03.05.09 kulturnatib

Open letter to XO?

A vacation is always thought of as a trip away from the familiar, everyday routine – drudgery, if you will – to an exotic location or even familiar locale sans work, house and office, with its attendant chores and obligations.

Our recent vacation was like that. Yet, it was, for me especially, also a return to the familiar work, chores and obligations that characterizes any art activity. In particular, a performance art event.

Thanks to you, XO?, who I'm sure won't mind not being named here in person since many of you have already made a name for yourselves individually to the point where the mention of your names brings on appreciative nods while that of XO? incredulous stares that wonder if artists are all such incorrigible alcoholics that they need to talk about intoxicants all the time.

Yes, you were able to organize two performance art events in as many weeks. Or, even less. And, in venues that reflect the continuing dominance of the youth market as the engine for the fast, furious and futilely unplanned urbanization of Cebu City. Moreover, they seemed to lend credence to some observation that the worldwide economic meltdown has yet to lick our shores.

The first, at Mango One, during the day of hearts. It was guerilla performance at its best. So far. I say this from the stand point of that being my first performance at said venue where, true to forewarnings, I found the audience to be the most heterogeneous and art-innocent yet at the same time certainly the most art-curious of all the audiences I've performed for there and here.

Russ Ligtas's performance was as stand out. Gay caricature is standard if usually tasteless fare in the city's menu of cultural offerings particularly for a day like February 14. But, Russ's performance art piece grabbed this caricature by the balls – pardon my French – and dazzled the audience with its unflinching, in-your-face honesty that I believe many there understood to be more about our addictions (loves, if you want to be cute) and less about gayness, straightness or whatever-else-ness.

The second event was at a more familiar venue. The audience, too, was more homogeneous, art savvy in both appreciation and practice. It was more intimate. As such, I was more relaxed, less wired for the minor to killer disasters that one prepares for with unpredictable success with an unfamiliar audience.

Yet, disaster struck. Almost. Not from the audience but from a fellow performance artist.

As I watched breathless, certain that all I was going to be left at best with was cleaning after the wreckage, that of my own performance particularly, the word 'spontaneity' came around to haunt me.

As I have often maintained, one of the most attractive element, for me, with performance art is the possibility or even the demands of spontaneity. A performance art piece can only be prepared, rehearsed, planned for up to a certain point. Beyond this is the slippery slope of spontaneity where nothing succeeds like success and flops like a soaked tissue.

Yet, it has to be spontaneity with a respect for some basic boundaries. My stuff is mine and yours is yours and make sure which is which.

I didn't mind much that a crucially important prop for my performance made an early appearance ahead of me without my permission. It was grabbed by this co-performance artist in a dance that had no business with my prop and vice-versa except for the simple, spontaneous fact that it was easily at hand.

Thank God non of the delicate release mechanism in the prop was dislodged or in any way rendered inoperable. That it didn't operate as well as planned when I did my piece is another matter that has nothing to do with the violation.

Yet, it could have ended otherwise. Badly. Then this letter would have been unnecessary. My point would have been made more directly, more immediately, there and then.

Still, this point wouldn't and shouldn't be lost for all that and even for the potential worse of that: You are doing a wonderful job, a real cultural service to the community whose archaic conservatism often trips or traps the long heralded march towards openness and modernity.

Padayon! I look forward to even bigger events with you.