Utilizing the imaginative power of written and spoken word, sonic landscapes and the descriptive immediacy of images to provoke conversations surrounding our climate crisis, The Weather Diaries (TWD) is a multidisciplinary immersive art installation and book project that teeters between nonfiction, speculative fiction, visual book, traditional craft and storytelling. Repeatedly traversing the island landscapes of Hawai’i, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, I probe the emotional, moral, ethical, spiritual, and intellectual implications of climate action and inaction through environmental portraits, video interviews, landscapes, still lifes and intersectional environmental research. Islands serve as microcosms that uniquely encapsulate the environmental complexities we face globally as biodiversity hot spots, sea level indicators and conservation frontiers that form our ecological web.

The conceptual foundation of TWD is the profound ancient cosmology of native Hawaiian Aloha ʻĀina. Literally meaning “love of the land”, this core philosophy of Native Hawaiian thought and culture informs many aspects of life with values founded upon deeply embedded beliefs that we are stewards responsible for and to all living things. The resulting hybrid narratives are based upon collaborations with local community leaders, spiritual leaders, cultural advisors, artists, and scientists who share their lived experiences, research, knowledge, and lifelong observations of radically changing environments. Voicing shifting perspectives of climate change that exemplify Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and practices of stewardship. TWD contemplates our environmental future emphasizing our emotional, moral and ethical responsibility to act, illuminating binaries that separate Western science and TEK, building bridges between diverse knowledge systems to address climate solutions.

The conceit of the TWD is the creation of the ephemeral, fugitive Weather Library where both the interiors and exterior are at the whim of atmospheric shifts. At the Weather Library, the Narrator, handed an umbrella and rain coat upon entry, is propelled by endless curiosity and unanswerable questions. She seeks information about what happened to the weather now that it is solely controlled by geoengineering. She wonders what had come before and what will happen in the future - wandering through rooms in the Library in various states of weather. In each room she encounters individuals who share their wealth of knowledge gleaned from years of astute observations - of the weather, of the natural world, of human nature, of cultural practices, of traditions - and how change is inevitable, imperative and pressing. The archetypal naming devices employed focuses attention on the intimate knowledge of the character: what they know and how they know in relationship to the larger world, not who they are and where they are from.

TWD challenges entrenched dogmas of western individualism, the supremacy of manifest destiny, and its entanglement with problematic colonial ideologies, to illuminate traditional ecological practices that can reshape our future. Bridging gaps between Western science and traditional ecological knowledge, TWD invites us to treat Nature like the beloved relation it is rather than a commodity. Neutrality is no longer an option, it is a choice. TWD suggests ways to sustain our emotional/personal involvement while insisting that our moral and ethical responsibilities acknowledge our shared humanity, motivated by love for all living things. TWD imagines a future we would like to live in and celebrates people around the globe who are offering imaginative visions forging sustainable pathways forward. Guided by deep research and 5 years of diverse experiences in the field, TWD shares environmental insights, posing far more questions than answers, celebrating diverse knowledge systems that highlights the interconnectedness of the sciences, the arts and crafts, cultural and community-based practices. TWD encourages a reordering of human/nonhuman interactions in light of the radically changing climate through the use of art, story and craft, infusing our connection to the one worldwide thing we all talk about – the weather - with physical, emotional and metaphorical meanings, becoming a mouth piece for the words and actions of enlightened scientists, community and spiritual leaders, and artists. TWD trusts our observations are profound sources of knowledge, embraces the solutions that Aloha ʻĀina enacts, and engages diverse ways of seeing, perceiving and being. We are writing our future now.