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.