04.24.10 kulturnatib

Birds

After a while of being away, home is no longer a given. True, it is still there, but there has changed. For the best, the worse and, especially, forever.

Given that visiting home could not be worse than at election time, which often is timed for the hottest months of the year, that immediately gray-tinted my immediate appraisal of the city upon touchdown.

Yes, there are more high-rises, many racing towards completion. Yet, these not only tended to crowd out the sky but also seemed to choke the streets as well. More, as glass is the cladding material of choice for these buildings, in their neighborhood the heat gets magnified beyond unbearable.

Still, as we settled down, a more heartening picture presented itself. Not in the in-your-face manner of the city inexorably hurtling towards crowdedness even as, where we were, this was difficult to miss or ignore, but in the more subtle hint of a solitary note, then a call, then a mix of several distinguishable songs.

These were definitely more than last year, our first homecoming with our daughter in tow, when the only bird sound I seemed to hear was the crowing of roosters.

This observation I admit was influenced in no small part by our daughter who, hearing live roosters for the first time and just a few meters away at that, took to clambering up the window jalousy to see better the source of the sound that she recognized only as reproduced in books and other electronic media.

This time, rather surprisingly, the roosters didn't seem to be crowing. It is possible though that with more interesting tunes coming from other birds whose kind and numbers easily overpowered the roosters they were pushed towards the outer periphery of our attention.

Also, even last year, to our daughter's disappointment, she could have scaled the window all the way to the last jalousy pane and she would still not have spied any rooster. We just knew the roosters were nearby by the proximity of their sound.

We did spy some roosters through the cracks of the hollow block wall, but they, like all birds, hardly stayed put even if they were tethered in place. Consequently they would flit in and out of our vantage point. Observing them was an exercise in frustration.

Not, however, with these other birds. They were as free as the cliché allowed them and as that goes, moreover, allowing only for one kind of bird; the flying kind.

They were definitely the flying kind. But it wasn't this ability that snared my attention. It was their songs; As singular as fingerprints yet many times more captivating.

Still more captivating was the thought bolstered by what admittedly is anecdotal evidence that there were more of them number and species-wise.

Immediately I surmised that these birds must no longer be hunted or simply shot at the way they were when it seemed like the mayas were the only birds left owing, it must be, to their being uninteresting targets.

I thought to stop by at the shop of one of the city's more popular gunsmiths at that time when air rifles were a popular adult toy and birds were popular subjects to toy with to see how my theory held up.

Even as this shop was not far away from our ancestral house where my mother and a some siblings with their families still live my theory, for lack of time to test it, remained just that.

Yet, the fact also remains, providing an unexpected bonus to our homecoming, that the birds are there.

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.

01.14.10 kulturnatib

Winston

Winston is not a usual name for a mother. But then, a mother is not what Winston would usually think of himself either, though, he would surely laugh at this, in the boisterous way he has been known for and with it a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

But, yes, he is a mother especially with the important virtue of being nurturing. This is, of course, a throwback to the strict unapologetic sexist days of the sharp divide between father and motherhood. Even the stereotype now accepts that fathers can be just as nurturing.

Still, recognizing this, Winston would appreciate the tongue-in-cheek nature of this declaration. So he – and I, for myself -- wouldn't mind being grouped with the mothers.

Also, there is a bit of irony in this. Winston, who turned half a century old very recently, could or, more likely, would not even be a father, so far as I know. He remained a staunch bachelor in the strict legal sense of the word.

Yet, there are more than a handful of people who could attest to Winston's generous nurturing.

Foremost would be the artists and musicians. Winston was one himself. Not one for hogging the limelight, he honed his art of drumming and percussion playing to virtuosity in the kind of obscurity that back-bench or back-up musicians are familiar with.

Still, drums and percussion are not exactly quiet instruments. And early on in his musical career he earned the notoriety for being a power drummer of a kind that had a few broken drums to his name and, at one point, membership in a blacklist of one from one of the more popular live music joints in the city in the early 80s.

When I caught up with him, his musical career was in full bloom and he had learned that power drumming had little to do with sheer decibel count. In fact, in one particular instance at that time when we bumped into each other, he was shadow-drumming with a walkman, playing to one of the greatest exponents of the judicious use of silence in music: Miles Davis.

Of the musicians that he subsequently influenced the most notable would be Budoy Marabiles and Jr Kilat. In an example of the expansive and inclusiveness of music, Winston and Budoy are connected, though generations apart, by their common search for a relevant musical vernacular.

More directly, Jr Kilat came about as a band name only because Leon Kilat was already taken. Budoy realized this and realized further that the music that he was creating was not just new but also old, rooted in the revolutionary spirit of Leon Kilat the now mostly forgotten hero and Leon Kilat the early 80s band that Winston was among the founding members of.

Then, in the last two years there were the musicians who Winston brought with him on a journey across what locally is still uncharted territory; the bridge between the musico-aural, visual and performative arts.

Here we found ourselves collaborating directly. The resulting performance works surprised us both. Even with minimal prior discussion we both developed our individual contributions or elements to a single work that was much more layered with multiple platforms for the elaboration of meaning or relevance. We were establishing the co-primacy of music or sound in the overall performative work.

Most recently, Winston was involved in nurturing the reestablishment of old ties from the time when we can be said to be most conscious of our developing individual and social selves – and from this, the selectivity of memory; our elementary school days.

This group, some physically and many, like myself, in cyberspace, kept track as Winston fell sick. As he was admitted into the hospital. As he recovered and returned home. Then, as he fell once more. This time, fatally.

But, fatal is not final. Winston continues as we do. If we do.

01.07.10 kulturnatib

IYBB

This year has been declared by the United Nations to be the International Year of Biodiversity or IYB.

Even before this declaration or before I learned about it, I had already made my own somewhat related declaration or resolution that at that time didn't have any special designation to it.

Now, taking the cue from the UN, my resolution is called IYB with an added B; IYBB for International Year of the Backyard Bird.

While I have had my share of more than just passing interest in birds – among others, when I was producing a magazine-format TV program I made it a point to include an episode on the birds in the Tabunan Forest, the last remaining patch of forest in Cebu and another one on the Olanggo Bird Sanctuary – it was two recent bird incidents that led to this resolution.

The first, though chronologically this came later, is not an actual bird incident. It is a virtual one, though not of the cyber kind.

At the entrance of the main branch of the Ottawa Public Library is a much smaller library I try to avoid, like a recovering alcoholic avoiding a bar. The books here are for sale for usually cheaper than your usual bottle, pint, glass or shot in a bar.

Here I found, “Songbird Journeys : Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds.” As my usual practice is with books whose covers I find arresting – this one is with a strong Audobonesque flavor – I started flipping the pages randomly to see if the content is as captivating.

I flipped to page 28: “They streamed just feet away but made no attempts to approach or land . . . I could have caught dozens, perhaps, hundreds with a butterfly net . . . the effect was exactly like standing on a rock in the middle of a swiftly flowing river . . . the river of birds continued to flow hour after hour . . . .”

This was a description of birder John Arvin on an off-shore oil drilling platform off the Louisiana coast. He was part of the project to monitor bird migration across the Gulf of Mexico where he was lucky enough to witness a rare ornithological spectacle and to be among the few eye witnesses of the magnitude of this migration that had been previously contested but then undeniably confirmed with the use of radar.

From this book I've learned many things. Among them, that Henry David Thoreau wasn't just an iconoclastic radical but was also a passionate birder and that Walden Pond wasn't just an experiment with economic and political self-sufficiency but an ornithological observatory as well.

More importantly, it confirmed – which ties in to the other and earlier bird incident – that birds migrate at night.

Walking home one early evening, sometime in mid-November, I heard the familiar squaking of geese. I looked up. But, with the sun just a thin orange line over the horizon, I could't see anything. Still the squaking continued and becoming louder.

Then, there they were. A graciously undulating and flapping ribbon. Just a tiny strand of that carpet of the great winter bird migration. I watched until they were swallowed by the cooling, soon to be icy sky.

Still there are the resident birds. The backyard birds. They will test my resolve; To watch, appreciate, learn.

12.24.09 kulturnatib

Real Santa

Rarely does an opportunity arise to be a real Santa. As we get older, the more we realize that Santa is nothing more than figment of the great consumerist imagination. Yet, along with comes the realization that now, more than when we were younger, is the time to realize Santa. To make him or her real.

In our culture and in other cultures as well who practice this, godfathers and godmothers are the real Santas. Beyond the consumerist trappings of perfunctory gift-giving, godmothers and fathers have the opportunity, the moral responsibility even, to share. Not just things but experiences, advice, a fully engaged and non-judgemental ear and, most especially, time.

Recently, I received a letter from a friend in behalf of a son who is one of two children I have accepted the responsibility of being a godfather to. I will not mention either of their names, the father's and the son's, for I have not secured their permission to do so as this goes to press.

The letter talks about the once-in-a-lifetime and possibly a lifetime defining opportunity for the son. He has been shortlisted to be part of the Philippine Team to compete in the Gothia Cup – the soccer (I prefer football) world cup for youth in Gothenburg, Sweden, which, according to the letter, will be played right around the time for the greatest show on earth – the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa next year.

Football has always been my game even if I didn't have much ambition with it despite playing on a high school varsity team and later on a U.S. college varsity team that saw us playing for a summer in England.

This lack is most remarkable in the fact that I have no memories of any of the games we played – except that we played uniformly badly, at least by European standards, scoring the barest minimum goal in all the games, which the British call nil, which somehow sounds more professional than zero.

The best I remember of that trip is dropping in on a performance of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, visiting the Tate Gallery that featured a retrospective by Salvador Dali and buying an old copy of art criticism by that venerable British art critic, John Ruskin from an antique book shop.

I'm sure my friend's son will have a different experience should his trip push through. For one, he is younger. He appears to have a more competitive drive. And he will be in a truly international competition where the Philippines, in its dismal history of international sports participation, has had a stellar showing.

The letter was actually asking for advice on whether his trip should push through. I think there is no question of 'should.' The question more is 'could'. This is a question for Santa, an opportunity, as I said earlier, for a real Santa. With enough real Santas its a short trip from should to could to will.

I have started to talk to friends here about which team they are rooting for in the coming world cup. I have said I don't know yet. Now I do. While it won't be the same cup, it doesn't matter.

Or, it actually matters more. I will have a godson, by God and golly, vying for the cup, which once more, even if from a distance, won't just be another spectator sport. Waaaaaave.

12.10.09 kulturnatib

Elephants and painting

Our daughter, just past infant, goes to a French speaking day care center. We have decided that it will be her mother tongue. She is learning it fast, as children do any language amongst the company of their peers and in the custody of the home. And she picks up songs rather keenly.

The other week, out of the blue, she started saying something that had us scratching our heads. We couldn't figure what it was except that it was probably something she picked up from the day care center. We figured, further, that it must be a fragment of a song.

We were right on both counts. I was intrigued by what the song turned out to be when we finally unraveled it. Even with my stagnating command of French I easily recognized – after we teased it out -- the phrase that, loosely translated, said, “To paint in oil is very difficult, much better (less difficult) to paint with water (watercolor).”

The first half of this song is actually also French 101. It is about an elephant with a trunk, an enormous trunk. How both parts of the song connect or relate is anybody's guess.

But it was the second part that intrigued me. How did this piece of artistic mythology or misconception really find its way into a children's song, which could be a testament to the French's affinity or proclivity for painting, if nothing else?

Yet, children's songs being the copyright resistant pieces of cultural treasures that they are whose pedigree or patrimony are a tangled ball of thread, there is probably no profit in inquiring into the hows or even whodunits of this song.

Still, better to educate our daughter, as soon as she is big enough, that this song and others of this genre are not all that factual. Or, to say that these songs have nothing, if little, to do with facts. It is even entirely possible that, especially with this song, facts are beside the point and fancy all of the point.

But, yes, as I have learned in my attempt at a degree in Fine Arts major in Painting, it is the other way around. Watercolor is the more difficult medium than oil. That is if you consider a good watercolor painting to be one that keeps to the essential translucent and delicate quality of the medium.

To achieve this one must, above all, be a master of the controlled accident. This is especially true with a technique that is called -- rather suggestively of something more prurient than painting – the wet on wet technique.

Wet can be just an area or the entire paper brushed on with water followed by a coat of wet color that can be applied with a paint brush, flicked on with a toothbrush or any other implement capable of delivering a layer of color.

The difficulty or the art, as practitioners no doubt would like to call it, is knowing how relatively wet or dry each should be. This takes precision, patience and practice. Because there is no fixity with water, one has to have liters of patience, and because even patience will run out, one must be willing to practice endlessly.

Or, in my case, one has to start practicing again. It is one thing to discuss all these with our daughter, it is entirely another thing to show her.

12.03.09 kulturnatib

Crocodile

Last week, while following the recent Maguindanao massacre over the internet, one picture that accompanied a Yahoo news story with the tagline, “Philippine massacre suspect calls charges 'baseless',” caught my attention.

This was a Reuters photograph of two NBI agents escorting alleged mastermind and massacre leader Andal Ampatuan Jr., upon his arrival at the Villamor air base after his surrender, according to him, his family and supporters or arrest, according to the government.

This is a standard 'firing-squad' photo where the main personages in a news story are neatly arranged or close cropped in a single line with the most important of them closest to, if not in the very middle.

This is the least interesting of photos in the grab bag of photojournalism save for its most utilitarian aspect which is to put a human face or human faces on an event that as far as this event goes can only be generously called truly inhuman.

As far as the face presented in the photo, it is a nondescript one. A young, even childish face, plump as only an overweight government official can be with an added burden of being a leader – though perhaps of a junior rank -- of a non-government organization of armed personnel in a territory where guns are a dialect unto themselves.

Yet, it is not the face that captures my attention, rich as it may be as a subject for physiognomical study. What does is what the face is wearing on its head.

It is a head gear. A head band, with a design that can easily be called 'ethnic' in the geometric style and with colors that this label sticks to almost reflexively.

Immediately upon noticing this, questions jockeyed with each other in my head. Here, some of them in no particular order: Is the headgear design typical of his 'tribal' affiliation? Is this even a typical headgear of this 'tribe' or of the region? Does this headgear denote something? Authority? Rank? A particular connotation when dealing with non-tribal personages or non-ceremonial events? Etc.

I needed a closer look. Or, even a look at other pictures – a related gallery that now typically accompanies internet news stories -- that might shed a clarificatory light on this particular picture and these questions.

I did both with the first act providing a detail that pulled the rug from under my earlier questions, though not as completely as to make them irrelevant, and made the second a mere perfunctory, even simply voyeuristic act.

In the middle of the headgear (or the way it was worn put this right smack in the middle of the forehead) was something that immediately jumped out. Or, maybe that should be, snapped out. Not only because it was of a highly contrasting color (mostly white against overwhelmingly red), design (organic against geometric) and context (global against tribal).

It was a crocodile. The proprietary trademark for the global clothing giant Lacoste and, for a while, IZOD as well. I could not repress a smile, which just as well could have been a smirk.

While Lacoste's crocodile for all its pedigree and ubiquity has nothing to do with the political symbolism of the crocodile especially as applied to Philippine politics, Ampatuan's is nothing else but that very symbol. And worse. But, how appropriate.

11.05.09 kulturnatib

From short to top

June last year I wrote about being shortlisted – two entries -- for the Bank Street North Rehabilitation Project Bike Rack Art competition.

Not much longer after, those two were in the finals list, which, among other things, kept my correspondence with the Ottawa Public Art Program going, mainly from their end regarding my entries that by then had moved into the implementation phase in this project's Gannt chart and from then on the works' movement on this chart.

It was not so one-sided though. I wrote to ask if it was possible to document on video the works as they were to be worked on by the metal-working contractor. I had heard (or maybe read) that there is this new metal cutting technology whose cutting blade was not solid as a rock, rather, liquid as water, sprayed pinpoint at extreme high pressure.

After some back and forth, I was turned down. Citing proprietary technology, the contractor, I was told, demurred. How so, I wondered, at a time when even the recipe for making a nuclear bomb in one's basement is easily accessible in the internet?

But, I did not insist.

Also, I sent invitations to my shows and other art events. The program administrator, Melissa Ramsden, while an ordinary functionaire in the French sense of being a government worker or official, was not just an ordinary functionary in the English sense of a mere bureaucrat.

She was into the arts even after office hours. Or, maybe, being in her position, her office hours were like artist's hours. All hours, in short. It was during such times, after regular office hours, that we bumped into each other at exhibit openings and other art events.

Yet another of such events was to take place today, which I had somewhat forgotten about even if I had mentally written it in big bold red letters in my mental white board – really more like a magic slate that empties as soon as the writing surface is lifted with the next thought – as soon as I received the email invitation the other week.

But, the other day, I received a phone call while cooking a late and hurried lunch. A bit irritatedly I picked up the phone, my mobile which is a tricky instrument to jam and balance between shoulder and ear while the hand attached to the engaged shoulder is busy.

Ms. Ramsden was on the other end, asking, first, if I had not forgotten about today's event, second, if I was going to be there, and third, if they could use one my works for the symbolic unveiling of the entire 60 or so bike racks in the whole project.

We thought the bike lock cum biker glyph was an appropriate symbol for the unveiling, unlocking the whole project to the public as it were, she said. Even if, as you know, this is really just half-way finished with the rest of the racks still awaiting installation, she continued.

I don't mind, I said, while thinking, personally, I find the other design more visually and thematically appealing with its meshing of gears that turn to flowers and vice-versa.

In last year's column referred to above, I ended by saying, like the British Booker Prize for literature, to be shortlisted is prize enough. Now, a year later, it appears that, toplisted – though this is strictly a manner of speaking as there is no ordinal scale in this competition -- I have more than enough.

10.22.09 kulturnatib

Nothing new

Many artists, I included for sure, have this overarching pride – half a step, really, to hubris – that what they do, their art, is something new, that it is something that has never been done before.

To them, and myself, it is always a good and humbling reminder to heed the ancient voice of the prophet of the Song of Solomon; There is nothing new under the sun.

When preparing, in the summer of 2008, for a performance art piece -- a performative action, as I have now learned to call these pieces -- involving alphabet noodles I thought this was a first. For myself, certainly, and quite possibility for the whole of Art as well.

But last weekend, this bubble was burst.

I was involved in a performance art event with nine other artists, six of them coming from Montreal. I arrived early at the house where the event was to take place. After depositing the materials or instruments for my performance in the home office that for the evening was turned into the coat room that soon accommodated more than just coats, I entered the living room to find other artists in the thick of preparations for their own performance.

This is not unusual. Often much of what gets used for a performance can only be brought together just before they are used, sometimes even, brought together only as they are being used, especially when the bringing together is crucial to the performative action.

I arrived at the point of their preparation when they had what I immediately recognized to be alphabet noodles scattered on the low living room table. The very same ones that I had used for my performance last year, the remainder of which we continue to eat as a kind of emergency, fast cooking meal, not because this is really part of our emergency preparations – it is now -- but simply because I had bought way more boxes than I needed.

I got introduced to the one artist I had not met before of this trio and to the fact that for that evening they were a trio. They have their own individual art practices but they are also together on a research project into performance art. In the course of this research they have decided to jointly develop collective actions, including that evening's, as part of their methodology.

I asked about the alphabet noodles, adding that I also had a performance last year involving those noodles and proceeding with a brief summary of what that performance was. In response, one of them, Anne Bérubé, then produced or wielded the bubble-bursting pin.

The use of those noodles were apparently one of her contributions to their entire performance piece that on the surface looked like disparate events but a closer reading revealed the connecting or organizing threads of play and communication.

The noodles came into play towards the end of the performance. They were organized into words contained in small resealable plastic microbags and distributed to the audience who by this time had been almost completely absorbed into the performance becoming unwitting though quite willing performers themselves.

She had been using alphabet noodles for some fifteen years now, she said, but not, so far, in the same way that you did, she added.

Bubbles don't burst halfway. But, like phantom limbs, bubbles can reappear like they did that evening when during my piece titled, 'A Musical Tribute To Housework,' I played Bach's Air in G on the classical guitar while seated in the bathtub with the water running.

10.15.09 kulturnatib

Art watched

My column last week ended with this paragraph, “In any case, they announce a switch: Art no longer the passive, pretty picture on the protected wall but the active pedestrian presence watching, measuring, judging the best and worst that we are or can be with the best or worst that we have or will produce, art and otherwise.”

So, the switch happened. Over the weekend, “ArtWatching,” more than a hundred paper cups with eyes from art works printed on paper and glued across their mouths and installed on traffic sign, traffic light posts and other public infrastructure like surveillance cameras, happened.

They watched, surveilled, listened, measured, judged. For the most part they were satisfied. They found they were, to some, like proper surveillance devices, invisible, they found interested strangers, but most satisfying of all, they found some friends; Hey, that's a Lichtenstein! That's gotta be the Mona Lisa! Warhol's Marilyn Monroe! Those eyebrows can only be Frida Kahlo! Goya? “Saturn Devouring His Son”? And so on.

For the most part what they saw was the normal run of things in a stretch of urban road in the capital, no less, of a major western country, Ottawa, Canada. It being a festival weekend, at least at this part of town, leading up to Thanksgiving Day on the Monday – not entirely the same celebration nor the same date as that of her southern neighbor though the historic impulse might be shared – and with the weather turning out to be a most agreeable in the closing days of Fall before yet another cold Winter, it was fun and merry.

People were out in droves, with children in backpacks, slings, prams, bicycles or otherwise trampling on foot. They sampled the sights, sounds, activity and, most of all though certainly not true for all, the merchandise. After all, this was the one day Giant Sidewalk Sale of shops that on regular days you would never catch a whiff of cheap from.

Yet, the GSS is simply the topping, of this extravagant annual Fall event called, as a whole, Cornucopia. If the picture of the harvest, the horn of plenty, is intentional and could be taken for shopping bags of goods to be loaded for or hoarded at home, the picture of a more insubstantial though every bit as substantive art that pervades the event is just as present though maybe not so immediately obvious.

This was especially true of the day's closing and main art event: Natural Disaster. A performance art event that promptly sold out to a packed audience of the art cognoscenti and those who could not tell spaghetti from panini artwise. Still, for both, there was the usual confounding or even confusing moments that performance art always brings on.

While way out of the range of “ArtWatching,” they knew about the event and were familiar with the history of performance art and the debates or discourses that accompanied the emergence of this art form or practice that continue to this date and to the foreseeable future. They would have been keen on it.

Still there was another part they also witnessed; mutilation, destruction, disrespect.

When we came around the following day to take down the cups some of them were gone – even some from a height that would have required a ladder or a Shaquille O'neal to get to --, some were missing the eyes, some had been crushed, ripped, discarded willynilly and not even given the decency of proper disposal in a nearby garbage bin.

Sad. But that's the life of art. Or, just life in general. You get all kinds. Even among the kind you think would know or do better.

10.08.09 kulturnatib

Art watching

For the most part and for most people, art is an object or event that is there, passively waiting to be viewed, read, listened to or otherwise consumed.

But, what if art were not so passive; Instead wears our shoes, watching, reading, listening or otherwise consuming us?

That is the question that becomes the premise or concept for my most recent installation work, a piece I had decided upon in lieu of a performance art work that was the original invitation for me to do.

This work had actually been percolating in my mind way before the invitation was extended, moving between developing detail and, as of yet at that time, the vacuum of venue.

Most of my works are site specific. The venue, space, wall or context of an exhibit or occasion for the work's display or unfolding just as important and germane as the work itself.

What began as a 'guerilla' piece not much different from graffiti that appears out of nowhere, unannounced and unacknowledged turned into this rather 'mainstream' work when looking further into the invitation and the venue, I realized this work to be a perfect fit.

And then, truth to tell, guerilla might have the radical chic appeal to it but so does the opportunity to make it 'mainstream' with some remuneration and recognition along with it. Why not?

So, informing the organizers, I submitted the proposal for this installation, regretting that the performance art piece isn't forthcoming and could be for some other time, should that be possible. No regrets, replied the organizers, we like the proposal.

The organizers are largely responsible for developing this smallish plot of Ottawa, a community called Westboro, into a cultural and commercial powerhouse – read chic, trendy, green -- known mostly for its two festivals. One in the summer, WestFest, and the other for fall, Cornucopia.

The horn of plenty then is where, once more, a plethora of art will happen along with a giant sidewalk sale on shops along a strip called Richmond Road where, except for this event, cheap is not something mentioned in the same breath.

Along this stretch as well will hang my installation piece, on traffic sign posts and other public infrastructure. These will be paper cups, more than a hundred of them, on the mouth of which are glued printed reproductions of eyes from art works known and unknown from all over the world, including one from a painting by the great Indian poet and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, who, I was pleasantly surprised to learn when doing research for this piece, had taken up painting towards the end of his years.

They will be like surveillance cameras; Art watching. But, they can also be taken as mini-megaphones; Art silently broadcasting their ever watchful presence.

In any case, they announce a switch: Art no longer the passive, pretty picture on the protected wall but the active pedestrian presence watching, measuring, judging the best and worst that we are or can be with the best or worst that we have or will produce, art and otherwise.

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.

05.28.09 kulturnatib

Bugs

“You speak French?” That this was asked in English betrayed a bet that, one, I probably don't speak French and, two, that I would be more familiar with English. “Un petit peu,” I replied, “but better with English,” I added.

There was another bet that had nothing to do with either French or English but rather with what might have looked to be like I was a newbie at this.

“That one, problem.” This was followed by shaking and scratching motions. “Plenty of animals.” “No, no, what is it?” This was exactly my question that I had no opportunity to verbalize as soon as he started talking to me. “Bugs, yes, bugs. That one. You use it?”

I followed where his finger was pointing and immediately realized what he was getting at. It was my turn for some shaking motion. I shook my head.

But, yes, that would have plenty of bugs. Even indoors they are bug borough. Outdoors, they are a veritable bugsville. Not only that, they are extremely attractive to bigger animals, including humans, whom I was, not surprisingly, mistaken to be among them.

Yet, no, I was not interested in in the faux leather couch that had clearly seen better days but could still pull through decently given some methodical touching up.
It was among the pile of furniture that had been left out on the curbside for the following day's scheduled pickup by the city's garbage service. Or, as often happens, for picking by anybody interested in them on a strictly first come, first claim and finders-keepers basis.

My interests were more modest. Besides how could I move that full, three-person couch, even if it was just two corners away from our house?

I was working on a project that needed cabinet drawer rails or slides. The junked bedroom cabinet next to the couch had those. Perfect.

So, with tool in hand, I was in the process of harvesting those accessories when this man on a bicycle stopped and, in what I can only see as expressing civic concern and social solidarity, proceeded to give me some advice on the fine art of trash picking.

Not that I needed such advice. Ever since I had, and for some time now, adopted the approach of extending the useful life of something by either simply using it some more or reusing it or using it for something else, trash has been some of my most reliable and readily available resources.

Even the use of 'found-objects' in many of my art works is a manifestation of this approach.

It just makes simple sense for me. With the pollution that is choking up the earth, ourselves and our future anything that helps to mitigate the situation helps.

This was not the immediate concern for the man on the bike, however. “Bugs, they itch much” he continued even after I had told him that the couch was not my interest. “You have to wash plenty,” he persisted. “So sometimes not worth it.”

“I know,” I said and wishing him a nice evening as he hopped back on his bike and as I hopped on mine with the success of my project in the bag.

04.23.09 kulturnatib

Culture and chance

Many governments who find that taxes are not a popular thing, especially governments with leaders who treat the tax coffers as if it were their personal piggy banks, find other ways to pry money from the hands of passively unwilling or actively resistant citizens.

The most trod avenue is the highway to the casino, or some form of either state managed or state sanctioned game of chance.

Even the church, normally the most vocal against this most addictive of sins, is not above dipping its holy hands into gambling revenues or not being too particular about the provenance of such money when some is thrown its way.

It's for some good, they say; government, church and, naturally, the gamblers themselves.

What that good is varies widely though they usually reflect the socio-economic priorities or realities of a particular government or country.

Thus, in our country, most of the money from legal gambling goes to disaster relief or emergency aid, health support and, not very prominently acknowledged, political projects of the President although even disaster relief and health support is often positioned to become political 'pogi' points for the administration in power.

Here, the most prominent positive face of gambling is cultural support, through Loto-Québec's various cultural support programs.

Ten years after its establishment in 1969 – 178 years after legalized gambling was established in the Philippines – Loto-Québec, after much deliberation and determination by the directors, decided to adopt the vision of supporting contemporary Québec art as part of its mission, importantly earmarking 1/100th of 1% of gross sales for art acquisitions.

Thirty years later, this collection has blossomed into over 4,000 works by more than 1,000 artists from all over Québec, representing one of the biggest and most diverse corporate art collections in Canada. 50 of these are currently being toured all over the province.

We caught this exhibit entitled, 'Nomade,' at its first stop here at the Galerie Montcalm of the city hall of Gatineau City.

As expected, the works were uniformly excellent in a variety of media and genres. Expectedly, too, for a traveling exhibit, they were mostly wall works of easily transportable sizes.

Of these what caught my attention was a figurative abstract in acrylic on shaped canvas by Kittie Bruneau. It wasn't the work itself, although this was mostly in eye-riveting bright reds, yellows and oranges, but the title.

Here is one of art's deep mysteries; the titling of a work, “Untitled.” Yet, in this case, the artist wasn't content to simply leave it at that, appending, though parenthetically, the name of a place that as far as I know can only be in the Philippines: Tondo.

The accompanying text to the work did not throw light into why this work was titled such. I was left with searching, though reluctantly yet unavoidably, into visual clues that could tie the work with the title suspecting at the same time that this could not, in all likelihood, be the intention of the artist.

Still, it got me thinking about the strange serendipities or coincidences of chance that a work probably inspired by what is certainly not the most picturesque of places in the Philippines ends up in the art collection of a corporation that traffics in chance thousands of kilometers away with a mandate that is a world of difference in how the smile of lady luck gets to be appreciated.

03.19.09 kulturnatib

Consuming art

I was just on the phone with an art supplier. They are five hours away by car. One would think that here, for a major city – Canada's capital, no less -- art supplies should not be difficult to come by.

They, actually, are not. The major art suppliers do have branch stores here as do some of the more specialized, non-Mall shops.

But what I need is not what is considered a traditional art supply. In this sense it is specialized. Yet, in the usual sense it is rather common; wherever there are Chinese or Asian restaurants or groceries, which there are quite a number here even if the local Chinatown is not as big or as prominent as in other major metropolis.

Still, what I'm looking for is to have this common after-meal delicacy customized to make it a component, a major one, of an art work for an upcoming exhibit.

I'm looking for custom-made fortune cookies or to have custom fortune cookies made.

They will be part of an installation/performance art piece that is my contribution to an exhibit called Transcontinental Divide.

The installation will be some kind of Zen Buddhist altar and the performance will be by the guests to or viewers of the show who will be encouraged to partake of the cookies that will be served in the altar in order for them to fully appreciate the artwork.

The more perceptive amongst you will immediately realize that fully appreciating the work crucially involves getting into the cookie, breaking it open perhaps, and retrieving the slip of paper that will contain one's fortune or its directions for realizing the same.

Except that this will not be regular fortunes. Thus the need for customizing. They will be koan like directions. There is neither space nor time here to get into what koans are except to say that they are riddle-like sayings used in Zen Buddhism to aid in attaining enlightenment.

Yet, they are not riddles in the usual logical-rational sense. They, indeed, appear nonsensical. But they are supposed to lead to the instantaneous, intuitive grasp of non-dual reality.

At least that's what I take these directions to be though a Zen Buddhist might legitimately beg to disagree.

They are provided by an artist in Vancouver, our counterpart in this exchange exhibit, whose idea or intentions for the artwork we are at complete liberty to interpret or implement the way we understand them to be. We are, in fact, as free as to reject entirely the other artist's idea or directions and come up with our own artwork provided that it refers to the rejection.

That is not an option for me. Rejection is not necessary. In fact, as soon as I saw (the text wasn't just simple letters but had a visual or graphic design element to it) or read the instructions, I immediately knew what to do. The rest of the work is a matter of a little tweaking here and there.

This work is about the consumption of art, of how it is to consume art, of how art can even be art at all. These are some of the knotty questions that bedevil art and artists today and ever since art has been accorded its very own soapbox.

Eating is a very basic if primitive form of consumption. It is also high art. I have no problem with both. Like cake, I can have art and eat it, too. Only this time it won't be cake but cookies.