to take a little bit of that space and occupy it in front of homes that were not occupied but are owned by non-Hawaiians who are in front of Hawaiian homelands which is across the highway. And if we can maybe just see the pictures sort of walk through until including 16 and I want to say this is really for me sort of a very activist project. You said it very politely as you are but this was sort of an illegal, almost illegal. You should have asked for permission and you had some friend who was somewhere in the authorities and you kind of checked to test it but officially there was no. You said, you know, this is my beach, this is our beach and we can do that. And the other thing I want to mention is that your art I experience as someone not from here how art on the island has become very, very literal and your art is so refreshingly the opposite is figuratively and it has such a multitude of meanings. I mean you could just look at this as land art or water art in that case, right? Sort of like Anthony Gormley, you know, in a way he had an exhibit at Kokshafen in Germany where we had a little vacation rental but we're Germans so we're okay to have that. And so then with a tide going higher and lower they were either almost submerged in the water. You can look at it that way. You can look at it also in many other ways and I want to point out to a little detail which we can see some of the cages have little gates at the very top and they're locks and the locks are open. So this is sort of on the opposite end if you want to know more, if you want to dig deeper you once again get a very critical message but you don't throw this message into everyone's face and saying you need to, you know, face that criticism. You can actually look at that in a purely aesthetical, very pleasing, absolutely stunningly beautiful way or you can think more about it if you want and you encourage, right? And maybe tell a little bit more about that detail at the very top for the gate. Well, it is, you know, a welcoming. You know, let's open the door and have a conversation. Let's sit down and talk about who you are and who I am and, you know, what unites us what are our shared values but also what distinguishes, you know, ourselves from each other. That makes it really interesting, makes life interesting. And I also saw it as a very, you're not afraid of discourses, critical discourses. I also read it as to say, well, yes, we got imprisoned, we got conquered, we got annexed but it's up to us now to break out of this, right? I mean there are certain circumstances we cannot change but there are others we can change so it's an encouragement to your own culture and saying let's not just whine and be sad all the time or be mad. Let's turn it into something constructive and positive which your working body is so perfect. Absolutely. And that's what Veritas was all about in terms of, you know, not only commenting on the history of what happened to us but also, you know, it's a call out to my own people to say, okay, you know, how are we complicit in this colonizing and commodification of our own culture and, you know, how are we addressing, you know, that particular issue? You know, in this particular situation, I mean, you know, there are people that drive on the beach. Were there ATVs in that case? Yeah. Didn't they come the next morning? Yeah. To try to tell you something? Well, you know, I mean, I don't think that's a, you know, very pono and I don't think that's a very proper way to aloha aina and so when you, somebody is talking about aloha aina, well then let's practice it. Yeah. So the question was whose beach is it, right? They said it's our beach. We're going to ATV here. And you said, no, tonight it's my beach. Right. Because then we have this installation that makes you think. About what you're doing. Exactly. And why you're doing it. Awesome. Yeah. Let's, we could talk about that so much more but we want to get to the last four pictures which is your very recent, very fresh work. You're more, almost resistant to say I don't have it photographed correctly. Right. These pictures we just saw were also by a very famous photographer, a friend of yours, right, very tough. So this has yet to come with you but I'm happy you were okay in sharing these. And this is for me amazing because very tough in this project for me are in some ways almost the total opposite but then they're obviously you and so they're very much the same as well but it's amazing. So please share where and what it is. This is Hulali Ikala and it's is, for me, it's a very important project because it became a people's project. It, you know, it's a commission for the Hawaii Prince Hotel soon to be known as Prince Waikiki and it involved over 400 employees of the Prince Hotel and so each individual copper Hinana, it's based on I guess the whole piece is based on the original narrative of the land. So the P'inaio stream used to flow through that area and with that stream came the Hinana or the baby O'opu and this is before Aloai Canal, this is before the Yacht Harbor and, you know, we don't necessarily know that it was there before but we're trying to bring back the stories of the original land and so before it was the hotel, before it was Kaiser Hospital, it was this Muliwai and so the texture, the form, the shape, this all is culminates in Hulali Ikala which translates to glistening or shimmering in the sun and it's really a testament to the community and so it's very different to have community work in a hotel and so that is another layer of, you know, quote unquote like subversion to a certain extent and so each individual Hinana is stamped with a number so we know exactly where the location is and it's also hand hammered by an individual and or their family member and it's also, they have their names or their message stamped into it so in exchange we gave them a map and we circled the location of where their piece is so they know exactly where it is and whenever we had a hammering session we exchanged information as well so just very small snippets of information that we felt were very important one is the lunar phase two, whether it was good for fishing, or Mahiai agriculture, everything that was very important to Hawaiians I think we got to do another show about that project because we ran out of time but can we have the last picture because I want to conclude sharing with the audience that actually you had different subtitles and I'm insisting, you got it all cut down to artists but I insist on adding educator and even more provocative, I insist on saying architect and I even heard out of our producer room saying she doesn't think she's an architect, you are we believe that, you're an awesome architect you're the most awesome architect on the island and you're inclusive and you're global and the last picture with the butt light truck is that I was just walking to the grocery store back home in Germany and I saw a Kona Longboard which I found a little absurd as absurd as it is that here locals have adopted a Belgian beer, Heineken as their local beer so this is you, whenever we get together we drink that, right? and that's for me a synonym and a metaphor and once again a reminder to thank you that you bring the world to Hawai'i and you bring Hawai'i to the world in the most beautiful way thank you so much dear friend it was a pleasure to have you