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.