★ THE ☆ WISHING ☆ TREE ★
My university assignment asked for students to take a poem from the “Mauri Ola” anthology of pacific poetry, and take it to as many people outside of the classroom as possible. I chose Tagi Qolouvaki’s “Tell Me a Story“ and identified that its core is about reclaiming a cultural identity. I thought to myself; how could I get people to identify with an identity, even if they weren’t aware they were doing so? Hence, Te Wishing Tree.
I conceptualized this ‘desire to be identified’ in the form of an interactive installation. The reason why Tagi in her poem chose to identify with the story of burying umbilical cord in the land, is because she saw value in that story. Generations of storytellers before her imbued it with value. The same way people along the beach freely chose to write their inner well wishes on a random piece of artwork, is because they saw value in doing so. People admired and read and the more words that the tree accumulated the more passersby felt the urge to interact with it. This odd, poetic, art, kinetic, social experiment had such a snowball effect, I wasn’t anticipating it would intrigue and delight people as well as it did. I think I proved my point well.
I’m pretty confident I will pass this assignment, but for my own closure, I’d like to share with you my critical analysis of this event — Words on the Wishing Tree are wholly life affirming — People are inherently good. I personally believe we all have a duality within us; at once we want to go about our business our own way because we are unique, and at the same time we want to belong and be apart of something greater than ourselves. We want to be apart of something that confirms and expresses to the world how good and unique we truly are. Thank you all for giving this fallen branch value and a reason for others to identify with it and thus, with you. Now, pat yourself on the back with me 😀
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