Historic Waikiki, 2001-2004
Offset print with found concrete; website
Packets – 13.75 x 9.25” open; display case - 18 x 14 x 10"
Downwind Productions - For the commodity objects, Andrea Feeser and Gaye Chan. For the website, Gaye Chan and Andrea Feeser, founders; Lisa Asagi, Creative Consultant; Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, Editors.
Gaye Chan, born 1957, Hong Kong; lives in Hawaii
Andrea Feeser, born 1962, Zama, Japan; lives in South Carolina

Downwind Productions is a collaboration between the Hawaii-based artist Gaye Chan and the art historian Andrea Feeser. The work consists of small bits of concrete, purportedly from Waikiki’s hotels and resorts, packaged and sold in stores in Waikiki as if they were authentic historical souvenirs. Each of the packets includes a folded sheet of paper with a map and a short history of indigenous cultural and environmental damage caused by reckless development projects associated with Hawaii’s tourist industry.

The work includes a website featuring a virtual tour of Waikiki, stories of the island’s history, and anecdotes from residents about their memories and experiences of life on the island. Together, the website and bogus tourist knick-knacks focus attention on the cultural and environmental changes that have occurred in Waikiki since European and American settlement and raise questions about the unblinking embrace of tourism and ongoing representations of the Hawaiian Islands as a leisure paradise.

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