Idle Dilemma
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IDLE DILEMMA A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‛I AT MᾹNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN ART MAY 2014 By Abigail Good Thesis Committee: Fred H. Roster, Chairperson Scott Groeniger Jaimey Hamilton-Faris i TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Plates ……………………………………………….…………………………....ii List of Figures ……………………………………………………….…………………iii Introduction …………………………………………………………………...………...1 Previous Artwork Made By Abi Good Leading To Idle Dilemma……..…………….….7 Technical ……………………………………………………………………………….10 Exhibition ………………………………………….…………………………………..13 Historical ………………………………….……………………………………………15 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..18 Bibliography …………………………..……………………………………………….19 Plates …………………………………………………………………………………...21 ii LIST OF PLATES Plate 1 ………..……………………………………..…………………..………………21 Plate 2…...……………………………………………………………………………....22 Plate 3 …………………………………………………………………………..……....23 Plate 4 …………………………………………………………………………………..24 Plate 5 ………………………………………….………………….……………………25 Plate 6 …………………………………………..………………………………………26 Plate 7 …………………………………………..………………………………………27 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1……………………………………………………………………………..……1 Figure 2 …………………………………………………………………….……..……..1 Figure 3 ……………………………………………………………………………….…2 Figure 4 ………………………………………………………………………….………7 Figure 5 ………………………………………………………………………….………7 Figure 6 ………………………………………………………………………….………8 Figure 7 ………………………………………………………………………….……..10 Figure 8 ………………………………………………………………………….…..…12 Figure 9 ………………………………………………………………………….……..13 Figure 10...……………………………………………………………………….……..14 Figure 11………………………………………………………………………………..14 Figure 12………………………………………………………………………………..17 Figure 13………………………………………………………………………………..17 1 INTRODUCTION Along the Oahu highway-one, near Electric Beach on the far west side of the island, lies acres of vibrant farmland. This land is used to produce a variety of vegeta- bles for consumption by the surrounding communities. Recently an addition to the fields has appeared as a series of oddly shaped cement forms perfectly aligned (fig. 1). They appear to be gigantic proportionally to the crops. The forms are the pylon style infra- structure of the Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project. The pylons are made by casting cement into molds, a process commonly used by contemporary sculptors. Examination of the pylon reveals a figurative quality hidden within its sleek engineered surface. The figure combined with the imagery of the Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project pylon became the focus of Abi Good’s thesis exhibition, Idle Dilemma. In making the figure visible in the context of the Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project pylons, Good reveals the deeper social implications of the city’s project. fig. 1 Left: Kapolei pillars of the Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project. fig. 2 Right: Train to Nowhere, 2013, raku ceramic, 6’ x 8” x 15”, Abi Good. The Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project began as a glimmer of hope for mass transit, hitting the major tourist destination, Waikiki, and also the University of 2 Hawaii. Honolulu receives more than 4 million tourists a year according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority 2010 statis- tics for Oahu, which is 4 times the num- ber of people that actually live here (U.S. Census Bureau). After the project had been approved by the people of Honolulu through vote, the city dra- matically changed the route for the pro- ject in 2007 removing the Waikik and University of Hawaii at Manoa stops. In a scathing 2013 letter to HART and federal transit officials from Chief United States District Judge Susan Oki Mollway, the obvious flaws of the new fig. 3 Investigative illustration combining human route are described. She writes, figure with an Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project pillar. “Remarkably, the project’s proposed rail route fails to run along the highly congested east-west transportation corridor between Kapolei and UH Manoa, the very corridor expressly identified as the route the project is intended to serve” (Honore). In- stead of servicing the university and Waikiki, the city moved the rail to the opposite side of the county, the first three stops planned on the farm. This farm, known to agricultu- ralists and scholars as the most productive farmland on the planet* was planned to be transformed into a suburb with the help of the Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project. New houses lead to more cars and therefore more traffic(Dudley). New houses also lead to a larger population, bringing more stress to the delicate food and transporta- tion system of the isolated island. The final destination of the rail line is Ala Moana shopping center. The project was clearly designed in the spirit of capital gain, which promotes a “culture of consumerism”(Lasch). Instead of resolving previously estab- *Dr. Goro Uehara, Professor of Soil Science at the University of Hawaii (http://www.hawaiipoliticalinfo.org/?q=node/1738) 3 lished problems, the elevated rail will likely create more of the same. The imagery of the pylon structures in the middle of the farmland is an effective image of the meaning- less gesture of installing the Honlolulu high-capacity transit corridor project. The Honolulu high-capacity transit corridor project is the next step of develop- ment slated for Oahu island. Since the industrial revolution in the United States, similar development has been described as progress. Much has been written about the history of the progress ideology, however these writings never truly came to a conclusion about the overall direction of progress. A recent documentary entitled Surviving Progress based on Ronald Wright’s book A Short History of Progress focuses on where the con- cept of progress has taken contemporary civilization and what the probable outcomes are. The discussion illustrates what is happening with the Honolulu high-capacity tran- sit corridor project on Oahu and what has already happened on the mainland: unsustain- able large scale development. Historically progress has been defined as a linear direc- tion, however it has become a system whereas civilization has fallen into a cycle of rein- venting the same machines and technology indefinitely. To paraphrase Wright in the documentary, generally speaking, there are different types of progress; good and bad. Progress can mean any change. Its difficult for us to see what direction our change is headed. Civilization has the characteristic as starting at a basic level, becoming more complex over time. There is an illusion that these com- plexities are always taking our civilization in a good direction. Ronald Wright explains: (there are) things that start out to seem like improvements or progress. These things are very seductive. It seems like there’s no down side to these things. But when they reach a certain scale, they turn out to be dead ends or traps. The term Progress Trap defines human behaviors that seem to provide benefits in the short term, but ultimately lead to disaster be- cause they are unsustainable. Wright uses the example of hunters targeting mammoths during the Stone Age. The hunters who figured out how to kill more than one mammoth at a time had made significant progress. When entire herds were killed at a time the species became extinct and a main food source was lost. Wright goes further to connect current potential pro- gress traps to ancient mentalities; 4 Our physical bodies and our physical brains, as far as we can tell, have changed very little in the past 50,000 years. We’ve only been living in civilization for the past 5000 years. Which is at the most .2% of our evolu- tionary history. For the other 99.8% we were hunters and gatherers. That’s the kind of way of life that made us. We are essentially the same people as those stone age hunters. What makes our way of life different from theirs is that culture has taken off at an exponential rate and has be- come completely detached from the rate of natural evolution. So we are running 21st century software, or knowledge, on hardware that hasn’t been upgraded for 50,000 years. This is what lies at the core of many of our problems. As our technology advanced, the rest of our mental abilities stood at a standstill waiting to be updated. The hunter and gatherer brain doesn’t necessarily compensate for our contemporary problems. For instance increased standards in sanitation over the last two hundred years, especially in the medical field, have saved millions of lives. On the other hand we are now facing a severe overpopulation problem. While the population boom has been in action, major social institutions never changed their philosophies to adapt to the change. Institutions such as the Catholic Church still prohibit women from using contraception (Gazit). In this case a technological advancement happened so effectively that neither culture or physiological evolution have had time to counterbalance the ad- vancement. Progress has grown into a system of technological recycling. Instead of advanc- ing in a direction, progress has mutated into a sequence of reinvention. The technology we have does not get dramatically better, instead it is simply reinstalled. An example would be the car. Each year car companies release a new models although the new model usually mimics previous models. The recycling is so prevalent that no ground appears to have been gained. Honolulu also seems to have become trapped in the cyclical rotation of progress, in this case through the category of transportation. OR&L was