CONTACT / 2014 Installation view
CONTACT 2014
HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART SCHOOL
1111 Victoria Street. Honolulu, HI 96814
EXHIBITION DATES
April 10 - 21, 2014
The inaugural CONTACT exhibition featured the work of over 70 artists who have responded thematically to the notion contact. The exhibition was juried by Lawrence Seward, an artist, art instructor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and principal at ALL ART LLC and Jon Staub, an art collector, critic, and principal interior designer at Philpotts & Associates.
THEME
CONTACT in its transition from root to host culture, haves to have not's, and noun to verb, underlies “pre and post” experiences in the Hawaiian Islands. Artists are invited to explore this theme as part of place based art making in Hawai’i nei.
CON*TACT(kntkt)
noun, the act or state of touching; a touching or meeting, as of two things or people. 2) immediate proximity or association. 3) an acquaintance, colleague, or relative through whom a person can gain access to information, favors, influential people, and the like. 4) Electricity. a junction of electric conductors, usually metal, that controls current flow, often completing or interrupting a circuit. 5). Geology . the interface, generally a planar surface, between strata that differ in lithology or age. 6) Medicine A person recently exposed to a contagious disease, usually through close association with an infected individual. v. (used with object) to put or bring into contact; to communicate with; v.(used without object) to enter into or be in contact. Adj. of, sustaining, or making contact; caused or transmitted by touching
Usage Note: The verb contact is a classic example of a verb that was made from a noun and of a new usage that was initially frowned upon. The noun meaning "the state or condition of touching" was introduced in 1626 by Francis Bacon. Some 200 years later it spawned a verb meaning "to bring or place in contact." This sense of the verb has lived an unremarkable life in technical contexts. It was only in the first quarter of the 20th century that contact came to be used to mean "to communicate with," and soon afterward the controversy began. Contact was declared to be properly a noun, not a verb, and moreover to be vague when used as a verb. However, turning nouns into verbs is one of the most frequent ways in which new verbs enter English. Sometimes there is resistance to such verbs, but often, especially when a term seems free of association with the jargon of business or bureaucracy, acceptance comes more freely. Contact is but another instance of what linguists call functional shift from one part of speech to another. As for the vagueness of contact, this seems a virtue in an age in which forms of communication have proliferated. Origin: early 17th century: from Latin contactus, from contact- 'touched, grasped, bordered on', from the verb contingere, from con- 'together with' + tangere 'to touch'
PĀ Hawaiian /To touch, get, contact, reach, gain control of, hit, experience; to blow (as wind), shine (as moon or sun), hear, drink. lit., touch someone.
PUBLIC PROGRAMMING ARCHIVE
April 17 6:30 - 8:00P Betty Ickes Value Of Hawaii: Oceanic Connections
This dialogue will think about Hawaiʻi’s connections and disconnections from other places and peoples in Oceania, and will present some of the ongoing efforts to build relationships between Hawai‘i and other Pacific Island cultures and peoples, while also addressing the linked roles of art and education in these efforts.
April 18 6:30 - 7:30P On Being Hawaiian: Open Dialogue
April 19 9A-3P All Day Panels 21st Century Contact: Navigating Hawai`i’s digital interface, Organized by Henry Mochida
This is a media series structured as a dialog around the tensions of contact. Participants are encouraged to diagram a new media landscape to rupture current notions of territory.
April 20 4:30P - 6P Community Readings from Hawaii’s story by Hawaii’s Queen, film vignette with Meleanna Meyer
Celebrates the enduring legacies of Queen Lili`uokalani - with a 45-minute program that includes community readings from the Queen’s autobiography Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, a 7- minute vignette inspired by the Queen, and a sing-along of some of the Queen’s music.
April 21 6:30 - 8:00P Keaweʻaimoku Kaholokula Value Of Hawaii: Health and inequality
This dialogue will contemplate the many ways in which individual and family health are affected, and in some cases, determined by larger societal forces. It reminds us about ways in which recovery of Hawaiian cultural practices can help to revitalize and healthily sustain all peoples in Hawaiʻi.
April 10 6:30 - 8:30P Loading Zone performance piece
April 11 6:30 - 8:00P Artist Talk Jamaica Osorio Value of Hawaii: Gender in the arts
This dialogue will focus on how stories define our gender identities, and on the creative ways we can recover or rewrite stories about gender. In particular, the dialogue will explore how Hawaiian culture today is gendered and consider the value of moʻolelo in helping us to rethink oppressive gender systems.
April 13 6:30 - 8:00P Cade Watanabe Value of Hawaii: Why we need labor organizing & art today
April 14 7:00 - 10:00P The Haumana, film by Keo Woolford kumu hula discussion immediately following
When the charismatic host of a cheesy tourist show in Waikiki accepts the challenge of leading a group of high school boys through the demanding discipline required for a traditional hula festival, he becomes as much a student as a teacher when he reconnects with the culture of Hawai`i he previously abandoned. Winner of the Hawaii International Film Festival Audience Award, the LA Asian Pacific Film Fest, and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. **A panel on Hula will follow the film with Keo Woolford, Robert Cazimero, and Maelia Lobenstein.
April 16 6:30 - 8:00P Kawika Patterson Value Of Hawaii: Prisons and Sanctuaries of healing
This dialogue will center on the valuable concept of “puʻuhonua”--safe and sacred places or people, while raising some of the following questions: How can prisons become places of healing? How will that require changes on the part of the prison system? What changes will be required on the part of communities?
