LOOKING AT TOURISM

The experience of viewing a landscape is a reflective one. I was interested in what Hawaiʻi represented and how it reflected our own hopes and dreams. Alone, it is perhaps a cosmic phenomenon, but a sunset captured on a cell phone and shared on an instantly linked network is imbued with our own cultural expectation of beauty.

It is a rite of passage that asserts:

“Look here, I have made it to paradise.”

Looking at Tourism then became a strategic way of viewing Hawaiʻi as a local rather than as a visitor, a method of re-appropriating our represented image, as people and even our own perception of what this landscape means. I borrowed the method of the dérive from French philosopher Guy Debord.  I began a walk with a friend, Noel Kenny, who also carried a camera. 

The walk can be performed by anyone and may follow a set of rules that include:

1.  No planned final destination
2.  No money may be spent
3.  Standard rules or decorum do not override the experience

The camera became a device for documenting our walk and recapturing our own visage against that of the visitor or tourist. We borrowed their image as we walked against traffic up Kalākaua, the main boulevard of Waikīkī.

We took from what we found littered on the beaches, posing in front of the landscape and the tourists themselves. The action of looking therefore became a reflexive one that I hope allows a viewer to gain a new understanding, or better an experience, of what the landscape means and how it is represented.