10.01.09 kulturnatib

Stories

Most artists are motivated or inspired by ideas, and that is as it ideally should be. But some are moved by vision or visions. That's the shortest version of how my current project started.

The somewhat longish version goes like this; A week before 9/11, 2001, right, I was flying from New York to Boston. On the very same flight that would plow a week later into the World Trade Center. Beginning with that flight, I started to have what I can only call paranormal or anomalous experiences.

The left half of my body became numb. Not paralyzed, just numb. And then, I would say something or try to say something but other words would come out. Not the ones that I had intended to say and even thought I was saying. Same thing with writing. I was writing words that I had not intended to write. Weird. Yet, weirder still, is that these abruptly stopped when the 9/11 attacks happened. They haven't reoccured since.

I am an artist. A rather rational one, I would think. I know that artists are often called weird, but that is an everyday sort of weird. This weird is something else. It stopped me. Somehow, I was shaken. Then I realized that I have similar experiences before. At age four, I knew that my grandmother had died before my parents received the news.

I had to get to the bottom of this. I also realized that my art practice has somewhat had, in different ways and through different media, something to do with vision, sight even precognition.

But, as I said, I am quite rational. So, my current project is really a mix of art and technology that involves working with a number of university research facilities with high technology tools, instruments – 3D printing, for example, for fast prototyping – , and facilities not normally found in an artist's studio.

I have been fortunate to have accessed grants to pursue this work. This week I'm finishing paper work; technical drawings, progress report, etc., so I can get to the final phase. An exhibit, for sure, is in the horizon. I just don't know yet how it will be. The exhibit presentation, I mean.

That, interesting as it is, is not my story. I wish it was, though I don't wish for the discomfort or disorientation this must induce. It was told to me at a recent get together of artist, 'emerging artists' according to the event invitation, by the owner and main character of that story.

She really is not or no longer an 'emerging' artist but she was in the neighborhood and having missed an appointment decided to look for something that would make her having gone there less of a waste.

There, indeed, was something. This 'networking opportunity,' was organized by the Emerging Arts Professional Network and the Canadian Artists Representation – Le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC) at Gallery 101. Thus, we met, meeting other artists being compulsory, though in the guise of a 'game', and the point of the whole evening.

I am not an emerging artist either, by the particular definition of this species of artists that I had only encountered here though this species is found in many other countries and is beginning to be recognized in the Philippines as well. What's more, I believe that art, to be worth the trouble, is or should always be emerging. But that is another matter for another column.

Stories were the currency that evening. Though you still needed legal tender to buy beer, wine or bottled water. Still, you just didn't get simply stories in exchange. Though, of course, there was lot's of that.

I got a few things beyond simple stories. One with some immediately practical, if negative and confirmatory, value. With all her connections to suppliers and specialists, I asked Ms. N if it was really that difficult to source here what is decidedly -- and somewhat embarrasingly -- a low-tech material: Silkscreen.

Yes, she confirmed, adding something I already knew: It is also quite expensive. There's always the internet, she said. I know, I replied, but, incredibly, that is one story I haven't tried.

09.24.09 kulturnatib

ID2B

Last Monday, September 21, was International Day of Peace. It was also ID2B or International Day to be Bothered and to Bother. In 132 countries, at least, it was.

According to Avaaz, an international civil society and mostly cyber community pressure group, September 21 saw the actions and heard the voices of global citizens clamoring for their governments to 'wake up' and support international agreements and conventions mitigating the effects of global warming that is the subject of this weeks UN Climate Summit, the run up to the much anticipated final round of negotiations during the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

In Canada alone there were 198 such actions across the country. Three of these took place in the capital, Ottawa, one of which I took part of, at the grounds of Parliament.

Taking part is really just a manner of speaking. What I actually did was bringing a part. Or, better still, performing a part.

I did a performance art piece. This was a shorthand version to the piece I performed early this year at a national convention of artist run centers. The shorthand version was necessitated by the guerilla nature of the performance.

Meaning, it was not an 'official' part of the program, not in the program at all, actually, and there was an expected element of disruption although this was what could be called supportive disruption.

The piece titled, 'Bye, bye,' called attention to one of the certainties of global warming: Rising sea levels, which, just as certainly, is going to affect archipelagos and other island aggrupations as indeed it is now affecting some Pacific island groups.

The performance consisted of my wading into the group of about 60 persons who, as it happened, were listening and responding to a speech. I proceeded to randomly roll into the crowd uncapped plastic water bottles with a piece of rolled up paper in each.

The bottles didn't roll as much as skidded as it was on grass which I didn't anticipate, like I didn't one woman's reaction: “Oh, my God, plastic bottles!” To which I said, “That's just half the bad news. What's on the paper – the message in the bottle -- is worse.”

On the paper were printed facts related to global warming, rising seas and how this will adversely affect many especially in the Third World including the Philippines, which incidentally had three events for that day according to Avaaz.

While doing this I was wearing a scuba diving mask and breathing through a diving snorkel. These I continued to wear until the event was over and I had finished collecting the bottles that were left behind – just a few -- or were given back to me,“to use in a further action,” as one woman advised encouragingly.

The only time this 'costume' was interrupted was when a reporter from Radio Canada TV came around to inquire about the performance piece. “Ah, that's why the scuba gear,” she reacted. She also asked a few more questions one of which my answer to was that rising seas are doubly bad news for Filipinos of whom more than 80% do not know how to swim. That's true. Believe it or not.

For climate change, however, it is not a matter of believe it or not, but, be bothered or be more than simply bothered.

09.17.09 kulturnatib

CSA

Early last month I did a performance art piece about food. In particular, about how a morsel of industrial food takes so much more energy in planting, processing and transporting than it can ever give.

To illustrate or express this point, I pushed a large wheeled plastic garbage bin 10 kilometers from our house to the art gallery where I did a communion or eucharistic ritual. In place of the host, however, was a piece of paper board the size of a slice of loaf bread with the above mentioned thought about industrial food printed on it.

This wasteful reality is, among other things, fueling the growing food revolution here and in other countries that in many ways marches under the banner of CSA or community supported agriculture.

Last weekend was a celebration of this movement with many member farms of the farmer's union or the Union des Producteurs Agricoles opening their farm gates to friends, visitors and subscribers.

We visited Le Vallon des Sources, about an hour's drive west from us named so because it is tucked in a small valley where there are some clear springs.

It is this farm that, since February, we have subscribed to, though we picked up our first basket only in May. Our subscription consists of a box of freshly harvested organic seasonal vegetables delivered weekly to a central location from where, in turn, we pick it up.

Our subscription, or partnership with the farmers, Michel Massuard and Monique Laroche, along with many other families and individuals signified through, though not solely, an amount we pay upfront covers for our part or share of the harvest of the entire spring and summer growing season.

For the farmers, it frees them from the uncertainties of the 'market,' sharing the inherent risks of farming thus allowing them to plan the growing season better and with more variety through farming methods that are ecologically sustainable leading to much less waste and a healthier environment, on the earth and hearth.

For us we get fresh vegetables – usually harvested in the morning of the delivery – from a certified organic farm. Though we normally don't get advance notice of the particular contents of the box, except through the seasonal guides or through the farm's website and regular email messages, we're always in for a surprise.

Our last box contained a head of Romanesco Cauliflower which can easily be mistaken for an ornamental plant with its beautiful Fibonacci spiral structure mirrored down to its smallest florette. Though not tasting as elaborate as its looks it provides an interestingly textured spin to any salad.

The farm was I had imagined it, though better. Instead of the monotonous monocultures of industrial farms it was an alternating patchwork of vegetable strips that, at the time of our visit, were mostly harvest ready. There were some greenhouses, one bulging with ripening tomatoes. Irrigation hoses snaked across the planted and crop ready strips. There were farm machinery that, while looking their age – no gps navigated, satellite data fed equipment here -- , also looked as homey as the rest of the farm including the clutch of free range chicken and some rabbits.

After the vegetarian lunch there was a game to test our knowledge of vegetables through identifying their leaves. I opted out of that game. I wanted to enhance the hands-on knowledge of our toddler who just a few weeks back had her first close encounter with farm animals though this was on a more controlled environment of an agricultural museum.

Our hands-on knowledge was enhanced as well. But this was mostly on the social and solidarity level, like meeting with similarly minded consumers, individuals and families, and agricultural producers, a community, in short, who shared the same concerns for healthy living and the desire to act on those concerns.

09.10.09 kulturnatib

Hot-air story

Hot-air balloons have never landed in nor taken off from Cebu City. I don't believe so. Yet, like everybody else who watches TV, movies, reads newspapers, magazines or books, I have had but a glimsing familiarity with these gracefully ponderous aerial giants.

Until my first visit here (Canada) in 2006, that is. When I learned that there was a local annual hot-air balloon festival and it took place during the time of my visit, I naturally and excitedly welcomed the chance to upgrade this familiarity to, perhaps, friendship.

To start off I learned these balloons' real names: Montgolfieres, from the Montgolfiere brothers, French siblings who pioneered this mode and method of flight when all there was to get by was ideas and drawings of Leonardo da Vinci.

That event came and went, as I did. Then, the closest I got to these balloons was half a kilometer away when a few of them got as far as getting fully inflated but not much more nor farther than that as the early morning winds strongly advised against their taking off.

Of course, before then, I had had a few sightings of them aloft from our apartment window. Taken all in all it seemed to be a fruitful enough introduction.

Last weekend, it was the Festival des Montgolfieres once more. I was back, so were they. But, I am no longer a visitor but a resident. And, no longer in an apartment but in a house not far from the base site of the festival and next door to a park.

It was the last day of the festival. On TV we saw them take off for the last time. We looked out the window and, indeed, there they were. They had taken to the clear, cloudless late summer sky; Clumps of blazing color against a brilliant blue.

We took to the street on our way to the park to get a better view. Especially for our daughter who, just learning to speak, does not yet make the fine distinction between the ball played with on the ground and the ball many times bigger that flies or floats in the air since in French they can both be called the same word; Ball.

Outside there were enough of them to have one go; there, there, there and there some more!

But then, look there! Hey, it's coming down! It's going to hit the houses! It's headed for the park! Mon Dieu, it's huge!

And you could hear the jets of flame roaring and hissing to heat up the air inside the balloon that gives it its better known english name and makes it fly. But this time and with this one it didn't seem to heat the air enough. Instead of flying it was headed down to what could only be a non-scheduled touchdown.

Non-scheduled it might have been but not entirely undesignated, as I learned later. Our park is a designated landing zone that lies in the periphery of the Gatineau Park, a bigger, more densely forested park where a landing is, at the very least, a messy and entangling proposition.

So, the Mongolfiere with the markings of Abitibi Bowater, a forest products company, paid us, our park, a visit, dropping in on the few kids who were playing basketball, soccer, simply running around or hanging out.

The bigger among them were hastily commandeered to help keep the balloon grounded since it still had enough hot air to lift it but not enough to clear the houses or the trees and it didn't have the traditional sandbag ballasts or weights while the pilot frantically called to his pursuit crew on his two way radio for assistance and eventual extraction.

Before the crew arrived, came the pleasantly surprised residents surrounding the park and their super excited children who wanted to meet this most unexpected visitor up close. They peppered the pilot with questions, who had a few of his own: Where are we? Which road is that?

A young boy, in particular asked: “How much to get on?” “Two hundred plus dollars,” the woman he asked answered who happened to be one of the, probably paying, passengers on the balloon. “That much for an hour?”, the boy persisted. “For a few minutes,” was the wry reply, as the balloon was finally wrestled to the ground by adults to whom the pilot gave more complicated instructions for this maneuver.

The balloon looked like an exhausted prehistoric bird slumped on the ground. But, still good looking enough for the rare photo op.

The pursuit crew finally arrived. They dismantled the whole gear which didn't look to be more complicated nor having more parts than an ordinary propane powered bicycle. The balloon itself, for sure as big or bigger than 20 by 20 meters when fully inflated was folded and stuffed into a bag just one meter cube.

As I started walking back to the house the pilot was handing out plastic cups of bubblies for a successful if not entirely completed flight and for sure for launching hot air stories that is certainly amazing and entirely true.