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!