Welcome to the club
The performance art troupe in Cebu is a fairly small one. It numbers from anywhere between two hands full to a couple of fingers. Although this easily balloons to more than many times that during the annual MindWorks of the UP Cebu Fine Arts Program.
When this event started almost three decades ago, this was a purely voluntary happening initiated by the students with the support of some faculty members. When erstwhile students became the majority of the faculty of the program, this event became some sort of centerpiece for the program. The other being, and continues to be, the Jose Joya Annual Awards and Competition.
Soon, participation in this event became compulsory for third and fourth year students of the program. This saw the popularization of the MindWorks far and beyond the cliqueish corners of the Fine Arts Program to even other campuses.
This even saw the event becoming a revenue earning one, with the collection of entrance fees. Not surprisingly, this aspect of the event gets less talk time between the organizers, their advisers and whomever is interested – for whatever imaginable reason – since, here, revenues and expenses always tend to be the proverbial dog chasing after its own tail; A situation not uncommon with the arts here.
Nevertheless, this event continues, still with fees though no longer compulsory – or, maybe, not as widely or strictly -- for the students, in a bid to return to the original intent and spirit of its founding.
It used to be that this was the only opportunity for performance art in the city. But, since late last year, performance art has had a surge of expression and exposure here.
Since that time there has been almost a dozen performance art events. Some of these have been spontaneous, almost spur of the moment performances – guerilla performance has been a term used with these – with only a handful of people in the audience. Yet, many of these have been well organized, well publicized events attended by scores of people. Some are steadfast supporters of the arts while others are fairly new to this art form and willing to go along for the ride.
Others still, are not content with just being simply passengers, or worse, being bukongs, literally hangers-on for a fare-less jeepney ride. They want to try the driver's seat. Either solo, or, for now, with co-pilots.
So, the next performance event at the Tapas Lounge will feature two of these. This will have taken place last night. It must be mentioned parenthetically that Stephan Senz of Tapas Lounge has been one reason for this surge of performance art. The others are Turtle's Nest Book Cafe, the Outpost Restaurant and Bite Magazine. These are businesses. For sure there are the countless individuals who have opened their hearts and mind to performance art. How else can one say this?
Yes, there are two new initiates to performance art in Cebu. Not having obtained their express permission for their identities to be disclosed, they shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say that one is a famous drummer – a demigod of the drums, very highly regarded among local musicians -- and the other works in well known resort in Mactan.
Different as their trajectories are, their target is the same: being able to be a part of an artistic expression that is fairly fresh, compellingly challenging and positively pioneering.
I don't know exactly what their parts are. Although, for the drummer, since he is helping me with my performance art piece called, “Human Security Art,” I know it is a pivotal one. Also a friend from way back, I am confident that his training in jazz music with its roots in spontaneity and improvisation will stand him well.
As for the resort girl, I can only say that her long friendship with the other performance artists involved in the event, with their own solo and group performance pieces, will also be her one sure hand on the steering wheel. Her other hand will be her curiosity and her willingness to embrace the fact that in medieval times the performance artist was the king's favorite subject: the Royal Fool.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
07.20.07 culinary review
Caribbé ready
For most people a picture of the Caribbean includes images of ports swarming with sleek cruise liners, beaches littered with skimpily clad women and streets choked with dancing and swaying bodies. That's the bright, sunny and touristy side.
In the shade, the picture includes and the slightly suspicious looking skinny man with dreadlocks, garishly painted offerings of stuff that would be immediately illegal in most of the world and, most fearsome of all, voodoo rituals with skulls, daggers and blood.
None of these pictures include food. At least, in the local imagination. It is as if the natives did not eat and the tourists brought their own baon, their own food.
“Caribbean food is actually very similar to our own,” Chef Ludo Estingoy intones. “At least the ingredients are. We are both tropical islands, after all. It's just the way of cooking that is different.”
This was something we did not know. For us, who frequent the Outpost Restaurant, it was only fitting, if not long in coming, that there was this Fine Food Festival and that, at the time we had our opportunity to sample this culinary event, Caribbean cuisine was in the menu for the month.
We say fitting because the Outpost Restaurant is, after all, is a strong supporter and exponent of reggae music and most things rasta. On any given weekend evening, this place hosts the biggest single concentration of the dreadlocked crowd than any place in the city.
Pork, poultry and seafood are the main foundation ingredients for Caribbean cuisine, says Chef Ludo. Familiar, indeed. Grilling, too, he adds, is a commonly shared cooking method, but in the Caribbean it involves more marinating with more spices in the marinate.
In fact, the dinner for that evening consisted of a main course of either meat or fish with three side dishes. Both set-menu offerings came with a welcome cocktail, a Margarita, a starter or appetizer and desert.
This is the common pattern for this Food Festival that started last month with French cuisine.
The Margarita was light with a twist of fruit, a bit of bite of the white rum and the unmistakable pull of cinnamon. This lubricated the conversation at the table, which, as happened, revolved around a recent activity that most of those present there were involved in.
This was disrupted, pleasantly, with the introduction of the appetizer. The dish, an avocado, yellow corn and cream dip decorated by stalks of spring onions – which one could eat for added edge -- surprised us with its slightly sour-salty taste that owes its regard as a vegetable instead of a fruit, which to our palates must necessarily be sweat.
This Avocado Creole originates from Sta. Lucie.
I opted for the seafood main dish, fish gumbo. From Les Barbades or the Barbados, this main dish shows how similar Caribbean cuisine is to our very own table tenants.
My side dish consisted of a vegetable stew of green peas, 'Marquechou' and okra.
Okra is the mainstay of all gumbo dishes we associate more commonly with New Orleans, or Cajun cuisine. Gumbo comes from an African word for okra, okambo.
The okra was boiled then coated with a light batter of corn meal with its accompanying white sauce dip contained in a slice of cucumber with its center seed column gouged out that one could proceed to munch after the okra and the dip were history.
The fish ingredient was three pan de sal size fillets of grouper (Molmol) lightly battered and fried. It's tender but firm texture went well with the crunchiness of the other vegetables, the crackling stringiness of the okra and the cool milky coating of the dip.
After polishing off the main dish, we were ready for desert although truth to tell our stomachs, – at least mine was, -- were already stretched to bursting. But being the consummate gluttons that we were -- I am -- we actually could not wait for next Caribbean culinary creation of Chef Ludo.
On the face of it, it may sound or look like an anticlimax. Pineapple? Only? But, the Fruits Foster from Jamaica looked and tasted divinely inspired by none other than Jah himself through the instrumentality of our humble chef.
Creatively cut in alternating advancing and receding cubes, this desert with glazed sugar was a perfect round up to an exquisite though familiar enough meal.
It wasn't only food for the stomach, it was also food for thought as well. The thought that it is simple enough to try at home. And you don't even have to tell the difference between Jamaica and Jamaique. They're the same difference.
There is more to come with the Fine Food Festival, says Chef Ludo. We will keep everybody posted, he adds. We will be on the look for that, we all agree.
Now who says that the Outpost Restaurant is just a drinking, jamming, chilling out place for slackers? Say what, mon?
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
07.19.07 kulturnatib
Capitan Maldo
Two Friday's ago while we were getting ready for the following day's celebration of Earth Calling Cebu, another group of friends and colleagues started off, from where we were making our preparations, to head to where the call of the earth issued from her deep and dark recesses.
That group, members of the Cebu Speleological Association were on their way to the municipality of Tabuelan, north Cebu. They were going there for further mapping and exploration of a cave system named Himaroto Cave, in Barangay Kanluhangan that Saturday. After this, the following day, a Sunday, they were to present their findings and recommendations to the community in an assembly organized by the Barangay Captain.
They met this village official last year when a smaller reconnaissance group were scouting for caves to explore that they had heard were plentiful in that municipality. They were eventually led to Himaroto Cave and to Romualdo Montecalvo, 56, the Barangay Captain.
The village chief was welcoming enough, while the rest of the community had their suspicions. Treasure hunters, were what they thought of the group. Not surprising for a community tucked away in the mountains where to get there takes some special effort and an even more special incentive to go there at all.
The group were indeed treasure hunters but not of the kind imagined by the community. But it didn't help that on that first ever venture into the cave primarily to map it, they were seen to leave – in a hurry, it was said -- with big soggy sacks.
Indeed. But the sacks were to better carry their ropes and other caving equipment that had become wet, hence, heavier, by the water in the cave and the rain outside as well.
But more than the sacks they carried out, they left with the conviction that this was a cave well worth studying. More, they found the Captain to be sympathetic to their overtures about cave conservation as well as conservation of cave creatures particularly the bats who lived in the cave and whose droppings or guano was an important link in the cave's food chain. They were also useful for plant life outside the cave.
True enough, they found the cave system teeming with life. Some they could not readily identify. Not even with the help of leading local biologists connected with the Cebu Biodiversity Conservation Foundation to whom they showed pictures and described the creatures.
These same biologists, Lisa Marie Paguntalan and Godfrey Jakosalem, accompanied the group in their last inspection of the cave system to have a first hand look and they also spoke to the community during the assembly.
Up until this writing some of these creatures remain to be identified definitively.
Through those initial visits and in subsequent ones, the group got to know Capitan Maldo. He was a simple subsistence farmer, unschooled but who understood the underlying connections of life and the need for environmental conservation for there to be any life at all. They had no children except for all the children in the village. He was respected, looked up to. For this, he earned a number of leadership and governance awards from local civic and development organizations.
The group was looking forward to fruitful relationship with the community led by their Barangay Captain. The Barangay Council had been getting ready to pass a cave conservation ordinance with, among others, plans of deputizing the owner of the land where Himaroto Cave was located.
Then last Monday the group woke up to tragic news. Capitan Maldo and four others had been stabbed dead the previous afternoon by a deranged villager who went on a stabbing rampage, even wounding a responding policeman, a cousin of the Captain.
Like the community, the group was stunned. An emergency meeting was called. It was decided that they would attend the wake and the funeral of Capitan Maldo and the rest of the fatalities as a show of support and solidarity not only for the bereaved but also for the entire community. It was also agreed that a wall on the main entrance chamber to the Himaroto Cave shall be officially identified in the maps as the Capitan Maldo Wall.
Though not explicitly mentioned during the meeting, there was also the silent consensus that the group will continue to support the community, support the leadership of the First Councilor who, by law, is the successor to Capitan and support these first steps of this community towards being better stewards of their resources.
Two Friday's ago while we were getting ready for the following day's celebration of Earth Calling Cebu, another group of friends and colleagues started off, from where we were making our preparations, to head to where the call of the earth issued from her deep and dark recesses.
That group, members of the Cebu Speleological Association were on their way to the municipality of Tabuelan, north Cebu. They were going there for further mapping and exploration of a cave system named Himaroto Cave, in Barangay Kanluhangan that Saturday. After this, the following day, a Sunday, they were to present their findings and recommendations to the community in an assembly organized by the Barangay Captain.
They met this village official last year when a smaller reconnaissance group were scouting for caves to explore that they had heard were plentiful in that municipality. They were eventually led to Himaroto Cave and to Romualdo Montecalvo, 56, the Barangay Captain.
The village chief was welcoming enough, while the rest of the community had their suspicions. Treasure hunters, were what they thought of the group. Not surprising for a community tucked away in the mountains where to get there takes some special effort and an even more special incentive to go there at all.
The group were indeed treasure hunters but not of the kind imagined by the community. But it didn't help that on that first ever venture into the cave primarily to map it, they were seen to leave – in a hurry, it was said -- with big soggy sacks.
Indeed. But the sacks were to better carry their ropes and other caving equipment that had become wet, hence, heavier, by the water in the cave and the rain outside as well.
But more than the sacks they carried out, they left with the conviction that this was a cave well worth studying. More, they found the Captain to be sympathetic to their overtures about cave conservation as well as conservation of cave creatures particularly the bats who lived in the cave and whose droppings or guano was an important link in the cave's food chain. They were also useful for plant life outside the cave.
True enough, they found the cave system teeming with life. Some they could not readily identify. Not even with the help of leading local biologists connected with the Cebu Biodiversity Conservation Foundation to whom they showed pictures and described the creatures.
These same biologists, Lisa Marie Paguntalan and Godfrey Jakosalem, accompanied the group in their last inspection of the cave system to have a first hand look and they also spoke to the community during the assembly.
Up until this writing some of these creatures remain to be identified definitively.
Through those initial visits and in subsequent ones, the group got to know Capitan Maldo. He was a simple subsistence farmer, unschooled but who understood the underlying connections of life and the need for environmental conservation for there to be any life at all. They had no children except for all the children in the village. He was respected, looked up to. For this, he earned a number of leadership and governance awards from local civic and development organizations.
The group was looking forward to fruitful relationship with the community led by their Barangay Captain. The Barangay Council had been getting ready to pass a cave conservation ordinance with, among others, plans of deputizing the owner of the land where Himaroto Cave was located.
Then last Monday the group woke up to tragic news. Capitan Maldo and four others had been stabbed dead the previous afternoon by a deranged villager who went on a stabbing rampage, even wounding a responding policeman, a cousin of the Captain.
Like the community, the group was stunned. An emergency meeting was called. It was decided that they would attend the wake and the funeral of Capitan Maldo and the rest of the fatalities as a show of support and solidarity not only for the bereaved but also for the entire community. It was also agreed that a wall on the main entrance chamber to the Himaroto Cave shall be officially identified in the maps as the Capitan Maldo Wall.
Though not explicitly mentioned during the meeting, there was also the silent consensus that the group will continue to support the community, support the leadership of the First Councilor who, by law, is the successor to Capitan and support these first steps of this community towards being better stewards of their resources.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
07.12.07 kulturnatib
Cebu answering
Last Saturday, despite the deafening silence from government, local government particularly, about leading the people in the search for and implementation of solutions to solve global warming, the climate crisis and general environmental degradation, a small corner of the city was in tune with the global movement for just such solutions.
At the Outpost Restaurant, more than a thousand people showed up for an event that was highlighted by a concert with more than 25 local bands, audio-visual presentations on global warming and the simple things individuals can do to contribute to solutions, live feeds via the internet of similar concerts that were taking place in 7 major cities worldwide, performance art pieces and the launching of Greenpeace Philippines' Simple Lang campaign.
This event lasted from a little past 4pm of July 7 until a little past 4am of July 8.
That itself was quite remarkable. Especially since this being the rainy season, the event got rained on intermittently. Yet the people just crowded together under several large tents that had been pitched around the concert area for that eventuality and the music didn't skip a single beat.
More remarkable still was the spirit of voluntarism and civic mindedness that bound up the event starting with the organizers or the conveners group, who, many times, acted on their own initiative without much direction or decree from a central authority.
Also, behind the scenes, were many ordinary individuals who simply started from asking what they could do to help and then proceeded to deliver when they learned what there was to be done.
When an airline turned down the request for a sponsorship of a round-trip ticket for the Greenpeace representative to fly from and to Manila for the reason – quite valid, for sure – that the request was made at the last minute, several individuals stepped up and contributed for those tickets.
That airline would have been one of the biggest big corporate contributor to the event. Yet, the organizers, perhaps conscious that big endorsers tend to end up endorsing themselves, did not aggressively court such endorsements and contributions.
Instead, small local businesses donated goods, products and equipment. The Outpost Restaurant leads this short list. They not only made available the venue gratis but also donated a percentage of sales on drinks for the Bike4U Foundation.
This donation totaled some 18,000 pesos.
The Outpost will likely continue to be the focal point for continuing actions or campaigns to follow up on the initiatives launched during that event as many of those in the organizing group feel should be done.
In the U.S. the campaign for tackling the global warming crisis head-on is led by individual states – California, most prominently – and local governments, while the federal government only now is starting to move away from its denial state that this problem exists and is reaching crisis proportions.
That can be the case here as well. Though more likely to be led my individuals and the private sector as local executives are busy consolidating their power soon after the elections or simply busying themselves with business as usual.
The message of Saturday's event was that it is no longer business as usual. It can no longer be.
Last Saturday, despite the deafening silence from government, local government particularly, about leading the people in the search for and implementation of solutions to solve global warming, the climate crisis and general environmental degradation, a small corner of the city was in tune with the global movement for just such solutions.
At the Outpost Restaurant, more than a thousand people showed up for an event that was highlighted by a concert with more than 25 local bands, audio-visual presentations on global warming and the simple things individuals can do to contribute to solutions, live feeds via the internet of similar concerts that were taking place in 7 major cities worldwide, performance art pieces and the launching of Greenpeace Philippines' Simple Lang campaign.
This event lasted from a little past 4pm of July 7 until a little past 4am of July 8.
That itself was quite remarkable. Especially since this being the rainy season, the event got rained on intermittently. Yet the people just crowded together under several large tents that had been pitched around the concert area for that eventuality and the music didn't skip a single beat.
More remarkable still was the spirit of voluntarism and civic mindedness that bound up the event starting with the organizers or the conveners group, who, many times, acted on their own initiative without much direction or decree from a central authority.
Also, behind the scenes, were many ordinary individuals who simply started from asking what they could do to help and then proceeded to deliver when they learned what there was to be done.
When an airline turned down the request for a sponsorship of a round-trip ticket for the Greenpeace representative to fly from and to Manila for the reason – quite valid, for sure – that the request was made at the last minute, several individuals stepped up and contributed for those tickets.
That airline would have been one of the biggest big corporate contributor to the event. Yet, the organizers, perhaps conscious that big endorsers tend to end up endorsing themselves, did not aggressively court such endorsements and contributions.
Instead, small local businesses donated goods, products and equipment. The Outpost Restaurant leads this short list. They not only made available the venue gratis but also donated a percentage of sales on drinks for the Bike4U Foundation.
This donation totaled some 18,000 pesos.
The Outpost will likely continue to be the focal point for continuing actions or campaigns to follow up on the initiatives launched during that event as many of those in the organizing group feel should be done.
In the U.S. the campaign for tackling the global warming crisis head-on is led by individual states – California, most prominently – and local governments, while the federal government only now is starting to move away from its denial state that this problem exists and is reaching crisis proportions.
That can be the case here as well. Though more likely to be led my individuals and the private sector as local executives are busy consolidating their power soon after the elections or simply busying themselves with business as usual.
The message of Saturday's event was that it is no longer business as usual. It can no longer be.
Friday, July 06, 2007
07.05.07 kulturnatib
Earth calling Cebu
Where do good ideas come from? From other good ideas.
The good idea that spurred ex US vice president Al Gore to write his best-selling book, 'The Inconvenient Truth' that became the Oscar-winning documentary of the same title and is the inspiration for a worldwide event come Saturday, July 7 called “Live Earth : SOS For A Climate In Crisis” is, like all good ideas, a simple one.
The good idea behind all these is that ordinary individuals can do something about the present climate crisis, global warming and other environmental problems that beset us and ultimately threaten the human habitability of planet earth.
This good idea is also what is encouraging a group of individuals, disparate in age, gender and profession, but united behind this good idea; to get together and organize a similar event here.
The idea is to use the drawing power of music and the arts to put across the message that ordinary people can do something, mostly quite ordinary things, to address the present challenge and, most importantly, to start doing them now.
Thus, like the worldwide event that will take place simultaneously or one after the other, given time differences, in places such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Melbourne, Johannesburg, London and others, musicians and other artists will take center stage on this day.
Sharing the stage will be local environmental NGOs such as Fisheries for Sustainable Harvest (FISH), Cebu United for Sustainable Water (CUSW) and others and the national Greenpeace Philippines who will launch their nationwide campaign called Simple Lang that suggests practical things to do to conserve energy, consume wisely and behave with respect to our communities and planet.
The simplest of these, Greenpeace encourages, is the signing of a personal pledge for the planet. The signing of such pledges will also be the centerpiece of Greenpeace's involvement in the event.
Already more than 25 top local bands have committed to participate, as well as two literary groups, Women in Literary Arts (WILA) and Bathalanong Halad Alang sa Dagang (BATHALAD) and the performance art group of UP, Performa.
Randy Su, of the Outpost Restaurant, the venue for the event and the lead convenor, says that, “While the line-up of bands will guarantee that the crowd will have a rollicking good time, we would like to ensure that they leave the event remembering not only the good music but, more importantly, the message that they are empowered. That they can contribute to solutions to global problems and they can start contributing now.”
The organizers say that the concert is free. But they encourage people to bring used books and clothing that will be turned over to groups who can distribute the same. They also encourage people not to bring their cars or vehicles in order to already practice one of the things that can be done to reduce carbon emissions which is to utilize mass transport or the jeepney.
More, practically, since the event will be at the parking lot, parking will be a problem that is best avoided, they say.
Lastly, in order to attract an early crowd, the organizers are making provisions for giveaways though on a limited, first come first sever basis.
This event will be among the 6,000 local initiatives worldwide registered with the Live Earth Organization that will contribute to global awareness and, the organizers believe, local action.
Where do good ideas come from? From other good ideas.
The good idea that spurred ex US vice president Al Gore to write his best-selling book, 'The Inconvenient Truth' that became the Oscar-winning documentary of the same title and is the inspiration for a worldwide event come Saturday, July 7 called “Live Earth : SOS For A Climate In Crisis” is, like all good ideas, a simple one.
The good idea behind all these is that ordinary individuals can do something about the present climate crisis, global warming and other environmental problems that beset us and ultimately threaten the human habitability of planet earth.
This good idea is also what is encouraging a group of individuals, disparate in age, gender and profession, but united behind this good idea; to get together and organize a similar event here.
The idea is to use the drawing power of music and the arts to put across the message that ordinary people can do something, mostly quite ordinary things, to address the present challenge and, most importantly, to start doing them now.
Thus, like the worldwide event that will take place simultaneously or one after the other, given time differences, in places such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Melbourne, Johannesburg, London and others, musicians and other artists will take center stage on this day.
Sharing the stage will be local environmental NGOs such as Fisheries for Sustainable Harvest (FISH), Cebu United for Sustainable Water (CUSW) and others and the national Greenpeace Philippines who will launch their nationwide campaign called Simple Lang that suggests practical things to do to conserve energy, consume wisely and behave with respect to our communities and planet.
The simplest of these, Greenpeace encourages, is the signing of a personal pledge for the planet. The signing of such pledges will also be the centerpiece of Greenpeace's involvement in the event.
Already more than 25 top local bands have committed to participate, as well as two literary groups, Women in Literary Arts (WILA) and Bathalanong Halad Alang sa Dagang (BATHALAD) and the performance art group of UP, Performa.
Randy Su, of the Outpost Restaurant, the venue for the event and the lead convenor, says that, “While the line-up of bands will guarantee that the crowd will have a rollicking good time, we would like to ensure that they leave the event remembering not only the good music but, more importantly, the message that they are empowered. That they can contribute to solutions to global problems and they can start contributing now.”
The organizers say that the concert is free. But they encourage people to bring used books and clothing that will be turned over to groups who can distribute the same. They also encourage people not to bring their cars or vehicles in order to already practice one of the things that can be done to reduce carbon emissions which is to utilize mass transport or the jeepney.
More, practically, since the event will be at the parking lot, parking will be a problem that is best avoided, they say.
Lastly, in order to attract an early crowd, the organizers are making provisions for giveaways though on a limited, first come first sever basis.
This event will be among the 6,000 local initiatives worldwide registered with the Live Earth Organization that will contribute to global awareness and, the organizers believe, local action.
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