03.25.10 kulturnatib

friends
je m'exuse. computers have keys that when pressed do weird things. weird in a way that you dont expect. apparently while posting this, i pressed some key that distributed the wrong post and not even halfway through at that. sorry for wasting your time if you took the time to check that. this one should work better.
thanks for you patience.
roy


Play

Home and vacation are words that cluster together often with family and friends. Other words that gravitate towards each other and the just mentioned words are fun, rest, doing nothing.

Those words are foremost in my mind of late because, indeed, we are going on a vacation, heading home to family and friends. Yet, for me especially, it won't be much rest and, in fact, it will be doing quite a number of things. Even then it should be fun.

One of the best definitions of home, I find, is that by the American poet, Robert Frost. He said, in a poem, that home is where when you go there go they have to take you in. Something like that.

This is true, of course, for family and friends. In my case and especially with this immediately imminent vacation it is particularly true of friends who are also colleagues in art.

Birds of the same feather are said to flock together. All the more if these are artistic birds since nowhere in human experience are there more kinds of feathers than in art and they are distinguishable one from the other mostly – though paradoxically since artists are commonly thought of as singularly unique – through their flocks.

The flock of artist friends I share the same feathers with are of the species rara avis performartistscinensis. Otherwise known -- or as of yet mostly unknown -- as performance artists. There are not too many of them in Cebu despite the first sighting in 1978 and almost annually since then in an event called the MindWorks.

These somehow remained sporadic if somewhat scheduled bumps in Cebu's artistic landscape. Though still rooted in the UP Cebu Fine Arts Program, performance art broke through the confines of that program and since 2005-06 has steadily produced works in venues that artistic angels fear to tread.

Having had the honor of being part of that breakthrough, it is performance art and the performance artists of XO? I also consider home.

And so, it is with them that I will be doing a number of things. First, there is a video screening of some of my recent Canadian performances. Immediately after there will be live performances. There will be preparations for these, especially with the latter, involving a bit of construction. Both will happen on April 7 at the Outpost Restaurant, 9pm onwards.

Aside from that there is also this performance piece I have been invited to present in August. This work as it has developed so far has a Philippine (Cebu) component. I will be asking the help of school children (grade six) both from private and public schools.

I am hoping that these children – a hundred of them, if I can manage that number – will be up to the challenge.

I hope that I am up to the challenge with them and before hand, their teachers and even parents.

This is a work that will have what attracts me most to performance art; the capacity for being open-ended, the possibility for other openings or further development.

That might sound like work, but with art, especially performance art, that could as well be play. Serious play.

03.18.10 kulturnatib

City of design

Soon after arriving in Canada I joined two design competitions for public functional art. My previous experience with such competitions were not all that encouraging. Not so much because I failed to garner the top prize, but more so because the winning works do not stay for long in the public's eye. Worse, they stay even a shorter time in the public's mind.

It is tempting to say that the Filipino public has no mind for such things. But it is really those charged with developing the public's mind who have narrowed this mandate to just one thing; politics. And the worse possible kind at that.

Here in Canada, culture gets equal billing. There is a wide ranging consensus that arts and culture are the breath of life of a place, especially a city. Not only the so-called 'high' arts – opera, symphony orchestra, etc.- but also the popular, or more popularly accessible arts.

Thus, the competitions I joined were for bike racks and sewer or manhole covers. Both were municipal initiatives under laws that provided for a certain percentage of public infrastructure spending to be allotted for art.

I was successful with the bike racks. Twice over, as the two designs I submitted made the top thirty. As an added honor the rack with one of my designs was chosen as the representative rack for the unveiling ceremony.

An example of how the public mind is brought to bear upon these projects not only it its appreciation but even in the creation is how an exhibition was organized to showcase the designs. The public was then invited to view and rate them, both numerical and qualitative, which, together with that given by the jury, then became the final grade.

It was an agreeable and enlightening experience over-all. Encouraging, too.

This comes in handy as recently an architect-friend forwarded me a call for submissions to a design competition. Moving up from two to four wheels for me, this competition is to design taxi stands for Montreal.

I just have the barest of information in the forwarded message which is mostly from the official online source.

Yet, even before going to that source, a few things are immediately expected. Most importantly, this will be a team effort. In fact, my friend in saying that she was passing on a project that I could be interested in was also recommending a team I could be interested in working with for this project; her team.

This will be a complex project whose design parameters are multiperspective yet must be cohered into a singular design outcome. This spells a polysyllabic word: alotaheadache, but also translates into a monosyllabic one: fun.

Which is what Montreal is. Yet more than just fun it is a vibrant multicultural city that has been designated by UNESCO as a city of design. The taxi stands and the competition for its design reflect and is reflective of this designation.

03.11.10 kulturnatib

Irony

Last weekend I was extended an invitation similar to one that, a decade ago, I was giving out.

Honoring the invitation, I found myself in a kind of deja vu, and was soon mulling over the similarities and differences of this occasion and its attendant circumstances with the one a decade back, where, in the most immediate of these differences, I was among the hosts, while, this time around, I was among the guests.

Both occasions were the introduction of a studio-gallery and, simultaneously, a group exhibit to highlight this introduction.

The former space was called 'Lunâ,' and this more recent one, 'Le Temporaire.'

Neither are english names.

Le Temporaire, however, is easier to understand or guess at, while Lunâ was often mistaken for being english as the orthographic mark over the letter â was easily missed in the reading and forgotten or dispensed with in the writing especially when using an english designated computer keyboard.

Right away both names, resolutely non-english, are proud identity badges.

More so with Lunâ since adopting that name immediately carried a triple burden. First, pronounciation, leading to the explanation that, no, it is not luna or moon, then, identification, leading to a further explanation that, yes, it is an old Bisayan agricultural word that in its various applications could be translated into english as 'rooted in the rightful place'. Lastly, vision, leading to a discussion on how with the space the group hoped to encourage the development of the local contemporary visual arts.

In short, serious.

This was then reflected in the title of our group show, “Munas Ginhawa.” Or, struggling to breathe, a local expression that means in the achieving of something one almost lost one's breath.

Meanwhile, Le Temporaire, as the name suggests, is a bit lighter or less fixed. And, in what seems to be in keeping with that name is the title of their show, “Pique-nique,” whose english equivalent is, likewise, not difficult to arrive at.

Lighter, however, does not at all mean less serious, especially in the sense of commitment to art.

While there is almost a generational gap between the artists of Lunâ and Temporaire there is no question or difference in their commitment to art.

The biggest difference, however, is not with these two groups and their spaces, but in their particular general cultural milieu.

The Temporaire artists decided to call their space that because of their short-term lease. The building owner wants to tear it down and replace it with another structure. But the present structure is in a 'heritage' rich area regulated by 'heritage preservation' laws.

There are also such laws in the Philippines. But they are hardly respected and, much less, enforced.

Here they are and that is what the Temporaire group is banking on. They plan to take on the building owner as they assert the prerogatives of heritage and culture.

The Lunâ Art Collective, meanwhile, struggled under a milieu that is still largely indifferent to art, personified in the current mayor who cares nothing for art because, you cannot eat art, he has said.

Lunâ survived a while. But, Le Temporaire could very possibly exist longer. I smiled at that irony as I walked to the bus stop.