01.04.07 kulturnatib

The future of progress

Our family had a get together during the holidays. My brother's son was home for Christmas, from work in Manila as a computer programmer for a Singapore based company doing much work for the Hong Kong government.

Typical or even expected of such workers in what is seen as a cutting-edge industry he was brimming with confidence in the future of technology; that technology shall solve the problems we are facing today as spelled out, he said, in a book he had recently finished reading.

At this, my friend who is visiting and I exchanged knowing glances. Her siblings are also into computer science, though perhaps not as sold as my nephew seemingly is into the “high technology has all the answers” mantra.

More than perhaps her siblings and almost certainly my nephew, we both have deep skepticism for the ideology of high technology, though we both certainly are intermediate-level computer users who depend on such use for our daily life and, with a well appreciated sense of irony, in the development and even the propagation of our skepticism.

More than the direct use of computers, though, we rely on the written word, hard copy as it were, in books, magazines, journals and assorted publications; one such material she has gifted me with.

Written by Ronald Wright, 'A Short History of Progress,' is a slim volume that presents the case for a second and careful look at 'progress' being traps instead of triumphs, as seen in archaeological records past civilizations have left for us in their ruins, magnificent though we think of them and rightly so.

The title of the first chapter, 'Gauguin's Questions,' immediately grabbed my attention, as an artist who consider Gauguin among my favorites. These questions are contained in one of Gauguin's largest, most enigmatic works done in an outpouring of grief at the news of the death of his favorite daughter and following long and hopeless bouts with illness, poverty and suicidal despair.

Where do we come from, what are we and where are we going are the three questions, the most prominent text, in French, in this mural. It is the last question that Wright seeks to answer in this book and to make the case for a cautionary approach to the promises – temptations, more like – of high technology as the engine of 'progress.'

Anthropology has practically answered the first two questions, writes Wright who is also a historian. We are the remote descendants of apes who lived in Africa about 5 million years ago. What differentiates us from modern apes, our kin and not ancestors, is that over the last 3 million years we have been shaped more by culture than nature to the point of causing so many extinctions that the fossil record of our dominion is like the impact of a small asteroid.

Though not uniform across the globe, our current civilization is the history of the overcoming of 'progress traps.' The first of these traps was the perfection of hunting some 3 millions years ago that saw that spectacular mass slaughter and extinction of the big mammals; mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant wombats and other marsupials, giant tortoise, giant bison, even horses from across the Americas.

The escape from that trap led to farming which, in turn, has led to industrialization and to the greatest and most precarious experiment of all – worldwide civilization.

While there are still differing cultures and political systems in the economic level there is only one big civilization feeding on the whole planet's natural capital.

There is no corner of the biosphere that escapes our hemorrhage of pollution and waste. Such interdependence means that a collapse of civilization, if and when it happens again will, this time, be global. Think climate change.

The book, gloomy as it is, strikes a hopeful note. There is no other future but now. And now is the time to act on sharing resources, cutting down on pollution and waste, dispensing basic health care and birth control, setting economic limits in line with natural ones, and instituting policies that favor caution, conservation and social justice. There won't be another chance.

12.28.06 kulturnatib

Ligalig

I don't follow Tagalog movies much. From experience, I have found them to be a waste of time and money. There are, of course, exceptions. But these have been few and far between. I have been told though that the independent, alternative and digital film scene has become vibrant in the past few years. Proof of this is the slew of (necessarily small) productions, festivals, and awards and recognition garnered by these that have made it to the international film fest circuit.

Cesar Montano is a name that is bruited about as among the new film makers who are invigorating the steadily growing moribund local film industry. He is, of course, an actor first and foremost. And he is not the first to cross over from being in front of the camera to getting behind it, but perhaps, the first to garner a major award with a first attempt. In 2004, he won best director award in the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) with his movie, “Panaghoy sa Suba.”

For this year's MIFF Montano once more has an entry. “Ligalig,” is a movie that tries to, looks like it is trying to put an MTV, digital edge and a straightforward psychological, crime thriller together. The result, however, is like barako coffee with sour cream dressing. It leaves one with an indescribable taste in the mouth and a determination not to try it again.

A friend, like many female friends who frankly admit to being taken by Montano's good, 'matinee idol' looks, badgered me into watching this movie. Both of us have seen a Montano movie before, but with opposite impressions. She saw “Bagong Buwan,” and considered Montano to be excellent in that movie. I saw “Panaghoy” and thought the movie to fall short of its ambitions. But, we both agreed that the movie poster for this latest Montano was intriguing and well-done.

“I like it already,” she said with the first minutes into the movie that featured solarized close-ups, gritty and soft-focus scenery, edgy title and credits work and gothic-rock soundtracks. I agreed.

Then the movie moves on to what clearly looks like green-mask technique where a foreground action gets superimposed on a background thats supposed to look like a complete scenery. In this case, it is Montano supposedly in a cab – he is a cabbie – driving through Metro Manila though it is impossible to tell just where.

And, in what is a dead give-away, Montano drives like nobody drives in a vehicle that is moving. He holds the steering wheel steadily in zero position. Even a child driving a toy car knows that anything that is moving will always have a small left-right, maybe even up-down play. But, Montano is oblivious to this even while his cab is supposed to be turning as can be seen from the moving background.

But the worse is still to come.

There are characters that are developed only within what's possible in half a sheet of tissue paper, there are scenes that are so gratuitously expected – Katya Santos is so voluptuous that an outdoor shower scene where the camera crawls up and down her glistening body is as expected as fat on pork adobo – there are the police who go about sleep-walking like in their investigation that, in the end, still results in a solution to the crime and there is the action-rooted Montano who has to sneak in an action sequence that leaves one's head in a spin dryer.

This is a technique driven film. And the techniques are that of digital editing and animation. Substance wise it attempts at a montage. But, it is still clearly motivated by the realities of the box-office so there has to be some kind of story behind all that.

Here, the movie fails miserably. One has to look for the story behind or beyond the movie. One has to find it in one's brain, not imagination. Imagination cannot work in a vacuum. Imagination has to work on something.

Here, there is nothing. Or, actually, there are too many things – the bane of Tagalog movies – that amount to nothing.

Box-office wise it doesn't even look promising. There were a total of six other people in the whole theater with us, a day into the festival, who were clueless or simply, perhaps, like us, didn't have enough brains to remember that the old saying about not judging a book by its cover actually meant something.

12.23.06 kulturnatib greetings

Merry Christmas


whether or not you buy into christmas -- and for many christmas is nothing but a lot of buying -- here is my opportunity to express my thanks to all of you for staying with me and this blog, even if much of the time i am unaware just how you are staying with me.

how else to express this but through the good old reliable card! so below is your christmas greetings card from us.

12.14.06 kulturnatib

Graffiti art

A friend, I think, is trying to make a career in graffiti art. He is equipped for this, more than anybody I know who has the temperament for such. He has enough years of training in art school to get a doctoral degree, though his original ambition was, and, perhaps, continues to be the more modest Certificate of Fine Arts.

I have seen him poring over his books on graffiti art by himself and with other artist friends as well. He has wielded his aerosol can paint spray on wall surfaces of his mother's properties that include two cafes and restaurant and an outdoor activities shop. He even hired an assistant, also a budding graffiti artist, to work with him on these. The reviews to these works are mixed, again coming, mostly, from friends.

I really haven't talked to him about this seeming turn in his career direction. So, I don't know how far he is planning or is determined to bring this forward.

But I would like to tell him that if he is more serious this time around than his last career stab at being a surfer -- or was that a restaurateur? -- then he should move. And move fast.

Because I have caught a glimpse of the future of graffiti art here. And it sucks. I am not talking about the walls that regularly get painted and repainted with civic-inspired works on peace, the environment, the family and all that spice and everything nice. Though these can suck too.

There is as much art on these walls as can be produced by the threat of a failing grade and the various inducements from monetary to funerary -- the promise of cookie points for that one-way trip to heaven.

I am not even talking about the slogan splashed walls of the left, whose imagination seem to be the fill-in-the-blanks kind where the blanks are filled-in with the name of the current national administration in power.

Historically and traditionally, grafitti art has been the canvass of the left or the left-leaning who gave voice to the voiceless, the powerless, the oppressed and, perhaps, even the simply bored.

No, I am talking about something more sinister. More ominous.

In recent days, I have have had to travel the stretch of AS Fortuna street, through both ends of Banilad; the Cebu City end to the Mandaue City end and back, for work.

When I first saw it, I noticed it but paid it no mind. I've seen it before, in more worrying profusion. But, this time, it was by its non-threatening lonesome. It even looked pretty, I grant.

But, the following day there was two more of them. The next day another one was added. This was just on one stretch of wall. The wall of the San Miguel Brewery and Bottling plant, I believe.

What I'm talking about has a name to it. Where I saw it first it is called MMDA Art. These geometrical, mono or trichromatic bunches – five or six to a bunch – you see along the entire length of EDSA. In many of these is the stamping, MMDA Art, like an artist signature or imprint.

This, of course, is an effort, an operation – military operation, comes to mind – to combat real graffiti of the sort that, to many people, especially those in authority who could be at the accusatory spotlight of these graffiti, see them as eyesores.

It won't will not be surprising that these people have an Imeldific view of art. Art is the the clean, the good, the beautiful. Graffiti, in this view is neither clean nor good nor beautiful. Therefore, not art. Even, therefore, nothing.

That's why my friend has to move. He has to claim his space. He has to assert the right for a public expression of art that is not merely cute, pretty, safe, soporific, ultimately boring and funded from the public coffers at that. For I cannot imagine that MMDA art is a free project from an artist's or an artist group's starving good intentions. No way, highway.

He has to assert his right to say that art is not always clean, not always 'good', not even always beautiful. For this, however, he has to realize that it is not the most solid of grounds to build a career on. So is surfing for that matter.

12.07.06 kulturnatib

Bike4U(se)

Alfredo Hermosilla and Arnel Dinopol are very similar in many respects, except that Arnel is shorter by a head and they come from practically opposite municipalities of the island of Cebu. Alfredo, is from Danao and Arnel is from Samboan.

Otherwise, both of them are lanky, dark in the way that many rural boys are, they are both 18 years old, taking the same course of electromechanics at the same school, the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) Technical Institute and, most importantly for why I talked to them, they belong to the same bicycle club.

Despite bicycles hardly ever factoring in our urban planners couch-interest in how our city is designed and planned to work, there are many bikers here, both individuals and organized into bicycle clubs. And, from anecdotal evidence, their numbers are growing. But, it was the first time I heard about a bicycle club of an unbelievably different sort, the one that Alfredo and Arnel are members of, when their club was mentioned at a press conference recently.

Their bicycle club, it was said, didn't have bicycles. But what they lacked in bikes, I learned, they made up for in enthusiasm, doggedness and, most of all, an original, if somewhat impenetrable name: Faxite Omnis.

This press conference was on the occasion of the turn over of funds that were raised by Jens Funk and Martin Langevoord who, last September, biked from Pakistan to China along the Karakoram Highway in what they called 'Bike for a cause '2006,' and who, in this bike-adventure-cum-fund-raising venture, sold kilometrage of the trip that was about 1,100 kms in length at 60Php or 1Euro per kilometer. They raised a total of 69,000 Php.

The beneficiary of the funds is the Bike4U Foundation. This foundation is organized by local bike enthusiasts, many of whose leading lights and driving force, including Funk, are connected with the CITE. The foundation aims at encouraging the use of the bicycle as commuter transportation, especially among students, and to further the familiarization of and operational skills on the bicycle through seminars on bicycle safety, maintenance, assembly and dismantling. Also, the foundation is trying to encourage the participation of the wider bicycling community through their donations of used bicycle parts, equipment and accessories.

Towards the end of this month, used bikes that have been solicited by Funk from Germany are arriving. They are to be distributed to deserving individuals and groups or communities. For reasons of faster implementation, recipient familiarity and demonstrable need and interest, Alfredo and Arnel's bicycle club will be among the first beneficiaries.

No, we didn't form the club because of those bikes, both of them say. “Our club project, making bicycle stands, was Mr. Bobby Payod, our adviser's idea and he suggested it way before we heard that there was an opportunity for our club to finally become a real bicycle club,” says, Alfredo, veiled anticipation sneaking out from his voice.

Undoubtedly, their club will attract more members, both boys agreed. But, with our adviser, we are now working on a more stringent requirement for getting in, they say. The Bike4U foundation has its own stringent requirements for availing of the donated bicycles, which Funk says will serve as a model of sorts for such a project that has never been done before locally.

Fortunately, the club and the foundation's requirement do not include demonstrating the ability to bicycle the short but very steep climb– seriously so, according to Funk -- to the institute's hilltop campus in San Juan, Talamban.

Still, were this the case, Arnel would qualify. “I have climbed it,” he says shyly. Not only that, he will demonstrate this everyday, when he gets his bike which will be a big help as he will, by then, have moved to a house farther away in Mandaue.

11.30.06 kulturnatib

Mobilize art

There is, these days, hardly any conversation in the the tri-cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu and its immediate environs where people, in the course of their daily lives, have to, in one way or another, deal with these cities that does not touch on the upcoming Asean meeting.

The actual content of these will vary, as conversations always do. But it is as good a wager as the bet that the 'cheapest, world-class' Cebu International Convention Center won't be finished on time despite the incredible yet predictable and expected contortions its proponents and beneficiaries are now undergoing on the meaning or
extent of the word 'finished,' that these conversations will touch wholly or in part on how an incredible inconvenience, nuisance and imposition the preparations for this Asean meeting is getting to be and how it will be so much more of that during meeting itself. And, for what?

Yet, inconvenience is our daily bread. So much so that we are often unaware that much of this is caused by our own inconsiderate, callous and even stupid behavior. Still, the inconvenience that we are being asked to bear – and then not apparently equitably because, as reports have it, a rich enclave has flatly refused access through their village as an alternative route to ease the burdens of the poorer citizens whose normal routes to or from the city center will be closed – are such that it approaches the scale, in extant memory, of a natural calamity; typhoon Ruping in the 90's and martial law in the 70s.

My own conversations have been with friends who have businesses that will be adversely affected by this ghost town immobilization approach to security and also 'beautification' to the Asean meeting but mostly with artist friends and art students, all at UP Cebu. They are also affected as all schools indeed are, mostly because of the forced resetting of the school calendar.

While many students do welcome the early vacation – after all it is common knowledge that school for many students is just a distraction between vacations -- not all realize the dint this will make in their education and that school administrators will have to arrange for make-up classes. The students will have to 'pay' for this early vacation.

But, this is not the concern of the students I have talked or am talking to. They are fine arts students whose annual MindWorks have to be reset downwards like everything else to accommodate the early vacation imposition that is eating considerably into their preparation time.

I have been asked to be resource speaker for their workshop that usually precedes this activity. My topic is on performance art, of which, I have been doing most of, of late. And, performance art has been the strong suit of this activity; the only continuing event of this sort in the country, the students are, rightly, proud to say.

I have told the students that this situation is ripe for a performance art intervention, reminding them that performance art developed out of a history of engagements by artist with the socio-political concerns of their day, first as a reaction to the bourgeousie commodification of art on one hand and in the sterile formalism of 'modern art's art for art's sake' on the other.

MindWorks is on December 7. It will be at UP though exactly where is still to be decided. It might even, as has been suggested, have 'guerilla' components that will just pop-up and happen in public places around the city.

Other groups are also preparing their reactions to the Asean meeting. They will, for sure, focus on other issues. They will also be peaceful, as they promised. A bloom of a hundred flowers. Even Mayor Osmeña has publicly said he will allow such blooming, though not as poetically as that.

Still, our slogan: Immobilize life? Mobilize art!

11.23.06 kulturnatib

Artport

Airports are not just gateways to the skies. They are welcome mats where places, countries put, as it were, their best foot forward. And as often, this is not just the technological foot, although certainly it also is since flying is nothing if not technological, but mostly the cultural foot as well.

The newest airport where the art is prominently displayed is the Suvarnabhumi Airport of Bangkok. On approach from Manila, I was impressed by the quarter-onion structure not knowing that this was the new airport I had previously been asked as to whether I was landing on the old or new airport.

Coming from a country where airports are nondescript and remarkable only for the corruption scandals that accompany or even underlie their construction, I am easily impressed. But, not knowing much about this airport, my initial favorable impression was soon to be overtaken. Positively so.

On the corridors from the arrival tube to the immigration control station, I had my initial glimpse of what soon was apparent everywhere in the interior of this airport: Thai art, religious, traditional and more impressively, contemporary.

On the corridors were large scale paintings. In hallways were gigantic statues of Buddhist or Hindu personages and facsimile of temples and royal structures.

Unfortunately, I just barely had time to rush through these works. I had a connecting flight to hurry after. Moreover, I had to see if the cheaper alternatives promised in the internet was available which meant looking for ticketing offices that turned out to be on an upper level about half a kilometer on foot but near the check-in counters which I had to go through.

On the way to the next departure gate were more art, more traditional works this time.

But it was on the return trip where I was most impressed. Our flight's baggage retrieval was assigned to the far most baggage bay. This necessitated traveling through the other bays that were separated by walls on which were large scale murals and, on the wall that separated our bay from the exit ramp, about two dozen contemporary works.

The murals were a hybrid of traditional themes and contemporary techniques using almost entirely the most traditional of colors: gold, in elaborate and giddy detail that I saw earlier in Khmer art and architecture and would see soon thereafter in its Thai counterpart.

Yet, it was the contemporary works that transfixed me. And, shamed me as well. First, in how little I know of the contemporary art and the leading artists of our neighbors and second, in how far behind we are in the appreciation, even access to contemporary art, especially local and then foreign.

Still, it was a good, inspiring experience. It made travel less the necessary chore that it often is. It was a timely reminder that in the rush between here and there can be things that give us pause, affords us reflection and provide us an occasion for respite and rest.

Even then, the day before I was headed to the way to the same airport for the exit flight home, I saw a newspaper headline saying an official committee had determined that this airport was only going to be ready in the next six months.

It was difficult to understand this. Surely it couldn't have been talking about the art inside. As far as I could determine, they were all ready to go, but most importantly, to stay.

11.16.06 kulturnatib

The high school

As our jetliner was taxiing through the tarmac from the runway where we had just made a bumpy landing, we were informed of the local time. I looked at my watch. It was now advanced. I set it back by an hour in accordance with the time advisory from the airplane crew.

I had known from mostly second or third-hand sources that a visit to Cambodia is not just a step back in time -- and not just an hour but even to as far back before our own calendar when the great Ankor Wat complex in Siem Reap was built – but it is a step back beyond time when man existentially confronts his most contradictory instincts and where the triumph of brutality makes mockery of his proud claim – always clothed in the loftiest of rhetoric -- to be above the animal kingdom.

It looks like an ordinary high school campus with multi-story buildings, spacious rooms, wide corridors and staircases and ample playing fields. Yet, it is a high school campus with an extraordinary history; a burden imposed directly and indirectly by those who fervently believed history to be putty in their hands.

It was built in 1962 and named Ponhea Yat High School, after a Royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk. In the 1970, during the regime the of the American encouraged Lon Nol, a general who came into power through a coup de e'tat in 1969 it was renamed Tuol Svay Prey High School.

It wasn't until 1976 that this campus was turned into the widely suspected and universally feared security facility of the Toul Sleng, the most secret security department of the Khmer Rouge regime who overthrew the Lon Nol government in December of 1974. This department was responsible for the systematic if arbitrary slaughter of millions of Cambodians who were dumped into shallow and hastily dug mass graves across the country, thereafter named the killing fields.

With the facility itself statistics vary with the high estimate of 22,000 detained and tortured there with as little as a dozen surviving. The official Documentation Center of Cambodia put the numbers of detainees at 10,499, though, it says, this does not include the number of children and babies detained there along with their families. After their torture and detention in Toul Sleng, these were herded mostly to and killed in Choeung Ek just outside Phnom Pehn, where an official memorial now stands.

Following a Vietnamese offensive, Phnom Pehn was captured in 1979. The Khmer Rouge were deposed though they continued a guerrilla struggle until the death of its leader, Pol Pot, in 1998 that signaled the collapse of the Khmer Rouge movement.
In 1980, the Toul Sleng Historical Museum of Genocide opened in the same premises that had been vacated and left almost intact by the retreating Khmer Rouge, including thousands of pictures they meticulously took of every prisoner that was interred there. Among these are of mothers and their infants, teenagers, girls, nondescript Cambodians from all walks with fear or resignation stamped on their eyes, one or two, incredibly, smiling, a caucasian with an Elvis hairdo and others.

The first visitors to the museum were ordinary Cambodians searching for information about their relatives that were lost or were feared to have been victims of the genocide. There were also attempts at forensic examination of the heaps of bones that were uncovered.

With the withdrawal of the Vietnamese expeditionary force in 1989, the signing of the international peace agreement in 1991 and the elections and reestablishment of the Kingdom of Cambodia in 1993, the country opened up to more foreign investors and tourists.

Now, this once nondescript high school campus is a tourist attraction, a must-visit in Phnom Pehn, the center of the grim, sobering and often stomach-churling reminder of the the unspeakable evils that man is capable of. And, sadly, that we will often allow him or her, as we did on countless occasions in the past and presently, on a large scale, in Darfur and the various wars on terrorism, and on a smaller scale, the vigilante killings in Cebu, Davao and the political killings all over the country.

apologies once more

11.16.06 kulturnatib

11.09.06 kulturnatib

Art spaces

I have been in discussions with a friend a few times about art spaces, or its earlier provenance, art galleries. The first question he asked is, are there many galleries here? No, there are not. And, more to the point, there are none that are real galleries, in a sense of having curators, a curated exhibit program – usually on an annual basis, based on the longer term thrusts of the gallery, and a proper organization for handling or ensuring the protection of the interests of artists, much less the interests of collectors and, if they are ever recognized as having any interests at all to protect, the public.

Galleries, or what stands for galleries here are simply spaces where the most basic amenities are provided – even then, often they have to be begged for, art works are thrown together, willy-nilly and, where the public and collectors must find their own way through the maze or haze of ascertaining artistic value, cultural significance, and then, for collectors, commensurate monetary value.

This is a pity seeing the number of practicing artists and art organizations here plus this city's attempts – often expressed, dead-pan seriously, as a certainty – at being world-class. There simply is no question of being world class when culture and the arts are mere afterthoughts in the minds and plans of city authorities, both in government and the private sector and the artists or cultural workers languish in neglect, stagnation or, worse, exploited situations.

With our art collective, we tried our hand at running an alternative space; alternative that is to the existing commercial spaces – that even then were and are far from the ideal practice for such spaces. We were fired up by the idea, and for a while, the practice of a space that featured innovative exhibits, had a program of art education with artists talks, art discussions, workshops, etc.

In the end, however, we decided on giving up the space, though we continue as a collective, continue to practice our art with a decidedly collective, collaborative bent that now, more than before, explores public space as alternative venue.

From that experience, we affirmed that a collective, collaborative approach can be a good, even necessary, countervailing balance to the present heavily commercial art space model. At the same time, we also realized that the business model of matching cost with revenues is as equally necessary with revenues not necessarily always equated with sales. There are revenue opportunities from grants, exchanges and the like.

Yet our most important learning experience is that while our collective approach was successful in providing the vision for our space it did not translate to operational efficiency and efficacy. There has to be one person to take care of the day to day management of all aspects of the business, even if its premises are from a not-for-profit perspective.

Still this does not preclude a for-profit perspective. This is what our friend is trying to explore. It has been done elsewhere. Can it be done here? That is the question we are helping him try to answer.

While we pride ourselves in being wild-eyed, contemporary experimentalists, it is here where we agree that the only way to go is to be clear-eyed realists. Still, dreams are part of reality, and it is a dream we share that a real professional contemporary space that helps the city mature culturally is a necessity, for us, perhaps our friend and, definitely, our collective future.

10.29.06 article / art review

Note: This is another of the advantages that kulturnatibists members have; you get advance articles. This article is coming out next week in the art page of the Cebu Daily News. It is ready, so I've decided, I might as well post it.

Hot exhibit at a cool resort, or is it the other way around?

One word descriptives of resorts usually run from the extremes of hot to cool. Normally, both are taken as compliments depending on how the resort positions itself, with anything in between being almost literally the equivalent of the purgatorial afterlife. Limbo, in other words.

But some resorts, more ambitious than others and, more importantly willing to put their wallets – fat, hopefully -- where their ambitious mouths are, try for the both hot and cool at the same time. An instance where, in a twist to the law of physics about opposites attracting, opposites join together to become an even bigger attraction.

While Victor Vergara, 43, is no stranger to physics, even if industrial engineering, his professional affiliation, might have less to do with physics than its other co-curricular courses, it is aesthetics and, frankly, business – after all aesthetics is big business -- together with some helpful egging on from some friends that have encouraged him to push for the hot and cool together in their resort.

With some space to spare and an ambitious expansion and refitting project in the works, Vergara took the plunge in December of last year with the inaugural show of Negregosanon poster boy for local art making it big in the international art scene, Nunelucio Alvarado.

Still, at that time, there was some hesitation. It wasn't until after that show that the Maribago Bluewater Gallery was established with the small but important exigent of making the name official, emblazoned discreetly yet firmly and tastefully in the show window of the main gallery room.

Four exhibits later, the gallery currently hosts its first show of abstracts by Dennis 'Sio' Montera, titled, 'AbstractSIOns,' that will run until November 17.

Cool change
Since his return from Manila in where he earned his masters degree in studio arts -- with honors -- from the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Montera has established himself as the leading 'cool', formalist abstractionist artist in Cebu.

This sets him off, though not necessarily in opposition, to the other established abstractionist of Cebu, Tito Cuevas, whose immediately palpable emotional, 'hot' expressionism belies an affinity to Pollock's 'action painting' as contrasted with the 'cool' impersonality of Rothko's atmospherics that Montera employs.

Actually, Montera pays homage to both moderns along with his own unique contributions, mostly in the area of materials use and application techniques, especially as far its acceptability with and utilization among local artists. The drip elements of Pollock is immediately apparent but the compositional color field approach of Rothko is somewhat hinted at with its color juxtapositioning though with harder, more defined edges.

Unlike his comeback show at the SM Art Center in February 2004, where the spotlight was on the newly incorporated industrial materials that Montera had been experimenting with – industrial resin and with teams of workers using industrial tools, -- this show steps back to his rawer, more immediate instincts that shows texture without the seeming denial of texturality by the encasing or laminating process and effect evident in that earlier show.

Also, with the exception of the main piece, measuring 12ft. by 4ft. dominating the main exhibit room, the works in this show have been reduced down to not only human scale, but, more importantly, mobile scale; the scale at which things are easy to travel with, especially as either carry-on or check-in luggage on the passenger plane.

Small change
Yet, Montera says that this is only inadvertent. “I was actually making many of the smaller pieces for my show at SM for next year, when I received word from my manager, Jude Bacalso, that this show was pushing through. So, why not show the pieces that were ready?.”

Just the same, he says that the largeness of a work doesn't seem to deter serious collectors from buying. “Two of my 4ft by 4ft works were bought by Manila-based locals. They simply had it packed for check-in baggage on the plane.” he said.

Still, for his part, Vergara, who currently acts as both curator and gallery manager, assures potential collectors, especially resort guests, that the gallery will assist in the shipment of the works worldwide, through whatever preferred means, and ensure that the works are properly packed to withstand the rigors of shipping.

“When we decided to set up the gallery, we made sure that we were ready to make available this service to collectors who would buy the works since part of the joy of collecting is having access to the collected itema at the time and place where it they are to be enjoyed.” Vergara adds.

“Of course,” Montera concurs, “artists will always appreciate galleries who take care of such details. We artists cannot or should not be bothered with such details.”

It is clear which details Montera can and takes care be bothered with. His works are take both control and abandon, both of which take unimaginable details to master in its proper mix, balance and, ultimately, impact.

10.26.06 kulturnatib

At the roof of the world

John Pirsig, writing in Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, said that with motorcycles one is truly in the picture in ways that one cannot be in a car. That is so. Even more so when one is on a bicycle.

I don't know if Jens Funk knows John Pirsig or his book. But, i know that Jens knows plenty about bicycles.

Together with a friend, Martin Langevoord, and collaborator on a book, the first and only so far, on cycling in the Philippines – it's the Visayas Edition as it features rides mostly in this region, though rides in Palawan, Romblon and Camiguin are included -- they recently took a trip from Pakistan to China along Karakoram Highway through some of the highest, most challenging and most picturesque passes in the world.

They undertook this journey to draw attention to and raise funds for the foundation that they have set up. The Bike 4 U foundation aims to gather donated bikes and bike parts from all over, primarily in the Philippines and Germany to give to deprived Filipino children, to introduce them to riding and repairing bicycles and to give them opportunities to join biking seminars.

Both Jens and Martin also know a thing or two about Filipino children, though it is with Jens that I know this firsthand.

I wrote about this innovative project that he helped set up in Cabilao Island, Bohol that provided satellite inernet access mostly to school children but also to the community and the tourists who flock to this diving haven.

Jens works here as a development worker with the German DED as an information technology consultant for the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), working particularly in IT curriculum development and teacher training. He is now working with some local telecommunications company to convert the satellite hook-up system in Cabilao to the much cheaper wireless wifi connection using mobile cell technology.

Jens also plays here. Yet, more than anything, he also wishes to share the fun. This led to the writing of the bicycling guide book.

I was privileged to join Jens on one of these fun rides some years back. We undertook to bike across Cebu island from Dalaguete on the east to Badian on the west through Mantalongon the vegetable basket of Cebu.

Going up to Mantalongon was fairly easy as the road is mostly paved, but it was the crossing to the other side, the following day, that proved to be a challenge as the road had just been recently opened and it had rained the night before making the ride very slippery through very steep, rock strewn slopes.

Jens ate this up. Just as I imagine he did their recent Pakistan to China trip though at elevations many times higher than Mantalongon.

Just how, though, I can't be certain. But I should soon find out.

This Sunday, October 29, he will be presenting a slide show of their trip at the Outpost Restaurant along Busay Road, at 9pm. He will also turn over whatever donations they received through the trip, from their main sponsors, North Face, Philippines and Rudy Project, Philippines and the kilometrage purchases bought, mostly online, at P60 or 1EU$ per kilometer of the entire length of their trip.
Everybody is invited. See you there.

10.24.06 article / art feature

Note: This is an article contributed to the arts page of the Cebu Daily News, which the editor, my editor tries to come up with regularly every Tuesday.

To gather again

Despite the continuing currency of the myth of the solitary struggler, artists take to gatherings, like fish to water. Especially, with their own kind. Unlike fish, however, who group into amorphous schools, artists do get together in definite organizations, even if, with many of these, the amorphous label can stick quite handily and the only definite thing about them is that they're definitely here today and, as definitely, gone tomorrow.

But what of those who are definitely serious with their organizations and who have the staying power of the Energizer bunny? What are they up to? How are their organizations encouraging the production and appreciation of art? Do they have concerns beyond the frames of their canvasses or the particular confines of their media? Are they moving or leading the broadening of field of art into other non-traditional media and attitudes towards art? Who are they?

At first glance, these questions seem to be the perfect list of topics for a conference, a convention or a cultural gab fest. But they can also be thought balloons for a daring – and, in retrospect, daunting – exhibit that puts the spotlights as much on the artists and their groups as their respective collective works.

The organizer of this show is the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, or the Met as it is more fondly called. They have the space, the staff, the respect of the artists and their audience, especially those with deeper, corporate pockets, and the history of artistic chutzpah to earn them the reputation of being the leading space for national and international contemporary arts in the country.

Supported by a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) the Met set about getting together a curatorial team that would put together the design, determinants, directives and the debutantes – for indeed, while some of the participants are grizzled, experienced artists, in an exhibit of this kind and with this scope, they are nearly all virginal debutantes – for this exhibit that opened last October 19 and will run till February 2007.

Composed of Inno Manalo, Chris Rollo, both of the Met – though Rollo has since resigned to join the United Nations Habitat Programme -- Brenda Fajardo and Bobi Valenzuela, both respected independent curators, this team set about organizing this show. The concept was discussed and agreed upon, the exhibit dates calendared, and, most importantly, the participants chosen, informed and contracted for the show.

Of the original seven designated groups, six finally cemented their commitment. These are the Anting-anting of Cavite, the Ang INK (Ilustrador Ng Kabataan) of Metro Manila, the Pampanga Arts Guild (PAG) of Pampanga, the Produksiyon Tramontina of Bacolod, the Davao Arts Foundation (DAF) of Davao and, our group, the Lunâ Art Collective of Cebu City.

The geographic spread of the groups was one of the more important parameters for the exhibit. It was an important recognition that groups with a more contemporary bent, who were going beyond the post even pre-war models for such groups, were not just confined to the capital but have been and are trying to play their often self-determined roles of catalysts in their respective communities for a more dynamically engaged art practice.

The exhibit is spread out on the second level of the Met. This level has two small exhibit rooms along the north end and exhibit walls on the west and south ends. Floor works can be placed on connecting walkways on the west and east, though the latter does not abut to the wall as it does at the opposite end.

Through the northwest stairs, the works are laid out thus: Immediately to the left, at the top of the stairs, facing south, is the work of the PAG (Lugud Qng Indung Gabun – Love For Our Earth Mother), then in the Anita Magsaysay Ho Gallery is the work of Produksiyon Tramontina (Reaction Shots), in the next room is the work of Anting-anting (Nagkalat Na Naman Si Lolo Sa Lungga ni Apo – Once Again, Lolo Is Making A Mess In The Studio Of Apo), across is the panel board and the space around it for the works of Ang INK (Play!), next to it, towards and occupying a space the length of the wall was the work of the DAF (Chasing Our Dreams). Rounding out the exhibit, on the south wall and occupying half of the walkway that leads back onto the PAG area is the work of the Lunâ Art Collective (Halad Alang Kang Arbet Sta. Ana-Yongco – Offering For Arbet Sta. Ana-Yongco).

Here, installations are, expectedly, the favored structure of all the works, though with Ang INK it is simply functional. Together with contextual narrative, it serves as the formal organizing plan that brings different elements together in various degrees of cohesion. Of the elements, paint is, not surprisingly, the most commonly used, with DAF's and Ang INK's works showing the most painted images on one hand and Produksiyon Tramontina, whose video installation uses no painted image on the other.

Picture prints, mostly digitally generated and printed comes in next as the favored image source for the works, with both PAG and Lunâ having large scale digital prints as dominant images though much more with Lunâ's work as an anchoring, context setting element. Also, both works rely on a photo narrative to establish historicity though for a much longer time scale in PAG's work and much more focus in Lunâ's.

Found objects, sculptures and mix-media make up the contents of the floor space. In Anting-anting's, PAG's and Lunâ's works they are the central objects determinative of context but much looser, more open-ended with Anting-anting, while more symbolic in both PAG's and Lunâ's.

Of the works, Anting-anting appears to have the loosest structure and most neutral, symbolically diffused content; Ang INK's, the most utilitarian; Produksiyon Tramontina's, the most technologically savvy; DAF's, the most personal; Lunâ's, the most socio-political; and PAG's the most biographical.

While it may be too early to pass judgment on Rollo's claim during the opening that, “This exhibit is a landmark in Philippine art,” it is clear that contemporary art and expressions are taking root all over the country nurtured by different and difficult environments that these groups have taken on as a challenge.

10.17.06 kulturnatib

Bringing together, again

In March of 2002, we headed for Manila, for an exhibit at the Surrounded by Waters (SBW) art space, at that time, across the Galleria Towers, along EDSA.

This was an exhibit that we had agreed with the SBW group which they were to reciprocate with an exhibit at our space, the Lunâ Art Collective art space, several months later.

While prior to this there had been little by way of formal communication between our groups, we were both aware of the existence of the other, though there was much more to know about their group as they had been in the scene as a group much earlier than we had been.

Both our groups were involved with Artist-Run Spaces (ARS). We both realized that running or managing our own spaces for exhibits and other art activities was central to our similar visions of nurturing an art – much of it our own, we have to admit – that was less commodified or even commodifiable as it was more meaningful to our personal and collective reasons for our engagement in art.

Artist-Run Spaces were not new in the art world. Most famous, perhaps, of these spaces would be Andy Warhol's, 'The Factory.' Early on in Warhol's rise to fame, he hit upon the idea that since art was already a commodity, a 'hot' commodity even – an idea that he literally exploited with his works on popular commodities, Campbell's Soup cans, Brillo boxes, etc., -- why not try to produce art the way commodities were made; in a factory and in some kind of assembly-line system?

While recognizing the point that Warhol was making, and in a way that, while, ironically, it was a critique of the 'art system', it made him extremely rich and successful, we also recognized that having our own space would allow us to mount exhibits and engage in other art activities supporting our vision of art that admittedly was and still is not quite supported or supportable by the present system of preferences of local art collectors and commercial galleries.

Still, we also recognized that, important as that was, the physical space was actually much less central to our groups as much as keeping the group together around some shared vision for art.

The SBW group had more experiences with art spaces. They had, in the course of their existence, several spaces in different circumstances of their occupation and tenancy. We only had one space, though in two configurations. In the end, the fact that spaces are real estate, an always rising commodity value and price-wise in an urban setting, prevailed.

The trajectories may have been different, but both us and the SBW group are now space-less.

Still, the SBW's and our experience will be shown to have many parallels, most important of these would be how, in the end, a group's vision will prevail over circumstances and will continue to keep a group engaged.

These are my thoughts on the way to the, 'Tipon: Artists Organizing,' exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila where we have been invited and which will open today. I have to wonder, though, why the SBW is not part of this exhibit. Are they still around? More likely as individual artists and not much anymore as a group. They might very well show up at the exhibit opening. And it would be fun to meet with them once again and to keep up.

As it will be fun and, hopefully, instructive to meet up with the other groups in this exhibit. We know many of these artists and groups, some closely and others through the grapevine of the national art scene.

This is, somehow, a homecoming exhibit for us. It will be a bigger, more prestigious and longer home stay than our first one at the SBW space. But, it will, in many ways, be the same home. Our vision when we started and how it has continued to keep us together through the difficulties of personal circumstance and group dynamics has contributed to our continuing art engagement. In turn, this has been what got us invited.

This exhibit is an honor for us. Hopefully, it will be more; it will be a challenge.

10.12.06 kulturnatib

Halad for Tipon

Art groups, like most groups in the Philippines, are, as they say, a dime a dozen. These groups have not been immune to the general Pinoy cultural viruses of division and replication, a major reason for their proliferation.

But, divide and replicate are not the only things that art groups do, even if to a casual onlooker that's what seems to be happening all or most of the time.

Art groups, traditionally, have and are playing a major role in the advancement of art and the promotion of some artists mainly through the organizing of exhibits.

This tradition has developed from, on one hand, the necessity for exhibiting and, on the other, the often lack of infrastructure or dedicated exhibit spaces – galleries -- and, more importantly, the personnel with experience and, often less so, expertise in mounting exhibits. Curatorship, in short.

But in recent years, art groups have emerged questioning or challenging this traditional model. These groups have and are seeing that the focus on exhibiting alone is too shortsighted and simply perpetuates the 'art as commodity' ethos that also drives most of whatever available or dedicated spaces there are, forgetting, ignoring or being completely unaware of the other, more fundamental aspects of art.

In recognition of this development the Manila Metropolitan Museum is organizing an exhibit titled, 'Tipon', that brings together six of these groups from across the country in a show that will highlight the 'collective' or consensual dynamics of these groups. Also, the show will be a venue for “analyzing the value-added role of the organization in individual artistic practice and community engagement.“

Our group, the Lunâ Art Collective, is among those to have been invited to this exhibit.

Yesterday, 11 October, we opened 'Halad', a shrine/installation honoring the memory and work of Atty. Arbet Sta. Ana-Yongco, who, two years ago, yesterday, was brutally gunned down in her own office next door to their house. At the time of her death, she was the combative private prosecutor in the celebrated and continuing murder case against cult leader, Ruben Ecleo, Jr.

In recent years we have been moving as a group and individually towards artistic engagement with issues or concerns that touch on the defense of civil and human rights. This, we believe is the necessary precondition for the practice and appreciation of an arts and culture that is progressive, enlightened, free of fear, bigotry and oppression. We have chosen to act on this belief.

As a result, our art has gone towards the direction of mixed media, site-specific installation and performance. Also, we have developed a dynamics that relies on free discussion, consensus building and active collaboration.

Originally, we had identified other individuals aside from Yongco to honor in what would have been a historical sweep of local champions of human rights. But we quickly realized the logistical constraints in a multi-honor scheme and settled on Yongco as being the most recent of the victims of violence that is plaguing our city.

By honoring her we also wanted to highlight our wider concern against the continuing atmosphere of impunity for murder and other violent crimes. This is abetted, if not assisted by the inability, even lack of interest – beyond the usual lip service -- among the authorities for the solution of such cases and the apprehension of those responsible for such crimes.

We are bringing this concern to the Manila Metropolitan Museum where our voices will join those who are crying for justice in our country. This is not only the cry in the streets. It is also the cry of art.

10.05.06 kulturnatib

Privacy

What I had read in the papers was still fresh in my mind. This was about some city councilors exercising their usual knee-jerk reaction to an issue that the say is an issue of morality, when the prosecuting lawyer said that it was an issue of privacy.

A security guard happened upon a couple having sex in their car. The guard, acting on the somewhat limited, though often exaggerated authority, hauled the couple in and charged them with public scandal.

Thankfully, the city prosecutor, standing upon the legacy of the Enlightenment enshrined in our constitution's bill of rights, disagreed and promptly threw the case out.

Some city councilors, always alert for non-issues that will ingratiate them to the unthinking sectors of the Catholic church protested. What about morals? they cry.

What about it? The city prosecutor stands on several hundred years of the struggle then the victory of the Enlightenment against a church with a long history of despotism and the temptation for those days is ever present, but grudgingly accepts that privacy is sacrosanct and that the last protection of persons is the inviolability of conscience.

Such where my thoughts when I received a call. There was a letter for me in the mailbox. It was marked personal and confidential. It was from the authorities. I gave my permission for it to be opened and read.

Here, again, issues of privacy. Without going into the details, the letter said that on the one hand under the freedom of information act they are compelled to provide information that is requested for, but on the other hand, the privacy law requires that such information can only be provided with the express permission of persons about whom the information is requested. In this case, the latter clearly has more weight than the former. In other cases, where the public has an overbearing interest, it could be the other way around.

The next day, again, on the phone with the same person bearing news about the previous day's letter. We were experiencing some difficulty with Skype, the free internet phone service, when a conference call was set up mainly to see if more heads can solve problems we were having over the quality of the voice reception.

The third party in the conference happened to be cyberloitering. As often happens, he was looking at some satellite maps available thorugh Google maps, which can be quite entertaining. But, this is a most useful feature, especially for places, mostly cities, where aside from satellite images, street maps are available. With such maps one is able to type in a street as a starting location and then another street as a destination location, a best route between the two is then generated. Also, a land based phone number can by typed in and the location of that phone is located.

The third party announced, "here is a satellite map of your city. I will send you the URL as an instant message". The URL appears on the screen, instantly. Yes, indeed, second party says, as the satellite image appears on her screen.

None appears on mine. My connection could be too slow or the image too big or both. In any case, with our original problem solved with some application of the trial and error method, as the second party was leading the first on a hunting trip for my house. "Is that the capitol building?" "That's not the big hotel near your place, is it?" "I think your house is under this big cloud cover." "Your privacy is safe. For now." And so on.

More and more privacy is under assault. With technology that allows the U.S. Air Force to bomb with precision using satellite maps, but, more often than not, kill people and obliterate neighborhoods who were not precisely the targets. But, more and more with people, people in authority for whom privacy is less important than the expediences of their political ambitions or simple lack of imagination.

09.28.06 kulturnatib

Don't forget, don't repeat

When I left for an extended vacation last June, the nation was on a perfunctory celebration of Independence Day.When I returned there was another celebration, a remembrance of the day the entire country was placed under martial law.

My ears were still stuffed from fifteen hours of almost non-stop flying when I joined the celebration organized by the UP Fine Arts Students Organization (UP FASO) and Pusod (The Open Organization of Cebu Visual Artists) at the Outpost restaurant.

My contribution was to have been the screening of the video of the performance piece, 'Silence Kills,' I did at the University of Montreal on the occasion of a forum on the human rights crisis in the Philippines organized by the Human Rights Center of the same university.

This did not push through.The organizers could not find an LCD projector available for use gratis. Some people were able to view it though on the laptop computer monitor. But these were just a few who stayed on after the event.

Instead of the screening I recited a very short couplet by the Punjabi poet, Ustad Daman who wrote it in reaction to the takeover of the Pakistani Army under General Ayub Khan in 1959 whose singular contribution to political science was the justification that, “. . . democracy cannot work in a hot climate. To have democracy we must have a cold climate like Britain.”

Daman wrote: “Now each day is fair and balmy / Wherever you look : the army.”

I got this quote from my transpacific companion, the book, 'The Clash of Fundamentalisms,' by Pakistanihistorian, novelist, activist and filmmaker, Tariq Ali.

Along with my contribution, the UP Serenata sang two songs, Errol 'Budoy' Marabiles also sang his hit, 'M16,'a capella, some other friends and artistic colleagues played music, but the main event for the night was clearly the performance pieces by the UP FASO.

While realizing the need to remind ourselves of the dark days of martial law and how we must struggle againsta repeat of those days, Raymund Fernandez, fine arts professor and advisor of UP FASO, told me in a conversation days after the event that the memorial was an opportunity for the UP FASO to hone their skills in the production of
performance art.

This was part of our preparation for the upcoming MindWorks in December when, as expected, performance art will comprise the bulk of that day's activity, Raymund added. The best works will then have a repeat performance during the World Monggo Day, an annual event organized by Pusod, hopefully the day after MindWorks, he said.

Performance art as an art form is especially suited for the activist bent that UP is known for. The immediacy of its spectacle-like expression and the wide variety of its expressive material and techniques that actively encompass the audience plus a mastery of metaphoric space are elements that UP students and their professors can take the most advantage of with this form. And, this is exactly what they are trying to do.

Still, Raymund says a clear grasp of content is what the students need. The martial law memorial activity served as a good learning opportunity for them as the theme was a historical event and a national experience that even today continues to impact on politics and ideology.

Students played a central role in the opposition to martial rule at that time. Hopefully students, fine arts students among them, will once more play a critical role in the present struggle. On one hand against the militarist tendencies of the current government and the continuing efforts of the ruling administration on the other to stymie all efforts at having a real representative government by cynically manipulating political institutions to serve their own selfish but ultimately destructive interests.

note

one of the advantage of being a kulturnatibist is that you get to read columns unavailable to the general public simply because those columns do not see print. there are many reasons for this but the most common is that they do not get submitted in time. such as the 09.22.06 column. the reason this column did not make the deadline was a confusion on my part about times and dates. i flew in from canada and wrote the column thinking that it was still a tuesday and that i still have plenty of time to make the deadline which is noontime wednesday. in fact, it was already a wednesday and my column missed the train. but all is not lost. you and you alone will still be able to read it. enjoy and maybe write a comment?

09.22.06 kulturnatib

Seeing as yet unseen

As I write, this giant metal bird I ride on is gliding over where the cool Arctic waters flow to the warmer Pacific.

This movement mirrors a parallel development in my immediate or current experience.

First, I am flowing (fleeing, some friend would say – and they would not be incorrect) from the chilling winds of the country that will soon be as white and cold as her Arctic neighbor to the balmer (scorching, some other friends would say – and they would not be incorrect either) climes of the equatorial Pacific.

Then, I am hurrying back from a vacation that has been laid back (as vacations should be) yet with its full share of exciting activity, including and especially artistic ones, to a vocation of art making that, by comparison, will make the upcoming ones a scorcher.

Even now as I write -- actually not long into my vacation -- thoughts of art making has never been far away and, more so now, they jostle for attention with the words that tumble into the computer screen.

A few days before my departure, Raymund Fernandez confirmed the plans. Yes, he wrote, there will be a remember Martial Law activity on the 21st. I forget the rather longish title or theme now, but it will be an activity of artists remembering Martial Law and, more importantly, saying Never Again!

At the same time, and more critically, the activity will strongly demand that the summary killings of petty criminals or said-to-be criminals in the local level and established leftist activists in the national level be stopped immediately, investigated thoroughly and punished with dispatch.

Raymund's letter said that there could be two venues, though he is sure only with one. The Outback and Kahayag Cafes' were mentioned as being the possible ones with the former's owner already committed to host.

By the time this sees print, the activity will have taken place. Exactly what that will have been will be difficult to say with any precision except where I am concerned.

My contribution to this event will be the screening of, hopefully, two videos of recent performances, though only one will have direct relevance to the theme.

This will be the 'Silence Kills' video of the performance of the same title at the University of Montreal. The other one will be the 'Bird In My Head, Song Of My Heart' performance at the Centre sur la diversite culturelle et les pratique solidaires (Cedisol) meeting in Gatineau,Quebec.

Only the more practical exigencies of having the proper screening equipment available for use remain to be resolved or secured for this. It will be both easy and difficult depending on how ready the organizers are and how determined they are to aim or settle for maximum impact.

What occupies me now, however, is the question or desire to come up with another performance.

Will I be able to do it? Will I have the time? The energy? The resources?

Yes, of course, is the desirable answer.

Writing this piece is a step of faith; of believing without seeing, of seeing through believing.

By the time you read this, you will or will not have seen something that, in the end, would have or have not been ready to be seen though no less pressing should the latter prevail.

Your faith, too, would have been as important.

09.14.06 kulturnatib

Birdsong

"Are you playing the guitar for your performance?", Loic asked. We were in his car returning home from a trip to Steve's Music Store. There he had a recently bought guitar repaired and his old guitar looked at.

Loic is a recent friend who plays the guitar, owned a jazz club in his native Benin, Africa, and works as a computer teacher, web and graphic designer by day.

He was simply putting two and two together. He knew my interest in guitars and I had just invited him to a performance piece I had been invited or, more accurately, given permission to perform in a weeks time after that trip.

As a musician he, more than most, would immediately think of a performance as something musical or theatrical.

But, like most, he probably hadn't been exposed enough to performance art which, more than other artistic styles or genres of the visual arts continues to expand in scope as much in its definitions as its practice.

I tried to explain as best I could what my performance was going to be. Before proceeding, however, I cautioned him that such explanation is at best provisional since one of the main elements of a performance is its site specificity.

The details of a performance is determined to a large extent by the specific conditions of the site where the performance happens, the most important among which would be the size of the audience (usually small), the size of the performance area and the extent or direction of the development of the artistic concept of the performance.

This differentiates performance art from all other visual arts genres or styles. The work is almost never developed in full until it begins and ends. And then, sometimes, not even. A similar performance can continue to develop depending on, again, the specifics of site, thematic or content currency or, simply, a different or the same artist developing further the artistic concept.

This puzzled him until I said that performance art was not unlike a musical jam where musicians improvise on a musical theme and constantly listens to the other musicians for cues on how the whole musical piece proceeds or otherwise ends.

Ah, he says, but to appreciate a good jam, its best for one to be present. I smiled. I couldn't have said it better. Just the same, I told him, music is an integral part of my performance.

Performance day rolls around and there he was with his partner, Amélie and another handful who comprised the audience. The event was a meeting of the Centre sur la diversité culturelle et les pratiques solidaires (CEDISOL), an immigrant integration and solidarity NGO based in Gatineau, Quebec.

The performance consisted of, first, the distribution of the artist statement titled, Bird In My Head, Song Of My Heart, which is also the title of the performance piece. Then I had eight people write their names on Philippine passport facsimiles which were arranged, as each were written with the names, in a circle approximating the eight compass points.

A chair was then brought in and placed in the middle of this circle. I then entered wearing a suit case head gear with the world map painted on it. After dancing around the passport circle a few times, I stepped in the circle and sat on the chair.

A minute later I took off the headgear, set it down and from a bag took out a home made megaphone. At the mouth end was a whistle attached to a paper strip that unrolled through the sound amplifying end when air was blown into it which also made the whistle sound.

One after the other I took the passports, climbed up the chair, stood, held the open passport in front of me and, facing the direction from where I took the passports, started blowing several times on the whistle as the paper bird proceeded to unravel and roll back.

After this I sat for another minute on the chair. Then, i got up, upended the chair and took off a plastic covering on the two rear legs of the chair to reveal a full bird on a board similar in design to the bird on the megaphone. Then I walked out with the suitcase.

Every traveller, whether they are immigrating or simply touring, always bring with them something of what they have left behind. This is the complex that is recognized as identity. Immediately, in the hands of a bureaucrat or an immigration official it is packaged into a document, a passport or a visa for exclusion or inclusion. For the wider community it is a set of prejudices or labels, dictating rejection or acceptance.

Every step across any border is an act of both acceptance and challenge. Acceptance that what one brings must be given voice. And the challenge that all voices must be sung, must be heard, despite or because of the difficulties.

That was the exhibit statement. That was what, I suppose, Loic was smiling at.

apologies

i have just realized that i have republished or reposted 5 columns. columns 6.29 to 7.27. as soon as i realized this, i deleted them. but, checking my own box that receives my own posts -- exactly for these situations; for purposes of checking -- the posts, even while deleted still got sent. you would have received the same. please disregard them. sorry, they are unnecessarily clogging your boxes. still, i have learned something from this mistake. i have also learned or realized that i have not been consistent with my post headings. i should hold to the mm.dd.yy format which if i remember correctly i started implementing only with the last post or the post of 09.07.06. hopefully, like technology, i shall get better at this. your comments can also help me improve. again, salamat for your forbearance. you should get the next post, 09.14.06 within the next day or two.

09.07.06 kulturnatib

Not all homecomings are happy

One of the most haunting works of art of the 20th century done by one of the most towering artists ever is the Guernica by Pablo Picasso. While incorporating many symbolisms that are associated uniquely with Picasso, this work that depicts the horror of the first experiment of aerial bombardment of a Basque town in northern Spain by the burgeoning Nazi war machine with its Spanish ally Franco, stands as a universal image of humanity's recoil in the face of war.

While some art critics are of the opinion that Picasso's works were beyond political contingencies or ideologies, Picasso remains among the most quoted of the modern artists in calling on the artists to wield their art in the service of humanity.

"What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes . . . How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war."

The above quote by Picasso appears in the exhibit poster of Art Against War, a visual art exhibit at the Cube Gallery in Ottawa.

This exhibit was organized to manifest the artists' solidarity immediately with the victims of the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon that has resulted in numerous deaths of Lebanese civilians and a lesser number of Israeli civilians killed in rocket counterattacks by Hezbollah in that month-long flare up of violence in the Middle East.

More concretely, the exhibit was also a fundraising event for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the France-based, international humanitarian aid organization who were among the first to rush to assist the victims of the attacks amid difficult conditions including the total blockade imposed by the Israelis and the targeting of clearly marked emergency and aid vehicles.

Though short on exhibit time and space -- the exhibit lasted for only four days in a gallery roughly 20 by 10 meters in size -- it was long in participants and guests. The exhibit attracted upwards of 120 artists and guests of over 1,000 with some 200 who attended the opening and more than a handful even during the last day when the works were being taken down.

I was among the participants. I submitted a sculpture piece. Made of corrugated carton, the sculpture is a facsimile of an oversized suitcase; the maleta favored by OFWs.

Instead of leather, leatherette or some PVC based hard shell material, this maleta was wrapped in newspaper facsimile of the front pages of national dailies whose banner and secondary stories were of the forced evacuations of OFWs from Lebanon - downloaded from the internet and printed on newsprint.

For visual impact, the banners or headlines were given more prominence but with closer inspection, snippets of stories can be read. For maximum impact however, pictures were also afforded prime real estate.

A red faux-silk robe jutted out of one bottom corner of the suitcase hinting at a harrowing and hurried escape.

The work is entitled, "Not All Homecomings Are Happy."

Having been an OFW once, I know that homecomings are a most looked forward to event in an OFWs life. But, I also know from recollections of colleagues who went through the first Gulf War, that forced homecomings are never happy, especially when such homecoming is to be facilitated by a government who, while praising them as heroes, treat them no better than milking cows.

The most recent crisis in Lebanon is, of course, precipitated by a foreign government whose attack is condemnable in the strongest terms, yet, practicing charity that best starts at home, blame should be laid on the steps of our government whose treatment of OFWs are always a crisis in waiting.

notice to kulturnatibists

salamat that some of you have responded to the invitation to be with the kulturnatibists egroup.

more than a simple thank you note, this post will test whether the distributive/dispersive feature through email of blogger works.

though hope has nothing to do with technology -- except for murphy's law, its a sure thing, diba? --, im hoping that this will work as advertised and further that our other friends that have been invited as well will respond to the invation soon, as you have.

here's hoping that all is well with all of us.

ps. you can start posting your comments also. salamat

8.31.06 kulturnatib

Andy Warhol

I don't remember now why I was there but I can't forget what I saw when I got there. I had just arrived in Manila to try out the proverbial greener pasture on the other side of the fence. I was boarding at a house on campus, in UP Diliman, Quezon City. I think I had been asked to do or get something at the College of Fine Arts. So, I went.

At this time the College of Fine Arts was still at the third floor of the Arts and Sciences Library. It was midmorning. There were few students about. Though I was told to expect the worse of what is always known to be the weirdest college in the entire university, I was totally unprepared.

There was no weirdness. Only ghostly silence accompanied with bond paper signs hastily scribbled with pentel pen and scotch-taped on the stairways all the way to the third floor that said: WARHOL IS DEAD.

Almost two decades after his death, Warhol has come alive for me as he never had in all my years of art school in an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, titled, "Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Death and Disasters,1962-1964."

In art school then, as it is mostly now, a class in art history is exclusively a study of western art right up to the American movements. As happened, we had less than a semester left to take up this period. Warhol is among the central figures at this point.

When he appears on the scene, the western art world's shift to New York is all but completed and the nascent American imperial triumphalism is facing challenges abroad, in Vietnam, and domestically, in the civil rights and then the anti-Vietnam war movement.

While affirming some of what we learned about Warhol at that time, this exhibit introduced the deeper cultural influences that contributed to his work.

The crucial element that we missed in school was Warhol's film work. This provides the critical link in the development of the silkscreen, mass production, collaborative, appropriative technique of Warhol's paintings.

Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, guest curator for this exhibit, makes this point trenchantly by juxtaposing the films with the paintings. Incidentally, he also narrates the audio tour of the exhibit, with contributions from actor Dennis Hopper and others who were witness to and sometimes subjects for Warhol's works of this period.

Cronenberg makes the observation that Warhol's multiple silk-screened images, especially the ones with the silver or white backgrounds mimic film's picture frames. Far from being static or mere duplications, no two images in Warhol's works are the same.

It is only fitting then that the exhibit opens with the film 'Empire.' This is Warhol's infamous eight-hour-and-five-minute-long movie that features nothing but the uppermost part -- the most famous -- of the Empire State building in New York at night.

Right away, one sees the beginnings of the themes that informed Warhol's art: celebrity, fame, commodity and tragedy.

At this time, the Empire State dominated the New York skyline, the brightest star in New York's firmament. Warhol would aspire to be as that star. Along the way, as the exhibit shows, he created his own star system with himself in the middle of it all, strangely with his very absence, or his voyeuristic presence.

Naturally, Warhol also gravitated towards Hollywood, the pre-eminent American star factory. He did this not by becoming an actor but by appropriating images of famous stars -- Elizabeth Taylor, most notably -- and recasting these images in the way that confirms or extends the commodification of those same stars as art, as a result blurring to the point of erasing the line between entertainment and art.

Also featured in this exhibit are some works that are taken from newspaper pictures -- like, indeed, many of Warhol's images -- of the brutal dispersal of protestors during a civil rights march in Alabama, USA.

But, as Cronenberg explains, these, to Warhol, were simply another time-bound record of the tragic and not a social comment. Warhol wasn't into this. This was not his art.

While Warhol continues to provide a critical element to the understanding of American art, it should be noted that American art has moved on beyond New York and the blatant and extremely profitable narcissism of that period, even as in many places, it should be added, art continues to be nothing more than entertaining commodity.

8.24.06 kulturnatib

Diverse city

Outside the window is a balloon. It is anchored atop the bank directly across the street. It is the kind that we are getting more familiar with as such promotional gimmicks or materials become more common in our native cityscape.

This balloon is most appropriate for the event that it is promoting. On one side it says Ville de Gatineau. On the other, Festival de Mongolfieres de Gatineau.

Montgolfieres are hot air balloons originally developed by the Mongolfiere brothers in 1783 in France. During the festival that celebrates this pioneering invention, the skies above Gatineau will be dotted with these colorful, stately, large and ponderous aircrafts.

But, last weekend, this balloon was a solitary presence in our patch of sky of Gatineau. It was also the sole provider of color against a gray sky pregnant with rain.

In another part of the city, however, was another festival. Amidst the cold wind and the off and on rains was a determined group celebrating another human invention; definitely earthbound but fueled no less by the lofty dreams of multiculturalism and diversity worn in the riot of colors of national flags, costumes, arts, crafts and solidarity and development organizations.

Organized by the city of Gatineau the Journee Gatinoise de la Celebration de la Diversity Culturelle is, I was made to understand, a recent -- only on its second year -- initiative of the city and various immigrant, solidarity and development organizations to celebrate the contributions of immigrants towards multiculturalism, diversity and a better understanding of the wider mostly third world outside the city gates.

When we arrived at the L'école Secondaire Mont-Bleu where the festival was held, the football tournament with two simultaneous games in adjacent fields was in progress. On the storm wire fence of one field hung the flags of the participating immigrant country teams.

Not surprisingly, of the Asian groups, two of the Asian football powerhouses were represented -- Japan and South Korea. The rest were flags of countries that were also mostly represented in the recently concluded World Cup in Germany.

Not surprisingly, too, was the smattering of languages spoken and sung that continues to convince me that global English is a chimera and that world music is infinitely more interesting than the top 40, payola-fueled music that is the listening diet served up by our local radio.

While the games were on-going, the other parts of the celebration were setting-up. We were there for a local NGO, the Centre sur la Diversite et Pratiques Solidaires or Cedisol with some fair trade and organic chocolates for sale. This humble offering shared the table with some very fine glass costume jewelry crafted by an Argentinian couple, of whom, Amanda is board member of Cedisol.

Because of the rains, some of the activities, such as the kiosks, had to be pulled into the covered tents. So that Cedisol, together with some other solidarity and immigrant service organizations had to share the space that was later also the performance stage for the folk dances and other cultural performances.

As this stage was being set up, I took the opportunity to make myself useful. I offered to help with the sound equipment. I introduced myself to Tito Medina who was hauling in speakers, monitors, mixers, CD players, etc.

In between uncoiling cable, positioning speakers, connecting wires and plugging-in connectors, we talked. I learned that the he was a signer-songwriter, the sound equipment was part of his sound studio recording business and he is Guatemalan, an exile who was forced to immigrate as a political refugee three years ago and whose elder brother, a writer, was kidnapped and is among the thousands of Guatemalan desaperecidos (disappeared).

Soon after the sound equipment were in place, the festival officially started at the main tent with a Chinese dragon dance. The mayor followed with a welcome speech praising this initiative.

As the smallest of the four main cities of Quebec Province, but the one closest to the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Gatineau has a stake in becoming the banner waver for multiculturalism and diversity in a country that continues to view Quebec's Francophilia as excessive if not threatening to national unity.

The folk dances followed. In that batch were Irish, Egyptian, Algerian and Serbian dancers. Another batch was set to perform after an hour's break.

Unfortunately, we could not stay on for that. It had started to rain again. We had no car. The bus stop was maybe half a kilometer away. We had a small umbrella. But somebody offered us a ride.

In the car, as a smattering of French, English and Spanish bounced about, I thought: there is the strength of a country, being able to welcome difference, diversity, to celebrate it, encourage it and even to be a haven for those whose difference are considered crimes in their own countries. This is my kind of globalization.

8.17.06 kulturnatib

Beaches

Having been in Canada for several weeks now, I no longer experience the comparison reflex. Before arriving here I was well aware that this is a huge country, that it has an extensive and well-maintained road network – for which, incidentally, because of the vagaries of the seasons, much maintenance work is done precisely at the time when most people take to the roads, making such travel sometimes unpleasant; that its supermarkets are well stocked; that its museums and galleries are well established; that people here follow the rules, traffic rules, scrupulously; that the trains arrive on time.

Yet, being simply aware is much different from being in the middle of it. Thus, the reflex, which led to the conclusion – the resignation, really – that there is no comparison. So what? I thought. Life continues, I argued, and it doesn’t have to be and probably is better not being the same.

This I thought or forgot about until I was invited to go to the beach. Beach? Aha, I thought rather triumphantly. Now here is where comparison reflex would be handy.

At first, I had to deal with some culture- or geography-bound prejudice. Upon hearing the word beach’ mentioned for the first time, I was unbelieving. It took a bike trip on a path that meandered along with a river where at some point I saw a group of adults and children congregating and bathing along the riverbank that did look like a beach for me to relent. Granted. The dictionary definition for beach, after all, is, the shore of a body of water, especially when sandy or pebbly. That is certainly what it looked liked.

But then it took an invitation to experience such a beach up close and the reflex got more bounce. This invitation to go swimming in a lake was followed last week by another invitation to go swimming in a river.

This really is neither surprising nor uncommon. Canada is a land of lakes – some two million – and rivers that make up about nine percent of the total land mass. Such bodies of water and their beaches are never far away and there probably is not much more other than these.

Both experiences were much the same. The shore is indeed sandy or pebbly, but they extend only few meters before the waterline and stretch across by not much more. Then it can get mucky or sludgy, perfect home to aquatic plants. In the river, their tendrils tugged at my legs – a most unpleasant experience. The water is cold. Closer to shore it is copper colored while at deeper depths it is a dark ale at full strength. Visibility is a misty shroud that, at sunset, lifts, making for an eerie, forbidding beauty.

And our tropical beaches, of which there are a few along our 32,000-km coastline?
I was going to leave it at that, at that point of triumphal understatement, when I happened upon the most recent issue of the weekly New Scientist. The cover story was titled, “The Other CO2 Problem.”

So far, most of the focus on the global warming and climate change studies that are now just gaining grudging acceptance even with the most conservative personalities in the anti-Kyoto/anti-carbon emission cutbacks camp – tele-evangelist Pat Robertson being the most recent convert – has been on the rising sea levels with the accelerated melting of the polar caps. This will and already is beginning to affect Pacific island countries and territories.

The New Scientist article focuses on the increased acidification of the oceans soaking up carbon dioxide, identifying it as “the other CO2 problem.” Carbonic acid is formed when it dissolves in water, and recent studies show that the oceans have absorbed as much as a third of all the fossil-fuel carbon released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

In 2003, a paper on nature by Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett introduced the phrase “ocean acidification” in scientific literature for the first time. In 2005, the UK’s Royal Society published the first comprehensive report on ocean acidification, concluding: “ocean acidification is inevitable without drastic cuts in carbon emissions. Marine ecosystems, especially coral reefs, are likely to be badly affected, with fishing and tourist industries based around the reefs losing billions of dollars each year.”

The article, as expected, makes for very heavy scientific reading with time frames in the hundreds of decades. Yet, James Orr of the Laboratory of Sciences and Climate and Environment in France puts it plainly, “Our children will no longer be able to see the amazingly beautiful things that we can. I tell my son, go see the corals now because soon it will be too late.”

Shouldn’t we be telling ourselves and our children the same?

8.10.06 kulturnatib

Our Indians

Most of us know about Indians. Not the ones who live near the Indian Ocean, although we would also know about them and probably with the same degree of familiarity or ignorance as we do with those other Indians.

These Indians were the Reds who fought and were always clobbered by the Whites, the cowboys. Both were the antipodal pair who, when I was growing up, were part of the repertoire of shoot-up games boys played.

Two weeks ago I wanted to write about Indians. Not the Indians of the mostly American Plains that inspired those boyhood games but the other Indians whom we know even less about. These are Indians who live north of the United States, now part of Canadian territory.

I met some of them on two visits. The first was at a protest activity a group of them staged in front of the government building where the Canadian Department of Northern and Indian Affairs have their main offices. The second was at a reservation of the Huron-Wendat tribe near Quebec City. The tribe was also represented in the protest activity; I realized that upon seeing their flag, which was among the flags I remember seeing at the protest.

These visits gave me a glimpse of how these people are faring among themselves and within the greater, more dominant “national” group. These, admittedly, were very small and short glimpses that provided not much more than anecdotal experiences and insights.

Yet, they were enough to trigger an unease over my almost complete loss of updated knowledge about, and concern for, our own “Indians,” the indigenous tribes, mostly in Mindanao, that are struggling for survival as a distinct group, which, most immediately and most contentiously, center around recognition and return of ancestral land, domain or territory.

So, I held off writing about those visits. Why would anyone, least of all myself, want to read about these Indians when I know next to nothing about how our own indigenous groups are faring?

But, as serendipity would have it, I was led to a visit to what I was embarrassed to not knowing much or not keeping a tab on: the struggle of our own indigenous peoples.

At the National Gallery of Canada, I visited the exhibit of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. This year’s awardees included Peter Wintonick, an internationally known documentarist and filmmaker.

In this exhibit, clips representative of his works were on show. One of these was “Seeing is Believing: Human Rights, Handicams and the News.” The excerpt from this film that was shown was of the Nakamata Coalition, a coalition of ten small indigenous tribes who are legally and peacefully struggling to reclaim their land under the 1997 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act.

The short clip features Joey Lozano, a journalist and human rights activist, turning over a Handycam to the coalition in a ritual that was common among the member tribes when presented with an important gift. This included the slaughter of a white cock and the smearing of its blood on the camera and its peripheral equipment.

The clip also features interviews of some of the tribal chiefs present and of Joey Lozano. The interview is in Bisaya, music to my ears, as the cliché goes. The accompanying English subtitles, though, make some minor mistake – major among them is identifying the place of the interview and the ritual as taking place in Bukinon. It is Bukidnon, of course.

This led me to a further visit, as many visits now take place, to cyberspace. And, as happens with many things in the Philippines, it led to both good and bad news.

The Nakamata Coalition continues with their struggle with the help and support of local and international groups and individuals who have armed them with the technological capacity to further their claims, which includes that Handycam and some GPS (Global Positioning System) instruments that can map out their territorial claims more accurately.

Unfortunately or inevitably, rather, this led to the death of two of its members, gunned while on a GPS survey, the case of which is part of the film, and which, when shown to the NBI, led to the slow grind of justice.

Lozano, likewise, couldn’t dodge bad news. After years of eluding death threats for his investigative reports against the powerful, he succumbed last year to cancer.

Still, his struggle continues, as does the struggle of many indigenous populations fighting discrimination, loss of land, and their ways of living that many now recognize as significantly more harmonious with nature at this time when nature is under siege.