 Welcome back to Hawaii Is My Main Land. I'm Kaui Lucas, and today we're looking at the local fashion scene in a very special way. Right now at Aung Moana Center on Level 2, Maoka, is a new venture, and it's called the Fashion Annex. There's a spectacular show on right now with two local artists who don't necessarily usually do fashion in the sense that we think about it. Marcus Marzon, who is at the Bishop Museum, and Solomon Inos, who is wherever the winds take him. And they were brought together through Namea Hawaii, Miley Meyer, and through the Hawaii Fashion Incubator. So, wow, from now until October 25th, right, it's open noon to five every day. Every day, yes. It is a very different experience for Aung Moana. So maybe you could each, how did you get pulled into this, and why was it an interesting project? Thank you. Thank you for having us both on your show. It's a great opportunity for all of us to experience different things. Like you were saying, to have art being presented in a shopping commercial setting is a new way to understand what are aesthetically pleasing to people in the commercial world versus the community and a cultural perspective. So this is a wonderful blending of those two worlds. I had the opportunity to be a part of this just by coincidence. Miley Meyer called me up one day and asked me if I would be willing to showcase some of my work alongside of Solomon's work. And I said, I have time, I have some pieces to share if you want them, and this is what ended up. Wow, so her genius strikes yet again. Yes, it does. So Solomon, how did you get drawn into this? Well, thank you again, and thank you Marcus and everyone here for the opportunity to share it because it really is storytelling. It gets us into trouble all the time. I think one thing that was really important about this work was a call and invitation to acknowledge the fact that location, location, location, location. Bringing fresh water and fresh ideas from an ancient and sacred reservoir is such an important way to help to pass on wisdom, especially to parts of the city which I think folks need to really get Hawaii, really get it, especially because one day they're going to be it. You want to Malama Aina now because you're going to be Aina, right? So that real strong connection is so important. Sorry, it was a little slow on that one. My family, we all go to the kai, we don't end up in this kai. Which will be rained back down upon the watersheds, you see, so it all being a circle. And I think the need to bring and to help bring sustained wonder to as many lives and as many perspectives as possible is a really pragmatic thing. It's actually the best form of security is to make sure that everybody in your community feels a deep sense of wonder and love. The beatniks were talking about this forever, so it's nothing new. As have all the other indigenous cultures that learn how to make it work, how to sing the kinds of songs that allow you to dance with nature as opposed to fight with nature. The guys who fought with nature always lost. So all of that's encoded, that's all source code for both of our work. We have been working independently and this opportunity came along to bring these ideas to a location which you almost can't miss. If you're in Alamoana, you're passing through, the irony of the name Alamoana is very interesting too. I don't know who tried to explore that. But Alamoana is also going to look very different in like two to three hundred years. It's going to be the Malamoana. I'm definitely going off on a tangent. But it's really, really neat because as you're walking by, you get some really neat access to nutrition. And the story that I think we're talking about is an extremely hopeful one. Because it talks about the regrowth of sacred ideas, ideas that are deeply grounded in people who love their land. And when you look at our work, we'll see like, wow, these people love their land and you can come and experience how much we love our land through the stories that we wear. And when people go back home, they can love their land just as much and they'll never need to go on vacation ever again. The stories we wear, I love that. I actually have an ethical system for clothing in my closet and in the morning I work through it. I don't know if everybody, well, probably not everybody. But one of the great gifts of this show is I am familiar with some of these pieces because they were part of the Malamo wearable art show. And you said actually over a year. Actually all of the pieces in the current show at Alamoana have been on the runway in the Malamo wearable art show in various years. And starting as far back, I believe, in 2008 is the oldest of the pieces that are on display in the show. Okay, we have a little bootleg clip that I took from this year and we'll see that. So tell us what we're looking at, Marcus. So this piece that I created, the model Anu Heli, Thomas Anu Heli, is wearing this garment. But again, it's inspired by the Pe'ahit, the fan, the white fan. And you can see the motifs that I printed onto the surface of this piece. But also the idea of movement and what a fan does, the moving of space and changing of space depending on what is around you. And what is it made out of? So the material is a raffia cloth. It's not from Hawaii, but it's one of my cultural heritage cloths from the Philippines. And it's a combination of myself, my different ethnicities, my Filipino ancestry, my Japanese and Hawaiian ancestry all combined. So it really is a true self-portrait of myself and to the world. So this is a dream come true to actually get to ask you about these things. I was watching and I had so many questions like, the pleats, pleats are so interesting. All of a sudden they're appearing. Halal Kipuhi had a bunch of pleats. What pleats? What about pleats? What's this thing of pleats? I think for me, pleating is the holding of time and space. The idea that it comes back and forth, ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows. And if a flat piece can be presented one way. And when it's coming and going and presented in that fashion, you see it from a completely different perspective. That happens to be my favorite cultural event of the year. That was fabulous. Anyway, so that's what they look like. But what's so fantastic about this show at the Fashion Annex, which is titled Reboot. Reboot. Is that you can get up close and personal and really look at the incredible hand work. And I have some images of the display that have labels on them. And as we go along, we can just reading the labels with very unusual materials like beetle wings. Pig intestine. All different kinds of materials. Felts. Okay, so this was, Solomon, I have to tell you, maybe you can't tell, but this kid is catching air. He was having so much fun with your images. Oh, fabulous. So he was jumping up and down and playing with the shadows. And he was just having such a good time. So that's what you just shared with me is the feeling that I had when I was drawing all of the figures up the wall. So one thing that really, and I'm so happy to hear that, one thing that really inspired me about Marcus' work is the nets, the interconnection between all of these different fibers and intentions. It's like how we weave together all of our dreams in the community. And then where there's phrase, where there's dissonance, where there isn't enough of a connection, a way to be mindful of that. I think that's what our good elite did. And our good community organizers did. We're able to look at the network of our communities and say, oh, your net is only going to work, you know, it depends on how many big pucas you get or not. And they're like, oh, it's kind of pointless. And that puca is just going to rupture. So I really saw those fibers. And so to be able to create one of the things that needed to be decided early on was because I have original artwork that just drew on the wall in the space, we had to choreograph a little bit of where some of those ideas would exist because I really wanted them to create a kind of a kinetic representation that would help to, you know, cohesively tie the show together at a glance because you have these figures that are moving right across the entire, you know, in different locations in the exhibit itself. But it really brought, you know, a focus to, you know, I'm almost going to, it's almost like what Carl Sagan said when he said like, you know, we are the way that the cosmos can know itself. So when we are weaving together fibers, we are weaving together DNA. We are at cutting edge that says, you know, whereas the rest of the universe is mostly falling apart, we're putting things together. We're the exception. So it's actually, violence is actually completely natural. Meteorites are violence. Most of the universe is pretty violent. So to be lovingly weaving things together, we are rebelling against everything. We are the magic in the cosmos. The cosmos looks back at us and says, what is that? That's a weird aberration, you know. So we are the magic. And I think knowing that we can change realities and change stories and, you know, begins with knowing that I can change this fiber into something else, you know. That active creative transformation, which you are, Marsha, going through the intricate tying, I mean, there's no way you can follow those. I mean, I don't know how you, I knit. I have no idea how you keep track of all of those, but you've been taught by some. I've learned from different people over the course of my life, from kupuna, from teachers in school, from the university, from books, from collections, museum pieces themselves. Just looking at the kupuna things that exist around the world. And you get to do that because you're at ... And because I work at the Bishop Museum, I'm quite lucky to be able to have access to those kinds of things at my workplace, but also the ability to travel around the world and see those different things that exist around the world because not everything exists here in Hawaii for so many traditional practices. So I think it's a wonderful opportunity for young artists or people today who want to understand who they are, the connection to Hawaii to explore the world because the world isn't a place to go out and see and try and understand, but it's a place that allows you to reflect back upon yourself and understand you better, yourself better. Well, and let's just take a minute to reflect back on ourselves and understanding and we'll be right back. Thank you. Hi, I'm Crystal. Welcome to Think Tech, my show, Clock Talk. Normally airs at 10 o'clock on Tuesdays, but it's going to change to 11 o'clock. So don't miss it. It's an hour later. You can sleep in a little longer. Come with me and engage in some sensitive, provocative discussions on everything. It's all good, all right? Women's issues, things that people don't dare talk about. We want it on the table, so join me. Aloha. I'm Chantelle Seville, host of the Savvy Chick Show on Think Tech, Hawaii. This show is for you. It's all about inspiring and empowering girls of the future to do what they love, get out there and be healthy, fit and confident. If you're up for that, 11 a.m. every Wednesday, I'll see you there. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lukas with me here today is Marcus Marzan and Solomon Enos. They are the artists who are currently featured at the fashion annex at Alamoana. Alamoana Center's second level on the Mount Casside. If Nordstrom was where it was last year, you'd walk by to get there. Correct. I don't know how else to explain it. Perfect. So it's kind of an unusual title, reboot. What's that about? Reboot, it's the reference back to a computer to return back to the original formatting and starting it fresh again. So the base foundation from everything from which it starts. So that's so much of what we do in our work. Myself reconnecting to our kupuna materials, reconnecting to the different designs and then taking them into a modern context and relevance today, even though they're not doing the same thing as our kupuna in the past. They make a stronger impact and have a purpose for what we do today and make sure that we always reference and keep that connection back to our things, references to the past, but ensure that it progresses into the future. I thought that is right. I love that. I have so many images in my mind. Walking through there, I'm like everybody has to come to this show because of exactly that. So often in the Hawaiian artistic community, or however we want to label ourselves, there's like, well, that's not traditional. Or there's that one side. And yet how to be really true to what's moving you and your history. I think this is, I've never seen such a stellar example of this between the two of you. And just as you were saying that our culture is like in this area, this clearing of light, and it's this light. And it disappears off into the darkness. And if we tug on it, that's our ancestry. It's all there. Even though the line, we can't see the line. We know that line goes on forever. So that we know we have that culture. And it's somebody's been at it and it's been a bit jammed up. So when we've got to reboot, what does the kupuna say? They say, don't just go up to where the pelikia started. Go before. Go back and undo more of the lay. And then when you redo it, you start before the problem happened. So you make sure that when you weave back into the lay, it's only the best stuff. And you wash your hands, and you laugh, and you sing, and you tell stories again. And then if there's plastic and glass and aluminum, you've got to weave them in there. We'll do it harmoniously, but weave it in there and make it beautiful and do it right. But it is a real, it's like they're almost in the reverse of follow through. It's pre-follow. You know, follow through. I mean, you follow through true, but you need the opposite of follow through, which is a really powerful beginning, a returning to begin. Also, it was meant to tie into something really quickly like that. It's really important is the stories that we wear. I was originally going to have a giant boot made out of human form, you know, humans. And that's what the, all throughout the show, you'll have humans linking together as part of the background artwork that they created, you know, in the space, which I took about a day to do, so it was lots of fun. But I decided to say, well, actually it's really going back to the original, to the foot, the original design of the foot and thinking about then coming back to this sense of, you know, non-naike kumo, you know, look to the source, coming back to this idea of trying to understand, you know, the true nature of what it means to be human. And maybe redesigning, maybe it's not about redesigning a better sneaker. Maybe it's designing a better world, you know, for your feet to walk in that you don't have to worry about stepping on glass. You know, not a better sneaker, but a better community to walk in, you know, and then extending that. And to bring that out really, really quickly, back in the quote, is that the idea that, you know, people are wearing stories where our kupuna could tell you where this fabric came from and where this lei came from. And they could, all night, it would unravel like an entire ecosystem of stories could come from a single object. I don't really know where this shirt came from. Actually, right. Right? I don't really know who made this shirt. I don't know if they're okay. I don't know if they're safe right now. You know, so I think that the idea of there will be a time using all of the reality to be able to look at somebody's clothes and like text and narratives will come flowing off of people's hats and things, not just a stupid price tag with a number. It'll be like this hat was made by a family who were safe whose children are living in a system that's getting safer and safer every day. And I'm going to continue to believe that. There's a lot of text, but we can make it cool. You see. And thank you for that vision. I try in a very small way to do that in my world. This jacket was made by my cousin. And talk about the story that you're wearing. What are you wearing? This shirt actually was made from a good friend of mine, Tutuvi. Yeah, so she's wonderful. And I'm very supportive of all that she does. But again, I think what Solomon created for the show, the entry wall of the foot with all of the drawings of different people connecting to one another, it's those points where they connect, which is the most special thing, especially in my work, all the knots, all of the points where things come together. Two different materials. Two different materials coming together and that energy that's created by the linking of those two things together is the most powerful thing that I look at in my work. And to see what he created on the wall, to see all of this network of figures all touching one another in different ways. It's just beautiful. And I think that totally pushes the message forward. So that green dress on the right, that's the one that is now pukka dyed and has beetle wings. Beetle wings. Now where did you get beetle wings? Well, you know, I source my materials from all over. Some of the materials are locally sourced. Some of them are from away. Those particular beetle wings actually come from China. Okay. But they were from dead. Yes. Yes, actually, those particular beetles shed their exoskeleton every year. So those are just the wings that are from the jewel beetle. They did not die. No beetles were killed on making up that dress. I thought you never put the stick on top of the stick and a beetle line on top and then you have, okay. I don't know like the feather. I feel like the feather. That's my cottage. The timeline that you were working with in those drawings. Oh my gosh. 40,000 years. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what, and I thank you. One of the neat things about this project was that, you know, even though Marcus and I were working in different studios, I think the illusion is that we're working in different studios and it really is this broader idea that we're all, you know, we were all really working on things that how, you know, it's like almost like quantum entanglement. But, you know, so the work that I created, it's so, it's really based on a 40,000 year timeline that I started about 10 or 15 years ago. And it's a really simple thought. Like, what if I created an image of an archetypical figure that represented what the most important human would be every thousand years. And that, and it actually would then give us an understanding over 40,000 years how, just through fashion, through what they're wearing, you know, like in a very, in a Sherlock Holmesian sense, you could infer an entire universe from all the things that they're wearing and why they were chosen as the most important archetype for that millennium. And that would help you digest 40,000 years at a glance. I think that's the key, is digesting huge swallows of time because I think that's what the shamans, and within all our cultures, they thought of things in millennial sweeps of time. So, and this is a figure from the early days. Yes. And in the later days, you allowed for the morphing, substantial morphing of the body. Oh, we're not done cooking yet. We have all these forms to get to transform into, and I'm a really big fan of looking at science fiction as like a splint to help to realign what maybe got disconnected about our own culture, a slightly broken bone. Science fiction is a great way, almost like a cultural laboratory, to take the sawdust from something and to make a patch, to take bits and pieces of a material and to try to rebuild something. And that's kind of what I was thinking about because as much as I really would love to create animation, science fiction, video games, I mean, whatever, but enough for Pauli Fantastika, I also want to be able to come back to it and tell our traditional stories in as much amazing fashion and glamour and everything. And that 40,000-year narrative is really based on a simple idea of what would happen if Hawaii was never interrupted. And I even want to broaden it to say what would happen if all of our cultures were never interrupted and we were left to maybe meet each other in beautiful harmony. And we said, you head that way and I'll head this way. In 40,000 years, we'll meet up again. And when we do, we'll be like, wow, I got 40,000 years of storytelling. Let me be sure to wipe my nose and not get you sick in the meantime. And then it was a groovier way for people to come together and do almost an animist futurism. And I think based upon that kind of idea, that's why I'll never be bored. That'll be the project I'll be working on for the rest of my life. It's a 40,000-year narrative. But what I love to see in the work was that I am like a theoretical physicist. You are the engineer, the technical physicist, the engineer, right? I come up with a theory and you build the Hydron Collider to physically see how would you build it because we're going to make our movies and we're going to make... My job is the artist and resident at the Hawaii Theater. So really I'm thinking about theater outside. We want three story tall puppets made out of recyclable and kapa coming down the street working with kids from the different parts of the Pacific where definitely whose voices are drowning. Horton hears a hoot. Horton's going underwater. Horton's being... Yeah, anyway. But really great opportunity to look at. And what I saw when those people were young men and women coming out dressed is this is the cutting edge of healing. This is the cutting edge because what we're seeing is not only does a culture come back, it thrives exponentially. And I think that is... That's the follow-through. Say Zoom! As if to solidify or embody that there's a great picture of the two of you and I didn't know until you guys came into the studio today with what the story behind that is. That was a picture of you two in the... Yeah, what is the story here? So this was just a dramatic moment that was just an amazing moment. I was bringing in my pieces to the space so that the exhibit designers could see the works and try to organize the things. Solomon was painting on the wall the foot for a title wall and lo and behold, we're both wearing the exact same shirt. Cala Pico. That is the ancestor sense of humor. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think when they find out the root of dark matter, it's humor. Mark my words. Humor. Douglas Adams was right all along. And he's still right. So just to recap, the show is going to be there until October 25th and it's open from 12 noon to five. Is it every day? Every day. And what's in the last two minutes? What is next? Who knows? What would you like to be next? What I'd like to do is to encourage people to remember where you come from and to always explore and innovate and be inspired by our things from the past, from the environment that we're surrounded by because we are a living culture. We're not just fixed to those things that were made from our kupuna, our kupuna made things and they innovated things. So the innovations that are kupuna made are the traditions of our present. So all of our innovations we create for ourselves today will be the traditions of our future. Wow. I love it. Okay, we have half an hour. Perfect. My goodness. Well, thank you guys so much and again everyone for the opportunity to share these stories. And I almost think like maybe today what we've done was providing a bunch of different combinations. It's sort of like we're trying to lock. We're trying to lock. And then somebody out there will say, we'll get the right combination. Like, oh, we've got it. We've got it. Because the key here is that there is a way to think about these islands as so much finite space. And there is a way that there's so many inches across these islands. And we can make every single inch mindfully woven together as harmoniously with every other inch of these islands. We can do it. And that we can be though. And that, of course, maybe it's the beginning of the upenada, the solid beginning and then we will weave this out globally. And I think the opportunity to then provide this as a template for how all cultures can reboot because we're all Native people to somewhere. And we're all Indigenous people of somewhere. And I think that identifying the way that we can weave ourselves and our stories together means, which is why, in fact, the idea of visualized world peace, we all need to be artists. We all need to be artists. Thank you, folks. Thank you.