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.