01.01.09 kulturnatib

Performance artist of the year
When I learned last September of my nomination for the Golden Cherry Award for Best Performance Artist of Year 2008 I was rather skeptical.

For one, up till then I had only done one public performance of note locally and for another, the year was hardly over. There was still a fourth of the year to go.

In art, as in life, so many things can happen in a day let alone a whole quarter of the year.

True enough, as the year wrapped up to a close, there was one unintended, perhaps even thoroughly spontaneous, performance art piece that has caught the imagination of the world and is now fast becoming a protest act of choice worldwide.

Of course, that may just be myself calling it a performance art piece. For all we know, it could really just have been an act of simple if angry, yet non-violent – or at least non-fatal – protest.

But my understanding of performance art that has deeply influencing my own practice of it sees journalist Muntader al-Zeidi's act of hurtling both his shoes at George Bush as an excellent example of performance art.

It was site specific, with a large element of spontaneity and widespread audience participation – albeit, in the case of Bush, unsolicited, even as he was the object of the performance piece's pointed artist statement.

The beauty of this piece is that it did not need a formal statement in the manner of a written statement that accompanies exhibits or most performances.

Nobody who knows anything about the Bush authored American fiasco in Iraq could miss the point even if the first viewing of the video documentation tends to miss out the cries uttered in Arabic by al-Zeidi translated thus: "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" And then, with the second shoe: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"

Aside from site specificity, there is also cultural specificity. This performance can only be done most effectively and authentically by an Arab for among Arabs throwing footwear is an act of supreme contempt and insult.

To even show the heels of one's shoe as one does when sitting with a crossed leg over other knee position is not encouraged among Arabs unless one specifically wishes an insult.

Not only do I identify with this act of art and protest as a performance artist but also as a writer, a cultural journalist.

At a shoe throwing protest activity in front of the US consulate in Montreal days before Christmas, activist and Canadian journalist Stephen Cristoff said that for journalists al-Zeidi's act should signify the taking off of the imagined 'objectivity' of journalism and throwing a clear light on those truly responsible for the horrific carnage in that devastated country.

Both of my favorite columnists are right. Raymund Fernandez, being a performance artist himself calls al-Zeidi's act an artistic and creative thing and hopes for the equivalent of to be applied on GMA and her allies which will then make him sleep fitfully.

Conrado de Quiros looks further into what that cultural equivalent would be for us and invites the public to share their thoughts and suggestions.

I join both in urging action. Peaceful, forceful, creative, empowering action to break the evil grip of GMA on the country.

For my part I will start with naming Muntader al-Zeidi performance artist of the year.

11.20.08 kulturnatib

Being, becoming and remembering
In Raymund Fernandez's last column, 'Guerilla Art,' I learned that, 'Tugpo,' . . . 'seems to have disappeared.'

Reading further, I realized that the hows, whys and wherefores of that seeming disappearance does not interest him. At least not as far as to share them with us. I suspect it is less a matter of reticence as a simple resolve that the intensity of this personal matter be accepted at face value.

While I have my opinion on how art is not just a personal matter, especially one that was very public, even if it did find itself in the no man's land of the public space subject to what amounts to the whim of a private owner – free speech, for example, is not constitutionally guaranteed in malls -- and one that I believed started to show the way towards public art that was neither heroic nor hagiographic, I respect Raymund's reasons for refusing to address this disappearance head-on.

In this light, this will be a remembering of that 'disappeared' sculpture. An epitaph, if you will.

I remember how upon seeing it for the first time I observed to Raymund that it was a fitting sculpture for a private company who has always prided itself in not being simply in the business of business but more so of the championing of local culture as an exemplary way of doing business.

As was and is our habit after more than three decades of continuing friendship and collaboration we immediately got into the thick of discussion. That time about public art in the city, its absence largely, and how the Arts Council of Cebu together with Ayala Center Cebu might finally provide the ground for its robust flowering in a public art garden no less.

We even launched into the stratosphere of artistic fantasy sharing what additional sculptures we would plant in this garden. As fantasies go these were definitely beyond the grip of gravity or what was practically possible in a city whose idea or affinity for the arts were rather basic and the willingness to spend for it was static; at almost zero.

The sculpture, though not in the most prominent area of the mall, was fittingly situated where people could promenade, sit down on the grass and enjoy the little of the clean and green space in the city. It was unobtrusive and one could almost bump into it especially as the day darkened since this was not lit.

Soon, as I would personally observe, it also became a favorite picture taking prop as it did provide for a variety of posing arrangements with the more adventurous photographers having a field day with its many visual and planar dimensions.

At the most immediate dimension, 'Tugpo' resonated with everything that was fun in the summer. It was a celebration of carefree innocence unmediated by technology and its exorbitant costs.

More than that, however, 'Tugpo' was the launching of a public sculpture that was without affectation or pretensions at greatness or holiness or even exemplariness.

Technically, as well, it introduced hammered copper into the vocabulary of the local art scene.

It also launched the pioneering foray of the Arts Council of Cebu into the visual and plastic arts where before they were firmly if exclusively limited to the performing arts. This changed, for the better, regard for it by many artists, myself included, leading to very fruitful collaborations.

So, Tugpo was many launchings. Not the least of which is itself into what I hope will be an even better appreciation of public art. Thus, Tugpo cannot disappear. Tugpo has not disappeared. It has simply and finally flown away. It has become what it was meant to be. A kite turning into one of Elton John's skyline pigeons; at rest in flight.

Like Raymund himself, Tugpo personified. He has launched and is continuing to launch experimental art - these days performance art, where rest and flight are a circular continuum into being, becoming and remembering.

11.13.08 kulturnatib

Biere de Saint Michel
Quebec is the Canadian province that takes language seriously. Very seriously. It has been said that Quebec is more French than the French. While the rest of the world, for example, is amenable enough to using 'computer' no matter what language they speak and appropriating it accordingly, in Quebec it has to be 'ordinateur.'

As part of this seriousness with language, product labeling are required by law to be in both English and French. This goes as well with names of businesses though implementation has been less than strict. Thus, Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, also has to be PFK or Poulet Frit Kentucky.

Having worked at packaging design in a country a similar law was in effect, I am familiar with the difficulties this present. Although having prepared materials provided to us and our main concerns were designing these in a visually appealing and effective way, I was aware that the two language requirement immediately doubled the chances of mistakes.

Many of us are familiar with or have been victims of China-made products whose accompanying labels or assembly and operating manuals run from the simply funny to the dangerously wrong. I once bought a computer table that made me wonder if a rocket assembly manual had mistakenly found its way into the box.

Last week I had the opportunity to see how one of our favorite products will fare in this bilingual territory.

I had a performance art piece that included a message in the bottle routine. Since the message or the messages were about global warming and rising sea levels and how the Philippines being an archipelago will surely be affected I decided that for maximum impact these had to be contained in bottles from the Philippines.

I knew that such bottles were available here. I had seen them before. What I wasn't sure was whether they were really going to be bottled in the Philippines or in Hong Kong or Spain. I had also seen such bottles from previous travels.

To my most pleasant surprise they were indeed bottled in the Philippines. This was the 'aha' moment that convinced me that I was going in the right direction with this piece.

Since the bottles had to be empty to accommodate the notes with the messages, I proceeded to empty them upon arriving home. In the best way I knew how.

This also provided me the opportunity for label and language checking. Checking my progress with the language, it turned out, that is. I had to spot where the translation had tripped.

I passed my test. I spotted all the mistakes.

The first one was easy. Premium Lager is translated into Lager Premiere, meaning first beer which does not technically translate into premium. The correct translation would be Lager de Premiere Classe.

The next two mistakes were grammatical. A matter of verbs in French called the Passe Compose. A matter of an additional e at the end of the verb, which for the most part is preceded by an accented e.

And this after a whole sentence describing flavor is not translated at all.

So, a barely passing grade for San Miguel Beer.

But, since flavor needs no translation, SMB still gets my thumbs up. Unfortunately, the translation that is most understood here is not French but Econospeak and in this language Premium Lager translates into expensive.

SMB is clearly not your hockey night drinking companion.

Still, as I was collecting the bottles after my performance piece I could only retrieve one of the the four I released. Clearly the bottles attracted some interest. Someone admitted to encouraging somebody else to keep what he said was a classic collectible.

It is often counseled not to shoot the messenger if the message is not good news. In this case the advise wasn't just not to shoot the messenger, but better: keep it.

10.23.08 kulturnatib

Art auction
No word can be more appropriate for what will take place tomorrow at SM City Cebu Art Center. The word is 'auction,' and is derived from the Latin augēre, which means to increase or augment.

Increase and augment are precisely the objectives for Mugnang-Halad. Fund-raising is the more popular term for this.

But, since this is also an exhibit, the organizers, Pusod, Inc., surely hope that it won't only be funds that will be raised but certainly art awareness and appreciation as well.

With the works on the block and on exhibit the viewing and bidding public will be treated to one of the finest artistic smorgasbord from artists across the country.

The artists are grouped into six groups or sets with an equal number of art works per set and an even distribution among them of the better and less nationally known. It will be the sets that will be up for grabs or bids.

All it takes is a P3,000 ticket or joiner's fee.

The money that will be raised with the auction, which is, frankly, the more immediate concern, will go towards increasing and augmenting the funds for the hosting of the Visayas Islands Visual Artists Exhibit/Conference (VIVA ExCon).

The bulk of the funding, however, is provided by a grant from the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the main partner of VIVA ExCon since its inception.

This ExCon, established in 1990, happens every two years – making it a biennial – is the longest running, uninterrupted art event of its kind in the country. It will be its 10th edition or the 18th year in existence.

More significantly, it will be the repeat edition here.

After going around the major Visayan islands, a move that was strongly endorsed by the Cebu delegation, it subsequently saw uneven hosting success yet at the same time significantly increasing interest for the visual arts in the host areas, the VIVA ExCon is returning to Cebu next month from the 27th to the 29th.

In 1998 Cebu hosted the 5th edition, after Bacolod (twice), Dumaguete and Ilo-ilo. That hosting provided some benchmarks for the VIVA ExCon and similar events in the country; The most well attended, the most extensive simultaneous exhibits in three different venues and the longest in duration and, most importantly, exemplary financial management.

This, admittedly, is not one of the most attractive colors for most artists especially for an event of this scope and complexity. Yet, in 1998 Cebu artists proved that it can be done.

This year, beginning with this auction, a new generation of artists who have graduated from playing assisting roles in 1998 to leadership positions now, will prove it again.

What will be more difficult to prove is where the Visayan artists or Visayan arts is headed. In all these years that has been a question that the ExCons succeed mostly in side stepping. Or, even not bothering to ask.

This is the million dollar question that will take more than an auction or, perhaps, even an ExCon to answer.

10.16.08 kulturnatib

Art and autumn
I am not a landscape artist. Or, more precisely, I am not a landscape painter. I do not paint landscapes. I have, however, tried my hand at it. In art school you have to. At least in the art school that I attended. I wouldn't say I was any good. Just good enough to squeeze through with a passing grade.

Over a year later, though, after passing over arts school, I tried landscape painting again. Just that one time. For no other reason than the landscape seemed to be begging to be painted. Or, as some of my landscape artist friends would probably have it, it was challenging my talents, like a young, sassy girl who would goad the hormonal control of a young boy.

The latter is actually more like it. I was the young boy with more hormones than I knew what to do with and, worse, nothing to do it with.

A dorm mate in school had invited me over to their place for a weekend. Their house was on a hill that had one of the most glorious views of the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, which, in autumn was even more glorious.

The mountain was on fire; Golden yellow, luscious orange, blazing red, royal purples, deep browns. Such, and all the hues in between, are the colors of autumn.

But I had none of those colors, or any other color, for that matter. I had exchanged musical chromatics for visual hues. Yet, the moment called for a visual palette.

My dorm mate's sister came to the rescue. Her make-up kit did, to be exact.

I don't remember exactly how that attempt -- probably the first landscape painting with a make-up kit in the history of art -- turned out. It would be safe to say that it would have confirmed the grade I earned in landscape painting class.

Also, it would have reinforced what I learned in all those odd years in art school though this wasn't taught consciously or was even explicitly part of the curriculum: art as a work of humans is different from nature however one tries to approach, mimic or copy nature using whatever medium.

This distinction or divide between art or culture and nature is, thankfully -- others would say frustratingly, -- not so clean and clear cut. Discussion, disagreement and debate on their respective boundaries and territories continue. They keep art schools in business. Artists, too.

Here, in the northern hemisphere, it is autumn once again. It is the same but different. The leaves are still in their falling fiery fineness. But they no longer tempt me. No longer, at least, to paint them. I am beyond that. I no longer see the point in that, though, for others, some artist friends who will no doubt call this season a landscape painting heaven, it will continue to have its allure for capturing in art particularly in the genre called realism or naturalism.

I am content now just to walk through a forest canopy of this kaleidoscope of color that, for all its liveliness is really a farewell to one season and the welcoming of another.

Strapped on my back is another life, 6 kilos and gaining fast, really a season coming into her own as I give way mine, hopefully, along the way providing her with enough experiences in the appreciation of both culture and nature for her to learn to paint her life as she needs to, however she wants to.

10.09.08 kulturnatib

The encampment
It is a dark night. It is past 8pm. Because it is now officially Autumn, it is cold. Why, then, exhibit an outdoor installation art piece at this time of the year? And, why, is it open for public viewing only between 7pm and midnight?

The answers soon present themselves. There are 70 of them although one reads them better only with the help of a provided LED mini flashlight or, better, one appreciates them best when one steps inside.

They are printed in explanatory text on plastic laminated sheets in both English and French hung on the door flap, citing historical references, statistical information or more poignantly and powerfully telling personal stories.

They are contained in daily objects, in art works, in mementos, in diaries, in photographs and other things that are summarized in the explanatory or narrative text yet they provide the gestalt that says more than words in strikingly or hauntingly creative ways.

They are inside white canvass field tents that, in its militarily precise arrangement, can only be some sort of encampment, the sort that the exhibit statement suggests to be metaphorically of the archaeological kind where, “a dig for artifacts is replaced by a dig into the collective memory . . .” or, also, collective forgetting or denial.

They are at Major's Hill Park, a popular public space within walking distance from the halls of parliament, in the shadows of the spires of this institution representing the collective called Canada.

They are the installation art piece called, “The Encampment,” a work conceived by Thom Sokoloski and creative collaborators from all over the country who have responded to the call for participation in creating this piece that deals with the issue and reality of persons with intellectual disabilities through history, legislation, social attitudes and more compellingly, through personal stories of intellectually disabled individuals themselves.

They are classified by authorities as having an IQ of 70 or less. Hence, the 70 tents.

The tents are largely in the dark. Each are supplied with a camping lamp that illuminates the inside and their contents. But only so much that one really has to step in for closer inspection. From the outside, they glow dimly, making them look like floating cocoons.

On each door flap post is a small, key-chain size LED flashlight for reading accompanying text. The power switch is difficult to operate, making reading less than straight forward.

Yet one reads about the wholesale discrimination, disregard, exclusion, violence and dehumanization that visits the lives and days of the the intellectually disabled with communities often abetting it, at the very least by looking away. One also reads of the victory of some who persist and triumph though never far from the shadow of the stigma.

This exhibit, a version of which will also be installed in Toronto and New York, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Association for Community Living, whose advocacy is assisting communities in becoming more welcoming and supportive of people with intellectual disabilities.

How better to celebrate than with art? Or, even so much better, participative, collaborative, engaging, inclusion challenging public art?

09.18.08 kulturnatib

Art award, almost
Like many, I am a surfer dude. Yet, as with them, only in the safer waters of the internet, though some would argue that these waters are even more treacherous.

Certainly that can be said for the Too Good To Be True banners that proliferate in the internet like pimples on a teener's face. Still, people must continue to fall for this ruse because there they are continuing to snare people with,'You Have Just Won Something That Is Too Good To Be True.'

When I was told the other week that I have been nominated for an arts award, it was just like one of those TGTBT internet banners. But, more compelling.

Enough that I looked at the source of the news. And then like the conscientious journalist that I try to be, I looked for confirmation from an independent source.

There they were; Both original source and confirmation. Yet, I wondered, where was my invitation to the awards event? Still, I reasoned if this was really what it was, they cannot or will not turn me away. I should just show up.

The awards venue was to be at a community cultural center. Driving through the area earlier in the day, we didn't see the center. But we saw an old church. There was some confusion with some friends about which church this was. St. Patrick's, maybe, as it is on St. Patrick's Street. No, others disagreed. St. Patrick's is somewhere else.

Turns out that this church was the old St. Brigid's that has now been converted into the St. Brigid's Centre for the Arts and Humanities, which, if you didn't know about the conversion and you stumbled inside, you would never know.

It is a more than century old church. And it showed. And, no disrespect to the religious sentiments of the faithful, what better showcase for the arts and humanities of which the divine is its loftiest goal than to keep it just the way it was?

The first guest band performers, though, quickly dispelled that sentiment or faith, if you like. It was no longer the way it was. It is no longer the way it is. And as if to underline this sense of confusion of text and context, this band -- metal or trash rock, I believe that's what they would be called these days -- was introduced with a reading from the Gospel of Mark where Jesus was casting out Legion or the demons. Hmmm.

The original notice, posted in one of the most widely used cultural and art events portal for Ottawa and the immediate region, said that this was a formal wear event. Sunday's best, in other words, which, makes sense especially for a church.

But artists, being who they are all over the world, this sense comes out a little different. A tie, I thought, would be just enough nod towards formality without being too formal that it would make me look like I was trying too hard not to miss my own funeral.

I wasn't too far off. There was only one person I remember going full monty formal wear-wise. He had reason to be. He had to have the look of Authority. He was up on stage handing out the envelopes with the winner's names, which, despite the look of Authority he screwed up a few times. Happens.

Mine wasn't among the winners, though it was called out. I was among what my friends at Habagat would call the first, second and third losers, though not in that particular order. It didn't matter.

But it did. I would be falsely humble to deny that it did. Or, does. Yet, only in the acknowledgment that I am, so to speak, in the game. Though, I am not playing for that alone. Hmmm.

09.11.08 kulturnatib

Same difference
Between 6.30 and 9 in the evening of the same day is a two and a half hour difference. But with a distance of more than 13,000 kilometers between the two events that would have respectively started on each of those two hours, the difference is both far apart and then quite close.

The other Friday, XO?'s, 'XO? Purdoy' started or was to start off at 9pm at the Tapas Lounge. At 6.30 pm that same night, Fait Maison's, 'Dennis Tourbin Redux,' was to start. However, it started late.

Had both been on the same time zone, this would have brought Fait Maison's starting time closer to XO?'s. But, no, the time zones of both are twelve hours apart and Fait Maison's tardiness would increase this even more. Yet, based on experience, XO? would have been late in starting as well.

This would even things out and was somewhat comforting. Artists, perhaps on all sides of the globe, are no Mussolinis. Their trains do not have to be on time and often are not.

Beyond this, however, there were a more close proximities that bring both events closer together than separate them in the differences of distance in time.

First off, both were performance art events. I am familiar with XO? and the performance art scene in Cebu. For now, XO? is about the only performance art scene there. No, that's not quite right. There is MindWorks of UP Cebu. But, not to disparage the work that the students put into MindWorks, that is just it: MindWorks is students' work. XO? is graduate school, doctorate level.

Fait Maison is the same. This was my second Fait Maison event. I was more impressed this time than the first one.

Fait Maison translates, in English, into home made. This name partakes of the pervasive DIY ethos of performance art that distinguishes it from the performing arts where specialization or virtuosity is often the goal and its display often the only point for performing.

In performance art, the mastery of a medium is requisite only up to the point at which its mastery is able to communicate the message or content. Thus, while some 'acting' could be involved, it doesn't amount to 'theater.'

Also, Fait Maison takes on the other meaning of home-made in that their events often take place in homes. Thus, this time, the venue is at the home of Dennis Tourbin, one of the most respected artists in Canada, for whom this event was a tribute.

This being mostly the case for Fait Maison's performance events, there are things that they can, and as I understand, often, do that XO? cannot. Mainly, I would like to believe, because, so far, XO?'s venues have been public and commercial.

Here is where the difference becomes wider than simple distance and time.

XO? has not featured nudity in any of its events, so far. Fait Maison has and, again, did during the Tourbin tribute. I will stand up against the blanket condemnation of the prudes and say that there is prurient or gratuitous nudity and there is artistic nudity.

The nudity during the tribute was entirely artistic. It referred immediately, at least for those who know their art history, to the nude in Edouard Manet's 'Olympia,' though in this performance she is decked with a headgear that makes plain what in the painting -- an orchid tucked in the hair -- is only alluded to; that she is a courtesan.

Yet, in the performance, the nude fans herself with a fan that one one side is written, 'object,' and on the other, ' abject.' Then she reads a poem about, “ this is what about I like being a girl.”

The performance thrusts in our face the hypocrisy of the 'objectification' of women who then are pitied for their 'abject' state and, what's more, judging that such state is the result of her 'immorality.'

XO? has tackled immorality. But not this kind and not in this way. But then again are the different kinds so different?

This will be an interesting question to ask when XO? and Fait Maison can come together for a joint performance event. Maybe next year. Inshallah.

08.28.08 kulturnatib

Purdoy

Recently, I received two letters from XO?, so far the only active performance art group in the city. They are so active that most of the mail I get is mainly about their activities or events. These two were no different. They both had the same news of a coming soon XO? event.

But, that was as far as the similarity went. One said the event was going to be at this place, the other said it was going to be at another place. Not surprising really. When i was active with XO?, it wasn't extraordinary that the venue for events was finalized not long before it was to start.

However, not long after these letters I received another one. An update. A corrective. Now, the two stories jibed. It is final. Tomorrow, XO? has a performance event at Tapas Lounge. Raymund Fernandez, the XO? Elder and fellow columnist, has confirmed this in his column, “Riding the tiger.”

Now, a matter of public record, it is a performance art event titled, “XO? Purdoy.”

Raymund wrote the first of the two letters mentioned above. Already there, he mentioned plans for this event and the title. I immediately wrote a reply that I then thought to develop further into an essay, a column.

I received Raymund's letter soon after I attended a performance event at the gallery with a solid reputation for such events. In fact, when invitations were posted to participate in that event, I thought it was an opportunity, a foot in the door, to the performance art scene here.

The short of that long story is that I ended up not participating, but going as a guest nonetheless. To my disappointment I found it no more polished than the student's work at UP Cebu's annual performance and conceptual art event, MindWorks, and even much more unorganized, which is worse than being disorganized.

When I realized that this was the fastest way to get nowhere, I decided to call it a night. Outside were people who had realized the same thing. I chatted with one of them, a performance artist himself, and gave my honest opinion of the proceedings in the basement, when he asked, and also that I was supposed to perform as well had a mix-up in communications not happened. But, I added, it was just as well that I did not.

Yes, he answered, I was invited, too. But, he said, I'm no longer in the market for doing performance art for free. Especially after making serious efforts, taking long hours, a lot of sweat and resources preparing for something that turns out to be quite amateurish, which, he added, is the best way to turn people off from performance art.

Raymund's letter took me back to that conversation, took me back to XO?, the practice of performance art in Cebu, my own practice presently and the matter of being 'purdoy.'

There is no question, at this point, of XO? or performance art in Cebu saying that they are not in the market for doing performance art for free. That would be foolhardy and would immediately be considered haughty.

The fact is that there is hardly any 'market' for performance art in Cebu. This can only be created as artists do performance art. For now, something just has to be on the table, attractive, serious yet fun enough for people to stay at the table long enough for them to realize the worth of paying for it.

Cebuanos or the 'market' is not paying directly for performance art. But there are those who are willing to foot the bill, who see the value of performance art. Stephan Zenz of After Hours-Tapas Lounge is one of them. Randy Su and Junx Muaña of the Outpost Restaurant are another. Bambi Beltran and son Ivan of Turtle's Nest Book Cafe, still another.

The performance artists get beer or drinks and sometimes food but, best of all, a welcoming venue open to all sorts of creative activities.

These are opportunities that needs to be matched by a seriousness of artistic purpose that will be evident in the level of maturity of the works and the dedication of the artists.

After that will the performance artist still be in the market for free performance art?

For me that has not or never been the question. It has always been, most importantly, the opportunity to express what a particular piece has to say and the opportunity the venue and the organizing provides that respects that expression and the furtherance of other expressions, in fact, even other forms of art.

Of course, a paycheck is certainly a helpful way of expressing respect. And for curated performance art events here like the recent, “TimeSquared,” I was involved in that respectful expression was indeed welcome. As, for sure, it will be there. Puhon.

08.21.08 kulturnatib

Cestmoidazmikoni

This month is a busy month for me, performance art-wise. It could have been busier if not for two performances that, one, did not and, the other, will not push through.

Did not because communication from this performance artist whose event I was to join ended up in my email spam box. By the time I realized this, it was too late to pick up preparations I had set aside thinking that, not hearing back from her, she had decided against my performing. Not so, but it was too late to adequately prepare for that since I was already in the thick of preparations for another event where I was to do a performance art piece at.

The other one, scheduled for the end of the month, will not push through. At least not my participation. It wasn't all that sure to begin with actually. But now with one of the main groups organizing this in the throes of disbandment, the same group under whose aegis I performed last week, the most I can count on is to be invited as a guest.

Still, two performance art pieces within a week of each other is busy enough for me, especially since both have been quite challenging technically.

Cestmoidazmikno is my most recent performance art piece. The title is a fusion of words from French, English and Bisaya, which all mean the same thing: Me.

This, again, is a participative performance piece. This time about identity, which I found to be appropriate for an event that bills itself as a celebration of cultural diversity and brings together the growing immigrant communities in this city of Gatineau which, so far, has no organized Pinoy representation.

For this piece I used the medium of the portrait. Or, more exactly, the self-portrait. The myth of Narcissus must have its equivalent in all cultures. There is no portrait we love most than our own. Yet there is none that creates so much confusion, confabulation, consternation or protestation that, “I can't do it!”

The setting for my piece is that of a booth similar to that of many carnivals or fairs where one can appropriate another persona simply by sticking one's face through a hole of a painted or photo image where otherwise its face would be, and then have their picture taken.

My image used the different immigrant newspapers in the area to form the silhouette of a person. And I took through-the-hole 'portraits' with a camera look-alike box similarly wrapped in the same newspapers. For added effect a real camera's flash bulb provided illumination.

For some people this effect was real enough to make them doubt what they could plainly see was simply a corrugated box with a protruding cylinder with a visible picture of an eye at the inner end of it and without a lens at the front end.

The resulting 'picture' had, instead of their faces in the hole, a blank oval space where they would then, I instructed them, draw their self-portrait. At the bottom of the sheet was the congratulations, which they were allowed to see only after they were through drawing, “You have made your own self-portrait despite the image imposed or required of you by others; the media of your own community and that of the larger community. Or, have you?

Expectedly, this did not make the same sense for everybody. Reactions ranged from, “. . . “ to “ha?” to “hmm” to “aha” to “ha! clever!” Still, everybody simply enjoyed doing their faces, with the children spending the most time on theirs, still unencumbered, it seems, by the baggages of identity.

08.14.08 kulturnatib

Art does best

In no other art form is weather a decisive factor than in performance art. This, among other things, is what sets apart performance art from the performing arts.

While the performing arts is generally sheltered from the vagaries of weather, often in climate-controlled environments of theaters, concert halls or some indoor venue, performance art -- because often it is site specific and just as often the site is outdoors -- has to work around those same vagaries especially when the performance art event is billed as “rain or shine.”

Exactly how the performance event Saturday, last weekend, was billed as.

The event was Time Squared or Time to the second power. This was the second annual summer art festival of Gallery 101 in Ottawa. It featured video screenings from the Available Light Screening Collective, performance art from Fait Maison (HomeMade) and a musical duo (electric guitar and drums) whose name escapes me now.

Rain and shine, indeed, it was that Saturday. Thus a tent was on standby for that eventuality. It became the refuge for the musical duo and performance pieces that could not weather the rain. Such as mine and another one whose karaoke setting, as happened, best fitted under the tent.

The four other performances were done in the rain while one was done when the sun made a brief appearance. The artists had anticipated and prepared for this.

I had done the same. I had anticipated rain and was prepared for the fact that it would be impossible if not foolhardy to invite a dozen possible strangers to the table for a soup meal while being drizzled on.

But, that was as far as that went. Which is what happens in performance art; What is possible is inevitable.

As mentioned in my immediately previous column, my piece involved inviting a dozen people to eat with me some alphabet noodle soup. The noodles spelled out certain phrases or sentences, the eating of which, while not necessarily acknowledging a mistake as implied by the saying, 'eating one's own words,' could lead to a healthy skepticism about such words.

I had provided chopsticks instead of spoons not only as a reference to my being Asian, but also mostly to force a more careful appreciation of the fact of the alphabet noodles and the corresponding phrases they formed.

For most, this was immediately apparent. For some it was an invitation to extend the performance, to add their own layer, their own skin as it were to the total onion of meaning to the piece.

Stefan is a performance artist himself and he was among those who received an invitation to the table. As soon as he sat down, he set about with his own performance, which others followed but not with the same thoroughness and doggedness.

He picked each letter carefully and properly with the chopsticks and reconstructed them on his place mat. This grabbed the attention of some others and encouraged their emulation for which he got a much deserved applause when the entire phrase, that turned out to be with the most number of letters, was completely reconstructed.

Then, to end it with a flourish, he proceeded to eat them by licking them off the place mat.

While that ending I found to be simply in keeping with his rather flamboyant personality, it was the careful reconstruction of the phrase that I realized was where he accepted the challenge of the piece and truly ate the words that not only led to skepticism but was from the beginning led by skepticism.

He was immediately skeptical of my claim in the exhibit statement found in the place mat that the phrase in his bowl was complete and he seriously took the invitation, also found in the place mat, to 'feel free to ascertain that no letters are missing.'

While I took pains to make sure that the phrases were complete -- in fact, there were some missing letters reported, but not in Stefan's bowl -- I simply did not expect that anyone would actually try to find out. Certainly not with the same elan and flourish as Stefan.

In some way Stefan did me better. Yet, at the end of that rainy day, it was the art that did best.

08.07.08 kulturnatib

Art and asking

After some months of hiatus, I shall, tomorrow, pick up where I left off performance art-wise. I did actually do a performance for a group of Filipinos and other Canadian guests who were part of the annual human rights training conducted by the Equitas a human rights training NGO in Montreal last June.

For that one I did a performance that had its world premier at the Outpost Restaurant in 2007, entitled, “My Rice Is Nice.” It was in support of the 'No to GMO Rice' by Greenpeace, a campaign that is facing an uphill battle especially with the current food crisis, where GMOs are touted as a solution. I thought it was fitting for that Montreal audience since access to food is definitely a human right.

The performance tomorrow will be more similar than different. Similar because it will partake of some elements that have been central to many of my previous performances. Chief of them being that it will be participative.

Food will again be a central element in tomorrow's performance but it won't be food as subject but food as object. As such the operative relationship towards it will be defined by the verb to eat.

My performance then involves eating. The title is, “The Last Supper / La Dernière Cène.” Reference to that last supper most of us are familiar with are as tangential as the fact that 12 members of the general audience will be invited to join me for a meal of noodle soup is incidental.

The noodle in the soup, however, is pivotal. It will be of the alphabet kind that continues to be enjoyed by children and some parents who think that eating them actually nourishes better reading and writing.

More than reading and writing, what I hope for the noodles to nourish is thinking. Skeptical thinking.

This is what the performance statement says: In the New Testament, St John the Evangelist, says 'In the beginning was the Word.' Since then words have poured forth from men and women that have served as foundations for their creations, institutions and actions.

Many of these words have turned out to be misleading, erroneous or downright lies. In some cases they have been acknowledged as such. These words are then said to have been eaten.

But, in many more cases such deception, error, or lies have not been acknowledged. In fact, they continue to enjoy widespread circulation and support.

Eating these words might not mitigate their effects nor lessen their stranglehold but at the very least it could lead to a state of healthy skepticism.

Most of these words are of the kind that will be closer to what I think is the particular historical experience of most of the expected audience or of the performance venue which is across the Canadian Parliament. As is easily imaginable, there is nothing objective about the choice of these words.

I have to admit, too, that none of these words have anything to do with art, which, there are, if an artist is to be honest, a lot to be skeptical about. Yet, no longer so much, I'm finding, about the viability of performance art as practice for me here and, with growing confidence for my comrades in art, there as well.

07.24.08 kulturnatib

Fish meal

Science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov once said that the most exciting phrase to hear in science is not Archimedes's “Eureka!,” but, “That's funny . . . .”

I call this the Asimov moment, which, I had recently. It wasn't a moment of scientific discovery. Instead it was simply happening upon something that made me not only say, 'that's funny,' but actually had me in stitches, laughing and thinking there is really nothing beyond man's imagination that he would not do.

The picture and the accompanying article recently in the newspaper that I regularly read that triggered my Asimov moment immediately reminded me of a friend, Paul Foley, who, soon after we met him, we baptized as Poloy.

He was a footloose, maverick environmentalist. For most of the time he was in the Philippines he was advocating the cause of the Thresher sharks off Malapascua, an advocacy that didn't win him too many friends.

He was developing a theory, which he was writing into a masteral thesis, that the particular and peculiar behavior of these sharks, that make them the singular most compelling attraction to Malapascua, especially for divers, was a learned one.

This behavior involves the sharks making their way from the deep, 230 meters, off the sides of Monad Shoal near Malapascua up to a shallower depth of 20 meters, in coral reefs, where they have a symbiotic relationship with a small fish called cleaning wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) that eat dead skin and bacteria from their bodies and even from inside their mouths.

The wrasses set up what are in fact cleaning stations that attract not only sharks but other big fish as well.

The sharks do this with enough regularity and promptness to establish a growing tourist industry in this tiny island north of Cebu.

Yet, as Poloy theorized it is this same industry with its largely unregulated growth fueled mostly by diving activities that will, as they become more intrusive into the thresher sharks habits and habitat, eventually lead to the de-learning of the very behavior that made it an attraction in the first place.

It was from Poloy that I first heard about the cleaning wrasse and, in fact, about thresher sharks and in particular those in Malapascua Island.

Now, from the newspaper article it appears that another cleaning fish, not the wrasse though but the Garra Rufa is being employed by a spa in Washington D.C., for pedicure and other feet cleaning duties.

This fish is also known as doctor fish because in outdoor pools of some spas in Turkey, where they are indigenous in river basins there, they are used to feed on the skin of patients with psoriasis, although caution has been advised on claims of causing a cure by this method.

While this could be the first instance of such a fish spa in the U.S., where the owner, John Ho, is hoping to establish a network of Doctor Fish Massage franchises, the use of this fish has been spreading to other parts of the world, including in Asia, since 2006.

I don't know where Poloy is now. Last I heard from him he was in Australia. Maybe he has heard about these fish spas or now spa fish. Maybe this can bring him back to Malapascua. To study if the cleaning wrasse can be adapted to cleaning feet instead of sharks. For what? To bring in more tourists?

Well, again, maybe not.

07.10.08 kulturnatib

Starting young

Two years ago was my first time at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Started in 1979, this festival has now become a powerhouse in the international jazz fest circuit and has helped establish Montreal as the city of festivals.

While at that time our visit to the MIJF had a singular purpose; that of seeing the legendary bluesman BB King in a pre-festival concert that also launched his 80th birth year world concert tour, this time around our aim was more scatter-shot.

This meant, and this is the feature I like about this festival, to just wander around the festival site where around the main -- meaning paying -- concert hall at the Place des Arts there are anywhere between 4 - 6 mini-concerts, often simultaneous, starting as early as 2pm until 11pm, with most concerts lasting an hour to an hour and a half.

By no means does this distinction between the paying and free concerts translate necessarily into quality of music. Often this is just a comparison between apples and oranges. They are just both fruits yet different with respect to the most qualities that distinguishes them separately. In the same way, paying and free jazz are both jazz. The most immediate difference is that the former will simply make your wallet or pocket or even credit card lighter.

Also, scatter-shot doesn't necessarily mean blind shot. There is a very comprehensive schedule that is as reliable and punctual as Mussolini's trains. It is published in a comprehensive festival guide and are displayed on billboards prominently positioned throughout the festival site. So, we did have our finger on one or two acts, but the rest depended on what was playing next door or how interesting it was.

Needless to say, the central business district of Montreal where the festival is located is swarming with people during the festival. Also, it goes without saying that this festival is timed for the sunniest, longest and balmiest days of summer.

What's more, these are all kinds of people, including, I just noticed this year, small people. There is no reason to think that it is only this year that children are prominent participants in the festival. The only reason, perhaps, is that one normally does not see what one is not looking for. Or, in this case, looking out for.

This time, we had a newborn to look out for. Suddenly, unlike two years ago, children were all over the place. Some in their places -- in prams, slings and even bicycle seats -- and some not. We brought along our pram on this trip, but decided it was too big -- it has been described as the Humvee of prams -- and unwieldy to maneuver around the crowds. Plus, there was the matter of hauling it on escalators on the subway train stations. Again, picture a Humvee.

We decided on a sling. Which is about the best way an infant can enjoy music in a position that is also enjoyable for the caretaker in a concert where seats or chairs have to be self-provided.

There you are standing with the baby pressed to your chest who feels your heartbeat as it thumps along with the beat of the music. While the ears are not in the best reception position, the sound system amplifies the music very well and often there are enough people around knowledgeable with the music to hum or sing along.

There is no way then that the baby misses the music. It could be argued that they would, at that age, be too young to make out anything of the music much less retain it. But this argues against the universal practice of the lullaby and the singing to the baby to sleep, calm them or even introduce them into the particular world of sounds and words and the general horizon of the imagination.

Realizing this, the organizers have taken very welcome steps to make the festival child friendly. Most immediately, prams are available gratis, as long as supply last, for use within the festival site for however long on a single day.

Then there are special booths where children can play or otherwise be engaged, like having their faces or other body parts painted.

There is event a diaper changing and breast feeding tent. But here is where the organizers failed to anticipate the number of mothers who would avail of this facility. There was only one such tent with a single changing table. The breast feeding facility was just as incompetently organized. A single chair affair really plus a hastily commandeered folding stool from the adjoining tent where the free parking for prams that the owners, for some reason didn't want to push around.

So, the inevitable line-up and grumbling and babies wailing -- ours mostly.

Still, that was about the only bump in the otherwise smooth festival where it is almost a shoe-in that many years later the children who were the clueless cuties in this festival would be the parents who would be bringing their own cuties to the same yet different festival.

07.03.08 kulturnatib

Pinoy on Canada Day

Tuesday, this week, was the big national holiday here. Here is Canada, but it is also, more immediately, Quebec, which celebrated its own national day, known as Fête du Quebec, also on Tuesday, last week.

If that sounds confusing, it is because, among other things, Canada doesn't have an Independence Day like we do. In fact, it was only in 1982 that the last vestiges of political control by Great Britain ended, though, as I learned only of late, that the Head of State of Canada is still Queen Elizabeth II. This is mostly titular however.

Now the thing with Quebec is a different matter about which I am still learning. Many of these lessons are not immediately obvious although if one were observant enough it is there for all to see. Like federal government buildings or those used by the federal government in this side of the river, away from the complexes on the Ottawa side always hang giant Canada flags a week ahead of Canada Day.

This, I was told, was a silent but not too subtle reminder to Quebec which, on the day the giant Canada flags hang, becomes a sea of blue, the color of the Quebec flag, that Canada or the Anglophones rule.

Tuesday was such a beautiful day to be spent on politics. Especially one that I am not only unfamiliar with beyond its resonances with the Tagalog-Bisaya divide but, more importantly, I have nothing to do with directly not being a citizen of this country.

So, on beautiful Canada Day, this Tuesday, I decided to be Pinoy and pay homage to the one thing that unites all Filipinos and commands their allegiance more than any occupant of Malacanang does; basketball.

Having been convinced not to wait to find one in a garage sale as had I originally intended and to buy a brand new one instead. I bought it and decided that Canada Day was the best time to break the ball in and to take advantage of the free facilities in the park just outside our apartment.

At first, it was just my partner and myself. We were just shooting ball and flexing muscles that had been underutilized throughout the winter and, more recently, with the forced domesticity brought on by a newborn. After a while we were joined by another couple, friends, who were on their way to the swimming pool next door to the basketball and tennis courts.

A friendly two-a-side soon ensued. The most that can be said of that game that naturally petered out brought on by the fatal combination of heat and thirst and compounded by the fact that none of us were particularly skilled at basketball was that, it was so much fun.

It also reminded me of what I now realize to be an abiding mystery. Tiago, half Brazilian, behaved a lot like many Pinoys, especially in one particularly peculiar respect. He had no compunction playing barefoot. But. the broiling hot asphalt court soon made him seek refuge in his slippers.

This is where the mystery came back to me. Many Pinoys play basketball barefoot or with their slippers but, in most cases -- and here is where Tiago betrayed his not being Pinoy -- only with one slipper. Why? Has somebody else noticed this? How is this behavior explained?

Back home, with the nagging question pushed to the back burner by the more immediate concerns of preparing dinner, another thing reminded me of being Pinoy on Canada Day. Walking back to the kitchen, I suddenly thought I heard something familiar. It can't be, I thought. I had not touched the dial. It was playing Astrid Gilberto when I left the kitchen barely two minutes before.

But yes, it was familiar indeed. There was no mistaking it. It was a Tagalog program. How it was switched to this program was less important than trying to find out what the program was about, what was the radio station and what was its call number as the radio's digital display was going nuts scanning up and down the frequency scale.

As far as I could catch it -- for the signal disappeared mysteriously as it had appeared -- the radio hostess was greeting a bunch of people who were celebrating their birthdays. So Pinoy, right? Yet, no greetings for Canada Day.

These two mysteries collided with each other as I enjoyed the fireworks display later that night. It wasn't that much different from the fireworks we've been having in Cebu lately except maybe in scale and duration. Its cost, too, no different. In both currencies, they spell expensive.

06.26.08 kulturnatib

Fête

When fellow columnist, Raymund Fernandez, in his column last week, “Infiltrating Music,” writes that “we were told that 'Fête' is a day when France celebrates a day of free music,” they were told not quite the whole thing, particularly where the word 'fête' is concerned.

Still, Fête de la Musique is, indeed, a day of free music in France, throughout the world -- especially the French-speaking parts -- and for the the first and hopefully not the last time in Cebu last Saturday.

I missed that one. Likewise, the one that I had planned to attend and thought I had actually attended when a check in the internet proved otherwise. This is rather curious since if there is any place where the Fête de la Musique is sure to be celebrated in North America, it would be or should be in Quebec.

But, no, the official event was in Ottawa, just across the Ottawa River or Riviere de Outaouais from here. It was held through the auspices of the Alliance Francaise who organizes this event in many parts of the world including the Philippines.

Actually, the event we attended could have very well been an independently organized celebration of the Fête de la Musique. This was held at the oldest house here, in Gatineau, a building restored by the city and operated by the writers' association, hence now called the Maison des Auteurs.

This was a small event held appropriately in a small venue. Appropriately, too, music was the focus of the event, provided by a four-piece band playing mostly socio-political songs and mostly in the style of the ballad, a proper French word with an 'e' at the end since it is a feminine noun.

So, missing that 'fête,' at least the official one, I made sure not to miss the next and bigger 'fête' a few days later.

This 'fête' is also celebrated in the Philippines and throughout the Christian, particularly Roman Catholic, world. This is the Fête de Saint-Jean-Baptiste, or Feast day of Saint John the Baptist, or simply, to us, San Juan, celebrated June 24.

This feast was celebrated for the first time in North America with the arrival of the first French colonists centered in New France which is today's Quebec province of Canada. While it is still often and largely referred to by its religious name which was given further impetus with the imprimatur from the Vatican, by Pope Piux X who officially designated Saint-Jean-Baptiste as the patron saint of Quebec, it has now been overtaken by the more secular and designation, 'Fête Nationale' or 'Fête du Quebec.'

This is translated to National Day of Quebec, which is the official language of the enactment of this designation in 1977. This, of course, gave rise to controversy that in many ways attests to the deep-seated and widespread feelings of Quebec nationalism.

Thus, now this event is accompanied by, among other things, much flag-waving of the blue and white, cross and fleur-de-lis flowers.

This was the overwhelming sight, an undulating sea of Fleurdelisè -- as this flag is called, in Quebec City, the capital of Quebec which is also celebrating the 400th centennial of its founding, held aloft by an estimated 150,000 people celebrating three 'fêtes' at the same time.

The 'fête' we attended was a markedly smaller event. As expected it was bannered by musicians, who I did not expect to be familiar with, except perhaps for their musical genre. But to my pleasant surprise here was music I knew though not the singer, nor the entire song, which is, of course, in French.

The song is, 'Lady Marmalade,' made famous again through a remake featured in the hugely popular, Nicole Kidman starrer musical movie, 'Moulin Rouge,' with the popular line from the chorus sung or quoted in the Philippines in its various mispronunciations: “voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir . . . . ' and sung here by its original creator, 70s Quebec rock icon, Nanette Workman, ironically, an Anglophone.

So, 'fête' has many meanings. In English they are all etymologically related to feast and festival. Yet, the most common usage here of 'fête' is 'bonne fête.' Or, happy birthday.

This one goes to Raymund.

06.19.08 kulturnatib

Loot bag

Before it gained acceptance and widespread use among the upper and middle classes of the English speaking world, ours included, loot bag used to refer to the bag or sack slung over the shoulder of a thief tip-toeing nimbly away from the scene of a crime as caricatured in many television cartoon shows or cartoon strips. The bag contained the loot of the crime, hence the name.

Now, with thieves -- especially in government -- no longer bothering about tip-toeing away from the scene of their crimes but rather are being whisked away in heavily tinted SUVs with police escort to boot, loot bag more popularly refers to a bag containing gifts or giveaways usually given by fast food chains where, most likely, this particular usage got its head start and powerful popularizing boost.

Thus, loot bag refers now to a gift bag although with, again, thieves in government, this has, for them, always been one and the same thing. For them it has always and only been a matter of being at the right place, at the right time and the loot or gift, rather, is just there simply for the taking.

As a creation of the fast food industry, the loot bag is a favorite gimmick to snare customers, often children who are particularly susceptible to these gimmicks. And parents too, who actually pay for these gimmicks -- there is no such thing as a free lunch is a favorite fast food industry slogan -- and who can't be bothered any longer about what gifts to give to their children or the gifts their children give to other children.

Still, not all loot bags are enticements for mostly junk stuff from the fast food chains.

Last week Luz received a loot bag. Since at 7 weeks, crying is still the most eloquent form of communication and fastest form of mobility she is capable of, we received the bag on her behalf. She could have been given the bag earlier but she did not yet have the card that everybody has here that gives them access to government services and facilities: A health insurance card, also serving as one of the main forms of identification.

Having this card is a requirement, at whatever age, to being provided a city access card. One of the main access that this card affords is to the municipal library network consisting of 10 libraries in the 5 sectors of the city.

All these libraries have specialized sections for children including special reading and multimedia spaces for them.

Luz's access card is similar to all other access cards, including mine, save for one respect. Instead of her picture it bears a smiley face. Just as well. She wouldn't have been able to stay put or hold her head up for her portrait to be taken.

(Parenthetically, it reminds me of one of Budoy's UP identification cards with a similar smiley face that he somehow was able to have made despite this being already the credit card type of ID card. And, he was able to use it, too. Only he knows how he was able to pull it off, on both counts.)

So, with her access card, she also got her bag. It was a medium size brown paper bag with one color on the outside and a reverse print that said, 'une naissance, un livre.' Or, 'one birth, one book,' which is the name of the reading encouragement program of the Quebec government, the public library system and the private sector of which the loot bag is some form of welcome.

As can be expected, inside were materials that she will not have immediate use for save for what might have been a squeak toy but is now only a squeeze toy. The rest of the materials, guides for introducing children to reading and writing, a childrens' books catalogue, and a magazine on children, were clearly for the parents.

There was, however, one book that Luz can immediately make use of. Not necessarily read but can start associating with; words as sound and words as sight. This is also one book that one of her parents can start with in communicating with her in what will be her maternal language and his adopted tongue.

Both are beginners, one knowing better than understanding, the other vice-versa, especially with a language often beyond words. Cry, or sourir, for example.

06.12.08 kulturnatib

Book ukay

In boxing, heavy and weight mean simply that. The heavier, the weightier and, to the delight of boxing fans, the more brutal – not brutish, as this is supposed to be a gentleman's sport – if, occasionally, burlesque the fight. Remember Tyson biting off a chunk of Holyfield's ear like it was some particularly delectable morsel of piping hot lechon?

With books, however, heavy and weight are often sparring partners. The heavier are often not the weighter. They are, as often, pejoratively called 'door stoppers' whose heft lend nothing but a hand at preventing doors from closing shut.

Conversely, the slim volumes are often those who pack the most punch.

This leads to the problem of monetizing books. Or, putting a money value to them. Like the rest of the trade of goods and services – the economy in general – the price we pay for books are supposed to be the sum of complex equations involving anything and everything that goes into book production, not the least of which are factors that make books more confounding than boxing.

But why not forget or at least temporarily put aside those confounding factors and reduce books to their most elementary, equalizing characteristic? Which, of course, is weight since books are nothing but paper, ink, glue, binding materials and, for talking books or books with accompanying cds or dvds, some plastic and chemical coatings.

Why not, indeed?

This appears to be the tack taken by the annual “Grande Vente de Livres D'occasion.” This yearly used or second hand book sale is organized by the Gatineau Municipal Library. It pools books, journals, magazines, vhs tapes and dvds from the ten libraries of the city's five sectors that comprise the municipal library network and sells them to the public by weight. At the price of Can$ 2.50 per kilo of books.

Even for Filipinos who can and do try to afford books – realizing full well that this means roughly 4 kilos of food crisis rice per kilo of books – this is reasonably affordable. Enviably cheap.

No less here where by the time we arrived at the gym where the sale was held an hour and a half after the doors were to open, as announced, it was packed. In fact, not knowing exactly where the gym was located, we were led to it by the cars that had lined the road from the highway, the tail-end – our lead-start -- of which was about half a kilometer away.

Inside it was organized chaos, ukay-ukay style. In snaking, criss-crossing lines, people were pushing, pulling or hefting bags, back packs, sacks, boxes and all sorts of containers being filled up with books. Along the walls some were sprawled on the floor by themselves or together with their children poring over volumes that would eventually go towards their pile.

This pile or piles were the only claim, if only for that day, to book connoisseurship entitling them to become spontaneous or extemporaneous book critics; Have you read his latest?; This one is better; This seems to be a new edition; etc. And in a mix of English, French and other languages for the immigrant communities were well represented there.

As to my pile, it included, among others, “Letters to Father,” letters of Suor Maria Celeste the eldest daughter of Galileo from a convent in Florence where Galileo had placed her and, “The Professor and the Madman,” a tale of the strange contributor of nearly 10,000 definitions to the great Oxford English Dictionary who, aside from being a master wordsmith, turns out to be a murderer and clinically insane.

For sure there were as many reasons as there were people for what could only be the success of that event. Chief among them, I am inclined to think, is that people there, perhaps unknowingly, are simply heeding the advice of Gustave Flaubert in a letter to Mlle de Chantepie: “Read in order to live.”

That quote is taken from, “The History of Reading,” of course, another one among my pile.

06.05.08 kulturnatib

Red letter day

Thursday, next week, will be one big red letter day for the Philippines and, by international law because they are considered part of Philippine territory, Philippine embassies and missions all over the world.

For the embassy here in Ottawa, though, that is more an intelligent guess because, as of this writing, there has been no announcements in the regular media and even on the embassy's website as to what activities or events are scheduled to take place for Independence Day on June 12.

The website would actually be where I would think that this and such announcements would be better posted rather than the regular media. It is cheaper and could be targeted more precisely. After all, when registering or doing business with the embassy one is required to furnish an email address.

More than simple cost considerations, however, the web also allows for interactivity, immediate feedback or action and all other kinds of information, communications and entertainment advantages that all web savvy Filipino teens know about and use daily.

But, the embassy here, and I would bet elsewhere as well, is too adult for that. Proof of this is that on the site's main page the main feature is still the “Important Announcement Concerning May 2007 Elections.” How so yesterday is that?

And then, the first part of that announcement is a list of voter's who apparently had taken advantage of the newly instituted overseas absentee vote and had election related mail from the Comelec which they had to pick up from the embassy. Why not take advantage of email?

Of course, that is the Comelec. The Comelec of Abalos, to be precise, who is involved in some of the most monumental scandals in Philippine electoral history or just history in general.

Again, that is so yesterday for which we all suffer the regime of GMA today and in the days to come.

So, there probably is nothing going on to celebrate Independence Day here. Unless, at the last minute, something turns up.

Nonetheless, it will still be a red letter day.

It will be the opening of the exhibit of the Bank Street North Rehabilitation Project Bike Rack Art competition. This will be a one day exhibit where some 50 shortlisted submissions selected by an art selection committee for this competition from the total submissions will be subjected to public scrutiny and comment.

These comments will be taken into account by the selection committee to decide on the final 30 entries. The final designs will be plasma cut into half inch solid steel sheets measuring one meter square. Each will then be mounted on bike rack areas along the length of Bank Street.

This is just one of the many art projects that the City of Ottawa is initiating, including the just granted Wellington Street Art Commission sculpture project and the light emitting diode (LED) public art commission, which is still accepting entries, among others for this year.

These are among the projects and programs that support the thrust of the city for the promotion of the arts which is funded through the allocation of one percent of funds for municipal development. Together with the private sector, who enjoy their own government incentives, these not only beautify public spaces but more importantly guarantee public access and appreciation of the arts.

On the level of the artist, these allow a foot, so to speak, in the door to more prominent exhibit spaces like better known galleries and museums.

With the Bike Rack Project I have two feet in the door with the shortlisting of two designs I submitted. True, there is still one more hurdle towards final selection. But, like the British Booker Prize for literature, to be shortlisted is prize enough.

05.29.08 kulturnatib

Frankly, a most difficult call

Frank Sinatra is, by talent, a great singer. By association, he was known to be a hobnobber with mobsters and, by a sure bet, would have made a lousy immigration official.

I normally don't think of Frank Sinatra even if I belong to that generation when the way to a girl's heart and other body parts was lubed by syrupy love songs of the harana – though no longer in the classic tradition of holding forth under the girl's window and no longer even called that unless we were being facetious. We called it folk singing.

A song or two by Frank Sinatra was a mainstay in the repertoire of those haranas. And, why not? His songs were heart rending enough to rend more than the heart in what the Tagalogs call 'laglag panty.' That, of course, was never the intention of the Sinatra nor ourselves, earnest haranistas that we were.

Anyway, during the week, looking over the newspaper rack at my favorite library, my favorite newspaper jumped out at me. The headline of the Globe and Mail read, “Ottawa dispatches secret teams in bid to crack down on phony foreign weddings.”

Just as soon as I read that, out jumped Sinatra, too. While in the news story the Canadian government is grappling with what it says is a growing concern for fraudulent or phony marital alliances – indeed, in another level, these marriages are facilitated through the phone – whose ultimate outcome is immigration of one of the partners and sometimes members of their family as well to Canada, Sinatra has no such problem.

Listen: Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage . . . You can't have one without the other . . . Try to separate them, it's an illusion, try and you will only come to this conclusion . . . .

After mulling wryly on Sinatra and proceeding to read the banner story, I sensed a creeping defensiveness. And then, the guarded need to look around to see if there was anyone to pick up the first stone and throw it so I could join them, even if there was also the growing awareness that, like most defensive gestures, it wasn't clear where to throw the stone at and why.

In any case, the news item proceeded on about 'clandestine', 'fraud' teams 'fanning out to foreign countries to gather information about elaborately staged phony weddings aimed at duping Canadian immigration officials.' And, then, presumably, nipping the problem at the bud.

Like any well-rounded news story, some experiences and contrary viewpoints were presented. An Ontarian man gained some fame in 2005 by suing the government, alleging that "the bureaucracy is destroying my family,” and expressing his outrage at Canada's immigration system for refusing to allow his new wife to immigrate to Toronto.

He won the suit, spending a lot of money in the process. His wife was allowed in. She brought along her mother and a daughter. Soon, he was back badgering the government. This time as an officer of the group called Canadians Against Immigration Fraud.

The government was right the first time. His wife was into the marriage just for the lure of immigration. She was in. He was out.

But does these happen only in advanced, immigration lucrative countries? No. This happens also in the Philippines. Only it is tacitly encouraged by the government in the guise of retirement havens or investment opportunities.

A cursory look at pockets of resort developments in the country and you will find an odd couple separated in age and even more distant in cultural disposition who owns a development in the name of, usually, the Filipino wife.

This is the open secret of many 'countryside developments.' Or, even in urban Cebu where foreigners get to own chunks of property prohibited by the Constitution but bypassed through a wedding certificate with the Filipino partner standing in as dummy owner of the property.

This leads to a lot of problems, least of all those of love and its more sublime manifestations.

This reminds me of a foreigner friend who has been in the country for some time now. He marries a Filipina who bears him a child. He leaves the countryside, more or less abandoning the wife and child for the city. But, for all this, he becomes, in language and behavior, even more Pinoy. Even in his relative poverty.

Just as Sinatra, in the face of this love-cum-immigration problem, sounds so crushingly corny, we often fall back on the neither better, pat explanation of the bad eggs always being with the good, which, as we know, is a most difficult call.

05.15.08 kulturnatib

Tulips

Everybody knows about tulips and Holland. But not about tulips and Ottawa. I certainly didn't. Not until last year. But I heard something about it only in passing. I arrived for a vacation a month too late for the annual Canadian Tulips Festival, held every May in Ottawa and Gatineau.

This time, however, I arrived when the tulips would have already been planted in autumn, in time for their spring bloom, which is right about now.

The story of this festival dates back more than half a century ago. When the Nazis ignored the pleaded neutrality of the Dutch and invaded just the same during World War 2, the Canadians sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters.

During this forced exile a daughter to Princess Juliana was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, the maternity ward of which had to be temporarily declared Dutch territory so as not to have any citizenship problems for the just born royal. At the war's end, in a gesture of gratitude, the Royals gifted the city with 100,000 bulbs of tulips.

Being the beauties that they are, the tulips soon earned an enthusiastic following in the city among whom was the photographer, Malak Karsh, who in 1953 suggested the festival. Years later, this festival has grown to be what the organizers claim as the biggest festival of its kind in the world.

The point in this history that I am interested in started only last year. As festival organizers are always looking for something to make their festival more attractive they hit upon the idea that should have been thought of right from the start. After all what was the welcome extended by the Canadians to members of the Dutch Royalty if not a gesture of international friendship?

So, they added an international component through a pavilion, the International Pavilion, involving the diplomatic and immigrant community. This was deemed successful enough in its inaugural year to merit a repeat performance.

Naively I thought that somehow the Philippine participation would be related to tulips, as I thought the same with the other participating countries. Or, perhaps something about flowers. After all this is a tulips festival.

I remember a few years back while working on a local television program, on a segment about the flower industry in the mountain barangays of Cebu City, I was told by one flower grower that there were current attempts to grow tulips locally. He pointed to a somewhat hush-hush greenhouse tucked in one of the neighboring hills where this experiment was being carried out.

It was an intriguing lead but there was no time to reschedule the airing of that segment and not enough verifiable facts to even warrant a rescheduling.

Why I expected this story to make its way to Ottawa when Philippine embassies and missions everywhere are known for their just-so service and just-that levels of initiative baffles even myself.

Still it was with enthusiasm, fueled by a beautiful spring day, that I walked the two kilometer distance to the pavilion where for that day the spotlight was on the Philippine participation.

I should have known better. I should have expected the usual. What else would we immediately think of when showing off to foreigners? Mount a fiesta. At least that was what I think the Philippine booth was trying to do judging from the banderitas or plastic buntings that were hung about. Yet, what would have conclusively clinched the fiesta theme conclusion I missed except for some tell tale remains: scraps of food. That's what makes a fiesta, right?

Still, I was just in time for the song and dance. For sure another Filipino mainstay. Then again, it was the usual, including how you can always tell without fail that it is a Filipino that has come up on stage and taken up the microphone. They always, always knock on the microphone twice and say hello, hello!

I have no problems with the fiesta presented as the window to the Philippines. It is that it has to be accompanied by renditions of old folk songs that annoy me. There is nothing wrong with old folk songs. I like them as much as my dear departed father. But why is it made to sound that there are no other songs other than those? Can't somebody sing something by the Eraserheads? Or, Junior Kilat?

To be fair, my father would not sing Eraserheads. Neither, I think, would those good folks who made up most of the chorale who look about the same age as my dad when he passed on.

But there was this fairly young Pinoy, with had a more practiced voice though not necessarily better for singing Eraserheads. Then again, he sings 'Dahil Sa 'Yo,' botching it so thoroughly that it would have Imelda rolling in her grave even if she is not there just yet.

If the chorale cum dance troupe didn't do too well on stage, they did better at the booth in a kind of harana where they did a repeat of what could only be a limited repertoire. Even Imelda would agree.

The young Pinoy redeemed himself well enough in the end. As I think the entire Philippine effort did for whom, as with most of us, there is always next time to try better. So, until next spring. Inshallah.

05.08.08 kulturnatib

Moringa

When I went to Riyadh many years ago one of the most astounding sights I saw was a most humble one. It was one that was totally missed by the thoroughly unproductive and expensive, compulsory introduction to Saudi life seminar all OFWs going to the Kingdom had to go through a week prior to departure.

By the time I saw this I had already integrated fairly well into the Bisaya community there through the Bisaya organization who would regularly get together to talk, reminisce, network, play, take care of the business of the organization and, most importantly and most often, eat. Or, that should be feast.

It was in the course of one of these feasts when I spied it first on the table, looking very familiar and delicious, as it invariably is. I immediately thought, of course with such a huge Pinoy, even Bisaya, population here these could be shipped over easily and probably fairly cheaply as well.

But, being the curious amateur journalist -- I was also by this time editing the organization's newsletter -- I could not stop at that thought and had to ask. “Oh, that?” our host answered. “We have a steady supply of that from the backyard.”

I had to see to believe. I saw and believed. Clumped together in a corner of the backyard garden were two or three robustly leaved moringa oleifera trees. As we all know these trees answer more readily to the name malunggay or kalamunggay or even better, kamunggay.

Our host had brought a cutting back from one of his home leaves. He had no idea whether it would grow or not. He just liked malunggay soup especially with a vanquished cock from a cockfight.

You don't know OFWs if you should wonder how the vanquished cock from a cockfight can be managed in Saudi where even to keep a pet is haram, forbidden or somewhat of a crime. Don't bother about seeing it. Just believe it. It can be managed and kamunggay can be made to grow there.

My father and most of his generation loved and lived on kamunggay. Until his death at the fairly ripe age of 75 he always insisted that a kamunggay dish should be among those on his dining table at every meal except breakfast.

Neither he nor my mother, who both insisted that we eat what they did, often whether we liked it or not, made a big deal out of kamunggay as being some kind of miracle plant that it is now made out to be. They just knew that it was good for us. No ifs or buts. Period.

Turns out that they are right. Science has caught up to the lowly malunggay. Only recently when botanicals are capturing a segment of the worldwide health and healing market has malunggay come into its own.

Also, recently word has it that malunggay might even make a bigger dent in the growing though controversial biofuels market, reportedly edging out the Indian Jathropa. Malunggay cultivation supposedly solves the nagging problem that biofuels represents of taking food from the mouths of the underfed to fueling cars of the overfed.

These are nice thoughts to dwell on. But not mine, not now. I'm thinking about two recent letters. Both reminding me two things about the same thing. One tells me I shouldn't forget to give my partner malunggay soup for general health and quick recovery from a recent delivery. The other encouraged me that malunggay soup is good for lactating mothers and not to be discouraged by challenges that breastfeeding often presents. Breastfeeding is the way to go.

Like we need to be told.

Unfortunately, we don't have a backyard. Even if we did, unlike our Saudi host years back, I'm convinced an experiment in growing malunggay here is a doomed proposition. Unless it is some Frankenfood experiment.

Still, fortunately, as mentioned above, the malunggay has come a long way. It is now available in a capsule. Probably, coated in a flavor of your choice and none of them malunggay. I just need to find it.

But, if I had my way, I would have them the way my father always had them. Maybe not like my friend in Saudi, cockfighting is surely illegal here anyway, but in a piping hot regular chicken soup with the tinge of bitterness of malunggay, the flavor of faraway home.

05.01.08 kulturnatib

Midwives

Since the birth of humanity human birthing has always been facilitated through a person who has a proven competence, experience and knowledge of the birthing process.

Even in the Biblical creation story, humanity itself is said to have been born into existence through the divine handiwork of a person in God.

In many societies and cultures, these persons occupied a position of stature although not all of them wielded power commensurate with such status. Almost all of them, especially those who attended to the births, were women.

When the practice of medicine and its allied fields became professionalized and increasingly technology mediated the practice of the facilitation of births also became professionalized in a medical doctor specializing in gynecology who now worked with other specialists, anesthesiologists and pediatricians, among others.

This is most widespread and most entrenched in the West or the advanced capitalist countries with the East or the mostly Third World playing a game of catch-up, despite a history of the practice of medicine several centuries ahead and advanced of the West.

In the West with every advance in the science and technology of birth a new or several specializations are likewise born and in the East their best specialists end up in the West resulting in a handicap that irreversibly skews the playing field.

The East cannot win this game. Even staying in the game is often a doubtful and much too costly proposition.

The costliness of this in the current practice of medicine has kept the traditional birth facilitators or the hilots alive in our country and with them the tradition of home births especially in the rural areas. Not only that, they have become specialists in their own right, as officially recognized midwives trained to be such like that of any profession.

Recently, as well, the traditional home birth have also now become mostly private birthing centers outside of hospitals and government health centers of which there are now several in the city.

But, even in the West, this costliness is also now recognized. Not so much the upfront cost of professional and other services or medication but in the hidden cost of the various dysfunctions that have come about with the very impersonal medical machine and their professional minders.

Here in Quebec, Canada, this recognition has meant the official recognition of the midwife who in French are called by a nobler name: sage femme, or, literally, wise woman. Now part of the government health system is a network of birthing houses or maisons de naissance.

I have not been to any birthing house in the city. I imagine it would compare favorably with the birthing houses here, give or take a few of the amenities that would expectedly differentiate one from an advanced country and another from the Third World.

Still, I expect there would be the same emphasis on natural birth and home birth is very much an option here subject to certain factors like accessibility for emergency personnel and equipment should that become necessary and breastfeeding post partum.

For my partner and I these were attractive options. We happily attended the preparatory and check-up sessions with our primary and secondary midwives together with other 'specialists' in relaxation exercises and massages, birthing, breastfeeding and others.

But when the time came, it did not come. The birthing house is not allowed to handle situations that would require surgery although it does have the basic emergency equipment that the midwives are fully trained to use.

We agreed with the primary midwife that the hospital was our only choice although a semi-natural birth assisted by epidural and chemically induced would still be tried. That didn't work either.

So, Ceasar had to be called in. But the midwife stayed with us the whole time, though not in the operating room but she facilitated our transfer and got in touch with the hospital baby delivery team, which was a no mean feat at 5.30 in the morning.

In the end, all was well. As they, indeed, continue to despite the inevitable and attendant challenges and sometimes even irritations of newborns with the continuing assistance and support of the midwives.

04.10.08 kulturnatib

Reg'Art

Competition is not my thing. This does not make me, among other things, a good athlete even if sports has been and continues to be an abiding interest. This is also why, ever since my earliest days in art school, I have been rather reluctant to join art competitions.

It certainly didn't help my appetite for art competitions when, early on, during the inaugural Jose Joya awards competition, opened by no less than Dean Joya himself, my work was thrown out of the exhibit for reportedly not being aesthetically appetizing or uplifting.

Still, there were a few art competitions I remember joining; A poster competition in the flush of the high hopes for change soon after the people power revolt in 1986, a photo competition a few years later and still much later, the biggest art competition in the country, the Philip Morris Asean Art Awards.

Except for the last one, I did reasonably well. Well enough that the judges agreed with me. In the last one, however, the judges had other ideas. One person, though, thought otherwise and was willing to peel off some of her hard earned money to collect the work. The amount was a negligible fraction compared to what the judges were dispensing but the honor was just as much, well and earned.

Recently, bringing the number closer to the single handful that I might end up joining in my lifetime, I signed up for another art competition.

More than anything, what attracted me to this competition was how this coincided interestingly with some of my ideas about art. In particular, how art can be of the most ordinary thing, from the most ordinary thing and with the most ordinary thing.

In short, ordinary to extraordinary. Yet still maintaining its ordinariness, even if it could or does earn a prize, some money or notoriety, end up in a museum, find itself in the books or otherwise inspire an outpouring of everyday, ordinary art.

And what can be more ordinary than a sewer cover?

Playing on the French verb regarder or to look at – conjugated to regarde, pronounced regard --, the sewer cover design competition 'Reg 'Art d'égôut' or a sewer sight, was launched by the city of Gatineau late last year.

The city of Gatineau has decided to follow the example of other cities in taking the branding of their city seriously. This concept of 'branding' a city started in the 80s and takes the idea of a city from a hodge-podge of largely unplanned developments into the city as a 'product' with a unique, unified identity exemplified by a 'brand.'

This idea of branding encourages the utilization or even creation of every opportunity to promote itself, which, by so doing, enhances the 'brand' and increasing its value that range from the abstract concept of attractiveness to the more concrete measure of economic growth or the increase of the standard of living.

A sewer cover might not be as imposing as a large-print billboard or as sexy as a lighted sign or as technologically advanced as a giant LCD screen, but people, at least here and in cities with extensive sewer systems – which I hazard to guess that Cebu City does not really have yet – do get to see them, a few times a day, day in and day out.

Its drawbacks are also its very strengths. They are everywhere, they are unavoidable, extremely durable, maintenance-free and, for all that, comparatively cheap. And then, they are expected to be, or people are used to their being ordinary, unobtrusive, unexciting and even, for their bulk and numbers, invisible.

So then, one morning, people will wake up and head to work, play or wherever they head for for the day and step onto or drive over the sewer covers and, hey, this is something new! There is some design here. What is it? It's a bird, it's a plane, it's SuperSewer!

They will be the talk of the town. There will be a buzz that will hit the media that will then be amplified by the media far and wide. Gatineau's brand will be enhanced, will be more recognized, will earn even more value.

That is the city's hope and, with my entry, my bet.