e ee o is a piece for cello, 'oli (Hawaiian vocal chant), and electronics. The electronics are run through a sculptural kahili (a long wooden sceptre intricately adorned with feathers around the top in a column). The one for this piece I made from a cardboard tube, sound wire, and newspaper clippings from 19th century Hawaiʻi. These are all materials that are not native and instead readily available, emphasizing the way distance (physical and chronological) alters and amplifies tradition. In this way any attempt at tradition is a reconstruction. When any attmept at tradition ultimately generates something new, what is it that unites contemporary indigenous identity?

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In e ee oo I set out to explore the process indigenous and post-colonial communities engage with to excavate and uncover a traditional identity. Reconstructing an identity and language from historical documents, story telling, music and dance, we are constantly searching, interpreting, enacting. 

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